Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday signed a $6.6 billion plan aimed at getting the youngest California public school students back in classrooms this month.
In a virtual signing ceremony with legislators and state school officials, Newsom expressed confidence that Assembly Bill 86 would spur a return to classroom learning by setting aside vaccine doses for school workers and creating an April 1 reopening deadline for districts to get full funding.
"I am here in the spirit of not just gratitude, but optimism that this bill is going to really accelerate openings all across this state," Newsom said.
The legislation rewards districts that return at-risk and grades K-2 students to classroom instruction. For those districts located in counties that are not in the state's most-restrictive purple COVID-19 tier, bringing back all elementary school students and one grade of middle or high school is required to get full funding.
State lawmakers opted to smooth the pathway to reopening with the bill, rather than mandate an end to distance learning.
The legislation does not require teachers to be vaccinated before returning, and allows districts to reopen without a labor agreement with school unions, though many districts will still negotiate such a pact.
"When you look at 58 counties, a thousand-plus schools districts, this truly is a challenge at scale that no other state in the country is faced with," Newsom said.
But by not requiring districts to offer in-person instruction, as critics of the plan have called on Newsom and the Legislature to do, state lawmakers admitted they are now at the mercy of decisions made by school boards across the state.
"We're going to take this as a first step," said state Assemblymember Phil Ting, D-San Francisco. "We're going to go home to all our districts and beg all our districts to open up, use this money."
