‘A Light at the End of the Tunnel’: Some San Francisco Kids Return to In-Person School

“There won’t be any space for quarantine,” he said in Cantonese, which was translated by KQED. “That’s one room for four of us.” When his kids are home, he feels he can help them stay safe. But they take Muni to get to school, where he fears he has “no control over” who they’d have contact with.

With some students in school, and some still at home, teachers are finding themselves split in their duties. Andrew Patel is one of those teachers juggling multiple cohorts — in person and online — at Leonard R. Flynn Elementary School on Cesar Chavez Street, a stone’s throw from Precita Park.

Patel said it’s important not to forget why distance learning started in the first place.

“We went to distance learning because of COVID-19 and we’re still, as a community, experiencing a lot of loss and a lot of hardship. And we have to think about what we’re going to do as a school to bring joy and healing and feel good once we return while also staying safe in our classrooms,” he said.

That will be no easy task. Like other schools where demand has been high to return to physical classrooms, when Patel’s school reopens he will divide up his class, welcoming eight students who are his “cohort A” kids into his physical classroom while signing on to Zoom with eight other children, who will be in class from home. There is not enough space to accommodate them safely in his classroom, he said, hence the split. But cohort A and B students will each spend some time in class, and some time on Zoom.

Patel must also plan to continue the distance learning curriculum for two more students who are in “cohort C,” whose parents have opted to keep them in distance learning the entire time.

Not every teacher feels safe returning yet. SFUSD staffers can request accommodations to work remotely should they belong to a group of increased risk, with a substitute teacher assigned to buttress in-person learning. So far, 584 SFUSD staffers requested accommodations, and 290 have met the criteria for approval, according to SFUSD.

But the district will still need educators present to meet student demand. At a recent Board of Education meeting, SFUSD staff said only 91 new substitute teacher applications have been received, prompting a warning from staff that “current substitute teacher availability does not meet anticipated need.” The district is exploring “additional options” to deploy other staff as needed.

In the tweet above, SFUSD seeks new hires to help meet the demand of students. 

And for those who are returning, teachers have even another layer of complexity to worry about when returning to in-person learning — their own children.

Sanchez Elementary School teacher-librarian Tara Ramos will spend Monday performing an intake of kids at her school, helping to supervise all the new rules and procedures kids and staff must follow for safety, from distancing to hand-washing. As she juggles that challenge, her own 8-year-old daughter will be attending an in-person school hub.

Ramos said she feels lucky that her husband can start work a little later to drop her daughter off at school, “but that’s not everybody’s situation.” There’s a “void of child care for teachers,” she said.

Still, despite the challenges, Ramos said her school worked carefully with families in the Mission District, many of whom are Latino and especially impacted by the pandemic, to find ways to educate their children in the safest ways possible.

“Most of our families live in the Mission neighborhood, and we know what they have been more impacted by COVID,” Ramos said. “I feel proud of us that we are being so careful with their health and safety.”

But the flip side of that is schools may be hyperfocused on safety for the foreseeable future, Ramos said, which may hurt their ability to concentrate on learning.

“How can we still make school fun? How can we still have engaging activities for kids?” Ramos said. “I just think that’s the part maybe people aren’t necessarily considering, like how much this undertaking is really about safety and not so much about learning.”