- Elizabeth Larson
- Posted On
Lakeport Unified School Board to hold special Friday meeting to reconsider hybrid school start date
As a result of the discussion, which took place at the school board’s regular Wednesday evening meeting, the board agreed to hold a special Friday night meeting to reconsider its previous decision, with input from Public Health Officer Dr. Gary Pace.
During the discussion, Superintendent Jill Falconer emailed Dr. Pace to ask when he could speak to the board, and she reported that he’s available on Friday evening.
To date, only Lucerne Elementary, Upper Lake Unified and some Lake County Office of Education schools are having in-person instruction in Lake County.
Lakeport Unified and the rest of the county’s districts have spent the year so far in distance learning, or phase one, of the Lake County Return to School Continuum Plan. While in phase one, no school sports practice or competition can take place.
The board decided at a special Nov. 9 meeting to move into phase two of the county’s return to school plan at the start of January, when the next semester begins. That stage two, “hybrid” model allows for students to be on school grounds for part of the week, while others can remain in distance learning mode if they wish.
That decision last week followed a lengthy discussion during which Falconer told the board that staff would be ready, at the earliest, to go to the hybrid model on Nov. 30. That was the date favored by board members Carly Alvord and Jeannie Markham, who wanted to get students back into school as soon as possible.
Falconer also reported at that meeting that 75 percent of parents wanted to go to the hybrid model, with just under half wanting to make the transition as quickly as the district could.
However, the teachers who spoke to that board overwhelmingly favored waiting until the start of the next semester in order to give them time to transition to the next phase. District nurse Diane Gunther also had urged caution at that time, noting climbing case numbers.
Sports discussion gives way to concerns about opening date
At the Nov. 9 meeting, Athletic Director Milo Meyer had raised the issue of school athletics and the need to make a decision about whether to allow them, which the board decided to hold over to Wednesday’s regular meeting.
It was in the context of discussing school sports for the 2020-21 school year on Wednesday night that the board encountered pushback from district parents and students about the later opening.
Falconer said the California Department of Public Health has been promising for more than three weeks that it would be releasing new guidelines any time for school athletics.
However, on Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom reported that half of the state’s counties were being placed in the purple tier – the most restrictive – in the state’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy due to rising COVID-19 caseloads.
During the same press conference, Dr. Mark Ghaly, secretary of the California Health and Human Services, said those new sports guidelines aren’t ready.
Later on Monday, in response to Ghaly’s announcement, the California Interscholastic Federation, or CIF, posted this statement on its Twitter account: “In today’s COVID-19 press briefing, Governor Newsom and Dr. Mark Ghaly from the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) disclosed that the release of updated youth sports guidance has been postponed. Therefore, the current guidance remains in effect, and CIF competitions are not allowed until new guidance is provided.”
While that appeared to leave the board members with little to discuss, they soon heard from coaches, parents and students urging them to take a stand, move up the hybrid phase start date and let students have sporting activities.
They heard about the depression and emotional challenges students continue to experience due to not having the social and instructional interactions at school, which parents said is a necessary outlet for them.
One of those parents, Brian Martin – also Lake County’s sheriff, who emphasized he was only speaking in his capacity as a citizen – said he’d never seen a group of parents and kids wanting to return to school so badly.
Martin urged the board to author a letter to Gov. Newsom and the California Department of Public Health to advocate for sports. “This is not the time to sit back and just wait for the state to guide us.”
He suggested that maybe Newsom is too busy going to the French Laundry – a reference to recent revelations that earlier this month Newsom attended a lavish indoor birthday dinner for a friend at the expensive Napa County eatery.
Martin’s son, Matthew, a Clear Lake High School student, said the large turnout at the Wednesday night meeting, held in the Marge Alakszay Center, was mostly of students who wanted to go back to school.
He said it’s hard to stay at home all the time, not seeing friends or participating in school life. “Please advocate for us.”
Ed Pepper, Clear Lake High’s baseball coach, also asked the board to send letters to the state and get students back to playing sports. “I can’t stand not having another season.”
On Tuesday night, Kelseyville Unified, which announced it is going to the hybrid model on Nov. 30, discussed school reopenings and hosted Dr. Pace. Pepper asked why Pace wasn’t at Wednesday night’s meeting, and Falconer noted later in the meeting that because the board had already made its decision last week, she hadn’t asked him to attend on Wednesday.
High school football coach Mark Cory said he participated in a Zoom call Tuesday night with West Coast Coaching Alliance, which is studying how to return to sports safely.
Cory said he agrees with following the science, which so far shows only a small number of children test positive for COVID-19. He said community leaders need to follow that science.
“At some point we have to make a decision,” Cory said. “We should be playing games, that’s the bottom line.”
He said it’s not an “us against you,” situation, rather, “It’s us together figuring this out.”
One speaker asked if Lake County could have its own internal sporting league if it can keep its case numbers down. Meyer said he had asked that very question of the CIF’s North Coast Section commissioner.
“The answer I got was, no,” said Meyer. “The state would be the one that calls it.”
He also noted that state guidelines currently only allow for conditioning, not practice that involves balls or other shared equipment.
Student Miles Mattina told the board that he’s taking five college-level classes, and while he’s doing well, “School is stressing me out.”
He said it’s requiring long days and nights on the computer, while at the same time he’s prevented from participating in sporting activities.
“I just want to be back with my team,” Mattina said.
He added, “We need to be back in school so that we can play sports.”
Retired teacher and coach Dennis Wilson told the board that they need to throw “a lifeline” to students who are failing due to not having sports. “Get them back in school, get them back in sports.”
Board members ask for special meeting
A person in the audience asked the board members their opinions about going back to in-person instruction.
Board member Phil Kirby, himself a longtime educator and coach, responded, “I believe in kids being in school every single day.”
However, he said he was relying on facts being presented by “the powers that be” outside of the school district.
Kirby said he’s also on the board of managers for the CIF’s North Coast Section and earlier in the day had asked if they had any more information he could share with parents, and was told no.
Alvord said she attended Kelseyville Unified School District’s Tuesday night board meeting and said Dr. Pace was encouraging them to send children back to school.
That’s what Pace also told the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday morning during his regular update to the board on COVID-19.
Pace reported that children are less likely to spread the virus to adults, and that there are few school-based outbreaks around the world, with the virus usually coming into schools with adults – primarily, teachers and staff.
He suggested the downside of not having children in school outweighs having them back in class.
Gunther did not address the school board directly during the meeting, as she had last week, but in a comment she made in the meeting’s Zoom chat line she noted, in apparent response to Alvord’s comments about Pace, “D. Pace also shared that teachers of older students had 2 times the rate of Covid than their non-teaching peers! He additionally deferred to the Board as the ones responsible for the decision and reported Lake County numbers are rising!”
Alvord said she wanted the school board to have a special meeting on Thursday to consider starting school earlier.
Markham said she was in complete agreement with Alvord. “As I voted last week, I believe you need to be back in school.”
Buffalo has three children, with one of his sons active in sports and wanting to get back to school and athletics. Buffalo noted he also was a high school athlete.
“This board had to balance what we were hearing and the consideration of the risks with the needs of our community, our team members, our faculty and our staff here at Lakeport Unified,” he said of last week’s decision.
Buffalo said he wanted to make crystal clear that going to the hybrid model “is not a return to normalcy,” adding, “It will be even more challenging.”
Parent Jason Soderquist criticized the board for waiting until January when Falconer had told them last week that the staff could be ready for the hybrid model by Nov. 30.
“This COVID thing is going to be around for awhile,” said Soderquist. “There is no way that I want my kid out of school for a couple of years.”
Board Member Jen Hanson, who teaches at Woodland Community College’s Lake County Campus in Clearlake, said that after last week’s vote she heard teachers thank the board because they are not in a position to adjust their curriculum in a reduced amount of time.
“As a teacher, I will still vote with them,” she said, while also noting that she hates teaching from home. She said that while she’s teaching, sitting across the table from her is her daughter, who is trying to learn online and crying because she wants to be in school.
Alvord continued to press for a special board meeting with Pace in attendance, noting he had given the Kelseyville Unified Board a thorough PowerPoint presentation.
“Let’s ask him what we should do,” Alvord said. “We don’t have to go back and forth and speculate.”
Kirby would later agree that he, too, would like to hear Pace’s presentation. Once a third board member made the request, Buffalo said he would work with Falconer to set up the special meeting.
A short time later in the meeting, Rob Alves, representative for the district’s teachers’ union, said that as far as they were concerned the hybrid model starts Jan. 4, and that a lot needs to happen between now and then to prepare.
He said he had no idea how the union membership would react at this point to a date change for the rollout of the hybrid phase.
“I don’t envy you,” Alves told the board, adding that he appreciated their willingness to dive into the matter.
By the meeting's end, Falconer reported that Pace said he was available to meet with the board on Friday.
She said she’ll proceed on Thursday with setting up an emergency Friday evening meeting, as the board requested.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
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