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Bonsall Unified board update on eve of schools reopening to students

With Bonsall Unified School District planning to welcome students back to campuses with a hybrid schedule on Monday, Oct. 19, the BUSD Board of Trustees heard a report Wednesday, Oct. 14 from Superintendent David Jones and district staff.

The board reviewed the Learning Continuity and Attendance Plan Recommendations and the staff gave a presentation on the process, steps and decision making in preparation for reopening the schools.

Superintendent spoke passionately about reopening.

"We are ready to reopen," he said. "I also wanted to share just personally that I feel it should be very, very clear to every single person in my opinion, listening tonight, that the right thing to do is to bring our kids back to school. And we can't do that until we have a finalized agreement (with the teacher's association), unfortunately, and what's difficult is we're required to go through and negotiate the impacts and effects of bringing people back to work, which is very, very challenging."

He said the agreement with the teachers association wasn't completed until Oct. 8 and the earliest they could come back was Oct. 19.

"Which means our principals have been scrambling to put classes together, to work at night, work over the weekends, including the directors," he said. "It's worth it because we've got to get the kids back to school.

"I would just ask everybody listening to think about this in this way. If the earliest we could come back was Dec. 10, theoretically, when do you think you would reach an agreement? You think it would be now November or close to Dec. 10? And do you think people would still be saying that they're not ready to come back? We have to do the right thing for our kids and we cannot delay this anymore."

He then mentioned reports of damage being done to students and young people due to being isolated during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"I would just encourage all of you to look at what is going on," he said. "And maybe you have kids and people between the age of 10 and 25, the screen time, the isolation, depression, suicide rate of being isolated at home because they're not in a regular, healthy environment and a regular daily routine. It is irresponsible to delay this for any reason, we have no other choice, but to do last minute scrambling because we haven't reached an agreement until recently."

Jones said the district will support parents who choose to keep their students at home.

"If you are a parent and you are choosing to keep your child at home, we will support you," he said. "I would just ask our parents to pay attention. And I'm not saying you're not, but I'm just asking that you have conversations with your children, especially at the middle school and high school level about how they are doing, their mental wherewithal, sitting at home each day, spending hours and hours in front of a screen, and then hours and hours of homework and what that does to us mentally."

He said he feels opening with a hybrid schedule wasn't good enough.

"If you feel it's the right thing for your child, we'll do everything we can to get them back to school," Jones said. We need to do everything we can to increase the amount of time that they're here. The hybrid instruction ... please know, I get it, is not good enough a couple of days a week. Not good enough. We've got to increase that as soon as we can. I'll do the best that I can."

Jones then talked about whether the schools would be shut down again if the county falls back into the purple tier of the state's reopening guidelines tiered system.

"We are in the red tier of San Diego County and the reason I bring that up is because parents and people have asked me if we go into the purple, now that we're coming back to school Monday, do we have to close schools down?" Jones said. "The answer to that question is no. It is based on case rate within a school, a cohort. Then in turn, we determine whether we need to shut down that classroom or school."

Jones also thanked everyone involved in the effort to get the kids back to school.

"We thank everyone ... parents, several parents were on it, two board members, administration, teachers, classified staff," he said. "That plan followed the CDC guidelines, all the rules and regulations. We have a full website; it was approved by the board of trustees on Aug. 12. We provided weekly updates over the summer to notify our families of everything that we knew that was going on in preparation for getting that approved.

"Every school site principal and many teachers over the summer, worked hard on the details of what to do, the procedures and routines and safety things. What does that look like at each school? That had to be ironed out by every principal and they brought in their leadership teams and many teachers. Thank you. Thank you to our principals, they helped to finalize their site. Plans are ready to go. All the safety equipment and protocols are in place."

The board approved the Certification of Sufficiency of Instructional Materials for the 2020-21 school year as presented by David Moore, executive director of Educational Services.

They also approved an agreement for participation in the San Diego County Career Technical Education Program and they also ratified a memorandum of understanding between the district and Fallbrook Union Elementary School District for transportation maintenance.

The board unanimously approved the consent agenda which ratified personnel registers, cafeteria revolving cash report, commercial warrant report and purchase report.

During closed session, the board considered the appointment, employment, evaluation of performance, discipline, transfer or dismissal of employees and discussed its position regarding collective bargaining with the Bonsall Teachers Association in order to direct the Superintendent in negotiations.

Earlier in the meeting, longtime board member Richard Olson talked about his time on the board as he would not be on the ballot for the upcoming election.

"As I approach the end of my school board career, after 27 straight years, it's starting to get kind of emotional for me," he said. "I've gone through so many superintendents, so many principals, so many students, both of my kids went through the entire Bonsall program and redistricting caught up with me. At 82 years old, I possibly would've run again if I hadn't been politically removed.

"I just wanted to say that it's been lovely working with the people I've worked with and I hope that I can leave feeling that I did some good here. Thank you."

Jeff Pack can be reached by email at [email protected].

 

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