Anonymous
Source: Santa Barbara County Grand Jury
Responding to citizen concerns and inquiries, the Santa Barbara County Grand Jury (The Jury) launched a full investigation and review of the impact of remote learning on academic performance and social-emotional well-being with specific focus on students in grades K-8.
Collectively, the educational system in Santa Barbara County, both public and private, has never been faced with having to create entirely new teaching methods, managing the absence of social and emotional interaction & growth of the students and the far-reaching impact on educators and parents alike.
In general, The Jury has found that all districts, in concert with guidance from the Santa Barbara County Education Office, did a noteworthy job to make remote learning as effective as possible.
Overall, however, remote learning, specifically in math and English language arts (ELA) was not as effective as in-person instruction and resulted in learning as well as social emotional deficits for many students. Academically, the most severely affected students were those already underperforming prior to the pandemic.
The K-8 period, while a critical period for foundational academic learning, is even more crucial to social – emotional growth. Academic performance is measurable on a comparable basis between historical norms and the 2020-2021 school year. But the social-emotional effects of remote schooling will require continuing, careful and diligent investigation.
For some students, an even greater toll resulted when problems within the home went undetected due to teachers not seeing students in person. With these issues in mind, the districts have outlined programs they will implement to mitigate the learning and social-emotional losses, beginning with the 2021-2022 school year. An immediate goal for all districts at the start of this school year is to focus on the emotional status of students, schools will be using counselors, psychologists, and special programs to address issues that may present themselves.
Regarding learning loss, the Jury notes that it will be a few years before academic performance can be fully evaluated. One standard county-wide assessment is needed at the end of the 2021-2022 school year to give a solid benchmark upon which to measure yearly performance. All students, but especially those who are underperforming, require county-wide initiatives such as smaller class sizes, more one-on-one instruction, and targeted testing to improve results in math and ELA. From a historical County financial perspective all these initiatives have unanticipated costs associated with them, which will need to be included in future budgets, once COVID relief funds have ended.
The complete report with agency responses are posted on the Grand Jury’s website: www.sbcgj.org.
I always find it strange that parents who put zero effort into furthering themselves and there own education feel that they have valuable opinions about the schooling of others.
Watch the interview from CNN yourself and read the numerous reports about what I stated.
CDC Director on CNN stating Vaccines do not prevent transmission.
https://youtu.be/swlUv2SbmT8
CDC needs to start tracking all Covid breakthrough infections. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn’t have enough resources to properly track Covid-19 “breakthrough cases,” Dr. Scott Gottlieb
The CDC stopped tracking most COVID-19 cases in vaccinated people. That makes it hard to know how dangerous Delta really is.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/07/28/cdc-needs-to-start-tracking-all-covid-breakthrough-infections-gottlieb-says.html
CDC: No Record of Naturally Immune Transmitting COVID-19
https://link.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/cdc-no-record-of-naturally-immune-transmitting-covid-19_4102046.html
Many parents with the means to do so moved their children to private schools or homeschooling. Unfortunately, most parents do not have the financial resources to make these choices. However, it looks like we might have a chance to change that in the 2022 election. There is a lot of progress being made towards getting an initiative on the ballot to empower parents to choose what is best for their kids. The initiative would allow parents to take the money the state spends on their child for public school and spend it at a private school of their choice or on homeschooling expenses. This would provide lower income families with the financial means to decide what is best for their kids, a privilege that is currently reserved for wealthier families. It would also bring some financial accountability to the public school system by allowing parents to take their funding elsewhere if they are not satisfied with their assigned public school.
Chip Of SB, looks like at least one reader has no interest in closing the wealth and education gap. Status quo works just fine for the ‘haves’….
GUSD could have opened 6 months earlier than it did, but chose to ignore expert advice over that of the unions. My kids could have had a semi-normal school year. “Should’a would’a could’a” though. Nothing we can do now but be angry. I feel much worse for those kids who lost their senior year, especially the athletes, and those kids who were struggling to begin with.
Not in anyway downplaying the seriousness of COVID, but the kids should have been in school last year – masked, spaced, etc – but IN school.
Agreed. Lots of left leaning folks (including me) want to see more money spend on education. Want to see a massive, grass-roots movement in that direction? If so, let parents control the $$ we are spending on their kids. They’ll spend it smarter, and make sure we aren’t short changing the investment in the future.
… either that, or you can go with the “PC” version, that the only way to improve education is to keep pouring massive funds into our current dysfunctional bureaucracies… and keep the parents well-managed and in their place with only the “professionals” telling them what’s best for their kids.
MediaBiasFactCheck:
“Overall, we rate The Epoch Times Right Biased and Questionable based on the publication of pseudoscience and the promotion of propaganda and conspiracy theories, as well as numerous failed fact checks.”
Stop spreading BS.
If we allow parents to take public monies to private schools, a greater percent of kids with less motivated, less engaged parents will be left in the public system (and those kids were already at a disadvantage). Also, private schools can pick and choose whom they accept, so all the troublesome kids will be left in the public schools. This might work out well for the kids who go to private schools. But it puts the public schools (and their students) at a disadvantage. And don’t private schools cost more than public? So if I take my chunk of public money, I still have to come up with even more, to be able to afford the private school. They might offer scholarships, but not enough for everybody. How can you address these issues?
I agree 100% transparent. And I would add there is bipartisan support for this initiative. Folks on both sides of the aisle want the best for their children and believe parents should be empowered to choose the best educational options for their kids. I truly hope we can all work together to make this initiative happen in the 2022 election.
Ahchooo. Simple. Guarantee a diversity of independently operated public schools that require no additional parental funds. We already have positive motion in that direction.
Charters, as they exist, are notoriously controversial. I think that’s because the issue is so darned complicated. But whatever your views, I would implore you to talk to the low-income parents with kids in those charter schools. They love them, by and large. Do you want to tell them (imagine doing it to their face) that you want to eliminate that choice that is helping their kids, or accuse them of anything akin to privilege or hurting anyone else? The “charters hurt poor kids” is a well-rehearsed talking point, but in my experience the low-income parents tend to disagree. I prefer the low-income parents having their opinion represented in policy.
Kids who were having problems before the transition to remote learning had problems with remote learning. Let that sink in.
@ Achoo. Second reply to your question. I get that you’ll likely disagree with my response. But consider this (you may agree here).
If we empower parents, we would see an OUTPOURING of bipartisan political support to invest more in kids.
Right now (amazingly) parents aren’t so politically motivated to increase education funding. Could it be because they know it won’t materially help their kids to add, say 15% to our spending? On the other hand, empower parents and boy o boy would you see folks demanding what our kids deserve.
Either way, I’m trying to find common ground with you on the idea that our kids deserve more. But more of the same? Heck no, imho.
100%. It isn’t that people don’t want to allocate more of our tax revenue towards public education, it’s that the funds aren’t being effectively or efficiently used in a system that doesn’t prioritize the students and isn’t tied to any performance metrics.
Ignore the website and opinions and go right to the source document, the FIOA request and response by the CDC. To quote the CDC’s response to the FIOS request:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (CDC/ATSDR) received your September 02, 2021, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on September 02, 2021, seeking:
“Documents reflecting any documented case of an individual who: (1) never received a COVID-19 vaccine; (2) was infected with COVID-19 once, recovered, and then later became infected again; and (3) transmitted SARS-CoV-2 to another person when reinfected.”
A search of our records failed to reveal any documents pertaining to your request. The CDC Emergency Operations Center (EOC) conveyed that this information is not collected.
You butt snorkelers don’t seem to realize that “no record” doesn’t mean “hasn’t happened”.
So @2:50, regardless of what your preferred fact checkers said, the CDC having no record of someone who caught covid, recovered, caught it a second time, and transmitted it to someone else is true by the CDC’s own admission. Last week someone commented, with no source whatsoever, that the vaccines provide 10x the protection of naturally immunity, somehow the post was left up and not taken down as misinformation.
That’s certainly not saying you should catch covid instead of getting the vaccine, but ignoring the resilience of natural immunity, particularly in the discussion of mandates, would be ignoring science and a hundred years of epidemiological knowledge.
You didn’t read the letter. @ 3:49, and name calling is an excellent way to prove your point.
@ 3:49 not “having” that data, if it does occur, would be an enormous failure on the CDCs part nearly two years into this.
Ignoring the fact that it’s nearly impossible to collect that data in the middle of a massive pandemic. Half-truths and lies peddled by the BS crowd to spread FUD, as usual.
I just did a FOIA request to the CDC for data on whether the BS posters here were sane, and received the reply that they also had no data on that topic. Hmmm… that must imply…
@3:54, you really should expect more from our governmental agencies, particularly the CDC, especially in the middle of the pandemic. That is extremely important information especially when pushing a vaccine mandate. Instead we continue to fly by the seat of our pants. Example A) from Fauci Friday (i.e Mr. no mask, one mask, two mask, no mask if vaccinated, yes mask if vaccinated, one shot, two shot, better get a booster shot).
“They are seeing a waning of immunity not only against infection but against hospitalization and to some extent death, which is starting to now involve all age groups. It isn’t just the elderly,” Fauci said. “It’s waning to the point that you’re seeing more and more people getting breakthrough infections, and more and more of those people who are getting breakthrough infections are winding up in the hospital. If one looks back at this, one can say, do you know, it isn’t as if a booster is a bonus, but a booster might actually be an essential part of the primary regimen that people should have.” – flying by the seat of their pants. Maybe the 4th jab will do the trick?
4:33 – Demonstrating a breathtaking lack of critical thinking skills. Just what do you think the “N” in SARS-NCOV-2 means?
Only far righties and the errantly religious want school choice.
@4:49 that is even more reason to have the data we’re talking about. To excuse this lack of data away as too hard to collect is a cop out (and not true). They have near limitless resources for this type of study and data collection.
California voters believed in public education so much that shortly after Prop 13 passed limiting property tax increases, Prop 98 was also passed which now automatically dedicates 50% of all general state revenues to K-14 public education. No strings attached and no performance standards expected. Just a fulsome commitment to the important role public education plays in this state. In return we got continually declining student outcomes and liberal border policies that have vastly diluted the per-pupil spending Prop 98 voters intended, along with growth of the teachers unions as the most powerful political force in this state. Lots of lessons and unintended consequences have ensued from the well-intended Prop 98 passage. Unfortunately maintaining a great public education system was not one of them. Hard to justify even more than 50% of all state general funds going also to public education, and short-changing all other state activities. That is where we are today. Where should even more money for public education come from? Does it come with no strings attached like Prop 98 funds or does more money come with clear metrics and accountability, unlike the total failure of Jerry Brown’s local control additional school funding he tried a few years ago that improved nothing for the students; except personnel spending. Tough call.
I do not want my tax dollars going for unregulated private schools. For example, I would strongly disapprove of my tax dollars going to a religious-based curriculum. I understand that public schools need improvement, but giving tax money to private schools seems fraught with problems.
5:22 – Why be civil to the persistent vax FUDnuts?
They are pushing agendas that are detrimental to the health of our community.
Our local schools are fraught with problems… options and choices would be a win. For example a 7 hour school day for 6-10 year olds is unnecessarily long. Science says let the kids sleep… let’s have a 5 hour school option. Kids and situations are different… this one size fits all model is archaic and has been proven to not be beneficial to the kids.
Generaltree – you were all for keeping schools closed…
What a disastrous (and obviously disastrous) thought and plan of (in)action …
GT- People that actually care about kids wants choice. People that benefit and/or appreciate continually dropping school effectiveness don’t. And The people who kept and wanted schools closed last year REALLY don’t want choice. It’s interesting and illuminating regarding who actually cares about our youth.
Most of it was wasted…
We all lost with Covid (well not all… Bezos and Musk did alright)…
Private schools aren’t unregulated, they are accredited. Most importantly, it’s not giving money to private schools, it’s giving the money to the parents to decide how to best educate their child.
Thank you SBUSD fir sitting on your hands and taking zero action while private schools did the hard work to open & have effective zoom school
SBUSD never even started an application fir a waiver to open. Never lifted a finger to open up.
Yet they received over $35,000,000 in Covid funds per EdSource.
Despite receiving $35 million they still say they don’t have enough $ to have counselors on site and Officers on site.
So who got the $35,000,000?
The nuts are out in force today….
“Academically, the most severely affected students were those already underperforming prior to the pandemic. ” Some of these parents weren’t so concerned about their students learning before the pandemic. It gave many the opportunity to have one more thing to be angry about.
I think the public schools really dropped the ball, especially in our area where schools could have taken advantage of our mild weather and migrated things outside. Instead of getting creative, they went full fear factor. It’s going to take a long time for everyone to recover, especially the school aged kids treated like lepers to be fearful of by the public school system. To save themselves the adults sacrificed the futures of a lot of children.
The failure of the SBUSD was substantial and now we are seeing real effects. I wish I could say they have learned from their mistake but I don’t believe they have. While classes are open this year, our school continues to implement stupid COVID rules about limiting parent participation, no field trips, no onsite meetings, etc. We are vaccinated, it’s time to move on and if you’re not.. well that’s on you. The COVID paranoia in our school system needs to be addressed because it continues and is continuing to affect our children.
11:49, they are talking about between $10,000 and $15,000 per student per year. This would help a lot with the cost of existing private schools, and would also facilitate the development of new private schools and smaller school pods that can work within the $10-15k per student budget. I expect this proposed initiative would lead to tremendous innovation in education and a corresponding improvement in academic performance.
“Then why is it that two kids who sit next to each other all day have such different schooling experiences?”
Because of their background, the educational and economic background of their parents, and how much time they got with their parents as infants and toddlers! How much they were read to. EARLY EDUCATION and PARENTAL LEAVE affect these background measures.
And I’ll shout out for birth control for those who cannot provide for their offspring.
Vouchers are just a right-wing racist white-flight ploy to deny funding and education to those that need it the most, while enabling the funding of schools that would perpetuate those inequities.
VOR, and they quit in droves and have not gone back to work. So they have exercised their choice. And theoretically they were protected by the mask mandates and sneeze shields. When you are an adult who can get really sick and die, and you work with kids who weren’t even eligible for vaccination until recently, and can be super spreaders, you should not be forced to work in that environment.
Which is a good example of where our society has really gone off the rails recently. Judging thought, ideas, and information, based on who is saying it vs. the actual idea, rational, and results.
So, firstly, we didn’t know if children would be super-spreaders of COVID way at the beginning, because they sure are really good at spreading everything else. You keep saying this like we always knew that, and we didn’t. You may have hoped that, or assumed that, but there was literally no data. Secondly, grocery store clerks aren’t stuck in a small room with very little ventilation with the same 30 people for 6 hours a day.
Something must be done to help the lower/lower middle / middle class and disadvantaged families to give them options to avoid the disaster that is the CA public school system [in most places]. School choice. If you do not wish to put your child into this environment you should most definitely get a tax break or subsidy, it is not the parents fault that the public schools are a mess here and no one should be forced to put their kids in it b/c they are poor or disadvantaged. Wrong all around. School choice now.
3:22 – Comments from a person with a Betsy DeVos level of understanding of education, who loves to promote pure speculation as though it were truth, as in the case who is even commenting.
Vouchers and “school choice” are just a right-wing racist white-flight dog-whistle ploy to deny funding and education to those that need it the most, while enabling the funding of schools that would perpetuate those inequities.
There’s a lot of concern-trolling in these comments. Conservatives suddenly concerned about public education is one of the funniest parts of recent political discourse. They cut the budgets for decades, put in a comically unqualified Edu Secretary for 4 years, then act like nothing happened and point fingers. The US doesn’t have two parties anymore, there’s a governing party opposed by a peanut gallery that got conned by a reality TV host.
EdChoice released a new study on school choice – claims it has saved tax payers $12-37 billion dollars, offering more efficient educational delivery systems as well as improved student outcomes. With a fixed amount already going for K-12 education in Calif due to Prop 13, this level of savings stays in the system for other student education improvements and does not return back to the taxpayers. Take a look (search engine Ed Choice + school choice) and see what they found out and how they reached these conclusions.
Every American adult has the right to make decisions to protect themselves from a pandemic that has a good chance of making you severely sick or killing you. Much higher odds than winning the lottery or scoring a big casino win. Are you really saying that teachers should sacrifice themselves for the good of the children? Who are you to make that decision for them?
There was data. And the idea that store clerks, interacting inside with hundreds of DIFFERENT people per day were safer than teachers dealing with the same 15-18 kids daily in an in/out environment in Sb is obviously ludicrous. It was inexplicable and inexcusable at the time… and it remains so…
8:42 PM – Ed Choice is just a right-wing propaganda mill:
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/EdChoice
Pit, now do grocery store clerks, bus drivers, factory workers, etc. that all had to show up for work, in person, throughout the pandemic or be fired. They were all forced to “sacrifice themselves”.
1013am -This is an utterly false bit of revisionist history. There were absolutely no limitations to opening outside. All Goleta Union School districts could have easily opened outside if they had actually wanted to/tried. Look at all the restaurants that procured tents and outdoor structures… They had the money and the ability…they just didn’t have the desire. The only people and schools that cared were the ones that had to care…namely private schools and schools like Cold Springs. The school board utterly failed us.
Certain people (and posters) elevated teachers above any/all else…virtually every other country realized the importance of schools being pretty much the last thing to close and the first thing to open…not California. We opened wineries and bars before schools. Staggering…
Ed Choice is just a right-wing propaganda mill:
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/EdChoice
That’s hilarious coming from VOR. Projection at its finest.
Am I the one judging a book by it’s cover and merely responding based on who is commenting or do I respond based on the information and rational in that comment?
3:00 – The word you keep misusing is “rationale”. Not surprising, since rationality is not a feature of you commentary,
I guess I would be more willing to listen to Republican ideas if they didn’t seem so hypocritical. They are not conservative in any sense of the word.
Their ideas seem to be:
– Having most of the wealth in the hands of a few people is better for everyone.
– Spending a huge amount on defense is great, spending a huge amount on caring for the poor is terrible.
-Medical care is a privilege and not a benefit to the economy.
-Government’s purpose is to make things easier for massive corporations.
-Natural resources are there to be exploited by corporations.
Dems are not perfect but at least they want more people to succeed in our system.
They may say that during election time PitMix, but their legislative actions, particularly now that they control the house, senate, and white house, dictate otherwise. Which party accepted more money for massive corporations, wall street, and pharmaceutical industry last year? Which party removed the ability for Medicare/Medicade to negotiate drug prices (hint, the party that accepted way more pharma money). Which party took away the SALT tax deduction (which increased taxes paid buy the wealthy) and which party recently put it back in place? With the Dems in control of everything I can assume they’ll get right on Medicare for all, cutting the defense budget, and canceling all new oil and gas permits? Which party is pushing for a mileage tax here in CA, an enormously regressive tax significantly impacting the poor? Which party piles on more and more red-tape, regulations and bureaucracy that make it harder and harder for small businesses to compete against major corporations? Which made covid mandates for us commoners then consistently didn’t follow themselves? Who just sold $650M of weapons to Saudi Arabia? Facts matter Pitmix, and you don’t have them.
Again discrediting information you didn’t even read solely because of the political leanings of author or website vs. the actual information and rational behind it. We will make no progress as a society or a community as long as people continue think everything their political party says and does is correct and good , and anything coming from other political leanings is wrong and bad.
What VOR said.
DUKE, COVID transmission depends on:
1. Number of people (grocery clerks win here, more people)
2. Distance (school kids, closer than grocery clerks)
3. Time in contact (school kids: longer than grocery clerks)
4. Ventilation (small classrooms: far less ventilation than a grocery store)
5. Masking