Anonymous
By Hilda Maldonado, Superintendent of the Santa Barbara Unified School District
Our county has made progress in our battle to decrease COVID rates. We are now in the red tier, and we are hopeful that we will continue to see a decline in infection rates.
We have begun to bring back small groups of students as well as Athletics. This week’s video highlights our visits to those campuses where student cohorts were welcomed back this past week. We also continued with our staff’s COVID 19 testing and are happy to share there are no positive cases reported to date.
By now you may have heard that schools will be allowed to open as early as October 13, 2020 if the county stays at the “Substantial transmission-red tier.” To help you learn more about what it means to return to in-person instruction, we have created a Family Resources & Information webpage which will be updated regularly.
As we move forward, each family needs to be thinking about three things when deciding whether to send their student back to school in person:
1. Know the status of the virus in your community
2. Know your and your family’s health risks
3. Know your school’s Health and Safety plan
In the coming weeks, your student’s principal will be communicating to you their individual schools’ health and safety protocols to ensure our campuses are prepared to welcome back students. The week of October 19, we will be reaching out to you to request your decision on your preference for your student: in-person school or distance learning.
Lastly, I met with a student advisory group last week and they have asked us to conduct a poll of students to learn more about their opinions on returning to school. Principals will be conducting the poll with 7-12 grade students this week.
Have a healthy and safe week everyone.
Inside Santa Barbara Unified with Superintendent Hilda Maldonado from Santa Barbara Unified on Vimeo.
I hope they are thinking of students and teachers health before everything else. Doing zoom from home is hard but if the kids and teachers get sick its going to be a lot worse.
Amazing to watch the level of PPE evolve. In the beginning everyone was wearing space suits to administer tests. Now a low level mask and gloves is enough? Does this mean the virus isn’t as severe as first thought? Who lowered the standard of protection for workers giving the tests?
I got an email today asking when I was comfortable with my HS student going back. I’m so happy to see them moving forward and not refusing to even consider in-person learning like what they have been hinting at. If kids can be out there playing soccer, going to daycare, and now eating inside restaurants (without masks), then I am confident they can safely sit in a classroom, distanced, wearing masks in a clean environment.
Thanks Maldonado, all these things could have been started months ago in anticipation of opening elementary schools on waivers and everything else on the 13th. But we continue to lose months of our children’s valuable education. Well done.
I hope they are thinking of students education before everything else. That is their job. Last I checked they are not public health officials or pediatricians… are you?
You are correct, the virus isn’t nearly as server as we first thought back in March/April. Unfortunately many are still stuck there.
VOICE – You are INcorrect. The virus is more severe than we thought, look how it’s affected over 210K Americans. Just because we know more about the virus and learned that full body PPEs are not necessary, doesn’t mean it isn’t just as severe or more than we originally thought. Don’t mistake increased medical understanding with decreased danger.
Wow Bosco, directing your anger at people that are NOT responsible for the virus is indicative of you having issues!
We all know that this pandemic hasn’t been handled perfectly, which would be an impossible feat considering that it is not something that has happened before in most of our lifetimes. What we do know is that it is highly contagious and those that die from it die a HORRIBLE death. And when you look at the “great leader” of our country who has covid and downplays it and says it’s no big deal as he gasps for breath… it’s no wonder that some people are confused into thinking it is not that big of a deal. It isn’t a bigger deal than it is BECAUSE things shut down. Yes, life needs to start taking steps towards returning to a more social and normal place but it needs to be done carefully. Children’s educations are important but so is their health, and the health of the community.
It’s not an easy thing to balance with so much still being a guessing game. Unless you have it all figured out over there?
Current estimates for IFR are way below what they were in March/April. Just this week the WHO estimated 10% of the world population may have contracted the virus. 1M deaths / 780M infected = IFR of .13%. This is an order of magnitude below the original estimates which were in the 1.5% – 3%+ range. Is the virus dangerous? Yes. If you get it will you die? 9997 time out of 10000, no you will not. That’s a 1/765 chance of dying IF you catch covid. Many other activities we partake in each day carry a similar risk of dying and we don’t even realize it. Yes, covid is contagious and car accidents aren’t, this is for perspective only. FACTS NOT FEAR
Bosco, it was started months ago but Gov. Newsom keeps moving the goal posts on them and changing requirements.
Anyone else for a 9am or 915am start for school? School doesn’t need to be 7 hours long and we really should be letting the kids sleep…it seems like the science is pretty strongly in favor of this as well. (And then yes, we can stop using the excuse of kids waiting for their school bus at 630am in the dark to justify the November time change). SCHOOL AT 9am and we keep the clock how it is now!!!!!!
voice of reason…it is not just about how many people die or do not die…it is the long term, possibly life long {only time will tell} debilitating, after effects on health and possibly early death from lung, heart and neurological effects such as stroke. I know people personally who had the virus back in March and April who are still suffering.
I am angry at people that are supposed to be doing what’s best for our children failing to do their jobs. I don’t blame them for the virus. I blame them for not putting our children’s education and development first. They have had plenty of time, with plenty of examples around the world, to plan and get resources in place. The reality is opening as soon as possible was never their priority. I am angry when I see hundreds of wealthy families sending their children to private school when thousands of public school children are stuck in a substandard “virtual” education. I trust and respect our public health and healthcare institutions to make the best decisions for the community. I trust the educators to do what’s best to educate our children. I am not saying COVID is no big deal. But I also believe it’s a risk we have to learn to live with. Schools are too important to the well being of our community to close, they should be the very first institutions to open, no the last.
I think it’s obvious that they are concerned about health first, by virtue of the fact that they are starting up slowly (small cohorts), practicing their distancing, starting up their testing, and surveying parents and teachers about their preferences. I’m a big fan of baby steps, even though distance learning SUCKS (nevermind “it’s hard”, it sucks – it sucks for the elementary kid who can’t focus, and it sucks for my former straight A high schooler who is pulling B’s and Cs. The teachers don’t like it either, but it beats dying.)
13 year old tests negative, goes on to infect 10 others:
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6940e2.htm?s_cid=mm6940e2_w
Pitmix I guess you don’t travel or drive out of CA. Go see how taxes are spent in other places. As soon as you cross the state line into any bordering state the roads are in better shape, The shoulders are usually clean and well maintained, Bridges and interchanges well designed and decorated with art. There are parks that are clean and well maintained. All done with less taxes!!!!
Pit, I drive on poorly maintained roads here in CA. I don’t access public parks because they’re filled with homeless. I used to spend a lot of time in public parks when I lived in Europe and I miss them very much. When I called the cops to report my vehicle being damaged in an overnight hit and run, I waited 3 hours for them to show up for my non-urgent call during a busy weekend and finally just gave up when it was 11 at night and I was tired of waiting. I’m not sure why you think we need property tax when we could tax income more fairly and cleanly without a bloated and insane tax code that benefits the .01% (not even the 1%) most of all. Everyone needs a home and property tax is a crazy concept. A tax to live in an abode that you may have owned for decades? Just for inhabiting space? Everyone has a right to a home free of taxation from the government. And like other commenters said – I have no problem paying my taxes when I get something for it and when I see government accountability. The bureaucracy, bloat, and waste I see here in the USA, California, and locally here in our city is unacceptable and unforgivable.
62% of your property tax bill pays for this. And the fun part is somehow it became legal to allow not property owners to decide via vote how much YOU should be taxed because they want an inefficiently run jobs program.
Property tax should be abolished for primary residences. It’s absurd to tax people for inhabiting a dwelling – a necessity in life. I’m fine with some tax for second homes, investment properties, commercial, etc. Nearly all European countries do not tax property like we do here in the USA. Tax is paid either at time of purchase or sale. I lived in and owned a home in two countries in Europe. We never paid ongoing property tax. Our income tax was “higher” than here, but came out in the wash to be the same as one pays owning a home and living in California or other high tax states. Plus, we had healthcare, trains, etc. Increasingly I am infuriated wondering where the heck they disappear all of our money to here in the US and California. Literally what am I getting for my taxes? I don’t have children in school here, I don’t qualify for ANY government programs or assistance, I just pay pay pay pay pay.
Well put and interesting to compare. The tolerance we have for system designs such as this are incredible. And as you say, even if the overall burden comes out in the wash via different taxing strategies, there’s still a huge issue with accountability and the new buzzword of transparency. Considering the system we have now, I’m honestly at odds that I pay 10x my neighbor for the same home because he’s lived exactly in that house longer (even if we’ve both been in SB for the same time). I then itemize my tax bill by looking at the County Assessor details page and low and behold I pay for 62% for some form a “school” budget. And this, along with bond issues, are decided by voters who have no skin in the game? I’m surprised beyond reason how there’s yet to be a brilliant legal mind who’s taken this on as an entirely illegal method of taxation. With internet based programming today, we could apply payroll taxes directly to anyone who chooses to approve additional spending based on their vote. That’s a fair system. Increases the tax base as well. They already did it with the gas tax addition over the past few years and that money went poof as nobody blinked an eye. Finally, I’d be somewhat fine with it if schools actually catered to children and not multiple overlapping bureaucracies drawing everlasting pensions.
I wouldn’t mind the extremely high taxes in CA if those tax dollars were put to better use. With some of the highest taxes in the nation we should have some of the best public schools, lowest ratio of homeless, best roads/infrastructure, awesome public transit. Unfortunately I believe most of that is due to a bloated public sector bureaucracy with way more employees than necessary to accomplish a given task, i.e. too much administration for the finished product. In addition, the public sector never shrinks as demands change, leading to an ever increasing, never decreasing headcount that only becomes more and more expensive to administer.
SBTownie, I guess you don’t drive on roads or want access to police services or use parks? Haskel, 62% of your prop tax do not go to Covid testing. Why the fake news?