Assembly Bill 10 Provides Hope for Struggling Kids and Families That Schools Might Reopen Next Semester

Democratic Assembly Member Phil Ting (with his daughter) has authored a bill to require schools to reopen when counties fall out of the restrictive purple tier.

Parents are fed up with malls and other non-essential businesses being open while public schools remain shuttered and kids suffer the consequences. Making matters worse is the fact that many private schools and smaller, wealthier school districts have been operating in person using waivers. 

Assembly Bill 10 provides a much-needed universal playbook to school districts that have been making decisions independently during the pandemic, leading to outcomes that have been confusing and frustrating for parents and inequitable for kids, such as one school district operating fully in person while a neighboring district remains completely shuttered. It provides a potential lifeline to California’s approximately six million public school students and their families.

The legislation, authored by San Francisco Democratic Assemblymember and father of school-aged kids, Phil Ting, would require most schools reopen within two weeks of their county falling out of the worst purple COVID tier, starting March 1. (There are accommodations for vulnerable students and staff.) It basically mandates that schools have a plan to reopen as soon as it’s safe.

“As a father, I worry about all the learning loss occurring and the millions of kids who are falling behind, as a result of our sole reliance on remote teaching — not to mention the impacts of social isolation,” Ting said. “Schools in other states and countries have prioritized in-person learning during COVID-19 and have done so without major outbreaks. California ought to follow that path.” 

The other lead authors of the bill are Long Beach Democratic Assemblymember Patrick O’Donnell, the chair of the Assembly Education Committee who described the current pattern of California school reopenings as “state-sponsored segregation,” and Sacramento Democratic Assemblymember Kevin McCarty, chair of the Assembly Budget Subcommittee on Education Finance. Like Ting, O’Donnell and McCarty are parents of public school students.

“It’s clear to us that many kids are suffering both academically and emotionally after nine months of distance learning, and the vast majority of families agree there should be an option to send their kids back to campus for in-person learning as soon the Health Department gives the green light and it is safe to do so,” said Speak UP Founder and CEO Katie Braude, who has a master’s degree in epidemiology. “We’re very supportive of the legislation in Sacramento, and we do think it would be very effective in helping to spur the reopening of schools at the district level. There is clear evidence that schools, when they follow accepted safety procedures, are not superspreaders.”

LAUSD Board Vice President Nick Melvoin (BD4) said AB10 takes politics out of school reopening decisions by setting clear guidelines based on science.

LAUSD Board Vice President Nick Melvoin (BD4) told Speak UP that the public health strategy in Los Angeles to keep malls open while schools remain closed has been “a colossal failure,” as evidenced by the current COVID-19 surge. “With Covid right now in LA at 15 times the level of reopening by state guidance, the county and state need to be called out for their failure in not putting kids first,” Melvoin said. “I believe many if not most students, especially in a district like ours, have been ill-served by distance learning. So we need to be acting with all deliberate speed to get kids safely back in school.”  

To do that, Los Angeles needs to take measures to bring the virus under control, he said, and California schools need federal relief dollars, as well as the type of PPE and COVID testing that Los Angeles Unified already has in place. But state legislation like AB10 will also make a huge difference.

“What I appreciate about the bill is that rather than politicizing the issue, it sets clear guidelines based on science about when kids need to be back in school,” Melvoin said. “That’s particularly important when you look at the inequity in places like L.A. of who is back in school and who’s not. Not only L.A., but statewide, when the governor’s kids are back in school, but L.A. Unified, 84% kids in poverty can’t go back.” 

Despite the fact that committee discussion on the bill isn’t slated to begin until January, the California Teachers Association and California Federation of Teachers are already rallying their members in opposition. But California’s public school students don’t have a powerful union representing them, and there is ample evidence that distance learning is failing many, particularly low income, Black and Latino students.

Just last week, LAUSD announced it was delaying issuing any F grades in order to give kids the chance to improve their grades because the number of students failing classes had skyrocketed and a disproportionate percentage were low-income students. 

And according to the California Department of Education, which held a suicide prevention webinar Thursday, there are widespread reports of increased suicides, depression and anxiety during remote learning. That’s backed up by this survey done by the Youth Liberty Squad and ACLU of Southern California, as well as Speak UP’s parent survey showing that nearly 60% of L.A. public school parents say their kids are showing signs of depression and other mental-health issues during campus closures.

Ting has said that both Governor Gavin Newsom and California Health & Human Services Agency Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly have indicated they want to work with lawmakers on AB 10. The legislation is also in alignment with President elect Joseph Biden’s vow to reopen schools within 100 days of taking office. 

“The bottom line is that L.A. kids have come last for too long during this pandemic, and it’s a huge moral failing,” Braude said. “It’s time we start putting the kids’ needs first.” 

 -- Leslee Komaiko and Jenny Hontz

 * If you would like to support AB10, look up your state legislators and contact them here: http://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/. You can also contact Governor Gavin Newsom here: https://govapps.gov.ca.gov/gov40mail/

Fund All Kids? The California Legislature Says ‘No’

Despite the concerted effort of thousands of parents and dozens of organizations, including Speak UP,  the battle in Sacramento to fund all kids was lost.

California legislators voted to fund enrollment growth at growing school districts as well as classroom-based charter schools this school year. Originally, schools were going to be funded only at, and not above, their pre-COVID enrollment numbers, leaving schools and districts with increasing enrollment without funds to serve all the kids enrolling.

However, nonclassroom-based public charter schools such as iLead Online, iLead Exploration, Compass, Sage Oak and Blue Ridge Academy were explicitly excluded from the funding bill fix. These are the very schools that many families desperately turned to during the ongoing pandemic in hopes of a better distance learning experience. For instance, iLead has a waitlist of close to 5000 students, according to one source. Nonclassroom charters wanted to help serve these families. They took steps to do so. But absent the funding that would normally follow a child to a school, they basically had to keep their doors closed to many new students.

Speak UP joined organizations such as EdVoice, Para los Ninos and Alliance for a Better Community to petition the assembly to fund all kids. More than 8,400 parents and community members signed the petition to the legislature, and more than 3,400 made calls. But those voices of parents were ignored. 

In a statement released Tuesday, California Charter Schools Association President and CEO Myrna Castrejon called the exclusion “unjustifiable and discriminatory.”

“By excluding growth funding for nonclassroom-based charter schools, the legislature purposely and shamefully limited education choices for parents who are desperate to mitigate learning loss for their child during a national pandemic,” she added. “The legislature has chosen to reward the status-quo district bureaucrats at the expense of California’s children.”

Fortune School and John Adams Academy were among the schools that filed a lawsuit in July challenging the decision not to fund enrollment growth. Even though the budget bill was amended to fund growth at those classroom-based schools, their attorney, Jerry Simmons, told EdSource there are “absolutely no plans to drop the lawsuit until the state has kept its commitment to fund every student.” 

Gov. Gavin Newsom is expected to sign the bill. For those keeping score, count this as a loss for California’s kids.

—Leslee Komaiko