‘Instructional emergency’: SF Board of Training worries about lack of COVID protocols
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. (KRON) – Parents, teachers, city guides and school board members all have a hard time standing on the same side for COVID safety in the San Francisco Unified School District.
On Monday evening, a member of the San Francisco Board of Education sounded the alarm.
Alison Collins spoke to Haaziq Madyun from KRON4. It’s a story you’ll only see on KRON 4.
A tweet from the President of the San Francisco Board of Education, Gabriela Lopez, said: “After years of asking this, the San Francisco Department of Public Health still refuses to speak to the school board and answer questions for the public. Our schools and educators are drowning in the Omikron surge and we have to hear directly from experts at our meeting next Tuesday. “
SFDPH officials have confirmed that they will not accept the chairman’s invitation.
“We need to work better together to plan ahead,” said Alison Collins, member of the SF Education Committee.
It is the lack of post-winter break planning on the part of SFUSD and SF city guides for the COVID spike that has created a crisis for parents, teachers and students, according to SF Education Commissioner Alison Collins.
“This is an educational emergency! We have schools that are barely able to function because of a lack of staff. We try to fill in the gaps with volunteer parents. We are trying to fill in the gaps with headquarters staff and that is just not acceptable, ”said Collins.
Collins says limited test sites in the district and overcrowded test sites that are open to the public are two big problems in the second week of school
“It’s hard to find tests. You want to make an appointment and have a week to wait. That’s not acceptable to people who want to stay safe, “said Collins.
“The line was out the door, around the block, up the hill, and at the end of the day when we closed there were still people wanting more tests,” said Alita Fisher, mother of SFUSD.
Fisher describes her recent experience at a public test site in the city’s Lakeview neighborhood. She talks about how the lack of available tests disrupts the regular school life of students with special educational needs in the district.
“There are many families who have children with disabilities, especially children with immunodeficiency. We are really concerned about the lack of information and policy change under omicron. How transferable. It’s just super creepy for families, ”said Fisher.
“We know that the demand is very high. We’re doing everything we can to get tests into the hands of employees and families, ”said SFUSD spokeswoman Laura Dudnik.
In fact, Dudnik says, this week there are thousands of takeaway tests that are being made available by the state.
“So we have about 56,000 of them. We are currently working on bringing these into schools so that schools can get them into the hands of students and families this week, ”said Dudnik.
Commissioner Collins says it is not too late for SFUSD to follow suit in other school districts in the state
“Other districts do better, and we need to learn from them. We have to make it easier for families, ”said Collins.
