Posted with Permission
July 13, 2020 To the Honorable Members of the Orange County Board of Education, I write to urge caution at today’s board meeting (07/13/2020), during which you in your capacity as Board Members will issue guidelines to our local school districts to resume in-person instruction for fall 2020. Your guidelines will be issued: 1) on the same day that Governor Gavin Newsom has ordered the reclosing of several businesses in all 58 counties in California; and 2) amidst Orange County’s recent surge of new COVID-19 cases. In light of the county’s recent spike in transmissions, the Governor’s new guidelines on social distancing, and the potential liability risks that a school district would incur by following your guidance, I urge you to reject and reconsider the guidelines to reopen schools in the fall. In order to provide clarity and reassurance to our community, our elected leaders must make every effort to provide consistent information, developed by both experts and our community. Rather than taking this measured approach to policy making, the Orange County Board of Education is choosing to issue guidance on reopening that is contradictory to your own Department of Education’s guidelines. The recommendations in today’s agenda are informed by only one public hearing that occurred less than 3 weeks ago. Children deserve to be protected in their classrooms. In order to make their safety a reality, our elected leaders must exercise extreme caution and thoughtfulness before making a decision to reopen schools. If schools do not properly prepare to reopen, they will be endangering the lives of students, families, faculty, and staff. Failure to protect these groups from COVID-19 will open school districts to legal liability. The Legislature is currently considering Assembly Bill (AB) 1384, authored by Assemblymember Patrick O’Donnell, which would provide guidelines for in-person instruction and protection for districts against lawsuits related to COVID-19. AB 1384 (O’Donnell, 2020) not only represents an example of the deliberate policy making needed for school reopening, the bill also demonstrates the potential legal issues surrounding this decision. I encourage you all to use today’s board meeting as a teaching moment for our students; one in which you will show what caution, empathy, and common sense looks like. Rather than rushing to judgement on reopening guidelines, I urge the Board to continue to work with the Orange County Department of Education and the California Department of Public Health on more thoughtful solutions to this complex issue. If you have any questions regarding this issue, please contact Nick Anas, a District Coordinator in my District Office, at (714) 558-3785 or at [email protected] . Thank you for your consideration of these concerns. Sincerely, THOMAS J. UMBERG Senator, 34 th District Cc: Rebecca “Beckie” Gomez, Trustee 1 st District Mari Barke, Trustee 2 nd District Ken L. Williams, Jr., Trustee 3 rd District Tim Shaw, Trustee 4 th District Lisa Spaks, Ph.D., Trustee 5 th District
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