News Update

Transcript:  what exactly did Gov. Newsom say about school opening in the fall

The following is what Gov. Newsom said at three points in his press conference on April 28.

The schools are shut down for remainder of the school year, and distance learning is going on. We recognize that there has been a learning loss.  We are concerned about this even into the summer.  So we are considering the prospect of an even earlier school year into the fall, late July or early August.  We have not made any decisions about that.  As a parent myself, and having talked to many other parents and educators, even the kids I think we might want to consider getting that school year moved up a little bit. We need to prepare for that, start preparing for the physical changes in the school and the environmental changes in the schools that are necessary to advance that conversation and make them more meaningful, and coordinate in the child care space itself. ..

As a father of four, that learning loss is very real. from a socioeconomic and racial justice frame, this is even more compounding and more challenging. So it is incumbent on us to think anew in respect to the school year, and I am looking forward   to those robust conversations about the prospect of an earlier school year that I do think is warranted considering the consequences of neglecting  next generation because of the inconvenience and realities of this virus … 

Our kids have lost a lot with this disruption. I am not naive. Some good work has been done on new wifi hotspots, on distance learning, the support of thousands, over 70,000 tablets and Chromebooks and other capacity to provide distance learning. It’s still inadequate to  the magnitude of 6 million children all throughout the state of California, in rural districts and in some urban districts that just simply don’t have the high quality download speed and capacity or anything to download into. So there’s been a learning loss and you can either just rollover and just accept that or you can do something about it.


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