Northern California’s largest school district is reopening campuses. How they did it

Just over one year after the Elk Grove Unified School District closed campuses – sending shock waves through the region as the COVID-19 pandemic began – students in Northern California’s largest district will begin returning to classrooms on Tuesday.

Desks were set apart, drinking fountains taped off, and an entirely new school that was set to open in Fall 2020 will finally bring students on campus.

But just as thousands of families in other Sacramento-area districts that are reopening have opted to keep students home, an estimated 30% Elk Grove’s 60,000 students are planning to return this spring.

District spokesperson Xanthi Soriano said the percentage of returning students varies campus by campus — some schools will have 60% returning to campus. Roughly 40% of elementary school students in the Natomas Unified School District are back after schools reopened there earlier this month.

Elk Grove is bringing students back on a staggered schedule, starting with students in classes Pre-K through third grade. Students will return to campus in a concurrent model, allowing teachers to instruct both students in-person and online at the same time.

Sixth grade teacher Heidi Emerson said she was initially nervous about returning to campus.

“Knowing everything that the district has done, the administrators have done, and all that the custodians have done,” she said, “I feel very excited to have students back in the classroom.”

Emerson teaches at Franklin Elementary, which opened in a new location just two miles east of its former campus. The school was scheduled to welcome K-6 students back in the fall, but sat empty for a year due to the pandemic.

Elk Grove was the first to close

When growing concern over COVID-19 began to hit the Sacramento region, Elk Grove Unified was the first school district in the area to close its campuses.

What sparked the decision was a call from the Sacramento County Public Health Department. A family with four students in the district was exposed to the virus from their grandparents. Some of those children would end up exhibiting symptoms and were assumed to be positive, although testing for the virus was difficult in the early months of the pandemic.

Just hours before a career fair was scheduled to take place – attracting more than 800 attendees – Elk Grove Unified Superintendent Chris Hoffman called the district’s legal counsel and asked, “Do I have the ability to close the schools?”

They told him if it’s an emergency situation, he could. With that, the fifth largest school district in California closed its campuses before any other campuses in the region.

The decision was met with surprise and push back — particularly from families with athletes, families awaiting regional competitions and students looking forward to prom.

“People were scared we were going too fast,” Hoffman said. “But we had basketball games, and one of those siblings who was assumed to be positive could have (infected) communities coming from the Bay Area.”

Hoffman recalled being blasted by local leaders, but it was a decision he never regretted.

Hoffman became tearful during his comments at an emergency meeting on March 13, 2020, after school board members praised him for his quick decision.

“I know it’s not been easy,” board member Bobbie Singh-Allen said to Hoffman during the meeting. “I know the emails you have gotten, and those horrible phone calls and texts, I’ve gotten those too. But what doesn’t break us makes us stronger. You are stronger my friend, and we are stronger because of you.”

Hoffman initially planned to keep campuses closed for two weeks. Other schools quickly followed as Sacramento County worked with school districts to send children home for two weeks. Those two weeks turned into months, as more than 250,000 students across the region settled into instruction time on Zoom.

While they didn’t know they were right at the time, Elk Grove Unified district officials never wished that they were. The decision wasn’t one that Hoffman celebrated.

“It meant that something terrible was upon us,” he said. “The best case scenario is that we would have been wrong, and we would deal with the repercussion. We had to hope these kids were not positive. But I slept better that Saturday night than I did Friday night because we had a plan.”

Reopening Elk Grove classes

With a reopening plan finalized in November, Elk Grove Unified was ready to bring students back to campus before Thanksgiving Break. Sacramento County was close to entering the state’s orange tier for coronavirus risk at the time, and there were about 4.4 COVID-19 cases per 100,000 county residents. The district needed 4 cases per 100,000 to reopen.

“At that point, Halloween happened, Thanksgiving happened, and not only did we not hit the orange tier, we went from 4.4 (cases) to nine, and then the 20s and 30s, and at one point we hit the 60s,” Hoffman said.

The surge of infections prevented the district from bringing back its 60,00 students.

But during that time, Hoffman said teachers underwent training and parents had the opportunity to share concerns with school officials.

The strong relationship between district officials and the Elk Grove Education Association union is largely due to the effort they both put into it. It was a contrast to the 2008 economic recession, when the relationship between the two sides was fractured. Those divisions still exist in other local school districts.

“We became partners in education, and everyone had the same representation at the table, we closed the schools together in March and reopened the schools together in March,” Hoffman said. “It was anything but seamless and painless, but it was done together.”

What classes will look like

At Franklin Elementary, desks are spaced out, classroom rules are posted on the walls, and drinking fountains are taped off. Emerson said there has been a lot of time and effort put into ensuring students can return safely.

“We’ll be going over videos and training them as we move forward,” she said. “We have worked really hard to maintain normalcy as much as we can via technology knowing that it’s difficult for everyone. “

Hoffman said students and staff may have a new learning curve in the weeks ahead, as students will now be online and in-person at the same time. He said he is optimistic that the remainder of the school year will run smoothly.

“There was an assumption that our kids were digital natives,” he said. “They knew social media but they didn’t know how to learn online and they do now.”

This story was originally published March 16, 2021 at 5:00 AM.