At Town Hall, Pasadena Unified Board Member Cahalan Cautious on Eve of Schools Reopening Vote

On the eve of a Pasadena Unified School Board meeting to decide on reopening K-5 classrooms, District 4 Board Member Patrick Cahalan on Wednesday held a virtual town hall meeting to answer questions and update parents.

At the meeting, Cahalan said that pandemic-related “conditions have changed in very short order and wildly disproportionate ways in various locales with a lack of standard data reporting, but it’s made it difficult for anyone, particularly your local school board members, to make solid decisions on dates.”

Cahalan spoke in mostly positive terms about the recent changes in case numbers and the possibilities of reopening elementary classrooms.

“The country was projected to be 50% vaccinated only by August, and  a hundred percent vaccinated only by Thanksgiving this year,” he said, “But as of Friday, with the approval of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, and the indication of defense production by the president earlier this week, that timeline has been shortened to May of this year.” 

“This is just one example of literally hundreds of major game-changing news occurring within a matter of days of reports about this pandemic” Cahalan continued. 

Shortly after the Town Hall meeting began, PUSD Superintendent Brian McDonald then issued a statement saying, “With COVID-19 case rates down and health and safety measures in place, at a special meeting on Thursday, March 4, 2021, the PUSD Board of Education will discuss possible reopening dates. I will recommend that schools begin reopening preK-2nd grade the week of March 29, with grades 3-5 returning April 13 after spring break. The reopening dates are subject to the approval by the Board.” 

McDonald added, “We have said from the beginning that we would not reopen schools until it was safe to do so. I believe that it is now safe for students and staff to return to in-person learning.” 

McDonald stressed that health and safety protocols were being implemented, and that the District has “worked diligently in collaboration with our labor partners.”

 All of our employees will have had the opportunity to be vaccinated prior to the start of in-person learning,” McDonald addendum saying, “By the end of this week, nearly half of our 2,400 employees will be vaccinated.”

The possible reopening coincides with a deal just announced by Governor Gavin Newsom Monday, which would provide $2 billion in incentives for districts to reopen.

According to The LA Times, the plan provides financial incentives to school districts that offer in-person instruction at the beginning of next month in counties with fewer than 25 new daily confirmed coronavirus cases per 100,000 residents, a threshold almost all California counties currently meet.

Districts must open kindergarten through second grade classrooms by April in order to receive their share of the $2 billion in incentive funding, and must bring back to school cohorts of students in grades most affected by the pandemic, including homeless and foster youth, English learners, chronically absent students, students without Internet access, and students with disabilities.

This provision will apply to all districts, including those in the “purple tier,” the most restrictive level under the state’s four-tier system governing business and community activities, provided the daily average rate of Covid infections is below 25 positive cases per 100,000 county residents.

“But this is not new money,” explained Cahalan. “This is money that the governor was going to give public school districts as part of paying off some deferrals that they had to institute last year as part of the economic crisis. 

We still keep the deferrals, so they’re still promising to give us the districts, this money, but it’s sort of an accounting gimmick. It doesn’t change the California budget.”

As Cahalan further explained, “This would mean if you are a district and you don’t qualify for the money, you’re going to be short on cash in June. So they’re going to give you a promissory note, which you can still use as your money, but you’ll have to go through some steps for cash flow problems.” 

Cahalan was also asked by participants a series of questions regarding teachers and the possibility of illness.

Moderator Geoff Albert of Collaborate Pasadena asked about policy plans should a teacher become sick or quarantined, asymptomatic testing of staff and students, and plans for substitute teachers.

Calahan responded that he believed that substitute teachers would be tested and vaccinated as classified employees under the current classification system. 

Should a teacher become sick, the teacher would follow the normal procedures for illnesses, Cahalan explained. 

“You would not report to work,” he continued. “The coverage plan would be, for example, if you have an extremely mild case,  let’s say a teacher is exposed, but is not sick, that particular class would probably move back to all distance learning, unless there was a sub available or principal was available to teach classes.” 

Cahalan added, “We know that historically in this district, there’s been times where we’ve had difficulty getting subs, so that may be a practical issue going forward. We may have instances where individual classes are there, moved over to the gym, and they’re in distance learning on the school site with their teacher who is not on the campus. I don’t think those situations are insurmountable.”

Asked about testing of asymptomatic students and teachers or staff, Cahalan acknowledged that County and State guidelines do not require asymptomatic testing of all students on a site under red tier conditions or under purple tier conditions. 

Schools which open after April 1st  will have to have robust asymptomatic testing, said Cahalan. 

“One of my observations about the existing deal that the legislature and the governor(are proposing) is that if you open before April 1st, your testing regimen can be grandfathered.”

As Cahalan expanded, “I think I made my opinion known to our state Senator. I think that this is an incentive for some school boards who may not be taking the coronaviruses as seriously as some other boards, to open with a sort of skeleton crew testing plan, and then stick with it because they can, because it’s grandfathered in under the rules. 

Cahalan pointed out that he is “personally very uncomfortable with opening without a robust survey. I’ve been tested two times a week here at Caltech since October. I’m also not entirely convinced that as far as the outcome goes, that it is going to produce a better health outcome, but it is going to produce a better data output.”