Another week, another disastrous San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) educational outcome for students and families.

It is clear that the total leadership incompetence, inexperience and corruption of Superintendent Marten, Trustee Tricky Dick Barrera and Trustee Whitehurst Payne continues to damage the education of tens of thousands of SDUSD Students.

This Sunday Reads highlights two articles.  The first article from EdSource describes the challenges that California school districts will have in staying open and/or reopening for the remainder of the 2020/21 school year as we predicted a month ago in our November 1, 2020 District Deeds titled  Zero Tolerance for Covid 19 Propaganda Scam Dooms the Education for Thousands of SDUSD Students!

The second article from EdSource provides great information on homeschooling options in California. in the near future.

This week we have posted BOTH articles in their entirety but strongly urge our readers to click on the titles and read the full articles and other offerings from these valuable educational news sources for themselves.

BE WELL…TAKE COVID 19 PRECAUTIONS

Pandemic’s spread in California upends plans for return to school in January — or beyond

By Louis Freedberg

The surge in Covid-19 cases in California is coming at exactly the wrong time for school districts contemplating reopening schools for in-person instruction.

Before the surge, the majority of students in the state were still getting classes via distance learning, but schools were reopening at an accelerating pace. Many others districts were looking to the beginning of January, after the winter break, as the date when they could possibly bring more students back to school.

With January just a month away, those plans are now shrouded in uncertainty. Especially in the wake of Gov. Newsom’s grim projections on Monday, including a possible stay-at-home order, the odds are low that the virus will be sufficiently under control, and counties will get the green light to bring students back to school after the winter break.

Over the past few weeks, Santa Ana Unified, one the state’s largest districts with 50,000 students, had begun bringing small groups of students to campus for its “Learning Labs”. However, the district planned to open in January, teaching more students using a hybrid model combining in-person with distance learning. But those plans are now on hold, school officials said.

Another large district — San Bernardino City Unified, with 53,000 students — has gone a step further by announcing that its schools will remain in distance learning mode for the rest of the school year. That means by the time students start school next fall, most will have been out of regular school for nearly 18 months.

Safety, interim superintendent Harold Volkommer explained, was the most important consideration. “The number of confirmed cases is rising steadily, with an anticipated and continued increase due to the holiday and flu seasons,” he said, acknowledging the “longer-than-originally-expected use of distance learning as our primary instructional delivery model.”

No other large district has announced a similar drastic action. But with the pandemic at its peak, and likely to get worse, the specter of more schools being closed for in-person instruction until the end of the school year, other than to small groups of high-needs students or to elementary schools that have received waivers to open, is now a prospect that more school administrators — and parents — may have to face.

This week, the public interest law firm Public Counsel filed a lawsuit on behalf of several Black and Latino students from Oakland and Los Angeles, itemizing the shortcomings of distance learning. It charged that the state has “abdicated its responsibility” in denying students “the basic educational equality guaranteed to them by the California Constitution.”

But regardless of its outcome, the lawsuit will be powerless to slow the virus’ spread.

Just a month ago, the number of schools bringing at least some students back to their campuses was increasing. Only 9 of the state’s 58 counties were in the Tier One “purple” zone. That meant that under state rules, two-thirds of California’s students were in schools that were allowed to bring back students for in-person instruction in regular classes.

Most districts did not take advantage of this opportunity, for a range of reasons. In many districts, teachers through their unions remain strongly opposed to opening classes for safety reasons. Not all parents necessarily support opening schools either. And in many cases, individual counties and districts, most notably Los Angeles Unified, the state’s largest, have set stricter standards than the state for in-person classes.

L.A. Unified Superintendent Austin Beutner, along with superintendents of several other of the state’s largest districts, last month sent a letter to Gov. Newsom asking the state to set a long list of “common standards” for all school districts, including clear guidelines for testing and contact tracing, along with additional funding to implement them.  Neither the standards they are seeking nor more funding seem forthcoming anytime soon.

But an EdSource survey of 58 counties at the end of October found that all or most school districts in 21 counties — overwhelmingly in more remote, rural areas of the state, with the notable exceptions of Orange and San Diego counties — were bringing back students for at least some in-person instruction, or were planning to do so within days or weeks.

In recent months, numerous research reports have concluded that schools are not the primary drivers of spreading the coronavirus.

But that doesn’t mean there is no risk at all. Administrators have had to balance the pressures they feel to bring students back to school against the relative risk that in-person instruction presents to teachers and other staff, and to older children especially — and to their families.

Most public health officials, including the most prominent, Dr. Anthony Fauci, have stressed the importance of opening up school campuses. “The default position should be to try as best as possible, within reason, to keep the children in school, or to get them back to school,” he reiterated over the weekend in an interview on ABC’s This Week.

But that statement, with qualifiers such “as best as possible” and “within reason,” is hardly definitive, leaving school and elected officials with wide latitude in deciding what to do.

Complicating the decision-making process is that there is rarely unanimity in a community about whether schools should reopen.

“I have seven board members, 3500 teachers and thousands of parents, and they all have different opinions,” Chris Hoffman, superintendent of the 65,000 student Elk Grove Unified District near Sacramento, said recently in an interview for EdSource’s podcast “This Week in California”. “That is just the reality. There is no set opinion.”

The district had negotiated an agreement with its teachers’ union that if Sacramento County entered the “orange” tier, teachers would be willing to come back to school for in-person instruction by mid-November. “I really thought we would have kids back in school by then,” Hoffman said.

The virus upset all those plans. Instead of being in the orange tier, the county is now in the purple tier. “We are not giving up,” said Hoffman. “We want to get our kids back. There are so many benefits to having them with us in person.”

But if in-person instruction gets delayed much beyond January, he said, “I do believe that the further you go, more and more families will say, ‘it (distance learning) has worked until this point; our kids are safe,’ and choose to stay in this mode. That will not surprise me at all.”

Under seemingly contradictory state regulations, if schools in counties in the “purple” tier had already reopened for in-person instruction, they can remain open. But if schools had not reopened before their counties were designated purple, they now cannot open schools until their counties are back in the “red” tier for at least two weeks.

In Orange County, Irvine Unified affirmed that the purple tier designation in the county won’t affect schools in the district that had already opened.  Superintendent Terry Walker said schools are not responsible for the increase in positive cases in the county.  “While we have experienced a slight increase in student and staff cases after the Thanksgiving Break,” he wrote in a message to the school community, “there is little to no person-to-person transmission in schools or other facilities.”

But as the pandemic reaches crisis levels, some districts are feeling pressure to close schools they had previously opened. That’s happening even in Marin County, one of the seven counties that has so far escaped the purple tier designation. For example, Miller Creek School District, an elementary district with just over 2,000 students in San Rafael just north of San Francisco, has suspended in-person classes until the end of 2020 as positive cases in the county rise.

“Given the local surge in cases, the recent travel recommendation for a 14-day quarantine upon return to the county, and competing instructional demands within our schools, the district has made the proactive decision to return to remote learning for all students starting Monday, November 30th and to continue remotely through December,” superintendent Becky Rosales explained in a Thanksgiving Day post to the district’s website.

For now, all students in the district are back to distance learning. When they will be able to return to school is unknown.

Most of California’s 6.2 million public school students, and many more in private and parochial schools, are similarly in the dark.

How To Start Homeschooling in California

by Matthew Lynch

QUOTES FROM ARTICLE:

As a result of COVID-19, homeschooling is on the rise. For some, this is a short-term arrangement, and others have discovered that homeschooling is perfect for their family. In case you don’t know, homeschooling is simply the practice of educating your kids from home. Some families choose to collaborate through homeschooling cooperatives and extracurricular leagues to enrich the home school experience.

Homeschooling is legal in all 50 states, including the District of Columbia. When exploring the homeschooling route, please be aware that the laws and policies that govern homeschooling differ by state. If you wonder if homeschooling is a good fit for your family, you probably have questions about how to begin the process and what resources are available. Because of this, we created a series entitled, How to Start Homeschooling. In each installment, we will discuss homeschooling rules and resources for each state. In today’s installment, we will discuss homeschooling in California.

What you need to know:

• California has four homeschooling options: a home-based private school, a private school, a private tutor, or a teacher, a public school independent study arrangement.
• You will need to decide which kind of homeschool option you wish to enroll your kid in. Each has a separate procedure to inform the Superintendent of Public Instruction that you will be homeschooling your kid. You will need to submit a withdrawal letter with a particular date to remove your kid either by mail or in person.
• There are particular requirements for each homeschool education option in California.
• The instructional hours required per day and days required per year depend on the homeschool option.
• All four homeschool options require seven academic subjects to be taught: English, mathematics, social studies, science, visual and performing arts, health, and P.E.
• Required academic records and testing regulations depend on which homeschool option you choose.
• If you decide to go back to a public school, your school may require academic records and placement testing. Public schools may choose not to accept the credits you have received while homeschooling.

Resources

California may have funding assistance available if you homeschool through a charter homeschool.

For more, you can check out the California Homeschool Network, the CA Department of Education: Schooling at Home, Home School Legal Defense Association – California, the Christian Home Educators Association of California, and the Sacramento Christian Organization of Parent Educators (SCOPE).

DISTRICT DEEDS SYNOPSIS AND COMMENTARY:

For almost seven years District Deeds has been warning all SDUSD Stakeholders that the corruption and incompetence that permeate the top levels of SDUSD “leadership would have long lasting damaging educational effects on all SDUSD Students and Families.

Some Stakeholders listened and some Stakeholders just continued to drink the Marten/Barrera Propaganda “kool-aid”.

But now the urgency has changed.

The Covid 19 Pandemic has fully exposed the compete leadership dysfunction in the SDUSD under incompetent SDUSD Superintendent Cindy Marten and corrupt Trustee Richard “Tricky Dick” Barrera we have described for almost seven years.

And now, effective later today, December 6, 2020 at 11:59 pm, the SDUSD in-person learning window will be fully closed and San Diego County is now facing an ongoing Stay Home Order.  It is highly unlikely that any SDUSD Schools will open in January, 2021 and beyond.

Winter is no longer coming…

The SDUSD Educational Winter is Here!!!

The main questions are:

How much longer will some SDUSD Stakeholders continue to drink the poisoned SDUSD education Kool Aid?

How much longer will some SDUSD Stakeholders continue to allow the SDUSD to educationally infect their kids?

How much longer will some SDUSD Stakeholders allow their children to be diseased with a sub-standard education while all the adults in the SDUSD leadership make 6 figure salaries.

It is time for all the hard-core Cindy Marten/Tricky Dick Barrera Kool Aid addicts to kick the habit for the sake of their kids and their Family.

It is time for ALL the SDUSD Parents and Guardians of SDUSD Students to actively seek out other educational options for their kids.

We understand that the decision to leave the SDUSD is difficult but until Marten is fired and Barrera is removed, nothing will change and your kids will continue to be harmed.

To help you in your decision we have provided the excellent article from EdSource above to provide you the details of California Home-schooling.  The links included in the article are also valuable resources for you to review.  In future articles we will be providing other educational options for SDUSD Students.

Meanwhile, to start you out, here is a link to THE ADVANTAGES AND LIMITATIONS OF HOMESCHOOLING  and below is a segment from another article in EdSource providing you the 8 Steps to Homeschool Success:

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Because of COVID-19, homeschooling is becoming a rising trend in K-12 education. Parents are opting to educate their children at home instead of sending their kids to public or private schools to potentially be exposed to a deadly virus. However, since most parents don’t have a background in teaching, they find themselves needing a lot of support to get started.

The Edvocate is one of the best resources for information about all things homeschooling. To help you get started on your homeschooling journey, we decided to write an article detailing the 8 steps to homeschool success.

1. Find Out All the Homeschool Options

You can look up the options for homeschooling when your kids are just toddlers or even after they have studied in an elementary school for a few years. Some parents prefer to do their homeschooling research when the school year comes to an end. This gives them sufficient time to get all the information and start homeschooling by autumn. You can subscribe to journals and magazines like Homeschooling Today, read books, visit libraries, and interact with other parents who homeschool their children. You must make an effort to know about all the routes that can be taken and the things that can be accomplished through homeschooling.

2. Gather Information About the Homeschooling Requirements

There are different rules for homeschooling in various states. For instance, in New York, parents have to submit a yearly declaration of intent and an individualized home instruction plan to the superintendent of the area 14 days before starting homeschool or by July 1. Parents who homeschool their children in New York are expected to maintain a record of attendance, make sure they appear for standardized tests and provide quarterly reports. To know all the laws regarding homeschooling in your state, check out our series entitled, How to Start Homeschooling.

3. Become a Member of a Homeschooling Group in your Locality

You can get valuable information from the other homeschoolers in your area. Your kids can get a chance to take part in sports and other activities that are appropriate for their age. Cooperatives may be organized, where parents can show scientific experiments or teach foreign languages to several kids.

4. Decide Your Homeschool Curriculum

You can buy the curricula from online stores such as Scholastic’s Teacher Store or get it through the mail. They may include textbooks as well as workbooks for arithmetic, reading, and writing. Curriculum fairs and state conventions also showcase different homeschooling products and publications.

5. Create a Space for Homeschooling

Decide the room or place where you will be conducting the classes. Think about the things you will need, such as a blackboard, desk, computer with an internet connection, bookshelves, storage cabinets, baskets for keeping the loose stationery items, and maybe some space on the wall to post calendars, completed work, or schedules.

6. Set Your Homeschooling Goals

Homeschooling proceeds at an independent pace, so it is necessary to set clear goals. Academic advancement is important. At the same time, the child should also get some exercise and socialize with others. Connect with other homeschooling parents, look at the newspaper advertisements, find out about the local community events, and give your kids a chance to participate in extracurricular activities.

7. Plan Your Homeschool Schedule

Buy a plan book and make a clear plan for each lesson you will teach in every subject. Have a plan for each week. Allot some time for going to the libraries or on field trips.

8. Avoid Common Homeschooling Mistakes

• Do not isolate yourself. Connect with other homeschoolers and let your kids socialize.
• Do not decide the curriculum in haste. Take your time and choose the most suitable curriculum for your child.
• Do not be rigid. Learn to adapt your approach as you proceed.

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If you are not sure that you want to leave the SDUSD “cold turkey”, use the enclosed resources to pilot a supplemental education strategy.  Obviously Home-schooling is NOT your only option and we will be providing you other alternatives in the coming weeks.

However, for the educational sake of your kids, doing nothing and solely relying on the corrupt SDUSD to deliver is not an option.

This is not a joyful or permanent suggestion by District Deeds and we will continue to expose the SDUSD dysfunction to promote improvement and help support all SDUSD Stakeholders.

We are all facing drastic disease conditions from the Covid 19 Pandemic and a complete SDUSD Sandemic on-site learning shut down for the last 9 months with no hope of change.  Under the current incompetent SDUSD leadership circumstances, it is impossible for us to recommend that Parents send their kids to any SDUSD schools.

When the SDUSD educational disease is cured by Marten being fired our position will change.

Remember – Parents are the key to Student achievement!

Meanwhile, here is our Quote of the Week:

“Extreme remedies are very appropriate for extreme diseases.” ― Hippocrates

#UNCONSCIONABLE

MARTENSGOTTAGO

#BARRERASGOTTAGO

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IF

• Your family has been injured by the San Diego Unified School District, go to the District Deeds Complaint Forms page to find instructions to fight for your Civil Rights!

• YOU ARE TIRED OF THE COVER UPS AND LIES BY SUPT. CINDY MARTEN…

Please Click the Link Below and sign the Petition Today and READ the COMMENTS to Support the REMOVAL of Marten by SDUSD Stakeholders!

FIRE San Diego Unified School District Superintendent Cindy Marten Immediately!

• You want to be sure you don’t miss an issue of District Deeds, click the “follow” button below and you will get an email automatically when an article is published on District Deeds.
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