Parents react to CVUSD board’s decision to keep students at home for virtual learning

On Thursday night Coachella Valley Unified School District's board of education voted not to bring students back to the classroom by April 19. In the days leading up to the meeting, board president Joey Acuña told News Channel 3 nothing is was off the table; they were considering everything that would factor into keeping students home or having them return to a hybrid learning model.

Parents were recently surveyed on whether they wanted their kids to return to the classroom. For those that did participate, a majority sided with maintaining the virtual learning model. Out of more than 17,000 survey participants, 74% preferred to stay in the distance learning model.

Thursday's vote left things open-ended, with one of the trustees pushing to have more conversations on the possibility of reopening before the school year end. It was still unclear, however, if they will decide to return students to in-person learning for the current school year.

"I think it’s okay, but I’m pretty sure when they open up next year that it would be better because how many weeks of school left? Seven, so it's a short period and what's going to happen there is they're not going to get the same teachers they have online. They have their teachers that they're used to already and I believe with every child, they need consistency," said grandmother of 4, Debbie Mendez.

Mendez said her grandchildren want to return to school.

"It’s hard, it’s hard because I know how [my daughter] is. She’s very active, social and since this started, she’s been depressed. She doesn’t want to play anymore, and it’s tough on us parents," said CVUSD parent, Lyana Campos.

CVUSD provided a statement to News Channel 3:

Board has asked to explore other ways students can return to in-person instruction. We are working on a plan that will explore other options. We need to involve transportation, nutrition services and many other departments. This involves a lot of planning, but details will be shared during our next Board meetings. 

"It took us 7 months of negotiation to come up with this plan and reach an agreement and we have about 7 weeks for the rest of the school year to come up with a new plan. I don’t anticipate that happening," said Coachella Valley Teachers Association President, Carissa Carrera. "It’s just sad for the students that want to come back because if they didn’t want that plan they should have said that months ago."

It appears that it's back to the drawing board for negotiations. Carrera said the board's decision has created confusion after the teachers association reached a tentative memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the board's negotiations team to bring back students.

“I understand that we even drafted or signed an MOU with the teacher’s union. It was unannounced to me, unknown to me," CVUSD Board Trustee, Jesus Gonzalez said in Thursday night's meeting.

"We have never seen a school board turn down an MOU that their own negotiations team worked on," Carrera said.

The California Safe Schools For All offered financial incentives for districts to return students to in-person instruction this spring. CVUSD has become the last remaining valley district without an in-person reopening plan. According to the state's website, the district has received more than $63 million in COVID funds.

During Thursday's meeting, the board did vote to increase what are known as PowerUp Hubs.

A CVUSD spokesperson said "we have PowerUp Hubs at all our school sites. Each PowerUp Hub is a small cohort consisting of 14 students per elementary school, two PowerUp Hubs consisting of 14 students per middle school and two PowerUp Hubs consisting of 14 students per high school."

It was unclear how many hubs would be added.