Right from the start, we must acknowledge the obvious. Our schools are closed to in-person instruction of students. Thousands of families across the Ukiah Valley have had to find creative ways to balance their employment and the in-home learning of their children. And it has been really hard. The functional closure of our school facilities has a major impact on families, employers and workplaces, our local economy, school district staff, and most importantly, thousands of children. We do not minimize the disruption that distance learning has created in our community. And we are grateful for the compassion and grace that has been extended to so many members of our school community during this extraordinarily challenging school year.
We have heard from parents that the rigor and organization of the distance learning model are vastly improved from what it was in the spring. We have heard from our school staff that teaching remotely is, in many ways, significantly harder than teaching in the classroom. And we know that learning remotely is extraordinarily challenging for students, and especially those in the primary grades. We are deeply grateful to the school district’s teaching and support staff for creating a distance learning environment that is attentive to children, rigorous, and responsive to individual needs. Our teachers, administrators and school staff are working really hard, and we are truly thankful for their dedication and perseverance in very unusual circumstances.
School Board members are volunteer, unpaid, public servants. Every single one of us chose to volunteer for this work because we felt a commitment to the children of our community. That being said, not a single one of us ever imagined that we would one day be required to govern a school system that is literally closed to in-person instruction. In an environment of extreme uncertainty, how does an elected body function? Some of the decisions we have made, especially recently, may appear incomprehensible or wrong-headed or frustrating to members of the public or school community. This column is our attempt to explain why and how our Board makes the decisions we do.
Our School Board is fully cognizant that our choices must reflect the values and needs of dozens of school administrators and educational professionals, hundreds of teachers and support staff, thousands of parents, many thousands of community members, and most importantly, close to six thousand children. Ukiah Unified School District responsibly manages and invests over $65 million of taxpayer dollars in our community. We are not only responsible to students and staff, but also to the public and taxpayers. And we fully recognize that schools are critical to a functioning and thriving community as a whole.
None of the members of our school board are public health experts. During an extended public health emergency, we must rely on public health expertise at the local, regional, and state level to guide our decision-making. In mid-July, our decision to open schools with the distance learning model was made at the direction and under the guidance of our Public Health Officer, followed almost immediately by further direction and clarification from the Office of the Governor. That being said, it is our Board’s intention and commitment to our community to return to in-person learning, in whatever form that takes, as soon as our public health experts tell us that doing so is safe for students and staff. We also recognize that we cannot re-open schools to in-person learning without a willing workforce. It simply won’t work.
Just as every household in this nation is figuring out how to live successfully through this pandemic in their own homes, the School Board is figuring out how to navigate, in real-time, an environment that none of us have experienced before. Given this unstable atmosphere, will we make mistakes? Absolutely. Will a few of us make statements in public that are misunderstood, or that we regret saying aloud, or both? Absolutely. We have made mistakes in the past, both individually and collectively, and we likely will make mistakes in the future. But here is our commitment to our community. The decisions we make will never be rooted in petty politics or a misunderstanding of the heavy responsibility we carry for the well-being of the Ukiah Valley community. And the mistakes we make will never be because we didn’t consider the issue seriously enough or because we didn’t care.
Our community entrusts us to responsibly and equitably manage a system that employs hundreds of people and is responsible for millions of dollars of taxpayer funds. Our community entrusts us to educate and care for their children for thirteen of the most impressionable and powerful years of their lives. It is a responsibility that all seven of us accept with a sense of duty and great care. As public servants, we will always, without exception, try our very hardest to make those decisions in the best interests of our entire community, and especially, our children.
Ukiah Unified School District Board of Trustees: Bea Arkin, Carolyn Barrett, José Díaz, Zoey Fernandez, Anne Molgaard, Tyler Nelson, Megan Van Sant