Santa Maria Bonita School District discussing fall plans

SANTA MARIA, Calif. - As summer is in full swing, schools across the Central Coast are starting to make decisions about reopening in fall. Santa Maria Bonita School District discussed their options at Wednesday's board meeting.

The board is awaiting legislative guidelines, and therefore did not make any decisions regarding a plan.

The board is looking at three models.

The first is reopening on campus, but the district would still expect up to 20 percent of students learning from home, plus a modified setting.

Learning on campus would mean students need to wear masks and social distance. Bussing would need to be staggered, and classroom procedures changed.

Melissa Dutra, director of teaching and learning with the district, said there could be no communal supplies. "We've got to look at what does it look like to have no communal supplies and how will we organize that," she said.

The second model is a hybrid version, alternating weeks of in person and distance learning.

"Students are in school four days in a week" with Mondays as a planning day for teachers, said Dutra. "So if I have a school of 400 students, 200 students would come Tuesday through Friday the first week. The other 200 students would come from Tuesday to Friday the second week."

The third model is distance learning using resources like Zoom and Google Classroom. No matter what, students can expect to use more technology.

The students are "all pretty tech savvy now, so we want to continue to leverage that," said Dutra. "If we were to pop back into a distance learning stance, we want to make sure our kids are getting stronger and stronger in that technology."

The district is also collaborating with other districts to have consistency in schedules.

They will need follow state guidelines as set by the California Departments of Education and Public Health.