Headline on Palo Alto Online says Santa Clara County Public Health are closing all schools in the county for one month. Should this article be updated?

In short- yes. Three local school boards met this morning to vote on closing schools, followed by the county's announcement. Stay tuned.

I hear that the high school district does NOT receive money from the state based on attendance. So, sure, why not close? The Mtn. View-Whisman District DOES receive money based on attendance. So figure they will resist closing. But if they can get money for online schooling, watch for that.

All three districts are basic aid. All three closed in unison. Next time get your facts right before you post.

I see you are right. Basic aid districts get basic aid plus locally generated property tax and do not need students to attend. No wonder they all voted to close. Got it.

iIt’s NOT the money, it’s exponential growth. SCC cases doubling every 3.5 days.

The school operators knew that the virus had spread around the world and into Santa Clara County weeks ago. Can you imagine a school district admitting school can be safely and effectively conducted online before a school bond election?

Get off your single-issue soapbox and do the math. That’s a factor of 1000 every 5 weeks. Silicon valley gets it. Flatten the curve.

COVID-19 cases in SCC:

T2 = (t1-t0) Log 2 / Log (N1/N0)
T10 = 3.322 T2

2020- Cases T2 (days)
0308 24
0310 43 2.38
0311 48 3.00
0312 66 3.24
0313 79 3.42

It is good that the MVWSD Superintendent knows that 200 students have been without internet access so far this year. (It was as high as 600 when we first measured it during my Trustee term in 2015, Voice Article on Jon Acher's survey].

Why the heck have there NOT BEEEN these Digital Divide steps (checkout Chromebooks and free home internet) for these 200 families BEFORE! Rudolph, get your rear in gear on this Issue! It is way past the time that PTA donations should fund Digital Education (at-home) access like the quarter million dollar iReady program. FREE PUBLIC EDUCATION - including supplementary instructional materials Dr. Dude! That is the California Constitution's mandate.

It is not your "choice". Write the DARN checks. Get it done for K-5th!
{checkout middle schooler books have been done for years now}

[ref. 2014 MVLA "the school district recently purchased 800 new Chromebooks for students ... to use"]

Note the school boards voted only to give their superintendents the authority to close schools. The county closed them. But evidently that the authority for the superintendents to close schools was enough to get some self-labeled "Protective Dad" to defend the delay. But hey, "Protective Dad," who should decide when the schools re-open? And if you are a dad of a public school student or students, tell us what you are now doing for safety and education of him, her or them.

@ItsTheMoneyHoney: Nice conspiracy theories there about school finances. Now you want to take it out on a school parent? Classy.

@SteveNelson: You’re splitting hairs on a press statement to score political points. I think you heard the response to your rant about access at a recent school board meeting, where the Superintendent refuted your claims with facts including programs put in place while you were a school board member. Also you really need to revisit your premises about access for parents, because we are a mobile-first society now and the first point of access for many is a smartphone (Kudos to MVWSD for having a decent mobile site)... if you’re going to do research here, look at broadband access on any device - I think you’d be amazed at how much access in socio-economically disadvantaged communities starts with the mobile phone and how much it takes priority over other needs that we might consider basic. Then go bang on Verizon and AT&Ts doors and see what they can do to help.

@MV Resident. The school boards did not vote to close. Superintendents did not decide to close. Order from county. Read that part? The anonymous "protective dad" is not likely a parent. More likely a school administrator. Classy.

@ItsTheMoneyHoney: so you want to assert that the board is somehow inept because they made a call on the closure process a few hours before the county did, and actually followed protocol in assigning authority? I think you have a different agenda than protecting the kids of this district, so save it for November and we’ll see how you do. Cheers.

@MV Resident: I heard Superintendent Rudolph's reply to my last Public Comment (Regular Board Meeting). It was IMO totally unsatisfactory - sort of like Trump's "I have NO Responsibility" - go back over the video recording of his comments!

I have not done a Public Records Request on MVWSD's last survey/study/report on internet disconnected students (families). Have YOU? What is the link? It is just (IMO) asinine to suggest that private company charity, or PTA charity, should drive Public School Kid Access to the Internet RESOURCES of the MVWSD at home. [BTY COMCAST has offered this charity - but surely many of those 200 student families DO NOT HAVE THE EXPERTISE TO CONNECT TO THIS TECHNICAL RESOURCE AND GIT IT DONE! (capitals for emphasis - not shouting)

Parent smart-phone instead of student Chromebook (set up by the District). Surely you jest! There have been elementary principal(s) (the best) in MVWSD who have literally gone into student homes - earlier this year - to help some families test and get actually going on CLEAR, iReady and the other MVWSD taxpayer provided digital-learning materials. -@MV Resident - You IMO obviously do not know or have experience in helping poor students get connected and USE / BENEFIT from these at-home learning tools.

I hope people ignore You on this (particular) item ... BUT I agree with you on the MVWSD going 'with the county public health officer' protocol system. The MVWSD Administration followed their (2015) adopted protocol which had been extensively worked out by the County before hand. They did not (IMO) shoot from the hip, stall, or cancel tens of thousands of instructional days without weighing the alternatives.

[Post removed due to disrespectful comment or offensive language]

@Parent (another neighborhood) -that's fine -
I pushed for and got the County Health Dept./Officer recommended draft school pandemic plan Legislatively Adopted as Public Policy when I was serving on the Board. I didn't write that Safety Plan. I didn't modify the Safety Plan. (and I won't ask for credit on that / not an "I invented the Internet" moment - Senator Al Gore) [see his Wikipedia link]*

But like Senator Gore, I was a legislator who pushed for the adoption of such public policy, and eventually was able to Vote on it's unanimous adoption by the MVWSD Board. :-)

* ref. The House Science and Technology Comm. and the Atari Democrats and the quotes from Vine Cert and Bob Kahn.

Now that others have made decisions school board members did not, we shall see how this works out. School closures and alternative learning may prove we do not need public schools as now operated.

@It's... - and so you think this is a good experimental setup? Some 'accidental' variables for a good pseudo-random trial THAT YOU WOULD CHANGE YOUR OPINION AFTER?

I somehow very much doubt that! If some metric for "we do not need" and some statistical criteria for "prove" (before the results are in by year_end academic testing) were proposed, I would not be surprised if ex post facto you rejected them if your "proof" evaporated. Good old @Protective Dad demonstrated a little of the type of mathematical modeling "proof" / or "reasoning" we expect in this community.

Online classes. No getting sick from others. No carrying viruses to old, former school board members. No transportation woes. No finding after-school programs or providers. Who could have ever imagined such a thing when you were on the elementary school board? Not you - it appears.

I've been around the Internet since I was on the Research Staff of Xerox PARC in 1985 - and ALTOS were running some of the net switching load of our research center. {senior-thanks for the anti-virus thoughts!)

Here is some good new local research on Silicon Valley use of iReady for math in 7th grade.
Web Link

iRead's been adopted for on-line use, both testing, classroom instructional supplement, and home review and work in MVWSD schools throughout the district this year. (rollout yr. it seems for instruction / but used for several years now in formative -partial_year - assessments in Language and Math).

[dystopian reality alert - it can lead to EQUITY problems when not implemented well / for instance GREAT SCHOOLS correctly finds Graham MS at 3/10 on it's Equity scale / which MVWSD administration continues to deliberately and deceptively obfuscate] read the research paper!


APPLES FOR (in) SCHOOLS (yes?) I hope you know of the LA USD's botched billion dollar bungle of that idea. There are many other instances of such failures. MVWSD did have an interesting small (unfortunately unnoticed) successful trial of KAHN ACADEMY free algebra curriculum and practice tools [Mr. Derek Mulkey@ Graham about 7-8 years ago]