Orange County’s Board of Education call for a return to classrooms without masks or social distancing last month drew a host of reactions from across the country.
Yet panel members never gave Orange County residents their own chance to sound off.
. . .
Over 4,000 email comments were submitted for the Board of Education’s July 13 meeting but board members chose not to publicly acknowledge any of the emails before taking a vote.
Board members instead chose to hear from 20, in-person commenters who seemed to have been picked at random but were overwhelmingly in favor of the board’s proposal.
The board still has not published the emails on their website, which they are required to do under the Brown Act, and has not announced a plan on how to release the emails to the public. The only information published by the board is a list of names from the commenters.
Voice of OC filed a public records request the night of the July 13 meeting, hoping to see what the public’s opinion of the recommendations were, and has reviewed half the emails.
. . .
A vast majority of the public comments reviewed so far were in favor of schools remaining closed until proper safety protocols could be implemented.
Of the 2,097 emails reviewed by this publication date, 1,540 commenters said they were against the board’s proposed guidelines for reopening free of restrictions and 345 commenters were clearly in favor of a return to classrooms without masks or social distancing.
. . .
A number of the commenters vowed to vote against board members who advocate in favor of a reopening with no masks and no social distancing come the next election.
The last elections for the County’s board of education was in March of this year that saw Republicans hold on to a supermajority of seats.
The next election is set for 2022, when trustees Mari Barke and Lisa Sparks will be up for reelection.
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OC Reg
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✅ California’s COVID-19 positive test rate declines. Did closing bars and malls work? -- The governor said it’s possible that “all of the above” contributed to the current decline, while cautioning that the trend is not yet clear. In critiquing his own performance, he has repeatedly said that the state didn’t focus enough in the first round of opening on educating the public about the caution and behavioral changes that would be required. Sophia Bollag in the Sacramento Bee$ -- 8/4/20
✅ Newsom provides path for elementary schools to open, strictly limits youth sports -- California elementary schools that want to open their doors for in-person learning must consult with parents, labor unions and others on campus and demonstrate their plans for contact-tracing and other public health measures that have been widely implemented in summer camps and child care settings, according to new guidelines released Monday night. Katy Murphy and Jeremy B. White Politico Dustin Gardiner in the San Francisco Chronicle$ Robert Jablon Associated Press Anita Chabria, Nina Agrawal in the Los Angeles Times$ -- 8/4/20
✅ UC Regents want to investigate top salary cuts -- Two key members of the UC Board of Regents are in favor of a model that would reduce top salaries to help offset pandemic expenses. Also, next year’s UC budget has more money for policing and the stage has been set for a likely September vote about a telescope in Hawaii. Mikhail Zinshteyn CalMatters -- 8/4/20
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✅ California undercounting COVID-19 cases due to ‘serious’ technical issue, counties say
The Sacramento Bee
Health officials in multiple California counties say the electronic system used by most local health departments statewide to report data on infectious diseases is currently experiencing “serious” technical issues, resulting in coronavirus cases being significantly undercounted.
The technical problems suggest that the apparent statewide decline in COVID-19 activity that had been observed in the past few days, and which Gov. Gavin Newsom touted during a Monday news conference as an indication the state has been “able to get a handle” on the pandemic via social distancing and business closures his administration re-implemented last month, may instead be either partially or entirely attributed to a data glitch….
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| New case numbers likely under-reported today |
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| In one possible world: March 1930 |
