SAN DIEGO (KGTV) - San Diego Unified School District is planning to retrofit classrooms to allow for the safe return of thousands of students in mid-April.
A little more than six weeks from now, some of the 100,000 San Diego Unified School District students may be able to return to their respective campuses.
"[We expect that] large numbers of students [will be] coming onto our campuses that week of April 12,” School Board President Richard Barrera said on Wednesday.
He added that on the targeted reopening date of April 12 an in-person hybrid model will be implemented to limit large groups.
“That means that maybe half of the class comes in the morning and half of the class comes in the afternoon or maybe half of the class comes in two days a week [and] the other half comes in the other two days a week,” Barrera told ABC 10News.
Approximately 5,000 students have already been doing in-person learning with strict safety measures in place, but the district plans to build out those measures to accommodate the massive influx of new students whose parents decide to send them back to campuses. The district is reportedly measuring desk spaces to maintain social distancing and staff members are working with UC San Diego Health experts to be sure that classrooms are updated with proper filters for adequate ventilation.
Barrera said that in addition to the $50 million already spent, at least another $50 - $100 million will likely be needed in part to expand the summer school model from teaching a few hundred high school students to teaching tens of thousands of students of all ages, with academic programs in the mornings and community-based social programs in the afternoons.
San Diego County must drop out of the restrictive purple tier for the district to move forward. While vaccinations for educators could begin as soon as next Monday, they reportedly won't be required.
