Under Gov. Gavin Newsom's latest reopening plan, K-12 schools are expected to fully reopen for in-person learning this fall.
San Luis Obispo County Superintendent of Schools Dr. James Brescia says he is in frequent communication with all of the school districts and the San Luis Obispo County Public Health Department to discuss what a full reopening might look like.
The return to in-person classes full-time is something Lucia Mar parent Shannon Galvin says she is cautiously optimistic about.
"They're throwing out the carrot of: 'Oh, we'll reopen in fall.' Okay, well you said that last fall too, so it's hard to get excited about it now when you've lost so much time and there's still no guarantee you're going to actually open," Galvin explained.
Galvin is one of the nearly one thousand people in a Facebook group, advocating for Central Coast schools to fully reopen.
She says she'd like to see the full return to the classroom happen before this school year ends.
"Everybody's situation is different and that's what we've said this entire year. We just want an opportunity to do what's right for our family and for our family, it would be to have our kids in school full time. If that's not right for somebody else, they should be able to do what's best for them," Galvin said.
But how safe is a full return to the classroom? San Luis Obispo County Public Health Officer Dr. Penny Borenstein says so far, local schools have only seen a few small outbreaks of the virus and much of the spread is attributed to gatherings outside of the classroom.
"Quite a few studies have been published in past months about how in-classroom spread of this disease is quite low and almost non-existent when it comes to [transmitting from] student to the teacher [and] we're seeing that same thing," Dr. Borenstein said.
We reached out to the Lucia Mar Unified School District who says it "is currently planning to offer full-time in-person instruction for the upcoming school year and is also working on a summer program to accelerate learning recovery."