It's official: Downey students won't return to campus this school year

DOWNEY — Downey students will not be returning to school campuses before the end of the current academic year.

The Downey Board of Education voted Tuesday to accept state and county recommendations to keep campuses closed through May 31, the last day of school in the Downey Unified School District.

“Our Downey Unified family’s health and safety is our greatest concern,” said superintendent Dr. John Garcia. “Even so, this is a difficult day, especially for our high school seniors who have been looking forward to important school milestones.”

Garcia said he will meet with senior class representatives this week to formulate a plan regarding graduation ceremonies, summer school, scholarships, and other end-of-year matters.

“We want to emphasize, this does not mean the 2019-2020 academic year is finished,” school board president Donald LaPlante and superintendent Dr. John Garcia said in a letter to parents. “While we will continue to stay physically apart, our educators will continue to provide distance learning instruction and our students will stay engaged in their learning until the very last day of school…”

The letter sent out by Downey Unified is below in its entirety:

Dear Downey Unified Families:

As promised last week, we’re reaching out to you this evening to provide you with an update following our recently concluded Special Board of Education meeting. In a public address on April 1, Governor Newsom emphasized that it is incumbent upon all of us to comply with the “safer-at-home” orders to help save lives. The Governor, along with State Schools Superintendent Thurmond and the Los Angeles County Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Duardo, also recommended that California schools should remain physically closed for the rest of this academic year.

Based on these recommendations, during tonight’s Special meeting, Downey Unified’s Board of Education voted to extend the closure of our school facilities and continue our distance learning for students throughout the remainder of the school year. We want to emphasize, this does not mean the 2019-2020 academic year is finished. While we will continue to stay physically apart, our educators will continue to provide distance learning instruction and our students will stay engaged in their learning until the very last day of school on May 31, 2020.

Our staff has been preparing for all possible scenarios and, with your support, we are ready to meet this new challenge together. As of today, we have distributed 4,200 devices to our elementary students and over 2,500 devices to our middle and high school students. In further preparation, a Distance Learning Portal was launched early last week that will serve as a focal point for our families to access our schools’ various distance learning plans. We encourage everyone to visit this portal along with your school’s respective webpage.  This can be found through a banner posted on our district’s website at www.dusd.net.

This portal also includes three other areas to support our families: a Family Resources section, which provides mental health, stress management and general health resources; a Special Education section, which provides various home learning, extended learning and related services resources for our families with students with special needs; and a District Update section, which includes the most recent updates regarding this ever-evolving situation.  For any families who do not have the ability to get internet access, we ask you to please reach out to your child’s teacher or your school’s principal for support. Our staff is committed to working directly with our families to make sure all of our students are being educated during this time and will coordinate with each of you personally.

We recognize this difficult but necessary decision may cause disappointment, and we deeply understand the hardship that continuing to educate our children remotely creates for everyone impacted. We are always concerned about the social and emotional well-being of all our students and you have our commitment that we will continuously work on ways to stay connected, even at a distance. This is especially true for all students who represent the Class of 2020, which includes most significantly our high school seniors, as well as our eighth graders and our fifth graders.

We have been thinking about our graduating seniors a lot this week…  This is certainly not what we expected their last few months of their senior year to look like.  We are committed, Class of 2020, that we will be able to salvage a portion of the senior year experience for you.  We are all sorry you won’t celebrate this rite of passage in its entirety with the all traditions of your final months of your senior year.  As Dr. Garcia shared with you in a video message two weeks ago, we are committed to holding a graduation ceremony at some point for our seniors.  This celebration is still in the research stages, but you have our commitment that we will do all we are allowed.  To that end, Dr. Garcia is having a video meeting on Wednesday and Thursday with senior class representatives from all three high schools to gather input. In the coming days and weeks, we will provide our families with information regarding how grades, graduation, transcripts, scholarships and summer school will be handled.

Spring Break starts on Monday and we hope that all of our students, families and staff are able to take time away from distance learning to enjoy each other. We know how hard we all have been working to adjust to this new landscape, and we encourage you to take this opportunity to relax and recharge your batteries in preparation to return revitalized and ready to finish out the end of the school year. We know that two weeks ago, Dr. Garcia also shared that we would not be serving meals to our families during Spring Break; however, our Board of Education felt the need to continue to support our families during this week. Therefore, during Spring Break (April 13 through April 19), meal distributions will continue however the distribution days and sites will be reduced to three days at three sites. Meals will be distributed on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at Carpenter Elementary, Price Elementary and Downey High.  On Thursday, meals will be distributed to account for having no distribution on Friday.

We truly want to thank and recognize our amazing Food Services staff, our site administrators and all the district volunteers who have made distributing meals to our families possible.  We also want to thank our essential employees who have continued to make sure our district is able to serve students and families during this time.

We understand that some of you may have questions and want to assure you that once there are definitive answers, we will update you. In the meantime, our new reality as students, parents and educators continues to evolve as we work to meet another challenge together. Our Downey UNIFIED family is strong, and we are confident that we will continue to support one another and get through this together. It is important that we stay connected, and you have our commitment that we will keep you informed. Please continue to check our website and follow Downey Unified on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube for updates. Stay safe everyone thank you for providing our kids the best!

Sincerely,

Donald E. LaPlante, President, Board of Education

John A. Garcia, Jr., Ph.D., Superintendent