As 2020 winds down, the Reveille will be taking time to reflect on the past year and everything that’s happened — from fires to a pandemic, Cloverdale has persevered. Despite barriers, the town came together for socially distanced or virtual events, supporting local businesses and more.
Over the coming two weeks, we’ll be sharing with you some of the highlights of the year.
Jefferson students started off the new year with a delivery from the Mad Hatters — three Cloverdalians who are part of a larger knitting group of Welfare League Santa Rosa — who for years have been going to the elementary school to drop off hand-knitted hats to kindergarteners.
During a Feb. 12 meeting of the Cloverdale Unified School District (CUSD) Board of Trustees discussed its dwindling budget. At the meeting, the board directed former Cloverdale Superintendent Jeremy Decker create a budget that would both increase the district-set reserve percentage, adding in an 8% reserve goal on top of a county-mandated 3% reserve and the district’s already-set 5% reserve goal. While the meeting emphasized the district continuously operating at a structural deficit, resulting in a decrease in reserve funds, it also centered around the unknowns associated with the governor’s budget. In a few short months, the financial outlook of the district’s budget — and the budget outlined by Gov. Gavin Newsom — was thrown into a tailspin with the early impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
On March 14, the CUSD announced that the district would be suspending site-based learning until April 7 — though the reality of what ended up happening was much different.
As districts started to figure out what distance learning meant, Cloverdale was in a better position than many other Sonoma County school districts, since it already had one-to-one devices for its upper grades. Instead of having to outfit every student with technology, the district only had to worry about the younger students.
And, teachers and school sites were trying to think on their feet with ways to hold instruction from afar, many leaned on programs that were already being used in the classroom.
Cloverdale High School English teacher Jacob Ramirez used Google Classroom.
“It’s just sort of a staple now,” he said in a March interview with the Reveille. “We’ve also been doing something called Grammar 101 for supplementary instruction in grammar … A lot of the things that we’re really relying on now, the kids are already familiar with so they’ll be really good assets for us moving into online learning.”
In an interview with the Reveille, Decker said that he hoped that all Cloverdale students would have internet and computer access by the end of the first week of April.
“Our teachers have worked so hard to try and meet this need and to turn their classrooms from a fully in-person experience to a completely digital one,” he said. “That takes years to do and we did it in two days.”
In an effort to try and equip all students with reliable internet, the district purchased 14 Wi-Fi hotspots, and worked with other families to plan out ways they could utilize a special internet hotspot program that was offered through Comcast.
In March, the district was hit with a different kind of hurdle — a school board vacancy following the resignation of Trustee Eric Higginbotham. On May 1, Brandon Axell was voted in as an appointed trustee to the board, filling Higginbotham’s vacant seat.
In mid-April, Decker announced that he would be leaving the district effective the start of July after accepting a job as superintendent of the Windsor Unified School District. On June 17, it was announced that Betha MacClain would take over for Decker. MacClain was previously the superintendent in Two Rock.
Helping Cloverdale seniors celebrate graduation was a community effort this year, with community members and the district teaming up to organize a drive-thru commencement where students drove through the CHS parking lot one by one, walked to a stage to receive their diploma and take a photo, and then drove off down North Cloverdale Boulevard, which was lined with community members.
Additionally, large posters of senior photos were hung up on the Citrus Fairgrounds fence along the boulevard for two weeks following graduation, and families of graduates were given yard signs proclaiming that a Cloverdale graduate lives there.
Cloverdale’s eighth graders got a similar treatment for promotion, with parents receiving front yard signs that read “Proud family of a Washington School graduate, congratulations class of 2024.” A car parade through town was also planned for outgoing eighth graders, and took place on June 4.
The bulk of this year was spent discussing distance learning and looking forward to when students would be able to return to in-person instruction. In June, district trustees planned for hybrid learning to possibly begin at the start of the 2020-21 school year — a hope that wasn’t realized once students began the new school year.
As plans to start the year in distance learning were cemented, the district created a large committee of students, community members, district staff, teachers and parents to help create a living district reopening plan that seeks to address issues that came up during spring’s bout of distance learning, as well as level out the distance learning-related wishes of all sects of the community.
The plan is being updated and added to regularly, with different distance learning developments being regularly presented about during school board meetings.
In an effort to help with students mental health, the CUSD launched a wellness website at the end of November, meant to help provide resources to students and families who may be struggling during this period of at-home learning.
The district is unable to start a hybrid learning model based on county virus metrics, which has the county still in the purple tier of the state’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy plan. In order to partially reopen schools for in-person learning the county must be in the red tier of the state plan for two weeks.
While the district discussed trying to reopen schools in January during an October meeting, the most recent board meeting in December came with the recommendation that the district stop trying to set goals for reopening dates, given the county’s ongoing struggle with lowering virus case numbers.
In the meantime, the district is continuing to prepare for a possible hybrid learning scenario, with the maintenance and operations department installing disinfecting sprayers, air purifiers and more to classrooms and school site buildings.
District developments
While this year was a mish-mash of distance learning and trying to reconfigure how to educate students, the district also made headway on its Measure H construction plans. In April, construction on the track and field of Cloverdale High School began and was completed a handful of months later.
In November, the district sold the last of its Measure H bond funds, taking advantage of growth in its tax base and low interest rates.
Since it passed, Measure H funds have been used to construct a new track and field at Cloverdale High School, and are in the process of being used to fund a new classroom at Jefferson Elementary and a new gymnasium at Washington School.
