FARMERSVILLE, Calif. — At 7:45 on a recent morning, the strangest of scenes unfolded at Outside Creek Elementary: A school bus pulled up. Students stepped off and sauntered to class. The principal, Derrick Bravo, greeted a parent with a friendly hey-there handshake.
It was humdrum normalcy in the most abnormal of times, as if there were no pandemic, no statewide order to shelter in place, no social-distancing directives.
Of the 10,521 public schools in California, Outside Creek is the lone holdout, a tiny school in a remote rural community in the San Joaquin Valley that is insisting on holding classes for the 21 students from kindergarten through eighth grade who showed up last week.
Bravo, who is also the school’s superintendent and eighth grade teacher, said he and the school board did not make the decision lightly. Yes, local health authorities had urged all schools to close, and every other school in Tulare County had done just that after Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a shelter-in-place order for the entire state March 19. They also knew the numbers — 10 dead so far out of at least 187 residents in the county who have tested positive for the coronavirus.
But when Bravo turned to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for advice, the nation’s leading authority on infectious diseases seemed to suggest in its written guidance that small schools outside hot spots could remain open if they took precautions. And then Bravo thought about the everyday struggles of the families who work the citrus and walnut groves here. Nearly every one of his students qualifies for free or subsidized lunches, and remote learning is a fantasy for the many families who cannot afford internet access.
“We thought about just our rural area and the resources available for our kids,” Bravo said.
As the spread of the novel coronavirus accelerates across the United States, Outside Creek illustrates the challenge of enforcing uniform social-distancing policies in a country that prizes local control over schools.
Under California law, only one official other than Bravo has the power to close Outside Creek — the governor. Newsom has repeatedly called on every school in the state to remain closed for the rest of the academic year. His shelter-in-place order is also unequivocal: “Everyone in California is required to stay home except to get food, care for a relative or friend, get necessary health care, or go to an essential job,” it reads.
Yet Newsom, well aware of Tulare County’s conservative politics, has refrained from confronting Outside Creek. His spokesman would say only this: “School officials should use guidance from federal, state and local public officials in deciding how best to serve students.”
The situation in Outside Creek is exceptionally rare not only for California but also nationwide. Every state has ordered or recommended school closures. While some religious schools initially dragged their feet, the overwhelming majority of the nation’s schools are now shuttered. Even in states that strongly advised schools to close without a formal mandate, like Kentucky and South Dakota, state education departments said Tuesday that they were unaware of any open public schools.
For his part, Bravo, the superintendent, does not dispute the dangers of this virus. Door handles at Outside Creek are disinfected constantly. Students sanitize their desks. Tape is stuck on the cafeteria floor at 6-foot intervals to space out the lunch line. But social distancing is easier said than done in elementary school. On a recent day, children converged into tangled clusters as they played ball on the playground.
Outside Creek may be the only school, not just the only public school, still open in California. Representatives of the state’s 3,315 private schools said they knew of no private school that has defied Newsom’s order. Tony Thurmond, California’s superintendent for public instruction, has urged Bravo to reconsider and fall in line. “Quite frankly,” he said at a news conference, “none of us knows when it’s safe enough for our students to return to campus.”
Karen Elliott, the county’s public health director, has also stressed that it is best for parents to keep their children home. Three quarters of Outside Creek’s parents have decided to do just that, with their children taking independent study courses devised by Bravo’s staff.