WCCUSD school board acknowledges reduced yard supervision will be challenging, but makes no changes
UPDATE FROM RICHMONDSIDE: Kennedy High deemed safe to reopen
The district-funded yard supervision planned for this coming school year is half of what it was last school year. Prior to COVID, the district provided 1 hour of yard supervision per 100 students. After COVID, that was increased to 1½ hours. Last year it was 2 hours, and the plan for 2026-27 is for it to go back to the pre-COVID allocation of 1 hour of yard supervision per 100 students.
Trustee Leslie Reckler said that just because that level of staffing was used for many years before COVID “doesn’t make it the right ratio.”
Yard supervisors are typically responsible for students for a period of about two hours a day, as different grade levels have staggered lunch and play periods. For the typical school, the new formula will provide each school with two supervisors each working a two-hour shift. Schools often have multiple locations where different groups of students are eating and playing simultaneously that need supervision.
Some trustees noted that while the same staffing rate is applied to all schools, the configuration of some campuses makes them more challenging to supervise.
Reckler suggested that the district look at the number of problems that arise during lunch at each site in considering how much yard supervision is needed at each school.
The staff report noted that schools often use funds controlled by their site to supplement the yard supervision funded directly by the school district, though how much site funds are spent on additional supervisors varies widely from site to site, as does the extent to which sites supplement the paid supervisors with parent volunteers.
Reckler said that with less yard staff more of that responsibility will fall on principals, pulling them away from administrative responsibilities.
“I don’t think people will be too happy about this,” she said of the reductions.
Trustee Demetrio Gonzalez-Hoy noted that the schools’ site funds are being reduced as well, other staff at the schools has also been cut, and many needs such as curriculum materials compete for those funds.
Trustee Jamela Smith-Folds said lunchtime supervision is particularly challenging on rainy days, when students are split up into their individual classrooms. She suggested principals share with one another how they deal with that challenge.
Earlier in the meeting, the board got an update on toxins found at Kennedy High School, which will put a further strain on the district’s already-tight finances due to the cost of testing, mitigation, and finding a way to teach students somewhere off campus if the school is not safe to use when classes begin Aug. 18. Many questions, including whether the campus will be usable when school begins, remain unanswered, with testing and analysis continuing. But the district is looking at alternative plans including using only a portion of the Kennedy site if it is safe to do so, relocating students to Helms Middle School in San Pablo and Serra Adult School in Richmond Heights temporarily, or having the students basically take a series of field trips for a few days.