Santa Rosa City Schools vow to be ready to open classrooms March 1

Santa Rosa City Schools Superintendent Diann Kitamura vowed that classrooms will be ready to welcome the district’s youngest students by March 1 — a milestone that could mark the nearly one-year anniversary of all campuses in the district and across Sonoma County being shuttered in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.

But the district’s plan to allow students to return to campus part-time, outlined Wednesday night, comes with at least one significant caveat: the number of coronavirus cases in Sonoma County must meet state thresholds for safety at a time when the virus is spreading more widely in the county than most areas of California.