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County remains in purple tier Further reopenings on hold despite downtrend in COVID cases By MITCHELL WHITE NEWS-PRESS ASSOCIATE EDITOR
KENNETH SONG/NEWS-PRESS
Although Santa Barbara County has reduced its positive COVID-19 cases in recent weeks, the county remains in the state’s lowest tier of the state’s four-tier color coated system. On Tuesday, the California Department of Public Health announced the county’s first official report card number in the new data system was 8.3 cases per 100,000. This was down from the Aug. 31 seven-day average of nine per 100,000, though the county needs to decrease its average to seven cases per 100,000 in order to move into the next tier, the red tier, officials said. The county’s reported positivity rate is 5.5%, below the standard
for the red tier. Even though the county’s test rate is in the red tier, the tier assignments are made based on the more restrictive tier, said Dr. Van Do-Reynoso, director of the Santa Barbara County Public Health Department. “If we all continue to be extra vigilant we can keep this positive momentum going in the right direction and move to the red tier by the end of September,” said Gregg Hart, chair of the county Board of Supervisors, during Tuesday’s press conference. County officials have met with officials at UCSB on several occasions in recent weeks to address the issue of gatherings as students return to the area. Dr. Do-Reynoso said the county Please see COVID on A10
A man walks his dog on Leadbetter Beach in Santa Barbara during a hazy morning caused by distant fires. This man was following proper guidlines.
Public disregards beach restriction
By JOSH GREGA
NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
Health Officer orders ruled that public beaches in Santa Barbara County were closed to non-exercise activities over Labor Day weekend, but that didn’t seem to matter much to members of the public. Over the course of the weekend, crowds of people laid on the beach and disobeyed the order, which Santa Barbara Harbor Patrol officer Monica Broumand said came as quite a surprise to her department. Whereas similar prohibitions of non-active beach activities enacted over the July 4 weekend to prevent the spread of COVID-19 were largely met with compliance from the public. Labor Day weekend was precisely the opposite. “There were a lot of people sitting and lying down,” Officer
Broumand said. “There wasn’t supposed to be any pop-ups or umbrellas. The beach was covered with those.” In order to encourage compliance with the restrictions, parking lots at Santa Barbara County beaches were closed with barriers. This helped little if at all, and Officer Broumand told the News-Press that Harbor Patrol received reports of people removing beach closure signs and tossing them into nearby bushes. Early on Labor Day, Harbor Patrol officers spoke to some individuals at Leadbetter and West Beach about the restriction of non-exercise beach activities, but they had to respond to other calls shortly thereafter. These calls were regarding disturbances like people parking illegally, speeding on boats in the harbor, and even a boating accident.
By the time the officers checked back on the beaches, they were filled with people. By the end of the day, on duty Harbor Patrol officers had doubled from two to four, but Officer Broumand remarked that this wasn’t nearly enough to enforce the beach closures. “We just don’t have the manpower to control the beaches being closed all day long,” she said. She added that while beaches were supposed to be closed to lying around, Harbor Patrol had to tend to its number one priority, ensuring boating safety. Harbor Patrol’s log of encounters with members of the public for Labor Day was twice as long as an ordinary day’s log. “We usually have a four-page log on most days and we had an eightpage log over the weekend,” she said.
In a statement to the NewsPress, Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors chair Gregg Hart said that while not everyone complied with the Health Officer order to the degree he had hoped, crowds at the beach were still far below normal Labor Day levels. Since massive crowds of out-oftowners stayed away as a result of the order, he considers the level to which people complied with it a success. His statement read: “The beach access restrictions were enacted to reduce the possibility that out-oftown visitors would come to local beaches in large numbers and create overcrowded conditions that could increase the community spread of COVID-19. This objective was met.” The Santa Barbara County
KENNETH SONG/NEWS-PRESS
More than 100 people participated in Tuesday’s Santa Barbara Unified School District meeting on Teen Talk, including a pair of Dos Pueblos High School students.
Public weighs in on sex ed More than 100 people take part in Teen Talk discussion
Please see weather on A2
By ANNELISE HANSHAW NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
RAFAEL MALDONADO/NEWS-PRESS PHOTOS
Smoke from distant wildfires makes for an orange sun Tuesday morning on State Routes 246 and 154 in the Santa Ynez Valley.
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The Santa Barbara Unified School District board meeting Tuesday was dominated by an hours-long discussion on a new sexual education curriculum called Teen Talk. Although only slated for a five minute discussion amongst the board, more than 100 members of the public joined in on the virtual discussion to give their opinion on the curriculum. Most who spoke were against Teen Talk, favoring the HEART curriculum instead. The HEART curriculum teaches abstinence-only sex education. Tuesday’s discussion came after the district reached out to parents in January through five meetings. The outreach only led to 27 opinions — a quarter of what was heard Tuesday. Junior-high physical-education teachers and high school health
teachers voted on the curriculum. Thirteen out of 17 teachers favored Teen Talk. The board formerly heard a report on the surveys from director of secondary education Anne Roundy-Harter in February. She recommended the board adopt the curriculum, though the board suspended the vote on Teen Talk in March. Many parents who spoke out Tuesday said they were surprised the board aimed to vote on the issue. Many expressed they thought parents were not properly alerted to the decision. Several of the commenters were concerned that Spanishspeaking members of the community haven’t been educated about the curriculum, as the provided report was only in English and not in Spanish. Teen Talk includes 12 Please see TEEN TALK on A2
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L O T T E RY RESU LTS
Comics................. A8 Classified.............. A9 Life.................... A 4-6
Saturday’s SUPER LOTTO: 1-18-22-26-27 Meganumber: 12
Tuesday’s DAILY 4: 7-0-4-7
Tuesday’s MEGA MILLIONS: 7-10-15-31-57 Meganumber: 21
Tuesday’s FANTASY 5: 2-8-18-19-36
Tuesday’s DAILY DERBY: 04-01-09 Time: 1:49.00
Saturday’s POWERBALL: 15-21-22-27-47 Meganumber: 7
Obituaries........... A10 Soduku................. A7 Weather.............. A10
Tuesday’s DAILY 3: 3-1-5 / Wednesday’s Midday 5-4-2