From the associate minister of religious education

With more and more people being vaccinated in California, the state government is moving towards reopening. So what about reopening plans for UUCPA?

First and foremost, reopening plans for adult programs will be different from programs for children and teens under age 16. Until we have a vaccine for those under age 16, I’m expecting we’ll have to be more careful with that age group.

At its April 6 meeting, the Children and Youth Religious Education (CYRE) Committee and I drafted procedures for reopening in-person children and teen programs. These recommended procedures will be passed on to the Board of Trustees, for their consideration at their April 22 meeting. At this point, we’re planning that we’ll be offering both in-person and online Sunday school beginning in the fall. As of now, we’re planning that in-person Sunday school will be outdoors, masked, and socially-distanced. But we also plan to monitor the rapidly changing situation carefully, taking our cues from the best practices we see in nearby schools, preschools, daycare centers, and after-school programs.

I have to admit that I haven’t been paying as much attention to what’s been going on with adult programs at UUCPA. There’s also a group planning out hybrid worship services (both online and in-person worship) at UUCPA. There’s also a group figuring out how we might resume in-person small group meetings for adults. Watch the UUCPA Web site for more information.

I’m not going to make any promises about when we might resume in-person programs. COVID has fooled us too many times in the past. But I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to reopen sometime this calendar year.