Colleges and school districts in the Bay Area are continuing attempts to stem the spread of coronavirus, but taking different approaches.

West Valley College is suspending in-person classes in response to the “continuing threat” of COVID-19, though officials said they are unaware of any contact between staff, faculty or students with the virus. The same is happening in the Chabot-Las Positas community college district, where no cases have been confirmed.

West Valley spokesman Scott Ludwig said the school is suspending face-to-face instruction “out of an abundance of caution” to reduce opportunities for the virus to spread.

School officials announced Wednesday that faculty will convert course material and lectures to an online format where possible, and classes could restart as early as Monday, March 16 in an online format.

Activity courses, studio and lab classes are being evaluated on a case-by-case basis to “ensure students can complete required courses for graduation and transfer,” the school said in a letter.

“West Valley will be working diligently to establish plans to manage courses that cannot, for a variety of reasons, be moved into an online capacity,” said West Valley College President Stephanie Kashima. “We are carefully examining the impact these changes will have on students with disabilities, international students, and those without access to technology at home, among others.”

Elsewhere in the South Bay, the Foothill-De Anza Community College District announced it is moving all courses with scheduled lecture hours to a virtual platform for the rest of the academic year, starting Monday.

“I am confident that we will have a successful transition because the district and colleges have been planning intensively for this,” Chancellor Judy Miner said in a statement. “We have been working closely with faculty leaders, and we deeply appreciate their flexibility, ingenuity and support in tackling this unprecedented challenge.’

The main campus and Sunnyvale Center will remain open for winter and spring quarters, and as of Monday, will be staffed by employees essential to maintaining operations, according to the district.

The move comes after 11 members of the De Anza College Student Body Senate drafted a petition asking the college district to move all coursework online in an effort to prevent an outbreak on campus. It was signed by more than 2,500 people.

The student who drafted the petition noted various concerns, including that the “college is waiting for an outbreak rather than taking preventative measures to maintain low risk overall.”

The student body leadership also said there is an increased risk to the De Anza College community because many students rely on private and public transportation to get to the Cupertino campus from across the Bay Area, as only about 4.8 percent of the student population lives in that city.

“De Anza College is one of the few educational institutions in the area that has not moved its courses online even after Santa Clara county’s legal order to ban mass gatherings of 1,000 people or more,” the petition said. “Thus we propose to prioritize moving all classes online. For courses where that is not possible, we encourage meeting as minimally as possible.”

Another petition at Foothill College calling for the school to cancel classes garnered nearly 1,000 signatures.

Some schools have seen backlash from parents who don’t want schools to close.

Christina Hildebrand, a parent of a high schooler at Notre Dame High School in Belmont — which is closed until March 26 after the Archdiocese of San Francisco decided to shut down all its schools — has written a letter asking legislators in Sacramento to help prevent mass school closures without confirmed cases of contact with COVID-19.

“I again ask you as legislators to ensure that decisions of school closure are made on a case by case basis of whether a school has had any coronavirus cases among their population, rather than just make sweeping closures out of fear,” Hildebrand said.

With school closing “out of an abundance of caution but no concrete reason,” Hildebrand said the archdiocese’s decision puts “tens of thousands of parents in financial hardship” who now have to find emergency child care or give up income.

She also said the decisions put thousands of students in the precarious position of learning through online instruction “for which no classes are set up.”

“This affects not only the education of our children, but the California economy as a whole,” Hildebrand said.

In the East Bay, the Chabot-Las Positas community college district is temporarily suspending in-person classes through the weekend. Classes will resume on Monday, March 16, using either online courses or limited in-person classes.

Like West Valley College, the Chabot-Las Positas district reported no known cases of coronavirus among students or employees.

At a Wednesday news conference, officials from Oakland Unified School District said that two high-school students may have been exposed to a person confirmed to have coronavirus; both students were reported to be under quarantine. The district did not recommend closing down any schools at this time.

The district is also canceling or postponing events with more than 100 people and will evaluate canceling practice and graduation in late April or early May.

Meanwhile, two Contra Costa County school districts announced conflicting policies on how to handle scheduled board meetings Wednesday night.

The Antioch Unified School District canceled its board meeting Wednesday “in light of recent COVID-19 guidelines related to ‘social distancing’ from Contra Costa Health Services,” Superintendent Stephanie Anello said.

But the Liberty Union School District’s meeting Wednesday night is still on, though they have issued other rules about afterschool events, including not allowing spectators or parents on campus for sporting events and practices. The school district has also postponed non-essential school activities to comply with the mass gathering threshold of 50 people at arm’s length.

“From the onset of this outbreak we have said that we will follow the guidelines from CCHS,” Superintendent Eric Volta said in a statement. “We believe, along with other county superintendents, these protocols follow those guidelines and keep our students safely supervised in our school facilities. It is important to remember that at the time of this writing, no student or staff member has contracted the CVOID-19 virus in Contra Costa County with an enrollment of over 177,000 students.”

Currently there are 9 confirmed cases in Contra Costa County.