“They were learning. We were lucky”
Going to school under any circumstances has its excitements and anxieties for children of all ages. After a year and a half at home with remote learning, the opportunity to see friends, leave home and meet their teachers has given students across the Santa Clarita Valley a chance at happiness following a grim period of time.
Take Miriam Brienik and her two second graders at Valencia Valley Elementary School. Last year in October, as COVID-19 cases were on the rise nationwide, the family of four moved to Valencia from Los Angeles.
“We kept them online with their teacher with [the Los Angeles Unified School District], through the end of the year because it was just a lot of change for very little people,” Brienik said about her children. “We lived in L.A. and they had been going to school there for two and a half years. We shut down – six months later we moved areas, moved school districts and we just felt like ‘You know what? Everything’s online right now anyways, let’s just keep it that way.’ And then when SCV went back [to in-person learning], we weren’t sure.”
Brienik said that while life under lockdown conditions were not ideal, it was the best of both possible worlds for her and her husband Sal. For her children’s physical and mental health, Brienik and Sal continued remote learning, in which she noted how their children loved their instructor, were “happy enough with their teacher. They were learning. We were lucky.” Both parents worked from home and went back and forth to help out on school work when needed.
In the months that followed, they walked around the campus to get an idea where they’d be going once in-person learning came back. As vaccinations indicated a sign of good news going into summer, the season delivered the next stage of the pandemic that caused anxiety for the Brieniks and millions of other Americans.
“It got scary around the end of July [into] August and Delta was starting to hit,” she said. “You read articles about how our hospitals are getting filled with children. It was a low percentage, but you have to take that into consideration overall. The low percentage is not a ‘no percentage’ and we all love our kids, right? We all want to protect them.”
“I trust the school districts, I trust the science”
Similarly, Kelly Franti’s sons adjusted well to remote learning. Now a junior and freshman at Saugus High School, responsibilities in life have caught up with them since the pandemic began. While her younger son has new commitments as part of the Associated Student Body, her older son has suddenly been met the familiar later stages of teen life.
“I think that right now is harder, actually,” Franti said. “It’s interesting, my older son is 16 now so during all this he would have gotten his learner’s permit and he would have started driving. He missed half of his freshman year and most of his sophomore year, and now all of a sudden he’s an upper classman. Obvious responsibilities that, as a parent, I’m expecting him to want to learn how to drive, to start socializing and being out with his friends more. He’s just been really hesitant about that. I think it was just so sudden going from freshman year to junior year – it’s such a stunning difference.”
For Brienik’s children, learning from home and achieving some grasp of the pandemic has been an interesting lesson for them to learn, she said. At a young age, structure matters until suddenly “you have school done day and you just literally never come back,” she added. She’s dreamt of taking them back to the old campus in L.A. to reminisce but knows that may not be possible.
Both Brienik and Franti said they follow the science and are grateful for how safe their children have been going back to school. Each family has remained vigilant about going out in public around others without masks. Franti said her sons, who are both vaccinated, will speak up in case someone in class is maskless.
“I think a lot of arguments against mask-wearing and testing and all that – it’s really our issues that we put on kids. I was nervous about telling them to wear a mask in the beginning. Now my kids [will remind me and ]are like, ‘Mommy, your mask!'” Brienik laughed. “They are fine… it’s kind of normal and it’s going to be abnormal when the masks go away. The human race is pretty amazing in that way. We adapt.”
Working with school districts and anti-mask/vaccine parents has also made going back to school contentious. The Newhall School District opted to not ask the California Department of Public Health about giving themselves discretion over the statewide mask mandate after enough parents came forward against the action. Brienik said she would contact Superintendent Jeff Pelzel to voice her concerns over the district’s lack of testing for COVID-19 and wish for more separation among students to prevent a potential outbreak. She noted that while she alone may not change anything, she could be one voice of hundreds of parents with the same concern. As she still gets emails from LAUSD, she’s reminded of its weekly testing of teachers and staff.
“Separating them is hard, testing them is hard and expensive,” Brienik said. “Making them wear a cloth mask over their faces is super easy.”
Franti said Saugus’ principal, Genevieve Peterson Henry, is doing her best handling students’ return to school and following district safety guidelines and, by extension, guidelines from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.
“I trust the school districts, I trust science, I trust the medical professionals,” said Franti. “I hope the school boards will continue to represent the interests and wishes of the majority, and not cave in to the pressure of the loud minority. They’re louder but there’s more people that agree with the science and are willing to do what’s being asked of the nation for the good of everyone.”
However, the divisions among parents at school board meetings and across social media have continued the fight over keeping children safe while COVID-19 remains a very real threat. Franti said for the parents who want to scream all they want, they’re “talking to the wrong people.”
“It’s not the school board that’s making this decision, it’s the county, it’s the city, it’s the federal government…” she said. “If I don’t see [school board members following guidance by health experts], then I’ll be at the school board meetings but I won’t be screaming. I trust the people who I’ve put in charge to represent me, and that they will represent me.”
“Anything can happen later”
Between an eager return to school and now-regular announcements by the Food and Drug Administration about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines in children, both families respectively remain contented with following safety guidelines well into 2022. As Brienik put it, science will answer the question: “Science is going to science.”
With a wide presence on social media, particularly Facebook, Franti said she’s talked with parents about the state of the pandemic, mask and vaccine mandates and children’s safety. Those discussions have been smart and intelligent, she said, coming from people who are decent, hopeful and “want to do good and help each other.”
“Even if people disagree it’s still not such a hard, absolute line in the sand and ‘You’re wrong!'” she said. “It’s, ‘Did you ever think about it from this way?'”
Both mothers said they see the current “Covid normal” continue well into next year as long as people continue getting vaccinated and resisting so. Brienik pointed out that COVID-19 vaccines will “go along with every other vaccine children are required to have.” She faults comparisons to the flu early on in the pandemic for contributing to coronavirus becoming endemic, given the similar unfounded denials of flu vaccines common before the pandemic.
“It’s just that this is happening now in a really weird time, and so people don’t look at this like they look at [measles, mumps and rubella], like they look at polio, even though it’s the same journey we went on.”
Before concluding her interview with The Proclaimer, Brienik made another point about the after-effects of COVID-19 among survivors by drawing a parallel to her husband Sal. While stories of long haul Covid have become common, studies have slowly emerged revealing more health symptoms caused by infection, however it’s unknown what is in store for survivors in the distant future.
Brienik and Sal lived and worked in New York City during the Sept. 11 attacks. Residing in Brooklyn Heights, Sal went across Manhattan Bridge to get home but was told when he could return to work taking the train. The subway was underneath Ground Zero, and the rubble of the World Trade Center left a “horrid” smell for workers making their stop, Brienik said. By 2008, Sal was diagnosed with Hogkin’s lymphoma.
“He’s totally fine now, but you don’t know,” Brienik said. “And I live with that [uncertainty]. Anything can happen later.”
This is Part 3 of a series focused on the “new normal” of schools in the Santa Clarita Valley and how districts, teachers and parents are acclimating to in-person learning despite the ongoing pandemic. Read Parts 1 and 2 below.
SCV school districts assure safety following return to in-person learning
Schools in the Santa Clarita Valley returned to an in-person school session in early August despite COVID-19 concerns and a surge instigated by plateaued vaccinations and the Delta variant.
The several school districts within SCV have assured parents that a variety of safety precautions have been implemented to alleviate the risk of contracting the coronavirus within the student body and staff.
Dr. Cherise Moore, president of the governing board for the William S. Hart Union High School District, said their schools have implemented safety precautions like encouraging vaccinations, wearing masks, distancing, infection control, ventilation systems in classrooms, testing and protocols in place for cases on campus.
She referred to their website’s COVID-19 dashboard as a helpful reference point for how the district’s protocols are keeping students and staff safe. This site is updated daily and compares cases all the way back to October 2020.
“[This dashboard] to me shows how contagious this Delta variant is and how fast it is spreading,” Moore said. “I’m a data person, so I look at those numbers to see what is happening and our protocols for how we are keeping the students and staff safe, [which] I believe are being implemented really well. When I see the positive cases that we have going up like we do, I’d rather err on the side of caution and have most people not experience being exposed, rather than have a child who is asymptomatic who may be carrying the virus, be on campus.”
The dashboard became a source of use following an outbreak of COVID-19 between the West Ranch High School and Castaic High School cheer teams following a July cheer camp gathering at Indian Wells in Palm Desert. Almost two dozen students from each school and a Castaic staffer were all advised to quarantine until they either tested negative, according to a district email issued on the matter.
She said the goal is to keep students on campus with what has been set in place for each school. Schools in the Hart District include Academy of the Canyons, Bowman High School, Canyon High School, Golden Valley High School, Learning Post Academy, Hart High, Castaic Saugus, Valencia and West Ranch.
“I am grateful for the protocols we have in place because we are seeing how quickly this variant is spreading,” Moore continued. “But [our] focus on communication… ensures that the community and parents are informed about what we are doing to keep schools open… At any time if we find ourselves in a situation where we report all of these numbers to the L.A. County Public Health Department and they say that’s too many cases, we have to shut down a class or shut down a campus. That could happen. So I think these protocols are keeping that from happening.”
Despite what the school boards may implement or have implemented, each school district in Santa Clarita answers to the Los Angeles County Public Health Department and their guidelines for keeping schools open. Each school has to meet certain standards set by the county in order to stay open, instead of creating their own. This means that the health department could shut down any schools that they believe has an outbreak or is not properly following the rules they have set in place.
Moore explained that “last spring, Hart High School was closed by the county because of cases and what they considered an outbreak that happened there. They can tell us that, which is what we don’t want to happen and that’s why we are being strict about the protocols and safety precautions.”
Hart District Superintendent Mike Kuhlman sent out an accessible video link on YouTubediscussing the district’s preparation for returning to school.
“[The video] frames what we are doing as our protocol for working with students as we have cases on campus,” said Moore. “For anyone who has been exposed we do contact tracing and we try to find all of the individual students and adults who might have been exposed to the person with the positive test. That means if you’re in a classroom and you are within six feet of an infected person for a total of 15 minutes or, more over, a period of 24 hours, you are considered a close contact. Our classrooms are larger than six feet, so you could be in a classroom and not be in close contact because of where your seat is in the classroom.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, children who are 12 years or older can receive the Pfizer vaccine. For high school and junior high students who are vaccinated, the resulting outcome of exposure is different from those who are not vaccinated.
“What the protocol calls us to do is that those who are vaccinated [will] be notified that they could’ve been exposed but they’re able to come back to school the next day,” Moore said. “Whereas someone who doesn’t have the vaccination will be asked to quarantine for 10 days.”
In order to keep these students from falling behind, the district has a plan set to keep their learning consistent. This includes teachers utilizing Zoom and the Google Classroom, which many students and their families came to use frequently during the last school year.
“We have what we call a ‘Continuing Education Plan,’ which requires that every student who is in quarantine – one, is personally contacted by a site administrator and two, the teachers are providing their work in a distance-learning format for them so that they aren’t missing out on their education while they are having to quarantine.”
Although getting a vaccination is not yet mandated by the state or district for students, the learning quality for those who do not receive it may be negatively affected by the protocols that the district has to abide by, according to Moore.
“I support family choice around [the vaccinations],” she said. “It’s a decision that you and your family have to make to decide that this is what’s best for you and your child. I know that for some, the experience that they’ve had at the start of school with not being vaccinated is being quarantined the second day of school and having to be out for 10 days. The reality is that if you are not vaccinated and you’re in close contact with someone who turns out positive… you could be out once a month for ten days, who knows what could happen.”
Pfizer recently announced that its COVID-19 vaccine is safe for children aged five to 11 at a third of the dosage given to adults and is awaiting FDA approval. Approval for children under 12 to receive the vaccine could happen within the next month.
Elementary schools within the Castaic, Newhall, Saugus and Sulphur Springs districts have to follow different guidelines for exposed students since a vaccine for the younger age group has not yet been approved.
“We do inform [people] if we have a positive case in the class,” Newhall School District superintendent Jeff Pelzel said about his district’s guidelines. “We obviously contact trace based upon the L.A. County Department of Public Health guidelines… Those close contacts now are then notified by the school and those close contacts along with the student that’s positive have to now quarantine for up to ten days. There’s potential to return the close contacts [to school] after a negative test on day seven. They can return a little bit earlier, but that’s probably been the most disruptive thing in the county requirement about how we’re quarantining kids, and L.A. County is the only county that is doing that quarantine. In every other county, close contacts are allowed to stay in school and as long as they test negative twice during those 10 days. They get to stay in school the entire time and they don’t have to go home.”
Pelzel said there’s also been a lot of irritation over the interruption of learning caused by the pandemic.
“I think a lot of superintendents are a little bit frustrated right now because of the volume of students who’ve had to quarantine because of being a close contact – and we don’t see those close contacts – then in turn also come out positive while they’re quarantining,” he said. “There’s evidence that these kids staying home for seven to 10 days are missing out on in-person instruction. We give them work but they’re doing that because that’s what the county requires…”
Several of the schools in the valley have apps available to students and parents for them to survey how the student is feeling before they come to school each day.
For the Hart District, “It’s called Crisis Go. Students, staff, everybody [fills this out]… You will get this form that you fill out… it’s a form that asks you how you’re feeling, if you have a fever,” Moore said. “Everyday everyone self-responds through the Crisis Go app and all of the students have it on their phone or through their ID badge. That’s a part of how we are able to do the contact tracing too, that helps us know where everybody is on campus at different times so this has been really really helpful.”
The Newhall School District, including its 10 elementary schools, has its own COVID-19 screening methods.
“We do a covert screener with our families before kids arrive on Monday through our parents Square application, which is a communication system to our families,” Pelzel explained.
In addition to tracking cases, each school has very strict cleaning policies to aid in the sterility of the teaching environment. Pelzel said the Newhall School District has done its part as well.
“We’re [sanitizing everything] in the evenings. Cleaning, wiping down all high touch surface areas and those kinds of things and then we upgraded our filtration systems. The filters that are in the classrooms are the highest quality as our systems would allow.”
He also added that new desks have been purchased to aid in social distancing.
“Over the summer, we bought 6,000 new single desks, so that every student would have their own desk,” he continued. “A lot of times in elementary school they are doubles, which sit them right by each other so that social distancing isn’t there, but we bought brand-new desks so that kids can be three feet apart… We [also] have hand sanitizer stations around campus. We have lots of signage we have put in and installed to hydration stations that are on each campus.”
According to Mayreen Burk, president of the governing board for Castaic Union School District (which covers four elementary schools), each school has had their air filtration equipment replaced. Burk said the district is “committed to doing what we have to do so that we are able to stay and keep the kids in the class.”
“They lost so much in-person time last year,” she continued. “I know that the teachers, as well, are concerned and want to make sure that the guidelines are followed because they don’t want to see that happen.”
Burk said “it can be really hard [on the teachers]… last spring they were on Zoom and in the room at the same time. I think that they’re all happy to be back and to get the kids back in a classroom.”
Pelzel believes teachers have come through many difficulties in the last year in order to get back to a somewhat normal learning environment again. Teachers transitioned to a hybrid model of learning in February until in-person learning became full-time in April.
“I think our teachers did a really good job in the Google Classroom, but we definitely know having our kids in person with our teachers is going to get the best results that we can just because of the things that you can do with kids in person. That amount of discourse kids can have with each other in the classroom and all those kinds of things. I think for upper grades they were already using Google Classroom a lot, but I think for our primary teachers it was a shift.”
Although teachers may be eager to return to face-to-face contact with their students, other issues have been brewing. Protests erupted from educators earlier this month over the COVID-19 mandates in the Hart District that required school staff to be vaccinated or receive weekly testing by Oct. 15. It continues to look like this will be required by state and county officials.
Moore said the Hart District saw a rise in enrollment, indicating a shared enthusiasm by parents and their children to physically go back to school.
“We were worried that we would have a decline in enrollment because all of last year we were closed and other states were open,” she said. “We were hearing that students were leaving California, families were moving to other open states where they could go to school and play their sport and things like that. What we’ve actually found is that we are actually up in attendance and enrollment. One of the numbers on the enrollment is that it was higher than the anticipated number… We were up by 100. That’s really significant when you think about how the narrative has been.”
Despite a positive start, Moore assured that the online format is something many families continue to feel comfortable with.
“We have had parents enroll in our Learning Post Academy program and that program is our independent study program,” she said. “It’s an award-winning program. We have seen 400 students this year. It’s quadrupled in size. There’s a lot of folks who chose that for a variety of different reasons. Some people chose Learning Post because after being out of school for a year and realizing some of the benefits of working from home with their child and the flexibility of that. Some people chose that option because they like that independence and the students actually did better with that model than the traditional school model. Some chose it because of the masks.”
However, many parents are also strong on their stance when it comes to their children wearing masks.
“Parents are frustrated, understandably, everyone has their own opinion about masks or no masks… It’s our job to follow the guidelines so that we’re in compliance, that we can stay open and that everyone stays safe,” said Burk.
Moore said parents email her and “ask me to push against the masks and share with me about their beliefs that masks are harming students and I have to think about it from the perspective of what is going to cause the least harm and to me the masks cause the least harm and I’ve seen it in the classes and students aren’t having an issue with it.”
To each district leader, it is clear that the masks are the last concern of the students.
Moore stated that “[students] are so happy… In every visit [to campuses], I talk to the students and you can see their smiles through the masks and you can tell they’re happy. They’re so glad to be back… We see students on our campuses just happy, smiling, feeling like they belong again and excited to do the work.”
She continued to add that students take their masks off outside, including during lunchtime. Despite this, Moore pressed that wearing masks are “doable because it’s protecting their safety and the safety of everyone around them. You don’t wear the mask for you, you wear it for your neighbors, you wear it for the student who’s at the desk next to you. That’s what the mask is about.”
Pelzel said going back to school has been exciting for everyone.
“It’s very refreshing to be back in school. Seeing kids in person, seeing our teaching staff in person. Our teachers talked about last year feeling kind of isolated even though they were on campus teaching – a lot of them – rather than from home. They were teaching from in their classrooms. It still felt very isolating and I think it’s nice to bring that camaraderie back to school. We couldn’t have gotten to where we are at without our parents, parents partnering with us last year in supporting us. And now we’re trying to reciprocate that and get things back into a routine that feels safe and assured, you know, really assuring our kids that we’re there and we’re spending a lot of time focusing on the social emotional support for the kids. Getting them back into the routine of what school really looks like.”
As the school year continues, many people are eager to see education move back into something somewhat recognizable to how it was before the COVID-19 pandemic. However, Moore stated the opposite.
“I don’t want things to be normal,” she said. “I want things to be better than normal. Better than before. We have learned so much from COVID-19 [about] what we can do better. We’ve learned so much about the inequities that can happen in our communities and with our students that this has unmasked. We can be better than we were. So I don’t want to return to normal, I want to return to better than we were, and we are.”
The Castaic Union School District and William S. Hart Union High School District both have sites available to the public that give daily updates on COVID-19 in their schools. You can see a list of each of the Hart District school’s cases here and different COVID resources through the Castaic District here. Newhall School District tracks their COVID-19 cases as well, which is available herewith other resources also present.
Representatives from the Saugus and Sulphur Springs Union School Districts did not respond to discuss their guidelines in time for publication. However, Saugus has their COVID-19 protocols listed here and Sulphur Springs has a letter to its community here.
SCV, AV teachers share optimism and worry with students returning to in-person learning
As schools have begun opening back up again across Los Angeles County, many teachers are finding the transition to be strange yet rewarding.
Districts across the county, including in the Santa Clarita Valley, have implemented COVID-19 safety precautions so as to follow the guidelines from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health to get students and staff back to their regular in-person campuses. William S. Hart Union High School District students, for example, who wish to remain at home during this time have been transferred to fully online schools such as Learning Post Academy and Hart at Home.
The first transition this spring from fully online learning to hybrid learning proved to be difficult for many teachers.
“I came back at the end of March for [hybrid learning], and I would guess maybe 20-25% of the kids came back to campus. So, that was hybrid because we had the class on Zoom, we called them our ‘Roomies’ and our ‘Zoomies.’ We had both simultaneously. I didn’t even know how to prepare,” said Tammy Kornfeld, a photography teacher at West Ranch High School.
“It was such an obstacle,” she continued. “To this day, I don’t feel like I could instruct another teacher on how to do it because I don’t think I was very effective at it. The nature of my class is very technology based, and that was really hard to transmit online… the kids at home were still stuck with cell phone pictures and doing everything through Google Classroom, and so it felt very inequitable, like no one got the best situation. If they were home they were truly Covid-safe, but they didn’t have Adobe Photoshop and the kids in the classroom had to make compromises because I would be on my camera on Zoom. I feel like nobody got really a fair time.”
These difficulties that came with hybrid learning were shared by teachers across the district.
“Honestly the preparation wasn’t that difficult, although I didn’t realize how challenging it would be having most of the kids still at home,” said Jodi Guerrero, an English teacher and Academic Decathlon coach at Saugus High School. “It reminded me of being a one-woman band, where I have instruments under my arms and a drum on my rear-end, and it just felt like I was trying to communicate via Zoom with the camera. I always have the lessons in place, I always knew what we were going to be doing, but it was just trying to make sure that I could accommodate the four to 10 people in the classroom and engage them while being behind a plexiglass screen and on camera at the same time.”
With all students — besides those choosing to transfer to fully online high schools — returning to in-person school at the beginning of the 2021-2022 academic school year, there was anticipation among some teachers to teach in the classroom once again without the distraction of being on camera simultaneously.
“It’s wonderful, the energy is great,” Guerrero said, noting the ad-libbed exchanges between students and no longer feeling frustrated by muted students on Zoom not laughing at what she said.
“It was like being the worst kind of comedian in a room where no one responds, so I really love the give and take. I like the energy of the kids, it feeds on more energy. I feel so much more at home in the classroom and so much more comfortable. Of course this is my method, this is how I started way back in 1999, so I’m just glad to be back on campus and I think the kids are, too.”
Students have been relatively compliant with COVID-19 regulations, according to teachers The Proclaimer spoke to. Following regulations set by LA County, students are required to be masked inside, however can remain maskless outside during lunch, passing periods and sports games.
“I don’t budge for a bit, they have to wear their mask in my class, and it does the usual thing where it dips below their nose, and no kid is giving me push back when I just remind them,” said Kornfeld. “In the hallways they have to wear it, and sometimes then it’s a little reminder. I always have spare [masks] with me, and they signed a document when they came on to campus. They knew when the school year started that this is our policy, and anyone who doesn’t want to do it has to go to Learning Post Academy. Kids do it, it’s not like those videos you see at Target or Trader Joe’s of people freaking out, because there’s a level of authority here… I find most students to be happy and compliant. They do it.”
“We’re not having a lot of problems with noncompliance of masks, almost every student to a person is incredibly eager to be there,” said Sean O’Brien, an English teacher and football coach at West Ranch. “They want to be there, they want to learn and they’re very grateful that we’re doing the job that we’re doing.”
Within the Keppel Union School District in the Antelope Valley, there have been concerns regarding students eating breakfast in the classrooms each morning, along with noncompliant staff members with COVID-19 regulations.
“There have been some staff members who have been noncompliant regarding wearing masks in classrooms or in buildings,” said one teacher who spoke on condition of anonymity. “A teacher complained to the principal regarding an assistant who kept on wearing the mask down. Some weeks later, I had to write an email to the principal about the same assistant.”
“My partner teacher and I have both broken down in tears because it did not seem like the school or district was actually ready to open with the proper precautions or procedures to do when a Covid situation comes up,” the teacher continued. “There have been many mix-ups in the office allowing students back in class when that child was supposed to be in quarantine.”
As for school sports and sporting events in SCV, schools in the Hart District struggled with team members needing to miss games while quarantining, and some have even had to cancel games completely.
“[Football’s] a huge challenge because it’s a little different environment where we’re not masked but we’re outdoors, so those two things kind of cancel each other out,” O’Brien said. “But we do test every week. We are hit a tiny bit, you know there’ll be one player who tests positive or who’s contact-traced, but it’s almost always we feel like that [student] was an important person. Every time, it’s a key player. At West Ranch, we have been fortunate because we haven’t had a single contest cancelled in football. But, I think every other school has had at least one, and I think Hart has had either two or three. We’ve only played five. So, most schools have lost out on a portion of their season.”
Although most teachers are adjusting well to in-person schooling once again, there have been some major challenges regarding lesson planning due to the aftermath of the 2020-2021 school year.
“Our primary concern is, ‘How am I going to not only teach the students, but also make up for the holes in their learning because of last year?’” O’Brien said. “[I teach] 11th grade, so my kids would be a 10th grader coming in. We all know that last year we weren’t able to do as good a job as we would have liked, we didn’t help students master as much material and process as we wanted to and we had to make decisions on what to leave out. Well, now we’re on the other side of that, it’s now time to try and cover those things that we didn’t cover before on top of the ordinary curriculum. We have some skill gaps here that we have never had before, how do I teach that skill gap and get mastery on that thing without losing ground on the things we have to do for this year?”
Teachers have also seen a large increase in absences due to students contracting COVID-19 or coming into contact with another student who has tested positive.
“A lot of my colleagues are reporting that about maybe 10% of any given class is just gone, on any given day, is just gone, and those kids will be gone for extended periods,” O’Brien said. “And this is assuming they don’t get sick. They have the Covid virus but don’t show symptoms, if they are unvaccinated they still need to stay home. That’s not even counting the ones who actually get ill and are out for even longer. That’s probably our biggest challenge, trying to juggle the needs of the students who are out, because it’s really just not a simple matter of, ‘Here’s the work, do it.’ That doesn’t cut it.”
In Kornfeld’s classes, it’s about “trying to change even just the culture of my classroom, like don’t even come if you’re sick.” Even if a student tests negative, “if you don’t feel good, you need to honor your body and stay home. I have a ton of kids absent. It’s hard. It is definitely a lot of kids that are out.”
“I think that in the past, West Ranch culture has emphasized grades over mental health. I don’t think this culture was necessarily driven by counselors or teachers but rather a mix of parent expectations, increased competition for college acceptance, et cetera.” said Kornfeld.
Overall, teachers and students alike are grateful to be back on campus, and with all the safety precautions being put in place, there is hope that schools could return to complete normalcy in the future, despite rumors that schools may need to return to hybrid learning.
O’Brien said there’s no official plan to return to hybrid learning at this time, nor a district position on bringing it back, but “having said that, I think it would be naive in the extreme to believe that there is no outline for hybrid sitting in a drawer somewhere.”
“We are resisting the move to go back to hybrid learning. We’re resisting that hard,” he noted. “COVID-19 is not working with us to stop hybrid. We need to. All of these mitigation efforts, the masking, the vaccination, the testing – some people are using those plastic shields – all of these mitigation efforts are an attempt to keep us in school. I think most people get that. But for those few people that don’t get it: we’re doing this because we want to stay here. It’s not a control move, we all want to see, well, half of your kid’s faces. We’re dying for that. And that’s why we have masks, that’s why we have sanitizer — to keep this going.”
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