Roll Call: Roseville City School District returns to the classroom

With just over a week of in-person instruction on campus, schools within the Roseville City School District seem to be hitting their stride. Twenty elementary and middle schools within the district finally joined in-person instruction last Wednesday for the first day of the second trimester with detailed safety and social-distancing precautions in its "modified traditional" model. For families opting to return to in-person cohorts since last March because of COVID-19 restrictions, this model includes five days a week of five-hour instruction with two 15-minute nutrition or recess breaks. Every student is provided with breakfast and a grab-and-go lunch at the end of the day. "Just a lot of joy and excitement," Roseville City School District Superintendent Derk Garcia said. "Getting kids back in school and having parents and staff trust that we have their child's best interests at heart, whether from a health or social-emotional or academic standpoint, I consider that to be a huge positive." The district enrolls just under 11,000 students from pre-kindergarten through eighth-grade throughout the 20 schools. Garcia said more than three-quarters of them have returned for in-person learning. Those opting to remain off campus do so through the district's Champions Academy, a fully online distance-learning program with a combination of synchronous and asynchronous instruction. All returning students and staff, with the exception of second-grade and below, are required to wear face coverings. The masks are a small trade-off for a bigger mission, said Robert C. Cooley Middle School Principal Karen Calkins. "On Zoom, you could see all the smiles on the screens but they weren't physically here, and now, we have the whole bodies of the kids but now their mouths are behind masks," Calkins said. "What was so reassuring about (returning) is that the working relationship between student and teacher was there. That bond of humor and learning, caring about each other and having gone through this pandemic together – and to still be going through it – it's glued these guys together." Several schools made proactive instructional videos for students on what to expect before returning to campus. "There was a lot of detailed work prior and I think it helped us in training the kids," George Cirby Elementary Principal Karen Quinlan said. "Some of our teachers did videos of their class entrance that showed the markers on the ground, so students were getting familiar with the environment before they even stepped foot on the grounds." Quinlan said the reopening was unlike anything she experienced in her 25 years with the district. "It was picturing something we didn't know how to picture," she said. "There was a lot of anxiety prior to starting on everyone's part, I think. But you could see within the first hour or two of school on that first day that everyone was more relaxed about it." While the district has experienced a smooth re-entry to the classroom, it still braces for the possibility of dealing with COVID-19 issues. "Challenges are going to be asking staff and families if they're not feeling well to stay home," Garcia said. "Deciphering what's a common cold or allergies versus a symptom of COVID-19, we've asked parents to err on the side of caution and help us do our best to keep these cohorts moving along." The district is also monitoring students who might have difficulty transitioning back to the classroom after nearly eight months away. "I think the excitement is overriding that but some have gotten into a different rhythm at home," Quinlan said. "Now adjusting back to school is a bit of a shock. Kids haven't been socializing as much and now they're in an environment where they're playing together and interacting with their peers." The reopening came just before Placer County was placed back in the "substantial" red tier of California's Blueprint for a Safer Economy on Tuesday. Schools that have reopened for in-person instruction are not required to close if their county moves back to the "widespread" purple tier. The opportunity to be present in the classroom has been beneficial to the students' social and emotional well-being, Calkins said. "They still crave physically being together. It's almost palpable," Calkins said. "We're certainly not at the end of the race but I feel like we're running together."