With face shields and sanitizer, this El Dorado County school gets ready to open its doors

Days before some El Dorado County schools are set to open, teachers at Rescue Elementary School are preparing their classrooms for students. Like every year, colorful borders line the walls, cubbies are labeled, and classroom rules are prominently displayed.

Some of those rules now include, “I can sit 6 feet away,” and “I can clean my tools.”

Plexiglass, used for personal protective equipment, is placed between desks in some classrooms.

That’s because most of the 500 students at Rescue Elementary will return to school on Monday, in person, visiting classrooms for the first time in five months.

Rescue Union School District, home to 3,700 students at its five elementary schools and two middle schools just outside of El Dorado Hills about 30 miles east of Sacramento, is able to open since the county has remained off of the state’s monitoring list and complied with the long list of requirements to reopen.

Masks are mandatory for students in third grade and older, desks are 6 feet apart, and teachers are sanitizing desks between class sessions – all the safety protocols spelled out by the state and local health officials in recent months.

About 800 of Rescue districts’ students, including 120 students at Rescue Elementary, chose to continue distance learning in the fall, along with millions of students across the state who had no other choice. Those students were assigned teachers who also chose to work from home as they identify as high risk.

Elementary schools adjust

Not all El Dorado County schools physically opened, however, including the high schools in the region. And nearby schools in Sacramento, Placer and Yolo counties have been unable to open during the coronavirus pandemic, as the region faces challenges in bringing case numbers down.

The state offered waivers to elementary schools, but with data errors in the system, Sacramento health officials put a hold on those plans.

That leaves Rescue’s nearly 3,000 students – some of the only students in Northern California – preparing their backpacks, and boarding school buses to attend classes five days a week.

“People saw the governor’s guidelines as reasons why not to open, and we approached it as telling us what we need to do to be able to open,” said Rescue Elementary Principal Dustin Haley. “If we can do it, then we should open. There are students that need us. That’s the bottom line.”

The district’s reopening committee, which included teachers, nurses, secretaries, and bus drivers, met throughout the summer to discuss what health and safety measures in reopening would look like. District surveys revealed most families wanted their children back in school.

Haley said reopening came with challenges. The school staff, along with District Superintendent Cheryl Olson,formed committees to ensure that teachers and students had options, and could return to a safe and healthy environment during the pandemic.

“It makes us nervous,” Haley said. “We are literally doing things we have never done before. But if it’s safe for them to be here, we want to give the students the opportunity.”

Haley said he knows the efforts the team has made to prepare for opening day, and those include a lot of attention to detail

Students will be back on campus on a morning-and-afternoon hybrid schedule, with a maximum of 14 students in each cohort. Desks are set up in pairs – afternoon students don’t sit at the same desks or in the same chairs as the morning students.

Books that students touch are placed in a bin labeled “need to be cleaned” and sanitized before they are returned to the shelves. Arrows are taped onto classroom carpets, similar to those in stores, to keep students safely in line as they submit assignments or line up to leave.

Librarians will make visits to classrooms with books, as opposed to students entering the library. Morning students will be handed to-go lunches to take home, and afternoon students can pick up their lunches before class.

Students who are attending class in person are still responsible for submitting online work, through the district’s chosen program Fuel Education, to ensure their school day is longer than the three hours on campus.

‘They need to see my face’

Teachers, such as kindergarten teacher Gretchen Belleci, devoted many late nights finalizing details for her classroom in anticipation of school starting. Her classroom will serve 13 students in the morning and six students in the afternoon, with 65 minutes in between to clean and sanitize.

Each cohort, for all grades, will be at school just under three hours.

Belleci said she worked hard to ensure cross contamination wouldn’t be an issue in her classroom. Students are assigned one desk, one chair, a cubby, and even one permanent spot on the circle-time rug – with a spot reserved for the star student of the week.

Cubby supplies are stored in personalized mesh bag to enable Belleci to spray all tools, pencils and blocks at once.

With all the physical adjustments in place, grace and practicality (in accordance with the guidelines) must be implemented. Belleci, for example, will wear a face shield when she is teaching children phonics sounds.

“They need to see my face, and my smile, because school can feel overwhelming,” she said. “This is one of their first learning experiences in a classroom environment, so we want to make things as easy as possible for them.”

A lot of the planning, she said, was a result of collaboration with other teachers and district officials. Rescue teachers and staff considered every detail, down to a playground schedule.

Belleci plans to focus on reminding students how to remain healthy rather than remind them they are living through a pandemic. Just like every year, her kindergarten students will learn a handwashing song to teach them how to prevent the spread of germs.

“Kids are really resilient,” she said. “They’re like sponges, and they take things in and understand rules quickly.”

While kindergarten students are not required to wear masks, Belleci said most of her students came to their kindergarten assessments wearing one.

Protecting teachers

And teachers are taking extra precautions. The plastic dividers that sit between desks are placed in all kindergarten and first-grade classrooms. Teachers worked with Olson to ensure younger students would have an additional layer of PPE when they return to the classroom.

“With these little guys, it’s hard to space them out or for them to know their personal space,” Belleci said.

Teachers, such as Megan Brown, who teaches third grade, have plastic in front of their desks so that students can safely sit near them during one-on-one breakout sessions.

Children may need to practice more independence this school year tying their shoe laces and zipping their jackets. But Haley said the measures teachers and staff took to ensure Rescue Elementary can reopen showed just how committed they are to reopening schools for students.

Renee Mallot, who has been teaching for 18 years, said she is excited to return to her fifth-grade classroom on Monday.

She is focusing on the positive factors of the hybrid model: fewer students in the classroom means more individualized learning and one-one-one sessions.

“I definitely anticipate there could be a loss of learning,” Mallot said of students who are returning to the classroom after so long. “But it’s amazing what you can get accomplished when there are 14 students in each class.”

Three of Mallot’s children are returning to campus with her. Another starts eighth grade in-person.

Valerie Berry of Cameron Park said she was open to having her child return to the classroom. But her 13-year-old son, Riley, opted to continue distance learning at Pleasant Grove Middle School.

“Transitions aren’t always easy,” Berry said. “He would rather have consistency. With the chance that there could be another shutdown, he was not on board with that at all. I am proud that he recognized that this wouldn’t be his jam.”

Haley said he knows the stakes are high, and that teachers, parents and students across the region are watching as they open their classroom doors.

“Last spring was different, because we had been through two-thirds of the school year,” Haley said. “Students knew their teachers and trusted them. But with a computer screen on day one, 5 and 6-year-olds need that connection. That’s what is driving us, and we believe we can do it.”