After more than a year, the Chula Vista Elementary School District began letting students back into the classroom for all its 46 campuses and three non-district charter schools on Monday, April 12. Using hybrid models for the remainder of this school year, it was a welcoming sight to see children on campus said Lauderbach Elementary School Principal Melody Belcher on Tuesday.
“Monday was our first day of school after one year, returning in person, and it was the best day ever,” she said. “They say that Disneyland is the happiest place on earth, but guess what? Yesterday at Lauderbach was the happiest place on earth. We had more than 400 children return to school in-person through our hybrid schedule. We are a school with over 700 students, so 58% of our students returned in-person.”
Belcher said they greeted all its families and Lauderbach scholars with its orchestra playing violins. As families dropped off their children, temperatures were taken, they were given hand sanitizer, and the students wore their masks.
“Then, we had them escorted to their classrooms to actually meet their teacher in person because their teachers have been online with them for the past year, so to actually meet their teacher in person was the icing on the cake,” she said. “I have to tell you. You could see the children smiling behind their masks. Their eyes were so bright and full of life. The way that they responded to one another to reintegrate to the socialization, it was a feeling that I have never felt before.”
Belcher said Monday was more than just first day jitters. She said it was such an emotional reunion knowing what families and students have experienced over the past year. With distanced learning, she said they took the initiative distributing more than 600 devices, home libraries and meals every week during shutdown. She said sadly during that time, at Lauderbach, they lost four fathers to COVID.
“So, we have stepped up to the plate to really keep our family close to us in supporting them socially and emotionally, and grief counseling,” she said.
Belcher said Monday was nothing short of phenomenal.
“We could not stop smiling,” she said. “Today the kids were skipping down the halls. What a year. But it is a new day, and it is a new beginning, and we are incredibly blessed.”
Lauderbach’s hybrid program is four days a week with an a.m. or a p.m. hybrid, like double sessions. It has morning group that comes from 8-10:45 a.m., and then its afternoon group comes from 11:45 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
“This allows us to accommodate more students,” said Belcher. “With 400 students, that is a school in itself. The hybrid allows us to make that accommodation for our teachers to have those a.m. and p.m. sessions. In each session, we have anywhere from 12 to 16 children per session.”
Belcher said the school has prepared for this since last fall, monitoring COVID numbers, CDC guidelines, health regulations, protocols and the many things that needed to be in place for in-person instruction.
“Starting last fall, we (began) creating signage, preparing furniture in the classrooms, ordering all the PPE, making sure we had everything that we needed,” she said. “We recreated our sanitizing and cleaning schedule with our custodial staff. We had protocols of what it would look like when students returned, so that when we got the green light, we would be ready. And it has paid off.”
Belcher said that this day could never have happened without the efforts of the community and the team at the school. She said it really does take a village to make something like this come to fruition.
“We have our kids back and that is the goal,” she said. “We will continue to follow our protocols. You wash your hands, you wear your masks, you watch your distance, if you do not feel good you stay home. That has proved to be effective, and it works. We will continue with this hybrid model until June 15, our last day of school. Hopefully, when we start up again in July, we will be able to accommodate more children and bring back the rest of our school, who are in distance learning right now.”
Belcher said she could not stress enough the joy in having their families back, seeing the parents and children.
“Our children’s faces yesterday said it all,” she said. “They could not get out of the car fast enough. Some of them have not been with other children for a year. Because we have maintained communication with our families, we have an established trust in our community. Our families trust that our facilities are prepared, that our teachers are prepared. They trust that everything we say we are going to do, we are doing it.”
Belcher said when families pulled up on Monday morning, saw they were taking temperatures and following all the protocols, was an emotional time for everyone.
“They were relieved, they were happy, they were smiling, some parents were in tears because they realized that this was finally happening,” she said. “Our parents this past year have been their teachers in a sense at home and it has been stressful for them. Especially the ones that work fulltime, they have a lot of children and they do not know the technology like our kids do. We are in an incredibly good place right now. We look forward to continuing to move forward.”
