By Marcy Axness, TME

As covid-19 became a slowly dawning worldwide crisis early in 2020, most assumed it would be a sprint of a few months, not the two-years-plus marathon it has become. And—despite state indoor mask mandates expiring this week, and declining case rates—many health experts say there is really no end in sight.

Schools have been one of the hardest-hit sectors when it comes to navigating the pandemic. Administrators and faculty have been nimble and resourceful to heroic degrees, balancing safety with the needs of students to not only learn, but to have the social life that campus classes provide. The emotional toll taken on youngsters by the isolation of virtual learning, combined with pandemic lockdown in general, only started coming to light many months into what was essentially an unwitting social experiment.

Fits and Starts…and Help

Students first returned to campus classes at all three El Tejon Unified School District (ETUSD) schools and Gorman School in February 2021. Peak to Peak Mountain Charter resumed…(please see below to view full stories and photographs)

Photo captions:

Above left: Principal Jeffrey Fenske of Peak to Peak Charter School, where almost half the student body was absent February 11; Above right: Jane Clark (pictured here at a January drive-through covid test) is in 7th grade, one of the classes that had to be tested on February 11 due to an exposure. Happily, none of the students tested positive.

Left: One of eight ‘trees’ in the Kern County Superintendent of Schools’ set of covid isolation / quarantine flow charts. All trees are posted on ETUSD’s website, www.el-tejon.k12.ca.us.

Above: At FMHS basketball teams’ February 11 Senior Night, the only two seniors, twins Victoria and Ian Sawrey, share in a Falcon chant.

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This is part of the February 18, 2022 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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