New shoes, new masks. Rescue School District opens its doors for students

Rescue Elementary opened its doors on Monday, inviting about 400 students back into the classroom for the fall, and bringing some scenes of normalcy to a new school year.

Parents and their children arrived on campus with new shoes, new backpacks, and a new look: colorful masks to start off the school year. Orange dots were spray painted on the floor to encourage families to socially distance as they waited for classroom doors to open.

The El Dorado County school, along with several others in the district, reopened for the 2020-21 school year. Students returned in cohorts – some attending classes in the morning, and some arriving in the afternoon.

Parents were allowed on campus Monday “to offset some of the anxiety on the first day,” said Dustin Haley, principal at Rescue Elementary.

Excited students, anxious parents

Signs reading, “Quick goodbyes leave dry eyes” were posted on the windows of the kindergarten classrooms, anticipating the arrival of excited students and some anxious parents.

For many parents, such as Christina Cameron, the decision to send her children back to school in-person was an easy one.

“We’ve been so restless at home,” she said. Her daughter is entering kindergarten. “We were here for (transitional kindergarten) last year, and she just excelled.”

Katherine, 5, finished the school year distance learning like all students. But the family faced challenges with internet connection, and keeping up.

“Our kids do so much better in person,” Brian Cameron said.

Kindergarteners were greeted at the door by their teachers. Kindergarten teacher Lynn Scales, was visibly smiling through her clear mask.

Scales is entering her 26th year teaching. Lynn brought with her some sense of normalcy: she greeted each child and their parents, took pictures at the door, and then asked parents if they needed a new Google Chromebook for the school year before children headed to their desks surrounded by plexiglass.

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 because the county has remained off of the state’s monitoring list and complied with the long list of requirements to reopen.

Staff, teachers prepare

Staff at the school devoted months to prepare. Last week, teachers set up their classrooms, some of them with additional personal protective equipment such as plexiglass dividers between students.

Students had the choice to continue distance learning or attend classes in-person for about three hours a day.

Janae Stoops of Rescue said she was anxious to have her children start school, but she said that she knew it was the right decision to opt in for classroom instruction.

Two of her children, Benaiah and Salem are entering fifth and third grade respectively.

“I am not quite sure what to expect,” she said. “But being able to send them has been such a relief.”

Stoops had been home-schooling Salem, who has Down syndrome, for four years before sending him to Rescue Elementary last year. She said he thrived with in-person instruction, and said the decision to return to school in-person was “100 percent easy.”

While school is open, not everything returned to normal.

Callie Yost, 10, was excited to return to campus for her last year at the school before she heads to middle school next year.

Her mother, Katie Yost, requested that her two children stay in the same morning cohort to make daily schedules easier on the family. But Callie learned that most of her friends were in the afternoon cohort.

“I am more annoyed that there are no field trips this year,” Callie said.

Fifth graders at Rescue Elementary usually visit Alcatraz Island in San Francisco. But field trips are off the table for the school year to comply with reopening guidelines.

But the new staggered schedule, and changes made for the school year, were what brought back many parents and children.

“Only when did the school decide to go back to school in a hybrid model did I feel comfortable coming back,” said Katie Yost.

This story was originally published August 17, 2020 at 12:15 PM.