Roseville high school students return to campuses for live, in-person instruction

Thousands of Roseville high school students returned to campus Tuesday morning to begin live, in-person instruction five days a week.

Roseville Joint Union High School District voted unanimously in December to bring its 11,000 students back on campus for a full week of learning.

Students are returning for 70 minutes per class for a total of 280 minutes a day; meanwhile the coronavirus pandemic surges in both Placer and Sacramento counties.

The Roseville district serves students in both Placer and Sacramento counties, forcing it to maneuver an interesting variance in county guidelines and expectations, as well as two boards of supervisors and county health directors.

The district confirmed that maintaining six feet of distance between people on campus “will not be practicable,” causing some families and teachers to grow concerned about how to protect students and staff from the virus.

Prior to the vote, students at the districts’ schools, including Granite Bay High, Roseville High, Woodcreek High and Sacramento County’s Antelope High, attended classes in-person twice a week.

Monique Hendricks sent her two students back to the classroom Tuesday morning after they attended classes in a hybrid model, where they were sometimes the only students in their classes. She said her family was both excited and nervous for the spring semester.

“They also have a class together so that will be interesting,” she said. “I’m anxious to hear how it went. It was a huge difference from rolling out of bed and logging in at the very last possible second that they experienced for the past 10 months.”

Hendricks said she is not too concerned about the coronavirus spreading on campus, because schools have not been categorized as super spreaders.

“I would like smaller classes on an educational level, but for me, my kids’ mental health has been much more of a concern than the virus,” Hendricks said.

Students who chose to continue distance learning enrolled in Roseville Student Virtual Learning Academy, which now has a waitlist.

“We have since altered our first three weeks of the new term for families who are not able to get into the academy to access their on campus classes via Zoom,” said interim Superintendent Jess Borjon.

Borjon also told The Sacramento Bee the district is gathering data Tuesday to determine how many students attended the first day of in-person live instruction in the spring, but added he anticipates more students are attending classes on campus.

At the end of January, board members will revisit the plan and consider increasing in-person instruction to 80 minutes per class and include an on-campus lunch.

Students across the high school district objected to the change in schedule and started a petition calling on the district to keep its hybrid schedule. The petition has more than 3,500 signatures.

The students said the transition to five-day in-person instruction was too soon given the surge in the pandemic.

Roseville students remain some of the only high school students in the Sacramento region that have returned to in-person learning. Thousands of students across Sacramento County school districts remain in online classrooms.

This story was originally published January 5, 2021 at 11:28 AM.