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Another measure of how much time has passed in the pandemic?
On Wednesday morning, half the students at Los Altos High School — the freshmen and sophomore classes — arrived for the first day of school barely acquainted with the campus, which not only had a new building that opened the day before but still had ongoing construction.
“Literally half of our school is new to us,” said Wynne Satterwhite, principal of Los Altos High.
In an interview, Satterwhite said that the sophomore class was coming in after about a year of distance learning and a few months of staggered bell schedules and four-day weeks — for those who opted in, she said. Then there’s the unique and unfortunate position of the freshmen class.
“They didn’t have an eighth grade year; they barely had a seventh grade year,” she said. “So the transition for these kids is very — unsettling.”
It added to the buzz of the first day of school, which is typically hectic. Satterwhite, Administrative Assistant Mary Donahue and other school administrators paced near the school library — the temporary home of the office while the new student services building is being completed — to direct lingering students where to go.
“It’s a little extra special this morning,” Donahue said. “You’ve got two classes (grades) of people who don’t know where to go.”
About 2,200 pupils started school on Wednesday. That accounts for about half the student population of the Mountain View Los Altos Union School District.
And while students were given the opportunity to come back to school earlier in March and newcomers had an orientation before the first day, it didn’t take away from the uncanny feeling and, for some, the anxiety of coming back to school.
“It’s really surreal to be back on campus,” said Emma Symon, a senior at Los Altos High and varsity volleyball player.
Symon was one of many who chose not to come back to campus in March, partly because she was not vaccinated at the time, although she did continue to play for the school’s volleyball team.
Circumstances are different this school year, as more students like Symon are eligible to be vaccinated. On Aug. 9, the district board voted to require staff to be vaccinated or regularly tested negative for COVID-19 twice a week. That and a better understanding of how the virus spreads is why the state gave schools lighter health restrictions such as the ability to unmask outdoors.
Other protocols are also relaxed this academic year. The district is not implementing health screenings before entering classrooms as it did in March. And social distancing is not mentioned anywhere in the district’s list of safety rules. This same easing of COVID-19 procedures attracted the ire of a few families from Palo Alto Unified School District given the rise of delta variant cases, but mainly from parents of elementary school students who remain unvaccinated.
For many high school students, most of whom voluntarily kept their masks on when outside, the pandemic wasn’t always the first of their concerns when they reflected on going back to school.
Beckham Wise, a sophomore, was feeling overwhelmed about the crowds — it was the first time in more than a year he had seen so many students at once. Wise opted out of coming back to school earlier this year since there were only a few months left in the semester. Being surrounded by so many peers on a campus he only recently got used to will be a bit of an adjustment.
“It’s stressful,” he said. “It’s very crowded and a lot to take in to be back on campus.”
Satterwhite acknowledged this rift the pandemic may have created between the students. One of the goals for her this academic year is to build a connection between everyone at the school.
“We were always a strong community, and being gone for about 20 months and having half of your people come in new, we have a lot of work to do to reestablish that community,” she said.
For seniors, this could come in the form of a steady flow of events that the classes of 2020 and 2021 missed. Seniors Haley Moore and Jenna Houdek are hoping their class will get school rallies back. Caroline Ongchin said she’s excited for more social events and dances.
But after slogging through months of distance learning and all the other stresses of 2020, there are some seniors like Charley Roberts-Laine who are getting hit hard by senioritis at the beginning of the academic year, already looking to move forward.
“I just want to be in college already,” she said.
