First public school in Sonoma County district welcomes students back to campus

In some ways, it looked every bit like a normal first day of school.

Over there, fidgeting kindergartners learned how to sit crisscross apple sauce. In another room, second graders were taught a song that would help them learn their classmates’ names. At recess, errant rubber balls skidded across chalk drawings, hula hoops were somewhat successfully twirled and foam noodles were used as epees in a mock duel.

But in other ways, things were not normal at all. There were masks on every face. There was hand sanitizer at every doorway. There were color-coded dots on the ground to denote where students in different grades were allowed to stand. Each class of students was separated into two distinct groups — no mixing.

On Monday, Sonoma Charter School just north of Boyes Hot Springs on Highway 12 became the first public school to reopen its classrooms without a waiver from the state since the coronavirus pandemic shuttered all campuses last spring. Bodega Elementary School, with about 20 students in Marin County’s Shoreline Unified School District, was given permission via state waiver in late November and opened its doors Jan. 13.

Sonoma Charter School was allowed to reopen after the county Department of Health Services approved its extensive health and safety plan covering all manner of campus life. Seven schools, including Sonoma Charter School, have received approval to reopen. Sonoma Charter is the first to do so.

On Monday, months of discussion, debate and planning went from theory to reality just after 8 a.m.

“You know it works when you see smiles on faces of staff, especially kids and parents, being so excited to be back,” school director Marc Elin said. “It’s been the best medicine we could have hoped for in 2021 and we’re thrilled.”

Schools that have also received county approval to return to in-person instruction include: Liberty School in Petaluma, Sebastopol Independent Charter School, The Spring Hill School in Petaluma, St. Rose School in Santa Rosa, Victory Christian Academy in Santa Rosa and St. Vincent de Paul in Petaluma. Nineteen additional schools and districts — including Santa Rosa City Schools, Petaluma City Elementary District, Windsor Unified, Healdsburg Unified and Sonoma Valley Unified — have submitted plans to the county and are in various stages of review.

And all of this comes as coronavirus case numbers continue to fall locally. Though Sonoma County remains mired in the state’s purple tier, indicating widespread transmission of the virus, it is anticipated that the county will soon move up to the next tier, red. The advanced status indicates substantial spread of the virus, but triggers a lessening of some rules for returning staff and students to campus.

In red, schools and districts no longer need county health department approval to reopen. Moving to red also allows the return of the county’s middle and high school students to the classroom — something that is not allowed in the purple tier.

But on Monday morning, months of hypothetical debate and dialogue became reality as scores of students walked through the gates of Sonoma Charter School. Just after 8 a.m., kindergarten, first and second graders all lined up outside, were welcomed by staff and bid adieu by parents, and proceeded into their respective classrooms for the first time since schools were shuttered across the county March 13, 2020.

Ninety-four percent of families opted to have their children return to the campus tucked in on the west side of Highway 12 on Vailetti Drive.

“The fact that they wanted to come back to school is also confidence for us. They had confidence in our ability to stay safe and have their kids back in school and that makes my staff feel good too,” Elin said.

For kindergarten through second grades, students will attend school from 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday and have distance learning lessons on Friday. Each grade has one full class of students that is divided into two stable groups which split time between their classroom teacher and full-time teaching assistants. The two groups do not mix.

In the classrooms, along with songs designed to get to know peers, students were instructed about the new guidelines: One person per bathroom trip, wash hands and use hand sanitizer, no sharing of snacks or supplies. Where once there were colorful rugs the youngest students would sit upon, now there were pieces of tape 6 feet apart.

At recess students sit at opposite ends of outdoor lunch benches to eat snacks. They do not share food. On the playground, orange cones mark where one group’s play area starts and another’s ends. On multiple occasions Monday morning, a ball bounced from one group’s area to another, at which point a staff member went scurrying after it.

Yolanda Rodriguez, a first grade teaching assistant, said she had some nerves on Monday morning. Her routine would not be the same as it had been and that gave her some butterflies.

“Am I going to be able to do this?” she said.

Instructions on how to move through a modified classroom in the multipurpose room and how to best to sanitize hands eventually moved to Rodriguez’s wheelhouse: Penmanship.

“Then I started to feel more comfortable,” she said. “I started to feel better.”

For Ashley Cornil, mom to a kindergartner, despite everything that wasn’t normal about the day, it still was moving closer to that all-important target.

“I think it’s a big first step to feeling a little bit more normal,” she said. “Things are starting to open up and I think it’s a relief for our community and our family to let the kids kind of have a little autonomy and, you know, kind of engage in a day outside of the house.”

Tom Tracy is father of a first and fourth grader at the school. He described the decision to send his first grader back on Monday and his older son back when upper grades return at the end of the month “a leap of faith.”

“This is a higher level of risk than we as a family have taken,” he said.

“My wife and I have always maintained that if the protocols are in place and they are allowed to move forward based on all the various guidelines, then we want to give it a try both for our kids’ social development and certainly for their learning. And they miss their friends,” he said. “So it’s just weighing all those factors. There is, of course, the cost of the virus but there are other costs, social costs, learning costs, that are incurred by everybody so it’s trying to balance those things that’s a little bit challenging.”

For mom Laura Lopez, there was a little nervousness about her daughter, kindergartner Valeria, being comfortable wearing a mask all day, but the overwhelming emotion Monday morning was happiness, she said through an interpreter.

"No, not nervous, happy,“ she said.

Sonoma Charter is the first among what is expected to a growing wave of schools reopening to in-person instruction. Elin said both the school’s COVID Safety Plan and teacher vaccinations were key in Monday’s milestone return.

“We have been working on the plan for a long time but the best shot of confidence was our first vaccine shot that we had on the week of (February) 8th and we are all going to have our second shot during our spring break, so that certainly gives us confidence to be back here as staff,” he said.

But the vaccination rollout in Sonoma County has been deeply hampered by lack of supply. The clinic, focused on vaccinating school staff and managed by the Sonoma County Office of Education, had to shutter this week when its anticipated allotment did not arrive.

But for Elin, on campus and finally among classrooms filled with kids and walking among staffers, the outlook was bright Monday.

“I’m celebrating our school but I’m really celebrating our whole county because this is really excitement about good news happening for us in the county. Our numbers are coming down, schools are getting ready to open, you are seeing that noted all the time,” he said. “What we are celebrating, I can’t wait ripple out to other schools. It’s going to happen soon.”

You can reach Staff Writer Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @benefield.