Back-to-school season fills campuses with laughs and life, but there is a new routine on campus.

Thousands of students in Monterey County have gone back to school over the past week. They woke up early, got dressed, grabbed their backpacks and got themselves to school. Instead of being in front of a screen and seeing their classmates and teachers through tiny windows like last school year, they were able, once again, to be inside a classroom with their teacher and classmates. 

Sixteen months ago, in-person classes were replaced with remote learning and schools were closed when Covid-19 began spreading in the region. Now, Covid-19 is still around and there is a surge of cases because of the highly contagious delta variant, but students, teachers and staff are back on campus with new safety rules in effect. 

At Steinbeck Elementary School in Salinas,  there were signs outside with big bright letters saying “Welcome Back.” Genero Anaya, principal at Steinbeck Elementary, says there is a team working on campus to make sure students are safe and are following protocols. Anaya says teachers and staff are happy and excited to be back on campus, but especially the kids: “They're  playing sports together. They're socializing; something that they were not able to do during remote instruction." The biggest challenge on day one, he adds, was not telling students to keep their masks on or how to abide by public health protocols, but helping students to find their classrooms.

During lunch time, the students’ chatter and laughs again filled the air. Outdoors, kids played and ran around—all of them with masks on. Isaiah Palomino, a fifth-grader at Steinbeck Elementary, says at first he didn’t like wearing a mask because he felt he couldn’t breathe; now he says he is used to it. 

One of the reasons Anaya says students are more comfortable now with wearing their masks is because at least 70 percent of them were in in-person classes during the final months of the 2020-21 school year. Back then, they had to tell students several times how to properly wear a mask but no longer, not even the littlest kids in transitional kindergarten.

Sixth-grader David Mendoza Lopez says he was a little hesitant to go back to school in-person. “ I just wanted to wait one year more,” he says, because the vaccine isn’t available yet for people under 12 like him. Mendoza says his mom was firm in sending it to in-person classes and he notes that it has its advantages: He focuses more and has less distractions. 

On Aug.11, California became the first state in the country to require teachers and staff—including  bus drivers, janitors, paraprofessionals and other school staff—to be vaccinated or submit a weekly Covid test due to the concerns about the delta variant.

At Monterey High School the first day of the 2021-22 school year started with putting into practice Covid-19 protocols. A parent reported two students were possibly exposed to the virus. Both students were tested for the virus, and the results came back positive; all students who had been in contact with them were notified. (The two infected students left school and went into quarantine.) 

Despite this setback, PK Diffenbaugh, superintendent of Monterey Peninsula Unified School District, says going back to in-person classes is in the best interest of the students.

“The impact of having schools close had a tremendous negative effect on students, not just academically, but perhaps more importantly, social-emotionally,” Diffenbaugh says.  

He visited different campuses throughout MPUSD during the first week of school. “To see the joy of our kids,” he says, “makes it all worth it.”

Diffenbaugh says they should remain vigilant and continue to abide by public health protocols to ensure campuses are safe: “We have a responsibility to ensure their safety and ensure that we can continue to keep schools open and that's what we intend to do.”