Three major Marin County private high schools — Marin Academy, Branson and Marin Catholic — returned to in-person learning this October. They are the first set of high schools in the Bay Area to welcome students back to campus since March, when schools shut in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Branson junior Maddie O’Keefe is excited to be back on campus after almost six months of virtual learning. “It definitely brightened my mood to see everyone and see the campus alive again,” she said.
Branson and Marin Academy have each been able to accommodate their entire student body, of about 400 people, on campus — four days a week and two days a week, respectively. Marin Catholic, which has about 800 students, has opted to have half the student body in-person for two days at a time. Each of the schools has some semblance of a cohort system that, for contact tracing purposes, tracks and limits students’ interactions.
“It feels pretty normal, except there are more masks,” O’Keefe joked. Masks are required on campus at all times except during socially distant outdoor lunches. However, she did acknowledge that the discussion-based lessons Branson students are used to are just not possible in this new environment. With each student seated at an individual desk spaced six feet from the next one, interactive learning has been difficult to manage.
Lola Daley, a senior at Marin Academy, had similar experiences with a lack of group work in her on-campus classes, especially when teachers are balancing both in-person students and those still coming to class through Zoom. Even so, she, similar to every student interviewed, was enthusiastic about in-person learning. “It’s just way easier to stay engaged in class when you’re actually there in person,” she said.
Marin Academy science teacher Liz Gottlieb was originally anxious about what teaching would look like in this new environment. This fall, “there was so much noise and everyone had an opinion and I felt very pressured,” she said. She has made a large effort to adapt her classes, moving her environmental science class into the school garden, where students have been able to do a lot of hands-on learning.
With evidence that outdoor classrooms are less likely to spread the coronavirus, many teachers at both Marin Academy and Branson have been conducting classes outside. Gottlieb said, “it’s really liberating to be outside, changing and mending the soil, and working together on a project.” With almost a month of in-person classes under her belt, Gottlieb said she was definitely just “anxious for the unknowns” and is now most worried about following complicated lab safety procedures as her classes progress.
Schools attempting to return to campus had to apply to their district before doing so, just as Lick-Wilmerding had to apply to San Francisco County’s Health Department before reopening its campus. Their application had to include a site-specific protection plan that followed the guidelines laid out by Marin County and the California Department of Public Health. Some of these requirements included maintaining distancing within classrooms, regular testing for COVID-19, wearing face coverings and frequent cleaning of school buildings.
These mandated measures designed to protect all members of the school’s community have proven to be very costly. The economic barrier to reopen is why the less-funded public high schools in Marin have yet to make a move towards in-person learning.
According to San Rafael High School senior Charlotte Lee, the administration at her school has communicated no definite plans or dates for reopening. She is losing hope of returning to campus this school year. The rest of the Marin County public high schools, including Tamalpias and Redwood, are stuck in similar states of inaction.
Despite all of their preparations, Marin Catholic and Branson have had to pause in-person learning due to reports of students attending parties off-campus. Brad Burnes, a sophomore at Marin Catholic, was disappointed about the decision in mid-October to close school for two weeks but thought that closing would push students to recognize that it is not safe to attend large social gatherings.
Branson was closed more recently, in the second week of November, after the school found out about students attending Halloween parties. “I felt bad for the administration because they’ve worked so hard to put all this together, and they’ve spent so much time and money to do all this,” O’Keefe said. When she was originally interviewed, before the closure, O’Keefe said she had thought her school community had been acting responsibly. She was frustrated to learn otherwise and to suffer the consequences of other students’ thoughtless actions.
Branson students briefly returned to school late last week after the whole community tested negative for COVID-19. However, Branson, along with Marin Academy, had already planned to return to virtual learning after Thanksgiving break so in-person learning is now paused until 2021. The administrations are concerned with the return of college-aged siblings or travel over the holidays bringing COVID-19 to campus.
COVID-19 has shifted expectations and presented challenges for administrations, teachers, parents and students alike. Now, amid ongoing changes, many are left wondering what’s next.
“Teachers want to be with students, this is what they love,” Gottlieb said. “They didn’t sign up to teach online or for emergency teaching and all of the different ways we’re calling it. Teachers also didn’t sign up to be on the front lines of a pandemic. I mean, nobody did.”
