Rancho Dominguez’s Plan for a Safe Return to Campus

With the increased rates of COVID-19 in California, Rancho Dominguez held a Return to Campus webinar where principal Keri Lew, Assistant Vice President Brian Hannon, and Attendance Counselor Luis Gomez discussed the protocols and selections of programs that parents and students can choose from. Students have a selection of either participating in hybrid learning, which requires on campus and virtual education, or online learning which only requires virtual education. Parents were supposed to fill out a survey regarding the selection process of the education of their child which can be found on the Rancho Dominguez homepage. If not completed, students are automatically placed into hybrid learning.

“I would prefer hybrid learning because online learning is very difficult for me. For me, online learning isn’t really something I would enjoy, but due to COVID, we all are behind the screen and education is a lot harder than how it was at school.” Nancy Flores, a seventh grader responded with.

Like every one of the students of Rancho Dominguez, every student who would want to come back to school would choose hybrid learning but those who wouldn’t choose online learning.
Some protocols that were mentioned are that you must be tested for COVID-19 before going back to campus if you chose hybrid learning. The schedule of hybrid learning is that students will come to the school for a portion of the week and if not on campus will remain online learning. If you choose to be in online learning and you would like to switch into hybrid learning, it will be harder to switch into hybrid than it would be if you choose to go from hybrid to online learning. This is because students will only be allowed to switch to hybrid during certain times of the semester (to be established by the district) due to the limited amount of space available within a group. Students will be provided with on-site supervised care and school bus transportation will be available if you already qualified for bus transportation from the District. LAUSD does not have a date for going back to school, but they are in the process of planning the date of return on campus, but with the recent spike of COVID-19, undetermined decisions are being made by LAUSD on a return date.

“Well, I think the teaching is definitely going to be different because some students will be online and some in class so it will be very different,” Flores said.

Due to the protocols that were told to all the students and parents who attended the webinar, there are several adjustments. There will be a big difference when returning back, but we must follow it.

“One reason why I picked hybrid is because it is a lot harder to work online and I think if we go back to school, we probably will be able to understand our work more. And just communicate with people even though we are going to have to be six feet apart,” Flores said.

We don’t know how many students chose hybrid, but it is more likely that students picked hybrid learning due to their problems with virtual learning. We are used to being at school during sessions but during the pandemic, online learning has made an impact on student’s mental health, stress, and overall engagement in the online classroom.

“My thoughts on online learning are that it is very difficult and very hard to understand what the teachers are trying to teach us and in my opinion, I am not a big fan of online learning,” Flores added.

Online learning has been hard to adjust for some students. The past few months of online learning have become a challenge for some students with them coming across certain problems like internet issues, eye strain from staring at a screen for too long, and home distractions.

“Hybrid, online can have a lot of technical issues, being Wi-Fi or computer not working. Plus online, to me, is a lot more stressful than being there physically in school,” Alana Naea, a tenth grader, said.