Merced Union High School District’s entire fall semester will be online classes, due to COVID-19
The Merced Union High School District announced on Thursday all classes will be online for the entire first semester, as a preventative measure to protect students and staff during the coronavirus pandemic.
The district had previously hoped to give parents and students a choice of in-person classes or distance learning. That was prior to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement last week prohibiting schools in counties on the state monitoring list from holding in-person classes when schools begins next month.
Merced County is one of over 30 counties on the state watch list.
The Merced Union High School District, which includes Merced, Golden Valley, El Capitan, Atwater, Buhach Colony and Livingston high schools, made the decision to do distance learning for the first semester after consulting with the Merced County Public Health Department, according to a press release.
“School districts within counties being monitored can only resume in-person instruction after getting off the watch list and staying off for at least 14 consecutive days,” the district stated in the release. “(Merced Public Health Department) does not believe this scenario is feasible for Merced County by the end of the year.”
Other districts like the Merced City School District, which oversees 18 elementary and middle schools in Merced, haven’t put a timeline on the distance learning.
“We are still planning to reopen after the county is removed from the watchlist,” said MCSD spokesperson Joey Horta, in an email to the Sun-Star..
The high school district had hoped for a plan that called for all students who chose to attend in-person classes, to have school each week with certain days scheduled on campus and certain days scheduled at home.
Students would have been given an “A/B Schedule” that called for each grade level to be separated into two groups. That would allow half of the student body on campus at a time, enabling the district to follow social distancing guidelines more easily.
“As much as we were looking forward to students returning at some point during the fall, the COVID numbers are trending in the wrong direction for a safe reopening for the foreseeable future,” said MUHSD Superintendent Alan Peterson.
“MUHSD staff will now focus its efforts on providing students a high-quality online learning experience for the first half of the school year.”
This story was originally published July 23, 2020 at 4:06 PM.
