Merced County school district surveyed parents about students returning. Here are the results

As Merced Union High School District gets ready to open all 10 campuses to 9,975 students on March 15 on a hybrid schedule, thousands of parents are faced with one big question: Should I send my kids back to school?

While the question is certainly being discussed in households among families amid the ongoing COVID pandemic, district officials this month also surveyed parents to gauge their opinions.

On the basis that pandemic conditions improve in Merced County, the survey asked parents if they will send their children back to school for a hybrid form of learning — where students will alternate between in person and distance learning.

More than 4,000 parents responded — and the results were close.

A slim majority of parents — 45.6 percent — expressed they will be sending their kids back to campus in March.

Slightly less — 42.4 percent — responded they would not be sending kids back for in-person classes. The remainder of parents were undecided at 12.1 percent.

To those parents who said no, the survey asked when they would feel comfortable sending their children back to school. Most, at 53.2 percent said not until August, while 13.2 percent said after their children get vaccinated and 11.6 percent were undecided.

MUHSD’s plan for the data

Based on the data, MUHSD Superintendent Alan Peterson said it will not affect the district’s plan to reopen campuses through a hybrid model.

Peterson said it did allow the district to consider how to go about having socially distanced on-campus activities.

“After speaking with 200 plus students I am comfortable saying that the 12 percent that were undecided wanted to see an improvement in overall county numbers and also wanted to see that school athletics and activities were moving forward,” Peterson said in an email to the Sun-Star.

“Based on that info we are offering more on campus in-person opportunities over the next few weeks, athletics, clubs, FFA, hands on CTE (Career Technical Education) classes. We are still planning on the 15th.”

Parents share their views

Melina Oliveros-Aguilar isn’t comfortable sending her Golden Valley High School senior back to campus March 15.

It wasn’t an easy decision for her and her husband to make, but it had to be made for the sake of her 10-year-old daughter with epilepsy and for elderly members of her family.

“With the different variants of COVID that are popping up, we can’t take chances,” Oliveros-Aguilar said. “I don’t know if one day a variant will come out that affects children the way it affects elders. I don’t want to take that chance, especially if I have a child who has an illness.”

Oliveros-Aguilar said her 12th grade daughter agrees with the decision due to her sister’s condition, also noting that the decision to keep her on distance learning is about respecting lives, especially those at risk for COVID, and the CDC guidelines.

“We were going to respect the safety guidelines of CDC no matter how inconvenient it was going to get,” she said. “We were not going to develop a casual attitude about COVID. And if we started to get overconfident and slack off on being safe, we were going to help each other to stay in the same mindset.”

Christie Asher, on the other hand, will send her children — a freshman and sophomore at El Capitan High — back to campus on March 15, despite having a husband who has asthma and is considered high risk.

She said sending her children back to school would be best for them academically. Grades slipped for her freshman daughter, and her sophomore son with an IEP (Individualized Education Plan) finds distance learning harder.

Then there’s the mental health aspect the family considered.

“We just have to be safe right now, we haven’t caught it so far. And that’s why I say that sending them back to school was a big choice, but we just kind of had to look at the big picture, we had to look at grades, see how they were doing, you know, with their mental health,” Asher said.

“We had to look at all these different things and say ‘this is best for them.’ And just cross our fingers, send them with everything we can, and for the school to provide them stuff, and just pray for the best.”

Coping with mental health and the pandemic

Like many teens in Merced County, Asher and Oliveros-Aguilar’s children have had their share of depression, anxiety, and isolation.

Oliveros-Aguilar also has a son who graduated from Atwater High in 2020, where the traditional graduation ceremony, sports, and other senior activities were taken away from him, which led to sadness and isolation.

It has been hard for Oliveros-Aguilar’s 10-year-old daughter not seeing friends in person, but Zoom at least allows her to have play dates virtually.

Asher’s freshman daughter, who just started high school, feels isolated and trying to discover herself.

“I just think high school kids already have a lot of issues to begin with, a lot of them, are going through all kinds of stuff and COVID has just been an atomic bomb, in my opinion. Some kids do well, but my kids however really don’t,” Asher said.

Oliveros-Aguilar’s kids had their share of isolation, and still deal with it from time to time, but try to find innovative ways to keep communication going and spirits high.

Her 12th grade daughter writes letters to friends, describing how her family is dealing with COVID, makes phone calls to people in the community and uses connections within their church to cope with feelings of loneliness.

“They would share and they still share positive thoughts from the Bible specifically about the topics of COVID, and in those topics sometimes she would have conversations with people about isolation, and even how to succeed at distance learning,” Oliveros-Aguilar said.

Time away from her children’s friends and peers has also allowed her children to build empathy.

“Just showing them that even though this is happening (COVID), you can still be industrious, you can still be helpful. And it has taught them empathy, she said.

Family time has helped Asher’s family, but at this point her children are ready to go back to school. She acknowledges sending them back to campus is a huge risk because of her husband’s asthma, but it’s a risk the family is willing to take.

“It was one of those decisions that we had to sit down and have a conversation about and make that decision together,” Asher said. “It wasn’t just an overnight ‘yes.’ And ultimately (our kids’) mental health and their well being more than just education outweighs everything else at this point.”

This story was originally published February 26, 2021 at 5:00 AM.