Students feel rites of passage denied as schools stay closed into the fall

LOS ANGELES – The first day of school loomed larger than ever this year. Inflated with both anticipation and fear amid a great pandemic, it was to be the release from five months of confinement, the end of what largely amounted to the longest, hardest and most boring of summer breaks in generations.

So for many students, the momentous decision to postpone the opening of schools in Los Angeles landed with a dull thud of disappointment. No catching up with old friends or finding new ones, no sports, no dances, no plays, no Friday night lights, no messing around in the halls, no vigorous classroom discussions – no end in sight.

Worst of all, for teenagers in particular: no escape from home.

The coronavirus surge convinced Los Angeles Unified School District leaders that even with precautions and social distancing, the risk was too high to open up campuses on Aug. 18.

Josh Coleman had transferred to Dorsey High School as a sophomore in February when schools closed a month later. A star quarterback with a 4.0 GPA, he couldn’t wait to get back in class to start making new friends. He was hoping the district would go through with plans to have students rotate through school, attending two or three days a week, filling the gaps with online learning.

“I think that should still be an option,” he said. “It’s really devastating we can’t go back.”

He worries about friends who have “tough things going on at home.”

“Being at school is the only positive thing going on in their day,” he said.

Josh said few students logged into the online classes the school offered in spring. “That was a big drop-off. There were eight or nine students in classes of 30 or 40.”

Ella Dennis, a rising senior at Cleveland Charter High School, said her humanities classes suffered in the online environment. She had two periods in spring on the role of race in society.

“My teachers would give us a lecture, one or two students would ask a question,” Ella said. “It’s hard to learn when you’re listening to lectures or (looking at) a Powerpoint. You just see words on the screen. It’s not enough. It’s definitely difficult to get things done in this kind of environment.”

She realized how much support she got from personal contact with friends and teachers.

“After class, I would go over to them. They would cheer me up, and then I’d go to the next class,” she said.

It’s the moments in between classes that Isaias Vaquerano misses – seeing his friends, saying hi in the hallway, asking his teachers about their families, decompressing from one class to the next.

Isaias, an incoming senior at Belmont High School, planned to do drum line in fall, wrestle in winter and run track in spring.

But now he’s not expecting to do most of that – even though the district says it will open schools as soon as it is safe.

“I’m just kind of bummed, but I think I might be able to join the drum line when I go to college,” he said. “So I’m kind of thinking about that. And the same thing with sports too.”