Huntington Beach Union High School District reopens campuses, as Newport-Mesa Unified preps for Monday return

Students leave campus at Edison High School on Thursday afternoon.

By Sara Cardine

and Andrew Turner

Nov. 5, 2020 7:40 PM PT

As the number of new Orange County coronavirus cases continues to climb, secondary students in Huntington Beach returned to classes this week, and more in Newport Beach and Costa Mesa are expected to come back Monday.

Huntington Beach Union High School District campuses opened to students Tuesday for the first time since March under a hybrid learning model designed to provide a measure of routine and interaction in a pandemic marked by distance and isolation.

The district has created an online dashboard to track COVID-19 cases among its 11,287 students and staff, but so far no cases have been recorded.

Small groups of masked teens took seats at socially distanced desks for a half-day of instruction with others in their cohort Tuesday and Wednesday while a second group of students learned from home. The scenario switched on Thursdays and Fridays.

Walking back to his car Thursday after his cohort’s first day back at Edison High School, junior Ethan Emerson said despite all the distance and precautions, it was good to see his classmates for the first time in months.

A digital sign welcomes students back to Edison High School in Huntington Beach.

“It was definitely weird coming back, being in masks all day and sitting away from all of your friends,” he said. “[But] I was bored of sitting in my room.”

Edison senior Jaden Lupercio agreed.

“The interaction is nice — I miss that,” he said. “I don’t like being cooped up in my room all day. Just being able to come to school and walk around the campus was nice.”

Fountain Valley High School Principal Morgan Smith said students on his campus are getting acclimated to protocols that must be followed if schools are to stay open.

“Hallways feel like highways, and our students are adhering to direction, following mask, distance and path of travel requirements,” Smith said. “Students and staff feel safe on campus, which helps us focus on the learning.”

The much smaller class size engendered by the cohort system is creating a closer camaraderie between teachers and students, Smith added.

“With smaller in-person classes, staff are getting to know the name, face and story of our students,” Smith said. “I know this is still different than any other year we’ve experienced but having kids back on campus is bringing the magic back into campus culture.”

Students at Edison High School on Thursday afternoon.

Newport-Mesa Unified reports 22 coronavirus cases among students, staff

While Huntington Beach high schoolers settle into yet another new normal, Newport-Mesa Unified School District is preparing for thousands of secondary students to return to campuses on Monday.

Plans are moving forward, even as an COVID-19 online dashboard maintained by the district jumped from 14 reported cases among students and staff to 22 Thursday. The total includes six cases at Costa Mesa Middle/High School and four at Newport Harbor High School.

“Just for privacy, we’re not sharing anything but the numbers,” NMUSD spokeswoman Annette Franco clarified, adding that teachers and some students and athletes have already returned to campuses for distanced small group practice and activities.

Like Huntington Beach, the district will combine in-person instruction and distance learning, but Newport-Mesa’s two student cohort groups will alternate in a full-day schedule that gives each group two days on campus.

A third group — cohort C — will continue to learn online but will stay attached to their home schools and check in with teachers at the start of each period by video before getting to work.

District officials announced this week they’d reached an agreement with the Newport-Mesa Federation of Teachers over secondary school reopening after months of anxiety, protests and disagreements on schools’ readiness.

A previously planned Oct. 12 reopening was pushed back, after principals admitted they hadn’t yet mastered the complexity of scheduling two separate student groups on one campus. The creation of cohort C is expected to alleviate classroom overcrowding.

Franco said each school site is designing its own schedule, while principals work to figure out which students will opt to stay home and which will be arriving on Monday.

“School site principals are working with families to determine whether the at-home learning model is for them,” she added.

NMFT President Tamara Fairbanks said while she was glad an agreement has been reached, there’s still some anxiety among teachers over whether district protocols will be properly implemented and effective in combatting the spread of the coronavirus.

“The proof will be in the pudding those first few weeks of school,” Fairbanks said. “Because there are so many students on our secondary campuses, it really is something that has to be monitored.”

New Orange County coronavirus infections, hospitalizations on the rise

The Orange County Health Care Agency on Thursday recorded 271 new coronavirus cases and three deaths, bringing Orange County’s cumulative case count to 61,112 and the fatality rate to 1,494. Area hospitals reported they were treating 178 individuals for COVID-19, including 76 in intensive care units.

The county’s seven-day average of new cases rose this week to six per 100,000 residents, while the average health equity quartile positivity rate decreased slightly to 5.7% — those figures would need to drop to 3.9 and 5.2%, respectively, for Orange County to be able to reopen more business sectors.

Thursday also saw 9,881 tests countywide, bringing the cumulative total of tests issued to 1,148,439 and accounting for a seven-day average testing positivity rate of 3.6%, up from 3.2% earlier this week.

Here are the latest cumulative coronavirus case counts and COVID-19 deaths for select cities in Orange County: