When the Los Banos Unified School District announced its schools would close in mid-March in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, parents had four days' notice to make arrangements for their children to stay home.
Stacy Brehm, a single mother with a full-time job, couldn’t afford to waste time coming up with a plan for herself and her fourth-grade son, Kellan.
"I went out and I got a desk and I got a computer," Brehm said in a phone interview. "I found my resources and I made myself a schedule for him to be able to keep up with while I was at work."
Now, nearly five months since schools closed in Los Banos, distance learning will be the norm for the foreseeable future.
California counties who are on the COVID-19 monitoring list for elevated disease transmission, increasing hospitalization and limited hospital capacity may not physically reopen schools. Merced County is among 37 counties currently on the watch list and they may not begin the reopening process until their county has come off the list for 14 consecutive days.
Merced County has seen a steady increase in COVID-19 cases since mid-June. According to the California Department of Public Health, Merced County has 300 cases per 100,000 residents, three times the case rate needed to make the monitoring list. Cases in Los Banos surpassed the 400 mark, tripling the number of cases in the month of July alone.
LBUSD’s decision to use the distance-learning model is in compliance with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s orders announced on July 17. The district’s Board of Education voted to push the first day of school back by two weeks to give teachers and administrators more time to prepare for teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Los Banos Unified School District is still finalizing its plan for the 2020-2021 school year. Any further updates can be found on LBUSD’s Facebook page.
Los Banos, a small agricultural town in California’s Central Valley, is full of working-class families. The average income in Los Banos is 24% less than the national average and commute times are more than double the national average, per the Census Bureau. According to data from the California Department of Education, more than three-quarters of students in the LBUSD qualify for free or reduced meals, indicating low-income households.
Los Banos parents whom cannot financially afford to take time off work or school cannot dedicate as much time to help their child through distance learning as they would prefer. They fear this current situation, caused by COVID-19, will have implications for their children’s future.
Brehm wasn’t left with many options when schools initially closed in March and her situation hasn’t changed. A manager at a local printing and shipping company, she is an essential worker and worked throughout California’s stay at home order. Working from home isn’t an option for her, since the store remained open for customers. When it came to trying to find a babysitter to watch Kellan, Brehm couldn’t afford the unanticipated expenses that come along with childcare.
"With my paycheck, I barely make it as it is," Brehm said. "There’s no way that I can pay somebody to watch [my son]. Staying home, because I can barely pay my bills, again, is not an option."
Brehm ultimately decided to buy Kellan a cell phone and allow him to stay home alone while she worked. She was comfortable with leaving him during the workday because she and her mother both work within two blocks of her home and check up on him in-person every so often.
"He was constantly watched," Brehm said. "But he was also still by himself which I didn’t like, but I didn’t really have a choice."
Brehm works six days a week but still makes herself available to answer any questions that may come up for Kellan while he’s home. He had three different teachers and they all posted his daily and weekly assignments on Google Classroom. He worked on his assignments individually throughout the day but called Brehm for help when it came to essay-writing and math problems.
She set aside additional time to help Kellan after she got home. For an average of two hours per day before school let out for summer, she walked him through the remaining questions and double-checked his assignments before submission.
Brehm is worried her son, who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, known as ADHD, will fall behind in his learning as this routine continues into the next school year. She feels partly responsible for this by being away from him and is unsure about how schools and teachers will ensure he stays focused.
"[I have] major mom guilt because I do work and it’s hard because I can’t be here with him," Brehm said.
"[I have] major mom guilt because I do work and it’s hard because I can’t be here with him," Brehm said.
Dr. Patricia Campbell, an East Los Angeles Community Pediatrician, said distance learning will have long term repercussions for students with learning difficulties.
"They’re not getting therapy and that one-on-one attention to help with their learning to the best of their ability," Dr. Campbell said in a phone interview. "Creating a structure within the household is very important and has been advocated by a lot of child development professionals, [but] I know this is not feasible for all families."
Kristina Cortinas, a working mother of two daughters, also fears her children will fall behind because they don’t have parent reinforcement during distance learning.
"I want to be home, I want to be able to help them and guide them," Cortinas said in a phone interview. "But I kind of feel like my kids are going to be left behind at the end of the day."
Cortinas and her husband both commute 85 miles each way to San Jose and are out of the house for nearly 12 hours every weekday. The children’s grandparents can take care of them, but can’t be hands-on with their schoolwork due to their age. She and her husband still take responsibility for making sure their daughters stay on track with school, but being a working parent makes the situation tougher.
"I feel like my kids are going to be harmed the most," Cortinas said. "I’m going to come home and, quite frankly, I’m not going to want to look through eight hours’ worth of work for both of my kids."
The Cortinas family depends on both incomes, so taking time off work or accepting reduced hours for their jobs in the healthcare industry was never a viable option. Cortinas said her employer lacks the capabilities of converting to a work-from-home model. Her husband’s employer, however, gave him the option to work from home if necessary. They both decided to continue carpooling to work because they are not comfortable with Cortinas making the commute alone.
The family’s youngest daughter will be entering sixth grade this year and Cortinas is concerned the distance learning might affect her transition into junior high school next year.
"This is the most crucial time she needs to get all the stuff in that she needs to know to go seventh grade," Cortinas said. "And I feel like she’s not going to have that."
The LBUSD superintendent, Dr. Mark Marshall, said many parents are concerned about the education their children will receive online. In a Zoom interview, he said last year’s distance learning program was about survival and they will improve the curriculum for the upcoming year.
"We want to do a better job than what we did the first time," Dr. Marshall said. "We're glad the associations worked with us as far as giving us more time to prepare and hopefully this time around we have a quality product, which translates to a good outcome for students."
Brande Van Brocklin, a full-time student training to be a speech-language pathologist, is also worried about what the upcoming school year will look like for her two daughters. Van Brocklin’s classes at Fresno State moved fully online, but she will begin a part-time externship in a nearby school district that may require her to report in person a couple of days a week. On top of this, Van Brocklin doesn’t know what distance learning will look for her oldest daughter, who is entering her first year of junior high school.
"That's going to be kind of hard to balance finding an area where I can work, do my classes and study and then make sure Ava has a quiet space where she can get all her stuff done," Van Brocklin said in a Zoom interview. "And then also make sure that my five-year-old is not just watching movies all day."
If Van Brocklin needs to go to work or needs extra time to quietly study, she said her husband could take her oldest daughter to work with him at a local flower shop if it’s necessary. For her youngest daughter who is entering kindergarten, she would need to find someone to babysit, which isn’t ideal. The cost of childcare for a 5-year-old in Los Banos could cost anywhere from $300 for part-time and $600 for full-time, according to Van Brocklin.
"Childcare is not cheap," Van Brocklin said. "And I have a hard time asking anyone to watch my kid anyways because they're my responsibility and I feel bad."
Van Brocklin still struggles with balancing her responsibilities as a mother and as a student all while being home, but she tries her best to be there for her daughters.
"I'm trying to just look towards the positive," Van Brocklin said. "This will be a time for me to be more involved in [my children’s] studies ... even though it's hard. I feel like sometimes I don't give my kids enough attention and it's also nice to be home with them. Just finding a balance through everything."