Robert Fisher-Yarbrough’s daughter gets nervous when it rains.
Major storms in early January flooded the streets of Planada, forcing evacuations and closures throughout the small community in rural Merced County.“It was pretty impactful,” Fisher-Yarbrough said. “It started raining , and she got really scared.”
“They have come to school talking about their experience, what has happened, what they have seen during the flooding,” first-grade dual immersion teacher Karina Pacheco said. “They’ve lost items in their home as well as their homes.” Only K-2 grade students and teachers remain on campus as they share the cafeteria and around a half dozen untouched classrooms — newer classes added on over the years above the flood line in contrast to the rest of the school built in 1955.The cafeteria is now a shared space for three classes at a time. Atop the cafeteria stage is the makeshift library.
Six hours is split between the usable classrooms and other activities. Students receive three hours of instruction in a classroom. For the remaining three hours, students are in the divided spaces of the cafeteria, engaged in instruction through physical education, “library” time, online learning and “everything we could find to fill that time in the classroom,” Villalobos explained.The changes for those students are more difficult, she said.
Regardless of location, the current situation affects learning for all of them, from missing nearly two weeks because of flooding to having a “minimized daily schedule” until they have their space back.With the damaged areas already demolished for construction, repairs are expected to take about two more months for the walls and flooring to be implemented to bring some students back, Villalobos said.
Teaching is “limited,” Pacheco said about her and her colleagues doing “whatever we can with what we have.”From the librarian turning the stage into a library to educators hanging age-specific learning charts or flyers around the cafeteria to administrators transforming the staff lounge into office space, the Planada staff wanted things to be as normal as possible amid the drastic changes, librarian Maribel Ceja said.
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