‘Que locura,’ this is madness. First-day-of-school delays frustrate students, parents

At 9 a.m. Monday, the lines outside South East High School and South East Middle School in South Gate were each a couple hundred students deep waiting to get onto campus.

Kony Aguillon sat in the shade while her son, an eighth-grader, waited for health check clearance. She did everything right Sunday night. She had pre-checked the district’s Daily Pass app so that it would be smooth going Monday morning. But now the app wouldn’t load. They arrived early at around 7:50 a.m. to check in, and an hour later there they stood.

“Que locura,” she said. This is madness.

“I imagined it was going to be crazy,” she added, but not as bad as it was. Still, she said, she will have patience. It’s only the first day, and this new set of safety protocols is going to take some adjustment.

The first day of school in the nation’s second-largest school district unfolded with a high-tech problem. The new health screening app called Daily Pass — touted as a way to make for an easy and smooth entry onto campus — failed to deliver and tamped down some of the joy and excitement of the return to campus for so many after nearly 18 months.

Interim Supt. Megan Reilly said district officials were assessing what went wrong with the app and believed the volume of users overwhelmed it in the morning.

Teachers rushed to the lines, pushing technology aside and quickly conducting interviews to get students to their classrooms. But in some cases, this ad hoc process could have resulted in some students being allowed on campus without confirmation of a required negative baseline coronavirus test.

Gary Garcia, the principal at John Marshall High in Los Feliz, found a work-around for Tuesday in case the app is still slow to respond. He’s asking students to take screenshots of their pass prior to arriving on campus; that way if it’s difficult to access in the morning, they can still show proof of the health check-in.

In anticipation of the delays, he had already extended the first period of classes by about 18 minutes in hopes that all students could meet their first-period teacher.

Throughout the morning he fielded questions from parents worried that their kids couldn’t get into school, and welcomed students back.

“I’ve seen students cooperating with the masks and I’m feeling confident that we’re going to be OK,” said Garcia, who has 15 years of experience as a principal.

Despite the lines and worries that the long entry times would continue, teachers and parents expressed optimism.

“It’s exciting; it’s scary,” said Nohemi Sanchez-Heredia, a first-grade teacher at Normont Elementary in Harbor City. “I’m excited for the children and I’m excited for myself, actually, to be back, to be able to help these little guys face to face again. Just like the good old days.”

At her elementary school, the organized chaos of the first day of school felt not that far off from normal, even though safety protocols resulted in a line of more than 150 students and parents waiting patiently to be checked in.

Principal Kim Sheehan said about 95% of her 295 students had taken the required baseline coronavirus test that would allow them to return to campus.

“We had done a pretty robust outreach program, and we were even still making calls to remind parents yesterday that they could still go to Gardena High School yesterday and get their tests,” Sheehan said. “Thank goodness we didn’t have anybody come on campus that was disallowed.”

The entry station was requisitioned with hand sanitizer, extra surgical masks and a book for each student: “Have You Filled a Bucket Today?” by Carol McCloud.

“It’s a book about kindness and giving more than you take,” Sheehan said.

Also on hand for the first day were three school board members and Reilly, who read the McCloud book to 10 first-graders in Sanchez-Heredia’s classroom. Other students in the class were still waiting to get through the screening process.

Sanchez-Herdia has been vaccinated, so she feels pretty safe herself, but she worries about her students.

“I feel protected,” she said. “My little guys, I just feel that I don’t want them to get sick. I just wake up every morning thinking positive and hope for the best.”

Students and parents wait in line to enter Normont Elementary School in Harbor City on the first day of school.

(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)

Parent Henriette Jeter was at the school with her daughters, who are starting kindergarten, 2nd and 5th grades. All three wore matching light blue T-shirts with sequined stars and tie-dyed masks.

“We’re very excited to start school and start learning and being with other kids,” Jeter said.

Her children had been learning remotely at a private religious school for much of last year before she decided to homeschool them.

Even though the Delta variant worries her, she felt her kids needed to be back in a classroom.

“They needed to get their energy out and be able to learn and be with other kids,” she said.

She put hand sanitizer and Lysol spray in her kids’ backpacks. And in the car on the way to school, she reminded them not to share food with their friends.

“But I can’t stay at home in fear,” she said. “I just have to do the best that I can with the girls to make sure that they are doing their due diligence to stay clean and stay away from people and not share food.”

Times staff writer Paloma Esquivel contributed to this report.