Recently, schools around the CVUSD district have been closed down due to the California high winds and fire risk. Schools in the district in fire risk areas, including Chino Hills High School, had made school attendance optional for students. Given Ayala’s distance from risk, the school didn’t follow suit and continued school as regularly scheduled. However, with air quality being poor within the Ayala region as well, many students thought that this was unfair and they should get the same treatment as Chino Hills High School.
Many students felt as though they should have been able to stay home without a penalty because of the natural disasters affecting power lines, especially if power outages made it difficult to complete assignment deadlines on Google Classroom. Lori Kim (12) and Jacob Kim (12) had both lost power at their homes, making it difficult to keep up with their school work.
“I was upset because I didn’t want to go to school and I have a lot of friends that go to Chino Hills High School,” Lori Kim said. “It was optional for them and they told me that they only had three students in their class or some classes didn’t have any students at all.”
Other students brought to attention the mental duress associated with such fires, stating that time away from school would have provided a much needed mental break.
“I think students and teachers should be able to have a break without penalty because sometimes us students and teachers need a mental health break and in events like this, it would have been nice to stay home and have a break,” Emma Min (9) said.
A lot of students believed that in this kind of situation, there should have been better communication between the teachers and staff. They believed that the school could have done more to protect students’ physical well-being.
“The administration could have sent out an email regarding the people who have been affected by the fire because the other side of Chino Hills, our power has been in and out for a while,” Lori Kim said.
On top of school being mandatory, many students felt unsafe coming to school because of such high winds and the air pollution.
“The air quality was terrible because of the fire and the wind just made it even worse,” Min said. “I believe that school shouldn’t have been mandatory given the current situation that we are in.”
With other schools around us getting cancelled or coming to school being optional, students of Ayala expressed that they should have gotten the same treatment. Some students of Ayala live in fire risk areas or in close proximity to Chino Hills High School, which brought concerns of power and safety of Ayala students that should have been considered.
“I live near the Carbon Canyon area so it gets very windy up there in the hills and it gets pretty dangerous,” Jacob Kim said. “Having no power meant no Wi-Fi so it was hard to do any schoolwork at all. I even had to shower in the dark which really sucked.”
