It has been less than a month since the fairview fires have started and it has affected thousands of people in Riverside county. So much so that a lot of people were wondering if school was going to still be open. However, the school remained open, and with that a lot of problems arose from staff and students alike. We asked some staff members what they had to share about the fire’s effects on the school as students were complaining about how bad the air quality was at the time.

“It was horrible, feeling like I had to drive from Moreno valley where it was relatively clear, to drive straight into what seemed like ashes. Hi, so my name is Chelsea Landin. I am an anatomy and AP biology teacher here.”

“At the school it was horrible, we had to keep all the doors closed. I’m Christina Hallman and I am the Healthclerk here at San Jacinto High School”

And incase of another emergency like this, we must make sure we must know what precautions to take on the air quality

“Stay in. If they have to go outside, definitely wear a mask.”

This terrible air quality made a lot of students not want to come to school, which led to an increase in absences

“It was understandable, because other districts were out and people were looking out for community members and so it made sense to me that our students might be with their families taking care of people around them. Ms.Gardner, I teach economics. Gosh, I think it was probably that friday. After we’ve been through the week, the district had decided to keep the schools open, and I think the air quality made a lot of people really uncomfortable. And on that Friday, that last day. Lots, lots, lots of students… probably more than half were absent.”

“There is definitely a huge increase in a absences for the entire week. I saw some days, I think Wednesday and Thursday there were at least half of my students were missing and absent so it was a big deal.”

The increase in absences also led to a setback when it came to what the class were doing.

“I would say it did set back a few days, it felt kinda like pandemic mode once again. It seemed like even though we had 5 days of instructional learning, we could only really do 2-3 days worth that week. Because there were so many absentances”

“A few days of content. Yeah I would say… I teach economics and that we cover topics.. It probably cost me three days additionally to catch up”.

Something we can take away from this experience in the school’s history is that we need to keep our environment safe and make sure we can be prepared for something like this when it happens again.

This is Brandon Padilla from the Tiger Media Network, signing off.