This story is part of a series on the experiences of students attending three different California school districts during the COVID-19 pandemic, in spring 2022. It was produced through a partnership with CatchLight Local and CalMatters.
Anthony Pritchett, a senior at Nevada Union High School, sits on the Nevada Joint Union High School District’s board of education as the student member. He’s tried to enjoy his last year of high school while also trying to navigate the politics surrounding schools and the pandemic.
In February, the district’s school board voted to make masking optional on campuses, violating an agreement with its teachers’ union. Schools in the 2,700-student district closed in the days following the vote because teachers refused to come to work.
As a student board member, Pritchett’s vote doesn’t count. But he said he voted against changing masking rules because it would set a “dangerous precedent” for teachers and their working conditions.
“It was a very scary, high-tension atmosphere at that board meeting,” he said. “I didn’t want to say much at all, which I still very much regret.”
Superintendent Brett McFadden said he was also disappointed by the board’s decision, because the district had to spend over $30,000 on legal fees to reach a settlement with the teachers’ union.
“Individuals from the community or outside the community would parachute in and throw their hand grenades on whatever issue they were passionate about, and then they’d leave,” McFadden said. “Well, the next morning, it’s the teachers and myself who are here and we have to repair that damage.”
McFadden, who’s leaving the district in July for a new job, said the relationships within the community will take a long time to recover. If it hadn’t been for the pandemic, he said, he likely would have stayed at the district. He said most of his employees are completely burned out.
“People were saying two or three months ago that we just want this year over,” McFadden said. “There was a sentiment of let’s get this year over with and come back next school year, hopefully refreshed.”
For Pritchett, this school year was full of compromises. School dances were held outside. Rallies were canceled. Friend groups dwindled.
But Pritchett said he tried to attend all his school events.
“We haven’t had any of these dances in like two years,” he said. “So I’m definitely trying to make the most of it.”


But the return to classes was also stressful. “We hadn’t seen anyone in like a year. We’d only seen them on FaceTime or Zoom calls,” he said. “We haven’t interacted in person, you know, and people changed so much. They grew beards out, they got taller, they changed completely. So learning how to talk to people, how to talk to friends you haven’t talked to face-to-face in a while, was almost an overwhelming experience.”

“It was stressful, because, you know, most upperclassmen they’ve been in school (in person) the entire time,” Pritchett said. “We were just kind of picked up from our younger years and just plopped back into school as upperclassmen. I think a lot of people in my class, they didn’t really feel like upperclassmen because they didn’t really get that chance to mature in their junior and senior years.”

“Things just started to get taken or stolen. You’d notice that mirrors started to get stolen. Sinks. Entire sinks started to get stolen. Bathroom doors were getting ripped off,” Pritchet said. “Things got so bad that the majority of bathrooms (were) actually closed on campus and the school actually brought in porta potties on campus and bolted them into the ground.”


During the 2021-22 school year, districts that typically had less than 5% of their students absent on a given day were seeing up to a quarter of students absent during the delta and omicron surges. Teacher absences also brought schools to a breaking point.
“There’s so many kids out of the classroom, with COVID. Same thing with teachers, too,” Pritchett said. “You’ll get like someone who’s been gone for a long time and you don’t really ask where they are. You know they got COVID.”

“My neighbor, we grew super close during the pandemic just because we weren’t going anywhere. We would just go on little walks every night and just play basketball on his basketball court,” he said. “We weren’t that close before the pandemic, but proximity brought us together.”

“Coming back from the pandemic, school’s just very, like click-y. Friend groups really dwindled and became a lot tighter and smaller,” he said. “I remember like my freshman and (the) beginning of sophomore year, at lunch, we would all congregate and the entire class, basically, the entire grade would be eating lunch together,” he said. “That doesn’t happen anymore.”


At the same time, Pritchett’s father works in a nursing home in close proximity to seniors who are at a heightened risk of severe illness if they contract COVID. For Pritchett, this means he’s felt the need to stay extra vigilant to avoid infection even as he has sought to reestablish the connections with his peers that dwindled while learning remotely.
“It’s one of those things you definitely do think about, though, especially when you’re with a bunch of kids in school, or (at) parties or events,” he said. “You’re always wondering, ‘Am I going to catch COVID here?’ It is one of those things that’s always on your mind.”






“And if I’d had a vote, the resolution could have failed.”


And while he disagrees with how the school district ended its mask mandate, he says that the process showed him “just how diverse of a community we do have, and really, how tough it is really, to actually build unity.”
“It’s a very precious thing to have,” Pritchett said. “But it’s hard to get there. It’s very hard to get there.”


Over the past few months Pritchett said he watched masks steadily fall out of use at school. “As certain reports came out, certain mandates were lifted, certain people started wearing masks less and less until really, the majority of people stopped wearing masks. And that’s where we are today.”
But rather than dwelling on it, Pritchett is looking ahead. He’s been accepted to UC Berkeley, where he’s enrolled in the College of Natural Resources and he plans to continue his engagement in advocacy work and politics.
“I’ve seen the necessity of people that need their voices heard and maybe can’t always get their voices out there,” he said. “One of the most effective things the pandemic did was shift everyone’s focus. And in a lot of ways, my focus was shifted from that purely academic viewpoint to realizing that there are more important things to tackle in the world.”



“It’s been a very surreal high school experience ever since sophomore year, ever since COVID hit,” he said. But “just the fact that, you know, as a class we were able to overcome, that’s an accomplishment.”

Student Reflections: Looking Back on School during COVID was reported and written by photojournalists Larry Valenzuela, Salgu Wissmath and David Rodriguez for CatchLight & CalMatters.
This project was produced by CalMatters & CatchLight as part of the CatchLight Local CA Visual Desk. Contributors include Joe Hong, Miguel Gutierrez Jr., Martin do Nascimento, Mabel Jimenez and Jenny Jacklin-Stratton. The San Antonio Elementary School project was produced through additional collaboration with the Salinas Californian.