COVID cases cloud students’ return to school in Sonoma County

On her children’s fifth day of school, Hayat Merouani received a message from Hidden Valley Elementary School that a student had tested positive for COVID-19.

Her son, Mohammed, in fifth grade, and her daughter, Maria, a second-grader, both attend the school. They awaited word on whether or not they were considered “close contacts” with the student who had tested positive, and tried not to worry.

“I was in shock,” Hayat Merouani said, adding that she hadn’t been too worried about the disease’s impact on her children when the school year began.