When the team formerly known as the Oakland Athletics took on the Chicago Cubs March 31 at West Sacramento’s refurbished Sutter Health Park, it became official: Sacramento, at least temporarily, has hit the big leagues.

In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, Comstock’s followed four downtown Sacramento businesses and their broader sectors for a six-part series. On the fifth anniversary of the shutdowns, we checked in to see how they are faring.

“I think what the pandemic really did was just lift the curtain on what was taking place in the classroom and at the administration level for parents to see,” says Justin Caporusso, a Roseville father of four and owner of Caporusso Communications. “A lot of parents saw how much time was spent on classroom management, behavior and really how little time was spent on kind of overall education.”

Efforts by California’s government to help students recover from the pandemic go back to its earliest days, with the state investing more than $36 billion to deal with pandemic impacts. The funding has gone to Learning Recovery Emergency Block Grants, expanded teacher recruitment, literacy specialists and much more.

Around the Capital Region, schools are still working to recover socially and academically from the COVID-19 pandemic. Test scores have been affected, as has school attendance. A new wave of behavioral issues has unfolded, too. Now, a variety of people are working to help students catch up.

The influx of immigrants and refugees from a multitude of different countries has created an opportunity and a challenge for Capital Region architects to design educational spaces with greater cultural sensitivity that provide a sense of belonging for new students and families.