Instead, the girl was reaching out her hands for a squirt of hand sanitizer. “We are so happy to see the children, but we can’t hug,” Perez said as she provided sanitizer and checked student identification cards Monday morning, the first day of in-classroom learning in the Palm Springs Unified School District this school year. After 13 months of no in-class learning in the district because of the COVID-19 pandemic and state and county restrictions, Monday saw students in kindergarten, first and second grades in classrooms. Third through sixth graders will return to in-person hybrid learning next Monday, with middle school and high school classes going back to class in the following weeks.