As the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District continues to monitor data to determine the COVID-19 transmission risk status for the Central, Eastern, and Southern portions of the district, they have created a portal that allows all Kenai Peninsula residents to keep daily track of the figures that help make the big decision.
The Smart Start plan adopted by KPBSD before schools launched calls for three risk levels which dictates the extent to which schools will open their facilities. That includes whether or not school buildings will remain open, the level of distance learning that will take place, as well as whether sports will continue.
The District’s online web portal not only offers daily updates about the current status of each area of the district, but also some rudimentary data to help see how they reached those conclusions.
KPBSD Superintendent John O’Brien says the district is keeping a close eye on the numbers, but that the decisions regarding High, Medium, or Low risk represent more than just the daily Department of Health and Human Services reports: “It’s a reminder to the folks out there: we don’t make our decisions strictly based on the numbers, because bear in mind, when those numbers are reported, those are not the actual onset date of when an individual has contracted the virus. Those are just dates that DHSS uses as reporting. It’s an imperfect instrument, but it’s been proven and vetted by our medical advisory group, and Dr. Zink and her team at DHSS. What we wold do is look at what that very important seven-day trend is. If we’ve gone this week with no or very-few numbers, and we’re not getting any indications from public health that they anticipate increased cases, it’s very likely – even though we might slightly be in Red over the weekend, if we anticipated those numbers were not going to be coming in and that we were going to be losing significant cafes, we could start in yellow.”
