Children returned from Spring Break to begin the fourth quarter in the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District. Going into Spring Break, school officials expressed concern that when kids returned, COVID-19 cases would incrementally increase.
Central, Southern and Eastern Peninsula schools are still meeting in-person and their classification puts all three in the yellow category. Kenai Peninsula Borough School District Superintendent John O’Brien advises parents to continue the COVID-19 mitigation measures, “We need to keep schools open for this last and final quarter. It’s our goal to not have any shutdowns at all due to COVID. I’d like to remind parents and staff and students of our symptom free protocol, if you are exhibiting any symptoms of a cold or flu, please make sure you stay home and get a COVID test and make sure that it’s not COVID and so that we can keep these schools open for the fourth quarter.”
With practicing COVID-19 mitigation measures to keep the numbers down, O’Brien expects an in-person graduation to occur this year, “We anticipate that all of our high schools will have in-person graduation ceremonies, hopefully looking as normal as possible. They’re planning, mostly for outdoor events, at this point in time. What’s still up in the air, depending on what happens with these COVID numbers is how big the guest lists can be for these graduation ceremonies. I certainly don’t anticipate the normal in the sports center or in school gymnasiums packed full of people congratulating our graduates. We will have in-person graduations for our students. It’ll look a little bit different. We’re working on trying to make sure that all of those are also able to be live streamed so that as many people as possible can be a part of that experience.”
Keep up to date with the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District operation levels by clicking here.