The Kenai Peninsula Borough School District seeks to clarify the Smart Start Plan, citing misinformation “circulating on social media and local talk radio”.
In last night’s Board of Education meeting, Superintendent John O’Brien wanted to provide an update on future changes to High Risk (Red) Level operations in the Smart Start Plan. In his statement, he said it’s to clear up misinformation “that has been circulating about the district on social media and on local talk radio.” Last week KPBSD administration was in contact with and sent a clarifying communication to the Department of Health and Social Services. The KPBSD Smart Start 2020 plan was reviewed by the Department of Health and Social Services Medical Team in July. KPBSD received the feedback and suggestions from the DHSS Medical Team to improve the plan.
For the public record, O’Brien read verbatim the suggestions the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District received from the DHSS medical team. DHSS Feedback to KPBSD in July via email: “They may want to consider the same encouragement towards wearing face coverings, especially for middle and high school, in their green operational zone as well as the yellow operational zone. While green means that the risk of holding school in person is outweighed by the benefits to most students, there is no truly low risk circumstance in a pandemic and we will need to take significant precautions in both green and yellow operational zones. They may want to consider cohorting as a strategy for containing risk in younger grades (elementary school) where students will have more difficulty with physical distancing and face coverings, but helping older children really focus on these strategies for risk reduction in both the green and yellow operational zone. We thought it was good that they mentioned particular precautions for higher risk activities like choir, and that section could be a good opportunity for them to provide more specific guidance to schools for those high-risk activities. We recommend using the enclosed checklist and other items to help expand their health and safety section.”
O’Brien said the decisions to move KPBSD schools into RED/High Risk operations and remote learning status is a local decision made by District Administration not by DEED or DHSS. When making decisions to move into RED/High Risk operational status, we have consistently followed our Board of Education approved Smart Start Plan and our clearly communicated determining factors. “The KPBSD risk determination is made in conjunction with input from the State of Alaska actual 14-Day positive case counts, seven day trends of positive cases, Public Health and contact tracing, the KPBSD COVID-19 Community Risk Level Medical Advisory Group, Kenai Peninsula Cooperators, and at times, consultation directly with the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services and the Alaska Department of Education.”
The district is currently working on new mitigation plans to safely bring more students back into our schools during periods of RED/High Risk and community transmission beyond the current Pre-K, K, and Special Education Intensive needs students currently attending in-person classes.
The KPBSD will continue to follow our existing Board approved Smart Start Plan until it is modified and the changes are vetted appropriately. To that end, the District continues to examine ways to safely modify our Smart Start Plan, to bring more students into our schools during periods of high risk. Before any substantial changes such as these are made to our RED/High Risk level Operations plan, it will first involve the input of the staff, parents, medical advisors, DHSS and DEED for feedback, and finally need full approval by the collective action of the entire Kenai Peninsula Borough School District Board of Education.
