The Kenai Peninsula Borough School District is reporting the possibility of grades 7-12 being able to return to the classrooms onsite daily as long as the COVID-19 risk levels continue to flatten.
According to a recent KPBSD press release, the earliest possible date grades 7-12 could resume attending onsite five days a week is Monday, January 25, 2021 for Eastern Peninsula (Moose Pass and Seward) schools and Southern Peninsula (Homer area, Nikolaevsk, and Ninilchik) schools, and Monday, February 1, 2021 for Central Peninsula (Kasilof, Kenai, Nikiski, Soldotna, Sterling area) schools.
Pegge Erkeneff Director of Communications, Community, and Government Relations for the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District said, “Currently our Pre-K through 6th graders go to school everyday onsite as an option and 7th through 12th graders are on a split A/B schedule. That was just to maximize space in the building and not have quite as many people in the building. What we want to do is have the option per all 7th through 12th graders to come to school everyday. Looking at the numbers, and talking to all of our healthcare providers, it looks like, if the trends continue, the earliest possible date for the Seward area and Homer area that we could open back up to 7th through 12th graders would be next Monday January 25th. The earliest in the Central Peninsula, would be February 1st on Monday. We’ll be doing an update at the end of this week to let people know for sure where we’re at with that.”
Erkeneff goes into detail regarding how the district would be able to make such a decision, “It’s looking at what all the members are and we all know about that data dashboard of numbers, but it’s also talking about how many cases are we really having here, how many hospital beds are being used, are we having any outbreaks. Remember, we’re shifting a little bit to a model when we have all our students back at school that it could be that one local school has some positive cases and so instead of shifting to high risk for the whole area, it would be at a specific school we’ll determine what’s happening at that site.”
On or before January 22, 2021, the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District will provide an update with an official announcement.
HOW WILL I KNOW WHEN GRADES 7-12 WILL BE OPEN EVERY DAY TO ONSITE LEARNING AT MY SCHOOL? – Parents, students, and families will receive a message from the district through School Messenger, and schools will also contact their families when this change takes effect. An announcement will be posted on KPBSD.org, the KPBSD mobile app, and on social media. The KPBSD team continues to monitor COVID-19 spread, health care capacity, and ability to staff and operate schools safely. Thank you for your good effort to open schools safely, and keep schools open! Monitor your school risk level on the COVID-19 dashboard.