Did the children in your home wake up extra excited on Monday? Or, perhaps, a little less-than-excited because the days of doing school work in pajamas are over on the Kenai Peninsula. Monday marked the return to in-classroom learning at schools, full-time for students pre-Kindergarten through 6th grade, and an A-B part-time schedule for students from 7th through 12th grade.
Pegge Erkeneff with the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District, entered the first day very optimistic about the remainder of this school year, as she told KSRM on Monday: “We are closely watching the positive case counts decline, which is awesome. When talking to our hospitals and healthcare providers, as some of our regions begin to shift closer to the medium risk level, we’ll be announcing when schools might be shifting into that yellow zone which could mean that 7-12 graderse could come into school every day on-site, if they want that option. We do have a fair amount of students who are remaining at-home, doing 100% remote with their school. We’re gonna keep our school operations the way they are right now, until everybody hears otherwise. We would directly contact those families in the school and contact them if there’s a shift to medium risk so 7-12th graders can come to school.”
She also discussed what will happen if COVID-19 cases pop-up in individual schools: “If there are positive cases in a school or we need to do some contact tracing for determining who might be a close contact, parents need to be aware that they might get a phone call in the evening that says ‘We’re doing contact tracing and there’s no school on-site the next day.’ Some of our schools might not be able to pivot immediately to 100% remote for a day while that’s happening. We’re all going to be learning in this together, how this works. We’re excited!”
Bus transportation is being provided on a normal schedule, but everyone must wear a face covering, and seating plans will be put into place. Also, lunches will remain free for the remainder of the school year.
One week from now, January 18, will be a school holiday for most schools. Check with your school for details.
