With several Kenai Peninsula Borough School District schools moving to universal masking, the general rule that has been made clear is to keep kids in school, even though they will be temporarily masking up.
Pegge Erkeneff, Director of Communications, Community and Government Relations for the KPBSD told KSRM that not everyone has been on board with the decision to temporarily mask up:
“To be honest, it’s a mix. There’s school communities that want to be masked or wear face covering and have universal masking because when universal masking is in place, if you’re identified as a close contact, and with universal masking this is an important distinction, if you’re greater than three feet away, you don’t have to quarantine if you are identified as a close contact. If you are within three feet with the person who’s positive for more than 15 minutes, during universal masking, you still are identified as a close contact who does need to quarantine, but we need to keep kids in school. There is a mix of emotions, of thoughts. There’s anger from people. There’s complete acceptance. I know that the superintendent gets calls and letters on all sides. It’s a full spectrum right now of people’s response.”
Erkeneff speaks on the District’s COVID mitigation response:
“The school district’s response and priority is keeping kids at school and when our absenteeism rates are so high because so many people are identified as a close contact, and we’re having so many positive cases in a school and it’s not necessarily in school spread, but it can be just number of cases wherever somebody was exposed to COVID. We’ve got those positive cases and high absenteeism rate, we need to keep kids in school.”
The schools currently under universal masking includes Cooper Landing School, Fireweed Academy, Nikiski North Star Elementary, Paul Banks Elementary, Port Graham School, River City Academy, Skyview Middle, Soldotna High, Susan B. English School and Tebugna School.