Soft closure extended through the end of the school year

IDAHO –– The State Board of Education passed a motion on Monday afternoon effectively extending their “soft closure” of schools through the end of the 2019/20 school year.

However, along with the extension of the soft closure, the SBOE did make an allowance in their motion that if a school district were to have the blessing of local health officials, they would be allowed to re-open.

This announcement comes 14 days after the decision was made by the SBOE that required schools to go into a soft closure until April 20.

Now that the deadline has been extended indefinitely, local schools will begin the process of figuring out how they plan on educating their students for the remaining two months of the 2019-2020 school year.

While school districts may not be opening their buildings, students will still be required to complete assignments, either through digital learning opportunities or by working off of pre-made packets if the digital option is not available.

All three local school districts had already put plans in place to continue their digital learning, so the SBOE's announcement didn’t have too much of an effect on them from an operational standpoint. However, this doesn't mean that district leaders weren't frustrated with the SBOE’s decision to an extent.

“It is unfortunate (that) the State Board didn’t choose to guide us through this decision,” Kellogg School District superintendent Dr. Nancy Larsen said. “With this decision, we are now on a week-to-week process of deciding where to go. With statistical models predicting a long-term social distancing recommendation to prevent the spread, we will continue to monitor and analyze the data on a daily basis and relay that information to everyone as decisions are made.”

Dr. Larsen sent out a media release to her students, their families, and her staff following the SBOE’s decision, where she stressed the part of the motion as it applied to local health officials.

The KSD school year is set to continue instruction through June 2, but now will be in a position where they must consider potentially reopening their buildings on a week-to-week basis depending on the decisions and information provided to them from local health officials.

“We must now rely on local medical professionals and ongoing, current statistics regarding the Coronavirus to make the decision to re-open buildings prior to the end of the school year,” Larsen said. “I emphasize that this will be a decision made by many professionals and our local school board. The decision will be a difficult one knowing that which decision we ultimately make will be favored by some and disliked by others.”

One of the more frustrating aspects for each district leader is that the criteria for re-opening a school is still being determined and will be decided upon by the SBOE in the coming days before being released to the public and health officials.

As of April 6, several milestone events for schools are also in limbo, including things like graduation ceremonies, prom, and Spring sports.

Those situations will be addressed and decisions will likely be made by each individual district.

Along with the digital curriculum, all three schools plan to continue their meal delivery services throughout the school year- which is one of the key components lined out in the SBOE’s initial decision to enter the soft closure.

Wallace School District superintendent Dr. Bob Ranells was brief, but candid, when speaking on the decision and he wanted to reassure people that despite the "new" way of doing things, students will still be benefiting from the efforts done by the schools.

“We are going to continue things the way we have been doing them, either through virtual learning or with packets of information,” Ranells said. “We are going to live and learn through this. But rest assured that learning will continue even if the buildings are closed.”

Each School District will continue to distribute information via telephone as well as through their various social media outlets.

For more specific information, please contact your local school district. For the Kellogg School District call (208) 784-1348, for the Mullan School District call (208) 744-1126, and for the Wallace School District call (208) 753-4515.