After more than a year of students attending school mostly remotely, the San Juan Island School District returned to in-person school on Sept. 2.
While still having to follow the current government mask mandate, all K-12 students are able to learn with their peers in the classroom while masked and distanced, but no masks will be enforced outside.
“It will be so nice for students to see each other’s faces again,” Secondary principal Martin Yablonovsky said, continuing on to stress the importance of seeing faces to him so he can get to know the students better.
SJISD Superintendent Fred Woods added, “We are going to be as safe as we can and we are extremely excited that school is starting and students are coming to the building. Not completely back to normal. It is not a return to 2019, but we are moving in that direction at least.”
If parents are concerned with their student returning to in-person school, Yablonovsky said that remote learning will be available through the Griffin Bay School.
To make sure that the students and teachers are kept safe, the schools will continue to follow sanitation procedures, including regular cleaning of the air filtration system. The school will also provide masks and students will have a seating chart in each class. In case there is a COVID case, the seating chart will make it easier to track down who was exposed. The school is certified to administer rapid covid tests, but they can only test students with parent approval.
Woods said he hopes that if there are any COVID cases at the school that they can manage it by quarantining small exposed groups rather than putting the whole school back to online learning.
Yablonovsky noted that while the school will keep vaccination records on file, vaccine information is kept private. While there are no COVID vaccination requirements for students, teachers have to either show proof of vaccination or religious or medical exemption by Oct. 18, according to the government mandate. The same bullying policies will be implemented at the school as in previous years while keeping an eye out for any bullying regarding being vaccinated or not vaccinated.
Physical education will still be a masked class if taking place indoors; if the class is done outdoors, no masks are required.
The only time indoors students will not be required to wear masks is in the lunchroom, which is another big change toward normalcy. Last year, all lunches were bagged and provided to students outside of the lunchroom. One thing that Yablonovsky is excited about is that all the lunches are free this year after the school received a federal grant.
“We have some of the best school lunches,” said Yablonovsky. “I’ve worked for other school districts before and these lunches are definitely quality compared to others I’ve seen.”
However, Yablonovsky did say that the school will need to figure out how to coordinate the lunchroom space so that students can still safely distance themselves from each other.
Along with that, all school sports are back this year. If a sporting event takes place outdoors, no masks are required for players or spectators. If an event takes place indoors, masks will be required for spectators. There will also be no vaccinated sections for indoor or outdoor events.
Overall, both Woods and Yablonovsky are looking forward to having students at the school once again and they encourage any parents to feel free to come forward with any questions or concerns they may have.
“What we are excited about is that the students are in school. It’s what the teachers want to see. We want to be with the students. That is the number one thing,” Woods said.
