With the fall semester rapidly approaching, three private Christian K-12 schools on the Palouse say they are carefully preparing to resume fully in-person classes as infection rates continue to surge both nationally and regionally.
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Leaders with Logos School, a classical Christian school in Moscow, said it too plans to resume face-to-face instruction. Logos Superintendent Larry Stephenson pointed out his school was able to reopen during the last month of school for the spring semester and no cases of COVID-19 were confirmed among students, faculty or staff.
Stephenson, Goetze and Beller agreed that the relatively small class size of their respective schools helped with observing health and safety guidelines handed down by the state and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
All three administrators said they plan to deploy similar strategies to help curb the potential spread of disease in the fall as well. This includes requiring masks or face shields in school facilities, keeping class cohorts as isolated as possible from one another and disinfecting classrooms and frequently touched surfaces. Stephenson said Logos has ordered about 1,000 masks and face shields for its students when they return for the first day of school Aug. 24.
“We’re just thinking things through, trying to be cautious and yet in focus on what we do, and that’s educate kids in the classroom — that’s our priority,” he said.
PCS and Logos, which both serve secondary students as well as those in elementary school, said the sports season will likely look different as well. While Logos still plans to participate in events, he said the school will follow guidance from the Idaho High School Activities Association on how to do so safely.
Stephenson said Logos ran into challenges using teleconferencing services to run live classes. However, he said if closures were mandated once more, Logos educators would make it work with similar strategies used when schools were shut in the spring. These methods include sending packets of assignments home each week and recording video lessons for students to access at their convenience rather than delivering them live via Zoom.