Kristin Bigler Crestview Heights School kindergarten teachers Melissa Butler, left, and Melaia Kilduff greeted students and their families in September as they arrived to pick up online instruction materials. On Monday and Tuesday they will get to have students in their classrooms.

By DANA TIMS/YachatsNews.com

Lincoln County’s incoming kindergarteners, aided by dropping cases countywide of new virus infections, will begin limited in-person instruction starting Monday and Tuesday.

Limited numbers of students enrolled in career technical education and special education programs will also start the new school year in person, following the months-long shutdown triggered last March when widespread outbreaks of coronavirus nationally closed virtually every school in the country.

“This is our first foray into having students back on campus,” Lincoln County School District Superintendent Karen Gray told county commissioners during a meeting this week. “And we’re very excited about that.”

Reopening the district’s school doors to the first small wave of its nearly 5,500 students will occur because the county has met strict guidelines put in place by Gov. Kate Brown and the state Department of Education, Gray said. Once one of Oregon’s hotspots, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Lincoln County has dropped sharply since the summer and now is averaging just six cases a week.

The state is currently requiring counties to have no more than 10 positive cases per 100,000 residents in order to open to in-person instruction for children in grades 4-12, or up to 30 cases per 100,000 for younger students, with some exceptions. However, regardless of how individual Oregon counties are doing as far as positive coronavirus cases, contact tracing and other factors go, there’s a requirement that the state’s test positivity rate be below 5% for three consecutive weeks — though that metric was suspended in September as wildfires interfered with testing. Gov. Kate Brown said Tuesday that her office and the Oregon Health Authority is considering changing that statewide metric.

Even so, only half of the Lincoln County district’s kindergarten students will receive in-person instruction on any given day to ensure that physical distancing requirements are maintained.

The first cohort of kindergarteners, using the so-called hybrid model of in-person attendance, will attend school Mondays and Thursdays, with the remaining group showing up for instruction Tuesdays and Fridays.

Those students, along with all of district’s other students, will receive instruction virtually, from their homes, on the other weekdays.

Gray told the commissioners she is hopeful that continued low rates of infection will allow older students to start returning, as well.

“And then we can begin bringing back another grade and another grade and another grade,” she said. “Our goal is by the time we hit the new year, we’ve gone fully hybrid in all grades K through 12.”

Older students taking career technical education courses that require hands-on experiences for certification will also begin classes Monday. However, they will be limited to 10 students for most programs, and, using the same hybrid model, will only be allowed on campus for a total of two hours a day.

Gray announced that athletics, broken into “mini-seasons,” also starts Monday.

Season One will begin with strength and conditioning workouts led by coaches. As workouts progress, school staff will continue to evaluate the district’s ability to use equipment, indoor spaces and, possibly, in-county competitions prior to Season Two beginning in December, Gray said.

The aftermath of the Sept. 7-8 wildfire that swept through the Otis area continues to be felt, she said. Of the total 358 district students living in the small rural community, at least 57 are now homeless. Many of those, Gray said, are still living in local hotels or residing with relatives elsewhere in the state.

“The time is coming where they’ll need to go somewhere else to go,” she said, adding that district personnel are working with the Red Cross to figure out alternative housing options for those displaced students.

“We’re all dealing with situations we’ve never had to deal with,” Gray said. “Somehow, we’re all getting through it together.”