BOISE, Idaho — One of the questions every parent has been asking lately is what will school look like in the fall amid the coronavirus pandemic?
The Boise School District is giving us a good idea of what to expect.
The district has put together an all-encompassing, district-wide plan for reopening.
As part of that, they produced and posted a video on their website.
The video lays out the guidelines and safety precautions students and parents, teachers and staff can expect when the doors open on Aug. 17.
In the video the narrator says "Teachers and students will be trained on four safety strategies as soon as the school year starts: Physical distancing, hand washing, respiratory etiquette and mask use."
The video also shows how and when high-touch areas such as desks, keyboards, door knobs and handrails will be sanitized, that desks will be rearranged for proper social distancing, that each student will use a personal water bottle rather than the water fountains, that visitors will only be allowed in with an appointment and other safety measures.
Boise School District Public Affairs Administrator Dan Hollar says the district has also put together specific plans for each and every one of its 51 school buildings and programs.
"It allows for the individual school, as it should, because each of our school facilities, the physical school itself, they're different from one another," Hollar said. "So physical distancing in one school may look different because of the configuration of the hallway, the configuration of a classroom. But we are allowing our principals, as we should, to put those individual pandemic plans together. And again, those are all online so people can click on those and find out how that is going to be handled at their individual school."
Hollar says the district is also buying 90,000 masks for the staff and students, if they need one. The district will be adhering to the city of Boise's mask mandate.
The district also created the Boise Online School for students whose parents aren't comfortable sending them to class during the pandemic, as well as for students with other reasons not to go to traditional school.
Registration for the online option is underway until July 31, and it is proving to be a popular option. In the first four days of registration 1,205 of the 25,500 students in the district signed up.
Hollar appeared on our one-hour Viewpoint special Thursday night focusing on back to school plans, challenges and concerns.
The other guests were Idaho Education Association President Layne McInelly, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Sherri Ybarra, State Board of Education President Debbie Critchfield and Greg Wilson, the Senior Education Policy Advisor for Governor Brad Little.
Watch it here.
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