Around 100 students started remote classes in Kake on Monday (8-31-20). The school will remain fully remote until the community sees no confirmed coronavirus cases for two weeks straight. The small, Kupreanof Island community has reported 16 total cases in the last three weeks, according to data from SEARHC. KCAW’s Erin McKinstry spoke with Kake City School District Superintendent Rich Catahay about the school’s plan to balance educational needs and community health and safety concerns.
KCAW: It sounds like you’re going to be starting in the red zone, the high-risk zone, so that’s fully remote.
RC: Yeah, it’s very unfortunate to tell you the truth. We would rather see our students come into our buildings again and to have in-person education and to deliver instruction that way. But with our COVID situation right now, we are in red. So having to be in a small community, we are making sure that even with one case in the community, we are…to ensure that we have a good way to deliver education and to keep the community safe.
KCAW: Yeah. So starting out being fully remote, what will that look like? What sort of platform will you be using? What will, generally, the students’ days look like?
RC: So, we had this back in March. Our staff had really stepped up, and they’ve done a wonderful job in delivering a remote education. We were very successful, even though we haven’t done it before. But again, like everything else, there’s some areas that we can improve on. So, now that we are in red, and we are in the same situation where we were in March. But in a different way. A little more experienced. We have other things that we could look into to ensure that we deliver remote learning in a little more of an intentional way. And so our students will have a little more of a quality education even though it’s remote learning.
KCAW: Yeah, so will students be tuning in over Zoom or Google Meet or how will that look?
RC: So, it’s a combination–blended learning. Where we have Zoom, we are very conscious of the fact that some age groups would require just a limited time in Zoom. And then in-between that, we would also send work home.
KCAW: Have there been concerns at all about students who may not have internet access or the appropriate technology to be able to tune in remotely? Is that something the district has been dealing with at all?
RC: Oh, yes. That’s something that we’re working on, and we hope to get some funding from OVK, our tribal organization here, or from the city to ensure that those kids have internet access. And we want to ensure that they have access to the same education as everybody else.
KCAW: So, this is more about the green and yellow zones, which at the start you won’t be operating in, but I was looking through the plan and just noticed that the schedules for kids can be really kind of complicated. I just wondered how you’ve talked about helping parents and students keep track of when they need to be at the school and where they need to be and all of that because it’s a lot of different schedules.
RC: Oh, yeah that’s the hard part. And it takes a lot of coordinating and collaboration with our parents. And we will continue to work on that piece as well just in case. So that we would hopefully slide right in to green or yellow to ensure that the students are…their education is not interrupted.
Kake City School District’s full Smart Start Plan can be found here. A list of plans from around the state can be found here. Erin McKinstry is a Report for America corps member.
