Machetanz Musk Ox begin 2020 school year together

WASILLA — Machetanz Elementary School students will enter through the doors of school on Wednesday after six long months without in-person instruction for Alaska students.

Principal Jen Dowd and her staff have put in time and effort over the summer to work to understand COVID-19 and its effect on schools and communicate that with parents. New safety precautions for students will start as soon as they step onto buses as masks will be required, seats will be assigned and dropoffs will be staggered to allow for distanced flow into school buildings. At Machetanz, 412 students have registered and 14 percent of those chose to receive their instruction remotely.

“I hope that we have laughter and we have joy and excitement for school. We haven’t seen our kids for six months. We miss them and we know that they miss us. We’re going to try to normalize all of this the best we can, and to normalize that it’s to continue to do what we do best which is make connections with kids and teach,” said Dowd. “We’re nervous but we’re excited.”

After the six-month long hiatus that started in spring break as the first positive cases of COVID-19 made the way into Alaska, Mat-Su Borough School District schools will reopen Wednesday and offer instruction as they never have before. Students attending school in person will be required to wear masks and social distance to the extent possible. Dowd ordered colored lanyards with clips that each student will wear with a color that corresponds to their cohort. The lanyard clips will also attach to students’ mask loops so that they will not fall to the ground when not being worn. Dowd also said that many teachers will be decorating and tie-dyeing their school district issued white masks with students as a fun activity for the first day of school.

“I’m trying to accommodate our parents, trying to accommodate staff and being flexible is the name of the game and really our staff has come together and we’re really in it together. We’re planning, we’re problem solving together and everyone’s being flexible,” said Dowd. “There’s nothing that could prepare you for something like this.”

MSBSD has released a district wide mitigation plan that is updated continually on their website. Each school principal has been tasked with providing their own mitigation plan for their individual school site. All of the school sites located within Wasilla and Palmer are currently listed under the ‘yellow’ category of medium risk. Alaska has 4,309 resident cases of COVID-19 and 5,110 total, with 3,031 active cases. On Monday, 50 new cases were reported statewide and 32 people are currently hospitalized. A total of 305,648 COVID-19 tests have been conducted in Alaska and 28 people have died. The Mat-Su Borough has an average of 16 cases over the last three days with 381 total positives and 292 active cases of COVID-19. A total of 19,485 tests have been conducted in the Mat-Su Borough. Wasilla has had 216 cases listed with 166 remaining active and Palmer has had 112 total cases of COVID-19 with 85 still active.

The MSBSD has required mask use for all students and staff in grades 3-12 and provided guidelines for students who do not comply with the mask mandate. Opening under ‘yellow,’ nonessential visitors will not be allowed inside Machetanz Elementary, providing another new feature for the opening of the 2020 school year.

“Parent dropoff and all parent pickup will take place outside. It will be curbside pickup so that’s going to be a unique challenge for parents that are used to just being able to come into the school,” said Dowd.

Dowd began communicating with parents in early July after registration opened. She held question and answer zoom calls with parents even before she knew all the answers to their questions, using parent concerns to guide their mitigation strategy. Dowd and Machetanz staff have been active in encouraging students to wear masks via Facebook posts, providing a picture and their reasoning. Dowd will host another zoom question and answer session one last time on Tuesday night before the doors reopen to students on Wednesday morning at Machetanz Elementary and all across the Valley. While 485 students had been projected to enroll at Machetanz, 412 have registered thus far. Of those, 57 are receiving remote education and 33 have chosen a hybrid model where they will attend a small group at the school building for one class period of two hours and fifteen minutes.

“Our families want kids in school and so we know that based on surveys that we did this summer and so being able to provide the hybrid model to try to bring some class sizes down and make some of those parents a little bit more comfortable that wanted their kids in school was beneficial,” said Dowd.

As the chair of Mat-Su Regional Medical Center’s COVID-19 response team, Dr. Tom Quimby and his wife Mandy also served on the Machetanz Elementary School Response Team as parent members.

“Dr. Quimby really was an excellent resource for us to have on our mitigation planning team because he talked about fomite a lot and it’s the cleaning of surfaces so we are at ease knowing that the majority of people that are getting sick it’s because of airborne and it’s not all the intense cleaning that we might need to do. So we are at ease with knowing kids are going to be in close contact at times and they’re going to be touching surfaces but if we can hand wash, we can physical distance as much as possible and wear masks, we should be pretty good,” said Dowd.