SJSD Virtual Academy Enrollment (7-30-20)

SJSD Virtual Academy Enrollment (7-30-20)

But overall mostly cloudy skies.

I'll have a complete look at your up.>> schools across the country are still debating whether or not to have kids back inside the classroom.students in kansas won't start school until after labor day...and now students in the st.

Joseph school district can expect a delay in their start date too... yesterday... the st.

Joseph school district announced changes to their upcoming school year plans.

Kq2's kilee thomas joins us in studio with the latest.

Students in the st.

Joseph school district will have one more week of summer district announcing wednesday school is being pushed back one week...to august 31st.

And once the doors do open, masks will be required for students, staff and teachers.st.

Joseph school district officials say masking up is the right decision.

"we realize people aren't turning cartwheels about it."

District officials say in places where social distancing isn't possible, masks will be required.

"we will require masks for anyone in our buildings and both staff and students."

District administrators say they hear the other side of the mask debateand are trying to make mask free time.

"to be able to build in those times where we can have some breaks because nobody wants to sit in a mask for 6-7 hours."there will be mask exceptions for students with disabilities as well as leniency for younger kids for everyone else..."if they want to be at school, if they want to play sports, if they want to stay healthy, let's do what we have to do to help everybody out."as for the one week delay...van zyle says the district needs more time getting the virtual academy ready.

The amount of students signing up to learn virtually this fall reaching 1,800 students so far "the number of kids makes it look like we're gonna need more teachers trained and wanna give them the opportunity to do that."

Although the numbers seems high, the numbers resemble other districts around us and in some larger districts as well, they're seeing 13%, 15%, 18% of their kids so we're pretty much in line with that."

School officials say the school district's decision to mask up all comes down to guidance from those who know best"we receive almost a bombardment of information.

So, we take all that information and we have to make it work for our school district for our school district because we aren't new york city and we're not florida, we're st.

Joseph, missouri."

"and everything is really leaning and guiding us towards masks.

Masks are you know the thing that is something we can do to try to provide that extra layer besides cleaning and disinfecting.

Masks and social distancing are the two things along with hand washing that people keep coming back to."

For those students learning online be required be.

Every student they signed up for the virtual academy still will need to get their necessary vaccines in order to register for school reporting in studio, kilee thomas, kq2 news even though the school district has