Students and staff at the Bristol Bay Borough School have gone through a lot this year from the trials of remote learning to attending class in fish processing facilities and churches. The school held its first classes in the building last week.Read More
2:55
If you ask the Bristol Bay Borough school superintendent, Bill Hill, about what it means to have the school building open for classes again, one word describes it best:
“We’re all really super excited about having the students back in school, he said. I think the students are excited, the teachers are excited, the parents are excited and the community’s excited. It’s a really great thing.”
That excitement is partly because it’s been a long wait. The school switched to remote learning at the start of the pandemic a year ago.
Since then, it has held small classes in the cafeteria and tried to juggle a mix of remote and in-person learning. But for the most part kids have been learning from home for a year.
Health organizations around Bristol Bay started to roll out the vaccine at the end of last year; in most communities, you can now get the vaccine if you are 18 years old or older.
Susie Jenkins-Brito puts a bandage on the arm of Kristin Smeaton, who had just received a dose of Moderna s COVID-19 vaccine. Feb. 13, 2021.
Credit Izzy Ross/KDLG
Around 1,800 people in Bristol Bay have received both doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. That s nearly a quarter of the region s population; according to the state Department of Labor estimates for 2020, about 7,200 people live in Bristol Bay.
As of Monday, the Bristol Bay Area Health Corporation has administered the first dose of the vaccine to 1,795 people; 1,159 people have received the second dose.