Jefferson City School district polling students, parents on graduation preference

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.

The Jefferson City Board of Education meet Monday for the first time since Gov. Mike Parson made the decision to close school buildings across the state for the rest of the school year to fight COVID-19.

The board was streamed virtually at 6 p.m. Monday. The livestream can be watched on the district's page at this link.

The agenda included an update on how the district is handling COVID-19 from several officials, including the superintendent and chief of learning.

The superintendent Larry Linthicum said the district has a running list of unanswered questions from parents and student's they are working to answer.

"We have a lot of questions and we know folks have a lot of questions," Linthicum said. "Just so many things that we are working through and we'll communicate and be proactive about."

One question was about events, such as graduation and prom. The district still has plans to hold graduation on May 17th, but Linthicum said that was probably not realistic.

The district sent out a survey to parents about how they would like to see graduation handled during this crisis. Families were asked to rank the following:

• Cancel graduation
• Keep graduation as long as we can have it sometime in May
• Keep graduation as long as we can have it by the end of June
• Keep graduation even if we need to have it in July
• Keep graduation but put it online for students and families to participate remotely

Right now, the district says about 200 seniors and 300 hundred parents have taken the survey. With these results, a majority of senior favored

The district said it will continue to monitor the results, and hope to get at least half of the senior to respond before making a decision. They said parents and student polled also favored having 2 or 3 weeks notice if graduation is rescheduled.

The board of education is also set to discuss guidance from the Missouri School Boards' Association on graduation policy

According to the report, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education is working with districts to make sure seniors can graduate on time.

The department has waived some requirements, extended timelines and worked with the governor to waive some statutes.

The superintendent mentioned they are still looking at the options for summer school. During the financial report, the CFO Jason Hoffman said the district would take a financial hit if summer school was canceled altogether.