September 3, 2020

Dear ASD High School Families,

The Anchorage School District is opening full high school sports practices with limitations effective Friday, September 4, setting the stage for competitions to begin as early as next week. 

While the District continues to be at a High-Risk level based on the 14-day rolling average of new cases, ASD is confident, after consultation with state health officials and the Alaska State Activities Association, it can operate sports and activities safely, with minimal risk to student athletes, coaches, staff, and families.  

Sports and activities have a smaller, more controlled group setting than a large secondary-school academic setting, allowing for additional safety precautions and less co-mingling of students. Additionally, sports and activities are optional. If students, families or staff are not comfortable, they may choose not to participate. 

Based on conversations with ASAA and state health officials, ASD believes it can effectively limit the spread of the virus with its sport-specific mitigation plans. These plans were successfully employed this summer during out-of-season training sessions and resulted in no secondary virus transmissions to date. Should an outbreak occur related to sports or activities, ASD will address it on a case-by-case basis guided by its confirmed case matrix (see chart).

ASD plans to publish a revised competition schedule early next week. Looking forward to resuming competition, ASD will implement a number of additional safety measures: 

• Detailed safety mitigation plans (see below) will continue for each individual sport during both practice and competition. These plans address sanitation and hygiene protocols, health screening, equipment handling, athlete procedures, and crowd limitations. 
• ASD teams will only play other ASD teams during the regular season. Teams will not travel outside of Anchorage unless teams qualify for their state tournament.
• Spectators at official competitions will be limited to reduce the crowd size at each event. Each athlete will only receive two tickets per event, and the general public will not be admitted. Attendees will be required to follow screening protocols, wear face coverings, and observe physical distancing. 
• When possible, games will be web-streamed for public viewing. 

Fall sports allowed to begin full practices Friday, September 4, include cross country, swim/dive, tennis, volleyball, gymnastics, flag football, cheer, and football.  Rifle will begin its season Wednesday, September 9.

By all accounts, student athletes, coaches and parents have done an exceptional job in following these protocols, as athletes and coaches have remained safe. Furthermore, ASD appreciates the greater efforts throughout the community to reduce the spread of COVID-19. As we head into the Labor Day weekend, ASD encourages folks to celebrate with social distancing in mind so we can continue to maintain high school athletic programs for the youth in our community.

Sincerely,
ASD Secondary Education

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and health conditions in the Municipality of Anchorage, the District is currently operating in a high-risk condition. ASD opened the season by following guidelines for practice published for ASAA for high-risk. ASD will continue to work with the Municipality of Anchorage.  

ASAA’s high-risk guidelines for practice include:

• Required screening for all participants;
• Required use of masks by coaches and by athletes when not engaged in vigorous activity
• Outdoor conditioning with 10’ distance maintained between all individuals;
• Visual indicators of proper distancing required;

• Prior to sharing equipment, (including balls, bats, mats, etc.) 
  • give instructions to NOT touch your face 
  • give instructions on proper hand hygiene (especially before and after sharing equipment) 
  • participants must disinfect their hands 

• Equipment may be shared, however every 14 minutes 
• the equipment must be disinfected or replaced with a disinfected item 
• participants must disinfect their hands 
• Hand sanitizer should be plentiful and available to all participants
• No competition
• Outdoor practices are preferred with 10’ maintained between all individuals
• Indoor practices may occur with the following protocols in place 
  • Single entry/exit point 
  • Isolate practice area from rest of facility 
  • Individual skill development and conditioning only 
  • No contact, must maintain 10’ between all individuals 

All programs will operate under sport-specific ASD mitigation plans. These plans are posted to the ASD Sports & Activity website.

Students who wish to participate must register for a fall sport through their school of eligibility. Instructions for registering for fall sports can be found here.

Students who participate, even if the District remains in a conditioning-only status for the season, will be eligible to earn a PE waiver.

A revised competition schedule will be released for each sport when conditions allow.

The new competition schedule will not include any overnight travel and may limit competition to ASD schools playing locally against other ASD schools, depending on current conditions.

It is likely competition will resume without spectators or with the number of spectators significantly reduced (for example, a limit of two spectators per athlete).

ASD has installed camera systems in all high school gyms and in several football stadiums so that competition can be livestreamed. An attempt will be made to livestream events at other venues as well.

• Case numbers per 100,000 people in census area
• Percentage of positive tests that have been administered in census area
• Census area trending up or down in their fourteen and seven-day averages
• Ability to have a safe mitigation plan for the sport or activity to prevent community spread
• Ability to control the number of spectators to avoid community spread
• State and Municipal guidance and mandates
• Alaska School Activities Association (ASAA) guidance

• ASD acknowledges sports and activities are a significant part of the secondary school experience and produce many physical and mental health benefits for students.  
• While many of our secondary schools have more than 1000 students in the building on a daily basis when in full face-to-face operation, sports and activities naturally operate with much smaller student groupings.
• When intentionally scheduled by level (Varsity, JV, C), sports and activities can easily reduce student interaction to consistent groups of less than 50 students. 
• Sports are an “opt in” activity, not a graduation requirement; therefore, if a family has health concerns, they can choose not to participate, unlike school attendance that is required. 
• Under ASD’s summer contact mitigation plan, screening and distancing protocols were implemented and diligently followed by coaches. During this time, while individual positive cases of COVID-19 surfaced, there were no secondary positive cases, demonstrating that the mitigation protocols implemented by our coaches and athletes proved effective in limiting transmission.
• Youth sports organizations in our community have safely operated this summer, and continue to do so, with additional mitigation protocols in place.  ASD has partnered with several of these youth organizations to learn from their experience and to write mitigation plans that take into account the unique equipment and venues associated with each individual fall sport.
• The district has received an outpouring of correspondence from parents and students advocating for a high school fall sports season, and we are glad we are able to provide this opportunity. Whether we are able to move into regular practices with shared equipment and full contact, and whether we are able to host competitions this fall, will largely depend on the COVID-19 health status in the municipality in the coming weeks.
• The district is once again encouraging all community members to observe the Mayor’s health mandates to help reduce the spread of COVID-19 so our student athletes can enjoy the benefits of participating in school-related sports and activities this fall and eventually return to school in person.