PENDLETON — If Oregon’s K-12 students return to school April 29, they will have lost a month and a half’s worth of instruction time. Those lost hours are especially critical to high school seniors, who need enough credits to graduate on time.

That fact wasn’t lost on the region’s superintendents, and according to InterMountain Education Service District Superintendent Mark Mulvihill, some administrators wanted to bring seniors back to school early so they could make up the credits they missed out on.

The state won’t let schools unlock their doors for seniors, but the Oregon Department of Education plans to address the issue later this week.

In an interview Tuesday, Mulvihill said school officials have focused on the closure’s impact on seniors from the start of the shutdown, which Gov. Kate Brown initiated on March 16 to slow the spread of COVID-19.

“That’s the top priority we have, amongst all of this unknown,” he said.

Mulvihill said Colt Gill, the state superintendent of public instruction, is working toward a plan that would allow the class of 2020 to graduate this summer.

Mulvihill anticipates that the credit requirement will be lowered and some of the subject requirements like English and math may also be changed to match a truncated school year.

Depending on future events, he said superintendents will have plans for either schools returning in April or the cancellation of the rest of the school year, a step some states like Virginia and Kansas have already taken.

“It’s crossing our minds how compromised the 19-20 school year will be, and we need to make sure we don’t compromise any aspect of 2021,” he said.

The Oregon Department of Education was mum about the issue Tuesday, with a spokesman saying the department expects to issue guidance about graduation “this week.”

Matt Yoshioka, the Pendleton School District’s director of curriculum, instruction, and assessment, said Pendleton students should be in good shape since the high school sets up children to earn a minimum of seven credits per year. While the state sets the minimum number of credits at 24, Pendleton high schoolers are projected to earn between 28 and 32 credits.

But Yoshioka said the credit situation is different from student to student, and high school counselors recently assembled a spreadsheet of every senior and what they need to do to graduate.

If the state changes graduation requirements, Yoshioka said the Pendleton School Board will need to meet to change the district’s rules to reflect the alteration.

Beyond graduation requirements, high school staff usually spend the spring helping some students prepare for college.

Yoshioka said the district is continuing to honor transcript requests through the shutdown, and staff may need to connect with students during the break to coordinate college and financial aid applications.

While the state will clarify how graduation requirements will work in the age of COVID-19, each district will have to figure out how to do a graduation ceremony when the state’s social distancing mandate is indefinite.

Umatilla School District Superintendent Heidi Sipe said in an email the district will be “unlikely to have our ceremony as originally planned in May; however, we’re committed to holding some type of ceremony (possibly an online event with a follow-up ceremony after this all clears) later on.”

She said she has been working “many hours” with the Oregon Department of Education to help the state finalize a plan to allow seniors to still graduate, and the district will work with students to help them complete the new requirements.

As a mother of a senior herself, Hermiston School District Superintendent Tricia Mooney said she understands the questions and concerns parents have about seniors graduating on time.

“We’re getting them ready to leave the nest,” she said.

But she also wants to encourage Hermiston parents and students not to panic while the district waits for guidance from the state.

Mooney said the high school is asking seniors to put their college ambitions on pause right now, adding that colleges are also dealing with the fallout from the coronavirus and may not have the staff or the resources to process all the applications and queries they usually receive each spring.