HERMISTON — It won’t look like it usually does, but Hermiston School District Superintendent Tricia Mooney is still telling high school seniors to save the date for their June 4 graduation.

Mooney provided an update on the school district to the Hermiston City Council on Monday, and during the presentation she told councilors that the district was working to come up with a way to recognize seniors without breaking whatever social distancing rules are in place in the county by June.

“It won’t be a group. We won’t have all the seniors together in a room like has been traditional, but they will have an opportunity to walk across a stage and be handed their diploma in a cap and gown,” she said.

Students and their families should stay tuned for more details as the date draws closer.

Mooney said the change to distance learning to prevent the spread of COVID-19 has been a difficult one, and she has been encouraging teachers to prioritize “compassion and connection” as they guide students’ at-home learning.

“This is something none of us has ever done before,” she said.

The district has now handed out more than 2,400 Chromebooks to help students connect online with homework and video sessions, and Mooney announced they have now taken the next step in securing routers and Wi-Fi hotspots for students without internet to connect their Chromebooks to at home.

The routers have a radius of 100 to 150 yards. They are named HSD_Home and only district-issued Chromebooks can connect to them. There are routers located at:

• Vista Mobile Home Park (three different spots)
• Ridgeway Apartments
• Fifth Street and Madrona Avenue
• Northwest Sixth Street between Hartley and Ridgeway avenues
• 1200 block of West Ridgeway Avenue

Mooney said other routers have been located in homes where students from several surrounding homes can use them, and the district has 40 “hot spots” that can be checked out to students in need who live out in the county.

“Obviously, in a time when everyone is looking for routers and hot spots we had to wait a little while to get ours, but that is great news,” she said.

Mooney said the district has now delivered more than 45,000 meals to students and are up to about 2,000 per day.

However, funding for that service will end as the school year ends in June. At that point, the district will switch to its usual summer meal service program, which will require students to visit one of several meal sites around town to pick up the meal themselves.

“As we get that finalized with the Department of Education and get some approvals, we will be doing a large push to get that information out to parents because that is going to be a huge adjustment for the parents that now are relying on that meal delivery, when we can no longer do that,” Mooney said.

In answer to questions from the council about school funding, Mooney said on a statewide call with superintendents recently they were told that all state agencies were planning on an 8.5% reduction for the biennium, which since the biennium is already halfway over, “feels like 17%.”

The Oregon Legislature had previously passed a new corporate activity tax to give schools a major boost in funding, but Mooney said it’s unlikely now that districts will see that money for the next school year. She said the district would honor its contracts with social workers and other positions it had already hired.

“We’re going to be able to keep all those positions, but we’re going to look at other areas where we can tighten our belt,” she said.

Despite the setback, Mooney said the district does have financial reserves and other tools to weather the storm of COVID-19.