We made the decision yesterday to not play our scheduled football games against Homedale (V) and Emmett (FR) and not to participate in our dual swim meet against Centennial. We want to make sure that you understand the rationale behind our decision since several parents have written emails objecting to our decision and/or asking us to reverse the decision.

First of all, the policy outlined in our Instructional and Operational Handbook, and approved by our BK Board on August 4th, states that as long as we are in Category 3 (Red) – which we still are in Ada County – we will not play games against other schools. We can practice and have intrasquad games, but not cross school games.

We know kids really want to play and it is part of our mission (spirit, mind, and body) to provide this activity. Some schools are playing while in the red (Kuna and now West Ada). This is even more complicated because the teams we have on our schedule for football (Homedale and Emmett) are both in the orange category (medium risk) and both communities do not have mask mandates. Also, an additional consideration was that the Treasure Valley Catholic Schools (TVCS) Monday cancelled all of their games/competitions until out of the red category.

The decision to “play or not to play” this week was a difficult decision and one that will be evaluated on a week to week basis given the circumstances surrounding the decision. For the current week, the decision was made after many, many hours of deliberation and discussion to postpone competition for at least another week. In the end, we do not want to jeopardize the success we have had with students back in school by taking unnecessary risks. Especially when we will be bringing most everyone back next Tuesday for full-time, in person learning. This one set of games, particularly in a sport where there is so much contact and in non-mask areas, is not worth potentially harming the first priorities of our mission – the education and development of the mind and spirit of our children. Thank you for your understanding and we would strongly encourage our community to move forward. We will not be revisiting this decision for this week.