GRANT COUNTY — With the school year fast approaching, and a strong suggestion from state officials that Grant County is not ready for in-person education, more school districts are opting for all-online starts to the school year.

In Quincy, district officials had worked over the summer to game out three different models, including 100 percent remote learning, 100 percent in-person learning and hybrid learning. However, due to a spike in Grant County coronavirus cases that began in June, Superintendent John Boyd proposed to parents Thursday that classes would begin all-online.

Hoping to ease parents’ concerns that the coming school year wouldn’t repeat the difficulties of the last, Boyd told attendees of a conference call Thursday that he guaranteed there would be no comparable barriers created by technology problems. All students will be issued laptops and earbuds, and internet hot spots will be reactivated, Boyd said, with a hotline for dealing with technology problems and specialized supports for special education, counseling, ESL and other needs.

District officials have previously stated that the hot spots, which utilize cell service to allow nearby users to access the internet, did not always work effectively in remote areas of the district with poor cell coverage. It was not immediately clear how the district would address this issue, and officials did not respond to further questions before deadline.

The district is prepared to change its teaching model, however, if Grant County’s rate of coronavirus infections were to drop, district officials added, with a hybrid of online and in-person teaching likely to be the first step to bringing children back into the classroom if conditions improve.

Ephrata School District Superintendent Tim Payne presented a similar plan for the school year in an Aug. 7 statement published on the district’s website, laying out a distance learning plan with additional in-person supports for certain students.

As in Quincy, students with the Ephrata School District will each be outfitted with laptops and are expected to participate in online classes Monday through Friday. But for students with additional needs, including those who are enrolled in special education or highly capable programs, don’t have internet at home, are homeless or need other specialized support, limited in-person instruction can be held outside the classroom.

Several days before the start of classes, the district will also be holding student and family orientations to hand out laptops and communicate expectations around the upcoming school year, according to the statement.

In the Soap Lake School District, Superintendent Sunshine Pray wrote in a mid-July letter to families that the district was considering a mix of models. In one model, students would work largely from home and attend classes online, coming into the school building briefly on Fridays to connect with teachers and to take tests.

In the second model, which more closely resembles a “hybrid model,” students would attend in-person classes four days a week for three hours either in the morning or afternoon and would complete the remainder of their coursework online.

While students are in classrooms, they would be required to maintain a six-foot distance and wear face masks, Pray stated.

“I have heard your concerns about students wearing masks,” Pray wrote. “This is not my personal choice; however, all public school districts are legally required to comply with guidelines made by (state education and health officials), and their county health district.”

In a video published on social media last Tuesday, Pray told parents that the district was considering adopting both models for the upcoming school year, allowing parents to choose which model best suited their child.

The next day, however, state officials announced guidelines that recommended schools in counties with high rates of coronavirus infections not open their doors to in-person learning. Grant County exceeds the threshold for the strongest of those recommendations. As of Sunday evening, the district had not published anything either reiterating or recalibrating its earlier commitments.

None of the school districts has finalized plans, which were drafted by each district’s superintendent but will likely be negotiated with teachers unions and must be approved by both their respective school boards and the health district in the coming weeks.