MOSES LAKE — Officials with Moses Lake School District are working to make sure school restarts next fall in “as normal conditions as possible,” though no one knows yet if there will be fall sports such as football.

“We are focusing on our reopening efforts,” said Superintendent Josh Meek during an online meeting of the Moses Lake School Board on Thursday evening. “The best-case scenario is kids in school, but we’re not in a place where school as normal will happen without a lot of things in place.”

The MLSD’s roughly 9,000 students were all sent home on March 17 when Gov. Jay Inslee closed schools across the state in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Several weeks ago, state schools Superintendent Chris Reykdal announced that schools would reopen in the fall, though districts would have to implement additional precautions, such as social distancing in classrooms and the wearing of masks.

“This is a big beast to take on,” he said. “There will be a lot of change.”

Meek said the district currently has a task force looking at how to restart school in the fall, especially sticky issues such as transportation and wearing masks.

Meek said there was not a lot of support in the community for “goofy things” such as rotating schedules or sending kids to school in batches, but he noted that in a conversation with Reykdal that the guidance from the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) is more rules than suggestions.

“He said we will be wearing masks when we return to school,” Meek said.

The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association has also handed out rules involving how sports will be played this fall — including, for example, the size of the small groups practicing and how often a football would need to be sanitized — though Meek said “it’s too early to say if fall sports are happening or not.”

“This is going to be a challenge, especially in a county seeing a surge of cases,” Meek said.

Board members also learned Thursday that MLSD’s three middle schools are all going to be very nearly at 100 percent capacity this fall no matter how the district reshapes school attendance boundaries.

According to projections provided to the district by GuideK12, a software system the MLSD uses to track demographics and draw school attendance boundaries, 2,143 middle schoolers are expected next fall. One proposal using the most recent projections to redraw the attendance boundaries would put Endeavor Middle School at 99 percent capacity with 322 students, Chief Moses Middle School at 95 percent with 1,029 students, and Frontier at 107 percent of capacity with 792 students.

“The middle schools are all at or near capacity,” Meek said. “We knew this was coming.”

After concerns from board members, Meek said it would be possible to shift students, likely from Frontier to Chief Moses.

“I can’t vote for a proposal that puts one of the middle schools over capacity,” said board member Bryce McPartland. He added that it was important for the district to use all of its resources as efficiently as it can.

The proposal to redraw attendance boundaries for elementary and middle schools was set aside until district officials can come up with a plan that doesn’t send so many students to Frontier.

“Redistricting is tough, and it’s going to be tough for a lot of people,” McPartland said. “A lot of people will be unhappy, and one of them may be me.”