The Tamaqua Area School District auxiliary committee approved the school’s updated Return to Play Plan, which includes tickets to games for families of spring-sport athletes.

Each spring athlete will receive four tickets to each home game and two for an away game.

“It makes it a lot easier when you’re outside,” Superintendent Ray Kinder said. “So many people have endured so much - the more that we can provide, we want to.

“But like anything else, it’s a balancing act. It’s constantly a lot of analysis,” Kinder said.

“We believe that we’ll be able to do this, but we want to take it slow and make sure that we’re doing it safely and somewhat conservatively to start. These kids have been absolute troopers with what they’ve had to deal with. Anything we can do to support them we’re going to try to do.”

Standardized testing

Tamaqua will have its standardized testing in the spring as scheduled. Kinder said there was an option to push it back to the fall.

“Essentially, being a full return all year long, we don’t believe that a three-month break and a quick refresher course at the beginning (of next year) is going to help with retention,” Kinder said.

The tests will help the district to gauge the effects of the pandemic on learning.

“If we see drastic drops in test scores, we understand the task in front of us to try and fix that. Conversely, if things are relatively good, we’ll know the things we’re doing are working and we can continue on that path. It’s valuable feedback to have moving into next year.”