Kiski Area veterans celebration goes virtual

Kiski Area School District’s annual Veterans Day celebration will go on despite covid-19 and public health restrictions.

This year, though, it will take place online.

“It’s too important not to do,” said Dan Smith, assistant principal at Kiski Area Upper Elementary School. Smith said the district knew about four or five weeks ago that an in-person event would be too much of a health and safety concern, so they would have to get creative.

The video will be available at a Google site the district created and will go live no later than Wednesday, Nov. 11 — Veterans Day.

The event, normally a huge assembly at Kiski Area Upper Elementary School that last year attracted around 75 veteran attendees, honors service members through slide shows, speeches and performances, as well as a luncheon.

Last year’s turnout was an all-time high, according to the event’s organizer, Rebekah Stankowski, an Upper Elementary social studies teacher. But this year, the district is preparing an elaborate video for a virtual celebration.

“I’m sure it’s going to be different,” Stankowski said. “(The veterans) are always so appreciative, and I’m sure they’re going to understand this is a unique situation. … Even though we’re in the midst of a pandemic and the world is completely different, our little neck of the woods is still trying to appreciate them.”

Stankowski said there has been a massive collaborative effort across the district, including teachers and students, to pull together the presentation.

She has led planning for the event for 16 of its more than 20 years. It wasn’t clear this year for a time whether the school would be able to host such a large in-person gathering amid the covid-19 pandemic.

“People, I think, want to make sure we’re not forgetting about the veterans in the day-to-day things,” she said. “We still need to maintain as much normalcy and day-to-day life as we possibly can … to make sure we’re still teaching about sacrifice and history and love of country.”

Smith compared the video to the presentations given at this year’s political national conventions, in which a moderator directed viewers from one virtual speaker to the next.

Smith will be the moderator for Kiski Area’s video, and he will guide viewers through segments including musical performances, pre-recorded interviews with veterans, speeches and a student-produced tribute video.

Students will offer individual thank-yous to veterans they know personally. One clip will highlight the district’s new Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps program, which began classes this school year.

Overall, Smith said, students from across the district are contributing pieces to the presentation, amounting to between 100 and 150 individual clips.

For at least one musical performance, students are individually recording their parts on their own instruments. In production, all of their individual recordings will be put together to sound like they’re performing in unison.

“We tried to watch and learn how events that are normally held in person and have a very specific purpose (are adjusted) and tried to emulate, as best as we can, the things they were able to do and accomplish,” Smith said.

Students are also sending out hand-written letters and cards to local veterans who would normally attend the assembly in-person, which is typically between 50 and 60 people, Stankowski said.

“Veterans are real-life heroes,” Smith said. “They deserve every bit of gratitude, every bit of celebration we can provide.

“Things being canceled makes it that much more important to put this program together.”