A student picks out his locker at the new Astoria Middle School building during an open house on Wednesday.

At the last minute, Tania Regier’s daughter decided her desire to see her friends outweighed her dislike of wearing a mask to school.

Regier’s three children spent much of the last school year enrolled in the Warrenton-Hammond School District’s online academy. For her family, it felt safer and — as shifting coronavirus case metrics dictated how and when schools were able to open for in-person classes — more predictable.

This year, two of Regier’s children will return to classes in Warrenton school buildings.

It’s a decision Regier left largely up them, but it was an uncomfortable call — a discomfort she knows she shares with other parents who debated whether to send their kids back to in-person school.

Virus case numbers rose sharply in Clatsop County over the summer with the arrival of the highly contagious delta variant, and the number of COVID-related hospitalizations and deaths ticked upward. At the same time, parents and educators grappled with growing concerns about the students left behind in online classrooms, the difficulty in teaching young students from behind a mask, and other issues associated with trying to educate during a pandemic.

“As parents, our general consensus is we don’t know,” Regier said. “We don’t know what we don’t know. We’re all hoping we made the best decision, but we don’t know.”

North Coast school districts are beginning the school year amid some now familiar uncertainties. It is a “back to normal” that is still anything but normal.

Masks, social distancing and other pandemic-related requirements remain in place. These are not ideal, but over the last school year, school districts have had time to hone these protocols and students and staff have had time to adjust, superintendents told The Astorian.

At districts where school was in person for much of the last school year, many students have already become used to wearing masks in class.

Superintendents say they are confident about their district’s response plans when there are, inevitably, virus cases among staff and students. Last school year, when some districts began the school year online and others began in person with limited hours, schools saw a smattering of virus cases. No major reported outbreaks were tied to schools.

On Friday, Bill Fritz, superintendent with Knappa School District, announced the district’s new preschool program would shut down until Sept. 20 because of a virus case and a report of a separate close contact case. It is a disappointment, but safety comes first, he told The Astorian.

Fritz said one of the biggest challenges over the course of the school year will be responding to unforeseen mandates from the state and the unpredictability of the course of the virus in communities.

“We are also concerned about continuity of instruction for those who may need to quarantine,” he said.

Many school districts had hoped to begin the school year with masks recommended but not required. Superintendents said they knew that any decision either way about masks would be off-putting to some families.

But then in August, Gov. Kate Brown took the issue out of their hands. She announced that students and school staff would be required to wear masks inside school buildings. She also announced a vaccine mandate for school employees, including teachers, a controversial decision.

At the same time, she urged school districts to return to in-person classes. Both the vaccine mandate and the mask requirement were intended to provide a safe learning environment for children, the governor said at the time.

Astoria Superintendent Craig Hoppes said his priority is to have students in school buildings. The school district had opted to begin the prior school year online and only began to slowly bring the bulk of students back to in-person classes later in the school year.

Hoppes hopes parents who may have decided to keep students enrolled online again this year will be encouraged as the school year progresses and decide to send their children back for in-person learning.

For North Coast school districts, Brown’s vaccine mandate has so far not resulted in walkouts, protests or staff shortages, but school leaders say they are still waiting to see the full effect of the mandate on employees. Unless they have an approved medical or religious exemption, school staff will need to be fully vaccinated by Oct. 18.

Warrenton Superintendent Tom Rogozinski expects to know more about how the mandate will impact his staff in the next couple of weeks.

For now, the focus is on the students, he said. There have been national concerns about learning loss among students because of the pandemic’s disruption to their education — and Rogozinski shares those concerns.

“But first and foremost,” he said, “we need to make sure our kids are socially and emotionally supported … It’s been a tough couple years for kids and we need to, I think, honor that they’re going to come in with some of those other areas needing to be addressed first.”