Temperature checks, staggered schedules? How will Fayette students stay safe in fall?

Fayette Superintendent Manny Caulk says school district officials face “unprecedented” times and questions in looking at how to start school in a safe way in the upcoming school year.

Issues under consideration include whether to take the temperatures of students and staff with infrared thermometers, how to achieve social distancing in a classroom and on school buses, possibly having more nurses on hand in schools, and having students attending school on alternate days, Caulk said at the May board planning meeting last week.

“We are certainly looking at everything,” Caulk said. “We could start out face to face and end up with intermittent school closures. “

As Kentucky school districts attempt to plan for the start of the next school year without knowing how the COVID-19 pandemic will evolve, the Kentucky Department of Education said Tuesday that it will provide guidance for several possibilities for reopening schools. Students in Kentucky haven’t attended in-person classes since mid-March and will be learning from home through this month in the state’s non-traditional instruction program.

The Fayette school district has convened three “think tanks” of staff and board members to help make decisions. One is looking at start dates and other issues about what schools will look like in the fall, another is dealing with summer learning and another will make decisions on feeding students.

Last week alone, the district served 40,000 meals, said board chair Stephanie Spires.

Fayette schools is going to have a virtual summer learning program for students who are struggling academically with hopes that all students could be offered some virtual learning this summer, district officials said at last week’s planning meeting.

District officials are also trying to determine, said Spires, if students would go to school on staggered schedules, some, for example, on Mondays and Wednesdays and others on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She said policies may differ from school to school because of varying enrollment numbers.

Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-diseases expert, said during a U. S. Senate hearing Tuesday that the idea of having treatments available or a vaccine to facilitate reentry of students into fall term was unlikely.

Gov. Andy Beshear and Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman want districts to consider three possibilities for when the next school year might start.

An early start, perhaps as early as late July, a traditional start and late start, perhaps after Labor Day or in October are among the options, Interim Education Commissioner Kevin C. Brown said at a virtual meeting Tuesday.

Fayette County school officials haven’t decided on whether the traditional Aug. 12 start date will stand, but they are working on that, Caulk said. He said the community and the school district would have to be flexible and adjustments might have to be made if and when there was a spike in COVID-19.

An early start could be Aug. 3 or even late July. Caulk said he thought that a later start date in the fall might be a little less likely.

Brown said scenarios include a regular opening in which most students would return to buildings that are mostly or fully staffed; an adjusted opening in which schools reopen with staff shortages or social distancing measures that will impact capacity, or with the possibility of some schools being unable to reopen.

Brown said that starting the school year earlier or later than normal is not a requirement or a recommendation. He said those decisions will be made by local school boards, which must approve calendars that comply with state laws.

Brown said that at least one superintendent in Kentucky, who he didn’t identify, has decided to poll parents to see how many would not let their children return to school in the fall because someone in the home is medically fragile and at-risk or the child is medically fragile. That school district would serve those children through virtual learning, he said.

School district officials throughout the state are not ruling out having to continue virtual learning to some degree in the fall.

Bob Moore, a school district staff member working on technology, told Fayette board members that the district has 35,000 chromebooks for distribution and another 5,000 assigned to schools with a high percentage of low income students. High schools have two students assigned to one chromebook, middle school students and students in grades third through five are each assigned their own chromebooks.

The district is at times handling several hundred calls per day from families to a technology help desk, he said. Students with the most need are receiving free internet service for six months.

This story was originally published May 13, 2020 at 11:56 AM.