Beshear won’t make school recommendation after Sept. 28. How KY districts will decide.

Gov. Andy Beshear said Monday he would not make another recommendation after Sept. 28 about whether Kentucky schools should resume in-person or virtual instruction because a new state system will help local administrators make that decision.

“There is going to be guidance from public health ...to help decision making based on how prevalent the virus is in the community,” Beshear said at a daily news conference.

He said schools will now make week-by-week decisions based on prevalence and what public health officials believe is the right course.

Kentucky Department for Public Health Commissioner Steven Stack said an emergency regulation was filed Monday creating a COVID-19 case reporting structure for K-12 public and private schools so the public can have data.

Parents and guardians will be required to report to their school within 24 hours if their child tests positive for COVID-19. The school will design a reporting process. The schools will have to report every day that classes are in session the number of new cases among students and staff and the number of students and staff quarantined as a result of exposure to COVID-19 through school activities.

The first reporting date is Sept. 28, the date Beshear has recommended schools wait before resuming in-person instruction.

The information from schools will be included in a new online dashboard that includes state, county, district and school information.

The state will now have two reports that will help parents, teachers and administrators make decisions in real time, Beshear said.

The current K-12 public school health report will also continue to be published and while its information may ultimately be more accurate, its data might be delayed, Stack said.

Local school decision makers will be asked to check weekly the test positivity rate and the incidence rate map that shows how common the disease is in the community -- the number of new cases per day per 100,000 persons living in that area.

If the overall state test positivity rate is less than 6 percent, school officials will look at a color-coded map to make decisions on in-person classes. The colors range from green to red, with green allowing in-person instruction and the color red meaning schools and districts should consider virtual learning only.

After Beshear said he would not make recommendations after Sept. 28, Stack clarified that if the positivity rate soared to ten percent and hospitals ran out of beds “then were going to come back, we are going to step in and we are going to give different guidance.”

This story was originally published September 14, 2020 at 5:38 PM.