Climbing cases at UK could keep Fayette students from going back to classrooms, Beshear says

Gov. Andy Beshear at his Thursday news conference addressed the link between cases at universities in Fayette County and the return to school for the district.

“What do I think about including or not including university cases in considering community spread?” Beshear said.

Beshear said a university is a part of a community. “Those kids go to restaurants, they go to bars, they go to different places in the community.”

“There is a challenge here. It’s one that we’ve got to discuss and it especially impacts where I went to school, Fayette County Public Schools,” he said.

Right now UK has so many cases that it may be pushing Fayette County into the red, he said. If UK stays open and continues to have that amount of cases it could potentially keep it red, Beshear said.

Beshear said he had talked to Fayette Superintendent Manny Caulk and Lexington Mayor Linda Gorton about when the school district in Lexington should return to in-person classes.

The Fayette County school board, whose district has been learning all virtually since Aug. 26, is set to meet at 8 a.m. Friday to discuss when the district should go back to in-person learning. Caulk has said the red or critical designation that Fayette had this week, including Thursday, in a statewide color-coded system is directly linked to cases among University of Kentucky students.

Caulk said district officials made contact with officials at the University of Kentucky to learn more about whether those cases are within an isolated UK cohort, or indicative of a wider community spread.

“At this time, we are still gathering information,” Caulk said Wednesday.

Beshear said many counties are in the yellow or green range of coronavirus incidence rate so districts are in a good position to start some in-person class activities. He said other counties are rated orange and should be careful, perhaps sending small groups back to school at first and then a hybrid model.

There are counties in the red where Beshear does not think the school district should return to in person class. If they are in in-person class, they ought to move to virtual learning until they move away from the red designation, he said.

In Fayette, Beshear said the answer can’t be that University cases just don’t count among Lexington’s positive cases because UK students are in the community.

“The question is how we can make sure we are taking the right steps so K-12 students don’t miss out on opportunities because of other decisions?” he said.

As many Kentucky schools prepare to return to in-person classes next week, Beshear said at his news conference that there was a” big jump” in positive COVID-19 cases in K-12 public schools.

Beshear showed a graph with 577 active positive K-12 student cases statewide as of Thursday and said there were seven Kentucky high school football teams under quarantine. A state graph said Fayette schools had 12 new COVID cases Thursday. Beshear there was 166 new public school student cases statewide, and 59 new faculty and staff cases.

Fayette schools have resumed athletics.

Beshear had earlier suggested that school districts wait until at least Monday to open in person. On Monday, every K-12 Kentucky school also has to report cases for a new statewide case dash board that will help make determinations on reopening.

He said he believed in many places there could be a successful reopening but that means kids in masks all day long, fewer kids in the classroom and students in the classroom fewer hours of the day.

Beshear said schools had to be fluid and flexible.