Beshear’s back to school plan, allows school districts to decide

Voice Staff Report
editor@tmcvoice.com

Governor Beshear announced Monday his plan to allow individual school districts to determine if they should return to in-person classes on September 28 based on the number of Coronavirus cases in their county. Beshear said there would not be any statewide recommendation concerning in-person classes unless the state’s number of positive tests rises above six percent.
After September 28th in-person classes will be determined by local school districts on a weekly basis according to the new color coded system developed with Dr. Steven Stack, the state’s public health commissioner. The color determination is based on the number of positive cases reported to the health department and reflects the level of disease present in the community. McCreary County’s current color level is orange.
A county in the red or “Critical” level (more than 25 cases/100,000 people daily) of Covid-19 cases are advised to suspend in-person classes and all school related athletic and extracurricular activities until the county returns to the yellow level of transmission. Orange represents “Accelerated” spread (10 – 25 cases/100,000 people daily), schools are advised to consider remote learning only but may have in-person classes and take additional mitigation steps. The Yellow level shows “Community Spread” (1-10 cases/100,000 people daily), schools should consider in-person or remote learning with heightened mitigation factors. Counties in Green level (less than 1 case per 100,000 people daily) may have either in-person or remote learning.

The determination of school opening or closing will be made by school officials for the following school week by the color level of our county at 8 p.m. every Thursday.
Important factors that should be considered in determining whether schools should open or close for in-person classes and activities include: The importance of in-person socialization, emotional and academic growth and their well-being; the current level, rising or falling trend of the virus in the county; number of cases among students and staff; effective mitigation factors that enable quarantines instead of closing the entire school.

McCreary County is reporting 15 active cases and our color level is Orange. To find McCreary County’s color level go to www.lcdh.org. To read Governor Beshear’s complete instructions for K-12 education go to www.kycovid19.ky.gov.