With record COVID-19, these Johnson County school districts send older students online
In what might be a sign of what’s to come in Johnson County, the Spring Hill school district plans to transition middle and high school students back to online-only classes later this month in the face of skyrocketing new COVID-19 cases.
In this district at the southern edge of the county, much of it rural, the school board voted 5-2 on Monday to move older students to remote learning on Nov. 30, unless new case numbers start to drop by Nov. 25. Middle and high schoolers have been learning in person, full time, since last month — unlike in other Johnson County districts, where secondary students are back in classrooms for only part of the week.
With Johnson County in the “red” zone per its school criteria, local districts are reevaluating whether all students should be in school buildings. Spring Hill is the first to carve out a path for older students to return to fully online classes after learning in person.
“The reason we have gating criteria is because when you see something that is apparently a health hazard coming at you, you have to use it to respond. The numbers are going up so fast,” said Spring Hill school board member Eric Boyle. “We know the numbers are staggering at this point.”
Gardner-Edgerton, another largely rural district, is the only one in Johnson County that still has secondary students learning online only. And despite protests surrounding its board meeting Monday night, where dozens of parents urged the district to allow their students back in classrooms, district officials have decided to continue with remote learning.
The smaller districts sticking to online classes might be a sign of what’s to come in the rest of the county, as health officials expect the case count to continue to rise.
The Blue Valley, Olathe and De Soto districts have older students learning in a hybrid format, in classes part of the week and online the rest of the time. The districts all plan to continue with that learning mode, at least for now.
The Shawnee Mission school board scheduled a special meeting for 6 p.m. Tuesday to decide whether to keep older students in hybrid learning or transition back to online classes. Dozens of educators and parents planned to rally before the meeting and plead with officials to return to online learning, while others are fighting for their children to be in class full time.
All of the districts plan to continue allowing elementary students to learn in person.
Some parochial schools, including Ascension Catholic School in Overland Park, have moved to online learning temporarily after teachers tested positive for COVID-19 and not enough substitute teachers were available to fill in.
Johnson County is reporting a record rise in the number of new daily coronavirus cases. On Tuesday morning, the county’s positivity rate — or the number of positive cases in the past 14 days — was 14.3%, compared to around 8% a couple of weeks ago. That metric combined with the incidence rate — or the number of new cases per 100,000 people, which was 608 on Tuesday — puts the county in the “red” zone.
The county is in the “red” if there are 251 or more new cases per 100,000 people, according to the school criteria.
Hospitalizations also are rising in the Kansas City metro area. The University of Kansas Health System reported a record 68 patients hospitalized for the virus on Monday, up 15 from Friday.
Still, Sanmi Areola, Johnson County public health director, has yet to advise districts to change their learning modes or move to all-online classes, even though that is what the criteria recommend. He has attributed the recent surge in cases to the broader community, putting the blame on weddings, parties and people letting their guard down due to COVID-19 fatigue.
He said schools have implemented safety protocols, like masks and social distancing, to help mitigate in-school transmission. Districts are all reporting several COVD-19 cases, but most exposures are happening outside of schools, according to local data. And Areola is urging districts to “continue to be vigilant.”
While the health department offers guidance, districts have the final say on whether to allow in-person classes.
Local health departments, though, have clearly warned districts against allowing winter sports, held indoors, where social distancing is impossible. So far, districts are ignoring that advice.
While all districts started out this summer agreeing to follow Johnson County’s guidance, they quickly diverted from those plans and each adopted their own criteria to help determine when to have students in classrooms. And that has left the county with a patchwork of different learning methods — which are often less restrictive than what the county has advised.
Even Spring Hill, which is on the path to transition older students back to online classes, is not fully following its own criteria. If the school board agreed to follow its own recommendations, older students would return to remote learning two weeks earlier, on Nov. 16.
But the board decided to give students the additional weeks before the switch, citing Areola’s recommendation that districts continue with their current learning modes. Some officials said that allowing more time to make the change would help teachers pivot to a new learning model, plus allow parents time to adjust work schedules.
“It gives parents who have middle school kids some time to find day care for those kids, or at least someone to watch their kids after school,” said Superintendent Wayne Burke, who recommended waiting until after Thanksgiving to move to virtual classes. “It also gives your teachers some additional time to prepare to go back to remote. Because remote is tough.”
But the decision concerned board member Boyle, especially as the district allows winter sports.
“We’ve created a gating criteria that we intentionally weakened to the point that we could go in full, in-person classes. And we said so when we did it,” Boyle said. “And then we created a very high bar that we’re thinking, well, ‘what are the odds (cases are) going to get that high?’ And, here we are. We’ve exceeded that. And now we want to slow it down and maybe ignore the gating criteria?”
“If you have a gating criteria, you either use it or you don’t. If you’re not going to follow it, you might as well get rid of it.”
This story was originally published November 10, 2020 at 12:55 PM.
