Blue Valley sending older students back to online-only class after COVID-19 surge
The Blue Valley school district will transition older students back to online-only classes on Nov. 30 as the Kansas City region reports record COVID-19 cases.
District officials announced Friday that middle and high schoolers will return to remote learning after Thanksgiving, from Nov. 30 through Dec. 22, the last day before winter break. Elementary school students will remain in in-person classes five days a week.
The district will allow middle and high school winter sports and activities to begin on Nov. 16, with safety precautions.
In early October, Blue Valley was the first of Johnson County’s three largest districts to allow older students in classrooms. They have been learning in person part of the week and online the rest of the time. And now it is the first of those districts to announce it is reverting back to online-only instruction.
Throughout the region, districts are returning to online classes or considering doing so, as hundreds of students and staff members must isolate or quarantine. Districts, including Shawnee Mission in Johnson County and North Kansas City in Clay County, are reporting staffing and substitute shortages, which they worry will only make it more difficult to keep their doors open.
Shawnee Mission has warned that older students could be sent back to online classes in a matter of weeks. The Spring Hill school board voted this past week to do just that later this month. The Gardner-Edgerton district is the only one in Johnson County that never brought secondary students into classrooms this school year.
The county’s other districts — Olathe and De Soto — are continuing with their learning modes — where elementary students are in person full-time and older students are in classrooms part of the week — at least for now. On Monday, the De Soto school board will hold a special meeting to determine whether to change learning modes.
Johnson County has been reporting an exponential rise in COVID-19 cases in the past few weeks. On Thursday, the county reported a record daily increase of 458 cases. On average, there are more than 300 new cases reported each day. That’s compared to around 100 new cases a day only last month.
The positivity rate — or number of positive cases over the past two weeks — was 15.4%. That rate was around 5.8% last month. As of Friday, there were 702 new cases per 100,000 residents in the past 14 days.
The county is in the “red” zone per its school criteria when there are 251 or more new cases per 100,000 people.
Johnson County health officials have not yet recommended that schools return to online classes, but they’ve acknowledged that it is inevitable with rising cases. Blue Valley is following criteria released by the Kansas health department, which puts the district in the “orange” zone, recommending online learning for older students.
As infections rise, officials expect the pandemic to continue taking a toll on schools. Districts have largely avoided in-school transmission of the virus, but outside exposures to COVID-19 are leading to more absences and staffing shortages.
This week, Blue Valley reported that 600 students and staff members were in quarantine after being exposed to the virus. That’s compared to 448 the previous week and 215 the week before, according to its COVID-19 data dashboard.
As residents plan to gather for the holidays, health officials worry that new cases will only continue to surge. And school officials are growing increasingly concerned that they will have to close more schools.
This story was originally published November 13, 2020 at 6:36 PM.
