Masks in class? Temperature checks? What school could look like in Kentucky this fall

LOUISVILLE, Ky. —The only thing Kentucky school leaders know for certain about next school year is nothing is certain.

“The good news is, we have some time to plan," interim state Education Commissioner Kevin Brown told superintendents last week. "The bad news is we don’t know exactly what we’re planning for." 

As Kentucky students finish an unprecedented weekslong pivot to remote learning, their superintendents and principals are trying to determine how schools can reopen come fall.

"There are a thousand different scenarios we need to prepare for," Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman, a former school administrator, told the state education board recently.

More news:JCPS teachers working to account for all students after closure

Gov. Andy Beshear encouraged school districts to craft at least three game plans for the 2020-21 school year: one with an early start in late July or early August; one with an on-time mid-August start; and one starting around Labor Day.

But school calendars cover only the surface of how education could look as Kentucky tries to restart after the coronavirus pandemic upended in-person classes.

Superintendents and private school leaders are weighing how to implement health guidelines and social distancing within the constraints of classroom sizes, teacher contracts and budgets facing rocky futures.

"Let's be creative," said Casey Allen, the superintendent of Ballard County Schools. "We've been forced outside our comfort zone. And so let's live there for a little while."

Masks at school? 

Amy Thompson is the superintendent for Monroe County Schools, a district of about 1,700 in Southeastern Kentucky near the Tennessee border.

The district's first day of school is scheduled for Aug. 14.

Thompson hopes to start on time.

"But we know it could look different," she said during a recent virtual panel hosted by The Prichard Committee. "We know kids may have to wear a mask. We know that when kids get on a bus, we may have to take their temperature." 

Thompson's peers and other education experts across the country are tossing around ideas as schools plot their new reality. 

Spacing desks 6 feet apart. Running buses half-empty. Eating lunch in classrooms. Putting students in cohorts. Having teachers in at-risk groups educate from home.

They're all options on the table.

A draft of suggestions for schools from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recently been shelved, according to the Associated Press, meaning education leaders will need to lean heavily on local health officials. 

Sanitizing schools more, requiring masks, promoting hand-washing and checking temperatures as people enter schools are being considered. 

Some districts are planning to use federal relief dollars to buy more sanitizing equipment and temporal thermometers, which may be in high demand and out-of-reach for districts. 

More news:In 'new normal,' Kentuckians will be asked to start wearing masks in public as of May 11

Checking temperatures once kids get to school may spark a different issue, said Marty Pollio, superintendent of Jefferson County Public Schools. 

Kids have often spent 20 minutes or more riding the bus to school, Pollio said recently, potentially unknowingly spreading the virus before being turned away at school for having a fever. 

In a district as large as JCPS, the virus could spread rapidly and exponentially.

"The larger the district," Pollio said, "I think the more significant the challenge becomes."

Closed lunch rooms, alternate school days possible

Teachers, parents and students alike echoed a question about reopening schools: How do you keep kids physically distant from each other? 

"We will have to do a lot of educating," said Matthew Constant, the superintendent of Owensboro Public Schools. “The youngest kids want hugs, and they deserve hugs, but we really can’t give them hugs."

Teaching kids to keep space between themselves will take modeling from educators and markers on the floor, like at stores. 

“Things will look different," Constant said. "But they’ll be quite challenging.” 

Common areas, including playgrounds and cafeterias, may be off-limits to prevent gatherings of kids. Instead, some experts are recommending kids eat lunch in classrooms or be spaced out in the lunchroom. 

Most teacher contracts guarantee a duty-free lunch, Constant said — meaning schools would have to find other people to watch the individual classrooms if that is where kids are eating. 

Spacing kids 6 feet apart in classrooms may also be difficult, he said. Many classrooms had started using tables instead of individual desks, Constant said.

Classes likely would need to be smaller too to fit everyone in a room with enough space between them. That would cause a need for more teachers — something in short supply as the nation faces a teacher shortage. 

Kids could also be stuck in a single cohort each day to minimize the number of contacts with others, either moving to each teacher's room or having the teachers rotate to them.

It wouldn't cause much of a change for younger kids, who often stay with one teacher each day, but may cause some problems for older students, who may be in classes that differ based on their skillset. 

Read this:With in-person ceremonies on pause, JCPS plans virtual graduations for the Class of 2020

Thompson, the Monroe superintendent, said her district, where about three in four students come from low-income households, is considering alternative scheduling.

"Maybe we come to school Monday, Wednesday and Friday and we have (nontraditional instruction) Tuesday and Thursday," she said. 

In Owensboro, Constant said he's looking at ways to live-stream lessons to kids at home, keeping everyone on the same page if schedules alternate.

Still, Thompson said such a schedule could put a strain on working families — a concern shared by Pollio.

Having students come to school on alternate days "really becomes a family issue and a work issue and a child care issue," Pollio said.

The 98,000 students in JCPS are scheduled to return Aug. 12.

Pollio said the district is preparing for that return but is also considering whether in-person classes may resume even earlier — a move that could reunite students with their teachers in the summer months before a wave of new coronavirus cases potentially reemerge in late fall or early winter.

No matter when kids return, social distancing will remain a challenge, likely until a vaccine for COVID-19 is discovered.

"Six feet apart with desks and transitions in between classrooms and lunches and breakfasts," Pollio said. "All of those are major challenges."

Related:Ready or not, JCPS to kick off distance learning for first time as schools remain closed

More NTI expected

When Kentucky superintendents asked if they should prepare to start next school year with a reprise of distance learning, state education officials had a blunt answer: We don't know.

David Johnson, executive director of Southeast/South-Central Educational Cooperative, based in London, Kentucky, said some districts his organization supports are considering taking some NTI days at the beginning of the year “to figure out bugs in their systems.”

Speaking during The Prichard Committee panel, Johnson said districts are asking, “'How do we make ourselves better prepared for when this comes again?’”

“I think the first time through, people understand and we get a pass if there's things that we didn't do quite as well as we could have done,” he said, adding that schools won’t get that same “pass” the next time the coronavirus forces them to shut their doors.

Allen, the Ballard County superintendent in Western Kentucky, said he and other officials are discussing a variety of options for next year, but “the conversations right now are, ‘What ifs?’”

Before the pandemic, Allen’s district, which serves about 1,100 students, had never implemented remote learning — much like the majority of Kentucky’s school systems.

Now, NTI is the district’s daily routine. And it could be come August, too, Allen said.

“Would we dare start a school year with (NTI)? Would that ever be a consideration?” Allen asked. “And I think what we accept is that everything's a consideration right now. Everything.”

In Northern Kentucky, Fort Thomas Independent Schools Superintendent Karen Chester said officials there scrambled to ensure the 3,000 students in the district got online once schools closed. The district rented 150 WiFi hot spots and rushed to connect teachers and students via Microsoft Teams.

Much of the district’s success in transitioning to virtual learning, Chester said, was a credit to the strong relationships teachers had developed with students and their families. If Kentucky schools have to start the 2020-21 school year in NTI, it’s going to be a new challenge, she said.

“It works so well now because our teachers and our students already had those really strong connections,” Chester said. “I think it's going to be kind of difficult when they go into a situation where the kids don't really know the teachers.”

More:JCPS teachers working to account for all students after closure

'Not in a position to speculate'

Private schools in Louisville are weighing the same concerns as their public counterparts and are working with education officials, along with representatives from independent school associations, to craft reopening plans.

How and when in-person classes resume will be "largely governed" by public health recommendations, said Cecelia Price, the spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Louisville.

"We are not in a position to speculate about the following school year," she said.

Kentucky Country Day, an independent school in Louisville, is scheduled to start Aug. 13 and hopes to have a phased reopening of campus over the summer. Its Head of School, Peter Huestis, is still gauging just how different the "new normal" will be.

"The reality is, we're going to need to be ready for school to look different," Huestis said. 

An early start to the school year could provide time for teachers to assess their students' learning gaps — which experts fear could do long-term harm if not tackled quickly.

One recent analysis found kids may return having learned only 70% of their previous grade's reading curriculum and less than half of math curriculum.

Most educators fear the weeks using distance learning, which is not a substitute for learning directly from a trained teacher, will compound the effects of the "summer slide" — the idea that kids lose knowledge over summer break. 

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In Owensboro, teachers are using the last few weeks of their contracted days to talk with their counterparts in neighboring grades to figure out where next year's teachers will need to pick up, Constant said.

On top of academics, schools will be looking out for kids' and teachers' mental and emotional health.

The pandemic and its resulting economic downturn is expected to have a disproportionate impact on already disadvantaged kids, educators say. 

Hiring more mental health counselors is one option. Constant's district has a grant to help them cover some of the fees, but other districts may not be as lucky, as education funding may take a hit in the coming months and years. 

“We’ll just have to take the kids where they are and move them as much as we can," Constant said.

Summer school goes virtual

In JCPS, which has some of the starkest achievement gaps in the state, educators are working overtime to prevent learning loss while schools are closed.

Still, hundreds of students haven't been reached since remote instruction began April 7.

Whenever students do come back, Pollio said schools would work quickly to identify students' math and reading levels. The goal would be to re-teach students in small groups, but that would take significant resources.

Most immediately, JCPS is adjusting its plans for the district's "Backpack League" summer learning program.

Fewer than 1,000 students took part last summer in the program's inaugural session, which, with field trips and hands-on learning, had sought to redefine summer school.

This year, officials had hoped to boost participation to 5,000 students. But that now seems unlikely, Pollio said.

JCPS is moving forward with a virtual Backpack League, which Pollio said will be more engaging than the district's nontraditional instruction. For example, students interested in robotics could receive an at-home robotics kit, with a teacher checking in virtually to reinforce math and reading skills, he said.

"As much interaction as we can possibly get with students is a benefit to their learning and achievement," he said.

In the meantime, those wanting definitive answers about the 2020-21 school year will have to keep waiting.

"The one thing we know about this crisis is things change, often," Pollio said. "And so we have to be flexible and be ready." 

Reach Mandy McLaren: 502-582-4525; mmclaren@courier-journal.com; Twitter: @mandy_mclaren. Reach Olivia Krauth: okrauth@courierjournal.com; 502-582-4471; Twitter: @oliviakrauth.