"We only have imperfect options before us," says @COJasonGlass, Kentucky's incoming education commissioner, who is starting off the meeting with a live video message from Colorado.
Kentucky faces "an unprecedented trifecta of challenges," Glass says:
- COVID-19
- Racism
- Forthcoming budget crisis
Glass starts Sept. 14
Members of @PCStuVoiceTeam are now presenting results of their "Coping with Covid" student survey, which you can read here: prichardcommittee.org/wp-content/upl…
@prichardcom is also surveying parent/guardians and educators:
Of @PCStuVoiceTeam's main findings: students "really wanted to shift from purely logistical teacher communications to meaningful and emotional teacher communications."
The Team is calling on schools to ask their own students how to enhance communication during virtual learning.
Other findings:
- less busy work, more meaningful work = fewer students feeling anxious, depressed
- flexibility is key! teachers should ask students what scheduling works best for them during a virtual learning environment and work together to create flexible schedules
Also:
- Mental health supports disappeared during springtime NTI. Those supports, including virtual counseling, "should come back in full force" this fall.
- Students are SUPER worried about how COVID-19 is going to impact their post-sec prospects. ASK ABOUT THIS. AND LISTEN!
Starting now: Lawmakers will hear from education officials about their concerns regarding @GovAndyBeshear's directive for schools NOT to open in-person right now.
Background:
@ReginaHuff82, chair of the House education committee, says that just because you support schools reopening in-person doesn't mean you don't take COVID-19 seriously.
But, Huff adds, school is where many kids' "basic needs are met."
"Frankly I'm more concerned and fearful for them not to be able to have these basic needs met, than I am of them contracting the virus."
@EricKen83 w/@ksbanews has same concern.
"A lot of the almost life sustaining services for our children are provided at school. That's not necessarily a good thing. But it is also a fact."
Kennedy says his members were "shocked" by Beshear's recent "one-size-fits-all" approach.
"Sometimes there is just a super overwhelming majority of parents who have responded that they want in person instruction and other times it's, you know, closer to 50/50. Well, we should honor and respect that and try to work with that as much as we possibly can," Kennedy says.
Kennedy says @ksbanews and local school boards believe reopening decisions should remain at the local level, just as a local superintendent would make the call, given available data/information, about whether to close schools for the flu or due to dangerous road conditions.
Kennedy: The Georgia comparison isn't fair.
GA didn't have a statewide mask guideline for schools. KY does.
If KY schools follow Beshear's own #HealthyatSchool guidance, we shouldn't see what we saw in Georgia. Allow districts the chance to do in-person learning the right way
Kennedy adds that the #HealthyatSchool guidance eases concerns over legal liabilities. If schools are following those public health rules, it will mitigate chances of school districts & boards facing COVID-19 litigation/losing to those complaints.
Dr. Jim Flynn, executive director of the Kentucky Association of School Superintendents, also says local districts should be allowed to decide their own reopening plans.
Districts are "really in a no win situation ... We continue to receive mixed advice from the medical experts," Flynn says.
Flynn calls on the Beshear admin to better arm Kentucky superintendents and school boards w/ the "accurate data" they need to make opening/closing calls
Chuck Adams, superintendent of Spencer County Schools, says he is the longest serving superintendent in Kentucky.
"So I have been around the block."
"We can't do what Jefferson County is going to do. Jefferson County, likewise, can't do what Spencer County is going to do. ... There has got to be the ability to make choices from the local level, that best fits the individuals that we serve," Adams says.
Adams says his local board received "backlash" after Beshear called for a halt on in-person school. Like districts across the state, his county had spent the summer garnering buy-in from parents for a socially distant return to school.
Adams calls out @LtGovColeman and @KyDeptofEd:
"Don't beat around the bush. There's too much confusion, the way it is. We will follow. But we got to have bold leadership in order to do so."
Dennis Buschman, a parent and JROTC instructor, says he wants to see all schools across the state reopen for in-person classes.
The COVID-19 death rate for Kentucky children 0.0009%, a "nearly 100% survival rate."
Buschman adds that more kids have died from the flu, car accidents.
"How we stopped using our cars because of the death rate?"
Buschman, clearly veering into territory that was not the position of previous speakers today:
"As a parent, my wife and I are completely comfortable sending our children to school WITHOUT masks or social distancing -- again, based off the statistics."
(emphasis added)
@MaryLouMarzian, a Louisville Democrat, requests to speak:
"I really do have a concern about kids. Even though their statistics are low for them, but then when they go home to grandma and grandpa or mom or dad who has diabetes or cancer or whatever .. that's where the rub is."
Marzian: "While it might be point-0-0-1-whatever for children, if you're the one out of the thousand that dies and it's your kid, all the other ones don't matter. I have 2 grandkids .. of course I'd love for them to be there .. but you know I don't want to be going to a funeral."
*Sen. Reginald Thomas, D-Lex, has had the mic for what feels like 500 years.*
Thomas asks what's wrong with Beshear's rec.
@EricKen83: most have followed it. About 18 will not.
"It's really not about not wanting him to recommend or offer guidelines or suggestions, but about the people who know the most about the local circumstance responding to that."
Buschman then gets more mic time but tbh he is not an elected official or the leader of a statewide education group so I will not be devoting anymore Tweets to him.
Adams, the Spencer County superintendent, says the frustration has been the last-minute change
"When you have recommendations, with the list of consequences that was given 24 hours later, that's not a recommendation. That's a mandate, under the disguise of a recommendation." ...
"If it would have been a mandate, fine. We will comply. .. Head on, had we been told that, fine. That's not a problem. But I don't need 24,000 people beating up on my school board members who really don't have an option, what the consequences that was later listed."
@maxwellwise, citing Beshear's comments yesterday about making sure schools report COVID-19 cases honestly: Is there any concern that there will not be transparency, that superintendents would be hiding positive cases?
Flynn: "Absolutely not."
FACT CHECK:
Rep. Steve Riley, R-Glasgow, says in @JCPSKY "over 20% of students" checked out once remote learning began.
That is wrong.
JCPS had a 90%+ participation rate until the final week of school.
Rep. Stephen West, R-Paris, suggests that if Beshear could issue an EO protecting school districts from liability amid reopening.
West also taking his time to point out that the 9-month-old may have died of SIDS.
"If that's the case, the real rate is actually zero."
Rep. Lisa Wilner, D-Louisville, and former JCPS school board member, notes the absence of teachers from today's testimony.
"I'm really disappointed that we've not heard the teacher perspective and that we've had no teachers at the table today."
@ReginaHuff82 responds to this criticism:
Ignoring the back-and-forth, I want to highlight what Adams just said -- because THIS is the crux of what has inflamed the reopening debate in Kentucky:
Sen. David Givens, R-Greensburg, ends the hearing with a message for @GovAndyBeshear.
"I sincerely ask that the governor stepped to the podium this afternoon. And when he does, he makes the case that his recommendation is a strong recommendation. He still stands by it ...
"But for those districts and families that have chosen to go in person, he will instruct KDE to (put) all of their resources and all of their talents to support those districts."
FWIW: Green County Schools, in Givens' district, opened yesterday -- the first KY district to do so
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