Daviess County Public Schools will soon transition from their current red light status to the newly introduced orange light level, allowing in-person classes to take place for preschoolers through 8th-grade students on a rotating A/B schedule.
DCPS is expected to transition to the orange level on Sept. 14.
According to Superintendent Matt Robbins, the need for children to be educated in-person largely drove DCPS’ decision to allow in-person learning.
“What compels us is the need for our children to be in school — the need for them to be in front of our teachers, our support staff where we have all the services provided to them,” Robbins said. “We know that this is a challenge. We know that having COVID cases in our schools is a reality, and we’re prepared to deal with that. Our motto is, ‘Kids First,’ and that’s what we want to see happen.”
Ultimately, Robbins said, DCPS felt that they hadn’t made their best effort if they didn’t try to hold in-person classes. Believing that most DCPS schools were moving in the right direction, he said the district would continue to enforce the three Ws: watching distances, wearing masks, and washing hands for all students and staff.
The decision was based on a number of other aspects, including struggles faced by working parents, as well as the emotional and physical needs of many children across the district.
“An education is a lot of things. We know that kids are struggling socially and emotionally. We know of the terrible statistic that says child abuse reports are down 60%,” Robbins said. “As much as I would love to say that problem has been eradicated in our society, we know that’s not the case. And that’s because our school officials — our teachers and guidance counselors — are diagnosing those instances and making sure they get the proper help.”
Child care has been an issue for many parents as well, Robbins said, noting “compelling” survey results from DCPS parents that revealed 82% preferred in-person instruction for their children.
“With that is a driving need to deliver the demand for that, so we’re going to try to make sure that happens,” he said.
DCPS started working on implementing the orange light level when they developed the original stoplight model on July 27. DCPS worked with the Green River District Health Department to approve the updated model — which is being used by the Kentucky Department of Public Health and was created by the Harvard Global Health Institute.
“We calculate [the risk] locally … so we have the data locally. We can track it locally,” Robbins said.
According to Robbins, local data from the last two weeks revealed that the community’s number of COVID cases per 100,000 people fell into the orange-shaded region on the chart.
“And so that was the necessity of creating the orange level model for us,” he said. “That’s what’s being used as the benchmark. We said we would notify our families two weeks ahead of making movements upward. Today marked the two weeks’ notice for entry into the orange model by Sept. 14.”
However, if the numbers change for the worse before Sept. 14 — whether across the community or within the DCPS district — Robbins said the plan for in-person learning could change as well, and quickly.
“What we’ve said in our model is, we need to be very fluid and we need to be very quick to react to changes that occur,” he said. “If that were to happen, we will make the choice with health and safety being our first variable that we look at in terms of bringing our kids and staff back.”
If the numbers were to drastically get better after Sept. 14, Robbins said any action to move up the stoplight system — to the yellow or green light levels, for example — would be implemented slowly.
