As the fourth week of in-person schooling comes to a close, parents and teachers are still posing the same question to local and state officials: What would it take to move to online learning?
Last week, the issue was further muddied.
On Aug. 26, Gov. Eric Holcomb announced a new set of COVID-19 metrics aimed at helping schools determine when they should consider moving to eLearning. The dashboard outlines per capita rate, positive test rate and the specific amounts of increase or decrease in positive test rate in each county. The categories are then scored from 0-3 and averaged into a number that determines a community’s spread.
While the recommendations are useful to some, it creates a conundrum for corporations that already have comprehensive plans in place.
Before the academic year started, local school and health officials — along with officials at the Indiana State Department of Health — created their own set of COVID-19 indicators, which can be found at https://covid19communitytaskforce.org.
Thus far, Bartholomew County Consolidated School Corp. has successfully relied on its own indicators for the decision to keep its schools open. At the same time, however, officials haven’t indicated what metrics would result in a move to eLearning.
Thursday afternoon, BCSC Superintendent Jim Roberts and other superintendents from southeastern Indiana met virtually with ISDH Commissioner Dr. Kristina Box, at her request, to discuss the new metrics.
Roberts said there will need to be further discussions about the two sets of metrics, especially since the state metrics include specific recommendations of what communities and schools should do based on certain levels of spread, with hybrid education forms being one of the state’s suggestions for certain situations.
He also said that if BCSC were to alter its COVID-19 metrics, which are part of the reopening plan, the process would involve the school board. He said this discussion may arise at a future board meeting, with the next scheduled for Sept. 14.
Another issue that the state’s data presents is that it could misrepresent what’s going on in county schools.
Flatrock-Hawcreek and BCSC shouldn’t necessarily go by the same rules based on county data. If BCSC has an outbreak and Flatrock-Hawcreek has no cases, or vise-versa, it shouldn’t force the other corporation to change its policies.
It’s also hard to compare counties, as each community in the state is so diverse.
There’s no universal way to approach this issue.
Local metrics and indicators — which were created with state guidance — should come before the broad new guidelines provided by the state, but school officials also need to make it clear where the line is drawn for keeping schools open.
The state could have provided more guidance to schools prior to the start of the year. It’s unclear what, if any, ramifications will occur if a school meets its own COVID-19 metrics for staying open but doesn’t in terms of the state’s figures.
As it has from the start, the state should defer to county health and school officials before creating metrics that may or may not work with the local guidelines. The public wants clarity, not confusion, about when the spread of COVID-19 reaches the point to move to eLearning.
