Wichita school board to reconsider COVID reopening; PreK-12 may move full remote

Wichita’s school board will reconsider its reopening decision and potentially send all students home for online only classes.

The Board of Education for Wichita Public Schools has called a special meeting for 4:30 p.m. Friday. The meeting is “to discuss the rapid increase in COVID cases in Sedgwick County and consider appropriate action based on the Board’s discussion.”

Superintendent Alicia Thompson, in an email obtained by The Eagle, told USD 259 staff that the district is still planning to have some older students return to the classroom beginning Nov. 9.

The school board decided in a 4-2 vote last week to allow approximately 60% of middle and high school students to return to in-person classes in a hybrid format for the second nine-weeks, despite worsening pandemic indicators. Parents of elementary students had the option of fully in-person or fully remote under the current plan, but they cannot change their choice from what it was before the school year started.

Thompson said the district is also planning “for the potential transition to full remote learning for all students grade PreK-12” if the two-week positive test rate exceeds 15%.

The school board during the summer adopted a reopening guide where a positivity rate above 15% was one of four gating criteria for the red zone. The red zone calls for moving all classes for all grades online only and stopping all sports and other extracurricular activities. The board did not use its guide when making its reopening decision last week.

At that point, the positive test rate was 9.40%, up from 4.86% in one month, according to data from the Sedgwick County Health Department. In the week since the meeting, the positive test rate surpassed 13%.

At the current trajectory, the local positive test rate could pass 15% before the start of the second nine weeks on Nov. 9.

The positive test rate is already above the White House COVID-19 task force’s red zone threshold of 10%. The county is also in the red zone for the rate of new cases, as measured by both the Kansas Department of Health and Environment and the White House. Both indicators are worsening and have been for about a month.

Wichita’s two major hospital systems are at or near capacity for COVID-19 patients, the county manager said Wednesday. The local health department reported the hospital status as “critical.”

“Our Board of Education and our district leaders recognize the heaviness of the decisions that must be made in order to safely provide quality educational opportunities for the 47,000+ students we educate, and a safe working environment for all our staff,” Thompson said. “... We understand the impact of decisions on your work, our families, our business community - and most important, our students.”

The meeting will be broadcast live on WPS-TV.

Contributing: Megan Stringer of The Eagle

This story was originally published October 29, 2020 at 1:32 PM.