FRANKTON — Several Madison County schools and districts, including Frankton-Lapel and South Madison Community Schools, are implementing hybrid attendance models next week after the Madison County Health Department on Friday reported moderate community spread of COVID-19.
Though districts each have their own plan for dealing with the novel coronavirus, the decision was triggered following the metric developed by the health department: 0-13 new cases is considered low spread, 14-24 is moderate and 25 and higher is high spread. The report is delivered weekly.
“We didn’t want to do it every day. One day you can be in moderate and the next day be low. You can’t change every day,” Frankton-Lapel Community Schools Superintendent Bobby Fields said. “Today, looking at our numbers for the last seven days, it’s at 19. That puts us right in the middle of the moderate spread.”
Officials at all the affected districts and schools hope to return to the traditional calendar the week after next if next week’s report improves.
Jill Barker, superintendent at Anderson Preparatory Academy, said in-person classes will continue there in accordance with the school’s re-entry plan.
“Due to our small size, we are able to currently maintain the measures we have put in place,” she said.
Another exception is Anderson Community Schools, whose board of trustees decided to start the 2020-21 school year entirely virtual through Sept. 9. However, the board will conduct a special meeting at 6 p.m. Thursday to discuss in-person attendance.
One day after the start of school on Thursday, Frankton-Lapel officials announced the district’s junior-senior high schools will be shifting to the hybrid in-person and virtual model for a week starting Monday.
Students with last names starting with A-K will attend in-person classes Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and the remaining students will attend Tuesday and Thursday. If the hybrid classes must continue for another week, the attendance according to last name will flip-flop.
The elementary schools will continue with in-person classes.
Fields said the decision to move to the hybrid model for the older students is based on several factors, including the greater likelihood of spread of teenage students and the inability to contain the spread as efficiently because they change classes and pass one another in hallways. Reducing the number of students in the building at any given time reduces the likelihood of spread, he said.
“We’re trying to reduce the number of students in the buildings to about 50%. Hopefully, we can keep kids 6 feet apart in this model,” he said.
With the elementary students, the questions are a little more thorny, Fields said. Most of them need adult supervision, which may not be available at home.
“That could cause hardships on the family,” he said.
Also, elementary students tend to be more isolated as a cohort, learning, eating and playing together, he said. So if a student tests positive, only a single classroom at a time needs to be sent home to isolate for two weeks rather than an entire building, Fields said.
“Their schedule allows us to put them in classrooms by themselves and keep them that way all day long. They will stay as a group all day long,” he said. “They don’t have to go from class to class and mingle with other kids during passing periods in the hallway.”
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