By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — More guidance will be coming soon from the Kansas Department of Education on what the next few weeks will look like for students in the state's school districts, but USD 308 Superintendent Mike Folks is pretty sure it's not going to be business as usual.
"There is the task force that's been put together," Folks said Tuesday. "It's a 25 member task force. They are studying a lot of things. One of them, delivery models, which kind of tells me to anticipate that this is going to be longer than a couple weeks for Kansas public school students."
Right now, the hours minimum on instruction for kids has not yet been modified.
"If we go beyond this week, we're going to have to make up time, it's that simple," said USD 308 spokesman Ray Hemman. "We're going to depend upon the state to either give us a waiver, or allow us to do some other creative accounting, I guess, whether we're talking sports, education, awards, this will go down as the year of the asterisk."
Nursing staff at the schools are watching for further guidance on the virus. At this point, it still appears to be milder in younger kids, unless they have underlying health conditions.
"Previously, we thought kids were just carriers of it and they didn't really show symptoms, or they were asymptomatic," said nursing coordinator Olivia Kite. "That is changing. There's babies testing positive for COVID-19. It's evolving, but we believe that kiddos are going to be, for the most part, carriers of it, unless they are in one of those high-risk populations."
It's also important to note that USD 308 employees will be allowed to use sick leave, even if they are under quarantine, not just if they actually come down with the virus.