By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — It's important to note that no matter what local school boards decide with regard to the start date of school in their individual districts, they will be doing it with masks. That Executive Order was not up for debate Wednesday.
"The Governor had two Executive Orders," said Mark Tallman with the Kansas Association of School Boards. "One on the start date, which the State Board had to approve in order for it to take effect. They didn't, so it doesn't take effect. Her other order deals with face coverings, social distancing, hand sanitizers and temperature checks, that was not subject to State Board approval. That is supposed to take effect starting August 10th."
With that in mind, some districts may delay because they don't have the supplies for the second order, even though the first one isn't going into effect, but that's not the only reason they may delay.
"I think we've probably heard more concern about maybe training, professional development for teachers and others getting things in place than necessarily the issues of supplies," Tallman said. "I think many districts did assume something like this was what they were going to be doing. We may start hearing more of that."
This raises its own questions when we start talking about what particularly hourly hand washing will look like on a daily basis.
"How do you actually enforce this?", Tallman asked. "This would basically be putting out something that says, this is what you are supposed to do. I think people would understand, it really becomes a kind of goal. It's simply, I don't believe, practical, that someone is going to monitor every class, watch every student, document every hour that this is done, but I think the idea is to say, there's a lot of evidence this would help and so this becomes what the expectation is."
Local districts will be meeting in the coming days to define their individual strategies for school starting this fall.