Earlier today, the Wolf Administration released a set of guidelines for schools to reopen for full in-person classes, online classes or a blended model, and according to their statistics, Indiana County falls into the “moderate community transition” meaning that schools are being advised to go to either a fully online or blended model.
According to the Department of Health guidelines published on their website, a school district can reopen for full in-person or for blended learning if the incidence rate per 100,000 residents over the most recent seven days is under ten and the percentage of positive test results given over a seven day period is under 5 percent. For the moderate category, the incidence rate has to be between 10 and 99 or the percentage has to be between 5 and 9 percent. The substantial category, which is the highest has to have 100 or more in the incidence rate and 10 percent or more in the percentage of positive test results. As of today, Indiana County is in the moderate category, having 59.2 cases per 100,000 residents over the most recent seven day period and a positive test result percentage at 7.9 percent.
The announcement from the Wolf Administration says that these are not mandates, but “meant to be an additional tool available to school leaders to inform local efforts.” New status reports will be made every week for every county, and guidelines could change very quickly.
One school district has already responded to the recommendations. Indiana Area School District Superintendent Michael Vuckovich announced on the district’s website today that the district would follow the recommendations and are making plans to go to yellow or red status, meaning a blended or completely online approach. Under the yellow status, half of the student body would attend Monday and Tuesday, the other half on Thursday and Friday, and Wednesday would be an all online day. If the district decides to go to red status, the district will go to an all online format.
Vuckovich added that the virtual town hall meetings for each school in the district will still go on as planned, but acknowledged that they might be less beneficial than originally planned, and the principals in each of those meetings will not be able to answer specific questions about the new course of action as the district has not had the time to make a plan.
The meeting schedule can be found at www.iasd.cc
The following is Vuckovich’s full statement:
August 10, 2020
Families,
Despite our best efforts to provide options for our learners that would best serve their needs, we have no choice but to follow the recommendations, guidance, and mandates of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Department of Health, and the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
At approximately noon today, all school districts in PA received guidelines from PDE outlining the circumstances under which schools should move to a partly online, or completely online model of instruction. Under these new guidelines, PDE is identifying all schools in Indiana County as “moderate risk,” and recommending they move to a model involving at least half-time virtual learning for all students. Based on the Department’s data, 42 out of 67 (63%) total counties (including Indiana) in the Commonwealth fall under this designation of “moderate or severe risk” (blended/full remote learning).
Obviously, having just received this information, we have several questions and concerns we need to have addressed by PDE before we move forward. We wanted to inform you as soon as possible that we are currently making plans to move to our yellow or red phase plan. As you can imagine, this will require some additional planning to make sure we select the most appropriate path moving forward as things have drastically changed since our previous correspondence.
In closing, I realize this may make our previously scheduled town halls for the next two evenings less beneficial than originally planned. Due to the late hour, principals will still be holding the meetings; however, please understand that they will be unable to discuss specifics about the new course of action, as we simply have not had time to make a plan.
Please know that we understand your frustration with this situation and will do our absolute best to get you the updated plans as soon as possible.
Michael J. Vuckovich
Superintendent of Schools
