South Central School Superintendent Kerry Herdes says the State Board of Education is moving quickly against school district’s that are not enforcing mandatory masking of students and staff.
The South Central School Board elected to stay with their original Return to School plan at a special meeting last week instead of adopting the Governor’s mandate. Herdes says it didn’t take long for the State of Education to act.
“Monday we got a letter that we had been reported and had a 24 hour time period to turn around our plan and what we are currently doing. Tuesday we got the letter we were officially on probation our recognition status as a district which comes with heavy consequences. Then finally today we heard that they were going to have a conference to basically start the time allotment.”
Herdes says the State Board of Education quickly set up a virtual meeting on Tuesday that starts a 60 day response period to avoid loss of recognition.
“If we decide to submit the plans for approval, they have 15 days to correspond. So let’s say we wait and do that at our next board meeting. Then you add 15 days to the 30th and if there are any revisions or changes you are really backed up against the wall. You could wait two board meetings but I don’t know what this process is going to look like. It went from a slow pace situation discussion to everything being accelerated.”
Herdes told the board he would speed up federal COVID relief fund projects in hopes of getting reimbursement before any slowdown in money could occur as a result of their state status. Herdes says as the school year began Tuesday `there were eight students on quarantine, but none who were COVID positive. While he had no exact count on the percent of students who wore masks without the mandate, he felt 30-percent was probably a good estimate.
In other developments, the Patoka School District is on probation and the State Board is in the process of setting up the conference that would begin the 60 day period to come into compliance or face loss of recognition.
Iuka Grade School Superintendent Sam Alli said he received an e-mail from the State Board of Education asking for confirmation that they are not following the mask mandate to start the probationary process against them.
The Carlyle and Flora School Districts are also reportedly scheduled for their conference with the State Board of Education to begin the 60 day process that could less to loss of recognition.
