LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Jefferson County Public Schools will follow Gov. Andy Beshear’s guidance to extend its stoppage of in-person learning through May 1 as Kentucky’s largest school district prepares to begin non-traditional instruction next week.
JCPS Superintendent Marty Pollio said it’s possible that the district will continue offering distance learning beyond May 1 during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Beshear said Thursday that he wants to see regular declines in the daily numbers of new COVID-19 cases in Kentucky and how other states are handling the novel coronavirus before he’ll recommend schools return to normal instruction. “There is a real chance” that schools won’t reopen their doors for the rest of the 2019-20 school year, he said during a Capitol news conference.
“It is a distinct possibility that we would go well beyond that date,” Pollio said in remarks provided Friday by JCPS. “...The earliest we could come back would be Monday, May 4.”
Pollio said he will as the Jefferson County Board of Education to make May 1 as school day as JCPS typically closes for the Kentucky Oaks.
JCPS teachers will be developing content for their classes Monday before starting non-traditional instruction Tuesday.
The district is providing 25,000 Chromebooks, offered first to low-income and special needs families, and 6,050 hotspots with unlimited data to households with special education students through a three-month, $871,200 contract with T-Mobile.
Pollio has said he expects much of the funding for the data hotspots will be covered by the $2.2 federal stimulus package passed by Congress, though groups like James Graham Brown Foundation, C.E. and S. Foundation and One Louisville have offered their financial support in the endeavor.
“We want to make sure our special education students have the opportunity, if they don’t have connectivity at home, that we get them a T-Mobile hotspot,” Pollio said, adding that demand for the technology has increased as school districts and businesses transition to working remotely.
“We are pushing to make sure we can get those hotspots, but this will all be based on when T-Mobile can deliver those hotspots to us.”
The district has also established a fund to buy more Chromebooks for the 2020-21 school year that has raised $30,000 so far through donations from Passport Health Plan, Help US Grow Foundation and Joy Hardesty.
JCPS is one of 89 districts that joined the Kentucky Department of Education’s non-traditional instruction program in light of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Schools were granted 30 days of distance learning by Kevin Brown, the state’s interim education commissioner, through a coronavirus relief package for school districts passed March 19.
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