Topeka Public Schools warns parents of possibility to move back to online learning

TOPEKA, Kan. (KSNT) - Topeka Public Schools sent an email to parents Wednesday telling them to start making arrangements for the possibility to go to online learning. This comes after the Shawnee County Health Department ranked the county in the "uncontrolled category" for the spread of the coronavirus. The email said the Shawnee County Health [...]

TOPEKA, Kan. (KSNT) - Topeka Public Schools sent an email to parents Wednesday telling them to start making arrangements for the possibility to go to online learning.

This comes after the Shawnee County Health Department ranked the county in the "uncontrolled category" for the spread of the coronavirus.

The email said the Shawnee County Health Department expects the spread to impact schools soon. The school district told parents to have their students take home their iPads and laptops on the 11th, before parent-teacher conferences. They also told parents to set up childcare plans like caretakers for their students.

Erika Hall, spokeswoman for the district, issued this statement:

"The Topeka Public Schools staff and students have done an exceptional job following the health department guidelines regarding wearing masks, social distancing and helping implement micro classrooms that have helped us prevent the spread of COVID-19 in our schools.  We thank them for the continued cooperation in support of providing in-person and remote learning opportunities.  Now we need our community to help us in also following the health department's guidelines as we work together to continue in-person learning for our scholars. The health and safety of our students and staff is our top priority and as a proactive step, if the county has a red rating for two consecutive weeks and the district is being impacted directly, we will be prepared to transition to remote.

District officials will assess the status of the community spread throughout November and we will inform families through weekly updates.  If there are two consecutive weeks of a red range and we are seeing an impact to our district directly, given students will be out for much of next week anyway due to parent-teacher conferences, we will allow them to remain learning remotely through the holiday break. We will plan to resume school as we normally would after the Thanksgiving holiday break if the red rating has declined as we want our students attending in-person as much as possible. As a proactive step, we want our parents to have this information early to allow families to have advance notice to plan for a transition to remote learning if necessary. While many schools have had no COVID-19 cases or a minimal number of COVID related absences due to the many safety measures we have in place, we believe this proactive step will help us remain in front of the increased spread as we are beginning to see the impact of the community spread on our district. "

This plan is to prepare families in case the coronavirus cases don't go down in Shawnee County.