CYNTHIANA, Ky. — In a few weeks, schools across the commonwealth will start their first days.
In the days left, school districts are finalizing measures to help prevent spreading COVID-19.
In March, Harrison County schools were the first in Kentucky to go to Non-Traditional Instruction (NTI).
“This year is different and when we ended in March, I think people were surprised. You don’t expect to just not come back the next week,” said Hannah Shoulders, an Agriculture teacher at Harrison County High School.
Shoulders said she’s grateful to have time to prepare her virtual classes after an abrupt end to in-person teaching last semester.
“Now with us having the experience that we had last semester, I think we’re going to be able to kick this off,” Shoulders said. “Like I have these big binders behind me, textbooks, things that I would use and worksheets I’ve used in the past, and we just can’t do that. And so when it comes to preparation, I’m converting a lot of my notebooks to be digital notebooks.”
Notebooks, labs, worksheets, and more are all being digitized in Google Classroom.
But among the many unknowns, administrators face connectivity concerns.
“One of the challenges is even if a student has a good device whether that be their phone, because phones can be used as well, or a Chromebook, the real issue is lack of internet service,” said Steven Fowler, principal of Harrison County High School.
Fowler is having his staff upload all lessons on Google Classroom so students can download lessons once a week if they do not have reliable access.
“Once it updates itself, they can go back to their home, they don’t have to worry about being connected to the internet at that point to complete the work because it’s loaded into Google Classroom,” Fowler said.
Nearly 35 percent of the families in Harrison County have opted for virtual learning while 65 percent will come into the classroom for two days a week in two groups, a model adopted in several other school districts.
The school district is working with the Wedco Health Department to set up contact-tracing guidelines and other health measures.