001hello again chris cooper superintendent of clearwater schools want to give you a brief update my last brief update was way too long this one will be shorter i'd hope to have more definitive information by this friday to send out to you but we just don't have it on here friday the 24th of july some things did happen this week the state board of education voted five five on a resolution to uphold the governor's order to delay the start of school until after labor day so that did not pass that leaves it as a local decision which has created a lot of different scrambling modes for different districts and what's going on um i would say we do plan to have a delayed start our original calendar for the developed last year would have had a
002august 18th start date we will be later than that how much we're not sure yet there's a calendar committee that's working through several different options i would expect a week and a half to two week delay from that august 18th original date that two weeks would put us at september first i'd say that's highly likely through that process the where we've come to that decision is i've met with sedgwick county health department as well as all the sedgwick county superintendents to to try to get some guidance there dr minz uh was very cautious tonight not uh tell us exactly what we had to do to leave that a local uh decision but he also said he does not believe that the numbers will be decreasing significantly by the middle of august and that he didn't
003feel it would be prudent to start school with the numbers where they are so that means middle of august start for us uh is probably not going to happen the other thing is we really need some time to plan to have really robust good remote learning and to just have our logistics of how are we going to keep everybody safe when we do come back in the buildings so all of the calendar options we've we are considering uh lump a lot of teacher work in front of our start day so teachers will come back much sooner than students probably a little over a week earlier the other question of the week is do we have to wear masks for little kids do we not and the governor's order is different than sedgwick county's order and
004in one day i got four different answers from the same person at an attorney at the county level so um and the the final answer was we're not sure yet they are meeting now so we may have more answers about that soon but as of right now we're not sure which order we would fall under on the mask for 11 and under we do have graduation this sunday i want to thank mr mellon for all the work that he has done to make sure that our 2020 graduates get to have an amazing ceremony even though it will be different and unique outside with all our safety precautions in place so that we know that we're keeping everyone that participates safe so again i will provide these updates when we get any new information i'll try
005to i'll do one at least once a week even if it's like this that i really don't know much but if we get definite information particularly a start date for school we want to get that out to folks as soon as possible so i hope you can all have a good week weekend stay safe and we look forward to getting school started and we do want the time to keep everyone safe and to start in an amazing way and have an outstanding education no matter what form it takes this year so thanks and take care