Sumner County School Board passed resolutions regarding COVID-19 in its district. The resolution will now go to state lawmakers asking them not to require a waiver to have 180 school days if the school district has to shut down over coronavirus cases and dip into snow days. The school board is also asking the state for more flexibility when it comes to remote and hybrid learning.
School board members Tammy Hayes, Alice Bachman, Sarah Andrews, Jeff Duncan, Betsy Hawkins, Andy Daniels, Patricia Brown, Glen Gregory, David Wilkerson, and Tim Brewer all voted to carry the motion on Tuesday.
The official resolution states, “The Sumner County Board of Education urges the Tennessee General Assembly and State Board of Education to immediately create legislation and rules that waive inclement weather days used as a mitigation effort to combat the spread of COVID-19 in Sumner County Schools as well as reinstate some flexibility for local school boards to transition districts to hybrid or remote learning for a short, specified period of time to combat any future variants or surges of COVID-19 that may occur.”
This comes just after Sumner County Schools was forced to shut down all district schools from September 7th to September 10th “to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19 among students and staff.”
Thankfully, according to data from the Tennessee Department of Education, the number of Tennessee school-aged children testing positive for COVID-19 has seen a significant drop from prior weeks. According to data from the Tennessee Health Department, hospitalizations among children are also at their lowest levels in nearly a month and the cases among all ages have continued to drop as well.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected]
Photo “Sumner County Schools” by Sumner County Schools, Tennessee.
