Blevins School Board

By Liz Woll, 11/9/21 12:37 PM

The Blevins School Board met Monday evening at 6:30pm in the Blevins School Cafeteria. The meeting started with prayer, the pledge, and the approval of the last meeting’s minutes.

This month’s meeting was brief, but there were a couple matters of note. One was that the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement informed the Blevins School District that as of Nov. 1st, there had been a 14-day rate of at least 50 new known infections per 10,000 district residents, thus listing the school district in the “red zone”. It is worth noting that this applies to all residents within the district, not necessarily only those actively attending school, and that these numbers include both confirmed and probable cases. It was also mentioned that these numbers are based on verbal reporting as well as testing. Members of the school board suspect the recent spike in local cases is largely due to Halloween festivities, and expect the number to decrease before long.

In a related issue, it was proposed that the district implement a Test to Stay program. This program would allow for students that have had close contact with a contagious individual to skip the traditional quarantine period and return to school immediately, provided they are tested for Covid-19 at the beginning of each school day. The student or staff member would arrive at a designated area and take the rapid test. If the results after the 15-minute wait are clear, they will be allowed to continue their day as normal. This will repeat for a 7-day period, the individual being expected to quarantine as normal over the weekend. Several board members voiced enthusiastic support of this idea, citing concern for both the students and parents being required to regularly quarantine and relief that the students wouldn’t be missing nearly as much in-person instruction. The program was implemented unanimously.

Other issues discussed include the replacing of an HVAC unit, the redistricting of the school board zones, and an upcoming chess tournament for grades 4-6 this Thursday.

The meeting’s minutes can be found on the Blevins School District’s web page.

https://www.blevinshornets.org/browse/168620