Tara Martin, the District Assessment Coordinator for Glasgow Independent Schools, speaks to school board members at an earlier meeting of the board.
(JORDAN SMITH/WCLU NEWS)
GLASGOW, Ky. – An updated COVID-19 operations plan for Glasgow Independent Schools and the possibility of an incentive program for recruiting and retaining bus drivers were among the agenda items at the monthly meeting of the school system’s board Monday.
The meeting was held at Highland Elementary School Monday evening.
Like most schools in the commonwealth, Glasgow decided to take a mask-optional approach at the beginning of the month. As of Monday evening, there are no reported positive cases of Covid-19 in the entire district and only eight students are in quarantine due to being exposed to someone who tested positive for with virus.
Tara Martin, the District Assessment Coordinator for Glasgow Independent Schools, said this decision was made after speaking with local health professionals and she has witnessed plenty of students and staff continuing to wear masks during school hours.
“In working with local health officials, we’ve decided to go mask-optional,” Martin said. “Walking in some of the buildings, it’s about 50-50 seeing faculty and students wearing masks to not wearing masks.”
Martin also said this protocol is something that will be reviewed and reassessed every Thursday night.
“The district admin will look at the state incident rate map for Barren County and if we get back into the red, we’ll have that conversation after we have had discussions with local health officials to see where most of the incident rates in the county have taken place,” Martin said.
The other big agenda item dealt with creating or providing an incentive program to recruit new bus drivers and retain current ones. There is a bus driver shortage across all of Kentucky and although it’s not a critical point for Glasgow schools just yet, Martin says it’s important to make sure it never reaches that point.
“We’re not hurting, but we definitely don’t want to be caught in a situation where we don’t have enough bus drivers to get our kids to and from school every day,” she said. “I was really appreciative and excited that the board is going to let us consider looking into an incentive program so that we can hopefully increase the amount of people we have driving for our district.”
Other items on the agenda include acceptance of a $4,500 donation to the Glasgow High School baseball team from Don Franklin, a $500 donation to the middle school boy’s basketball team from Houchens Food Group Inc., and a $1,500 donation from German American Bank for the high school.
The School Board will meet in regular session for the final time in 2021 next month.
