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Touchless, hands-free filtered bottle filling stations approved for schools

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Dr. Greg Adkins

By MEGHAN BRADBURY

news@breezenewspapers.com

The school board approved the purchase of touchless, hands-free filtered bottle filling stations during its Tuesday school board meeting, another measure to keep students and staff safe in the school house.

The school board unanimously approved the purchase of bottle filling stations for school facilities for a total cost of $1,535,707.22, which will come out of capital dollars, in response to COVID-19.

The Good Cause agenda item was a request from the Maintenance Services Department for an emergency purchase of 1,414 filtered bottle filling stations. The stations, which are touchless and hands free, will ensure that students and staff have access to safe drinking water during the pandemic at schools.

Superintendent Dr. Greg Adkins said there are two things they are spending money on for safety measures this upcoming school year. The first is personal protection equipment, masks and sanitizers, which is coming out of the general fund dollars.

“The reasons why we would first use our general fund is we would be attempting to get FEMA reimbursement for those dollars,” he explained to the board. “If we are using general fund dollars you are able to at least be eligible, or hope to be eligible for FEMA reimbursement.

The second safety measure the district is taking include the water dispensers, which comes from the capital budget. Again these items are also eligible for FEMA reimbursement.

Chief Financial Officer Dr. Amy Desamours said it allows them to have the most flexibility to have the entire amount reimbursed from FEMA. In turn, it leaves the district to use CARES Act dollars on educational initiatives that are really focused on trying to provide some additional services to students to help with mental health and educational initiatives to tighten the achievement gap.

Adkins also provided an update of the reopening of schools on Aug. 31. He said teachers, currently 5,000, have completed their intent forms.

“Dr. (Angela) Pruitt has a pretty monumental task in front of her and her HR team of really trying to make the balance between students and staff,” he said. “Fortunately we do have 66 percent of our teachers that have chosen to do face-to-face.”

So far 32,583 students have chosen face-to-face instruction, 30,990 have chosen Lee Home Connect, which will keep them tethered to their school, 11,079 have chosen Lee Virtual School and 727 have picked home school.

Adkins said they anticipate Lee Virtual School to continue to track down as many parents are shifting to another model to stay connected with their school. The track down also will help with funding.

“One of the things that is a concern regarding a strict virtual school option, the loss of funding,” Adkins said of a potential reduction of $22.9 million.

Lee Virtual School went from a relative small school to the largest school in the school district.

There are still 10,000 students whose families are still being contacted to find out their final request. Those who are not able to be contacted with automatically be assigned to the face-to-face instruction.

The class size for face-to-face instruction will be as low as they possibly can and virtual classes will be a larger, Adkins said.

“If I am a teacher I may have a class load of 150 students overall. Normally I would have that divided into 25 kids per class over six periods,” Adkins said.

The district, meanwhile, is putting some decisions on hold, such as staffing in terms of bringing people in externally and moving people around.