KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A spike in COVID-19 cases in Douglas County — spurred by the testing of returning students at the University of Kansas — has led the Lawrence Public School District to begin 2020-21 with six weeks of remote learning.
The Lawrence-Douglas County Health Department said Thursday in a release that the increase in cases at KU drove the decision to move the county into the yellow phase.
“We recognize that the entry testing and high number of tests of University of Kansas students drove the number of new cases,” Director Dan Partridge said in a statement. “Given those COVID-19 cases are now in our community, we believe it’s prudent to move to phase Yellow.”
In addition to remote learning, the yellow phase calls for suspending high-risk activities at the middle and high school levels — including football, rugby, lacrosse, competitive cheerleading, dance, basketball, soccer, water polo, ice hockey and field hockey.
The suspension of competitions in high-risk activities takes effect on Monday.
Once school starts on Sept. 8, the district said in a Facebook post that it will follow remote learning guidelines approved by the school board in late July.
The district’s two high schools, Lawrence and Free State, compete in the Sunflower League.
Of the league’s 13 schools, which includes all Olathe Public Schools and Shawnee Mission School District high schools, only Gardner-Edgerton currently plans to allow fall sports when the school year resumes.
On the Missouri side of the Kansas City area, the Suburban Conference — which includes all the larger districts in Clay, Jackson and Platte counties — voted unanimously Monday to allow fall sports to proceed as scheduled.
