COVID clock ticking as school districts wait and see

It was announced at the July 26 Ash Grove Board of Education meeting that the district has decided to take a wait and see approach regarding a school-wide plan of action to combat the recent surge of COVID-19. 
As Aug. 23 is the first day of school, there are still potentially many developments in the coming weeks to consider regarding the district's COVID counter attack. As such, school leadership has decided to hold off until the week of Aug. 9 to reevaluate the situation.
"Most every district in southwest Missouri has agreed to put their back to school plan out at that time," said Ash Grove R-4 Superintendent Dr. Aaron Gerla. "So sometime between Aug. 9-13 every school is going to put it out there what's going to happen. We do it now, that may change within the next two weeks and that's not good for any of us. That's also the first week of fall sports so we're going to have a lot of kids on our campus that week. So we want to be able to put it out there and be able to follow it from that point on."
Also during the meeting, the board approved:
- school handbooks, certified handbooks and non-certified handbooks;
- service contracts with physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy;
- meal prices, which will be increased 10 cents over last year's rate;
- transportation routes, which will be the same as last year;
- non-resident tuition rate of $7,000 per school year, which remains unchanged;
- and school bell schedules, which were updated at Bois D'Arc for 7:45 -7:50 a.m., with others remaining the same.
Also approved, were bids for gasoline, diesel and propane awarded to MFA; bread to Pennington's Supermarket and milk to Hiland Dairy.
The next meeting of the board  will be at 7 p.m. Aug. 23 at Bois D'Arc Elementary School, which will be preceded by a tax rating hearing at 6:30.