With the rise of Covid cases within the past month, many schools have elected to not have open houses, or instead, host them online. HC, however, is hosting an in-person open house on September 14th from 6pm to 7:30pm. 

With the potential of having many parents and guardians coming into the building, multiple teachers have voiced their concerns. Most of these are regarding teachers’ coming into contact with parents and bringing the virus home.

“[Teachers] feel like they don’t know parents coming into the building,” HC Spanish and Research teacher Pablo Brown said. “They have to wear masks to get into the building , but that doesn’t stop them from pulling them down when they walk into a classroom. We won’t have any leeway to tell them to pull the mask back up.”

If teachers and staff members happen to contract Covid, or their children, they will have to take 10 days off and schedule a substitute. Unfortunately, there is a shortage of substitutes in FCPS, increasing the difficulty for teachers to be out. 

“A lot of our teachers have children under the age of 12, so they aren’t able to get vaccinated. They are worried about the health of their kids [and] worried about how much time they are going to have to take off,” Brown said.

According to HC Paul Little, CDC guidelines and recommendations will still apply during the open house. This includes social distancing and wearing masks properly. In past years at HC, all the parents have met in the gymnasium at the beginning of open house. Although this allows administration to communicate with the parents all at once, social distancing will not be able to take place. 

“We have structured it differently this year than we have done in the past,” HC Principal Paul Little said. “We [usually] start open house in the gym, in one close area. Then, going around to each of the classrooms. This year, we have left it open, so there won’t be large groups.”

With parents being able to move around the building with their child’s schedule, contact tracing could not be implemented. This would make it difficult for teachers, staff members, and the Health Department to track exposure.

With Kentucky’s positivity rate at 14%, the highest it has been since the beginning of the pandemic, many HC staff and faculty are preparing for an open house that could have potential consequences.