Parents must decide quickly if they want kids to repeat unprecedented COVID school year

Valarie Honeycutt Spears
·3 min read

Families in Fayette who think their child suffered academically during the pandemic have just two weeks until May 1 to request a repeat year under a new state law.

Under the law, the Fayette County Board of Education and other districts in Kentucky must then decide before June 1, 2021, to either accept all of the requests from students or none of the requests, Acting Superintendent Marlene Helm told families in a message Thursday night.

The new law approved in March by the Kentucky General Assembly allows students currently enrolled in grades K-12 to use the 2021-22 school year to retake or supplement courses or grades they have taken in 2020-21 in which students mostly learned virtually. Most districts in the state have now returned in person.

Kentucky Education Commissioner Jason E. Glass said at a superintendent’s meeting this week that state officials did not know how many students would take a repeat year and how the new program might impact districts,

Every Fayette school already has an established process for students to be retained if they have not mastered the content they need to move on to the next grade level, Helm said in her message.

“What makes this program different is that it allows families to request retention, and it creates a pathway for seniors who have earned enough credits to graduate to return for a fifth year of high school,” Helm said.

The sponsor of Senate Bill 128 which created the “Supplemental School Year Program,” Sen. Max Wise, R-Campbellsville, has said he viewed the legislation as helping students who lost a year of opportunities in learning and extra-curricular activities, mental health and relationships.

People interested in the option should fill out the district’s online request form before 11:59 p.m May 1.

“We understand this may be a difficult decision for your family given the short timeline, however the law requires a quick turnaround. Fayette County Public Schools wants to help you make an informed decision about whether or not this option is right for your child,” Helm said.

Information on the Senate Bill 128 Supplemental School Year Program is on the district website. and the district has a dedicated email address -- sb128@fayette.kyschools.us -- to send questions about the program.

Courses taken during the supplemental year must be those the student previously was enrolled in during 2020-21 or bear a reasonable connection to previous courses.

Students can’t retake or supplement courses or repeat grade levels from any school year before 2020-21, and they can’t use the supplemental school year to explore courses they did not have the opportunity to take in prior years.

Students who choose the supplemental year can participate in extracurricular activities. Student athletes in their senior year could get a fifth year of eligibility In high school, they must meet Kentucky High School Association age and other eligibility requirements. If the student is 19 before August 1, 2021, they will be ineligible for KHSAA sports during the 2021-22 school year, Helm said..

At a Fayette school board budget session Thursday night, board members mentioned that if enough Fayette students repeated a year, more staff might have to be hired.

School districts across Kentucky have been telling families about the program and its pending deadlines..

State education officials said at the recent superintendent’s meeting that districts could use federal COVID stimulus money to pay for costs associated with the supplemental school year program.

“Not only did the COVID-19 pandemic affect education in ways we have never seen before, but it also altered the education landscape going forward,” Glass said in a recent statement “This bill is an example of that. We want to ensure our districts have all the necessary resources to provide students, families and school officials with relevant information as they make these significant decisions.”

Recommended Stories

  • Jennifer Lopez & Alex Rodriguez's Breakup Announcement Gets to the Point of Why This Hurts So Much

    After four years of dating, Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez are officially no more. The Hustlers star and former pro baseball player gave a statement to Today confirming the end of their relationship a few years after Rodriguez’s romantic beachside proposal and just weeks after denying rumors of their split amid new reports that Rodriguez had been in touch […]

  • Wall Street spent a record $2.9 billion on political contributions and lobbying in 2019 and 2020, a new study shows. Here's who spent, and received, the most cash.

    Financial-services firms spent much more on Biden than on Trump, and Bloomberg LP spent more than any other firm, data suggests.

  • Alison Brie defends 'Promising Young Woman' costar Carey Mulligan for calling out Variety critic

    The actress told Insider she thought the views expressed by the Variety critic were "egregious" and "inappropriate."

  • Why Peter Phillips is the ideal peacemaker to stand between William and Harry

    Peter Phillips is the ideal peacemaker to stand between his cousins Prince William and Prince Harry at Prince Philip’s funeral. However badly the brothers have fallen out, they remain extremely fond of their first cousin. Ever since they were born, Peter Phillips has been the cousin they most look up to. As the oldest grandchild of the Queen and Prince Philip, he occupies a powerful role among the next generation of royals. At 43, he is 30 years older than his youngest royal first cousin, Viscount Severn, Prince Edward’s younger child. Five years older than William, and seven years older than Harry, Peter was the tough, strong, no-nonsense boy they admired when they were children. Now they’re grown-up, you can see how close they remain to him, joshing each other and laughing away.

  • GOP lawmakers react to FedEx shooting, discuss Supreme Court reform

    Reps. Ken Buck, Ted Budd and Markwayne Mullin join 'Fox & Friends First.'

  • 'Lost' creator Damon Lindelof says Justin Theroux 'wasn't interested' in lead role that went to Matthew Fox

    Lindelof and Theroux eventually worked together on HBO's "The Leftovers," which ran for three seasons and gained huge critical acclaim.

  • A photo of an 85-year-old Brazilian woman getting her first hug in the COVID-19 pandemic has won World Press Photo of the Year

    The photo, taken in August 2020, shows Rosa Luzia Lunardi getting a hug from a care home nurse, with a clear plastic sheet separating the two.

  • ‘Worse than any war zone.’ Teacher’s killing reveals drug cartels’ growing NC footprint

    North Carolina is situated between between major population hubs on the East and West coasts and south Florida.

  • Hunter Biden on Burisma, Don Jr., and Cooking Crack

    Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/GettyOn a special edition of The New Abnormal, the president’s son opens up to Molly Jong-Fast about … well, about a lot. Why the Trumps continue to go after him so hard. Why his wife won’t let him have a laptop. How easy it is to cook crack cocaine. How hard it is to live in fear of a relapse.But Hunter Biden also gave some hard-to-swallow answers about the emails he traded with the bigwigs at energy companies in China and Ukraine—answers that could come back to haunt him. It’s all part of an absolutely gripping episode that you absolutely have to hear.Jong-Fast asks Biden when he realized that the former president and his son were fixated on him. “That was right around when I started to get sober and clean... It was only then did I realize the level of their obsession because long enough to look up from whatever drink or drug I was just pursuing at the moment. And it seemed like that every word out of the president's mouth was some kind of demeaning or just horrible insult towards me,” he answers.“Do you think they did it because they wanted you to kill yourself?” Jong-Fast replies.“As a person in recovery, one of the things that I have truly tried to come to grips with is that the world actually does not revolve around me,” Biden says.“I mean, usually it doesn’t. But on this, I feel that it does,” Jong-Fast says.“I don't think that they thought that they would necessarily convince anyone not to vote for my dad because I'm an addict. I think there's far, far too many people—I mean, everyone I know knows someone that they love—that suffer from addiction,” Biden says. “I think that they thought that they would be able to distract my dad enough that he wouldn't be able to focus on the campaign... But it had the exact opposite effect… They obviously don't know what it's like to be a part of a family, at least this family.”Listen to Bonus Episodes of The New Abnormal PodcastJong-Fast also asks Biden about the leaked emails that caused such a stir at the end of the campaign. He claims he had no idea what she’s talking about. The email from an executive at Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company, thanking Biden for “the opportunity to meet your father and spend some time with him”?“I truly don't know the origin of a lot of this stuff,” Biden replies.The email titled “expectations,” which involved details for how much he might get paid by China's largest private energy company?“I literally don't know what you're even referring to. Is it from me?” Biden answers. “You know, I mean, there is a intelligence report from, from all of our intelligence agencies that has come to the conclusion that this was a Russian operation.”What Mika Brzezinski Did When She Read Trump’s ‘Bleeding Facelift’ TweetThe conversation swings back to his oscillation between addiction and recovery—“I talk to somebody in the program at least literally three times a day,” Biden says. Jong-Fast mentions how open he is in the book about his struggle, and about his marriage to his brother’s widow.“The truth is that I can't afford not to be honest with my myself,” he says. Marriage is hard enough, but then marriage with someone that is going through a cycle of relapse? And then do it in the public eye? It's a dangerous mix.”Listen to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Amazon.Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

  • Texas House votes to allow Texans to carry handguns without a license or training

    You may soon need a license to drive and vote in Texas but not carry a handgun in public. After years of failed attempts by gun advocates, the Texas House on Thursday gave initial approval to a bill that would drop the state's requirement that most handgun owners obtain a $40 license to carry their firearm in public, concealed or openly. Currently, Texans 21 and over with no criminal record can get a license to carry a handgun if they complete a training requirement, don't have a drug addiction, and can "exercise sound judgment with respect the proper use and storage of a handgun," the Austin American-Statesman explains. The measure would drop the license requirement, though federal background checks would remain in place for most handgun purchases, with exceptions for private and gun show sales. It passed 84-56, mainly along party lines; five Democrats voted in favor, one Republican voted against. The legislation needs another vote in the House, and it faces an uncertain future in the state Senate. The El Paso delegation led the unsuccessful opposition to the bill, HR 1927. After a gunman murdered 23 people at a Walmart in 2019, followed weeks later by the mass shooting of seven people in Midland Odessa, "there were roundtable discussions and stakeholder meetings and a lot of promises — and I was hopeful, members, even knowing the political realities, I was hopeful," said state Rep. Joe Moody (D). "I'm so tired of doing nothing," he added. "I'm so tired of catering to a very small number of very loud people whose thinking about guns is wrapped up in unfounded fears and bizarre conspiracy theories." Permitless carry has the support of the Texas Republican Party and the National Rifle Association. It is opposed by law enforcement groups, firearms trainers, and groups of clergy and veterans. At a break in the five-hour debate, a group of gun control advocates prayed and sang "Amazing Grace" in the gallery, before being escorted out by law enforcement. More stories from theweek.comHow a music teacher falsely accused of pedophilia sparked the Matt Gaetz investigation5 colossally funny cartoons about Biden's infrastructure planKevin McCarthy says Matt Gaetz is 'the same as any American. He's innocent until proven guilty.'

  • GOP leaders diverge on Trump, putting party in limbo

    One by one, the Republican leaders of Congress have made the trip to Mar-a-Lago to see Donald Trump. Kevin McCarthy visited after the deadly Jan 6 Capitol insurrection, counting on the former president's help to win back control of the House in 2022. The chair of the Senate Republican campaign committee, Rick Scott, stopped by to enlist Trump in efforts to regain the Senate.

  • EU post-Brexit imports from UK halve in Jan-Feb, trade surplus rises

    The European Union's imports from Britain almost halved in the first two months of the year following the UK exit from the EU single market, data showed on Friday, and the 27-nation bloc's trade surplus with Britain rose as exports fell by less. The European Union's statistics office Eurostat said EU imports from Britain dropped 47.0% year-on-year in January-February to 16.6 billion euros ($19.9 billion) while exports to the United Kingdom declined only 20.2% to 39.8 billion euros. As a result, the EU's trade surplus with Britain rose to 23.2 billion euros in the first two months after Britain's Brexit transition period expired from 18.6 billion euros in the same period of 2020, when London still enjoyed unfettered access to the EU's single market.

  • Former Vice President Pence receives heart pacemaker

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence received a heart pacemaker device during routine surgery on Wednesday and is expected to fully recover, his spokesman said on Thursday. Pence, 61, who previously disclosed an "asymptomatic" heart condition, underwent the procedure at the Inova Fairfax medical facility in Virginia after experiencing symptoms associated with a slow heart rate over the past two weeks, spokesman Devin O'Malley said in a statement. “I am grateful for the swift professionalism and care of the outstanding doctors, nurses and staff at Inova Heart and Vascular Institute," Pence said in a statement, adding thanks to his doctors in his home state of Indiana.

  • Jaida Peterson was killed in Charlotte. Her sisterhood wants to know: Why?

    One friend said of the violence: “Most of the time, we don’t get no funeral or nothing. We just get our bodies found.”

  • ‘Worse than any war zone.’ Teacher’s killing reveals drug cartels’ growing NC footprint

    North Carolina is situated between between major population hubs on the East and West coasts and south Florida.

  • Texas' longest serving death row inmate has sentence tossed

    An appeals court has overturned the sentence of Texas’ longest serving death row inmate, whose attorneys say has languished in prison for more than 45 years because he's too mentally ill to be executed. Raymond Riles’ “death sentence can no longer stand” because the 70-year-old inmate’s history of mental illness was not properly considered by jurors, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled Wednesday. When Riles was tried, state law did not expect jurors to consider mitigating evidence such as mental illness when deciding whether someone should be sentenced to death.

  • Sixty years after Bay of Pigs, Biden can find opportunity in Cuba after decades of policy failures | Opinion

    On the night of April 17, 1961, the CIA-backed Brigade 2506 reached the Bay of Pigs on Cuba’s southern shore. The intention was to overthrow Fidel Castro’s socialist government and install as interim leader José Miró Cardona, a former member of Castro’s government and the head of the Cuban Revolutionary Council, a pro-democracy exile group.

  • Creepy ‘eyeball’ creatures wash up on Texas beach stumping experts

    ‘This one had us stumped for quite some time,’ said National Park Service officials

  • American voters overwhelmingly like the stuff the GOP wants to strip out of Biden's infrastructure plan

    A CNBC survey found that just 36% of voters like Biden's infrastructure plan as it is. But they largely support measures that GOP lawmakers oppose.

  • Top US general in Europe says there's a low-to-medium risk Russia invades Ukraine in the next few weeks

    Russia has amassed roughly 80,000 troops along Ukraine's borders, raising alarm bells across Europe and in Washington.