The decision of whether, how and when schools will re-open for in-person classes next month is officially at the discretion of local school districts after the Oklahoma State Board of Education voted Thursday not to impose mandatory guidelines.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Joy Hofmeister and her staff presented a proposal of mandatory guidelines for all school districts based on the color-coded community spread alert system issued weekly by the Oklahoma State Department of Health.

The proposed regulations extended from in-person instruction with masks strongly recommended for schools in counties labeled “green” (new normal – less than .43 daily new cases per 100,000 population) to distance learning only for schools in counties labeled “red” (more than 50 new cases per day per 100,000 population).

After lengthy discussion, the board voted 4-3 in favor of an amended version of the proposal that changed the guidelines from mandatory to “recommended or strongly recommended,” leaving the decision up to local administrators and school boards.

A motion to reconsider the vote and make portions of the recommendations mandatory and other portions voluntary was voted down.

The state health department’s alert system is updated each Friday and is based on a rolling seven-day average of new cases reported each day in each of the state’s 77 counties.

Some board members expressed concern about how schools would be expected to respond from week to week to a changing color code that so far has been based on highly volatile numbers as the health department struggles to keep up with data collection and reporting.

Last week, data reporting at the state and county level was delayed by a backlog of test results that the health department was still working through on Friday when the latest color coded alert map was released.

Several board members were concerned about taking control away from local school administrators whom they said were best able to assess the risks pertinent to their local communities, particularly in counties where a high risk level is set by a large metropolitan area while smaller districts in the same county may have a much lower infection rate.

Kingfisher County dropped from what would have constituted a moderate Orange Level 1 risk last week under the state department of education guidelines to a Yellow (low risk level).

The recommendations for “yellow” counties include in-person instruction with masks for teachers, staff and students in grades 4 and above in the classroom, and for all students and personnel in the common areas, except when eating, on the playground or in PE, and limited public access to school buildings.

However, whether those recommendations are followed is up to each individual school district.

Reached via telephone on his way home from vacation, Kingfi sher Supt. Jason Sternberger said the state school board’s decision “really hasn’t changed what we said at our last board meeting.”

“Our No. 1 priority is to have as much normalcy as possible,” he said. “We’ll keep an eye on how the local situation changes over the coming weeks, but right now our intention is to start in-person instruction on Aug. 12.”

(Watch Wednesday’s edition for a story with more detail on county school districts plans.)

Friday’s statistics from the state health department showed 16 active cases in Kingfi sher County (74 total with 58 recovered); 142 active cases in Canadian County (786 total, 638 recovered and four deaths); 78 in Garfi eld County (220 total, 140 recovered and two deaths); 24 in Logan County (138 total, 113 recovered and one death), and six active in Blaine County (26 total and 20 recovered.)