Newton Public Schools will move into an orange zone in its gating criteria next week, meaning students in seventh through 12th grade will move to remote learning and sports can continue, but now without fans. Limited fans will still be allowed at home games this week. The move is due to the increased spread of COVID-19 in the community, according to school officials. Pre-kindergarten through sixth grade will go from on-site to hybrid next week.
Source: Local News | Wichita Eagle

More Kansas counties had so many new cases of COVID-19 over the past two weeks that they moved into the red zone of one key state benchmark for closing schools during the coronavirus pandemic. A map from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment showed 88 of 105 counties in the red zone of the incidence rate as of Monday. That’s 13 more counties than last week and 23 more than two weeks ago. The measurement compares the number of new cases of COVID-19 over two weeks with the population, expressed as the rate of new cases per 100,000 people. It is one of five school reopening indicators established by the Kansas State Department of Education. The KDHE releases information by county for three of the five indicators.
Source: Local News | Wichita Eagle

Sedgwick County, Wichita and the Kansas Department of Transportation are about to start on a plan to relieve the area’s biggest traffic headache, the oft-congested interchange of I-135 and I-235 in north Wichita. On Wednesday, the Sedgwick County Commission is expected to vote on spending $3.7 million toward the rebuilding of the “North Junction,” a well-known bottleneck between the city and points north. The project started in November 2018, but the work to date has been mostly rebuilding parts of I-235 to the west of the interchange and the only impact on traffic flow has been to slow things down in the construction area.
Source: Local News | Wichita Eagle

A Lawrence bar is suing a local health official over an emergency health order that limits bar hours in an attempt to slow the spread of the coronavirus. According to the Oct. 1 order issued by a Douglas County, Kansas health official, restaurants and bars with liquor licenses are required to stop serving alcohol by 11 p.m. and have to shut their doors to in-person clientele by midnight. Rita “Peach” Madl, the owner of The Sandbar, a popular bar in Lawrence, home to the University of Kansas, filed a lawsuit Friday against Douglas County’s Local Health Officer Thomas Marcellino, who issued the order.
Source: Local News | Wichita Eagle