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A teen dance that had been planned for Saturday, Nov. 6, was now postponed indefinitely after school and health officials expressed concerns.

Becky Kissick, director of the Clark County Health Department, confirmed that the dance was supposed to have been at 7 p.m. at the Tierney warehouse on Rockwell Road. When she learned about it, she and another health official met with someone at the business to provide them the governor’s coronavirus guidelines on mass gatherings and “share what we know about just how rapidly COVID can spread” at such events.

Gov. Andy Beshear issued an executive order July 20 limiting social gatherings to no more than 10 persons with exceptions for weddings, restaurants, retailers and other businesses and situations. 

Kissick said she wants people to be “mindful” that mass gatherings “pose a lot of challenges of risk factors” for the spread of the debilitating and often deadly disease.

A woman who was involved said in a Facebook message Friday that the event had been postponed and that Superintendent of Clark County Public Schools Paul Christy was “working with us to plan the next one.”

Christy confirmed that he had met with a group of parents of George Rogers Clark High School students and told them that he didn’t think it was safe for them to have “200 kids gathered at a dance” at this time.

It wasn’t a school-sanctioned event, so he could not have prohibited it, but the parents agreed to postpone the dance until the situation improves and it is safe to have some kind of event, maybe early next year.

“They agreed it was better to wait,” Christy  said.

Before The Sun knew the event was canceled, it had reached out to the superintendent, the GRC principal and all five school board members by email.

Three board members replied, expressing concerns about students gathering in large groups only two days after the school system had resumed in-person classes after eight months of distance learning because of the virus.

William Taulbee, a member of the school board and the superintendent’s coronavirus task force, said he would urge parents to cancel the event, which he had heard was planned for about 200.

“This dance jeopardizes in-person classes for next week and beyond,” Taulbee said. “A mass gathering of this size could also be detrimental to our community.”

Board Member Scott Hisle said that dance participants would be closer than the six feet of distancing recommended by public health officials, “unnecessarily inviting the further spread of COVID-19 in our community.”

“These actions could potentially cause a setback to all of the efforts that have gone into finally getting the kids back in the school this week,” and could force Christy to “proactively prohibit in-person school at GRC for up to two weeks,” Hisle said.

If a student who attends a dance tests positive, it could mean having to quarantine everyone else who was there.

“A single positive test from someone who attends this event could effectively shut down our current in-person instruction model and could force a  return to an entirely virtual instruction program with no in person teaching,” Board Chair Ashley Ritchie said. “This would be devastating for all those who have played by the rules and would be disappointing for all of the parents who have been working to keep their children safe and following the rules so we could get back to school.”