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Date: 5/27/2022
BELCHERTOWN – With COVID-19 cases on the rise across the board, the Belchertown School Committee discussed potential action to help combat the current surge.
Committee member Michael Knapp began the discussion by stating he was concerned about the rising cases in the county and district.
“We’re in a surge right now, if you look at county-wide numbers you see that, we’re over 200 cases per 100,000 for the week. What’s keeping us out of the red zone is that our hospitals aren’t capacity right now and hopefully it stays that way. If you look at the schools, the last two weeks we’ve had more students out with COVID [-19] than any time since the height in January,” he said.
On May 12, Knapp said 79 students and 10 staff reported having COVID-19 and on May 19 there were 58 students and 11 staff.
He added that missing school with COVID-19 has a negative impact on students and teachers because students and staff are required to quarantine for a week if they contract the virus.
“Every time a kid gets COVID [-19], they’re out of school for a week, if a teacher gets COVID [-19], they’re out of school for a week. If it’s all that happens, then thank goodness but it’s still a loss of learning and loss of experience for a lot of students and that has all kinds of effects because substitutes are hard to find and if a teacher misses, the whole class has less learning,” he said.
Committee Chair Heidi Gutekenst said surges were to be expected because COVID-19 is not going anywhere.
“My thought is we expected this to happen; we kind of said every three months we’ll see a surge like we have been, and every variant seems to get more and more contagious and less and less hospitalizations,” she said.
Committee Secretary Amy LaMothe said she was against implementing a mask mandate.
“Masks are important, but we have three weeks of school left and to me personally I don’t think a mandate is the way to go for this. I think we can encourage mask wearing and staying home if they’re sick but unfortunately, I think we’re late for this to really prevent any more spread,” she said. “If the Board of Health is not mandating it everywhere in our town, I don’t see the utility of it to finish out the school year.”
LaMothe added that the best way to fight the virus now is to encourage vaccinations, and because it is spring, potentially spend more classroom time outside with better airflow.
Superintendent Brian Cameron said a lot of the current spread was happening at events outside of what the school can control.
“It’s sporting events, it’s graduation parties, it’s activities outside school, which are going to happen no matter what. I think we have to encourage people to self-report in the morning when they come, we can have masks ready at the doors but for me it’s the self-reporting,” he said. “It’s all the things that sometimes we don’t have control of so I don’t know how we would control those things. We certainly do encourage getting outside and more classes are going outside.”
Cameron added that currently masks and sanitizers are available at the entrance of each school.
After Knapp suggested resuming the district’s weekly COVID-19 case reports because people were not making an informed decision by not wearing masks when he visited the schools about a month ago, School Nurse Leader Phyllis DuComb said more people were wearing masks recently.
“If you went there today or yesterday at any school, you would find that there are more students wearing masks and more staff wearing masks, I have seen a difference in the last month, so it is becoming more comfortable to wear a mask,” she said.
Gutekenst said she did not think it was necessary to resume the weekly case reports.
“I disagree with the notion that nobody knows it’s happening, I feel like everyone does. I think the numbers are helpful to know but I think they make people who are scared a bit more scared, I think for the people that are high risk, it exacerbates their worry,” she said.
During a public comment session about changing protocols, nearly every commenter said they were against instituting a mask recommendation or mandate and the choice should be left to parents and families. One Belchertown High School student said she wanted to reinstate the mandate.
“I know tons of seniors who are missing their prom because they got COVID [-19] due to the lack of mask mandate in our schools. I’m fearing that I will get COVID [-19], and my friends will get COVID [-19], which will put the community at risk,” the student said. “Because the numbers have been up so much, I do think that it’s necessary to mandate masks because what we’re doing is not helping anyone.”
While some commenters suggested the committee did not realize the virus would be sticking around, LaMothe said they were planning on it to be around forever.
“As a medical professional I never doubted that, that was something we knew. What the fear was what’s going to happen when people get sick and what’s going to happen to our hospitals. Now we have options, we have a vaccine, we can get boosters, we have anti-viral medication, so we have options now that we didn’t have before,” she said. “That is one reason why I don’t think mandating this is the best route.”
Ultimately, the committee did not make changes to the current COVID-19 protocols.
During the meeting, the committee also agreed to have Knapp speak on the committee’s behalf to the Department of Education against raising the required passing score for MCAS.
The Belchertown School Committee next meets on June 14 and coverage of that meeting will appear in the June 24 edition of The Reminder.