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Date: 2/16/2021
EASTHAMPTON – After nearly a four-hour meeting on Feb. 9 the School Committee voted to begin transitioning students back to school with high-needs populations returning on Feb. 22 and the remaining students phased in over the course of four weeks, starting in early March.
Before the vote, Superintendent Allison LeClair presented her return back-to-school plan for consideration.
For a safe return, Easthampton’s special populations, preschoolers, kindergarteners, English language learners (ELL), and students in remote learning centers would return on Feb. 22 to their normal school buildings, not the high school, she said.
According to an agreement between the district and the teachers union, this population can return to classrooms only if COVID-19 cases are below 35 per 100,000. For all other students, the threshold is 30 per 100,000. Prior to the meeting, the metric stated the city was at 23 cases per 100,000.
LeClair said this is their neediest group of students and therefore, they wanted to prioritize them.
LeClair presented two options for all of the other grades, both with a tentative start day of March 8.
Option one had a tentative start date of March 8 with the each sequence of grades entering the buildings two weeks after the group prior. First, grades 2, 5, and 12 would return, followed by grades 3, 6, 7, and 9 , and lastly, grades 4, 8, 10, and 11 would make up the final group.
Option two also has a tentative date of March 8. First, grades 2, 3, 5, 6, 9, and 12 will return, followed by grades 4, 7, 8, 10, and 11 two weeks later.
The difference between the two options is that option one spreads out over a six-week period and option two is spread out over a four-week period.
LeClair said that students will have one week of in-person learning and one week of remote learning to watch the transmission and keep the cohorts spread out.
Pre-K-8 students will be in school for part of the day for in-person learning, go home to eat lunch, and then continue their schooling online.
Students will not eat breakfast or lunch at school. Every afternoon they will be sent home with bagged lunch and breakfast for the following morning.
“Why did we decide that? Because our educators expressed to us they had concerns about students taking their masks off to eat meals. We heard them and in addition to that, our COVID response team reviewed all the information and their recommendation was, that we could return to in-person schooling more safely if we took serving meals off the table,” LeClair said.
High school students will be at home in the morning and come to school in the afternoon. LeClair shared that they think students will be more awake and responsive to their classes in the afternoon and Easthampton High School Principal William Evans added they have chosen this plan because he believes the attendance will get better.
School Committee Chair Cynthia Kwiecinski raised the concern that some families rely on their oldest child to watch their younger children so to have them at school at opposite times may be an issue. She also asked if a survey went out to parents on this idea and Evans said they did not because he wanted to know what was going to be decided before he announced it.
The committee also discussed transportation, pooled testing, and voted on fall II sports.
On Feb. 5 LeClair sent out an email to families and the committee saying that buses will only be available for eligible students in grades K-6.
During public speak parents voiced their concerns about being a single parent and or working full-time.
One parent of a student who attends White Brook Elementary School shared that she and her husband work full-time and will not be able to pick their son up.
“If he does not have a bus home, he won’t be going because no one will be there to pick him up and if I let him walk home, which I am not going to because it is too far, he would never get here in time to have lunch and log on at 12:30,” she said.
During the superintendent updates, LeClair explained why that was determined. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) guidance restricts passengers on the bus. Their 65 passenger buses can only hold 21 students due to COVID-19.
According to state law, they are only required to provide transportation to students in grades K-6 who live more than two miles or more from the school. Because of this, they need to run more buses to transport their youngest students that live over two miles away.
LeClair shared that they are waiting on DESE to change the restrictions so they can add more students to a bus which will result in fewer bus runs and freeing up buses to assist with the upper grades.
If parents of students in K-6 who are eligible for the bus choose not to use it, they may be able to consolidate, run fewer buses, and offer some runs for the upper grades. They will also plead with families that qualify for transportation but can give their spot up for others to use.
While Easthampton only has seven buses, Kwiecinski urged LeClair to come up with more creative ways to transport more children to and from school.
Originally, Easthampton schools were not going to participate in pool testing but after hearing from the community and school members, LeClair announced they will now participate.
She said she hopes to take part in the final three weeks of the pilot and then reassesses if they wish to continue using federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) dollars to fund it.
This will be extensive work for the nursing staff and they will need to prioritize this. If they choose to do it after the free period it will cost $10,000 a week from their ESSER funds and $120,000 if they do it until the end of the year.
The committee voted on fall II sports Tuesday night.
They voted to allow participation in football, cheerleading, and hockey from March 1 through April 22.
There will be a competitive football season, cheerleading will practice and engage in sideline cheering for outdoor sports and there will be no stunting allowed, and hockey was approved to continue practicing through fall II and practice once a week on an ice rink.
Athletes participating in football and hockey will continue to have to provide a weekly COVID-19 test. If Easthampton public schools do not continue the pool testing after the free period is up,they will have to get a test on their own.
Athletics Director Brian Miller shared that the number of athletes participating in sports this year has dropped due to the weekly testing requirement – whether it was too hard for them to commit to or they would not have transportation to get tested once a week.
Miller shared that hockey currently has two players and he is not sure if it was the testing requirements or the rules surrounding how they practice that turned them away.
The committee voted against boys and girls competitive basketball. The concerns surrounding basketball were that it would be indoors and players would be in each other’s faces.
During the meeting, they also accepted two donations – one from Barbra Foster to Maple Elementary School and another anonymous monetary donation to Maple Elementary School.
Their next meeting will be on Feb. 23 at 6 p.m.