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Date: 9/21/2021
EASTHAMPTON – The Easthampton School Committee met on Sept. 10 to discuss lunch practices three weeks into the school year.
Easthampton Superintendent Allison LeClair and School Committee Chair Cynthia Kwiecinski visited schools in the district to see how lunches were being operated so far, especially since they received around 10 emails from parents asking about lunches.
“When I speak to colleagues in the area, I think that we are doing a lot really well,” said LeClair. “We’re doing the best practices that we can.”
According to LeClair, administrators have taken the necessary steps to ensure student and staff safety throughout these time periods when students are allowed to take their masks off to eat and drink. LeClair said she and the administrators have read all the guidance, talked to custodians, and measured out proper spacing and sought other furniture to add even more spacing.
“I think that they are continuing to think about what to do when the cold weather sets in,” said LeClair. “I think it’s going well at lunch for what I’ve seen.”
The district used COVID-19 funds to hire an additional lunch monitor for every school in the city, according to LeClair, and even added lunch waves at the elementary school levels so there would be five in total so they could decrease the number of students eating at one time.
If weather permits, schools have prioritized allowing students to eat outside, and some students at the high school have been allowed to eat indoors because there is much more space in that lunch-room than in other schools, as well as filtered air.
At the moment, while the weather is still warmer, students are eating on yoga mats outdoors, and custodians are marking six-foot separations so students know where they can put their mats down.
According to Kwiecinski, the high school currently operates lunches with assigned seating, which was reassuring for the committee chair. White Brook Middle School meanwhile is conducting lunch 100 percent outdoors. Students will be distanced six feet apart when the weather gets worse in the winter. The committee and the district are brainstorming other ways to spread out six feet in other schools like Center-Pepin as the weather changes.
“I was thrilled to see HEPA filters in the cafeterias where kids are eating,” said Kwiecinski, who added that Maple has HEPA filters in the hallway as well. “That’s not happening in a lot of schools.” All schools in the district will reach six feet of distance for lunch when students must be inside, according to LeClair.
“I started the day really concerned, and I was calmer and calmer as I saw each school,” said Kwiecinski regarding the visits to the schools. “Just managing five lunches in an elementary school is a bravo.”
During the meeting, committee member Laurie Garcia noted that a parent’s email expressed 26 points of concern about safety in schools, and Garcia found it a problem that these concerns outside of lunch were not going to be discussed during this meeting.
“I know our district has done more than most districts,” said Garcia. “What’s extremely concerning to many families in our district is we have stepped back from being so proactive,” referring to the dwindling members of the district’s COVID-19 response team, which Garcia was a part of all of 2020.
Kwiecinski, meanwhile, said the committee conducted this extra meeting because many of the parents’ concerns involved lunch protocol. The committee, therefore, wanted to address those problems and ease people’s concerns. They plan on addressing other concerns in a future meeting.
Garcia asked the administration to be as cognizant and vigilant as possible, as some people in many school districts continue to not take the delta variant serious.