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Date: 1/21/2021
GRANBY – Jan. 5 marked the first Granby School Committee meeting of 2021.
At the Dec. 23 meeting, the committee decided that all high need students would return to school on Jan. 4. Other students who were set to return were those in pre-K through grade seven that were not high needs and had begun hybrid learning on Jan. 11.
In a turn of events, Granby was in the red and school did not reopen on Jan. 4. The district went remote the week of Jan. 11. A special education teacher at the East Meadow School spoke for her nine students within the special population, four of whom are nonverbal, during the visitors comments portion of the meeting.
“They are missing out on working activities of their daily living skills and behavioral and communications skills,” she said. “They struggle not being in school and I think they have the most to lose by not being in school.”
In response, chair Emre Evren said, “I appreciate your comments and dedication to the education of those students who are high needs.”
Next, the committee made a motion to approve the Policy EBC COVID-19 with the amendments of the date in the top portion and the typo in the bottom portion.
The meeting continued with an update of the reopening planning process from the Health and Safety Committee. For the remainder of their school population, the Health and Safety Committee made a recommendation to adopt a criterion of metrics. Their sources for the health metrics were the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, which is Gov. Charlie Baker’s metric, Granby’s Board of Health metric trending data and the Mass DPH 5 percent positivity rate. The health and safety committee also added school-acquired transmission, clustering and vaccine data.
Above 26 positive cases for two consecutive weeks with potential for a third week, the school will go remote at the start of the third week. When the district turns yellow on a Thursday and there is a downward trend in the data for the following week, the high needs students are planned to return the following Monday.
Below 25 positive cases for one week with the potential for a second week with a downward trend, the school will go hybrid the start of the second week. Being categorized as red for two consecutive weeks with potential for a third week. Yellow, Green, Gray on the governor’s metric for one week with potential for a second week with a downward trend.
Ultimately, the committee made a motion to adopt these sources.
Granby Junior/Senior High School Assistant Principal Alison Jordan-Gagner and South Hadley Athletic Director Eric Castonguay joined the meeting with an update on winter sports.
Both Granby and South Hadley delayed the start of their seasons until Jan. 25.
Castonguay said, “We decided because of South Hadley’s rising cause of COVID numbers in town. We’re at 5.39 percent. For right now, we have proposed a Jan. 25 start date for practices and that will be visited Jan. 21 with the school committee to take a look at the numbers and see if they are trending down. Our decision will be made for the winter on the 21.”
For swimming, Castonguay said their pool had fallen apart and they will not have a pool in South Hadley for the time being. This season, they’ll be using the Holyoke YMCA facility. Granby participates in co-ops for hockey and swimming.
“Granby is part of our sports team,” Castonguay said. “It’s really going to hurt our teams if we don’t have Granby participating. We voted that we are going to allow Granby students to continue with our co-ops pending your approval to allow them to participate with us.”
At the Dec. 15, 2020, meeting, Gagner presented the committee with a winter athletics proposal for strictly skills and drills. She admitted there was a typo. Instead of the Granby proposed skills and drills start date being Jan. 18, it was moved to Jan. 19, as Jan. 18 is Marin Luther King Day and all buildings will be closed. Gagner’s proposed idea of incorporating games towards the end of the season between Feb. 1 and Feb. 28 had changed. She instead proposed Feb. 1 to 28 the start date for winter sports intersquad competitions for basketball only, with potential games if COVID-19 numbers decline. The committee unanimously approved the winter sports proposal.
There was also an update on the phases of the reopening plan from principal Stephen Sullivan for transiting grades nine to 12 to in-person learning
“So far, we have our high needs population in. We’ve had our seventh grade in and the next step was our eighth grade so we’re prepared for that and ready to move forward. This is really focused on grades nine through 12,” said Sullivan.
Surveys were sent to families in grade nine to 12 on Dec. 21 and 29, 2020, and as of Jan. 4, 53 percent of the families who responded have opted to return to in-person learning.
Currently, he said, they were prepared for the seventh grade, eighth grade and high needs students to be in-person. They were awaiting guidance from Davey Engineering, however, regarding five additional spaces. Those additional spaces were expected to be ready for use the week of Jan. 25.
At the end of the meeting, Hepworth announced that the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education adopted additional amendments to the Student Learning Time regulations on an emergency basis. Due to the need of live instruction, which includes a combination of in-person and remote synchronous instruction, and synchronous, which consists of learning that is directed by a teacher and that happens in real time with other students, in districts that are operating hybrid and remote learning models.
Using an average across the grade levels excluding pre-K and kindergarten allows flexibility for districts to set such as higher amounts synchronous learning time at the high school and lower amounts at the elementary level. Districts and schools operating a hybrid learning model must provide students with access to at least 35 hours of live instruction over a 10- day school period. Districts and schools operating a remote learning model must provide students with access to at least 40 hours of synchronous instruction over a 10-day school period. Students must have an opportunity to interact with educators each school day including a required daily live check in between students and educators.
This change went into effect on Jan. 19.