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Date: 8/10/2021
WORTHINGTON – The Worthington School Committee voted on Aug. 5 to approve COVID-19 safety guidelines that would require mask wearing for most people at the R.H. Conwell School to start the 2021-2022 school year.
Masks are required indoors and on school transportation for students in pre-K-6 and all adults – including educators, staff, visitors and volunteers – regardless of their vaccination status. Face coverings are not required outdoors or while eating and exceptions will be made for those with documented medical conditions or behavioral needs that make mask wearing not possible.
The policy generally mirrors guidelines set forth by education and public health authorities. Currently, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) and the Department of Public Health recommend – but do not require – masking indoors for all students in grades K-6. Additionally, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also both recommend that everyone wear masks indoors in schools, regardless of vaccination status, and the CDC additionally suggests maintaining three feet of social distancing when applicable.
Superintendent and Principal Gretchen Morse-Dobosz called the policy, which was unanimously supported by the committee, “clear” and “explicit.” While admitting she had hoped the coronavirus situation would have allowed for a normal school year, she said with patience from the school community, masks would be a thing of the past.
Morse-Dobosz noted that the school would continue to support educators’ efforts to teach outdoors whenever possible, noting the success of that approach during the 2020-2021 school year. When asked about the use of tents, she noted they were not preferred and school staff has ample outdoor learning space.
“We go back to what our school vision is, which is we want to be an outdoor learning school,” she said. “We talked as teachers [and] we’re not interested in having the outdoor classrooms in tents per se, but each classroom spending a good amount of their time outside … Just by nature, pre-COVID, teachers spent a lot of time outside and last year, they got the real practice of spending every day, all day outside, so it’s second nature for them.”
When Morse-Dobosz offered educators the opportunity to speak on outdoor learning, Kimberly Orzechowski, a third and fourth grade teacher on the school, said, “I will tell you if I have to wear a mask and if kids have to wear a mask inside, then we’re going to be spending a lot of time outside … We did a great job last year. I’m not going to speak for all of my colleagues, but I can dell you the majority of our day will be spent outside. I go out in the snow, I go out in the rain and we will be spending as much as we can outside.”
Eliza Lake, chief executive officer of the Hilltown Community Health Center, told the committee it was her assumption prior to the meeting that the majority of learning would take place outdoors because “I don’t feel that things have changed substantially at all from last year given that vaccinated people have been proven to transmit. I don’t see any difference than last year in terms of risk to the children in terms of transmission, so I would heartily hope that all the teachers would do that.”
When asked about the potential for transmission of the virus outdoors, Lake said while she had read one report that raised the possibility of the delta variant being more susceptible to outdoor transmission than the original iteration of the virus, she hadn’t observed a difference. She said more scientific research was needed to draw any conclusions.
“I haven’t seen any evidence and I don’t know if anyone else has about how it’s different with delta,” she said. “We do know people have 1,000 times more virus in their nasal passages than they did with alpha, so obviously there’s less exposure that you need, but I don’t think the science is out.”
R.H. Conwell’s projected enrollment, according to Morse-Dobos is 72 students, including 14 school choice and eight new families. The school will have 16 preschoolers, six kindergartners, 10 first graders, seven second graders, six third graders, 13 fourth graders, seven fifth graders and seven sixth graders.
Separately, Hampshire Regional District Superintendent Diana Bonneville said in a statement to Reminder Publishing that her administrative team is continuing to examine the ever-changing guidelines from AAP, CDC and DESE, and will discuss safety protocols at each School Committee meeting leading up to the new year.
“Our fear is that with increasing COVID cases, that these organizations will revise their guidelines as school approaches, which would alter our protocols,” she said.
Despite wanting to wait for more updates, Bonneville said that the consistent narrative across all organizations is students between pre-K and grade 6 are recommended to wear masks, regardless of vaccination status. Bonneville, however, believes that it is best to require them for those ages.
“I worry that certain families will choose not to mask their unvaccinated students, which puts our most vulnerable population at risk,” said Bonneville. In her guidelines presented to the committee, Bonneville wrote that all students pre-K through grade 12 would be required to wear a mask indoors except those who cannot do so due to medical conditions or behavioral needs.
Reminder Publishing staff writer Ryan Feyre contributed to this report.