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Date: 2/1/2021
SOUTH HADLEY – The South Hadley School Committee met for a special meeting on the evening of Jan. 21 where they decided that only some winter sports would be played this year due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
The two-and-a-half hour meeting began with member Charles Miles sharing some recent data regarding the number of positive COVID-19 cases in town. He said as of Dec. 29, the positive rate in town per every 100,000 residents was 47.9 percent. However, as of Jan. 19, it had climbed to 53.78 percent from 57 to 64 cases. Interim Superintendent Diana Bonneville gave a few notes following Miles’ sharing of statistics, and said there were some risks with sports including no masks and less strict social distancing. She said, “Baystate Health does not think this region has reached peak and is not likely to have significant reduction numbers over the next month or so.”
Bonneville said some surrounding communities were deferring athletic contests should their town be in the red. However, another option for South Hadley was to just do “skills and drills without competition” to allow for sports to be played, but to be safer. Athletic Director Eric Castonguay said while hosting only practices would work well for “just basketball,” he didn’t think it would work for swimming or hockey. “I think there’s been a few pools in the area that have been closed, so we got lucky to get the Holyoke YMCA, but there’s other schools that could use the time and I just can’t see us being allowed to keep that when another school could use that,” he said.
Similarly, he said the same was true for ice hockey. “Just practicing daily and paying the ice fee is – that’s an expensive practice,” he said. Castonguay added that the Olympia Ice Center in West Springfield was having a difficult time scheduling schools and he felt as though the district’s ice hockey team “would get bumped anyway.”
Liz Wood, who serves as the director of counseling and an adjustment counselor at the South Hadley High School, emphasized that while they all saw the social benefit of sports, circumstances had changed since the last time the group spoke. “Our positivity rate is different. Since Jan. 4, we have had 16 new South Hadley High School students test positive for COVID. And also on Jan. 4 our pod of practicing schools were Belchertown, Palmer, Granby, Hampden Charter, Pathfinder, Ware and Ludlow,” she said. “Today the only schools that remain in our pod are, and this is for basketball and swim, are Ware, Hampden Charter and Ludlow. The other schools have cancelled their winter season.”
Miles said as much as he wanted to have a winter sports season, “one-third of South Hadley’s cases have been in the last 30 days.” He said, “In the last five weeks, 100,000 people have died from this disease. This thing is off the rails and I think it would be reckless for us to have any sports right now.”
Vice Chair Allison Schlachter said during the committee’s last meeting she had been vocally in favor of having a winter sports season. However, she said in the week since the committee had received many letters from physicians and “our priority has to be on moving in a direction that brings our numbers down so we can open our schools.” She said, “We’ve got to get our students back to the school buildings. So whatever that means, that’s what I’m in favor of.”
Despite public comment not being on the agenda, after some discussion member Allison Garcia made a motion to open up public comment for 20 minutes. The motion was seconded and a parent who served as a vice principal in a different community gave a statement in support of hockey being allowed to have a winter season. “They’re fully geared up, they’re not sharing equipment, they’re holding their own stick, they’re hitting a puck that is on the floor and when they do come in contact it’s probably less than three seconds,” she said.
Resident Ed Godek then spoke and gave his experience, stating that “we’re assuming everyone was doing the right thing.” However, he said he had been “stuck at home for the last week” as someone who thought they simply had a cold entered his wife’s place of business and later found that they tested positive for COVID-19. He said while he “felt” for kids stuck at home, he felt it was “not the time and place” to let a winter sports season take place.
After public comment was closed, the committee continued their discussion with Wood explaining the difference between the transmission of the virus with hockey compared to other sports. “Hockey is different because of the temperature of the ice and the humidity in the air. It holds the virus at a certain level, so that’s why the Department of Public Health said it’s a different scenario when you’re in a hockey rink,” she said.
Wood also went on to say that she was unsure if the YMCA in Holyoke and the ice rink where they would rent practice and game time would go forward with their contracts given that they would only be using the space for practice. She also went on to explain the logistics and that there were “concerns about the dollar amounts,” as there would only be “six or seven games.”
“The dollar amount playing six or seven games doesn’t necessarily go down. It actually doesn’t at all because of the staffing that we need to support games as well as just the ice time cost and the cost of renting the pool,” she said.
Both Garcia, Belanger and Schlachter went on to express their frustration at how they’d tried to reach out to local Board of Health members and had invitations declined. Belanger said this had happened as recently as the day of the meeting. Schlachter said, “I’m tired of being shamed for wanting help with these decisions that end up with 60 emails in our inboxes of angry people no matter what we do.”
Miles said while he understood firsthand how children benefited from sports as he’d had young children play touch football in the fall, he didn’t think the situation was the same now that winter sports were on the table. Belanger said, “I think the question is, not whether or not it’s worse, the pandemic. The question is whether or not our tolerance for risk is there, if I’m being completely honest.”
“The risk is there. We tolerated it in the fall, and we were successful, but the question is, is our risk tolerance higher? Because the risk has gotten higher,” he said. Schlachter said she felt as though it was and that people had “rehabituated” as they’d learned to live with COVID–19 for close to a year now.
“We’re conditioned to be living in a pandemic, so I think that is true. I also think that because our tolerance and risk is higher, there are certain members of the populations that are taking more risk,” Schlachter said. She then went on to say this is why she felt as though they should be discussing if it made more sense to be bringing people together safely where they could monitor and enforce masking and social distancing guidelines.
Registered nurse who works for the school, Eileen Garvey, said she felt “school has to be the priority over sports.” She said, “The numbers of the infection, it’s enormous right now.” Dr. Michael D’Alessandro also joined the call and said he felt as though students needed to be back in school for in-person learning prior to beginning sports again. This, he said, felt was “many months down the road.”
When Schlachter asked D’Allessandro if it made sense to conduct structured activities where social distancing and masking wearing could be enforced, he said while he understood that thought process and it made sense, he still didn’t recommend it. “I think it comes at too much of a risk because you’re right about adolescent behaviors and not complying, and I think all of that will continue. But the actual sports themselves, the athletics, the comparative efforts will pose a greater risk,” he said.
Student representative, Maddie Foley, said she participated in indoor track and had known for a while that they would not have a season. She also stated that, as a senior, she’d rather be back in school, be able to experience some of her senior year and have a graduation than play winter sports. “It’s such a small population of the high school that do we want to risk it for such a small population when arts aren’t happening, indoor track isn’t happening, all these other activities aren’t happening,” she said.
Miles then made a motion to cancel the winter sports season for the school year, which was seconded by Schlachter. Both Schlachter and Miles voted in favor of the measure while Belanger, Garcia and Phillips voted against the measure. The committee then took up each sport individually to assess where each sport should have a season. Belanger first broached the swimming season and clarified that all meets would be virtual and there would be no locker room accessibility.
Castonguay explained the way virtual swim meets would work is that there would be a referee at the pool to record times. The opposing team would then “have 24 hours to get referees, and then they’ll compete and we’ll share our times,” Castonguay explained. He also said that students wouldn’t take their masks off until they were on a starting block ready to begin their race. The mask would then be put in a personal ZipLock bag with their name on it which would be grabbed by a teammate and taken to the finishing end of the pool. Castonguay said as soon as the athlete was finished with the race their mask would be put on again. Additionally, there would be staggered lanes and no one would be swimming next to each other. The committee ultimately decided in a four to one vote to allow for a swimming season, with only Miles voting against the measure.
The committee then moved on to discussing hockey. Schlachter and Belanger both voiced concerns regarding the ability to work with a neighboring community’s board of health with respect to testing, data and contract tracing as the team would be interacting with Granby students. After more discussion, a vote was taken regarding the hockey team’s season. Ultimately, the committee voted against the hockey team beginning their season with a vote of three to two.
In their last measure of the night, the committee discussed basketball. Belanger pointed out that basketball was one sport that would be able to do skills and drills with no contests. Additionally, it was pointed out that basketball was a sport that requires the most amount of cleaning and that athletes would be wearing masks when participating in the sport. The committee then voted on allowing basketball to have a competitive season where they participated in games with schools in their pod. The motion failed in a vote of three to two. However, the committee then went on to vote in favor of allowing the basketball team to simply practice and do skills and drills with a vote of four to one.