Public School Return Dates and Remote Learning in Flux Amid Impasse With Union

Editor’s note: Late Friday night (8/21) the Amherst Pelham Education Association and The Amherst School Committee reached an agreement on start dates for the fall semester and on the configuration of instruction. That agreement can be found here. The article below provides useful background and detail on the nature of the impasse that may help the reader understand why the two sides struggled to settle.

The Amherst Regional School Committee issued a statement this week outlining a major disagreement with the teachers’ union about the degree of caution needed to partially reopen schools in order to serve the district’s most needy children. 

The district had outlined a plan for a phased reopening beginning September 16 with only the youngest and most needy students, or “priority groups,”  attending in-person classes. However, on Friday (August 22) administrators and the Amherst Pelham Education Association announced an “agreement” under which no students would return to buildings before Oct. 1, with all others to start the year remotely. The priority groups who would return first include preschool through first grade pupils, English language learners, homeless children, and those with special needs.

As of this writing, however, it is unknown whether enough teachers will agree to appear in-person in order to staff the adopted model.  (A recent article on the reopening plan is here.) The phased reopening initially called for additional grades returning to in-person classes in batches in October and November. Friday’s announcement did not say whether those dates would be pushed back.

The amount of live virtual instruction remote students will receive has also been a matter of dispute between the school committees and the APEA, which represents teachers, clerical employees, and paraprofessionals.  

Such disputes between teachers’ unions and public school officials are going on across the nation.  Lawsuits by advocates for the disabled are pending against some school districts, arguing that they broke federal and state laws in the spring by failing to provide a free and appropriate public education. Despite the  pandemic, those laws “have not changed,” said Diane Smith Howard of the National Disability Rights Network on National Public Radio recently.  “Those laws have not been repealed. There are no waivers to those laws. So they are in effect,” Howard said. 

On August 19 APEA members participated in a statewide “Day of Action” by teachers calling for an all-remote start to the school year, and for school buildings to reopen “only when it’s safe.” (A related article is here.)

Amherst’s phased re-opening plan would be conditional upon “conservative” health metrics, according to the school committees, which maintain that more stringent APEA standards “would allow for a return to in-person learning only when COVID-19 is essentially eradicated.” 

Topics of debate between the school committee and union include the rate of positive tests in the region which should be used as an indicator of increased COVID-19 risk. Superintendent Michael Morris has put forward a 3% positive test rate as the threshold among other metrics. The district has said it wouldn’t move forward to a new phase if  there were more than 70 new cases per 100,000 people in Hampshire or Franklin counties, while the APEA’s proposal would set a limit of less than 1 case per 100,000 people. 

The current positive test rate for Hampshire County is 2.8%, according to CovidActNow. Additional statistics on the pandemic in Massachusetts are here. 

A summary of the APEA’s proposal this week called for all students participating in “enhanced remote” learning on September. 16, followed by individualized on-site services beginning “at the earliest” on October 28, “only if and when safety metrics are met.” It calls for “hybrid learning” to be phased-in by grade level beginning on February 1 at the earliest. 

Under the APEA’s proposed standards, schools would be closed if a single person tests positive for COVID-19 in any of the four member towns, including Amherst, Pelham, Leverett, and Shutesbury, independent of their connection to the schools, according to the school committees. 

The APEA’s list of demands also includes the requirement that all students wear professionally-fitted hospital-grade N95 masks. “This is more extreme than the most conservative recommendations from any reputable public health or healthcare organization,” School Committee Chairwoman Allison McDonald said at a meeting on August 18. 

McDonald read aloud from the school committee’s statement, after lengthy negotiations with the APEA in executive session. The virtual meeting was broadcast on Amherst Media Channel 15 and can be viewed here.  

“We remain confident that our deliberate and thoughtful process resulted in a cautious plan,” McDonald said, adding that the committees recognize that COVID-19 and associated risks “will likely be around for a very long time,” potentially beyond the fall semester and even the school year.

The school committees said that the APEA wants to prevent the district from setting any minimum requirements for teachers to provide “synchronous” or live virtual instruction.  Meanwhile, the union’s proposed format “mirrors the emergency distance model from last spring,” McDonald said, although last spring’s experience showed that remote instruction presents major challenges for some students.

“There was a large proportion of students who talked about struggling to stay motivated,” Superintendent Morris said at an August 13 school committee meeting. The state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education expects districts to provide a robust “virtual education,” with regular and consistent opportunities for students to access live synchronous instruction. 

Morris added that parents have made clear that they want comprehensive online instruction. “The expectation is that we will teach their children, not provide resources so they can teach their children,” he said. 

Friday’s agreement between the district and union states that the parties have agreed on “broad parameters” that will make distance learning meaningful for all students.

The district has surveyed families with students who would be part of the initial re-opening phase, with 90% responding as of August 18, and 68% opting for in-person learning.