Up to 75% Of Amherst Elementary School Pupils Will Be On-Site In April
Photo: health.mil
Amherst Regional High School Could Return May 3, Further Reopening Information Expected Tuesday
Most families with children at the Fort River, Wildwood and Crocker Farm elementary schools have informed the school district that their children will be returning to buildings next month, totaling about 75% of the schools’ population.
The three elementary schools will each have 200 to 250 students in-person, for a total of 711 pupils returning to buildings. By redeploying some staff who ordinarily work as specialists or paraprofessionals, there will be enough classroom teachers to keep class sizes small, and enable teachers with medical conditions to remain remote, Schools Superintendent Michael Morris said at a meeting Tuesday of the Amherst, Union 26, and Regional School Committees (RSC.)
The average in-person class will be about 15 students, while remote classes will have 18 or 19.
“This worked out pretty well by grade level,” Morris said, adding that the district will attempt to keep as many children as possible with their current classroom teachers this spring.
Small numbers of children have returned to the elementary schools in recent weeks, but the majority have been learning remotely since mid-March of 2020.
State guidance released earlier this month set deadlines for resumption of full-time in-person school for grades K-5 by April 5, and grades 6-8 by April 28. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) did not set a date for high schools to return, but said it will announce “details and timing” in April, and give at least two weeks’ notice.
Morris said that the state is not requiring live remote instruction as of April 5, but that Amherst will continue to provide it, rather than shifting to all “asynchronous,” learning. “I want to be clear that is not what we’re doing,” he said.
Massachusetts Teachers Association Rejects Three-Foot Distancing Guidance, Warns It Could Lead to More COVID-19 Infections
Meanwhile, COVID-19 cases in Massachusetts schools rose this week for the second week in a row. A total of 669 cases were reported to the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) for the seven days ended March 17, including 476 among students and 193 in staff who had access to buildings. The new numbers were 146 cases higher than last week. (See a related article here.)
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated the “operational strategies” for schools on Friday, stating that students can be spaced three feet apart from one another, revising earlier language urging separation of six feet. (See a related article here.) The CDC also removed a recommendation for physical barriers in classrooms, and clarified the importance of ventilation in reducing COVID-19 transmission risk.
The Massachusetts Teachers Association rejected the CDC’s new distancing guidance, and called once again for public school reopenings to be delayed at least until April 26.
“The CDC has said for nearly a year that six feet of distancing helps reduce the spread of the coronavirus in schools. The new guidance says three feet is now good enough in most circumstances, even though it will lead to a sharp increase in the number of potentially infected people in our school buildings. For Massachusetts, this guidance comes at a time when new cases are relatively high and more contagious variants are spreading,” stated MTA President Merrie Najimy.
Najimy said that other transmission mitigation strategies will be more important than ever, including vaccination of school employees, use of masks, and “surveillance testing.”
Remote Elementary Classes Will Combine Fort River, Wildwood & Crocker Farm
In Amherst, remote classes will continue in April for the elementary families who chose it, but some will combine children from different schools. There will be just two remote classrooms per grade level across the elementary district, Morris said. The return will also result in a few multi-age classrooms at the elementary level.
Amherst pupils in grades K-2 are scheduled to return April 5, and grades 3-6 on April 12, although the later date for the upper grades will require that a waiver be granted by DESE. Morris said the one-week waiver would enable a phased return which would be better for both students and staff. The start time for in-person elementary school will be 9:30 a.m., Morris said, and the day will end at 3:10 p.m.
Of returning elementary families, 43% have requested district transportation. Many cars are expected to arrive at school buildings for drop-offs and pick-ups, and Morris said that substantial planning will be required to manage the traffic safely.
Elementary Schools Budget Picture Improves Slightly, Cuts to “Specials” Teaching Proposed
At a budget hearing on Tuesday, ARPS Finance Director Doug Slaughter said that the town has said it can provide an increase of about $466,000 to the elementary schools’ budget for 2022, higher than the $320,000 offered a few weeks ago. However, even with the larger sum, a “level services” budget will require $372,000 in reductions.
Reductions would include 5.45 full-time or equivalent teaching positions, including cutting “specials” technology and art teachers to four, rather than five days at each school. (See a related article here.) Some staff vacancies would not be filled, including a bilingual psychologist’s job and a food service assistant.
The total elementary schools’ budget was $23.9 million in fiscal 2021, and is projected at $24.8 million for fiscal 2022, an increase of just under 2%. Salary costs are expected to rise by $481,000, and special education expenses by $253,000, according to slides Slaughter presented. Balancing the 2022 budget would include use of $700,000 in school choice revenues.
The school committee must adopt and submit a budget to Town Manager Paul Bockelman by April 1, and a proposed budget is due to the Town Council by May 1.
Details Of Secondary Schools Return Expected Next Week
Plans are underway for students to return to the middle and high schools, with details to be presented at an RSC meeting next Tuesday, March 23.
At virtual forums for families on March 18, High School Interim Principal Talib Sadiq said May 3 is a possible return date, pending school committee approval. An orientation for 9th graders and other students who have never been to the building would be held April 30.
As of Thursday, Sadiq said he had gotten 260 responses to a questionnaire sent to families about whether their child would be in-person or stay remote. (Responses to the survey are being collected electronically and must be completed by March 22.) Of those who responded by Thursday, Sadiq said that about ⅔ will attend school in person.
“Most teachers will be returning to the building,” Sadiq said. Classes led by teachers who remain remote could be shared on whiteboards at the high school, using Google Classroom.
Lunchtime plans were still evolving, and will depend on the numbers that return. When it is not possible to eat outside, students may eat in classrooms in order to allow for six-foot distancing, Sadiq said.
While school meals will still be free for all students for the rest of the year, whether in-person or remote, meals will no longer be distributed at 13 sites across the district as of April 1. Instead, all meal pick-up will take place at the high school, Morris said, adding that the district needs to redeploy its drivers and vehicles as the students return.
The Amherst School Committee voted on Tuesday to allow siblings of pupils enrolled in the Caminantes dual language program at Fort River to attend Fort River as well, in part to reduce the number of families with children attending two different elementary schools. The committee discussed making a broader policy change, so that siblings can attend together whenever one child is in a specialized program offered by a single school.
The next RSC meeting is set for Tuesday, March 23. The agenda is here.
Here’s the statistical report upon which the new 3′ guidance is based:
https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciab230/6167856
Inasmuch as it is now understood that aerosol transmission is primary way the virus responsible for the COVID19 pandemic spreads, it is not surprising that the minimum distance between masked people in a room appears to have little impact on the transmission rate among properly masked people.
But isn’t the more relevant quantity the viral density — the amount of aerosolized viruses in a given volume — at a given time within the space under study?
This viral density, inter alia, will depend on ventilation rates for, and the length of time spent in, that space.
And the viral density will also be proportional to the number of people in the space, and since halving the minimal distance from 6′ to 3′ has effect of quadrupling the number of people in the space, that could also quadruple the viral density, and thereby increase the expected rate of transmission.
Furthermore, by quadrupling the number of people in close contact within a confined space, the chance that an infected (but undetected) person happens to be in that space quadruples, and the number of people who might be directly exposed also quadruples.
This would almost surely increase the R-factor substantially, and the resulting (exponential) growth in infections that would stem from any particular exposure (though prompt detection might contain the outbreak — of course, we’ve been there before, and there can be serious health consequences, especially for the unvaccinated, of which there remain many, many, many…).
It seems (at least to this scientifically-minded reader) that proper study should have also controlled for this density — perhaps* I missed it in the report, perhaps* it was controlled for but the authors didn’t included in the report, or perhaps* it is addressed elsewhere?
At any rate, this appears to be a significant question that this report leaves unanswered: if it is not addressed, then it surprises me that anybody — the CDC, the Mass DESE, the Governor… — is making public health policy based on this report.
[*If anyone knows if and where this question may be addressed, please share the link(s)!]
Rob, thanks for your detailed comment and scientific analysis regarding the reduced distancing recommendation from the CDC. My impression from watching many meetings and reading a lot of news about school reopenings is that lesser-distance guidance is really driven by the inability of many districts to accommodate all students, six-feet apart, in existing buildings. Maintaining six feet for some schools as you’ve no doubt heard means a hybrid model – for example half of children attending in-person two days a week, a day for cleaning, and the other half in-person for the remaining two days. This kind of model is in use around the state and nation.
Early on, I thought that perhaps the state and municipalities could work together to set standards for alternate schooling sites, so that kids could be in small learning pods during the pandemic. I imagined that maybe spaces that were not being used – for example empty town offices, vacant municipal buildings or closed libraries – could be requisitioned for this purpose. Maybe this idea was too complicated, given all the various requirements for learning spaces.