Falmouth School Committee Unanimously Approves Reopening Plan
FALMOUTH, MA – Students in the Falmouth Public School district will begin the academic year learning either in-person or as part of a hybrid model depending on age after the school committee voted unanimously Thursday night to approve Superintendent Lori Duerr’s reopening plan.
Under the plan, pre-kindergarten through fourth grade students will attend school fully in-person while grades 5-12 will be placed into cohorts and learn on a hybrid platform. Specific details of what schedules for middle schoolers and high school students will look like are still be worked out at the district’s various buildings and will be announced in coming weeks, Duerr said.
With the plan approved, school officials will send their proposal onto state officials, who extended the deadline to do so until Aug. 14 after they were originally scheduled to be submitted by Monday.
In her overview to school committee members, Duerr said that the majority of families and staff who responded to a district survey chose in-person learning as their top option. Although guidance from state health and education officials will dictate if this model can be used for the entire school year, Duerr said that both state educational officials and local medical experts insist that students and teachers will be safe under this model.
If things change, however, she said the district will need to be prepared to shift to a fully remote model.
Duerr said district administrators are still awaiting final guidance from The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, she believes one metric of state officials allowing schools to remain open is the positivity rate for the coronavirus. As of now, the state is relying on a 5 percent positivity rate as a baseline, according to a study by Johns Hopkins University. As of Thursday , Massachusetts had a 2.88 percent positivity rate and locally, the rate is much lower.
Duerr said while she expects some guidance will be based on statewide data, it is her hope that localized health rates will be taken into consideration if it came down to a matter of remaining open or closing.
Committee member Leah Palmer expressed concern over what guidelines will be used to ensure that students and faculty will remain safe while in-person learning, especially among younger students. Duerr, however, assured Palmer that local health officials have indicated that they feel comfortable with the idea of students being in the classroom at a time when a large number of teachers have expressed discomfort with returning to the classroom.
“I guess my question is why is that we’re having everyone come together in a school when people are feeling that’s not necessarily the safest thing for them?,” Palmer asked.
Because of the cohort system for middle and high school students, roughly 50 percent of the student body will be learning in-person on any given day. Duerr said that because classes at the elementary school tend to be smaller, officials felt comfortable bringing students back in a socially distanced manner.
Duerr said that the district is awaiting guidance on what schools will do should a staff member of teacher tests positive. Duerr said that state education officials are discouraging districts from doing regular testing but will establish protocols for what school districts should do in the case of a positive test.
Committee member William Rider said his concern is making sure that everyone who enters school buildings is healthy.
School officials that said as of Thursday only two current staff members have considered opting out of the academic year. One has already announced they will opt out while the second one has not yet made a decision. Still, committee members wanted to make certain that before they voted to approve the plan, they had every assurance everyone involve can remain safe and healthy.
"Do we know that everyone that everyone is in good shape?", he asked. "Do we know everyone is negative? I realize that when you're dealing with schools, when you're dealing with kids and teachers, you're dealing with high numbers. But we should be dealing with high numbers in the United States at this point in this time."
While families have the right to have their students learn on a full-time remote basis, committee members said that based on the amount of work and research that went into the reopening plan by Duerr and more than 100 members of the district’s faculty and staff, sending back to school in-person appears to be a logical move.
“My vote is going to be a vote of trust for (Duerr) and your team,” said committee member Andrea Thorrold, who acknowledged during Thursday’s Zoom meeting that she and her husband are choosing to have their eighth-grade daughter learn remotely for the year.
This article originally appeared on the Falmouth Patch
