Can Grafton students return to school in the fall? Cummings outlines plans
Plan one: Everyone returns to school in the fall, with students seated 6 feet apart and masks required.
Plan two: A hybrid model, where half of Grafton’s students attend one week while their cohorts participate, remotely, at home, switching off the next week.
Plan three: Full-scale remote learning, graded and “more robust” than the lessons hastily cobbled together after Grafton schools — and all Massachusetts schools — shut down in March to prevent further spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This makes everything else we’ve done over the past decade look easy,” Superintendent of Schools Jay Cummings told the School Committee Tuesday night.
There’s little relief in knowing that every school in the country is facing the same issues. The return to school comes after Massachusetts has reopened a good portion of businesses as COVID-19 cases flatten out locally, but other states are seeing cases surge as their residents flock to summer hotspots without masks or a regard for other precautions.
The virus is still out there. Will it be safe this fall for students to return to the classroom?
Cummings said the district has until July 31 to submit plans for the three scenarios, purchase necessary PPE, throughly clean the schools and explore hiring additional custodial staff, nurses, and monitors for school buses. The state, however, does not want districts to commit to a plan until the first week of August.
“I don’t see a way, at least in viability, to do a full return,” Cummings said.
The downsides:
- Simply getting students in and out of school will take most of the day and twice the buses. Monitors would enforce the use of masks and clean the buses between runs. Traffic will be an issue, especially if parents choose to drive children to school.
- Food service would require students eat both in the cafeteria and in the classrooms to maintain distancing.
- Furniture, especially in elementary school classrooms, will need to be removed to maintain distancing.
- It is unknown what an outbreak at school would require for a response. “It’s not like a snow day, when I can just make the call in the morning,” Cummings said.
- Some staff may choose to not return due to health concerns, leaving Grafton competing in a very small pool for replacements.
Cummings prefers the hybrid model. “It would definitely allow us to comply with all the regulations.” Students who use special education services would be able to have daily in-person instruction with fewer students in the schools, while teachers could focus exclusively on either in-school instruction or remote learning.
“Every single piece has like five things connected to it and we don’t have a bit of clarity,” Cummings said.
