Grafton schools get later start date, fees are canceled
There are a lot of unknowns about the coming school year, but there is now one thing parents of Grafton students can depend on: it will be the fall, and possibly the year, without bus, parking or athletic fees.
The School Committee Tuesday agreed to waive the fees and revisit the issue later in the year.
“The spirit of my motion is to not be in the position of refunding fees,” School Committee member Amy Marr said, noting that parents have not received refunds from last year’s suspension of in-person schooling.
Grafton parents now pay $200 per child, per year for students to either ride the school bus or park at Grafton High School. Well before COVID-19, the School Committee voted to impose athletic fees for the first time in the 2020-21 school year — but it’s still unclear whether sports will even exist this fall.
The pandemic, however, changed things considerably, and changes keep happening daily. Monday, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Massachusetts Teachers Association came to an agreement to take 10 additional days for teacher planning before the start of the school year, bringing down the number of days in class to 170.
That changes the start date for Grafton to September 14, Superintendent of Schools Jay Cummings said, with a last day of June 15. He also predicted that the coming year will be the first without snow days — if Grafton schools are operating on the hybrid model with students switching in-school and remote on opposite weeks, then all students will be able to go remote no matter how piled up the snow is outside.
Grafton has until August 10 to submit three fall plans to DESE: an option for all students to attend school with social distancing, a hybrid model in which students attend school one week and attend remotely the next, and an all-remote option. Parents who do not wish their children to attend school at all — masked, socially distanced, on half-full buses — also have the option of attending a Remote Learning Academy. At issue: the school department has no idea what option the state will choose, or how many parents will refuse to send their children to school.
More than 700 people attended virtual sessions with Cummings last week to learn about the options and express their concerns.
“Obviously, we’re doing the best we can, but nobody’s done this before,” Cummings said.
There will also be three “large substantial tents” set up at the schools that may be utilized as classrooms, but they aren’t a permanent solution, he added. “I do get a lot of emails from people thinking we should have a lot of tent cities or something. There’s no way. With the kind of year we’re having, there’s going to be substantial rainstorms and wind.”
Other changes will come on the school bus runs. There will be fewer stops, the buses will be half-filled, and bus monitors will be hired to make sure students keep their masks on and remain apart.
In response to a parent question about whether high school students will still need to reserve a parking space without fees, Cummings was emphatic that the answer is no.
“No, no, no, we are not doing free-for-all,” he said, adding that GHS Principal Jim Pignataro will be asked to develop a plan. “We’re not starting the year with complete chaos when we have enough chaos already”
