Grafton schools have 15 percent absence rate in current Covid wave

“Despite all the challenges that we have, there is so much good stuff going on,” Superintendent of Schools Jay Cummings said as he flipped through a quick slide show of Grafton students learning in class, practicing a penguin dance, and participating in sports.

These are things that were impossible during the bulk of the 2020-2021 school year, when students alternated a week of in-school class with a week of remote learning. With COVID-19 cases seemingly on the decline, Grafton returned to school in the fall — physical school, with masks.

And then came the highly contagious Omicron Covid variant, which took advantage of holiday gatherings to spread throughout the population. Hospitals are over capacity, parents are keeping immunocompromised children out of school, and sometimes school administrators have to step in as substitute teachers.

“Right now we’re averaging about 15 percent of staff and student absences daily… while we’re missing the students, it’s the staff that’s the greater challenge,” Cummings said.

The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education recently expanded its mask mandate until the end of February. But DESE and Gov. Charlie Baker have been adamant that a return to remote learning is not in the cards.

“As it stands now, DESE and the state have certainly doubled down on in-school,” Cummings said,

On a positive note, more Grafton teachers started the vaccination process before returning to school, limiting the impact of the new vaccine mandate. Teachers who are not vaccinated are visiting the school nurse once a week for testing.

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