Reopening Plan Has Most Students In School Two Days A Week
by Alex Brooks
The Hoosick Falls CSD held an online forum about its reopening plans on Wednesday evening July 29. The District had received a week before that a 145 page guidance document from the State. During that week, Superintendent Patrick Dailey and his staff had been busy, and had posted that day on the District web site a “preliminary reopening plan.” The plan itself was only four pages, but a powerpoint presentation prepared for the online forum got into more details.
Dailey conducted the online forum more or less solo, with some technical help from District staff. He began by going through the powerpoint slides and elaborating on some of the plans laid out therein, and then he took questions from some of the 100 plus people listening to the presentation.
Dailey said the District’s goal is to provide a safe and healthy environment which is equitable for all students. Using the NYSED reopening guidelines, the District has determined that a full reopening for in-person schooling is not feasible. The guidelines say that students must sit six feet apart from each other in the classroom, and that would mean about 12 students would fit in a typical classroom. Since the average class size in the elementary is 18 students and the average class size in the high school is 22 students, meeting the guidelines would mean cutting class sizes almost in half, and the District does not have the resources to do that.
Instead, the plan is to have most students go to school two days a week, and do virtual learning the other three days. Some life skills students and special education students who need more personal contact with their teachers will go to school four days a week. Wednesday will be virtual school for everyone, and students will come into the school only on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Dailey said this may involve “streamlining” content – focusing on the basic things that must be learned and leaving out some of the “extras.”
Teachers and staff will be at the school every day, and classes will be held on a regular schedule.
There will be no before and after school activities, no field trips, no concerts, plays, performances or assemblies.
It has not been determined what will happen with sports. But what we know so far is that no sports activities of any kind are going to happen before September 21.
When students do come into the school, there will be a lot of procedural precautions in place. Everyone entering the building, including students, teachers, staff and visitors, must have their temperature taken. Anyone who has a temperature of 100 degrees or higher may not enter the building. Everyone entering the building must be wearing a face mask. Students may take their face masks off while sitting in a classroom six feet apart, but must put it back on whenever they get up and start moving around again.
In order to maintain social distancing, buses will only be able to carry 22 students. There will be assigned seats on the bus and everyone must wear their face masks while traveling on the bus. Additional bus monitors will be hired to supervise social distancing on the buses.
Dailey noted that the school must carefully track where every student has been throughout the day, so that in the event of a positive COVID-19 test, the health authorities can do contract tracing and quarantine those who have had contact with the infected student. He said if that happens, the NYS Department of Health will handle all contract tracing, but they will need information from the school about where the infected person has been and who was there with him or her.
Dailey said the District must also develop a plan for fully virtual operation, in case there is a COVID-19 outbreak at the school and the Dept. of Health orders it to close its in-person operations. But Dailey said he is doing everything he can to avoid that. He said, “We have no desire to go fully virtual. We would only do that if the Governor orders us to.”
Dailey emphasized that all of the plans he outlined at this presentation are tentative, because Governor Cuomo has not yet announced his state-wide policies for reopening schools this fall. He is expected to make that announcement this week. Dailey said he will hold another online forum about a week after the Governor makes his announcement to talk about revisions to the reopening plan and more details about how everything is going to work. Dailey said after that there will probably be online forums on a weekly basis until school starts, to keep parents and community members informed as the reopening plans become fully formed.