Cumberland changes course, OKs partial in-person classes
CUMBERLAND –Aweek after taking a controversial vote to open the school year with full distance learning for all students, the Cumberland School Committee Thursday voted 7-1 to support a recommendation by Schools Superintendent Robert Mitchell to partially reopen schools for in-person learning.
According to the new plan, preschool and special program students will return for in-person learning and will be placed in classrooms that meet the state’s ventilation and air quality guidelines. All other students will begin the school year with full distance learning and then return to a hybrid model – but only after ventilation issues, identified in an air quality and ventilation audit of the district’s 10 school buildings last week, are resolved.
The goal, Mitchell said Thursday, is to have all Cumberland students return to
school in a hybrid model by the state’s deadline of Oct. 13.
Voting in favor of the plan were committee members Jennifer Bernardo, Mark Fiorillo, Heidi Waters, Paul DiModica, Raymond Salvatore and Karen Freedman. Casting the sole dissenting vote was committeeman Denis Collins.
Last week, the committee voted to open that district’s school year with full distance learning for all students. That vote, which elicited a firestorm of controversy, came after the committee was given preliminary information regarding an air quality and ventilation audit of the district’s school buildings, which were assessed by ENE Systems, Inc., an HVAC contractor hired by the district. That eleventh-hour information prompted Collins to make a motion to have students and staff return to remote learning
on Sept. 14, which was approved by the committee 4-3.
The full report on the ventilation and air quality assessment was discussed at the committee’s meeting on Thursday. Paul Murphy, an engineer with ENE, attended the virtual meeting, saying the district has significant issues with building ventilation that need to be addressed before students and staff can return safely. Murphy said the company looked at 25 percent of the ventilation equipment in each school building and found that more than 10 percent of the equipment had issues.
In voting on Mitchell’s new recommendation, which would have most students and staff return to a hybrid in-person learning model once the ventilation issues are resolved, Colins was the sole dissenting vote.
“There are still too many
unanswered questions,” he said. “There’s still a virus out there and I fear there’s going to be an outbreak.”
According to Mitchell’s recommended plan, once the district’s school building ventilation issues are addressed, most students and staff will return for a hybrid program of in-person and remote learning where half the district’s students would attend school in-person Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the other half on Wednesdays and Fridays. Monday would be a virtual learning day for all students.
Also part of that plan, preschool students would attend based on their individualized education plan and age, while other elementary school and special needs students would attend Tuesday through Friday based on their individualized education plan.
Mitchell said the district
recently asked parents to complete a school reopening survey. Of the 4,996 respondents, 49 percent said they want their children to go back for in-person learning, while 29 percent preferred distance learning. Mitchell said 21 percent of the survey respondents said they were waiting for Gov. Gina Raimondo’s announcement this past Monday.
In that announcement, Raimondo said every school district in Rhode Island, with the exception of Providence and Central Falls, has been cleared for full in-person learning starting Sept. 14. The governor says school districts will be allowed to ease into full in-person learning with the expectation that all students will be in school by Tuesday, Oct. 13.