New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Area school districts planning for fall reopening
NEW HAVEN — Local school officials want you to know everything is going to be fine.
After the state Department of Education released a 50-page set of guidelines Monday for a planned reopening of all schools at full capacity in the fall, school superintendents have been planning extensively for a return.
“We need to exude the confidence that everyone will be safe when they return,” New Haven Superintendent of Schools Iline Tracey said, after the state announced the plan to reopen schools completely.
Local superintendents said they have been planning for reopening since long before the release of the state guidelines. School buildings closed in the middle of the 2019-20 school year because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“It would be unusual if I had a day where I wasn’t in some sort of a reopening committee meeting,” said Hamden Superintendent of Schools Jody Goeler. “That’s been my life over the past, I would say 2.5 months.”
The guidelines released by the state have several mandates around cleanliness, and also suggests that school districts be prepared for several possibilities depending on changes in public health data.
“I’ve designated a manager to oversee the process and to assist our building administrators develop our plan,” said West Haven Superintendent of Schools Neil Cavallaro. “I can tell you that the entire team believes that reopening is the right thing to do given the needs of our student population.”
Like Hamden and West Haven, Tracey said New Haven’s school system has been planning endlessly. Before the state issued its guidance on a return to school, New Haven Public Schools had released a draft document accounting for two possibilities in fall: completely virtual instruction and a “hybrid” model in which students split their time between school and home.
“We are still struggling with the social distancing segment if all students return to school,” Tracey said. “The team is examining the layout of buildings to see if social distancing is feasible.”
New Haven officials set up a virtual call with parents Thursday to answer questions and assuage concerns. What they learned is that parents are deeply worried.
“They are playing Russian roulette with our children. This is horrible that higher standards are not being considered,” one parent wrote in the chat.
“I am not gambling on my child’s life,” another said.
Nearly 400 parents signed on to the call, which lasted about 11⁄2 hours, as Tracey and her team attempted to answer questions about how the district would plan a return to school while adhering to state requirements in English and Spanish.
Assistant Superintendent Keisha Redd-Hannans told parents that the district would send surveys to parents soon, asking whether they prefer to have their student in or out of school. Many parents on the call made clear in the chat that they will not have their children return, and they worried about equity.
“If parents are opting to keep their kids home, by the governor’s edict we will provide distance learning to keep students home,” Tracey said. However, it may not be as simple as livestreaming classrooms because of student privacy concerns.
Parents asked about social distancing; Tracey said it may be possible to spread students two or three feet apart by removing most teachers’ materials from classrooms.
Goeler said it may not be as difficult in Hamden. As the city wraps up a renovation project, he said there will be extra classroom space at Wintergreen School.
“We were expecting that they would be specifying students had to be six feet apart with only 10 students on a bus. We were anticipating more rigid guidelines,” he said. “The fact we are allowed to do this with appropriate masking and (personal protective equipment) and cleaning, a lot of the commonsense things we would anticipate doing anyway, the plan gives us more flexibility to arrange classrooms appropriately.”
What confuses West Haven’s Cavallaro most is how schools can provide a consistent message with the rules set out by the state.
“I am somewhat concerned about giving the option to students and their families about working from home. While it could ease some back to school, there needs to be limits,” he said. “If we’re going to spend the entire summer getting ready and convincing families to trust that we’ve done everything in our power to prepare, I worry about the mixed message it sends.”
Financially, he believes his district is up to the task.
Cavallaro said his district plans to use its Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act funds — about $2 million — to shore up some deficits, such as providing students with electronic devices for at-home instruction and investing in making sure schools are open and accessible for social distancing.
“I’ve designated a manager to oversee the process and to assist our building administrators develop our plan. I can tell you that the entire team believes that reopening is the right thing to do given the needs of our student population,” he said.
Goeler said he anticipates some fiscal pain. The town’s Board of Education recently voted to make about $2 million in cuts, eliminating some personnel, according to the New Haven Independent.
“We are allocating money as best we can and as smartly as we can to what we anticipate the needs being,” he said.
Questions remain, though, such as how many masks should the district invest in? A student with special needs might need multiple masks, he said.
His team is making those sorts of calculations now, he said.
New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker said during a press briefing Thursday that the city’s schools have some tough times ahead because of the state’s unfunded mandates.
“We’ll figure it out. We always do,” he said. “It’s just very, very difficult for us in New Haven to provide the quality of education a suburban town might be able to provide.”
On the call with New Haven Public Schools parents, Tracey repeatedly explained that she is unable to make decisions that contradict state orders. Parents in the chat began to wonder whether they should challenge Gov. Ned Lamont.
During the call, a petition was made demanding that the governor be more considerate of the concerns of New Haven parents.
“We need to take this to Hartford,” a parent wrote.