Some students may not return to classrooms this autumn

WOONSOCKET - Even though the state’s goal is to resume live classroom learning by Aug. 31, school officials say some students may continue on a distance learning plan when the new school year begins.

Nothing is cast in stone, according to School Committee Chairman Paul Bourget, but distance learning may carry on for students in some grades, mostly likely at the post-elementary level, depending on the plan school officials execute for the resumption of classes.

“it’s going to depend on how all this works out in the next few weeks,” said Bourget. “it’s like Rubik’s Cube. There are so many scenarios we’ll consider as we go along.”

“All this,” as Bourget explains, is an all-hands-ondeck effort to develop plans with three different scenarios for reopening schools after the switch to distance learning in mid-March due to CO9,'-19.

In keeping with guidance issued by the Rhode Island Department of Education, School Supt. Patrick McGee has seated a 15-member “reopening schools committee” to develop those plans. McGee discussed the status of the task force, deadlines and goals with members of the school committee during a meeting this week.

Bourget said the local reopening schools panel includes members of the school committee the Woonsocket Education Department’s Chief Financial Officer Brad Peryea Special Education Director Janet Sullivan Chief Operating Officer Al Notarianni Police Chief Thomas F. Oates Fire Chief Paul Shatraw Curriculum Director Angela Holt and other WED personnel.

Members have also split up into four subcommittees, each with a unique focus school operations student transportation

health and safety; and academic instruction, according to Bourget.

The panel has until July 17 to submit to RIDE the completed plans, each of which is designed as an adaptive response to the various risk levels that COVID-19 might pose.

One plan, as Bourget puts it, is “everybody goes back to school.” The others are “hybrids,” which means “some kids stay home, some go to school.” One hybrid keeps students in school, grouped in pods of no more than 15 that stay together the whole school day. The other hybrid works the same, only with larger groups – 30 students.

But that’s where the planning gets tricky. Who stays home and who goes to school in the event officials execute a hybrid plan are details that haven’t yet been settled.

The preliminary thinking, however, is that elementary school students are the most likely to attend classes in a school building for a live

teaching experience.

“We would like to see the elementaries come to school,” said Bourget. “They need the most assistance and direction.”

To find flexibility for keeping some students home, said the chairman, the two middle schools and the high school are places school officials are most likely to look.

Like parts of a puzzle, the various plans are interchangeable, and it’s possible the school year could start off with one and switch to another later. Those will be judgment calls based on the fluid nature of COVID-19. Presently, the test-positivity rate in Rhode Island is around 2 percent, though in recent days some states in the South and West are setting records for new infections in a muchfeared spike that health experts and economists around the country are now watching very closely.

Amid the uncertainty, one thing that’s abundantly clear, says Bourget, is that the reopening committee faces a considerable challenge and doesn’t have a lot of time if it’s to meet RIDE’s deadlines for completing the plans.

“The pressure is that these plans have to be very detailed and cover a lot of stuff,” said Bourget. “The process will continue feverishly, over the next few weeks. We’ll be meeting often and as necessary.”

For a group of communities that make up the urban core of the state, including Woonsocket, Pawtucket and Central Falls, RIDE is softening the chore of developing the reopening plans by pitching in with some support from a private company, the District Management Group. An educational consulting firm based in Boston, DMG has a package of services designed to help school districts transition back to classroom learning after the wholesale shutdown live teaching during the pandemic.

Among other things, DMG says it can offer help with academics, food service, maintenance, budgets and “stakeholder communications,” according to the company’s website.

But Bourget had a sobering assessment of the planning process that parents and other interested parties might chew on as the school year

gets closer. No matter what the specifics are of any plans that the reopening committee settles on, he says, they’re bound to get tweaked for conditions that are observed on the ground when the time actually arrives.

One contingency the plans cannot envision, he says, is how different groups of workers essential to the resumption of classroom education, including teachers, assistants, monitors, bus drivers and others, will respond to the prospect of interacting closely with children. Health officials have drummed home the theme of asymptomatic transmission of COVID-19 by younger people who may not even know they’re infected, thus serving as carriers who can potentially transfer the infection to older people for whom it has potentially fatal consequences.

There may also be some parents who don’t want to send their children to school.

“The human factors we don’t know about and we’re going to find out as we go along,” says Bourget.

Another challenge for the reopening schools committee will be nailing down the

availability of and protocols for using sanitizers, masks and other personal protective equipment, or PPE.

With so many variables, Bourget said any plan “is theory. It’s only going be on paper but who knows how well we’re going to be able to execute these plans.”

RIDE acknowledges as much in its framework guidance for assembling the district reopening committees.

“The framework is not exhaustive or final,” RIDE says. “We know that the COVID-19 landscape is rapidly changing – this uncertainty will require us all to be flexible and pivot quickly as circumstances change.”

The school committee is expecting to approve the reopening schools plan at its next meeting, on July 15.

In addition to the three plans for the resumption of classroom education, Bourget says there will be a fourth component that no one is hoping will be implemented.

“The fourth plan is, you stay home,” he said.