‘As back to normal as we can’
Danbury-area schools expect students to return to classrooms next year
Masks and social distancing may be fixtures in Danbury-area schools next year, but it remains unclear what students and educators should expect.
“We’re definitely going to try to get as back to normal as we can,” New Fairfield Superintendent Pat Cosentino said.
The biggest change next school year may be that everyone is back in the classroom. Several local districts continue to work out details, but do not plan to offer distance learning after the state announced it’s not required. Some districts have not announced decisions.
Most schools in the area are already open full-time and can fit all their students safely in the classrooms under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation that children be at least three feet apart.
“I can’t imagine it’s going to look a lot different,” Bethel Superintendent Christine Carver said.
The exception is Danbury, the largest school district in the area that has been kept on hybrid learning this year due to overcrowding.
The district aims to lease a closed Catholic school in Brookfield and purchase tents and furniture to teach all students in-person. Additional employees are needed, too, to reduce class sizes and staff the new school.
It remains unclear how and whether state and federal experts will change guidelines for schools next fall, but Dan
bury is planning as if the rules won’t change.
“COVID remains a very fluid situation,” Kathy O’Dowd, Danbury schools’ health and nursing services coordinator, told the school board last week. “It’s very difficult to pin down making predictions more than weeks in advance because everything continues to change.”
Most staff members are vaccinated in local schools, with clinics available for students over 16. Providers in Danbury and New Milford plan to work with area towns to vaccinate students 12 to 15 once they become eligible for the Pfizer vaccine as soon as next week.
“Our goal is to get to herd immunity, so that we can return to what we consider normal,” O’Dowd said. “We’re not there yet. We're getting close.”
Carver expects COVID-19 rules in middle and high schools could be looser because those students may be vaccinated.
“The middle and high school could look very different than the elementaries given the availability of vaccines for that age group,” she said.
Distance learning
After April vacation, many Bethel students returned to the classrooms full-time, Carver said. About 15 percent remain on distance learning district wide.
Newtown and New Fairfield are seeing this trend, too.
About 10 percent or lower are on distance learning in Newtown, which at one point had about 20 percent of students at home, Superintendent Lorrie Rodrigue said.
New Fairfield remote learners returned this week for standardized testing and some of them plan to stay, Cosentino said.
Districtwide, 17 percent of New Fairfield students are on distance learning. Percentages are lower in the younger grades, with 5 percent of Consolidated Elementary School at home, but higher for older grades, with 38 percent of the high school on remote.
Some high school athletes want to be remote so they don’t risk needing to quarantine and miss games, Cosentino said.
About 22 percent of Brookfield students are on distance learning. That won’t be permitted next year.
“Should national, state or local conditions change in regard to the virus, we will make adjustments in alignment with the advice of health officials and our medical advisor,” Superintendent John Barile said.
That’s the case in Bethel, too.
“Unless there is a public health need, the district won’t be offering [distance learning] as a separate tract,” Carver said.
Danbury, where 35 percent of students are on remote learning, does not plan to offer this option next year, although the board has yet to vote on this. New Fairfield Board of Education voted Thursday to not offer remote learning, too, at least on a regular basis.
“It’s not something we want to do, but we’re aware there may be reasons we have to do it,” Cosentino said.
Teachers won’t need to “room and Zoom,” where they teach students inperson and at home, she said.
“That is very, very difficult for everyone involved,” Cosentino said. “We have done it this year because we haven’t had a choice, but that is not going to be an option for the future.”
The Connecticut Education Association, the state’s teachers’ union, has campaigned against “dual teaching,” arguing it’s “unsustainable” and ineffective for students at home and in-person.
Cosentino’s waiting on more guidance from the state on how to support students who need to quarantine for COVID exposures, for example. It’s possible a designated teacher could work with a group of these students from different age groups, she said.
Newtown, which does not plan to offer remote learning either, may have a certified educator work with quarantine students, but he or she would be “more like a tutor, than a classroom teacher,” Rodrigue said.
Danbury would need to educate students who are exposed at school, Superintendent Sal Pascarella said.
“If we send home your youngster for 10 days because — for no fault of their own — they were exposed, then we need to provide the education, whether it’s online or what we call homebound tutoring,” he told the school board.
Previously, the district did not offer homebound tutoring for students who were absent for 10 days or less, he said.
Barile noted updated rules from state and federal experts could determine that quarantining “may be considered an unnecessary strategy by the beginning of next school year.”
Districts expect to work with students who request distance learning because of medical conditions.
Lunchtime challenge
Carver hopes students will be able to eat lunch in the cafeteria again. In Bethel, pre-kindergarten through eighth-grade students eat lunch in classrooms, while high school students are dismissed early for a late lunch to be eaten at home or socially distanced in the cafeteria.
She doesn’t anticipate needing to dismiss early at the high school next year.
“Maybe I’m overly optimistic, but I think — given the fact that starting next week, potentially, children 12 and over can be vaccinated — I think the rules are going to be different,” Carver said. “Because I think you're going to have the majority of people that will be vaccinated, but we haven't gotten that far in planning.”
In New Fairfield, all students will likely eat in the cafeteria.
“We may have to have more lunch waves,” Cosentino said.
It’s likely to be similar in Newtown, where this year students in grades seven through 12 are dismissed early for lunch and have their last period at home, Rodrigue said.
“I’m looking to bring everyone back next year and really utilize the cafeteria space, perhaps adding enough lunch waves so that they can still be distanced without their masks,” she said.
Danbury High School plans to ditch cafeteria tables and set up desks to accommodate 350 students at lunch time. Lunch waves are 800 to 850 students, so the rest are expected to sit in heated tents. Tents may be purchased for Broadview Middle School, too.
Danbury’s full $5.98 million reopening plan — which the school board is expected to vote on next week — would be paid for through federal coronavirus relief grants.
Places like New Fairfield are trying to figure out how to use their grants, but Cosentino said it would, in part, be used to catch up students academically.
“We’re trying to do a needs assessment based on what we need to recover and re-imagine our educational programs, close those gaps,” she said. “We’re going to be offering as summer program and hopefully some-after school programs.”