MacDuffie School working to keep students, staff safe

April 7, 2021 | Danielle Eaton
deaton@thereminder.com

GRANBY –  With local and international students, the MacDuffie School in Granby has been working hard since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to keep everyone safe.

Principal Steven Griffin said the school moved to the Granby campus in 2011 after previously being in Springfield. He said the school operated as a girls-only school for 100 years after being established in Springfield in 1890.  

“The big decision was in 2011. We took over this new campus in Granby, which is the site of the old seminary, St. Hyacinth seminary,” he said.

Griffin said the school was completing their 10th year at the Granby location, and was “starting to feel like part of the fabric of the town.”

He said when the pandemic spread last year it impacted a great number of students as half of their student population are international students who live on campus. “It was very difficult, when last March hit we had some students that stayed on campus through the end of the year. They weren’t able to get back to their home countries,” he said.

However, Griffin said this allowed the school to develop “some policies and procedures to keep those students safe.”

In the fall of 2020 he said the campus opened back up to about 190 students. Unfortunately, he said, many students who live abroad were unable to return to campus due to the travel restrictions around the COVID-19 pandemic. “Many of our international students were unable to make it to campus, and are studying abroad in countries such as China, Vietnam, Turkey, Spain,” he said. “They are continuing to be remote whereas a number of them were unable to make it here.”

Griffin said at the time of press, “Half of our boarders are in person, half of them are remaining away.” At the beginning of the year, he said their day student population, or students who did not live on campus, were offered the option of learning in person or remotely.

“We offered the option for our day student population to learn remotely for the start of the year, 20 [students] took us up on that,” he said.

Griffin said once the campus opened it remained that way until Thanksgiving. During that time, he said the school worked very closely with the Granby Board of Health, “sharing policies and procedures with them.” Additionally, he said they worked hard to try to follow guidelines that had been set for schools both by the state and the CDC. The school also “developed a weighted measure,” Griffin explained, that took note of the prevalence of COVID-19 in surrounding communities as they are a “multi-community school.”

While Griffin said, “to our knowledge we haven’t had any cases of transmission inside the school this year,” the average number of cases in surrounding communities increased in December, pushing the school to return to a remote learning model.

After over a month of remote learning, students and faculty returned to in person learning on Feb. 8 after the number of community cases began to trend downward again. Griffin said due to a decreased student population the school was able to avoid cohosting while still maintaining social distancing in small classes.

Another measure that the school has and continues to take is pool testing. “We’re using pooled testing every other week with students and staff. That’s testing where individuals get grouped into 10,” he said. “It’s helping provide people with peace of mind.”

Griffin said the school also invested in “about a half dozen outdoor classrooms, including outdoor dance classrooms to allow for more space, including faculty who were anxious about being indoors.” He explained that the school’s music room was facilitated this way “all winter long” successfully with “lots of space heaters.”

While their enrollment went down “about 20 to 25 percent last year” because of “fears about COVID,” Griffin said that the school was “continuing to try to attract and retain good students both locally and internationally.” He said, “It’s still a difficult time with us not really being open to external visitors. We’re trying to work out a program where students can learn remotely until borders open up.”

For students living on campus, he said the lower student population has allowed for more single room living situations. Additionally, students arriving on campus quarantine for a full two weeks. From there, Griffin said, there was “restricted travel between floors, [and] between rooms.

He said while “borders had a fair bit more freedom on campus when everyone was remote,” that has changed somewhat due to students returning to in person learning. Other changes to maintain the safety of everyone on campus include encouraging borders to go back to their room during the day, something Griffin said isn’t typically allowed, and limiting off-campus travel.

Griffin then went on to explain that accommodations had been made for staff who were concerned about their safety as well. “We work very hard to acclimate our facility and their requests,” he said.

He explained that some staff had anxieties about teaching indoors, which resulted in their placement in outdoor classrooms, others were fully remote due to concerns regarding their age and others were working on a hybrid model due to childcare restrictions. “Some faculty had some anxiety about being inside, some had outdoor classrooms, other older faculty were remote with students in person and faculty remote until they’re fully vaccinated,” he said.

Ultimately, he said, it was “about listening to them and what their needs are.” Griffin emphasized that the staff has worked hard to continue helping students and he was proud of both students and faculty for their work in stopping the spread of COVID-19. “Our staff have been awesome, they’ve been great in supporting our students,” he said.

Share this: