Longmeadow School Committee hosts brief discussion on Baker’s delay of school reopening

April 2, 2020 | Payton North
payton@thereminder.com

LONGMEADOW – The Longmeadow School Committee met on March 26 briefly to discuss the results of Governor Charlie Baker’s press conference where he announced all school districts would be closed until May 4.

Superintendent Marty O’Shea referenced the School Committee’s previous conversation on expectations from the March 24 meeting, stating, “As we sort of had indicated earlier, [the extension of no school] would cause us to reset our expectations.”

He continued, “What made sense perhaps for the first couple of weeks might not carry us through for five weeks, we’re gonna dive into that.” O’Shea noted that the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) sent out requirements to the district.

A small update from the meeting two days prior, O’Shea noted that the guidelines that were created based on allowing teachers to use Zoom and Google Meet were sent out to teachers. He stated that parents were given the opportunity to opt out, many teachers activated their accounts and beginning on March 27, the opportunity to start video conferencing reguarly with students was made available.

School Committee member Kevin Shea asked O’Shea to talk a little about the guidance that was sent out by DESE. On a personal note, Shea said that he felt DESE “had good suggestions” on grading and frequency of feedback from faculty.

“I see it as a baseline,” O’Shea said about DESE’s guidelines. “Many of the components matched things we already have in place.” He then referenced that there were a few guidelines that they would use as a “jumping off point,” specifically the amount of time students should be engaged and then also the credit or no credit arrangements at the high school level.

“I think we know that we need to bring more structure to this than we had in the first few weeks. We want routine, we want consistency and predictability but we want it to be manageable for families,” O’Shea said.

Shea asked if it would be useful for the school committee to form some sort of statement to the town, noting that O’Shea had been doing a “really nice job in communication,” but “folks haven’t been hearing from us,” referencing the committee.

Chair Armand Wray said he would put together a statement and would forward it to O’Shea to get his approval on it.

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