LONGMEADOW – Superintendent M. Martin O’Shea announced at the Dec. 8 School Committee meeting a shift to remote learning beginning Dec. 9. The district will continue to serve students in the integrated preschool and students in their 11 intensive special needs programs.

“It was a very difficult decision,” O’Shea responded. “If I could say one thing that is it was really no single factor, but really a combination of factors that caused us to have to make this decision. We all understand the benefits of in-person learning and it saddens us frankly to see that we had to shift to remote learning.”

He continued, “We think it’s the right thing to do. What I have great confidence in is that, over the last several months, our teachers have refined their remote instructional practices. They have become skilled and adaptive and creative. I’m confident that they’re going to be able to sustain their connections with students at home and they’ll be able to continue providing a first-class education.”

The combination of factors that O’Shea said caused them to shift to remote learning relates to staffing. The district has teachers, staff and educators coming from dozens of communities; to the extent that those communities are seeing spikes or to the extent that those communities are falling behind in contact tracing or testing results,  that affects them.

Over the last several weeks, O’Shea said he has seen some staffing challenges that have become more difficult. Each time a teacher stays home out of abundance of caution because they are experiencing some flu like symptoms, or each time there is a teacher subject to a quarantine order, it is becoming difficult to cover their classes.

O’Shea told the community, parents and staff they want to hold out the possibility that they could return students to in-person learning on Jan. 4, 2021. If they have a handle on the staffing issues and if contract tracing is catching up in the region and if the numbers are in their favor, then that’s a decision they could make.

“I still do believe that students belong in school. I want to continue planning in that direction and I still believe that the protocols, procedures and guidelines we have in place will keep our staff and students safe,” O’Shea replied. “We look forward to a time where we return students to in-person learning because that’s still our goal. If we can do that on Jan. 4, we’ll do that, but certainly a lot of things have to be in place for that to happen.”

Fire Chief John Dearborn joined the meeting to update the board on where they are in the town with COVID-19 cases.

He stated, “On Nov. 19, we really started to see a pretty rapid climb in our numbers and our percent positivity. Then on Dec. 3 we saw improvement. We went from 51 average cases down to 40. Our percent positivity went from 2.19 to 1.18 percent. This is after a lot of testing that took place during the pre-Thanksgiving holiday.”            The committee went on to approve the 2020-2021 school improvement plans for Blueberry Hill School, Center School, Wolf Swamp Road School, Glenbrook Middle School, Williams Middle School and Longmeadow High School. They also approved the memorandum of agreement between the Longmeadow School Committee and the Longmeadow Education Association Unit A dated Dec. 8, as revised and authorized the chair to sign it.

Dearborn shared at the Dec. 15 School Committee meeting more information in regard to the health and safety metrics Longmeadow has.

He stated, “The Dec. 10 report, we did see an increase in both our active cases and our percent positivity. As you recall, we were sitting at about 1.18 percent. We saw what I consider to be a significant increase to 2.73 percent positivity. We were running right around 63 cases. We saw a lot of activity over the weekend. Unfortunately, as of today we sit with 78 active cases.”

Dearborn also said there is no indication of in-school spread since most of the students are remote right now. There are also six active cases for long-term care. With the holidays coming up, he advised community members to limit gatherings to their direct family members and to social distance if they’re going to celebrate in groups.

The meeting continued with elementary Principals Donna Hutton, Amy Stec and Marie Pratt on their new instructional plan to increase more in-person learning for third through fifth graders at Blueberry Hill School, Center School and Wolf Swamp Road School.

For the Cohort C community, they would like to put forth the same plan they did for their K-2 students, which will be a dedicated Cohort C teacher to teach the students in each of the grade levels across all three schools. For third grade, the principals currently have a certified Longmeadow Public School teacher available to do the third grade. Fourth grade will require a new teacher, and fifth grade will be two new teachers for the Cohort C community.

Hutton pointed out that the Cohort C class might fluctuate. Third grade is 24 students with a dedicated teacher and an academic tutor available to support that teacher for that class size. Fourth grade is 17 students. For fifth grade, one dedicated class at Blueberry Hill with 17 students. Fifth grade students at Center School and Wolf Swamp Road combined is 14.  

Students will be provided activities and work to complete independently via Google Classroom and SeeSaw with family pick up of materials.  Special education support for Cohort C will remain stable with their liaisons and home-based support. New class lists have been created to sustain the in-person model.

Sutton said they hope for new staff to begin on Jan. 4, 2021; introducing them to the students and teachers. They would want to share the class list with families on Jan. 7, 2021. She noted Jan. 8, 2021, would be a transition day for students to formally meet and greet their teachers, and on Jan. 11, 2021, students would begin with their new teachers and their new classroom community. On the other hand, the major concern some of the committee members had was if students are remote, would they be sticking to those timelines, and what is the process by which they figure whether they are going to have to be remote in January?

After deliberating, the committee approved the elementary grades three to five in-person learning proposal as presented and authorized the use of available appropriations in the fiscal year 2020 budget for the new positions and FTE (full-time equivalent) increases to current positions associated with the proposal.

Next, was an update on winter athletics from Principal Tom Landers and Athletic Director Michael Capotosto. The PVIAC pushed back their start date for practices to Jan. 11, 2021, and their end date to Feb. 28, 2021. Transportation will be available. Parents transportation is allowed but no carpooling; students will either be riding on the bus or riding with immediate family members. Their recommendation is to move forward with winter sports, with the exception of girls’ ice hockey. Part of that reason, Capotosto said, is girls ice hockey is a cooperative team and they are one of the 11 schools in the co-op. After speaking with health officials and administration, they do not feel comfortable mixing that many different communities within their community.

The committee will continue to proceed with winter sports; committee members expressed they have questions remaining for their meeting on Jan. 12, 2021.

Landers reiterated, “We will move forward with registration for everything except girls hockey. If the committee decides to revisit girls’ hockey in the future, we will then open registration.”

By the end of the meeting, the committee approved the following policies as revised: policy DI fiscal accounting and reporting, policy IJJ textbook selection and adoption. They moved to add policy JRAA student confidentiality during remote educational services to the policy manual and to remove policy ADA-E district goals and priority focus areas from the policy manual. They also moved to accept the filing of Dr. O’Shea’s conflict of interest disclosure form as required by Massachusetts General Law Chapter 268A section 23 b3.