NORTHAMPTON – During a special meeting on April 29, the Northampton School Committee voted to approve a return to full in-person learning for Northampton High School (NHS) students beginning on May 17.

To start the discussion, committee member Dina Levi said many people she heard from wanted their students back in school sooner.

“I have heard from a number of constituents who have asked me why the high school is not starting earlier, so my question is given the MCAS tests, AP tests, the SAT, PSAT, all of that, is it even feasible for us to consider an earlier start date?” she asked.

Due to testing requirements, Superintendent John Provost said May 17 was the earliest available start date for in-person learning at NHS.

“I had truly hoped May 10 could be our start date, but when I looked at the MCAS requirement as well as the rest of the AP testing that is going to be required, we have more than 14 high stakes tests that need to be administered over the next 10 days, so it really is not feasible to start any earlier,” he said.

Provost added that returning to school after the testing is done would allow students to focus on learning.

“I think we will be much better off to get all of the testing out of the way so that when fully in-person high school learning starts, it can just be learning and not be an experience that is broken up by a lot of testing,” he said.

Committee member Roni Gold said that testing had to be pushed into those 10 days because of how late students would be returning to in-person learning.

“When we decided to come back is what is making the testing difficult. Many districts are coming back ahead of time, which makes it less complicated to do the assessing.  The assessing is challenging specifically for Northampton because we waited so long to return for high school,” he said.

While a vote was not necessarily required for students to return, Mayor David Narkewicz said the committee wanted to inform the community that they would be returning with a vote and some clarification.

“This date is the date that the commissioner announced earlier this week. I am not sure that a vote is required, but we thought it would be important for the community to have the School Committee to clarify and be on the record, so they understand,” he said.

 The committee unanimously voted to approve the in-person return date for NHS for May 17.

The School Committee next meets on May 13.