WESTFIELD – At its Sept. 21 meeting, the Westfield School Committee approved a motion to create a gift account with the purpose of getting students internet access and approved the next step in its phased in reopening plan.

With around 100 students in the district without internet access, former Westfield Mayor Brian Sullivan brought forward a motion to establish a gift account for residents to donate to help students get better internet access.

“Really what we want to do is ask the community to help those students stuck at home and some of them are probably going through a lot of angst right now because they just don’t have the access to what they need,” he said.

This fund would be specifically for donations and would not receive any additional funding from the city.

While interested residents can donate any amount, $250 would give students internet access for the entire school year.

“That $250 dollars would get Wi-Fi connected to households for one year, and at roughly 100 students, we’re looking to get $25,000 rather quickly. School is in progress now and we need to act on this quickly,” he said.

During the meeting, Sullivan said he had already received donations for the gift account, and the committee unanimously approved the motion.

The School Committee also approved a motion to begin Phase 1B of the district’s reopening plan, which brought Fort Meadow students, students in the Autism Spectrum Disorder, Essential Learning Skills, and Developmental Learning Special Education programs back for full in-person learning beginning on Sept. 28.

While Public Health Director Joe Rouse was in favor of approving the next phase, he said he would be hesitant to approve allowing more in-person learning because of higher COVID-19 numbers in children ages 14 to 18 in the city.

“We just need to tread lightly moving forward. This Phase 1B is not hitting any of the demographics that we are worried about so I would support that. When we get to the next level, we are going to look more closely at the cases that we have and the relative ages of the confirmed cases,” he said.

He added one of the biggest concerns with that age group was organized youth sports.

“It comes down through our case investigation and contact tracing to be youth athletics. It’s at a point now where we may have to look at youth sports if we’re interested in getting the students back to school a month from now when the full hybrid plan is implemented,” Rouse said.

At this time, he said it was hard to tell if it was the activities on the field that led to the spike.

“These are permitted activities right now, and nobody is doing anything wrong, but I just don’t know what the disconnect is. I’ve observed a lot of these practices where seemingly everything is being done correctly. It might not even be the event itself; it may be riding in the same car together or congregating afterwards, we don’t know,” Rouse said.

He said that he did not want to shut down sports at this time, but he was happy that the district was taking a slower phased in approach.

“You take this and then you put that into a school setting, and we are going to be talking about closing really quickly. That’s not my opinion, that’s just the statistical facts,” he said.

The School Committee also discussed a policy that would require flu immunizations for all students as part of an executive order from the state.

“This isn’t a personal decision to me, but it’s another decision that I don’t think the School Committee should be making to put into our policy. It’s not our place to do that,” School Committee member Cindy Sullivan said.

While School Committee member Ray Diaz agreed with Sullivan, he said there was nothing the committee could do to stop the policy.

“The state supersedes our authority on it, so it’s not like we can say no. I’m going to vote yes just so we can get past it because there’s nothing we can do about it. I don’t know why we’re even voting on it, it doesn’t make sense,” he said.

Ultimately the committee approved the first reading of the policy.

During the meeting, the School Committee also approved a motion to allow coaches to prepare for a return to football practice, pending a final vote at the next meeting.

The Westfield School Committee next meets on Oct. 5.