WESTFIELD – At the Aug. 26 Westfield School Committee meeting, the committee unanimously voted to approve a return for low and moderate COVID-19 risk sports in the fall.

With the approval, students at Westfield High School and Westfield Technical Academy will be able to participate in golf, cross country, gymnastics, volleyball, soccer, and field hockey.

As a part of the new guidance, the district’s Supervisor of Athletics and Physical Education, Ryan Dunphy, explained that each sport was broken into four different risk levels.

“They have assigned a risk level based upon the type of play from levels one to four. A risk level of one is socially distanced group activities, levels two and three would be what they consider games, and level four are tournaments in a jamboree style where you have a bunch of different games and a bunch of different teams playing on one day,” he said.

Dunphy added that level four play would most likely not include bigger events such as Western Mass. and state competitions, but he said he was still waiting for more guidance.

“Our lower risk sports deemed by Mass EEA can participate in level four so pretty much full participation by their standard. There will still be modifications from the MIAA but they’ve deemed the sports pretty much good to play,” he said.

Along with the guidelines for playing sports, Dunphy also said that there would be changes to transportation as well.

“We’re going to provide on our registration the ability for parents to opt in or opt out of transportation. We’re going to be following all of the DESE transportation guidelines and right now we can have 25 passengers on a 77-person bus, and everyone has to wear a mask,” Dunphy said.

He added that in order to cut down transportation costs, the district is looking at having varsity and junior varsity teams play on different days because otherwise the transportation costs would double.

As part of the general safety guidelines, Dunphy said that students would not be able to use the locker rooms at Westfield High School and only small groups would be allowed in the Westfield Technical Academy locker rooms at a time.

All athletes will be required to have and wear masks at certain times, but he said the district was still awaiting further guidance.

While the committee was initially only supposed to approve lower risk sports, committee member Cindy Sullivan suggested to approve the moderate risk sports that start on Sept. 18 so they could hire new coaches ahead of time.

“You can’t wait until Sept. 10, 11, or 12 to hire coaches that are supposed to start on the 18. Yeah, they can’t have contact with the kids, but they certainly need to be in contact with Ryan. There’s more that goes on before the kids hit the field,” she said.

Superintendent of Schools Stefan Czaporwoski also gave an update to the back to school plan, including the results from the enrollment survey.

“We are at 28 percent remote and 72 percent hybrid. We know that over 1,600 devices have been requested, which is a bit more than we expected. I think we’re close to that and we’re going to be okay,” he said.

Sullivan then jumped into the update to say that there was some confusion if Chromebooks were required for learning and Czaporwoski clarified that any computer would work.

As a part of the meetings regular business, the School committee approved two memorandum’s of agreement with the Westfield Lunch Association and the Westfield Cafeteria Managers Association.

The Westfield School Committee next meets on Sept. 8.