WESTFIELD – During the Westfield School Committee’s Feb. 11 meeting, the committee discussed putting all sports on hold because of two COVID-19 cases on teams, and denied the start of the Fall 2 season, but will revisit the decision at the next meeting.

To start the Fall 2 discussion, Superintendent Stefan Czaporowski said new cases were falling both in the schools and across the community.

“This week so far, we have had six positive cases reported to the schools, which is way down. If you’ve seen the city numbers, it was 62 cases in the city, which is also way down. If you’re paying attention across the state, numbers are going down significantly,” he said.

Health Director Joe Rouse joined the call to discuss the numbers in the community and his concerns over the current state of schools.

Because of two positive cases on the hockey and basketball teams, Rouse said contact tracing led to just under 50 people that have been exposed as a result.

“A couple of cases in the athletic programs in hockey and basketball prompted us to conduct contact tracing for it and as I understand both teams were given quarantine orders. It amounted to just short of 50 letters that are going out tomorrow as a result of the contact tracing of two cases,” he said.

While Rouse said there were other factors at play in terms of the cases, he could not elaborate on those for privacy purposes.

In general, Rouse said it was unusual to see even 10 people be listed as contacts.

“It’s unusual because you don’t get 20 close contacts unless you have been symptomatic for a period of time, you don’t just spread it to 20 people overnight. I’ve never seen 50 letters go out the same day this entire time, this is something that would be disturbing across the board to any medical professional,” he said.

At this time, Rouse recommended shutting down all sports.

“Honestly, we can’t keep doing this. It’s a strain on our department, we’re getting ready to do vaccinations, we can’t keep doing this. I don’t want to let it go to contact tracing at the state, there’s too much of a delay. I think you need to step back and let the general virus resolve, we’re on the precipice of giving out vaccines to more than our seniors. My recommendation is you have to stop now and wait until the spring,” he said.

With numbers across the city falling exponentially, Rouse said that he did not want to see those numbers go back up again.

“Community spread is going down exponentially, it’s exciting. We’ve gone in a month from a record number of cases to almost 200 less than where we were before. What we don’t need is for that to start creeping up for any reason whatsoever,” he said.

In order to start sports again, if shut down completely, Rouse said he wanted the vaccine to be more widely available in the community.

“We need to have more vaccinations available in the city so if this does happen in the spring we have less to worry about if school is in session in terms of transmission to staff and teachers. I think we need to wait until we see this not be so disproportionate, it disturbs me that a small percentage of the population is causing 50 quarantine orders going out,” he said.

Committee Member Cindy Sullivan said she was against shutting down all sports for just two cases.

“There are two cases right now, and yes they play a sport, but that doesn’t mean they transmitted it because they play a sport. When WTA girls basketball shut down, I know for a fact none of the other girls got infected. We shut down basketball and hockey, it wouldn’t be fair tonight to say the teams can’t play anymore because there are two cases, and we don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said.

Committee Vice Chair Tim O’Connor said he was initially worried about high-risk sports and those fears were realized after the two cases between hockey and basketball.

"I was concerned about the high-risk sports more than anything three weeks ago and I was hoping I was going to be wrong. All of the sports that have contributed to this are the high-risk sports and we have those on the calendar for Fall 2. The track record is not supporting that that will work out,” he said.

Committee Member Heather Sullivan agreed with Rouse and said the committee spent too much time talking about sports with bigger issues at hand.

“I do know that we’re using the data, we’ve made decisions based on the information Joe has given us. We gave it a try but how important is the season versus just getting through this. I’m sick to death about talking about sports when I’d like to get these kids back in school,” she said.

With a four to three negative vote, the committee denied a start to the Fall 2 season but did not put a halt to winter sports and will revisit the motion at its next meeting.

During the meeting, Mayor Don Humason also provided an update on the new elementary school and said he put in a request to purchase two parcels for the building site to the City Council.

“I submitted a request for $340,000 out of free cash to purchase the two parcels of land on Franklin Avenue and we have entered into negotiations with the homeowners. The issue is before the council so we hope they approve it so we can purchase those houses and clear the land for the new elementary school,” he said.