WESTFIELD – Westfield Superintendent of Schools Stefan Czaporowski announced that the district is working on a four-phase approach to reopening after the Westfield Health Department was against opening schools in a hybrid model right away.

“Last week, members of our central office administrative team met with representatives of the city of Westfield Health Department. The Health Department is not in favor of schools opening with this hybrid model to start the year. For that reason, our committees are now focusing on a phased in approach,” he said in a July 20 letter to employees.

In an interview after he sent out the letter, Czaporowski explained that Health Department Director Joe Rouse was worried there would be an outbreak of the virus if schools reopened right away with a hybrid model.

“The hang up from the Health Department is that research is saying this spreads in large groups and when we have kids in school, that’s a large group. He was fearful that bringing this many people together to start is going to make us susceptible to an outbreak,” he said.

Czaporowski wrote that at this time, it would be impossible for the district to even implement a full in-person return to learning given the current conditions.

He said, “Our first task was to perform a feasibility study for each school to determine how many students will be able to fit in classroom spaces with physical distancing guidelines. We quickly learned that at 3 feet or 6 feet, we do not have the square footage required to bring all students back to school at once.”

In the interview, he emphasized the fact that the district does not have enough space for students to start in the hybrid model right away, even if the Health Department was on board.

“We have 5,400 kids here, even Westfield High School at 50 percent capacity is 625 students. How do you keep them socially and physically distant? Especially that age group, when you’re a teenager you think you’re invincible,” he said.

He added that in a hybrid model school busses would have to be at 1/3 capacity and as a result the district does not have enough busses.

Since the district will not be going with the hybrid model at first, Czaporowski said the district is working on a four-phase approach, starting with its more “dependent students.”

He said, “We want our high needs kids, which includes our special education kids, our level 1 and level 2 English Language students, who are very limited in English. It could be expanded to include the lowest performing students on our assessments.”

During phase 1, students at Westfield Technical Academy would be able to return and work in their shops since the spaces are much larger than typical classrooms.

One of the biggest concerns Czaporowski said Rouse had is staff with conditions that make them susceptible to COVID-19.

“The big picture concern is just that we have staff members that are high-risk, whether it’s because of personal illness or other conditions,” Czaporowski said, “We have some staff members that may not be able to return for valid reasons and then how do we staff our buildings? It’s a concern.”

Czaporowski said one of the larger logistical concerns with the hybrid and remote models, is when parents have to go to work and do not have a place to send their kids, but the district is trying to create a plan so kids have a place to go during the day.

“We are having conversations with the Boys and Girls Club, the YMCA, and reaching out to the Westfield Athenaeum to see if there is any kind of partnership we can form,” Czaporowski said. “So, if parents have to work maybe they can drop their kids off at one of those three places and we could staff them with some of our paraprofessionals.”

As part of the district’s new plan, Czaporowski wrote in the letter that they would also be purchasing additional Chromebooks for students. “With a goal of 1:1 student to device ratio, we have ordered an additional 2,000 Chromebooks,” he wrote.

Czaporowski added that keeping students safe is his number one priority and that this virus is the biggest challenge of his career. “We’re just trying to keep everyone safe, that is our top priority and how we do that still is a work in progress. This is tough; this is probably the biggest challenge I’ve had in my 25-year career in education,” he said.

He added that currently the district has a survey available on its website for parents asking parents what they want for the school year and will be adding another survey once the plan is finalized.