schools

Two students from the same household who attend Hanscom Middle School have tested positive for COVID-19, Superintendent of Schools Becky McFall informed Lincoln Public Schools parents on Monday.

The recipients of McFall’s email were parents whose children have not had close contact with the affected students. Parents of children who were in close contact were notified separately. All close contacts should be tested but must self-quarantine for 14 days after the last exposure to the person who tested positive, regardless of test result. The school was also disinfected with a focus on those areas frequented by the community member that tested positive, McFall wrote.

Students in quarantine have access to their classwork via their remote learning platform (either SeeSaw or Google Classroom). “In addition, we have support at each level for students during quarantine including their Learning Coaches, classroom assistants, tutors, and our counseling services,” McFall wrote.

By 12 Lincoln and Sudbury officials*

For our children, teachers, and community, please take the pledge to prevent Covid-19.

We all are eager for a safe and healthy 2020-2021 school year. To make this happen, we must work together and be vigilant, every day, to ensure there is minimal community spread of Covid-19. For our schools to open and remain open, it is critical that we prioritize the health and safety of our teachers, students, administrators, and families. The best way to educate our children, support families, and reopen our economy is for each one of us to pledge to take all necessary steps to prevent Covid-19 exposure and spread so that we eradicate this dangerous virus.

We ask all residents, local businesses, and visitors to prioritize safe school reopenings and the health and wellbeing of your neighbors in all your decisions. Throughout August, please continue to stop the spread by practicing healthy hygiene and social distancing, avoiding travel to hotspots, wearing face coverings, limiting the size of groups and large group activities, and getting tested if you suspect exposure. Please make sure your family members, your employees, and you know how to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and that you follow Centers for Disease Control and Mass. Department of Health guidelines.

We are all painfully aware that new Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are increasing across the U.S., and many school districts are moving to fully remote learning because of high community transmission. While Massachusetts has made great strides and Lincoln and Sudbury have kept case numbers low, our progress is fragile, and we remain at risk.

Our collective decisions in August and throughout the school year will determine whether Covid-19 spreads throughout our communities and whether our schools can stay open. Our combined future is in our collective hands. The health and safety of our teachers and administrators, our town employees, our children, our families, and our patrons and visitors depend on all of us. Thank you for consistently doing your part.

* This statement is by the Lincoln, Lincoln-Sudbury, and Sudbury School Committees and Superintendents, Select Boards, the Lincoln Town Administrator and Sudbury Town Manager, the Lincoln Public Health Nurse, and the Sudbury Board of Health. The original signed document can be seen here.

”My Turn” is a forum for Lincoln residents to offer their views on any subject of interest to other Lincolnites. Submissions must be signed with the writer’s name and street address and sent via email to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. Items will be edited for punctuation, spelling, style, etc., and will be published at the discretion of the editor. Submissions containing personal attacks, errors of fact, or other inappropriate material will not be published.

As schools in Lincoln gear up to restart next month, several teachers and staff expressed concerns about infection risks of teaching students in person.

The teachers spoke at the August 13 School Committee meeting where administrators unveiled the results of a survey that asked parents to select either all-remote or fully in-person instruction to start the school year on September 16. The state cut the 180-day school year requirement back to 170 to give schools more time to prepare before classes start.

About 80 percent of teachers in Lincoln would prefer to start the school year fully remote and not in person, said Matt Reed, co-president of the Lincoln Educators Association. In contrast, 77 percent of parents in the new survey said they would like to see fully in-person classes, vs. 21% advocating fully remote.

The same survey revealed a mix of sentiments among faculty, with a plurality (36%) preferring a remote assignment, 22% preferring fully in-person, and 16% expressing no preference. Thirty-three percent of instructional support staff said they had no preference, while 31% preferred fully in-person work and 16% preferred remote.

In an earlier survey, 53% of families said their first choice was fully in-person learning with safety protocols and 20% said fully remote learning, while 25% preferred one of several hybrid options.

The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) has urged school districts to hold classes in person if possible, though they must also offer remote instruction for those with medical vulnerabilities or simply prefer not to attend, even with classroom social distancing, mandatory masks for students, and other Covid-19 precautions. Some towns are also offering a third hybrid option, with some days in person and other days remote.

Every Massachusetts district is wrestling with the decision about what to do. The Wayland School Committee recently voted to begin the school year fully remote. The Concord and Concord-Carlisle districts are still debating which options to offer, though Concord educators have urged their school committee to consider starting the school year remotely. Teachers in Sudbury held a “day of action” at three locations on August 13, hours before the town’s school committee was scheduled to meet, with a flyer saying “Only When It’s Safe — Students First.”

As required by the state, Lincoln submitted a detailed reopening plan earlier this month outlining health and safety precautions, scheduling, and more. The Lincoln teachers’ expression of concern “is in no way a reflection of dissatisfaction with [the school administration’s] work or the plans they submitted to DESE,” Reed said at the August 13 meeting. “It’s the unknowingness that gives many people pause, and teachers want to feel fully prepared.”

“We are worried for our own health, the health of our students, and their families,” both physical and mental, said Lincoln School fifth-grade teacher Joe Colombo, referring to the “stress and anxiety every time a mask slips off someone’s face or someone sneezes.”

“Many teachers have begun to wonder if [the advantages] of the in-person model can actually be fully realized,” said Lincoln School kindergarten teacher Michael Chin. “We’re not choosing between remote and in person; we’re choosing between remote compared to a shell of what in-person learning used to be before Covid-19.”

“How often will I need to remind our first-graders about picking their nose, wiggling a loose tooth, or sucking a thumb?” said Lincoln School teacher Rachel Goldner, lamenting having to fight the “urge to connect and communicate… with a reassuring hand on a child’s shoulder or a hug,” or having morning meeting not in a circle but with “kids in various corners of the room unable to see other children’s smiles and frowns.”

She also touched on the “mind-boggling number of logistics that still need to be ironed out” with regard to things including snack and lunch time, policing recess, student arrivals and departures, after-school activities, and a likely shortage of substitute teachers.

Other teachers worried about safety protocols surrounding toileting and general cleanliness for preK children, evaluating and working with special education students, and making the frequent arrival of new Hanscom students feel welcome.

“Just because we can be fully in-person at the beginning of the school year, should we?” mused Hanscom Middle School fifth-grade teacher Erin Dotson.

“We know there’s a lot of detail still to be worked out,” Superintendent of Schools Becky McFall said. Under the Family First Coronavirus Act, teachers are eligible for paid leave if they or a family member gets sick.

Another big issue is staffing. “If we’re fully remote, we won’t be able to do what we did in the spring and keep people on the payroll — we will have to furlough people,” McFall said.

“Without medical data showing we should absolutely not bring kids back to school, it’s difficult for me to say we should go fully remote,” she said. “I have to follow the guidance of the governor and the Commissioner of Education, and what families say they want and need.”

Lincoln schools are not offering a hybrid option because they have the space to allow fully-in person instruction even with social distancing. “We didn’t see that a hybrid model has that much more benefit,” since all students will still be in the building at various times, and teachers would have two cohorts of students at different parts of the week,” McFall said. “It’s a hard, hard place for us all to be right now, but I think we’ve provided the right options for folks.”

The Lincoln Public Schools (LPS) will start the school year in mid-September, and parents will have to choose by August 10 whether to keep their children home for fully remote learning or send them to school five days a week.

In a June 25 memo, the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) told Massachusetts school districts to make plans for “start[ing] the school year with as many of our students as possible returning to in-person settings—safely” but also told districts to plan for fully remote instruction or a hybrid model where students have some days at school and some online instruction at home. 

Superintendent of Schools Becky McFall announced the district’s decision in a July 23 email to families, and she and other members of the LPS Education 2021 Task Force presented details via family forums on Zoom on July 29 and 30 (faculty/staff forums were also held on those days). The forum PowerPoint presentation, as well as links to previous emails from McFall to families, can be seen on this LPS website. The presentation can also be viewed and downloaded from this link.

Lincoln’s school buildings (including the portables on the ballfield) have enough space to bring most students back to school full-time, even with social distancing and teaching student “cohorts” of 11-15, McFall said during the July 29 family forum. Other school districts without enough room are offering online-only or hybrid instruction. If at all possible, “it’s really important and valuable for students to have the opportunity to be with their peers and taught in person,” she said.

The School Committee is scheduled to review and vote on the final plan on August 6 after a review by DESE. Families will be asked starting the same day to commit to either in-person or remote instruction for the school year. There will be more family and faculty/staff forums on August 7, and family decisions are due no later than August 10. 

Survey results

In a survey whose results McFall reported in her July 26 email, 53% of families said their first choice was fully in-person learning with safety protocols and 20% said fully remote learning. A slightly larger proportion (25%) preferred one of several hybrid options. The remaining 2% said they planned to withdraw their child from school and opt for private school or home schooling.

When faculty and staff were asked about their preferences, a slight majority (40% vs. 38%) said their first choice was fully in-person rather than fully remote learning, with 21% specifying one of the hybrid models as their first choice.

After the school administration gets the final count from families of how many children choose each of the two options, they will release more detailed plans about student groupings, teacher assignments, and day-to-day school operations.

If Covid-19 cases starting rising in the fall, the school will be ready to make a “quick, seamless transition to all-remote [learning] at the cohort, school, or district level,” McFall said. State officials are discussing infection thresholds for closing schools, “and we’re hoping for guidance for all districts,” McFall said. 

The DESE has reduced the number of required school days from 180 to 170 to allow more time for faculty to prepare their teaching plans. As a result, school will not begin in Lincoln until September 16. School will start each day at 8 a.m. but will end at 1:45 p.m. on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday (Wednesday will still end at 12:35 p.m.) to meet contractual requirements for teachers. The new teaching model with smaller cohorts means that teachers will be working at the same time with no breaks and will continue to work after dismissal until 3 p.m. The extra student-free time in the afternoon will also allow for more intensive cleaning.

Among the many safety protocols McFall outlined:

• All preK-8 students and employees except those with disabilities or medical conditions must wear masks all day in school. They must supply their own masks, though the schools will have extras on hand if needed. Students will get two outdoor “mask breaks” per day while still maintaining six-foot social distancing.
• must check their child’s temperature each morning before school and may not send any children who have a fever or symptoms of illness to school. Faculty and staff must also take their own temperatures each morning.
• Hand-washing and physical-distancing protocols will be in place, and high-touch surfaces will be sanitized multiple times a day.
• must provide written authorization for administering acetaminophen or ibuprofen to their child at school if necessary. Per CDC guidelines, flu shots are highly recommended for everyone once they become available.
• Fans will not be used in school to prevent the spread of airborne germ droplets. All classrooms except those in the new Hanscom Middle School have operable windows, and screening will be used to reduce sun glare. The later start to the school year should also mean that the worst of the summer heat has passed. 
• Two 3,800-square-foot tents will be used while weather permits to allow for outdoor learning.
• There will be assigned seating on school buses with one child per bench seat except for those who live together. Drivers and monitors will wear masks, and buses will load from back to front. Bus windows will be half-open at all times except in extreme weather. The schools expect there will be enough buses for everyone in Lincoln, though some routes may be adjusted, and they will add a third Boston bus.
• The buildings’ air-intake filters will be upgraded. 

School officials took some questions after the family forum presentations, but they will take more at the August 7 forums and also invite parents to submit questions ahead of time.