AMHERST — School days will likely be shorter in the fall, and most students and staff will be required to wear masks or face coverings during in-person instruction, though distance learning is expected to continue to be crucial at both the elementary and secondary levels, according to school officials.
During two town halls July 9 with School Superintendent Michael Morris, school staff, and members of the Amherst, Amherst-Pelham Regional and Pelham School Committees, parents and guardians were able to ask a series of questions about what the fall semester will look like for their students.
The sessions came in advance of the committees approving a priorities document that will provide guidance for the reopenings of the elementary and regional schools.
The three primary goals embedded in the priorities document are protecting staff and student safety, maintaining a 6-foot distance between students and teachers during in-person learning, and making sure the best education is offered for both in-school and distance learning.
Regional School Committee Chairwoman Allison McDonald said the committees were considering adopting this this week, which will allow Morris, administrators and teachers to finalize learning and instructional models for the fall.
Then, the following week, the committees will be presented a first look at those models.
When putting together the models, Morris said he intends to follow federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.
“I’m committed to following the CDC guidelines that were released before,” Morris said, adding that he would prefer to not see them weakened due to political pressure.
For both students and staff, there will be less time spent in the classroom, with the expectation that the days will start later. Keeping children in school for fewer hours will also help them build up a tolerance for wearing masks.
Morris said he doesn’t imagine a full five days of teachers and children in classrooms, even in the best of circumstances, and that distance learning will be necessary.
“The short story is that no one will be forced to go to school,” Morris said.
The town hall meetings followed school officials’ unveiling of a space utilization plan for the six school buildings in Amherst and Pelham two days earlier, with the most significant change being the move of fifth- and sixth-grade classrooms from Crocker Farm School to the middle school.
The plan, based on keeping a 6-foot distance between desks, showed that because of limited classroom space in the Amherst Regional Middle and High school buildings, if in-person instruction resumes this fall, secondary students will likely continue doing remote learning during more than half of each week.
Middle and high school students would get a minimum of two days of classroom instruction, with the possibility that 60% of their studies would be done online. Elementary students in Amherst and Pelham would get a minimum of four days of in-person classroom instruction.
Morris explained that in a 750-square-foot classroom, just 16 desks would fit, half the number allowed if following state guidance. But that would be safer for students, as well as staff. “There’s also a lot more teacher space,” Morris said.
Though the middle and high schools are large buildings, and accommodate students from Amherst, Shutesbury, Leverett and Pelham, numerous classrooms will not be available for instruction because they don’t have windows and sufficient ventilation.
Only Crocker Farm, among the four Amherst and Pelham elementary schools, is complicated in terms of what Morris describes as “de-densifiying” the buildings to limit the spread of COVID-19. Being creative with space in that building, he said, is just not possible.
The 110 students projected to be in the fifth and sixth grades will get their own wing at the middle school, using seven classrooms in that building, rather than being at Crocker Farm.
Morris said a modular classroom for these students at Crocker Farm was not practical, after Amherst representative Kerry Spitzer wondered if that had been explored.
Also at the middle school, the art room and professional development center will become classrooms, but even with this added space it is not possible to fit all students into 20 classrooms. Morris said at most about 225 students would be allowed in the middle school building, or a little more than half of the anticipated enrollment.
Fort River School, with 78,864 square feet of space, will be able to accommodate the 18 classrooms it needs, said Principal Diane Chamberlain. The plan is to convert the “quads” into “duos,” or “halfsies,” by constructing permanent walls and removing partitions that normally separate the teaching spaces, and to convert the music and art rooms, and one of the cafeterias, into classrooms.
Chamberlain said the setup will allow the dual language Caminantes program to expand to first grade.
At Wildwood School, which is similar in size and set up to Fort River, Principal Nick Yaffe said there will be a similar creation of new classrooms, and the 21 classrooms needed will be able to fit in the building.
Finally, Pelham Elementary also has sufficient space for its students, with the fourth-grade classroom moving to the converted cafeteria, said Principal Leigh Whiting-Jones.
Whether parents will be receptive to sending their students back to school this fall, and whether teachers will be comfortable with the arrangement, remains uncertain.
Mick O’Connor, president of the Amherst Pelham Education Association, wrote in a statement to the committees that in-person learning should not resume and that the administrators and committees should “not allow any excuse to justify risks that may threaten the health or life of even one person as together we fight COVID-19.”
At the town hall meetings that followed the unveiling of the space utilization plans, McDonald said committee members want to see remote instruction greatly improved from what was implemented in the spring.
Simon Leutz, head of the social studies department at the high school, said his concern with emphasizing remote learning is how to translate the usual classroom environment dynamics and engagement to online instruction, when small group discussion and hands-on projects can’t be done.
“In my own sense of good teaching and what practices look like in a classroom, I think we’re really going to have to be inventive and lean on distance learning in this case,” Leutz said.
Tiffany Thibodeau, a math teacher at the middle school, said she is trying to figure out how to make a robust distance learning curriculum that can also be used in the classroom.
“We really do have to get creative about how to be able do that in the classroom, and rely more on technology maybe more than we would have in a typical school year,” Thibodeau said.
Jill Conselino, nurse manager for the school district, said though students in second grade and up will be required to have their mouths and noses covered, there will be opportunities to take off their masks or other facial coverings.
The schools won’t be doing temperature checks as not everyone experiences fever symptoms with COVID-19. Instead, the district will require parents to check for symptoms with their children.
“We will not be doing any type of physical screening,” Conselino said.
