East Meadow Board of Education adopts amended safety plan

The East Meadow School District adopted a district-wide safety plan last August, but the district is now required by law to establish protocols to protect itself from another threat, a communicable disease. That plan was adopted at the March 3 Board of Education meeting.

New York’s Safe Schools Against Violence in Education Act, or SAVE, passed in 2000, requires districts to submit to the state an outline of their protocols for dealing with an implied or direct threat of violence, and their prevention and intervention strategies in collaboration with local law enforcement, including drills.

Now, procedures for dealing with a public health emergency involving a communicable disease have been added to the list, after Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed into law a measure requiring all public employers, including school districts, to plan for an outbreak of a virus like Covid-19.

“With that said, the district added a pandemic plan, and the plan was then submitted to the community for review or for comment back on Jan. 15,” East Meadow Schools Superintendent Dr. Kenneth Card said at last week’s meeting. “There are four parts to pandemic planning, which include prevention and mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery.”

Card went on to say that as part of the amended plan, the district, in the event of an outbreak, would provide data to local and state health departments, and work with social services to support staff members, as well as students and their families, during and after the pandemic. The district would also support local communities with resources such as food distribution.

Since last spring, the school district has had to adapt to the times, Card said, and has had to closely follow guidelines set by the state Department of Health as well as the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Last year, at the first meeting in March, similar to this meeting, I shared that the threat of Covid-19 — the novel coronavirus, which it was called at that time — remained low for New Yorkers and the general American public, a statement that I picked up from the news and newspapers,” Card said. “Little did I know that in a little more than a week, we would shut our doors for the rest of the school year and pivot to remote learning, distanced learning, hybrid instruction.”

The pandemic addendum to the district safety plan comes at a time when East Meadow schools are in the process of bringing middle and high school students back for in-person instruction.

District parent Jill Mallilo, a member of the Safety Task Force, said she was happy to see that students would soon return to some sense of normalcy. “I think it’s fantastic that children have something to look forward to — going back to school,” Malillo said. “The kids are really excited to go back to school. They need it for their mental health.”

She added that she believed the district had done a “fantastic” job of preventing the spread of Covid-19 among teachers, students and their families. Since the start of the school year last September, there have been 422 cases in the district out of 6,274 tests. With protocols like contact tracing in place, the schools have had minimal closures.

The district based its decision to make a full return to in-person learning on information that the number of positive cases is decreasing across the state and inside district buildings, and that there has been a successful vaccine rollout for teachers and staff.

As an additional layer of safety, the district will continue to mandate masks, desk shields, six feet between desks and a virtual option for the remainder of the school year, and will continue cleaning protocols, reviewing pandemic-related data and making decisions based on that data.

“Since last March,” Card said, “our number one priority has been, and continues to be, the safety, health and well-being of our students and staff.”