East Meadow School District deliberates reopening options

Dozens of administrators, teachers, parents, nurses and police officers have been working together throughout the summer to answer the question, How will schools in the East Meadow School District reopen in September?

On July 7, they presented their ideas in a PowerPoint slideshow to a group of almost 100 people who tuned in to a Board of Education meeting on Zoom. But the question remained unanswered at the end of the three-hour meeting.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently announced that school districts must submit reopening plans to the state by July 31. After reviewing those plans, the state will determine whether districts can reopen their buildings to students in the fall. Cuomo also plans to release safety guidelines for schools early next week.

But board President Matthew Melnick said that the district was not given any guidance on developing a plan. And Superintendent Kenneth Card Jr. added that doing so feels like “we are flying a plane in the dark.”

“The best-case scenario is everyone back in school at the same time,” Melnick said. “The question now is if that’s not possible — which it seems like is going to be the case — what is our next-best option?”

During the public commentary period, Kevin Fitzpatrick, a district parent, proposed that the district consider renting trailers or vacant rooms at closed school buildings so class sizes can be reduced. He said that his daughter’s experience with distance learning was a “disaster” and that she received no help when she had questions about her coursework.

Superintendent Card noted, however, that renting trailers would require hiring additional teachers, and both would increase the budget that was passed last month. “We have to do what is prudent and what is responsible both to our students our staff and our taxpaying community,” he said.

Card added he appreciated parents’ concerns about remote learning, and he knew it “wasn’t perfect.” “The reasons why we’re engaging in these conversations now is because, in March, we had to go to distance learning on a dime,” he said. “We had to turn around, in 48 hours, and do something that we’ve never done before. That is why we have committees in place right now that are having conversations about what possible options could be put in place and what are some of the learning gaps we may need to address.”

To develop a plan to reopen, the district formed a School Reopening Committee, which conferred with the School Safety Task Force before creating a plan that was outlined in the PowerPoint presentation. It included the results of a survey that was distributed to districts parents. Asked to describe how comfortable they were with their children returning to school, 1,180 said “very comfortable,” 974 said “somewhat comfortable,” 435 said “somewhat uncomfortable” and 280 said “very uncomfortable.”

Presented with a list of potential precautions for sending their child back to school, parents were asked which were most important to them. The highest-scoring concerns were: the school is cleaned at least once a day, staff and students regularly wash their hands, and hand sanitizer is provided in each classroom.

The presentation also outlined protocol for staff members returning to work. All employees would answer a series of health-related questions before entering a building to prove that they are healthy. Social distancing would be required, and when not possible, staff members would be required to wear a mask or cloth face covering. Students would be encouraged, but not mandated, to do the same.

Staff and students would be asked to avoid sharing supplies and convening in shared workspaces like copy rooms, conference rooms, break rooms and cafeterias.

On June 5, Cuomo announced that schools could offer in-person courses to special-education students who rely on an expanded school year. The district began offering those courses at Bowling Green Elementary School, one of its five elementary schools.

Card said that this program would give the district “a preview of what is possible” and “the opportunity to make sure that our protocols and our systems are tight.”

The next topic that district officials plan to discuss in-depth is contact tracing, and how the district would respond to limit the spread of Covid-19 if a staff member or student tests positive.