After a marathon four-hour meeting Thursday, the Bedford City School Board voted unanimously to back a tentative “hybrid” plan for reopening schools for the 2020-2021 school year.
Called Plan B, the program would ask families to send students to school for only two days a week with the other three days being spent at home doing work virtually.
Technically, two other plans were also on the table at the meeting. Plan A comprised of sending all students to school every day, and Plan C would have meant virtual schooling only. Plan B, however, was the only one of the three plans that was mapped out in great detail by Superintendent Andrea Celico and other administration officials.
“We are prepared. We spent a lot of time on Plan B,” said Celico. “I think (the plan) that we can handle, and do well, (the best that we can) … is the hybrid model.”
As far as the other two plans were concerned, she said, “I don’t see how we can get five days a week (in school), and all-remote makes me very nervous, not having contact with the students.”
Celico reminded the board that last week, Governor Mike DeWine provided guidelines for schools to restart in the fall. These guidelines include: 1. Visually assessing symptoms through daily health and temperature checks. 2 Washing and sanitizing hands. 3. Thorough cleaning and sanitizing surfaces inside buildings. 4. Practicing six-feet social distancing. 5. Developing a face covering policy.
These guidelines make Plan A — all students returning for five days a week — virtually impossible for the Bedford Schools to undertake due to classroom space and staffing restrictions the board was told.
Celico said Plan C, or the all virtual plan, could perhaps be the easiest of the plans to implement, and she admitted that the hybrid plan was going to be “a ton of work,” but it was her concern for the children that makes the virtual-only plan not optimal.
“Me not seeing the children at all, only through a screen frightens me … for any age,” she said. “I don’t feel comfortable allowing any age child just to take that ownership on their own … and I think a lot of my colleagues feel the same … that the importance of at least seeing a child two days a week is helpful.”
While Plan B was chosen, it is still very much a work in progress, and much tweaking will probably need to take place before it is unveiled in its final form. Before the board members voted on the plan, Assistant Superintendent Cassandra Johnson led the group through a detailed presentation on the basics of how the hybrid plan would take effect. During the presentation, administrators from different grade bands, including preschool, K-3, 4-5, 6-8 and 9-12, walked the board through slides that included the proposed schedules and curriculum needs of each band.
What was consistent for each grade band was that half of the students would attend school on a Monday and Tuesday, and the other half would attend on Thursday and Friday. The idea behind this setup is that after the first group of students is done with their days, a “deep cleaning” of each building can be completed on Wednesday before the next group comes in on Thursday. Likewise, another deep cleaning can be done on Saturday for the start of the next week.
There will still be consistent, ongoing cleaning of the schools while the students are attending, but part of deep cleaning on the off days includes a new disinfectant spray machine that can cleanse the whole building.
The decrease in student numbers enabled by teaching only half the class at school will allow the children and teachers to be able to follow social distancing guidelines. The students who will be at home will still be required to do their work virtually on those three days they are not at school.
Celico said she had been on conference calls recently with colleagues, and she was surprised that quite a few of the schools in the area were going back five days a week. She said a recent survey by the Bedford district of around 900 school families (less than a third of the families in the district) found that about 50 percent of the parents preferred online learning.
Celico said that, as part of Ohio House Bill 164, all districts are required to present a virtual-school only plan by August 21. She said she had spoken with a few families who already know — regardless of the safety measures that are in place — that they will be keeping their children at home at the start of school. She said that, of course, it is their right as parents to do so, but whatever a family chooses — either the virtual learning model or the hybrid model — that they need to commit to the model for the first semester of school.
Despite the unanimous approval of Plan B, some board members were skeptical of the idea of opening the schools at all, due to the uncertainties that the coronavirus presents. Board member Tim Tench was one of the most vocal.
“I don’t understand why we would even consider going partial. …” Tench said. “We already know how to do the virtual. We are already set up for it (with some tweaking). … I guess I would be more sold on opening … if we knew what we’re dealing with. There is not an expert out there that can tell you what this disease is doing, how it works, or how it acts. “(If) we open these schools, within two months we may be closing them right back down, because we don’t know.”
Tench wondered why the district can’t just “err on the side of caution” and keep the kids home. He said that many of the teachers have expressed they feel the same way.
“Of all the surveys that I have read that we have gotten from our administration, the only one that was over 75 percent was the staff that wanted to do virtual, and it was based solely on safety,” he said. “These teachers want to be with their children, but they also want to be safe.”
He said teachers do a real nice job keeping the students safe under normal circumstances, but that these are not normal circumstances.
“Are we supposed to … assure the parents that these kids and staff are going to be safe?” he asked. “It’s impossible. It’s not going to happen.”
At the beginning of the meeting the board allowed for about 45 minutes of audience participation. The topic everyone chose to talk about was the school opening, and most of the participants were teachers.
Trish Duncan, a teacher at Heskett Middle School, and the President of the Bedford Education Teachers Association, echoed some of the concerns of Tench.
“Teacher’s are in no way opposed to returning to work, providing … that our students and our staff can return with the maximum of protection that offers the least amount of risk,” she said. “Through no fault of Bedford’s, or any district in my opinion, I don’t believe our district can create a safe framework in reducing the level of risk to a safe level. There are too many hurdles in creating a framework that Bedford simply just can’t jump, financially, architecturally — in terms of space for our kids’ distancing, adequate work force, proper training, consistent levels of PPEs, just to name a few.”
“I know we can’t eliminate all risks …, but my expectation is that (for) all of our students and teachers, we provide every safeguard known to reduce the risk,” she said. “I just don’t think we have the people, supplies and ability to do that.”
Other call-in participants expressed their concerns, and some of these included: Teachers with underlying health conditions, students potentially bringing the sickness home to grandparents, lack of circulation in some of the buildings, difficulties in teaching and learning while social distancing, the lack of substitute teachers, working with the equipment during physical education and issues of student health confidentiality.
Celico admitted that there were different areas of Plan B that still need to be addressed, and she stated that “our work is just beginning.” She said the district will be communicating with parents and teachers throughout the whole process.
“I can assure you of this,” she said. “If your questions are not answered this evening you will get a thorough explanation of what we will be doing. We need to first and foremost make the decision of what we are going to do and then our planning begins. It has already begun, I should say. It will continue, but it’s going to be far more detailed now.”
In other business, the board:
– Agreed to the 2020-2021 school calendar, which would put the starting date for students the day after Labor Day. Teachers would return on August 24. Celico said that there will be several fewer days during the school year, but that they will still meet the minimum instructional hours.
– Approved, with a 3-2 vote, an Oakwood Village day camp to be held for 80 high school students from the village of Oakwood. The camp will be held in a wing of Bedford High School. Oakwood Mayor Gary Gottschalk made a detailed presentation of all of the safety measures they will be taking during the learning.
– Approved the contract of William Parkinson to be the new district treasurer beginning August 1.
– Welcomed Claire Gowing, a secondary curriculum specialist, and Dorinda Hall, an elementary curriculum specialist, to the Bedford Schools.
– Accepted a donation of a 1997 Cadillac STS, with an approximate value of $5,000 from Robert C. Pliske, to be used in the AutoTech Program, and a $1,000 donation from Gardening Know How, Bedford, to be used at the Glendale Habitat Garden at Glendale Primary School.
