New social distancing guidance in the classrooms
BERKSHIRE COUNTY, MA (NEWS10) - Massachusetts schools have been preparing to open their schools to full in-person instruction, even before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released recent social distancing guideline changes.
School officials continue to jump through a year filled with obstacles. In Massachusetts, schools were doing six feet social distancing but as soon as next month that’s going to change. “It has been a challenge of continuous adaptive leadership,” says Dr. Barbara Malkas Superintendent of North Adams Public Schools.
“Washing your hands, using hand sanitizer, disinfection protocols all of those together allow us to physically distance children at three feet seat edge to seat edge. That allows us to bring more students back collectively,” says Malkas. This only applies to students in the classrooms, they will still be required to wear masks.
CDC recommends six foot distance should continue between faculty and staff, in school lobbies, auditoriums and cafeterias. “It requires using space outdoors, feeding students inside the same classroom in different shifts — that seems to be the most complicated factor,” says Interim Superintendent of Lenox Public Schools, Dr. William Cameron.
A plan was put in place for Commonwealth School Districts. Earlier this month, the Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education announced all public elementary schools will be required to open for full-time, in-person starting April 5th. Middle schools will be required to do so on April 28th. High schools don’t have a set date, but districts will be provided with a two-week notice.
“We’re doing capacity studies to see if we can do all of this…I think we're ready with all of the tools in place," says Malkas.
Even with these changes, parents will still have the option to keep their children remote. “We think it will be a substantial number of kids coming out of remote and going back into school in-person, but the actual definite numbers aren’t clear yet," says Cameron.