As COVID Spikes In State, Belmont Remains In The ‘Green’; Four New School Cases In Past Week

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Photo: Belmont stays on the safe side of the COVID-19 surge.

As the corona virus spikes for the third time across the nation, Belmont has seen the rate of COVID-19 infection over the past two weeks relatively steady as the community remains one of the few to retain a “green” designation from the state’s Department of Public Health.

Based on the average daily cases per 100,000 residents, each city or town is designated a color to indicate if they are a community with a higher risk (red), moderate risk (yellow), or lower risk (green).

The color map from the MDPH as of Oct. 21.

As of Wednesday, Oct. 21, Belmont’s average daily incidence rate per 100,000 was at 2.9. While that is slightly higher over the previous two weeks, Belmont remains in the “green” catagory reserved for municipalities with less than 4 cases per 100,000. The town has reported 11 new cases since Oct. 7 for a total case count of 282.

The total number of deaths caused by COVID-19 continues to hold steady at 60 with the last reported death in late May.

Statewide, the daily incidence rate has soared to 9.2 per 100,000 with nearly 9,000 new cases confirmed in the past fortnight. Many cities and towns close to Belmont has seen their average daily incidence rates skyrocket with neighboring Waltham reporting a rate of 13.9 as 130 positive cases in the past 14 days.

Belmont’s Health Department Director Wesley Chin told the Belmont Select Board that his department is advising all residents to continue to social distance and when out in public to wear a face mask that covers the mouth and nose and which has ear loops.

“We strongly discourage the use of neck gaiters and bandanas,” said Chin as they don’t stop virus filled droplets from escaping into the air and, in fact, the fabric appear to turn large droplets into smaller ones creating aerosols that can build up over time infecting an entire room or indoor space.

Four additional positive cases at the Chenery

Two seperate cases – reported on Oct. 15 and Oct. 19 – of a pair of positive COVID-19 cases at the Chenery Middle School were confirmed by the town’s Health Department.

The Belmont School District has now confirmed seven positive cases at three schools since early September: Winn Brook Elementary (1), Chenery Middle School (5) and Belmont High School (1).

Of the two individuals – either students or staff members – confirmed to have the virus on Oct. 19, both were in close contact with one of the positive cases reported on Oct. 15. The classroom which all the individuals were located has been closed and all students and staff who also used the room are now working and learning remotely.

In regards to one of the positive cases reported on Oct. 15, it was in close contact with a previously reported case identified on Oct. 14. The second positive case on Oct. 15 was independent of all other cases.

Air Flow Data ‘Discrepancies’ Sends Belmont Schools Back To Remote Learning

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Photo: Descrepancies in an Excel spreadsheet caused Belmont schools to go remote this week

A critical report used to determine the safety of Belmont school buildings to reopen during the coronavirus pandemic was revealed this week to be riddled with miscalculations forcing the School District to shut down in-school hybrid learning for kindergarteners and elementary students and delay the start of the hybrid model for middle and high school students.

According to an email after the Tuesday, Oct. 20 School Committee meeting, Belmont Superintendent John Phelan announced that grades “PreK to 12 will remain home and pivot back to remote learning on Wednesday, Oct. 21 through Friday, Oct 23.”

During the three-day closure, the town’s Facilities Department will be “reallocating and reprogramming” as well as increasing the number of air exchange equipment so rooms will meet the minimum air flow standards set by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health to allow learning to safely take place, said Phelan.

Phelan said he will issue a progress report to the community at noon, Friday, Oct. 23. “We do not anticipate this pivot to remote learning will be extended past this week,” said Phelan.

The closure of Belmont schools has delayed the start of hybrid classes at the Chenery Middle School that was scheduled to start on Oct. 22. The start of the hybrid model for Belmont High School has been halted indefinately due to a vote of the School Committee later in the meeting.

Early in the summer when standards were being discussed during the creation of the four phased , air exchange was one of the pillars of the safety protocal – along with community level of COVID-19 infection determined by state data – the district would use to determine when to move from remote learning to hybrid and finally in-class instruction.

Initial airflow data collected and calculated in September by Bala Consulting Engineers – hired this summer to inform the Belmont School District on the air exchange rate in the district’s six school buildings – found that the majority of rooms had passed the standards set by the Chan School and guidelines from the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Steven Dorrance, director of facilities in Belmont, said Bala was hired by Belmont “on a rather urgent basis” in August when they were asked to produce air exchange assessments “under a very, very short time frame.”

An explanation of air exchange rate and how to calculate it from the Harvard T. H. Chan School can be found here.

With preliminary data in hand “which we believed in good faith was representative, accurate and through,” the decision was made to move forward in placing students in classrooms which were equiped with “wonderful air purification technology.”

But when a more detailed data report was released this week and reveiwed by school principals and the town, “we had some surprises,” said Dorrance, noting “discrepancies” between the first and second groups of figures.

Keith Parta, the mechanical department manager in Bala’s Boston office, acknowledged there were differences between the two data sets. Digging deeper into the numbers, Parta discovered there was a “cell problem in the Excel” referring to the Microsoft spreadsheet software, “and it was entirely on us.”

While calculating the air exchange rate is fairly easy to do – there are online air change calculators – Parta said the error resulted during the process of “layering in additional mitigation strategies” into the data cells. Those mitigation actions included changes to the air flow rate by, for example, opening a window three inches. This required introducing a multiplier to the data cell to calculate the new rate.

“I don’t believe we got the multiplier correct for the windows,” said Parta. With layers of incorrect mitigation data, the calculation for the number of fan filters required for each room to generate the correct air flow was flawed.

“It’s very easy for even a seasoned veteran to … look at [a spreadsheet] and say ‘hey, this data set looks consistant but upon further review you have to say to yourself with that inner voice … something is wrong here,” said Parta.

The error likely occurred during what Parta called his firm’s “mad dash” as it was conducting testing at 62 school districts during August. Just in analyzing the Belmont district, “there are hundreds if not thousands of cells” that need to be inputed.

In addition, Parta said a “major misstep” was what he discribed as neglecting to perform a “scrub” in which Bala and the town would review seperately the results before meeting for a combined appraisal of the data.

Saying that he has made a 1,000 mistakes in his lifetime, “the more important thing is that we catch [the mistake], we fix it and we move on because that is the only way we can proceed,” Parta said.

The result of the new data is “there are some rooms that clearly have to come offline because we really don’t have any incoming or free air to work with,” said Dorrance, with other rooms that will need to be “flagged” such as “tiny” interior rooms with just one door to obtain pass through air.

Andrea Prestwich, the school committee’s chair, noted that those newly identified rooms are not classrooms or spaces that children are taught.

Because there continues to be “some concerns about the report” the third district-wide analysis will be conducted over the three day shut down. Parta said there should be only minor improvements with the third reports over that of the second. Dorrance said the town’s confidence level in the coming “final” report will be at “110 percent” when it is released in a subsequant meeting.

“As we move through this process to continue to provide a safe environment for all students and staff, we thank you for patience for this unexpected schedule change. We understand the impact these changes have on families, work schedules, and childcare, and we regret the inconvenience,” said Phelan.

‘Stop!’ Parents Group Push School Committee To Halt High School Hybrid Model

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Photo:

A group of parents of Belmont High School students is trying to slam the brakes on the transition from remote to hybrid learning just two days before it is to occur.

The hastedly assembled group will present the results of a survey they created to the Belmont School Committee at its Tuesday, Oct. 20 meeting showing overwhelming opposition to the committee’s vote last week to move high school students into a hybrid instructional model.

In a statement that is accompanying the survey, the group – self described as “Concerned Parents” – says the upshot of the results is ‘[t]he community, that elected you to represent their interests, has spoken loud and clear – stop the move to this model of hybrid for our High School students.”

“We are providing you with the voice of the community who wants to work together to help pave a path forward. We are asking the school administration to take this feedback into serious consideration and reshape their approach,” the parents group stated.

The group’s objective is for the school committee to nullify its earlier vote and return students to the current remote model while creating an ad hoc partnership of parents and the district administration to return back to square one and reconstruct the hybrid model from scratch in the matter of weeks.

“Our goal is to provide insights and ideas to work with the school committee and the administration on paving a path forward, together with the community. We want to make this work and support our students, teachers and school administrators in this unprecedented time,” says the parent’s statement.

The statement’s signatories include Charlie Conroy, Wendy Conroy, Heather Barr, Christa Bauge, Rachel Bruno, David Palmer, Heather Rubeski and Clare Crawford.

The numbers from polls speak volumes, according to the parents: 88 percent of more than 600 respondants do not support the proposed hybrid model for the High School, and a near equal 87 percent are asking the School Committee to nullify their earlier vote and return to a remote model.

Part of the survey has also been dedicated to the views of students which the group contends is a “critical component that has been missing from this discussion so far.” More than 35 percent of survey respondents “overwhelmingly reject this model of [h]ybrid also,” reads the statement.

The parents group is laying forth two “requests” before the six member School Committee and the district administration:

  • Present the survey results to the School Committee on Tuesday [Oct. 20], “so the voice of the community, including the students at BHS, can be heard and be part of the public record.”
  • The School Committee will acknowledge the results at its Oct. 20 meeting and in a formal vote succeed to the group’s belief that “at this time, it is necessary to pause the transition to Hybrid until a better plan can be determined.”

The School Committee voted 5-1, to begin the hybrid instruction model on Thursday, Oct. 22. During the discussion before the vote, nearly all the members agreed that the approved hybrid plan was lacking in student instructional time.

Yet the committee members acknowledged at the Oct. 13 meeting there is an insufficiant number of personnel and staff needed to revamp or rebuild a new hybrid plan in the next few weeks. In addition, the district faces pressure from the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to begin in-school learning.

Rather than start over, Belmont School Superintendent John Phelan suggested the high school continues into the hybrid while collecting feedback and suggestions from educators, students and parents. That information would then be the foundation for alterations to the plan after the completion of the first two terms of the school year early in the new year.

The parents group also started its own communications with DESE officials to reaffirm long-standing department policy that while the state can “strongly recommends the implementation of an in-person model of instruction” a move from remote to hybrid models “is ultimately a local decision.”

“Given there is no mandate to move to a hybrid model, the fact that DESE has highlighted that our local school committee has the authority to make this choice, and the fact that our survey shows there is not community support for a transition to the proposed Belmont High School hybrid model, we are highlighting that the school committee has the authority, responsibility and community support to stop this move now,” said the group.

The school committee should act quickly and decisively in this regard and stop the transition to Hybrid for the High school that is scheduled for October 22nd. We have collected valuable community comments about what is expected in a Hybrid mode for the High School.

‘Backed Into A Corner’: Reluctant School Committee OKs High School Hybrid Plan

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Photo: Belmont High School

Saying they felt “backed into a corner,” the Belmont School Committee voted “reluctantly” for students at Belmont High School to enter into the approved hybrid learning phase.

The proposal which passed 5-1 with Evelyn Gomez voting no, will become operational on Thursday, Oct. 22.

“I just don’t think for high school that the hybrid model of this type is the way we should be going and I’m very, very reluctant to support it,” said Andrea Prestwich, school committee chair who led the effort to seek changes to the hybrid plan that would increase instructional time.

Under the current plan, teaching time for each student will decrease from 180 minutes in the current remote learning phase to 95 minutes in hybrid with 55 minutes in class, limiting educators to teaching the most significant areas of a subject – how to propose and defend an argument and not the proper usage of commas and articles – and leaving high schoolers in AP courses to seek classes outside the school to prepare for the important tests.

But Prestwich acknowledged while the proposed schedule created by High School Principal Isaac Taylor is “the wrong hybrid and the wrong time” and it may be advantageous to stay in the remote system, “we don’t have that choice, in fact.” In September, the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education singling out Belmont along with other districts that were considered “safe” to do so to place students in classrooms.

Several members also noted that Belmont is hampered in making quick changes to the model as it doesn’t have the resources in teaching personnel or staffing to set aside for such a project.

Saying she had received “many, many emails from people who have said, ‘How come Belmont can’t do it when Weston is doing this and Lexington is doing this,” Committee member Tara Donner commented that “I think its good to mention again that our amount of staffing compared to our student body” is far less than other communities. For example, Weston has a student/teacher ratio of 11.3 to 1, while Belmont stands at 16.5 to 1.

“I don’t think we have the staff capacity to start from scratch at this point,” said Donner. “I wish we did, I want to do it differently,” she said but the time for students to have “some kind of in person relationship established with teacher” for this school year is closing, so reiterating Prestwich’s statement, “I basically feel backed into a corner about it.”

While agreeing with the committee’s sentiment, School Superintendent John Phelan said it wasn’t feasible to attempt the changes suggested by the committee and many parents of high school students with the hybrid plan having just been implemented.

Phelan acknowledged that all districts statewide are “trying to maximize the instructional value” in their hybrid systems, he suggested the hybrid phase in Belmont continue as voted through the winter holiday break and into the New Year.

“The deserve to be implemented for a few weeks to a month to get a good handle on what’s work and what’s not … and really rehash where we are and make improvements where we can especially after the winter break and into terms three and four,” said Phelan.

“I honestly feel that when we give our educators a chance to be in a model for a period of time that the feed back we can recieve from family and students and from fellow educators, that creative idea will come from that,” said Phelan.

Student representative senior Alex Fick conducted a survey of the students and discovered that while 50 percent of his classmates would approve moving to a hybrid model in general, two-thirds would say “no” to the current hybrid system.

“They don’t think this hybrid model will suit our needs,” said Fick, who noted comments to the survey revealed that “remote is working well for students … and we should try to develop it more rather than ruining to a hybrid which seem to provide risk with no real benefit as we are losing instructional time.”

Committee member Kate Bowen felt that the approved hybrid system is “something to build on” as it’s like “any creative process and its difficult to go through it … “but I do think it’s important for student to meet their teachers in person to be in the building.”

As for those who worry on the reduction of teaching time, “take a little breather there and consider that those minutes may have a greater value than you can anticipate right now,” said Bowen, noting that a decade from now students will be surprised what they learned during this time and not “the precise minutes you spent in any one class.”

Gomez said if the committee is committed to building on something, it would make more sense to make those improvements while students remain in the remote phase “before we ask people to switch.”

And after hearing from Fick, Gomez believed the model was beyond repair “and I hate saying” that it made more sense to start over.

Member Amy Checkoway said she would also support making significant changes to the hybrid plan if it could be done within at most 10 days “but I don’t believe it’s possible.”

“I feel comfortable with moving forward because I think there’s some real mental health issues I know happening in some households with students that we haven’t probably talked about enough,” she said.

Yet in voting to support the move from remote to hybrid, Prestwich continued to advocate for major changes to the hybrid plan sayiing her vote was based on “an effort over the next couple of weeks to figure out how to increase the instructional time within the model.

“I don’t mean January, I don’t mean December. I mean the next couple of weeks. We need to look at every single way possible, to increase the instructional time within the context of that of the model,” she said, which could include streaming classes on line, hiring more teachers “so that we can move the curriculum along much more efficiently than in the current model.”

The final motion read “Moved, that the school committee approves the current plan to move the high school to hybrid by Oct. 22 provided that efforts are made to impove with a model, especially wih regard to instructional time, going forward.”

Third COVID Case In Belmont Schools As A Chenery Staff/Student Tests Positive

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Photo: Chenery Middle School

A Chenery Middle School community member – either a student or staff – has tested positive with the coronavirus, according an email from Belmont School District Superintendent John Phelan.

The Belmont Health Department sent the district confirmation on Wednesday, Oct. 14 at 11:45 a.m. This is the third person who either attended or worked in Belmont schools to come down with the COVID-19 virus in the past three weeks. Just last Friday, a positive case was reported at Belmont High School. In late September the first case in Belmont was reported at the Winn Brook Elementary School.

Unlike the earlier incidents, the person was present at school and in close contact with others during their infectious period which is two days prior to becoming symptomatic or, if asymptomatic, two days prior to testing, up until the time the student/staff/teacher is isolated.

Individuals who were in close contact with the community member have been notified privately and should be tested, said Phelan. Regardless of test results, those who were in close contact must self-quarantine for 14 days after the last exposure to the person who tested positive.

To further prevent transmission of the virus to other staff and students, the district has sanitized the school with a focus on the areas frequented by the community member that tested positive.

“Although we cannot provide specific information about our school community member who tested positive, please continue to monitor your child for symptoms, and keep your child home if he/she/they shows any symptoms or is not feeling well,” said Phelan.

Spit, ‘Poop’ Or Both: School Committee Explores Testing Options In Push Towards In-School Learning

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Photo: Mirimus Labs image

The Belmont School Committee took the first steps in implementing a testing regime that could spur students to return full-time to the classroom.

Promoted by School Committee Chair Andrea Prestwich and a group of parents acting as ad hoc advisors, testing would provide students and teachers the necessary “peace of mind” as they prepare to reenter schools.

“One thing that will add considerably to the safety of in-person learning is surveillance testing,” said Prestwich, as the committee unanimously supported a proposal for the school administration to look at the feasibility and logistics of surveillance testing at Belmont Public Schools.

The School Committee will update the testing proposals at its Tuesday meeting, Sept. 29.

Kate Jeffrey, a Harvard-affiliated academic scientist and the parent of a Burbank first grader, presented a plan created by fellow parents, Jamal Saeh and Larry Schmidt, that recommends the district continue its safety and health protocol such as proper social distancing and wearing masks with weekly surveillance tests and contract tracing through the town’s Health Department.

Both Jeffrey and Prestwich said the lack of guidance by the state and the federal government on the use and type of surveillance testing has forced Belmont’s hand on moving on its own to establish its own standards.

Unlike diagnostic tests that are performed on individuals who have symptoms, surveillance testing seeks out the infection within a population which in Belmont’s case will be the school district.

While the CDC does not promote its use, “surveillance testing is the only way to bring [the school district] back to normalcy,” said Jeffrey.

Not that Belmont is that far from putting students back into the classrooms. With biweekly community data showing a less than one percent infection rate per 100,000 residents and school-age rates less than a half of one percent, Jeffrey said the anticipated current number of positive COVID-19 cases of the 5,000 students in the district would be three.

And while it would be optimum that there would be no risk, Jeffrey said that is simply unrealistic so the best can be done is to reduce the overall risk with surveillance testing to increase the amount of time students can stay in class.

While most people will associate COVID-19 testing with a swab rammed into the nasal cavity, methods have advanced where saliva – drawn into a straw than placed into a container – is used to extract the RNA that are highly specific pinpointing the virus. While there are false positives at about 3 percent – Jeffrey noted half of peanut allergy tests produce false positive results – they can be detected when the individual goes to their physician.

The recommended affective options available would be fast test produced by Mirimus Labs which will analyze a pool of 25 saliva samples, about the size of a classroom, with the ability to identifying a positive case within 12 hours. The Brooklyn-based firm can breakdown the large sample into pairs and determine which students will need to seek treatment.

Jeffrey said Mirimus can begin sample testing within two days after being selected. It would need two volunteers to collect the saliva and fill out the data forms for every grouping of 250 students.

After the first week in which all students and teachers would take the test to establish a baseline number, each subsequent week 10 percent of students – approximately 500 students – and all educators would be tested. The baseline test will cost $80,000 and the subsequent cost for the school year will be approximately $500,000.

Fundraising, possible federal or state expenditures and future lower cost testing could fund the proposal.

Jeffrey’s recommends the district start with the available Mirimus lab-based technology, than switching to a cheaper point-of-care approach when one becomes available likely by the end of the year.

While this new testing remains important for the community by supplying information on COVID, its greatest benefit “really has to be in returning students to the classroom,” said Jeffrey.

A second testing scheme – reviewed by Prestwich and Dr. Kate Rodriguez-Clark – is to sample the wastewater at the six school buildings. COVID is present in fecal matter so testing would involve the weekly collection of sewage from each school. The samples would be tested by a company like Biobot Analytics that can identify a single infection from the samples. The cost would be $8,500 a week for all buildings.

The advantage of using wastewater testing is it works well in tandem with the saliva testing in tracking the virus and it is easier to collect a sample. One negative is a person with the coronavirus must use the restroom at the school for the sample to register a positive case. Describing the dilemma resulted in Prestwich likely uttering the first mention of the slang definition of solid waste from the body in a future school committee minutes.

“The bottom line is that if the person who was infected with COVID doesn’t poop at school then we will not detect it … and that’s a drawback,” said Prestwich.

While calling the overall testing proposal “an exciting opportunity” to increase the peace of mind of educators and the public, Belmont Superintendent John Phelan said it will be a challenge to see how the district “operationalize” testing with the knowledge that the district has 4,500 student and 625 staff member between the ages of 3 and well past 60.

School Committee member Kate Bowen wondered aloud how necessary a costly surveillance testing regiment is for Belmont after the school district had “taken great steps in improving the buildings” including increasing the air flow in all school rooms and as the community has a very low rate of infection.

Prestwich noted that while the town’s “rates are low at this point … COVID increases exponentially if you don’t keep a lid on it.”

“Hopefully the precautions that we can take will prevent the numbers from shooting up,” she said.

Hybrid Learning For K-4 Pushed Up To Oct. 5; Calls For Grades 5-12 To Follow

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Photo: Hybrid plans accelerated

The Belmont School Committee approved moving up the date kindergarteners and elementary students will begin full hybrid learning by two weeks to Monday, Oct. 5, allowing nearly 2,000 students to start partial in-school learning.

“Two weeks is tight but we’re committed to hearing the feedback and responding to the school committee’s desire to have this happen sooner than later,” said Belmont School Superintendent John Phelan.

At another marathon committee meeting held remotely on Tuesday, Sept. 22, Phelan told the six member board the district accelerated the start date for K-4 students “reacting and responding to the community feedback that has asked to tightened up” the time between entering each new phase.

Earlier in the meeting, the committee approved the kindergarten and elementary school hybrid schedule which will be used by students. It consists of two cohorts of students attending school three half dsfdays the first week while spending two other days online.

Phelan said the school district is now following a newly redesigned four phase approach, removing the recently installed “bridge” phase and beefing up Phase 2 to include full K-4 hybrid learning. Middle and high school students will remain learning remotely.

While not yet approved by the school committee, the district showed on a PowerPoint slide that grades 5-12 could anticipate entering their hybrid phase on Monday, Oct. 22.

The district’s discussion to accelerate the move to hybrid learning is due to a pair of good news on the health and safety front. Despite a recent uptick in positive COVID-19 cases in the past week, Belmont remains on the “good side” of the state’s health metric. The district is also nearly complete with its project to increase the air flow to all rooms in each of the six school buildings. By meeting these two measures, the district can now move towards hiring the needed teaching staff to handle remote learners and create schedules for children who require transportation.

Current K-4 teachers will use the next two weeks to prepare their classrooms for learning, said Phelan.

Since the start of schools last Wednesday, between 120-130 pre-kindergarteners, students designated as having “high needs” and English language learners are being taught in the four elementary schools with full day instruction, said Phelan.

Under Phase 2, an additional 100 students with special needs and English learners who will be attending both the Chenery and the High School. “This next phase is a real scaling up not just for the elementary schools in full but also for another layer of student at the middle school and high school,” said Phelan.

While praising the work the district has done in getting “our K through 12 students in the door,” School Committee member Michael Crowley asked if there was some possibility to bring the remaining students back into the classrooms “a little bit earlier.”

Saying he might be receiving emails that “won’t be happy with what I’m about say,” Phelan said the scaling up behind the scenes what needs to be done for the middle and high schools – placing students and siblings in cohorts, making sure transportation can be done safely, hiring teachers for remote learners – “is infinitely more complex” compared to the elementary schools.

“We’ve accelerated [the date to enter hybrid learning] twice already and the educators are already very concerned about their ability to complete this task to the satisfaction that everybody would like so we are trying to meet in the middle and respond accordingly,” said Phelan.

‘Let’s Make It Work’ COVID-19 Surveillance Testing: Another Parent-led Solution To Re-open Belmont Schools

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Photo: Testing is around the corner

By Jamal Saeh, Kate Jeffrey, Larry Schmidt

The last academic year left many parents and students full of anxiety. Will remote learning work? Why can’t schools start with hybrid now? How can we help remove obstacles for increased in-person learning?

School started this year a little rocky despite heroic efforts by teachers. Technology did not always cooperate, some kids were in tears, and parents’ work schedules were disrupted. Some were luckier and fared better.  As part of the next phase, the school administration presented a hybrid model that involves approximately six hours of in-person learning per week and trimmed curricula. Little has been presented by BPS leadership about the constraints behind this model or the rationale for the timetable for the hybrid.   

In stark contrast to BPS, multiple K-12 systems have initiated full four to five day in-person models owing to thorough planning geared at removing obstacles such as air quality issues and Covid-19 surveillance. It’s therefore not surprising that many Belmont parents remain worried that their children will continue to fall behind when compared to their peers around the country who will benefit from more robust in-person learning.

All school administrators and committees are grappling with the question: “How do you maximize education while minimizing the risk of infection?” Inherent in this question is an acceptance of risk. While the risk can never be zero, science can help us quantify the risk and guide our strategies for maximizing educational opportunities. 

Recent quantitative analysis of various school opening scenarios, including one similar to the Belmont Public Schools hybrid model, suggests that the risk of infection is very low and supports schools opening in hybrid now.  For example, based on Glanz et al., the risk is low for a BPS student to come to school with the virus. If some do, with current risk mitigation countermeasures, Cohen et al conclude that the cumulative risk is also very low.  

To further reduce the risk and to better enable more in-person learning opportunities, multiple K-12 schools have initiated surveillance testing (e.g. Wellesley, Belmont Hill, Boston Public Schools,  NH, UN Int). A parent-led proposal will be presented at the upcoming School Committee meeting advocating for a cost-effective surveillance strategy. 

Two key barriers preventing routine testing are cost and logistics, and we believe we’ve made progress on both fronts. We’ve identified a promising ready-to-deploy solution from Mirimus labs that couples the gold standard RT-PCR test with a strategy to pool saliva samples from multiple individuals followed by a deconvolution step to identify the infected individual. The saliva collection is easy, results are provided within 12 hours for approximately $15/person. However, the estimate for the often requested weekly testing of the 4,800 BPS community is more than $2 million for the academic year, and more prohibitive for twice weekly.

We propose a pragmatic, scientifically driven solution.  All 4,800 BPS members can be tested ahead of the start of the hybrid phase for approximately $75,000. This will allow the identification and quarantine of infected individuals while students are in remote thus minimizing disruption. Once the hybrid starts, weekly surveillance is possible via random sampling of the BPS population. Random testing is a well-established scientific alternative to testing everyone. Experts recommend(1,2) that, for a district like BPS, a 7.5 percent sampling threshold can be adopted as an effective surveillance metric, a rate consistent with the surveillance plans implemented in independent schools.   We estimate the cost of weekly testing to be $325,000 for the entire year, which ignores the likely possibility that costs will decline going forward. The cost includes testing teachers.

In conclusion, our view is that a robust surveillance testing regimen is within reach financially for BPS and can be implemented in days. However, the surveillance testing should not be viewed as a prerequisite for executing BPS’ existing reopening plan given Belmont’s very low rates of community spread. Such a program makes it easier to track conditions in real time and reduces risks of larger outbreaks.  It should be implemented along with a broader set of changes to the BPS reopening plan which enable much more substantial in-person instruction opportunities for our students. If the extra peace of mind this provides enables our students and teachers to have much more robust face-to-face interactions, this will be money very well spent.

Jamal Saeh is the Executive Director and Global Program Leader at a local pharmaceutical company. He is a Belmont parent to two BHS students.

Kate Jeffre is an immunologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. She is a Belmont parent to a first grader.

Lawrence Schmidt is the Victor J. Menezes Career Development Professor of Finance at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management. He is a Belmont parent of three children.

Letter To The Editor: School Re-Opening Less Than Ideal But Pandemic Limits What Can Be Done

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Photo: Return to learning has been less than ideal

Dear Belmont Parents and Community:

As a member of the School Committee, I’m fully aware that many parents are deeply unhappy with the fall reopening plans for our schools. Based on the volume of emails and phone calls, it’s also clear that many people do not think the School Committee is listening. I can assure you that we are.

Many parents want a return to in-person learning as quickly as possible. Rightly, they point to good health metrics and the probability that we could begin using many classrooms in hybrid with safety. Yes, the metrics are good and we probably can begin using many classrooms but it will be a few more weeks before we do that.

I have been a proponent of a quicker move to hybrid reopening for Belmont’s schools. Not everyone agrees on the timetable, and I understand that. It’s not an easy thing to gamble with people’s health, but that’s essentially what we do when we proceed to reopen schools without due caution during a pandemic. Between myself, other members of the School Committee, the Superintendent, and our educators, there are some differences of opinion about what “due caution” means. In every negotiation, there are differences of opinion. When decision making depends on satisfying many different and very reasonable concerns about health and safety, some flexibility is needed. At the end of the day, no one wants to be responsible for opening in a way that leads to anyone getting sick, being hospitalized, or even dying.

We’ve just gotten summary feedback from our consulting engineers who have been evaluating our air handling systems in the school buildings. We’ll get the full reports in days. So far things look pretty good, as long as we plan to open windows in our classrooms or use air purification equipment that we’ve bought. But we’ll be proceeding to in-person learning in our school buildings in a deliberate and orderly manner only after the consultant reports have been received, fully digested, and responded to in a way that mitigates any problems with space that needs to be used. It would be unwise to do otherwise. Because the school buildings are not ready, there has been no other option – to be clear, absolutely no other way to proceed – but to begin the school year in remote mode. We’ll get the schools opened for in-person learning, but it just will take a little more time. 

Apart from getting back to in-person learning, we are getting lots of feedback about the remote school plan, which has been adopted by the School Committee, as well as the hybrid plan, which is still under discussion. Not everyone is happy with the remote schedules, including school start times, lunch breaks, and time between classes. It is a complicated negotiation to build out these schedules, and not all needs can be satisfied. Similarly, to try to undertake school in a hybrid fashion AND provide remote-only for those parents needing that option for their children necessarily means that there will be more asynchronous learning (e.g., taped lessons, students working on their own, etc.). The school district does not have enough resources to do much better than this. 

It is deeply unfortunate that our children will continue to experience school in a less than ideal way this school year. I know that our school administrators and educators – and every member of the School Committee – is deeply regretful for this. We all recognize that this isn’t the way school should be done. But we also know that there are limits to what can be done during a pandemic with the kinds of resources that we have. Everyone, too, is committed to making this the best experience possible for your children.

I know that parents will continue to be concerned about our schools and I hope that you’ll continue to share your concerns with me and other members of the School Committee. At the same time, I hope that we’ll have your patience as we work to change what we can AND your understanding in realizing that there will be limits to what can be done for your children with the resource constraints that our schools operate under.

Best,

Mike Crowley

Member, Belmont School Committee

Opinion: An Open Letter To School Committee On Delaying A Vote On Proposed Hybrid Learning Option

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Photo: Wait on voting for a hybrid model

To Andrea Prestwich, Chair, Belmont School Committee

I understand the Belmont School Committee needs to ratify the Belmont Public School’s remote learning plan in some form or fashion before school starts. Prior to voting, I would urge you and the other members of the committee to address the following aspects of the proposed Remote Learning plan in a clear and concise manner:

1) There has been no clear and precise estimate given by the BPS for the amount and types of family support that will be required for students at different levels to be successful in remote learning, nor has there been any assessment that I am aware of that gauges the degree to which the required and expected levels of support are feasible for families at the outset of this Phase or sustainable for any duration of time.

2)  There has been no clear and compelling rationale that has been offered to explain why start times can’t be later in remote learning. Belmont Schools Superintendent John Phelan has spoken a few times to the complexities of transportation, but as far as I’m aware there are no transportation issues during Phase 1 and very few parents and caregivers representing less than 500 out of 4,000 students indicated an interest in or reliance on bus transportation when asked. One of your core campaign issues when you originally ran for BSC was for a later start time. If we are ever going to explore and experiment with later start times, which the vast majority of families and students support, this would appear to be the moment. If we are not going to start later, especially at Chenery Middle School, I would expect that the particulars of why we cannot do so would need to be presented to the committee and the public before a vote on the remote schedule.

3) There has been no clear and compelling reason for why lunch schedules can’t be adjusted to accommodate family lunch at the same time both within Chenery and across school levels. Doing so would be the most convenient thing for families and would be best for the social-emotional wellbeing of students and families during Phase 1.

All of these issues relate in some form or fashion to the degree of responsiveness of the BPS and BSC to core concerns of and feedback from Belmont families, especially given the shift in the degree of responsibility for students’ education that families will bear in Phase 1 and all of the proposed phases until full in-person learning resumes.

Regarding the proposed hybrid plan, I strongly oppose and do not understand the idea that we need to rush to a vote next week given that the proposed hybrid plan, which is radically different from all previous models of hybrid learning that have been presented to the BSC and the public, has not been properly vetted by the public nor the BSC and given that hybrid learning is not likely to start in whatever form it takes until October at the earliest. 

To understand this issue more deeply from the perspective of Belmont parents and caregivers, it is useful to review the timeline of the process of exploring hybrid models so far:

  • June 29: of the 900 survey respondents, only 42 percent of respondents indicated support for a hybrid when the idea of the hybrid model was fairly abstract and when families might have conceived of the question as being in distinction to the possibility of a full in-person return to school.
  • July 16: though the total number of survey respondents is not clear from the slide deck from the BSC meeting, only 9 percent of families preferred full remote learning; 91 percent of respondents preferred full in-person learning or hybrid.
  • Aug. 4:  Superintendent Phelan presented 7 hybrid models to the public, all of which have significantly more in-person learning opportunities for students than the current proposed hybrid plan, which offers far fewer in-person options for many fewer students.
  • Aug. 6: the current “Return to Learning” phased plan is reviewed for the first time, marking a sudden and significant reversal in the direction of the public discussion about options for returning to school without a very clear rationale for why we are moving in this direction.
  • Aug. 11: at a BSC presentation representing the perspectives of approximately 3,000 of the 4,000 Belmont Public School students and the last time families were invited to express a point of view about hybrid learning, there was overwhelming support (2,138 of 3,152) for more and more frequent in-person learning opportunities (hybrid + full in-person) than is currently proposed.
  • Sept. 2: the current proposed hybrid models are presented to the public for the first time along with information about the “remote-only” option; the proposed models for students allow for significantly less in-person learning (2-3 mornings a week for most students) than had been previously discussed, not in keeping with expectations of families. In addition, the concept of a “Bridge” phase (“Phase 1.5”) is introduced for the first time to BSC but not voted upon.
  • Sept. 3: a survey is distributed to BPS families to choose between the current proposed hybrid model and the proposed remote model with the expectation that families will choose by Sept. 17 between these two models, neither of which approximates families’ expectations or resembles previous hybrid models under consideration. The survey does not contain a “none of the above” option or an option to indicate support for a different hybrid model if one would be available.  In the meantime, families are asked to articulate questions they have about the proposed models vs. feedback and there is a precipitous drop in family engagement as represented by the steep decline in the number of families who respond to surveys.

I would submit to you and other members of the committee that neither you nor Belmont families have had the opportunity to vet properly the details of the proposed hybrid model such that families would have a basis for making a choice on the one hand and that you would be informed enough about the perspectives of families on the other to vote next week.  Indeed, I would go further and say that, notwithstanding the very real need that the BPS has to engage in staffing projections, families should not have been asked to indicate a “choice” between two models they mostly do not want without further examination by BSC and BPS of whether adjustments can be made to the proposed hybrid model that would be in keeping our recently agreed-upon metrics for each Phase and more aligned with what families want and expect for their children.

Under those circumstances, I urge you to delay a vote of the hybrid model, to encourage BPS leadership to add more in-person learning opportunities whenever we move to Phase 3 and to extend the deadline for families to submit their preference sheets until modifications to the hybrid model can be more fully explored and articulated.  

Jeff Liberty

Worcester Street