All Belmont Public Students Are Back In School On Last Week Of April

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Photo: Belmont student will be in classrooms after the Spring break. (Credit: Pixabay)

After two months of in-house analysis and some pressure from the state, all Belmont students will be back in school on the final week of April, according to John Phelan, Belmont superintendent of schools.

“We believe that we’re making really, really good progress so we appreciate everyone’s patience [during the pandemic],” said Phelan, at the Tuesday, April 13 Belmont School Committee meeting.

Chenery Middle School students and teachers will return full time on Wednesday, April 28 and those attending Belmont High School will be back in the on Thursday, April 29. Each school will reopen after the two student cohorts at the Chenery and High School are combined in the hybrid schedule.

Those students learning remotely will attend classes via live stream.

Students in Belmont’s four elementary schools have been in classes both in class and remotely since April 5, an experience so far, Phelan said, “students are doing very well, some kinks to work out for sure.”

Currently 83 percent of students district wide have elected to return to in-person learning at the six Belmont schools. Approximately 17 percent will continue to be taught remotely. Elementary students have the greatest in-person attendance at 91 percent while high schoolers are split 70-30 in-class vs remote.

Phelan told the committee that the district has taken “a real close eye on” the level of community transmission of the COVID-19 before moving towards a full return to in-class education.

In announcing the dates for the reopening, Phelan acknowledged the effort of the 32-member Return to In-Person Learning Working Group which over eight meeting since February drafted sets of “rolling” recommendations to the School Committee and District outlining the steps both in terms of public health and navigating logistic concerns that led to the return of full-time classroom education.

The group – made up of educators, students, parents, members of the Board of Health, School Committee and community – included:

“We truly appreciate the role that everybody brought to this work; the feedback, the healthy suggestions, the debate, the disagreement, and there was disagreement in this committee. There were recommendations that folks felt really good about, and there were recommendations that folks struggle with a little bit in these were hard discussions within our subgroups,” said Phelan.

“This was not all smiles in fun. This was work. This was debate, review and reflection. But ultimately we came up with an outcome that that put students in school in the month of April, to some degree ahead of time. So we’re thankful for their work,” said Phelan, who pointed to the leadership of the Working Group’s facilitators, Harvard-based Michelle Rinehart and Dr. Drew Echelson, who provided the analysis and just the hand-holding required to shepherd the group in its mission.

While finished with its initial goal, the work group will reconvene in May to tackle issues such as remote learning, creating contingency plans in the event of another surge and mapping out a seasonal strategy.

“We did do a little bit of reflecting on what this group could do better next time. How this type of work can serve the district well in any other type of challenge or with any other issues that need to be worked out with community support and feedback. So we think we have a pretty good format for future use,” said Phelan.

Belmont Readies For Schools Reopening As District Defends Restart Process; A Question of Whose Mandate

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Photo: The elementary schools will be open for business on April 5 … if not sooner.

Days after the state’s education set dates for reopening of elementary schools, the Belmont School District revealed on Tuesday, March 9 its plan that will allow the district’s youngest students to return to full-time in-school classes on Monday, April 6.

Created from recommendations by the Return to In-Person Learning Working Group, the blueprint will provide an educational experience for children in Kindergarten to 4th grade lacking since exactly a year ago this week.

“Our administrators and administrative team at the central office have been working hard on this for over a month and a half and we’re glad we are making progress … and to let our families know that as we try to finish this year as strong as possible, that we are prepared to have a goal of opening [schools] in-person learning next year,” said John Phelan, superintendent of Belmont District Schools as he presented the plan to the School Committee at its regularly scheduled Tuesday meeting.

The new plan was being developed by the Working Group when the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) which oversees public education in Massachusetts, issued an edict requiring districts to replace their hybrid systems in elementary schools with full-day in-school classes.

The plan for in-person schooling at the town’s four elementary schools has been discussed for the past two weeks by the working group, school committee and district with the final recommendations released Tuesday:

  • Students in school 5 days/week with the same timing as our pre-Covid school schedule;
  • Offer academics, specials (art, physical education), lunch, and snacks as part of the school day. Lunch and some electives classes will be made possible by setting up large wedding tents at each elementary school and a pair at the Chenery Middle and Belmont High schools.
  • Include specialized instruction for students with disabilities and students who are English learners; 
  • Provide bus transportation to all student in accordance with DESE guidance;
  • Implement classroom capacity, individual distancing, and quarantining requirements from CDC and DESE guidance.

Parents who’ll choose to have their children attend classes remotely will also attend school five days per week. Yet one “trade-off” of moving to a full-time school day will be the end of live streaming that allowed for in-class and at-home students to learn together. This will likely require many remote students to “loss” their current teachers who will transition to in-class teaching, replaced by remote-only educators.

“These are some of the challenges that we are facing in order to be able to provide these two learning models,” said Phelan.

Parents were sent a survey last week on which learning model they would choose for their students which will, in turn, determine how many teachers would be in the classroom and those teaching online.

More specific information on in-school elementary education can be found in the form of a PowerPoint presentation at the Belmont Public School website which was presented at the Tuesday School Committee meeting.

You can see the March 9 Belmont School Committee meeting at Belmont Media Center here.

Phelan noted DESE is requiring middle schools to follow the elementary schools in full-time in-school learning by April 28. And even though the state has not made any time certain for high school students, Phelan said the Working Group will be moving forward on recommendations for reopening the middle and high school.

Tuesday also provided an opportunity for Phelan to defend the district and school committee’s deliberative approach to reopening the schools to the criticism from many residents who felt the superintendent and committee members were ignoring physical data compiled by parents indicating students could have safely returned to classrooms earlier in the school year.

“Why in person now versus earlier in the school year than in the winter,” Phelan asked as he spoke of the success of the Return to In-Person Learning Working Group in formulating the recommendations using data and information gathered internally. The superintendent pointed out that the following guidance from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that only within the past few weeks had it become the optimum time “about bringing more students back to schools.”

“But back in February and January, that was not the case,” he said.

Whose mandate is it anyways?

In a sidebar to the meeting, a question of who has the mandate to speak for educating Belmont students could preview issues facing the Belmont School Committee after Town Election when new members come on board.

Committee member Mike Crowley chided the emergency mandate from DESE Commissioner (and Belmont High alum) Jeffrey Riley directing children back in the classroom either absent of any guidance on a number of issues including the social distancing for unmasked activities and conflicts with union bargaining agreements or “that “DESE guidance seems to be updated about every five minutes,” said Andrea Prestwich, school committee chair.

“I do not like that DESE has usurped the authority of the school committee to make decisions about these planning efforts. This is work that we asked for,” said Crowley, a sentiment seconded by Prestwich, saying she was “holding my tongue about my feelings about DESE, but you did say it nicely.”

Crowley’s statement is hardly a lone voice in the wilderness as many school committees, teacher unions and associations came out to pan Riley’s seeming overreach into local governance. Phelan joined a large group of nearby superintendents in signing a letter asking DESE to work with school districts to come up with a more concrete plan for a return to school, including joining the effort to vaccinate school staff.

While current members were expressing disappointment with the state, School Committee candidate Jamal Saeh, whose run for office is fueled by a growing populism among a segment of the community critical of what they perceive as unwarranted delays in reopening schools, wasted little time in castigating Crowley for his critical take on the state’s intrusion in the running of local government.

“When I hear a school committee member say that DESE usurped the authority of the school committee, I feel compelled to amplify the voice of those parents’ opinion of the school committee [that it] is not the mandate of the community,” said Saeh.

Saeh’s apparently offhand comment was interesting in so much that an elected school board, by state law, was provided a mandate by voters to run the municipality’s schools including managing its own budget, independent hiring practices, and creating policies on how to educate its students.

As District Works Towards Full-Time In-School For K-4; Phelan Commits To ‘Fully In-Person Start’ Of ’21 School Year

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Photo: The Belmont School District is working to bring K-4 students back to full-time in-the-classroom instruction by April

Belmont Schools Superintendent John Phelan reiterated his stance from last week that the district is actively working to derive a program to safely send elementary school students back to the classroom full time in April, according to a press release dated Thursday, March 4.

Rather than add in-person hours to the existing hybrid plan for those attending Belmont’s four elementary schools, “we are now developing a plan for a full, in-person option for K-4 students,” said Phelan.

Phelan also used the release to acknowledge the strain the pandemic has had on residents and students for the past year and his personal pledge to “a strong fully in-person start of the school year in September 2021.”

“I am committed to finishing this school year better than we started. I am committed to returning students back to school as safely and quickly as possible starting with our youngest learners at the elementary schools,” he said. “I will be working tirelessly, along with the entire Belmont Public School community, to deliver on these commitments.”

As he stated in his release of Feb. 26, Phelan said the district has shifted its focus following the announcement by Department of Elementary and Secondary Education Commissioner Jeff Riley who said on Feb. 23 that he will ask state permission to yank the hybrid option for the state’s youngest students.

In response, the district’s Return to In-Person Learning Working Group – the nearly 30 member group created last month to manage the transition to full-time in-school learning – had shifted its focus to now “building recommendations in subgroups which focused on physical distancing and classroom capacity, lunch and snack, specials and specialized instruction, remote-only options, and transportation,” said Phelan.

Monday, March 8: Working Group meeting and possible recommendations
Tuesday, March 9: Recommendations presented to at School Committee Meeting
Thursday, March 11: Q&A session with school administrators
Friday, March 12: Survey to all K-4 parents asking for remote/in-person choice
Wednesday, March 17: Survey due by 5 p.m.

And as Phelan promised when the group was formed, the working group has begun making “rolling recommendations” to the district on meeting his new goal. After its meeting on Monday, March 1, Phelan along with school principals and central office staff have begun reviewing emerging recommendations focusing on creating guidelines for social distancing in classrooms and non-learning spaces in the four elementary schools.

One of the leading constraints identified last summer hampering a return to full-time in-school learning throughout the district has been the lack of physical learning space required for 100 percent student participation with a required six-foot separation between students.

In addition to social distancing, the working group has also focused on addressing concerns related to the remote-only experience for those students and families that select to remain remote for the rest of the year, and taking stock of current PPE equipment, and make any recommendations so the schools are ready for a return to increased in-person learning.

The Working Group will meet again on Monday, March 8, and could issue recommendations at that time. If there are proposals from the Group, they will be made public at the School Committee the next day, March 9.

In an attempt to have families fully briefed on each learning option – in-person or remote – Phelan said the district will hold a Q&A session with school administrators on Thursday, March 11 at 6:30 p.m. 

The district will send a survey to parents on Friday, March 12, on whether they would like to choose the remote or in-person option for their child.  The survey will be due Wednesday, March 17 and this selection will be binding for the remainder of the school year.

After the Working Group has completed its K-4 recommendations, it will then move into discussions of how to increase in-person learning at the middle and high schools. Initially, the Working Group will start with grade 5 by leveraging their recommendations from the K-4 given the self-contained grade 5 model which is more similar to our elementary schools.

On a personal note, Phelan said he was well aware of the considerable hardship the school community – students, staff, parents – has taken on since the pandemic halted in-school learning in March 2020.

“I want to recognize that this has been a difficult year for students, as well as for parents and families. It has also been the most significant challenge our educators have ever faced. There are no easy answers as we battle COVID-19,” said Phelan.

“I appreciate and acknowledge that change can be disruptive and that these plans will be met with happiness by some and concern by others. I look forward to working together to deliver on three big commitments: finish the year better than we started; return more students to in-person learning this spring, and focus on a full in-person start to the year in the fall.”

“I … want to thank the families of Belmont for the grace they have shown–and continue to show–as we work through this devastating public health crisis,” said Phelan.