GREENFIELD — School Committee Chair Amy Proietti explained to the City Council Wednesday that when the committee unanimously voted in August on reopening plans, there was never a plan to reopen Greenfield schools to all students during the current 2020-2021 school year, as many parents have hoped for.
“We’ve been working with the plan we voted,” Proietti said. “And we certainly were not comfortable before February talking about a hybrid model. We wanted to make sure we were offering more stability to our students.”
Proietti said she and other School Committee members, including Katie Caron and Vice Chair Susan Eckstrom, have checked with other local school districts and found they have had their students in and out of school over the past several months because cases would spike in their towns or there would be reported cases within the school districts.
“We didn’t want to do that to the kids,” she said.
However, Proietti said the School Committee’s recent decision to work toward reopening to all students by the end of April did not come about because of a petition signed by more than 500 people asking that it happen, but because it was “always our plan” to at least talk about all options, even if they weren’t in the original plan.
At-Large Councilor Ashli Stempel-Rae said she wished she had seen the School Committee working on a reopening plan before the petition was delivered. She said not only has the committee had to worry about the pandemic and keeping everyone safe, but it has been working for roughly the last month without an “actively working” superintendent — Superintendent Jordana Harper was injured on the job — and has had to consider other issues including funding and space challenges.
In August, the School Committee approved a “remote, remote-plus” plan, which meant all students would learn remotely until school and health officials felt it was safe to return; and then only the highest-risk students, including those in special education and English as a second language learners, would return to in-person learning. All others would remain remote.
Proietti said that since December, even remote-plus hasn’t always gone smoothly as those students have had to return to remote learning on a couple of occasions as COVID-19 numbers surged during and after the holidays.
The Greenfield School Department has hired a lead administrator who started Tuesday, and Proietti said the first thing Judy Houle with The Management Solution Inc. did was start working on a reopening plan for April. The district also hired two superintendent-licensed consultants and a communications expert from TMS for a total cost to the district of about $10,000 a month. The agreement is on a month-to-month basis. It would end as soon as Harper returns to her duties or a new superintendent is hired.
Precinct 2 Councilor Dan Guin said he is concerned about the additional cost but is happy to hear it won’t cost the city any more than it already budgeted for schools.
While some parents and Greenfield residents have criticized the School Committee for what they have described as its “inaction,” Proietti said people should be “asking similar questions of the Greenfield Education Association,” the union that represents educators within the district. However, she said she can’t talk specifically about negotiations that have been ongoing throughout the pandemic.
Reach Anita Fritz at 413-772-9591 or afritz@recorder.com.