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A Few Clouds and Breezy Five Towns teachers not sold on district’s opening plans
Updated Aug. 21 at 10:35 a.m.
Leaders of the two Five Towns public school district’s teachers associations are in on the reopening plans, however they stopped short of total endorsement as both see problems ahead.
Ric Stark, president of the Hewlett-Woodmere Faculty Association, said that the teachers want schools to reopen as close to normal as possible with the proper coronavirus safety precautions in place. “We miss our students, we miss teaching them and helping them to navigate everything they face,” Stark said. “Our position on this is that we believe that students should be wearing masks for as much of the school day as possible.” The HWFA has roughly 290 members that also include librarians and speech pathologists.
The current Hewlett-Woodmere plan calls for online and hybrid instruction to begin on Tuesday, Sept. 8. Full-person instruction is tentatively scheduled for Oct. 5. Recent district hire interim Deputy Superintendent David Flatley helped create the reopening plan. He acknowledged that protocols on mask wearing are still being discussed among the district’s reopening task force. “The determination as to the need to wear a facemask and the process by which mask breaks will be provided is still being kicked around by the task force,” he said.
Stark said that he thinks the district’s reopening plan is good, however, the policy on mask wearing has been a sticking point. “Every public health official has defined safely in the era of Covid to be four key items: hand hygiene, regular and intense cleaning, physical cleaning and use of a face mask,” he said. “On the first three items, we are confident that the district has set up the best possible protocols. On the fourth, discussions of this with the task force are ongoing.”
The health and safety teachers and students is the No. 1 priority for Stark. “Both masks and distancing are required by law in every indoor venue at this time,” he said. “This for their safety. The children and faculty deserve nothing less.”
School is scheduled to begin on Sept. 8 and mask wearing by students and teachers will be mandatory in the Lawrence School District. Lori Skonberg, president of the Lawrence Teachers Association said that while she thinks the district has come up with good protocols in their reopening plan, she is withholding judgment until the plan is put into place.
“The reopening plan looks good on paper but what will these plans look like in reality,” she said. “The district has good ideas, but ask me how it’s going when school is under way in September.” The LTA has nearly 280 members, including librarians, speech therapists and social workers.
Skonberg described the reopening process as work in progress. “Nobody signed up for these circumstances but were all in this together,” she said. “For every question we get answered, there’s five more follow up questions. Were never going to get all the questions answered during this process and we realize that.”
