The ConVal School Board unanimously agreed to move the District back to the green phase of their COVID-19 Reopening Plan on Tuesday night. The move allows winter sports to resume under the terms negotiated in December, and allows students to return to school in-person on Jan. 19.
The vote came after the District’s COVID-19 response team recommended the change.
“After careful consideration of: the context of COVID-19 in the nine communities that make up the ConVal School District (particularly that the majority cases in Peterborough relate to long-term or congregate facilities) the significant mitigation strategies that have been successfully put into place across the District, the upgrades to air handling and air filtration, the potential harm done to students who are unable to adequately access remote learning, and the minimal risks of exposure for staff and students, the COVID-19 Monitoring Team recommends that the School Board move the District back to the green phase of the Reopening Plan,” COVID-19 monitoring team member Peterborough Fire Chief Ed Walker said, reading the team’s recommendation to the group.
The move reinstated sports under the conditions the Board approved in December, with every team allowed to practice and play save for indoor track, which will be proceeding with skills and drills for a lack of open competitive venues. Athletes and all other students in their household will continue remote learning until two weeks after their last competition or practice, ConVal athletic director John Reitnauer said.
Pediatrician Lara Niemela said the mitigation team’s decision was partly due to data collected from US and European schools over the past six months. “Schools are not the place where COVID-19 has been spreading,” she said, particularly in children ages 12 and under. “The risk is not zero,” she said, but younger children appear to be less susceptible to contracting the virus, get less sick when they do get infected, and appear to not function as significant asymptomatic spreaders.
ConVal was the only district in the area that was able to have K-8 students learning in-person every day, Niemela said, and had no cases until November. “And it wasn’t related to a school exposure,” she said.
When asked about the danger of the national threat of a post-Christmas virus surge and the threat of asymptomatic spread, Niemela said that area towns have been “remarkably low” in COVID-19 cases, but reiterated that all the District’s mitigation strategies were still necessary. Board Chair Rich Cahoon reiterated that the District would be unable to sustain its green, in-person status unless all community members follow public follows public health advice.
The positive COVID-19 test rate in ConVal towns sits at 6.5 percent, team member Richard Scheinblum said, as compared to the 8.3 percent positive rate statewide, 11.5 percent in Hillsborough County, and 5.3 percent in Cheshire County as of Jan. 11. Per capita caseload is still less than half the rate in the rest of Hillsborough County, he said. Although Peterborough has the highest current case load of any town in the District, team members have confirmed that between 30 and 40 of the active cases are confined to congregate living situations, Scheinblum said.
Several members of the public, including several ConVal staff and faculty members, expressed concern with the change. One brought up the fact that students would have to eat their lunches unmasked inside classrooms due to the cold weather, and another questioned why some Board members continued to meet remotely if infection rates were low enough to resume in-person instruction and sports.