Hopkinton School District plans to reopen fully five days a week by May 3 for any student who wants in-person learning – and maybe even earlier, if they can swing it.
School Board chairman Jim O’Brien announced the change at the first info session for the district’s annual meeting, held Saturday via Zoom. A group of parents in town had been pushing for schools to fully reopen.
“If we can move faster, we will,” O’Brien said. “We feel that this is the right approach and the right timeline, provides staff and families the time to prepare, and allows our students to be back in the classroom full-time to reconnect and complete the school year.”
O’Brien cited imminent vaccinations as one of the reasons for the decision. New Hampshire teachers and school staff will start getting vaccines this week through the Regional Public Health Network, as part of Phase 2A of New Hampshire’s vaccine rollout.
Hopkinton teachers and staff will be vaccinated at Concord’s Steeplegate Mall between March 21 and 28, according to O’Brien.
In the weeks leading up to the announcement, some Hopkinton parents had been advocating for a return to in-person instruction. A group of five Hopkinton parents created a petition last week, asking the district to re-open in-person learning. The petition garnered 129 signatures.
Hopkinton parent Beth Mayland, who has a sixth grader and an eleventh grader in the district, has been active writing letters to the school board and speaking at meetings, advocating for in-person instruction. Mayland says the hybrid model, which cuts face-to-face instruction time in half, has been taking a toll on her children’s learning.
“It was a really tough go for our high-schooler during the period of all remote. It wasn’t a great learning model for him,” Mayland said. “Someone who had been a straight A student, sitting in front of the computer all day – it really took the joy of learning from him.”
Hopkinton parent Craig Burrell said his seventh grader and tenth grader have also been struggling with not being in school full-time, particularly his seventh-grade son who has trouble focusing on the computer.
“Being isolated from school from November to February caused him to have some major social and emotional problems arise. He was becoming very angry, depressed, developed an adjustment disorder, started lying about doing his schoolwork, and other things,” Burrell said in an interview last week. “He would just go off about the work he was doing and how stupid it was and how he was not learning anything. Some kids are not able to work in this environment.”
When Burrell and his wife set out to find their son a counselor, they realized just how many other families were trying to do the same thing.
“My wife called over 25 counselors in a two-day period of time, and none of them had availability,” Burrell said. “Everyone is overwhelmed because of all the psychological and social emotional problems our kids are having right now.”
Some details of Hopkinton’s reopening plan have yet to be worked out, including a memorandum of agreement that was established with the teachers union and educational support staff in September that says no classroom can contain more people than can be accommodated while maintaining six foot distance.
“There is a lot of work that needs to be done to be ready to welcome more students back into our classrooms in a safe way – and the board is eager to continue working cooperatively with our teachers and staff to make it happen,” O’Brien said Monday.
Hopkinton School District has had 20 cases of COVID-19 so far this year, 13 at the middle-high school, five at Harold Martin School and two at Maple Street School, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services school dashboard.
The Hopkinton School Board will discuss the topic of school reopening further at a meeting March 18.