Concord School District officials are holding out hope to get their plans for an in-person graduation ceremony in June approved from the state Department of Health and Human Services.
Concord Interim Superintendent Frank Bass said the plans comply with graduation guidelines released by the Department of Education this week, which require participants to maintain social distancing at all events. Concord administrators discussed the plans with the state education officials on Thursday and it went well, Bass said.
However, the district still needs final approval from state health officials before they can make the plans public. The district is coordinating with Concord Police Chief Bradley Osgood to present a proposal to DHHS next week.
“The one thing I don’t want to do is to create unrealistic expectations,” Bass said. “All I want to say at this point is we’ve heard very encouraging news from the DOE.”
At the Concord School Board meeting Monday night, Bass told school board members that he and Concord High’s leaderships staff hoped to hold a graduation ceremony on Memorial Field on June 13. He said students would wear masks and not come into contact with other students or their teachers.
On Monday, he proposed a graduation ceremony where students will be separated by their “commons,” which are large clusters of students grouped together for guidance, student support and other resources. By Thursday, he said that idea had changed.
“You’re not going to see Commons A, B and C for graduation. It’s going to be a whole scale level better,” Bass said. “It’s far better than that. I’ll leave that up to everyone’s imagination”
Hopkinton School District will follow Bow’s lead next week and take the plunge into holding an annual meeting in the social-distancing era.
Final details are being worked out Thursday night but Hopkinton will largely follow the process laid out by the Bow School District, which saw its week-long combination of virtual meeting and drive-up voting run fairly smoothly last month, drawing a huge voter turnout. One big difference: Hopkinton will let people vote on amendments as well as on final warrant articles, which will produce an extra later of complication.
Instructions will be mailed out to all voters Saturday, following decisions to be made Thursday night by the school board.
The schedule calls for a virtual, online meeting Tuesday starting at 7 p.m., followed by two days of emails or telephoned comments and suggested amendments sent to the school district moderator.
On Friday there will be a second online meeting beginning at 7 p.m. with discussions about proposed amendments and comments.
On Saturday, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. registered voters can drive up and vote at the high school, using ballots they printed out at home or received at the school. It is still being determined exactly how people can vote on article amendments and at the same time on the article that might or might not be amended.
Members of the Executive Council are protesting Gov. Chris Sununu’s authority to spend state money to combat the coronavirus.
The council voted 4-1 Wednesday to table what usually is a routine request from the state treasurer to spend money for all functions of state government for the next month. The request included $500 million in state funding and $450 million from the federal coronavirus relief aid package.
Councilor Andru Volinsky, a Democratic candidate for governor, objected, saying the council and the public deserve more details, including information about which health care providers applied for no-interest loans from a $50 million fund.
Republican Councilor Russell Prescott joined Volinsky and the other two Democrats in voting to table the request. Sununu said he assumes the council will approve the request May 20, otherwise all of state government would shut down.
A task force on reopening New Hampshire’s economy recommends that dentists resume some routine work if they can provide staff with medical grade personal protective equipment.
While dentistry offices have not been ordered to close, most if not all have limited their practice to emergency work. The Governor’s Economic Reopening Task Force on Wednesday approved a recommendation that they resume elective and orthodontic procedures if they comply with American Dental Association guidance regarding protective equipment.
The group is not recommending the resumption of elective cosmetic procedures or the use of ultrasonic scaling.
Task force member Bill Marsh, a Republican state representative from Wolfeboro, said the guidance balances the public health risk of opening versus the public health cost of remaining closed.
“This lets dentists catch up a bit on their backlog and keeps us from creating too much of a public health burden from untreated dental disease,” he said.
Concord Orthopedics is joining the ranks of health-care facilities slowly opening up for non-emergency and elective work.
The company announced Thursday that its Derry and New London offices have reopened for appointments, joining its Concord office, although at the moment the company website indicates only that the Acute Injury Clinic is open.
All the offices shut mid-March following guidance from national health organizations and Gov. Chris Sununu’s stay-at-home order.
The new moves come after Sununu loosened some of those restrictions, allowing certain elective medical procedures to take place as of Monday, May 4.
(Material from the Associated Press was used in this report)
