Any Massachusetts nurses know their district's plan yet?

JenTheSchoolRN, BSN, RN · Jul 27, 2020

2 hours ago, MHDNURSE said:
Neither the district where I am working, nor the district where my own children attend have any sort of plan yet. I know they are working with DESE and have final deadlines for August but wish we had some idea of what they are thinking. I am not involved in either district's reopening committees.

I do to a degree. But I'm on the re-opening committee for my school and it is more of what the school is hoping to be able to do/achieve. But even then, it is still on the fence because of instructional pieces to be worked out so nothing is 100% yet. (And yes, in MA, the date to submit all three plans - full, hybrid, remote - to the state is August 10th and the state is encouraging folks to not share official plans until then.)

k1p1ssk, BSN, RN · Jul 28, 2020

I'm in MA and on my District's Elementary Level Reopening Committee. It is incredibly difficult. We have no concrete plan. If I had to guess, we will start hybrid and move to full on in-person by November. However, our smallest school building can only accommodate 3-feet of distancing in classroom, even if only half of the students are in-house at a time. If our school committee votes for the 6ft minimum, I have no idea what will happen to change the hybrid plan.

DESE did give approval to reduce student-learning days to 170 (and 850hours, which would be five 5hour days per week), which is a huge help, though it still feels like it won't be enough.

scuba nurse, BSN, MSN, RN · Jul 28, 2020

It looks like the district I live in (small town) will be hybrid, most likely one week in school next week at home, at least that is what most parents wanted in the survey, whether that happens or not is yet to be determined.

The big city district I work in is a nightmare! We had 2 zoom conferences where any one could attend and there were 1000 people on zoom, and another 1k on FB, and it lasted well over 5 hours both times! It was crazy! I think they are hoping for hybrid, with kids divided into 2 groups and either attending school Mon and Tue or Wed and Thurs. Friday would be home for all (YAY we finally get fridays "off").

BUT I am not holding my breath for anything at the moment. DESE has until August 10 to decide, and at least now with the extra 10 days, school will not start until well after Labor Day, and my guess is that by then, unfortunately, that the state (and most of the country) will be shut down again, and we will all be home.

JenTheSchoolRN, BSN, RN · Jul 28, 2020

To build on it further, my school is hoping for hybrid, with 6 feet of distancing and week A/week B (which my school physician and I recommended for contact tracing vs two groupings in one week). We have the space to pull it off it looks like.

I know DESE is really waiting as long as they can because of trending. But it does make it hard to plan. My school has already pushed our school opening back one week and may know push back a little more with the 170 day allowance released this week.

Also, anyone else frustrated/confused by the whole "if you are a close contact and test negative and are asymptomatic, you can come back to school masked at all times" yet the general public still needs to quarantine 14 days if they are a close contact regardless of test result? I was a contact tracer and was surprised by this deviation, especially for the adults involved. But if schools are now essential services, it follows the health care essential worker guideline (which I expected school nurses to fall under, but not necessarily everyone else).

Guests · Jul 29, 2020

The latest in my home district is either a hybrid or full virtual. Both plans were shared by our SI yesterday. I don't love that they are looking at several 1/2 days/week per cohort, vs. only one group of kids in the building per day. Our SI straight up said there is no way to do 6 ft so they will do 3 ft distancing and are "working on" ventilation issues...we shall see. Still no word from the district where I work, though based on survey results, only 48% would send their kids back for in-person, so this will be interesting...