Westport Public Schools Fully Closed Tomorrow, 02/01/21, due to Snow
Good evening Westport Families and Staff,
Due to the pending winter storm, Cooper, which is forecast to have a significant impact on Westport over the next couple of days, the Westport Public Schools will be closed on Monday, February 1, 2021. This will serve as the District’s second full snow day in which the students and staff will make up the day at the end of the school year.
The storm is projected to impact Tuesday, February 2, 2021 as well. We will monitor conditions throughout the day tomorrow and provide updates as appropriate. Should we have to close schools again on Tuesday, this day will turn into a remote learning day for all students and staff. Again, any decisions about Tuesday will be made once we can better assess the storm's impact.
The Board of Education is scheduled to meet tomorrow evening. As of the time I am writing to you this evening, the meeting is still scheduled to take place at 7:00 p.m. We have been working on backup plans throughout the day today, which may include broadcasting tomorrow night’s meeting via the Town’s website and channel 79. An update, including the manner in which the public can access tomorrow night’s meeting, will be sent out tomorrow afternoon.
Please stay safe in the days ahead. The Town has partially opened its Emergency Operations Center (EOC) in response to the storm. We will support the EOC by passing along any relevant storm information through the District’s School Messenger service, but please also be on the lookout for any direct communication from the Town as well.
Respectfully,
Thomas Scarice
Board of Education Meeting: Plans Move forward to Reopen; Families Plead to Reinstate Missing Long Lots El. Principal
As the Board of Education meeting began, many families took the non-agenda item public commentary period to plead to the Board of Education to have Long Lots Elementary School principal Dr. Debra Dunn reinstated. The principal has reportedly been on leave from the school for about six weeks for unknown reasons. A petition to the Superintendent has been signed by over 300 families as of tonight’s BOE meeting in support of the return of Dr. Dunn. Former and current Long Lots Elementary School PTA presidents described her return as needed in order to “return stability and leadership to the school” while lauding her work as principal in a school that was in need of strong leadership.
Dr. Debra Dunn was a former Superintendent of the York, Maine School Department before her hiring as LLS Principal in 2017. According to letters, the elementary school has seen nearly one dozen changes in leadership in the past decade, with Dr. Dunn being the one who instilled the most confidence in staff and student, according to some letters, while others described her as a calm face who made hard decisions that needed to be made. No explanation of her leave was given from the Board.
The health update remained positive overall as COVID-19 case numbers remained similar to last weeks, with the Supervisor of Health Services Sue Levasseur describing some “flattening of the curve” as time moves on from the holiday breaks.
Superintendent Thomas Scarice said that last week’s public comments of frustration or worry about returning to school were not ignored, as items such as four hundred K95 masks, and desk shields for the middle school, were all ordered ahead of the district’s reopening of schools for its youngest learners. He also described meeting with both the teachers’ union and paraeducators’ union after last week’s BOE meeting to further discuss options and concerns.
The meeting quickly dove into the Superintendent’s proposed budget, which was requested to be cut from the original 4.98% increase to a near 3% increase at last week’s meeting by the Board of Education. Board of Ed members gave concern over the cutting of SmartBoard updates as well as talks about funding for certain programs and extracurricular activities, citing that many new residents chose Westport specifically for those programs. There was also talk about positions of teachers and paras, however the Board wanted to assure that student education would not be impacted.
The meeting ended with discussions about capital expenses, approval of soft costs and acceptance of gifts, including a new cooling tower at Greens Farms Elementary School and the donation of a $9,000 upright Boston piano to the same school by a local family.
Superintendent: Weekend Reports 6 New COVID-19 Cases in 3 Schools; 4 at Long Lots
The Westport Public Schools COVID-19 Dashboard. Numbers may not reflect new cases.
From Superintendent Thomas Scarice this morning:
Dear Westport Families and Staff,
In our efforts to remain transparent with reports of positive Covid-19 cases associated with our schools, we will continue to provide these updates as information is confirmed. As of the time I am writing to you this morning we have 6 newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 from Friday evening through the weekend. The reports came from the following schools:
Long Lots Elementary School - 4
Saugatuck Elementary School - 1
Staples High School - 1
Those impacted have been notified by school and District officials. As a reminder, families are asked to report positive of COVID-19 cases of students using our reporting voicemail or email regardless of whether the students are in remote or hybrid models of instruction. Please follow this link for more information on reporting.
Additionally, we want to remind families that students with pending Covid-19 tests should not return to school until receiving negative results. This approach is critical in helping us continue minimizing the potential for transmission in our schools.
Respectfully,
Thomas Scarice
Superintendent of Schools
Westport Teachers: Full-in Return is “extremely unwise”; Paediatrican, Parent:“prioritize your job, which is to teach.”
Last week’s Board of Education meeting garnered 63 public comments on the Superintendent’s choice to re-open elementary and middle schools full-time on February 1st, just days before the Governor announced vaccines for educators are delayed until March. Comments can be found here.
With so many public comments - many several paragraphs long - the Board elected to stop reading them, with the promise to post them publicly and read at a later time, in order to attend to their full meeting agenda. Even with the time saving measure, the meeting was pushed until after midnight on Wednesday morning. It’s unknown how late tonight’s meeting will go, or if the Board of Education will comment on staff or family concerns.
The letters were mainly written by Westport educators, some of whom said they were “overwhelmed, stressed, scared, disconnected, anxious, uncertain, nervous, lonely, worried, exhausted, tense, drained, and uneasy.” according to one group-authored letter. Others described their love for the district and their jobs, but their feeling “undervalued and underappreciated through actions of the Board.”
Some parents brought up concerns for the students who elect to remain virtual, specifically referring to a change in specials scheduling, saying “Distance Learners depend on zoom specials to stay connected to their schools, classmates, and beloved specials teachers. What you have presented is not equitable.”
However not all unread letters criticized the decision to return. One high school parent/paediatrician told the Board of Education “I respect teachers as much as I do physicians so with all due respect I ask that you prioritize your job which is to teach. Leave the job of health and safety to those of us that have spent lifetimes studying it. Listen to the CDC, AAP, and National Academy of Sciences, who have all stated that at this point in the pandemic returning children to school will not change the outcome that you’re imagining.” The parent continued to request that high school seniors are allowed to finish their high school career in-person.
In addition to the Health Report and transition discussions, tonight’s meeting will include a review of the superintendent’s budget - which administrators were told to cut by nearly 1% in order to keep an increase of around 3% instead of the proposed 3.98%. High school class sizes will be looked at in particular, followed by conversations about capital expenses.