SAUGUS — The complicated road to reopening has yet to be mapped out for Saugus Public Schools.
Superintendent David DeRuosi told the Saugus School Committee Thursday that he is “at the whim of the Department of Health” when it comes to nailing down an official date for allowing students back into the district’s public school buildings, which have been closed for more than three months due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“We’re being driven by health,” DeRuosi said to the committee. “If you can all tell me one common message about this virus that hasn’t been changed mid-stream, I’m open. None of us have that intel.”
Saugus schools have taught students via “distance learning” methods since March, but health officials warn that the current health crisis may last well into the fall, leaving school officials everywhere scrambling to put together reopening plans that will comply with each state’s mandated safety regulations.
“We have to take this really seriously,” said Vice-Chair Ryan Fisher, who added that a recent finance committee meeting had explored several different reopening scenarios, each of which would differently impact the district’s budget.
“Every one of those (scenarios) impacts everything else,” Fisher said. “We’re trying to plan under different variations in case one is the one that happens.”
Adding to the complexity of the situation is the fact that students in grades 6 through 12 will start the 2020-2021 school year in a new middle-high school building, which means state-mandated guidelines will need to be maneuvered in unfamiliar — although much larger — territory.
“Say they tell us we need to keep everyone five feet apart,” Fisher said. “Because we have this brand-new building with an auditorium (where) we could easily spread out some desks, we could put a projector at the front of that (room), and one teacher could be teaching math to a whole gymnasium full of kids.
“That’s an idea we hadn’t thought of before, because not every district is going to have this great new building.”
DeRuosi said he would be open to considering any plan presented, but warned that determining the ultimate impact of each plan will further complicate the process.
“I’m willing to look at anything, (but) there is a ripple effect to everything,” he said.