SWAMPSCOTT — Public schools in town will begin a phased reopening on March 29, Superintendent Pamela Angelakis announced Wednesday.
On that day, students in kindergarten, first grade and middle school who are currently participating in hybrid learning will return to school, with other grades to follow. Students who are currently fully remote will be given the option to return to school after April vacation.
“I would love nothing more than to say, on Monday, everybody come in for a full day,” Angelakis said in the Wednesday evening School Committee meeting. “We do not have the spaces worked out yet.”
On March 22, all elementary special education students will return to their original classrooms from other spaces where they have been learning, a process that has already begun in some buildings. In addition, the current remote half day at the high school will become a fully remote day, and high school students will transition from a two-day to five-day schedule.
Preschool students will return to a full-day, five-day schedule in person on March 29. Current hybrid students in kindergarten and first grade will be in-person five days a week from 8 a.m. to 12:15 p.m., with teachers available on Zoom for remote students at 1:15.
Middle school students in all grades will also be in-person five days, but will have class from 8 a.m. to 12:30. High school students will return to a full-day, five-day schedule, but will not have lunch inside, instead leaving for lunch as current hybrid students do.
“We’re still figuring out lunches, and a week is not enough time to set up,” Angelakis said. “We figured, get those little ones in, get them acclimated to the five-day schedule, keep them until 12:15 and we’ll be phasing in their reunification with their schools.”
Grades two through four will remain in the hybrid model until April 5, when all current hybrid elementary students will return for five full days of school. The district is still determining how to offer lunch, with plans for one single lunch option and for bagged or boxed lunch only to minimize use of trays.
Middle school students will return to five full days of school on April 12. Middle and high school classrooms will be live-streamed for students who are still learning remotely, but Angelakis said that the teachers’ focus will be on the students in front of them.
“Families can choose to keep kids remote for the remainder of the year, but time on learning is not a factor for this group of students,” she said.
The district is looking for ways to address these students, including searching for remote-only teachers.
Facilities Director Max Kasper said the district is still working on upgrading the ventilation systems in the school buildings, and that there will be an air purifier in every classroom in the four oldest buildings, as well as purifiers in some non-classroom spaces. The district will conduct more testing on rooms that previously underperformed in ventilation next week to see if they have improved.
“The hope and the expectation is that the additional repairs we’ve been doing have continued to improve the performance of our ventilation equipment in all of our buildings,” Kasper said.
District administration will send out a survey later this week to determine what students plan to return to school.
