Coronavirus Easton & Redding: Schools Prepare, Make Tough Choices

EASTON, CT — For Connecticut schools in the Age of Coronavirus, topsy-turvy is the new normal. But for Schools Superintendent Thomas McMorran, whose domain covers Easton, Redding and the Region 9 high school, whatever number of balls his fellow superintendents in neighboring towns are juggling, he has times three.

"We have three administrators' contracts. We have three custodial contracts. And we have to make sure that whatever we ask people to do is compliant with their contracts," he said. "And the reason that's an issue is we're budgeted for a hundred eighty school days. So if we get to a point where we need to try to run a day remotely, we've got to be able to pay everybody."

McMorran says he has taken a three-pronged approach to the immediate problem of providing a healthy and safe environment in the schools. The first is a regimen of deep cleaning, as detailed by the state Health Department.

"We have taken every reasonable step that we can think of to improve the cleanliness of the buildings and to introduce greater self care protocols to our kids," McMorran said. "Our custodians have changed their cleaning schedule so that they're doing daily surface cleaning of common areas, door latches, doorknobs, countertops, the carts that people push, on restrooms and so forth.

The second step, which McMorran refers to as "programmatic," encompasses minimizing the time people spend among other people, and maximizing the space between them when they are together. He has introduced the students and teachers to the recommended practice of "social distancing," encouraging everyone to maintain their personal space. He has cancelled many after-school and evening confabs such as club meetings and college informational seminars, and asked some of the groups that would normally rent school space for events like pancake breakfasts or fundraisers to cancel or re-schedule. The superintendent says he has not made up his mind yet on the senior prom, which will be held at a non-school site, and is still more than a month away.

For sports, the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference made his job easier, if perhaps a little melancholy. On Tuesday, the CIAC cancelled all its tournaments, a move that came with a particular sting for Joel Barlow High School's championship-contending boys basketball team. McMorran says the boys are heartbroken.

Finally, the superintendent says he is working closely with the districts' transportation vendors to ensure the daily cleaning of their vehicles is as strict and deep as his own custodial staff's cleansing of the A/V carts.

Keeping all those plates spinning just addresses the immediate crisis of the sudden COVID-19 outbreak. McMorran and his staff are simultaneously contingency planning out through six to eight weeks into a future that could see the state shutting down his schools, and still mandating that the children be educated.

"When you don't have a crisis of this nature," McMorran said, "It's already a full day for students, teachers and administrators. The big challenge is how to continue to run and manage the schools, and still engage in all this necessary thinking and planning to account for the current status, and more importantly, contingency planning. What happens if Connecticut has a larger outbreak?"

Distance learning protocols represent a particular challenge, McMorran says, because of all the legal and statutory implications. "Basically you have to guarantee that every kid is getting free equal opportunity and actual valuable instruction, and that includes kids with special needs."

Still, the biggest challenge, McMorran says, is not keeping everything deep-cleaned, laying the groundwork for distance learning, or consoling the could-have-been hoops champs, but doing all of that while still running the day-to-day operations of three school districts.

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