Toms River Schools Weighing Tentative Plans To Reopen Buildings

TOMS RIVER, NJ — What will classes look like in the Toms River Regional district if school buildings are reopened to students and staff in the fall? The short answer: No one is sure.

At the Toms River Regional Board of Education's curriculum committee meeting last week, Superintendent David Healy emphasized the word "tentative" repeatedly during discussions of what the district has discussed for resuming in-person classes in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

School districts across New Jersey have been told to come up with plans for the new school year that include social distancing guidelines to protect students and staff, based on the state Department of Education's school restart and recovery plan titled "The Road Back."

Making those plans — the state is requiring proposals be presented to the public no later than a month before school is scheduled to open — has become an all-consuming task.

"This takes over most of our day," Healy said last week as he and assistant superintendents Cara DiMeo and Richard Fastnacht presented preliminary information on how classes might be held. At the time, district officials were weighing a hybrid schedule that would have divided the students into smaller groups that would then rotate days in school and learning remotely. The tentative plans were focused on four-hour days, because of the state's existing restrictions on indoor dining make school lunch periods impossible.

"Additional guidance comes out daily, and sometimes it's contradictory," Healy said. The Board of Education meets at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and the changing guidance likely will mean updates during the meeting.

Toms River surveyed parents and staff about the possibilities, including whether parents would send children to school if they had to wear masks, and whether teachers, aides, bus drivers and other district staff would feel comfortable if they had to return to the classroom in midst of the pandemic.

Healy said Scott Campbell, the president of the Toms River Education Association, "presented a number of concerns and they are legitimate concerns," about the many ways the coronavirus pandemic could affect teachers, from health risks to how they carry out their responsibilities.

For special education teachers, for example, close contact with some students is unavoidable because of their physical care needs.

A memo from the New Jersey Education Association released on Monday shows the statewide teachers union wants districts to require weekly coronavirus testing for students and staff, and wants students to wear masks from the moment they get to the bus stop until they get on the bus to go home.

Teachers' concerns go much deeper, however. A Google document created by Sarah Mulhern Gross, a teacher at High Technology High School in Monmouth County, has garnered more than 380 questions so far, covering topics from sharing of art supplies to whether teachers will be required to sanitize rooms between classes to what happens if a student or a staff member tests positive for the virus.

Some of their questions include:

• If we contract the virus at work, will we be able to claim workman’s compensation since it occurred in the workplace?
• Parents routinely send sick children to school by dosing them with medication to mask symptoms. Parents also do not report illnesses and do not keep their children home for an adequate amount of time (24 hours fever free WITHOUT medication). Strict guidelines have to be adhered to for the safety and well-being of staff and students. How will districts ensure that parents do not violate these rules (which have been in place for years and are routinely ignored)?
• When it comes to younger students, our curriculum is play-based and hands-on. How will play-based learning work? (Blocks, games, manipulatives, puzzles, kitchen, puppets, play-doh, cars, etc) Also, who will be required to clean all these? And how often?
• How can students be protected in band classes where wearing a mask prevents playing an instrument?

The state education department's guidelines create even greater challenges for Toms River (and other districts, according to the Education Law Center, a watchdog group.

The Road Back document recommends classrooms be reconfigured at 113 square feet per person, allowing for a 6-foot space in all directions for social distancing, the center said Tuesday in a critique of the guidelines. That square footage means many classrooms, which average 800 square feet, will accommodate seven or eight students maximum. Those classrooms typically hold 21 to 24 students.

"Reducing class size by 14-16 students to achieve social distancing will be problematic in buildings with reasonable class sizes pre-COVID-19," the Education Law Center critique said. "Yet, the Road Back fails to acknowledge that meeting this standard in already overcrowded school buildings may be insurmountable. If an 800-square-foot classroom typically holds 30-35 students or more, the district will need to reduce class size by over 20 students to meet the social distancing standard."

Toms River class sizes were creeping up because of the impacts of school funding cuts under S2. The district is working on a review of school capacity, which has been a point of contention in terms of the district's enrollment in the battle over funding cuts.

The financial aspects of the school building reopening are likely to be significant. William Doering, the district's business administrator, said the cost to provide masks to students and staff daily could be more than $1 million for the year, based on roughly 17,000 masks for students and staff per day at the current 35 cents per mask. If parents provided masks for even a fifth of the students, the cost for the year would still be nearly $900,000, just for the masks, he said.

Air purifiers with HEPA filters for nurses offices, disposable medical gowns for aides who have to help students with toilet needs, disposable gloves, face masks with filters, Plexiglas for some areas, and large quantities of hand sanitizer also will be necessary — and will have significant budget impacts, Doering said.

Note: This article has been updated to clarify that the cost to provide masks is over the course of the 180-day school year.

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