The district is expecting to bring students back for continued in-person learning after Christmas break, though if health data points toward going remote again, New Canaan Public Schools are prepared for that, too, officials said last week.
The schools and the students, staff and faculty in them “exist in large ecosystem all around us,” Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi said during the Board of Education’s regular meeting, held Dec. 20 in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School.
“People are watching what decisions are being made around us and getting nervous,” Luizzi continued. “And so we are preparing just in case, but we do not intend to have to go out. Our goal is stay in school as long as it’s healthy and safe to do so. That is our goal. but as you know, since the beginning of this, we have been prepared for whatever comes. So we also don’t want to put our head in the sand and pretend that there is not something going on around us. So we are going to be prepared in case, but we are optimistic that we will be able to certainly finish this week and then reopen on the third [Jan. 3] and bring everybody back and back in the schools.”
The comments came during Luizzi’s regular update to the Board of Ed on COVID-19 virus. At a meeting earlier this month, the superintendent told the Board that the district would seek to gather information regarding the vaccination status of students and their families, anticipating that an executive order currently set to expire in mid-February that requires mask-wearing in schools could become a location decision even sooner than that.
Yet in the interim, New Canaan and other towns in the region and state have seen a rise in positive COVID cases. Last Thursday, First Selectman Kevin Moynihan said the town has had “a significant increase in the number of reported positive COVID-19 cases this week with 208 versus 71 cases for all of last week, and we now know from CT DPH that the Delta variant continues to be the dominant variant locally.”
Moynihan urged those who are not yet vaccinated to get vaccinated and said it’s important “that anyone experiencing COVID symptoms stay home from school or work, and avoid large gatherings.”
“Mask wearing is encouraged when attending non-family gatherings indoors due to the increasing community transmission we are seeing,” Moynihan said. He added that as of Thursday, New Canaan has had 128 “break-through” cases out of 15,982 fully vaccinated residents.
According to data updated Tuesday by the state Department of Public Health, New Canaan’s rate of COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population in the most recent reporting period (Dec. 5 to 18) is 55.8. The figure compares to 48.9 for Ridgefield, 46.4 for Darien, 42.6 for Stamford, 31.9 for Wilton and 30.6 for Westport.
The most recently updated dashboard on the public schools’ “Charting Our Course” operations guide for the pandemic shows that a total of 97 students across all schools are isolating as a result of testing positive for coronavirus, with another 138 in quarantine as a result of close contact with a known positive case.
Regarding what comes in the new year, Luizzi underscored during the meeting that “schools are safe places.”
“We’ve got the ventilation systems,” he said. “We’ve got all the mitigation systems in place and working, and that’s. If we all had a team like that round us in our lives outside of school, we’d all be healthier.”
He added that district officials “have never stopped paying attention” to the virus, pandemic and guidance from public health experts.
“We have never stopped using the strategies that kept our schools safe and open last year,” he said. “We are going to keep doing that this year as this new variant does what it’s going to do. According to the DPH and others, in the next couple of weeks, we are going to see some numbers that are higher than we’ve seen in awhile. We know how to handle this. We know how to keep our schools safe. And our students, our staff and everybody is working very well together to do that. So i’m optimistic that, regardless of what the storm brings, that our schools will be able to remain open because we are doing all the right things. But we have to be prepared just in case.”
Board of Ed member Phil Hogan asked whether there are any hospitalizations among students and staff. Luizzi said he wasn’t aware of any.
Board of Ed Secretary Dan Bennett asked whether the Board should be looking at hospitalizations rather than cases since “the actual health outcomes wouldn’t warrant all of those levels of precautions.”
“As opposed to a bunch of people getting really, really sick and hospitalizations where you would be like, absolutely let’s have these conversations,” he said. “If it’s just people feeling fine and testing positive or people being asymptomatic, i think it’s much more important that those kids are in school, that kids are there for learning regardless. If they are asymptomatic they are asymptomatic. So at what point do we look at underlying outcomes, as opposed to a case-driven policy?”
Luizzi said such questions around when officials change their view of what is the most relevant public health data to inform such policies amounts to the “million dollar question.” He said that the DPH and others are still using case rates as a leading indicator around future hospitalizations and deahts.
Bennett responded, “But that doesn’t seem to follow actual outcomes. Hospitalizations are zero. It get it if it’s nursing homes, but we have took at actual health outcomes related to the population we are talking about,” which is 5- to 18-year-olds.
Luizzi said the district must keep the entire school community in mind, including some 750 staff members who are interacting with the students. Board of Ed Vice Chair Brendan Hayes noted that the students, whether they’re young kids or young adults, are interacting with grandparents and others outside of school.
Bennett said that the administration “has done an excellent job keeping schools open, but I just think the problems that we are facing now, and some of the policies around them don’t really comport with the facts on the ground.”
“And i think from my perspective, I think the Board should be having robust discussions around, what are the relative priorities? Is it more important for kids that are healthy to not be quarantined to be in school and have the option of learning, or to have some of these other less education-related priorities?”
Board of Ed Chair Katrina Parkhill said the school board should pick up the discussion at a future meeting.