Editor’s note: This story was originally published last night. This morning, Dillon sent out an email to the BHRSD community announcing that after classes on Tuesday Dec. 15, Muddy Brook Elementary will shift to remote learning and that Du Bois Regional Middle School and Monument Mountain Regional High School will stay in remote learning. The headline has been changed to reflect this development. Click here to read Dillon’s email.
Great Barrington — Following the lead of several other districts in the county, the Berkshire Hills Regional School District is seriously considering a return to remote-only learning after a spike in COVID-19 cases in the region.
In an email Tuesday to the Berkshire Hills community, Superintendent Peter Dillon said, “Unfortunately, it looks like things will continue to get worse before they get better, and we may soon be fully back in remote learning.”
Dillon also included links to data on cases and infection rates from Covid Act Now and the state Department of Public Health, which issues a weekly COVID-19 public health report. Also included is a link to statewide COVID-19 data by town, as assembled by the Boston Globe.
“These are extraordinary times,” Dillon wrote. “We are all concerned about safety and health, learning, the economy, our jobs, our kids and their opportunities, vulnerable populations and people, our individual and collective mental health and well-being, and a host of other things.”
Dillon said he is constantly looking at data and “trying to proactively anticipate where all of the data trends are going.” He reviews data not only for Berkshire County, but specific data for the three Berkshire Hills member towns of Great Barrington, Stockbridge and West Stockbridge. In addition, he monitors neighboring communities that choice- or tuition-in students to the district. In addition, cases must be monitored in the district’s three individual schools, and in individual classrooms within those schools.
The district’s infection rate for those who tested positive and were in school (see 14-day chart on Dillon’s letter) is not high, but even one case can disrupt the model for teaching and learning. Dillon said he will add cumulative data in his next letter. He added that he anticipates a spike in cases in the wake of the Thanksgiving holiday.
If one child or employee is infected or exhibits COVID-19-like symptoms, everyone who had close contact with that person must be quarantined for 14 days, or until the test comes back negative. If enough teachers were in contact, staffing the classrooms becomes very difficult.
“A small number of people tested positive but they actually followed the protocols and they never came to school,” Dillon said in a follow-up interview. “So I don’t want to minimize that they got it … but they weren’t in a position, at least in school, to infect their friends.”
Dillon monitors not only rates in Great Barrington, Stockbridge and West Stockbridge, but in towns that send students to Berkshire Hills, including Otis, Sandisfield, Richmond, Pittsfield, Lenox, Lee and Sheffield. In addition, during in-person learning, faculty and staff commute daily from other towns in the county as well as from New York and Connecticut.
Dillon and his team are also concerned about stress and the mental health effects of working during a pandemic and, as Dillon put it, “trying to assess people’s capacity to manage the on-going stress of being at-risk.”
“If we don’t have enough teachers and staff, we cannot support students in person,” Dillon said. “This happened once when several staff working in the 5th grade had to quarantine.”
A recent spike in cases in Pittsfield, where many Berkshire Hills faculty and staff live, prompted the city’s schools to move back to fully remote learning last month. Pittsfield schools will remain remote until the COVID-19 positivity rate drops to 3% or less. The district says remote learning will continue at least through Friday, Dec. 18.
In Lenox, Superintendent Bill Cameron announced last month that his schools were going all-remote, with hybrid instruction to resume Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2021. A divided school committee voted to do so after the state Department of Public Health added Pittsfield, Lee and Dalton to its list of “moderate risk” communities. The Southern Berkshire Regional School District remains in hybrid mode.
If, as appears likely, Berkshire Hills does go fully remote, the district will have come full circle. After moving to an all-remote model March 14, Dillon had initially proposed starting the year in September with a hybrid model that offered remote learning combined with a physically distanced on-campus program in which no more than half the students would be in the schools on any given day.
But Dillon and the school committee subsequently faced aggressive pushback from the Berkshire Hills Education Association, the union that represents the district’s teachers, arguing that starting the year with fully in-person learning would present unacceptable health risks. The following week, Dillon proposed opening the school year with a remote-only model until conditions warranted a change. After about three weeks, Berkshire Hills transitioned to a hybrid model.
“There is a light at the end of the tunnel and we all need to hang on a bit longer,” Dillon wrote. “With holidays and breaks coming up, please continue to wear masks, wash your hands, social distance, and please avoid travel and gatherings.”
Dillon added that, “Teachers and staff are making remarkable efforts to support students. I so appreciate what they are doing.”
