New Hampshire Releases Coronavirus Back-To-School Guidance

CONCORD, NH — The state of New Hampshire released its back-to-school guidance for Granite State K-12 schools to provide a roadmap on how school districts can reopen safely for the 2020-2021 school year during the new coronavirus pandemic.

The 49-page School Transition Reopening and Redesign Taskforce report, released by the governor's office Tuesday, provides requirements and recommendations on how schools can allow safe in-person classroom instruction if they choose to offer it. The end of the previous school year remote learning gave the task force "invaluable experience and information" toward moving the state's education system through the pandemic. The task force recommendations focused on ensuring student and staff safety; accommodating students, family, and educators; being responsive to individual learners, families, and educators; and preparing staff.

"We all share a goal in getting our kids back to school safely and believe this guidance allows schools to open, but we know each school district will have a different path forward," Gov. Chris Sununu said. "Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, this is a guide that values local control, and helps each school district make the best decision for their students and teachers."

Dr. Benjamin Chan, the state's epidemiologist, said the guidance in the report provided "concrete steps schools can take" to reopen with "built in layers of protection" to stop the spread of COVID-19. He said health and state officials would continue to work with schools, districts, and the education community to support them during the pandemic.

Frank Edelblut, the commissioner of the New Hampshire Department of Education, thanked all of the experts, parents, educators, and others who provided "invaluable input" to the task force.

"We expect students to be back in school in September, with local schools making decisions that work for their communities," he said. "These plans should emphasize good hygiene practices and mitigation procedures that are appropriate for their communities. Schools should be prepared to accommodate students and staff with underlying health risks, and have a robust response plan in place if coronavirus is detected. Nothing can ever eliminate all risk, but we must balance that risk with the need to educate New Hampshire children."

Task Force Recommendations

School districts will be required to establish district management and communication response plans with a leadership team and COVID-19 coordinators to make sure students and families understand protocols, have a voice, and are interacting with everyone in the district and public health officials.

Districts will be required to report COVID-19 suspected and confirmed positive cases to the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services. Districts will be required to clean and disinfect frequently, encourage sick staffer members to stay home, and create a system of self-reporting symptoms.

Districts are advised to develop a process for screening staff, students, and visitors for symptoms on a daily basis for symptoms and risk factors. Staff and visitors should be screened before entering schools while students need to be screened by parents or guardians each day before traveling to schools.

Schools are also being recommended to consider a second screening process for students at school either when entering buildings or by a teacher in the first class of the day.

Districts will be allowed to make their own decisions about cloth face coverings for students, educators, and visitors, the report said.

"Such determinations will be reflective of circumstances on the ground at any given time and will likely be fluid and change as those circumstance change," the task force report stated. "The guiding factors for these localized decisions will be the combination of NH Division of Public Health Services (DPHS) guidance, which incorporates CDC guidance localized for New Hampshire, local ordinances, and the Governor’s executive orders."

Face coverings should be worn by students when social distancing cannot be maintained but "ultimate determination of their use will be a local decision." Districts should make plans as well for students with disabilities and underlying health conditions. The state health department is recommending students wear cloth coverings while waiting to enter or entering schools, leaving schools, arriving to and from classrooms, walking in hallways, when engaging in classrooms within three feet of another student or staffer, and boarding buses.

Similar guidance is being recommended for educators and school staffers.

Social distancing will be required when onloading and offloading students on the bus, while in hallways, cafeterias, and while performing classrooms activities.

Frequent hand hygiene is recommended including washing hands with soap and water or using sanitizer when soap and water are not readily available.

In the case of areas with a confirmed COVID-19 case, those areas of the school need to be closed off, ventilated, and cleaned after 24-hours while waiting for the coronavirus droplets to settle — to reduce the risk to individuals cleaning the rooms or sections of the school.

HVAC systems in schools should be working properly and schools should consider opportunities to circulate exterior air into buildings, like opening doors and windows, and holding classroom activities outside, when possible.

Classrooms need to be modified to maximize distance between students.

Non-essential visitors and volunteers should be minimized — and use of facilities for non-school functions should also be limited. Large gatherings at the schools should be discouraged.

"Any group gatherings in larger common areas should be closely monitored and controlled to ensure social distancing and group cohorting is maintained between individuals," the task force said. "Depending on the circumstances in each community, varying degrees of cohort size limitations and group size limitations may be in effect. Social distancing is an effective mitigation strategy, so consideration for how common areas, such as libraries, gyms, auditoriums, cafeterias, and other areas are used, will need to be considered."

School districts, depending on size, building capacity, and other factors, may need to consider a hybrid plan of both in-person and remote instruction — while also adapting current staffing and structure to ensure students with special needs, diverse learners, students with mental health issues, and at-risk students are accommodated. Those plans and policies, the task force said, need to be "flexible and nimble" in case they need to pivot due to "public health considerations."

The full 49-page report can be found here in .pdf format.

Opponents Denounce Plan

Before and after the release of the task force, two of Sununu's opponents were critical of the plan.

State Sen. Dan Feltes, D-Concord, before the plan was released, said the state needed to provide clear, certain, and concise guidance, because flexibility would lead to confusion and a breakdown of safety measures. He said the administration should coordinate services for communities including busing and not downshift responsibilities to communities.

Feltes also called for more financial support for schools and limiting state cuts. He also called for the governor and department to address possible discrimination and bullying in schools — including Asian-American students who might be targeted.

"Flexibility is not a plan," Felte said, "it just means more uncertainty for our families and our schools. What every school and every family wants more than anything is certainty, and certainty comes with clear, concise, and consistent across-the-board guidelines on in-person learning. Based on what we know about Governor Sununu’s guidelines, it appears he needs to go back to the drawing board to provide certainty, immediately. Sununu needs to listen to parents and teachers on the ground. In addition to the clear guidance desperately needed, schools have yet to receive a guarantee from Sununu that funding secured in this last state budget will actually be there for schools, or that taxpayer funds won’t be diverted away from public schools to private prep schools in working with the Trump administration."

After the release of the plan, Feltes said Sununu had punted responsibility away from his administration to school districts.

"With less than two months before school starts, families and teachers wanted certainty, Sununu just delivered chaos," Feltes said. "A governor's job is to make tough decisions, not wait for months, and then punt everything to everyone else. When this pandemic started Sununu said, 'we're all in this together,' now Sununu is saying our families and our schools are on their own."

Andru Volinsky, another Concord Democrat challenging Sununu, who is currently serving as an executive councilor, offered a statement — recorded outside the education building in Concord.

"We all know during this COVID crisis, one of our biggest concerns is the safety of our children and the people who teach them," Volinsky said. "So with school reopening, that's on my mind. I know that the Department of Education had a 10-week long set of meetings and it produced two pages of documents that were recommendations that you could have drafted during the first week. That two pages is now 30 pages. We don't know who wrote it or who approved it. But here's the problem. The state hasn't taken positions on reopening. Should we reopen? Are we planning to reopen and not reopen? How do we include the CDC guidelines? Is there any money that goes with the need to buy PPE for teachers, for example, and students?"

Volinsky was critical of any plan that required school districts to evaluate HVAC systems, without financial support, when many communities were having funding problems before the pandemic. He said Edelblut and Sununu were not doing their jobs.

"We need to take positions," he added. "Do schools open. Do they not? That needs to be driven by public health data and nothing else. That's not a political issue. And then if we open, what resources can we make available to help our schoolchildren and our teachers and our administrators and other school personnel take care and be safe? That's my goal. Safety first, reopen as best we can, and then prepare for real distance learning across our state because we're likely to have to go back to that come the fall."

Editor's note: I was director of communications for the New Hampshire Department of Education between April 13, 2018, and April 16, 2019.

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