The Farmington River Regional School District serves the communities of Otis and Sandisfield in the rural southeastern corner of Berkshire County.
“We have approximately 110 students grades pre-K through 6 here at the elementary school," said Superintendent Thomas Nadolny. "And then we tuition our middle school, 7 through 12 and high school kids out to either towns of Lee or Great Barrington.”
By any measure, it’s been a difficult start to the semester that kicked off on August 30th.
“Real difficult start, actually," said Nadolny. "First day of school was a half day. I was notified later that afternoon that one of my teachers was positive for COVID. So we started doing BionexNOW testing, which is a rapid test, on all the students in that classroom. It’s a new program for the Department of Ed for students to test and stay. So we started doing that.”
From there, the week only intensified.
“I had to close on Friday," Nadolny continued. "Two employees, one of my essential departments, were possibly COVID positive and I could not proceed without them. So I had to shut down school for just that Friday to make arrangements. And that same day, I was notified by our bus company that we contract with that one of their drivers had tested positive for COVID and two of the other drivers were not feeling well, so I basically lost all my transportation. And there's a huge driver shortage right now for bus drivers. So we had no transportation. Being a rural community, there was no way to get kids to school, so we had to shut down. In that time period, we had additional students test positive all who rode the same bus. So we now have those kids out on quarantine, and they will return after their 10 days of quarantining. And hopefully everything will be going smooth from there.”
A staff member and 11 students have tested positive to date.
“To help identify cases, we actually worked with the state to bring in a mobile testing lab, and we tested any parents or students and siblings here to school last Wednesday," said the superintendent. "Out of that testing, we identified six additional positive cases, which was good to catch before we brought them back to school. So now today, we're back open with a limited bus schedule. I don't get my full driver accoutrement back until tomorrow. So, knock wood, things hopefully will be back to normal tomorrow.”
The Farmington River Regional School District has a mask mandate for all students and staff, regardless of vaccination, but no vaccine mandate for its employees.
Nadolny is trying to find a silver lining.
“Well, I mean, the good news is, well, if there is good news, it happened so quickly at the start of the school year, that things really didn't get rolling," he told WAMC. "So if anything, it's like a delayed start, or a false start. Go back, start, have a stop, reset, start again. So we were out a total of six days, which we'll have to make up at the end of the school year. So I don't see it having a huge impact on student learning. It was just a stop or a start, stop and then start again, so we should be fine.”
Even districts that weren’t driven to the point of temporary shutdowns are facing the realities of in-person education while the pandemic continues to rage.
“We've had a few cases across the three schools in the district, two at our middle school and four at the high school. I think we've been able to manage that pretty well," said Berkshire Hills Regional School District Superintendent Peter Dillon.
His district has a mask mandate for anyone who enters a school building and a vaccine mandate for staff.
“Our school nurses along with the local public health nurses try to figure out where the close contacts were," said Dillon. "So, who was in contact with the person who tested positive for more than 15 minutes and at three feet or fewer feet from a distance perspective. And then based on those people's status, whether they've been vaccinated or not, we may then ask them to quarantine or there's a ‘test and stay’ protocol where they can continue to come into school and we keep a very careful eye on them and monitor their health. So in these early cases, most of them had not been in school, so there wasn't a risk of transmission within schools, so we didn't have to worry about it too much. But as the year goes on, I think that the interactions between young people will likely result in some more positive tests.”
