Franklin Regional will be fully remote for a week after Thanksgiving

The Franklin Regional school board will send all students home for online instruction during the week after Thanksgiving, a move the superintendent said he hopes will stave off later district closures.

“We’re approaching Thanksgiving, and all indications are that people will continue with their lives,” Superintendent Gennaro Piraino said prior to Monday night’s emergency school board meeting. “Our concern is that we’ll have people coming back into our school, and we won’t know who’s been where doing what.”

The board voted 6-3 in favor of full online instruction Dec. 1-4, following the holiday. The district will return to its current instructional model on Dec. 7.

Board members Ed Mittereder, Deb Wohlin and Scott Weiman voted no.

“Right now, when we get a case, we investigate it, do the contact tracing and we’ve been really good about quarantining people early, to keep cases from getting into the school,” Piraino said. “If we come back after Thanksgiving and have a lot of active cases, it will be very difficult to do the contact tracing.”

Having students learn from home the week after the holiday “gives us 10 days from Thanksgiving for people to make sure they’re looking at who they’ve been in contact with, and whether they have any symptoms,” Piraino said.

The district has seen seven cases of covid-19 since the school year began, none of which resulted in any building closures.

The board’s decision comes on the heels of Westmoreland County’s worst week yet for new covid cases: state health officials reported Sunday that Westmoreland added more than 800 new covid-19 cases in the past week, which is more than the county saw during the first five months of the pandemic.

“My husband and I both work full time, remote learning isn’t an option for us,” parent Lauren Brown wrote in an email to the board. “I know I am just one voice in the district, but we are not the only family in this situation.”

Brown’s was not the only voice in support of keeping schools open. Seven of nine public comment letters submitted strongly supported keeping district schools open.

“Our kids need to be in school,” said parent Nichole Bertucci, who has three children in the district. “I know my children are among many children and families that feel the same anxiety about virtual learning. The stress on working families is tremendous when you send the children home for any duration of time.”

Board member Bill Yant disliked “flipping the switch” between the current education model and learning from home.

“Kids are switching back and forth and back and forth and I feel like they’re not getting much education on either side when that’s happening,” he said.

Fellow board member Gregg Neavin echoed Piraino’s desire to be proactive.

“For parents whose children are attending in-person, I truly believe that shutting down for an ‘incubation period’ during what we believe is going to be spike, is the best way for us to keep doing that,” he said.

The board also voted unanimously to sign an attestation that when in-person instruction resumes, they will follow the expanded state Department of Health guidelines for schools in areas with substantial covid-19 spread.