WMHS tour shows schools’ safeguards

Fri, 08/28/2020 - 1:00pm

SUSAN JOHNS

WMHS Principal Charles Lomonte with a hand sanitizer in the lobby. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper

Classes can sign up to use these tents as outdoor classrooms. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper

SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper

Transportation and Maintenance Director John Merry. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper

Kristine Cornish, in a mask and behind the new window at the athletic director-assistant principal’s office. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper

Merry said each classroom will have at least one fan. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper

Career and technical education (CTE) and science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) teacher Seth Platukis. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper

Administrative Assistant Beth Smith put up this message she found online. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper

Every WMHS student gets one of these bags, with hand sanitizer and school supplies, officials said. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper

WMHS Principal Charles Lomonte with a hand sanitizer in the lobby. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper

Classes can sign up to use these tents as outdoor classrooms. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper

SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper

Transportation and Maintenance Director John Merry. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper

Kristine Cornish, in a mask and behind the new window at the athletic director-assistant principal’s office. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper

Merry said each classroom will have at least one fan. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper

Career and technical education (CTE) and science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) teacher Seth Platukis. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper

Administrative Assistant Beth Smith put up this message she found online. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper

Every WMHS student gets one of these bags, with hand sanitizer and school supplies, officials said. SUSAN JOHNS/Wiscasset Newspaper

So far, 81.4% of parents are on board with Wiscasset’s hybrid, part in-school, part remote plan for the new school year, 15.2% are staying all remote and 3.4% are going homeschool, according to information Superintendent of Schools Terry Wood released Aug. 27.

Wood noted in email responses, “Some parents are making changes such as switching from the remote option to returning back to school in the hybrid model, and vice versa. We have designated every single student in the district with a Group A or Group B identification so if parents want to send their children back to school, they will already be assigned a group and can fit right in it.”

The plan the school committee passed Aug. 11 has one group in school Mondays and Tuesdays, the other Thursdays and Fridays and everyone remote on Wednesdays.

“I believe that once staff and students return to school, parents may feel more comfortable and hopefully decide to send their children back to school,” Wood told Wiscasset Newspaper. “Every district around the state is dealing with all of the unknowns and we truly are thankful that at least ‘We are all in this together!’”

In other results, 92% of the survey’s 204 respondents reported having adequate internet service for remote learning; 57.8% need devices to maximize their children’s remote learning, 56.4% would have their children take a bus to school, and 65.9% want all their children on one schedule.

Back to school Sept. 8, what will students find? Aug. 27, Transportation and Maintenance Director John Merry and Wiscasset Middle High School Principal Charles Lomonte showed Wiscasset Newspaper around a pandemic-prepped WMHS. Merry said the same measures are happening at Wiscasset Elementary School.

A freestanding hand sanitizer is front and center in the WMHS lobby. Every room will have hand sanitizer, and students will each receive hand sanitizer to take around with them and that the school will refill, Lomonte said. The bottles will go in students’ bags that will also have colored pencils and other supplies. The bags were CARES Act funded, Lomonte said.

Outside every classroom door is a new maximum occupancy sign. The number is based on the room’s size and the anticipated number of students, Merry said. Splitting the student body into two groups who attend on different days frees up the space for students to be three feet apart from one another and six feet from the teacher, he said.

“(The A and B groupings have) done a lot of the separation for us,” Merry said. One room with about a dozen desks, spaced as required, will probably only have about eight students in it at a time, Lomonte said.

The chairs and other furnishings removed from rooms to allow spacing are being stored on the gym stage, Merry said. The gym half nearest the lobby will be one of the places students each lunch. The others are the cafeteria and, if needed during the larger, high school lunch, the library. Physical education will be mostly outdoors, Lomonte said.

So will some of the other learning. Four white tents, open all around, have gone up outside. Classes can sign up for blocks of time; the tents will get names like Longfellow Tent and Robert Frost Tent “to class it up a little,” Lomonte said. He said teachers are “really jazzed” about the tents. “This has been a tremendous addition.” Masks will be worn in the tents, same as indoors, he said.

All the restrooms with multiple stalls will have only the handicapped accessible one open, “so we can limit the amount of people coming in,” Merry said. “The approach is one person at a time in the bathrooms.”

Students can still get a drink at the water fountain this year, but not by putting their mouth near the bubbler; it will be closed, and the fountain will have an electronic eye where students set their school-issued bottles for filling. So the fountain is “touchless,” Merry explained.

Locker use will be limited and the locker rooms will be off limits. And counselors’ time with students will be in larger rooms this year; their offices are too small for people to be six feet apart, Lomonte explained. He, Merry and, via email, Athletic Director-Assistant Principal Warren Cossette, said staff have been working tirelessly for everyone’s safety. Cossette wrote, “The custodial staff have worked tremendously hard to make our schools top notch in every manner.”

Lomonte added during the tour, he is very proud of the district’s administrative team. In his 29-year career, the only challenge comparable was opening a new building, Biddeford Middle School.

Career and technical education (CTE) and science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) teacher Seth Platukis is about to have his first year teaching in Wiscasset, and his first year teaching. In the hallway, he said starting during a pandemic has added to the anxious feeling, but others’ support has helped greatly..

This year is new for everyone, officials have observed. Wood said in an Aug. 27 email response, “When dealing with a pandemic and not having any sort of template to follow in any of the crucial areas of returning back to school, I believe that we are doing a very good job in meeting the needs of our staff, students and our families.”

A bulletin board in the lobby has its message for the school year’s start: “When you enter this loving school, consider yourself one of the special members of an extraordinary family.” WMHS Administrative Assistant Beth Smith found it online after an inspiring conversation with Cossette. “Earlier this summer, Warren and I were talking about the wonderful school and community support that went into graduation and the memorable night for the seniors,” Smith recalled in an email Aug. 28. “He said how Mr. Lomonte really got to experience what a family we are. Warren really wanted to have something positive and to show something for the incoming students to welcome them to the family. So with this conversation as the catalyst, then I looked around for ideas. This saying fitted the sentiment perfectly!”