Roy-Hart Middle School reopening to grades 7, 8 on April 26

Benjamin Joe, Lockport Union-Sun & Journal, N.Y.
·2 min read

Apr. 15—MIDDLEPORT — Seventh- and eighth-grade students in the Royalton-Hartland district will be going to school four days a week starting April 26, superintendent Hank Stopinski confirmed on Wednesday.

This follows the reopening of Royalton-Hartland Elementary school, and classes for fifth- and sixth-graders at the middle school, this past Monday, after the New York State Department of Education relaxed its guidelines to allow three feet of social distancing between students in a classroom. The caveat to the guidelines is that students must be "cohorted," meaning that groups of students are together all day.

The Roy-Hart district was unable to do that at the high school, where students are mixed and matched throughout the day with different schedules and different classmates.

And while seventh- and eighth-grade classes are cohorted, they follow a more secondary-school kind of curriculum and Stopinksi said the district needed additional time to sort out the mechanics of bringing those students back into the middle school.

"One of the challenges is the seventh-grade class is very big and we needed two more weeks to be able to figure out the transportation and the scheduling to make it work," Stopinski said. "We wanted to get the fifth- and sixth-graders back in as soon as possible, so everyone will be back in two weeks."

"Everybody is in the cohorts. We're going to be in a really good place when we get back."

Before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) determination that three feet of distance would work in classrooms, the district had been under pressure from some parents to bring as many students as possible back into school four or five days a week. Parents said their students were fighting mental and emotional distress caused by a lack of interaction with teachers and peers.

Stopinski said that since the week before spring break, 41 students have been placed in the high school four days a week, and next Monday eight more students are expected to join them.

There are 90 high school students who will continue full-time online learning, he said.