Webutuck BOE reviews COVID-19 vaccines and high-risk sports

WEBUTUCK — The Webutuck Board of Education (BOE) kicked off February discussing the winter sports season, bidding farewell to several beloved teachers and looking into getting Webutuck staff vaccinated against COVID-19.

BOE members convened at 7 p.m over Zoom on Monday, Feb. 1, due to the pandemic. Superintendent of Schools Raymond Castellani delivered an update on COVID-19 vaccines and mentioned  Webutuck is scouring different sites daily to see how many vaccines are available and offering it to its staff.

Taking into account the dramatic shortfall in vaccines, Castellani said the federal government and New York State have not released more vaccines and  the county is struggling with the overwhelming number of people who still need to be vaccinated. Given the number of Webutuck teachers, regular and support staff, faculty members and administrators who need to be vaccinated and how quickly the vaccination appointments are filling up, Castellani said there may be days when the district will have to declare a half day of school, a snow day or “an emergency type of day.”

The week prior, Castellani said 16 people in the district had signed up to be vaccinated, and the schools wouldn’t have been able to function without those workers. The appointments didn’t pan out, however. Going forward, he said the district will get updates from the county when vaccines are available and sites are open.

On that note, the Dutchess County Department of Behavioral & Community Health (DBCH) announced on Wednesday, Feb. 3, it received 700 doses of Moderna COVID-19 vaccine from New York State and scheduled appointments online at www.dutchessny.gov/COVIDvaccine for eligible individuals in Phase 1a and 1b as determined by New York State’s Phased Distribution Plan. The vaccination clinics were held in Poughkeepsie on Thursday, Feb. 4, and locally in Dover Plains on Saturday, Feb. 6 (for more on that story, go to www.tricornernews.com).

High-risk sports

Bringing up Governor Andrew Cuomo’s announcement that winter sports, including high-risk sports, were allowed to begin on Feb. 1 (for more, go to www.tricornernews.com), Castellani said that for Webutuck, high-risk sports includes just basketball. He added a great plan has been put together to keep students 6 feet apart from one another during practice and each student will have their own basketball. 

While the district is looking to see how many student athletes will sign up for basketball, Castellani said there will only be a handful of games, so it won’t be a long winter sports season. Additionally, spectators won’t be allowed to attend and students visiting the school district from away teams will have to follow safety protocols from their home school.

Though she was excited to hear students will soon be able to move and play with each other, BOE member Nikki Johnson acknowledged, “I just can’t for the life of me figure out how we’re going to do it with the hybrids and how we’re going to get the remote kids in, or if the kids are only there Monday and Tuesday, do they not go on Thursday and Friday?”

Castellani explained that it’s been worked out: If the students are in hybrid instruction on certain days, then they’re allowed to come back to the school and participate in sports since it would involve smaller groups of students. With seven to 10 students on a varsity team, he said the district can spread them out and work with them. 

Though students would be responsible for making sure they have a ride to the school, he said the district would ask its Transportation Department provide students with a ride back. 

Johnson asked if students are allowed to play sports if they’re in remote instruction, to which Castellani confirmed that they could.

“They’re still our students — if they choose, if they want to be involved in an athletic sport, they’re allowed to do so. We need kids back in school — it’s simple. There’s a lot of hesitation and I understand… but I believe that it’s important to those students to get back to some type of normalcy and if we can do it safely, which I believe we are, then why not?”

With basketball considered a contact sport, BOE member Rick Keller-Coffey asked about the logistics of remote students whose parents decided that they can’t come to school during the day still being allowed to come to school to play a contact sport. Castellani explained that Webutuck only goes by what the Dutchess County Department of Health (DOH), the state, the governor and the Centers for Disease  Control and Prevention (CDC) have allowed the district to do. He noted Cuomo went from a staunch position last March through the summer that was against high-risk sports to allowing counties and schools to now do what they want.

“He’s passing and punting the ball to the counties. The counties, under great scrutiny from parents and the athletics, are now punting the ball to school districts, so all of the schools in our section are going with the minimum of basketball right now,” Castellani said. “We’re just following what the DOH and the county and the CDC and the governor and the state have laid out for us.”

Retirements

Combining all of the agenda’s instruction resignations in a single motion, the BOE accepted the resignations of Carol Gribble, Jennifer Jaffe, Mary Murphy and Jay Bradley. All of the resignations were for the purpose of retirement and will come into effect on Wednesday, June 30, of this year.