Schools wonder how staff holiday travel could impact calendar

LACONIA — School administrators will be asking staff members about their travel plans during the Christmas vacation this year, which, because of COVID restrictions, could potentially require a revision in the school calendar.

Superintendent Steve Tucker said at Wednesday’s School Board meeting that if a significant number of teachers or other school staff were to go beyond New England to visit family over the Christmas holidays, that could create challenges to resuming in-person classes on Jan. 4, as is the current plan.

Tucker said he had received emails from families (of students) who indicated a desire to travel over the holidays, and that he was aware of staff who were thinking along the same lines.

Under Gov. Chris Sununu’s current emergency order, state residents who travel outside New England for non-essential purposes must quarantine for 14 days after their return.

That requirement would apply to school staff and students, Tucker said.

One option would be to alter the school calendar so that schools – which are scheduled to reopen after the holiday break on Jan. 4 – start out teaching remotely until the quarantine period has run its course.

“We might have to come back remote if we have a lot of staff traveling,” Tucker said Thursday, but he acknowledged, “Most people people don’t like remote.”

Some School Board members expressed sympathy for those staff who might want to travel to visit relatives they have not been able to see for months because of limitations posed by the coronavirus pandemic.

“We are looking at an entire school year without the staff being able to see their families. That’s got to be a consideration,” board member Aaron Hayward said.

Board member Nicholas Grenon said the board should keep in mind the effort that teachers and other staff have been making since last March, when the pandemic hit and schools were forced into a radically different way of teaching students on very short notice.

Another way to compensate for any quarantines would be to use substitute teachers to fill in for affected teachers until their quarantine period was over.

Grenon said if a great many teachers needed to quarantine, the district might have trouble getting enough substitutes to cover all the classes.

Laconia schools are in the process of phasing back into full-time, in-school classes for most of their 2,000 students. Students in kindergarten through second grade as well as all high school students are already coming to school every day. Sixth graders started phasing back in to full-time classes Thursday. The remainder of the students are scheduled to be back in class full-time by Nov. 16.

The board directed Tucker to have the principals in each of the district’s five schools find out how many staff members are planning or contemplating travel that would require a quarantine upon their return.

Tucker said Thursday he hoped to report back his findings to the board at its Nov. 17 meeting.