A new plan would return Burlington High School students to in-person learning in mid-November, when they would start spending Wednesdays attending class at the Edmunds Elementary and Middle School, the district announced Monday.
The high school’s nearly 1,000 students have had only one day of face-to-face instruction since March. The discovery of elevated levels of PCBs, carcinogenic chemicals, caused school officials to shutter both the high school and technical center in September.
The tech center’s roughly 250 students have already been temporarily re-housed at sites across the Queen City. In an email to Burlington High School families Monday, Superintendent Tom Flanagan said the Edmunds complex at 299 Main St., which students and teachers are not using on Wednesdays, could accommodate BHS students for one day of in-person learning a week.
“While this is not an ideal situation for anyone, it offers our high school students the opportunity to connect and learn in person in the short term,” he wrote.
Flanagan said he hopes in-person learning at Edmunds — which was once Burlington’s high school — will start Nov. 18, but is “working collaboratively with the (Burlington teachers union) to agree on the details of this short-term solution, including when we will begin instruction in this new model.”
To allow for physical distancing, the student body will be split into two groups. The first will attend school in the morning, the second in the afternoon.
The school district has also signed a short-term lease for 14,000 square feet of space on the fifth floor of the downtown mall, above L.L. Bean. The space will house the “BHS Community Center,” according to Flanagan, which will include room for student support services, counseling, the Succeed Program, one-on-one spaces for students and staff, the school nurse, space for educators teaching remotely, and administrative offices.
The space should be ready for use in the next few weeks, Flanagan said, adding that BHS Principal Noel Green will provide information soon about when and how students could use the Community Center.
District officials still hope to find a place to bring BHS students back for four days of in-person learning by next semester, which begins in January, and the school board is mulling several options for doing so. Board members are next scheduled to discuss the topic Thursday.
“Students have been in remote learning for seven months,” Flanagan said in an interview. “And I’ve heard really clearly from students and families — but I really want to emphasize the student voices that I’ve heard — that have been asking me and our community to get them back in person. So this is a first step toward that.”
