Wellesley High back to hybrid learning; schools tightening budget belts due to COVID

January 21, 2021 by Deborah Brown Leave a Comment

Wellesley High School returned to a hybrid model of education on Tuesday, after students spent a week learning remotely due to an increase in positive COVID-19 test results. Data located on the district’s COVID dashboard reflects that in the date range of Jan. 8 – Jan. 21 there were 22 positive tests in the public school system, with the highest number during that time (10) coming from WHS. The high numbers caused a shift at the high school to full remote learning.

Wellesley High School, fall 2020

Superintendent David Lussier during the Jan. 12 School Committee meeting said the data is essential in allowing the district to take “targeted actions that might be appropriate at one school that really aren’t warranted at other schools. While we never want to see schools closed, period, the fact that we’re able to target this for one school at a particular time speaks to how much we’ve learned.”

Some parents, however, are concerned about the impact of remote learning on the quality of education that is delivered, and the impact of remote learning on students’ mental health. A letter about this was signed by hundreds of parents and sent to school and other town officials.

The upshot: a large number of parents want their kids back in school full time.

The school and health departments are reworking the public schools reopening measures dashboard, whose underlying measures need to be updated in light of new data from the town and beyond regarding COVID-19. Currently, Wellesley Public Schools are failing all three measures highlighted in the dashboard.

Our take: we’d like to be wrong on this, but in reading between the lines, it seems unlikely that there will be a return to full-time school across grade levels for the rest of the year. Though the vaccine could allow some changes.

Why students aren’t back in school full-time

In an effort to manage expectations while addressing parent concerns, Lussier said that the overarching goal has been to “bring back students within grade levels who have exceptional needs, whose needs can’t be met adequately through remote learning.”

Additional prioritized students are those in Pre-K, K, and grades 1 and 2. Those students are back in school four days per week. Wednesday, traditionally a half-day for Wellesley’s elementary school students, is a remote learning half-day.

The biggest consideration on bringing back the rest of the grades centers around social distancing. The WPS have in place a a 6-feet social distance standard, which is in keeping with the Centers for Disease Control standard.

“We believe that standard needs to stay in place for now” to prevent in school transmission, Lussier said. In addition, “We don’t have anymore spaces to be bringing back any more whole grade levels.”

Lussier also cited as concerns the increased need for contact tracing that would result should additional whole grades be brought back into the schools; lunch-time, with its no-mask environment; and bus transportation needs for K – grade 6 students who live over two miles from school. By state law, the district must provide transportation to those students.

School budget, FY2022

Under guidelines the School Committee received from the Select Board, there is to be an increase in the FY22 budget of no more than 2.5%. “That’s quite slim,” said Linda Chow, “but certainly a reflection on the times we’re in and the impact of COVID on town finances.”

In FY2021, Town Meeting voted to appropriate $80,379,651 to the schools. A 2.5% increase would boost the FY22 schools budget by a little over $2 million.

The budget will be strictly a service-level affair, the goal being to hang onto all educational programming at the level at which it now operates at the very least. There will be no expected investments in new programs. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that all current programming is safe from potential cuts.

One line item that can substantially fluctuate upward: the money set aside for special education needs. The FY22 budget currently is based on the town’s known special education needs, but variables are always possible. “The budget is based on only the known costs we have in special education, or that can be reasonably anticipated,” Lussier said.

Level services may also need to include additional student interventions to close education gaps created by the pandemic.

Wellesley schools, FY22 Budget

Upcoming meetings:

Jan. 26: School Committee meeting
Watch School Committee Meetings online at wellesleymedia.org
Comcast 8 & 9
Verizon 39 & 40

Feb. 2: School Committee meeting and public hearing. The community is invited to ask specific questions and make comments during this meeting.

Feb. 9: School Committee votes on the budget

Mar. 3: Advisory Committee will review the SC budget

Apr./May 2021: Town Meeting

At Wellesley High, you can’t have too many robotics clubs

January 9, 2021 by Bob Brown Leave a Comment

When Wellesley High School junior Rachel White gave us a heads up about a robotics club she launched this past spring with fellow student Ethan Chen, I was surprised that the school didn’t already have one. White quickly clarified for me that indeed the school already had a robotics club that participates in Botball competition—but the new club focuses on FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition.

“An [FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC)] robot presented us with a really exciting opportunity to design, build, and code a 125-pound robot,” says White, who has compiled an impressive range of robotics knowledge via classes at Wellesley High and Wellesley Middle School, participation in the Botball club, and five years of robotics summer camp.

The FIRST club, which started with six students in May, now has 27 members. So the appetite for more opportunities in this field are apparent.

“We were inspired to create an accessible and equitable team to increase the diversity of students in STEM activities, and open it to all no matter their background or experience with robotics,” says White, who notes that only 10%-20% of the students in her engineering and computer science classes/clubs are girls. The Wellesley Robotics Team (WRT) is 50% girls.

White and other students are urging Wellesley High’s administration to add a robotics course that goes beyond the Botball and Lego Mindstorm topics included in existing courses. Who knows, maybe that will inspire even more robotics and STEM clubs in the future at the school.

Building the robot

The Wellesley Robotics Team has been designing, building, and coding a prototype robot since October that White says “we have fun driving around!”

While you can choose to take part in many tasks in the FRC game, Wellesley’s team has focused on one: shooting a 7-inch ball into an 8-foot-high goal. The competition will take place virtually in January and February.

The Wellesley club has been meeting on Zoom for the past seven months, White says, to learn about the robot control board, electrical wiring, Java programming, CAD (Computer Aided Design), mechanical design, tool safety, and material use.

Building the robot in person has been more challenging, though they’ve been fortunate to have access to a team member’s garage, which has been outfitted as a shop.

“We meet in person several days a week so that no more than six people at a time are in our build space due to our COVID protocols,” White says. “With only six people in at a time, it can be hard to make progress, but we are persevering and pushing forward with our work.”

Club cofounders White and Chen also have plenty of other activities to keep them occupied. White’s a student representative to the School Committee and a WHS Student Congress member, while Chen is a swim team captain, co-leader of the New Student Ambassadors, and a member of the Keynote singers.

Among the club’s mentors is Brian Kelly, who teaches robotics at Wellesley Middle School, but parents also help out a lot, as do mentors from FRC teams around the state. The Wellesley Robotics Team is always looking for mentors to help with coding, CAD, and mechanical design/build tasks.

Kelly says it’s been a pleasure to mentor the club members given that most were in one or more of his classes during their time at the middle school. “It is a hard working, focused, and enthusiastic group who has taken on quite a challenge, not the least of which is organizing a workspace and schedule to maintain as safe an environment as possible during this pandemic,” he says.

“They are getting tremendous support from parents and I have been impressed by the forward thinking on the part of both students and parents, in the sense that they are very much focused, not only on their particular challenges for this team, this season, but also on the teams that will likely follow,” Kelly says.

The club members and parents are “building a foundation for students and the parents who will also find themselves inspired and engaged by the challenges of building a robot that actually does what one wants it to do. It ain’t easy…,” he says.

FIRST robotics teams are sponsor funded, and Wellesley’s team (Team Ultraviolet #8765) thanks MathWorks, Eliassen Group, NASA, FIRST, and Lowe’s for their support. Anyone interested in sponsoring or learning more about the nonprofit can email [email protected] or check out its website.

Rise in COVID-19 cases forces Wellesley High back to all-remote

January 8, 2021 by Bob Brown 2 Comments

Wellesley High School Wellesley Public School and town health officials feared that the return from the holiday break could result in a rise in COVID-19 cases. Speculation was swirling among parents that a return to full-remote could be in the offing even as they urged the Health and School Department to renew efforts to update COVID-19 dashboard metrics and bring students back to full in-person learning.

Unfortunately, fears that a spike in cases would happen has been realized, and WPS is failing two of its three COVID-19 dashboard metrics, a trigger to reevaluate the educational model in use. Wellesley High School will return to all-remote education on Jan. 11, with a planned return to hybrid schooling on Jan. 19. This means that the winter athletic season has also been put on hold (no practices, games or competitions until Jan. 19 at the earliest).

The School Department briefed the School Committee shortly before Christmas on the successes of its viral testing program, and the funding status of it. One key marketing point by those touting it is that the program has allowed the school system to close down schools in a targeted way, as it is now doing with the high school.

Here’s what Wellesley Public Schools Supt. David Lussier and Health Department Director Lenny Izzo shared in a Friday night memo:

Dear Members of the Wellesley Public Schools Community,

We write to provide you with an update on Covid-19 in WPS this week. We saw positive cases at multiple schools, including single cases at Bates and Upham, two cases at Sprague, and five cases at WMS. All but two of these cases are students. None of these cases involved in-school transmission of the virus.

Our most challenging situation is at Wellesley High School where we documented 10 positive cases this week. All but one of these cases are students. Two of these cases may have emerged through in-classroom transmission, although we cannot confirm that with full certainty. (We will be conducting a more thorough review next week.) The aggregated number of close contacts and other absences has resulted in a significant number of students and staff who cannot attend school in person. We are particularly concerned that we do not have enough staff to safely open the school next week.

After a careful review of all of these facts, the School Department and Health Department have jointly determined that Wellesley High School will transition to full remote learning on Monday, January 11th, with a planned return to hybrid learning on Tuesday, January 19th. All WHS winter sports will be on hold during this time and may also resume on January 19th.

It is absolutely critical that our entire school community work together and adhere to the safety protocols of wearing masks, social distancing, frequent hand-washing, and avoiding large group gatherings. It is particularly important that we support our students in doing this anytime they are outside of their homes.

We recognize that this is disappointing news given all of our safety efforts, but we also believe strongly that this response is both appropriate and targeted based on the information we have collected. All other WPS schools will continue to follow their regular hybrid schedules next week.

Thank you for your ongoing efforts to keep our entire community safe.

Dr. David Lussier

Superintendent of Schools

Leonard Izzo

Director, Wellesley Health Department

Thank you Swellesley Report supporters & on to Year Sweet 16

Wellesley remembers Tony Lumley, Sr., as “such a present parent”

January 4, 2021 by Bob Brown 1 Comment

In reviewing five years of texts with her friend Anthony “Tony” Lumley, Sr., Wellesley’s Betsy Komjathy says it was all about him being “proactive, supportive and in good humor” about his kids, as well as their schoolmates. “He was such a present parent,” Komjathy says.

Wellesley and beyond are now mourning Lumley, a Boston resident who passed away from coronavirus on Dec. 22 at the age of 56.

A fundraiser has been launched to support the family during this most difficult time. All funds raised will be used to help support the Lumley children with unforeseen medical and living expenses, as well as college tuition.

Lumley is survived by his four children, who like himself, all took part in the METCO educational program for Boston residents, as well as two grandchildren and his fiancee Gwen Johnson. His oldest son, Eric, graduated from Wayland High School; Nykia and Anthony, Jr., graduated from Wellesley High, and Samone will graduate from Wellesley High in the spring. Lumley’s aunt, Carla Lumley, works for the Wellesley METCO program.

According to the fundraiser, organized by Lumley’s mother Beverley and Wellesley High’s Diane Zinck, “To say ‘Mr. Tony’ was a loyal family man is an understatement. As a loving single father, his entire world centered around loving, providing for and taking care of his beloved children and grandchildren. Lumley was a father who seemed to have the power to be in three places at once. He supported all of his children at all times, attending every single cheerleading event, football game, basketball game, and educational ceremony.”

Lumley’s mother told us that “My son Anthony had a huge presence in the Wellesley school system and the community. He and his children were quite well known.”

According to Anthony Lumley, Sr.’s formal obituary, the Annual Caribbean Festival was among his yearly highlights, when he opened his home and shared a BBQ “that gave us all an opportunity to gather at the end of the summer and enjoy each other’s company.”

Komjathy, a Friends of Wellesley METCO board member, says when she recalls Lumley she thinks of the pride he had in his kids.

“He went to all of their activities that he possibly could, and if he wasn’t at something, it was because he was at another kid’s event,’ she says, fondly recalling sitting near him and family members at sports events. Lumley epitomized being part of the two-way community that the METCO program hopes to foster, she says, as he felt part of both the Boston and Wellesley communities.

Services for Anthony Lumley, Sr., take place on Jan. 11 in Mattapan at Davis Funeral Home.

lumley family — Lumley family photo from Gofundme page

Shocking stats spurred Wellesley High student to launch breast cancer awareness club

December 29, 2020 by Bob Brown Leave a Comment

Wellesley High School senior Sarah Howland says the fact that the cause of more than 70% of breast cancer cases is unexplained was among the reasons she decided to start a club called Protect Our Breasts.

“That was really shocking and concerning to hear, especially because I had never heard anything like that before,” says Howland, who came across the numbers while taking part in a Harvard Medical School summer program. “Education surrounding breast cancer, and the types of things people can do to avoid it, are quite nonexistent unless you go searching for it. I can’t recall much education about breast cancer in sex-ed class or any science classes, so I wanted to start this club to spread more awareness and help educate as many as I can.”

The WHS Protect Our Breasts club, which now has 15 members, is a chapter of the original club started at Umass Amherst.

The club’s purpose is to raise awareness of the non-genetic causes of breast cancer, and the students recently started a fundraiser by selling stickers, which you can order via an online form or by scanning QR code if you come across any of the club’s flyers.

The club has also reached out to local businesses to see if they’d be interested in carrying the stickers in their stores. If interested in participating, please send email to [email protected]

All net proceeds will be donated to The Ellie Fund, a Needham-based non-profit that provides assistance to breast cancer patients residing in or receiving treatment in Massachusetts.

Running the club in the hybrid learning environment has been “surprisingly easier than I thought it would be,” Howland says. Meeting via Zoom instead of booking a physical room has simplified things, not to mention that students don’t need to worry about travel arrangements. The club generally meets once a month, and hopes to have some sort of socially distanced year-end celebration.

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A holiday treat from Wellesley public school musicians

December 24, 2020 by Bob Brown Leave a Comment

The Wellesley High School Performing Arts Department assembled a Virtual Holiday Concert to share with the community.

The Wellesley High Concert Band, Two O’Clock Jazz Band, Keynote Singers, Rice Street Singers, and Wind Ensemble, as well as Wellesley Middle School 8th grade band, perform.

Each one of these pieces represents hours of work.

“We applaud our students for continuing to find a way to keep music active in their lives during this time and for putting in the effort to make this special performance for the Wellesley community,” writes WHS Band Director Steve Scott.

Patty’s Room: Wellesley High seeks fitting honor for athletic trainer retiring after 40 years

December 10, 2020 by Bob Brown 10 Comments

Update Dec. 22: The School Committee approved the naming of the WHS Athletic Training Room after Patty Hickey at its Dec. 22 meeting. Here’s a mockup of the plaque shared by Athletic Director John Brown.

Wellesley High School Athletic Director John Brown isn’t the mushiest guy I’ve ever met. But he waxes downright sentimental when speaking about Patty Hickey, the ubiquitous head athletic trainer who has been serving the town’s student-athletes for 40 years and retires this week.

“She truly thinks of every athlete as her own child,” he says. “When she talks about my football players, she means they’re her football players… she just cares about these kids, whether it be swimming or wrestling or you name a sport.”

Patty Hickey, Lucy Raeke — Patty Hickey in 2017 wth student trainer Lucy Raeke (photo courtesy of Eric Cohen)

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the school system can’t throw a party for Hickey as it would otherwise have done.

But Brown and WHS Principal Dr. Jamie Chisum recently approached WPS Superintendent Dr. David Lussier with an even more special idea. They proposed naming the athletic training room in Hickey’s honor, and Lussier and Brown in turn made this request to the Wellesley School Committee this week (hear their comments starting at about the 1-hour and 56-minute mark of the Wellesley Media recording). The committee welcomed the idea, and now needs to proceed with the logistical ins and outs of getting it done, hopefully by the time it has its last meeting of the year later this month.

Brown said during the School Committee meeting that Hickey has dealt with hundreds of thousands of student-athletes across the state over her career, which has also included mentoring a roster of excellent student trainers.

He praised her thoroughness, whether it was treating athletes directly, calling parents if their kid twisted an ankle at a game, or emailing the administration if an athlete got concussed or needed to get in an ambulance for treatment.

John Griffith, a WHS fitness and health teacher, as well as football and track coach, echoed much of what Brown said when we exchanged email with him about the trainer.

“Patty Hickey will be a tremendous loss to our teaching and coaching community,” he says. “She was such a strong figure that brought knowledge, confidence and a kind heart to everyone she was around.”

He adds: “I remember countless times that she was brought to tears worrying about the health and well being of countless athletes over the years. As a head coach, I always knew my athletes were in good hands with Patty.”

Naming the training room in Hickey’s name, and putting up a plaque to formalize it, is an obvious way to recognize her, Brown says.

“Whenever anyone describes the door that comes into the building that’s outside the athletic training office, they call it coming in by ‘Patty’s room,'” he says. “If we’re going to say ‘come in by Patty’s room,’ why don’t we just name it ‘Patty’s Room?'”