School buildings will stay open, and winter sports practices will begin on November 30.

Masking, distancing, and other COVID-19 mitigation strategies enable district schools to stay open. Photo: Kai Lincke — Masking, distancing, and other COVID-19 mitigation strategies enable district schools to stay open. *Photo: Kai Lincke*

At a nearly four-hour meeting on Monday night, members of the Wallingford-Swarthmore School District school board voted unanimously to maintain the hybrid model of instruction. In order to do so, they voted to formally attest that the district’s coronavirus mitigation efforts continue. Because local rates of COVID-19 have risen into what the Pennsylvania Department of Education considers the “substantial” range, the commonwealth would have required the district to return to all-virtual learning without the attestation.

Superintendent Lisa Palmer reported that the district has not seen linked transmission of COVID-19 in the schools, that contact tracing continues, and that the district can still adequately staff its buildings. “We know our mitigation efforts are working,” she said.

The decision to allow winter sports was made after over an hour of sometimes emotional discussion. Board member Chapin Cimino expressed frustration that the board had so little information about the risks of sports. She also noted that the district strictly enforces a 6-foot distancing requirement in all other cases, wondering about the exception for athletics. “Why are sports getting this and not other extracurricular activities?” she asked.

Athletic director Pat Clancy reported that all athletes will be masked when possible, but that safety concerns preclude masking while swimming or wrestling. Palmer noted that, while some fall sports team members tested positive for COVID-19, transmission occurred at extracurricular gatherings, not at practices or games.

Board member Jennifer Lentz noted that many district students are already actively participating in indoor club sports. She said it was unfair that students whose families could not afford club sports were denied the opportunity to play.

Ultimately, the board voted to permit winter sports to begin, with the provision that all students participating in sports transition to virtual instruction when practices make it impossible to stay 6 feet apart. Students will not be allowed back into hybrid instruction until 14 days after their sport ends. The vote was 7 to 2, with Kelly Wachtman and Marylin Huff voting against.