With new school protocols and policies driven by the still-lingering coronavirus, hundreds of parents sought unsuccessfully to log in to last week’s Boston Public Schools online meeting on the return to in-person learning, set for Sept. 9 for students in grades 1 through 12.

But when those parents clicked the link to join the meeting, it was a no-go.

While 1,000 parents and interested parties were able to access the Aug. 24 meeting, about 10 minutes into the Zoom-only session it became apparent that many others weren’t able to log in. BPS officials on the online call, who seemed to be surprised by so many attendees, said they were trying to expand the capacity limit, but were not able to do so on the fly.

BPS said late last week they had recorded the Aug. 24 meeting for anyone to review, and they plan to have additional meetings later this week for those that couldn’t log on.

“We apologize for this inconvenience and have scheduled two more community meetings to provide families with additional opportunities to learn about our plans for the new school year,” a spokesperson said in a statement, adding, “BPS is in discussions with Zoom to expand the meeting capacity of our license. We also are recording the sessions in multiple languages and those recordings will be posted on our Back to School webpage, as the Aug. 24 recordings were.”

The additional Zoom meetings will be held on Thurs., Sept. 2, and Tues., Sept. 7, at 5:30 p.m.

The botched call quickly became a hot topic in the mayoral race, with Councillor Andrea Campbell, a mayoral candidate, hosting a press conference the very next day and noting that the system has over 50,000 students.

“What is frustrating is we only have two weeks until schools start again…and most teachers, families, and students still have no idea what the plan is for opening, Covid safety measures or what support is available to them after a year of disrupted learning,” she said, noting that her son will be heading to the Kenny School in Dorchester this year.

“Last night BPS held a virtual community meeting to discuss their Back to School plans and answer questions but the meeting was capped at 1,000 and had no live stream,” she said. As you can imagine, I heard from several frustrated parents.”

She added that while she supports masks in school, frequent testing, and proof of vaccination or testing for teachers and staff, she believes too much has happened too late with BPS and Acting Mayor Kim Janey’s administration.

“This all should have been rolled out weeks ago,” she said. “With only two weeks until schools re-open, teachers and BPS families should feel confident that sending their students back to school will be safe…Because the acting mayor waited so long to announce a vaccine requirement for City employees, they could not realistically enforce that requirement until Sept. 20, which will leave students, teachers, and staff vulnerable for the first several weeks…Right now you have school leaders out on their own trying to figure this out. That’s unacceptable. You can’t put this on the backs of educators.”

Councillor Annissa Essaibi George – a former BPS teacher and a BPS parent running for mayor – sent a letter to BPS asking for more meetings when she learned that many parents were locked out of the meeting.

“We need to strengthen relationships and trust within our BPS communities, and unfortunately, this meeting was a prime example of missing the mark,” she said in a statement to the Reporter. “During a pandemic, we need to be consistently communicating with all families, and a single meeting with a cap—far under the amount of students and families in the system—is unacceptable.”

Councillor Michelle Wu – a mayoral candidate and also a mother with a young child in BPS schools – said it would be her priority as mayor to focus on clear communications so parents know and are prepared to return to school.

“Our children and educators have endured so much through the pandemic, and our focus should be on healing and reconnecting our communities. We need a baseline of effective communication to build that trust at this critical time,” she said.

John Barros, a mayoral candidate who ran the city’s economic development office, said Boston City Hall should be mindful that families need more information, especially about availability of protective equipment, masking, testing, and social distancing procedures.

“[BPS] should help ease this transition by doubling down on their efforts to provide ample linguistically and otherwise accessible information about what protection is being provided and what protocols families can expect and rely on to stay safe this school year,” Barros said.

Outcries on lack of virtual option
While there was a vigorous presentation by BPS stressing masks, Covid testing and vaccination as well as specific policies around facilities and quarantine measures for those that did get on the Zoom meeting, the biggest outcry from a large group of parents was over the lack of a virtual option for students.

BPS and other Greater Boston urban districts had been investigating the idea of having a virtual option this coming school term, but that idea was eliminated by BPS last spring due to logistical concerns. That decision was cemented in place when the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) announced that all public school districts had to be in person for this coming school term.

This was something that many parents were not aware of, and the chat in the meeting was moving at warp speed with dozens of parents commenting that they wanted a virtual option. Most wrote that they didn’t feel safe sending their kids into an uncertain situation when Covid-19 cases were on the rise statewide.  

BPS officials explained that they were not allowed to offer a virtual option, and many parents on the call were rallying around the idea of presenting a letter and petition to Gov. Baker to override the in-person mandate this year.

Meanwhile, BPS said they are continuing to evaluate whether to move ahead on the idea of offering a district-wide virtual school.

“We want to take the time to fully develop a proposal with our students, families, and educators and will work on those next steps,” school officials wrote in a statement.”

Consent forms for testing sent out
BPS Superintendent Brenda Cassellius said in early August that the district mantra this year in the return to school would be repeatedly stressing the importance of mask-wearing, vaccinations, and Covid testing.

The wheels on the latter piece of those three – testing – have already been put in motion with parents receiving consent forms last Friday, Aug. 27. Testing is voluntary and requires consent of staff members and families.

Those who do choose it will have weekly testing. It will be done on a sample population, or a pool of people. If there is a positive in the pool, each individual sample will get a follow-up test.

If students complain of symptoms of Covid-19 while at school, they will have access to the BinaxNOW rapid antigen test, which yields results in about an hour or less, school officials said. Based on the result of that test, decisions will be made about what to do next. Anyone with a positive test will be sent home for quarantine – even if they are asymptomatic.

“Students who are in quarantine as a result of a confirmed positive case will access tutoring during their time at home,” the district said in a statement. “Details will be shared in early September on how students will access tutoring and who will provide the tutoring.”

As for the upcoming virtual meetings on Sept. 2 and Sept. 7, the district said they would review many of the frequently asked questions from the first meeting – which did have many of the same questions asked multiple times by parents and stakeholders. They will also present their back-to-school safety protocols and Covid-19 vaccination resources, among other measures.

Details of the upcoming sessions, including meeting links, are available at bostonpublicschools.org/backtoschool and on the district calendar at bostonpublicschools.org/calendar. 

In addition, the August 24 community meeting was recorded and is available to watch in multiple languages on the Back to School webpage.