Q: Why didn’t you mandate that all schools in New Hampshire open with in person instruction?
A: “We Have a Worldwide Health Pandemic! I Can’t Force a Teacher or a Parent to Send their Child into a Classroom If There Could Be Health Conditions.”
In an interview with WKXL’s Chris Ryan, New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu discusses allegations that, in order to interfere with absentee and mail in balloting, the US Postal Service has been sabotaged by the Trump administration, and the preparations which have been made at polling places to deal with COVID related delays and wait times. As districts across the state make a variety of back to school plans, Governor Sununu explains how districts should deal with an outbreak of the Coronavirus, and he addresses those who question why he didn’t mandate that all schools in the state open with in person instruction.
Governor Sununu is looking into potential problems with our post offices by scheduling a conversation with the regional postmaster who is responsible for New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont. He is confident that despite the larger than usual volume of ballots being processed by the USPS, the election will go off without a hitch. The Governor feels that President Trump, Speaker Pelosi, and others are playing politics by asserting the Postal System is not up to the job of processing the expected increase of voting by mail.
The Governor has confidence in the contingency plans which have been worked out for months by the New Hampshire Secretary of State William Gardner to deal with the possibility of COVID related delays and difficulties at the polling places. Governor Sununu is confident that, barring a recount in a close election, all of the ballots will be counted, and the winners will be declared on election night.
New Hampshire’s school districts were given rather broad guidelines from Governor Sununu on how to reopen schools this year. As a result, there is an incredible array of plans to reopen schools safely. Some districts have opted for direct instruction and all sorts of variations and combinations of remote learning. The Governor discussed the public health plans which have been put in place to deal with an outbreak of COVID-19 in a school. When a student is identified as having the virus, the school will notify the community on a central website. Public health officials will work with the family and the school to do contact tracing. When there is a cluster of COVID-19 cases, public health officials would determine if the cluster has grown to be an outbreak and whether the school should revert to a remote learning model for a period of about 14 days.
Despite his firm belief that in person instruction would be very beneficial for students and teachers at the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year, Governor Sununu was reluctant to impose that “One Size Fits All” approach. He felt that the needs of the many different school districts in New Hampshire would make that impractical. He points out that communities in the northern and western parts of the state have very few cases when compared to the seacoast and southern areas of New Hampshire. The Governor was also reluctant to impose standards for remote learning because this is all new and untried. The wide differences in technology, communication protocols, connectivity, and differences in home situations for students and parents make it inadvisable to impose remote learning standards. The Governor feels that it is better to give districts flexibility and to suggest programs and resources which they can use.
