Superintendent Dr. Robert Baldwin Updates the Return to School

We are just over a month away to the first day of school. How and where that first day of school will happen is still very much an unknown across school district here in the Commonwealth.

We caught up with Fairhaven Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Robert Baldwin, who also doubles as the president of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents.

Dr. Baldwin told us that there are two key dates coming up. School districts need to submit their detailed plans to the state outlining how and where learning will resume in a matter of weeks. The deadline for this to happen is July 31.

On August 10, a final plan needs to be communicated to the public. At that point, Baldwin hopes parents will be able to give schools an indication about whether or not they will be sending their children to school or keeping them home.

Dr. Baldwin also announced that he expects the first day of school to happen on what would have been the first day of school before the COVID-19 pandemic, September 1. Under normal circumstances, teachers would be expected to report to classrooms the day before the first day of school.

This year, however, Baldwin is predicting that teachers will be asked to report the week prior to the first day of school for several days of training. The training would cover safety measures that will be put into place and how best to enforce them.

Baldwin talked to us about how he sees extra bus pickups in the future and how high school students will change classes. I told the superintendent that there were enough questions to last an hour, but that we had run out of time.

You can listen to the superintendent's full interview, which answers a bunch of different questions, by clicking the player at the top of the page.