The Buffalo Public School District held a community town hall meeting on Thursday evening at East Community High School with Superintendent Dr. Kriner Cash on-hand to discuss a number of different topics with parents and staff of the schools and also the community.
Among the number of topics discussed by Dr. Cash on Thursday was COVID-19 and safety protocols the Buffalo Public Schools are taking with COVID-19 case numbers continuing to rise across Erie County.
Dr. Cash said that the Buffalo school system currently averages 50 COVID-19 cases per-day. In particular, zip codes 14220 and 14206 are among the highest case rates per-zip code for COVID-19 in the school district. Cash urged the people in the audience in attendance that in order to bring down the case numbers in the district, everyone should take all proper measures.
Also addressed on Thursday by Dr. Cash was the abrupt halting of the school district's testing program and the steps being taken to get testing back in the schools. Cash said that local company Buffalo Homecare Inc. has stepped up to take over as the district's testing program provider.
Buffalo Homecare Inc. will start testing in the Buffalo schools next week at some point, however, not every school will be a full-go with testing availability right away. Dr. Cash is hoping that they will have testing available at full-go by the start of the 2022 calendar year.
Then Dr. Cash stressed the importance of students and staff in the school district being vaccinated for COVID-19, and the significance of being vaccinated for the rest of the family with the virus still being a threat.
"There is some hesitation, we all know, about taking the vaccine. What we've said is if we can get help with getting more vaccines dedicated to us, we will make sure through our relationships with our students and our families that we can get better percentages of students and their families vaccinated," Dr. Cash said. "The more vaccinated people we have... the safer our children will be.
"Too many children are being exposed and testing positive to COVID-19, and especially now this Delta variant."
With the urge to get more vaccines made available to students and families in the community, Dr. Cash reached out to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul in an attempt to be provided some assistance with the matter. Hochul responded in fairly quick order to Dr. Cash's request, issuing the Buffalo Public School District 10,000 COVID-19 vaccines to help get students and families in the district that have yet to receive their vaccinations, vaccinated.
"East is a community school, so vaccines will be happening here," Dr. Cash said. "We'll schedule this during the school day, a block of time all across our 30 schools after school, and on Saturdays during the Saturday academy blocks. This is a big deal. 10,000 vaccines. And when we do that effectively, this first sequence, they said they'd then send 10,000 more, 10,000 more, and so forth.
"Were partnering very closely with the Erie County Department of Health, our medical advisory team and community healthcare providers that are helping us get deep into the community and bring [families] to us so they can be vaccinated."
As for the faculty and staff of the school, the district has seen a very large number of its people, especially in-school, being vaccinated as they work with their students and other kids. According to 3,985 responses from faculty and staff from all 30 schools in the district (nearly 100% response from in-school staff), just 240 people remain unvaccinated for COVID-19.
"Everybody wants the schools to stay open, to be open during this unprecedented global pandemic. Well, we need to be safe," Dr. Cash said. "We need to keep our staff and our students safe."
With the new Omicron variant of COVID-19 now starting to spread across the globe, as well as the Delta variant continuing to surge in numbers, Dr. Cash said the district is preparing for the possibility of schools being forced to go all virtual once again if need be. While the preference is to keep kids in school and have the focus be on education, Dr. Cash, once again, stressed the importance of safety.
Also on the docket for Thursday's town hall meeting was the ongoing shortage of bus drivers in the district and what is being done to get students to school in a safe and timely matter.
As Dr. Cash pointed out, the Buffalo Public School District used to have a total of 667 bus routes, but that has now broken down to 464 morning routes and 457 afternoon routes.
The district has made its best attempt to try and consolidate routes as much as possible to pick up their students and take them back home at the end of the day.
"Needless to say, we did have a national bus driver shortage that was affecting all school districts in the country, and it certainly was affecting us. But we didn't whine and cry about it. We said, 'What are we going to do about it?'" Dr. Cash said. "One of the things we did about it was we consolidated routes, we reduced routes, and we still were able to get the children picked up once it got smooth. We had some bumps in the first couple of weeks, but as of right now, today, it's running pretty smoothly."
As the district continues to evaluate its situation with the bus driver shortages, they have looking at three solutions that have seemed to work well to this point:
The first solution has been looking for other qualified vendors to help the school district out, especially when it comes to athletic programs after school. Dr. Cash says that should helped free up some more busses during the course of the day.
The second solution has been to keep bringing in new drivers and getting them fully trained. Dr. Cash says the school will always have some turnover with drivers, so it's good to have some new drivers ready to go.
The final initiative the district is looking to take to try and help open up some school busses and address their transportation issues is an adjustment to schedules for all schools in the district.
"Coming off of the December break and as soon as Jan. 3, we're going to be adjusting the schedule for every school - every 37 days, about 5-6 weeks, one school will let out a little earlier or start a little later," Dr. Cash said. "Just that little adjustment, low-impact to one school... that will free up a lot of busses. Probably 50 or so, which will take us pretty much back to square."
You can listen to more from Dr. Cash at Thursday's town hall meeting below:
