New school guidance to be announced next week will allow three-foot distancing for older students, a move to help get more Vermont students back in the classroom. But it comes as some schools are struggling with COVID outbreaks and are requiring students to provide a negative test after they test positive.

The Essex Westford School District, one of the largest in the state, has had a jump in COVID cases, sending some schools into remote learning. 

Around this time, millions of high school seniors across the country, including here in our region, are hearing back from colleges and universities after applying.

However, for traditional four-year colleges, the number of responses being sent back are much less when compared to years past — that’s because many of them saw a decrease in applications this past year.

The Carroll family started quarantining well before it was mandated, in order to protect their daughter Addi, who is immunocompromised. Robotic technology for the classroom has made learning just a little easier for the girl battling a serious disease.

“Educationally, it’s been an amazing piece,” said Ian Carroll, Addi’s dad, who has taken the lead on supporting Addi’s schooling from home. “It sort of re-established a more full and well-rounded school day.”

The Essex Westford School District is expanding in-person learning for K-5 students to five days a week, with early release on Wednesdays. That begins April 26.

But the district hasn’t figured out a safe way to bring students in grades 6-12 back into the classroom with the current physical distancing guidelines.

Class sizes are larger and the rooms don’t have enough space to safely accommodate everyone.

February is National Career and Technical Education Month, and despite the pandemic, students at these centers are still graduating with the hands-on experience they need to jump into the workforce or college.

Cat Viglienzoni spoke with Bob Travers, the principal at the Center for Technology Essex, about what kinds of programs are available to his students and how they have adapted over the past year.

Food insecurity continues to be a major issue around the country and local school districts are combatting it with free meals for students. Essex Westford School district hit quite the milestone on Friday, hitting its 500,000th free school meal since March, and they were here on Friday handing out nearly 2000 more meals to kids 18 and under, something they do every week.

Monday was originally set as the day that high school winter sports teams could begin playing games.

Some schools begin immediately, others waited until students returned from winter break. The state’s largest school, Essex, was set to begin on Monday, but the district switched to remote learning for two days after a positive COVID test within the school community. Essex athletic director Pat Merriam told Channel Three Sports he hopes practices can begin on Wednesday.

A temporary move to remote learning due to a COVID-19 case has delayed the start of winter sports practices at the state's biggest school.

Essex High School was slated to begin modified training for its sports programs on Monday afternoon, but a member of its community tested positive for COVID, according to the district, which announced Sunday a switch to remote learning for the next two days.

Essex High School students will be learning remotely Monday and Tuesday because of a COVID-19 case.

On Sunday, district leaders say they learned a member of the high school community tested positive.

Because of that, all EHS students and staff will learn from home.

The Essex Westford School District and Circus Smirkus are putting the “fun” in fundamental learning.

The two entities are teaming up to bring kids social and emotional learning skills over Zoom.

In-school circus classes are nothing new to Circus Smirkus. In fact, they’ve been doing residencies for over 20 years.

What is new is providing that curriculum over Zoom, and EWSD is the first school district to pilot it.

It's safe to say that remote learning for students in the Essex Westford School District's Virtual Academy has been a bit of a circus.

"(The students have) been balancing peacock feathers and learning how to use spinning plates," said Josh Shack, with Circus Smirkus.

This week the elementary school students were mastering the art of juggling with the help of Circus Smirkus.

In last week's usual Tuesday news conference with Vermont health officials, school districts got some surprising news. They were told on Nov. 10 the state would be funding COVID-19 testing for all faculty and staff in K-12 schools.

The responsibility then fell to the administrations around the state to very quickly organize testing sites. For example, Essex Westford Superintendent Beth Cobb was told on Wednesday her district would have their testing materials on Monday.

Three people in the Essex Westford School District have tested positive for COVID-19. They are members of the Thomas Flemming and Summit Street school communities.

The Essex Westford School District will begin providing free meals to children under 18 during the weekends through much of the rest of 2020 as a way to gauge community needs.

After being notified Monday afternoon that a member of the Essex Elementary School (EES) community had tested positive for COVID-19, Essex Westford School District (EWSD) Superintendent Beth Cobb and Chief Operating Officer Brian Donahue spoke with the Reporter Tuesday morning about the situation.

"We try and be as transparent as possible," said Beth Cobb, the superintendent of the Essex Westford School District. Cobb said the district learned about a positive COVID-19 case in its elementary school, prompting four kindergarten classes to go into a fully remote option out of an abundance of caution.

Have you ever wanted to spend all day at the movie theater? Some lucky Essex students get to have school at one. Essex Cinemas welcomes students five days a week, ticket free, to use the facility during the children's remote learning days. The movie theater is a child care hub site, a program established by the state to provide care to students on non-in-person school days.

The principal of Hiawatha Elementary School said she went into this unusual school year with the mindset that they'd be back fully in-person soon.

"I don’t feel like it was rushed," Principal Katherine Grykien said. "It was something we were talking about right from the beginning, so the community knew this was where we were headed."

By creating its own program, instead of contracting with Vermont Virtual Learning Cooperative as other districts have done, the Essex-Westford can align curriculum and assessments across the hybrid, in-person or remote learning models, to make it much easier for students to transition between them.

They were asked what went well and better than expected, what didn’t go so well or might be at the top of their priority list to address, and if they have heard any negative feedback or concerns from parents.

Elementary school students at the Essex Westford School District will learn in-person, five days a week. Starting Oct. 5, one grade at a time will integrate back to classrooms, with all elementary students back in the building by Oct. 13.

Things seem to be going smoothly at the start of the academic year for the Essex Westford School District (EWSD), so much so that it has announced that some grades will begin having fully in-person instruction in the coming weeks.

Thrilling news for high school athletes came out of Montpelier Tuesday when it was announced during Governor Phil Scott’s press conference that schools will be able to enter Step III of reopening.

The Agency of Education is relaxing some health and safety guidance required by schools starting Saturday, Sept. 26. Dan French, secretary of education, announced at Tuesday's governor COVID-19 news conference that schools would move into Step 3.

Over six months after being sent to the sidelines due to the pandemic, it’s officially ‘Game On’ once again for high school sports in Vermont.