Multiple school districts send students to Herkimer Fulton Hamilton Otsego BOCES every day of the school year. That’s a lot of responsibility placed on the shoulders of Adam Hutchinson, the supervisor of safety services at the facility.

“At the beginning of the year, it was where you had to maximize spacing in classrooms, cohosting as much as possible, kids and staff masked at all times, except if they were outside, even masking on the buses,” Hutchinson said.

What made it easier is Hutchinson says the districts were each on the same page, following state guidelines.

“Everybody kind of all organized around the idea that let’s get kids in school as much as possible, let’s keep them as safe as possible, let’s keep our staff as safe as possible,” he said.

Gov. Kathy Hochul recently announced that for now, there are no plans for a school mask mandate. She said three million COVID-19 tests will be sent to school districts across the state.

Hutchinson spoke after the governor’s announcements.

“I would expect that there will be a continued reliance on testing, not necessarily a mandate for unvaccinated students and staff, but just that early testing, early detection,” Hutchinson said.

Although COVID is still a concern, with eased guidelines, Hutchinson said focuses are shifting a little bit.

“Dealing with school facility safety, dealing with the emotional toll that COVID has had on students with things like bullying, behavioral outbursts, that sort of thing,” he said.

Hutchinson said there were more COVID cases in the past school year at HFHO BOCES compared to earlier on in the pandemic.