School Committee: July 28, 2020

Transcript captured from YouTube auto-captioning. No speaker labels; proper names and dollar figures occasionally misheard. Click any timecode to jump to that moment in the source video.

2:02 hi hi um i’ve got an air conditioner running in this room can you hear it the background on it really loud no okay great i’ll also have a fan i hear my family okay i can’t hear your fan so i just needed to make sure thanks what oh yeah yeah

2:31 hi nan hi nan good morning can you hear the background noise in mind okay good hands really hoping to be able to keep this air conditioning unit on

7:49 sir can you hear me hear me yes i can you’ve got a little bit of an echo today though okay

9:41 all right we’ll try this again sarah can you hear me

10:05 actually john i’m not sure there isn’t an echo can you say something

10:12 i can say something what do you think sarah does that sound like an echo to you i mean it’s a little tinny but it doesn’t seem to be echoing okay it looks like john’s in the meeting twice that might be the reason there’s an echo so i actually think it’s um it’s lisa that’s also on just under john’s name

10:39 but john was when there was an echo john was on three times so okay

10:45 i just wanted to make sure you saw it hurt me you’re too many johns there was more than one of you the only way you’re getting the work done

11:02 thanks for coming today oh you’re welcome

11:21 unmute myself morning everyone hey david good morning hey hey hi how are you guys megan where’s bono today megan he’s not joining us nope relegated to the basement david [Laughter] probably cooler bit yeah for sure quieter for sure hi dorothy thanks for joining

12:15 i’ll give it about one more minute until we join we’re at a pretty steady number of people hanging out with us

12:29 sarah will i be able to share my screen i will give you those capabilities all right excellent so i think it’s going to make me make make you a co-host and then that should allow you to do that

12:51 megan i’m going to make you a co-host as well just in case okay i’m just gonna stop my video for a second pull up some files

13:04 a parent bring me some flowers from her garden so i wanted to make sure they made today’s video very nice brightens everything

13:35 i’m ready all right ready okay so i will officially call the meeting to order at 10 33 a.m okay um sarah before we jump into things um i would like to i don’t know if i have to officially make a motion but i’d like to um if we can switch the agenda a little bit i feel like there’s been a lot of moving parts over the past 24 hours oh yeah i think i don’t think michelle’s here yet so i was hoping if we could do section five well we’ve got dorothy and move section replace it with section two okay you mean just flip-flop them yes okay all right so um

14:22 just a motion to take out of order right by the way before i mess this up am i is lisa on i don’t see her is on she doesn’t have any video or um voice capabilities though so she’s the other john bucky okay but i’m not i don’t need to take minutes she’s trying it okay thank you i just wanted to make sure i didn’t mess that up um okay so yeah so can i have a motion to take the agenda out of order so i moved alright move by megan seconded by sarah um all right all in favor sarah gold yes emily baron yes sarah fox yes david harris yes and megan taylor yes all right so we will flip-flop number

15:08 two and number five and that doesn’t change or move up the re-entry planning or other important like you know very important things as far as anybody who’s tuned in to the public all right so that brings us right up to the school community discussion school communication discussion items and so we have a district council discussion as well as a school committee internal communication discussion we have dorothy presser our massachusetts school committee state representative here with us today and she’s going to kind of be part of our guide um so we will start just to keep with the agenda as it is we’ll start we can start

15:55 with the district council discussion um so there’s a few kind of housekeeping pieces that seem to make a lot of sense on this agenda and most likely on further agendas as well this as we have a new permanent superintendent and kind of looking over some of the pieces that are currently in place at the district and whether we want to stick with those pieces um or change things up a little bit so part of that is looking into um district council so our legal representation for school committee as well as this is a group that john would be able to uh utilize to help with any kind of legal issues within the district as well so um megan had emailed everyone

16:41 dorothy’s powerpoint presentation um so hopefully everybody had a chance to flip through those uh those slides so john do you do you have anything to kind of add on this discussion before we sort of open it up

17:02 um no i just uh i thought dorothy would go through uh her presentation and then at the conclusion of that i might talk a little bit about my thinking around the topic okay great so dorothy um i don’t think unless you want to go through all of your slides i don’t think you have planned to do that no i did not so that um and i’ll jump in with my thinking can i can i make a suggestion john here just because we did send you know everyone has had a copy of the powerpoint so maybe we just started sarah with you know because that was really meant to set the scene um in terms of roles and responsibilities and and the process so maybe if we just started with if there’s any questions kind of in terms of roles

17:47 and responsibilities um before we jump into you know how we want to move forward sounds good that’s good so any questions on on i may admit that when i went through and reviewed everything in the dropbox yesterday i didn’t see this in the dropbox i sent it separately it was in an email um because it wasn’t going to be presented formally with the on this meeting so it was just in the email okay is from megan

18:32 david or emily do you guys have any questions or thoughts on on any of it so i don’t think i do i’m just gonna bring it back up i think one of my main questions is the process so if we do decide to look into what options are out there dorothy um the the best process for doing that because i know there’s been a little bit of behind-the-scenes discussion on the need for an rfp and how that would go out um and whether or not we

19:15 officially need that um so i think that would be sort of where that’s been this question circling in my head so it’s it’s a it’s a it’s someone who’s you’re you’re hiring basically as a consultant so it’s different than needing an rfp based on a different type of service like if you were going out and purchasing new um boilers for your schools it’s that’s an entirely different process that you would need an rfp for this is your decision of which consultant that you hire so there’s you can if you want to see you know what’s out there and expand your choices but there’s no requirement that for this you you put out an rfp okay

20:01 is the is in your experience dorothy do is there a way that school committees usually do they usually put out an rfp or do they usually send just some type of letter i mean you know i don’t think that there’s hundreds of these firms in our area um so did they just kind of send a letter to all or some firms so um we have there’s a there’s an organization called the council of school attorneys um that you can find the list of the attorneys that belong to that organization on our website and those would all be firms that represent school committees so generally if school committees decide to send out an rfp they would use that list as the place to send it out or just

20:48 a letter you know um soliciting um a soliciting interest in something that says what you know what can you do for us then they might look over those packages that they receive invite some people in for interviews it’s also not an unusual process um for a new superintendent to come in with experience working with a particular firm that they feel comfortable with and particularly since you’re already thinking about making a change to see if the school committee also feels comfortable with that firm okay

21:31 so one thing i just um in dorothy’s presentation i just pulled up um it talks about one of the reasons um one of the driving factors for having legal counsel beyond you know obviously the legal piece is that it provides institutional knowledge where there is you know turnover of various members i think that that is actually really important in our situation in particular where um almost our entire central administration is brand new and for all intents and purposes our school committee is very very new and green um as well i mean we have we david has more experience but everybody else is you know two years at best um where we have we we’ve had a lot of carryover

22:18 with um legal issues particularly from past administrations i am concerned switching legal counsel right now of losing that um institutional knowledge and for me i while i would welcome the idea of looking at possibly a new council i wonder if maybe this is not the year to do it if if that perhaps we should um maintain that institutional knowledge for this this year just for that transition piece and you know then maybe look at it later on because in the last few months um we’ve all had some surprises but that that weren’t as surprising to them or they had little bits in the background so i just

23:04 for the institutional knowledge piece we’ll just put it that way i i don’t know where my comfort level is with this i understand that i thought that was a really interesting point on that page that i had not thought of um so that i i hear you on that one do any other school districts that you know of um rely on town council because i know legally town council represents us as well and we could rely on town council but is that done or no uh it is done um it’s sometimes hard for town council if they’re representing the select board as well as the school committee

23:49 um it it happens sometimes i think it makes it hard on town council um to um to to sort of thread the needle sometimes if there are issues between the the different bodies the different boards in the town well in that circumstance my understanding would be that they would always air on the side of the slackman because they’re protecting the town for the whole am i wrong in that assumption well if they’re representing you that i mean that’s where if they’re representing you they’re representing the selectmen if you guys have issues between the two of you that puts the town council in sort of a pickle well yeah because the town the selectmen

24:35 are the um client of record just like on on with our letter of engagement we’re the client of records yep yep so can i just ask a quick question this is just because i’m i’m new um so do we currently have legal counsel for the school committee and this is just to change yes okay we use the polarion associates but what is breaking up which idea to change if if yeah go ahead david if i could i don’t so we’re we’re looking to get information on um we talked about this i you know sarah mentioned that you know

25:21 what what does what are the level of services being provided and how do we engage our council and what are the duties and responsibilities and so on and so forth and um i think it’s just sound business practices this is uh you know we are over the years we do try and put various pieces of our work out to bid and you know this is an area that i i think just it would be a you know good sound business practice and it doesn’t mean that um valerio couldn’t present their package to us as well and and they could continue to be retained so i don’t think it’s necessarily a uh a blanket request for a change but i we

26:06 just think it would be reasonable to go through the process uh also we do have collective bargaining coming up very shortly which is a major role that our legal council plays for the town and the school committee so i think it would just be good to get an overall understanding and um you know for me i’ve always i’ve only ever seen the um legal counsel from afar of course we’ve had executive sessions where we have met in person but you know i’d like to just see more of a collective package about um what firms have to offer and and how we could streamline the process and the use of legal counsel within the district that’s my thought

26:52 my thought my thought yeah and so the idea of it was actually sort of jostled around a little bit last year as well um but it just was such a such a crazy year and we just had bill for that one year that we’ve again like kind of to sarah’s point we stuck with the institutional knowledge aspect of things got through the year and then one of the big reasons that we had discussed it last year was to david’s point the budgetary piece to it is let’s you know as we’re looking into all of this let’s really make sure that we’ve dotted every eye and crossed every t in kind of shoring up every piece of our of our budget

27:37 stuff so one thing i i will say um is i i have at different times wondered if we should shop um if we start to shop um the legal community as is as i’m sure like every other sub niche of communities um they talk and so if we start shopping we are putting a message out we are not happy with valerio so we need to move on um it there’s two reasons why um clients and attorneys break up and it’s either the attorney can’t help the client anymore and it’s done with them or the client feels that the attorney is not meeting their needs so we just we if we are saying we’re done with valeria that’s that’s one

28:23 discussion but i i think we need to be clear that in in my opinion having seen how this kind of happens you know from a different point you know from from a different point of view it is um i i if we’re shopping we’re shopping we’re leaving valeria

28:43 dorothy in terms of school committee is that your experience with this as well i would say sarah is probably on target with that yes i would think you know there’s probably instances where people do or committees do what you are talking about is you know it’s time to review um but generally if people are reviewing it’s because there’s something behind them deciding to do that okay i i will say from conversations i’ve had um with various different administration um in town both on the town side and um the school school side in the last year

29:30 we do have more legal stuff than is typical for um districts so i i just don’t know if now is the time to kind of switch horses mid-race if if you know what i mean john did you wanna put your two cents in sure um i had some conversation with bill when he came in about this because he indicated that conversation was already happening so um i think there’s a case to be made on both sides with as much as we have going on right now is now the time to enter this conversation and then on the opposite side this may be the most timely to have this conversation with six

30:18 collecting targeting things coming up um and um just don’t think people would be surprised with the new superintendent of schools coming in that this conversation came up i actually reached help uh to several superintendents and it’s pretty common um for this conversation when there is a change in administration that said if we go in a different direction okay if we stay with the current council [Music] dorothy not to put you on the spot but you have more school committee experience and all of us literally combined um and you’re all your time did linfield who did linfield use and did you um did you find that switching and that was good

31:04 uh we had a a long time attorney who retired so that forced us into uh

31:11 finding new representation um and i’m i’m just you know what’s right for one community what’s right for one uh committee is not necessarily right for another so i think who we use is actually irrelevant to your discussion because it’s a decision that you’re going to need to make about how you feel comfortable with

31:50 well i haven’t offered my two cents yet do you want me yes i’ll just i’ll just give my two cents on this is that you know i kind of i am i do think now is the right time and it’s not necessarily um i think it’s more for what david said like i would really like to understand what is available out there given our current and projected needs and you know i think sarah’s point is valid um i would say that’s probably based on um you know historical data and that’s you know hopefully not how we’re going to proceed but i do think we should kind of understand what the whole package is and view that from a fiduciary lens

32:36 i will say knowing the legal industry their hourly rate is not in the high side at all if this is a fiduciary lens it’s very reasonable actually well it’s not necessarily just down to dollars but what are you getting for those dollars and you know comparing i do i do think that comparison is worthwhile too compare it comparing the quality and the breadth of the services and i just think you know with john coming in in a new administration um and as he said you know knowing that we’re going to be going through you know pretty comprehensive collective bargaining um phase this year i you know i do think this is probably the time to at least review it and again it’s not saying that we’re 100 making a change

33:21 but it’s worth kind of having a review and make sure that we’ve got all the information at our disposal to make the right decision and i don’t feel like we’ve got that information right now i just want to make sure this is about the quality of their work and not who they worked with in the past absolutely

33:59 if i may through the chair yes i think the timing is right for the exploration um if we stay with the current council great i think that it will be information finding uh for the committee and you can see comparatively what services what your return on investment is and i don’t think exploration is without merit

34:28 that continues to be how i feel as well and i wonder if

34:39 or i guess it could be an rfp as well but just sort of if we can word it in such a way that it doesn’t come across that we’re you know upset with valerio in any way in that you know we’re we’re done with them and that we’re just we’re simply sort of in a due diligence mode um and and looking at everything that’s out there dorothy am i is that a pipe yeah and i would say if that’s if that’s the direction you want to go in sort of the the vein of no surprises i would certainly uh let valerio uh dominello and hillman know ahead of time that that’s what you’re doing in your rationale okay yeah i agree with that yeah absolutely i would yeah i wouldn’t want to just to pull that as a surprise on them

35:31 so so um do we need a motion then i was just going to ask and can i can i get a motion to and i guess i guess before i ask for a motion it doesn’t sound like we are mandated to put the rfp out there so i guess in my head i would i would support the creation of a letter and then maybe we maybe we bring it back next time at our next meeting or at a subsequent meeting if it doesn’t make the most sense for the next meeting look at the letter look at the list that dorothy has on the masc website and go from there

36:18 um you know i would ask honestly um john’s input here if he’s got someone that he’s worked with previously that could that he could recommend i mean especially because he’s our incoming superintendent has some experience there and that’s you know i would like to start there personally yeah i’ve worked with um different firms but for the last 20 years um steven chandler miller in boston has been uh the council in each district we’ve used mike long uh for some employment law stuff um special education council in each of the districts i have been in has been different from uh other council and in my conversations with eric oxford he is very happy with the council that he has for special ed

37:05 so i’m not going to change that um this would just be there are not a lot of firms out there um and so uh if you reached out to a couple three seconds and learned miller would be my first choice for them to have an opportunity to present you that’s what you’re asking i would i would also say that if you you may not receive information back from every place that you send it out just when you send out an rfp not everybody responds um so you know that’s something else to keep in mind and john is absolutely 100 correct that more often than not i would say that um the the council used for special education is a different firm than the council used for uh labor personnel uh student type issues

37:57 so what what i’m hearing then is that there’s that we draw up a letter that the motion would be more that we draw up a letter um and send it to what sounds like a hand the handful of firms out there and see who replies

38:19 i would go along with that as well so can i get a motion to have megan and myself work with john to write up a letter to be sent to

38:44 the legal firms on masc’s list of recommendations recommendations so moved so moved david moved second megan second

39:02 all right so any discussion around that sorry can you remind me how many approximately how many are on that list is it like 10 or 30 or it’s going to be well it’s going to be more in line with 30 but when you look at the list there’s going to be places you obviously are not going to send because they are attorneys that are employed by the school district so you know like a big school district a big city might have their own attorney that they hire uh specifically for them and is not part of a firm so they’ll i mean that so you won’t send to the entire list and between john and your business manager um they’ll you know they’ll be able to look at the list and determine who’s the appropriate

39:47 where the appropriate places to send it are okay all right because some of them may not even be regional enough they may be based out of springfield massachusetts for instance or not in an area where they could serve us too i would guess so that that would that would be great to get that recommendation from michelle and john

40:08 and and i think that just to sort of say if megan and john and i have any issues where we feel like this needs to be brought back to the committee at our next meeting then i won’t hesitate to do that

40:23 and sarah do we do we need the committee approval on that letter or can we kind of get that sent out and maybe have some you know feedback anyway um by the 10th that sort of i think in the way that i stated the motion my hope is that we can get that letter out and then start to receive some feedback before the next meeting okay perfect and then if we get stuck we’ll we’ll send it we’ll hold it and get feedback from the committee okay i just want to go on the record that i think now is not a good time given the that one of the main purposes as noted by dorothy is institutional knowledge and no one right here now has an institutional knowledge and compa um

41:08 coupled with the fact that we are dealing with some um complex legal situations right now that they have already dug into as well as the fact that our union is already well-versed with negotiating with them i i just don’t think now it’s the time

41:33 and i have no problem you know reaching out to to liz and and filling her in on on this conversation and where our collective heads are at um as far as the the exercise that we’re that we’re undertaking yeah i think that would be good sarah i mean we have a good relationship with them and i think you know that um that would be a good idea i will do that all right so any other discussion pieces under that motion before we vote i don’t think you have a second yet uh i do oh okay i think so quietly

42:20 all right so roll call sarah gold yes emily baron yeah sarah fox no david harris yes megan taylor yes all right so that motion carries four to one all right thanks for your help with that dorothy sure all right so um that leads us to school committee internal communication um this is something that we kind of go through each year dorothy is usually around to help us out on this um so there were a couple of things in in our dropbox one is our current policies on how we govern um

43:07 sort of the operating protocols and then the next is a draft that john has put together in in how he would like to see things move forward um much of which is very similar if not the same but i think there’s just a little bit more meat to to what john has has put out from his desk so i will open this up for conversation did everybody get a chance to look particularly since the one is is you know our paul our current policies but particularly john’s information over

43:53 sarah do you mind if i just set the table a little bit for the newer members about operating protocols you do okay so i you know it sounds like you’re not ready to hear my big spiel and powerpoint but um particularly when they’re new members of the team which i mean obviously you have a couple new school committee members and a new superintendent so you have a different team that’s working together um and it’s always a good idea to have a discussion when that turnover happens about how you’re going to operate and communicate together i often think of it as once you’ve determined how you’re going to work together then you can actually dig in and do the work um

44:38 because you’re not thinking about you know how does this work how do how do we get things done you know how you’re going to get them done so you can get them done so we recommend as you have done in the past that you established a set of operating protocols and have that discussion about how communication flows before the meeting at the meeting in between the meeting so that you can work together effectively and have that same understanding you have a couple people that have come on not working with the committee in the past you have john coming on who is coming from another district has different experiences and may make different assumptions about how that operation and communication happens differently than

45:24 it happens in marblehead so that’s and so even though you have established operating protocols now is really the time to look at them and and say are they working for us do we want to make any changes um and are there areas that the operating protocols may not have been working for us as effectively as we want so we want to edit or add to those protocols so that’s my that’s my setting the table and sarah i’ll throw it back to you

45:56 so thanks dorothy so if you if you want to go ahead and and do the presentation that would be great sorry okay so kind of you’re off for it well and i’m gonna what i’m gonna do really quickly let’s see if this works yep okay so uh

46:15 uh let me see if it’s working right from my end here

46:26 you still see it yes okay um something in that share did not work the way i expected so we’ll see what happens when i try and forward here so oh it’s not gonna work hang on sorry

46:53 okay i got it sorry about that okay so i always start my presentations with just having you think big picture um and if you think about what is the overarching mission of the school committee what would people say just throw out some thoughts well clearly to hire the new superintendent or okay to hire this superintendent evaluate the superintendent

47:26 i think that that you know to set policy maintain policy that reflects the value of the district absolutely absolutely um i’m going to take this right from the ms masc from the school reform act to hire the superintendent we have some additional responsibilities in regards to the assistant superintendent special education director school business officer in legal counsel we develop and dictate policy we set goals and standards for the district the superintendent ourselves and we review the school improvement plans we set the district budget and we are the employer of record for collective bargaining all right

48:12 um so a night a very nice recap um so when we think big picture think of everything that you talked about fits under that umbrella according to the national school boards association the overarching mission of any school committee is continuous improvement in student achievement so um student achievement as you define it for the students in marblehead not just test scores but what do you want them to know and be able to do and have accomplished once they cross the state at graduation so that that’s big picture and all the things that sarah outlined that others of you talked about fit under that umbrella um taking those responsibilities seriously and doing them well is the way the district runs

48:58 effectively in that pursuit of student achievement so we talk about um the we talk about the school committee and the superintendent together being the governance team that needs to be able to work effectively in that pursuit of what you want for your district your district goals and that ultimate goal of of continuous improvement in student achievement and part of that working together is understanding that there’s different roles for the superintendent and the committee that both have a leadership role this committee from a governance viewpoint and the superintendent from the management viewpoint managing the day-to-day operations of the district so the superintendent is going to come to the school committee with

49:46 recommendations on goals on policy and budget su school committee deliberates over those recommendations makes decisions and hands it back to the superintendent to implement the decisions that the committee has made so this committee is thinking about those big picture questions of what and why um how much um superintendents thinking more maybe think of it as tactically how does the work get done who does it when does it happen where does it happen particularly at goal-setting time and think sarah gold brought this up when i was asking that question that the school committee is um the bridge between the community and the superintendent bringing the vision and values of the community to the table

50:33 conversely this the superintendent is the bridge between the staff and the committee so bringing the needs of the staff to get the job done and those two things come together as you’re deliberating and making your decisions at the table both sides have the responsibility for promoting trust and mutual respect in that relationship and when it’s all humming along well then you have the trust of the community too so there’s also a difference between being the committee which only exists when there’s a properly posted meeting or being an individual member so outside of a committee meeting you have no authority unless it’s been specifically granted to you by the committee so you might have liaison responsibilities subcommittee responsibilities the chair has

51:19 additional responsibilities but other than that you’re really just another man on the street however as a member of the body you certainly have the responsibility to come to meetings prepared to contribute to and communicate to the discussion um at uh community particularly about the vision and goal questions that um or the decisions that are made ask those critical questions i think we all know that the best decisions are made when multiple viewpoints come into play um and um those critical questions can be asked and when those uh different viewpoints come into play and sometimes the vote isn’t five zero

52:05 um then the committee member should support the decision of the committee that doesn’t mean changing your mind doesn’t mean saying oh yeah that was right but it does mean not getting in the way of the of the decision moving forward and of course everybody needs to be dedicated to the work on behalf of students the committee is exercising its authority through the votes it takes through the meetings governing through policy making sure that the having the fiduciary responsibility to make sure the financial resources are used appropriately engaging the community and the work of the schools sustaining that relationship and the employer of record and the collective bargaining

52:51 and this slide was already very well um articulated i think i think it might been sarah who went through taking that what are the responsibilities of the school committee so far as being the municipal legislature for schools um going forward you know according to law and regulation so that gets us to thinking about you know that sort of setting the table of where the responsibilities lie and how you communicate and make that collaboration happen um gets us to the discussion about operating protocols you’ve done them um in the past so you know that there they are that set of ground rules that’s created and maintained by the committee and periodically revised um again enables you to work together and

53:37 you can also use that document occasionally for self-evaluation are we following our protocols i mean in a way that’s what you’re doing this morning you’re looking at your protocols and finding out are they working for you or do you need to be adjusting them so i’m gonna pause my i’m gonna stop my share here um because i think that probably we’re ready to leap into the discussion of the of the two documents that you have in front of you any questions before we leap into that discussion though

54:10 that was a good over overview dorothy that um i like those uh my venn diagrams yeah i love a venn diagram so you know just a good refresher i think

54:23 so one thing i i also found on um from the misc that that pertains to this that i think really summarizes our duty the best it was so well written is it says finally the school committee represents the heart and soul of the community and its conscience as well as when it comes to public education um citizens look to the board for guidance and to personify the best qualities of the city town or region the obligation to fulfill these standards is an unwritten but important standard that is so yeah excellent so if you’re looking at

55:09 um i wonder if it makes sense to quickly go through the operating protocols that you have in place right now and particularly people who have been on the committee um to talk a little bit about you know how they work for you and if they’re working for you does that would that make sense sarah sure yeah okay so is there any way you can put that up on your screen well she’s doing that i just want to apologize that occasionally i have a head little head pop onto the screen

56:16 perfect so perfect so dorothy would it be best if i read through this or is that silly no i think why don’t you i what i’m thinking a little bit is um and i don’t think you can do this as a split screen um but and john you’re probably most familiar with the one with the document that you expanded on some of these things um i’m wondering if in reading one bullet if we cross to the other document um i’m just i’m just looking at this first bullet conducting um we shall conduct business through a set agenda tied to district goals i noticed that in john’s document bullet 2 covers the same thing and expands it a little bit more

57:02 yeah and i feel as though in john’s document that number one and number two are actually the ex like both kind of expansions on that first bullet yep yep so we acknowledge that a school committee meeting is a meeting of the school committee that is held in public not a public meeting and we shall conduct business through a set agenda that should be connected to district goals emerging items shall be addressed in subsequent meetings through planned agenda items unless it is determined by the school city chairperson that it would be detrimental to delay the issue until a subsequent meeting request to add items to an agenda shall be made to the superintendent or the school committee chairperson in accordance with the law now correct me if i’m wrong but we are a public meeting we’re not a public hearing which means it’s not a free for

57:47 all and people can’t talk out of turn and without the depression of the chair or during public comment absolutely correct by by law we are a public meeting yes okay but the different i think the differentiation here is it’s a meeting held in public that’s the public meeting not a meeting with the public which would be a public hearing yes no that’s that’s like the term i was just looking for was that to clarify with that it’s not a public hearing yeah so maybe that needs to if we’re thinking about this kind of as a draft with as we’re discussing it today than to kind of stew on it this was this is how i saw this so we’re discussing it today stewing on it and then it’ll come back for further discussion and a vote

58:34 offensively at a subsequent meeting um maybe that sort of a clarification that needs to be made

58:43 so awesome this would be a policy change doesn’t this need to be read twice in a public meeting before we can vote on it so what um i was going to answer the wrong question so i’ll be quiet

59:04 yeah i think it does because if it’s a policy if it is a policy change because these are our operating protocols then yes so we often talk about protocols as not being coded into policy because you want it to be a flexible enough document that can change fairly easily not to say you know don’t follow the procedure of making sure that you deliberate you know that you have enough time to think about it before you vote and you also don’t want to vote at a workshop um generally there’s no votes taken there other than what is expected on the agenda um but um

59:44 so we talk about it as being not like buried in your policy manual but a little more front and center and also being something that’s a little bit more flexible than you think about policy with multiple readings and so forth um so that it can change as committee members change or as you see a need to tweak and change the document we also talk about it being

1:00:13 not not getting so long and like a big rule book that it becomes sort of burdensome to try and follow but to put those important things out there um succinctly so that you can keep it front of mind okay okay yeah i think also

1:00:37 we did we did work through these over the years i believe and make some edits

1:00:47 yet at davis point i think that if i if i recall these were worked on for about two years by the policy committee with conjunction um with masc and i wonder if in the if if there’s an area of our current operating protocol that isn’t working for someone if maybe we just talk about that area because personally i think that they’ve been working well i i would i would agree i mean i think so is that the expectation it’s just you know we’re reviewing it for the purposes of the committee and dorothy is is you know help helping lead us through this discussion but um i i would i mean i’m open to suggestions uh for people that might want to um

1:01:32 you know smooth them over or make some recommended changes but i’m i’m good with how we govern i i think um i think they have served us well and um maybe we don’t need to make any changes i’m gonna i i am gonna push back a little bit on that one um i think as dorothy said we are a new team at this point so we’ve got a new administration for the most part we’ve got new members um on our committee and i do think this is a point where we should be not necessarily changing whole scale but tightening up how we work especially because we’ve kind of had to be a lot more unstructured over the past 18 months and

1:02:17 now we have the ability to put that structure back in place so that we’re working as effectively and efficiently as possible um so i think for that reason it’s worthwhile again tightening up what we’ve got not changing whole scale but just kind of clarifying um where it makes sense and i think what um this piece that john’s kind of put in draft form does a good job of that i would suggest maybe we don’t necessarily i mean it’s up to you guys if we want to go through every one but i think you know john’s kind of in charge from an operational standpoint um and i think it’s worthwhile like i said just making sure that we’ve got the structure in place to make sure we’re

1:03:03 really being effective and efficient with everybody’s time our time john’s time the administration the town and we’ve got that you know structured communication lines in place too now i would say i think i remember talking to you guys last summer and saying you know given what you had been going through it seemed like there were times when you felt the need to sort of step a little bit out of your school committee role into more of an administrative role and now with a solid administration and a path forward in place you want to make sure that you step fully back into that school committee role and anything that you felt the need to reasonably um step into that you step out of does

1:03:49 that make sense yeah it does and that’s my thinking on this as well is that it’s sort of that that and as well as megan’s is that you know we do have someone new who is permanent and and that we want to establish a really tight protocol for for how our relationships and our are built with with john and the administration and um and yeah so i think i think it isn’t it isn’t my intention at all to kind of throw out this other document um but possibly just to like megan said kind of tighten it up and possibly um expand on a on a few little pieces

1:04:36 and i think you also want to make sure that new members emily i just saw you waving your hand i think you want to make sure that new members understand and have a chance to say you know what does this mean um and how does it get applied

1:04:51 that’s what i was just gonna say is that um i you know looked over both of these documents and the newer one with the questions that i had you know this last week i was like oh this is how this works and as a new person to have this laid out so nicely and developed that i was able to get my questions answered by like how you know because being new how did like if someone talks to me who do i talk to just so i know exactly the order of under the communication what the school committee’s role is so i thought this was great and i think the more developed one has is better has more information and is in more

1:05:37 detail and can help us really understand what we our roles should be so this is the new the new guy and i had a similar appreciation even though i’ve you know got a couple years under my belt at this point it was it was helpful for me reading through these to sort of think oh yes yes that sort of that hashes that piece out that that kind of more broad bullet point and kind of you know delineates it a little bit more precisely and i don’t that was helpful to me one concern i have about the new document to be perfectly honest is i felt it you served some of the provisions in the educational resources right

1:06:22 and also um i i personally felt that it took the process away from the public and that there was you know one line about no questions that wouldn’t be answered in a public meeting that we’re not and paraphrasing that we’re not um sent ahead of time the purpose of of a public body is that this happens in public and if we’re kind of coming to these meetings with predetermined statements that that removes the public from having a role in this and seeing kind of how the sausage is made which is which is their right um i i don’t believe in any anybody that should ever have a gotcha moment um i don’t think that that should ever

1:07:07 be anybody’s goals but i do think that if through the discussion new new um i i do i do think that through the public process we should be able to ask questions that we may not have thought about several days in advance or whatever i i just don’t want to sorry i have concerns what specific bullet were you looking at do you know off the top of your head there i know you’re managing a couple things here if we can yeah i know i’m sorry we’re gonna also nicer breakdown

1:07:47 so i’m just looking for that as well if we could project the document on the screen it would probably be helpful and we can go through the issues it looks like they’ll be coming up on the screen in a minute

1:08:24 is that too big perfect no i’m just gonna i was just gonna ask you to make it bigger with my bags here

1:08:40 i felt that new business kind of was somewhat felt removed from this the idea of having new business on an agenda um so sarah which one is that just so we can all look at it uh it wasn’t that it was specifically outlined it was that um emerging items shall be addressed in subsequent meetings i like the way we have new business now um it works well as things unfold rapidly [Music] so i’m gonna push back a little bit on that or maybe you can give me a little bit more local context because that’s not an uncommon um bullet to have and it’s also sometimes an open meeting law issue if you have an issue that’s not on

1:09:28 the agenda and you begin to discuss it that can be a violation of the open meeting law because you have not advised the public that you’re going to understand that new business pertains to anything that did not could not have been 14 48 hours of advance

1:09:47 my reading of number two it was actually how we do it right now okay as long as there’s no change i saw that provision for new business things that cannot be foreseen with 48 hours in advance would be removed no that’s not how i read that at all that that emerging items you know that that at any point you know we there’s there’s always something that’s sort of like oh yeah that didn’t make it onto this agenda um we’ll put that on for the subsequent agenda but then there are those those every once in a while times where it’s like it says you know oh yeah that actually we actually need to deal with that and so that needs to be brought up in in new business yeah and i think you

1:10:34 know some of that is making sure that when an item when a topic comes up that the administration has enough time to prepare um to discuss it that that you know if there’s background that they need to be able to have a good discussion um that they’re able to gather that and make that presentation to you totally agree and just for context never in the last year was there ever a time that i think any of us you know approached film called up with a gotcha moment if you if you know what i mean by that but there were certainly times where things happened where it had to come up under new business um for whatever reason they’re limited in scope but they do exist yeah

1:11:19 many times that bill would bring something to me you know a day before the meeting and say this you know this came in and i want to mention it under new business and it was never shattering yeah that but that is covered here right because it says unless the chairperson decides it would be detrimental to delay

1:11:42 right okay um and then i’m sorry i just

1:11:47 lost that train of thought um oh actually i that’s what it was i um actually have heard a lot of feedback at various times that people are actually looking for more clarity in our agenda items more specificness of you know what we’re doing because often you’ll read our agenda sometimes and it i feel like it’s in code um a little bit for those of us in the know um and if you have the backup in our packet of what document we might be talking about it’s a little clearer but sometimes to the public some of these very high level ideas and we do have to keep it high level to a certain extent but i think that if we could have some clarity it would be helpful

1:12:43 and while i agree with four wholeheartedly i feel like writing it like that kind of diminishes all of our professionalism that we would need to be told to vote now personalities [Music] well i think i think we need you know as dorothy said that this is a flexible document and so it can change and it and you know on every one of any one of the summer retreats that i’ve participated in we’ve had a conversation around internal communication and policies and protocols and everything or operating protocols um but i you know i think that that i i actually like keeping that in there because although you know no one on this current committee may struggle with that you know we don’t know

1:13:29 you know three committees into the future what may be happening and that i think it’s a good one to put to keep on there but as dorothy noted this is something that each new committee should review themselves so i think we are designing this for this committee and if people feel that each other are voting that way that’s okay but i i personally have respect that all of you are voting based on the decision and not on personal analysis or alliances so i just i not a fan i’m just going to say this of group wordsmithing um but i do wonder if maybe personalities isn’t quite the word and i think that there’s also something

1:14:14 in here about not voting on uh bias or there’s another yes so maybe something else that covers this on the current um on the current policy that we have or the protocols that we have it says school committee members will engage in open-minded respectful debate vote our convictions avoid bias and will support the decisions of the majority of the committee so maybe that may be i think that’s perfect just use continue to use that

1:14:49 john feel free to pipe in at any point because you know you’re as much of a part of this as we are

1:14:58 um so to avoid either credit or blame i will share kind of how it came to be um i reached out the bill and asked is there a protocol for communication is there a process document and he shared that that had been a conversation and that that was one of those gotta get twos that in the midst of everything that was happening they didn’t get to um so i asked him do you have an example of something and so bill sent me something from triton from beverly and from acton-boxborough and i did kind of a compilation of all three documents and to be honest i wasn’t aware we had an internal

1:15:45 document so maybe shame on me um but in the conversation with bill it wasn’t referenced and so yeah i might have been able to use it to augment so um i am not married to this document that i put forward i produced it in an erroneous belief that one didn’t exist and so if what exists you want to change modify edit i’m happy to be part of that process but what i produced for the committee was in thinking that we needed to establish gotcha gotcha and thank you jen this is not at all you know poking at anybody we’re just working through you have done a tremendous amount of work in

1:16:32 your first three weeks and i don’t think anybody is is sort of impressed thank you everybody keeps talking about this new superintendent i can’t wait to meet him i was actually at another district that had hired their uh i think you guys um completed your hiring process prior to everything shutting down correct another district that hired their superintendent um ended up doing some of the last interviews remotely and then when everyone was at an event masked um the with face masks on so the chair went up to someone and asked if they were a town official and they said no

1:17:17 actually i’m your new superintendent so there you go so so well i i would like to just say i think um once again you know thanks for for the work here and always trying to improve upon this so so there’s there’s the old protocols and and maybe it’s great that john wasn’t uh influenced by those or um but they do line up and then there’s some additional clarity and i would also agree with dorothy that i think you know protocol versus you know a set policy and you know numbers of readings and so on

1:18:02 and so forth but it i think it would it’s probably we’re not going to vote on this and there’s an opportunity for you know the rest of us to uh look through this and identify any specific items that we might like to talk about at our next meeting [Music] and then maybe come to agreement yeah i cannot can i make a suggestion um given given that particularly given john’s um confession i guess that he didn’t know that um the protocols the ones existed i wonder if it makes sense for a couple of you who might volunteer to take what you have take what john did

1:18:49 figure out where you want to expand some on some of the bullets with the new information that john put forward um and then come back to the committee with a draft document and that sounds like it might be the efficient way to do things rather than um trying to wordsmith this as a group of a large number of people yeah i think that makes a lot of sense uh that’s a brilliant idea i would love to be a part of that group okay good to know um and i think i think that definitely makes sense offline to do that bring it back because i think you know obviously the we sort of moved things around as far as what you were presenting today dorothy um and so we still have some communication pieces to discuss so i think this easily fits

1:19:35 along with other ongoing conversations that will come up on um on agendas in the future during this summer um so i think that makes perfect sense that we’ve got it out there we can all we’ve got a little discussion behind it we can all ruminate on it and then a few of us can meet and kind of combine the documents and bring them forth to the committee at a later date sir is the intent though that we would kind of be able to wrap this up this summer yeah i that would be my intention that would be the goal yeah okay yeah and i think again since we’ve seen both and had i think a decent conversation about both obviously we didn’t get all the way

1:20:21 through um but i think you know we can do that and offline um that we can absolutely move to do that so again i’m sorry i’m sorry if i’m not like catching it i’m sorry but would the intent be that at our next meeting whoever is working on it will have sent it to the committee and we can you know vote voice any concerns and then vote my intent would be that assuming because in my head the next the next meeting i think we’ve got set for the attempt um that that has that that larger communication of how of public communication as well and just kind of really trying to move us forward in the right directions that that when that

1:21:06 occurs when that conversation occurs this comes back so in my head that is occurring on the 10th um and so as long as it stays there then yes this this stays there and i guess you know we can have a conversation too if so for whatever reason that larger conversation has to be pushed off you know that that since we’ve seen this already we can keep it on that agenda

1:21:36 all right i hear nothing so we will move forward

1:21:43 all right dorothy thank you so much um because i think that that brings us to the end of what we had asked you to help us out with today uh all right yeah and feel free to stick around um but we understand that you are also very busy so feel no need to stick around as well but we do always appreciate your input very much well and you know i enjoy working with you and anytime i can provide some input and value i am more than happy to do that well i think we’ve already got you set up for the next meeting as well um you know my guess is that we may need you at least one other time okay sounds good sounds good all right thanks dorothy okay i will see you on the 10th sounds good thank you

1:22:29 thank you thank you bye going to stop sharing my screen okay and then that will move us on to the much awaited superintendent report on re-entry planning and the update on that

1:22:46 so thank you um and i think i would be remiss not to lead with there is no one more than i that wants to open all of our schools and invite all of our children back to be in classrooms in front of teachers on the athletic fields in the chorus room playing in the band what the work put forward in front of us by the commissioner is how can you do that safely and so we have been working um [Music] feverishly i think would be a good word um over the last several weeks um in the committee structure which i

1:23:32 think is serving us well looking at what does fully in person look like what does the hybrid model look like and what does fully remote uh look like we have been keeping the public abreast of all of the work that we’re doing the backtogethermhd.com website um kate thompson has been [Music] a new superintendent she is updating and posting documents and coming in with her iphone and doing the video snippets and uploading those to the website so i don’t think that anyone could suggest that we are not being very transparent in our work i

1:24:18 i i will say i do not see a path for us to return to all in-person instruction um the uh the department and the commissioner issue update and documents every other day there’s another call with commissioner tomorrow so a new document of 15 pages about coveted responses what do you do with transportation how does this impact food service and so as we get that information it looks less and less likely that we could bring everyone back safely in person and maintain the six foot distance

1:25:05 the principals have done an incredible amount of work measuring buildings looking at capacity repurposing spaces and yes we could bring people back with the three-foot distancing but more to health that’s not their recommendation and the more that we learn it doesn’t seem the safest alternative so the six foot distancing is really what we’re using as our benchmark which all but eliminates the possibility of returning everyone to in-person instruction um we will be posting all of what i’m talking about today later this afternoon the memo that the school committee got to the

1:25:51 backtogethermhd.com website and then i’m going to go on what i’m calling listening tours um i’ll have a staff session tomorrow from one to two uh family uh parent and family uh session six to seven and then two more sessions on thursday again we’ll post all of that information um and so you guys have the data in the statistics in person and hybrid um while approximately two-thirds of our families would like to go back in person our staff are not at that place and so a hybrid model i think really makes the most sense

1:26:37 and man murphy who is a blessing to me every day has done an incredible amount of work with the teaching and learning uh committees the pre-k to six the seven to twelve and they have come up with really creative ways to cohort students uh to get them back into classrooms safely and so what i provided you was schedules for the pre-k to six model and when we talked about bringing people back in hybrid models there was no real clear winner with you know 45 families saying let’s go every other week 48 saying let’s do the every other day

1:27:22 41 saying what about a morning and an afternoon and in man’s brilliance and work she was able to get a variety of each of those approaches for returning students in the cohort model to in-person instruction so for the pre-k to six model students will be in a cohort on a two-week rotating schedule so that over the course of ten academic days they will have been in front of their teacher five times for approximately four hours each and then when students are not in the face-to-face instruction

1:28:08 they are in a remote learning but each school will have a remote learning liaison each cohort will have a professional that will interface with the students in remote learning they are really breaking down those schedules to make sure that the lessons we learned from last spring or what didn’t work in remote learning are addressed for families in specific a specific schedule set times attendance requirements grading so many of those pieces that were missing elements and really a source of frustration for our families are captured in the hybrid model

1:28:54 and then uh you have the middle school hybrid model where students are either in a morning session or an afternoon session and so those students are coming in uh for approximately two and a half hours each day either in the morning cohort or an afternoon cohort the high school similarly has a cohort a and a cohort b that meet in a morning or an afternoon session um as i roll this out i want to caution people that this cannot be a zero-sum game it’s all or nothing because i know people that want to go totally in person and people that have to stay totally

1:29:40 remote feel passionately about those and this is where i think the hybrid model which i will concede initially was the most confusing to me i was like i don’t see how that will work and man in her committees have just done great work and compromise because nobody on the committees said no it has to be this way people came to the table with passionate feelings and ideas but then as educators spoke parents were like oh we didn’t think about that makes sense parents added something educators were like oh that’s a piece we might not have considered and so nan in her work with the teaching and learning committee they’re not meeting once a week for an hour they’re meeting regularly for

1:30:28 extended periods of times so as we’re rolling this out she already has both groups at the ready so as questions are posed today and we’re listening to community input if we have to pivot and make some adjustments um she’s ready to do that work um i think i’ll pause there and open it up uh for questions that we can’t return to 100 in person instruction i think that it is highly that we will have to go remote at some point or points in the coming year and the work that teaching and learning has done to establish these schedules makes that pivot so much easier there’s

1:31:14 a structure there’s a process there’s systems so that if there is the need to close down a school or close the schools we can pivot that remote learning model given this infrastructure thanks john thanks john sarah yes can i just ask one can i just ask john to clarify that last statement yeah absolutely is that all right because um john i guess what i’m trying to understand is i can see it in the pre-k to six because there’s remote learning happening during that day anyway through the hybrid models but can you talk about that transition from a hybrid to remote for both vets and the high school yep the teaching and learning committees

1:31:59 are working on um i think fairfax to this earlier the sausage being made on that but the structure of the timing that kids could be they know that they’re either going to be to face or in remote in that two and a half hour block so they’re putting structures in place that has to be all remote students would know that they are responsible during those times so it’s more the schedule piece of it so technically when they’re in person um you know for the high school the monday tuesday thursday friday or thursday friday then that would just be they’d be virtually but at those same times for those same classes i believe that to be true and i would uh ask him to jump in if i’ve missed that

1:32:48 that is that that is the plan there is talk about you know teachers wanting to maybe um extend some of that to to broaden a topic or something but that would all be planned within the cohort of the teaching team so that the teach the the content is equitable so so ultimately the answer to your question is yes that that schedule would would remain the same okay thank you

1:33:19 so i’ve had the um the honor of getting to send the k through our pre-k through six opening committee and i just wanna um let the my fellow committee members here know how impressed i have been with um the entire process and as you all know i have a high bar so um i felt it has been so collaborative and and every piece of the team um was worked together and also i feel that all of our stakeholders are represented um there there’s people from every mindset and it’s always been respectful um but it’s also been very honest so teachers have been honest about

1:34:05 what their hurdles were last spring um because they existed for teachers and parents and students and parents have been really honest about the hurdles on our side and it’s really been this idea of let’s identify what didn’t work so we can get to what works best and it’s been a really great process and we’ve all acknowledged there’s no perfect solution because the perfect solution would be that every child is in a school safely and due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control as john said that’s just not possible so i truly believe we’re getting to the best non-perfect solution if you will um and i felt really good about the process thank you very much for saying that and

1:34:52 i was remiss in talking about the in person because i know that people feel very strongly about that um in the north shore superintendents round table they put out a survey and not one of the 19 school districts responding we’re talking about a fully in-person model it just is not feasible so most are looking at the hybrid and there was just information out of one of our neighbors today that they’re pushing to open fully remote and so people continue to be all over the spectrum what i’m very proud about the work we have done here is the compromise is getting students back into buildings in front of teachers attending to the uh academic and social emotional needs

1:35:38 emotional needs emotional needs without jeopardizing that

1:35:48 david um i know you’ve got a work meeting that you have to hop off for and if you have do you have any questions or comments or anything you want to weigh in on before um before you have to hop off hopefully you’ll be back you know but i don’t know where we’ll be at on the agenda at that point right no i mean just so since we’re here hearing this now just a um a summary of what while things could evolve and continue to change what what would the next steps be john is something

1:36:25 yeah we’re doing a staff listening session tomorrow for them to give feedback on the hybrid model um and then we’re opening it up to community to ask questions if we need to we will make revisions and then on friday the department wants every school district to have submitted their name very purposeful in their language draft preliminary school reopened by friends right we will then have 10 days we’ll put out another survey to constituents and be much more pointed in terms of what is what will you elect to do will you be coming back from the hybrid model or will you stay in remote learning will make modifications again

1:37:12 and then the commissioner has an august 10th date where schools have to submit a final school’s reopening plan if history of the last two weeks is any guide and there’s a call with the commissioner tomorrow i anticipate desi uh sending a lot more guidance and a lot more information particularly once they get the preliminary draft plans from every district i think that’s going to be very telling to the department and they might be able to step in and be more directed in their approach one thing before you lose david because david always has a really good vision on the financial aspect of things um as it pertains to this um and i’ve i’ve voiced

1:37:59 this concern before where we will be in this hybrid more of a half day model i just want us to be brainstorming about some of our re-evolving accounts like kindergarten tuition and how budgetary-wise we’ll we’ll manage things so david’s always a good mind on that so i wanted to put that up out there before um we lost him so and there is a document i think it was added really late um that and michelle that’s one of the reasons that we sort of took the agenda out of order so that michelle could come be here with us she was on another call so um you know again i don’t know if david will be on at that point but certainly after the fact can ask any further questions and i think that i know in the memo michelle

1:38:45 speaks to that so we can absolutely have her sort of you know give us a little bit more in-depth information on on that type of thing as that comes up in a little while

1:39:01 and then i see a lot of people doing questions one thing we did do is we came up with people’s likely questions um that john that we we we’re gonna give to john um and i will try to add all these on there so that when he does his listening tour that you you have them i just have to figure out a way to copy that from that piece and add it but a lot of them actually were once we came up with as a group man i think that chat saves as i as the recording saves and everything after this i believe that chat saves so i will do my best i’ve not been very successful in sort of being able to navigate through the recordings and everything but i will do my best to get that to you yeah david and you can you can also drag and copy the chat right before you exit the meeting and cut

1:39:48 onto a word document yeah so sarah i won’t end the meeting until we’ve been able to do that so sarah gold in terms of the conversation now do we do you want to just jump into our own questions or is it worthwhile john and nan walking through each model how do you want to proceed here i think john um this is my opinion i think john sort of gave that higher level um it’s going to be posted afterward after this um so that the community has a chance to really process through it and then come to listening things um tomorrow tomorrow and thursday um as well as you know that the is it reentry at marbleheadschools.com john is that still

1:40:33 the email address yes okay um so that you know those questions can be submitted as well um so i think at this point it’s our we can ask questions

1:40:50 so one policy question i’ve had is um because so much of this is just it is is not something for us to get into the nitty-gritty other than as parents um one policy question is when we talk about the possibility with remote learning um particularly where some families will choose that from the beginning i think the idea is if we become all remote that that will be different than if families choose from the get-go um that they’re all remote where we have some staff i forgot the percentage i think john put it in the memo something like 50 was it 54 something like that of staff that was kind of preferring it and then we have some families that prefer to be remote for various reasons um

1:41:36 will will we be as a policy in marblehead requesting that there be a remote plan that our students here are taught by like in a cohort of marvel head students with a marvel head teacher um taught with a curriculum designed by by you know a marvel head educator or are we going to look at the policy of enrolling in one of these potential rollouts in the states

1:42:05 i think the quick answer to that is to be determined because the state still has yet to come out with what options would be available to districts with any specificity um there are there is an option that they call a playlist which resonates with me because there might be course specific and as a secondary person high school person that if you don’t have a local educator or you don’t have the local capacity for a course like that for a student to say okay i’m gonna do remote learning ap physics or i’m gonna do remote learning civics um but i agree with you star fox that there are going to be a number of marblehead educators that will be

1:42:53 in a remote learning model so we can cohort those students to have a marble head educator or professional as a point person now the state system might be robust and some families might look at it and say that’s great we’ll elect that but there would still be a local head educator or professional as a point of contact

1:43:19 john just to piggyback on that um so if a family chooses to be fully remote from the get-go and and you know and we and then as a district though it’s the it’s you know we’re in some type of in person um i agree with you on the when um because i i also think it’s a when not an if we end up in fully remote um much to my like cringe um but those families and i think this does depend on whether the state ends up and whether we end up buying into a state program but the families that are fully remote from the get-go do they have an ability when the district transitions into fully remote to

1:44:06 rejoin on that level or is that still kind of in the works or um it’s a great question and one that nan and i were working together this morning i really want to promote the idea of voice and choice i don’t want a family to feel like they’re locked into a system but then i want to make sure that we’re not um we’re taking educators and professionals into account that okay you had a cohort of eight and now your cohort is 16. so how we group students what the cohorts look like that is another positive for the hybrid model that might be missed is

1:44:52 class size in the face-to-face instruction piece is going to be around 10 and so that will the elementary piece is focusing on numeracy and literacy in the time that they’re in session and then in those remote uh days they will be focusing on other content areas of really focused instruction on literacy and numeracy in those face-to-face sessions and if i’m all over the map i apologize but there are so many moving parts and pieces that i remember something and i think you guys need to hear that so thank you for your indulgence no that’s a great point john um we’ve made it a lot in those those teaching and learning committees is what

1:45:38 a teacher can do with you know 23 students versus what a teacher can do with 8 9 10 light years apart um we talk about how important small group learning is well those chunks of time really are going to be small group learning and it’s going to be really exciting to see what can be accomplished during that time um and i think that it will be much more impactful um because listen i’m managing five kids every day it’s a lot different than managing two so um there’s that but i do i do feel that i totally that’s a really good point you made about how someone might want to take ap physics and we might not have an ap physics remote teacher so we’ll definitely have to work within those

1:46:23 constraints but for instance if we have the availability to do a remote cohort of you know sixth grade with a sixth grade teacher um and her use her typical curriculum i would as much as possible like to facilitate that model um i i think there’s a tremendous pride in marblehead about our educators in what they do and also i think it will be very helpful for those students that are remote to kind of still maintain that social emotional connection to each other to their friends it can be very isolating for these children i think um and so i think to still have a a class of um

1:47:08 students and a teacher that they know and love and particular projects because i know for instance we do a lot of marblehead specific projects that work with the state firmworks but it’s it’s a sense of community and home at elementary level that i think that would be a really great way to still connect those students

1:47:30 that’s part of the elementary model that i like is that every day begins with that engagement piece whether you’re in the hybrid model or whether you’re fully remote you are part of that morning time

1:47:47 megan go ahead um i’m just wondering nan i mean you and i talked about this briefly yesterday but just you know i’m trying to wrap my head around the model so if we can just talk about the pre-k to six model um in a little bit greater detail i would appreciate that um one thing that kind of jumped out of me was the number of hours of in-person teaching um versus total hours because i you know i get that they’re getting both during um you know during their cohorts but um you know if you can kind of talk through the rationale behind that um and again go through some of the other models that you looked at um in detail as well and the challenges

1:48:33 that kind of led you to where you ended up sure so we um started out

1:48:46 by just kind of scream i screenshotted some models that were being kind of shared around massachusetts as potential hybrid models just to kind of prime the pump when we started this work a few weeks ago and what ended up evolving is completely unique and personalized to marblehead public schools it is not something that we grabbed off somebody else’s website and ran with it it truly has been built from the ground up based on what the committee felt was best for kids um so to talk you through the the structure of the day they as john said it’s a two-week model so on

1:49:32 so on so on on week one if you are in cohort a you are in front of your teacher three times a week you come to school and you get direct instruction around literacy and mathematics from your classroom teacher you will leave school at 11 50 and there will be a remote component of follow-up connected tasks so the language you’ve used is remote learning extensions so there will be traditional homework or some sort of component that will help you for the to to con continue the learning for that time

1:50:18 the remote students are in school the same block of time from eight to 11 50. the learning for them will consist of logging on for morning meeting at 8 o’clock and when morning meeting is concludes they will then be guided by a professional that is in that session with them so at that point whether it’s a paraprofessional or a tutor that structured remote learning will be framed by that person an agenda maybe will be presented to children they’ll be a fluid a structured flow to the day or to the

1:51:04 time that they’re using whether it focuses what content it focuses on will be science and social studies

1:51:15 small group clarification follow-up in in some cases on literacy and math but it will be supported by a point adult during that time they too will have extension activities to complete independently and then the next day cohort b will be in front of their teacher for literacy and math instruction from 8 to 11 50. their cohort a friends will log on at 8 o’clock join them for morning meeting and then follow the same remote schedule as their peers did the day before does that help frame it a little bit for you megan

1:52:05 i can’t hear you got it i forgot i’d put it on mute um so that’s a good walk through and i appreciate that but can you also talk about you know again why you landed there versus some of the other models that maybe you talked you talked about like what are really the strengths here to make this work versus you know some of the other ones you may have got so teachers um teachers were very adamant they wanted to see kids every day they really did not want one day where they didn’t see kids they didn’t want kids to not be in front of a teacher more than three days they felt a four day rotation was too long to be not be seen by a teacher

1:52:53 the the concentration on literacy and math was another driving factor they wanted in person the the in-person instruction to to consist of those foundational skills so that was another priority put forward by our teaching staff and i think it was echoed by our parental um in you know partners as well in the conversation um the morning meeting was established to be part of a consistent piece of the schedule starting at eight o’clock to bring both cohorts together and just to provide the structure for students

1:53:38 whether you were remote or in person your school day consists of the hours eight to eleven fifty and so we felt that that would support families and students in developing sleep routines and consistency throughout their learning environment so that they knew when and who and where to be when they were remote and where and when and who when they were going to be in person okay so the consistency piece i think is one of the things i mentioned with you especially in terms of the schedule so having the three days on and then the

1:54:24 you know and then the two days on the next week especially for a younger set of children and so i guess that’s what i’m trying to understand like that that piece and then also um you know in terms of seeing them every day if you look at specifically the schedule for um you know the vet school where there’s morning and afternoon cohorts so you know i’m trying to wrap my head around why this schedule is very different from the others and the benefits that we’re gonna get out of it compared to those so like you know again i’m not saying that necessarily that schedule would work for the younger kids but again that’s still got them in every day it’s got consistency for the children it’s got consistency for the

1:55:10 parents they’re getting in-person instruction every single day so that’s the piece i’m trying to really wrap my head around so i’ve been with a piece here one of the considerations megan is our secondary students have a larger capacity to get to and from school themselves where our busing is more for our elementary set and to do a pickup and drop off and clean a bus to go for a pickup um we weren’t sure the results for that or if we had the capacity to do that

1:55:52 there was definitely a facilities piece too um i sat on the facilities committee and we talked about we asked todd his his piece and he said that information to men so even though there’s all these subcommittees they’re all very collaborative um at the administration level it’s been my understanding and my experience from what i’ve seen but um todd had explained that at the elementary level the idea of sanitizing and flipping a building in that short period of time when younger children tend to touch things more often was not going to be able to happen and he also couldn’t flip a bus and sanitize it that quickly so it had to do with maximizing safety

1:56:39 emily did you want to say something um yeah just um i’m just looking at the schedule and are you gonna like communicate with parents like every monday and remind them what group your child is in because i just see people are going to start showing up on the wrong days after at least at the beginning and then our family is going to be in the same cohort like if you have a second grader and a fourth grader will they be a so they’re on the screen schedule i’m just i feel like everyone’s kind of you know there’s so much going on that monday wednesday you’re always monday wednesday like if you’re monday wednesday didn’t it change

1:57:25 the next week so friday’s the only flip day you go every other friday but if you’re monday wednesday you’re always monday wednesday it’s your thursday you’re always tuesday thursday and then so you just have to think of like i go every other but that’s not what this says it says week one a it’s monday tuesday i mean monday wednesday friday week two your tuesday thursday yeah we we ended up going away from that sarah because of the teachers feeling strongly about the four days in between a cohort oh i didn’t remember that switch i thought because of child care we were trying to keep it the same yeah we did we’ve had so many conversations it’s hard to keep them all um in alignment but yeah

1:58:10 john to your point um that is why i think the commissioner has worked with the massachusetts teachers association to provide those 10 days at the beginning of school for staff professional development and communicating clearly with families what cohort you’re going to be in how to get information on safely entering the school and policies and practices and all of that so um i think we will be over communicating with people and that is work that the committees are doing as well to keep cohort families together so if you do have a fourth grader a seventh grader and an eleventh grader that they’re on a similar cohort

1:59:01 so i think one of the biggest concerns for me on on the little kids as a working parent and particularly one who pieces together a bunch of different jobs um i think i think this the piece where no week is the same and and so you know one week i would have to have one schedule and actually gonna have to have a different schedule um is tough is tough um it’s just really tough and i know you know i know that this speaks to this larger conversation this societal conversation around the fact that school is used as

1:59:46 daycare um but i’m even thinking about the ability you know to pull in my sitter and that would be flexing and moving um that it would it would make it so that my sitter has to be responsible for some reasonably heavy-duty educational pieces um and yeah i don’t i don’t you know i don’t want to do any gotchas or anything like that um that’s just kind of where my where my head goes on this oh and i think that’s that’s why we’re rolling this out and taking feedback that um there is not a perfect model right

2:00:34 in marblehead the model that we have put forward people want us to reconsider or reimagine um we certainly have the ability to do that the committees are continuing to work in this ban today with today’s announcement um and so we’re happy to look at them today is more about the the reality that we cannot safely bring 100 of our students back to in-person instruction and we are not going fully remote at this point which some districts are announcing so if the hybrid and again it will resonate with some that are hearing this that okay i can wrap my mind around the two-week schedule that they’re going to be in

2:01:21 session these days and for others whatever their job their family situation just doesn’t make that possible so that’s why i want to give school committee the opportunity to weigh in before this draft preliminary submission on friday yeah absolutely and megan can i just say one thing and i totally agree you know i i have spent the last few weeks on my own in my own professional capacity sort of you know trying to diplomatically say like that like similar to sarah what’s theirs that this whole situation stinks and so there’s no non-stinky way to handle any of this and so we’re being tasked with creating the options that stink

2:02:06 the least and then each family is going to have to pick which of those least stinky options stinks the least for them so that totally is where my head is at on all of this um and i and i’m fully supportive of that idea that you know until kovid is no longer you know here is our reality and then and that we’re all best to really wrap our heads around that piece so that we can productively move forward so i think a couple things first of all the these committees have been they have changed and morphed in and heard different points of view and then reconvened and switched around that’s kind of why i was confused and missed that change

2:02:52 um but i do think that you know what john said john’s doing a listening tour i think that we purposely came back and added an additional two meetings so that this week so that we can regroup with the information from the listening tours so i don’t think anybody is saying that any of this is final and all this feedback is excellent feedback and i agree um completely with you sarah that this is really hard for working families to secure child care and to um and to schedule life if you will um but one thing i want to point out is how amazing the communication has been so far um john and kate thompson have have been really phenomenal one thing i would request is when you talked about kind of figuring

2:03:39 out those cohorts during that 10 days um that if we could get communication out to parents as soon as humanly possible about what cohort their children will be in i think that you know there’s limited thoughts for childcare right now there’s much fewer people willing to kind of go into other people’s homes or there’s fewer spots at day cares it’s just it’s just limited um so i think the sooner people can kind of figure out what they’re doing the better so if we just keep this phantom with our communication um i think that that will be the important piece megan i’m sorry you wanted to say something yeah no it’s all right um so

2:04:24 john i appreciate you kind of framing it in terms of setting our expectations and laying out the work that’s been done and i have no doubt that everybody has worked like like you said feverishly i you know and it’s an impossible situation really there’s no there’s no great answer um i am very interested to understand the feedback from both staff and the community members so i’m happy that you’re doing those listening tours and you know um if i can listen in where possible i absolutely will because i think that’s an important piece to this to this process i do just want to follow up and again i’m not trying to beat a dead horse but i want to make sure that we have the information too but um man and sarah you mentioned issues not issues but challenges if you will around

2:05:10 the busing and the facility turn around so that’s the piece i would like to get more information on not necessarily today or tomorrow but you know as we kind of work through these plans if the busing is an issue i guess i don’t have an um i don’t have the data to make any type of opinion on the number of students that are bused how many buses do we have how would we lay that out in a safe fashion and if there’s a gap what is that gap and what what’s it gonna cost us so i would like to have a little i would like to have more information on that and also in terms of facilities um we def we absolutely have challenges there especially in our older buildings and especially for our younger students you know coffin being a perfect example but again if we’re saying that that’s a challenge how are we looking creatively

2:05:58 and out of the box to use spaces that are not necessarily purely classroom spaces and is there an opportunity to be utilizing thor those creatively and effectively and again i’m not saying it hasn’t been talked about but if i could get some clarification on that i would appreciate it and it doesn’t have to be here at all because i’m asking for it on the spot but you know as we work through this process i could get a better understanding i would appreciate it that stuff came up those questions came up questions of 10 i mean we when i say like we tried to skin a cat 27 different ways man facilitated a phenomenal discussion um and one of one of the pieces is and megan you’ll probably appreciate this more than a lot of people from the

2:06:43 budget standpoint is um we can say we can take half of those students and maybe put them in a tent or the library or this and spread them out we would have to double our staff because we still need to keep that ratio like eight to ten to one to get that spacing so where’s the money coming because our number one ninety percent of our driver is staff budget um staff our salaries so if we’re gonna add classes of children we need to add staff well one of the reasons i’m asking the question sarah is because um it was in response to my question of why can’t we have and again i’m sure this has been looked at i’m just trying to wrap my head around it now is you know if we compare it to

2:07:31 the other models for the upper grades this model for the younger kids pre-k through six does not have them in person five days a week so if we looked at it having them five days a week similar to vets morning and then afternoon the response was facilities couldn’t handle it so my question is is there a way so we’re not having to clean down every classroom in between those two cohorts especially in a school like bill it like coffin could we basically set up two classrooms so that you’re not having to go through and clean in between them so could you use the you know some of the rooms that are used for special education classes that might not be in this model the cafeteria whatever other spaces we have available to so that you’re not having to do that

2:08:18 cleaning in between so having done the walk through for facilities the facilities audit in the spring at our elementary levels every single space is used i mean sean’s literally in a closet because he gave his office to be used for another purpose um people are in what were designed as copy rooms and storage areas at village i mean there’s

2:08:43 like because we shut down bell so we maxed out all of our other schools for classroom space um i um i and we talked about tens but then the idea of safety came up because um it’s got health safety air quality safety but um unfortunately in the situation we all live in now we live in area places you know kids are behind locked doors for reasons right now um i um i to kind of go what along with what megan is saying i think it’s important maybe just to show everyone

2:09:29 like in detail why an everyday um in school for the pre-k to stick isn’t an option and just show just to make it clear and because i you know spoke to john yesterday and he explained it to me and it makes sense but if you don’t know the information you know people are gonna i think get frustrated and say well why not and if it’s all laid out clearly like this is why we can’t do it this is why this model was chosen it might help in just getting everybody on board so this suggestion there yeah good point emily can i ask a clarifying question um and then looking at some of the

2:10:15 schedules i think it makes sense if we if i hop over to the uh bets it when so cohort a’s in the morning on monday cohort b is in the afternoon um is cohort a in remote learning at in the afternoon or are they working on homework and just kind of existing as students exist after school um and you know then flipping you know each each day or is it or are they sort of attending but just in different ways each day

2:10:56 people have things to do there will be not like synchronous um sessions but they will be tasked with work to be done so that it isn’t just when your cohort is done right that yeah that synchronous piece says thank you john who didn’t use the word

2:11:20 one thing that we didn’t talk about but is it would have to be a school committee thing is is there an appetite for re-looking at the calendar obviously we’ll have to re-look at the start date because john will tell advise us what the new start date is going to be but in order to get as many days in as possible consecutively um is does it behoove us to look at the calendar and try to just do what the colleges are doing and maximize the learning while we can fully knowing that when the typical cold and flu season hits it could get worse

2:12:00 i think i think you know i think any option that is brought to us is on the table in my opinion i think if you know if that is where the direction that the administration starts to think makes sense then it should absolutely be brought to us um for a larger conversation

2:12:20 i will say on that just looking through the calendar because sarah was thinking you know could the calendar be adjusted too but bill did a really good job of keeping our calendar pretty tight um you know so there’s not a lot of you know historically we’ve had a lot of kind of broken weeks especially in the beginning of the school year it doesn’t look like we have a lot of those you know we’ve got a pd day here and there which maybe you know especially since we’ve got some extra training days at the start of the year we might want to think about how do we kind of structure that so it’s as effective as possible throughout the year because it’s different from when we approved this back in february but you know aside from that especially in the first half of the year it’s basically just you know federal holidays right well i think that’s what my suggestion

2:13:05 that we only go with federal holidays and i think that’s i mean i’m just looking through no through december right now aside from one professional development day in october that’s all we’ve got i think oh no we’ve got a hat we’ve got two half days for parent conferences so and i think i do think we had some more days off at the beginning of the year i mean i’ve got the calendar up right now i don’t see it but aside from you know the holidays you know what yeah we can have that conversation about the professional development day if that is something that we could recapture uh as a school day and say this a lot but i think i’d be remiss now to know joan miller being a thought

2:13:52 partner and a contributor in all of this work um not to be specific but i hear from colleague superintendents who are just at odds with their teachers association and i cannot say how appreciative i am of the collaboration of mba with me on this work it has been so impressive and so helpful in not making muddy waters even workier so i just wanted to put that out there yeah absolutely that’s a good point john thank you yeah and i think maybe this was already done but i think it the pd piece was sort of what was spinning in my head with the calendar as well and just making sure that where our pd’s

2:14:38 fall that it doesn’t end up impacting one cohort more than another particularly at that elementary level um but really in anywhere where we’ve got half days splits and that type of thing

2:14:57 emily you look like you want to say something no you’re okay i guess i’ll say it i i don’t know if this is where we should talk about it but um i know we kind of said the start date is still up in the air is that true can we comment on how we feel about that please um so i think starting so late in september is not the best idea in thinking that maybe we will have to go remote at some point in the winter that if we can get as i think someone had mentioned this get kids in school

2:15:43 school school as we can in the fall um and maybe spread like take some of those extra days and use them to switch to remote if that has to happen to use those professional development days there and then maybe just really use we could take a couple of them and be super efficient at the beginning of the school year to get everybody on board and then get the kids in school as soon as possible i feel like that’s

2:16:22 and i put a date in the memo uh that was erroneous it was just me doing some calendar counting if the state were to get days what would push it out and so that is not a proposed start of school date okay but i also want to be sensitive to making sure teachers feel that they have been provided adequately absolutely safely with students i want to find a balance between yeah the bad date that i put out in one day and i guess that’s um what i’m saying to make sure everyone feels good but then not to go too far i feel strongly um about giving that i think if we give those 10 days and they’re 10 really meaningful days of

2:17:08 professional development which i have the space in john and nana they’re going to be very impactful um that we are going to set our our teachers up for success and giving them tools and the know-how to use those tools to really teach successfully remote because what we saw is um in the spring and i think what we’ll see again is when a jump happens it’s not going to be slow most likely um we could you have another situation where your children go home one day and you find out they’re not coming back and that means that happens to a teacher too so i think that if we give them these 10 days and they have a robust program for

2:17:53 for professional development um on those for remote learning that we’re going to be setting them up for success which in turn is going to set our students up for success and we’re really going to maximize outcomes so again like it’s not ideal in any way shape or form for those 10 days to be blocked together um but i think given our current situation it is the best way to maximize outcomes because i think we’d be kidding ourselves to not acknowledge we will end up in remote at some point for some period of time but it could happen and most likely will happen suddenly i guess sarah just to follow up on that point one thing i do just wanna enough caution is too strong of a word but just to consider

2:18:39 is absolutely staff training is imperative especially in this environment but in my head i’m thinking that we will have to adjust and pivot as we move along and especially if we’re moving into a remote situation that i wouldn’t want to i would like to have some of those days so that as we make adjustments or pivot or new technology we’ve got the ability to use some of those training days at that point so that’s my only two cents on that um the other thing is i guess you know it depends on when the start date’s going to be but just thinking about students that get the summer services um i know two or three weeks might not seem like that long but for students who need those services it is very important

2:19:26 so i guess just understanding if there’s any room for kind of making sure that you know we’re not we’re not putting students at enough you know on a back foot when they start is there any way to continue those services a little bit longer provide something for students especially if we’re having a later start date eric and i are currently having those conversations megan because that’s what we’re looking at uh first day of school changing can we augment what we’re doing and yes why now to extend it so okay thank you so i think those 10 days also are an opportunity and i think i’m feeling seth thunder um but um it’s it’s an opportunity to kind of ready families too and um i wonder if

2:20:12 one of those days or part of those days could be about some type of workshop to train the parents on how to facilitate maximizing results on our end too because as a parent i felt completely enough i didn’t know how to use some of these platforms i didn’t really understand the adaptations i kept i kept calling bill and saying can we have another parent’s night do we have like a virtual parent’s night where like i get the little folder but virtually and they explain to me what’s going on um but we were all thrown into it so i wonder if we set that up instead of you know the third week of school the way we do parents night now that it’s during that period so that everybody starts off on the same page working together towards the common goal

2:21:01 yes i think that’s a interesting idea um run that through uh reopening especially as we look at the calendar for what that first day of school will be um i think the i don’t want to put something out there that we’re not going to be able to do but the child care conversation was something that nan and i sat and talked about extensively this morning that’s very much on our radar of how could we support families in an out of the box thinking way with the funding that we have and the resources that we have and the community partners that we have what sort of options might be there so i’m not suggesting

2:21:47 that we’re doing anything and i’m not suggesting that we’re doing nothing but it is part of the discourse that’s going on right now because we know that is a significant piece i will also say the districts that are announcing that are going fully remote that’s even more challenging for families because now they’re being told you know if they’re back to work which many of us are back to work that they’re going to be in need of five days a week week after week of figuring these schedules out

2:22:29 if i can circle back to um sarah may i go back to a question posed by megan yeah absolutely okay um both megan and emily were were trying to tease out a little bit more about how we landed where we did with the hybrid and i went back into my notes and i found a couple of key pieces to the the k through six model one um the am pm if we were to do two um sessions in one day in person for kids the blocks of instructional time would have to be reduced to accommodate getting kids in and out and then sterilizing and then back in

2:23:16 so that the teachers felt like they didn’t want to lose that instructional time by reducing the time in front of them and then [Music] another component of having them all in at the same time or megan your suggestion about having two classrooms set up where you’re in one room and then you go into the next room was around staffing and around having certified um teaching um the way that they had hoped to be able to roll it out and that that was a concern for teachers as well thanks man thanks man thank you

2:24:06 all right all right thank you is there anything else on this i just want to acknowledge that that everyone’s in mourning our educators are more in the way that they’ve learned to teach and love to teach our parents and our students are in morning morning for the way that they used to you know experience school and it sucks it actually just sucks there’s no other way but i do think that we are we are still on our way to the best of a bunch of not great options i agree with that completely

2:24:53 and i know for sure that everyone is working you know just non-stop on making sure that these plans are are airtight in the end um that you know that they’re changing that they’re dynamic um and i think it it deserves saying that you know what’s due to the state on friday is not what’s due to the state on the 10th and that you know there will be other passes at all of these plans um and you know i’ve i feel like i’m on like a pendulum with this whole thing that you know a month ago i thought one thing and then two weeks ago i thought a completely different

2:25:40 thing and now i’m back to this other thing but it’s but it’s a little changed as well so you know i can only imagine where in two weeks or a month or six weeks this is all going to sort of take shape and actually be put into motion um and then there’s an athletics committee which the biggest joke in town i swear is that i’m on that um fully acknowledged that um an effort and when i came to the first meeting i was like i’ve got nothing for you folks nothing to offer but i was so impressed and of course i had to jump in because i can’t keep my mouth shut but um i was so impressed at how they’re like all right same same as everybody else like goal is to get kids

2:26:26 in person if we can’t take kids in person how can we still give these kids these outlets um and i’ve just been impressed at the out-of-the-box thinking there too so i just wanted to put that out there all right all right well i will move us along if that’s where we’re at um so that that takes us then to the um financial piece of our meeting um and it brings us to our schedule of bills um it was a relatively significant

2:27:11 schedule since there it’s been a while since we’ve met um and i believe um in keeping with the way that we’re signing and everything everybody should have all of the schedules in their dropbox but that i think it was half of them were signed by me and half of them were signed by sarah since i was out of town um so is michelle is michelle with us at this point oh yes i see you michelle um so does anybody i’ll ask for the motion so can i get a motion to approve um the identified schedule of bills totaling 486 000 four hundred and sixty dollars and twenty seven cents

2:27:53 sarah did you say second okay so megan and then sarah seconded all right so does anybody have any questions on any of those because i know that just to point to is that a majority of those schedules were still in fy 20 and then some of them are fy21 as well and one actually got switched after we signed allison wanted to switch what pata came from and michelle gave a really great explanation on why that was happening and i felt really comfortable with it so great

2:28:31 all right well no further questions then i’ll roll call sarah gold yes emily barron yeah sarah fox yeah megan taylor yes david harris yes all right so that passes five to zero and that brings us to service and maintenance contracts um finance question of michelle before or because we waited for the finance question about the reopening that i had for her yeah so that hold on oh yes yes we do need to can we do the votes first and then michelle we get things out of order so that you would be here um so we’ve

2:29:17 okay so so we’ll can then can we ask michelle the questions on the memo that was dropped to us late yesterday at the end of that i think that’s where that makes the most sense

2:29:31 okay which memo did you want to discuss you know what for people who are sticking around on the call let’s do that right now so that we really take care of re-entry when we have the most people present um so the memo is uh financial streams right yes the kovid 19 related um lines okay yes um i received a couple questions last week about what we have available for covid related costs um so i put this together yesterday so that’s why it originally wasn’t in the packet it wasn’t planned to be there so i apologize for the weakness of it um but we have various pots of money which we will be able to tap into

2:30:17 to fund all of these various costs and um for the most part there are very few restrictions on what we can spend these money monies on as long as they are covered related um so announced back in the late spring um early summer the town was granted an amount of 1.8 million dollars at that point every single town department submitted what they thought was going to be their their rough estimate of cost between now and the end of december in dealing with this we primarily estimated our cost to be focused on ppe and sneeze guards and signage um so really that’s what we we focused on at

2:31:03 that time and our estimate was um 454 725 so that amount of money has been set aside by the town for um school needs related to covet costs but i should mention that the town administrator has mentioned that if our costs are are higher than that and higher than our available funds that we may be able to dip back into that bucket of money and be able to have some more of our costs covered by that 1.8 million because we surely don’t want to turn anything back at the end of december that we haven’t spent um the second amount on that memo that i listed and

2:31:49 these are all in the box um towards the second half of the memo on the one page is um elementary and secondary schools emergency relief grant this is the grant that was initially announced probably a couple months ago we refer to it as our essa grant and this is um in the amount of one thousand six hundred and twelve dollars the amount has been specific specified by the department of ed and has been released um we will be submitting an application of how we will be spending this um this funding and i do want to note that this is the only pot of money that is actually able to be spent over a two-year period so this this can you know does not need to be

2:32:35 spent right away whatsoever so i think we should be very methodical in what we determine we’re going to be spending this grant on and i’ll be working very closely with nan and john and and the team to determine um you know what what we’re going to use that for um the the second grant but third item on the funding summary is called the school reopening grant or the coronavirus funding grant this is based on an amount of 225 dollars per student and based on what we submitted for students back last october so we are estimating that we are going to receive 680 175 um this is also a grant it is not a competitive grant so we will

2:33:20 automatically receive this amount of money assuming we put an application in we just need to determine how we’re going to spend that money that application is also due by the end of august but does need to be spent by the end of december so we need to determine what we will be spending that on i have a feeling that a lot of that will be going towards technology um the third grant and fourth item fourth line on that um summary is the remote learning technology essentials grant this is actually a competitive grant there’s not a specific dollar amount that we would be eligible for but it is based on need um and in talking with nan earlier last week we’re hoping to be able to submit for this one we’re hoping that we are awarded it

2:34:06 because we certainly have some technology needs this grant does have a matching requirement but the matching requirement can be taken from one of the other grants or the town portion of that 1.8 million so certainly we do not have to have that man matching amount come from our operating budget which is great news because that’s usually how grants work so we don’t know what that amount of money is going to be but anything we receive through that grant will be greatly greatly um you know appreciated and used towards meeting our technology needs and then finally we have a budget line item within the school’s operating budget that we you know we established in in late june i want to say it was probably later half in june um

2:34:51 um um where we funded 168 699 dollars um and that can be used for any coveted cost whatsoever or can be used for non-covered costs but right now it’s in a covet related line i do want to mention that all of the state and federal funding sources cannot be used for any revenue shortfalls right now we have kindergarten preschool tuition in a revolving fund and we also have our food service revolving fund both of those funds will see a decrease in revenue of some sort shall we shall we operate in a remote environment once again so we could actually use that 168 000 to offset some of our our revenue shortfalls and the revolving

2:35:38 funds if needed otherwise we will have to um either dip into those fund balances detect depending on how much they are during the rollover which will happen later next month or um we will have to absorb that within the operating fund so all together um the funding that we currently have in place for covert related costs is one million three hundred ninety five thousand two hundred and eleven dollars um and and that basically is um the minimum we have available because we do have an additional additional ability to tap into the towns funds and we do have an additional ability to receive this technology grant so i think we’re in a pretty good

2:36:24 good position overall i mean certainly we need to go back now and look at some additional costs now that we we have an idea of how we’ll be reopening for example we are in the process of ordering desks for a few of our schools because we were using tables in those locations so we’re ordering desks right now the metco program if we’re having split days at the high school and middle school level we’re going to have additional busing costs so we’ll certainly need to take those into consideration we have additional staffing costs in terms of just the disinfecting and the cleaning so we are looking to hire a temporary staffing firm for some of those janitorial needs obviously we we had the ppe budgeted and that was part of the 1.8 million so we knew those costs early on

2:37:10 and then our technology needs our um you know can be almost limitless and really if we have these funds available we really should um you know focus on what we need to to make a great learning environment and give us all the tools to our staff and students so that we can do the best job possible

2:37:32 if you have any questions feel free to shoot away it’s all in summary thank you very much david did you have questions or are you good no i was just saying that’s a great summary it clarifies a lot of things we’ve been hearing so so thank you very much for that and um yeah that was really helpful sarah go ahead thank you so um my my main concerns for finance is mostly these um revolving funds because as you noted we can’t draw for la off these other grants for lack of um revenue which which they would in count as so um the activities fees will also i would assume be down um

2:38:19 that’s one thing to look at um the food service the kindergarten i i think that we my biggest my biggest concern to be perfectly honest is the kindergarten and pre-k tuition um the kindergarten tuition i think is 450 000 and i think we need to be prepared that given given the reality that we’re going to have very limited if anybody enrolled in full-day kindergarten so we we really need to take a hard look at that um because we can’t pull that from those grants um and then also the transportation piece michelle are we are we getting any numbers in yet for our out of district placement transportation numbers because that’s a big driver

2:39:04 big driver big driver whereas they’re not going to be they’re going to have to change how they transport and how many children at once i have to assume their their costs are going to climb well we are looking at um we had a transportation subcommittee meeting last week and eric was eric and peg were focused on looking at the special ed transportation piece we’re also looking at some in-town transportation that we were providing to special ed students that were not required so we do expect we’ll see some you know some savings there it certainly won’t cover a huge amount of increased costs but we are diving into that right now to see what that’s going to be

2:39:51 and then in order to minimize the additional expense of the medical transportation is there a way to coordinate with nan on the teaching and learning to see how we can line up those cohorts a bit better to limit the number of buses that we’re running back and forth in any given day yes that that will be our plan going forward at this point to see you know how the schedules go together and and what we can do um nrt had which nrt is our transportation contractor for our metco transportation and they had reached out to me a couple days ago to see if we were going to need additional buses i do not believe we’ll need additional buses but i believe we might need additional runs if we’re having split days so we will be investigating that with them and do we

2:40:37 anticipate any issues with delayed procurement for technology seeing as there’s probably going to be an increased demand for technology i would say um particularly the level at which schools are utilizing i am not um directly involved with the technology committee i am part of the larger committee um but i do know that we were seeing some backlog with chromebook orders chromebook availability um we had ordered about 200 chromebooks in june which are coming in or or have just come in i’m not sure of the specific status of that um but i do know that kathy was was trying to prep orders as quickly as possible to get them into the pipeline so while we may not be able to

2:41:24 secure as much technology as we would hope we’re certainly working on that and i think we’ll be in in decent shape john you had your hand raised at one point i’m just working with jasmine boyd perry on the metgo process and what medgo schools are doing um and she is in uh she was on the conference called nan for hours yesterday um and so we’re looking at the number of students and probably putting them in an afternoon cohort uh whenever possible um so that they are here or after school activities whatever those might be we’ll wait to hear from the athletics and activities subcommittee a little more on that

2:42:10 but we are working uh with jasmine on the command copies

2:42:21 all right all right anything any other questions from michelle on that

2:42:32 michelle do you foresee how many months could we could we sustain the full fiscal year with these with this 1.3

2:42:42 um unfortunately everything but the um 91 000 has to be used by the end of december so even even if it covered our costs we are not able to incur those costs past december unless the federal government makes some type of um extension to that are we allowed to prepay or prepar prepay you know additional transportation costs or anything like that or no no not if it’s a specific um periodic cost if it’s a if it’s an annual cost then yes we’re able to pay for an entire year but if it’s a monthly cost then no we are not able to

2:43:25 all right that takes us to the service and maintenance agreements contracts um there was one for the elevator maintenance michelle do you wanna speak and i and i do apologize i thought we were going to have multiple ones um we found a hiccup with our fire alarm maintenance bid so we’ll probably be putting that back out to bid um but that we are still investigating that at this time and it was also a joint contract with the town so i need to speak to the um fire chief regarding that so um today we just have one award of maintenance contract for elevator maintenance this is a contract jointly that we

2:44:12 participate in with the town and we put this out to bid we had previously been with city elevator their contract expired on june 30th and so we put this out to bid bids were opened on june 24th we received three bids one from city elevator the incumbent from woburn and the amount of fifty nine thousand ninety dollars um one from embry elevator also out of woburn for fifty one thousand four hundred dollars and one from united elevator company out of marshfield for fifty seven thousand seven hundred and ten dollars um so the low bidder is embry elevator um we have checked out with their references and actually in one of my previous districts we also used them so it was kind of nice to see a familiar name with someone who i had

2:45:00 um pretty positive experience with so that was encouraging and um we have discussed this with the town and made sure that they are also on board and the board of selectmen will be voting this at their next scheduled meeting but we do recommend that we award a one-year contract to embry elevator um in the amount of 51 400 and that contract will have two one-year options for um contract extension great so megan i saw your hand up um but i’m gonna just ask for the motion and then we can is that okay yeah okay so can i get a motion to award a one-year contract of the elevator maintenance contract to embry elevator

2:45:46 of woburn massachusetts in the amount of fifty one thousand four hundred dollars and to authorize the chair to sign the contract on behalf of the committee so i’m gonna do megan megan first and sarah second all right megan i know you have a question um michelle thanks for this is this is this a situation where we are required to take the lowest bid um typically unless hold on sorry dog’s pushing at the door i apologize we are required to take the lowest responsible bidder so unless we can prove that the lowest bidder did not meet our our specifications or they are

2:46:33 not responsible given some poor um poor feedback from references then yes we are we are required to take the lowest bidder okay and then you mentioned a contract negotiation as part of this so that’s just an automatic piece we don’t have to go out to bid for that again if we want to extend their contract is that how it works correct we have this if we are happy um we have the option to extend their contract for one year and then one more year but they do not have the option to back out basically it’s our call only okay and are there rate increases with each extended each expansion it’s not the same rate stays the same which is actually really good for us yeah that is good okay okay thank you you’re welcome any other questions on that

2:47:23 all right so it looks like we lost david again um i’m not sure what happened to him but um so that’s just the four of us so um sarah gold yes sarah fox yeah emily baron yes and megan taylor yes all right so that motion passes four to zero um

2:47:44 so that then takes us back around to the agenda items that we moved earlier so that starts us with the acceptance of donations um michelle do you want to take looks like that memos from you as well it is i was just writing memos like crazy the other day it’s good though get it all out yeah um so yes as we have discussed the previous meetings um we had a parent volunteer um samantha rosado volunteer to run a fundraiser for us for our summer meal program which is fabulous because the pre bill mccall deaf the previous superintendent was felt very strongly that we did not want to continue with the program if we were going to run into a deficit situation so our

2:48:30 estimate of the cost of the program after the state and federal reimbursement was a shortfall of just over 2 900 and within very short order samantha set up a gofundme fundraiser she also accepted donations through venmo and we also um received some checks and then actually other parents um donated their students lunch balances that were on account with us already so between those four um those four methods we collected a total of three thousand four dollars and seventy five cents which should cover our shortfall and um and obviously that was an estimate so we’ll be right in that ballpark of where we estimated the cost of the summer program would be and the

2:49:15 summer program is continuing to operate and be very successful so i i thank you all for agreeing to run that program because it it’s while it’s not serving a huge amount of families it is serving about 60 kids per day um those 60 kids really rely on it so it’s a wonderful thing that we can actually you know do for the community so um at this point we just need to officially accept that donation um samantha has sent out um thank yous to every single person who donated through her um and most of the couple of them remained anonymous when they came to us but i do have a list of the rest of the donations great thanks michelle and again a huge thanks to samantha rosado for everything she’s done for that uh for that

2:50:01 fundraising so i will ask for a motion to accept donations totaling three thousand four dollars and 75 cents from various individuals to be used for the summer meal program who moved sarah fox moved second emily second uh any questions from michelle on that we sent samantha a formal thank you note right um i don’t believe so but i will make sure we do if we haven’t already absolutely all right all right no questions just thanks again to samantha and the community and michelle just it’s a good one thank you um

2:50:46 moving into the fall what was the number what were we 7 000 a week it was that needed to come out of our operating budget to keep that program open yeah it was in the high sevens i want to say it was like 7 800 700. that comes from one of those line items that you’ve

2:51:07 no it would have to be a cost that we have to institute to address covert costs so existing staff wouldn’t wouldn’t be able to be um charged to any of the coveted lines all right all right we’re gonna need to look at where that comes from yes

2:51:30 i’m always the wet blanket i’m sorry oh these are the things i’m thinking just don’t publicly say a lot of times yes write that thank you note we might need to call her again all right i will call for the vote sarah gold yes emily barron yes megan taylor yes sarah fox yes and thank you again to samantha and everybody who donated for her so that vote passes four to zero all right so i think for our final agenda item today we have the district letterhead logo discussion so basically um john is is looking to order new

2:52:17 letterhead and new um business cards for the new people in the district and that we just sort of there was a i believe let me see if i can pull this up and i have a person’s name um

2:52:37 a visual arts teacher miss leah bortieri at the high school has put together some drawings with the marblehead m we all had two different logo a business card mockup and then two different letterhead uh mockups using the m with the hat on it um they look really sharp so what we are tasked with is we need to approve the business card template that was in the dropbox as well as approve one of the letterhead options so that they can get things ordered do you mind putting them up just to the public and see because there was definitely a lot of work that went into these sure i will start with the oh john’s got it just

2:53:24 everybody’s zooming on i will still look for it in mine so is her image when in color um my screen is really bad so it looks black and white what john’s holding up are we gonna have them printed in color or in black and white in color

2:53:45 all right let me share my screen this is the business card that will come up

2:53:56 so that’ll be the front of the card and then that will be the back of the card

2:54:04 can you go back up a second oh yes hold on oh sorry sorry that’s the front

2:54:17 i’m going to go down as well no i just was wondering because um john’s added all these extra avenues for communication that people are really excited about um would this be the appropriate place to like put some of them but probably not i think just the website is i was just thinking like i haven’t done business cards in a while so i don’t know if people put that stuff on them now i think everything that’s been developed is linked off of the so marbleheadschools.org so that we don’t have too many things going on on a business yeah yeah and that and that one will always remain the hub um regardless of what is linked okay

2:55:02 and then i will pull up letterhead option one they’re very similar i actually had to go back and forth multiple times to figure out what the difference was um is on this letter had option one there is a line underneath the artwork and writing and then nothing else

2:55:29 there’s no line underneath but there is a line in between the marblehead public schools and then from the desk of who whoever is coming from visually i like the line underneath i think it’s more um in line with what you see often

2:55:50 and it gives i think a clear definition between like the header and the body that was that was really the only thought that i had of sort of what was tipping me and i just was wondering if there was a any kind of trend on letterhead that where you know it’s pushing towards the line in the middle or the line underneath

2:56:17 [Laughter] [Laughter] the graphic person in me like is gonna get nitpicky like where it says the the logo on the left i feel like should it be equal to the size of what’s on the right

2:56:35 height wise slightly cool yeah it needs to be like the same yeah and should be yeah it needs to go up just a little bit john you’re the one that has to use it the most which one do you like the best right i’m just thrilled to be able to bring such highbrow conversation

2:56:59 i mean important decisions so much lighter and more relaxed than the re-entry conversation it is and it’s almost embarrassing so i’m gonna apologize to the facebook group that is going to secure me for having a logo conversation after the reopening dialogue i will say that i’m very appreciative of lisa in my office and the graphic design teacher at marblehead high school for collaborating on this and i don’t feel strongly about option one or option two i think that um they’re both very nice and the former letterhead had the town seal um and there was just not a uh pristine is the wrong word but a clear image of that it’s all kind of distorted on

2:57:44 on on our current letterhead and logos and stuff so like the kind of refresh that this offers yeah and i love that you used uh our internal resources wisely absolutely and i like that it represents the schools you know we are the schools within marblehead and so i like that it’s sort of you know i’m always a fan of the little

2:58:14 like ways to which you can kind of build the morale and kind of the i don’t know what word i’m looking for and branding yes the branding thank you

2:58:26 all right so it seems megan emily do you have something to say okay so it seems like the week so i’ll take i’ll ask for a motion on the business card first um

2:58:43 so i’ll ask for a motion to approve the business card template is that it that’s it so moved all right megan moved sarah second all right any comments or further clarity on that one all right i like it yeah so do i uh is there is it is there more of a um usually i’m like such a miser today um is there more of a cost to having the red background on the at the flip side the dual printing compared to what we have now and is it are we talking like

2:59:29 significant um like 50 more 90 more like is it significant um i can look into that i don’t know but i could almost guarantee that having um the two side printed would be more expensive and if we just out with the logo on the back um we’ll look into the cost and we’ll go with the treats well i mean if it’s like we’re looking at a thousand dollars but if i don’t know how much we print a year i have no idea like so the hope is to get business cards for everyone in the central office so this cards from shuttle and eric nan and so it could be substantial okay i love the design i just i just know that printing can get expensive in multi-color and dual

3:00:16 all right sarah gold yes emily barron uh yes megan taylor yes sarah fox yeah all right so that’s four to zero and then it seems as though um sort of the lean was towards shoot i’ve got to pull up which one was which again um i think one yes so it was leaning towards option one so i will just go ahead and ask for a motion to approve the letterhead option number one so moved so moved second emily second all right any disagreement with

3:01:02 letterhead number one that’s the one with the line right the line underneath yeah yes i’d love to see the animals what emily and i were saying i’d love to see it a little bigger but you asked two people with design backgrounds this is the feedback you’re gonna get i’ll work with the team to see if we can make that happen

3:01:28 she did a nice job it looks good really yeah there’s a really nice job all right i will call for volt stair gold yes emily barron yes megan taylor yes fox yeah all right great so that is all we’ve got for today um thank you everyone thank you particularly john and man for the comprehensive conversation around the the re-entry plan and we look forward to hearing back from the community as i am absolutely positive we will hear much um sarah you and i will get those questions from the chat function and make sure that they get back to john in the um further review

3:02:14 um i have a question just on the next meeting i think our next our our next meeting is scheduled for the 10th which is kind of part two of our retreat um but do we need to vote what gets submitted to desi and therefore would we need to meet prior yes we do so yes we definitely need to have another meeting before the 10th um so the 10th if i’m remembering correctly is a monday yeah i think so so my guess would then be that we would look probably at the seventh

3:02:55 that’s a friday night yes would be that we we’d be working that we’d want as much time as possible for that plan to really cement john correct so correct so it’s not to be a real pain here but um the hope is that we will pass whatever it is recommended but just in case there’s any tweaks like should we do it thursday and then it gives time to make any tweaks or adjustments okay okay so pushing towards maybe and maybe a thursday evening at that point um that thursday the 6th

3:03:41 so why don’t we tentatively set for thursday the 6th at 7 pm okay john i’m always for earlier but seven’s good just say that just because for continuity sake and that that’s when our usual thursday meetings are um hopefully we can keep that to keep the meeting to a minimum on the agenda and maybe even adjust to that particularly since we’ll be having another meeting another workshop style meeting on monday yeah just a re-entry focus right yeah okay all right if anybody ends up having an

3:04:27 issue with that and we need to tweak it obviously we’ve got some time before we need to post that so um just reach out and let me know

3:04:37 all right so while we’re booking that i did copy i did what david said i copied and pasted the chat into a google doc and shared it with nan because she has our other questions and don but i didn’t it literally is just a copy of it it says like from iphone to everyone so it’s it’s definitely messy but it’s there okay great great thank you so i can end the meeting without worrying about losing anything or having it go into the abyss on my computer

3:05:10 all right so i will adjourn us at 1 24 p.m then thank you everyone all right thanks thank you