School Committee: September 3, 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.

3:06 okay i think i will go ahead and call us to order at 702 welcome everyone um i’ll ask for commendations first but if anyone from the public wants to make public comment just go ahead and raise your hand and i’ll call on you when it comes time for public comment any

3:33 commendations megan commendations megan um i just want to welcome all the teachers back um and thank you for a great first day on monday so welcome everybody absolutely

3:49 i also just want to um thank everybody for all the extra time they put in this summer i know that technically the teacher’s first day was monday but so so many of them worked out a contract all summer long to collaborate and to get us to where we need to be to to open our schools and i’m i’m very appreciative of that absolutely annie david annie david and i would just like to uh thank um cindy schieffer from the building committee for all the work that she did on the uh public outreach for the signing of the of the final steel beam allowing students and parents and citizens to come by

4:34 and participate in the event and also to gilbane for their support brian johnson from left field and everyone that made that happen but uh you know cindy did a great job coordinating that thanks to her and everybody else for um a really great day on tuesday and um we might talk about that later but it it’s really worthy of recognition so um an exciting day on tuesday for the school project so absolutely

5:07 emily emily i just want to second that it was really an amazing week-long event so it was great yeah it absolutely was it’s um i think i’ve said this a few times but it’s it was nice to focus on something that was not covered and was very positive and that will see us through into the future um it was a welcome reprieve all right well that will take us to public comment um i don’t see any hands up currently does anybody want to make a public comment

5:49 all right then i will move us forward dan howells is going to join us at our next meeting i did touch base with him um and he is planning on coming back and being our student representative again and he’s going to start on i think it’s the 17th is our is our next regularly scheduled meeting and he’ll he’s planning on giving a first day of school update for the remote program um so we’ll look forward to welcoming him back at that point uh so that leads us to the consent and action items um with the minutes so we have minutes from may to approve so can i get a motion to approve the minutes from may 7 2020 may

6:39 21st 2020 and may 27 2020. so moved megan moved second second david second did anybody el have any comments on any of those minutes megan um lisa there were just a few like typos and um little omissions that i’ll i can just um email to you it’s not going to stop me from voting but more just nfl that will make a few little tweaks

7:14 on may 21st the second page a roll call vote only the votes were only listed for the first two voting members the last three were blank so we’ll just need to fill in how people voted as well

7:34 and you said that that was on the 20th middle to second page yeah middle of the second page on may 21st all right sounds good got that written down we’ll make sure that that gets taken care of

7:51 all right so i will do a roll call vote sarah gold yes megan taylor yes emily baron yes sarah fox yes david harris yes and i just want to thank lisa for her work on this there’s been a lot of other things to be focused on but i appreciate the work that she’s done to get these compiled and completed for us absolutely yep thank you everyone yeah lisa is a rock star yes she is that’s sweet of you to say i feel the same way about you all all right that takes us to our superintendent report um john i will turn it over to you for a re-entry update we’re gonna hear i think from you about facilities and then nan

8:37 from teaching and learning yes um the i figured it was important and timely to do facilities since we did the moa that focused on hvac issues uh todd provided me an update today uh that fusson o’neil has been in all week this week walking through the buildings and they have found no outstanding issues with our ability to circulate air adequately in the buildings any interior rooms will be outfitted with air purifiers they’re oversized for those spaces any space that is too large will have a second air purifier added to it one recommendation that fussen o’neill had

9:23 is to put forth uh that we should physically inspect the air filters uh once a month so todd will be developing a log uh cataloging that work all the merv 13 filters are in and are being installed he has a window and glass company going through inspecting that each window is functional and operational and if it needs a screen or any parts they will be outfitting those uh coffin school has received two new oversized roof uh rooftop exhaust fans that are running 24 7. abs has begun loading the purging program in our system they’re doing some testing at village

10:09 school and making adjustments tomorrow todd is replacing four exhaust fan motors at the high school there is one to replace at vets and one to replace that glover um he has gone through and checked uh all the systems abs has been in uh and given their report and so it does not appear at this time that there would be any hvhc air quality co2 things that were listed in the moa that would uh cause us to not be able to transition on the 14th um continuing to work with the union and it seems to make good sense to me that we’re successfully doing this week with

10:57 allowing people to be remote or in the building and again as i reported in the fireside chat this week uh 70 of our educators and that has gone up uh each day as new people have come in um to allow them to continue that choice uh through the end of next week so um i have i’ve asked todd to be on standby for phone a friend uh capacity but if anybody has any facilities questions i’m happy to answer them or dish to todd

11:31 john i i may have um missed it did you say anything about evaleth i did not there were no issues raised in todd’s report at evola okay perfect

11:45 it’s really good news that uh everything seems to be passing and and we can kind of move ahead with all of this yeah a lot of work done in the past week or two so yeah i’d be remiss not to give todd a huge shout out he put in 30 hours last weekend weekend saturday and sunday feverishly working to address that and certainly people pull him aside anytime they see him in the building and say todd can you do this and he never says no and so you know he’s running with some short staffing issues we’ve contracted with some outside services but really appreciative of todd and his crew for all the work that they’re doing absolutely

12:30 thank you todd and to all the custodial staff thank you very much we’re getting there

12:43 so if there are no other facilities i figured that reopening has focused a lot on the big picture and the hybrid or fully remote that it would be helpful for the committee to hear uh from nan murphy and teaching and learning how some of that big picture stuff is narrowing down to building level work and so i’ve asked nan to update the committee but again i would be remiss not to give nan a huge shout out for the work that she has done uh with teaching and learning and in particular this week the eight and a half days of professional development that started on monday nan and her team have really put together some rich opportunities we have internal talent

13:29 talent talent leading professional development she’s done some outside consultants who have been very well received and so professional development’s going very well so shout out to nan and i will turn it over to her to talk about what’s happening on the ground at each of the schools all right great well thank you john um i am beyond excited for how this past week has gone um welcoming back the teachers and actually getting to see people and get to know folks and put a face to some of the emails i’ve received it has been just a continual warm and generous welcome that i have received

14:14 from marblehead staff and teachers and this this week was no different we started monday eight and a half days of professional development we anchored all of our learning in three specific areas strengthening and expanding the usage of instructional technology the second area is ensuring the physical social emotional health and wellness of our staff students and families and the third area is implementing key initiatives to enhance classroom instruction and student experiences so this week um around the social and emotional

15:01 physical health we had todd and deanna mccann speaking to us at our opening day about all of the work that’s been completed over the course of the summer and the proper physical care that we need to take of ourselves our masks our classroom spaces our work spaces bathrooms school open areas so we spent about two hours learning and becoming very familiar with the resources that are available to us in district through um that maybe haven’t been here in the past large buckets cleaning supplies and where that is all located

15:44 the along the lines of a social emotional wellness we had a consultant come in and talk to our k and two through two teachers about building classroom community remotely and in person because we have heard over and over from families and teachers that they understand the value of that relationship and we wanted to put some more tools in the toolbox and so that provider will come back tomorrow and professionally develop our third through sixth grade staff with those systems and structures for community building all of the principals um took john and i up on an invitation to attend some pd over the summer with a

16:32 small team of teacher leaders and to come back with the intention of presenting what they’ve learned to their staff and so that this week they did some professional development internally on engaging students and learners and i attended a number of different schools in that pd and it was outstanding the the principals and their teams did an outstanding job putting that pd together um we introduced a new platform uh in terms of technology to our k through second grade teachers the seesaw it is a warehouse um it it works a lot like google classroom but it’s much

17:18 more developmentally appropriate and so we had some pd around that teachers were given pd around all the different variables within zoom and being able to do breakout sessions so that they can do some small group instruction with students in small breakout rooms we um today i attended another phenomenal pd which i was glad was recorded because i couldn’t take my notes fast enough on screencastify something that i have not used yet so that’s another really important instructional tool that i think was really well received from our marblehead staff and again it was differentiated we had our elementary teachers together and then we will have our middle school

18:05 team together for pd as well we had internal google classroom users and various levels of expertise offer professional development differentiated there were there were beginner sessions intermediate sessions and advanced sessions for our teachers so it didn’t matter what level you were we were able to push you in your learning and your thinking and being able to bring new things to kids this year and in terms of instructional support we’re not just about pd in the office of teaching and learning we are doing a lot of other great things we john and i welcomed 12 new teachers to the district at our new teacher orientation last week our

18:52 collaborative teacher leader in that role is sally chevry who put on an amazing welcoming presentation she’s aligning all of our new teachers with professional staff as to serve as mentors she’ll be running that program with me meeting with staff regularly making sure that they have everything they need to be successful as first year teachers

19:17 we arts also brought to the district aims web plus ames web has been an assessment tool in the district in the early elementary grades we expanded it to now serve our k through eighth grade students so i’m working with rebecca brand and she’s professionally developing all teachers in that grade span on how to implement the assessments look at the reports they generate and be able to use that data purposefully to plan and change instruction for the very next day and also move intervention model instruction forward and using pairs and tutors um with that data so that’s exciting

20:04 um i have i will be meeting next week with all of our cohort c teachers those are our teachers that are going to be in full remote teaching so we will be working together to calibrate our expectations for students talking about building relationships with kids talking about communicating with families and most importantly talking about how do you stay connected with your in-school staff and colleagues so that you’re all pacing and aligning instruction the same way so students are getting what they need whether they’re regardless of the model that they’re being instructed in and i’m working with michelle cresta on really aligning our pr our purchases in

20:51 terms of um instruction so looking at updating some curricular materials looking at um what kinds of materials we currently have and where and how are they servicing students and if there’s a better way to serve students where we’re looking to discontinue contracts and bring aboard more relevant and current track um contracts i’ll end with something that i think is going to make parents happy we have implemented uh bringing clever on board and that is our new hub of logins and it centralizes all of the emails that parents over the summer i’ve been learning have really struggled with

21:38 in the spring so there’ll be one place for kids to go they’ll be it’ll be very systematic and routine how they access their daily agendas and their zoom links uh their google classroom links and hopefully help organize the household a little bit so those are just some of the things that are happening i welcome anybody parents teachers to reach out send an email i’ve had a had a great opportunity to have people come into my office and meet with me i would extend that opportunity to anybody in the district so um having a we’re looking forward to a great um next week looking forward to even some more professional fun so if anybody has any questions about that

22:25 i’m happy to answer them and this is all so exciting to hear um you know there’s so many little buzzwords and and you know sort of topics that have been inflammatory or incendiary incendiary like it’s just it’s great to hear that you’re on top of all of these things and that our staff are are learning more and you know the piece with google classroom or that you’re able to really bring people in at whatever level that they’re at that was great um i’m it’s it’s all really exciting to hear great go ahead mike um so similar to facilities nan i’m just like amazed at the amount of work that has happened in the past week since we’ve spoken to you

23:11 it’s really impressive um i know personally as a parent i’m really thankful for clever uh and looking forward to using that so thank you um and i just wanted to say that also what struck me in your update is the use of our internal expertise and making sure that we’re kind of sharing the knowledge across the board so i think that’s just a great great approach so um no questions at this point you know i’ve been in to talk to you already but um i just think that that’s a really you know we’ve got such an amazing resource in all our staff so i’m really glad to see that we’re kind of sharing sharing the wealth there yeah we had 20 teacher leaders leading professional development this year this this past week yeah that’s awesome yeah

23:56 um man our nan i i love the train the trainer model do you foresee utilizing that for more professional development um throughout you know this year in particular but but um definitely you know in the the next few months absolutely absolutely especially once we really get to some really uh exciting lessons that have been developed you know looking looking internally for teachers to share really good lessons and structures and tools that they’ve found and located or developed themselves so absolutely and any of these um pds like train the trainer that you’re using the vast majority are only good they’re good for the the faculty i understand but some might be good um

24:42 to put on the parent website too you know on on how to utilize your google classroom and things i know a lot of parents need that extra bit of tech help yeah myself definitely included and we’ve started talking about that john and i have talked about how do we get those videos out and access for for parents to access so we’re definitely thinking about it and we’ll be creating those and probably using our teacher leaders to do it perfect thank you nan

25:17 no i i don’t have any questions it just seems like nan’s been here for years she’s jumped in and is um you know moving things forward so thanks nan that there was a lot there in in your update and i’ve heard from uh from john and sarah and others as well so yeah really really great to hear and and thanks for moving us in the right direction as we look to open our schools yeah i don’t have any questions i spoke with nan the other day i popped my head in and she was able to answer them which was great so thank you for always being there yeah to answer our questions you got it i i really i think that it was so wise

26:03 to start things off with um talking with todd and deanna too i think you know there’s so much anxiety around and you know whether it’s marblehead or private school or any other district there’s so much anxiety around the nuts and bolts of facilities and how we keep each other well that you know i think it’s just it it’s so beneficial to be able to to have access to those people who are coordinating all of that for the district

26:40 right well thank you nan got it thanks john um for those updates and that moves us on to the northeastern conference fall sports one conversation before i jump into the athletics piece i just want to dovetail on something that sarah fox said about staff uh giving of their time this summer and uh sarah gold your comment about starting with the health and safety stuff deanna mcmahon as our nurse leader has been exceptional and she may be the only one in the district that answers email faster than i do and there is not a parent or a community member or staff member or an administrator that poses a question and

27:27 you can imagine at this time the number of questions about masks and hand washing and social distancing and contact tracing and deanna is right on top of it in response immediately so i think that she certainly deserves the shout out for that absolutely in terms of nec i will give a brief uh introduction and then turn it over to high school principal and the athletic director

27:56 as with everything covid the best decisions are made in the moment and then the conditions on the ground change and new decisions have to be made and so when the nec uh decided uh eight zero three uh that they would postpone to fall two that made sense at the time last friday the nec superintendents got together had further conversation because things were changing as a community went from red to yellow or yellow to green and so we asked the athletic directors and the principals to revisit that decision as we were hearing from our school committees that they felt perhaps not

28:43 part of that process and would like to be more included in at least the back story of how we got there and so i’ve asked dan and greg to talk about that back story today with the understanding that i believe the athletic directors met today and the principals at the direction of the superintendents are scheduling a meeting where we can revisit the decision to maybe not postpone fall to fall to so i don’t want to steal dan or greg’s thunder but they’re going to provide you a little back story and i would even though i’m told i don’t need to apologize that school committee was not looped in to this but i think the superintendents when we met last friday each recognized that um school committee

29:30 needed to be more a part of this decision so i will acknowledge that and turn it over to mr bauer good evening everybody i hope you’re doing well just to give some background as we know on august 18th the mia in collaboration with desi um made recommendations and guidelines for athletics for this year within that there’s two main points number one there’s a creation of a flex season so in essence they created four seasons the flex season was is located right after that winter season between wedge between winter and spring to allow if there’s any situations that don’t allow a district to play or participate in fall athletics they could move that to that particular point or if

30:17 the community was in red same thing also the second key point is the ability to have out of season practices so in essence rule 40 was waived which um i have to admit i was against at first because as a coach in in knowing that um there’s a lot of demands on our student athletes um but at the end of the day maybe that might have been a game changer too in terms of how this decision process was going because that would allow what we all missed with those meaningful connections with our coaches and with our teams and such so the principles we met on well actually the athletic directors met before us they discussed a number of issues in terms of what it would look like moving into a fall one season uh particularly with a lot of the complications with with a lot of our league schools at that time um going

31:03 through tough situations and just the overall piece of how would we logistically launch launch a fall season at this time uh we followed the meeting and basically how it works is they make recommendations it moves to the principals and we sat and discussed you know it was a joint meeting of the athletic directors and principals and we discussed the outcome of their meeting along with discussions from each of the nec schools in terms of their feelings and thoughts and where we’re going with this um and in all honesty there were a number of things and factors that were discussed and i think one of the big pieces at the time there are five districts five schools out of the 12 that were in the red category which means they’re not eligible to play in the fall season they

31:49 have to automatically move to the flex season number two there are five more schools that are starting remote with that piece that means school committee approvals necessary in order to play in that fall one season so at that point that’s ten schools five for sure couldn’t play the other five that really not sure where that would go the two schools that were in the hybrid just need you know superintendent approval to move forward so that that’s problematic for a number of reasons because that creates a lot of uncertainty in terms of where that would be what kind of season would be where those teams are if a number of them move the fault to a few are left behind also the new guidelines indicate that if you’re trying to find an opponent to

32:34 fill schedules you can’t go outside of your geographic region they really want you to stay close for obvious reasons and try to stay within your league those are some main pieces there too the other part is is that you know the thoughts of like what happens if the season starts it stops will students lose those meaningful opportunities because you know maybe they could have had a meaningful season in that that fall to that flex season coupled with a rich fall of practices and structured opportunities to meet with coaches the second piece quite frankly is the fact of trying to start school safely putting our attention on bringing our students back in our faculty back in the building following the guidelines and making sure everybody’s safe on top of that making sure that is there enough time to really

33:20 implement the guidelines that we’ve needed to be for safe schools for safe athletics major concern too with transportation because we know transportation quite frankly is cut in half for bus capacity we already struggled transportation and marble is known for being difficult to get here but it’s also difficult for us to get out too and will that put extra pressure on us to look at how that would work for transportation in in terms of will that increase liabilities in terms of does that limit opportunities for sub-varsity participation because of just transportational needs you know it so those items were floating around also too you know certainly knowing that the other piece is working together as a league is is important because you know

34:05 you know you know we we know they’re tough decisions and we took the information that was at that time the best information that we had to try to make a decision that would best fit the needs of individual communities as well as the league to work together for a number of those factors and certainly the piece that kept running through my mind is the fact that our students are missing contact and connections totally totally get it we need to be able to provide opportunities greg and his subcommittee have done awesome work in trying to create structures for our student athletes but also all of our students in whatever extracurriculars we can come back to because we can’t forget the other students as well and i’m getting off track um so we we’re looking at can we provide again the great practice opportunities

34:52 and then knowing and obviously you know knowing that the the fall two season begins february 22nd through april 25th i know you can’t get on the golf course on february 20th i know that i know you’re not going to be on the cross country trails on february 22nd but can you couple the fall experience with great practices and then change your competition period in that fall too to match almost as many competitions if you work it the right way obviously weather’s always a factor in the spring and we know that and certainly new england is a challenge as it is as well as facilities as well as making sure again we work together and certainly knowing that we have i think one of the best trainers around knowing the fact that one trainer for typically we’re very well known for our participation being able to make sure

35:37 that all those guidelines are in place for safety for all the sports all the coaches and everybody that that just really certainly has kept me up at night but maybe that’s because i’m old and that’s what happens um because i as anybody else value extracurriculars that’s the strength of our school strength of our community so these decisions aren’t easy and certainly you know as we went around the table you know everything was was dubbed out in and it wasn’t about taking away an opportunity it’s about being able to preserve as best as we can an opportunity to allow participation that flex 2 with fall interactions as best we can um so we went we took the vote i was 903 and then really what happens now it’s a recommendation that

36:25 moves moves up moves along um and that’s where we’re at at this point so you know the other piece too of indicators to think about and i know this is keeping greg up at night is that the sports medicine committee came out with sports specific recommendations uh in terms of modifications of rules that certainly um will change some of the dynamics of games and and i don’t have all that memorized yet but i know the game of soccer will be very different and certainly field hockey but more importantly safety guidelines including measuring temperature for every athlete that comes in for practice and for games and monitoring that as well as also monitoring attendance very closely then obviously you know if there’s transportation the seating charts within the bus as we’d have seating charts in

37:10 our classroom too so um obviously we we’re talking as a league of principals and we have a another meeting tentatively scheduled for early next week somebody wanted to have it on monday we’re all like in this world of getting started and somebody said that’s labor day so we can’t meet in labor day so i would have but anyway um but i believe it may be tuesday or wednesday they’re trying to find a date to have a meeting to reconvene the principles and i know the athletic directors met today i frankly haven’t had a lot of time to catch up with greg i see him right there nice to see you greg and that really is the the crux of the discussion points with the principals working with the athletic directors and trying to to work together as a league

37:57 thanks dan thanks dan um greg before i open it up for any kind of questions can do you have um dan just mentioned the sports medicine stuff do you have any information that you can share on on different recommendations that are being made i’m assuming it’s to is to kind of keep students stay as safe as possible so just a few of the key points that are kind of overarching points uh this is for every sport not sport specific um like dan mentioned you have to have your temperature taken and have a check checklist filled out before every single practice or every single game every day for every kid which is very time consuming and um requires a lot of staff or a lot of time from one staff member um

38:46 there’s there’s no locker room usage anyway but that’s just one of our rules but uh any any bag or athletic bag that a a student athlete brings in has to be disinfected before and every before and after every practice or every game they can’t keep them in lockers they have to be six feet apart from any other kid’s bag uh let’s see there are face coverings have to be warned at pretty much every single event during pretty much every single time uh that goes for coaches and officials as well not necessarily just our own kids uh we have

39:33 sports pacific wise like dan mentioned there’s some dramatic changes in in soccer and and uh feel lucky soccer is not really even soccer anymore there’s there’s it’s it’s so different it’s not gonna be the same thing if you want do you wanna get into specifics at all i’m not sure if that’s what you’re looking for no that’s okay i think um yeah you know but i i am i’m glad to hear that yeah i’m kind of on the the mask path so i’m glad to hear that that masks are being looked at and utilized um dan did you want to add something i was just going to ask greg too i know that there was recommendations in terms of fans and and spectators too through there but um i haven’t caught up with greg on that because that’s certainly a

40:18 big factor as well yeah so they’ve kind of left that up to individual leagues to decide upon um obviously if fans are gonna be coming to the games they have to be socially distanced they’re supposed to be wearing their masks at every game but again that’s gonna require someone to make sure that they’re actually following those guidelines um and again if it’s gonna be by league you know it has to be kind of a league-wide decision or it’s going to be you know different to danvers versus beverly versus swampscott versus us and that can be uh create a challenge as well for us

40:49 one um one of the things that was really impactful in our meeting that you brought up greg was when you talked about the guideline that you have to disrespect each individual ball between every single play um yeah oh so for example for for soccer they broke instead of just two halves they’ve broken into four quarters uh you have to have a new and new and disinfected ball every quarter for volleyball which is uh very dramatic after every single rally you have to have a new ball put in play um which if i see you know coach would claude go crazy by that because it’s it could be a serve it could be an ace and you have to put a new ball in or it could be just a serve and return that a new ball has to go in it’s it’s very different you can’t be within i believe it’s three feet of the net

41:35 which is really not even volleyball anymore you can’t really block you can’t spike it’s it’s a whole different game it’s it’s a very dramatic difference in some of these sports

41:47 greg one more thing too just just more communication in terms of what’s happening um other leagues around the commonwealth they’re starting to look at is is a situation where volleyball may move to the fall too because it’s indoor support anyway and would that allow you know fewer athletes during that time to focus in in looking at other opportunities to move sports if necessary and and just while we’re on that there are three other leagues who have also decided to move their entire seasons to the fall too uh and other leagues are also discussing it as well as we go it again it changes every hour as you guys have seen with everything coming back to school wise not just athletics greg just uh just a clarification um the points that you just talked about with

42:34 the sports medicine and temperatures etc is that what came out of your athletic director’s meeting today or is there any other updates from that meeting no that meeting today actually didn’t really bode much information a lot of schools are in a similar situation that we’re in right now kind of waiting on guidance from school committee and you know we gave our recommendation to the principals after our principal and a.d meeting and we’re just kind of waiting for a final decision uh we thought we kind of had one last week with the 903 vote and then it kind of came back to us and now we’re we’re here and where we are tonight i will say in our our um athletic opening committee greg and dan correct me if i’m wrong the perception i’ve gotten is from this the coaches on this

43:21 um on that subcommittee that they were in alignment with the recommendation and decision that was by the aed is is so the survey that we sent out to to coaches was more so for this actual coming fall season oh no not not the survey but the coaches on our committee um weren’t were supportive of what the ads decided correct yes

43:49 these modifications are are these just for this fall or is it for the whole year so right now this is for just the fall because teams that are actually participating this fall throughout the whole state are going to be following these guidelines they’re going to be believe this october 29th is there is there next time they’ll be looking at the winter uh modifications for all the other ones okay so it’s by season that they’ll make yeah okay

44:17 greg was there any talk um in that sports medicine piece about any of the pieces coming back especially that as the big ten and some of the um the other uh college leagues are looking at the cardiovascular effects on student athletes who have tested positive for covid and how competition could be harmful to them truthfully no that that hasn’t really been brought up at least not at our level quite yet there is that whole thing it’s a culver 19 task force at the miaa and they are kind of the ones who present things with the board of directors who then gets voted on and then kind of pass down to us um but there there really hasn’t been a lot of that information given to us to answer your question okay thanks i think it’s really important for the school committee to understand as well that um

45:04 greg is presented in to the the reopening athletic and activities committee options to still keep kids active in at an intramural level um and actually it will be opened to children or to students who might not have have played at a competitive level it will be open to everyone as my understanding so there will still be these social emotional and athletic opportunities it just will will stay within our um our school versus you know megan in in that in that scenario though are we still required to um implement those same recommendations that you just walked through greg so if we’re going to be just within our

45:52 own districts yeah some of these rules are a little bit more relaxed this is this is more for when we’re we’re going against other schools and having you know inter-school competition if we’re doing more of an intramural piece there are there are eea guidelines that are out as well that is more so geared towards um like adult leagues or youth sports that are out there and they’re not quite as stringent as these ones so for example like the temperature taking and the in the locker room or those some of the buildings i don’t think the locker is gonna be used anyway just because that’s indoors i don’t think we’re gonna have our kids go inside anyway but you’re taking piece i don’t i don’t believe that’s part of it okay um it’d be just like we were having a practice for for uh

46:38 out of season team right now okay

46:46 so so i saw in the salem news and on twitter is is it a fact that masculine is going forward with athletics yes so they had their school committee meeting last night uh and and they they voted on uh having masco play in the fall one season or year or kind of a your regular fall season so who will they be playing if nobody else is participating i think that’s kind of the major issue right now is they would be uh currently alone um like i mentioned before i know that some schools are kind of waiting uh conversations like we’re having right now to see what’s going on um

47:29 yeah yeah john um well i’ll all right john just wanted to add something david hold on a second okay go ahead john no i think that that’s a beautiful segway into i wanted school committee to have the opportunity to hear the back story the superintendents when we met wanted uh to see if there is a path forward beginning october 2nd for us to consider the fall season of play and so i think masculine was the first to jump out there and so this evening if the school committee would like us to explore a path forward having fall sports in the fall season beginning on october 2nd

48:16 for marblehead that accomplishes two things first because our hybrid model begins on october 5th it does not require a vote of the school committee because we are in remote if you are in remote learning desi is asking that it is a vote of your school committee to approve uh interscholastic athletics and it also gives us the opportunity to have a couple weeks of school to address some of the concerns that mr bauer raised that the principals were concerned about getting school up and running safely so i think that that is the decision before the committee this evening is would you like uh to join the nec and i can anticipate uh from the

49:02 conversation last friday that superintendents would like the principals and the athletic directors to explore the feasibility of at least offering some fall sports uh beginning on october 2nd i just clarified on that john though if it starts on october 2nd um how does that affect the overall season is it do they still have the same number of competitions is it still a full season you must have heard my conversation with mr bower this morning i asked that exact question i think that it will uh condense a season and certainly mia is not doing any tournament play but we would have to see who is moving forward with the fall season like if it’s just masculine and marblehead which

49:47 i do not anticipate that being the case based on the superintendent’s conversation um how many are going to do that and what would a schedule look like within the league maybe november 20th would be the last day of the fall okay thanks and sorry sorry david i’m sorry if i’m jumping over you but just one more clarification because when you mentioned dan that there were five you said five of the twelve were read five others were remote we were considered remote at that point because we even though we’re moving into a hybrid okay okay sorry i know you kind of jumped on sorry david

50:25 do you have any other before i give emily no i i just want to thank dan and greg i mean

50:39 what can we say right dan we we all know you know you’re you’re down at seaside at baseball games and field hockey games you’re at football games you’re you’re the principal of the high school you’re as much as uh as a sport promoter as anyone greg is our athletic director clearly that’s what his his um job is and i know i know it’s difficult what you’re going through and i know that you’re putting the safety of our students um [Music] first and foremost that we need to get back to school then we need to figure out how can we do athletics and and i and i really appreciate that and i

51:24 i i just want to say that i hope there’s an opportunity whether it is you know if field hockey gets modified to seven on seven and um soccer has no throw-ins and they’re kick-ins and if there’s things that can be done so that um you know thinking back what you know some of us who’ve had students that have gone through the school if it was their senior year and how can they safely participate to have some sort of um you know academic season and we know that how much academics adds to the overall uh development of a student from being on a team

52:09 and uh participating and winning and losing and all those all those benefits so i i appreciate it dan and greg i i know you’re focused on that as a priority and i’m hopeful that the nec might be able to find an opportunity even if we have to play swampscott three times in a week uh maybe there’s an opportunity you know to have three soccer games in a week and it’s all versus swampscott um that we might we might be able to do that and um for seniors and other and other students to participate in athletics so thanks for what you’re doing i appreciate that you’re um continuing to um move forward and look at the situation that changes thank you emily

52:56 emily emily um so mine kind of feeds off of what david just said and i was wondering if there’s been any talk about um student athletes who are going for scholarships for college and how i know they have to have videotapes and and obviously recruiters won’t be coming probably but has there been talk about how they can get that um field time or any gymnastics time like how are they going to get that to go um on their resumes or applications or what if they’re getting scholarships or anything like that just has that has that been brought up yeah i i think that was kind of the reasoning behind that that flex season

53:42 that they moved so that that still gives kids an opportunity even if they’re in the kind of those red towns that still gives them an opportunity to you know hope that things clear up uh or at least get better and gives them an opportunity to actually play and showcase those talents and certainly during the practice opportunities i know it’s not the same as competition but sometimes you could even create a combine situation or something where you can measure skills um in that because really it’s a it’s a situation around the country and recruiters you know it’s a real challenge for them to get the film and that to evaluate too it’s tough it’s come up at a few meetings so for instance annie madden brought up she’s the girls lacrosse coach um you know wanting to find ways to work with those

54:27 students that are are headed to the next level of pet play um so it’s definitely being discussed in our committee i think

54:37 so i’ve got one more question it was helpful to me when i was reading the guidance to understand that when the town is in red they cannot compete um so that it we’re not we’re not having to make those types of choices um on who is sort of how we’re who we’re allowing to compete and not allowing to compete if a town so you know we in marblehead are are doing well if at some point we start not doing well and we’ve decided to push this forward and then we go red how does that impact sort of the season and the the schedule and because or any town that happens to greg can answer that he actually has some uh gut information today on that

55:24 yeah so if if we let’s say we start our our soccer season on september 18th and you know we start practicing and we have you know a scrimmage in a game or two and then something happens where we we go to red and we can’t play anymore we are we’re done and we’re shut down for the remainder of the season and we’ll be pushed into the fall two seasons the only thing that we don’t quite have yet is in terms of like and this isn’t clear like how far does that go into that season so there isn’t like a there isn’t a set date where like say you play half your season and if you go red you’re done there there really isn’t that number out there yet i know it’s in discussion right now um

56:09 but there would be an opportunity to move to that fall two season so long as you know you’re not playing 16 of your 18 games i think you probably wouldn’t be approved because if if you do go into the red uh and you want to play in that next fall two season you do have to officially apply to the to the dac the district athletic committee so there was a process sarah sarah greg you had another meeting today with the ads um

56:44 did was there any change in the recommendation that came out of that meeting from what was previously recommended from the athletic directors like was the recommendation of your conference athletic director still to hold off to fall to or did you guys reverse that vote nothing changed the only thing i think changed was was masco they were one of those nine so i guess technically now it’s eight one three i i to be to be honest with you i don’t know even if the school committee voted for for them to play i don’t know if that means that they would still vote to play by themselves because they would have a really hard time finding opponents because no one else in our league would be playing and you’re not really supposed to go out very far outside the league just just to basically surrounding towns so i i’m sorry to put you on the spot

57:31 but i think you’re you and dan probably have more to say about any of this um you know hearing my my getting to hear from will and other people on our our subcommittee has been helpful too but since you two are the ones that are here speaking to us is it your recommendation given the guidelines that you’d have to meet you know the the all the different pieces i’m sorry that you would still recommend waiting to go through well i think at the end of the day i mean that is a tough question uh on this piece because you know out of fairness you know not to not to cop out of the question but out of fairness to the league and to everybody else you know that’s i think the main purpose that you know john said was first to come back and and talk

58:18 about it as a group and see if you know we could certainly make any modifications to the initial recommendations because we’ll come back with the recommendation i’m sure if that one is modified and changed so um certainly i’m not going to go alone on that decision without greg and our people in terms of what we need to do because at the end of the day it has to be a very well thought out decision and things change so quickly uh because tomorrow maybe those other red are are no longer red and who knows so um that’s as best as i can give you an answer on that one right now absolutely yep so i’ve got two questions right now so if we if we vote to move this forward and move ahead with the fall one season tonight it’s not it’s not it isn’t necessarily a done deal

59:10 and then one question pertaining to budget given the transportation pieces what what type of budget implications does that have and would that need to impact something like student user fees or the student activity fees in order to cover the possibility of additional busing needs i think that’s a safe assumption i think if we were to move forward with fall in fall and we were traveling and could take half the number of students on a bus and would have to take two buses or three buses that would certainly have implications that then we would need to look at user fees as a means to compensate or accommodate that i think the question before the committee tonight before

59:56 tonight before tonight before you is you’re not going to make a binding decision the vote for this evening if you were to vote is to ask dan and greg to go back to the nec to see if there is a viable path to start on october 2nd and have some modified fall sports and so that would really be you’re not voting to play false sports you’re not voting to commit to playing fall sports you’re just asking them to go back and re-engage the conversation that if uh the league were to look at sept or october 2nd as a start date is there a viable path forward for some of our fall sports whether that’s cross-country golf field

1:00:43 hockey modified soccer do we need a vote to do that are they not they’re doing that already it sounds like dan set up a meeting for next week and and greg is in talks now do they do they need our vote for that

1:00:57 i think it’s more symbolic sarah than anything

1:01:03 well so i i’ll go ahead and ask for a motion to ask greg and dan to continue to talk with the nec principals and athletic directors to see if there’s a pathway forward to a modified fall one sports participation so moved so moved megan moved second do we add the date in of october 2nd i think that would be helpful okay so can we so we’ll amend that um amend that motion to

1:01:51 remember our date within october so an october second start date of the season so just for clarification this is different than what masking voted on they voted that they were committing to fall sports we’re not voting for that we’re just requesting they go back and have a discussion correct i believe that is this motion that sarah has made or the motion that she’s put forward

1:02:19 so i think i need a second on the amendment second second you you oh i can’t get the amendment oh i’ll second it okay so all right so i’ll roll call the amendment first so do you want the amendment to add um october 2nd okay as the start date so sarah gold yes this is for the amendment sarah gold yes megan taylor sorry are we voting on it now we’re having a discussion this is just for the amendment okay yes emily barron yes sarah fox confused

1:03:06 yes we’re just allowing this just yeah for the october 2nd yes david harris yes okay so we have an amended motion to include october 2nd is there any other questions or comments on the motion in general um can i just say something i kind of want to echo what david said earlier that you know dan and greg we appreciate the work you’ve done here i trust your judgment and i know that you have the best interests of our students and our athletes and our community at heart so i appreciate it and i appreciate you you know taking us back and having that conversation so thank you yeah i feel very similarly i think you know as i think john stated at the very beginning of this conversation that you know we’ve continued to look at a

1:03:52 lot of different things throughout this situation and how it impacts our students in our planning and so i think i view this motion as just support for you guys to continue to to look at the data and talk with your colleagues and you know you have my full confidence that you guys will be able to make a decision that is at in the best interest of our student athletes as well as our our full student body because i think that’s the the larger concern is that something that we do with sports could impact the ability to actually be in person at school all right anything else i just i just want to

1:04:39 chime in that i’ve been incredibly impressed with how collaboratively these meetings have been run and

1:04:48 you know greg organizes them obviously but everything is a team no pun intended because this is for athletics everything has been a team approach um and i’ve been really impressed so i i personally have no concerns whatsoever that greg and dan aren’t you know gonna gonna get those kids in the fields at the earliest moment they can safely um so i support everything they’re doing

1:05:21 david do you have anything less that you want to say no just i’m disappointed that the quakers won’t be playing the big green this fall and i will be able to have a little side to action with dan we’ll have to pass this season um on that but um you know absolutely dan i mean to you and the coaches everybody wants to be on the field and um if parents need to drive the students to games like they do with youth sports and they’ll do that if there’s something that we need i’m i’m sure we’ll we’ll figure it out and hopefully um there’s a happy medium where kids will get to have some sort of competition this fall so thanks for all you doing

1:06:10 all right so i will call for a boat uh sarah gold yes megan taylor yes emily baron yes sarah fox yeah david harris yes all right so thank you both dan and greg for that update and for the conversation around that it’s really appreciated to better understand all everything that’s going on with this issue

1:06:40 all right that moves us along to the uh veteran school nurse appointment uh john do you wanna have anything to add with that um no i just want to thank emily barron for serving as the school committee rep on the search and we have uh put forward andrea wigoski as the veterans nurse and as a matter of policy or practice the school committee needs to vote to approve her as the new school nurse you have her application or her resume in the packet for your reference does anybody have any questions before we move to accept that um i have a question about our nursing staff but not not on the tire would this be the right time to ask it

1:07:29 suppose so suppose so um just looking at her resume i noticed she’s got um hospital experience which is great and it made me think um are any of our current nurses that are in our schools working per diem in hospitals at the same time and does that are there any concerns that we may have about you know the potential of increasing contamination issues if they’re working in you know an emergency setting or uh icu setting as in a premium basis i can’t answer that tonight but i’ll certainly work to get an answer for you on that side all right and i don’t think we can control that it’s just a question if at the top you

1:08:16 so i will ask for a motion to approve the hire of i apologize i might it’s not coming up on my computer can you remind me of her name andrea wagoski to approve the hire of andrea wagoski as the veteran school nurse

1:08:46 any other can i just say comments thing um so andrea was my top choice and i thought she was great um she had a wonderful interview and she was young and enthusiastic and willing to learn and i think she will make a great addition to the school and because she’s kept talking about working with everybody in the school and being um a team player um so it’s a really great choice great yeah thanks for that

1:09:22 all right i’ll roll call sarah gold yes megan taylor yes emily baron yes sarah fox yeah david harris yes all right great that passes five to zero and that leads us to the approval of the handbooks yes rather than have each principal or each level give a presentation or read through the materials that they provided i just have them each on standby in case there was anything in the proposed revisions to handbooks that people had questions about so i think the only question that i had was the um elementary handbook did not

1:10:09 the changes did not include adding the mask policy so i was just wondering if that needed to be added to to that handbook as well i think the mass policy should be in each of the handbooks so i can circle back to the elementary school principles and just ask them to make reference to the adopted mask policy thank you and i notice at the elementary level that at glover they talk about how student um behavior i forgot the exact term but student behavior on remote is the expectation is exact same as in the classroom and i wonder if that’s not something that should be at all the elementary school handbooks as well and then my last question was in my senses that i understood it correctly

1:10:56 but that we’ve relaxed the attendance policy at the high school we won’t be requiring a doctor’s note and there will be no grade given of no credit for attendance that is a great question and i’m going to go backwards and address the high school piece first because dan bauer and i met this morning to discuss that and that’s going to be a rescinded recommendation for an update because dan would like to consult with the faculty at the high school before making a change to that attendance policy so what you would be voting tonight is no change to the attendance policy as written at marblehead high school and in terms of the elementary schools yes that would be a uniform expectation among the elementary schools

1:11:42 should we hold off on improving the high school until we have that language for the app um the attendance just because if we approve it right now we’re saying that in the middle of a pandemic we’re okay with the doctor note piece and i i think um our our local pediatricians and physicians will revolt on that um you certainly can um my experience has been that you can add an addendum or to a handbook once it’s uh voted if conditions change or circumstances necessitate an update to the handbook but we can certainly hold off on the mhs handbook if people if the committee prefers that my concern with that being i know for the for example the pediatrics practiced in town if you have a fever they won’t

1:12:29 see you so if a child is absent and needs no they have to go to an er or an urgent care because the practice won’t actually see you in person if if you’re symptomatic of anything so we may be kind of sticking these families in a catch 22.

1:12:47 so um emily and i have a policy subcommittee meeting tomorrow and there’s a policy for the title nine um pieces that need to it needs to be looked at so basically the intention is to um to be able to hopefully present that at some point next week and then vote it at our next regularly scheduled meeting and so my anticipation honestly would be that we might have other covid related policies to add at that point too so that there is probably a reason to go back and add this addendum to the high school handbook regardless so i in my mind i kind of wonder if it wouldn’t just be worth having a past handbook for this for the official start to school knowing that

1:13:34 we’ll be back to look at these policies and probably add some things to the handbook before students ever even come into the school through the chair that seems to make sense that maybe we hold off on officially voting on handbook changes until the second meeting of september knowing that policy subcommittee is going to meet and make some recommendations and if dan that would then allow dan the opportunity to consult with the high school faculty about changes to the attendance policy guys question do we have any requirements to have past handbooks before the start of school i’m not sure i understand the question megan well my understanding is we’re legally

1:14:22 required to vote the handbooks does that need to happen before the first day of students in school i cannot answer that i don’t know i could find out since we’re not returning remotely um that might buy us uh some time but um certainly you can vote them this evening and then vote to amend them at the second september meeting

1:14:55 now i my my understanding is we have to have another meeting school committee meeting before we actually go back to approve the collective bargaining changes so we’ll be meeting before school starts back anyway why don’t we just do this at the same time okay with me john if that’s if that works for you if you think that that you know hopefully dan can get information on that and then again we would have the policy piece a little bit more ironed out good and then again for my megan’s because megan that is i have that concern as well that we need to have to be passed before uh school actually starts so that that sort of helps us out on that too so we’ll be passing it

1:15:41 and we can if we don’t have everything ironed out we can look into whether or not it needs to be passed before school starts as well i guess you would entertain a motion to table approving handbooks this evening so can i get a motion to table approving handbooks

1:16:09 second emily second any concerns along that line before i call real call

1:16:17 all right sarah gold yes megan taylor yes emily barron yes sarah fox yeah and david harris yes okay so we will table them looking for them to come back onto the agenda at the meeting that we’ll discuss on our new business for next week all right that brings us up to the schedule of bills um can i get a motion to approve the identified schedule of bills totaling 2 million six hundred twenty six thousand seven hundred and four thirty four dollars and twenty three cents

1:17:05 second second david second any questions on those schedules or the invoices there were several dates that were in the last fiscal year one of them noted that it was a revolving fund so i know that that’s fine the other ones not i didn’t see that it noted a revolving fund um so i just want to make sure that we’re within the rules of what we can and can’t do yes some of the invoices were actually um taken from our encumbrance um funds so there’s a specific account number um i apologize for i did not make a note on the invoice um also had to rescan some of the bills because some of them got cut off from the original scan and i had

1:17:50 to rescan and so i didn’t re retranscribe my notes onto the second copy that got scanned in so i apologize for that but yes no the town has approved them all as well they actually approved them as of today and um and usually they catch anything that i do not um make a note on so we are all set i find it hard to believe you don’t catch something michelle once in a while

1:18:18 all right um i will call laurel call sarah gold yes megan taylor yes emily barron yes sarah fox yeah and david harris yes all right the schedule’s passed 5-0 michelle you can stay on with us um and that brings us to the fy 20 closeout report yes okay thank you um i hope you all had a moment to at least glance at the memo and i do apologize um for the lateness of it but and it does have a few typos like spelling is not my strong point numbers are just keep that in mind as you see my typing memo my typos um

1:19:03 so fy20 closed was unlike any other we have ever seen um obviously you guys have been through challenging times in the past but this certainly was a challenging year a lot of movement at year end but we have finally closed our books the town actually has not finished posting the entries just yet so we do not yet have our general fund expenditure report that you would normally see on a monthly report but we will get that to you in the coming weeks as soon as all that is set but our total general fund expenditures after all our movement and all our reclassifications totaled thirty nine million four hundred and seventy three thousand four hundred and thirty three dollars and this was from our operating budget of 39 million

1:19:58 yeah can’t hear you i’m so sorry about that thank you okay um just talking away here so um yeah fy 20 was unlike any other year we’ve ever seen obviously um we’ve certainly had challenging times but this was a challenge that no one really has experienced before so we um we closed our books for fy 20 the town has yet to finish posting all the journal entries and adjustments so that’s why you do not have your general fund um expenditure report that you’re normally used to seeing for each month but as soon as that’s available within a week or two i will forward that to the committee our general fund total expenditures as

1:20:45 of um year end totaled 39 million thousand 473 hundred thirty three dollars and and this was from our operating budget of thirty nine million six hundred and twenty four thousand four hundred and twenty five dollars we did have encumbrances totaling 85 248 dollars those were fy 20 bills that had been incurred but had not yet been received as of um the end of july and those actually may have may have been some of the invoices that you had seen on this past schedule of bills but most of that amount was made up of some of the foss science kits that we ordered late in june using up some of the fy 20 funds that we had discussed and

1:21:30 and and a good portion of that was also set aside for unemployment invoices which had not yet been received we actually just received those this week and we’re in the process of reviewing those invoices after all the expenditures and the encumbrances which is the carry over into the fy 21 or basically set aside it’s not really a carryover into 21. it’s a set aside of fy 20 we have a final turn back to the town of sixty five thousand seven hundred and forty four dollars we had estimated that this amount would be between um fifty thousand and a hundred thousand dollars so we are right in that targeted amount so i’m happy to see that that

1:22:15 played out as anticipated we did have a number of adjustments that we had to make due to our unique situation one of our large deficits that we had to fund was the school lunch fund operations um we had projected that this account would go into deficit and that’s exactly what happened um we had an operational deficit in the amount of one hundred and eighteen thousand eighty two dollars which we covered from the general fund um in addition to that amount of money uh also discovered which i knew we did have some prepaid accounts when a student prepays their lunch account we technically hold that money but it has not yet been earned per se

1:23:03 we hold that amount on account for a parent or a student and they can request a refund at any time so really that’s not our funds and we should not be recognizing that as fully recognizable revenue we need to put that aside so those total prepaid accounts came to thousand 47 hundred and seventy eight dollars so we wanted to make sure that we had this amount of funds on hand um especially because our refunds our requests are coming in pretty frequent frequently these days so between the deficit and the amount that we need to have on hand for the prepaid accounts we had a total adjustment of 165 660 which that brought that fund pretty much down to zero

1:23:49 and we will start over with the new fiscal year um i’ll talk about this this account when we get to the covet expenditures um because it is an account that we want to keep our eyes on as we move forward the second large adjustment was the kindergarten and preschool tuition revolving fund this was another big talking point throughout the end of the fiscal year we covered an operational deficit of 95 440 dollars um and we also had collected tuition deposits in prepaid tuition in the amount of fifty thousand six hundred and thirty nine dollars for the kindergarten program so we wanted to make sure we fully carried that over and at the time at the current time we are in the process of

1:24:34 refunding all those dollars which will be done by the end of this month um so with that adjustment we um were able to actually carry forward a balance into the new fiscal year of 166 926 dollars this was deliberate because we knew that we were going to run short in the new year given the current pandemic situation so we wanted to try to carry forward as much as much funding as we could into the new fiscal year the third adjustment was um a prepayment of special education out of district tuition costs in the amount of two hundred thousand dollars we paid that actually on june 30th

1:25:20 and that was an agreement to reduce our fy 21 operating budget so we do need to keep that in mind when we prepare our budget for next year that this was a prepaid cost that that was charged to our fy20 budget and not our fy21 budget and the last adjustment we made which really wasn’t an adjustment but it was ordering ahead and paying for one-time costs most of that was part of the foss science kits and some math curriculum in addition we paid some other small one-time costs this was all above board in agreement with the town and basically this was to allow us to be

1:26:05 able to shift some monies within the fy21 budget to create um a capital line item in the fy21 budget to address some of our capital needs and not go to the town’s capital fund for those needs so that amount of money totaled eighty seven thousand five hundred and forty four dollars

1:26:28 um after all those were made i just went to um give you a quick summary of the revolving account balances that have been carried forward um there in the bottom of that memo so for user fee revolving fund we have um 31 736 our tuition revolving fund for our student our foreign students totaled eighty four thousand one hundred dollars our guidance revolving fund has a balance carry forward balance of fourteen thousand five hundred and ninety seven dollars our special education tuition fund has a carry forward balance of 75 740 our building rent revolving fund has a

1:27:15 carry forward balance of 82 569 industrial arts revolving thousand sixty seven dollars kindergarten and preschool tuition that we just spoke about was 166 926 dollars athletic revolving was 26 353 lost book revolving 1604 fine arts revolving 3654 and our circuit breaker um is technically a revolving account sometimes that the town actually categorizes it as a grant but it’s a it’s a revolving fund from the state funds and that has a carry forward balance of 83 689 so our total revolving fund balance that we’ve been able to carry forward is 584 035 dollars

1:28:00 035 dollars 035 dollars and that is about it for fy20 but if you have any questions please let me know thank you michelle anybody have any questions for michelle

1:28:16 i do but i’m willing to let the liaisons go first if they want they i’m sure they have questions go for it sir

1:28:25 um okay so the as far as the revolving funds go okay i believe we can you is it true that we can use the i’m trying to pull it up now in front of me sorry that we can use the building rental revolving fund um pay custodial overtime or is it only for custodial overtime during that rental because i’m assuming quite a bit of that this year um we can use it for custodial rental i try not to use it for operating costs that would be considered an operating cost unless it was for a unique one-time situation um usually we just use it for the building rental you know

1:29:11 and then for the k tuition does that um does that and does the number you presented to to us account for keeping all teachers in pera’s whole not reducing anybody’s hours correct yes okay and we will get into that a little bit more when we talk about the covid costs but yes that keeps all staff um whole as as initially budgeted and have you encumbered for the full school year the additional um disinfecting service i think it was estimated to be what about thirty thousand a week yes i have that’s in the cobot costs but yes not the full school year that’s through

1:29:56 december 31st our co our covet funding um expires on december 31st unless we receive an extension which i do expect we will be okay um so for that additional 30 000 per week for the rest of the school year do we have a funding source for that that will be um part of the town covid funding costs and we’ll talk about that a little bit when we get it to the covered funding okay um and we we have no problems with making up the loss of revenue from the school lunch programs because we can’t take that from coven money correct we cannot take it from the cares act money we can take it from our covered line covered line item but we are taking action to try to reduce some of those

1:30:43 costs right now okay will there be a reduction in staff there yes there will be okay does anybody have any other questions on the fy 20

1:31:02 closeout michelle i just want to say thank you for this and thank you for everything that you’ve done throughout the year i mean to be on to be honest to come out where we are almost to the dollar of what you said we’re gonna do um so i appreciate that i know a lot of work’s gone into it thank you david and i’d like to echo that um welcome michelle thanks for your first close out report coming to the district after thanksgiving and working with our interns interim superintendent bill mccaldiff who basically handed off a bunch of spreadsheets to you you’ve really done an awesome job you really helped lead us into preparing a budget for a fiscal 21 precovid

1:31:48 precovid precovid um but then worked through it with bill as uh the months went on and this level of detail is is very much appreciated and um i think it’s really i also want to say i think it’s really good that we have continued to support the school lunch program and um and fund and fund what is needed for the district and for for students um that participate in that program and we’ll work through that and and every other just adjustment that might come up whether it’s can you know the the kindergarten tuition and all these things that are going to

1:32:35 happen over the next couple of months so thanks for this report and um i really appreciate it and i can also say i mean i know it’s a it’s an exceptional year and covid contributed to some of the balances that we had in our budget but it’s really it’s really good to see the open communication with the town and the town finance department and when we were trying to close the gaps with the subcommittees working together to figure out how to prepay things and how could we make the budgets work it was it was just a really

1:33:20 good process and i and i’m hopeful and confident that that will continue this year so thanks thank you um michelle one question that came up a few times at the athletics um meeting is it it reminded me when david said we were captured savings i know we captured about 71 000 in savings from coaching salaries um but we’d already taken those user fees at the beginning of the year are we concerned at all about how we might facilitate that again this year paying a portion um because families might not be inclined to pay a user fee at the beginning of the year if

1:34:06 if there’s no sports um and just can we talk to that a little bit because am i correct in that we fund ourselves coaches salaries 100 through the users fee or to someone that come out of the operating budget fifty percent of the coaching salaries comes from the operating budget and fifty cent fifty percent from user fees okay right now it’s it’s quite a tricky situation not knowing if we’re going to have sports or a portion of sports or what we’re going to do because i would assume if our sports opportunities are reduced then our coaching salaries will also be reduced so i’m hoping that would be a wash

1:34:53 but as you see you know we do have some funds within the revolving funds we can certainly be creative and moving around some of our operational costs that were really anticipated to be charged to a general fund and use them to the um use the specific reserve funds if we ever need to um i should know that of the 584 000 in the revolving funds really only 166 000 that’s in the kindergarten tuition account is really earmarked at this time so the rest of the funds really are not budgeted to be used anywhere in particular um which is a great thing because that’s something with this level of uncertainty of what we’re encountering this year

1:35:39 we do have the flexibility so as a school committee when we talk about you know what what this fall season looks like and there’s this idea of this three-week potential or maybe something else of intramural play will there be and what would it be um a user fee because although we all know our coaches aren’t in this to get rich they’re here because they have a passion and they love it um plus we see what we pay them so they’re clearly not getting rich on it but um i i also think we can’t ask them to volunteer yeah no you’re absolutely right we need to keep that in mind as we move forward and figure out what we do in terms of

1:36:27 a modified athletic season okay thank you michelle all right michelle i think you can move forward onto the covid related expenditures update okay covet update’s a little more exciting than your end um a little more challenging than your end as well so as we are currently um

1:36:52 preparing to open the school year and welcome students back um we have so many costs that are changing on a daily basis um i have outlined the anticipated covert 19 related costs it’s on this the third page of the memo that is in the dropbox um the sheet also includes the total cares act and coveted funding currently available to the district to the school district and not the town necessarily um the current expenditures total one million eight hundred seventy five thousand seven hundred fifty dollars this is a number that is very fluid and um it includes actual cost paid date costs occurred to date as well as

1:37:39 anticipated costs to come and most of these costs are projected through at least december at that point is when the current cares act funding is set to expire i do anticipate that it will be extended and i do think there is i was talking to the finance director today there is some additional town funding that we will be able to use if the situation continues and that date is extended so all the covered funds that have been awarded through either the department of education or um to the town have been part of the overall cares act so the cares act we have received two grants from the department of education are deci

1:38:24 one in the amount of ninety one thousand six hundred and twelve dollars which is a grant that we can actually use over two and a half years um not a lot of money that we can carry forward but it is something and the second grant is in the amount of 653 175 and that grant also expires on the december 31st date so that’s something to keep in mind also we have an align item that we created at the 11th hour in our fy 20 fy 21 budget process for cobit related funding of 168 699 dollars that can be used for anything basically it’s in our operating budget we earmarked it for covid related

1:39:10 costs but we can decide what to use that on and lastly we are able to close any gap with a good portion of the town’s funding that they have received from the cares act they received a commitment of 1.8 million at the current time we are anticipating using just under a million dollars and that will take us through the december 31st projections there is additional funding available under that allotment and it should also be noted that of that 1.8 million that is actually after any fema reimbursements i am not involved in the actual fema reimbursements those are handled

1:39:56 completely on the town side but anything that we send to the town in terms of a coveted related invoice if it meets the fema guidelines then the town submits to fema for reimbursement and they will get some funding back on that or if it does not meet the fema guidelines and it’s just a strictly covert related cost that’s not necessarily a ppe or cleaning item then it gets taken out of that 1.8 million dollar allotment that the town received so certainly we have a lot of moving parts but there is a significant amount of funding available to meet all of our needs on the on the

1:40:43 estimated expenditure sheet the last two lines on that indicate i’ve separated out it’s a revenue shortfall one for the tuition revolving fund um of for the kindergarten revolving account that um we’ll get into details in just a minute and the second is for food service fund those two lines total 150 000 that is just a rough guesstimate at this time the kindergarten revolving is an exact figure but the food service revolving is an estimate at this time so this particular shortfall cannot be charged to the cares act funding but it can be charged to our operating line item of that 168 thousand dollars that

1:41:33 we had earmarked for covet related costs so at this point that is how we plan on addressing those two particular revenue shortfalls with that particular line item so to dive into the kindergarten revolving fund we touched upon that at the fy 20 close out memo back in there’s a chart on the second page of this memo back in march when we set the fy 2021 budget we had anticipated um having a beginning balance of zero dollars receiving a revenue tuition revenue in the amount of 529 thousand dollars we had budgeted teaching and

1:42:18 paraprofessional salaries totaling 423 000 coming from those funds health insurance and medicare tax payroll tax benefits being charged to the fund of about a hundred and five thousand dollars and other expense items um for kindergarten registration which totaled 529 000 as well which brought our projected balance down to zero since march obviously when the um cobit situation first arose we have had this particular account on the forefront of our minds um even at the end of june when we were finalizing the budget we knew that you know any additional savings in the salary line items would have to be focused and applied here so

1:43:04 so so as of the current time we were able to carry forward a balance of the 166 926 we are anticipating a revenue of 45 000 that is for the enrolled preschool tuitions that have not um not with been withdrawn from the program that are still planning on continuing to attend so that will give us total funding the amount of two hundred and eleven thousand nine hundred twenty six dollars so to use that line item um that funding source we are planning on charging salaries of a hundred and seventy nine thousand sixty two dollars benefits of twenty four thousand three

1:43:49 hundred and eight dollars and the um same other expense for registration items so this will leave us a projected balance year-end balance of just over 7 500 in that revolving tuition account for kindergarten and preschool we were able to shift 243 938 dollars to the operating budget for the existing salaries to date we’ve been able to absorb 175 000 of that 243 that leaves us with a balance of sixty eight thousand three hundred and fifty dollars that we have not yet been able to absorb um within the salary budget this is the amount that i am recommending at the current time that we earmark

1:44:35 earmark earmark a portion of those covered funds within the operating budget i do believe that the situation will actually improve we will have additional salary budget savings it seems to be a moving target but every single day it seems to be getting better and better unfortunately is due to a large number of staff turnovers a large number of leaves of absences we are filling the positions but we’re filling them at a much lower cost which is a great thing um especially if it’s a temporary thing and this is also a temporary situation so two temporary situations will wash each other out we’re not making permanent changes which is a great thing so at this time i do expect that we will

1:45:21 be using the 68 000 from that coveted line that leaves the rest of the line essentially for to address any shortfall in the food service line as i did mention we are reducing staff or furloughing some of our cafeteria staff we have asked for volunteers to um be furloughed um which will qualify them for unemployment as well as will enable them to maintain their health insurance benefits if they had qualified for that um this will be a cost reduction to that fund in addition we are um reducing some salary some hours in other cafeteria workers so we are working through those numbers

1:46:06 um just as we speak right now and once we have a better projection on that we will report that out and also the usda did announced earlier this week or maybe it was late last week that free meals will continue for all students through december 31st so this also means that we will not be collecting um fees for lunches or for breakfast those meals will be provided free of charge to any student who wishes to receive them

1:46:41 so that will certainly be a continual revenue source for us as long as the students are requesting the meals so that’s we are also trying to think outside of the box of other ways to increase participation maybe in terms of staff or in terms of putting together maybe some goodie packages that a parent can order to have delivered to um in staff appreciation so we’re trying to think outside of the box about how to increase our revenue because our actual meal revenue will be limited with the usda free meals for all so but we will be working through those figures and i hope you know within the next couple weeks we’ll be able to report out what we are projecting

1:47:26 in terms of the school lunch revolving fund for that and just lastly on the last page of that memo i um indicated a description of each category or how i categorized each of the covid costs you know whether it’s cleaning supplies a facility’s cost of hvac or air quality cost ppe technology signage storage trailers etc and it totals that 1.875

1:48:00 1 875 000 that are referred to before and that just gives you an indication of what we are anticipating for total expenditures and i did note that this is through december 31st um but we do we will have some additional funding available if the government extends that deadline and um the town does not incur any additional costs which they’re not expecting to at this time any questions michelle can you just clarify that last piece do you expect just that date will extend or that there will actually be additional funds as well um at this time i i am pretty confident that the date will definitely extend um

1:48:46 i do not know if there will be additional funding but i i think if you know knowing that we’re not going to have a vaccine i read just today that most people are not or the cdc is not anticipating that most people will not be vaccinated until next summer i think that the current situation is going to go on through you know pretty much the end of the school year so i’m hoping that the date is extended through the end of the school year as well as hopefully additional some additional funding will be coming to us but a lot of these costs that we have incurred are one-time costs um some of them are ongoing costs and will depend how how long we are actually in session with students in our schools thank you

1:49:33 michelle one quick question um the usda piece that you were talking about i know one of the ideas on making up some revenue had been to be able to offer lunches to go home with students who may not be interested in the the kind of pre-packaged one but some other types of lunches does that limit that ability

1:49:57 um i’m not sure to be honest that’s the first time hearing about it but it maybe that was an idea that got floated and yeah taken off to say didn’t make it to me just yet um but that’s something to look into definitely i’m not not sure if that’s a possibility it may be thanks so you noted these um your write-up was to carry us through december 31st but was the portion pertaining to kindergarten tuition only through december 31st or was that incumbering for the full year kindergarten tuition was actually the full year okay um

1:50:39 and then and then for those other

1:50:47 expenses we’re looking at roughly a third third of the school year we’re taking a little more than half the schools we’re going to take a large chunk um and they’ve been very supportive but do we is it realistic to think that we’re we’re looking at a third of the year of our covet expenses and if we stay in the school for the full year that we’ll have enough i mean i know you said some of these for one time but yeah i mean most of our tech most of our technology costs are just one-time costs um we have ordered a significant amount of hardware totaling over four hundred thousand dollars our software is also one-time cost as it covers the entire year um technology services that i have

1:51:32 anticipated is to basically get our hardware up and running so really the operational costs are going to be cleaning services temporary cleaning services and any additional ppe that we need we have ordered a good chunk probably to take us through between four to five months we had to order an astronomical amount based on deci guidelines we certainly do not think we’re going to utilize the amount they estimated um in a in a month’s time so honestly i think that the amount we have on hand could could take us through half of the year um with that being said the signage is a one-time cost um the student desks were a one-time cost

1:52:21 the student services will be a front end um heavy loaded costs and when as we bring these students back into school so i think a lot of these and obviously and not not just um go off on a tangent but the hvac assessment that is a one-time cost for right now as well so i think a lot of these one-time costs will go away but the the primary um continual cost will be the temporary custodial staffing that we’re bringing in and the revolving uh the shortfalls of the revolving fund for the the food service correct yes okay um so that could potentially be anywhere from like another 800 to maybe a million those continuing costs

1:53:07 um and do we have a rough estim estimate of i know we’ll have to pay a portion of the unemployment of the people that are furloughed is that in these numbers at all um it is not currently in these numbers because the amount that we’re going to be responsible for is going to be probably pretty minimal and in addition they will qualify for any federal add-on that is voted um i know currently there was a additional amount voted through or or approved through the end of august there is an expected additional amount hopefully that will be coming that will be provided to these employees but will not be charged to us um so we do not think it’s going to be that large

1:53:57 um but we also can use the cares act to pay for um the unemployment costs it isn’t allowable oh excellent so that wouldn’t count as loss of revenue correct okay good um so you’re confident that that if we go through the end of the school year we can find that possible 800 000 to a million i think so between um between what the town has available the fema funding that they’re going to get back to basically bring their 1.8 million to a higher number and we are obviously the largest user of that 1.8 million um and they have pretty much committed to um saving every

1:54:43 every opportunity they can in the cares act to make sure that all of our needs are met so i i am confident in that and honestly um given the current school year it’s not going to be operations as normal so i do expect some savings whether it be transportation spent tuitions a lot of our our special ed programs are actually operating in a remote situation now um from our outer district schools so there’s going to be some some transportation savings there um so there’s there’s a lot of moving parts right now that we have our eyes on that we’re we’re not quite yet certain but i’m confident that we will be able to make this work i am not and that’s really that’s really good to hear about the out

1:55:29 placement transportation because that’s such a huge driver i was concerned where you can transport fewer people in a vehicle that that actually was going to go skyrocketing but you’re saying we’re going to recoup some savings there so that’s really huge it could i mean the students that we are transporting those costs may skyrocket rocket but we also have some situations where we no longer need to transport a student so um so there’s a lot of moving parts that we’re trying to keep track of right now but without us actually being in um session yet and without some of these schools not yet being in session it’s it’s really a a guessing game david thank you michelle your your numbers are always so easy to um kind of understand and go through thank you so much for the way you break it down and present

1:56:15 present present no problem you’re welcome david did you have a question i i did i did michelle if clearly the two biggest expenses on this other than cleaning i guess we could say is uh custodial temporary staffing and the technology for hardware could you just um are these assumptions that this can the first thing i guess is i’m sort of always a little bit more glass half full that things will get better but these assumptions and what you’ve encumbered are for expenses for the entire year um but also could you just also talk

1:57:03 about the custodial temporary staffing and the technology hardware that we’re spending 400 000 on the technology hardware that we have spent um just over the 400 000 that encompassed um ordering 490 chromebooks for students and that included ordering 260 ipads um those are on order some of the chromebooks we have already received the second shipment we have been um informed that we we have our orders in and we should receive those probably within the next month our ipads i believe we have received those if not they are coming very shortly so those are certainly one-time costs we

1:57:50 did anticipate acquiring some hardware this year but nowhere near those amounts um so certainly the cares act has benefited us in in this regard where we got a large number of um hardware devices that we initially did not anticipate before this whole remote learning situation and those those devices will go to students in need that that don’t necessarily have them correct okay yes we we have committed to providing devices to any student who needs a device um in order to for a remote learning situation absolutely or if we’re in a hybrid situation that might be technology that can be

1:58:39 used in in both instances um in the school as well as at home correct yes yep so obviously that that cost will not be reoccurring whatsoever um because we have that that large influx of the technology um the custodial cl the custodial temporary staffing um we’re currently ball parking at about 30 000 a week we have an rf garden rfp or an ifb information for bids um or invitation for bids i’m sorry out currently on the streets we will have bids due on september 14th at that time we will have an indication

1:59:25 of what the actual rates will be we’re anticipating bringing in additional custodial staff of about 30 people per week

1:59:37 pretty much on a daily full-time basis currently we do have a number of vacancies their temporary vacancies in our custodial staff we have two people currently out on workers comp um we have another one out um just on extended sick leave and um and we i believe we have another position not yet filled so right now we are down for custodians on a regular basis that’s certainly that that’s hurting us but the custodians that are on extended leave are not are no longer being paid so that does result in some um staff savings as well and that has not been added into our salary budget right but it’s it’s about anticipated expenses to

2:00:24 keep the schools clean exactly and having having this temporary staff come in right yeah so really that’s that’s the only ongoing cost that i see besides the cleaning supplies but we we really hit the cleaning supply ordering hard because we were afraid that the products just would not be available um the amount of hand sanitizer we have on hand the amount of disinfecting wipes we have on hand is just astronomical i honestly believe that we will make it through the whole entire school year with what we have if you walk over to vets middle school you will not believe the amount that we have on hand so i i think that that number is

2:01:10 pretty much set for the year um i expect that to be increasing too much either so really the the one piece that will be ongoing is the custodial staffing thank you very much welcome storage trailers just for our cleaning supplies some of his cleaning supplies most of its furniture that we had

2:01:40 michelle do you anticipate any savings you know in the spring we had voted um to carry over a certain percentage of the coaching stipends that were out so if obviously if we do any piece of sports there’s gonna be stipends paid out but if if for whatever reason we can’t pull off a season um does that do those percentages carry through or would we revoke them or do you are there going to be any anticipated savings or or expenditures with that um i would recommend that we take that issue up um given whatever whatever happens with the new seasons um because

2:02:25 that was very specific to the um spring season where we were just about literally to start i think the day after we closed um and some pre summer preparation had been done at that time and coaches really were expecting to work um and had put in some some time at this point obviously our seasons really have not started um so we certainly should take that um issue up for discussion you know going forward with whatever happens whether we have pretty much a full season or we have a half a season or we barely have any of a season but i think we should take that up but yes we have an amount you know 50 percent of the coaching salary is budgeted in the operating budget

2:03:12 the other 50 percent is slated to come from user fees so certainly if the coaching salaries were reduced to just 50 percent and we did have some user revenue we would see some savings in addition obviously the athletic transportation issue is unknown um we don’t know you know what transportation will look like we obviously have guidelines that we need to follow um but we also have a new school bus that we have on order currently so we will actually have a fleet of four full-size school buses um four marblehead schools and maybe we can utilize some of that that should be um received i believe in november we’re

2:03:57 looking at receipt of that new bus at this time we are also um possibly looking at leasing to additional special advance that we had anticipated for this budget we honestly have not had a moment to put out bid specs for those um and because we are limiting our transportation to only students that we are required to transfer transport either due to the distance from their school or because of an iep requirement our transportation numbers of students has been greatly reduced so we’re taking all that into consideration as we you know look forward into our busing needs and transportation needs from

2:04:43 outside vendors as well okay thanks you’re welcome um just a quick question and my todd may be the one to answer this but you’re the one that informed us so i’m gonna throw it at you sorry um those four custodians that were down um given that we’re in a pandemic and our will are we confident those positions will be filled or those people will be back to work before we have students in schools and in fuller buildings um two of them are on a longer term workers comp situation um i do not anticipate those two people to be back and um both of those are currently off of our payroll so we do have savings and

2:05:29 if we need to hire either temporary staff or apply portion of their savings to the contracted temporary staffing we can certainly do that but those those vacancies were taken into consideration when you know when todd came up with the number of 30 additional bodies needed for um to address our needs okay i just want to make sure todd has what he needs yep oh i’m sure he could use a 100 people but um we’re trying to be reasonable and he’s been great about that he tries to do things you know in the most economical way but sometimes we need to spend the money to to meet our needs all right all right

2:06:14 thank you michelle um your updates are always fantastic who really appreciate it and all the details and the ability to ask all these questions and and have them answered it’s amazing no problem um that will move us on to school community community school committee communications and discussion um i am going to ask that we actually table the resolution discussion that’s on the agenda for this evening um it it would require a vote and i missed the fact that um a vote didn’t get noted on there so we will table that one and then move it to the 17th um and actually emily had talked with me earlier today about getting another resolution on for the 17th so that’ll enable us to talk

2:06:59 about a couple resolutions um at the same time and um and and vote on on them if we feel that that’s necessary derek can i just request that we read the proposed resolution to the public because i think that one is pretty impactful so that i think the public would like to hear it before i actually thought we wasn’t on for a vote so that we presented to the public so that the next time we can hear feedback on it in public comment before we vote i thought the lack of a vote was intentional um

2:07:33 when i’m not opposed to reading it i i guess i would just

2:07:41 um i i guess i would just prefer to move it along i mean it’s after nine um if we’re not gonna have a discussion on it this time it’ll definitely be back up next time for sure because i agree you know it is a resolution that we want to to discuss and hopefully um move forward with a vote on it um and one thing though sarah just to add on to that is that next week if we decide that we want to think about it we don’t necessarily have to vote on either of them next week either if we just want to kind of attack it then and and allow for public comment the following one or for us to think about it um a little bit so there’s no vote mandated next week either it’s just you know let’s move it along since we’ve got a number of other things on our agenda still

2:08:27 still still can we make it available to the public on the back together marvel head or wherever yeah i think that makes sense on this one because it is a coveted related uh resolution so i think as long as john is okay with that um i think that makes a lot of sense so we can get that up um as soon as possible um and then yeah so we’ll not we’ll look at that one again on the 17th um not because we’ve talked about it we’ll hammer out that other um off cycle meeting in new business but the this one will go on with the regularly scheduled meeting um so that will move us on to the school advisory council discussion emily i will turn it over to you i know you and john worked on this offline as discussed

2:09:19 um okay so john and i met after the last meeting um and we came up with alternatives to having school committee members on the school advisory councils at our various schools um and we tried to create uh new ways to create our increased visibility and approachability of the school committee within the district with parents and families and staff um and so some of the things we came up with were our learning walks where um john would have regularly scheduled walks through um schools with the superintendent the principal and one school committee member and they would tour the school be able to ask the principal questions um these could be scheduled once a week

2:10:06 if you know we would schedule with john we can go see every school and he throughout the school year we will have those schedules for all of us to see each school and meet with each principal the second idea or to add on to that is six for the sixth grade the middle in high school to have pizza lunches to um so to get 10 to 15 students have lunch and a school committee member would meet with them have them ask questions bring up concerns um so that’s a way for us to get um in front of actual students the next idea is to have one to two school committee members sit in um on faculty meetings then

2:10:52 then then another [Music] event that could be scheduled our school committee uh member coffees with parents so again one to two school committee members can hold morning coffees um or also i guess evening coffees or tea um to talk with parents and so again parents can act direct questions to the school committee and um the next thing is to have the school principals present um at our school committee meeting so each meeting a principal would present just a short school related update

2:11:39 um 10 to 15 minutes long to just you know tell us what’s going on in the schools and then the last thing is to have a school committee member attend the central council meetings which are the meetings of the presidents of the ptos and pcos in the district and so that’s a way for the school committee to see another aspect of the district and what’s going on and then with all of these people the school committee members could have the option to report back to us to see what they’ve learned if things came up um and then we can talk about it so those are some of the options that we came up with in our meeting and i thought they were great ideas to really get us out there

2:12:24 and get us talking with people and learning and um meeting everybody so i guess we can talk about it i don’t know how people want to yeah absolutely we should definitely open this up they feel about it

2:12:42 yeah um i like i like all of those ideas they’re really good ideas and i think um interestingly they might put us into the community and into the schools in a more effective and impactful way than maybe even the sacs have had in the past

2:13:02 i love the pizza lunch idea i’m down for that now i’m assuming a lot of these will will be after the kovid piece is kind of behind us for instance the the pizza lunch in the touring of the schools because we won’t want to be doing any of this and putting people more at risk exactly okay um so that i mean a lot of this these are like a year out um i personally really like the way we’ve done the sacs i felt like it’s extremely collaborative it it makes the school committee members part of an equal team with you know our community members our teachers our administrators and i’ve had the opportunity for five years now to serve on them and i’ve i’ve found it

2:13:48 extremely beneficial whether it’s you know as a school committee member or as the parent rep um to kind of all work together as a team towards common goals and i worry that doing away with them will further kind of silo us i worry i worry that some of our procedures lately are feeling like we’re kind of siloing ourselves a little bit but that’s just my point of view and it’s to the will of the committee

2:14:19 um i actually i don’t i don’t know how if we you know i think if we did away with the sacs i could see that that would be siloing ourselves um completely but i think if we opt for a different way of of interacting with the public and the in the schools and the principles um i don’t know i actually think um again i think that these are more effective ways quite frankly than than the sacs um i certainly have enjoyed my time on the sacs um but i always felt a bit like an observer um and i don’t know i guess that just is sort of i always feel that it that it there

2:15:05 needs to be some i don’t know is this some mindfulness around how when when a school pity member walks into a situation um that that they’re there with their school committee cap um and so i kind of like this idea of of sort of being dispersed a little bit better

2:15:31 you know i might be the only person who served on one as a non-school committee member because i i like i said i you know i’ve been doing this for five years now and i really didn’t see that anybody acted different or that anything changed um and that was one of the pieces i i liked so much of the the sacs it was it really felt very equalized it’s very collaborative um i never felt like an observer i always felt like we we just you know i got to see what what the school did how they did it how they worked um i i’ve enjoyed all my time so i think that i would i would see it as a loss but megan megan so i know i see this every time it comes up

2:16:16 up up i love the village sac meetings i love them they’re my favorite me of all school committee meetings because i learn so much about what’s happening in the school and i i say it every time the passion the excitement the enthusiasm i love it that said i’m not sure how much value i add to their process so my question would really be what do the principals want us to do for the sacs so i would you know i’d really like that input that said all these ideas emily that you and john are presenting are things i would like to do no matter what um because i think you know when we went through the

2:17:02 search and we did the walkthroughs of the buildings with the superintendent and the principal those were you know obviously a great window to see you know john’s skills and how he interacts but it’s also a great way for us to see what was going on in the schools and here so you know i would absolutely like to do more of those no matter what um you know and i think we’ve historically you know before everything kind of went sideways we were having our meetings at the individual schools you know once a year um and so we haven’t really been able to do that in a while and i think probably this year would be the same thing but if we’re having the principals and maybe even some of the students and teachers come to our meetings and and

2:17:47 present some of the great thing that’s going on in the schools even in a remote or hybrid situation that would be useful as well so um you know any way that i think we can get more involved in what’s happening in the actual buildings and with our students i think is a great thing

2:18:08 i think that’s a great point that you made megan and i was hoping that these ideas would get us there like to get us out in the schools all of us can go to all of them you know and really see what’s happening during the day um and i think that’s so important that we all get to have that opportunity to go and actually meet with everybody and see because um when i went to the central council meetings when i was the pto president hearing what every other school was doing it’s like you felt more connected to everybody in the district instead of your little your own school that you were so invested in and hearing what everyone like what everyone else their events and just um everything that goes on there’s so much

2:18:54 more so i think it’s great for all of us to really go see what’s happening um in our schools and i actually wonder how much of this we could pull off realistically this year um you know like the lunches with students obviously it would be probably ill-advised to meet in person with the students but there were plenty of times last spring when um you know that i would hop on a tower with a for a lunch with students um and you know one grade would be getting together and teachers would be there and students would be there and we’d chit chat and sometimes the conversation would be serious and sometimes it would be um silly and it was a nice way to just kind of

2:19:40 encourage community um so i actually actually think something like that and the possibly the coffees um and even the you know i would assume that the central council things would be on zoom um that some of these we it might be an interesting year to actually look at this because the sac meetings might be different i know certainly when kovid knocked everything off kilter last spring the sac meetings um didn’t happen quite as often so i wonder if this might be a nice test run for this in an odd year anyway

2:20:26 and at the end of the day they’re public meetings so anybody that still wants any of us who will still want to partake in them can and will

2:20:40 so we don’t have a vote on this one either

2:20:46 so do we want to take the next two weeks to kind of think about it and come back or you know emily do you have a

2:21:08 i think the faster or the like as soon as we can get our decision made because if we do want to get some of these things happening um in this first part of the school year you know we have to schedule all of that so well i think we should probably move forward i mean i don’t see them as mutually exclusive many of your ideas even if we keep sacs as they were are good are we can be implemented i don’t i actually don’t see them having any bearing whatsoever and sacs can i ask a clarification and you may have said this so i apologize but with coming up with these ideas um have you and john i’m sorry you may have already told us this have you um consult you know talk to the principals

2:21:56 and get their feedback on these so i’ll jump and jump in there um i think sarah fox’s point is very well taken that they are public meetings and so if school committee members wish to participate in them i think it is a good idea to explore new ways for school committee members to be involved in the life of the schools perhaps not as voting members of an sac and i think that that is a good position for the new superintendent not obligating building principles to the outcome of this decision how’s that for a walk around that was a pretty good one never voting in members

2:22:44 never voting members yeah we were non-voting members well i’m good with getting some of these you know okay going personally i like them so john asked me to make a calendar and put them all on the calendar so i can get going on that all right that sounds like a plan bring it back all right great great thank you guys

2:23:16 all right that brings us to subcommittee updates um and this was something that we worked on keeping on agendas in the past year um so i just wanted to really stay the commitment on that that we would have subcommittee updates regularly at meetings um i know that obviously we’re kind of all flying by the seat of our pants here and so and most subcommittees are not scheduled to meet yet um but just to kind of keep it on everybody’s radar um emily and i are scheduled to meet for the policy subcommittee tomorrow morning and we did choose to have that meeting in person and at woodrow road that was you know i think as we look as a district to return to

2:24:03 return to return to as normal functioning as we can return to um i think it makes a lot of sense to be attempting as the school committee to return to as much normal as we can return to as well um so that was the thinking behind that um you know it’s it is obviously a public meeting we’ve consulted the ag’s office um if it you know we’ll have chairs for the public set out and socially distance and masks will be required um if we get to a number who come that uh the space is is too small for it lisa’s booked a bigger space in that in that same in in which a road and we can always move it outside as well it looks like it’s going to be beautiful tomorrow um so that’s the plan

2:24:48 on that um and like i said earlier in the meeting hopefully we’ll have some some policy updates to hand to the committee uh next week when we meet um about the moa and then that will give us the opportunity you know for the mass policy we kind of did an emergency uh reading with it and got it passed with just one reading ideally policy you know is discussed at the subcommittee level brought to the full committee uh for an initial reading and then to a subsequent meeting for its final reading and vote so ideally that’s what we’re looking to do moving forward with these policies that that we’ll start to look at tomorrow um as as per the having the meeting in person um

2:25:36 i would like to see moving forward that any in-person meeting also have some type of video link my understanding is we’re the only community and actually not even community we’re the only board in the entire north shore area hosting in-person meetings partic particularly indoors so i i feel like there’s this idea in the community where it’s not as accessible at being a pandemic and all um that we we in order for this idea of collaboration with the community and transparency that i would like to see us always offer a video option as well um so that the community can can um you know zoom in or youtube in or whatever it is that they do um and be part of these meetings i think

2:26:22 the idea that we’re constantly going to be hopping from room to room or possibly outside and crossing our fingers that the weather’s okay moving forward isn’t the best plan um and also i think for you know the argument being made that we’re moving towards putting students in school in a public meeting are two completely different beasts it’s like comparing an apple to a cadillac in my mind um bringing students in school were more meticulously organized we know what students are coming when they’re coming where they’re going where they’ve been we can contact trace we have seating charts um it’s very organized very meticulous um we can plan for safety a public meeting by its nature very nature is you cannot limit or dictate who comes and from where so

2:27:08 so so if there is a need for contact tracing we i don’t know that we’ve established a protocol for that um and i i’m concerned with having in-person meetings without a protocol for contact tracing if there is a positive how do we trace who was in that room where they sat this and that um i just i don’t feel our protocols are there yet for to safely do it and because we can’t control who comes to a public meeting it’s an entirely different beast so i i can understand completely the idea that we don’t want the public saying you know well you’re zooming still but you’re putting kids in buildings they’re entirely different beast you can control one who comes and goes and the other one we have zero control and follow through on as far as contact tracing

2:27:56 um so i think you know that’s a that’s a well taken point um and certainly as we move as a committee to meet mostly in person as the school committee members those meetings would absolutely have a zoom component for public participation as well as uh public viewing hopefully on multiple platforms um and i think you know i i just as as wonderful as zoom is to be a stand-in for these types of things that that it’s allowed us to do business it’s allowing us to run classes and be effective and move society forward um it certainly does not

2:28:42 does not does not is not as easy to use as in-person meetings um and i just really don’t want to see us struggle to get business done um while we kind of trip over ourselves to run zoom meetings as well while we’re also running in person because it’s not it’s not the easiest thing to do as you’re trying to participate in a meeting and control a weight room and manage any kind of um you know zoom bombing situation that might come up um so i think you know for the it that for the subcommittees at least where we don’t tend to get

2:29:28 vast amounts of public participation to begin with um for myself it just made some sense to be able to start to meet in person i mean we’re not talking about moving 100 people from room to room i will say the budget meetings i mean we’ve been packed elbow to elbow i mean i can tell you i could you know i can remember paul baker on many occasions being you know right next to me um which it’s great that people are involved and want to be there but the idea that we’re going to fit the people that are interested six feet apart in these rooms i don’t know i think the budget one is one that we should um you know we’re gonna have to plan for a little bit i’d like to see much more

2:30:13 regularly scheduled budget meetings than maybe we did in the past and also you know we know that we have interest there so we have to plan accordingly especially when we’re talking about space um you know that’s probably the one where we do get the most interest and we have to plan accordingly for that but i will say like i absolutely think there our meetings were more effective and efficient when we were in person um and you know what we’re doing there is those are more like working meetings and we bring everything back to the school committee so it’s not like we’re making any decisions um in those subcommittee meetings they’re actually like i said they’re more working and then we bring them back to the full school committee for discussion votes and action to be taken um and those i do think that we should you know still make a hunt you know

2:31:01 continue in this form for accessibility um you know for the at least the you know short to medium term um the policy one you know being on the policy subcommittee for the past two years we’ve never uh i can’t say never maybe once we had some person come um you know so i think we you know we know the ones that we should expect um you know greater attendance we have to plan accordingly for that um but i don’t think it should preclude us from trying to work as effectively as possible and i do think the in-person ones get us a little bit further along on that you can still have an in-person meeting you just would in my opinion you would also

2:31:47 you know have it available to people who aren’t in the room or can’t be in the room um you know

2:31:56 part of an an open meeting is being accessible and and there are people with health and underlying conditions where we’re making it non-accessible to them

2:32:09 it’s an accessibility issue too i think yeah but i think again as megan pointed out this is a piece where no actual decisions are made um that are going to be carried forward to the district you know it’s all planning and that it’s brought back to the full committee which there is absolutely a commitment to being um continuing to be within zoom and online um in multiple formats i mean you know we’re recording this it’s everybody has access to zoom and it’s being streamed live on youtube um so it you know there’s there’s certainly is a dedicated commitment to having people be able to access when decisions are being made

2:32:59 does anybody else have any um plans to to put a subcommittee meeting on the books at any point are we still working uh david and i have actually started talking about what’s going to work schedule-wise and i do think you know like i said especially for budget that’s probably one where we want to get a more regularly scheduled meeting um in place a for you know our own schedules but also just you know so the public’s aware and we can kind of start working with the town on that too right

2:33:32 fantastic fantastic well i know emily and i will have things to report on uh this policy subcommittee i think it might be a busier year with that one um as we work to bring things forward david school building project update is there any chance you can share your screen with me just briefly can i make you do you have it

2:34:07 can i give you co-host of abilities right if you do that i guess then you can share your screen no it’s it’s there so can people see that here we go

2:34:25 yep yep okay and i won’t do the whole um five minutes of the video but um so as i mentioned at the beginning of the meeting we had the topping off ceremony and mhtv was nice enough to put together this video um and i’m just gonna do the you know the first minute of the video because i think it’s really cool and for people to see even if they’re logging on and have already seen it but so here we go

2:36:35 so so i will stop there to spare everybody but um uh thanks john uh put you on the spot a little bit there tuesday morning and asking you to make a few remarks and uh head and ass in advance but you know after all it you know it it’s about this it’s about the students it’s about the kids that are gonna be at the school and um thanks for your remarks and um just really exciting to see and all i can say as far as the report goes um we are moving forward and as john said we’re we’re on schedule and on budget and

2:37:21 as far as being ahead of schedule and under budget we’ll we’ll kind of leave those for uh future conversations but the the project is moving forward and it’s just great and there was a lot of energy there even though we couldn’t have the public and seeing the students sign the beam and it’s permanently in the building i just think that’s really cool one of the things we might do david sandon was saying is to try and do a time capsule like you hear you know buildings do a you know and you have a little brick where there’s um things that can get put in the corner of the building so you know we’re going to continue to do those kinds of things to just try and celebrate the success of the project as we go forward

2:38:06 that’s all i have very cool thanks david i’m sorry go ahead sir no go ahead meg you’re good you’re good go for it it was a really fun morning i was i was really glad that um you know that we got to participate yep yeah it was great and congratulations and well done you know to everyone on the building committee you know our the partners and vendors that we work with i just think it’s been a great team effort and you know this was just one more milestone towards the finished product yep

2:38:38 really really exciting sean and donna there and the and the teachers and um just the overall excitement of of what it’s going to be like you know next year when we cut the ribbon and the students actually going to school so it’s a nice distraction from some of the covid19 that we have going on and so so far so good with with the project and they’re they’re following all the rigid guidelines related to it and social distancing and so hopefully that can continue and we won’t have any um related delays but um yeah just a great day so thanks for everybody thanks david all right so that moves us to closing

2:39:24 business um obviously i’ve mentioned a few times we need to pick a date next week um but i just wanted to give a short update um and just kind of talk a little bit about the the process and getting us to the moa um so i just want to point out that the negotiations that have gotten us to this point where we will be voting on an moa next week uh have been the very definition of bargaining in good faith uh dr bucky has represented the school committee well in every meeting that i have been privy to and as our superintendent he’s charged with assisting the committee in reaching sound judgments and in this matter dr bucky has acted as the communicator of the committee with the union uh we are now the point where we will soon have the opportunity to discuss

2:40:09 this as a public body i ask us all to remember that we are members of a committee and we carry out committee decisions once they are made that applies to the current moa we have in place as well as just the one that we will hope to pass next week our authority as individuals is to represent the committee and the schools in a way that promotes interest and support when negotiations with the union happen in a climate of mutual trust and understanding that goal is much more easily met as i’ve said all along as we have faced challenges due to covid if we can continue to work together we will succeed um at this point in time with a superintendent who we can trust it is in everyone’s best interest for us to be aligned with john since we have charged him with meeting with the union this doesn’t mean that we can’t ask

2:40:55 questions and have a lively discussion when it is time for us to vote on the moa and we are tasked with this duty as individual members of the committee however we need to remember that none of us should be eroding the process by engaging in any kind of direct dealing with any of the members of the union this undermines our employees belief in the union’s ability to represent them as they are entitled to by statute and in our ability to maintain our primary responsibility to the children of the district it also erodes the credibility of dr bucky as the superintendent and i know that’s not what any of us want to do direct dealing can be tempting and is a slippery slope in a small community where we know each other however it is always a violation of the law we can communicate accurate information to employees but we may not bypass the

2:41:41 union and deal directly with employees we need to remember to refer complaints to administrative chain of command and if we follow these general guidelines we’ll be certain to end up with an moa that is collaborative and provides the best possible opportunities for the young people of our community so at the end of the meeting on um good grief i don’t even remember what day it was it was the other day um i’ve lost track of most of my days at this point um it sounded like we had come to a consensus and that the union felt that if we were as a school committee to meet next wednesday that they would be ready and have their members have voted on it at that point um so i wanted to put that to the committee at this point to see if

2:42:29 wednesday hopefully works um and then work to find a time on wednesday that that everyone is available not to be a total pain in the butt but i am away on wednesday i’m actually away sunday through wednesday traveling on wednesday okay all right what does that mean i mean you guys can meet without me if you need to i don’t want to hold up the moa at all

2:42:58 john thoughts on that yeah i think thursday would be fun all right sounds good so no worries

2:43:10 go um last week john sorry john you had said everything was smooth you didn’t have any anything in your um my words are failing me i’m sorry anything that looked like it was going to present a problem is that kind of still you feel everybody’s pretty much in the same page as just dotting eyes crossing t’s yes i have uh finalized i think we have finalized with the union i’ve sent it off to john foskett i would like to schedule a time with each school committee member individually so that i can sit down and go over it with you i can release that uh i think john is getting back to me tomorrow and so once he has put his thoughts uh to it i can share it uh over the weekend for school committee

2:43:56 to uh look at and then the individual meetings will serve two purpose one certainly to go over the mla with me and to ask questions but two uh for me to have time with you to do part of my entry uh process which reopening has consumed and i haven’t had the opportunity to do that so the individual meetings with you would be super helpful if your schedules would permit that great that’s a fantastic plan so thursday works for everybody evenings are are definitely better for me i’ve ramped up with our um situation again so days are a little tough that’s fine um because i i actually go back the kids come back to tower next week so my week

2:44:43 is a little bit nuttier as well um in testing out john’s desire to have a 6 30 meeting would we be willing to put this one at 6 30 and give it a whirl

2:44:56 john has spoken i i will 30. i’m not committing to this long term i’m just letting him try it out just one time i personally make it to seven by the skin of my teeth like getting everybody situated um but it’s up to everybody i’ll make i’ll do whatever i need to do

2:45:25 uh either one is fine with me wrong but i can do either yeah 6 30. sarah would you be able to give it a try i’m not totally certain that i can pull off a regular 6 30 either just with how my household functions um but it would be i would be willing to make an attempt yeah i’ll i may be late i can’t see anything but um you’ll give it on is one 6 30 meeting it’s one 6 30. i hope that’s not a trade-off that it’ll go for hours then well with only a few things on the agenda we’ll hope that it we can we can wrap it up relatively quickly

2:46:10 and david this doesn’t cross over on a building committee right um um no we’re not we’re not on tap next week okay good yeah we’re good to go yep good point all right so thursday i don’t even know i think that’s the 10th um at 6 30. okay got it all right thanks for everybody’s flexibility um all right any other new business i hit something the whole meeting i was holding but i literally it’s it’s gone now okay well if you remember it and you want it on a subsequent agenda just um you know let me know and

2:46:56 we’ll get it on okay sounds good all right so with that i will adjourn us at 9 46. thanks everyone thank you good night good night