School Committee: September 17, 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.

0:59 all right david you should be able to unmute yourself

1:05 there it is good evening everyone thank you good to see you i was wondering why it was so quiet because you just muted everybody so we couldn’t talk

1:23 good evening john hi nan michelle how are you we’re good eric oxford’s with us tonight lots of people are on board james you you at the lighthouse or where are you james maroney james maroney are you on waldron street or where are you oh he probably can’t unmute himself

2:30 sarah fox you should be able to unmute yourself correct i am now i was not when i put the note up okay

4:01 sarah gold i think i’m going to try to zoom in from um another device this one keeps cutting in and out so if you see me come in under one of my kids names can you just i’ll switch the name but can you unmute me absolutely

5:30 sarah you should still be able to unmute yourself

5:38 okay i’m coming on as grace right now i think

6:37 okay um we still got a few people trickling in but i will uh call the meeting to order at 706 pm uh does anybody have any commendations go ahead sarah

6:55 i just wanted to thank all of our staff the administration the students that’s the teachers and the students for for making it through the first week um the positive energy i saw and even when things didn’t work they’re just there was patience and grace shown and i for that i’m i’m just wanted to recognize everyone yes i’ve got a second that it’s been you know not without its bumps but i think overall it’s been a great start um and so it just is really a testament to everybody coming together and working to make it as the best start we could have so thank you i will third that

7:41 i’ll fourth it i think it sounds like the committee is in agreement

7:52 all right then that will move us along to our student representative dan howells dan i think you should be able to mute yourself i think i changed the setting correctly

8:07 i think yep we can hear you welcome dan welcome to another school year with us yes i’m very excited i’m glad to have you back yeah thank you very much so uh we are as we were saying we’re just finishing up our first week of school it’s crazy to say that um but i’m really glad that we got to this point um so to sum up the first week at the high school on monday we had a full school meeting uh with everyone which was actually like very um it was crazy to look at because we had you know the same pages you know about us the same many about as many people per page but like 30 pages um hundreds of kids so that was really cool um and then we split up into meetings by grade after that

8:54 then on tuesday we went through all eight of our class blocks for 20 minutes each uh to get acquainted with our teachers um and then yesterday and today we split up our eight blocks into two days uh so we had four classes yesterday for 50 minutes each full blocks and then four classes today for 50 minutes each and then tomorrow we are going to have the same schedule from tuesday we’ll have every class for 20 minutes as a check-in day so if i had to pick one word to describe the last week of school that i think all students would agree with uh i think it would have to be weird uh because

9:39 uh because uh because i think it’s fair because you know a year ago no one could have possibly imagined the position that we are in um but that being said i think it’s important to recognize all the work that teachers have uh put into getting this year ready uh it is clear to me that all teachers have uh worked extensively to make sure that their virtual classes run smoothly and that we will also be safe to return once hybrid school begins um so every day has run more smoothly than the last this week um and it seems to me that students are you know really settling in to the schedule

10:25 and their you know work environment at home so moving forward i understand that many after school activities are working out uh their return plan uh and i also understand that many sports will be returning but with revised rules but students are definitely excited to get back to those activities uh even if they have to change the rules a bit to make them safe for everyone and i don’t have much else to report regarding the future as we all know it’s it’s almost impossible to know uh what’s the situation we’ll be in uh even as soon as in a month uh but i of course will uh you know let you know as things

11:12 unfold and uh keep you up to date but what’s going on now thanks so much dan great to hear yeah david did you want to say something yeah hi dan uh welcome back could you talk a little bit about was there during the week i understood some uh book pickups and some different things going on at the high school for the students yes so um on tuesday wednesday and thursday we’ve had uh i’m not sure maybe tomorrow but we’ve had pickups at the high school for textbooks and uh other materials that uh students probably wouldn’t have at home uh so i know like some of the art classes are giving art supplies to students um and things like that so they split it up

12:00 by last name so depending that would uh say when you go to the school so they had actually the path that goes um back to like the tennis courts um opened up for cars to go down and then we drive we drove around the back of the school picked up our textbooks and then headed back out around the other way so it went very smoothly um yeah we were able to get all of our things great and i and i think the boosters were doing some special t-shirts for yeah they they had uh teachers out uh giving out uh t-shirts with um a magician with a mask on uh on the back yeah that’s great i saw i saw that

12:46 on twitter from from uh principal bauer so that that’s really cool and thanks to the boosters for doing that as well yep great great well great update dan again good to have you back we’ll look forward to hearing more as the year moves on and i think our next meeting is is october 1st so right before the hybrid starts so we’ll see where remotes out at that point and push through into in person sounds good thank you dan thank you all right next is public comment if anybody wants to make public comment please uh use the raise your hand function and i will call on you

13:32 here’s the raise hand function sarah i’m trying to take notes as we go just to kind of try to help to get ahead of the minutes thing so if people can just make sure to um note their address if if they could do it in the notes section that would be helpful but if not if they can note their address as well all right

13:55 so if you want to put your name in the chat function with your address that would be helpful um john whipple i think i see that you want to make a public comment so i will allow you to go ahead and start speaking thank you i’m i’m sorry i can’t find the ray’s hand function no worries disabled it tells me but anyway uh john whipple 106 atlantic avenue and i’m uh here on behalf of the marblehead ministerial association we had a meeting earlier this month and the racial justice team invited us among others to make a statement about the recent acts of hatred and bigotry and uh

14:41 and uh and uh rabbi meyer and i were tasked with drafting a statement which goes as follows in 1981 the marblehead ministerial association responded to acts of anti-semitism by adopting our interfaith covenant in it we cro quoted scripture and the us constitution and we began by affirming our common faith in the one god this is the one who created all people equal and endowed us with unalienable rights to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness as stated

15:29 in our declaration of independence as leaders and representatives of marbleheads communities of faith we proclaim that our creator creates every individual as an act of love that love for us is universal and unconditional as beloved creatures of the one creator of all we are called to reflect the divine love to all our fellow human beings this leaves no room for hatred or bigotry toward any person or group for this reason the second scripture verse we quote in our covenant is you shall love your neighbor as yourself regardless of ethnicity religion sexual orientation

16:15 orientation orientation gender identity or any other basis therefore in solidarity with many other organizations and individuals we condem recent acts of racism anti-semitism and homophobia here in marblehead as well as elsewhere we call upon all our congregants and all people to oppose bigotry and hatred of any form and to do whatever is within our power to build an inclusive society of justice peace respect and love

17:00 that’s the statement i’ll just add that one reason we wanted to share it with the school committee and the superintendent is that we believe and we hope you believe as well that schools have an important role to play in developing that community of uh hatred of um justice peace respect and love to make marblehead truly no place for hate thank you john would you mind sharing that statement if you can with um with our chairman sarah and pass it along so we can include it in our minutes i think that would be um beneficial for everybody to have that

17:47 uh yes as a matter of fact before i realized that this was going to be a zoom meeting i had made copies for every member of the committee and for dr bucky so i can drop those off at the school administrative offices wonderful thank you so much thank you all right is there anyone else who would like to make public comment either raise your hand or if that function is not in fact working um i believe i have the chat on correctly so that it will pop up to me that your name and address

18:43 all right um i’m not seeing anyone

18:53 so we will move forward to the minutes um and we’ve got a few sets that we were hoping to get on tonight but i think only one of them ended up making it into our dropbox which is june 4th um does anybody have any additional pieces or corrections to make on june 4th

19:14 and i’ll just take a moment um to just note that we are working really hard to get these minutes up there’s obviously a lot going on in the district at this point and that any after june 4th was the only meeting that was not posted on the youtube that is also not posted uh as minutes on our website so on the youtube station if you search on youtube uh marblehead school committee you can find every uh recorded meeting that is not also in our minutes so basically from june 4th forward and i think there’s some older ones from may and there that have since been passed but are up on the up on that site all right anything about the fourth

20:02 okay then i will ask for a motion to approve the minutes from june 4th 2020. so moved megan moved

20:14 second david second all right i’ll roll call vote sarah gold yes megan taylor yes uh sarah fox yes david harris yes and emily baron yes all right let’s pass five to zero thanks guys um hopefully we’ll have the rest of june and then also some of july for our next meeting uh john that leads us on to the superintendent report and you’ve got an opening day update sure thank you madam chair um the opening day by all accounts was very uh successful i think i would echo our student representatives insight that who would have thought that the opening of school would include things like drive through textbook

21:00 textbook textbook pickup um but i think one of the things that uh affirmed for me the approach that we took to opening this year as solid was an email from a parent who was initially opposed to the idea of a remote opening and didn’t understand why we weren’t immediately going into the cohort and i think as we watch the evening news and see schools that are pivoting our school districts at the last minute that were intending to go back in hybrid and commit conditions in the community changed or young people had celebrations that led to principals or superintendents having to make last

21:46 minute decisions and families scrambling thinking that they were had a schedule prepared and then that was turned on its ear really uh the value of us starting with the three weeks remote resonated and so um that was uh good for me uh as the superintendent and good for the reopening committees and everyone that really did all of that work and weathered um some feedback that uh people weren’t sure that we had made uh solid decisions about reopening and um it has been also very nice to get emails from families recognizing that remote learning is indeed different by most accounts that children

22:31 from all grade levels from first grade to high school are seeing a difference in remote learning and the expectations and the enjoyment i would just say some questions have come to me about rigor in remote learning at some grade levels or in some instances and i will say part of the educational experience at the beginning of the year is building community and getting to know your students and to develop relationships and routines and i can remember as a high school principal urging teachers not to just jump in to content on day one and uh certainly with our advanced placement teachers at the high school

23:17 level they are very much eager to jump into ap chemistry and ap us history and art history and all of those things but in good classrooms in safe and inclusive schools teachers really spend that first week or those first couple days building community in the classroom and getting to know students and so if as you’re listening to your remote learner talk about their summer vacation or what scares them or their hopes and dreams for the year and you’re thinking what is going on why are we not talking about foundations or go math or why aren’t they doing the quadratic uh why aren’t they doing quadratic equations there is purpose behind that and where i

24:03 realize that time is shortened this year and there is an increased anxiety for being able to get the content but i do appreciate that teachers are being mindful that in a remote setting it’s tricky getting to know uh people in a classroom you can read some body language you can see facial expressions more readily but in zoom um many of us it’s like our first year teaching again and i just want to complement our teachers that they are doing such amazing work and those 10 days that we organized before we started remote learning hats off to assistant superintendent nan murphy and her teaching learning committees for really

24:50 making those rich days full of professional learning i might say that some teachers will will have looked back on that and said maybe it was too much learning uh which you know is a mixed bag but we offered so much for them and i think that our efforts certainly paid off uh for the opening if you saw my comments um in the paper uh today i gave us a b plus and i that was purposeful um you know as superintendent you want to say a plus we were perfect it was great but that wasn’t true there were glitches and um i think uh as i said in the paper as well if you looked for it to be different and better we gave you a ton of examples of where it was different and better and people

25:37 were happy and engaged and could see that if you were unsure and not happy there were some glitches with technology and things that didn’t resonate i think my words in the paper were that fed that beast and so i will say by and large it was a very successful opening we take feedback and try to address that in the moment and anytime that technology you’re solely relying on technology to work perfectly it is a perfect setup that something will go wrong with a connectivity issue or a device not operating fully and so just today

26:25 at the high school we put in new connection points and replaced 11 teacher devices and so i really do value the feedback from the community and we work to make decisions for the next day not um you know we’ll get to that next week or well when we get to the hybrid that will be different so i do appreciate that um i could jump to enrollment and personnel but i would like to open it up to the committee if there are questions about opening that i could address specifically like megan’s got a question sorry i don’t have a question but i do just want to say more as a parent um you know being on the other side from you it i was expecting you know to go in and i was expecting

27:11 issues it was night and day from the spring and my daughter has been engaged from the moment she logged on on monday um all the way throughout and i would say she probably echoes dan’s comment on it being weird you know especially at first um but i could hear them today in their breakout rooms and you know getting to know each other too and i just think it’s been a really good experience for her so far um her teacher i am going to give a shout out to miss brewett and um also from a special ed standpoint i’ve already mentioned this to eric but her case manager miss mccarthy reached out to us prior to school which you know for me was just a great experience to kind of have the chance to meet with the person who’s going to be

27:58 providing the services and be able to talk about my daughter’s needs before the first day of school that was a huge benefit and you know move in the right direction so i just want to thank everybody again for doing a great job and you know we’ve had a good experience so far so thank you megan i’m just going to echo uh that in a compliment to eric there have been some questions about um should we be bringing more students back and if we went strictly with the deci formula for what constituted your special populations or high needs we would have brought back about 55 students across the district we currently have around 150 students in the district back receiving

28:44 supports and services and i just credit eric and his team for that work that we didn’t hold to the deci formula and say we’re just going to do the minimum but almost tripled the number of students that we’ve been able to bring back that’s great that’s great as always eric is setting great examples sarah did you have something i did um i know that there’s been some questions out there and i think i think it’s actually um john’s word i’m stealing the twitter sphere or however he puts it about um about the length of days um can you talk a little bit about is this what people can expect moving forward um can we expect to tweak in those i know right

29:29 now it seems that lower elementary is kind of at on a full day schedule you know 8 to 2 15 or or thereabouts and then the vets i think is done a little earlier and then the high school you know goes asynchronous a bit earlier is this is this the way it’s going to be moving forward or will there be tweaks coming yeah i think that’s a great question yes there will always be tweaks coming because as we get into a system and learn lessons and what’s resonating and working we want to continue with that but we also want to course correct i think there is some misunderstanding about the vets and the high school schedule being done at noon and there not being any afternoon activities and i did have an opportunity

30:15 to sit down with principal fox um uh today after school and i’ve connected with principal bauer and i would just ask families to reach out to them for clarification if they’re thinking that there isn’t any afternoon expectations or activities at the secondary

30:35 i think probably as any of us with those secondary students would say they like to uh pretend that that there’s no work going on when there’s video games involved at least that’s my experience

30:49 emily did you have something um yeah i have another uh question that’s kind of out there um on the internet in our community about um because the rates in marblehead are so low people are wondering when we can bring students back full-time like when that date is that phase of our right yeah i think that’s a great question as well emily um currently we’re using um the board of health and six foot distancing we have said all along that we could use if we had the three foot distancing we could fill the buildings right now we don’t see that as a safe option but if cdc or mass public health

31:36 or the local board of health say conditions are such that your distancing requirement could change then we could bring more students back for longer great thank you

31:55 all right john i think you’re free to move on to an enrollment update enrollment update is super interesting and i almost think i have set myself up with the committee because of the depth of information that i provided you um but um enrollment is a very interesting trend uh across the state and the superintendents association did a survey of um all districts and they got about a third of districts to respond so about 120 school districts marblehead being one of them that we um they’re looking at homeschool data and kindergarten data and so i tried to mirror some of the

32:41 questions that they ask in giving you a grade by grade breakdown the delta in marblehead is what we budgeted for or what we planned in terms of the october 1st enrollment last year we’re about 255 students down from that and so you will see the reasons for that whether they were moved to another public school a private school a charter school if they’ve opted for homeschooling if they moved out of the state um and then the totals uh by grade level um i did want to point out kindergarten enrollment you can see that we’re down about 41 from what we had anticipated

33:27 in the 120 districts that responded to the state survey there were 85 districts out of the 120 that said that they saw a decrease of enrollment in kindergarten and that represented almost 5 000 students 5 000 kindergartners that are not enrolled in those 85 districts so i know that that 41 number probably jumps out at us particularly because we charge kindergarten tuition and i certainly monitor that uh with michelle cresta in terms of budgetary implications but i think the enrollment information that i gave you is hopefully helpful and excite insightful by grade level and so i would open it up if people have enrollment questions

34:20 yes so yes so we with the enrollment being down the way the funding comes in that will come off our cherry sheets so the funding source that will be depleted will actually be depleted at the town level since our budget has already been allocated at town meeting so our budget ironically won’t change but the revenue coming into the town on the cherry sheets will be depleted um has there been discussion with the town how we’ll address that because this is not an insignificant number it’s it’s going to be a hefty number um and i know the coven relief money cannot be used to supplement for any loss of revenue which this would count for so has there been a

35:06 discussion with the town on the impact of that and are they suggesting any remedy in the way of our budget quick answer to the question sarah is no and no i meet with the chair of the finance committee and i meet with the town manager monthly right now and it has not come up in conversation in terms of a request from town for budgetary implications right now okay but i do track this with michelle cresta and she is confident that we can um to use a bad phrase weather the storm uh in terms of kindergarten tuition and like everyone we hope that we are able to go back into full day session if there’s uh

35:53 you know changes in conditions and we could go back and is there an opportunity to charge a partial tuition if we’re able to do that for the last half of the year the last quarter of the year so certainly it’s at the forefront of michelle’s uh mind and something that we in our weekly meetings together uh keep tabs on okay no that’s um that’s really good news i think you you had shared that you’ve been sharing a good update good updates with us on the kindergarten tuition and i’m very happy to know that you guys have been on top of that but those reductions in the cherry sheets um we we’ve we’ve made really good headway on on trying to be aware of you know what happens with the town effects affects our budgets and vice versa so i just if we can kind of for the next meeting have somewhat of an answer on

36:39 that because i just want to make sure that the town isn’t going to take potentially i forget the exact student funding but if it’s around the 5800 mark per student we’re we’re looking at you know over a million dollars here that the town will take a hit on um so that i think we need to have that conversation happy to look into that sarah thank you

37:15 all right john do you want to go on to the personnel update yes i think similarly uh with personnel um there were i got i think when i met with one of you you said i got a little granular on the information that i provided um so hopefully the synopsis information uh in terms of leave of absence requests and remote teaching uh requests was helpful um i think everyone panicked when it came out that swampscott had 25 of their staff asking for leave or remote teaching that percentage for us is around six percent um and i tried to break it down uh for you in terms of teachers

38:02 paraprofessionals tutors our service uh providers the number of those in the district and people asking for a leave of absence or a remote uh assignment i did uh note at the bottom that there were seven uh requests for remote uh teaching assignment that were denied and i tried to i broke that out as well by school i did not uh when the numbers get small i try not to be very specific because i would not want an individual to be identified and so on the leave information tool and the names i tried not to provide any specific information but to

38:49 list the new staff members in each school but i’m happy to answer leave or remote teaching assignment questions anybody anybody sarah go ahead um i did notice on there that there was a new position an inclusion teacher at glover the there was three new positions two of them we had known about and discussed in the budget during the budget season being the guidance counselor eck lover as well as the um humanities teacher at vets but the but the new position of inclusion teacher glover had not not been discussed during the budget um preparation process so i was just wondering if you could speak to that a little bit and how it fits into the budget and how we came about adding the position

39:36 sure um i’m not sure specifically sarah so this is where the new superintendent gets to phone a friend with michelle cresta or eric oxford because i know we wouldn’t put a position in that we didn’t have money to put in but they can uh bail me out here and let me know how we did that so eric take it away hey no problem um so i don’t have your document john in front of me but i can assure that that was not a new position it was actually an internal transfer from one school to another so we did hire a new uh person but there were no new allocated funds there’s i could go it was about a five step process to get to where we needed to be but there was no new budget line items so someone the position basically got a new title so it looks new but it did exactly

40:23 yeah but nothing nothing new no added position to the budget it was a repurposed special education existing special education position so it was not new that makes perfect sense i just when i saw a new position i was a little questioning but thank you guys no problem any other questions about uh personnel

40:51 all right then we will move along to the deci health and safety guidelines for hybrid instructions and there were new protocols released this week for reporting and mobile testing so john i believe you’re going to have nan take that i am and i just want to give a shout out to the widger road team before i transition to that just in sarah’s last question me being able to ask michelle and eric to jump in and for them to have the information readily available the support that we have in the collaboration on widget road is really what has helped to make the opening so successful and so um with that i can dish to nan who has become kind of our covid’s rs in terms of the latest deci iteration of what we will do for mobile

41:38 response so man all right great so i attended a conference call with the commissioner’s team and got i joking joked with the superintendent and i said we actually got guidance that is actually pretty easy to follow so um i shared it with our reopening committee on monday morning but i will summarize it for you but there is um some substantial detail in there if you’re interested in in going a little bit deeper so starting monday september 14th all districts across the commonwealth are now required to report covid cases so they provide a rapid response help center number

42:23 center number center number we have asked deanna mccann to be in charge of the covid reporting pieces so she will be our lead in reporting both daily numbers and um also assisting in what i’m going into next which is our covid mobile rapid response units so units have been created to support districts in testing large amount of students or faculty and it’s very prescriptive in terms of when to call to get information about a mobile unit

43:08 they i’m i’m clear around saying to request information because it is not the district staff that um employs um a rapid response unit the actually the um department and the in collaboration with their health team will make that determination based on what we are reporting so we may report and request and that request may be denied based on what they know about our area um so given the following conditions a rapid a mobile rapid response team might be deployed if within a 14-day period um

43:53 two or more individuals in a single classroom test positive for covid19 if that is the case a map a rapid response unit may be deployed for all students within just that classroom also the option within the 14 day period if three or more individuals or three percent whichever is greater of any given grade or cohort tests positive for covid19 they will deploy they possibly will deploy and test all individuals either in that grade or in that great in that cohort

44:40 another scenario would be if 3 of our school of a school test positive then the mobile unit would be deployed to test the entire school population and finally within a 14-day period if two or more individuals within the same bus test positive the rapid unit might be deployed and test all individuals that were transported on that bus

45:10 prior to prior to utilizing the mobile mobile rapid response units the superintendent or designee will inform staff members families and students that this is an option and that there’s a possibility that these units will be deployed parents will then have an option to review the forms the communication forms that were also provided in this packet around how transmission and cases will be communicated out into their classroom community or into the school community parents can request at if their child is part of a classroom that will be tested parents

45:55 can request to be present during that testing um they can also deny uh their child be screened and in that event the children that particular student would not be required to quarantine and would be allowed back into class so it wouldn’t change the way any privileges or any experiences they have school-based if they were to deny that the department of health number is provided and again they request only one person from the district do that communication [Music] so with that um i think i have it all covered but i i do

46:42 have my notes here if anybody is interested in asking a question i can quickly reference the material or um get back to you with the information if i don’t have it in my hand so just if anybody has any questions or if needs any further information please let me know thanks nan um i was i i this document for me was really helpful because it to me it really laid out the differences between what a and i’m going to get the name wrong but what that direct contact would be or close contact versus sort of just a regular contact and i know that that can be really confusing i was actually asking questions about that of the tower nurse in my own role this

47:27 week and so it really laid it out nicely i think so that it was much more understandable about how we’re contact tracing and who is exposed and who would be tested immediately versus um those that are kind of optional and and like this says in many places asymptomatic so um megan i know i saw your hand up yeah just um man thanks for this and i think you know the fact that there’s kind of more proactive testing being made available is a great step in the right direction just a few kind of detailed questions and if you don’t have the answer that’s fine just some notes i made but you know we all know from you know those of us who’ve had to take the test already that the turnaround time can sometimes be an issue is there any details on how quickly you might get results from those tests

48:17 no no so that is something we can look into for you okay that’s an excellent question um well we just had it done i’m like three days you know a lot can happen in three days um and then the other thing too just when i was reading through that document um you know it says that we make the request for the um for that testing to be done but it’s not clear in that document what parameters they’re actually using to make the decision it just kind of says you know that team will make the decision but it just is a little bit gray for me so again i’m kind of expecting that there isn’t information right now but that is one that i’d like to kind of dig into a little bit more my my assumption is that it’s a gray

49:03 because they’re not it’s it hasn’t happened yet and so you know do we have enough units do are we going to have enough staffing is it going to be able to be sustainable if we get numerous amount of calls in the same day so i think they’re intentional in keeping it gray at this time but i will certainly press if i’m given the opportunity or a forum to ask more um a little bit deeper question about that i certainly will do that okay thank you so hold on two seconds sarah because i just wanted to um address one of the things that megan had said um i think with that with the testing on the asymptomatic people you’re if you read further down into this guidance it says that it’s deployed

49:50 to the school optimally four or five days after the last known exposure so in that snapshot view of testing as we know it should be picking up it it should be picking up on people if they are asymptomatic positive cases um i have invited helene hazlett tonight helene um do you does that make sense from your board of health standpoint

50:26 we received this uh from nan as you did and um we did discuss this uh protocol on on tuesday evening at our meeting and as you know the um the school committee is at the school department the school committee or autonomous and we are here for to advise and to recommend and we don’t find any problems with with the protocol we do want to remind the school department that all cases will be reported to the health department as they would be any citizen would report whether it would be reported by their physician or by themselves so as far as the four days or whatever we’re fine with that if that’s what they are

51:12 are are satisfied with great thanks elaine sarah um yes i my question i i’m looking i’d be interested in the response about how they’ll prioritize who gets um these mobile units and again you may not get an answer to that but if you do that would be interesting and then another thing was a question that’s arisen in the community quite often is this idea that our numbers when they come out from the town reflect residents in the town versus these numbers will reflect not just residents but students and staff that actually do not reside in marblehead and i think that there’s a large amount of the people in the school community that are interested in that information because

51:58 information because information because it won’t be the same at any given time um so do we have an intention of sharing that information you know not obviously that joe smith teaching biology blah but that we have a positive case at the high school we have two positive cases at vats or or and we can say resident versus non-resident just for clarity of information so i’m i’m gonna okay helene go ahead you’re muted again sorry i muted you helene okay and you know what why don’t you answer on the school department side and then i’ll answer on

52:43 what health department no go ahead while the the health department side there is no way we don’t we only count the residents in fact we those numbers if you see sometimes that a number in even in our figures in the last few weeks or months have changed it’s that we person has been identified say they’re a college student and they were identified in this community and they go off to pennsylvania to school all of a sudden pennsylvania inherits them and we don’t have them so if the same thing happens if a teacher lives in swampscott and is uh work teaches in marblehead they will we will count them when they’re reported and then we’ll find out that they’re a swampscott resident if the

53:31 numbers we will take that person off and um that will uh then become another town’s responsibility for their numbers so sarah i hope that answers your question because it starts out where it’s reported and then it ends up where they’re residing and if the residence changes it changes back and forth thank you no no that that clarifies the board of health piece um which i had understood but i think there’s a lot of ambiguity in the community what i’m concerned about is people are really looking for clear net clarity coming out of what is happening in our schools and that won’t come out of our board of health numbers because not everybody is a resident and it wouldn’t be proper for our board of health to be reporting that but perhaps it is for our school department

54:18 so i think i i don’t think we’ve come to a consensus as a leadership team on that i think we would be intentional in reflecting on the why so i think when we put information like that out there um i think it would be important to make sure that it’s it’s not um causing alarm or undue stress for people so i think we would be very careful and want to make sure we’re accurate accurately representing the condition and health of our buildings and our staff so i i would i would follow the superintendent’s lead on that i just add one thing um you know especially

55:04 given the low number of cases that marblehead has right now my only concern that kind of comes up right away is around confidentiality and people’s you know health confidential confidentiality around their health so especially you know for going i would caution against going towards any type of granular level and that type of reporting yeah i think i think going granular would be you know in violation of hipaa guidance and we would never go there so i think it would be very broad and very um you know in present you know maybe the numbers in our school community as opposed to in certain schools or populations within

55:49 hipaa schools actually don’t apply to any of this with the pandemic numbers that was one of the things that came out in a recent case but that that can be that it was just one question that i had um because i know that people are looking for that clarity but if it’s not possible then that it’s not possible i guess we’re not sure if it’s possible and to what extent it would be offered but it’s certainly something that um the superintendent and i will will discuss and be able to update you on okay thanks and there was definitely guidance towards the end of that before it went into um mock-ups on on consent forms that talked about um the family educational rights privacy

56:36 act and it also did mention hipaa um as being careful to be mindful of it

56:48 all right all right thank you nan that that’s um that that covers it correct on both of those yeah all right great thanks um is that something that would make sense to put up on the back together page yes right i think that would be interesting for people to know just kind of like with what i was saying about how it talks about close contacts versus direct contacts and um and all of that i’ll connect i’ll connect with kate about that and make sure it gets up there tomorrow great thanks dan all right that leads us to uh follow our fall sports season one update from greg siglarski

57:34 hi greg hi greg hey how are you good

57:41 all right so thank you for letting me uh take the time to discuss athletics today and how we’ll move forward with our fall season i just want to give you a quick background i know that uh dan and i met with you guys a couple weeks back uh but on august 19th the mia created four season opportunities for the 20 20 21 school year opposed to the usual three seasons that we have they did this by cutting out uh an overlap between seasons and extending the spring season into july it’s broken down into the following dates your traditional fall or fall one season runs from september 18th to november 20th and there’s no postseason play the winter season runs from november 30th to february 21st

58:26 the fall 2 or the floating season moves from to february 22nd to april 25th and the spring season is april 26 to july 3rd uh football football cheer and unified basketball are listed as high-risk sports by the eea and have been voted by the mia to automatically move to the fall two season which is statewide not just our league or our school since our last meeting where dan and i gave you some updates there’s been many conversations meetings and votes from other nec school committees as of today seven other nec schools are approved and planned to play their fall season in the traditional fall or fall one season those schools are beverly danvers gloucester

59:14 masconomet peabody salem saugus and swampscott lynn classical lynn english and winthrop are all listed as red communities according to the kova 19 community level data map on mass.gov and any communities that are in red automatically have to move their sports to the fall two season although saugus did come up as a red community in yesterday’s update uh they’ll need to postpone their start until they’re out of the red and approved by the miaa or the dac which is our district athletic council to return to play so i guess what i’m looking for you tonight is as a school committee i need you guys to vote for us to either stick with our original vote uh from the principal and athletic directors meeting back on august 24th which we stated we’re moving all of our fall sports for the fall two season

1:00:02 or to approve us to play fall sports aside from football cheer unified basketball in the traditional fall one season one quick note on that before you guys discuss volleyball is typically a fall one season none of the other nec schools are playing in the fall one season they’ve all moved to fall too just because you can’t get inside yet and i know our building specifically we can’t get until october 5th and uh dr bucky and principal bauer and i have talked at length about this and we agree that we would probably look to move that to the fall to season as well all right thanks greg um john did you have anything that you wanted to add before i open it up to the

1:00:48 committee sure um i i just want to commend uh greg he has done a tremendous amount of work we spent an hour uh together this morning going through different scenarios and discussions with athletic directors and principals and the superintendents meetings and school committees and for us to move forward um it would be a vote of the school committee because we would begin fall sports practices on the 23rd wednesday of next week and that is prior to us moving into the hybrid model and so that does require a vote of the school committee for to move

1:01:34 forward with fall athletics while you’re in remote learning i think that it makes sense now that there is a majority of districts in the nec that are able willing and interested in fielding fall sports for us to move forward with those miaa approved sports and accommodations greg has done a lot of work in terms of user fees and impact and certainly there are implications for budget because busing will be different for these but i think if we are able to use the miaa guidance and deci guidance for safely doing fall athletics that i would support the committee

1:02:21 voting in favor of that thanks john um greg i’ve just got a couple of questions um if if students with the with the busing piece uh the assumption i i’d be making is that just as with our student population to get to and from school that we would need more buses in order to transport kids to and from athletic events um would students have the ability to ride with their parents to and from if that seemed like a better safety concession for specific families i don’t want to cut greg off but i just would put out there that i think that districts could look at that because busing is

1:03:07 is is a concern to and from school to and from athletics that if we developed a waiver for parents to transport students to and from i can remember as a student athlete myself whenever you weren’t going to ride the bus back from a match or a meet your parents would have to write a note and i think that that would be logically something greg and i would want to look into is at the district level if parents prefer to transport their students to and from an athletic competition and i’m sure we’re not the only ones looking at that thanks john sarah just to piggyback on that we are meeting as a group of athletic directors tomorrow morning to actually hammer out a full schedule for the fall season with the hope that you’re only playing

1:03:52 playing playing uh one program away so for example on a tuesday we could be hosting a voice soccer and traveling somewhere for girls soccer and that would be the only away game we have so you could take multiple buses and plan it out so we don’t have to worry about parents uh driving anybody and that kind of eliminates any liability issues any uh other kind of carpooling issues that um could arise from that great that’s great that’s that’s good thinking too um the other question should it just flew out of my head i’ll open it up to the rest of the committee and hopefully my question will come back emily

1:04:33 hi so i had the same thought about the waiver and my thought is that if a parent or student doesn’t feel comfortable taking a bus just that having the option to have your parent drive you i think would be good to have that set up because the buses are a place where um they say that you know kovit can spread pretty quickly on a bus so maybe someone you know doesn’t feel comfortable and if just leaving it open that you can have your parent drive you for like if you have a good reason sure i think if we do go down that road i i would assume it would have to be a vote by you guys or maybe a waiver would it be uh created by you guys um i would caution that we need to make

1:05:18 sure it’s only uh the son or daughter of the parents who were driving not having kids drive themselves to games um no carpooling with other families i think it’s it would that would be a slippery slope uh right yeah no like your own you could say like it has to be someone within your own household that is driving you and you can only drive that one person but just yeah whatever just so everyone has the ability to get yeah uh i know that um danvers had their school committee meeting on monday this week and they had a very similar thing put in place i could get some language from them and see what they said and give that back to you guys as well

1:05:56 greg with that although i i 100 agree that a lot of families won’t want their students on a bus because of you know transmission issues um i also know from sitting in on our meetings that there was a strong concern that with the coveted provisions as they stand now for sports that coaches were going to become police officers of i do have your mask on did you have your temperature and all this stuff and with this idea of the waiver are we now adding another layer that coaches may have to make sure that students aren’t riding together and we’re not carpooling was it a parent not a friend that drove you here yes absolutely yes absolutely that’s something that we’re going to have to whether that’s done you know the day before if that’s done by noon if that’s done

1:06:42 at some point during the day we kind of set a deadline on that and if it’s not in my hands or mark tarzan’s our assistant athletic director then they either don’t go or they’re on the bus i guess we have to be pretty strict with that i think and consistent sarah i think to that point it’s part of the conversation that greg and i had today that coaches education will be critically critical to the success of this particularly that the school committee has a mask policy that coaches can’t go uh quote-unquote rogue and wink wink not not you don’t have to wear your mask unless you know a.d siglarski is there or dr bucky is by the field that there’s really no margin for error if teams can’t follow the rules or coaches can’t

1:07:28 enforce the rules then we would have to shorten that season or eliminate it and also on that uh i met with our athletic trainer on tuesday and we kind of went through any scenario we could think of and how how we would react to it and also kind of mapped out what a day would look like whether it be a practice day a home game day an away game day and kind of came up with all the protocols we would have in place and i think we have a pretty a pretty firm grip on how we would actually make this make this happen so this seems like a no-brainer but i just want to be be clear so it is your recommendation greg that we vote to approve the fall season fall one with the exception of those

1:08:15 high risk areas starting now is that correct can you repeat that sorry is it your recommendation that we vote to approve the start of fall one now now or on september 22nd i think uh after lots of discussion i think if you guys feel that would be best uh it’s your decision i’m kind of giving you the facts and kind of laying out either side and and i think that you guys can kind of talk it out and ask me questions i’m happy to answer more um and what you guys feel is best is what we can go with and i’m kind of dancing around a little bit but and i put you on the spot i did but you’re the expert at this so i want to make sure like we’re not experts on how to manage

1:09:01 to manage to manage so answer your question more directly i think if we do move forward with athletics with what we can play um we can make it happen and we i think we have a good plan in place where we can be successful and and safe as possible i mean no different than coming to school and i guess kind of on that note i talked with dr bucky today for a while like you mentioned um a fear of mine is that when we open this up if if we open this up and we start practicing outside of cohorts and maybe playing against other towns that it would delay the opening of in person school and that would be the last thing i would want because obviously our student athletes are students first and we want to make sure that they’re getting

1:09:48 the best academics they can on a school day and while being fully remote is not ideal right now um i don’t want to extend that if we don’t have to um but on that same note i do think that we have a plan in place that can make uh running athletics this fall one season uh successful and so and we would be doing that in place of that every three week model that would be essentially out the window and we would look at out of season coaching that whole other conversation that we had in our subcommittee uh down the road okay megan megan so greg i want to um first echo what john said and thank you for all the work you’ve put into this i know a lot of time

1:10:34 time time since we met last has gone into it and that um you know it’s clear that you’ve kind of very taken a very thoughtful approach and really thinking about the best interests of our students holistically not purely from an athletic standpoint so i appreciate all the work and time you’ve put into it um and still need to put into it you know you mentioned the scheduling and the protocols and there’s still a lot of work to be done so i just want to thank you for all that um the one question i have that hasn’t been asked yet though is you mentioned there are some schools that are red now and so you know must move into fall too but if they were in the next two weeks or three weeks or sometime in the middle of the season to turn yellow would they be able to participate at that point or is it an all or nothing type

1:11:19 yeah that’s a good question and and so saugus has kind of been on that cusp they were in red to start when we initially voted to move everything to fall two and then they came back to the yellow similar with salem um and like i said saugus just yesterday got uh pushed back into that red so what they would have to do if once the season starts uh they would have to speak with our district athletic committee uh who is district uh district five which is made up of a couple of leagues uh locally around us uh and they would go to them with their application to come back and show them why and they would either be approved or or denied in the push to fall too okay okay um that’s all i had you know that hasn’t already been asked so thank you david

1:12:14 um thanks greg for for what you’re doing and i know you’ve worked closely with dan i guess my only question is why are we sort of a follower and not a leader in this

1:12:31 when it comes to athletics we we know what it means to our students in the high school and it seems like we’ve waited for everybody else to make a decision and now we’re making a decision and i don’t understand why with the instances that we have been marble had and what our um um level of covet is why we couldn’t have been more of a leader here in this it seems like we’re just sort of jumping in and it doesn’t seem like we’re really confident that we’re um that this is the right thing to do sure so i think to be to be really

1:13:17 honest and open with you we’re just we’re the last school committee meeting to meet there was four there was three other schools this week that met danvers gloucester in saugus they all voted just this week so it’s just a matter of kind of when our school committee meeting fell um and after just lots of discussion with other ads and with dr bucky and with uh our reopening subcommittee um we’re just making sure we’re making the right decision that it’s an important one and a big one and we want to make sure that we’re putting the safety of our kids first and i i do think that um we’re making the right decision by by voting now okay yeah i would i would agree with greg um i mean because obviously this is this is at least the third meeting that we’ve talked about this

1:14:05 um so i actually really appreciate how thorough we’ve been on this and that you know it’s not as though our students are going to miss anything within our our timing of a vote um i think that you know could be a big question of of you know did we act too soon or not um or not soon enough but i think that you know waiting and seeing where our numbers are at and how our how are roll outs going and you know just as when you guys took your original vote with the ads and the principles it seemed to make quite a bit of sense because numbers are kind of around our county and within our conference were were higher and we’ve seen them kind of fluctuate and they’re in a better place now and

1:14:51 and other towns are in a better place so that we would have more people to compete with and the idea of competing in other towns and putting our students into play with with towns that maybe are not quite as good as marblehead i think to to wait and and make sure on that i i i’m very appreciative and actually i’ve had the opportunity to be part of those meetings and i’ve been so impressed with greg and the other members of the committee and how thoughtful they’ve been in their approach to this um they all have been said fast that we want to get our athletes on the field but they want to make sure that we’re we’re doing it safely because where marbleheads numbers are really

1:15:36 good we want to make sure that we’re not putting like greg said um school first are our schools opening at risk by going bringing our students into these high towns with higher levels so i’ve i’ve been really impressed with how thoughtful process it’s been and i felt at all times it was um the priority of that that committee to get our student athletes back as quick as possible in the safest manner and i’ve been very impressed david i don’t know if it will make you feel uh better but um there are a couple schools and greg please correct me if i’m wrong that are voting to go to fall but are not voting for this next week as

1:16:23 a start but have moved it to an october start date for practices yeah danvers isn’t even beginning their practice until october 5th i think the only thing that we’re going to miss is and again this can be part of a vote or just part of a discussion we would miss two days so most of our peer schools are starting on the 21st since we’re voting tonight and would only allow us tomorrow and the weekend to to register kids and get kids approved and cleared to play uh it’s also rosh hashanah so i i don’t i don’t want to force that on families as well and just if we’re missing two days uh i can we’re creating a schedule literally tomorrow for the entire fall season and i can kind of tell tell the other schools don’t we’re not going to schedule for that monday and tuesday once we start because we have to have two full weeks of practice before we can

1:17:09 play a game it also allows us time to walk the captains uh to kind of what the protocols are going to be in the new modifications to their sport because some are are substantial like i discussed a little bit last or last week or two weeks ago whenever we met and make sure we’re on the same page for wednesday when we do start so just to be clear greg because this i was just about to ask this so i’m glad you talked about the schedule so the start date for practice would be the 23rd wednesday the 20th september 23rd and then the first day that we’d be eligible then for game play would be october 7th yes you have to have two full weeks of practice golf is a little bit different they have to only have to have seven days

1:17:57 so they play a little bit earlier but um most of our other sports are our full two weeks okay all right thank you greg greg how how is it going with with allowing our students from medco from the metco program to be able to participate are they going to be able to participate fully in this and then also with you know all the headaches around busing then be able to um make it home on those evenings so to to be honest with you and and nan can jump here too if she wants to i have a call with jasmine tomorrow morning after this vote just because i didn’t want to start wasting time and spinning wheels that we don’t have a decision made yet so we’re going to talk tomorrow morning once our decision here is made and kind of come up with a plan and and

1:18:42 how we’re going to do it great and then you know i know from some of the other conversations that have kind of been going on around the district and around the town with our mass policy that because our math policy states on school grounds that it would be the expectation that all of our students whether they’re practicing or competing as well as the students who are coming in and competing against us be masked at all times when they’re on our school grounds as well as our park and rec has now adopted our school policy so that even if we’re on a cross-country meet at seaside the same rules would apply um do you i guess the only question that i

1:19:27 would sort of leave out there for you is do you think it would be helpful and i don’t need an answer from this now or just kind of make an offer on it do you think it would be helpful if you needed any other supplemental policies from us to really ensure the safety of our student athletes as well as those coming in so the the mia kind of answers that question for us you you have to wear a mask at all times you can if you’re within 10 feet of somebody you can take a quick mask break but the default is that you’re wearing a mask at all times great that’s good to know

1:20:10 yeah well you know once again i just want to um i appreciate all the work that’s been done on this but but i think i think marvel had should given the position we’re in we should we should be in more of a leadership position and um i don’t know how to say this but i guess you know seeing that masco was the first one to jump on and and here we are three weeks later it seems like we’re following and um we all understand the importance of athletics to our to our student athletes and and i’d like to see us be a leader in this issue if if the um

1:20:55 if the statistics and the and um everything related to covid allow us to be there i’d like to see us to be more of a leader instead of a follower in this issue because you know it’s very important and um you know we’re we’re jumping in sort of as the last school and i’m and i’m disappointed i’m disappointed that’s all because i i know there’s so many student athletes out there that want to participate and i think we could have played a better role in working within the nec or or maybe we were i’m not saying that we weren’t but um you know and it does depend whether it’s you know yellow green red what situation we’re in but i’d like

1:21:41 to see us take a leadership role in this because it’s it’s important to our student athletes so i’m glad i’m glad we’re going to start i’m glad we’re going to be back participating and um i’m hopeful that you know as we move forward with uh winter sports we we can take the same approach thanks for your feedback appreciate it yeah all right so um i will ask for a motion to allow the fall one sport season to begin on september 23rd 2020 um with the provision that all miaa safety and all district policy be followed

1:22:28 during practices and competitions so moved can you put it in there sorry about volleyball because that is that is different yes so okay so you want with the exclusion of volleyball you want added on okay so so the motion will read since we don’t have a second i think i can just go back and restate this um a motion two allow the fall sports fall one sports season with the exclusion of volleyball to begin on september 23rd 2020 with the provision that all miaa safety and all district policy be followed during practices and competitions does that sound good greg okay yes yes sarah i can type it to you afterwards because i actually have it written down okay because i have half of that and

1:23:13 then i lost it um all right megan has moved second second emily second any last comments before we vote i just i i want to thank greg and um all of his coaches and everybody involved and dan and there’s been a lot of work that’s gone into this and i don’t think anybody waited too long i think they did their job and i’m i’m really proud of the work that that committee did

1:23:50 yeah um thank you greg i know that this none of these decisions are easy to be making at this point um and and i appreciate that that you that you’ve taken your time on this and and are and i’ve been so thorough in your presentations as well i think we’ve got a lot of student athletes who are anxiously awaiting our decisions so yep

1:24:14 um you know what i jasmine’s hand is raised and just because i had asked the meth question and and greg had had talked about her i’m gonna i’m gonna allow her to just weigh in quickly jasmine i’m assuming you want to weigh in hi yes sorry um i’m still doing some deliveries um i i wanted to answer that i do have a response regarding the transportation i’m picking up in sevens for the students but i also wanted to ex uh i just had a curiosity regarding how we’re handling the cohorts i think cohorts for students who live in marblehead having mixed cohorts is more reasonable but for students who live in boston and have siblings that can cause concern that was

1:25:03 thanks jasmine thanks jasmine sarah can i ask jasmine a question is that allowed or i don’t know um is it is it about the sports transportation yeah um i just so does she feel she can work it out so that metco students will have an equal opportunity to partake is she confident that we’ll be able to work out that transportation piece i’m confident that we’ll be able to give the students an option for transportation um the bus passes are fully um covered in costs and the students uh bps allows students of grades seven to twelve to take public transportation with the consent of their parents um i think that so that yes i think i do think it’s possible

1:25:49 possible possible um i yes i am mostly concerned with the distance and then our students being on potentially public transportation

1:26:06 which exposes them to more risk that’s all yeah no that’s a very valid concern um i would like to see if there’s some way that we can figure out a way to kind of allow those students equal access while keeping them equally safe if we can and i’m sure that can be worked off on offline but i just want to make sure that it’s kind of not a choice between them partaking in the activity versus safety that’s definitely one of the main things we want to discuss with greg tomorrow yeah you feel any better um we we are required we’re recommended and we’re going to do symptom checks every day for every kid before any practice or game as well as temperature checks and that’s all

1:26:52 going to be recorded uh by myself if that would make you feel any better it does and i had one question regarding locker rooms how are what is mass policy for there and we’re actually not using locker rooms they’re they’re entirely off limits so great thank you students are encouraged to bring an athletic bag to and from uh every practice or game and that goes home with them every day to be sanitized and brought back thank you so much for the clarification

1:27:32 all right um we have a motion and it’s seconded so i will call for a roll call vote sarah gold yes megan taylor yes emily barron yes david harris yes sarah fox yes all right that motion passes five to zero thank you very much greg i appreciate it thanks craig

1:27:57 all right that moves us on to our finance and organizational support we had a schedule of bills in the packet hopefully everybody got a chance to look that over so i’ll ask for a motion to approve the identified schedule of bills totaling 264 dollars and 152.40 cents so moved so moved megan moved can i get a second second emily second anybody have any questions on that

1:28:38 all right i will call for a roll vote sarah gold yes megan taylor yes sarah fox yes david harris yes emily baron yes all right thank you okay michelle that brings us up to you in the contract to award the temporary custodial staffing yes thank you um i’ve never brought a contract to you so quickly but given the circumstances we want to get this put to bed and signed and sealed so on this past monday we received an open bids for the temporary custodial staffing this is in response to our covert

1:29:24 cleaning needs and protocols we’re estimating that we will need approximately 30 full-time additional custodians to meet all the needs while the students are in school so we put this out to bid we put an estimated amount for up to 14 full-time weeks for this contract this contract can be extended through june 30th 2021 so we will just bring it back to you for an additional vote but we did receive five qualified bids for this contract the low price ranged from the range was three hundred and twenty thousand ninety

1:30:11 six dollars from go to services llc of east providence rhode island and the high price was sj services inc out of danvers of four hundred and eighty thousand seven hundred and twenty nine dollars we actually did receive a sixth bid um that was after the due date due to um a delivery issue which was not due to us and that actually that price was even higher so um it was quite interesting but we did do our due diligence and todd has talked to all the references for go-to services and um we’re very happy with the feedback we’ve received and this while this firm is out of rhode island they do have a massachusetts presence um however they are very significant in rhode island they um have

1:30:59 contracts for cleaning courthouses and um colleges and community colleges so they significantly into the cleaning business so basically we are just looking for the temporary staffing piece we will be providing all the chemicals all the equipment and we will provide the oversight so we are just looking for the bodies basically um so we are recommending or requesting that you do approve this contract to go to services in the amount of three hundred and twenty thousand ninety six dollars and this contract as soon as all the paperwork is done will become effective and hopefully we will have these um people be able to join us at the beginning of october that is our hope

1:31:44 great thanks michelle um just a quick i’ll take a motion in just a moment i just want to clarify the motion michelle that you gave to me it says staffing through june 30th 2021 um is that the correct date that you want me to keep in there yes if the dollar amounts um are good and if we don’t need to use the full 14 weeks before june 30th 2021 or if we find our need is not for 30 full-time people then we can certainly extend it through that so the contract end date will be june 30th 2021 but i expect that we will probably need to come back for additional dollars um to be authorized for this contract okay so i will ask for a motion to award the contract for temporary custodial staffing through june 30th 2021 to go to services llc of

1:32:30 east providence rhode island in the amount of three hundred and twenty thousand ninety six dollars and authorized the chair to sign the contract on behalf of the committee so moved so moved megan moved second second emily second all right any questions for michelle yep megan well how are we funding this yeah good question this is being funded through the cares act through the town um i had put a dollar figure in of i believe 380 000 for the initial contract um so this did come in slightly a little bit more than slightly below my estimated cost for the 14 weeks

1:33:18 so are we kind of reaching the limit of that bucket we’re getting close to the million dollars that um we have committed to the town yes we are almost up up against that million dollars um we will need to have an additional discussion if our costs continue to rise or we will need to really dive into our budget and see where we might be able to have some significant savings and we do have a number of vacant custodial and bus driver positions right now which we are not paying but we are keeping those dollars reserved for those positions so we do have some flexibility within our operating budget but right now we are anticipating using the cares act for this entire contract

1:34:08 and if we need to go beyond 14 we 14 weeks carries us to [Music] the first of the year basically yes and that’s where our cares act funding right now will expire okay so if they don’t renew that grant and we need to continue this we are going to be creative and really dive into our budget and see what we can have some savings you are the most positive person i know when it comes to these answers and i am not concerned with that right now i really am not um you know maybe in december i’ll have a very different um perspective on that but right now i’m i’m not overly concerned fair enough david well i’m just wondering um

1:34:55 what this contract covers since we’re currently not in school

1:35:02 and then when we go back to school it will be a hybrid plan i know where there’s alternating students come in so um how does it supplement the work that we or the cleaning that we need to be done that needs to be done but yet we’re also in a hybrid plan where we don’t have all the students at our school right regardless if we are in the hybrid plan or if we are in back to full inclusion right now with the covert situation um we are functioning under a protocol where we have to have as long as students are in the building which they are currently we have very limited students in the building right now um

1:35:48 more coming next week even more coming the week after that then once we get to october 5th we will be in the full hybrid situation um once the october fifth date comes around we are going to have a lot more high touch areas that we need to touch every every hour or two um every bathroom will be fully sanitized every two hours every high touch area all um stairway handles railings all of that will be deep cleaned every two hours and with the students moving through the cohorts where we are in a monday thursday tuesday friday within the alternating wednesday situation we basically need to do a deep cleaning every single day

1:36:33 because the same cohort is not going to be in the buildings two days in a row so we need to do a ultra thorough cleaning every night so that’s why we are hoping to break up these 30 individuals between daytime and night time to make sure we get the full cleaning and the disinfecting needs done that we needed for each day

1:36:59 great thanks great thanks any other questions

1:37:06 all right i will call for a vote sarah gold yes megan taylor yes emily barron uh yes david harris yes and sarah fox yes all right thanks guys that carries five to zero thanks michelle all right so that leads us on to our school committee communications and discussion items first up is our policy discussion so last thursday emily and i presented two different policies um that are well one is being basically rewritten slash revised and the other one is a supplemental for coded policy a c a b for sexual

1:37:52 harassment um and then policy ebc supplemental emergency plans for covid19 so this by having a vote tonight would put us right with how our policies state and what is best practice for adopting new policies um i will ask i’ll ask for a motion separately on both of these so i’ll ask for a motion to um accept the new policy a-c-a-b for sexual harassment so moved so moved i get moved

1:38:34 emily second emily second was there any other questions on that before we vote all right all right roll call vote sarah gold yes megan taylor yes emily barron yes david harris yes sarah fox yes yes thanks guys five to zero that passes and then i will ask for a motion to adopt policy ebc supplemental for emergency plans for

1:39:16 second second emily second any other additional questions on that one

1:39:25 okay roll call vote sarah gold yes megan taylor yes emily barron uh yes david harris yes and sarah fox yes yes thanks guys that motion carries five to zero so now next we have two different resolutions for up for discussion the first uh was is the resolution on covid testing we had this on the agenda two weeks ago but i had neglected to put a vote on it so we tabled it for today um megan um i will turn this over to you for a moment um since this one was sort of brought to the committee on your request so yeah i did

1:40:12 raise it a couple weeks ago um and at that point uh there was another school district i believe it was lincoln sudbury who had put it together they have a nerd listen the doctor on their school committee um they’d done a significant amount of research to come up with this and they passed it and um through masc it was kind of forwarded on to other districts

1:40:43 so i just raised it in that everything else without fit um and you know i think as we heard from nan today with the rapid response and mobile testing that i think we’re in a very different place [Music] than even a few weeks ago when this was packed we said we would table it and bring it back um really think it was fair to the to not do that um but i think we’re just in a very different position than we were a few weeks ago thanks megan thanks megan um so i don’t know if we want to move forward with this or not i guess i’ll i’ll leave a little bit of discussion out there before we call for a motion given what

1:41:28 megan just said i think uh the the problem that i saw with this was that um i’m i’m not actually okay with the therefore be it resolved um so it says for the public it says therefore be it resolved before any district brings students back into session we request the commonwealth allocate funding for regular um proactive testing for teachers students and staff um and that supports school districts to identify so i th they have not basically that first piece is my problem is that they have not the commonwealth hasn’t allocated funding for this and we’re bringing our students back and i think we’re doing so in a very safe way

1:42:14 um i i do think that testing in the long run is how we get people back um into classrooms more full-time but i don’t think it’s necessary in order to do so in a hybrid situation um and how we’re functioning in our district and the plan that we have to put through for our district yeah and sarah i completely agree with that i think you know this was the resolution that was passed in some other districts so you know i think no matter what we do that’s you know if we did want to move forward then i would you know completely agree with with that statement and that change too so

1:42:57 so megan is it your recommendation that we do not move forward on this resolution i don’t have a recommendation it’s up for discussion for the committee does anybody else have any other thoughts on whether they want to move forward with this i think that there’s several points in this resolution that are very very valid i i agree that it would not

1:43:36 make sense for us to sign a resolution that says therefore be resolved when we already know we’re not putting in place what we’re asking for it to be resolved so yeah it just seems that whether i agree with this or not we’ve already said we’re not doing what we’re asking the resolution to do so it seems counter-intuitive yeah i agree i agree with that also

1:44:02 all right so it sounds like we don’t want to move forward on this one with any type of motion through the chair i think you could ask for a motion and if it fails to get a motion and that’s your vote all right so i will ask for a motion to

1:44:21 to accept the resolution of the covent testing um um sorry the resolution for covid testing in schools

1:44:43 i do not have a motion for that so let’s carry on to our next resolution um this one was requested we had sort of looked at it earlier in the summer a little bit um and then things got busy and then emily brought it back to my attention a couple weeks ago and asked that it be put back onto an agenda so emily do you want to open this one up a little bit um sure um sure i um think as a school committee that we have the responsibility to stand up and make a statement that we don’t tolerate any kind of hate in our town and i think this is a good

1:45:30 way to start that because um everything begins with teaching our children how to behave and it starts in school at the youngest ages that we teach children how to be inclusive and anti-racist and i think saying that we are going to start thinking about that in this district more than we have been i think makes um a great point and i think passing this will help that i guess thanks emily where i came from when i asked for it to be brought back up

1:46:12 what is the origin of this can you um megan had noted the last one was lincoln sudbury could you tell me what the origin of this one is i’m guessing those aren’t isn’t your language no it’s not our language this one was up on the masc website i think they created it yeah too yeah that’s true

1:46:38 all right so i will ask for a motion to pass the resolution on social justice and anti-racism so moved sarah fox moved

1:46:55 a second megan second any other statements on this statement on this resolution specifically but i just think to follow up with what emily said you know especially kind of in light of the recent events that as school committee members and john you know that we’ve attended um and with that have been supported by the marblehide racial justice team and the rotary club this week and you know in support of a what’s right obviously but also you know we we are a metco district and i think we have to show support and inclusion and do everything we can to make sure that our school district um provides that for everybody

1:47:44 so i’ll just quickly read the the what we’re being resolved for is that we’re resolved that the marblehead public schools and all the school districts in the commonwealth must guarantee that racist practices are eradicated and diversity equity and inclusion is embedded in practice for our students families faculty and staff we must ensure our own school culture and that of every district in the commonwealth is anti-racist that acknowledges that all lives cannot matter until black lives matter

1:48:14 and i think for me you know i i think there’s you know we’ve had these issues in this district we’ve had graffiti on playgrounds we’ve had graffiti and racist graffiti and we’ve had racist and anti-semitic graffiti in bathrooms and that this happens on a regular basis in our district and so i think you know this is not just some you know kind of current thing that that we’re going to pass as a school committee i think that that this resolution really sort of pushes forward some of the things that that this district needs to bring to light and needs to really tackle

1:49:06 this has always been an important i want to say that this has always been an important issue i know it’s come to the forefront in the last several months but i think that this is not a new issue this is not something that you know should just be talked about now because that’s you know when it’s in the news cycle this has always been and will always be an important issue so i think this is a very important resolution um have we or do we need to at any point run this the wording by this resolution by our legal counsel or no i don’t think so okay all right i just didn’t know if resolutions needed to be run by them or no

1:49:54 all right then i will call for a roll call vote uh sarah gold yes megan taylor yes parafox yes david harris yes and emily baron yes great that motion passes and the resolution passes five to zero all right megan i will turn it over to you at this point for the school committee website update i almost forgot i was on for this uh so can i share my screen should be able to i think there we go

1:50:32 oh i have to click share it would help okay so what the last time we spoke i can’t remember which meeting it was but we talked about putting together a school school committee website so similar to what um has been put together for back to head back together marblehead and the reopening plans and one of the reasons really was to provide a one-stop shop where people with a community can get information on our meetings the meeting materials our calendar um and you know it also helps make it a little bit easier for specifically lisa who has to do i’m sorry

1:51:18 you know lisa who’s kind of got a lot of the workload on her shoulders to update the district website and it’s not the easiest easiest tool to be using so this is an easier tool a one-stop shop and can really help us provide the community the information that you know we all know that they’re looking for so um when we talked last we said we put together an action plan and some timelines to make it come to fruition so i’ve worked with kate thompson again um you know she’s our communication expert at the moment who we are all very thankful for um but she helped us put together this phased approach i sent you all an email earlier this week kind of highlighting some specific pieces of data that we’re going to need from you i want to make sure that you had

1:52:05 plenty of time to put it together it’s you know bio photo that type of stuff nothing nothing earth shattering so what we plan to do um over the next week or so is to get all that data sent over to kate and myself we’ll upload it we’ll review and make some modifications which we’ve already started and we’ll come back to the school committee in our next meeting which is october 1st for a final presentation of what that first phase of the website will look like um and then it will give us a couple days if there’s any tweaks we want to make with a target go live date of phase 1 for september 5th so after september 5th we should you

1:52:52 know the calendar will be there our bios we will be able to link to the policies which for now we’ll keep on the district website that’s something we can talk about before phase two if we want to modify how we’re doing that masc does provide some tools for that um kate and i are gonna one of the things we talked about in our meeting was push notifications for um calendar updates so that would be a phase two piece because i think kate and i need to test that out a little bit before you know once we have it up and once we have the calendar up and running um and then one of the things that we can do with this website is get some analytics on usage so we can really see where people are going to to help us figure out how we want to

1:53:38 continue to improve the site so uh i think that’s it really i’m just looking at this slide that i’m putting up in front of you which walks through those phases um the calendar is probably the biggest piece i think the biggest win for us because we can put our school committee meetings out there that and then we can post the meeting materials hopefully you know we’ll get into a rhythm where we can post those the day of so that people can start to have the materials available for you know the community can have the avail the materials available so they can follow along in our meetings especially you know for continuing in a virtual virtual approach for now um and then i’m hoping i know we’ve talked about this

1:54:24 before but i think we’re finally starting to get into a little bit more of a rhythm where we can have those subcommittee meetings at least the major ones right policy budget facilities on a more regular flow so that we can put those out on the calendar um you know with a little bit more regularity and we all know the strategic plan is on tap for this year that is one piece i’d like to get a little bit more information in terms of what that planning process is going to look like and we can add that to our website too um again for phase two so the first one is just getting it up and running getting the basic data out there um getting some links um for other resources and then you know i think we can have it

1:55:11 up and running like i said by october 5th which is pretty quick turnaround

1:55:17 do you know if you’ll be if you can add a section with the link to the youtube channel because i know for people who don’t have cable they’ve really enjoyed being able to watch live on youtube our meetings kate’s going to look at that she’s already posted out archived meetings but she’s going to try to find a way to link to that youtube so you can again one-stop shop right yeah that’ll be perfect thank you kate and i were trying to embed that youtube page when we when i first created it we were trying to embed it onto back together because that was really where it it started from um and we’re having a lot of trouble with it and kind of not i i’m certainly not tech savvy um and just kind of figuring that out so i do think it seems like we can probably do that we just need to figure out exactly how

1:56:06 yeah if it’s not for 10.5 you know we’ll look at it as soon as possible but it’s definitely on the list i’m here guys i just wanted to let you know that um am i allowed to talk am i public comment i don’t know you’re you’re an expert that’s been helping us okay so um yes all that’s great the site is um in great shape it’ll be ready to go live um for when you need it to be and i i think what will happen is on the home page there’ll be a live streaming section so sarah and i you and i can troubleshoot that a little bit but um in an ideal world that is where people can go and watch ongoing live school community meetings and then i added a page that has an archive of all

1:56:51 the past meetings and all the past live streams so that they’re all in one place so yeah i think it should work out pretty good great and it might it might behoove us kate to look at right now the youtube page is linked to my email um so it might behoove us to put that somewhere else so that when i’m no longer on school committee it can still continue forward yep that’s it that day will never come soon

1:57:18 sir did you stop sharing my screen i just want to make sure i mean i’m good yes your screen has stopped sharing okay good yes thank you all right anybody have any other questions this is exciting thanks guys no i i just want to thank everybody who’s been involved because i think um in the last year and certainly the ability to have this information online is helpful and and we all know that um there’s lots of options out there and emily and cindy schieffer are working for with that on the building committee and we’re trying to communicate with the public as much as we can there and anything we can do to improve our um

1:58:05 communication as a committee is great so thanks for everybody that’s been involved in this it’s really good and i appreciate all the work that you’ve done catherine and um you know look forward to seeing this come up and and go forward

1:58:21 yeah i’m excited i think it’ll be good definitely you know it’s hard it’s hard to find information it shouldn’t be that hard let’s make it a little bit easier for all of us and the community right and one of the ideas that i had as you were talking megan about because i know one of our concerns with the push notifications is that any time we made a little tweak to something on that calendar that it would issue out another email i wonder if there’s a way that we could do like a weekly recap email of what’s on tap for this week then with you know if some major change went on then that we could push that out you know at that point um if that might be sort of a solution to some of our concerns okay getting a thumbs up from kate yeah then yes

1:59:09 all right great just one thing on that sarah one thing that kate and i talked about also is having kind of like an upcoming events piece probably on the home page so you can see kind of the meetings you don’t have to kind of click through the calendar you can see what’s what’s coming up great great yeah this is exciting and way to go we had talked about an october rollout and you guys are on it i like my deadlines all right david that brings us to a building project update is there any way i can um share my screen i think you should be able to so let me try

1:59:57 so can everyone see the screen yes so big milestone we have a building permit and people may say well haven’t we been building the school all along but um there’s permits that the town requires as you go through the various stages of uh construction demolition um and various things but um this is a really big milestone that in order to get a building permit there’s a lot of submittals that that go to the town that have to be reviewed and plumbing electrical and everything that goes into it so as you can see we received this on

2:00:43 september 14th so just a couple of days ago and um we’re really excited and uh even though people have seen the the building uh seems like it’s moving forward but this is a this is the one of the final steps in the process and we’re really excited about it and um if you haven’t been over to the site we encourage people to stop by it has um we’ve completed the steel erection they poured the concrete for the uh for the second floor and that work is going on and uh it just continues to move forward so it’s really exciting to have this building permit in hand and let everybody know that the project is

2:01:30 uh on schedule and on budget moving forward another great milestone david i feel like they just keep coming it’s good it is for sure great thanks david um all right so that leads us to our closing business uh any new business that uh we want to address emily um i just wanted to bring up the um metco presentation that we attended because there’s a new update so um john sarah and i attended um the metco inc presentation that the marblehead rotary gave on tuesday and i sent everyone the slide deck but it was

2:02:16 it was it was really informative and exciting to learn um about the possibilities that what or the possibilities our metco program can bring to our community um and for me i learned so much about the mecco program that i didn’t know about and i thought um it was so great and one of the highlights that for me was there was a slide that said every student in a mecco district is able to experience an inclusive equitable and anti-racist education so essentially every student in our district has these opportunities because we’re part of this program and

2:03:01 they’re offering um all these different ways for us as a community to get involved as families to get involved as our students our medco students everyone can come together and really learn and experience this great program that we have and i hope we can start um really implementing some of it into um our schools more than we have just because i feel like it’s kind of put to been put to the side and i think it’s really an asset that we have i just wanted to give that a little update yeah thanks emily thanks for bringing that up um that we had pretended that on two it was tuesday morning um and it’s funny as you started talking about that one slide i was actually grabbing my phone to highlight

2:03:48 that slide because i snapped a picture of it on my computer screen so i’m glad that you that you brought that one up because it was a really powerful slide um is there an opportunity perhaps to me i don’t know where it would live maybe on back together marblehead to have a metco section that really highlights the ways that people can get involved i think with kovid being what it is those students feel more probably more isolated than ever um you know they’re not getting to see their friends and our community as easily and they have many more hardships than you know with the transportation and everything then than really students that reside in town here have and i wonder if there might be an opportunity to put on the the website somewhere these opportunities to get involved because i know there are families that

2:04:35 would like to and just don’t yeah so i uh hi this is jasmine michael director talking um so uh part of the reason why i go to community events and i’m in the process of solidifying what it uh the process of becoming a host family is so that i can talk to families about it i have given my email address out in my email there is actually a metco page on the website um where i have a rolling roster of families we’re trying to figure out how we um engage uh with covid and so we’re thinking of virtual spaces and potentially having affinity groups and mixed spaces mixed spaces on uh

2:05:22 on a regular basis i’m planning it with the metco pco and some leaders in district right now um but we’re trying to uh re-look at what the host family process could look like yeah

2:05:41 thanks jasmine and i know my first year on the committee um we had had the the metco director at that point came and gave an update at one of our meetings and i know emily had after this after this presentation the other day emily had reached out to me saying that it would be great if we could get that onto an agenda um and that either you know either jasmine could do it or we can also invite um along with jasmine milly who had done the presentation on this call the other day um for them both to talk about because i think there was certainly an aspect within this presentation about how communities can get more involved and really deepen their connections um so that was certainly a piece what it seemed like um that that is a real push from the metco

2:06:27 inc side and that would be really great to move forward in our community as well i think that falls in line nicely with the work that nan and i are doing with jasmine to and all the school leaders to organize school committee presentations and so we will certainly work uh with uh metco and jasmine and maybe to have some students come and represent their experience as uh members of the metco program great i think that would be i think that’s a great idea and i think sarah fox just to kind of follow on from your comment is not to plug this school committee website again but you know adding those event because the metco program not specific to marblehead but metco inc actually has a lot of events um that i

2:07:12 think would be great you know i’ve been to a few of them and they’re amazing um so i think you know if we can start to integrate metco events also into our calendar we can we can um you know i know that monique and and melissa from the pco central council have been working pretty closely together over the past year to to again just continue to be inclusive so that everyone’s aware not just of the metco program but all the great benefits that come along with it for both students you know that come here and students that are in marblehead and the entire community we can really all benefit from some of the events and programs that they that they run i think that’s um a great point that we need to

2:07:57 need to need to get this information out because people i don’t think are aware that all these opportunities are here for everybody absolutely i think it’s another piece where you know we’ve talked about how some of the ways in which we’ve broken down silos in the past and um i think this is just another one that we can continue to work to really dismantle and disperse uh throughout our entire community

2:08:24 great thanks any other new business um um yeah it’s not really new business and and uh dr bucky i don’t want to put you on the spot but um given that week one is um [Music] wrapping up tomorrow any uh words of wisdom or things that we’re looking forward to for for week two as we uh move forward yeah i think um i certainly don’t want to steal my own thunder from the superintendent’s uh weekly update um but i do like those absolutely yeah some of the stuff we’ve talked to uh talked about tonight um you’re going to see played out in that update a lot

2:09:09 of good things happened this week and i don’t want to um overshadow those but there were some things this week that i think are teachable moments for the community and in particular an opening meeting at the high school and the conversation about uh equity and justice and so um i look forward to continuing those conversations i’m very excited about welcoming our kindergartners and our first graders uh next week that certainly i have said repeatedly starting my week at glover and seeing the pre-k children was just such a reminder why i’m in this business it was so heartwarming and so lovely to see the excitement of parents who are

2:09:56 taking their children to school for the first time and the fear and excitement of children to go into a classroom so i would look forward to that and you know correcting some of the things that were not optimal this week will certainly be on the radar lots of good meetings happening professional development need to better align uh some practices across grade levels um and certainly i have heard um clearly from families this week that there may be some tightening and alignment across schools and grade levels and that was a promise that we made through teaching and learning and reopening committees that the experience of a child in one grade at one school will not be markedly different and i

2:10:42 want to remember our cohort c students those students that are doing fully remote that that is aligned as well and so that’s part of the wednesday afternoons that the pre-k to 6 teachers are getting together and working with each other and working with nan and with me to make sure that there is a tightness and a cohesion and an alignment so that when we have those transition points or pivotal points where somebody who is in fully remote wants to try hybrid or hybrid wants to go fully remote that there is alignment there and it’s kind of seamless the transition between models great it is well

2:11:29 thank you john thank you nan and thank you to everyone that’s making it happen and the staff it’s it’s just it’s it’s great to hear so thanks for that john thank you john i think that’s a perfect little tee up into the correspondence that made it into our packet this week do you want to just give a brief synopsis on that is the email that uh you and nan had received from a pd provider yes uh nan received a beautiful uh email from a provider that does uh professional development work across the commonwealth and probably beyond the borders of the commonwealth so i’ll ask dan to uh kind of share uh the positive feedback that we received

2:12:16 from uh i believe was seaside yes so we had seaside consultants to come in and do two different sessions with our teachers one was um they both were offered k to k to 12 one was around raising high expectations and holding kids accountable to good practices and good teaching practices and um the other one was around co-teaching and how do you collaborate and co-plan and co-own classrooms with multiple adults in the room and build upon each other’s expertise and we got an absolutely rave review from the president of the consultancy saying that by far marblehead educators were the most

2:13:06 prepared the most excited the most um they had all the content that they needed well in advance to be able to access all the documents and planning materials and she just said it was an absolute delight to be around such a positive group of adults um really ready to learn and challenge themselves and to to enter into a new year with knowing that it was going to be a challenge but excited about bringing some fresh a fresh look at co-teaching and high expectations and inclusive practices to into their into their practice so she could not um she said we want we won the number one prize for all districts that she has served

2:13:53 this year in professional development marblehead in her mind um was heads and shoulders above the others so um certainly a tribute to our teachers and to the commitment in this district to make it through whatever is thrown at us we are going to we’re still going to make it work at the best we can and we’re going to um change and shift and pivot and still fold in new learning so it was it was really nice it was a it was it was nice for john and i to get that and and feel so um well represented represented with um such a prestigious organization

2:14:41 so can i say something yeah yeah so i think we all know that we’ve got you know an amazing staff here it’s one thing that we’ve said for the past few years you know that we are so fortunate to have dedicated and passionate staff but i will say i’m so thankful for the central administration team that we have this year we went through some challenging and dark times to get here um but it was worth it to have you nan eric michelle john that lisa that whole administrative central office team just i hope you are also relishing in you know a job very well done thank you megan i appreciate that and um in that correspondence this provider had

2:15:28 been in the district in the past and she did comment on the change in culture and climate that she sensed across the district and from her past experience here so i appreciate you uh adding those comments yeah it’s it i i see that as well i see even in just the the feel when you walk into widget road at this point um that it’s a it’s a very different place and it’s light and people are enjoying being there um and i think that just speaks so highly of everyone who’s there and all the work that’s being done um and it makes it makes me really excited for our district and clearly it’s

2:16:13 very quickly um you know trickling down to staff as well great thank you thank you guys all right that brings us to the end i will adjourn us at 9 16. that was a great way to end so it was definitely great way to end i just want to um note that i have the minutes almost complete and if we want to put them up in draft and note that they’re a draft we can put them up in draft version um within a day or two because i took them as were going okay great great i will get the uh that motion to you as well okay um can you send me any motions you have because i just want to check my language and also what time you called me to order yes 706.

2:17:02 thanks thanks all right thanks everybody good night good night