School Committee: November 19, 2020

Transcript machine-generated with Whisper speech recognition (the source video has no caption track). No speaker labels; proper names and dollar figures occasionally misheard. Click any timecode to jump to that moment in the source video.

0:00 We are going to officially call this meeting to order at 7-10. Alright, so that… Prince Stevens, you’re still unmuted by the way. Alright. Brian, do you want to take it away? For accommodations. That’s a lot of feedback, Sarah, just so you know. I don’t know what that was, but that was a lot of feedback. Okay, can you hear me alright? I want to thank the School Committee for providing the opportunity to talk about Glover School tonight. First, let me highlight the fact that Glover was the first school to go hybrid. We launched kindergarten and first grade on September 21st. We rolled out the second grade the following week, and third grade went hybrid on October 5th, when the rest of the district went hybrid. The teachers have been working hard, creating two lesson plans for each day. One for hybrid, and one for remote. Their days and evenings are spent creating lessons that include slideshows and videos, for the students in their hybrid classes or in their remote classes. Both slideshows and videos are not the same for remote and hybrid. On remote days, the tutors provide reinforcement for the asynchronous materials that the teachers have developed for them.

1:34 I want to express my deep gratitude for the teachers tireless dedication and professionalism in preparing such rich and motivating lessons. Developing and implementing the hybrid and full remote model has been a challenge. We have been learning from our experiences and are constantly improving our plans. There are so many complex issues and unknown variables to contend with. For example, what are we to do when a fully remote teacher suddenly takes ill and will be out for an unknown period of time? Our traditional method of getting substitutes and giving them packets for work to follow in a live classroom does not work at all for a fully remote teacher. Everything is online and uses many applications such as Clever and Seesaw or Google Classroom, RazKids, Lexia, Think Central and many other applications. A lesson we have learned the hard way is that substitutes need more training to be able to run a classroom with all of these applications. Something else we had not anticipated was the need to provide laptops for the substitutes. Our school uses iPads so we had to issue them older laptops. When we were able to secure a substitute, she experienced many technical problems and sometimes the laptops would crash several times during the course of the lesson. The substitute also found working remotely with kindergarten students was very challenging.

3:10 After experiencing all those problems, the substitute dropped out. What is truly a testimonial to our staff is that our three hybrid Glover kindergarten teachers stepped up to fill in the void. Each teacher taught an academic clock with the remote class and then later on taught their own classes. After two weeks of doing this, the Evelith teachers willingly rotated in and covered the remote classes. This continued until we were able to find a long-term substitute. I wish to thank these wonderful kindergarten teachers at Glover and at Evelith for covering the full remote teacher all those long weeks until this long-term substitute could fill in. One other point to bear in mind is that the curriculum and the lessons between Evelith and Glover are the same so that either school could jump into the remote class and the lessons they used were the same lessons they had prepared for their own classrooms, regardless of which school had taught that remote class last. This highlights the fact that our teachers at all grade levels are working much closer than ever before with our sister schools. This ensures that our curriculum and learning practices are well coordinated. I want to thank Dr. Bucky and Nan Murphy for providing our staff this valuable time to connect with each other. Our teachers have been performing pre-assessments in literacy, writing, phonics, math.

4:43 We fully need to understand the impact that this year switched to full, that last year switched to full remote and this year’s hybrid and full remote models have had on our students. We are targeting improvements in reading fluency based on our data collected before the impact of COVID and the subsequent end-of-year assessment. We are now coupling that data. We are now connecting that data with the pre-assessments that we have been doing so that we will have a very comprehensive baseline. We are also targeting phonics, writing, spelling, and math. The amount of data collection is daunting when it’s coupled with the amount of everyday planning teachers have to do. As the data is compiled, we will be focusing on the critical areas first and then create mid-year and end-of-year goals. We will also be keeping our parents fully informed of our findings. Recognizing the need to focus on social emotional learning during this very complex and stressful school year, second grade has begun compiling a new program called Zoning In and Checking Out that was sponsored by the PTO. The students come in in the morning and select a colored emoji that reflects how they feel. For example, red emoji means the student may be ranging from troubled to agitated, yellow from pleasant to euphoric, blue from disappointed to feelings of hopelessness, and green meaning their content and tranquil.

6:22 The teacher then selects an activity from the toolbox that helps the student learn how to process their feelings. For example, a red student may be asked to run in place or write in their journals about what they are feeling. This provides the student with a positive way to move from one color to the next. The opportunity recently came up to present a timely social studies lesson on democracy, the election. The third grade has spent two weeks of activities on the election. They started with four candidates for the best snack. They were chocolate chip cookies, ice cream sandwiches, Austin cream donuts, and ice cream. They had campaign posters, they held caucuses, they ran campaigns, they had voting, they even had an electoral college. When all is said and done and the voting was tallied, ice cream was a clear winner. What a wonderful and fun way and motivating way to teach students about our election process and how it works in a democracy. Despite the difficulties that COVID has presented our schools, I am very confident with the staff at Glover that we will be able to weather any storm that approaches. And I look forward to the future. I want to thank the school committee for giving me this time to talk about our school, Glover, and I thank you very much for your time.

7:54 Thank you, Brian. That was great. That was a great update. I really appreciate that. It has been really fun to hear from all of the different building level principals to hear what is going on in such a tough year to hear what is going well. I really appreciate that from the staff from Rotteri down to the students. It is all great. Thank you. That leads us to school committee commentations. John, I know you have some that you are going to do from MASS. Don’t you go ahead and go first. Sure. I have been waiting 15 years to be able to make a presentation like this. The State Superintendents Association gives each district superintendent an opportunity to honor two seniors, in the case of Marblehead because of the number of students we enrolled. This year we will recognize Tess Keening and Diana Gordon. I asked Mr. Bauer to give me a little bit of a file on both students. Hopefully they are both in attendance this evening. As I am talking, they can prepare a 10 second update to the committee about what their planning is right now for next year. Not knowing what they are doing for next year is certainly okay. Tess Keening is a strong student, very involved and dedicated to Marblehead High School. She is the student council president.

9:27 In addition, Tess was integral in bringing the unified basketball to Marblehead High School last year and was recognized by the MIAA and Special Olympics. Tess is a member of the field hockey team. Diana Gordon. Diana is a positive influence through positive attitude, dedication and involvement at Marblehead High School. Her leadership extends to being a peer mentor, a member of Team Harmony and involved with the student council during her sophomore and junior years. Diana is also a counselor at JCC. She is a member of both the basketball and volleyball teams. We have the opportunity to give each young lady their certificate today at school. If they are on the line, I would ask Tess to update the committee about your plans for next year. Tess. Hi, thank you so much. I am so honored to receive this recognition and I am planning on attending a four year university. I am not excited yet. Hopefully you all know soon enough. Thank you again and so on. Congratulations Tess. Diana, please. Thank you so much for recognizing me and I just want to say that I am definitely planning on going to a four year university. I am not 100% sure yet. Thank you again. We just want to say the district is very proud of you and wishes you best of luck in whatever your future plans are.

11:01 And thank you to Mr. Bauer for providing those nice bios for you. Congratulations ladies. All right, any other accommodations tonight? Sarah, do you have anything? I had something little but those two wonderful young ladies I think stole the show. So let’s just keep it at that. All right, sounds good. You guys own the evening for the accommodations. All right, that will bring us along to our student representative, Dan Howell. Dan, welcome this evening. Hi, good to see everyone. So this is our, I believe our first meeting that we’ve had without a kind of big schedule change. Either about to happen or having just happened. So we are always ready to change but it has been nice to have a sense of consistency starting. The MHS boosters are looking for help. They this year due to the pandemic have not been able to hold their annual scholarship drive. And they haven’t been able to open the snack shed at Piper Field as they usually do. Those are their, you know, two main sources of money. So they need some support right now. So they fund scholarships for athletes at the high school.

12:35 And these kids work really hard and they have for the past four years. And the boosters have been great about supporting these athletes, student athletes. So supporting seniors this year would mean a lot. You can help out by going to their website, marvelheadboosters.org, and find out more information there. The Performing Arts Department is doing their annual wreath fund laser for the holiday season. And the students are having Spirit Week. So normally Spirit Week would be the last three days before our Thanksgiving break, which ends on the Wednesday half day with a pep rally. So we are continuing this year despite not having the pep rally and the football game the next day. So I think it was great how we were able to work around this. So there are normally two themed days before the pep rally on the last day. But we’ve had Spirit Week today. It will be today and tomorrow. And then Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday of next week, which gives both cohorts the opportunity to take part in both Spirit Days. So I think this is a great example of students working to make things work in this time

14:10 and still having a strong sense of pride in their school. And yeah, just putting a lot of work in to have a good year, despite the large amount of challenges facing us. Great, Dan. It’s always so nice to hear your updates. I’m really excited that the whole community has figured out a way to really make the best of a not so great situation and be able to continue some of those traditions with the Spirit Days and everything. It makes me really proud of our high school and our distance as a whole. Because I know it’s going on at every level of the buildings that everyone is working so hard to make this year sort of as close to normal as we can possibly get. Can I just add on to that, Sarah? And Dan, it’s just a great example, I think, of all students on how they’ve been so resilient and adaptable in this situation. And I hope, you know, I think as adults we can all learn from that too. So I just think, you know, well done, Dan, and you know, all the students at the high school and beyond. So thank you. So I’m going to pile on. Pile it on. So, commendations wise for Dan, I just shout out to his Eagle Scout project that he has raised almost $2,000 to fund the project that he’s doing.

15:40 So good job on that, Dan. Great job helping Dan. Thank you. I appreciate that. Dan, on those two things that you noted, the booster sale or the boosters fund drive and the reef sale, if you somehow can get them out there on even the Alt-Marblehead schools page or something like that, I know that a lot of people in the community might want to support that. The booster’s page is easy to find, but the other might not be as easy to find. But I know that the community wants to support the schools right now. So if you can find a way to get it up there, I think you would be successful. Yeah, I can definitely, I’ll link to that. Dan, I think if you were to send that to either myself or the superintendent, we could get it up onto the Twitter feed as well. Alright, yeah, I will do that. Great. I think sure, Sarah’s good for a dozen reefs too. Which Sarah are you signing up? Alright, thanks so much, Dan. That will lead us to public comment. If anybody wants to make public comment, go ahead and in the participant sort of bar that you can bring up, raise your hand. If anyone wants to do public comment, I just ask that you state your full name and your address for the record so that we have that in our minutes. I’m not seeing anybody right now. Alright, I think we are safe to move on to the minutes for this evening, or the approval of the minutes.

17:16 So we have, let’s see, let’s see, five minutes that were on the agenda to be voted. I don’t think that we have 10, 29 on there yet, so I think we’re really only looking at four of them, so it would be 7, 8, 8, 10, 9, 17, and 11, 5. I still had a few, I just wanted to go over a few things on 9, 17. So I would be more likely to ask for a motion to approve the minutes from 7, 8, 20, 20, 8, 10, 20, 20, and 11, 5, 20, 20. I agree with that, Sarah. Yeah, I haven’t gotten to the 9, 17. I think some of those edits were made by Lisa, but I haven’t even gotten a chance to loop back onto those. I kind of emailed you about that to loop you in, but… Yes, yes, sorry, I’ve been kind of backlogged on emails today, so I must have… Oh, no, totally fine, totally fine. So, yeah, so that’s totally fine that we pushed that one. We’ll meet on December 3rd, so we can work to get those up at that point. So, Megan, I think you made the motion. Yep. Can I get a second? Second. Emily, second. All right. And David, just for the record, I didn’t say this earlier and should have… David Harris is not here with us this evening, so it’s Sarah Gold, Megan Taylor, Sarah Fox, and Emily Barron that are in attendance tonight.

18:53 So I will take a roll call. Did anybody have any, before I take the roll call, any additions or any comments on any of the minutes? I had sent Lisa just a minor change for 11-5. Okay. All right, so that’s what you noted. Great. All right, and I will call for a roll call vote. Sarah Gold, yes. Megan Taylor, yes. Sarah Fox, yes. And Emily Barron, yes. All right, so those pass 4-0. John, that brings us onto the superintendent’s report. We’ve got a few things that I think you’re going to walk us through this evening. I’m hoping. There we go. Great. Yep. All right, grab your company slippers and maybe a cup of tea. The superintendent’s update is probably a little longer than I anticipated, but the volume of stuff that happens in any given week, and I want to make sure that the committee always feels well informed and up-to-date. So although we have a couple bullet points, I’m going to use a poetic license and add some additional things. Just if you haven’t been to the Back Together MHD website, what a brilliant idea to have students submit web art to be thankful for their teachers. And there are just a couple examples of what has been.

20:27 I’ve been able to send these out specifically to the teachers that are honored or recognized, and what a great thing for the superintendent to be able to do, to email a teacher with a child’s artwork to say, this is how they feel about the experience in your classroom. And so these are just a few examples of things that have been up. I think even a school committee member was recognized. So it’s really nice to see the community get behind this. And I want to thank Kate Thompson for this idea and for having this as part of the website in November. We’re thankful. And speaking of that, there has been a lot of response to being grateful to our Marblehead educators. And certainly, I recognized the PTOs last time, but there have been a number of parents who on their own have kind of rallied forces and gotten groups together to do everything from coffee carts to plants to catered luncheons. Nan and I have been able to do something each week this month, ending with chocolate turkeys today. And so here are just some things we tried to communicate this stuff out, examples of how the teachers have been recognized. So to the PTOs, thank you to those individual parents at the high school

22:01 that put a good group of parents together to go above and beyond to give special recognition to our teachers. Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who has done something. And this is across the district, the high school, Coffin, Bell, Eveleth. I say Bell, but I guess it’s still a name that we use. But it has been so gratifying as a superintendent to see people respond to the fact that our educators were feeling not so great. And so they went above and beyond to make them feel special, deserved value, which they so richly deserve. So to the meat of the hybrid learning plan update, I’ll just start with something that’s always on the website, kind of that timeline. And as you know, communication has been a big part of my transition into the district. I want to thank Chris Stevens for an amazing article in the reporter that kind of highlighted the work that we have done to communicate and to be transparent in everything that’s going on. The amount of data we have generated through listening sessions and surveys has been rich, abundant, plentiful, and we are using that information to inform what we’re doing.

23:34 So we are doing data informed decision making. You’ll see here on this slide that it’s that three-legged stool or the Venn diagram as I’m fond of using that the feedback from students, teachers and staff, and parents help us to collectively make those data informed decisions. On this slide, it shares some of the anecdotal comments made by teachers in the teacher survey. And I just thought that that helped to highlight the story that they were telling of feeling exhausted, of feeling frustrated, and the desire to be heard and respected. And so I pulled out some comments that underscore those themes and I think maybe it was Emily who would ask at the school committee meeting could we just have some themes around how teachers are feeling. I think it’s important to note that 210 teachers responded to that survey. And so that was a 70% response rate. And if you do any sort of surveying for a living, which apparently I do now, that is a great response rate. And we beta tested the survey with some staff before issuing it out to the larger audience to say, do these questions capture your feelings or will you be able to share your experience by what we are asking?

25:08 And one of the people we beta tested it with is like, good questions, but I don’t think people are going to respond. I’m so happy that we had that 70% response rate. So what do we do? The immediate response from the teacher feedback is we tap the brakes and we settled into the hybrid model. As I tour the schools and talk to teachers and talk to building leaders, this has been immensely effective and helpful. The thankful Thursdays that I started with, the high school and the middle school, moving to that full remote day on Wednesdays has helped to kind of get off that roller coaster that one of the teachers talked about. We look at the data, the survey monkey tool that we use allows us to get very, very granular with the data. So I have sent out to the building principals the raw data and all the comments that are made so that they can use that information in working with their faculties to make any sort of adjustments. Those verbatim comments are immensely helpful from students, from parents, and from teachers. I’ve asked the principals to look at it in a format that I’ve shared with the committee before of stop, start, continue.

26:38 Based on the data, the numbers, the quantitative information that you’re getting, compared to the qualitative stuff through the verbatim comments, what should you stop? What is the messaging that you’re getting of what isn’t working or what needs attention? What should we start doing? And then what should we continue? So we’ll be using that at our leadership team meeting on Monday the 30th. Each building principal has gotten the data, the numbers, and the comments. And then at a future school committee meeting, I will share out with you plans that stem from the work of the leadership team. So this slide shows the kind of six areas that we look at in each survey and the data or some outcomes to date. I’m not going to read this to you, but the six areas are the school’s concern with academic growth, with social emotional health, physical health and safety, that people feel that teacher support is adequate, and that’s the parent perspective pre-K to 12, but also the student perspective in grades 7 to 12. The workload is appropriate and the schedule is clear. And you can see I put in green those things that seem to be going well

28:08 or demonstrating improvement over time, and red are things that we want to focus our attention in that stop, start, continue paradigm. When you look at high school and the middle school, there are some challenges when you look at this data, and I would say that’s probably not surprising because you have student voice then in this information. In particular, social emotional rises. I would attribute that, and I don’t think it would surprise you, that the school for high school, middle school students tends to be the hub of their socialization, whereas elementary parents are the source of socialization, whether it’s play dates or birthday parties or that at the elementary level. But high schoolers, particularly if you’re a junior or senior, and this is the time of year when homecoming would have been happening, the homecoming football game or parades or those annual traditions that are now not happening. And so we need to do an analysis, a review of how we can, we’re not going to replace those, but implement new traditions so that sense of loss isn’t so significant.

29:39 And so the social emotional piece is something that certainly has our attention. I think this is a particularly interesting slide because it shows you the diversity of data that comes back. And so the messaging isn’t always straightforward, and we need to take the necessary steps. The first one is the primary time to glean insights and nuances. So you can see for the high school hybrid that students felt overwhelmingly it’s too much. And if you look at that, 80% of students are reporting that they feel that it’s too much compared to 28% of parents. And certainly as feedback, the perception or some of the comments are on remote days. Children are sleeping till noon. They don’t have anything to do, but students themselves are feeling overwhelmed on those remote days. And so again, the data tells a story of perspective. And so parent perspective in neither one is right or wrong, but our job is to interpret the data and to make changes that attend to themes that emerge over time. Did you want to do questions or do you want me to plow through

31:10 and ask at the end? Go ahead, keep going. Okay. So the live streaming update is cameras in the classroom. We continue the discovery and fact-finding. The remote audit has been completed. The on-site audit is taking place. We’re reviewing. We continue to meet with MEA, talk to students and parents, talk to districts that are doing it. I think the recommendation at this time is MEA has met. Their membership does not want to be mandated to do this. They feel that there are members who would like to pilot this, who would like to try it. We will make the technology available. We have looked at three different sources, the OWL, the PolyStudio, and the Java PanTek. All three have an upside and a downside, as does the entire live streaming debate, for lack of a better word. And so the MOA with the MEA will stand. Teachers who would like to take advantage of this and do this will be supported in doing so and provided the technology. And if that requires at some point for us to go out to the community and say, hey, there are more educators interested in doing this than we have capacity to fund. But right now, we have free access to pilot this. And if it builds

32:52 momentum and the people that are filing it say, hey, this is great, this is much more helpful than I had anticipated, or this is really filling a void that I didn’t anticipate, or we will provide those to educators. Health and safety. The superintendent’s health and safety advisory committee met on Monday. Certainly the governor’s push and commissioners for more in-person, if feasible, I think is the caveat of that push. Because I was in a meeting with superintendents from more urban districts who were talking about they have been read as red as it could be, have not done any in-person instruction, and they wake up the next day and there are yellow districts being asked to go back in person. And the only thing that changed was the threshold. And so with all things COVID, it’s a moving target, and we will attend to what we have the capacity to do. But this slide represents where we’re at in the town, where we’re at in the county, and those numbers are on the rise, which they are everywhere. So in the Monday meeting, we talked

34:24 about the current data in the community. We talked about the evolution of the virus. We talked about the mixed messaging that’s coming out from public health, and agreeing that the governor’s change is well-intended. And I don’t mean any disparity to the governor, but the time for the state to direct was this summer, when they turned it back to local control. And they turned it back to local control because this work is hard. And every district is in a different place with transportation, with ventilation in the HVAC, with the capacity in their buildings. And so we each negotiated with our local teachers unions for certain things to be in place. And we can’t just unilaterally change those because the governor says, I think we should have more in-person learning. It’s well-intentioned, but we can’t just say, hey, the things that we negotiated in good faith now no longer stink. And so if we have to go back and renegotiate things, certainly, but that doesn’t happen overnight as a result of a press conference. There was broad support for the six-foot distancing, and that was, I just go back a slide, everybody was in agreement from the superintendent, to the health director, to the lead nurse,

36:01 to the former commissioner of public health, physicians, doctors, nurses, parents, that when you go from six-foot to three-foot distancing, then you lose the ability for close contact. Everybody then is a close contact. And so we are in agreement that we will maintain six-foot distancing. Testing is often a topic that comes up. Capacity, again, becomes the question. I know there’s some conversation about in the community using some funding for maybe a mobile testing clinic like other towns have implemented. So that continues to be a discussion, but we don’t have the ability every day to test 3,000 people or to test half of our population every other week. Or, I mean, there are lots of ways to approach it, but the capacity and funding continue to be stumbling blocks in that area.

37:18 So Thanksgiving has become a pretty hot topic. There was a call with the commissioner today, and I think his administrative assistant said that 15 superintendents had asked the same question about Thanksgiving as some people, some schools, some systems are taking the week after Thanksgiving or two weeks after Thanksgiving to be fully remote. I met with our reopening committee this morning to discuss is that something that we should do because the governor has issued, you know, if you travel out of state, my former district, Littleton Public Schools, has implemented an attestation form to families that you have to affirm that you didn’t have a large gathering at home, you didn’t travel out of state, and for families that are not willing to sign that, they are then remanded, for lack of a better word, to two-week remote learning period. I do not support that. I do not think that that’s something that we should do in Marblehead, and so I have heard from the community that they want in-person learn, and I could make a case to take us to a week remote after Thanksgiving, two weeks remote,

38:48 but I’m not recommending that we do that. I think that we maintain in-person instruction in the hybrid model where we’re being successful, and I do think there is a strong case to be made that we are doing a good job when students are in school with masks, with distancing, with, you know, the mitigation protocols that we have in place, and some of that is lost, particularly at the older ages when we’re in full remote, and so we see in the community that that may be an area where the chain is weakening, where there is the coronavirus fatigue, and is real, and so I worry that if we do a two-week remote, that that perhaps raises the potential for us not to be able to come back to in-person, but in saying that, this really puts it on our families to abide by the protocols that we have in place and to follow the recommendations that the governor has put out for gatherings at Thanksgiving, and so my recommendation to you this evening is that we do not do a two-week or a week remote period,

40:19 but that we move forward with our in-person after the holiday, and we’ll be putting out a good deal of information from my office in terms of the weekly update and tweets and building level, just so families fully understand kind of the request that we are making in order to be able to stay in the in-person cohorts after the Thanksgiving holiday. So just some other things that have happened over the last, since we met last, the Unexpected Village School Dismissal, that really speaks to Mandy Murphy certainly as the leader of that building and getting the dismissal underway so smoothly and the Chief of Police of getting the crossing guards there and just everything taught, blood-good with facilities. If you wanted something to work like a well-oiled machine, I think the village dismissal, and certainly thank you to our parents and students who, that’s an incredible burden to have to come an hour before you anticipated, leave work, rearrange transportation, but I really do think that this timeline gives you a sense of how smoothly that went. Oh, and by the way, we’re going to enter into collective bargaining.

41:53 We had the first meeting with the town manager and the attorneys, and I will say I laugh out loud when the attorney or the district said that the past precedent in this district is it takes about four meetings to reach an agreement because my experience with collective bargaining was the first three meetings. We’re just talking about process and the calendar and what issues you were going to put on the table, and then after those three meetings you had eight months of weekly collective bargaining meetings, so dozens of meetings for collective bargaining, and that was for one contract. We have six that we will be negotiating this year, and to hear that the precedent has been in four meetings we generally get it done is really welcome news to a new superintendent. The long-time MTA rep that has been doing bargaining is retiring, and so we are talking to the NBA if we could get the process underway before she retires. I don’t know that we will be able to do that. The town manager Jason and I are in pretty regular communication on a number of topics, but he is being identified, crowned the collective bargaining rep for the community, so he will sit at the table for our collective bargaining, and I’ve asked him to come to the December 3rd

43:27 school committee meeting to talk to the committee about that process, because I don’t believe anyone other than David has been part of the collective bargaining process, so I think that would be helpful. When does that person retire? I believe the end of January, so that’s why we would like to be able to do the bargaining in January. And then really good news, we have chosen a finalist for the director of technology. He was in district today and toured all of our schools and had a lunch with the tech staff and with the directors, and I’m taking feedback from everyone that had an opportunity to meet with him today, but as you can see the process started with 17 applicants. We did a paper screening committee that recommended six for interviews. We had an interview committee, one of the identified semi-finalists with Drew, so we interviewed five. From the five there were two semi-finalists that we did background or reference checks on and then invited the one finalist to the district today. And despite liking to keep things brief, that is my lengthy superintendents update. Just real quick on this technology director, if the feedback is positive and you decide to make an offer, would we have an opportunity to meet that person’s prize or how does that work? I mean, I know it’s your hire, so I’m just curious if we get a little chance to meet him.

45:01 If people would like to, yes, certainly, but I would be most open to inviting him to the nearest school committee meeting after his hire, but if you would like to meet with him prior. Either way, I mean it’s your hire, so, but yeah. I will say he was very favorably received today and the feedback that I’m receiving across the district. Yeah, when John and I touched base, I’m speaking. When John and I touched base about it today, that was kind of what we had discussed that, you know, school committee had had a chance with basically all of the district hires at this point to just meet them in a meeting and say, you know, welcome, so that we can kind of get this process going. That is since John’s hire, that John would sort of make the determination on when that hire would take place and then at the 12-3 meeting, hopefully this individual will be able to come and meet us. Yeah, I know we’re kind of on a fast trip with this one, so I definitely don’t want to slow that process down. I think in a normal situation, yeah, we would have that person to the school committee before an offer’s made, but this one, you know, we know we’ve got to move on it. Yeah, my desire is for the individual to have overlap with Kathy so that they can be connected and share prior to her retirement at the end of the month. Okay, great, very exciting. All right, so maybe I should have allowed us to take that. Yeah, I like that you’re going back to this. Does anybody want to start?

46:38 Sarah, go ahead. Sorry, Sarah, just before you start, can we go section by section? Sure. Is that Ari? And we can get kind of, it might just be a better point. So is it better if I start with the most recent and work back or? Sorry, so you might not have heard what I just said. I asked if we can just go section by section so we can cover one topic at a time for everybody. So start back with the hybrid update. That post is everywhere. So I heard with the hybrid survey that originally the survey only went to students and some students may or may not have shared with their parents. Did we get that glitch worked out and give parents time to kind of come to that? Okay. We had over 900 people respond to the survey. Oh, good. And stop me if I transition to the wrong area because I’m not sure if this is in it. But it’s very interesting. I heard you say that the remote elementary is the happiest because that’s where I’m living. And I have to say, I’ve been telling everyone it’s going really, really great. And it’s that piece that is 100% synchronous. And then the comments you put up on that board from the teachers really brought it all to life. I’m assuming that was the common thread, if not

48:13 basically just different verbiage, but the same message over and over and over. But I just wanted to confirm that for the community as well that that was the theme. And then… And I did try to capture that we all own a piece of it. It isn’t about blame or finger pointing, but that each of us has a role in making and decreasing the frustration. And so I want to make clear that I don’t mean to point the finger or blame anyone, but the reality on the ground was they needed our support. And I firmly believe that we’re going to maximize outcomes by giving them the support they need. So I think that’s important for everyone to realize. Some of those notes in the survey said reflective of, and then like you gave a data point. How did you determine what those results were reflective of? I don’t think I understand the question. So for instance, one said, as far as some parents not being comfortable with the health or the safety guidelines, it said reflective of town metrics going up. And there was notes on the right hand side of the page that would note what the results were reflective of. And I’m wondering how you came to the data point of determining what that result was reflective of.

49:43 Was it short answer notes or was it kind of a little more of a common sense path of what might be the main reason? Yep, there were specific questions in each survey. And then under each question was the opportunity for open response or public comment. And so try kind of using both the quantitative data point if the percentage was high in an area, and then using the comments under that question to kind of fill out what led people to be higher in one area than another. And then the tech survey is the next talking point, right? Yes. Okay, I’ll pass along to someone else. All right. Emily, Megan. Did you have anything on the yeah, on this. So this is really helpful. And I think, you know, I’ve said this before, but having the data to kind of back up what we’ve been hearing, and to do it anecdotally is very helpful, because it does help you hone in on the specific areas that we need to address. So this is great. I appreciate this. One thing that we talked about in our last meeting was pulling out scenes from the comments from all those surveys. And I’m just wondering, you know, you did talk about how you got to some of the commentary here. But are there, I can imagine there’s quite a bit of data in the commentary from those surveys. So is there a way to kind of break that down into what what you were seeing in in that commentary, or those groups

51:21 of surveys? Yeah, I think that I tried to capture in a slide that the data can sometimes be confusing and tell different stories. And that’s why I send it to the building level, because Sean can look at the coffin data, and it can be broken down so granularly for first grade cohort A in person, how they’re feeling about social emotional. And so again, I can give you global 30,000 foot view of themes. But I think we are best served in giving the principles to data which we have, and allowing them to use that information to their specific building. I think that’s a fair point. I guess my concern there is especially on the elementary levels, where we’ve got four principles, and then making decisions. I don’t want to see us make decisions that are building based when we’re talking about a third grade or second grade, because it’s not always, I mean, in some cases, it may be, but it may not be building specific, it may be grade specific. So I guess I just want to make sure that we’re not making only building level decisions, especially when it comes to where we’re across multiple buildings. Yep, absolutely not. And that’s what I said that on the leadership team meeting on Monday, the 30th, each principle is going to share out that stop start continue reflection on their data. And then we can coalesce

52:52 around a second grade or third grade, particularly since third grade is housed in two different places and second grade is as well, in looking at whether it’s a schedule change, increased time on learning that information, but each principle will be reporting out at that leadership team meeting. And you know, Eric Oxford said that, because there will be implications from the data analysis that are germane to special ed, Emily Dean is part of those conversations, Richard Kelleher, if we’re going to go to extended days and add lunch. So it really would not be a building based decision. But the analysis, I think is where we get the most bang for our buck at the building level. Okay, so that brings me into my next question. How does that lead that work that’s happening? Feed them into what the reopening committee’s doing? How do those two groups connect? Everyone that’s on the leadership team is on the reopening committee, in addition to parent reps, community representation, right, Joan Miller for the MEA. So there’s a broader, but Eric is part of it, Michelle, Todd, all the directors, all the building principles are further reopening group. So is it recommendations from your leadership team feeding into the reopening committee? Okay. And then I think this is probably my last question on this. But what’s

54:22 the timeline? I know it says in here that it’ll come to, you know, come back to the school committee with an action plan. But do you have a feel for what that timeline is going to be? Would it be the next meeting? Would it be? It would definitely not be the next meeting, because you have the holiday in there, and then the returning from the holiday, the leadership team meeting. I think that the second meeting of December would be the suit.

54:51 So it seems other than the switch that’s going to go on at best, that was led at the building level, and then the teachers at the high school who are of it, who want to opt into any kind of the camera pieces were basically on pause until at least the new year.

55:18 Except for the changes that are going to go to that schedule after Thanksgiving. And then if any of the teachers at the high school want to opt in and start doing the cameras in the classroom. Sorry, that changed at that. Can you just walk me through that? Well, I could phone a friend and ask Matt, but the answer is Monday. I just had my first SAC meeting today. So starting the Monday after Thanksgiving, they will go to a full day remote Wednesday, similar to the high school, where both cohorts will be together and it’s a full day. And then the other four days will remain the same. As a middle school parent, I’m pretty excited about that. Yeah, because it’s working. I mean, everything I’ve heard at the high school is that it’s working well. Okay. Oh, it starts December 2nd. That plan goes into effect. Is that the day that I said? No, that would be the 30th. All the days. Oh, so the Wednesday. So yeah, because the only change is the Wednesday. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I’m mildly panicked.

56:46 So I think the only piece that I had on this is just the piece where we’ve got the student data, particularly at the high school, because it was most significant at the high school, but but it’s evident in rumblings at the middle school as well, that I really, I really want us to pay attention to the student data. And that would sort of just be where I’m coming from, especially because I think it’s what is going to feed into social emotional stuff pretty easily. And we, you know, I think there was one of the other slides that talked about social emotional low across the board with the older students kind of feeling it the most. And I certainly think that that’s accurate in my own career in what I see. And so I just want to make sure that we’re as a, as leadership across the district, paying close attention to what the students have to say. The number of students he responded to the in the high school. I can get you that number off the top of my head that I don’t. Okay. I just would be interested. It was significant. Yeah. Well, you said 900 was that for the total high school? Yeah. Both but it’s parents and I’m thinking seven to 12 respondents, 345 is sticking in my head. Okay. But I would, I can disagree that out for you by grade level. 900 was across the district. Oh,

58:20 that was across the district. Okay. Yeah. Great. It’s two to 12. Yeah. Okay. Right. I’d like to, yeah. So I want to know how many high school students responded to the survey because their numbers were still different that their parents, you know, it’s really interesting to see that Sarah, did you have something that you wanted to add? Yeah. I just wanted to piggyback onto what you were saying where we have such a large portion of our remote high school students. You know, voicing concerns about what’s going on. And those also happen to be the demographic that’s the most isolated from their peer groups and other people who would be who they might reach out to if they’re having some social emotional issues. I want to try to pay particular interest to that group just because they are more isolated if we can. This also brings up one question I had for these remote students. I know we’re not changing anything, but one thing that’s really kind of lacking with them is that peer connection. And I was wondering if I know we’re having a lot of these advisories and things, but is there a way to somewhat regularly group the remote students in some type of discussion format that’s facilitated by one of our guidance counselors or school psychs just because they’re under a unique set of

59:52 stresses, I would say, where they have that isolation piece. And I think it might make them feel like they’re less in this.

1:00:30 There is that isolation for them. And so we’ll absolutely do that, Sarah. I would even bring it down to the village level too, because I hear it discussed with my own village students how they love that group format of the advisory, but it’s also they hear a lot about what they’re missing further, about what they’re missing out on. And it might be nice for them to have that connection. For sure. All right. So I think that moves us more towards the tech update now. Megan, did you want to start? Sure. So a couple of notes that I just jotted down while you were talking through it, John. I guess my first question is, when we met last time, I think it was Valley Communication was going to come in and set it up so that some teachers could pilot it. How did that happen? And what’s the, you know, how did that go? What’s the feedback? How many teachers participated? Yeah, we have, okay, I want to parse out what the question is. We have demo equipment. And I know Dan is working with the staff that is piloting that. So I don’t have any update on that or how that is going or the teachers that are doing it. The tech audit is not complete. I had hoped that it would be, but in times of COVID, timelines that you hope never end up being the timelines that play themselves out in reality.

1:02:14 Okay, so I guess if we could get some information on how that pilot went, how many teachers participated and what the, you know, again, thematically, the feedback. Because that kind of falls onto my next question is that if we’re going to offer this to teachers, which I think we should do, I don’t have a feel for how many teachers that is, and therefore what is the cost going to be. And being on the budget subcommittee, you know, my first question is going to be how we can pay for this. But I don’t, you know, can we even, we can’t even get to that point without knowing what equipment are we using, how many teachers are going to be using it, and you know, is there any infrastructure we need to put in place to support, whether it’s five or 50, like, you know, that’s an order of magnitude piece. So that’s, and again, you don’t answer it here, but that’s my next question. How many teachers, how much equipment, and how much is it going to cost? Well, I think maybe the spoiler alert is in that I don’t expect there to be a large response. From my conversations with the MEA, they have taken it to the membership, and the membership does not have a robust interest in doing it. And so they’re comfortable keeping the MOA as is, and letting people that are interested in doing, not letting people, but people who are interested in doing it, do it. So what’s the concern? And like, honestly, like, you know, I’m just curious, where, where are the trouble spots from MEA?

1:03:53 I think that the technology at the high school, or just the bandwidth or connectivity, they know the struggles that are real now. And I think the tech candidates that walked through today shared some surprise in what we have in terms of infrastructure. And again, the audit will spell that out in black and white for us, along with the cost that I know you’ll be interested in. I think teachers know how it’s working in other districts, and it’s not the silver bullet that some people hope that it will be. And so, you know, I think our teachers are connected with colleagues across the Commonwealth, across the US. They have teacher groups, you know, AP English teachers or Spanish teachers, and they hear some of the challenges that this, some of the vulnerabilities. I think that, you know, there is teachers heard feedback from the spring of, that wasn’t really great. And I think there is some fear, and that was one of the things on the feedback, that do I open myself up for this if I don’t have to. And so I think there are a number, it’s not that they don’t understand it.

1:05:30 You know, I think that that’s almost a little concerning to say our teachers don’t understand it, because they do, and they don’t want to do it. And, you know, we will make it available for those who do. But I don’t think we’re in a place as a district to mandate it, because, infrastructure only, technology-wise, we’re just not paying. Right. And I guess, until we have that audit, we don’t know what it will take to get us there. So in, you know, I guess where my head is at is, I think those points are all completely valid. And I agree. But if we can solve some of their issues, you know, not their issues, but address their concerns, then I would like to keep that conversation going. So when we get the audit back, it will be interesting to see what will it take for us to get the infrastructure at least the high school to the point where connectivity issues are not going to be a day-to-day frustration. Because I completely get that. And if we pilot it and we see success with the technology that we’re talking about, because we don’t have this in-house right now, then, you know, we can address that concern. So I guess I would personally like to keep it moving. You know, granted, we’re at the end of November now. So, you know, there’s still a chunk of work if we want to go that way.

1:07:03 But I think if we know what the concerns are and we can start to address those, I would like to keep the conversation going. I don’t see this as the end of the conversation, but I want to set the expectation that it is in districts that are doing it and have the capacity to do it, they’re running into challenges that, you know, the tech candidate that was here today was talking about his wife as a teacher. And part of it isn’t just the school’s infrastructure, but home internet access and capacity and networks. And so classes get dropped. And then a student misses that day of instruction. There are benefits, certainly, and our teachers hear about that. I just don’t think they’re hearing that the benefits outweigh some of the concerns that they have. And I don’t know that I’m going to be able to change that. I think one of the biggest pieces on this is starting to allow the teachers to, you know, or increasing the ability and kind of the technology around the teachers who want to opt into this, because this is exactly what we’re saying right here is that we’re hearing from other districts. So if we start it in our building and it’s a royal flop, then we know where we’re at. And if it’s going well, then I would assume more are going to kind of want to jump on and try.

1:08:37 So, kind of what Cara was saying, are we or is the school going to train the teachers on how to use this technology? They are. So if someone is kind of hesitant about it, they’ll be able to get some… Both of the vendors that we worked with offered training as part of it. And it’s interesting that you mentioned that the tech candidate that was here today said, you can have all the hardware and software programming that you want, but if you don’t invest in integration and helping people to understand how to maximize the use, it was like Google Classroom. We had Google Classroom long before COVID or Google Hangouts, and people didn’t use it because they didn’t have to or they didn’t know the capability. And then suddenly we threw everybody in and said, you have to teach on Hangouts or Zoom. And he was talking about that Zoom is actually in a learning curve because the demand that they had overnight far exceeded their capacity of what they were capable of doing. And so all of us are in that learning curve. So I just want to make sure that we are providing the support for when we do get… because there’s two different types of cameras coming for here.

1:10:13 And they do two very, I think, two very different things and they work differently. I think it will be good to set up training, obviously. And then, like I said, for teachers who are nervous about it, they will feel more comfortable and that might help get some more on board. I don’t know, right? Just to know, like, again, that we are supporting them to try this and want to help them be successful out of it. So I think that’s important. Sarah, did you have something? Yeah, so I think really the biggest hurdle for us is going to be infrastructure. We don’t have the infrastructure. We’ve never invested in our infrastructure technology-wise. We haven’t funded it. We just… year after year after year, it’s the thing that we’ve kind of said, well, that’s what can we… and that’s what can we. Which, at the time, it was put a teacher in front of kids or, you know, we’ve been faced with a lot of hard decisions year after year after year. And this is where the end of the road happens. Like, we don’t have the infrastructure. And to get us where we need to be is going to be exorbitantly expensive. We would need a tremendous amount of buy-in either from the town or really like a Hail Mary package from the federal or state government. So I think that’s going to be our biggest hurdle.

1:11:43 And I think that’s what we’re hearing from teachers is they don’t want to be on that type of platform and keep freezing or have students freeze. It interrupts their rhythm, their flow. It probably makes them feel like they’re not appearing professionals that keep chopping. And it’s not them. It’s our infrastructure. So I think whether we adopt this now or not, this is a lesson learned that this is an investment we have to keep investing in and prioritize and do that moving forward. Now, one of my questions is, you listed three different platforms. The ones we’re trialing right now is the OWL one of them because I thought we had a really extended lead time on that. Okay. If we decided to go with more of those, is that something that’s available or is there still a really long lead time? I believe we were able to get them, but there is a wait on some. They have various models at various places. And then, I mean, ideally, if we had the buy-in from the teachers and we had the infrastructure, I think this really could work because we’ve heard the best feedback has been from remote elementary. And I think the reason is, and I’m pretty sure you identified this, is fully synchronous. They have a teacher all day, every day, and they’re learning. And the irony is, at the beginning, I just wrote these minutes this week, at the beginning of the year before school started, we thought that was going to be our most challenging demographic, was there’s no way that these elementary school kids can handle remote.

1:13:15 And what it really is is you give them a teacher all day and they’re doing it. So if we can find a way to do that for the other students, I think that would be helpful, but I understand we have very real obstacles. My question is, if we end up at some point in a remote model at one of our schools or all of our schools, is there any reason that everybody should not be expecting that when in full remote, it will not mirror what our elementary remote is getting, which is a full synchronous day with your teacher? It’s going to vary by building, and we had this conversation in the reopening committee meeting this morning, that the building principals are confident that if we have to go remote by a building or by the district, that they can make that pivot seamlessly, that they have the schedule in place and are prepared with their staff and schedules to make that move. Okay, because in my mind, in theory, if we wound up full remote, I mean, you wouldn’t do it for a week or two, that wouldn’t make sense. But if we wind up there for, you know, a chunk of time, in my mind, it seems that your remote day would mirror what your day in school was last year or whenever, like, you know, you would just zoom into that class at that time and just move on. My sense is the answer to this question is no, but I feel like I have to ask.

1:14:47 Is there anything we can do to incentivize teachers to try this live stream? That’s a very interesting question, Sarah, because one of the superintendents I talked to in their MOA, they built a stipend for teachers that are willing, that were interested in doing that. But on the administrative side, they said there has to be a threshold, a certain number of students for the district to pay a teacher the stipend to do the live stream course. And I think that that is a challenge here, and certainly very understandable, but I now have parents emailing me saying, I understand you’re going to be piloting this. I would like my students French 3 class or honors physics class or CP biology class to be in that pilot. And so that gets us to, we can’t mandate that. So if the French teacher wants to do that, then we would provide that technology, but we don’t have a mechanism in place in the MOA to incentivize this. Or in particular, the funding to do. And then if we do have, even if it’s just a handful of teachers that decide they’re embracing this, it’s working for them, they like it,

1:16:19 can we open those classes to any student at the high school that is now doing the remote platforms that we’re hearing aren’t working and say, you know, you’re taking physics on the remote platform. We have physics available with a teacher who’s streaming, would you like to transfer into that? Therefore, they get a different version than they may be getting with Edgenuity, but also they’re more part of our community then as well. I don’t want to give a definitive answer to that without having an opportunity to sit down with Mr. Bauer, but knowing the links that he has gone to try and accommodate students that their experience is not what they wanted it to be. I can imagine Dan being favorable to that conversation, but I wouldn’t want to say publicly and not for nothing, but we do pay for the virtual high school in Edgenuity courses. And so we have invested in those, whether people think that they are robust or meet the expectations that they wanted. We do have families that feel that their student is overwhelmed by a virtual high school course or an Edgenuity because of the expectation. There are other families who feel that they are subpar and are not meeting expectations, but we are paying for them both.

1:17:53 And then to grow on Megan’s point about having some feedback from those teachers who are piloting it, I think for us particularly to see kind of their narrative feedback if we can, it will make it easier for us when we are deciding if that’s somewhere we’re going to invest or not because our budget’s not growing. So if we invest in that, we’ll have to find it somewhere else, which is a hard decision to make. So having as much data while making that decision will, I think, be very helpful for myself, but I think probably for us all. I just want to thank Sarah for saying what maybe a new superintendent would be hesitant to say about the investment in the infrastructure and why we are not in a place capacity-wise that this is an easier decision. But I do want to say that even if we did, the fully remote experience is different because that is the teacher, particularly at the elementary, Sarah, or where you’re seeing the student with the full remote teacher. This is dividing a teacher’s attention. They have the hybrid students in front of them and the live stream students at home. So it will not mirror that focused attention experience that our full remote students are indicating are happiest with.

1:19:26 That experience is only going to be mirrored if we have to pivot that fully remote. That is correct. And that there is no in-person option anymore. And I think I’ll just piggyback on that really quickly because the point that I really, and as we continue to have this conversation, I’m going to continue to say this, I really feel strongly about students in person in the classroom not being on a Zoom call. This is very hard to do. And I feel like when I’m looking at you guys, I’m ignoring Sarah. And when I’m looking at the screen and I’m trying to make sure that there’s nobody in the waiting room, it is a lot to manage. And I’m not managing it. I am running this meeting, but I’m not teaching a class at the same time. So I think it’s, you know, I don’t, this is difficult, and I really don’t want the in-person piece taken away from the kids who are in-person. I feel really strongly about that. No, I agree. I think the OWL format is pretty drastically different than what we’re experiencing, though. If what I read is correct, it’s very drastically different from this. To further this remote hybrid question, one thing I didn’t see was I believe the quarter end came up where parents, at least, is it at the middle school and the high school had to identify? Did you get a lot of shift?

1:20:57 We did that. Okay. All right. I think that moves us along to the health and safety advisory updates. Does anybody have anything on that? So can families self-identify, or even staff, I guess, self-identify that they did travel or whatever and say, you know, it’s safer. I will take a two-week hiatus. And can we facilitate letting that happen? Because in a way, we’ll be encouraging that honesty. Not only that is our expectation, is that people, that the honesty is critical in making that work. And if you do travel out of state, certainly we can’t tell families not to, but we can strongly encourage them so that they’re honest in self-identifying and observing that warranty. I think so. I was obviously at that meeting this morning, and I appreciate John for pulling that meeting together because I felt really strongly about having the thoughts from that group to be able to bring it to the full committee this evening. I think the big concern that was shared amongst the group today is that the assumption is that many, many families in our district and across the country, quite frankly.

1:22:40 But all I’m caring about right now is Marblehead. That many, many families are going to either travel or host bigger family events where they either by state guidelines should be in quarantine because of travel, or really for the safety of the entire… Everything that we’re trying to pull off in person here should pull their kids for… There’s a few guidance shifts coming out as far as quarantine goes and testing and all of that kind of thing, but they should be following the current DPH and Board of Health and state guidelines. We as a district and our teachers can’t push 50 families into our remote program for two weeks. I’ll get a little personal here because part of the conversation this morning was around that, that if we were to do that, we may have to pull in-person teachers to push them into a remote system. As someone who’s choosing not to travel and to be without my family this holiday season, so that I’m setting a priority for my kids to be in person, I don’t want my children’s teachers being taken from them because other families made different choices. And choices that can really impact our entire system.

1:24:13 I know I’m on a soapbox here and I apologize for that a little bit, but I feel really strongly that this message needs to be that if you choose to travel, that’s fine. But that the district cannot support those families in a fully remote program. So you’ll have to know that your kids will absolutely have access to their remote and asynchronous days coming back and that the middle school level is going to be a little bit more support. But that when they’re supposed to be in person for those four hours on the two days a week, that they’re not going to be able to be in person and they’re not going to be able to access their teachers as they maybe otherwise would have. And that piece was a was very strongly advocated for by everyone at the district level in that meeting. And I want that to come across really clear so that people are aware of really how serious this was. And John, John talked about it a little bit about, you know, we’re only as strong as our weakest link. And I think Thanksgiving is going to present a massive opportunity to have a lot of weak links. And I think, you know, I’ve had conversations over the past week with other leaders in other parts of this community. And the concern around seeing our students out at Seaside playing basketball without masks and, you know, walking around downtown without masks, that’s a weak link as well.

1:25:52 And this is only going to exacerbate all of that. And so for that reason, I think I am I’m I’m definitely behind us remaining in in person in our in person hybrid system, because I do think that when we have our kids in our building, in our buildings, that we are helping them be safe. We know that masking works. We know that washing the hands works. We have them in a six foot distance. And that’s why we’re seeing numbers across our town and across our commonwealth start to increase rapidly. But we’re not seeing spread within our schools, because when they’re in our schools, our mitigation practices are working. So I think, you know, I am behind this decision from the reentry group. And I just want to make sure that all the parameters and all the pieces of it are strongly stated because they’re really important to being able to for Marblehead to keep us in person for as long as we possibly can remain in person. I’ll step off my chair. No, I think that was really well said. And I think I think it’s good to remember, too, that, you know, we’re getting to ski season. Everybody knows what that means in Marblehead. People go to New Hampshire. People go to Maine every weekend. From what I read yesterday, New Hampshire and Maine are getting added to the do not travel. You have to quarantine for 14 days when you return or get a test list any day now.

1:27:26 I didn’t see the news today. It may have already happened. That means if you’re going skiing every weekend, you can’t be sending your kids back into our school. So I think it’s really important for everyone to remember, and I’m sure this will be an unpopular statement, but I’ve never cared before, that this year, in-person learning is a privilege. And we need to treat it as such. And if we go to Thanksgiving dinner with 25 people or we travel for it or we travel every weekend for skiing, we’re playing with that privilege, and everyone can lose it. So we just all have to prioritize education and in-person learning and hope that’s where we fall. One thing, you know, in the slide show, John noted the cost of testing. And I know, I think for a lot of people, it’s, you know, just out there as this abstract. I was talking, I talked to my sister recently, her school, she runs the health center at a private boarding school. They test weekly. 60 students is $6,400 a week for 60 students. It’s an exorbitant cost, and it’s not something that a public school, particularly one with our funding structure, it’s not even an option. So I just wanted to kind of put a real number to that. Thanks, Sarah. Emily?

1:29:00 I think we should start sending out reminders to families, like starting tomorrow, because at other schools, they’ve been sending them since last week. Every update, everything has it in there saying, you know, in order to stay in our hybrid system or plan, we have to make this extra cautious, cautious decisions during Thanksgiving break. And it kind of goes over, there’s like a little visual kind of showing everything. And it even says if you travel outside of the state, you have to quarantine or you have to get a negative test and they require you to give your test results to the nursing. And we talked about this, and we can’t require that here, but just keep sending that reminder how important it is for people to make the right decisions. So I think you’ll be very happy tomorrow, maybe to the point of be careful what you ask. I asked the reopening committee to just let me present at school committee this evening before the barrage of information, reminders, social media. So at the building level, my weekly update tomorrow will certainly cover it and there will be lots of reminders. I think even down to Greg Siblarsi, he’s got a well-followed Twitter page.

1:30:35 And so we said, please, put this out and keep it going. And I think, honestly, I know everyone is really focused on Thanksgiving as we well should be. But quite frankly, I received multiple texts last weekend that had me really upset and concerned over multiple parties going off. That it’s one thing to have a couple of kids over where you can kind of control it and not start involved in everything. But parties that are happening and we can’t anecdotally react to everything. And I’m not suggesting that we do, but it’s just really frustrating when we’re trying so hard to be getting that feedback and thinking like, this is how this is going to end. And this is, I can only control so much. I can only control my own family, but this is how this is going to be the dominoes that pushes it all over the edge. And I really would love to keep us in person as long as we possibly can remain in person. Me too. Can we make sure that there’s some messaging around the attendance policy too? Because I know that where that’s a little stricter at the upper levels that some parents get a little nervous about keeping their kids home and that there will be allowances made for the attendance policy with this. I don’t want any high school kids coming to school because they’re worried that’s going to factor into it. I believe that the attendance policy was, was it taken away?

1:32:10 Basically that it was. I thought it was, but then it went back in. Okay. Certainly we can message that for sure. There’s not much to add. I mean, honestly, pandemic fatigue, it’s a real thing. I feel it, you know, especially now coming up to the holidays, but we heard resoundingly that parents want to have their kids in school. The only way that happens is if we all are responsible and make responsible decisions. So I’m just going to thank everyone in advance for making responsible decisions and thinking about, you know, yes, I want to hang out with my family, but if that means my kids can’t go to school, then I can’t do it as hard as that is. But we want to keep our kids in school. We all are in this together and there are state guidelines that we all have to follow. And that’s it. I’ll set it now. I know last time I asked John, if we’re looking at letting anybody who does not need to be in a building, like teachers teaching remotely, relaxing, letting them teach remotely from home. I still believe every physical person in a building is a risk to shutting us down. And if you’re not teaching physical students in your classroom that let’s let’s let them teach remotely and and keep people in the building who really need to be there for students. I think it in my mind maximizes the chances of keeping students in longer.

1:33:44 But have we looked at that particularly with the holidays coming in the winter months? We spoke a little bit about this offline, Sarah, and I just want to be transparent in that it is not as cut and dry as that because that is also part of the MOA with the teachers union. And we have our special education students that come in person, whether we’re in sometimes remote or not in terms of service delivery. And the pre-K to six are not looking at having that remote Wednesday. So it becomes a question of equity with teachers that OK, the six to 12 or the seven to 12 teachers get to stay fully remote and teach from home on Wednesdays. But maybe the elementary. None of these are insurmountable challenges, but they do need to be part of the conversation. And I can’t just sit at a school committee meeting and say, we’re going to allow when we’re in remote teachers to teach from home, because that’s not what we negotiated with the association. Well, the one thing I would say, too, is that the good thing is we’re not seeing a lot of spread in our schools as a result of being in schools, which for me is good news. And I think we’ve got to be making decisions based on science and data. So that changes. Then we reevaluate, but we’re not seeing that right now. So I think, again, any decision we make has to be based on data and science.

1:35:16 And I feel really strongly that the decision to remain in person after Thanksgiving is based on data at this point. You know, I think it was it was a really good discussion. It was a really difficult meeting makes it sound like it was contentious and it wasn’t at all contentious. It was just a really great discussion. I think people were very real about their concerns and about on all sides of the issue. So I think it was a great conversation and rooted exactly in what we’re trying to do. And this is why I’m so glad that that committee is in place and it’s being utilized on a regular basis. So good job. So as the superintendent tied up nicely with the bow before we go into Mr. Siglarski, who is waiting patiently in the wings with the athletics update, regardless of the model, we are going to deliver high quality education and we are going to appropriately educate the children of Marblehead, whether we’re in hybrid or fully remote and we’re committed to maximizing the educational opportunities that exist regardless of the model that we’re in. And so if we have to make a change, it doesn’t mean that we will lower our expectations or the standards for quality of education. So Mr. Siglarski, take it away.

1:36:47 All right. Thank you. Thanks for having me on here tonight. I’d like to give a quick overview of the fall season and update you on where we stand for the winter. First for the fall, after many conversations, modifications, and rule changes, our student athletes were able to have the best fall season we could offer. Between our coaches, athletic training staff, athletic department staff, and administrative team, we were able to give our student athletes the opportunity to play sports they were training for all summer. We had a great turnout with registrations and were able to field the same amount of teams as we have in the past. Our student athletes worked hard, they were competitive, and continue to improve in their respective sports. It makes me very proud of their efforts. Also, I would be crazy not to give two special shout outs to people who helped make this fall season happen and keep it running. First to our athletic trainer, Will Desjardins. He and his interns of Endicott were so important to keeping our student athletes safe every day. Our daily process of checking every athlete in every day, taking their temperatures every day, and then taking the field for games wouldn’t have been possible without them. I can’t say enough about how helpful they were. And secondly to the man behind the scenes, our assistant AD Mark Tarmy, who’s an essential piece of this complex puzzle we had this fall. He overscheduled games from the two-week break we had, handled the weekly or even daily changing of opponents or venues,

1:38:17 and the constant communication that came with it to the officials, bus drivers, building staff, and coaches. He managed the athletic website and more often than not he reminded me to breathe. Our teams are very lucky to have him in the building. Now for some quick highlights from the fall season. Our varsity golf team went 6-2. They had some nice wins versus Beverly and Gloucester. And Coach Green is very excited about the underclassmen coming up for next fall. Boys soccer went 2-4. They had a solid work all season. They lost to Swamscott in their first game 4-0 and then beat them 2-1 later in the fall. In an outstanding effort versus a bigger and stronger Masco team just this week at the end of the season, but they fell short 1-0 in the last minute of the game. Girls soccer was 2-4-1. They had a great job all season and battled hard every game. They had a great 1-0 win versus Swamscott and Coach Dormer is very excited about the future of the program. For field hockey they went 2-3-1. They had two hard fought wins versus Swamscott and Beverly. The team did an amazing job with their modifications to their sport. They went from 11-11 to 7-7 and that’s a pretty big jump. They did a great job. A girls cross country team went 2-1. Very nice work all season with wins versus Salem and Danvers. And had a great showing and a few of the Massachusetts invitational events. Boys cross country went 3-0. Excellent work all around by them as well. They also had some boys who had some good showings in the state invitationals

1:39:51 and our senior Logan Rodriguez actually came in first place in one of them which was great. For the winter season, the MIAA board of directors are meeting tomorrow morning to discuss winter sports and the modifications that could be put in place in order for us to have a season. Once those discussions and votes happen, the NEC athletic directors and principals will meet to hammer out the details kind of like we did in this fall. And we’re hoping to have more details that come out next week along with registration information. Thank you Greg. All right. Great. I want to thank you Greg for all of the work that you did this fall and everyone else that you mentioned. I know it was no small feat to pull this off and that it really made a huge difference to so many of our students. I’m really grateful that you pushed ahead and figured out a way to make it happen because I think it was really important. Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you. Completely so. Yeah, well done Greg. Thank you. Thanks. And I also want to thank, you know, I know you did a little bit, you were able to pull off a little bit at the middle school as well. And you know, my son participated in cross country over there and he was, you know, he was really grateful to be able to do it and I was glad to, you know, be able to kick him out of the house and go make him run for a couple of times a week. So yeah, that was some common feedback we got. So that’s good. All right. So you’ll, he just posted on winter.

1:41:21 Yeah, we really don’t have much right now as other than the modifications pushed through the different committees at the MIA and with the board of directors tomorrow. Right. What was the, what was the original start date for winter sports? The Monday after Thanksgiving, the 30th. Okay. So will you know by then what the deal is? Will you be able to update us? We should know tomorrow afternoon. Yeah. And we’ll have information to follow next week. Okay. All right. Greg, the winter sports, if I’m correct, are all indoor, correct? Yes. Um, yes. And in the fall, we didn’t do any indoor. No. Okay. So will, will we just go with, you know, it, the idea is that, um, the MIA will probably allow things, you know, they allowed any pretty freely in the fall, but individual districts and, and groupings decided to do it or not. Will we, will we do that same with this or have we just decided as a group, if it’s allowed, we’re doing it. I think it would probably be up to Dr. Bucky on that one, but, um, whatever the MIA recommends, we would probably take back to our league and then also to the superintendents of principals and then, and then kind of go from there.

1:42:46 Just as a spoiler alert, one of the things that I have heard being answered about, like swimming, I officiate swimming. And so they’re talking about schools having a meet, but just posting the times against another school. So we would swim army here with our team. And if it was against Beverly or Swanscott or another team, they would swim at their pool and they would have an official and then compare the times. So you wouldn’t bring two schools together for me. Yeah. I have to assume swimming is fully unmasked though. Yes. It’d be very hard to swim with a mask. Well, however, I, I do know that the J and the Y team have pulled this off, um, since the summer and, and that, um, I have a couple of friends whose kids compete and it’s swimming in particular when the kids are on the deck, their masks, and the mask comes off when they’re on the blocks and that’s it. Um, and, and they’re really only, they’re not hanging out in there. It is you arrive, you have your window, you arrive and then you go. So I think swimming actually is one of the ones that I’m less concerned about safety wise, um, as we head into the winter. Yeah. My son’s on the swim team at the J and they’re super strict about how they run the program and chlorine does kill the vaccine. So fires. It makes for the vaccine too.

1:44:19 But in all, in all honesty, like, you know, basketball, all these different things where there’s, I mean, it’s not contact like football, but there’s contact in basketball and we’re indoors and there’s heavy respirations. I don’t know. Like, is this something we, we want to discuss further or, or, I mean, not tonight, but we’re prioritizing in-person learning. It’s better we’re having this discussion without David tonight. Cause I think it’s just something I’m putting out there. Yeah. So the modifications that are, that are being generated by the sport committees are strictly off of the EEA guidance that came out, uh, maybe two weeks ago. Um, all of that information is, is for all new sports and amateur sports that, that people have to follow basically under the age of college. Um, so all those sport committees, they’re generating every modification they have for the sports to happen from the document. And that goes up through two different committees and then to the board of directors, which is happening tomorrow. Yeah. And I think, you know, I think that those groups have done a good job of really looking at the sports and, and making them as safe as possible. And for all intents and purposes, the ones that were pulled off seem to be quite safe. I mean, we don’t have spread in those. Um, and so I, my essence would be that they’re going to do the same and that, you know, we all know that it’s more difficult to pull off inside. And so,

1:45:49 you know, I think Greg, you know, if you don’t mind maybe coming back on the third and filling us in would probably be the best next step. Um, just so that, just so that we all know what’s going on. Absolutely. No problem. Can I, can I modify that though? If those winter sports are supposed to start on the 30th, I would actually like to know before they start. Okay. So, so just to be transparent. So we’re, we’re meeting as a league of athletic directors tomorrow morning. Um, before even those, those guidelines come out to talk about kind of our start date and where that might fall. Okay. A lot of other leagues around us are starting the 14th, which is two weeks after the Thanksgiving coming back, just to kind of allow things to settle down a little bit. Um, there’s been some discussion in our league about that as a date, maybe even the seventh. Um, but not, not a ton of leagues are going right off, right off the bat. It’s actually going with their list. Okay. All right. So maybe John, you can just give us an update in an email and then we can kind of proceed from there. We’ll have a really good idea tomorrow, you know, sometime after lunch. All right. Thanks Greg. Thanks Greg. All right. Okay. So that moves us on to the financial portion of the meeting. Michelle, welcome. Um, do you want to take it away and give us the monthly budget update? Sure. In your packet this month, we have the year-to-day budget report for October 31st. Um, also attached a budget transfer listing,

1:47:21 which not much has changed since last month and a COVID expenditure report. Michelle, before you get started, is it possible to share your screen? I don’t have the ability and honestly, I don’t know how I actually do not have VPN access. So I do not have the documents electronically. I apologize. It’s okay. I mean, I’ve got it on here too. I’ve been having VPN issues all week and I can’t access the network from home right now. I’ve got an additional computer, so I’ve got it. Yeah, no worries. Okay. Okay. Um, yes, the year-to-date budget report reflects that we have spent a total of $7,598,000 or 18.75% of the current year operating budget. Um, it’s not too much notable to discuss or bring to your attention except for the special education out of district tuition costs that we keep talking about and we will continue talking about each month throughout the entire year. Last month, when reported out the monthly update, we had just learned that the circuit breaker revenue did not come at the, at the budgeted level. The Student Opportunity Act had been pushed out for another year and now will be implemented in FY22, which is the next fiscal year and not the current fiscal year. Um, because of that, that act, which basically lowered the threshold of what we receive

1:48:54 or what we can submit in terms of special education reimbursement costs, we are receiving $225,000 less than budgeted. We do have some reserves in our special education revolving funds, which basically leaves our current projected shortfall at $148,000. Um, this is a number that will remain fluid throughout the year. It will probably increase a little. It will probably decrease a little. Um, but overall, we do have the special education reserve fund and the amount of $250,000 available to us. We’re hoping not to have to use that as we did not have to use it last year, but we do have that in reserve if, if it should be needed. We are also looking at implementing some changes. Um, right now we’re looking at expanding some special, special education programming that will potentially bring two students that are currently out placed back into our district. That certainly would result in some savings. Um, so we’re always looking at opportunities to enhance the program programming, but, um, also it is more of um, really how, how can we better meet the students needs? And that’s what it is in this particular case. And it just has a bonus of, of actually being cost more cost effective for us. Um, so working closely with, with Eric Oxford on that. Um, so this, this is just a number that we need to keep, keep looking at each month and keep reporting on. Um, just want to keep you up to date on it. So we’re, we’re not in a bad place right now, but it’s something to keep

1:50:28 our eyes on, which we knew we would be having to do that, you know, throughout the year. The entire year. Um, so that, that’s it about in regards to the operating budget. Um, we’re keeping a close eye on the school lunch revolving fund as well as the tuition in revolving fund for the, the preschool. Um, most of those costs, we actually move to the operating budget, but that’s something we want to project out. And I probably will report that out in the next, um, financial monthly updates. Um, and lastly, in the packet is an accounting of the school department’s COVID related costs to date. Um, for the past couple of months, we have been looking at a figure of approximately 1.9 million in COVID costs that we anticipate through the end of December. Um, as of right now, we have spent the total of $986,346. We have encumbered or reserved another $618,611 and we’re anticipating at least another $308,000, which will bring that to a total of the $1,913,000. Um, this is all covered by the CARES Act for the most part. Um, there is a small piece that we’re carrying in the operating budget of $168,000. Other than that, it is all CARES Act funding made up of a couple of different buckets. Um, we are continually looking at this. The town does

1:51:58 have some additional funds potentially and we’re in discussions with the town of how best to use those funds and take advantage of them because most of them are expiring as of the end of December. Um, we do have one small grant that is actually going to continue. It is our ESSER grant and that was in the total amount of $91,000. So we are able to be a little flexible with some of our costs and we can cover some of our COVID costs with that grant, um, beyond the December 30th date. And I just want to note that, um, right now we do have our contracted cleaning company in. The, the weekly cost right now is $27,000. We had budgeted a little bit of overtime, which brought it to that projected $30,000 number that has been tossed around. We did not need to use any of that overtime that we had budgeted for. But we are also looking at reducing some of those contracted staff numbers, um, beginning in the next few weeks after we return from Thanksgiving break. And that will hopefully bring our cost down to about just under $10,000 per week. Um, so that will prolong the amount of time we’ll be able to have this contracted cleaning company in house. Um, they’re doing a fabulous job. Um, we’re just finding that we can probably hit all of the high touch areas every two hours on a continual basis without the 30 additional man hours or the, the, um, employees that we’re using from this company.

1:53:28 Um, so we’re going to cut that in approximately half, um, or just under half and keep that going as long as we are able to meet all of our protocols and all of our, you know, suggested and required cleaning practices. So we don’t want to skip on that whatsoever, but we are very cognizant of the ongoing cost as the CARES Act is expiring, um, at the end of next month, which is just around the corner. Um, the only other ongoing COVID related costs that we will have will actually be the storage trailers. Um, they run us about $150 per month for each trailer. We currently have six trailers. Um, so that’s not a huge cost that will affect us. So we can certainly absorb that as well. Um, but those are just the things that we’re keeping our eyes on at this point. And we will continue to update you on a monthly basis on that. But if any of you have any questions, please feel free. So I really appreciate the work that I think it most likely, you know, you and Todd are sort of at the helm on that piece with the COVID and the cleaning. Um, I think, you know, when we first started to look into this in the summer, um, you know, those touch surfaces were the, like one of the biggest concerns. And as, you know, if we continue to talk about as we get our data and we continue to look at the data, that data has really changed and that we’re less concerned about touch surfaces and spread at this point. And so I really appreciate that you guys have continued to stay up on that and really moved what needs to be

1:55:03 looked at and what needs to be funded so that we can really continue forward and meet the needs wherever the data tells us the need is. So Sarah, I’m glad you said it because this was something, you know, we had, and I don’t want to skip around too much, but the budget subcommittee did meet last, was it last week? I don’t even know what day it is anymore. But we, and so the cleaning piece was a big piece of our conversation because it is such a large stand for us. And, you know, as Michelle pointed out, the CARES Act for the most part, you know, that funding ends the end of this year. So, you know, yes, Michelle and Todd are absolutely awesome and on top of it. And I think, you know, from that conversation, the plan, you know, we have to continue to look at what protocols do we need to have in place, like you said, based on the data that changes, you know, over time. So this is one where we really need to be very efficient with what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. And we talked about also Michelle coming to us with a plan for our next meeting on how we plan to continue using that and how we’ll go fund it. So definitely an area, you know, that we have to keep a real tight eye on. Great. So Michelle, well, I always appreciate how calm and positive you are about all this stuff. Bottom line is we have less revenue than

1:56:33 we planned on and more expenses. And that’s a problem. So at what point does the rubber hit the road? I think we’re holding our own right now. You know, all the analysis shows that we’re holding our own. Unfortunately, we have so many vacant positions right now. We have bus driver positions that are vacant. We have two custodian positions that are vacant. We have hours and tutors that are vacant. And while we are being very creative on how we address our needs, we do have some vacancies that absolutely have to be filled. And the good part of that is we are seeing a dollar savings, which is helping us offset these costs. The downside of that is we’re not able to meet every need that we had anticipated. So we’re doing a great job. And I commend all of our principals and administrators and we’re being unbelievably creative. But we right now will be living off of payroll savings. And that’s not something ideally we want to do. But that’s going to help us get us through this year, unfortunately. And we will have some increased, most likely substitute staffing costs at some point. We haven’t seen those just yet. We’re actually running much lower than we were at this time last year. We did start school a couple weeks later. But our substitute costs are just a fraction of what they were at this point last year. So

1:58:09 overall, we do have some areas of savings. And another thing is athletics. We’re not running as many teams as we were. I mean, not necessarily as teams sports due to the restrictions. And if we’re not able to run those, those are going to result in some savings as well. So we have lots of areas. And it’s going to be just a matter of diving into each of them and figuring out what the savings does. But I’m closely watching the payroll and the salaries because that is most of our budget. So we should be okay in the long run. So I just want to clarify in the sub line, it’s because we can’t find subs to work, right? Correct. Exactly. And we’re being super creative about how we fill those vacancies. But yes, we are not able to attract the subs that we absolutely need. Okay, so I just want to, the reason why I’m putting all these things out here is what we as a school committee may know these obvious things. But I think it’s really important as we go into budget season, because I worry what we’re going to hear is, well, you made it work again. And I think the I think our magicians want is like at the end of its life. And oh, no pun intended, the magicians, but I think that we really need to realize that when we keep deferring things we need to fund, we wind up with not enough technology infrastructure during the pandemic that we’re heavily reliant on technology. So we just as we

1:59:42 go into this budget season, we need to put out to the community that this is really, we can’t keep funding through savings on our staff. I mean, some point hopefully we’ll be able to hire these people and and we can’t We can’t rely on that. You’re absolutely right. Alright, thank you Michelle. Thank you. Always appreciated. So that moves us to our federal bills. That was in the packet. Can I get a motion to approve the identified federal bills The bill’s totaling $739,568.95. So moved, Megan moved. Second. Emily second. Do anybody have any questions on that? All right, I will roll call Sarah Gold. Yes, Megan Taylor. Yes. Sarah Fox. Yes. And Emily Barron. Yes. All right, that passes four to zero. Thanks guys. So Sarah, I did notice on those schedules that when they’re scanned, we don’t see who signed them. I’m assuming it’s you, but if it’s not you at some point, will we just be, how will we know that? Yeah, so I believe Sarah, the way we pass it back in, I don’t even remember when we passed that, it’s either that you, that me and you are the designees to sign right now. So if I can’t. But yes I know.

2:01:13 If I can’t do it on any given week, then Michelle would just reach out to you. And I guess if both of us were not available, it would probably just go to the vice chair. But I’m not traveling, so. All right, so that takes us on to our school committee stuff. So the first item up that we have is the Massachusetts comprehensive assessment system. So the M-pass testing resolution discussion. So this is one that has gained some traction. Megan kind of brought it to my attention on one of the listserv that she follows from the MAFT site. So I figured it was worthy of bringing it before the committee. It was in our packet, I believe it’s up on the website too, if anybody wants to refer to it. Yeah. Okay. So let’s talk before I ask for a motion. What do people think of this resolution? I think it’s a good ask. Do we have a sense of if it’s achievable? I mean, as with any of these resolutions, I feel as though it sort of put forth to the powers that be that are far above us to kind of talk about what the boots on the ground are feeling. And I don’t know, John, if there’s anything going on at the superintendent level with this, I feel like there was something,

2:02:44 I think this one did pass at the larger MAFT meeting. So this one just as some background, I am on the MAFT listserv, so it’s basically school committee members from all over the state. So this has been passed in a number of them prior to the MAFT delegation getting together. I do think there were a few minor tweaks to it after that, but my understanding is yes, that it has been passed there as well. So I have an interesting perspective on this. So when I first read it, I was like, this is great, we should all be for it. But then I met with Nan on Wednesday and she really kind of explained everything to me about the MAFT and educated me on why we need them right now. And she’s here to answer anybody’s questions, if people have questions after I kind of explain what we talked about. So the governor has said that this year that the MAFT will not be used for accountability or district ranking. Right, that’s the right way to say it. They’re just for us to use as data collection on what our students have learned.

2:04:15 And so as a district, we need that information so we know where the gaps are and we can use that for next year for what to plan for instruction and what we should be doing for our students and what our teachers can be using. And it’ll give us a lot of great information for us to use, which I think is extremely important, considering we didn’t have them last year. And if we don’t have them this year, we don’t really know where we are. And also the students, we are taking them this year. I mean, nothing has been said yet. And also, let me just blank on the other thing. And also I think it’s such a bold resolution that I don’t think it can be up to us to make such a huge decision about taking out a standardized test because if you look at the language, it says that students will never have to take them again and that they will be gone forever or for the next three years. And if you look, there’s a lot of more stuff in here that we would actually be floating that we agree with. And so I think we have to really take a good look at what is being said. And I didn’t read the language to be gone forever,

2:05:49 just to put that out there. Well, it says the Marblehead Public School system to undertake MCAS testing during the 2020-21 school year or ever. That was as it pertains to the graduates of the year 22, which means children that would have been taking that 10th grade MCAS last year, which is a graduation requirement. So what that is essentially saying is those students that should have taken it in the 10th grade will not be held back from graduation because of that. Because really to take that test a year or two years out from taking the class and not to be a reliant of your degree, you getting your- No, and I agree with that. That’s not, I agree. Yes, they shouldn’t be there. Yeah. But I think- When it reads or ever, I think that means for students who don’t have their other graduation requirements to graduate in four years. So that’s a loophole covering any student that was in that class, not all students. So I think if you read a little bit further, it’s the additionally that we urge the legislature to enact a moratorium on high state testing for three years.

2:07:18 I think maybe that’s the way Sarah’s interpreting that might be correct with, yeah. For instance, I think it’s also, the language was written, for instance, it could cover the class that would be in 10th grade this year. So basically it’s really more towards those 10th grade tests that could keep you from graduating. But no one would take it. It’s not just that the 10th graders wouldn’t take it, but no one would take it. Correct, I think that that’s what this is. Right. Yes. Yeah. For two years. Right. Right. But it’s that, the way they phrase that one form of testing, that is for the graduation requirement. That we would put on hold all testing for this year, but that the four, three years or forever is as it pertains to the 10th grade MCATs. So that’s not for the entire district. No, it would be for the entire district that they wouldn’t, like, that wouldn’t, it wouldn’t make third graders as fifth graders go back and take the third grade test as well. But those aren’t graduation requirements. Right. So it’s not quite as significant. But it’s also saying that third graders wouldn’t take that test until they are in sixth grade. Right. Right, that’s what that lesson’s in. I actually think any data points that would be gleaned by a fourth grader taking a test they should have taken last year are completely inadequate data points.

2:08:51 But that’s all I’m asking though, Sarah. What I’m asking though is, does this say that we will not be administering the MCATs this year, next year or the year after? Right. Correct. That’s how I read this. Man, if you want to, if you have anything to jump in with, feel free. Yes, please, man. I might not. That’s how I read it. I don’t have the document in front of me, but that is how I read it, that the first paragraph alluded to the 10th grade and then the second paragraph alluded to the district in general. But I did want to just go back, Emily, in one of the statements that you made around having other, if we didn’t have this data, we wouldn’t know where we were. And I just want to make sure that the committee understands our teachers know exactly where we are. They are right on it. They’ve got their pulse on where we are in the curriculum and they are amazing. But it does serve as another point. And when we talk about data in districts, we talk about triangulating data. So using data that we use in the classroom, collecting data that we do subjectively, objectively, and then using the state data, it really does help anchor our picture of where our standards-based instruction lies. So that was the point that I was making to Emily,

2:10:22 that if we were to enter into some sort of resolution about dissolving MCAS from being able to be used in our district, one, we really don’t have a data warehouse right now established in our district where we have a source where we put all of our assessment data to really be able to take that one piece of MCAS out. We really don’t have another place to go where it’s all centralized. Where MCAS does centralize our math, our ELA, our writing, and our science data. So in my conversation, I appreciate that the governor and the commissioner are not holding anybody, that we’re all being held harmless. That just makes good sense. But there are good teaching professional learning points that can be pulled from that data. So I just think as a district to sign on to something that says we would never use it again, or hope to never use it again, I’m not sure we would wanna go into that without having a conversation with teachers and leaders in the district and having a more

2:11:52 in-depth conversation about that. So if it was just for the three years, for the next three years, and a moratorium for the next three years, would that be a little more palatable? It would be palatable, but it’s still, there’s gonna be a lot of learning lost. What the MCAS does is it provides us an overall picture that is truly aligned to our frameworks and our standards. So we can pull any standard in third through 10th grade and be able to measure where we are against other districts and where we are in our own curriculum. So there is a lot of information and when teachers are using that data well, they’re looking at that information, finding trends, and then going back in their lesson development and trying to supplement those lessons or deepen those lessons so they cover more of that content when they’re teaching that standard. So it is really useful information. There’s a lot of cons as well, as far as there’s always the term teaching to the test. And Emily and I talked about that yesterday and my philosophy on that has always been when I talk with teachers, if you’re teaching to the standards, the kids are gonna do fine on the test. Don’t even think about it

2:13:22 because if you’re following a standards-based curriculum and doing a nice job of progress monitoring and getting kids what they need throughout the year, they’re gonna be fine. So we don’t need to teach, there’s no test prep if you’re teaching to the standards, you’re doing that all year long and that’s the best way. But that’s a whole nother kind of philosophy and pedagogy around that. I’m not sure, I haven’t been in the district long enough to know what the teacher’s pedagogy and thinking is on it. So I wouldn’t wanna speak on their behalf, but I think there are good pieces of information that come from data analysis. It also helps us understand our equity and access and our growth percentiles and some of our high achieving students, they continue to do well in terms of proficiency, but it’s the overall growth percentile that stays flat. So it gives you a perspective of how far that child’s being pushed and in terms of where you might wanna try to target their learning and interests. So there’s a lot of rich data that is provided. It’s just about using it well and not overthinking the preparation and preparing kids for the test.

2:14:54 Nant, can I ask you a question though? So can you just talk a little bit about the validity of MCAS results in this, doing them this year, given how different this year is? Because by the time we do them, it’s at the spring and by the time we get the results, the school year is basically over. So what, I guess I’m just trying to understand what data are we actually gonna get from this year that we can carry forward because we’re not gonna be able to do anything retroactively, it’s all about using it going forward, right? Right, so we’re still doing rich and extremely engaging activities in the classroom. So we’re, for example, fourth grade unit on personal narrative. The teachers are teaching the personal narrative and the students will write a personal narrative or a response to some sort of, sometimes it changes a little bit with the MCAS, but they’ll be asked to do a substantial amount of writing in fourth grade. So that will be a benchmark for teachers to look at that and they can look at the students’ responses. The MCAS did not use to provide those, but now you can get student their actual responses. And it helps teachers reflect and kind of calibrate as a team how kids did and where did the score, where did the students, the rubric

2:16:24 that they used to grade the writing, where did kids score high and where overall as a team, did the kids fall short? And it just kind of gives you some perspective on your instruction. And sometimes that perspective is, yeah, that’s not a surprise that they fell short there because we didn’t get to that. We weren’t able to teach that. But we spent a lot of time on this and they did really well. So there’s validation in that when you review that kind of data. So I would think if we did MCAS this year, it would all about, it would just be about internal reflection and thinking and planning for next year. Okay, and then I should know the answer to this question, but I’m gonna ask it anyway. In terms of the time that students are required to spend on the actual test, how much time do they spend? So it all depends on grades, but typically in the third grade, it’s two days, I think third and fourth are two days ELA, two days in math. Are they full days or are they just a couple hours? I mean, typically they’re supposed to be in 90 minutes, but students are allowed to continue untimed until the end of the school day. So some kids will be done in a half an hour, some will be done, they’ll take a few hours on it.

2:17:57 So I would suggest just from my chair that I think Emily’s meeting with Nan was very helpful. And if there isn’t a timeliness to this, that the committee would table this and people that want to meet with Nan and me because I had a really rich discussion with Nan after her meeting with Emily in talking through this, that people have that opportunity. And if there is massism saying you need to take your vote in November, that you would table this and bring it back if this is something that the committee wanted to vote on. That’s how I’m feeling as well. I agree, I don’t think I have enough information tonight to make the decision. I think we really have to give it some more thought. I do appreciate Nan’s thought process around getting some teacher feedback too. That would be useful, I think. But yeah, I think that’s a good suggestion. Yeah. One, if I can ask a couple of questions of Nan now. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but were we not taking a new version of the MCAS last spring? Wasn’t that at least at the elementary level? The last spring, no MCAS was implemented last year. No, I understand it was canceled, but if it had happened, it was gonna be a new version, correct? Not that I’m aware of. Yeah, the spring before that was the year they rolled out the new one. Oh, I go to the elementary level,

2:19:28 we were switching it up again. Okay, so that was my question because I know the first year, the data is not useful in that first year. At least that’s what I’ve always heard from the, at the SAC meetings. And then my concern is, what Megan was saying is that the data would be very skewed. And then if this takes up two days, particularly when we have kids in school in person, 85 days, I know two days doesn’t sound like a lot, but to take two out of the 85 days, they have seemed significant. And then the added pieces, although this isn’t going to count against the district, these tests are anxiety provoking for students. And I think we’ve kind of thrown a lot at these kids this year and they’ve handled it in stride. But my concern is, some point we need to kind of do what we can to stop throwing things up. So that’s one of my concerns. Yeah, yeah. So let’s table this for tonight and I’m gonna put it back on for the third. And then that’ll give all of us, including David, a chance to touch base with Nan and have these conversations and really kind of ruminate on it individually as well. So I think that’s certainly what would be good for myself. So it seems like that for everybody. So. And I just spoke to Emily about it yesterday. So it will also provide John and I some opportunity to talk with teachers and get their perspective.

2:21:00 Wonderful. Perfect. All right, so that takes us to the homeschooling policies, IHBG and IHBDR and that discussion. So last meeting, these policies were brought up and Nan did a pretty extensive presentation with the PowerPoints over the changes that she’d like to see in how she and parents work together to adequately provide homeschooling for children. So this would be the time where we could take a vote on this policy. So I just wanna clarify that nothing in our actual policies are going to be changing. This really pertains to the IHBDR and the way that it then gets put onto the district website as to what parents access. So not even particularly on the policies page of the school committee piece, but back underneath the homeschooling tab within the district website. Just wanted to clarify that before we move on. So do you mean that we’re not actually changing any of the policy as it pertains to the things a parent has to do to get their child enrolled in homeschool? So we’re not- Is there a mechanism of exchanging information?

2:22:32 So we’re not actually changing the verbiage in our policy. It’s simply changing the requirements that support that policy. Am I saying that correctly? Yes. Yeah, the process. So parents, I just wanna make sure I’m understanding this because I did have a few concerns, but so parents, the only difference is parents are required to give us some more, give us more information about their plan, and then give us more assessments along the way. Yes. Okay. We’re not dictating at all what they’re doing because my concern is that, not that I would choose homeschooling, especially after this year, but my concern is that the families that choose this in a traditional year, which this is not, are doing it because for whatever reason, the education in Marvel had public schools is not something that fits them or their children’s needs. And I wanna make sure that we’re not saying, okay, you can do it at home, but you’re gonna do it the way we want you to, because I wanna make sure that we’re allowing them still to say, this doesn’t fit my needs, I’m going to provide something for my child that does, whatever that difference is. I just think we’re asking them to articulate what that is, as opposed to, I’m, or use a sports example,

2:24:06 which is really foreign for me, but I’m gonna red shirt my child for a year and just not do anything. And we’re just saying, if you’re electing homeschooling, please articulate what program and what assessments you’re going to use in that homeschool model. And Nan and I had a conversation the other day about the piece around stipulating a baseline for where a parent’s education should be. And I thought about it since we’ve talked about it. And I’m wondering if we don’t need to actually put any kind of stipulation in. Nan and I talked about the fact that some people either don’t end up graduating from high school or have a GED and go on to do really incredible things and own businesses and highly functioning parts of the society, and that they would be perfectly capable of providing homeschooling to their children. So I’m wondering if because of some of the other pieces in that system that Nan has set up on some of the other ways in which there’s check-ins throughout the year and there’s sort of some consequences if a parent is really truly failing and being negligent in what they’re saying that they’re doing. If that isn’t enough of a safety net to kind of support

2:25:37 what the system that Nan is putting forward to us. And so that we could kind of just do away with any kind of need to stipulate an educational bar for the person providing homeschooling. I agree. So, okay, then your failure of a home educated to abide in good faith, that piece, right? That’s the consequence. It’s the consequence, yeah, and that eventually is, like I would just, and I noted this to Nan the other day, the term CHINS, Child and Need of Services is actually outdated and it’s a CRA at this point. So just to be able to put that in when it actually goes into effect so that we’re current with what would actually be filed. So that, and that’s a really serious and last ditch piece that puts a family into a court system for many different reasons. And as a child therapist, those things have come across my desk before and it truly, truly, truly is a last ditch effort when everything else has not worked. So can you just talk a little bit about, I mean, you mentioned the safety nets that are in place. What are those safety nets? So you don’t get to this point. So Nan, do you wanna hop in on the safety nets? You can probably explain it a little bit better than I can. Well, I think the safety nets that are framed out in the language for the DESC

2:27:09 is really around that portfolio and that you are showing evidence that you have followed a framework of instruction for your student and measured their growth according to their developmental and school age peers so that you can, and you provide evidence that your child is making progress. So if a parent wasn’t able to show you anything or then you would know to kind of go a little bit deeper and maybe ask a few more questions. And do they follow, how often do they provide that portfolio or the evidence? So my understanding is that hasn’t been part of the process in Marblehead for a bit. I haven’t been able to find a portfolio, but so I would say that this DESC suggests a mid-year point and an end of the year point. Okay, so does that just need to be documented in here? Or is it? Maybe I just missed it. I don’t think dates were, Megan, right? Is that what you’re asking? Well, it doesn’t even have to be a specific date, but a mid-year and end year. I didn’t see it. So, okay, so we should add that probably a NAND somewhere

2:28:42 along the lines. Or it says like method assessment. And then you pick one, but then that doesn’t give you any other information. Right. I think this is probably not part of what we would do, but I think for a family looking at this, to have a sample portfolio at every like elementary middle would be probably really helpful because it will guide people on what you’re looking for, I think. Good idea, yep. I think that’s a good idea, sir. All right, so do we feel like we can move to vote? Well, it sounds like you might have a few revisions that need to be made or no. Can we make those revisions after the fact man or would you want me to bring it back on the third? I think we can make them after the fact. Okay, all right. I’m absolutely fine voting on this now. I just didn’t know with the requirement to read the policy as we’re voting two different times, if we can vote on it without having read the amended policy. I didn’t know if it was just like a bureaucracy piece. I think that. Because nothing in the actual policy itself is changing, it’s just the implementation part that’s in a separate portion of the website. I think we can move forward on this knowing that if the changes aren’t made, we can bring it back too.

2:30:18 All right, so I will ask for a motion to approve the policies IHBG and IHBGR on the homeschooling with the adjustment suggested this evening. Sorry, I lost myself there. To remove the requirement of parental educational level? Correct. So I move to approve the IHBG and IHBGR homeschooling policies with the adjustments noted in the discussion tonight. Oh, so moved. Megan moved. Second. Emily second. All right, I will move for a vote. Sarah Gold, yes. Megan Taylor, yes. Sarah Fox, yes. And Emily Darrin, yes. All right, that passes 4-0. Thank you all. So that moves us. Thank you, Nan, for all the work on that. Thanks, Nan. So that moves us to the subcommittee and liaisons updates. I will jump in because we had a policy meeting. So I’ll just keep on the policy train. We have that last this past Tuesday. We had Ms. Benedetto or Dr. Benedetto came to talk with us about her work that she’s done on understanding busing policies in other districts and the need for additional busing in Marblehead.

2:31:52 And so we had a really nice conversation with her. She’s going to work offline with Michelle Cressa, who’s going to take that on as one of her projects this year to really dig into busing in Marblehead and the costs and sort of all of the details around additional busing at various levels. And then we had a really nice conversation with her about how we can move forward, particularly as we move into budget season. So there was also an immediate follow up from Dr. Benedetto with Judith Crocker from the Safe Route to School system that we had been working with a bit last year offline. We had a couple of things going and then COVID struck. So that is back on the table for some walking audits to just really get some good information on the safety and walkability to various schools around the town. And that’s, I did not open that email today, but I know that there are dates being put forward for when those audits are going to take place. And then we looked at a few different policies in the eyes and we’re going to bring one forward at the next meeting to be looked at the policy ID. I did policy ID and I’m not remembering exactly which policy that is, but we’re just going to change a little bit in the how it reads.

2:33:26 And then we’re also going to look at the F policy section starting in our next meeting and that covers quite a few different things about naming a school, facilities, and then it was a bunch of facilities things, most of which if not all, it’s a short section, but we’re really relevant to a lot of the work that’s going to be done this year at various sub to me levels as well as the larger committee. And I forget anything? I think that’s policy. Maggie, you gave an update. I have two quick questions. One is arms of buzzing piece and this may be premature. So I can hold, but is that something that ideally was booked to implement for the next school year? Yes, we cannot implement that this year. No, definitely not this year. So I think ideally it’s for the next school year, I think it’s going to depend on budgets and how that looks and what the needs are and where the district wants to go with it. So my assumption would be that at some point Michelle would present to us and possibly Jeff would be involved in that as well. Dr. Benedetto. Sorry. And then the walking audit that you mentioned, does that include the new school too? That’s a good question. I’m not sure if it includes the new school at this point. I don’t exactly know. I can, I can ask because I think it’s kind of game last spring.

2:35:01 It was supposed to be done for Glover and village, but I think at this point we’re sort of looking across the district. So I see my understanding is that part of it is actually doing the physical audit of the traffic patterns. To and from at that time. So I think that would be really difficult because there’s no traffic pattern of drop off and pick up at those times. So they really wouldn’t be able to get a valid audit is my understanding. So maybe that one would have to come back for next year. And sorry. So following up on the busing, you had said there’s no way it would get implemented for this year. Is that because we don’t. Is that because of funding or what is that? What is the reason for that? So funding is an issue and the COVID stipulations on busing are intense. They’re probably the most intense of any of the stipulations that are the guidance that is given. And the end. So that then impacts funding. And then I guess we have a bus that was ordered that we budgeted for last year. And it hasn’t arrived yet. And even when it does arrive, there is no bus driver to drive. So that ad has been out for some time at this point. And I think most likely due to COVID that that’s a pretty. Not. I don’t know. But that’s not a job that many people would really love to have at this point.

2:36:34 Yeah. My understanding that was in my facilities update is that came out in our meeting the other day that that position has been actually vacant for over a year, well before COVID and still no one will take it. Yeah, we haven’t even had a single applicant. So for everybody that wants busing, you can drum up people to apply. But in all seriousness, information comes out of this audit that there are safety concerns. I know that, you know, you can’t get blood from a stone, but I really think we have to prioritize if they if they identify one or two walking routes that are really, really unsafe. I think we really need to prioritize getting those students passing as soon as possible because we can’t have students in an unsafe environment because we can’t afford make them safe.

2:37:26 All right. So obviously, Paul, to the back on all of this. Meg, you mentioned a bit about the budget. Yeah, so, you know, we met the end of last week. Michelle went through, you know, the same thing with you all tonight that she went through with the budget subcommittee. So there’s nothing really new there. The only thing that I did want to bring up to this committee, and I mentioned it to John earlier this week, is there are a number of grants available and, you know, they’re not huge amounts of money. They’re not going to solve every problem. But I think at this point, every little bit helps. But I would say, and John, correct me if I’m wrong, I think bandwidth wise with everything else that’s going on. Internally, we don’t necessarily have the bandwidth. So I would love to put it out to the community. If there’s anyone who’s got grant writing experience to if there’s some willingness to help us out in that regard, I would like to consider that. Again, it’s open to the, you know, just a thought to the committee. But if there’s a way that we can kind of try to realize some of that without putting additional burdens on our already overtaxed administration, that would be great. So I’ve been advocating for a long time to incentivize grant writing in the district. I know, for instance, we have some professionals in our district that prior to being educators were professional grant writers. This is their wheelhouse.

2:38:56 They’re great at it. And I think if we incentivize that extra work, because it’s a tremendous amount of extra work, we would get a pretty good return on our investment. So it’s something I’d like to see in the future, but I don’t know what man and John’s feelings are. There’s been pushback in the past and that idea, but I do think it has a good ROI in that. I think if we can get, you know, even this year, if it ends up being simply that we get a volunteer or two, I think it helps to make the case for how valuable that is. And so then when we look at budget pieces, whether it’s incentivizing current staff or creating additional positions, it really starts to look at the benefit of that. Great. Any takers? Facilities? So we had a meeting on Monday and we did decide that moving forward, we’ll be meeting on the second Monday of the month at, I believe, 130. I have to confirm the time, but I believe it was 130. Emily was going to get that up on the website. The committee asked Michelle to get started as soon as possible with getting a facilities assessment out to bid. We want to make sure that we get that out in the market, that we get our bids back and assign it as soon as possible so that in an ideal world, we have that assessment back with all of our data points so we can develop our plan for our facilities.

2:40:28 If we’re thinking we may need to be developing a more comprehensive budget this year that potentially could involve an override, we’re really going to need those data points as drivers for our facilities. So we’re hoping to get that out. It’s a really tight timeline. I know that the budget season really is starting now and then we have to have our numbers for our capital asked to the town by mid-January. So with the holidays, it’s a tight timeline, but we’re hoping to get that done. We also talked about the bus, so we don’t have it yet, but we hope to be receiving that soon and we can’t get a bus driver. So that’s another big piece. There’s a lot that would be helped out, district-wide, if we could find someone for that position. So we talked about that a little bit. There’s been some scuttle about the valve at Village. There’s some questions on the committee level about that and about maintenance. While we all know that we need to do regular maintenance in our building, that valve issue was not a maintenance issue. It was one of those things that just happened and it could have happened at any given time and it wasn’t a preventative maintenance thing. So we also talked about the need for a comprehensive facilities manual or playbook. We talked about how that would be essentially come out to be about 300 pages is what was estimated.

2:42:00 But really, what needs to be done on a daily basis, a weekly basis, a monthly basis in our buildings. So that once we have that, we can associate costs with all that. And again, this goes to building a realistic budget of what it takes to run our schools facility-wise. We talked and we were pretty candid with this. We have Todd and Michelle both on our committee that there’s this idea in the community that we don’t have a maintenance plan. And actually, if you look on our district’s website, we’ve had a pretty comprehensive maintenance outline. There’s one done through an assessment in 2015. It was updated in 2017. It was building by building, plan of what will be done, what year. It’s well thought out and well laid out. Not that we don’t have a plan, it’s we don’t have money to pay for the plan. So every year it gets kicked down the road of what we’re going to do. So it’s this idea of we have to maintain our facilities, then we need to pay to maintain our facilities. The best laid plan is great, but if we can’t pay for it, we can’t pay for it. And then the other question that came up was the truck that we were supposed to get that was agreed that we were going to take it off the table in 2019 during the budget crisis. And we were going to get a truck from the water department. We never did. Bill looked into that. And here we are 18 months later and we still don’t have the truck. So poor Todd is trying to cobble together all this stuff and we’re not giving him the tools he needs.

2:43:38 The man’s a saint at this point, I think. So it just was something that came up. His understanding is at this point, we probably there’s been so much more wear and tear put on that truck that it’s probably not beneficial to our school department anymore, but it doesn’t negate the need for it. So just going into what we need, these all were important ideas. And then I had, oh, so we also talked about how COVID is affecting our facilities. And we talked about it’s an increased demand on our HVAC systems. We’ve identified that because, you know, the MOA and the regulations was we would keep each window open a little bit. Well, with colder air coming in constantly in the constant air dumps every two hours, we’re putting up more of a tax on our HVAC system and also on our motors. So Todd noted we would need to be prepared to replace those motors at various points this year that they’re going to probably burn out. And so we identified that and he actually talked about how at some point windows will need to become closed and the air dumps every two hours will essentially need to stop because we have these coils that are heated up to a certain temperature and running. And then we’re dumping cold air on them, they crack and break.

2:45:08 So at some point that that influx of the cold air when we hit, you know, the 10 degree temperatures and stuff is going to stop. So that was another point that came up. And they talked about that there would be increased to expect an increase in the utility costs for this year, but that doesn’t affect us so much as the town because we hit our threshold every year and then it goes back to them. But someone might may want to give them the heads up. All right. It was a busy meeting. So I really like the idea of this playbook. I think that’s great. I guess my first question on that though is do you feel for timeline around putting that together? We don’t. And that was discussed too that everyone around the table talked about how amazing Todd has been. And really he has been, he has been wonderful. I mean, he’s, he’s taken a lot of things that in the past we would have just called someone right up and outsourced and he’s having our guides do it in house. But that typically would be done by a facilities director that is the person that would handle the budgeting planning, more the business end of the facilities. And we have Todd running, you know, making our buildings run constantly. So I don’t know how or when that would get done because you don’t really have that, that person allocating that time

2:46:43 to the administrative piece, if you will. So we’re trying to work on that piece. So I guess not answering your question, other than to say, we shouldn’t expect it any day soon. So we, I guess where I’m going with that is for, because we are heading into budget season. It’s not something we’re going to look to factor into our budget planning for the coming. I think what we’ll have is more, I think realistically and Todd may, you know, correct me later, but I think realistically, what we can hope to have is more of a bulleted, very high level list with the goal of we’re going to need to get that more detailed playbook. When we really can donate manpower to do it, because I don’t, I didn’t get the idea that, you know, that was something that Todd had the time to sit down and dig in. It’s pretty comprehensive. Yeah, fair enough. So you also mentioned motors. Do we have a feel for what that additional cost is going to be? So Todd said that those were not it. They weren’t at first, I got worried that that was like a 10, 10 or $20,000 thing each time. Um, sorry, what he said was they run, I think he said maybe six, $800 each, I think. And sometimes he can rebuild them. He has kept some on hand or he has a couple on hand in case we need them right away.

2:48:15 We talked about the idea of if we know they’re going to burn out to try to get those on hand so that we don’t have a school without heat. Um, we also talked about the filters they use have to be changed more record regularly. And the procurement of those right now is a little tough because everybody’s trying to procure them. Okay. Okay. And he does have a surplus of the motors, right? No, I thought he had a few, he does have some he says. He has some for some of our buildings, but he doesn’t have, when you say surplus, I think, I think, you know, he has one for everywhere he does not. Okay. So the other question I had is on the, um, that facilities assessment. So Michelle, this question might be more for you because when we talked about this last year, Bill had recommended a firm that he had used previously. And I’m pretty sure that we already have an estimate from them. So is this one of those cases where we potentially could use them without having to go out to bid? I don’t understand how that works. No, unfortunately, the, um, the estimate we received from that firm was just over $42,000. Anything over $25,000 has to go out for, um, official bid. Um, so, and they are not on any state contract list or procurement, um, purchasing groups. So I’ve actually spoken to them, um, working with the town procurement officer to see what, um, section of the law.

2:49:53 We actually need to put this out to bid under. I have put it out under a different, a couple of different things in my past districts. Um, so we’re working on that and hopefully we will have the bid docs out within the next week or so. Um, I spoke to that firm if they would be the winning bid and right now they’re scheduling into January. Um, so, but they think it would be a really quick turnaround in terms to have an actual report in hand. But because of the price being over $25,000, we do have to go out for official, um, sealed bids on those. And then I guess just again, thinking about the budget timeline, because we’d have to get their results back, but then we also, you know, I’m assuming the facilities subcommittee also then has work to do to review and prioritize. Um, I guess I’m just a little concerned about the timeline. So we talked as a committee about that piece and everybody was in agreement that although we’ve set this second Monday of the month, that we know that this is time sensitive. And we’re all aware that we will need to have meeting an off cycle meeting to get this done in time and everyone was prepared to do that. Great. All right. Sounds good. All right. So I think that’s it. And then that would build, bring us to the building project update. Oh, sorry. Um, can I give it? Oh, sorry. No, it’s all right. Um, so this, um, CPAC is kicking off a conference series that they’re going to do. I would say almost monthly. There are a few months, maybe where it’s not going to work just because of holidays or whatever.

2:51:26 Um, and this is in response to, they had had a conference scheduled for last spring. Obviously they had to cancel and it was a really well thought out, well-planned. Um, it was going to be well attended event, um, with both internal and external speakers. So, um, in response to that, they’ve set up this conference series over, you know, throughout the year. So on, I’m pretty sure it was Tuesday night, uh, they kicked it off with their first one and Eric Oxford, um, our director of student services, uh, hosted that. And it was about the IEP process and how that all plays out. Um, and it was a really, really well presented, um, event. Eric did a great job and I felt the parents that attended asked great questions and it was a good conversation. So, um, so you should be, you know, we’ll see additional events coming throughout the year and their community events. They’re not specific to special education families, they’re for the, for the whole community. Um, so I would ask, you know, that as a committee, we also help to promote those events as well. And, um, you know, hopefully the CPAC can, you know, get that, all that information out to the community. One thing that I would like to see as a committee we can help with is around outreach, um, especially to new parents who are, you know, new to the special education process. You know, we don’t know where to turn. I mean, that’s how I got involved in the CPAC to begin with.

2:52:58 I, you know, had a young child who, you know, needed some services in the school and I had no idea where to go. I didn’t know the process. I didn’t know who to ask, you know. And it’s intimidating. So I think finding a way that we as a committee can also help reach out to those families and, you know, get them involved in the CPAC and let them know that that’s a support there for them. You know, I’d like to, I’d like to do that and we can help facilitate that, but I just wanted to put it out there so everyone’s kind of aware that that is initiative. But I think the CPAC will be working on this year. Great. Great. All right. Thanks. Um, so billing committee. Um, Dana’s not here, but Sarah or Emily, do you guys have anything that you would like to share? We had a meeting tonight. Yeah. Um, they started to put the brick on the building. So they, um, they showed some images of that. They have started doing some more of the interior work. They’re doing the rough, um, the rough then, sorry, my words are failing me today. Um, they’re roughing out the interiors right now. Um, what’s next? They talked about some of the, some of the pricing is starting to come in for the landscaping and they’re working on, you know, tweaking that a little bit and making a few substitutions in order to make what we want work into the budget. Um, and the, there was a committee that both Emily and I sat on, um, to look at the mosaic for the outside.

2:54:34 And we voted tonight to allocate the money for the first portion of that, the design portion to get that ball rolling. Um, so that we can start to see some designs come to, you know, get flushed out on paper, which was exciting. And I don’t know if Emily is, can you think of anything else? Um, no, I think that was, it was a short meeting, so we had to go pretty quick through everything. Um, but I think it would be great if we could get trips, pictures to put up somewhere. Okay. Well, how the building, I mean, there’s, the first thing I was going to say is that there’s brick going up. So it looks like an actual real building now, which is so cool. Um, yeah. So I think the pictures may know we’re going to try to share them with some of the teachers who will be, um, in the building to kind of just show them like how far it’s come along and how great it’s going to look. So it’s really exciting. Great. Yeah. Can you add, sorry, I don’t need to, I don’t need to hijack this meeting, but I wonder if that’s a, if we can add a section on our website for the new building. I know we’ve got subcommittees, but maybe we can just add a little section on there. You can just link it to the pictures. Great. All right. Fantastic. Um, so please tell me there’s no new business.

2:56:06 Really late. A really quick question. Zoom sign-ins. My, I found out this week when I tried to, to, um, do the meeting for facilities that the school committee does not have. We don’t all have access to Zoom sign-ins. Can we get one that’s don’t like that we all, you know, could share this very rarely, if ever, a subcommittee meeting at the same time as another. Can we get one that, so that we can book them and run them ourselves? You can just use your email, your Marblehead schools email and sign up on Zoom and create an account. And because it’s associated with a school, they will give you unlimited time. And it comes with like a hundred people, I think. So I can get unlimited time though, right? You can’t realize that. Correct. The only reason, so I’m the only one that is, I actually am associated with my account, associated with the town and that’s only for capacity issues. Okay. All right. That’s good to know. Thank you. Yeah. So you can just use your school’s account and create a Zoom account and you’ll be good to go. All right. I don’t think there was any correspondence this week, so I will adjourn us at 1007. Awesome. All right. Thank you.