School Committee: December 17, 2020

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

4:38 yes i’m just typing minutes only did you get the link for the website

4:45 yeah it should be all set okay great i will admit these people and then i will call us back to order at 704 pm thank you for joining us this evening everyone um [Music] first up is our commendations and we have high school principal dan bauer here to update us on great things that are happening at the high school thank you for having me aboard um we’re taking a different approach today because i think i would take up your whole meeting with accommodations for all the great things that are happening in our school so um first of all i thought i would just take a a look like through my view from the beginning of the school year and i just broke it down into several categories first of all our staff is just amazing

5:31 just amazing just amazing we’re so proud of the work that they do they’ve led by example throughout all the challenges so keep in mind not only juggling schedules keep in mind the internet outages that happen that we’re working through uh they never complain they’re positive in the classes and we’ve heard many of our veteran teachers saying that it’s really like being a first year teacher for them they’re making curriculum adjustments assessment adjustments they’re figuring out different ways they connect with students and they’re making it work and when i do my walk throughs and i know when lindsay and michelle and our team to our walkthroughs we come away with the same thing our teachers are just doing awesome work and we’re so proud of them um just a couple highlights with the special education department and the

6:18 amazing job that they’re doing because they’re just tasked with so many different things to connect with students engagement connecting with general education teachers families and making all the adjustments to to make it work for our students and our support staff i’ve had the great pleasure of running sel pods with our paraprofessionals and tutors and and the work that they do behind the scenes is just truly amazing our guidance department having to reconfigure their whole programming um to put everything online all the seminars and right now our seniors are so stressed out right because college acceptances are coming out and the work they did to get the transcripts out and the recommendations it’s just it’s just amazing um and really i can’t point out to one department because i would not be doing my duty or my service to all them

7:04 because it’s just been amazing the work they’ve done i do have to point out to our front office team the the brutal backbone when you come in they’re positive carrie and vicky vivian and guidance maureen special education and amy saccone they’re just positive people they set the tone day in and day out so i think with all that i again i could go on all night um but my job is very easy with the great staff that we have but i also have to give a lot of credit to our students they’ve been very resilient and i don’t mean just the students in the hybrid schedule our remote cohort students are doing amazing things think about trying to do school not in school right they’re making the best of the interactions being different and the connections and they’re really

7:49 really trying and they’re doing a great job and and we’re trying our best to make connections with them and my hats off to a remote learning cohort the students in the hybrid have been truly amazing if you come in our building they’re following the safety guidelines they’re social distancing they’re doing the one-way hallways they have the mask on they they’re just really just really rising to the occasion and we often talk about just they’re they’re happy to be there and they’re doing a great job so again my job is very easy with everybody doing all the work they’re doing but i also want to point out our medco students who are unbelievably resilient in this year so as you may or may not know when we changed our hybrid schedule we had afternoon classes and that really became a challenge for our medco students because if they were to go home

8:34 they would miss the afternoon classes so the work that has been done behind the scenes um their resiliency positivity is just awesome our performing arts you know i i’m get the tooth or horn in fact today so the nice piece from the orchestra on twitter and our band and our acapella groups um our visual arts they’re flourishing clubs are starting to come to life we have over 35 different clubs now and counting getting ready to launch your activity fair come back from break we had a new club called the skate club another club with the community club and just trying to do fun things and i think it’s awesome fall athletics um i know that’s been talked about but really did a wonderful job mr larskey mr tarmy and willard traynor

9:20 our coaches but really our students did a wonderful job meeting the safeguards and and having a very successful season student council by the way next week is spirit week i don’t know if dan holes will get a chance but pajamas i know it’ll be different virtually of course they always say appropriate pajamas which i appreciate is the principle um and our morning announcements have come back so it’s it’s like coming back to life and i know it’s december 17th um and it feels like an eon we began and thinking about all the things that we had to come through but again i’m enormously proud of our staff and students for all the reasons but i want to point out deanna mcmahon and megan calpin their amazing work helping us navigate covet 19. our staff there’s always

10:06 questions and and really outside of our school walls they’re dealing with their families and situations and they’re always available they’re always answering questions weekends night time and they they help me and they help our student families and and really i need to toot their horn because they just do amazing work if i were to talk about the pco our boosters and fopa they’re still getting it done behind the scenes too just to have some normalcy for our students in our school but the last group i’ll recognize because i know i’m getting the uh the oscars music is starting to play in the background i guess uh is our custodial crew really the work that they do and day out they see you see the barricades right we set up the entrance in different ways

10:51 they come by and wipe my handle off every hour they’re they’re doing all different things and and really they’re positive they had to move like a thousand desks into the field house and adjust it around and never complain and they just really do great stuff and today i didn’t get a chance to get over there because they definitely oh pizza lunch because i can’t imagine how tired they are from shoveling all that snow to get us ready for tomorrow but again i can go on and on but again just really blessed as the principal and and if i left anybody i apologize and i see the hook coming to pull me off the screen but thank you for the wonderful martial art high school community and i do want to thank the parents too for their support helping us and navigate and thank you

11:43 absolutely um yes absolutely so you’re spot on thank you any other commendations this evening sarah

11:56 um i just wanted to if i can just read a little thing and then lead into it it is fair even-handed noble adjustment of things that while there is infectious infection and disease and sorrow there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and humor and i just that is charles charles dickens i thought it was a good time of year for that but dan’s positive attitude and you know laughter and offhanded jokes they’re infectious they’re just wonderful and and i think that you know we have staff that do that we have kids that bring that to their peers too and i think you know we hear a lot about 2020 and we can’t wait for 2021 but if there’s anything good that’s come out of this year it’s really how you know

12:43 whether it’s a student kind of picking up their peer or a teacher seeking it out or you know teachers doing it to their peers or administrators we’ve helped each other and i think that that really shows um the strength of us as a community and i think that that’s a positive that came out of this year

13:03 absolutely thanks sarah anybody else this evening well and i would like to say i really appreciate you know dan’s right we we could take up most of the meeting tonight with accommodations with what everybody’s accomplished and dan’s being all too modest and i would second what sarah just said um you know dan’s leadership is infectious his um positive attitude his approach and his tweets and i’ll say it again as i’ve said before if people don’t follow dan on twitter i learn more about what’s going on at the high school dan is tweeting about um you know basketball practice he’s

13:49 tweeting about what’s going on in cooking classes he’s tweeting about what’s going on in um everything at the high school and it’s just it’s just great to see and it’s it has been it’s been a challenging fall semester for everybody but there is just so much positivity that you can see and the challenges that everybody’s up against and so you know thanks dan to you for being the leader of that from the high school level and uh as you recognized everybody that works with you whether it’s the administrators teachers and write down of the custodians that are that are doing everything and um you know my commendation also goes out to everyone

14:35 to everyone to everyone you know as we go into the holiday break that everybody can have um you know uh happy holidays and have a nice break with their families and um i’m always sort of a glasses half full person and that when we come back in january hopefully things will be moving in the right direction and um we’ll we’ll do the best we can to uh keep providing the best education that we can for all the students in in the marblehead district so thank you thanks david all right i think that leads us to dan howells our student representative dan if you want to mute yourself welcome

15:21 hello it’s good to see everyone um so today we had a snow day i think it was a bit of a sigh of relief for students and teachers it was nice to have the day off so the junior class of 2022 is selling their class clothes class of 2023 is doing a fundraiser with double good gourmet popcorn so both both these grades are working to try to build funds for themselves even though we can’t do some of the normal uh fundraisers uh a number of winter sports have begun with of course uh changes to how they are run but um i think students are definitely happy that

16:08 they are happening at all um uh and as mr bauer was mentioning a number of clubs have uh returned at this point for the school year um i think it took uh it was good that we took some time so that they could adjust and really uh you know come up with plans of how they were going to run um uh and they’ve all and a number of them have started now um seniors ha some seniors who have applied ed to schools are um now hearing back so congratulations to them and to everyone who’s applying right now um the

16:54 choral department has over the past um four weeks done a um their holiday video series um so they’ve put out a song um a week for the past four weeks leading up to uh the uh winter break and the orchestra and band has uh also put out videos um which has been nice this is the time when the the winter concert would normally be happening so having these videos uh has been great i’d also like to um you know shout out the the music department teachers because they’ve all had to learn about video editing software because they’ve been

17:40 putting these videos together for us so i can only imagine how much time they’ve put into that so we really appreciate it and also uh next week we are having another spirit week as mr b mr bauer mentioned it’s pajama themed which i think should be nice for everyone in the uh remote uh in the remote three day week next week um another example of uh no so this actually is a new spirit week we don’t we haven’t normally had one before the winter break um but i think it’s a it’s a great chance for us to as well sorry having trouble i think it’s been a great chance for us

18:27 to you know remain engaged and

18:33 it was a smart decision from the student council to um you know pick this time to hold the spirit week

18:43 great thank you dan and i actually left out one commendation that i can’t believe i forgot and that is for dan howells um he officially became an eagle scout after his project that helped out the new school with a sensory room so congratulations dan thank you so much congratulations dan it’s a huge honor thank you

19:09 all right that leads us sorry that leads us to public comment uh if anyone that would like to make public comment please feel free to raise your hand using that function give people a moment

19:28 okay uh jennifer eaton please state your name and address for the record

19:39 sorry about that hi hi welcome i’m jennifer eaton 126 west shore drive um so um i just had a couple things about you know going remote i’m actually calling in for mark tonight from icu so obviously the going remote has a you know special presence for me um i know dr bucky in your email you talked about the three reasons for going remote which were virus presence operational strain and community threshold so just about those three things um you know it i wish with the community threshold there was like an actual number for that you know i know mark the

20:24 numbers are definitely going up in the community but there’s never been an actual percentage like if we hit this number that’s why we’re going remote and i know that covet is obviously scary obviously being a nurse i understand that but you know i just i know that marblehead is still not in the highest risk community so while our numbers are increasing you know we’re not that high risk community quite yet and for kids like my own who really need to be in person and who thrive in that environment you know i think we really need to look at that and where you know the other things were virus presence and operational strain

21:10 meaning that you know two people in the school system are contracting coveted or that the teachers are getting sick that hasn’t really been an issue yet so um you know the transmission in the schools hasn’t been a problem and i know that if teachers are contracting covid they need to be out that still would affect us in a remote setting because if we need subs you still would need subs in a remote setting as well so you know going remote isn’t you know easy because if for instance my child who’s on an iep if we go on the full remote schedule like it seems like we will be going into the week of september her whole iep is disrupted she won’t be getting

21:56 her secret services in that setting and i know her t her uh ashleymanette vets is doing an excellent job but they have to reevaluate her entire schedule and if it goes back to the way it was in september her secret services aren’t getting met which means we have to completely reevaluate everything and it’s a big deal you know next week it’s only the most high needs children and she doesn’t qualify for that but yet she gets a lot of secret services so it’s a big deal you know it’s going remote isn’t just this like willy-nilly thing and it’s it’s hard for everybody not just special education kids it’s for everybody so i just ask you to really look at this you know transmission in the schools

22:42 hasn’t happened and i understand that covid scares everyone but schools are safe it’s been proven to be safe there’s a researcher um joseph allen he works for the harvard department schools for health and he’s this is his life’s work so i just as a nurse i’ve seen kovit it’s scary i understand i understand the fear in the community but going remote is affecting our kids and it’s affecting our community so it’s not the answer and i know the teachers are scared i know the community is scared i understand but we have to look at all the wonderful things that you guys have done to keep our school safe so um

23:28 just thank you thanks jen all right uh there’s nobody else so i will move us along to our minutes um we accidentally put the uh november fifth minutes on there but we already approved those so they i believe should be up on the website um if not today hopefully within the next couple of days but i know lisa’s been hard at work on that so can i get a motion to approve the minutes from november 11 2020 so moved sarah moved

24:03 can i get a second second megan second did anybody have any additions or questions on those i had um two little amending things um one is simple um dr benedetto is doctor um and then um i just wanted to point out because i think it it’s written correctly as it was said in the meaning but i know i’ve gotten some feedback it that that there was a large effort put into organizing lunches and drop-offs and all that for the teachers um and the ptos helped with that at some schools but that was largely organized by private citizens separately from the ptos i know at one school at least the ptos joined forces

24:48 after that organization had happened but that was spontaneous um we run by just people in the community that were thankful all right thanks sarah i’ve written those down too okay so if nobody else has anything i will call for a roll call vote sarah gold yes sarah fox yes emily baron yes megan taylor yes and david harris yes all right those pass five to zero okay john that leads us to your superintendent’s report with teaching and learning updates and then a winter sports season discussion sure uh a lot has been happening um

25:35 the uh board of elementary and secondary education met this week and uh provided some guidance to schools and i have talked about this in the past that this guidance would probably have been most helpful in june july or august when we were directed to do this at the local level and so um coming in in december and saying uh here are the minimum requirements i certainly support them and they make good sense but they come after the fact after superintendents were asked to get their facilities and technology and transportation

26:22 and transportation and transportation and time on learning doing moas with unions so to come in now and say here are the parameters are challenging the good news is we’re in a very good place so what the board voted on was first that every student must have at least one daily live check-in with an adult and so that’s happening at the high school that’s happening at the middle school at village nan has been doing incredible work with the principals they actually met today to talk about this the second point that the new guidance or regulations now

27:08 it’s not even guidance which makes it trickier and i think i said this to sarah earlier today it is as though they said okay you need to plan a trip to hawaii this year and then came back and said oh by the way everybody needs to fly first class and do a stopover in london so the trip would be differently planned knowing those two and so the second thing that they added in terms of regulations is every student must have access to synchronous instruction every day and again across the district we are meeting that with some areas where that needs to be refined or expanded and then the third is every student must

27:53 have at minimum 35 hours of live instruction and

28:02 at the elementary level i think it’s two hours difference um at the high school it’s two hours difference i think village had a three-hour difference and then the middle school had input a different schedule when they collected this data in november and is already uh meeting that and so when i say a two hour difference people that isn’t a two hour a day difference but that’s two hours over the course of 10 school days and so i know nan in working with the building principles has identified things like shaving moments minutes off of passing time or increasing minutes in an end of day meeting or a morning meeting

28:48 for those structured learning time and so several decisions uh that we have made and i’m going to have to say with things moving at the speed of light um i have not been the best at getting out ahead of information uh with every stakeholder group that wants it first and so i uh on monday the reopening committee met and we established some information for uh what snow days would look like and what uh the week after the return from holiday break might look like remembering understanding appreciating that teachers have said it’s really

29:35 challenging to get information at the same time that students and parents get that information it would be nice so that if somebody reaches out to us a parent and says oh i hear you’re gonna do this that we knew it so check mark for the new superintendent he got that out to teachers but didn’t get it out to school committee so you all start to get calls and you’re like uh oh what what’s going on and so i acknowledge that with the three days remote needed to get that to school committee first the week after and i want to speak to the week after that is an anticipatory

30:22 in that the numbers in marblehead are not trending in the right direction and when they come out tomorrow the decision to go remote for monday tuesday wednesday of next week will make sense and so we are working with the board of health to say okay if the threshold for the monday tuesday wednesday leading into the holiday break moved us to remote then that should be the threshold for returning in january so let’s say the number tomorrow is four i’m using four because yesterday or last week was 3.85 so let’s say that’s four if it’s still four it would seem to make sense that that

31:07 first week back in january were remote and so that will be seen likely as a good decision by most if it’s seven it will seem like a very good decision but if it’s two then we need to revisit that and the reopening committee discussed that the pivots for families are hard in terms of planning work schedules and child care schedules and knowing that you’re going to be in remote gives you the opportunity to plan better than if you’re anticipating being in person and that’s taken away and i will be the first to say as i have said myriad times

31:53 myriad times myriad times no one is right and no one is wrong what i just said might resonate for many of our families and for others it’s the exact opposite of what they need it might be easier to anticipate being in person and go to remote for them so that’s where we’re at on teaching and learning and models i would just say as a clarifier the lever to go remote or hybrid is a central office reopening committee superintendent’s health advisory committee decision that we make collaboratively

32:38 once that lever is pulled the schedules and the day-to-day operations nan and i leave to the building principles and so i know there’s been some conversation okay we’re going remote monday tuesday wednesday next week and we’re hearing that it’s not the same remote schedule that we began the year with that doesn’t make good sense to us that’s a building level decision for building principals working with their faculty making those decisions about where they are in terms of teaching and learning what makes uh the most sense and so we afford that flexibility that it isn’t always going to be the same

33:23 schedule and it makes good sense to me why dan bauer at the high school or matt fox at the middle school that have the fully remote wednesdays now might look at monday and tuesday next week as challenging to implement one schedule and then jump back to this wednesday schedule that we’re in so that’s kind of an update on teaching and learning somebody did ask me about cameras in the classroom and i just wanted to touch on that mr bauer as would not surprise anyone did a great analysis of the teachers that were uh employing uh cameras in the classrooms and that range from the poly system that we tried the

34:10 jabra system that we tried and the owl and he collected feedback many positive things about connectivity and ease of use and being able to have the asynchronous or the at-home students in no surprises connectivity issues inability to hear teachers not feeling that they were able to attend uh to the remote learners or the students that were live streaming in dan has put it out there and with my full support that anybody that wants a camera wants to do this live streaming that we will purchase that technology for them and i think dan shared with me he has one or two uh

34:57 teachers that have uh approached him um so there were some successes and some challenges uh with the live streaming we’re not going to be able to overcome the infrastructure issues we have and i think if you ask any high school student or parent family right now did the internet go down at the high school or were there connection challenges this week we would probably have a 90 to 95 percent uh affirmation rate and so um we do have a new director of technology on board and he has already uh started to try to troubleshoot some things and to increase bandwidth and connectivity so it’s a work in progress but it wasn’t

35:43 something that was forgotten it wasn’t something that just got talked about at two meetings and i know dan continues to work with uh his teachers and to make that uh accessible to those who want to use it and so i’ll pause and see if there are questions about a teaching and learning update

36:05 so so um i do have some some questions and it’s not schedule based it’s more of a policy of my understanding is if we go to a period of full remote um the policy would be that we would be fully synchronious for all and there would be no reason to cohort out because the cohorts are due to spacing and if we’re remote there’s no spacing issue so in my mind there’s absolutely no reason that um we should be cohorting out these students in a student we don’t we’re not bringing them together because the other policy was that we had to pace everybody

36:50 you know the remote kids had to be paced to stay with remote our cohort a and b so that there could be movement at any time if things happen so we’ve already preemptively paced everybody so there shouldn’t be that cohort a is a week ahead of cohort b and that’s the issue so i i would like to understand more why some will be getting a teacher um will be joining cohorts and therefore kids will get a live instruction every single day and um some won’t sarah i know that you participated in teaching and learning so you probably have more of the inside baseball for the elementary and so when i speak to this it’s never going to be a pre-k to 12

37:37 discussion because our fully remote students i don’t think you’re saying that our cohort c students should move in with cohort a and b or is that what you’re asking no no cohorts but there’s like um for instance a teacher who teaches chemistry

37:58 ap or whatever um would have a cohort a and a cohort b why are we not joining them together and so that all those students can can actually maybe have an opportunity to make up some of the ground because we’ve been cohorted out

38:17 i’m not sure i’m following that question sarah that cohort a and b would be in different so there’s absolutely no reason to cohort out i mean if we were remote for just three days then that would be one thing but um there’s no reason to keep cohort a and b separate why are we not joining them into a class so that if you were going to take history on c block at c whatever time c block runs that day you would get on your history teacher zoom cohort a and b and you would just have a virtual lesson so

39:03 i believe that just um next week monday tuesday is is the remote but functioning in hybrid if we end up actually being remote for the week of one four it’s a fully remote schedule where the cohorts are combined where cohorts are combined so we we so we are just talking about the monday and tuesday of next week where they where the hybrid where cohort a will will be on and then on monday and cohort b will be on on tuesday and i think there is a question so if we extend anywhere beyond next week it will there will be no cohort a and b they’ll have that label but they will be

39:49 joined together and taught at one time so every student will have a full day with their with their educators that is my understanding sarah yes that’s my understanding from reopening as well not just phone sorry i didn’t understand that at first can i just follow on from that though because i i guess i’m having a hard time understanding why even next week we are in cohorts when we’re remote especially for the elementary kids um so i guess i’m just not understanding that piece and it’s i think at least reading you know the principal’s email from my third grader it’s that monday and tuesday are basically a hybrid schedule in remote but then wednesday is a full remote schedule so it’s just really

40:35 really really i’m confused as a parent to be honest so if you could just walk me through that i’m gonna ask nan in working with teaching and learning for the elementary to walk you through that thank you dr bucky um it’s actually pretty easy to explain we um initially when we were thinking about going remote for those three days all of the leaders and i had the conversation around going back into the full remote schedules that we started with however our teaching and learning has broadened and deepened so much since we started that we have a lot of different services happening we

41:21 have hired three additional tutors so their schedules didn’t would not align so we needed some time to create schedules and vet them through our special education teachers because we have all kinds of special education services that are built in a day and um to just simply push you know take the two core cohorts and put them together it it just it’s not as easy as it sounds now that we have more learners with different services in place so we needed a couple of days to really get that right and have dr oxford and his staff vet

42:07 those schedules to make sure that everyone would be in compliance with the services and those services need to be aligned to specific content areas so we can’t have content happening in two different classrooms at the same time because the special education provider needs to be in both spaces so we really wanted to get it right and we took um next week as that opportunity seeing that it was just it’s just two and a half days um so that’s that’s the reasoning behind that primarily

42:47 did you say did i hear you incorrectly did you say our threshold would be four i did not oh okay do we have a threshold i think that’s been asked for a lot yeah i said i’m working with andrew petty at the board of health and if it were for for this coming week and we’re in hybrid monday tuesday or we’re in remote monday tuesday wednesday that when we get to january if that number is seven then that would make good sense why we’re continuing with remote but if that number were two then we would need to revisit that and again reopening is meeting every week

43:30 emily emily um my question about the threshold is well if it’s 3.8 what it was last week and we were hybrid this week does that mean we will go hybrid january 4th

43:48 yes yes okay so as long as that i just want to make sure that’s clear yep and then also um well no i guess that’s it for now megan did you have something else yeah just i guess this is another piece that i’m trying to wrap my head around is setting that parameter i think is important you know sarah just mentioned it to you like we’ve kind of said all along that there would be a parameter to get us into remote and then you know to get us back out of remote too so i think being very clear about what that is and granted we know that things change over time so if something changes fair enough but at least as a starting point what is our parameter to get us into a remote setting and

44:34 and being very clear about that so that again parents and teachers and the community can plan accordingly based on the information that comes out so and a follow-up question to that is who actually sets that parameter is it do we follow the state um kind of red yellow green um you know standard that they’ve put out is it the board of health that makes the decision is it purely the reopening committee if we can just clarify that so everyone’s on the same page that would be helpful megan i so appreciate that because it is right in line with everyone thinks it’s a simple threshold decision and desi turned that on its ear when they said the governor’s red

45:21 designation no longer means that you shouldn’t be in school you should look at other factors as well and so in my conversations with superintendents in like chelsea or revere who are like we’re red as red can be and they’re telling us we should be in school so i imagine if marblehead were ever in the red that there would still be people that would wonder why because desi has weighed in that even red communities can be in hybrid so i get that it sets a parameter but i don’t think that it’s going to solve each of the problems and that’s fine if we don’t use that state stoplight coding that’s fine but i do

46:06 think we need to have a more we do we do need to set a parameter to so that everyone can plan accordingly because right now it feels like it’s i think it should be based on fact and science on what is going to put us into a remote setting because it does have large-scale impacts on everybody and i’m just trying to see how can we get to that point

46:32 so i think that um you know i i understand what megan’s asking for but i think you know i can speak for the conversations that go on in re-entry um and that that it that it is based on fact and that it isn’t necessarily one threshold um you know we hit one point but that you know deanna mcmahon does a lot of talking in there um and when we bring something up it’s oftentimes referred back to her of okay deanna can you you know inform us about the the you know health pieces underneath whatever the subject is that has just come up um so you know i don’t think it’s necessarily a bad idea to have a threshold i think it’s a

47:18 good idea but that it sort of it’s more complex than it just sort of is at the saying like oh we should have a threshold and we do align with the marblehead board of health and helaine sits on reopening and we often ask her to take things back to the board of health and andrew petty and i are on speed dial i think at some points and deanna works with the nurse for the board of health and so it isn’t just a singular variable decision that goes into it sarah i like the idea of metrics but i will say i think a threshold is hard in some ways in that for instance um by the way the state did release the

48:04 numbers i know we didn’t post them in town yet but we’re this week we’re at 4.32 um for marblehead as of the state releasing this evening um but that thresholds hard in it when you just look at it by itself because for instance the three if the threshold if if our percentage was eight percent but we had empty hospitals no one our icu’s were wide open we had plenty events then that would be health-wise stable to keep the schools open in my mind it versus we could have a rate of three percent and we could have our hospitals maxed out with only two beds open um and and that’s

48:51 a much different situation because at the end of the day that’s what’s in my mind needs to drive this because if we that gives us an idea of how sick people are getting um not that i want anybody to get sick but if we can’t give sick people a bed or to give people event when they need it then we need to start shutting things down and that’s just my mind based on the science but that’s where i think that that number of at five percent will close at this percent will close because i do think it does need to factor in hospital bed availability vent availability and icu availability so our local hospitals not and when they say north shore that encompasses way to i mean some of those north shore

49:37 hospitals encompass that are an hour away um unfortunately we have two hospitals right now we have salem and beverly so i think we have to try to look at those more closely and sarah i don’t you know i don’t disagree with that and i’m not saying it has to be a parameter but maybe it’s a set of parameters like you said but just to have some guidelines that we’re working towards that everybody knows what the goal post is because i don’t i don’t know what the goal post is and the other thing just completely to play devil’s advocate anyone can disagree with me if you want but even as our numbers are rising that percentage positivity number is rising we are not seeing the spread in schools our children are safe in our schools because of that because of what we’ve put in place to keep them safe

50:24 absolutely but i do think you know as our numbers are rising we are seeing increasingly more students who are in quarantine um in student teachers who are in quarantine teachers having trouble with their daycare providers so it isn’t necessarily that there it isn’t it is amazing and a testament to mitigation practices that we are not seeing spread in schools um however it again isn’t quite just that simple emily i know you’ve had your hand up um i was gonna say what megan said about we need more than just the percentage there has to be other um

51:09 you know points that get us to go remote and i was going to say transmission in the schools but if there are other things happening that we don’t know about like kids in quarantine or people not being able to show up to work for various reasons then again it’s we see the numbers and it says there’s no transmission in school and everyone should be in school so i guess we need just clear information everybody to so that we know that these why these decisions are being made right because we went remote next week or we’re going remote next week but the numbers weren’t out yet so we don’t know why we’re going remote next week and if we go remote in january

51:55 in january in january we still unless we know exactly why people are always going to question it so i guess we just need to back up everything we do so if teachers are missing school for various reasons because they’re sick or daycare or just show us a list of all the teachers so we can see that we don’t have enough support or if there’s all these kids out for whatever you can give us like whatever is allowed to be seen if we see that then these decisions i think make more sense to us yeah and just to follow on from that emily one of the things we talked about in october um was using that re-entry committee more and i’m so glad that we’re doing that but i guess in my mind the way it would work is that the re-entry

52:40 committee would kind of bet through all the options and come up with a recommendation and then that is what would feed up to the school committee and not to say that we would second guess anything that you would recommend but also that we’re having these conversations and those reasonings as emily just talked about everyone’s aware of them including the community and the family so that they understand like okay that makes good sense and then it actually makes everybody’s life easier i have to agree it’s it’s kind of started to feel more like the reopening committee is taking the place of the school committee if you will i thought it was more an advisory committee and it seems like that’s where decisions are being made and as a school committee i don’t feel like i know what decisions

53:27 are being made or why and so it’s really hard for me then when the public contacts us to say you know we’re all on the same page we all know what’s going on and this is the background information for that because honestly i don’t know whatever what leads to these decisions so i think you know the reopening committee is is being used as an advisory committee so john sort of brings in topics that that need to be addressed and if there aren’t any topics that week then we don’t meet um there certainly have been lately so we’ve been meeting more often um and and then it is given back to john then sort of as that advisory piece so that he follows through on the day-to-day operational decisions um i you know i think he’s talked about some of the

54:14 communication pieces this week um where there was some information that sort of got ahead of school committee for sure um and i think you know there’s that john and i try really hard to tag team and remind each other like oh have you told school committee this other thing um and you know i would just really like to encourage everyone again you know there was quite a few weeks ago john asked everybody to start to schedule weekly meetings with him um and i think you know if week lead is too much then bi-weekly because i get that we’re all busy but i think you know having those touch points where all those background pieces can be filled in so that when we get to these meetings everybody comes in much more on the same page and we are kind of you know going

55:01 through our business here um so i would encourage everybody really to to reach out to john and schedule those meetings um so that it doesn’t feel as though there’s a whole bunch of things going on at the operational level that you don’t know about so that you can you know in that you’re filled in at that operational piece yeah i would i would say that from my perspective the the going to a full remote um program for the hybrid kids seems more of a at what point we do that seems like a policy decision not a procedure decision and that’s where i that that would be my point that we’re going to switch to remote at this point and move forward in the remote

55:46 fashion in this way seems like policy and that’s school committee

55:53 and i think the way that i saw it is that it is a time limited remote so that if we if we get to the end of winter break or we get into the middle or end of that first week back and and we are you know say we are remote for that and our numbers but you know if our numbers are at seven percent or or worse you know i i think we can anticipate that they’re not going to just drop back to where in in person hybrid makes sense you know in a couple of days so i think at that point that’s when it be it switches from like this time limited piece that is operational to a more policy piece of possible possibility of you know school committee saying you know we’re remote for the you know foreseeable future

56:38 until our you know our operations tell us that it’s safe to come back yeah i yeah i appreciate that uh i i appreciate that uh distinction you know from a few days to effective on this day going forward until further notice we will be going remote and whatever situations may come up to uh put us in that but also i just wanted to say you know to megan and emily’s point i was reading about swampscott’s decision to go remote for the next couple of days prior to christmas

57:26 and um the superintendent said it had nothing to do with covid but it was that they had so many teachers that were out and so you know to megan’s point and they couldn’t backfill to teach properly but as we heard earlier in public comment then we have to and i’m sure our principals would would do the best to adjust and scramble to okay how do we handle remote if if the teacher is if the teacher’s too sick to do um hybrid learning can that teacher do remote learning don’t know maybe there you know there’s different scenarios and then you know those principles would need to adjust to that but when i read swampscott’s you know going remote they that you know

58:13 superintendent angelakis i think her name is or whatever she said specifically it was that they had so many teachers out that they just you know couldn’t have in person teaching and we’re not in that situation like megan said but if if that or as emily said if that were the situation you know that would be good to know you know we have 20 or 30 teachers out in k-3 and we need to you know we need to go remote at the glover school and it probably it might even be a school by school situation as opposed to uh a district-wide decision so yeah i kind of understand there there’s a there’s there’s not just a number

58:58 there’s a lot of different factors that um nan and dr bucky and the administrators and the reopening committee are considering and then the last piece i’ll say is hey david can i just jump on that just before you put a last piece and just to clarify too that’s that often times when people are in they’re either direct contact so they can’t be coming into work but they still are okay to teach so there’s that balancing point too in these systems that it isn’t necessarily that we’re finding subs for the same amount of people when we’re remote that we would be in person so that the classroom teacher we could pull remote and a classroom teacher can take back over for his or her classroom so sorry go ahead now no that that you’re right depending on the situation and i think based on um scenarios that i’ve had

59:44 i’ve had i’ve had um both at work and what we’ve had at the building project for our new school there’s also the step where you you know you err on the side of caution there there are specific okay if if you’re if someone’s positive and you’re a close contact you’re out for 14 days and if you’re a contact of a contact but we’ve seen at the building project for instance um you know somebody tested positive and even though they weren’t necessarily a close contact um take a step back get the per see if the person can get tested you know and and

1:00:29 make sure that you don’t kind of add to the you know the cove the covid challenges and i think if you look at how big the school district is um and sarah i hadn’t known that the numbers just went up so you know erring on the side of caution for a few days here and there taking a pause and between um nan and dr bucky and all the principals being able to to work that out you’re right it might not be um a decision that can be made uh two or three weeks in advance and it might be something that needs to be made a week in advance um and and those are going to be

1:01:15 challenging situations and i i respect that too if we want to err on the side of caution but um i think i agree where i think where where um emily and megan were saying if it was more or as you pointed out sarah if it was more of a a long-term decision like okay effective january 1st we’re out for the month of january and well why are we out for four straight weeks um that kind of thing so yeah there’s just it’s um as our interim superintendent said when we first got into this back in march and april uncharted waters unprecedented times um a lot of moving

1:02:02 pieces so i i respect what every all the questions that everybody’s asking here um related to this so i know some areas in some towns or or whether they do by town or county release numbers that say you know we have this many obviously cases but then they say we have this many under monitor quarantine um can we i know that we have those numbers compiled on a weekly basis can i see no reason that we couldn’t release those um weekly that say in our system we have this many students this many i mean we send out those emails anyway this many people in each building actually positive but we have this many people under monitor quarantine because that will give a people an idea wow we

1:02:49 like ten percent of our teachers can’t teach in the building or we now are at at the evol or the village school that we have 20 percent that are in quarantine so we’re providing distance learning for 20 of our students that that’s not sustainable will have to go remote so that that in and of itself may be indicate to people that we’re starting um oh my gosh i love whoever this little guy is popping in um that may give people an idea of kind of that dashboard that people were thinking about if we could release those weekly sure i know deanna mcmahon collects a lot of data and she shares it with joan miller and me and so i can work with uh

1:03:34 deanna and also andrew to see what sort of information we could get to the committee on a weekly basis and that’s like thinking like to the community that that information has a dashboard well that that would be out of my wheelhouse i could suggest that to andrew but i i couldn’t make that happen but i i don’t know about our data it’s our teachers it’s our data it’s not his it’s ours which is what i’m saying i would release it but not to the community no but in the school community like there’s no people like it as a part of the weekly update yeah that would be a great place for it because i think that would give people that idea of okay like we’re getting close they can’t sustain this many people remote you need that weekly update that is so

1:04:21 woefully long people cannot re possibly read it every week you want me to add to it sarah or just put it on the reopening i mean get it out there we have something to figure this out um um so i you know i i know about go no go ahead david i i mean we’d have to run that by andrew i mean when you know it it’s just like special ed when you start you know we don’t name names and then when you start drilling in then people can identify who it is you don’t go to the marblehead town page and find out who the 78 people are that are tested positive with kovid um so we would probably need some additional guidance there it’s

1:05:09 just like we don’t say how many firemen and how many policemen and how many highway workers and but there are many many people but as an example you know but i’m just saying i don’t know enough about it sarah i mean it’s a reasonable ask but i don’t know enough about it you know i was reading where um you know lynn closed their uh city offices because once again just like i was reading about swampscott today same same paper they closed their offices because they had um too many covet cases but they didn’t say who had coved at the town offices and they didn’t say how many cases there were they just said they were going to close their town offices and people would have to do their

1:05:54 business um remotely so we’d probably just have to check and see i’m definitely not saying like say we have a science teacher i’m saying like there are a ton a ton of places doing this it’s completely legal there’s no violations using phrasings like currently we have 27 staff under monitor quarantine who are working remotely like that that there’s no if unless you have a magic 8-ball i mean no one’s going to figure out that you know who that is i’m happy to work on this all right um so with that i i would like to ask for a motion to support dr bucky uh to make a decision based on community

1:06:41 metrics as to whether or not to be in a remote system or a hybrid system for the week of january 4th

1:06:52 wait can you repeat that yeah so um i would like to take a motion to support dr bucky to make a decision based on community metrics on whether to be in a remote system or a hybrid system for the week of january 4th so moved so moved david moved all right i’ll second megan second all right you know what i’m going to ask the community metrics yeah what are the excuses you know if we had them i would specify them in the motion but i think you know the pieces that have just been discussed and that john is working to drill into and he does have his health and safety

1:07:39 committee that is made up of doctors and epidemiologists and andrew petty that are using the community metrics that we have been using all along um and that john has yes john it’s such an odd system for meetings um megan since sarah has access to the data uh that it’s going to be 4.3 for this week knowing we’re going to be 21 22 23 would you feel better if we said greater than or equal to 4.3 i mean i don’t know what i’m going to

1:08:25 feel good about you know i i just want to know like what is it so that we can all plan so that you know we know like as a parent i can also kind of keep track of what’s going on in the community and be like okay i can get a feel for what’s happening because otherwise it just feels for me again i’m speaking right now as a parent too it’s nebulous so i have no idea what’s what’s getting what’s getting us there and i appreciate the fact of what everybody said like you know but this isn’t there’s a lot of conversations going on that i’m not privy to so i get that point can can john can we say that knowing that it’s somewhere between 3.85 as we were in person under those and then

1:09:13 4.3 that we’re just hearing now can you talk with the health and safety committee again um and and decide on a number and maybe a few other qualifiers if that’s necessary um to go along with that number and then can we know those before the winter break yes okay yeah that’d be great thank you and i would think hospital i personally would want hospital capacity to be to be a driver like if we’re at two percent but we still only have two icu beds how do you open i mean that’s just me sarah you know i can get you that information so i can add that i have the link now all right we have a motion that’s been seconded i will roll call vote sarah gold yes sarah fox

1:10:03 yes yes emily baron do we have to add that we’re going to get those metrics before uh if you want that added into the motion i want to because i still don’t feel comfortable like without knowing that these are gonna be the

1:10:23 i just don’t i just want to know before i commit to that so can i just

1:10:33 just for clarity’s sake we’re not i mean this is just saying we support i mean he can close schools

1:10:42 and i think he’s made you know a good faith commitment to getting us the those those metrics by wednesday okay then that’s fine then i appreciate it i i would agree with that okay all right so emily emily baron uh megan taylor yes and david harris yes thank you all

1:11:05 now for our next topic sports well this will be easy and quick um so one of the questions that uh came up well kudos to greg siglarski and the winter sports uh teams that started uh on monday and sports are not sports anymore they don’t look like they have parameters student athletes getting their temperatures taken and so greg is juggling a lot of balls and doing a great job uh i think we have over 200 nod for me greg student athletes that are participating in winter sports and so that you know that’s a huge commitment to the mitigation efforts to make sure that we’re able to do that safely the question that is before us is uh and it came up at reopening and there

1:11:53 was uh spirited debate about should we continue with practices over the holiday recess particularly if we’re going to be remote monday tuesday wednesday and then if we’re gonna return in remote for that first week um is it a mixed message to say okay it’s not safe for in-person learning but co-curriculars or uh interscholastic sports can continue so i asked greg uh to reach out to the league see what other communities are doing um and so i’ll just dish to greg to give you maybe a two or three minute update on where the league is in terms of these conversations

1:12:42 thanks john and the number is 224 for uh winter student athletes this winter so um just to give you a pretty quick update here on how things are going um we did a pretty good job in the fall i i have to say as far as um our athletic department and our athletic trainers and our um our interns that i kind of mentioned last last time i was on with you guys we had no cases from athletics um so that’s always something good to keep in mind we were very cautious probably some of the clashes if not the most cautious in the league uh my athletic trainer is pretty tied in with other uh trainers around the league and what our protocols are are way way at the top of being uh cautious um as of right now we’ve had a good three

1:13:29 days of practice and tryouts with our boys and girls basketball boys and girls hockey swimming and diving skiing in gymnastics all have gone at least once some have gone three times we’re very spread out in the field house we have chairs six feet apart all the way around the exterior of the field house uh and things have been going really smoothly then um kids have been really good about bringing multiple masks in case one gets wet or tears um you know we’re following all the protocols set by the eea um it should be set by the mia which were derived from the eea um the hockey rinks we play in and the ymca have very strict guidelines that we’ve been following uh we’re still taking temperatures of

1:14:15 every kid and going through the attestation form with every kid before every single practice so that hasn’t changed that’s all recorded in one spot and then looking forward to after a vacation many many games wouldn’t be until probably after the 18th of january as we are only one of five schools who are uh who started this week with with our practice and tryouts um to touch on what dr bucky uh spoke of um beverly started this week uh they’re playing next week as well as the week after gloucester also started this week uh they are not remote at all next week or the first week of january again this is as of as of today and they’re playing all the way through

1:15:03 uh masco is remote next week uh they are not remote the week of the fourth and they are playing varsity only practices on the 28th 29th and 30th so they’re not doing anything next week uh pbd started this week except for their basketball team they’re starting until the 28th as they had some sort of a breakout within their program they are playing but not sure of that vacation week uh and winthrop who was the uh the other team that was playing they are uh remote next week um and they are maybe coming back on the fourth but they are playing through regardless again all as of today so those are the five schools who could go the other seven aren’t starting until after uh january sixth or eighth or summer still tbd

1:15:50 still tbd still tbd i just want to do a point of clarification and thank you greg for doing all of that work that’s very helpful to the committee to be able to have a frame of reference for all of that but when you say play you mean practice because there’s no inner scholastic play scheduled before january something yes we are only practicing right now the first game if everybody was able to start this week the first game wouldn’t even have been until january 8th anyway that friday um but as of right now like i said only five of us are playing and the other seven uh probably aren’t even gonna start until the sixth or the eighth or that following week so uh again practice sorry we are gonna practice until then so um

1:16:36 i’m happy to answer any questions you guys have or listen to discussion and i can chime in if need be sarah sarah okay i just wanna i have a question for greg but i didn’t realize we were transitioning away from the last agenda items so i had two things about the deci meeting that came out if i can after this we can circle back so i can ask um how many of those five are in the red because my understanding and i could i could have missed this was in the fall when someone was in the red we weren’t playing them so what we did in the fall was we kind of came up with a guideline if uh if a community was in the red for three consecutive weeks uh we wouldn’t play them we did that once with sagas uh

1:17:21 otherwise everybody else either was in and out of the red or um wasn’t three weeks all the way through once the season came to an end uh as of as of today it’s only us in beverly in our league who are uh both yellow everyone else is red yeah cause i know winthrop’s been significantly bad recently so that’s that’s what jumped out to me is is this a mute discussion like are are there even any but is it there even anybody to play

1:17:49 so again with what i went through the list here uh danvers is starting on january 6th uh swampscott is starting on january 6th uh let’s see sua sagas is on january 8th salem and the two lens are tbd uh and that that’s the rest so they’re all scheduled to start practices and tryouts that week that first week of january and then we would play games two weeks after that uh as long as they can go and even when we’re home for practices for hockey obviously we’re not playing in marblehead what are the ranks we use salem and lynn or just sailor no we we aren’t using salem state they uh they aren’t taking anybody in any outside programming in they’re just their own

1:18:35 uh their own community we are practicing out of uh the lynn arena and also in revere as well so we’re going to substantially read communities with these kids daily to practice so the the lynn practices are at 6 00 a.m where the first one’s in there and um swampscott boys hockey would practice after us um and then revere we’re there sunday afternoons we have back to back ice times where we would be a boy in a girl practice or uh that could be a game slot as well moving forward to january

1:19:09 i personally i personally it’s hard because we’ve gotten you know obviously some very articulate emails that cite sources that talk about how these extracurriculars really are are the lifeline that some of these kids are holding on to especially in the high school for that mental health piece um so it is a hard decision but at the same time i think as a school committee we have to protect in-person learning um whenever possible and i and i don’t know the answer to this but is is it right to say we’re not safe enough for in-person learning but we’re safe enough for in-person sports that are endorsed i mean the fall was a different beast they weren’t endorsed and the ones that were correct me if i’m wrong greg the only one that would have been is volleyball and that was deemed

1:19:55 to be put off to fall two because we weren’t ready to do endure correct well if we weren’t ready to do indoor at two percent what makes us ready to do indoor 4.32 when we put in-person learning on hold well well outdoors indoors follow the science the science as megan taylor said and emily have said you know the science shows that students are not transmitters um my wife has been back at school full time five days a week 100 attendance um and um she’s gonna be back at school tomorrow and greg’s uh record granted it was outdoors sarah we had um no incidences and

1:20:44 as he said we we take extra caution and i’ve heard all kinds of things about how we travel to games how we limit the amount of spectators how um you know everything that we’re doing we we are one of the districts that seems to be going above and beyond so i totally trust the judgment of greg and dan that we will continue that practice um as he said you know we’re gonna go to the lynn arena we’re probably we’re gonna i’m sure they have limits to there’s only one team in there we’re not gonna be co-mingling with other teams we’re not gonna be using locker rooms um and things like that and i’d like to make a motion i don’t know what the motion was to vote on but i’m assuming it was to allow practice to continue over winter break

1:21:30 and i’d like to make a motion that we allow all varsity sports teams to continue their practices over winter break and through the week of uh january 5th or up until january 5th if that’s what the original motion was going to be and let’s just move on from this second there second there do we have a motion and it’s seconded does anybody have any further questions for greg or anything one question craig and i think you said this so i apologize but in the fall if a community was read for three weeks then they would that team would have to suspend plays it’s the same thing now that’s not in place so that that would be us playing against

1:22:16 them if they were consecutive for three weeks the the initial initial guidelines that came out uh talked about if you started in person in the red excuse me if you started uh remote in the red you would have to get approval from your school committee to start in the fall guidelines have been changed a couple times since then uh and as of as of right now um with our our meetings with myself and dr bucky and andrew petty and our principal and uh todd bloodgood all of us have had many discussions about athletics moving forward and we were going to reconvene uh the first week of january to kind of see where we were at and talk about spectators and see how that would go um but as of right now the what you asked was if community was read three consecutive weeks we would not play them

1:23:02 in a contest okay i had a few questions for greg before i’m ready to vote on this um in the fall on the reopening committee for athletics you had done a survey and if i recall um the least positive results on on coaches feeling safe to play was or to coach was for those winter indoor sports have has there been a change in that do you have staff that that are feeling good about coaching this or have you gotten concerns i’m not asking you to say like you know the basketball coaches you know but just generally is yours is your staff supportive of this uh yes yes they are are very supportive they’ve all been um actually pretty voiceless to me about

1:23:47 continuing to play and hoping they can continue they see i mean obviously it’s a small sample size with three days just this week but they have all seen that it can work and again the protocols we have in place i think would would be safe to continue but again i wanna not really my decision at the end of the day right now it’s i’m you guys though uh i’ll i’ll do whatever you would whatever you guys feel is best and i think we can be i’m confident we can make either work if we’re gonna continue or if we’re going to hold off then that’s okay too thank you for that and then the next question is for john you talked about your health and safety reopening committee and how you have epidemiologists and public safety experts and or public health experts have you um gotten feedback from them on

1:24:34 where they sit on these um winter sports which i think all are any of them outdoors or are they all indoors skiing is outdoors okay well yeah obviously um that’s its own bowl of wax here so um i mean the science does say there is a stark difference between indoor versus outdoor and transmission rates i mean that’s the science so i will speak uh to that question sarah i have not asked them specifically about athletics but their um weigh in on the mental health concerns that are increasing

1:25:19 i think having co-curriculars interscholastic athletic practices continue over the break is a very strong safety net that for me outweighs or mitigates the coveted transmission concerns um i think that for in a normal december as a high school principal we worried about our most vulnerable kids having two two weeks without connection to the school or without that check-in and so i know that athletics for 224 students is a daily connection and those students have friends who they communicate with and i just i think it the safety net aspect in terms of mental health for me

1:26:06 compels me to ask the committee to consider allowing practices to continue and i don’t disagree with that mental health um aspect but i think we need to appreciate that there are just as many students that get mental health stability from in-person learning and we we can’t i don’t know i it does feel like we are prioritizing athletics over education right now i think the difference in this is coming in for me is that we’re we’re only allowing for practice right now and that we have not gotten to the interscholastic play at this point and that you know the rink piece they’ve figured

1:26:54 out ways to keep this safe you know throughout all of this um indoors as well so um i think that’s the piece for me that’s kind of helping me feel more calm about this um i don’t know i lost my chain i thought meg i know you had your hand up i mean i was just gonna suck at what john said um about the mental health piece of it you know especially over the winter break and i did listen into that desi call and that was the point that was hammered home and just sits in my brain constantly about the mental health impacts to our to our students um and like you said sarah and david the motion on the table is for practice over the winter break until january 5th

1:27:40 because i do think i’d like to just just to really do our due diligence because i i don’t disagree at all with sarah either that that you know i do feel like our primary duty is to protect in person learning um oh and the other point that i wanted to make a moment ago was that we’re we’re just talking about how part of the decision to pull remote it’s it’s not about the spread within the schools it’s about teachers being able to um you know teach their classrooms well while being in quarantine and that there’s this pressure on the system um and so that that for me also separates this piece from it’s not that we have massive spread in our schools it’s that that

1:28:25 there’s system balances that are going on here um and so i think i think i would like to revisit this we do have a meeting the for that first week of uh january um as i would love an update on this um but i think you know right now we are just voting on practices and for continued tryouts

1:28:50 are we i mean are we at are we doing you know chorus and and are we are we only doing extracurriculars for sports or are we giving those those mental health outlets for kids in other avenues are in other things like that or is it only sports the only one that i’ve been asked about is sports but my feeling would be the same sarah that if the acapella group wanted or the orchestra or the gay straight alliance or the student council or the honors society wanted to be able to do a toys for tots drive or something like that uh over the break that we would allow them to do that i’ve actually done a lot of thinking on that too sarah um throughout this because as a yeah you know banning choir where my life as a high school student um and

1:29:36 and you know in in my opinion they often get the short end of the stick um but i do think you know what i kept coming back to in my head there was a lot of my i had a lot of thoughts on it but what i kept going back to is that the the banning choir also um their their meeting during school as well and as dan pointed out dan howell pointed out at the beginning of the meeting that that they are finding ways in which to put on their performances and kind of come together and make their practices work um however difficult it may be and that that you know you can’t really have a zoom

1:30:22 basketball uh session and you can’t you know you have to be in person for those things um and so you know again i’ve been i’ve been completely wrapped my own thoughts around all of that but i you know that’s kind of where my head is at right now

1:30:43 anybody else anybody else all right we’ve got emotion oh emily we’re just voting up until january 4th practices now through the week of the fourth oh through that whole week crap john you have a school committee meeting um beef the first week of january i believe right right so you could vote through the next school committee meeting because sarah you have asked for an update so you could extend it from that point that they could practice up through that thursday and we’re fully remote and and games there’s no interscholastic play planned before one seven that is great okay okay

1:31:30 all right um sarah gold yes sarah fox

1:31:39 i gotta tell you i’m torn i i am so torn because i know that the kids need this for the mental health piece but it feels like we’re prioritizing sports over education it does it feels that way um but i i know no no emily baron yes megan taylor yes and david harris

1:32:16 yes yes okay so that motion passes four to one and uh greg we will look forward to hearing from you again on the seventh no problem i’ll keep track of everything as we go along here so uh i’ll give you a nice update on our next next meeting thank you for having me thank you very much greg um sarah i know you said you wanted to circle back and had a couple questions about dussy yeah i’m sorry i i those ready to go and then i forgot um you you talked about how they gave out guidelines about the amount of synchronous learning and the hours of live instruction um the minimum over the 10 day period what does that mean for the vhs and ingenuity kids because my understanding is it’s fully asynchronous

1:33:03 yeah um since edgenuity is uh offered by the state and virtual high school has a teacher connected to it those are counted in time on learning as part of the formula and nan you can correct me if i’m wrong but those are scheduled for students just the same as an mhs chemistry class would be yes that’s correct and i know dan bauer is working on the touch touch check-ins with staff with students on a daily basis so he’s going to work with schedules um to make sure that all students have that access to an adult which is in addition to the time on learning requirement correct

1:33:49 if we were to wind up in a in a model that winds up being longer term full remote will we at that point give those vhs and ingenuity students a chance to transition into a full remote classroom with their peers in district i don’t want to speak for dan bauer in the high school schedule because that’s a decision that he and the high school faculty would make but if history is any indicator dan is always open to considering possibilities and things that will better the experience for students at the high school and edge annuity well i’m going to speak for virtual high school because that’s my experience is a semester based most of the classes now if it’s an ap macro economics that’s going to run the full year but a lot of those courses are semester-based and so they’re going to

1:34:36 time out so to speak mid-january and so that would give those students an opportunity to consider something for the second semester

1:34:47 all right thank you john i think that oh emily did you have another question um yeah sorry this goes back to the cameras and um in our meeting i think it was on the 19th because i read it in the minutes we we had talked about um the technology audit at the high school and so i was just wondering where that is are we waiting for the new technology director to start that or just an update on that yep that’s a great question thank you emily we met with the tech audit firm and i brought kathy and steven uh into that meeting so they could update uh steven on the work that they have done to date and then for steven to be able to weigh in on some things that he would

1:35:34 like uh to see them do and the great thing about this firm is they have worked with the community of marblehead the town of marblehead in terms of the police and abbott hall and doing some mary alley work uh in the past so they have a familiarity uh with our systems and so they’ve done some remote work and i think steven is bringing them on site to do some continuation work

1:36:05 just one last thing it’s before you jump in um david actually brought this um to my attention i think i should say clearly we are in school tomorrow and thank you to todd bloodgood and the dpw and the highway department who did work starting at midnight this morning and has worked all day and what a what a partnership the community and the schools and clearing the sidewalks and us helping uh with roads and then the highway department coming in and helping with parking lots um so we are in person tomorrow i was just getting texts about rumors to the uh the otherwise so thank you for clearing that up yes

1:36:51 all right um michelle cresta that leads us to you um with a monthly financial report hi how are you okay so the monthly financial report for the end of november um we had spent a total of 11 million 929 000 or 29 of the operating budget at this point um a couple things to note we are closely monitoring the special education out of district tuition costs as we always do at the end of october i had reported that we were estimating a shortfall of 148 000 at that time good news is we have taken some actions and made some changes and we’ve had some

1:37:38 other um just other minor changes with students tuitions and our current shortfall is estimated to be 93 000 um so we’re definitely moving in the right direction um one thing that we will talk about uh in the next but actually agenda item is we have started a new specialized program that actually will be starting at the very beginning of january where we have brought to students from an out of district tuition placement and we’re bringing them back into the district which is absolutely fabulous the fact that we can do this and the bonus is it actually results in a cost savings but the fact that um we had this issue the students were not receiving the

1:38:26 services that they should have and um eric and his team were amazing and we were able to start this program which resulted in some dollar savings for us which is a great thing but more importantly it really um addresses these students needs more than they were able to receive outside of marblehead so that’s a wonderful thing but bottom line is our our current shortfall is estimated to be the 93 thousand dollars which is well within the special ed reserve of the 250 000 that we have available to us another area that i just wanted to mention is substitute teacher costs right now we have only spent 11 000 or just over 11 just under 12 um four substitute teachers which only

1:39:12 reset represents about five percent of our budget um our budget is 232 000 typically at this point year we are probably um 30 to 40 percent spent in that area while the spring is usually a typical time where a lot of teachers use their personal days um we’re just not able to attract teachers and fill our our teaching vacancies that we really need to um so while we do have cost savings in that area it’s it’s not a great thing for our education um also i’m attaching you know in addition to the monthly report i attached just a list of the budget transfers you do not need to take any action on those but those are for your information just want to keep it completely transparent about the the numbers that are moving within the budget

1:39:59 budget budget um and the last page of or actually not the last page i’m sorry i think the budget transfers the last page but there is uh towards the end this is a covert coven expenditure report um it’s one page the total estimate has not changed since last month but the figures leading up to that certainly have so as of the end of november we have spent um one million and one hundred and fifteen thousand dollars we have had uncovered encumbered at that point seven hundred and sixteen thousand three hundred and sixty dollars and we had an estimated expense of eighty one thousand six oh one that eighty one

1:40:44 thousand we may not fully expend and part of that is um one grant that we are able to carry throughout the rest of the school year which is great but that totals our estimated cobit expenses of one million nine hundred and thirteen thousand four hundred and eighty six dollars which is right where we were expecting it last month um i do want to note that while most of the cares act funding does end as of december 30th not even the 31st so i don’t know who who decided on that date um but it does end the end of this month we will have certain ongoing costs related to our coveted response and that includes um our contracted cleaning services and the total cost of that

1:41:29 beyond the december um date will be 198 dollars and then we have storage trailers which is storing the ppe the cleaning disinfectant um the hand sanitizer and extra furniture that we had to remove from the schools and the total cost of that will be about five thousand dollars for the remainder of the year so i do think we will be able to cover those um i’m confident that we will be able to cover those with um either the remaining cares act grant that we are able the esser grant to use past december and some operating fund surplus that we will have primarily due to some vacant positions in our custodian and bus driver

1:42:17 roles and the substitute teaching vacancies that we’re not able to fill

1:42:24 that’s that’s about it for the financial report for november if you have any questions sarah so um so um for these full remote weeks we’re saving on that outsourcing of custodial services correct we don’t have to still pay them correct if we’re going fuller remote then we do not have them in um we may have them in depending on how many special education students will be in the schools um so we may not have we we may not have all of them not come in we may have a select number of them come in but primarily our custodians are able to do that during the remote weeks so if we go on any extended remote learning um then we definitely will not

1:43:11 have any of any of those contractors in okay um and i know we have our subs in-house the last two years um and our sub pool has kind of shrunk from that but we recoup savings compared to what we are paying kelly considering that one of the drivers to us going full remote is the need for subs and the lack of subs um have we considered re-contracting with a service like kelly who is a bigger pool to deal with or have we considered upping what we pay people for subs so that we can indeed get those subs in and secure that in person learning we have looked at that um if we bring in a third party vendor to provide our substitutes we’re looking at a markup cost of about 40 percent um so that is

1:43:57 significant so while we’re looking at our you know our budget normally is about 230 000 we would be looking at a budget of approximately 400 000 so we’re talking real dollars in the increase there um which i get but if through half the year we’re way down mathematically even at the 40 markup we should be within our sub line budget which means we could stay in budget yeah absolutely the issue is i have actually kelly services in in two of my previous districts um they were great the problem was they were also having the fill rate issues they were not able to attract the subs because the subs are only paid what our daily rate pays so we are the ones that determine that so ultimately yes we do need to have a

1:44:43 conversation at some point about what we pay our subs and we need to make sure that we are on the higher end the problem is every district around us is also having the same issues so we do have surrounding districts who are paying slightly more they are experiencing the same exact thing so it’s not a situation that’s very unique to marblehead it’s a situation that um is we can’t attract the subs a lot of these people are receiving unemployment um as long as the unemployment is extended these people do not want to work and in addition our rate is not great um and they just do not want to come into the buildings during a pandemic

1:45:29 so we do have a pool of subs that pretty much report on a regular basis um but unfortunately it’s just not enough people so we are we are very creative and are the principals are create very creative in how they’re using their powers and tutors at this time to fill all of those vacancies in the remote learning needs yeah um i i would like to see if we can maybe look at increasing that rate just because if that’s a driver we talk about metrics that’s a metric that helps us secure kids and then i don’t know that a lot of people in our community know that correct me if i’m wrong but my understanding is to be a short-term sub you don’t need to have a teacher’s license in the state of massachusetts correct so if there are moms and dads and caregivers out there that are

1:46:14 desperate to get these kids back in the building give i don’t know if it’s nan or michelle or whoever call because if we have more subs to cover and we can keep teaching these kids in person we can keep kids in person so don’t have don’t think that you don’t have the qualifications that you need because you’re back right absolutely and that’s something that we probably should do a little bit more of um or we could possibly do a little bit more of a pr you know maybe put in the principles newsletters and whatnot but yes we are desperately in need of short-term subs so we can start spreading that word and bus drivers as well but not as many people are qualified to drive buses um

1:46:59 and then my other question for michelle is i know

1:47:12 sorry guys sorry guys um so i know that um we were over on our covet spending somewhat um and i and i think that you know there’s there’s a lot out there right now um are there any other recurring contractors like i know we have the the custodians custodians um and you mentioned one more but i know we were also paying for communications out of that coven money is that something recurring that we we need to allocate money for or is or no i’m gonna jump in there michelle the communications contract was a five-month

1:47:58 contract and that ended on november 30th and so um that is continued to be volunteer major driven but that was a budgetary expense that ended on 11 30. that was all my michelle questions thanks all right i think uh that leads us along to the budget transfer request yes thank you so as i had um mentioned in the report we have started this um brought this program into the district and we’re placing it at the village school to serve two students

1:48:45 that are currently outplaced um the families were ecstatic to be able to bring them back into the district which is a wonderful thing it results in a cost savings to us however the cost of educating these students it resides the funding resides in the out of district tuition budget for private day schools so by bringing them back in we have hired two staff members one special education teacher and one bcba board certified behavioral analyst and um so we need to fund those two positions so i am proposing and requesting the school committee approve a transfer establishing these two new positions and transferring the amount of eighty six thousand three hundred and twenty dollars

1:49:30 dollars dollars from the out of district tuition budget to um village school special education faculty salaries so so moved second

1:49:47 any other questions on that i don’t have a question i just want to say well done to everyone who worked on this it’s you know i think it’s really great anytime that we can bring students back into their home district so well done it is a wonderful thing really is yup all right sarah gold yes sarah fox yes emily barron yes megan taylor yes david harris yes all right that motion carries 5-0 thanks michelle thank you all right and then the only other piece there is our schedule of bills for the last couple of weeks so can i get a motion to approve the identified schedule of bills totaling 455

1:50:34 379 dollars and seven cents so moved megan moon tech ended tech ended sarah second uh any questions all of those uh schedules were in the packet as well

1:50:49 all right sarah gold yes sarah fox yes emily barron yes megan taylor yes david harris yes all right approve thank you michelle thanks michelle all right so that leads us back to the mcas testing resolution this was in our packets a couple of weeks ago we had tabled it um but i wanted to make sure that it kind of came back for a second look are we ready to talk about it tonight or do we need a third look after the break

1:51:36 i’m fun i’m fun you’re fine to talk about it okay all right um we’re going to open that up for discussion then where people’s thoughts i know the conversation before had been that we were going to try to touch base with nan uh because emily had talked with her and had had some good conversation with her are we out of order to just ask nan to give a two-minute little feel if nan is if man is comfortable prepared not to put you on the spot man yeah i’m prepared nan are you okay with that or would you um sure okay all right so the primary conversation that i’ve been having um

1:52:23 that i recently had with some members is around the language that inclu um refers to pulling away as a district from mcas altogether from for this year and future years and so my conversation is related to that point of data collection for us as a district right now is really the only standardized piece of information that we have we do not have a universal tool in the district for assessment so we have a lot of benchmark

1:53:08 information that teachers collect we have some formative and summative pieces that go along with our curriculum resources but we really don’t have a standardized standards based standardized assessment tool and so we can get a lot from that information we understand we can dig down to the level of student growth we can see not only a student’s level of achievement in terms of proficiency but also how much they’ve gained in one year in a content area so there’s a lot to be learned about teaching and learning through the that information and as long as you use it to inform instruction

1:53:54 instruction instruction and to grow teaching practices i think right now where there isn’t another tool in our district it’s important that our teachers have it it’s to give you an example of how teachers might use that data they can pull reports from it and find out where exactly as a grade level the students are falling short of being able to meet standards and they can pull a standard and really be able to talk about where are we going to make sure that we hit this standard a little bit harder than we did last year because we’re seeing here that only 80 of our students we’re at proficiency with it so how do we change

1:54:41 where we put it in our pacing how many times do we come back and revisit it before mcas testing so it’s really not about students getting proficiency on the mcas it’s about students retaining the information and being able to apply it and so that’s an indicator of proficiency on the mcas that the students learned it and are able to apply it and that’s going to benefit the teachers in future years so if we were to have mcas data from last year it um from say the fourth grade ela pieces of information would be used by the fifth grade team would be looking at teacher that students that they had

1:55:28 in their have in their classrooms right now and where do they enter in september based on proficiency and those skills and so if they’re able to look at their class of students and say most of my kids are coming with an area of a weakness in a math standard or an ela standard or social studies standards they can fill that gap based on that information so there’s lots of really good ways to use the data i think mcas has some negative connotations in terms of how people look at it in terms of accountability and can put a lot of pressure on kids to to perform in certain ways and the way that

1:56:15 i prefer to use data is really as a teaching tool and to let kids just show what they know and that’s all we ask of kids when they when they take the mcas and to take that onus off them and that level of pressure off them i will also add that uh i’ve just discovered that the state there is a working group looking at trying to get the mcas to be more consolidated if uh for when it is implemented this spring so there’ll be shorter sessions and fewer questions

1:56:56 so so i think it’s this second or third or second to last paragraph here where it says and further be it resolve that the marblehead school committee rejects the calls for all students in the marblehead public school system to undertake mcas tests during the 2021 school year or ever i would amend that to say instead of or ever i think the point we’re getting at is that not that they never take them again but that whatever if you had a third grader that was going to take the third grade mcas this year that they’re not going to do that and we’re not going to ask them to make up that third grade mcas next year so just to amend that language so that we take we we resolve that we’re asking there’d be none this year and whatever grade level you were in in the 2021

1:57:43 school year that that not be required to be made up and i think that that actually makes a lot more sense than the verbiage of or ever i’m wondering if because that’s kind of i remembering back i’m wondering if so one two three four the fifth paragraph down and further be it also resolved um no sorry the final paragraph additionally we reiterate our call so the very last few words we urge the legislature to enact a moratorium on high stakes testing for three years what if we edited it to say uh we urge the legislature to enact a moratorium on

1:58:30 using high stakes testing for graduation requirements for the next three years because to me this seems much more like a high school piece than with the or ever because we do use them for graduation requirements and so more so than a third grade having to take it in fifth grade or fourth grade it seems like it would come into play where the biology one would need to be taken by seniors because kovic was hit hit when you were you know in freshman or stop whenever that gets taken um the only the only wonder i have about that maybe dan bauer can speak to that is i believe if you are going to qualify for the abigail adams scholarship that the mcas

1:59:15 is part of that requirement correct

1:59:24 so i just want to clarify here and correct me if i’m misunderstanding this but this resolution whether we pass it or not has does not determine if marblehead does mcas it is literally just like our opinion right if the state says you’re doing mcas we’re doing mcas so this is literally just saying like hey here’s a it’s basically our opinion that then we’re putting in a letter and sending to the state house yes similarly as we begged for guidance for reopening things and did not get it we can beg that the mcas be shut down and we may not get that so not to be like totally controversial here but

2:00:10 is it worth it should i say that out loud i don’t know john do you want to weigh in i i would like to weigh in and i think that megan has teed this up beautifully for me that of the things that you need to talk about this resolution if you’re starting to wordsmith it is something that you just take a polite pass on because it’s not it’s more symbolic than anything and so if you vote uh to accept it as written or you spend some time and wordsmith it and change it it really is just a symbolic gesture i mean it isn’t it isn’t if if we got an email from every single person in this town

2:00:55 this town this town asking for the same thing it’s symbolic they can’t compel us but their symbolism would be compelling so i think if all the school districts come together and ask for this there’s no mandate through this letter for odessa to react but i would hope that they would be reasonable in saying we have the vast majority asking for something this is compelling i i would love to be able to agree with you sarah that’s just not how desi works because superintendents weighed in on the new resolution that they passed for time on learning regulations and they ignored it out of hand

2:01:40 can i add one thing though is that um you know i’m kind of discussing this um with man especially some things did come up that i i do think we can take i don’t know if action’s the right word but maybe suggest is that um one of the things i ask nan is around the scheduling piece you know if we do have mcas how do we make sure that we schedule it to have the least impact on the learning time for our students and so if we have control over that like that’s where i’d like to see us put some time and effort in thinking about it and the other piece that nan mentioned um was around the data collection around assessments and having a consistent tool in place that then we can utilize so that’s another piece that i’d love to see

2:02:26 us drill into in a little bit more and now is the perfect time since we’re talking about budgets so if that’s something that we need as a district to make sure that we can assess where our students are at in a consistent way for all our teachers to then leverage then i would like to see us do that um so if we could put some you know if we have the opportunity to kind of drill into that a little bit more for this budget season i would love to do that emily emily um and i have to agree with megan and that was the big thing that i got out of when i spoke with nan too and so it’s like if we don’t do the mcas what are we going to do instead we have to do something so i think that’s a great point that we need to come up with an alternative i

2:03:11 mean the mcas are going to happen but in the district we need an alternative also another way to collect this data so at least we got that out of it nan what levels can can families opt out of i know like third grade you can opt out of right but you can’t i would assume 10th grade you have to do that i think 10th grade is the only one and i’m not even sure about 10th grade that might i dan bauer may have a better understanding of that so families could opt out you just don’t get your competency determination and so you do not qualify for a diploma in the commonwealth you get a certificate of attainment

2:03:55 only 10th grade one you can meet all the local graduation requirements so you can meet all the marblehead high school graduation requirements but without getting your competency determination in science ela and math mcas you cannot get a diploma from the commonwealth yeah but that’s only 10th grade correct that’s correct you could opt out of everything else take the 10th grade and still get your diploma that is great yeah okay all right well it seems like we’re ready to just move along from this and if anybody feels differently again we can add it back at a different point so you know just because we passed tonight doesn’t mean that it can’t come back all right so that leads us to school committee goals um [Music]

2:04:42 i have failed to get the strategic plan goal up up and up and posted um so i will just take that on the chin right away i don’t know where the other goals are at i have not seen any of them either

2:04:59 we have a budget draft goal which we could go through but it probably makes more sense to do them all together um yeah and maybe it wouldn’t be a draft yeah and was there a facilities goal that we had talked about we’re trying i think it’s best to to wait on the facilities review for that so that we know what our our major drivers are okay all right so i will i’m gonna plan on putting this on for the seventh um and attempting to do it then and even if it means a placeholder for the facilities um you know maybe one of our goal one of the goals is to get that done and have an accurate gauge um so yeah but we can we can work on that on offline on that

2:05:50 all right um that brings us to the review of the policies that emily and i and john are proposing some changes to so there are uh four current policies that we’ve got small changes that um you know an addition of a paragraph here a tweak or kind of like a yeah tweak on a paragraph and a different one and then the physical education so ihae um is a brand new one that uh john i believe you said you had that one in nantucket yes um and so he brought that to our attention and as we looked at other districts um there you know plenty of them have that physical education policy as well so we felt that it was a good

2:06:36 idea to to bring it forward um the ihai occupational education the only change that we’re making to that and i cleared this one with dorothy presser that we are just wanting to change the title of it because occupational education to all of us made it seem like an occupational therapy type piece um when in reality it is a vocational and technical education policy so it seemed more appropriate to name it as such and dorothy’s thoughts on it were that if that more accurately reflects where our district policies should be then we can make that change so this would be sort of the the official second reading the first was in the policy subcommittee this would be our second meeting and then they would

2:07:23 come back on the seventh so um if anybody has any questions otherwise we can continue to move along

2:07:32 i in in the packet too i had highlighted the changes that were made in red

2:07:38 do we have to actually read them no we don’t although they’re shorter than the typical policy they’re much shorter than the sexual harassment policy that we got halfway through

2:07:55 all right um so that will move us along to our superintendent communication discussion um i think we had this a little bit earlier um this was a requested agenda item so does anybody have any further pieces to add i know you know we kind of talked about how um there was a misstep between john and i this week about kind of getting information about the particularly about next week’s uh remote schedule um sarah you had asked for this one do you have anything further that you wanted to um i think it really just surrounds around anything that

2:08:35 not to not to simplify it but anything that would be awkward or embarrassing for us to find out um you know not in a timely manner i i would just like you know to get we hadn’t we had a few instances this week i think it was just you know the perfect storm um and i i do feel like a lot is getting cleared and communicated through that reopening committee where i i just don’t feel like we have the level of information um that we’ve had in the past it it feels like there was a shift with that reopening committee from advisory to

2:09:21 more so than that um and we did have this conversation earlier so i don’t think we need to rehash all those pieces but i think the good rule of thumb is just kind of anything that’s not commonplace that isn’t normal you know habitual what would anything out of the ordinary just loop us in um so that we don’t hear it in the news or somewhere else or you know a phone call or something else or a meeting that happened this week in the middle of a meeting so yeah that’s where i think it would be really helpful that if everyone could prioritize and i think you know again a weekly meeting with john may just be a little bit much but you know every

2:10:06 other week or maybe you know two weeks in a row and then a week off i just think with the with the speed at which information is coming out and decisions are being made this year and everything that’s going on you know i think it would just be really really helpful for everybody i think you know anytime that i talk with john i whether it’s you know about something relatively minor or some other major thing that really has me in a tizzy i always come away feeling a lot more grounded um a lot more sure of the direction that we’re headed in and and kind of you know the day-to-day those day-to-day operations that we aren’t always privy to and that you know are not our purview but it certainly is helpful to understand them because it’s sort of how everything that’s going on is being implemented

2:10:53 um so yeah i just i would continue to to just really say you know keep talking to john and those weekly meetings you know are one thing but the things i’m thinking of are more things that kind of are popping up like we had a meeting on friday and we decided to shut down our schools and this is it or you know things that might not i if i had waited a week for that i still would have you know been caught with egg on my face so um i just want to make sure that doesn’t i don’t want to i think the policy last year that our last um interim superintendent had was i never want to have the feeling of hear the phrase from one of my um uh school committee members have to say i actually did not know that

2:11:39 um and and i talked to john about this he was very receptive um so i just want to make sure that’s our policy moving forward that none of us you know are in the position of saying i did not actually know that

2:11:55 john yeah um i i will say uh in my effort to continuously improve uh in the new superintendent’s uh round table or induction program this week i made this my problem of practice and used five other new superintendents and five mask or mass uh facilitators and coaches including my coach for you know what is a governance issue what is an operations issue when do you reach out to your school committee and certainly there were instances this week where i could have done a better job in communicating and certainly will own that but as much of a priority as i have made communication i would just ask people that if you get a call from a

2:12:41 constituent and it doesn’t resonate with you and you’re like why wouldn’t john have called me on this please pick up the phone and call me and say why am i hearing about this and don’t stew in something or don’t take four or five or six telephone calls which i know this is marblehead and those come in quickly but to just reach out and clarify and say this doesn’t make good sense to me john because if you’re gonna go remote we probably should have known that and i was saying to sarah earlier today i’ve talked to each of you this week i’ve talked to several of you several times this week and i never leave the conversation feeling like oh we’re just we’re not on the same page here that there is so much that happens and the ability to communicate uh with one

2:13:27 another and yes if you feel like i’ve missed something please pick up the phone and say and i uh called bill twice this week i hadn’t called bill in probably a month and a half he goes must be exciting in marblehead john this is the second call this week but having access to those resources and him knowing you and me getting to know you please just always feel free to know that the phone works both ways and if i fail to call you i always welcome the call from you

2:14:00 i just think um you know john it’s i’ve said this to you too but i just you know i’ll say for the benefit of committee too is that we’re all learning each other’s style here right like we’re a new team and this is a learning process so let’s like i think we should just take this as you know a lesson learned for all of us not for you but for all of us um just so we’re all you know we’re all looking to be more effective and more efficient so this is just you know i’m just gonna tweak as we go as we keep kind of learning how we all work that’s why we did our team building session in november and this is a crazy time like there is no normal here so what maybe works in a you know a typical year it kind of some things are out the window this year too so we’ve just you

2:14:45 know i just think we’re just tweaking as we go yeah i agree i think you know yeah we’ve had it on our our to-do list for quite a few years to want to get back to like what you know what’s our purview what’s superintendent’s purview and you know each year there’s some new hurdles to that but i think eventually you know we’ll get there and and i think we’re we’re all learning this and getting better yes sarah you and i have no idea what a normal year is i would love to get there all right all right um so moving along it brings us to the subcommittee and liaisons updates um i know you know we just presented a bunch of policies so i think that sums up the policy subcommittee um

2:15:33 anybody else want to weigh in emily so um so um i would like to talk about mecco because i have lots to say and it’s really great so we now have a new interim metco director heidi harris who i um was able to meet i’ve met with her a couple times this week um and she is awesome and she was a metco director in other districts for many many years she has done research um on desegregation and now she’s a consultant but she was willing to fill our gap for the time being which is so great um and she

2:16:20 is so motivated to help our program um get to where it can be um and she’s talked about creating uh practices and structures that we can set up so as we move forward we’re always like ready to go and have things in place and we’ll just be able to keep our program moving forward um so she started december 7th and she’s already met with all the leaders of the school she’s met with nan um nan hosted a metco family chat to introduce heidi to all the metco families um on wednesday we were part of a fundraising meeting for metco

2:17:05 because we have this awesome um tyrone bumper scholarship at the high school which i didn’t know about um and i don’t know if a lot of people know about it but we give um there’s money that’s been raised that two students a metco student and a resident marblehead student it’s an essay contest and they write an essay about what the metco program means for them and it gets um judged and the two winners get money a money scholarship and a laptop so we now have this group to fundraise to fill that um i don’t know pot to just make more and more money for things to do for the scholarship but also to

2:17:51 to to do for the metco students um to support them and so the other great thing that came out of that meeting is that we’re going to try to do the cultural feast this year in the spring um so there’s a group of people working on that to make that happen and then there’s another group of us who are working on establishing fundraisers so every year we’ll have these standing fundraisers so that this um metco bank account will always be full of money for everyone anyway so it’s just really exciting and i’m just excited to that i get to be a part of it and um help the program really it’s just really exciting to

2:18:37 be able to see what this program can be for marblehead oh and heidi would like to come to our meet one of our meetings in january she wasn’t able to come tonight um and she said she would do a presentation for us on what metco is and what it can be so if we can schedule that yeah absolutely that’d be great i will uh i’ll probably meet with lisa in the next few days to to plan the next the the january 7th meeting so we’ll look at what makes most sense either the seventh or whatever then if that’s possible okay all right great good to know the the seventh you want the 17th isn’t there one that yes that’s the third the third thursday oh yes oh sorry sorry our second meeting in january got it

2:19:23 john has an update to add no i just want to share in emily’s enthusiasm but just offer a clarification that we had a deficit in communications so we hired a consultant to support communications the same thing is for metco heidi is a consultant coming in to support the work of our metco program great i’m really glad to hear that

2:19:53 um i don’t have a question really i just am so happy that that cultural fest is going to you know still plan to go forward because it was such a great event last year i mean it was one of the highlights of um of my year last year so hopefully that can definitely kick off and this might not be for this meeting but just if we can reach out to the metco pco um you know just make sure they know about these meetings that are happening too um you know i know it’s now that it’s zoomed they might be able to participate a little bit more so you know if possible so monique um the pco president of mecco is now going to be coming to the central council meetings awesome yeah so she’s been looped in now and the next one is in january okay

2:20:39 okay okay sarah emily do you hear a sense of you know are most of our metco students doing in-person learning are are more of them doing remote and is the covid in the unique set of circumstances with coven and their need for transportation and everything and how long they’d be spending on the bus a further barrier for the for those metco students i’m just curious of you know how how they may be even more adversely affected by covet well i i don’t know the numbers of students who are doing um in person or remote man would be able to answer that better um but i do know that we are bringing them in through a bus

2:21:26 and we have this amazing bus monitor delta i think her name is heidi spoke really highly of her and she is making the bus experience for our students um as best i think as it could be she was really excited that we had her here and said whatever we can do to keep her is what we need to do so i don’t know if nan wants to answer that other question well i would i would just like to add that at our family chat i had asked um parents about the bus and how busing was working because we do have to keep the windows for air circulation slightly open the parents were talking about how it is cold on the buses and in a matter

2:22:12 of days we had organizat friends of marblehead people coming together and we have a embroidered monogrammed marble head blanket a bag and a hat for every child we’ll be giving those out tomorrow it was it was phenomenal so the program is is super supportive when we ask and so i think we’ve learned this year that we really want to get our mecco program out in the forefront and let people know what the needs are and they’re eager to to support so the transportation has been fantastic greg

2:22:59 has been coordinating for our metco athletes and we have a late bus that has been running without a hitch for those kids we do have most of our students in the hybrid model but some in them in a full remote setting and we do have some metco students that come five days a week for programming that’s awesome i’m so excited about that blanket piece because i saw that in the newspaper that another district did that and was thinking we should do the same so that’s really exciting done done and done

2:23:37 wonderful all right any other um subcommittees want to weigh in sarah facilities met this monday and we talked about the facilities assessment is out to bid right now um if everything goes according to plan we hope to have that completed by mid january so we can get those that report and those good data points that we’ll need to build um we’re the goal was to use that to build our facilities master plan which we really need to update but as well as our capital improvement ask we did find out at the facilities meeting this week that that the capital improvement ask had already been put in

2:24:22 by the district um and after that meeting michelle sent that out to us to review we will be tweaking that further um because we obviously want to have information to build that on um and that was about it i’ll just say that i spoke to bill about that and that was actually much earlier this year that town asked for capital requests than they had in the past and so that january time frame of taking that list and tweaking it or prioritizing it is actually in line with what the committee did last year great very good megan anything to add for budget are we good there

2:25:08 good there good there um we did we did meet uh yeah we met last week um mostly we talked about scheduling um because i’m sure we’re gonna have to add a few meetings so um john is gonna work on putting a draft together that we could get out to the committee you know early january um and john and michelle are working with the principals and the budget owners to kind of you know get their get their requests in order so you know january is going to pick up for sure i would expect um you know early january we start to get some rough numbers to start looking at and digging into and then um and then you know we’re we’re off january february always fun times absolutely a question on that megan um at the sac

2:25:55 we discussed that they haven’t started to dig in and look at new math curriculums yet yet so are you guys going to have a a holder for a new math curriculum and if so what will you be using as a driver probably a question for john and michelle sure michelle and i actually have had that exact conversation with both of the principals that we’ve met with and we have two more meetings um on monday for it will probably be a pre-k to eight math curriculum adoption and so we will put a place holder in the budget for that great great all right uh i think that’s it david any uh building project updates this time around

2:26:46 i do so i at our previous com at our last meeting i talked about the um dmp or the guaranteed maximum price the building committee met voted it was submitted to the massachusetts school building authority promptly and on monday we did get a reply from the msba what results from the guaranteed maximum price is what’s called a project funding agreement amendment but in our case [Music] the amendment will actually be 124 999 dollars less

2:27:32 than what our budget was so the awarded gmp is is about 125 000 less and that will get um updated and put into the you know the system that’s called propay that tracks all of the invoices and the reimbursements related to the project so that’s um that’s a really significant milestone to be um on budget and also you know within the gmp there is the project schedule and gilbane is um you know looking to deliver the school for a september opening so um

2:28:17 as we’ve been talking about at the beginning about remote learning and uh hybrid learning um kovid certainly could play a role in in that but right now we’ve been very fortunate and as we move indoors uh gilbane continues to with with their experience on many projects other other than just this one um they have very stringent protocol in place and we’re working very closely with all of our subcontractors um you know all the prerequisites for coming to work and uh the various things related to kovid and you know so far so far so good and

2:29:03 as we move indoors there’ll be a continued focus on that for sure there’s been um one or two instances where our vendors outside of the project are having some covid challenges and just to point out the one one is as an example the elevator uh vendor that we’re procuring our elevator from um [Music] is experiencing some delays but it’s not a delay that will um impact any of the um milestones right now we’re still ahead of schedule as as for when we expected the elevator in and those delays will be somewhat minor and as an example gilbane mentioned um it’s a two-story school

2:29:50 and not having the sometimes elevators are used during construction but um you know if if there is a delay so that that’s the only um delay that we’ve experienced when it comes to um the procurement of products and materials and of course we had our first big snowstorm and today so that created a couple of challenges and people should note the notices have been out there and it’s been approved through the through the building department and through the police department as allowed with our construction project uh snow removal will start a little bit earlier than seven o’clock so the site can be prepped and ready to go and those notices

2:30:37 have been put out on the web page but um so far so good everything’s uh everything’s tracking and moving and moving in the right direction and i i think the last time we met i don’t you know we we’ve done a walkabout with the superintendent ralph wallace and myself to um you know to visit the site and uh you know we’ll can we’ll continue to do that and look to get the um building committee on the property um in the first of the new year because certainly um you know being there uh you know the pitchers are great that we get but being on the site it’s just tremendous to see the progress that’s that’s going on and um i’ll let sarah talk a little bit about i know there’s a lot of work going on on the finishes

2:31:23 and the interior with with the architect so the mosaic um working group will be meeting to talk with the artists on monday believe emily correct thumbs up um and then we’re i was going back and forth with gene trying to find a time for the interiors working group to get together again he let me know i think yesterday the day before he was hoping for friday we’d send some times back and forth he just got back to me like a half an hour before this meeting so um i don’t know if we’ll fit that meeting in for tomorrow but and then hopefully by in the next couple weeks we’ll get that tied up and it’s moving well one question i i want to point out is where david said we are on track for the september possibly we’re not guaranteeing anybody anything but the possibility of september

2:32:10 um i believe customarily calendar comes up in january um so we might want to you know look at that and have a commerce to have david have a conversation of the likelihood that they think that they’re on track for that september because where we start school at the end of august you know is this year maybe to push back that start and consolidate our schedule so that we don’t have three days on a day off those those first five weeks of school like we’ve had in the past um and then we facilitate opening our doors at the new school versus you know a two week three weekend move so that might be a deeper conversation we just want to have in place before we vote the calendar or open that discussion

2:33:00 all right wonderful thank you very exciting as always all right so that takes us to any new business out there all right and i don’t sarah um has there been a discussion at the reopening committees ever of having a letter home that there’s been a positive case in your class for cloven i mean we get the i’m sure you’ve all read this they’ve gotten the emails about this um that we get the letter home about lice we get it for strap we get all these letters for all this stuff um it seems like why would this communicable disease be different than the flu or the strep ladder um so it might be just one that people may want to have because where people are

2:33:46 doing this in person learning and wanting to maintain that they may have a unique set of circumstances that they would talk over with their physician if they got that letter and say you know what this week we’re gonna we’re gonna stay home because we have a unique set of circumstances here

2:34:03 um we have not had that conversation yet so we can add it okay great all right and there was no correspondence to the best of my knowledge to to get to you guys so that will lead us to adjournment at 9 33 thank you happy holidays to everybody happy holidays last night at hanukkah tonight