School Committee: February 23, 2021

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2:40 all right we are live on streaming on youtube um and then that’s also being put onto the school committee website um i will call us to order at 703 sarah fox can you hear me okay

3:02 all right all right so i will waste no time in scooting along with our agenda so john um we are here tonight for a learning model update

3:14 and an exciting update it will be it is a step that i think collectively we have all been uh looking forward to being able to take and to return us to a sense of normalcy in a word that has been being defined month by month sometimes moment by moment but i think that this is an evening to celebrate um the collective good work that we have done and so i want to share my screen

3:57 some of the good stuff that we’re able to talk about tonight

4:03 so why are we proposing expanding in-person learning now um i think it’s clear as we have learned more about kovid and some of the impacts that it has had educationally and in social emotional health the advantages of in-person learning for students are seen in each of those realms the academic the social emotional physical there’s improving public health data around covid if you think back to where we were in september or august when we released our initial reopening plans and why we went

4:50 with our hybrid plan much of the public health data and information and knowledge of the virus has changed since that time i think that our mitigation efforts have proven very effective we’ve had no in-school transmissions and i know that that’s something that all of our building principles our nurses our faculty celebrate vaccinations came online and so that opens the possibility for increasing uh the number of in-person students in the buildings and pool testing which you will have an

5:35 update on at the thursday meeting being picked up by project beacon which i know is a welcome news to many people in the community and amanda rivers has put together a presentation on that that we’re going to post so anyone that has any lingering questions about pool testing and what project beacon will be able to offer us and then she’ll give a brief update to you thursday as well another question that might be on people’s minds is why is it possible to consider this expansion in learning time now back in august it was very important to families across the district that the cohorts were aligned that parents that had children in different schools

6:21 different schools different schools were not being asked to go on different days at different times according to different schedules and so that cohort alignment was important our initial cohort numbers in august september are dramatically different than they are now and so we have had over a hundred changes in cohorts either people going remote to hybrid or hybrid to remote since september transmission rates have dramatically changed if you think of where we were in november to january the precipitous spike that we saw in 0 to 19 cases marblehead was a red community for a

7:07 week in january knowledge of transmission i’m sure i don’t have to remind school committee that we were spending 30 thousand dollars a week in cleaning because we worried that if somebody touched a surface that could be transmission and so the idea of bringing more students into the building even in the cohort model people were worried about well will they be sitting in a desk where a cohort a student had sat the day before and it might seem silly right now to think of that stuff but at the time that was our knowledge and understanding of kovid and so we used the science and the data available to us at that time

7:53 to make decisions openness to increasing numbers in the building in the amount of time in buildings i know sarah fox is on the teaching and learning committee in december i directed nan to ask teaching and learning how can we bring more students into the buildings or how can we increase the amount of time students are in the buildings nan came back to me and said that meeting was a disaster people were literally in tears at the thought of trying to bring more students into the buildings or for longer periods of time we made a decision then to go three days remote before the holiday break

8:38 and then the week returning from holiday break to do that as remote along the way everybody doing the best that they could given the information at hand the information that we have now is it is safe to bring students back in the buildings and with the numbers that we have we can assure in k to six that six foot distancing where in earlier months we were not able to do that or people weren’t willing to do that either the numbers changed or people’s willingness [Music] [Music] well i would like to go to the next slide

9:26 all right all right so just to take you back to the decision making dashboard that we have been using along the way i think you see that sometimes our ability to safely staff the buildings was a question for us it hasn’t been since november 30th where our positivity rate was a two point something this past week it was 2.23 another indicator that the metrics we follow says we will attempt to increase in-person learning should those things that are listed there be in place and so no evidence of in-school transmission we haven’t seen that

10:14 marblehead and yellow status the 0-19 case rate local hospital capacity staffing levels at green or a new unforeseen impact dynamic that has not yet developed which it has not so what i’m proposing this evening is that our students k to six in the current hybrid shift to five half days of in-person learning they would come in monday through friday i say eight to twelve very well aware that different buildings have different start and end times but just as in four hour increments that would be combining cohort a and b into one cohort i’m proposing monday march 1st as an

11:00 anticipated start date for k to three and monday march 8th as an anticipated start day for four to six this does not impact our students in remote learning and despite the governor in the commissioner’s announcements today i think we’re focused on marblehead and what we’re able to do here given what’s happening in our community and allow beacon hill and malden to make their proclamations knowing that they have been making them along the way to pivot then to local control so my focus continues to be on marblehead and what we’re able to do here

11:55 okay students in 7-12 you will hear the building principles talk tonight we cannot do six foot distancing in the middle school high school i think i was clear about that in the february 4th meeting that the high school middle school piece would be more complicated and so they will talk uh this evening to you about an am pm cohort model where students would be in five days a week and so i won’t steal their thunder and then uh we continue to have conversations with mea and their uh negotiation renegotiation uh conversations about the six foot distancing

12:48 so some of the things that come into play when you have a decision of this magnitude um it are operational uh and uh sarah gold and i had good conversation today with mea talking about some of these pieces reconfiguring the classrooms that the way classrooms look there will be students literally lined up against bookcases or up against the front of the room in order to combine the cohorts into a single classroom that may require outfitting with appropriate furniture because they have some furniture that will have to be removed from classrooms as great teachers do

13:36 they brought things back into classrooms in the current cohort model easels and bookcases and storage containers that will have to be removed so that we can combine the cohorts and maintain that six foot distancing technology some classrooms have smart boards and the way that we would configure with that many students and maintaining the distancing might mean access to technology is impacted pedagogy is certainly impacted in the way that teachers are able to teach will have to take into consideration the number of students in the room and their ability to do certain things then just logistics drop-off in pickup

14:23 it’s different when you have a hundred students as opposed to 200 students and preparing for inclement weather bathrooms and hallways you’re doubling the number the number of people in buildings so how will that impact things like bathroom and hallways specials art music pe media center how what do those look like how are those taught so those are conversations happening at the building level with principals and their staff and then breaks snack and mask break with double the number of students in that’s something that principals are working through with teachers so some quick

15:09 frequently asked questions or facts about what is happening has this proposal been shared with teachers and

15:19 i only pause because and other mps staff yes i met with faculty and staff yesterday as a district announcement and i continue to learn about the progression of information in this district i think you will megan and sarah can talk about reopening where a parent said i learned of something through my third grade student and teachers feel that parents hear about it first and parents feel that they’re hearing about it from their students and so teachers expressed in surveys that they felt they wanted to be in receipt of information like this prior to

16:06 it being publicly launched and so i met with faculty and staff yesterday to share this information does this shift compromise six-foot distancing k-6 no it does not can a family request a start a student’s current learning model i’m saying now after meeting with the leadership team not immediately and i think again sarah fox in being in teaching and learning you know how delicate the balance is for our capacity to have students shift from remote or hybrid and fortunately we have two pivot points coming up march 12th will be the trimester for our k-6

16:53 learners and april 1st will be the beginning of quarter 4 for vets in the high school but when this goes into implementation it is based on the numbers that we have right now so the numbers of students in cohort bay cohort a cohort b and remote learning we will not be able to make that transition overnight if there are people in hybrid that don’t feel comfortable and want to go to remote or remote that have been i chose remote because i wanted five days of continuous instruction but now that i can get that in person i want to make

17:39 that move so i’m not saying that it’s not possible but the immediacy of it i think in listening to building principles they need time to anticipate these changes and so those pivot points uh might play an important part of that conversation um what about students in seven to twelve that is being developed and negotiated as i’ve alluded to and matt and dan will certainly give you more information at the building level and does this impact fully remote students no it does not this does not have impact on our fully remote and so with that i will either pause for questions or allow principals to talk

18:25 about the building level and what that will look like at each school i’m inclined to have the principal speak first okay so first up we’ll have donna zasky at evelyth and village third grade

18:51 muted sarah muted sarah okay am i good now i chose donna i can’t i think everyone can hear me um so welcome everyone thank you for joining us tonight um i just wanted to talk a little bit about eveless school most of you probably know this it’s a great little school six classrooms at the start of the year we had near 90 kids um right now we’re sitting in the mid 60s so we’ve lost a few students this year as we have at many of the grade levels because it has such a simple layout and the fact that each classroom has a doorway that goes to the outdoors getting the kids in and out of the

19:38 building arrival and dismissal all year long has gone very smoothly i don’t anticipate any big hurdles with that as we um have all the kids join together as far as um you know i think we should um just spend one second in talking about some of the things that have been accomplished this year um we started out as everyone knows there was lots of anxiety about teaching teaching remotely all these things that we started way back in september and our teachers have really worked hard to um you know learn applications learn things like csun clever and google classroom both at evolith and third grade there was a steep learning curve

20:24 learning curve learning curve and i think after we went through these different models of instruction each one brought a different challenge but certainly i feel like the we definitely rose to the occasion and our kids are performing really well at this point um i want the community to know that our assessment scores are right where they should be they’re right on target our kids are doing um really well at the lower level um third grade also is doing awesome so i i wanted to kind of give credit to our teaching staff for that um also the staff that came from bell and how we all got mixed up you know we started out last year with the move out of bell

21:11 divided it between three places then by the end of last year we were in the cova thing and now this year it’s been uh another uh covet experience so i just feel that the teachers have really worked hard over these last two years to meet all the demands and the challenges that we face and i’m proud of the accomplishments that we have made so now we are at the point as john mentioned uh uh looking at next steps and bringing the cohorts together five days a week uh the daily schedule will not be any different for example the start and end times will remain the same the afternoon sessions for kindergarten will be voluntary we are thinking with the kids in five days a week

21:57 and it being a more structured kind of a learning environment that that will be a little bit taxing on those young learners at least in the beginning so the afternoon sessions we will certainly have instruction maybe some small groups maybe it’ll be some enhanced or targeted skill sets that kids need to work on with their teachers but those things will be scheduled as we go

22:31 right now um as far as what we’ve done to prepare we have uh changed the classrooms around a bit uh everybody has been working through that since they’ve heard even the first day on monday they’re thinking about how to be creative in their classrooms i have had a chance as john mentioned we all met with the teachers after john’s meeting yesterday so um dr satterfield and i met with uh the evoluth the coffin and the third grade at village together um partly because that whole school is going to be a whole school next year and we um decided to approach it that way and um as far as village is concerned again hats off to mandy murphy because

23:16 you know she gave us some of the bigger classrooms in the school she kept us all together and it’s looking like she’s going to try to keep doing that which would be um you know hardly any changes for third grade other than the kids coming back to school so um the custodians have been busy measuring rooms you know everything isn’t exactly perfect at village i think that you know it has so much more diversity as as far as the building is concerned itself which creates a little more challenges but again mandy and i work really closely together and almost everything that comes up we problem solve it and move on to the next step the next challenge so um we’re excited to have the kids back of course and looking forward to that next change

24:14 next up we’ll have dr satterfield thank you john um i i just want to say i’m just sarah do you have a question i’m sorry i i wonder if we should ask questions by speaker or or do you want to wait and bring everybody back at the end i was thinking of bringing everybody back at the end and what do you guys think yeah let’s run through mm-hmm that would be my preference yeah i agree go ahead all right thank you sarah um yeah yeah it’s funny that donna mentioned about the transition because i think that is probably the biggest thing at least for me and i think my our staff as well is um the really the resiliency when this came up out of the fly um

25:00 there’s been a lot of discussions of course but once we kind of knew there was a hard date the teacher’s a little surprised anxious but then they really kind of hit the ground running when we closed gary’s school and then the children moved to lower bell and then they moved over to evelyth and we had the bell teachers for two years um they’re really kind of used to running through these kind of things and and not just um standing still and um i’m really proud of the the kind of things that our teachers have done over the past couple years in the three years really with the multiple transitions that we’ve had um they’ve really come out on top um i’m going to echo a lot of what what donna said we’re in a good place with the um the hybrid as far as the students assessments going but we really do need to have the

25:45 students come in the building and we’re excited about doing that the past month or so we’ve had a number of students that have gone to five days not not just special needs or the early learning but some of the other ones that are that are struggling and i’ve had many teachers come to me the past few weeks and say you know so and so child they really need to be full day or five days i’m sorry um can we have them come in and just about every single time if we can make it happen we’ve made it happen um so i’m really excited to have all the students come in five five days a week until 12 15. it’ll be a fantastic experience i think for the children but it’ll be an adjustment for them as well one of the things that we mentioned yesterday in our meetings was it’s almost going to be like a first day of school once again for for

26:31 the children coming in it’ll be first day of school for the teachers they’re going to have to relearn procedures anything from what recess is going to look like to hallway walking to snack time to having children maybe that they haven’t seen since last fall in the classroom with them which will be a new experience so it almost be like a first day of school and that’s how we’re asking the teachers to approach it as far as the teachers go again that’s going to be an adjustment for them as well a good one i think but realizing again that they’re going to be having a full classroom full of students that they haven’t had in a year and that we’re going to have to do some more shifting as far as the facility and rooms go in terms of furniture i spent quite a bit of time

27:16 today this afternoon with custodians and with the teachers and going through the classrooms and moving desks around and moving shelves and bookcases and things like that so we can fit the children it’s a challenge but um as i said it’s something that i think we can do and the teachers are really pretty much excited about having the children in and being able to see them firsthand every day teaching is going to look a little bit different because we have the children spread out at six foot distancing of course in rows all the way back from one quarter of the classroom to another and as john mentioned earlier that does make a bit of a challenge with some of the technology that we use but those are all kind of workarounds that that we can we can um we can kind of work through it once we have the children in the building it’s it’ll be different but i think

28:03 it’ll be a good difference once we kind of get rolling into it and make some adjustments on the flies once we have the children in the building i think it’ll be it will be a positive um and i just want to thank the the teaching staff again for um really kind of as they’ve done so many times in the past just just coming up to the plate and really knocking it out um the other school committee um you were talking about people knocking it out of the park and i’m sure without a doubt our staff um at all all three all three of our buildings including thomas buildings they’re just gonna fly with it and it’s gonna be a fantastic experience

29:02 okay there we go under the current hybrid models our students are making strong academic performance despite doing well academically under the current hybrid model we came to understand that some students are feeling isolated and are experiencing social emotional problems as educators our staff recognize that our job is to teach the whole student both academically and social emotionally with our academic process uh progress well in place was time to open up other avenues of opportunity the plans to increase our students live learning time by returning to school for five learning days a week as seamless and as transparent as possible to accomplish this task we’re going to use the cohort a model students will attend classes from 805 to

29:49 12 15 monday through friday they will log out for lunch at 12 15 and return to attend remote classes from 1 30 to 2 30 on monday tuesday thursday and friday wednesday will be the same as it is currently teachers will be using that as planning time and to work with their cohorts from across the district as dr bucky had stated previously there are a lot of challenges that we’re working on uh tomorrow in our staff meeting to find solutions for some of these things with six foot spacing that means the classrooms are basically desks and chairs it will be difficult to use the smart boards and the easels that we have been using so the teachers are now working to figure out how to do instruction under these new conditions

30:36 there are questions on how allied arts are going to be able to do their work within the classrooms with six foot spacing i know that the special education department under dr um oxford are working now to make sure that all of the inclusion students and program students get the services that they’re required and then as dr bucky also pointed out there are a lot of logistical simple things that we have to figure out such as now with the introduction of the whole school coming back we have instead of 100 kids here and there it’s going to become 200 to 300 kids coming back at the same time that means our drop-off pick-up lines have to be changed our snack and recess breaks have to be re-coordinated to make sure that everything is done safely with the students

31:23 the glove school is extremely creative and very professional and will address these challenges as we did last march and as we’re doing since the beginning of the year i am confident the clever staff will be able to provide the services that our students are looking for thank you mr oda this is murphy i got concerns that maybe you didn’t want me to speak dr bucky i wasn’t on the agenda um i’m going to start with the positives really quickly we’ve had some really positive things happening this year and i know as we look towards the next step it’s just important to note that the hybrid model gave us small group instruction teachers built relationships with their students so now when we’re looking at bringing the whole class of students in

32:09 they’ve already built relationships with those small groups on both sides of the cohort so that’s been really nice the curriculum pacing has been on par with last year our aims with our aims web data as everybody else has already shared shows that were right on target with the curriculum for where we were last year so that’s been really nice our discipline has been an all-time low and in class disruptions enabling students to be more focused in class so as we discuss the possibility of bringing back students five days a week it’s important to reflect on what’s gone well and what will change and improve so it will be nice to plan lessons for just one group of students not planning for remote and hybrid in person at the same time and our major goal will be to focus on bringing back students um and bringing and focusing on their

32:55 social emotional well-being and education we’ll be reteaching routines procedures rules and schedule i’ve already got mr gallo and mr newsome working on a video to review spacing proper mask wearing mask breaks all the fun procedural stuff things that we’re planning for we will have to collect information from families as dr bucky noted before that may help us impact less movement around the building so we may be able to use those changes to our or those notes of change from parents and to our advantage here at village school our overall structure as everybody has said our schedule will remain pretty much the same it will just be that both cohorts will be live in the building together so we’ll have eight to twelve a break for lunch they’ll have independent work at home and then they’ll be attending

33:41 attending attending class remotely from 1 15 to 2 15. we’ve found that our advisory program has worked out really well this year so we’re going to keep that in the remote portion of the afternoon furthering that connection between our remote students and our in-person students so some of the things that we’re have that we’ve found are working well we’ll we’ll be able to keep consistent as we move towards these next changes we’ll adjust small pieces in our schedule so that allied arts classes are added into the in-person days as opposed to the remote days and we’ll be diligently looking at space as everybody else has already noted we’ll be reutilizing classrooms in the building to allow for more space currently we have 14 class lists that have greater than 20 students in them so for fifth and sixth grade this may mean a team of 40 students or greater will move teachers

34:28 move teachers move teachers and students so that students are that are in a class of greater than 20 students have the larger classrooms in the building this means classes in grade six may be in a hallway with grade four and classes in grade five maybe in a hallway with grade four or six so areas such as the auditorium and band room have been used for shared teaching spaces right now where we have remote tutors or other people we may be repurposing those into us reassigning them as primary classroom spaces this is a process that’s been happening throughout the year at village school as we adjust schedules and maximize time on learning for example we’ve moved remote teachers into office spaces and we’ve our so that we can move inclusion teachers to have the larger classrooms for students that are in person so these are changes that have been happening

35:13 throughout the way it’s just a bigger change and as we know change is always something that you look at how do we maximize and use this to the best of our ability so the physical space will be reimagined as dr bucky mentioned we’ll be using it will really be allowing for teacher desks will be removed from the classroom so that students have desks in the classroom wall-to-wall bookshelves will be moved to the hallways so that students can still access those independent reading books and other items that they may need and students may be close to the whiteboard but thinking creatively we may have students bring in their own devices or we may be utilizing apple tvs paired with ipads or other technology needs so that we can not worry about having to use projectors so thinking creatively on that piece

35:59 we’ve already purchased rolling whiteboards so that when the weather is warmer students may go outside for outdoor learning i’m really hoping that it gets warm soon so if you have questions at the end i’m happy to answer any more questions that might be specific to village school i actually think we’ll pause their four questions because we’re sort of talking about bringing k-6 back and then other issues with 7-12 so let’s uh let’s go for some questions at this point

36:33 i will okay go ahead meg can everyone hear me okay yeah um so i guess first of all i just want to say thank you um you know when we in our last school committee meeting this is what we asked for um john from you and from the leadership team and from the teacher so um you delivered and i appreciate that um i think donna and bo and sean really highlighted some examples of the learning curve that you know our teachers and our students have had to contend with and i think you know everyone’s kind of done that um really just an amazing job with it around across the board so um i do appreciate that this might be a quick turnaround for teachers since they

37:18 just came back after break on monday um and from what we’ve heard here there is you know quite a bit of logistical pieces that need to be worked out never mind the physical pieces um so i do appreciate that that might seem at least a little bit overwhelming for teachers and i just want to acknowledge that you know this is less than you know a week that we’re asking them to kind of make a significant change to how they’ve been working for the past six months so i think that’s an important part um i do have some specific questions where’d i put all my notes um

37:58 because of those logistical issues um i’m happy with the march 1st date to get k through 3 in um i guess if everyone’s on board with that then i think that that’s a great start date mandy alluded to maybe some videos that were going to be done i’m just wondering if that’s something that you’re planning to do across the board for all buildings and students just to prepare them because it will be a change from what they are used to at this point um and for parents too because obviously parents can’t go into the classroom so is that something you’re planning to do across the board yes okay and do you have a timeline for that again i know it’s a quick turnaround so yeah i think uh building principles we talked about this during the leadership retreat

38:44 last week that because this will be a significant change giving students and families an opportunity to see in reality what a classroom will look like and so principals are already working on that okay so we can expect that maybe this week before they start on monday if they start on monday yes okay i think that’s part of the conversation this evening and each of the principles and i’ve alluded to the logistics of this um

39:15 i would like a march first but i would like for it to be successful when it launches and so that’s the calculus right now is and you’ve heard me say this multiple times just because we can should we and we can start march 1st but we can probably start more successfully march 8th or wait until that quarter change at the k to 6 or the trimester change for k to 6. we can do anything because this is a major change i want to make sure it’s successful and so i think in hearing from each of the principals that in hearing from teachers they’re going to hit the ground running they’re going to do exactly what they did last

40:01 march and make that major shift but if we could give them a little extra time to make sure that they can operate in the classrooms with the increased number of students i think that would be well received i can piggyback on that from the meeting with mea earlier today that that was a really strong sentiment um that i took away just how much they would appreciate more time than what you know that they take their craft very seriously that they want to be prepared for their students to come in and they feel that additional time particularly from the first um again like john said whether it’s the eight i think the hope is from them i think the hope was the 15th after the trimester break um but

40:48 that’s to be determined um so you know the more time is better for them

40:57 okay so is that something that we want to make a call on or is that something that you’re going to make a call on like how do we kind of proceed with that i think that the i had this conversation with another school committee member today that that has been a bit of a moving target that we started in september by school committee approving the cohort model and then when we did a deviation from that and went to a full remote week the belief or the understanding was that that should have been a school committee decision and so as we’re making this major change to collapsing the two cohorts into one i wanted to make sure that if it were a school committee decision you had the ability to make that decision or to

41:44 direct me as the superintendent to make that decision okay okay so do you sarah do you want us to just kind of continue with our questions and come back to this is that the best approach okay all right fair enough so thank you um

42:06 so can we talk about the wednesday um because i think brian mentioned that if i heard it right wednesday would still the wednesday afternoon would still be a non-school time or an asynchronous school time for students is that across the board um i would ask brian to speak to that for the glover school because i did not know that to be across the board yes i might have heard it wrong sorry if that’s the case

42:42 can you hear me yep go ahead brian yes we have been planning to use the same wednesday afternoon um as a planning period that we have been using since the beginning of the school year um as instead of having asynchronous classes in the afternoon we were planning on using it for teacher planning time it’s when they get together with the cohorts from the other elementary schools they meet in the afternoon and then they go back to their own professional learning communities and continue the planning for the week and under this model you’re dramatically increasing the face-to-face time on learning from the structured learning time minimum of the state so they will have 40 hours

43:28 of in-person over that two weeks yes okay i guess um my question is more around consistency across all the elementary grades so that you know it’s not we’re not doing one thing at one school and something different at the other schools so i guess that would be my suggestion anyways to make sure that that’s consistent for everybody okay um i think those are my major my major questions right now thank you

44:02 um um i’m happy to let emily go i hopefully will get rid of my background noise in that meantime okay go ahead emily um so just to um emphasize what megan said thank you for this awesome announcement and exciting news and um i think there’s going to be a lot of happy children in marblehead when they find out about this um i did have a couple questions also so um at glover they’re doing the afternoon remote session and i didn’t hear that if the village third grade and the coffin third grade were going to have that afternoon session as well i did hear that

44:47 that that at evoleth um it was voluntary but just for uh one through three will it they have that same remote every day or monday tuesday thursday friday yes that’s correct okay yes and then wednesday would continue to continue to be the professional development right okay um

45:13 and then i think another this is more like a comment so mandy said how they’re pairing technology with the whiteboard issues because kids will be right um underneath it so i think if other schools want to use those ideas i think that’s great to have kids bring in their own devices or use some of the ipads that we have as a way to see so i’m sure that’s all being shared but i think that’s a great idea to kind of help with that um issue so thanks for the being creative and thinking outside of the box on all these ideas so thank you to everybody and that’s that’s it

46:01 hi um i apologize to still have my little visitor who’s you might hear in the background um so i i have you know probably a lot more questions than i think we’ve had so far um so i thought i heard mandy say in order to accommodate the teachers would no longer have a desk in the classroom um so they can’t really stand and walk around the classroom and they’re not gonna have a desk so how are we gonna facilitate them doing what they need to do i’m going to answer that john sure so um in order to fit the student desks in the room the teachers have large desks they won’t be able to have that there we’re going to look creatively at maybe

46:48 stand-up desks that teachers have because they’re going to need some sort of teaching tool off of that a lot of our teachers already wander the classroom anyway but they will need a spot to have as their own so we’re looking at those specific spaces they’re a little bit smaller to figure out what that might look like whether it’s a smaller class we were meeting with the custodians and talking about that today um if it’s a smaller desk or if it’s a stand-up desk or uh something else that we can provide for them [Music] if if they’re wandering the classroom and we’re six feet that right there we’ve checked that cumulative 15 minutes for the day if you have a positive case and now we have a quarantine teacher um so that’s a concern um and then you talked about with the

47:35 whiteboards needing to use possibly some creative technology and i i continue to be amazed by the the learn the time these teachers will put into learning new platforms or ways to teach to make this work um but with our tech infrastructure being what it is do we really feel we can handle i mean we’re crashing a lot now with half the student load do we feel we can handle the full student load in there now with everybody possibly with a device so that they can see what they would be seeing on a whiteboard so these are conversations that i’ve just started to happen i pulled a technology person into my room today we wrote a grant a few years back at village for ipads

48:21 and the apple tvs and i think pto helped out with that as well so we have those pieces some of those pieces in some of the classrooms in order to do that so we’re just starting that conversation and then we’ll follow through with teachers trying to to problem solve that piece okay because i know we do have severe limitations of our tech infrastructure right now um my next question is the elephant in the room i was on teaching and learning and at countless meetings if not every single meeting we talked about how do we get these students back in would these students need to be back in and our hurdle was always six feet and i heard every principal say they measured

49:06 these rooms and they just couldn’t couldn’t make it work um so i think the elephant in the room is why does it suddenly work um and i’m sure there’s an answer but i’m only asking it because i know it’s a community concern so i figured let’s ask it now people can get an answer versus a public comment when we can’t get some answers so if each principle could speak to what the element is that changed that makes it possible now

49:38 i can go first since i was just speaking i think for me it’s the data that john said we’ve seen we’ve seen positive uh we haven’t seen positive transmission in the school we’ve seen the positive success of the school and it’s the enrollment i if we were to go at the beginning of this year and take all of our students in the building and that’s what we were doing is making sure that we could fit all of our students in there’s no way we could do this right now even if we added every single remote student into our building we wouldn’t be able if every remote student decided to come back we would not be able to accommodate that so i think it’s knowing what we have for our enrollment right now and basing on that and seeing the data and where we’ve come from i could piggyback on that i feel the

50:25 same way as mandy part of its enrollment part of it is where we were in the fall as opposed to where we are right now just as john said at the very beginning um at the very beginning of the school year i remember students parents and staff being really anxious about having 10 students in the classroom now it’s a little bit different we know about transmission we know about things like viral load which never entered into my mind until this past fall but we can make it work and as i said it is a little bit different we have we have desks that are much farther up toward the front of the classrooms or the smart boards are um we took even more furniture out of the classrooms um and really those are the factors that kind of turned it around for us but mainly i

51:11 think it’s because of the um the enrollment and and then the the science that we know right now about the transmission i think at glover we’re right at the top with 20 students basically you know every classroom so we couldn’t take any more and at the beginning of the year we had more students so we couldn’t possibly do it without bringing in new teachers and setting up other classrooms to be able to accommodate that number and as everyone’s alluded to we were concerned of course with the large class size six foot spacing how would we teach but as we have known now we’re right there our performance is going quite well and we’re where we’re supposed to be academically so we think it’s time to be able to experiment and bring in more

51:56 kids and do the six-foot spacing with old class again at glover we can’t take anyone coming back in from a mode because that would warrant another classroom somewhere

52:11 so i i guess it’s my turn to chime in um for me sarah i feel like i knew at evolut school it was one of the few schools where we could probably have squeezed the kids in because the classrooms are fairly large and there is a couple extra rooms there but i just feel we were in such an unknown territory um even the summer

52:36 the first thing that happened was you know we all came back we had been out of the buildings totally and then there was anxiety when we had the teachers come back in i mean every little step of this was like um there was i don’t want to say fear but we were very cautious and i think with educators we always focus on the safety it’s always wanna we can’t teach the kids if we can’t um maintain and keep a safe learning environment so with covid and the unknowns of covid and the risks of children and parents getting sick i think we took a really cautious approach and i think it was what we

53:22 needed to do at the time because there were so many unknown factors we didn’t know how fast things were going to happen as far as the things spreading in our classrooms but i would also say you know we started out in that cohort model we did start out with bringing the younger kids in right from the beginning and even the cohorts you know that was a one of those mitigation things in my mind to make sure we had control factors before we put everybody in i think if we put everybody in we may have not have been as as successful as we have been with what we’ve done um you know there’s certainly been a lot of changes but there’s been some positive

54:07 things like working with the kids in smaller groups and having an opportunity for 10 or 12 kids in the classroom with a teacher um you know the teachers were surprised i will tell you you know when i’ve gone through the building and checked in with the staff how are kids doing how do you guys think things are going you know when you think of a child last year in october um how do they appear to you or are they coming along in all the 10 ways we would expect a little kindergartner to be coming along and i you know it was a little bit surprising but it was like yeah they were really um happy by the end of october they were telling me that they they really felt

54:54 with the smaller class sizes some of the things that we had done that the kids were making great progress even that early so i would say yeah maybe you know you could have done it in one school one building but then you couldn’t have done it because wha what would little glover do if you threw the everybody in evoluth and didn’t offer that same opportunity in your glover building so um i just think we have to understand we came from a spot of so many unknowns and now um we’re shifting to knowing more and we have to just keep going um things are in constant motion this year it’s probably been one of the hardest things for every single educator and

55:40 you know we just have to adapt and be ready and move on to the next challenge thank you very much um for all that information um the other piece of this is so and i and brian spoke to it when we had our meeting i think it was two weeks ago um one of the things i brought up was the importance of now that we’ve really changed our our method of um teaching right now i mean this is a drastic change and it’s a change that you know our students needed and i i fully support um i have issues about it only happening for half the kids but that will be i’ll discuss it at a later point um but

56:26 but but you know as we all make this drastic change it was a concern for me that we allow children and families to make changes um to their decision and what i’m hearing here is this the the success of this this being able to happen is really dependent on not allowing anybody that is in remote um or to come in but we also have the other factor of people that are homeschool could re-enroll um and i don’t think legally we can tell them they can’t um people that might have been private may come back i think that one’s less likely um but the idea that there’s going to be no changes i want to make sure we’re not

57:13 putting something out here that is so that we’re walking such a tight line that if we if we keep our word and let people change like we said two weeks ago we would that it will negate the the capability of running this program i want to make sure we’re setting this up for success and we can get people back and we’re not pulling the rug out in you know three or four weeks if all of a sudden we have an influx of people wanting to do this so what is our path forward to allowing that movement between the cohorts and what is our plan if we recoup some of these homeschool families or or people who have left for other reasons sarah can i answer some of that we have already looked at that like evelyth has room to take kindergarten

57:59 kids in if they want to come back from remote um coffin has space in grades one and two i believe right sean that we can move kids back in in third grade village also so yes they may not be able to come back to glover but there are rooms in other schools in the district that they can return to so they can go back to live learning okay so any any family in any student that wants to go back to live learning will be granted that no one will be turned right away because of black spacing well i think dr bucky could probably answer that better because if we run out of space we’re gonna have to hire another teacher and set up a room but that will be done john did you want to yeah and i think that people have already noticed that there are postings and anticipated vacancies

58:46 that if we make this model change and we need to uh run an additional section of kindergarten or first grade or second grade we want to be able to do that as i say work we have the capacity to do almost anything we might need a little time in order to make it happen and so if we launch this k-3 on monday i would love to be able to make all the changes at once but it’s just not feasible if there are 15 families that move one way or another and that might be a good indication of why we wait put out a survey to families say what is your anticipated change i have the remote

59:33 cohort numbers uh the fully remote students and our capacity to take people that may have been in remote that went to hybrid that are looking at this to say oh not not really wanting my child to be in a room with 20 people i think we really get into a dilemma when we start looking at everything as a binary choice in covid it’s either this or it’s that and as i’ve said from the beginning it’s not sarah and i met with the teacher today who said i haven’t had a desk in my classroom in years and so it’s not that all teachers will not have a desk now but some classrooms where to maximize the number of students in that room it might be the teacher desk that moves and so

1:00:19 will all children be on technology at the same time no we have technology infrastructure problems but that doesn’t mean that we won’t use technology because not all children can be on it at the same time and so i just want to caution us from these binary choices of it has to be a hundred percent one way or the other and look for that fertile middle ground where there’s compromise and it doesn’t mean white boards won’t get used ever again correct i mean depends on what’s happening in the classrooms you know breakout you know groups for reading and then maybe the whiteboard is being used however that approaches it’s just it’s change correct i think that’s the key point in that we all have to be flexible here

1:01:05 and i think our teachers and our and our principals have shown that they’ve done an amazing job being flexible throughout the whole year and you know i i think and our students as well and we’re just going to continue to be flexible to make this work yeah i i just my comment just and other people can it’s not a question but you know starting with you know right right with donna you know sean brian and mandy we’ve heard nothing but positivity and they’re talking about how the reaction of the teachers has been to these changes and um most importantly um i think it was um you know they were talking about it being the first day of school it will be it’s going to be exciting for these kids to be back with

1:01:52 um you know 18 19 kids in their classroom instead of maybe nine or ten that they might have known last year and now they’ve been in a different cohort so i think that’s really exciting and i’m i’m really excited about the positivity that i’ve heard from from all of your all of the staff john i mean we’ve seen this before during other times prior to covet but um i just want to thank them for you know being creative being flexible and looking at this because i agree i think one of the biggest things that’s changed from august is we just have to remember there was so much that was that period of time where kova just sort of started coming back

1:02:38 and there was so much going on out there um it it impacted me personally i know at my place of work the the concerns went full circle from where they were in june and now where we are today it it’s the same thing that we’re hearing with elementary education and with the education in marblehead we just know more about it we know more about the cleaning we know more about as you said um what what can be done in classrooms and how we can handle these things so um it’s just i think this has just been a great meeting so far and i’m excited to have the conversation continue

1:03:22 jared did you have any more questions yes um so this one’s for brian you have a few programs that are housed in your in mandy also because they age up um programs in your building that are are wonderful models of inclusion um the access program the tides program um that although i don’t understand all the pieces my daughter would i had a child in one of the classes um where some of her peers were part of the program and i often saw you know they would come in with a service provider or an aide or multiple so those are bodies in the room too i want to make sure that for our special ed um students that they’re able to have all

1:04:08 those additional people that they need with them um to service their needs and that you know obviously we’re meeting everyone’s ieps that we always and we will because we’re required to but that we’re we’re able to still keep with the ratios and the spacing in those buildings um and you know keep up with the beautiful inclusion inclusive you know model that that is those programs

1:04:43 we’re we’re still planning on doing the inclusion in fact i had met with just lev levanciu who’s the bcba coordinator for access and she and i started the conversation today she carried it over with eric and that’s the plans that they’re working on now how do we continue we don’t want to lose that inclusion because that’s very important for children with these type of disabilities to be able to get into the classrooms so yes we are going to do it we may have to do some experimenting to help figure out how to do it correctly but that isn’t our plans oh eric there you are do you want to speak about this i’d love to good evening um yeah so thank you sarah i think it’s a great question it’s i think one of the few fortunately that that we are still you know grappling with every single

1:05:31 detail i think the good news is that um those numbers of students that that do require require additional staff like in the grand scheme is a very small amount so that’s a good thing the second thing i think the big word the key word that you used is really analyzing examining staff that are needed and i think that we which i love always go above and beyond in terms of having you know staff in these classrooms and i think it’s it’s an opportunity certainly to you know ensure to your point that we you know based on our required a requirement to ensure the appropriate staffing that we’re really strategic about which staff are in these classrooms and i think a lot of times we get unintentionally in our own way in terms of thinking about specific staff that are from

1:06:17 specific programs that go into these classes and we may have at times two different staff members from two different programs going to one classroom and we don’t necessarily always need that so i think in and actually i know and to brian’s point jess and in our team chairs i know we’re talking k-6 right now but really k-12 are already on that you know we’re already thinking forwardly about what that’s going to look like and you know in the spirit of of what we’ve continued to do across the board we’ll collaborate uh with parents and communicate that out so it’s a good question i don’t have a set set answer for you but i don’t foresee that being a large challenge at all no that was a great answer i just wanted to make sure that we were maintaining inclusion um for all those students um another group that i want to make sure that we’re we’re thinking about um and

1:07:03 my sense is that there won’t be it won’t be too impacted but um how does this affect the metco students and is there any concerns there because i want to i just want to make sure that all of our students are you know getting a positive benefit from this i think that i’ll pick up that and i’ll ask nan to fill in any blanks i think we’d be remiss not to talk about the fact that the second day of planning for this we invited all of the team chairs across the district to participate in the planning to address those questions about services and inclusion so that they were part of the conversation as we built this one of the things we did was to develop

1:07:50 a document of questions and make sure that everything was being considered and so i know nan has been working with heidi harris who i also see on the screen to make sure that this is a seamless and high heidi waving a seamless transition for our metco students so either nan or heidi if you want to jump in and take this

1:08:11 sure i’ll do that heidi and i um have been on the phone a couple of times talking about this together um he’s been quiet all all night and now now he’s gonna bark um so we have we’ve made the exciting decision to bring our metco students back for a full day so if for example if they come in for the morning um they will um have their four hours of in-person instruction and then have lunch and have some supervised support to do some work and then join and log back on for the remote section of their um day which is 1 30 to 2 30 in

1:08:56 the afternoon and then the bus will transport them back home so um they’re actually going to be offered more time and more support in the district and um heidi and i both have a meeting planned a parent forum pending the result of of this evening we have a forum planned with parents tomorrow night to bring them up to speed and to share the changes and to answer any pending questions they may have thank you very much um and i’d love to hear the the results of any of that too nana’s as the after you have that parent meeting if there’s any specific concerns um now you you know in your presentation

1:09:41 john that you had the meeting with the staff yesterday um and that the you had you addressed the teacher’s questions and concerns can you just walk us through what those main questions and concerns were just so that we have an idea um you know and we can be cognizant of our students and our staff’s needs um i think you know the answer to that sarah is that mine was an overview at the district level and then they split into building level because the questions would be more granular at the classroom or program level and so i gave an overview much like i gave to school committee this evening of what the proposal would be to school committee and then allowed building principals to meet with their staff to

1:10:28 ask questions i know mandy murphy at village put together a survey another school put together a google document so people could start adding questions to that they have faculty meetings tomorrow to address some of those questions so i didn’t specifically address concerns with the district overview but this is something that i feel you have support for i do all right david i just want to say for our k through 6 6th graders this is a wonderful development um and i i’m very eager to hear how we’re going to provide this for all of our students

1:11:18 did you have anything else that you wanted to add all right um i want to thank everybody as well i know that you guys have been hard at work you know i heard this last the kind of the update last thursday morning at the reopening committee um and you know there’s a lot that’s going into that and that has gone into this um and will continue to go into it and so i think you know again one of the things that i took away from sitting in at the mea meeting this after that at the meeting with john in mea this afternoon was sort of a wish for more time um and i think i didn’t want to sort of go to that point before i was in that meeting and then hearing from the teachers in there it was really helpful

1:12:03 to hear how that time would be utilized and again just kind of that reminder that we all really we’re all taking care of each other here um and that giving the teachers a little bit more time is going to help them care for the kids better um you know in the short and long term so i think that’s just you know if i’d like to impress that upon the committee because i know we’ve all since the february 4th meeting i think it was um been really gung-ho on getting getting kids back in the classrooms as quick as possible um and as john has mentioned a few times you know it may and i think something from the fall was you know

1:12:50 or maybe dorothy presser the this you know go slow to go fast or start slow to go fast um and that’s kind of what’s where my head is is at at this point [Music] maybe comment and question um i agree on that piece i think i said it too that i can see how that could be an overwhelming move for teachers given the logistics and and for principles really for everyone involved just given the logistics um entailed um so i am you know i don’t see any issue with giving them a little bit more time because we also want teachers to feel confident in what they’re gonna deliver and that impacts the student’s success too so i think um that makes sense i guess my question is right now the plan

1:13:36 is a phased approach so k through three and then four through six um does it need to be could all students go back on that you know if we gave perhaps another week for example or the term if we need to but then could they all start on the same day i would think so yes and i think i think it’s important to note that you heard from four building principles this evening and not part of any of their presentation was there was resistance to this or teachers didn’t support this or teachers were opposed to this so i think principals have met with their staff and of course there are going to be questions or concerns but to suggest that our staff are not in

1:14:22 unison of wanting to get students back into classrooms which is what they have said since august this is a big step there will be questions concerns anxieties but to insinuate that teachers do not support this or are opposed to this i just want to be clear that in the meeting with mea today from their leadership we did not hear that correct and i’m sorry if any of my words uh insinuated that because what i took away from there was that they would they would you know they’re gonna do what they need to do as they’ve done all year but that it would be greatly appreciated if there could be a little bit more time to really get their feet under them yeah emily

1:15:08 was there a date that was specified so i think that date is sort of the trimester break um that that was the one that kept coming up so it would be a return on the 15th um you know i think there’s conversation to be had around the 8th versus the 15th okay so if it was the 15th or the 8th it would be all grades k through 6 would start together i think so and then does that give enough time to send out a survey to find out who if anyone wants to go between the two different models i think it would be tight but we could do it i think teachers would appreciate the logical break that we’ve talked about throughout the year a lot of echo am i echoing for you nope you’re good

1:15:54 throughout the year of those pivot points so the trimesters for k-6 or quarters for vets in the high school

1:16:05 is there am i on from a curriculum standpoint or from a student perspective is there like is there something that changes at that date like you know that was one of the things that was mentioned in the meeting today was that that there is sort of as the teachers look towards the end of the trimester or quarter but we’re talking about k-6 so it’s trimester um that there is sort of this natural kind of catching up that’s done so that they sort of end at that nice neat break um so that in their minds it was helpful i also think it you know one of the reasons that i pushed to have this meeting on tuesday night is because instead of rolling this out on thursday evening is because parents have work to do too you know

1:16:52 this if we send our k to three back next week the the parent working parents who have nannies need to readjust that you know i i’ll have to readjust mine um so i think there’s something to be said we we got an email i believe it was today maybe that didn’t go to the full committee maybe that was just me and you that was on that um from a working parent and um who lives in marblehead and has kids in the system and sort of asking like just just slow this down a little bit like give us all a little bit of time to get this into place and you know and i’m sure we’re gonna hear from plenty of people saying no you know do it on the first um so these are always with all of these decisions these are the pieces that sort of have to get waited out so the other piece of the trimester

1:17:39 break is then we would we would be able to not make it piecemeal with kids jumping it like it really would be at the first day of school like we could figure out who’s coming back from home school who’s transitioning from remote to full in person or vice versa there may be people that want to come out the other way and we really could start you know everyone so it’s not the teachers saying and this is how we move and this is the new way and then doing it again a week later with a new group of kids we could accommodate everybody and start everybody fresh because that’s the natural marker we’ve told people

1:18:18 i’ve said to several people that a third of our constituents are going to think that this is too little too late and we should have done it sooner a third will think too fast reckless too soon and that area in the middle is where we want to find comfort in people feeling that it isn’t too little or it isn’t too much and doing this in a way that the rollout is successful my biggest concern is the people who want to switch between i don’t because if it is gonna cause like a glover student who’s coming would want to come back and they have to go to a new school i mean that’s like a huge

1:19:04 change for someone and i think that information needs to be found out right away like basically send it out find out who wants to do anything and then have that and then we can kind of um figure it out from there i mean obviously the date will be set but we got that’s like to me some of the most important information that we need to find out because if um i don’t know if it’s going to be a lot of people but if it is that’s a lot of logistics beyond just like the physical space that i think that will need to be figured out for everybody and john said depending on that we may need to hire someone exactly so that you’re gonna take care of someone by monday

1:19:49 right so that’s my only that’s one of my big concerns i don’t think man and i don’t have tricks up our sleeves if we have to pivot and do marked first no but i’m thinking to keep it smooth and make everyone feel comfortable in the um in this new change because we want everyone to feel good about it so how do we do that for everyone i do recall mandy murphy saying she really likes being in the classroom

1:20:24 shall we move to teach wednesdays do matt fox and dan bauer for the high school middle school 7 to 12. sorry just on that one do we need to make an official decision or no i think that would be helpful if we want to do that for the k-6 now if you’re prepared to make a motion i’d like i’m just asking like what what do we want to do do we want to kind of close this conversation station out and move on or do you want to hold it till the end i don’t care i see them as too distinct so if you made a k-6 determination now we could move on to 6-12 or 7-12 so is anyone interested in making a motion to support the move support the plan to move k to six a and b cohorts together for five half days a week starting march 15th

1:21:14 i’d like to hear the the seven through 12 presentation because i i view our student body as a collective student body and i’m not comfortable with this um piecemeal of breaking them up but if it’s the will of the committee that’s fine i don’t care okay we can continue to move on i don’t have any taking on that motion so well i mean i think it’s just i i mean sarah i think we’re on the same page here having a second grader who stays in the classroom all day is very different than a junior who’s at the high school uh changing classes all day long with different teachers different cohorts i totally working through the hallway right

1:21:59 i totally appreciate that but two weeks ago we we were overcome with emotion from hearing about the the mental health crisis of our adolescent and teen population and um that that is something that sat with me and has sat with me every day since then um so it it’s hard for me to imagine that one of these decisions does not somehow impact the other in some way that there’s not any type of ripple effect um i just i i’m very concerned with what we heard two weeks ago um

1:22:43 i agree i agree and i i you know i look forward to hearing dan bauer speak and and matt fox speak about how they’re going to move their schools forward just like we did with the elementary school principals but i i think they’re they’re two distinctly different learning groups that um and we’re fortunate that we have you know separate schools you know vets as a stand-alone school and the high school is a stand-alone school and you know there’s different challenges with education and i think we’ve heard at least from the segment of k-6 what they can do and what they’re looking to do and that doesn’t necessarily mean that

1:23:28 um we can’t aspire to do the same thing in seven through 12 and that we won’t hear some of the same things from dan and matt so i don’t think necessarily that voting now on k-6 closes the door on anything for 7-12 i agree and i think you’ve i think anybody who’s caught up on uh commissioner o’reilly’s uh decisions and statements today knows that k to six is a different animal than seven to twelve unfortunately as much as we want to not have it be the case it just is yeah okay so do we wanna motion do you wanna motion david

1:24:07 well i i mean i i think we could and close the chapter and move on to seven through twelve okay so i asked for motion to um support the plans to move k-6 in person five days a week half days starting march 15th k-6 k-6 i’ll second that is that what i said yeah this would make the motion so moved oh sorry a little second second all right after any additional comments on that i think that this is the right thing to do so so

1:24:52 my thoughts are and i’m i can we can talk about this but if if we had initially thought about uh k to three next week and then four to six the following week if if we want wanted to give everybody um an additional week i know you said everybody could megan asked the question could everybody you know come together on that on that date so so now k to six um once again granted they’re different schools and things everybody would would come together on that one date but you know i’m just wondering if we gave k-3 all of next week um

1:25:42 because because there wasn’t going to be that week we we were talking about k1 and and i am very interested in hearing from from the public comment because um each of you here are our parents of and sarah are parents of of k-6 students and i and i think i think that is another piece of it that the parents need to make an adjustment you know whatever they’re doing in at home with their families and their kids and their children and their daycare and and everything you know it’s everybody’s eager and excited to go back but i think there needs to be some uh planning there and and discussion and and um what that’s going to mean so maybe the first wasn’t the best but um

1:26:27 i i feel like dates is getting into the weeds i think that john needs to make a recommendation for a date as as the you know the operations manager if you will okay um that’s an operational decision i would say and that’s his purview so i think he needs to make a recommendation for a date and then we need to either approve it or not it is my i just think that we’re starting to try to micromanage out of our purview if we start talking dates am i right in understanding that the recommendation is the 15th yes okay okay so so the so it’s the recommendation is the 15th for k-6 okay okay yep i had misunderstood i thought it was still going to be staggered and then it would fall to the 22nd

1:27:12 no okay so so the 50. okay um yeah i obviously with my parent hat on i would love to get my children into school as soon as possible and i know that they would love that too i know they’re very very eager and anxious like david said um but we have to do this in a logical and realistic fashion too um there’s a lot of moving parts on on all sides so i think to allow the teachers the time that they need to make those adjustments to get our children comfortable with it the families you know then yeah i’m i’m fine with that i’m just happy it’s gonna happen yes agreed i very much wanted to go home and wake up tomorrow and be able to tell my

1:27:58 third grader that he was going back on monday because he asked me about it today

1:28:04 but i think the 15th will will suffice thank you thank you all right so we’ve got a motion and it’s been seconded i’ll take a roll call vote sarah gold yes megan taylor yes emily baron yes david harris yes and sarah fox abstaining and i want it noted for the record it’s because we didn’t have um the full i can’t i i don’t feel comfortable voting without knowing how this affects our entire student body um i support the return to school um i reached support bringing our students back but i want to know how this affects our entire student body and it feels weird that four of us um kind of put our own kids back in school and we haven’t heard how it affects the other kids and i know that’s not oh i

1:28:51 have an eighth grader so i i hold on no that’s completely unfair to to suggest that anyone on this committee does not support getting our kids all kids back in school is really not it’s not no it’s out of order it’s out of my i i was saying that if you’d let me finish it i know that’s not how anyone here is voting however the optics on this are not fabulous i know you’re all voting you know not like that but i’m saying you know we all just went around about how excited our kids are i want to know how this affects all of our students before i vote on it and for that reason i’m abstaining so i have an eighth grader and i’m incredibly concerned about him far more concerned about him than my

1:29:39 third grader so just you know that can be in the record as well that that and and the and this seven to 12 is where is my specialty in my profession so i’m incredibly concerned about this entire group and just because we can we can do one thing for one group and it’s going to be a different situation for another group it doesn’t mean that we should leave any other group out so yeah i just wanted the full i felt i needed the full presentation as i noted prior before i was prepared to vote and that’s why i’m abstaining because i didn’t get the full presentation all right i believe that it’s matt fox’s turn

1:30:25 as john led off tonight with um and what you’ve talked about k6 is is a little different than 712 our schedules are more complicated our classes are much larger um and it’s more difficult to balance them per se besides the classrooms uh the work that dan and i along michelle carlson dupage and julie ferreira did this summer um we we can’t we can’t return everybody at six foot base uh spacing it’s just this is not possible uh it would have to be three foot spacing um it’s it’s just not possible to have a six foot total return to school like the elementary and i i hate to start with a downer statement but i think we have to be realistic because we had to move from there because uh the

1:31:11 goal the charge from dr bucky was how do we prioritize time in school for students still manage uh the spacing still manage the requirements of the state which is you know the the hours by you know the district average um by you know live live experiences every day for students so we had a lot of parameters um trying to to the most to the best of our ability keeping seven through 12 together because you know if we’re going to step aside from us really a pre-k a k-12 model we we want to run the district as much as we can under die you know dr bucky’s province there of a of a 712 approach so looking at a bell schedule a cohort rotation that that matches up um

1:31:56 so that led us to take a look at a couple different options the first option of course would be to stay with our current hybrid and we know there are you know challenges with that um there are benefits to that too option b though is what we are bringing to the table now we went back to [Music] early july pulled out one of our old models and modified it and spent a good time on that so what we’re proposing as option b would be two cohorts in a day so that means every student monday four days a week um would attend a portion of the day to school so two cohorts in a day so it would look like monday morning a would be cohort a would be in the morning monday

1:32:41 afternoon cohort b would come in tuesday the opposite be in the morning in the afternoon wednesday would stay remote because we have some shared staff that we have to you know keep that too and it brings everybody together thursday we go back to a the morning be in the afternoon and be in the morning and afternoon on friday um these are about three hour chunks in eight to eleven and eleven thirty to eleven thirty five to two thirty um these are um you know divided up by the classes so for us that would mean four classes in the morning three classes in the afternoon and then a big bonus you know what we heard about uh is an in-person advisory uh at the school now for us um so that’s sort of like the general overview of the model that dan and i are talking about and

1:33:27 what we’ll do is i’m going to go into positive some implications and unknown and then dan is going to go to the same thing for the high school so some of the positive for vets from option b we get more in person time we go from 16 hours over two weeks in person time to 23. so we jump up in the number of hours students are in front of teachers and with their classmates we increase uh students being in the building from two days a week to four days a week uh they’re in the building four days a week uh with that time and with that in-person time uh we get more social emotional supports and connections um with you know teachers will students look at that with the teachers and peer-to-peer connections if you see your peers more often

1:34:13 we still at the middle school somehow miraculously meet the 34-hour required 35-hour requirement i don’t know how but the math worked out so that was the last thing we went through um our classes at the middle school will go from 33 minutes to 42 to 46 minutes each so we actually get longer classes um believe it or not um our in-person our advisories will become in person now so instead of virtual advisories where to be honest we struggle with attendance with our with our advisors right now uh we’ll be able to do more in-person activities with our students then it reduces um for the hybrid students remote classes will now only be on wednesdays so instead of juggling through remote meetings in the afternoon and things like that

1:35:00 they’re all in person except wednesdays and our homework club now would be in person we would run a couple of homework clubs on mondays and tuesdays when students whoever’s in the afternoon could stay after meet with teachers get assistance and things like that so those are all some of the positives that we pulled out here vets for the for option b some of the implications if we make this change um i think the biggest one this to sort of get over is um it’s an impact on the families uh different arrival and departure times um it’s it’s a change you know three essentially three quarters of the way through the year the challenge the change you know if the students getting picked up they’re getting picked up around you know noon and and the dismissal would still be sort of around noon or their arrival would be around noon if they’re in the afternoon cohort it would be the

1:35:45 afternoon cohort of 2 30 um would sort of be the change um but we’re also moving to weather that you know students can walk home you know or we’re heading into the spring hecate i think it’s gonna be 50 on friday um so the that’s that’s a big one that that i think when you hear from our parents from about that um so obviously drop-off pick-up plans need to change if a student’s watching the under younger younger siblings in the afternoon and there they had to rotate through the afternoon cohort that’s going to be a challenge um it’s already been addressed there’s we’re going to make some changes with the metco program and support our students that way um and then to support those in-person advisories we would have to have some students change their advisories at this point all remote students all students who are

1:36:31 elected remote would have to change their advisory because they couldn’t be in the in-person advisory so we’d have to create some remote advisories and then some students because of those changes that are hybrid would also have to change their advisory too just because of gaps left behind and then the final thing the unknown is again what was addressed and what’s already been brought up before will this change you know necessitate for families to move um or drive families to move from one model to the next um and that’s when we get we get very tight um you know it’s it’s unfortunately the middle school in the high school it’s not as easy as starting up a new classroom you know if we have a good number of students returned or a good number of students go out it’s it’s

1:37:16 a it’s an entire reschedule for a team or a grade or possibly the building uh which which is um the challenging middle year so those are the positives implications and unknowns sort of where we’re sitting for vets for option b um dan i’ll turn over to you thank you mr fox um you know first of all before i get into our plan i just want to echo what what the other principals have said i’m extremely proud of our staff um and you can’t lose sight of the work that has been done throughout this year it’s been it’s been a year of adjusting it really has i believe we’ve been through five schedule changes throughout the course of the year right and certainly that impacts our students as well and our students are resilient i’m proud of them too but our teachers really have worked hard in

1:38:03 the resilient um and you know when dr bucky charged us last week with working on how can we bring students back as matt said uh we we’re in the same boat in terms of six foot spacing everything is based on that we’ve spent a lot of time this summer as matt’s crew did measuring and plotting and planning each classroom each section and as you remember we had to rebuild our whole schedule to be in a cohort model right we went from a three foot to six foot and it’s amazing the work that michelle carlson and christine chakowski did to turn that schedule around so we’ve done that piece so when we look at it we’re like how can we do this will the schedule change allow an afternoon in the morning to bring more students back absolutely just as matt said you know with an afternoon morning break our students would be back

1:38:48 four days versus the two days and utilizing a current grid if i could visualize that we’ve been using all year where we’ve been planning by the week i think is advantageous for us because that allows for some continuity as you bring another schedule change although it’s morning and afternoon it’s still you know we still have the the core day coming in the morning on mondays which they’ve done all year and b coming in the morning on tuesday so that continuity is there the remote wednesday is there as well so we’ve established those pieces um you know certainly having the students in the building more i i think certainly would be um you know and again i haven’t received a lot of student feedback we just haven’t had the opportunity to ask on that part but i i know our teachers are working hard and they’ll make the adjustments to

1:39:33 make it work as they as they always do the other piece too is we talk about screen time right and our current schedule two-thirds of the classes are virtual they’re remote so a change to this would then reduce it to really one-third of our schedule would be remote and that’s wednesday so the student that we would reduce screen time which i think we all want for our students and also the preparation that goes into preparing remote classes is maybe three times as much time required as in person it really is it’s a lot of work and we talked about how our teachers really have planned three modes this year in person remote and asynchronous so that that piece in itself i think would be beneficial in thinking of our staff as well but also for our students having some continuity there i believe would be really important

1:40:19 really important really important um certainly the import in person hours would be increased and you have that balance piece and i know our teachers have done a great job in terms of adjusting with assessments as best they can but it’s still a challenge and now having them in twice in the week they’re able to balance that because we know the time with them is very precious we do know that and we and we do appreciate that part i also think that um when you look at the implications you know obviously in this covet environment every typically in a normal year every move has a domino effect right one move is gonna there’s a counter move to everything and you have to balance that out in the covid what we’ve found is every move is not dominoes it’s avalanches so every move there’s there’s all sorts of movement around it so you

1:41:06 have to be careful and i do appreciate the piece that was said about time you know our staff can do anything but time is critical for them to make that juncture as simple as it might seem in a change with a morning afternoon there’s a whole lot of work that’s required for curriculum and shifting to that so time is really advantageous so i would say the implication for us at this point is i’m not as good at math as matt as i shouldn’t admit that publicly but there would be a decrease in in the overall learning time because something has to give the typical time we have with them is four hours right in the in the current hybrid model if you shift to a and pm it’s got to be reduced to three you have to do it in order to fit both in but is the way of having students in person more more

1:41:52 important than having you know two-thirds of our current schedule remote that’s that’s a piece that’s important the other part too is there’s some things that we’ll work through it’s just transitional right now you know the students are dismissed we jump in remote we we move on if we have an ampm would require as matt was saying that shift in the drop-offs and pick-offs now our our juniors and seniors they you know their transportation is usually different than our freshmen and sophomores in terms of coordinating that um and also to note our senior project begins mid-april so that’s going to change we’ll have seniors involved in that too but i think that’s something to keep in mind with our transitional point between cohorts um you know it’s going to be a quick turnaround we’ll do it we’ll get it done um and our students have done an

1:42:38 outstanding job waiting in the morning you’ve seen them line up and they come in we just would repeat that in the uh early afternoon also our medco students in some special education situations that require transportation that will be worked out and that has to be the forefront of our thinking and planning so all students are included and that’s critical um and obviously the unknowns are this and i think it’s been said you know with this the k through six presentation you know we’ve been in a pretty good mode once we’ve established the natural break at the quarter it isn’t that for all for for all educators and administrators it’s a natural break and our families are used to getting the form about you know potential change of learning mode a couple weeks out before the quarter break so they can look at it our

1:43:23 guidance department does a lot of work trying to break down the classes and now working with families to let them know hey this is what your schedule will look like so that time is is critical too because the unknown is you know will there be a change by moving to an am pm will families go out or come in and as situations change the unknown time is closer to that transition would be extremely helpful the other piece too and again just just throwing out i want to be transparent the our guidance department has prepared their course selection process based off the current hybrid schedule that has all the different openings so that they can meet with students individually throughout the month up until april 1st or override the whole process is built on that so any shift would require us

1:44:09 making an adjustment on on that piece so again the closer we can get to a quarter break i think would be advantageous for that piece and then finally the last component just to be transparent as well if the remote is reduced down to one-third we’re able to survive right now with quarantine situations based upon two-thirds of our current programming being remote but as we move closer to april and move out of there it may be less of a factor so i think i’ve been more than long-winded but again i just want to state again how proud i am of our staff and our students for being resilient making the changes and doing what’s best for students they want to our staff wants to produce an outstanding product for our students and they want what’s best for our students too they they really do so thank you

1:44:54 thank you both um can you just remind me when the quarter break third is ends april 1st and this fourth quarter begins monday april 4th

1:45:17 so so if no one else has any idea go ahead there um is freaky breaking into this a and thank you very much those were very thorough um presentations if we break into the this am pm um situation does that violate any contractual hours i know that you know we have a very specific number and i think a lot of the parents might might think a lot of the community might think well my kids are there from this hour to this hour but that’s not what our contractual hours are so i just want to make sure that um the math and that works now if you if you envision if you knew our schedule before um you know teachers taught you know the whole day long from eight to two thirty

1:46:03 this doesn’t change it for them it’s it’s an eight to two thirty day day for them and they’re teaching their five contractual classes in that day but aren’t they teaching them twice now teaching contractual classes in the morning and they’re doing a little bit more in the afternoon for us yes okay um i just want to make sure that that doesn’t require any new any negotiations this this model if i if i try to stay from the teacher viewpoint or from the student viewpoint when we’re going through this because honestly that’s where we make our decisions yeah to speak as a teacher um this is going to allow teachers to sort of slow down their their approach um and really focus on in-person instruction um and

1:46:49 it’s it’s been a hustle this year um and that’s that’s a that’s an understatement um it’s been a hustle and my teachers and vets i’ll speak to vets only um i can’t believe the work they’ve done this year and um so i think from a teacher viewpoint um this is this is a a nice approach it allows them to connect with their students in person more oh good and i can attest i’ve heard um one of your teachers tawny callahan speak very eloquently and passionately about how much she wants to do for her students and how hard this is emotionally on her as a teacher you know so i i can i can say i’ve seen it with my own eyes how deeply the teachers in your building care about their students um

1:47:35 um um how are we decreasing the hours per day matt but increasing the length of our periods because the way it works right now is you know we’re eight to 12 and we’re we’re fitting in seven classes in that eight to twelve spot uh now we’re going to an 8 to 11 and fitting in four okay so it’s we’re dividing the day our seven periods in half one group takes four in the morning one two group takes three an advisory in the afternoon and the next day they switch okay all right that makes a lot of sense um and and you said that both cohorts would be given the homework club right not just the pm right it’s the on monday the the header the you know it’s their in-person homework clubs so monday and tuesday whoever stays late monday so

1:48:22 that would be magicians for us that’s b they would have their homework club right down there and then headers next day could have their homework club in there in the afternoon um i have teachers running extra homework clubs i have you know we we’re we said we had a great lead teacher meeting today where tony was there actually we started brainstorming and having a great time about what we can do with our students with advisory now when it’s at the end of the day they know all their homework that they’re going to have going home what can we do to help them out you know can we start you know doing some tutorials through those and i mean it was we just went down the rabbit hole some of the things that we could do with that advisory period um to make it a really rich and learning time to beyond just the social emotional stuff we always do okay and for both um dan and matt so

1:49:08 would asynchronous instruction go away i’ll jump into that dance since i was been rambling uh we had that’s part of the discussion that that we’re going to have as the faculty and staff because that we call it aha work at home asynchronous works we call it aha work at our school um you know some teachers have been using aha as as really a way of flipping the classroom and moving it forward a little bit you know given the the shorter amount of time but at the same time then they might be sort of pulling back on homework so it’s been sort of a juggle um you know i personally and i want to talk this through with my faculty um you know i would lean towards because students are going to be in school every day that we sort of slowly start reverting back to the just standard approach of homework and we even talk today about putting together videos for students about how to manage their time

1:49:55 in this new schedule sharing that with students at upcoming advisories and then sharing that with parents at home like how are you going to juggle now when you have homework in the afternoon you got a virtual class the next day when should you get it done and we’d literally walk them through about how they’re going to do some of this time management piece for the last quarter of the year you know so that’s part of our approach that we’re taking as far as time management okay um and i is that the scene for you dan i’m assuming absolutely our it’s been a year of adjustment and certainly adjusting the asynchronous and certainly with the high schoolers you know um being able to to work through their schedule there will be an adjustment currently you know because now they’re seeing them more in person but there will definitely be a natural adjustment to that okay

1:50:41 um i just keep getting struck by the fact that we’re the magicians and and i really do feel like these teachers probably performed magic and flipping back and forth all year long um can you logistically get all your students in and out i think it might be actually easier in matt’s building because of the the way i at least when i drive by i mean it seems like there’s just a flood of children on the street first would you like me to speak to that so my post is out in front so i’ve been timing you know as we as we shifted remember we shifted to schedule number five we reduced our passing time to five minutes because we were timing it and saw five work so today it was like 13 minutes that once we dismissed again we’re only at half the building a little less because

1:51:27 of a remote learning cohort you take those students out so the traffic really was pretty much empty in about 13 14 minutes over the last two days so with that being said um you know we’ve done a good job our students have done a remarkable job we let them in at 7 45 and certainly the colder weather we haven’t wait in the field house where it’s a little warmer but they’ve done a good job now getting into the flow uh really it doesn’t take long to get them into the building so i think the important piece too is protecting the teacher and staff lunchtime right because that would certainly be a component that and that’s incumbent on the administrative team so we’ve been talking on strategies we’ll get the students out they get out quickly um

1:52:12 and then we’ll be able to wait until the next group comes in and then get them in and the other piece too is remember again senior project comes into play you know april breaks so some students will be off on internships and stuff and that may reduce the amount of traffic in in flow but the students have really caught on to you know getting it they know if they’re here at 7 45 they’ll get into the building by eight easy so um i i we we can do it um require the admin team to really work on that okay for us it’s it’s a similar sort of juggle you know we we have two cohorts and for whatever reason magicians are a little slower and their exit of the building and that’s today each cohort has its own personality but even today there were seven minutes you know our campus was cleared in seven minutes um

1:52:58 it’s you know it’ll fall on me and julia ferreira to manage that second start of the day um that’s because teachers will be in their lunch um but i you know i think it’s doable you know i think you’ve been asking parents if you’re gonna if you have to drop off and pick up then maybe we drop off on campus and pick up on the street you know something as simple as that where we’re moving the traffic into two different areas um especially in that middle of the day so i mean there’s there’s ways to work it out um that’s that’s part of the nitty-gritty and that’s why some some time between now and the start would be helpful yeah i actually when i think about not that a half an hour is i mean we went through all the traffic studies for the new school but the fact that this will be a half an hour before the the k through six might be better because then

1:53:44 it’s not the entire town out flipping at the same time because we know that that street can become congested more weather we’ll have more bikes so that’ll be even better in our building with better weather we’ll have more bikes so um um what i mean when realistically do you guys think this is going to take a fair amount of planning um when realistically do you think you would be able to implement this you know dan and i have talked so you wanted to yeah i mean certainly you know like i said our staff they do amazing things in making the transition and as long as they have the time to work out what they need curriculum wise and practices and then on us on making sure we have i believe

1:54:30 we have the guidelines down pat the mitigations and everything have been very successful the students have done a great job teachers so we have all that peace it’s just a matter of putting it together uh and again just that natural break piece i think to me just makes sense in terms of how that goes uh but i’m not making the decision on that but i’ll turn it over to matt if he has any different thoughts on that yeah and i think you know we we took a look at a few dates you know we said what can we get done here and there and i think the only thing looming over our heads um would be requests for changes um and when and when the change in instructional mode would happen for students you know depending upon what a family and um because like i said at the beginning it’s it’s a substantial change if we

1:55:16 have a big number of students leaving or returning um you know i have very few spots in our remote program it was very tight this last quarter um you know we’re we’re maxed in our remote program just about we’re 25 students and i can’t just open a classroom um you know to open a whole nother section remote if that’s the case would entail rescheduling an entire grade um students would have to change teams um and not just the students that want to go remote so it’s it’s impactful um so i think you know dan and i would would probably really have to invest in a survey i i don’t want to say a binding survey but some sort of guarantee that this is the plan moving forward or what is the plan moving forward and this is the drop dead date where you

1:56:02 have to tell us if you don’t tell us then you’re staying for fourth quarter and i hate to be black and white but there comes a point where you have to make a decision with what you got um you know we dan and i could both turn this around right you know pretty quick if there’s no changes i mean we there’s going to be some special ed considerations what’s taking place and so once but our peer our days run with periods so moving periods around is moving you know like blocks on a table you just you just readjust them it’s the changes of of instructional modes that’s that’ll be the on the huge unknown that’s that scares me every quarter this year so would your preference be at the quarter change which is what the first week of april i i would you know if you put me in a

1:56:48 corner and said well if you gave me magic wand and said it’s yours i’d say yes um you know but like like dr bucky said we can make whatever work you know we’re just going to have to invest time into making it work okay um yeah i just want to make sure we’re like dr bucky said do it right make sure we have everything vested through and although things seem simple there’s a lot of moving parts the avalanche piece just want to make sure we do it right and do it well we owe it to our students and to our staff definitely now how far off are we on on meeting this six foot number at in your two buildings i know that you know we we had thought we were there and then we re-measured and we reconfigured and i know your buildings are a

1:57:35 completely different situation with all the the class changes and everything else but do you have a sense you know that it would work in half of your sections or that it might work in you know 20 or only 20 it doesn’t do you have a sense no we it’s not a number that it’s not a number that’s even functionable i’ll just tell you that it because i’m you know we were we had two things we did this summer that we if you look at the reopening document that we sent to desi uh somehow a picture of my st of my my two sons uh actually made it in when we measure each on page 10 uh you’ll see a picture of my two sons as they came in 19 at

1:58:20 that point 1916 came in and for 12 hours we went room to room with with sticks and um you know measuring sticks and a six foot stick and their three foot picture sitting there smiling for me or not smiling made it in there um beyond the measuring deci also had a tool um that was an online tool for you you calculate square footage the number of desks in there um so you know i did i did measurements we walked through we did classroom structures and then went through and just did square foot structures uh to the point where i called down to texas to talk to the the economist actually he was an economist believe it or not who set up the the programming for this tool and uh because there was some confusion

1:59:05 about sizes of desks because our desks are even bigger than the elementary so i mean we we’ve we’ve gone to the wall with this literally um and and it’s it’s just not feasible i mean i’m i’m looking i i have my laptop here with the data up and it’s you know with six foot spacing i’m at 16 and and there are very few classes that are 16 and most i mean that’s that’s a chunk of my classrooms and that would be wall-to-wall

1:59:36 i didn’t have a sense if it was if we use the field house and or the auditorium or like if if we were anywhere close to it but you’ve answered that i just i was just more felt i needed to ask that’s fine yeah we followed the same process i couldn’t get my children to come in they’re too old um come on dan but linda my son and your daughter are the exact same age come on go with this son here will you help me out so i’ll lend you kids next time we plotted every room out we followed there was the the desti formula and we you know worked on the three foot six foot spacing and then we broke down every single section that we have in terms of how that would break and it would not be feasible so we broke it down thoroughly

2:00:21 down thoroughly down thoroughly okay so we’re it’s not a narrow margin it’s a gigantic margin that we’re off by yes okay all right um thank you very very much um and just well i have the opportunity i’ve heard really good things about the program you’ve put together since our last meeting um i know for sure dan did one i don’t know if matt did one um to kind of answer the concerns and meet with those students so i just want to acknowledge that and thank you for that all right megan and i think you had some questions i don’t know that i necessarily have questions i have to be 100 honest um i wasn’t so sure about the am pm model coming into this um but i think dan and matt you guys have done a great presentation

2:01:06 um there’s obviously a lot of work that you’ve put into this and so many details so i think the avalanche analogy is is a good one um there are a number of things that i do like about this model to be honest um i think first and foremost getting kids in um in person four days a week even um you know giving them a reason to get up and get dressed and get out of the house and come in is important um i think the homework piece of it not necessarily the homework but the time management skills um you know is also an important thing to you know that hadn’t really considered um so i i think that’s something you know especially that age group is something we need to to start getting back in the

2:01:52 in the habit of um i do wonder about the schedule though and about the feasibility for families specifically um you know with that rotating schedule but that’s just my thoughts on it i mean to be 100 honest i would like to get some feedback from parents and from families and students on what what that would look like in terms of challenges for them or or maybe it’s you know just a simple change and it’s fine but i would like some feedback on that um so so you know i guess this is just a lot to think about at this point i think you’ve given us some really good information a lot of food for thought um to be 100 honest i would like to really

2:02:38 continue the conversation around getting them in the five days and if that means reducing distancing then i would like to have that conversation with with the union um i think it’s important i think we have to follow that through and if that isn’t possible then maybe this is the approach we need to take um but but that would be my preference at the time i can say that conversation is ongoing sarah and i met with mea today and that that is definitely on the table and that they knew what would be presented this evening but that three foot distancing is still an integral part of the conversation because the high school middle school piece is so complicated

2:03:20 but before i get to that so so dan you had you had mentioned it the the rotation right now is is a b monday tuesday and then thursday friday it’s a b so they all have that um they’re used to coming in in the morning the adjustment will be that on tuesday they go to the afternoon and the b group on monday would would be in the afternoon on monday that that’s the new norm and to your point you said they they’re already sort of used to you know one day they’re in school one day they’re at school so there is a little bit of a rotation going on it seems like the adjustment as dan said is that is the afternoon piece

2:04:05 piece piece and i think to be clear the middle school the advanced those kids you’re in person so you’re in person on monday and then you’re asynchronous in the afternoon on monday and then you’re asynchronous in the in the morning on tuesday so for a cohort a i’m talking and then your synchronous zooms in the afternoon on tuesday so really what you’re doing is you’re not flipping the way that they have to tune in a lot anyways i’m right matt right i’m not i’m getting this correct yeah essentially whenever they had afternoon virtual classes they now have afternoon real-time classes and and not just afternoon real time

2:04:50 classes our virtual classes are 20 minutes we’re now talking three classes of 46 minutes each we’re talking real real instruction you know real learning a real experience and time with the classmates and an advisory in person i just want to clarify cause i’m confused by what david said david were you saying that you thought you know children may may switch between whether they go in person in the morning or the afternoon because my assumption was if you were a you’re always in the morning if you’re b you’re always in the afternoon no switch is day-to-day where you are okay yeah where where this we’re the sort of sticking point with that because we have seven periods dan has eight you know dan has an easy switch between the two so our afternoon is composed of three

2:05:38 classes plus a shorter advisory um so we’re juggling to fit seven periods into eight without creating a study hall or something like that for a 12 year old so if we were to keep the students the same the awkwardness of of you know running an abcd and then ghi in the afternoon it’s it would be fairly awkward for everybody to do that so and i had to go with the a and b because i’m completely i know that magicians is one of yours i don’t know that’s fine that’s funny um so just so i get this right if i had a uh seven through twelve they would go monday morning tuesday afternoon thursday morning friday afternoon

2:06:24 potentially yeah that’s correct okay

2:06:30 and for us that’s how a header goes through the week anyway they have monday morning and personal class so a has monday morning and personal classes right now tuesday afternoon virtual classes wednesday remote one thursday morning in person classes friday afternoon virtual classes but without the transportation meeting right right and i get it that’s that’s what i said that’s the big change is it’s a it’s a familial change there yeah and i think that that’s all for good weather that’s this piece where we’re talking about the social emotional aspect of things and particularly for this age group of being able to be in person every day and connected with their peers in a more meaningful way you know i think i i i’m actually i’m i’m really glad to

2:07:16 hear these updates because i think last thursday at reopening um this plan wasn’t quite where it’s at today and i had i had a lot of concerns over it even as the middle school parent who really wanted to see this this push forward um so i’m really happy with how this has sort of come together um like megan though i think i think it would be beneficial to have some more feedback from parents um just because we are asking uh for this flip-flop um you know my kid walks so it’s not that big of a deal but i think sarah may have mentioned you know that then your your child care may go away and i was like oh shoot my third grader’s not going to have a big brother at home at those points um so i think

2:08:03 that there are these really big pieces for for parents to work out um and so i think having a little bit more info i also think it would be i mean these are kids we pulled them before on what they what their thoughts are on their learning model i think it would be interesting to to get a little bit of feedback from them too if possible um you know i think again referencing commissioner riley’s statements today and where his head is at this this group is certainly the tough group um and i think you know he noted that the high school nine through twelve is even tougher than the the seven and eight so i think this is a good next step um i think this seems like a good next step i think

2:08:49 you guys are clearly asking for a bit of time um to sort of have all the ducks in a row i guess i’m hesitant on on the quarter break it just seems like it’s a ways off and i get i get antsy around the conversations and the public comment that we had from a few weeks ago

2:09:09 to punt this for with this group for another month and i think it it needs a little bit more info before we really move forward so i think one of the things that coming in my head is that we have a meeting on thursday and because of february break we have a meeting next thursday as well so we have quite a few lined up right in a row right now where we can really get some info hopefully and make some make some choices um i mean i guess that’s just where my head sits tonight that it seems as though we’re moving forward towards this but you know john has also noted we’re continuing talks with the mea about the distancing so if that can change then we’ve got a lot more options than

2:09:55 than an afternoon uh a morning and afternoon um flip-flop so i guess that’s where i sit with this emily

2:10:08 so i just have a few questions comments um so the vets plan i really like i’m so glad that it’s three hour chunks because at first i don’t think it was in that so the three hours with an actual 40 minute class is going to be so great i think um and then it follows the schedule they’re in now so it kind of just like we’re saying brings them in and they get to be with their teacher more so but my concern is at the high school because i don’t know exactly how it works but i know that they’re in so cohort a is in person monday and then they have remote after school is that correct in the afternoon

2:10:53 what we’ve done i’m sorry i’ll wait no yeah just you can answer that right now right so our our a is in the morning and then we join the cohorts in the afternoon for two remote classes uh monday tuesday thursday and friday right so those are 50 minute classes so that’s where the adjustment is made just in the large puzzle right that was a big change for us that allowed us to have more instructional time if you remember back in maybe october when we put this together was the afternoon remote right classes um because of tuesday b would be in and then in the afternoon they both joined so um thursday friday same thing right so now with this new plan that afternoon remote chunk is gone

2:11:39 correct so they lose that those two periods i guess right correct so again it’s that balancing of do we want them in but then they’re going to miss out on some learning and is everybody okay with that so i mean yeah yeah yes and and certainly when you do it that way there’s something has to give and do this because now you’re bringing you know it’s virtual is one thing but now you bring them in so you have the logistics of that to carve out match the morning but at the same time you see your teacher in person twice and once virtually the way it’s happening now is you see your teacher in person once and twice virtually oh okay so in a way it’s actually

2:12:24 better okay you weigh that in exactly person versus the virtual yep component yeah so i guess all that clarification is really good and to have just let people know that because when you just look at it on the surface it’s like oh well they’re missing out on all this time um but then if you think about it they’re actually with their teacher more so that’s great um and then i also feel like waiting till april 5th is a long time it’s six weeks from yesterday um i don’t know what the right answer is but to me that oh that’s a big chunk of time and those kids need to be back more so i think we need to talk about that

2:13:11 um but also i do agree with everyone we need to find out what parents and students feel about this change um i don’t know because i was kind of against it but now after hearing about it today with this presentation i’m like this sounds good but i also i just would like to hear what everyone and even how teachers feel i know at vets they said that this would be great um at the high school do they feel similar did they like the idea of this switch um we were working through everything and you know obviously we have some more time to work together so we’re just trying to yeah so but just over time just like finding out how everybody feels about it um and also like sorry um and like what megan said i if

2:13:58 we could do the three foot distance and kind of solve a lot of these issues i’m a big proponent of that but i know there’s a lot that has to go into that but so if we just can keep having that conversation and like john said keep that going that would be great so thanks david go ahead

2:14:21 so i i think on the issue of the the three foot distancing where where i come in on that is to some of the comments that we heard about where we were in august and i and i wholeheartedly agree where we were as a country as a community as a school district and you know what was happening with with kovid

2:14:49 and six feet was was one of those things that was was promoted at the time given that what we knew and i think that um over time um there there’s been some changes that are leading us to allow for people to be closer than six feet and i think um you know for instance the most recent cdc guideline update that you can find or there might be others but on february 11th is that you know basically we’re at a point where we’re promoting behaviors that reduce covid so that’s very solid people are

2:15:35 accustomed to those uh we’re in a situation where we’re maintaining healthy environments we have been very fortunate to get federal funding and state funding upwards to 1.9 million dollars to be able to support the entire initiative since september that without those resources you know we wouldn’t have had um tools for teachers um personal protective equipment air quality um units um additional custodians cleaning high-touch surfaces all of those things that those monies afforded us and they continue to afford us we know that there’s monies that still haven’t been spent and we also know that

2:16:21 there’s another round of funding that’s come forward to us so i think that’s just a huge difference from where we were in august and and i and i’m sure if you talk i mean we’ve heard it from dr bucky and michelle and others that that obviously that that infusion of funding has helped us come to a different place um so we’re maintaining healthy operations as well and then i think also as we’ve heard from all of the teachers and administrators that um we’re very prepared for when someone gets sick so we’ve seen those limited instances and it’s really not that it’s being spread throughout the schools but if there is an instance where an

2:17:07 administrator or a staff member or an athlete gets sick we have guidelines and procedures and policies in place that probably didn’t exist in september until you get through until you actually go through those situations until they happen and you have to walk through them you know i’ve done that at my at my day job and experiences and um having having had covid and gone through it was a whole nother experience and i think even my experience from november you know now they’re talking about 10 days instead of 14 days because they know more about covid um they recommend that you don’t need to have a negative test to go back to work whereas

2:17:54 you know three four five months ago depending on who you read so things have evolved and changed and i think the six to three feet we most recently heard from the marblehead board of health even that it wasn’t necessarily

2:18:11 the um policy of the board of health but but it was a recommendation that that they were making and i think dr bucky you even said when that meeting a couple weeks ago where where the board of health said you know they’re it doesn’t mean we can’t go to less than six feet but it was certainly if we can and so we’re recognizing we can we can do that in k to six and we’ve heard from matt and dan that in most situations we we can’t do it in the high school but i think if we are continuing to do um you know those four bullets about um you know what we know about kovid so far i would like to think we could continue to look at that

2:18:57 and have three feet distancing or distancing less than six feet because as we’ve heard you know there might be a couple of kids that are that are you know three feet apart from each other but then there could be 16 kids that are six feet apart from each other or a row of so i and i and i know matt doesn’t want to bring his kids back in and do the sticks and the measuring all over again and we’ve been there and done that so i understand that piece of it but um i think there is a change right now in in what um six feet meant back in september and what it means now in order to safely provide education to our students and i strongly encourage

2:19:43 strongly encourage strongly encourage the superintendent and hopefully the mea to have discussions about that and considerations and and not just um overlook that i think that that’s absolutely where the conversations are starting is that you know as it’s been mentioned multiple times tonight we we’re in a very different situation our data is is just it bounds um from where it was in uh in september and august um you know the things that we had concerns about some many of them thankfully didn’t pan out um and now you know our concerns have shifted into into other places where we actually have data

2:20:28 supporting those concerns um so i think you know that it yes i think that that the distancing piece and talking that through and looking into the moa and everything is paramount at this point yeah emily i want to say one thing kind of going off what david said there’s so much talk about six and three and those are like the big numbers but we don’t know is it really three because if it’s four and a half that’s it even in your head it’s a different number and i know beverly is at four and a half and that’s the number they picked so i think finding what that minimum number is could make a difference maybe we don’t even have to get to three we just don’t know

2:21:13 know know um maybe we do know but that information we should find so that depending on how like maybe it makes people more comfortable if it’s four and a half feet that’s the lowest bid and summer at six some so i think just getting more information on that would be helpful um and not get so stuck on like six and three and try to find you know again be creative on how we can do it yeah i think there’s an inevitability that there will be classes at three feet distance and so it will have to be that distance in the moa um so because of that you know that is sort of that magic number okay um but it doesn’t necessarily mean that every single class at the high school and at vets is going

2:21:58 to be at three foot distance right and they can when they can be more distance they absolutely would be right i guess knowing that what those numbers like right that information would be great to know keep getting more data absolutely all right there was one question that popped into my head and now it’s gone um oh yeah go ahead meg and then sarah i’ll come to you well i was just going to ask just um you know because we do have two more school committee meetings coming up and if i’m putting you on the spot that’s fine you can come back to me but just the timeline for kind of getting to the next round of information like i don’t you know we want to move this along quite as quickly as possible knowing that there are a number of conversation and moving pieces but if we can just have a general feel for what

2:22:44 that timeline is going to look like i would appreciate that i think that matt and dan would probably both agree and i open it up for them to correct me if i’m wrong but there are so many moving parts in the high school and the middle school schedule what they have presented you this evening is what will work for the am or pm i agree with the idea to reach out to students and parents for feedback on that and the three foot distancing is going to be what has to be negotiated with mea because in a section in the middle score in a section at the high school it might be three feet exactly and then the next class that they go to could be five feet and the third class they go to is six

2:23:30 and so it would be in negotiating with mea three two six right but it might change some people’s idea if you’re a teacher who’s nervous and you find out your class is really at five feet you might feel differently about voting for one so i i don’t know i don’t i’m gonna i’m gonna dish to matt because i see his hand up and we had this conversation last week so mr fox there’s no concept of five feet it’s either three or six because the reality is i’m not setting up a room every period for the next class that’s coming in desks because they either have to be at six foot or three foot because nearly

2:24:16 every single room has a three foot classroom so the reality is is there’s always going to be kids within three feet of each other because even if a smaller class comes into a room set up for three feet and they don’t need every three foot desk there’s going to be kids within three feet of each other because there’s not enough desks to all be separate there is no five foot you know what i’m saying is that that’s really good information to know because right so different classes go into different classrooms like right every period so okay you know so mr pascal our social studies seventh grade teacher on the red team might have a class of 20 right okay but he’s also got i know he has a class of 25

2:25:02 and he might have a class of 19 that’s the smallest maybe so in 19 you might you know there might be a little you know but the reality is that we’re not going to move the desks well right three foot and might be able to skip one desk hither and yonder right everything every desk is set for three feet okay it’s it’s a fallacy to say that this room could be five feet the beverly four and a half feet they’re only doing that at that pre-k want pre-k one or two level my son goes to beverly high school he’s three foot if they have three cohorts there he goes either once a week or twice a week depending upon his week to school so there i’m sorry i i mean interrupt but no but that’s good and for that’s

2:25:48 great information to know just when we’re gathering information so thank you so it seems as though i think that based on the me conversation that there may be some additional information to share this thursday there may not be um it kind of depends on how quickly they can turn around meeting times and everything but i think maybe next thursday can we have some data from some surveys back from the high school and middle school parents and students and then hopefully have a bit more information on them from mea at that point as well i think that’s very doable because i know what we did last week in the retreat and nan worked with building principles on surveys

2:26:34 and so they could take the existing questions and then add some additional for the information that’s been requested this evening and the turnaround time on that could be pretty quick okay sarah i don’t want to forget that you had something else yes um now that i understand this better about how this am pm thing works because i i was confused about the you’d always be one or the other so will that mean that our um special education and our met coast to some of our special education students that are now going you know to both cohorts and our metco students will get a full day essentially because they will stay in the morning they’ll have lunch and then so every day they’ll get a full day of class the medical program we’re still working

2:27:20 out but that’s that was a drafting we came up with them coming in for a full day we we already have some students come in for full days so they’re they’re in they’re in you know with teachers they’re in the office with me and julia um taking their virtual classes um it just works better for some students to be in class more or to be in school we have our medical students are here full day as it is because we have the virtual classes there’s no way they could get home in time to tune in so we already have that arranged and i spoke with nan this morning who spoke with heidi um so we’re working on provisioning for that if we move forward okay so we can accommodate all those students um and then the bus like if we we have we do our own busing we have limited buses my sense is we don’t rely as heavily on buses at the

2:28:06 middle school and high school level as we do elementary but is there going to be a problem with that we now have an 11 o’clock drop off

2:28:17 or pick up an 11 30 drop off and then a 12 o’clock drop off somewhere else in town i don’t believe we bust our 7 to 12. we do we don’t at all okay even our special education students none of them let’s see or no okay yeah if we do it’s such a small number that we can make work and the bus guidance actually just changed greatly they basically deemed buses to be completely safe oh i wasn’t thinking about the spacing it was more like getting to three spots in an hour um okay all right so it sounds to me just to sort of recap this like we’re obviously not making a

2:29:02 decision for 7-12 this evening but that generally the committee is leaning towards adopting this am pm model for 7 to 12. we want a little bit more data first we want some feedback from parents and we want some feedback from students before we actually make a determination

2:29:24 i think i would reclassify my perception anyway i would really like to see us get the kids in five minimum five half days that is my preference and that is what i’d like us to work with this is a plan b yes we’ve given no change to the six foot distance if we cannot get that done then this is where we’re at for now yes yes but i really want to see yes yes i agree too okay so we will obviously continue to um keep this moving along and updated and and getting information to everyone all right thank you very much uh dan and matt and

2:30:09 you know to all the principals i see i think everybody’s still on here so um i appreciate that and all the all the hard work that’s been done yeah thank you i know it’s been a long night too a long week so just i appreciate all the work you guys have done we all do all right so that is the end of our learning model update and then we have a fall sports 2 update um on the agenda as well this evening mr siglerski take it away hi everyone thanks for having me here tonight just give you a quick update on how the winter went and then we will uh get into the fall too uh so between our coaches athletic training staff athletic department staff and administrative team we were able to give our student athletes the opportunity to play sports they were preparing for since last winter

2:30:54 winter winter we had a great turnout with registrations and were able to feel the same amount of teams as we have in the past our student athletes worked hard we’re competitive and continuing to improve in their respective sports and they should be very proud of their efforts this winter certainly was more challenging than the fall season we handled two close contact situations managed three positive coveted tests and implemented a detailed return to play policy for covet positive tests i think the plans protocols and procedures we had in place from the get go allowed us to handle the situations we were dealt and for the most part we were able to have a successful season and i know it’s been a long night but i’d like to take a minute to provide some quick highlights for the winter season as our term our teams deserve to be recognized our boys hockey team went eight four and

2:31:41 one and had nice wins versus danvers mask on winthrop and i know coach wells was very happy with the team’s efforts and attention to detail girls hockey went five four and three uh they did a really good job all season under first year head coach brittany smith they lost winthrop early in the season five one and had a very exciting 1-1 tie with them to close out the season our boys basketball team went seven and five they did a great job all season and battle harder every game they had a great two-point win for swampscott and two very exciting games versus beverly and i know coach giardi is really excited about the future of their program girls basketball won seven and five as well uh they started their season with three tough losses but went on to win seven of their last nine games and had two hard-fought wins for swinthrop and beverly i know coach moray was very proud of the girl’s efforts all season swim and dive had really nice work all

2:32:28 season especially since they had virtual meets and had to rely on each other to stay focused and excited coach guertin was so excited about the opportunity to swim and we even broke a number of long-standing school records and finally gymnastics went one and five uh they had excellent work all winter uh they had some close meets with danvers and essex tech and then a great win versus salem and should be very proud of their efforts as well all of our student athletes and coaches deserve extremely high praise for their flexibility patience and desire to keep playing in a safe manner i can’t say enough about them in their efforts also i need to give a shout out to our training staff and assistant admark tarmy both are very uh frankl’s jobs and without all of their help and attention to detail we would not have had a season thank you very much for all your efforts moving forward to the fall 2 season we’ll be offering football volleyball

2:33:14 indoor track and cheerleading while we’ve done a great job sticking to the protocols given to us by the eea and the miaa we know the challenges ahead of us will take a great amount of effort we have our two most popular sports in the same season and we’ll do our best as we always do to keep our student athletes safe and on the field track in court i’d be happy to take any questions for the fall 2 or athletics moving forward david did you raise your hand okay um i’ve got i’ve got one um how many how many stu so for fall fall this fall too particularly the football program but i guess yeah i guess football how many students does that encompass the full program uh right now for the fall too we have 230 athletes registered 74 of which are

2:34:03 football players okay thanks and for i know i know the fall one was was very very successful as far as mitigation and everything and and covered positives um for the the one we just did um the winter season yes thank you um there were there was no transmission within teams uh uh there if you can’t answer that then you can just say that and i’ll back off i’m gonna leave that one alone i think okay my best interest okay any other questions um greg can you remind us the date so the start and end date for the season when do games start etc

2:34:49 etc etc sure so our fall two seasons started technically yesterday uh and it goes through april 25th and then the spring season would start april 26th after that uh games would start next week okay okay sarah

2:35:15 who who when you know obviously when there’s athletes on you know the field or on the court um their coaches are there and supervising to make sure that there have all the protocols and there are a lot of protocols i know um but when they’re out like you know you see the teams running by or whatever who supervises to make sure that they’re due they’re following the protocols when they’re outside the building you mean like um yeah like you you know if if they’re you going to do a long run or something like that so our coaches will go out with them uh if for any of our distance runners like for track we just started yesterday um our distance coach will go with them

2:36:00 inside they’re inside here on the track or they’re going to move to the outside track as soon as we’re able to and our coaches will all be over there our whole staff okay all right

2:36:14 so the football the 74. is that like varsity jv ram white it’s not 9 through 12. okay 17 currently for a freshman maybe 18. uh and then the rest would be kind of jv varsity combination okay so they’re not all like practicing at the same time no no we’ll have it separated where freshman practice uh first and then there’ll be an overlap where they’re finishing up and the varsity and jv are uh warming up and stretching and then they’ll uh freshman get off and the other guys stay okay and so are they inside right now or outside they were inside yesterday and today but they’ll move outside tomorrow as the the turf is cleared up enough for us to to get up okay so they’ll be practicing outside and playing obviously outside

2:37:04 but the other three sports are inside right sure well cheerleading is kind of outside of both and then it’s nice enough to get tracked out to the track over at village we will send them out there right away okay thanks one more question just um greg how do the um spectators work i mean again we’ve talked a lot about changing in um science and and where we were from the fall so especially where you know for football and and share where we can be outside how to suspect spectators work so unless things change uh in our next nec athletic director meeting we’re going to stay with the two spectators per home athlete and that has to be either a parent or household member

2:37:53 and then nothing for a way right nothing for away from this no um craig how many other districts are all of the other districts playing now because i know i’ve read the article about lin recently but it sounds like much of lynn has switched conferences um yeah so the the lynn schools are uh they joined up with the greater boston league um somerville everett medford those uh types of schools over over there that used to be with us um and they are kind of having custom dates for their season because they were able to play now where they weren’t able to up until yesterday but otherwise everyone else in our league is is playing the same sports okay so then they’re all in on fall too yup okay um and all of these um all of these are fully masked

2:38:40 oh yeah absolutely okay absolutely okay

2:38:45 any other questions um i think the public is like able to act no the public can’t ask questions sorry there’s time for public comment afterwards um and then so we’ll allow people to to speak um but then you can also email us um i can take emails and phone calls too if need be as well later on thanks greg so the football program is obviously our largest program it sounds like what is the largest number of peop of students and staff that if there was a positive in our largest program that would be put in the quarantine right you say that again sorry i cut off for a second what like i’m assuming football is our largest program what is driving close

2:39:31 okay so if there was a positive what in our largest program just to give us an idea how many staff and students would be put into quarantine for a sport like football would depend on when it happened because they they practice their practice plans are different each day leading up to their games whereas track it would be pretty easy to kind of separate their pods out because they are separated by distance by sprinters by throwers by high jumpers etc football is a little bit different where you have probably your starting 11 on either side uh if they would be going against each other in practice for the most part together and whereas other kids would

2:40:16 kind of be on the sideline who are still learning plays who are still trying to uh work their way in as as maybe a sophomore or a junior waiting for a starting role so we’re not quarantining the whole team the way we seem to have in the past would it would really depend on the situation when uh if something were to happen like even for for volleyball we have enough separation like between our coaches uh where they probably wouldn’t have to be in quarantine again we it would just it really determined case by case i know it doesn’t really answer your question fully but that’s the the best i can give you right now but i don’t think it sounds like so if our track track is our biggest program we’re not going to quarantine the entire track team

2:41:03 likely not right because they’re not they’re not it’s not like basketball where they’re all together yeah they’re doing their separate thing correct and even right now we have we only have half the kids in for track right now at a time so half one day half the next day and then they’re separated as well after that okay so just to throw out an idea it since extracurriculars are an opt-in i’m gonna can we require them to agree to the pool testing program and pool test our teams can look into that i don’t know that you can compel someone to participate but certainly worth reaching out to amanda rivers to reach out to project beacon to see

2:41:50 if uh that is a possibility i don’t know the answer to that right now i don’t know either i just thought where it’s not you know it’s like public education is a right like playing a sports not right um it’s it’s a privilege and an option i didn’t know i just i didn’t demand her maybe no legally but i thought

2:42:10 yeah i can look into it i i think salem may do it i can reach out to their athletic director and see what what he has to say but uh i’m not i’m not positive

2:42:21 so in the past we’ve voted to support the athletic program moving forward um so that in you know in my head we would continue that this evening so so do i have a motion to support fall to athletics to move forward so moved emily moved megan second um anything else to be said yeah and and thanks again to greg and the and the coaches and the staff for and parents who have had to you know limit attendance at events and make sure we’re adhering to all of these best practices that we know so to make to make it possible so thanks to everybody

2:43:06 yeah i agree david i mean just kind of like the actual sport is a team effort so is kind of get you know making it all happen and coveted so i just appreciate all the work everyone’s done and again flexibility um i think it’s worthwhile looking into the testing piece i think sarah makes a good point um but i obviously support the the athletics moving forward i think everyone’s done a really good job in following the protocols and while we have had coveted cases i think because we’ve got the protocols in place we’ve been able to manage those so i’m confident greg in your ability to keep that going thank you um yeah i’m i am in support of this and i think um i think it speaks to a broader level of support for again this push for in more in-person learning in my opinion um i

2:43:53 quite frankly struggle with the idea of having football move forward and football to me is there’s there’s like a piece with football because it is so contact oriented um where i know that that it is you know a voluntary thing and that you know these the kids that are doing it know what the risks are and everything but at the same time we’ve we’ve run our sports very successfully with the mitigation and and even in our cdc guidance that just came out as complex as it is our community is supported in moving things forward and further in person and the biggest hesitance that they had and i i will preface and say i do have a little bit

2:44:39 of qualms with that guidance but the biggest hesitance they have even in communities like ours where they’re saying that more in-person learning can be happening even at the 7 to 12 level is that sports is another thing and so again i think that our data supports us proceeding forward with our sports programs um and i think that same data supports us moving forward in getting and returning our students to more in-person um at less distance quite frankly yeah i think very well said sarah um greg um greg you are you’re comfortable looking into the pool like asking if we can do that because i think that that might qualm some of those concerns in the community that sarah kind of just talked about a little bit

2:45:24 bit bit yeah i can work with with the pool testing with dr bucky about that uh moving forward we can he and i can he can i can discuss that for sure there was there was a testing question that came up earlier in the mea conversation as well so we can we can follow up on on both those pieces

2:45:43 all right we’ve got a motion in a second um roll call is sarah gold yes megan taylor emily barron yes david harris and sarah fox yes all right have fun thanks thank you i forgot to mention the ski team uh they did really i’m sorry for ski team and coaches you guys did an awesome job gotcha mountain a couple times a week um sorry about that didn’t mean to forget you keep you off of my update all right great thanks greg and thanks for sticking around and filling us in all right so that brings us up to public comment um i’ve got a couple of hands raised already so um if anybody else wants to make public comment um it is you know pretty late um we do have

2:46:28 another meeting with public comment uh again on thursday and so if you know if people want to take a a day to sort of process this and and then speak eventually at that meeting um i would encourage that so um i just would would ask people that if they keep it short um to maybe like a minute or two comments this evening because again it is is getting pretty late so um susan you have your hand up hi thank you so much i will be brief and just first thank everyone for all their hard work and so respectfully coming together to hash these things out i’m a parent of a high schooler

2:47:14 schooler schooler who’s in hybrid but has not been in very much due to concerns about spread and it’s worked out and well we look forward to getting back into the building soon we hope as the numbers go down as i’m hearing the proposal for the high school and know and i really do appreciate that more information is needed from parents and and kids about how they’re feeling about everything one thing i just want to point out is that um i know that a lot of this discussion has come up because of mental health concerns and the feeling that being in the building more would be helpful in resolving some of that um as a mental

2:48:00 health clinician myself i’m not so sure that i believe that’s the cure although it might be for some kids maybe not for everyone and i’m wondering as we’re in this process of um navigating how to increase in person time in school um if there’s a possibility for the students who are really needing to come in sooner to have that like in the afternoons during that combined cohort time when there are already some students there like whether they’re in the metco program or maybe they are already identified as having services so that they don’t have to wait as long

2:48:47 and at the same time i’m hoping that a very important part of the conversation moving forward is what to do about the either fully remote kids or the cohort of kids who don’t whose families choose not to have them come in you know who opt out because at the high school that is a completely different ballgame and could create a mental health crisis for those kids who are already very very accustomed to their schedules you know for example my student knows every tuesday and friday that he’s going to have class from 8 to 2 30 whether that’s in person whether that’s remote that is predictable routine structure that

2:49:33 is a really important element in our lives and so if it turns out that he had to go remote that would completely upend his schedule and put him and other kids like him in crisis so i just think that if we’re looking at that piece it has to be that we need an identified plan for everyone you know so that we’re not trading one set of circumstances and problems for another so that’s all thank you susan can i actually get your last name and address as well sure it’s shiowitz and it’s 25 herrera ford road thank you very much thanks all right kristen pratt can you state your address as well sure kristin pratt 48 pleasant street marblehead um

2:50:19 i guess i just had two quick comments but before i make that i just want to thank the principals i really think that their candid and authentic comments tonight um were excellent and it made me feel much more comfortable i still feel a little bit cautiously optimistic i’m not sure i feel like this is a hundred percent um for my little ones until i hear it from the teachers but i’m gonna stay positive and hope that things uh go more positively than last time um the two points that i wanted to make is that um it was really around public comment i noticed that tonight it was saved until after which i think was quite effective but at the next agenda it’s now before and i think there’s some concern around around parents being able to get feedback effectively i mean i can tell you i sent an email to the school

2:51:05 committee and the superintendent and i never heard back so i’m not comfortable not relying on that channel and normally when you have to make the comment in advance you kind of run the risk of either being redundant or hoping it gets answered and if it doesn’t then you wait two weeks or you hope it’s in an email and i don’t know why it took me so long to think of this but there are applications out there that allow people to submit comments and there are other meetings in town where you can ask questions during the meeting but have you looked at the virtual uh polling functionality in zoom or other applications that would allow participants to submit questions and for other participants to vote and prioritize those so they could be addressed during the meeting so that’s my one comment um the second

2:51:52 is really just that i was uh stunned after my last uh public comment and the reaction i got from people and so many people reached out to me and um i guess i have two two just some points on this one is that there are a lot of people who are not comfortable speaking at this meeting and i don’t think the last meeting did anything to help that and a lot of people thanked me for coming forward to speak so i think anything you can do to further encourage it would be lovely um and then the second thing is one of the specific things people came back to comment on was oh my gosh yes if lunch is the problem i will volunteer for the job i will apply for the job i will get quarried and i know that’s a process and it might take you know a month to work out but i just want to reiterate that beyond this

2:52:38 initial phase of the four hours or looking even into the next fall there are parents that are willing to step up and help and you know i would encourage you to i know if anybody wants to reach out to me to take advantage of that i’d be happy to try to put together a group of people um because i really think that might be something that’s not as complicated to solve so thank you thanks kristen and i’ll uh i’ll see if i can find any info on some of the other things that you talked about and how other districts may be using them yeah yeah and i can share application names i use them all the time for work thanks uh pat noonan

2:53:18 thanks sarah patrick noonan 15 beverly avenue uh first i want to acknowledge the positive developments of tonight that our youngest children will be going back to school five days a week in march dr bucky and the principals i applaud you for your efforts i thank you for listening to the overwhelming majority of parents and students as expressed at our prior meeting genuinely thank you so much my comment is directed at the five committee members the return date as presented by dr bucky at the outset of tonight was for march 1st for k-3 and march 8th for 4 to 6. for reasons that frankly escape me you seem to have pushed this timeline out until march 15th where is the fierce urgency that you all showed three weeks ago no educator or administrator has asked for more time at this meeting sarah gold you noted comments you heard at a meeting at which some teachers asked for more time what about the many teachers

2:54:04 who did not speak at this meeting presumably because they were fine with the march 1st and 8th proposal you also noted some parents may need more time to adjust schedules and juggle their nanny’s scheduling but we all know that if you pushed a poll out to parents tonight over 80 percent would want this done asap not three weeks from now and megan you expressed your view at the last meeting that the timeline for reintroduction be as tight as possible and now you seem to have said well it’s just two more weeks no big deal it would be one thing if dr bucky’s original proposal was to begin on the 15th instead you the committee members seem to have taken it upon yourselves to push the timeline out by another two weeks as grateful as i am for the actions of

2:54:50 dr bucky our principals in the district i am baffled by our committee members actions tonight labor management relations only work when both sides zealously represent their constituencies the committee members should be should have been asking why our grade 4-6 children could not go back on march 4 march 1st not looking to move the return date further back into march the teachers have wonderful representation through the mea it is long past time for you to do your job to represent the parents and taxpayers of this community and after one full calendar year of our children’s athletes from school i wish you would start doing it thank you thanks pat thanks pat uh joan miller

2:55:40 sarah sarah um hi joan miller 34 nagasav i’m an eighth grade inclusion teacher at mvms and president of the marvel head education association i’d like to speak tonight on behalf of the teachers in the marblehead public schools our staff has been working tirelessly tirelessly during this global pandemic to make marblehead students education the best that it can be during these unprecedented times the marblehead public schools team of educators and administrators have worked collaboratively to ensure both the students employees and a community remain safe as we all navigate this challenging year from our youngest pre-kindergarten learners to our graduating seniors we want nothing more than to return to a

2:56:25 consistent in-person safe educational experience as soon as possible as teachers we recognize the toll that this pandemic is taking on our families many of us are also parents and are trying to navigate the situation for our own children as teachers we have historically advocated for additional mental health resources for marblehead students long before the pandemic it is now more apparent than ever the work and the resources that will be needed to help our students as we navigate to this new normal we want to make sure that additional in-person learning is done with the best interests of students staff in the community in mind we believe in a thoughtful and well-intentioned plan that puts health and safety as a priority marblehead has successfully been in a hybrid model

2:57:10 since returning to school in the fall with no in-school transmission according to our lead nurse we want to make sure that we do not jeopardize that at this point the mea remains committed to working with the administration to ensure a safe return for more in-person learning as we move forward we as teachers also look forward to getting a vaccine in the very near future and we appreciate any support that you as school committee members can give us in order to help make that happen i would caution us as we talk about the older students to remember that when it comes to the virus they transmit it as adults thank you

2:57:57 hey thank you so much it’s really nice to hear joan’s comments and that we’re all in the same boat together here in terms of trying to get our students back as soon and full-time as soon as uh as possible blair can you just state your address real quick yeah i’m at 100 um the so tonight’s been tremendous news uh it’s really exciting to hear how we’re moving forward um and and john is completely right um many of us do think it is a little too little and uh too late we’ve been asked several times this evening for the perspective of the school company understand what parents think you know here’s one person’s view in terms of case sex you know we can do more you know now we’re going to go to school finish at 12 o’clock come home eat lunch and then jump on a zoom call with the same people that we’re sharing a

2:58:44 classroom with in the morning why there’s nothing magical about eating lunch at school if we can eat a snack we can eat lunch if it’s getting warmer we can sit outside sit on bucket whatever parents are here to help this is not a show stopper let’s just go back for full days full full days it shouldn’t really take us a month to figure that figure this out the second thing when you heard that really strongly from from patrick just now as well is let’s get as many students back as soon as possible if any of the school schools can do one march let’s do one march or the 2nd of march or the 10th of march to be clear we want to go back as soon as possible and finally while i don’t have a child in the 7-12 program we clearly need to get them back way earlier crazy idea

2:59:30 in terms of 7 and 12 can we find a model where the parent with the students sorry are at three feet but the teachers keep six feet it just feels crazy that we could play football and basketball but we can’t find a way to have these students in school full-time thank you so much thanks blaire thanks blaire alexandra colonette hi there i’m 15 hillside ave um so i’m actually a senior at the high school and you guys have mentioned just getting some feedback from the students and so as someone that’s experienced what the high school is like in a normal year and as well as the other schools i really just want to say like thank you to all the teachers and the staff i think everyone’s been doing the best that they can do but it is still like a ton to handle as um teenagers and

3:00:17 as you know just young adults in general and specifically i want to say thank you to mr bauer and mr fox during this meeting for keeping the students as the priority and keeping both teacher and student well-being in mind it’s really comforting to hear that um you know we’re being thought of and that you know we really people are just trying to do the best for us um as well as talking about like the surveys and the thoroughness about how they’re looked into um i’ve answered every survey that you know we’ve been issued and i don’t really feel like the requests or concerns have been upheld very much um you know and we get preached about like social emotional check-ins and social emotional health

3:01:03 and i think as valuable as those check-ins are um i don’t think they’re doing as much as the staff is counting on them too and i think hopefully having more in-person hours will help with that um but i think just maybe more frequent check-ins or something like that would definitely be beneficial and then just the last thing i’d like to add is um as someone who would be exposed firsthand to the three feet distancing change adding that am pm schedule i don’t really see um why there’s a need to change the six foot distance because that has been what has um been keeping me like feeling safe going into school and i think changing that would you know push a lot more kids to go to remote thank you very much alexandra we appreciate that

3:01:49 appreciate that appreciate that uh kristen zeros hi sarah thank you um kristen exeros 16 barrel street uh road sorry oh can you hear me yes we can i think you’re on in two different places somehow but we can hear you and see you i am my internet’s not very stable so i didn’t want to lose and try to get back on um i just wanted to thank you for extending the time to go back in as a teacher who’s been on this roller coaster road since last march i feel like sometimes all our voices aren’t heard and tonight i just wanted to express that i do have concerns about going back

3:02:34 in with 20 kids in my classroom and two adults i’m concerned about my kindergarten kids who i feel like have been so successful i know they’re happy they’re learning assessments are telling me that um but when i think that i will not have or be six feet not have that capability i feel threatened and i feel like although that our numbers are down i feel like our numbers are down because we have had such great safe protocols i think that’s why we didn’t have a spread because we were a hybrid and we took very um you know big precautions so i just wanted to express that for me as a teacher in the school district i

3:03:19 wholeheartedly don’t want anything more than to have my kids all together but i wanted to be safe and successful i want it to be that when i have 20 kids in my classroom they are all learning the same way they did when they were 10 that they all are getting the same quality and they are all successful um thank you and thank you i look forward to what will happen next thanks kristen uh theo kemmel hi uh theo shemel 24 thompson road um i’m also a senior at the high school this year and i would also like to speak out against the three foot suggestion social distancing i think once you reach that three foot

3:04:05 point you’re really just back to regular school um we’re really never sitting closer than three feet together i mean and i would ask the committee right now who’s in the library how many of you are actually sitting closer than six feet apart right now i don’t think any of you um so i would like to see you know a return to in-person learning that places the focus on what we can actually do safely instead of spending the next two to three months you know dreaming about this ideal world where we can go back to having three feet apart and letting the current hybrid situation that is what is going to happen for the next month and a half of the high school at least um letting that fall by the wayside

3:04:51 thank you very much theo all right i actually don’t have any other hands right i would like to go thank you i am hopeful okay no one is holding you back you didn’t have your hand raised so i have no ability to know that you wanted to speak so please state your name and address calmly hi i’m anne simcoe i couldn’t raise my hand because i am on my phone after i was kicked out of this meeting from my computer um i am a sophomore at the high school i live on 77 garfield street uh i am a sophomore at the high school and i would like to say that i think that with the three feet distancing in regards to that there is no magic number that says six feet is the ultimate like distancing

3:05:37 distancing distancing like there’s nothing that makes six feet all that much safer than five feet so i think we could do three feet i just think you know this is politics the school board everything moves at the pace of the snail and i don’t know i mean i’ve been waiting here for three hours to speak and just like that’s the pace that this is going and i don’t know i feel like you got like with the hybrid schedule it’s most likely going to last out the remainder of the school year for the high school and as a high school student that really disappoints me a lot and i feel like i am disappointed in you and and i think that a lot of the

3:06:23 teachers and the people who are represented here the people that have waited three hours to talk are not representing the majority because they are the ones who are the most scared and it’s the people who are the most scared who are waiting for three hours to speak and maybe a few parents who are really upset about their young children but i don’t think that the majority of people are going to wait three hours through this long school board committee to speak but the majority just wants to go back in person as much as follow possible it does not really care as much about the three feet and i’ve been talking to my fellow students and they are just a little bit perplexed at why are we still in this hybrid model that is super

3:07:10 difficult for teachers super difficult for students and i don’t know i’m just disappointed in what you guys the administration have have done like i think that there could be a lot more that we could be doing i have some ideas i will send you an email later i think you could be doing a lot more like one idea i don’t know i’m not gonna say it because i am going on a long rant here but yeah i’m disappointed thank you thank you anne uh lauren andriano hi thank you so much school committee dr bucky i want to give a huge shout out and thanks to the principals and a.d

3:07:56 savarsky for making athletics work and improved in school learning um congrats for the k-6 crew i happen to land in the 7-12 bucket for my three children um still seems far from where it’s it’s a it’s a great improvement there i almost don’t want to comment on it because it seems that there’ll be another several iterations before we really have a the details laid out and i appreciate the hard work going into it my biggest question is around the comments i think joan miller hopefully i pronounce your name correctly i i am so supportive of the teachers in fact i almost like get excited when i hear my daughter’s middle school teachers

3:08:43 teach during the day to them the effort the energy everything they put into it so awesome where i’m struggling is understanding um what constitutes a safe return what exactly is that we’re a year into this excuse me i’ve seen no metrics on that and i am so sorry if i’ve missed something but if we can get some transparency and clarity from joan and the team on what will be a safe return is that vaccinations is that hurt immunity is it six feet um even beyond that you know what whether what are you what is being suggested as considered to be safe in private schools across the country and in many public schools we’ve started to

3:09:28 see what their safe return is and for the 7 through 12 crew it’s just still an enigma for me so if there’s a way that something can presented be presented with some detail on one of the next sessions i would really greatly appreciate that sorry trying to avoid a coughing fit in the middle of coronavirus we can all appreciate that thank you lauren emily dewitt hi um hi um thank you to everyone there started off with such positive vibes and it just kind of i’m sorry to say just really went downhill for a lot of us and i know you’re hearing the same voices but those of us that are speaking up are representing

3:10:14 representing representing a lot of people who as mentioned tonight might not be comfortable speaking up and that includes other parents and other students children we’re just baffled by the mixed messages out there we don’t understand the science metrics that are being used by the school committee how can a bus that sarah gold just deemed perfectly safe and sports including an entire basketball season my son just completed and now football about to resume um with complete disregard to six feet distancing travel games away

3:10:59 camaraderie on buses and at games which i fully support by the way i’m only spotlighting it because we don’t understand how one set of rules can work for a bus or team sports but not apply to our kids being in the classroom physically i also want to say thank you to sarah fox for pointing out that this is a whole student body issue and i really appreciate that she used that word our students at the higher grades as you just heard from a very brave student thank you ann are in trouble and are suffering and i know you’ve heard this from me before and you’ve heard it from other students and i really want to keep that whole

3:11:44 student body phrase in the mix please we don’t understand what’s going on we’re reeling from data released today by not only the governor the school commissioner of education dr bucky and desi and yet the school committee members are not representing what those results of those meetings or the students or the parents voices and i know you’re working hard but please we’re all beyond bewildered you don’t answer emails sarah gold um so to say that that’s a transparent way of communication is false

3:12:32 uh we’re just feeling like the rug was pulled out from under us you promised going back to school and now you’re changing dates you’re revisiting data it’s like this meeting what was it for

3:13:05 and i’m a senior at the high school and i know that we’ve heard from a couple other seniors and i just want to first off say thank you to the other seniors who have spoken up and the parents who have spoken up and mentioned the concerns of the kids and also the concerns coming from the teachers sides thank you to joan miller and especially thank you to mr bauer mr fox because i think um when we talk about you know the return to school and the return to sports um the kids definitely get lost in the mix and i think that um we tend to forget that you know the high schoolers are like you know like we’re citizens obviously like we read the news we’re educated and

3:13:51 we have opinions and this is you know not just like the health and safety of teachers and kids but like we’re people and i don’t think it would be fair to discount the words coming from students just because we’re younger or maybe our information isn’t trusted as well as it coming from an adult um and so i guess what i’m just saying is that i think that while it’s easy for the kids to get lost in the situation i think that it’s really important that we try to remember like what we’re here for um you know educating our kids and creating adults that are going to go off and make

3:14:37 our community better so yeah thank you thank you ruby and don johns

3:14:58 john if you want to unmute yourself sorry about that um just building on what lauren and emily have said and i just feel like at least i am beating my head against the wall we all agree it seems like you sarah gold megan say that we the kids should be back in school at least the five mornings and we need to do away with this three feet science is saying that we can and we all seem to be in agreement yet nothing is happening and then when we say things then we’re against the teachers so it is the union that is saying they won’t go back unless it’s six feet

3:15:43 so how do we get past this are they really renegotiating like dr bucky says they are i mean enough or just tell us exactly what they need to get back into the school is it vaccines is it i mean i don’t know what it is so i just feel like we’re going around in circles that’s it

3:16:13 thanks don thank you scott solberg yeah thank you um one ramsey road marblehead um scott solberg so i just i’m really excited to see so many of our high school students speaking up and just the quality of the voice and um it’s just a great testament that we have some amazing students with a great passion um i know sarah you’ve been inundated with emails we had 450 people on here so to hear that you may not have responded to one or two um it seems relevant that you guys are being really um inundated with with comments and and feedback and want to appreciate that i do appreciate john the the science that’s going into this and i know it’s a slow and it feels like it’s going too

3:16:59 slow but at the same time i also recognize being on the reopening committee that we are at the cutting edge that you are leading the other um the other superintendents to say we need to start pushing on this and so we as a community are now at the front end and i know it feels slow and we feel like it should have happened yesterday but it’s just such a scary situation and i want to appreciate the fact that we really are having these conversations and it feels like we’re ready to move forward i would love for it to happen march 1st that would be fantastic and i understand that there’s a lot of complexities that we need to get some parent feedback and figure out all of that but hopefully we can get a compromise between the march 1st and april 1st and and hopefully we can get this thing going but i think we’re all moving in

3:17:45 that in that direction to get our kids back in the classrooms

3:17:51 thanks scott thanks scott all right um i do not have any more hands raised so i will adjourn us at 10 18. thank you everyone thank you sarah thank you for booking this extra meeting i can’t imagine if we tacked this onto thursday