School Committee: February 25, 2021

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

1:01 james did i give you the correct permission yes thank you thank you thanks appreciate it absolutely

1:24 all right i will call us to order 701 first up is commendations uh anybody have some commendations i i have one that’s all right absolutely just real quick um i just wanted to give recognition to amanda rivers because she has really taken the pool testing program and run with it i think she’s done an amazing job in a very very short period of time to not only get herself up to speed but get everything organized so that we can implement this in marblehead and i just think she’s done a phenomenal job so thank you amanda all right thank you um anybody else have any commendations

2:11 i was just trying to look back and remember um i don’t think we’ve met since you’re in town was broadcast or done and i would like to have a commendation for all of the cast that it was a lot of fun to watch it was great that they pulled it off and uh and just you know it was it was an inspiration to watch all the kids just kind of come together and make the best of it and and pull off their musical so and everyone did an amazing job including our own dan howells who will be with us in a moment

2:49 um any other combinations i’ve got a couple with art

2:56 all right um there is a public schools national grand bank show that that the art department has quite a few various students from around the district who are who have their work displayed over there and then there was also an additional art a scholastic art and writing award and arts marblehead high school um emily did we get that did that go up onto the website oh awesome um i would encourage everyone to look through that it’s up posted on the school committee website there’s some really amazing art in that file and then all the names of all the

3:41 students who have their art over at national grand bank is up there as well so just shout out to the it’s in the meeting packet information um so just a shout out to all of all of those kids and the amazing work that they’re doing in our district all right if i can the work the the images of the work that from the high school program that we saw were were really really amazing i was impressed by so many all of them and so many of them especially the photographs left me wondering how how did they execute this how did they do this okay um if the if any of the teachers or anybody from the national brand art show has some images of that those students work

4:27 i would love to see them if they get a chance to send them my way or our way um we didn’t get images with that but i would love to get to see what came out of that absolutely gladly post those in addition um yeah

4:53 david’s still on mutant his videos off sorry i don’t think it was an intentional by any means but greg was covering the the success of our various teams and i would be remiss if i didn’t mention the ski team so in the massachusetts um uh bay ski league the girls finished at the top of the league after a a nine race season and in the league is uh lexington wellesley newton north brooklyn and framingham and additionally after a uh nine race season the boys also finished in first place um in the league and then there there were also uh they named the all-stars

5:39 the top 10 skiers from those schools are deemed to be all-stars and ranked for the um the boys was christopher thompson who was second matthew thompson who was fourth and charlie pingree who was fifth in points and for the ranking of the girls the number one ranked skier from marblehead samantha mckay number two was may calwell and number five was uh sydney hamilton so uh even though it was abbreviated and shortened it’s one of those teams that you know they need to get on a school bus on thursday nights and and go train and then they they try and you know have their races and it was a difficult winter until the snow finally

6:25 came and but um a good season by the ski team and john thompson of course as the head coach so well done by everybody absolutely thanks david all right uh tonight for our building-based accommodations we have principal sean satterfield with dr satterfield welcome thank you hand it over to you thank you sarah i promise i’ll be brief but thank you for your time tonight i’d like to highlight for you in commendation three groups of people who’ve been working hard since the start of the school year first our classroom teachers at coffin have been continually working to plan and develop lessons for students both remotely and in person using our professional development times they plan as a team weekly to meet student needs as you know this has been quite a challenging and most unusual

7:10 year i’m pleased to report that our assessment data shows tremendous academic growth by our students over the course of this school year our assessment data via aims web shows that our students in first and second grades are at or close to traditional benchmarks for this time of the school year our teachers are excited for the march 15th date to bring our students back for five days for both academic and social emotional consistency and i want to thank you personally for trying to make this happen next i would like to highlight the work done by our counseling staff our school counselors allison eaton and allie carey as well as our school psychologist meg burns they have been instrumental in observing tracking and supporting our vulnerable populations when needed they meet weekly together and with classroom teachers to keep lines of communication open in support of our students

7:56 students students so that their social emotional needs are being met in addition they quite often reach out to families who may have fallen by the wayside or sometimes have difficulty logging on this work enables our students to be ready and open for their academic work be going on in the classrooms it is indeed vital work in these times finally our special needs teachers lindsay o’hara paula morrison janet pock anita candelayaro marianne levine and our team chair meredith wishart have been working tirelessly since september providing five day a week support for our special needs students they continue to continue to develop modify and refine curriculum for individual students in order for them to meet success this work has not stopped since we opened and i commend them and

8:41 the other teachers that i mentioned for their hard work and dedication throughout this school year thank you for your time thanks sean and thank you to all of those individuals it’s a great list completely agree with that one all right if there’s no more commendations i will call on our student representative dan howells

9:11 uh so we are back from february break uh and so first off uh one thing that has definitely been affected this year by covid has been uh sports uh mainly the the scheduling around them and right now for example the football team which normally plays in the fall the volleyball team which normally plays in the winter and the baseball team which normally plays in the spring are all uh going right now so it’s a a little bit funny how that works out but i’m sure our students are glad to be uh uh glad to be able to play their sports um just uh as was mentioned the the ski team finished up a great season as well as the boy

9:58 boys and girls basketball teams and the boys and girls hockey team uh so i have actually come uh heard from some students that there have been some conflicts now that uh with the way the scheduling worked out now they’ll have to pick between two sports that uh normally aren’t in the same season but will be now um but i’m sure you know they’re definitely happy to get to do something as opposed to nothing additionally the football team is fundraising to get some of the equipment mainly for covid that they need so i i will share that link so we can get that posted um course selection for next year has begun

10:44 for ninth tenth and eleventh grade uh and i imagine the eighth grade as well coming into the high school uh the scholarship process for seniors is beginning and will end in around april and finally uh family feud so the senior uh the senior class advisors and class officers have put together uh a family feud uh game so next wednesday um there will be uh at the high school family feud so surveys have been sent out to each of the grades as well as the staff at the high school and as well as high school parents so there have been a number of uh

11:31 mhs-based questions uh and also some just other general questions and seniors will get the chance to uh you know try to answer those in a family feud format uh at the high school next wednesday so the last day to sign up for that is friday um and it will hopefully be a great event this is something new that we’re trying out um uh we we picked it mainly because of its uh you know coveted safety uh everyone can be distant and still answering trivia questions uh so we thought it would be fun uh and we hope that it works out and that students all enjoy it as well

12:11 that all sounds great uh thanks dan and i hope that that family feud is fun sounds like a good one for dan actually um dan there’s been a lot of people i i’ve heard in the community that kind of are very interested and ask about the senior project because it’s something we hear about but if you have younger children or um just aren’t familiar don’t have a senior or haven’t had a senior it’s something people don’t necessarily know about at some point would you be up for um kind of giving us a little overview of what the senior project is what the path is how you pick it you know just just a little bit about it because i i haven’t you know i don’t have any high schoolers i’d like to know more about it um and i know that i’ve heard a lot of people in the community really interested in

12:56 interested in interested in and you know liking the idea of learning more yeah i could talk about that uh now uh if that works um so senior project is uh basically a chance for seniors at the high school to engage in an internship that involves something that they are interested in pursuing um so normally you would the internships would be mainly in person but this year both virtual and in in-person internships are being supported by the high school so we just recently had or in january i guess uh had our first uh introductory meeting about it uh we

13:41 got some info uh about you know how we’re gonna uh apply and things like that so now at this point we have all uh applied for our senior projects you need a supervisor who works with the whoever you know whatever company you’re trying to work with as well as a mentor who is a teacher at the high school that you will communicate with uh to make sure you know you’re on pace and uh keeping up and things like that um the way that it works with the schedule is that seniors who are doing senior project uh don’t uh go to their normal classes during the fourth quarter so it takes place during the last quarter of their senior year uh except for ap classes um so the it’s

14:27 it’s it’s open to everyone if you’re willing to do it however there are you do have to meet some academic requirements to be able to do it and also some of the kids who are taking a lot of aps may not be able to do it because the aps are filling up their schedule um yeah that’s a just a little bit about it i hope that you know answered a lot of the questions

14:56 thank you so much i just it i just know it’s been interesting to me and i’ve heard other people ask about it so thank you for giving us that synopsis yeah i could uh maybe next week i can come uh with some examples i’ll ask around uh see what kids are doing yeah i’m glad that you guys are pulling that off this year um because i know that’s something that seniors really look forward to and there’s a lot of planning that goes into it so i’m glad it’s going to happen for everyone definitely all right thank you dan as always and we’ll see you next week since we’re on and off schedule this week thank you okay that leads us to public comment um i think to start public comment this evening i’m going to limit it to 15 minutes at the beginning of the meeting

15:43 and then if there seems to be additional people who want to comment we can circle back towards the end of the meet up or at the end of the meeting i just feel as though it would be helpful for the committee to be fresh as we push through our agenda this evening and so we can hear some public comments and then if necessary we can hear the rest of it towards the up or at the end of the meeting if anyone who wants to make public comment can raise their hand and i will just sort of monitor the time and um it’s about 7 15 right now so around 7 30 we’ll just ask people to wait until the end uh catherine martin you can state your name and address for the record as well uh catherine martin 29 west shore drive and i’ll be very brief because i want to give everybody their opportunity to

16:30 exercise their first amendment right so i attended the budget subcommittee meeting this week and i was really thrilled to hear about the essr grant or esser grant i don’t know if i’m pronouncing it right and that we were able to obtain 350 000 and it sounds like we got another covid relief grant for a hundred thousand dollars and i want to applaud you for putting 25 000 of that immediately into technology i think that’s fantastic so i want to talk about the balance of that um the other 400 000 and what can we do with that money for our students right now and is there the ability to use it you know we heard about the 7 to 12 and how hard it is to get them in the building well can we look at tents can we look at

17:17 outdoor classrooms can we look at ppe how do we use this money and can we use it for the immediate needs of our students i know that you have a two year window to use it i know that we have a 980 000 gap with the town right now budget wise but we also have a crisis um and i come on these meetings quite often and i talk about the budget and under funding but here’s the chance where we actually have money and we actually have a problem so maybe the agenda items can come together reopening and budget and maybe we can look at using this money now for its immediate need i understand that i don’t know all the intricacies of this grant and perhaps this isn’t reasonable but if there is the ability to use this money now i

18:02 would love to see it put forward to help ease the burden of our students right now in time thank you very much thank you catherine jeff benedetto yes hi um my name is dr jess benedetto bradley rhode i’d like to give my perspective as a physician on the front lines treating covid i work at a hospital i’ve been exposed to covet at my job for a year now i’ve never stayed at home since march 13th 2020 because of my profession i have seen covid firsthand and i understand how serious this disease can be in terms of getting kids back to school

18:48 five days a week there is mounting evidence from the scientific community that we can do it with three foot distancing there will never be a time in which there is zero risk to get our kids back to school scientific experts think that covid represents the first pandemic in our lifetime but it will not be the last we need to implement a system in our schools to mitigate the risk as much as possible for vets and the high school we should treat the building like a hospital place mass stations at all entrances with alcohol-based hand sanitizer both staff and students use sanitizer then remove their cloth mask and replace it with a well-fitting surgical mask

19:34 this mask is worn all day we give the option of double masking with the cloth mask placed over the surgical one place hand sanitizer stations at the entrance to every classroom students must re-sanitize between every class and before lunch place buckets six feet apart outside and students must eat outside whenever possible based on the weather on bad weather days put up folding tables in the gym and convert the gym to a second lunch room to provide more distancing vaccines for teachers are coming and this is another mitigation strategy we must volunteer for pooled testing for our kids this is another safety measure we should attest to not sending our children to school when they’re sick and

20:19 testing quarantine as directed by health officials in the event of an exposure this is another safety measure all of these safety measures have been in place at the hospital for months and we are not seeing covet outbreaks in the building i spent all day at my job discussing patient care with other doctors nurses and patients and none of us speak to each other while being spaced three feet apart we’re closer than three feet and with these safety measures we are not getting covet we can do this let’s stop discussing why we didn’t do this before or pointing fingers at school committee administration or teachers union to blame others let’s figure out how to move forward and use our coveted state money for the best

21:07 quality well-fitting surgical mass for all faculty all staff as well as students in grades seven through twelve along with school based hand sanitizer we know transmission to covet is less than younger children at the elementary level cloth masks are enough for kids but let’s provide all teachers and staff with the same surgical mass and sanitizer so our teachers feel safe adjusting to the new normal let’s aim for five half days per week in school all cohorts all grades with similar hours this is because we lack any sort of consistent transportation system in this town to have different schools on different schedules at the same time let’s tackle the lunch issue and make the move to

21:54 to move to full-time full days in the next few weeks if possible let’s acknowledge that change is scary for everyone but by focusing on the science we can make that change happen in the safest way possible based on the available data now if we minimize our risk using scientifically proven strategies the benefit of our kids being in school will largely outweigh the risks of covid thank you dr benedetto alexia kearney hi thank you for letting me speak i just want to read a letter um that has been signed by uh many people in our community that will be forwarded to all

22:40 of you in the next few days dear mr bucky and members of the marblehead school committee we are parents students teachers neighbors caregivers therapists healthcare providers and good citizens of marblehead and we care deeply about our students the children enrolled in our district have lost thousands of hours of in-class learning while other massachusetts private and public schools have opened and demonstrated over the past year that a three foot distancing between students along with other stringent mitigation efforts result in almost zero in school transmission of covet 19. our own state

23:26 guidelines published in june 2020 set the social distancing requirements for schools at a minimum of three feet the massachusetts american academy of pediatrics have recently stood up for our students and sent an urgent message on february 14 2021 from a group of more than 60 physicians public health experts and infectious disease specialists who are urging massachusetts education leaders like yourselves to ask schools to implement a three-foot distance policy these experts have given us a path forward to bring our students and teachers safely back to school in marblehead

24:12 our high risk and remote teachers and students deserve the ability to live stream in marblehead classrooms our school district has recently received grant funding for covet relief in an amount over 450 000 and yet has not allocated its use we ask that those funds be considered to upgrade our current technology platform build outdoor classrooms and create a more robust mental health initiative now not next year the risk to students of not being in a supportive school environment are dramatic and we as a community are very concerned students have been isolated for months at home

24:57 students in marblehead are suffering suffering an unprecedented level of more mental health issues increased rates of non-accidental trauma physical health concerns and learning loss we are worried and we are scared for the future of these children in marblehead we stand up for the students of marblehead and we hope our concerns will be heard and addressed by you our educational leaders in marblehead tonight thank you thank you alexia jennifer eaton hi hi [Music] as an icu nurse the past year has been a very long one but as we’ve learned over time it’s

25:44 masks even more than any specific amount of social distancing that has kept us safe from covid um however the reason i’m talking tonight is that when i informed my fifth grader the other day about after the meeting that she would be returning to five days a week of school starting on march 15th she was ecstatic remote learning has never worked for her and in the past few months it’s been even more challenging my seventh grader however said what about us i told her well they haven’t made a decision yet her first reaction was why doesn’t seventh grade get to go as well is there anything we can do one of the only positive things that’s come out of covid is that her transition to vets has been her new ability to self-advocate

26:31 as a student on an iep in a remote setting she’s had to ask for help in ways she never did before because she doesn’t have access to her teachers throughout the day she’s learned that her needs and the support of her teachers in person is much better excuse me she’s learned that the needs and the support of her teachers in person is important daily she’s learned that sitting in front of zooms and doing the at-home remote learning is next to impossible for students like her who struggle with attention and executive function needs at 13 she knows what works for her and her learning style and after one year of remote learning at home this continued style isn’t it all of our students need to go back to in-person learning we have a chance to make things slightly better

27:16 for at least the last few months of these students because of her newfound self-advocacy skills she would like to take a moment moment to speak to you so if i may ask the trip person to let her have a moment to speak she would like to do so now absolutely

27:37 being a kid with adhd is hard on its own but being a kid with adhd this year is chaos hi i’m megan and i’m in seventh grade school is really hard for me and many and many of my friends with all the zooms online homework and remote wednesdays are very hard for all of us i enjoy the days when i get to go in person to school because in a way it feels normal seeing my my classmates again i have an iep in school so learning for me is an extra is extra challenging i think that remote wednesdays are one of the most difficult days for all the students and teachers it’s really hard to do five classes in a row without a screen break i think it’s good having more time for classes on wednesdays but it’s hard to sit in front

28:24 of a computer all day with my adhd i have a hard time focusing and i get distracted easily during the 42 minute block seams on wednesday my eyes hurt at the end of the day staring at the from staring at the computer the worst part about not being in school more often is when i go into school on my magician’s days i’ve noticed that the teachers often rush during class and don’t get to explain the lessons as much as they probably would have last year this makes my classmates and i confused about the homework when we get home another problem about the remote days is that we have to do our assignments on our own this is really hard because the directions aren’t as clear as they would have been in a normal school year covet 19 has caused a lot of problems but i think one of the big ones in school is most of the students at school

29:10 forget how to communicate with each other when we went through quarantine to me it was torture these past six months of seventh grade have been very difficult for myself and my classmates i hope that since covet 19 numbers are decreasing we will be able to go back to school for five days a week i really need my teachers in person and i miss seeing all my classmates thank you thank you very much megan and i appreciate that you’re standing up and talking to us and that you’re willing to talk about the things that that are struggles for you because you’re not alone in that and there’s a lot of kids out there who are struggling in very similar ways

29:51 all right it’s 7 30 so i’m going to ask kelly salowitz and emily dewitt to wait till the end and we will come back and um i’ll ask for a motion to do public comment at the end of our meeting as well sarah can you just add another name i’ve noticed a woman whose hand she’s physically waving but i don’t know that she knows where the where the button is and her name on the screen says mary mccarrick stun i thought she was waving it maybe not no she looked oh all right she she was it looks like she’s signing so if we can add her to the list that at the end yeah for a public comment just so she knows that she’s on it yes and i see jeff st george’s hand raised as well at this point so i’ve got those four written down and we will hear from you guys at the end thank you

30:36 okay so that moves us to our consent agenda and action items um we have one set of minutes from january 21st 2021. uh can i get a motion to approve those minutes from january 1st 2021 sorry january 21st 2021 so so i’ll send you all right megan second was the updated version of those in our dropbox i didn’t see them in today’s folder um i don’t believe there was any changes made to them i thought we tabled them because there was going to be a clarification made maybe not um i i think we had and then you didn’t send the clarification i thought lisa was gonna look at the

31:23 file okay that’s fine okay all right um anybody else have any additions on those okay i’ll call for roll call sarah gold yes megan taylor yes uh emily barron yes sarah fox

31:39 yes and david harris yes all right those paths five to zero all right then we also had a memo from stephen kowalik about recycling some technology as surplus so there was a relatively long list of things that he has identified to be recycled so you guys got the memo about it um i will ask for a motion to allow the items on the memo from from stephen kowalik to be deemed surplus and recycled one question i had sarah i noticed on there was 20 ipads and i know that they

32:24 were outdated so we wouldn’t use them you know for t in the teaching environment but i didn’t know by recycled i mean could we offer them if people in the community want i mean wanted them now that so much is tech based and i know they get a school ipad now but during the summer i don’t know if if that’s something we can do steven i see that you’re on here with us i’ll let you answer that most of these ipads are not even in use anymore uh don’t even turn on um and most of them are probably over 10 years old so they actually can’t do a lot of the stuff that we need the kids to be able to work on today okay i just didn’t know if they were functional if someone wanted them keep them from going in the dump but i’m not sure exactly what the policy is too about um

33:11 about um about um handing out technology

33:18 to the public i don’t know what the school policy is well the policy subcommittee will have to look into that thank you steven all right any other questions on that nope okay um so we’ve got a motion that’s been seconded sarah gold yes uh emily baron yes uh sarah fox yes david harris yes and megan taylor yes usually everybody’s tight on my screen and they’re not tonight i have to look all right that passes five to zero thank you everyone thank you steven okay so that brings us to the superintendent’s report and you’ve got a couple of things delineated on there but i think you’ve got a little bit of an update as well for us so i will hand the floor to you john yeah i just wanted to

34:05 go back over tuesday’s meeting and make sure that people were clear that the march 15th date for k-6 does not require any negotiation with the teachers union that that is a set date and i think the school committee arrived at that after hearing principals talk about the feasibility of march 1st and march 8th in the turnaround time for them to be able to do that is where we got to march 15th and so i just wanted to clarify that that is a set date uh dan and matt provided an option for the high school and they talked about a preferred start date there school committee asked that

34:51 they get some data so they are going to push out a survey tomorrow that will ask questions about the current model the proposed model to gather data so that school committee next week can then vote to approve uh whatever’s decided for seven to twelve and so again what they presented also is not contingent on mea what is going on with mea right now is a renegotiation of the memorandum of agreement and that is uh by its nature just as we came through collective bargaining recently not an open process and so we can’t talk

35:37 about this is what they’ve brought to the table as what they need in order to take these steps and sarah is the school committee representative and is the one charged at negotiating on behalf of the school committee and so additional members of school committee people should not be advising teachers to work with individual members of the committee for this process it should all go through sarah if people have questions or concerns and so that walks a fine line in mass general law if individual members of the school committee are working with teachers as we’re doing negotiations in good faith and so the

36:23 k-6 model is set that does not require negotiation you’ll make a decision next thursday on the 7-12 what was presented does not require negotiation the negotiation with the teachers union is solely focused right now on the six to three foot distancing and just to update people on what we can talk about is we met i’m going to be conscious of my mask because i know that people watching are will point out if it goes beneath my nose we had a two and a half hour bargaining session with mea on tuesday they took information from that process back to their membership this week

37:09 they will meet with us again early next week to talk about uh what the results of working with their membership are and so when i say that it’s uh going well that’s what i can share that it is an ongoing process but to talk about this is what they’re asking for or this is what school committee is countering we cannot talk about public session just a quick question john isn’t megan and sarah on our collective bargaining subcommittee i thought that’s who we assigned how come megan’s not part of that this is the memorandum of agreement which was just sarah sarah as uh the representative that did that this summer in august and so it’s nan murphy sarah and me and then mea has their representatives

37:54 representatives representatives so megan and i did the collective bargaining agreement for the ongoing the the agreements that we voted on for unit a and then the things that we have um this evening that came back in executive session to the committee as well

38:13 i thought the two collective bargaining refers to any collective bargaining so i thought both of you are on were we’re covering that um and then and then to speak to what john said earlier about the date can we get a notification out to families because although we had 460 or 470 people on our call by that by far is not our whole district so can we um as soon as possible get some type of communication out about that march 15th date so people can just start planning and adjusting their schedules yes and tomorrow’s uh superintendent’s weekly update will uh have very clearly delineated all of this information um there was something that i wanted to say that just went out of my mind oh that the

38:59 k to six will be a change form that unless parents indicate they want to change their current learning model they are staying as currently enrolled so if you’re in remote and you want to go to hybrid in the five-day model you will need to indicate that if you’re in hybrid and wish to go fully remote you will indicate that it is an opt-in or opt out uh process we will not be surveying everyone to say do you want to change your model or not no news means that you are staying in your current model so it will be incumbent on families to indicate that change and again the k-6

39:45 principles will be pushing that information out it’ll be in the weekly update but it will be important that if they do not indicate a change they will remain in their current model and john um when if we push out or sorry when we add lunch and go to full days are we going to allow families another chance to to opt out or in or is this this is it because we’re at our trimester break at this point for our for our final trimester i would see this as binding for the next trimester okay so if someone is not truly happy that we’re only doing half days but knowing that we’re going to be pushing towards full days um

40:30 they should opt in at this point correct okay thanks so the next thing is a pool testing update and i am so grateful for megan shout out to amanda rivers because she has done a great job in stepping in working over the break because uh project beaten beacon was aligned with us over the february break i would just ask that for purposes of tonight that uh amanda just update us on kind of the facts of where we are and with that we do not go back into what is pool testing and how many pools will we have in that she’s made a great informational video that we pushed out to families this week that’s on our website but she does have i don’t want to steal her thunder some

41:18 really exciting developments that we are full in for the pool testing so amanda take it away hi um i was really fortunate that today i actually even got to go to salem charter school and shadow some of their pool testing to kind of see what they’re doing but mostly the things that since i last spoke to the school committee um we have been set up with beacon uh families are signed on we have just under 600 people that have signed on to do the um the pool testing and honestly the more people that we can have buy into this program the better the more people that work and do it the better our information is going to be um on top of that i got all the supplies i need so i officially have everything um we matched with a courier service so

42:04 i have career pickup started i will be able to start a little bit of it um next week with the people that we do have signed on and i hope continuously like we have it up on the website you can enroll or disenroll whenever um as far as numbers go we have a little like 150 people at the high school um about 110 people at village 100 veterans uh like i said 600 and then the rest are um sort of dispersed through there um what else oh the other thing um i guess to what the school committee if they want to do this is i know salem right now is um testing all the fall sports so each sports team would end up being in like their own pools um salem is

42:51 actually mandating that if they do fall sports that they want uh they have to be part of the pool testing program um so that’s another idea that is definitely doable and something that we can can do with the sports here um so nextly uh how we will determine the pools and how they will be tested and when um so the nice thing is i have a little bit over 24 hours from taking the test from when they get picked up so i’ll be able to do tests on monday tuesday wednesday thursday and i have the courier service coming tuesday wednesday thursday to pick them up so i’ll have four days a week that i can do testing um and then you know do the reflex tested if need be that um through there um the elementary

43:37 school is most likely i’m going to be doing it during the day with it um being able to actually go and see the testing getting done it honestly takes less time than it takes to blow your nose to do it so there’s gonna be negligible time lost um to any students in there with it takes 30 seconds to swab them um and i plan on doing central admin as sort of to kind of show them what it’s about on monday morning so it’s it’s gonna start next week i’m really excited i think the one thing that i would just want to jump on that is exciting and the commissioner announced this in a call yesterday is that they’re extending the program through april vacation so it will go through april 18th so we will have seven free

44:22 free free from the department weeks of pool testing and so i know that there was some concern that we were maybe getting a late start but we’ll start monday and then be able to go through the april vacation that’s great news and i wouldn’t be surprised if they if it’s a successful program statewide if they extend it again um amanda thank you so much you’ve put so much work into all of this and it’s really really appreciated um i would like to make a motion to mandate sports to pool tests um following the example from salem i’ll second that motion um [Music] i think we just need to have it pending legal that was um we discussed it this

45:07 morning in um reopening and so that was sort of that general feel that we were just going to make sure yeah i’ll look into that and we do have a meeting scheduled with greg ziglarski and i think he’s on board with that as well any comments on that thank you so much amanda we have a motion on the floor but it’s pending legal i don’t really want to vote anything if it’s not legal so we can come back to it i think we’re going to meet uh next week aren’t we yep and we’ll be able to get a resolution by next week i would think is that agreeable to you sarah i’d like to to vote it now i think it’s

45:53 pending if legal says it’s not okay it falls to the wayside that said i see that too if legal says it’s a no-go then it’s a no-go yeah i mean there’s other public schools doing it i have to assume they’ve used their legal but we should definitely check ours well so if i could ask the school nurse so we have 600 out of 3 000 people enrolled so what why are people not enrolling uh why um so i think initially it may have been due to the fact that there was some can or people didn’t know what pool testing is so that’s why we did the video we put it out as of wednesday um i think

46:38 i think i think i i’m not i guess i’m not sure it’s it’s not invasive it’s not traumatic it’s a 30 second procedure that gives us a lot of really good information as to the incidence of um pool of covered within the schools and especially where right now there’s talk about the six feet and three feet in the elementary schools it’s something to give the teachers more confidence that the what we have set up is working um i’ve answered a lot of questions my i’ve tried to put my email on everything that i can so if anyone’s questioning whether or not they should sign up i please like i encourage them to email me to try to soothe maybe any sort of concerns or what they don’t know um

47:25 but i think too maybe people are waiting to see what happens the first week that’s all i can really think of to be honest great i’m also hopeful that after it’s talked about again tonight so we kind of had it push out and continue forward over february break and so now it’s sort of back on people’s periphery um and that will get more to people to sign up because i do think that there was a more of an interest sort of in kind of things that i was hearing than than sort of what is being sold out in the numbers right now emily um so i think it would be helpful i know this doesn’t really have to do with the motion but kind of what david’s saying can we have every principal send out the email with the link or i don’t know if we’ve already done that but almost like every week send it out be

48:10 like this is how you sign it’s super easy i did it when we got the last one i think from amanda and just say this is how you do it because a lot of i think emails don’t always necessarily get opened um or and so if it’s one from a principal or even i don’t know if teachers can just get it get it in front of people as much as possible because it is a step you have to take and that’s sometimes hard yeah so just have people send it weekly and then i bet we’ll get more it’s also on the back together marblehead site so if you go into there there’s a section with pool testing so you can easily click there too and beacon testing has been really awesome as far as if anyone’s having any sort of technical difficulties with being able to like figure it out

48:56 so if i can’t they definitely can yeah once again oh sorry i was gonna say it was really easy i put my kids on and was took just a few minutes but going to the website again is one step too much for parents i think you know what i just put it in their face if we can we will absolutely do that you think from experience yeah just make it as easy as possible yeah um well i i think um past practice of this board unrelated to covid we we post our agenda also and we usually identify items that we’re looking for a vote on we do try and um we try to and i think um you know there’s been objections that if we vote on things

49:44 maybe uh other people would have attended the meeting to be heard and while the the agenda does have a pool testing update it doesn’t say that we’re going to vote on mandating athletics and i would just like to just understand a little bit more about it before i vote on it i’m not i’m not opposed to it by any means i i just don’t know enough about it to just say that because salem’s doing it everybody else ought to do it i think salem is also still red salem charter that’s doing it’s not oh salem charlotte i don’t know i think it’s no it’s it’s salem public school what was it salem public school sports so i mean feel free but i i would just like to know more about it before

50:30 vote on something that just has been presented in 60 seconds or less yeah and i think um again i’m not opposed to it but i would like greg to really think it through and come to us and present his thoughts on it and you know someone make the recommendation to us again following past practice um so we can really understand exactly what that’s going to mean to the sport team how they’re going to break it up what happens if they get a positive like let’s kind of work through all that i mean we’re talking about really a matter of a few days um so i think that’s just not that we don’t not that we’re not you know honestly considering it and not that we don’t all think it’s a good idea but let’s just kind of like think it through and get all the information before we vote there’s a motion on the table people can

51:16 abstain or vote now there’s an opportunity to discuss the motion as well after it’s been seconded no i totally understand thank you you need to discuss but i’m not foreign so through the chair i would recommend that we vote on the motion on the floor now but that we put this as a votable agenda item for the meeting next thursday and allow greg and amanda to do a joint presentation okay okay all right um i will call for a roll call vote did you have anything additional david you’re good okay um sarah gold yes megan taylor no uh emily baron

52:04 no sarah fox yes david harris no okay so the motion fails three to or two to three um just to clarify that though i’m not voting against it i’m voting to get more information and to make a decision based on an informed presentation absolutely that’s my comment as well and to do that next thursday yes and mine as well all right um lisa and i will be probably working on the agenda for next week tomorrow morning so it will be on our agenda and um dr bucky we can have greg common talk as well wonderful thank you contracts contracts we have the uh remaining

52:50 contracts the custodians paraprofessionals tutors permanent subs and we omitted cafeteria workers on the agenda but i would like to include them as a bargaining unit that you vote as the contracts are all the same and so it would not be differentiated and i think that you have the language there uh that was similar to the unit a agreement that applies to the remaining five and also the language for subcommittees to do any language changes as agreed upon by both what i just asked a question about that though so when we um voted to approve

53:36 the for the teacher today we voted to establish that committee then so do we need to re-establish it because it would be the same would it be the same committee or would it be a different committee i think they would be different because they would have representatives for like if there were changes to language in a custodian agreement that they would have a representative for custodians or paraprofessionals or tutors or cafeteria workers okay but it’d be the same representatives from our side yes yes i’m sorry okay for the administration side it would be the same okay okay any other questions on that i do so um

54:15 probably unrelated to this but how did we cover stipends what was that usually also is handled on the side what what was the comment that we made about how stipends were going to be addressed that it would be on the side that it was not included in what you’re agreeing to that it did not apply to stipends so is that something that will um take place in the next couple of months so you’ll find the opportunity to do that or something that was discussed in executive session so that did come up in executive session okay i’m i’m sorry sarah i just failed to have a recollection of what was discussed in executive session so no i just wanted to make sure we weren’t

55:03 getting into an area that we might get you know i can i’m not talking about what was talked about in executive session i’m just asking if stipends are going to be addressed at some point and thank you thank you for the clarification ready for a motion uh yes thank you um can i get i’ve got two motions here so the first motion can i get a motion to approve the moa for collective bargaining agreements with the mea custodian cafeteria paraprofessional tutor and permanent substitute contracts beginning at the start of the 2021 school year through august 31st 2024 as presented

55:49 it’s all moved david moved second megan second

55:56 all right this mimics the unit a so um there shouldn’t be really any questions um sarah gold yes megan taylor yes emily baron yes sarah fox yeah i just want to clarify are we voting on the part that wasn’t on the agenda for vote 2 it was just a it was just one of the additional uh okay yeah comfortable doing that um david harris yes all right that passes five to zero and then motion two is can i get a motion to approve the establishment of subcommittees to investigate and report out findings or recommendations to the parties for considerations on negotiation regarding which changes so moved megan moved second emily second

56:44 all right i will call we’ll call that sarah gold yes megan taylor yes emily barron yes sarah fox yes and david harris yes all right that passes five to zero as well thank you everyone john john um the town report um is uh something i’m proud of because it was a document that was in my humble opinion pretty sterile and didn’t give an intimate look into the schools and so i asked each principal to write a narrative of the year that was and i think it’s very safe to say the 1920 academic year was a very different year

57:29 and so listing the immunization needs for the public schools and people’s extensions didn’t seem to provide much detail to the community and so we were able to take a town report that was 33 pages in length and shorten it down to i think 22 pages i would argue to say 22 pages of information that is very transparent about what happened at each school in each program and kind of highlights the year that was i will say it is awkward as a new superintendent to write about a year when you weren’t here but i am appreciative of the directors and principals that wrote that and i think the community will appreciate it as well and so um that was in the

58:15 dropbox for you last night and i’m happy to answer any questions about the town report if people have them any questions no i think it looks good well done thank you in the past has there been a fiscal portion of the town report david maybe knows this better from his years on i’m going to look to david because i don’t know how to answer that question i don’t think i recall seeing in they gave me previous years as exemplars to use uh i know there was a lot of testing data that we didn’t have available because there wasn’t mcas data there was some at the high school through sat and ap scores but i don’t know uh if there was and lisa is listening in so maybe she could

59:01 chime in as well michelle cresto and i think you have the fincom report and the town report which are which are two separate uh documents so um not really sure about wasn’t too involved in in the town report more so on on the fincom book that you know has has a report in it and all of the budget information yeah um i’ll just jump in here real quick i believe all the financial information is from the town audit and because we’re just part of the town audit that’s what’s included in the town report so we don’t have a separate financial section for the school department i just didn’t know if it gets noted somewhere that we came in under budget last year

59:46 no we don’t we don’t just pull out the school budget and that’s the superintendent’s report all right wonderful thank you very much so that leads us to our finance portion um michelle we’ve got our monthly financial report up first yes lots of information for you so good evening um first the fy 21 financial report um as of the end of january we were 44 through the operating budget or we had spent 18 million 19 878 dollars um this month there were not any significant changes just in the past couple of months it’s been a been a

1:00:31 quiet couple of months financially knock on wood um the only slight change we’ve had is in the out of district tuition costs it has actually decreased slightly which is great is to our benefit and right now we are projecting a shortfall of just under seven thousand dollars and i’ll repeat that we’re just we’re projecting a shortfall of just under seven thousand that actually really excites me because with all of the movement we’ve had this year and all of the uncertainty the fact that we’re at that point it’s it’s wonderful so um you know eric and i continually talk about this we meet about this we have shared spreadsheets it’s it’s a really good working relationship and we really you know are on target here um another area that i point out each month

1:01:17 have for the past couple of months is the area of substitute teaching costs we have spent a total of thirty thousand two hundred and thirty seven dollars as of the end of january and that is just thirteen percent of our um substitute teaching budget um we continue to struggle to find day-to-day subs but we are servicing our students um even if that means a principal jumps in and fills in for a classroom or someone else um you know we’re not letting these students not have have what they need in the classrooms but it is it is a little bit of a struggle for our administration um and on to the big news is the cobit funding so we currently um as has been mentioned and we talked

1:02:03 about it at the budget subcommittee we have two new funding sources of covert funds that have been awarded to the school district the first is the state coronavirus prevention fund and that is in the amount of 98 175 dollars and the second is the easter two grand and that’s e-s-s-e-r it’s an acronym um and it’s the second grant because we got an easter one grant earlier in the year and that is in the amount of dollars dollars that amount actually has ten thousand dollars that we have to set aside for mental health purposes the rest of it we can determine um what what our covert related needs are and whether that be

1:02:49 remediation services or something we need to do to get our students back we can certainly spend on um that is just recent that we we know about that amount and we know what the guidelines are the grant just opened um last week so we certainly have some planning to figure out what those funds will be used for and it was mentioned that these funds can roll over if needed so we can use them this year we can use them next year or even into september 23. um so far we have spent a total in covid costs of one million four hundred eighty six thousand and we have encumbered another 730 i’m sorry 373 000 and we anticipate an additional

1:03:34 151 at the current time um so that brings our total covered costs pretty much committed of just over 2 million dollars it’s 2 million 11 662 dollars so for this um these two new pots of covert funding that we’ve received the first one in the amount of 98 000 will be earmarked completely for it services this will cover the fiber connection that i’ll be asking you to consider for approval coming up very shortly in the agenda and the other one is the internal fiber at the high school where a lot of our connectivity issues are happening um so we’ll get into that in a little bit but the 98 000 is is going to be completely earmarked for

1:04:21 technology needs um the 354 000 which is the remaining amount of the easter two grant that is not specifically for mental health services can be used for technology if we need um can be used for a variety of items so the district really needs to figure out what we need i do want to mention that the past couple of days since we’re really ramping up for bringing students back into the schools some additional costs have come up um you know we may need some additional rolling carts for for teachers because they’re no longer able to use their big bulky desks we might need some um additional desk dividers there’s all types of costs that have come across my desks in the past two days so those will be um considered and you know we will have to take a look at if we need to

1:05:09 jump into this this most recent um grant funding opportunity or not to to bring these kids back um and so certainly we will we will make sure we do what we need to do to get these kids back and we will use these funds wisely we don’t want to just throw them out the door and and spend them without giving some serious thought to how we need to best spend these funds but that that’s it in terms of the coveted funding report and the monthly report if you um if the committee has any questions feel free to ask that’s great thanks michelle um i know i was talking with nan murphy earlier today about um that esser grant and the ten thousand dollars that’s allocated to social emotional we were talking about you know trauma trauma-informed care both in classrooms and um in

1:05:54 guidance and so it’s you know i know that everybody is is right on top of this all this stuff so absolutely there’s a lot going on which is great yes uh sarah fox

1:06:07 um do you foresee more grants coming in this fiscal year potentially to help us with any covet expenditures there are some rumblings about an additional aid package nothing for certain that i’ve heard about um so potentially we could get more funds um one of these two pots of money is the 98 000 actually has to be spent this year and the second part of money that easter grant does not have to be spent this year so we have some leeway so we need to be careful about what pots of money we spend when um most of them do carry over so we’re well aware of that you know so if there’s any lingering small funds here and there we will do that um but we’re hoping to get more funding and we will certainly you know use that to the best

1:06:52 of our abilities and and we do have a wide range of items that we can spend it on which is great because a lot of the the covert related costs i mean you think of covid and you think of the ppe you think of the hvac systems and all these but there’s so much more there’s so many student services there’s so much professional development where we can help these teachers um help our students and and just you know improve the district and with all this coveted funding we really have been given um a great opportunity to to start to bring our technology up to where it needs to be so we will certainly spend all these dollars in the best manner possible can i just follow on from michelle to just more for information for the rest of the committee is in her monthly report she’s now kind of

1:07:38 um itemized all our funding sources and you know the amounts obviously but the dates you know that those expire because they do expire at all different times so it’s just worthwhile to really think about that so that we’re managing the use of those funds in a you know effective way absolutely um as far as the mental health piece goes of that of the essa grant um how quickly can we vet whatever the use is going to be for that and really start to implement that and um and get that moving because we know how vital those services are um my sense is ten thousand may not even you know cover once we identify what those needs are

1:08:24 but um i wanna start that bull rolling oh absolutely some of our current grants do you know did not require a mental health spending um but we did set aside a lot of funds for direct student services and programs like that so we still have some funds allocated for such programs um and we can use that right away and if we do need to tap into this this most recent grant we can tap into that you know as soon as next month so that’s not a problem at all now as i mentioned sarah as i mentioned um nan has kind of you know heard she’s got a bucket full of of ideas and things that leads that she’s following up on and and um you know really kind of moving the district at all levels forward on that mental health piece that’s wonderful um

1:09:09 is there a plan to use any of this funding or a need for it for additional summer services that may um which or probably will be needed to kind of you know fill any gaps that may may exist um i am not i can’t speak to that specifically man may be able to speak to that and i believe part of the student opportunity act will also um include additional summer services for our students um but certainly we can do that as well okay um and then can you give us your can i can i also add um on the commissioner’s call this week he did allude to perhaps providing funding to districts to to offer some summer support

1:09:56 oh that would be wonderful yeah thank you nan for adding that um and can we get a breakdown of that covet spending which items in that list kind of were funded through the school allocated funding versus the town allocated funding because i know there were two different pots to kind of draw that from um well with these two new funding sources we actually have a total of six different pots so yes i can certainly give that to you um i do have it on this massive spreadsheet so i can break that down and give it to the kids thank you um and can we go i have a visitor hey thank you um can we go into our sub line since you know we’re not going to use all that reasonably at this point in the year um to fund getting kids back whether that’s

1:10:42 you know tents or whatever is needed can we go safely into that sub lines or is that been assigned or allocated to something else at this point no we can we can certainly do that where you know in the next couple couple of weeks i will be doing a projection through the end of the year just to make sure to see what our budget surplus is looking like um you really don’t want to do that really before you get to the to the last quarter of the year so i typically do that in march and we’ll know if we have specific shortfalls in any other areas i’m really not targeting any other area especially where we have closed the special education tuition gap at this point um essentially so yeah we can certainly use some of those surplus funds that’s not a problem that’s great

1:11:27 to hear um and then my last question is those items that you’re saying we need to get those kids back um i’m great really happy we have funding for that what is the lead time because i’m assuming a lot of districts are kind of vying for some of the same types of things right now are we confident we’re going to get that stuff we need in a timely manner we believe so yes pretty much everything we’ve asked about is readily in stock so we’re i believe we started ordering samples today to make sure it’s what the teachers want um and we should have no problem getting them within the next two weeks thank you michelle so much everything you’re doing thank you michelle does anybody else have any other questions for michelle all right sorry i don’t have questions i don’t know if it’s worth doing it now or just because we’re talking about budget

1:12:13 or the subcommittee update but just that we met with the town um this week um and went through kind of all the materials that we’ve we’ve got here too and it was i just want to say it was a positive meeting um i think very collaborative you know we’re we’ve got a few more meetings over the next couple weeks with them um so you know process kicked off with them and it’s all been good to go great i think that’s a great lead in to uh michelle assuming that you’re headed towards the fy 22 budget update as well 222 yes um yeah and basically we we completely covered this extensively at the budget subcommittee meeting yesterday so our fy 22 budget the total has not

1:12:58 changed since we had our budget workshop um we haven’t begun to start digging in and making cuts to any figures but what i did share with the budget subcommittee and i put into the school committee packet this week is a listing of the fy 22 budget priorities nothing new there but basically just summarize the items with dollar figures so i’ll briefly run down those so for the brown school we have an expanded preschool program we are looking for two teachers and four paraprofessionals that cost less than additional estimated preschool revenue because of the two additional classrooms um is a total cost of 147 thousand six hundred and seventy dollars

1:13:45 the next item in no particular order on the budget priority list is two integration technology specialists for a total cost of a hundred and sixty thousand dollars the next item is it capital leases for network switching wireless and our replacement of the phone system across the district except for the brown school which will already have a new phone system and that cost is estimated to be two hundred and twelve thousand seven hundred and six dollars that is a finance cost over a three year period um those quotes actually have started to come in and we we might be looking at a little bit of a lesser cost than that curriculum we’re looking for two additional and two instructional specialists for total cost of one thousand one hundred and twenty dollars

1:14:32 curriculum with a new math program for grades k to eight um looking at a total cost or just estimated at a hundred thousand dollars and that may be a multi-year cost as well due to financing and central admin we’re looking for an hr director which would actually be a total an increase cost of thirty thousand dollars because we currently have an hr assistant um which will be absorbed by the hr director’s position and we’re looking for community relations liaison for estimated cost of forty two thousand so those budget priorities come up to a total of eight hundred and thirteen thousand four hundred ninety six dollars these are included in the total budget figure that was presented at the budget workshop um the second document just

1:15:19 details the fy 22 budget changes from the current year’s budget of the 40 million 521 000 with all of the operational changing changes increases and reductions and then it lists each of the um requests the budget requests and mostly positions that comes out to the total of the 42 million six hundred and forty nine thousand one hundred forty two dollars that we what was presented to school committee at the workshops and um we will do that deep dive into starting to cut those those numbers and then the last document was really a budget tracking sheet which shows what the town’s target is and we reviewed that with the town last yesterday this this week’s been a very long week um so it was just yesterday

1:16:05 morning that we we reviewed the target with them and the target between the town’s number and what our total budget asked at the present time is a difference of 974 624 so that is what we need to start working on that number and we will start doing that um i believe in in the coming meetings with a target date i believe um the school committee goes to the finance committee i believe on april 1st if i recall correctly um [Music] hold on did we resolve april 5th yes so michelle one just a clarifying question i think

1:16:51 because um so the budget priorities that sheet that’s sort of based off of the outlined pieces that uh were discussed sort of pre-budget season of kind of where where our focus was going to be and then but then so one one thing i was just concerned about is that mandy murphy’s guidance counselor position wasn’t on there but then i see it over here on this other page so it’s not that it’s not in there it’s just not on the priority list and it’s sort of within that larger um 974 thousand gap correct it’s included in the total ask it was not a dedicated budget priority by the superintendent jesus great just wanted to make sure i was understanding that correctly thank you sarah welcome i need two questions i’ll go with village first because sarah started there where it talks about the teacher

1:17:37 leader stipend positions my understanding in years past when we try to kind of move those out was that they were part of the the is it unit a um contract are we do we have to negotiate that or is that how how can we get rid of that if it’s in the contract um that is something we will have to certainly talk to the union about because if we eliminated them we would just be eliminating them at that one location um and not district-wide because district-wide that is a significant cost and and it would most likely lead to um reopening the contract so um we would definitely have to have a discussion with them okay and then my other question is um at the brown school where we have

1:18:25 um teacher reductions i know that right now we have three elementary school teacher full-time positions up on school spring is there a way to possibly and that was an immediate position you know an immediate need which isn’t going away i would assume can we fill them with long-term subs and instead of reducing teacher positions um that we’re hiring now use use it more as a transfer if you will um the the positions are classroom teachers that are not needed due to decreased student enrollment and that’s not due to cobit it’s just it’s the bubbles that are going through the district um right now the the positions

1:19:12 that are posted right now are posted in anticipation of needing additional classrooms while we’re bringing these students back in they would be hired as long-term subs um for the remainder of the year so we would no one’s a short-term need and one is the lack of a long-term need correct exactly but you know usually throughout the budget process and throughout this period of time throughout the end of the year um we do see a lot of movement between teachers and you know we really need to take a look look at what each of them what area they’re licensed in and whatnot but you do you see a lot of transfers between schools between grades and whatnot so in the end very few people are typically laid off at all if any at all

1:19:57 so we will certainly make make all um take all means necessary to see if we can keep all those teachers within the district just in other roles that we currently have vacancies or have needs yeah obviously that’s the idea um is i don’t know i mean we don’t have a crystal ball but if we’re saying it’s a short-term need now is there a way to kind of project if we’re going to need that additional need you know to allocate for spacing in the fall to make sure that we have a full-on opening in the fall or is it too early to kind of make that prediction i think it’s really too early to make that prediction i mean we will have a better handle on what we will need in the fall in the coming weeks as we bring these students back um and we’ll figure out you know which families want to come

1:20:43 back now which families are really planning on a return for the fall um unfortunately we don’t have that crystal ball and we’re we’re hoping that all school you know staff are are vaccinated before september and and all the families have opportunities to have the vaccine so so with with the best intentions we’re hoping for a normal school year and that’s what we’re budgeting for and that is also part of the reason if if we have the opportunity to save some of these coveted pots of money to go into the new year to be able to have those at our disposal for the next year as well because i do anticipate we will have some unexpected costs just dealing with what we need to do to have these kids back in school full time i know last year we had that unexpected

1:21:31 covet expense line for 162 000 are we including anything like that for this year for for to allocate us some planning space or no not at this time but if we have the opportunity we probably should consider that as well

1:21:50 all right thank you michelle thank you all right so i next on is the contract reward for the fiber connections um so you’ve got a memo for us in our dropbox um i’m gonna bring us up to speed and then we’ll get that passed yes i thought i was done completely forgot about that so thank you um yes so there’s a memo in your packet for the award of the contract for the five a connection um this basically would replace the connection connecting all of the school buildings um with the exception of evoluth and coffin we wouldn’t replace their their connections at this time um but this would be for the the actual connection between all the schools and this is the backbone of our

1:22:38 infrastructure um what we currently have has been explained to me and i am no i t expert and we have steven on if we should need it um it’s currently a daisy chain loop and you just you think about loops lots of loops and redundancy um not redundancy but potential for failure and causing delays in our current system um so we have or stephen has done a lot of work and has come up with this solution it is through a state contract so it does not need to be bid any further and it would be through state contract itc 68 and the lowest cost was through a company contract of box borough massachusetts and the total cost would be 79 900

1:23:23 900 900 for this and um if we can vote this contract tonight i believe the services would you know start pretty pretty quickly stephen has them lined up and ready to go as soon as we can we’re very anxious to get this done but it should also be noted that this contract would come out of one of those new coveted funding pots that 98 000 of the coronavirus prevention funds that the state gave us and um this along with some extra internal fiber at the high school will be used to increase our immediate needs for our connectivity and you know any of the parents and staff understand that the challenges that we’ve been going through um so this this is an immediate need and

1:24:10 it’s a great use of these funds stephen i saw you raised your hand did you want to add something here yeah i just wanted to say michelle had said that evleth was not included but it actually is oh it is okay i did not realize that thank you thanks steven um all right um can i just ask for a question all right can i get a motion to award a one-time contract for the design and installation of a fiber connection covering all school locations to contract of boss of boxborough massachusetts in the amount of thousand nine hundred dollars and authorize the chair to sign the contract on behalf of the committee megan moved seconded sarah second

1:24:56 all right megan do you have a question i just had two questions um probably more to stephen if you don’t mind but steve um i know michelle said that you’re have this vendor lined up and ready to go but what’s the timeline for implementation so currently the high school internal fiber is scheduled for april break we didn’t want to take a chance of having any downtime while we are still in session the fiber as soon as we sign this contract we’ll get on the schedule normally that’s at minimum six weeks out but it should all be installed you know i would say easily before the summer okay and then from a user experience what should the user see

1:25:42 um after we get the high school internally upgraded our internal speeds at the high school and connectivity between each of the closets will be greatly increased uh just from the 20 year old wiring that we have currently um the fiber between all the backbone really from building to building um will be better than what we have currently but increasing um once we get into replacing the core switching at each building uh the speeds will be increased at that point using using the fiber okay all right thank you sarah

1:26:27 so this we won’t see an impact on this school year then most likely [Music] it would probably be minimal right this second until we can actually upgrade the core um networking inside each of the buildings and then you know update the the wireless throughout the buildings as well then then we’ll really see it in this with this update and change um allow us to live stream more effectively without interruption with that once once we upgrade the other pieces and parts then yes um this won’t you said you’re going to try your goal is to do this over april break so there will be no downtime

1:27:14 yeah the internal fiber closet to closet inside the high school will be done during the april break right now that’s when we’re scheduled okay so there won’t be any downtime at any of the schools during during the school yeah i did not expect to have any downtime all right thank you so much great thank you both um any other questions all right we’ve got a motion and seconded uh sarah gold yes megan taylor yes uh emily baron yes sarah fox yes and david harris yes great that passes five to zero thank you both very much thank you okay and then finally in this section we’ve got a schedule of bills um they

1:28:00 were all in the dropbox to be looked over can i get a motion to approve the identified schedule of bills totaling 406 863 dollars and 10 cents so moved megan moved second emily second any questions there all right sarah gold yes megan taylor yes emily barron yes sarah fox michelle is can i vote on this one remember our conversation i believe actually the bill is in this particular batch i have seen okay and david harris yes all right so that passes four to zero with one abstention right thank you michelle as well stephen thank you i’m glad i asked

1:28:46 because i looked through it and i couldn’t figure out if it was which one it was all right so that leads us up to school committee communications um and discussion items so there’s a whole bunch of policies on here some of which actually don’t need to be discussed tonight so i apologize um i didn’t have the edits made when we needed to put this through so the first um the first group um i actually want to ask that the face coverings the ebcfa face coverings one be pushed to next meeting um we put it on this one as an emergency vote um if we were going to be opening next week with more children in the classrooms but since we don’t we can actually take it through the typical policy or the best practice policy

1:29:32 process so um emily and i met today and we made we looked it over there was a request from principals to look over the mask break distancing language and so there are actually very few changes that needed to be made just referencing when taking a mass break that it is ideal to be outdoors um but that it is okay to be indoors as long as they are distanced at six feet or more um so that was really it’s all marked in red as i’ve been doing with any of the changes um so that will come back around uh next time for on next thursday for a vote um and then the others were on for the february 4th meeting and because

1:30:19 we ran so long we um we just tabled that agenda item and so it’s back around this is the so this would be the third read um it went to subcommittee then it was on and it was on one agenda and now this is the vote um so any questions on on the eyes and the f so i have a question on the face covering do you want me to come back to that you can ask questions okay so that one i mean you’re right there’s barely any changes in it but the one i just wonder if we can look at or i’m not sure is it says during physical education classes course choir and instruments etc um those have to occur outside with a minimum of 10 feet physical distancing so i guess that one’s just confusing to me since we can you know we’re we’re

1:31:05 allowing sports we can eat at six feet we’re outside six feet why is that one still ten so that’s unmasked um so everything else that you’re talking about is when masked so this is if you’re performing those activities unmasked you need to be distanced at 10 feet and that’s per deci guidance so if they’re outside on a mask break do they still need to be at 10 feet no and that’s the language that’s changed above so if they’re outside performing those activities deci guidance still requires a 10 feet distance it’s the activity piece of it yes because they are as they’re either projecting exactly okay okay through the chair i just uh on the call with the commissioner yesterday they had proposed

1:31:52 new singing guidance and that was uh rejected by medical uh health professionals and so the commissioner said that they have to resubmit and update uh the concerns that were rejected so um no there’s no updated guidance since the beginning of the year on singing so when that comes back as it hopefully will gonna be approved to to be singing um if that needs to be looked at again we’ll just bring it back and edit it at that point all right thank you any other questions all right so can i that so the face coverings one we’ll see next week um and so can i get a motion to approve the policy changes to policy iham health education ihamr health education exemption procedure

1:32:38 procedure procedure ihama parent notification relative to sex education ihmb teaching about alcohol tobacco and drugs and ffa memorials

1:32:55 megan moved second sarah second all right um sarah gold yes megan taylor yes emily baron yes sarah fox yes and david harris yes all right great thanks guys um so that takes us to the next and let me see the policies that we’re actually changing are um let me find that email really quickly emily do you want to explain the js while i look for this email and which ones

1:33:38 i don’t know what sorry that we’re not talking about it right now yeah okay so the ones sorry i got it the policies that were actually going to are actually up for a first read tonight are i h ihca summer schools and i h b a a uh uh that first one yes so those are the two the all the other eyes are not being looked at they we found that those were fine so i apologize for that um what about the other days so the js i’ll explain the js um in a review from was it jessie um a dusty review on

1:34:24 the on those policies that relate is it mostly relating to special education or an english language learner so this was with in work with emily dean um and so they they identified desi identified some places in all of these policies that needed to be changed so the the it went in those edits and there again there in red all of those changes have been made and so at our next meeting then we will need to vote those changes okay so are we voting anything more tonight nope not from policy so these are all just the the reads all right all right i have it that we’re going to review them on march 9th the js

1:35:10 in our subcommittee meeting nope we review them on in february in the future oh maybe i said february 9th yeah okay oh and yeah sorry

1:35:25 all right that leads us then to other subcommittee and liaison updates sounds like you did budget megan yep hey i don’t know if david has anything to add i was pretty brief we met it was great yeah and i think i think what michelle just presented was essentially that meeting yep great um and then facilities anything from february no we um postpone that meeting because we’re waiting for the affiliate facilities assessment to come back in and we anticipate probably having to have two meetings that month when that comes back because we’ll have a lot more work to do once we have that but we’re kind of in a holding pattern right now so sir when when do you expect that back um michelle michelle’s handling that um my estimation if we’re still on track

1:36:11 from the first one i think is in the next what about three weeks michelle yeah we should see a draft of it in the next three weeks and then um the final version probably at the end of um march or so and i think we can start working off the draft i’m comfortable with that i don’t think there will be any drastic changes between the draft and the final version it’s going to be a level of detail all right can we also just you know kind of put on your guys radar i know i think they’re busy to just um the update the minutes for that subcommittee yes we’ve actually voted some of them but i don’t know if they’re up on the website okay just forward them to emily and she’ll put them up right away and there’s also i believe lisa has created a minutes folder in the google drive folder that she has for us yeah so if you can if you

1:36:59 drop them into there once once they’re voted then emily’s got access to that as well and so between lisa or emily they’ll get them posted okay i’ll probably just email them to emily because i i’m i am very tech inept so all right sounds good do that um anything more there i was gonna ask about the safety committee that hasn’t met this year and we had talked about the year that there probably would be a higher need given you know the pandemic so i’m just wondering if we’re going to get together as that or or where we are anything on that john i think that’s um more superintendent advisory

1:37:42 great great anything from matco no i don’t have anything okay update today and then anything from cpac all right all right nothing from okay nothing from cpac either david you want to take it away with a building update i certainly will thank you very much so can people see that see if this

1:38:25 so this would be the um this is the first viewing of what is called the the nietzsche panels that are that are in between the brick those uh have been going in rather quickly the framing was was all put in and then the area that you that you see right at the beginning of the pit of the picture is really um the area that they’ve been using from from the mock-up in the building so on the exterior they would mock up the windows and then they mocked up the panels and you know it’s everything from you know are they are they recessing the the screws are the screws going to be colored screws

1:39:11 making sure that it’s all passes you know what the architect and what the team thinks and what gilbane thinks and then once that’s agreed on they’re on their way so that’s what that’s what you’re seeing now and it’s exciting to see what they call the storefront so the bottom has doors in each classroom and then the upstairs you can see it looks like a door but it’s you’ll see a picture coming up it’s really cool because it’s a floor-to-ceiling kind of uh window but um and the reason the doors aren’t put in it’s it’s almost a contractor issue they come pre-framed and so once the doors go in there’s a tendency for the contractors even though you tell them not to use the doors they go in and out of the doors and

1:39:56 there’s an opportunity for them to get damaged or nicked up so gilbane’s just sort of holding off until a little bit of a later date to get those uh doors in but they they are on site um this is the interior mock-up of the classroom and as i was mentioning you can see how beautiful that view is this is looking out towards dartmouth and colgate and as i’ve said before teachers will need to get in the lottery for these rooms they are they are full of sunlight they are they are beautiful they’re all beautiful um but um so you can see here once again in the mock-up where they have all of the sheetrock up there there’s a spray that was that was put on that helps

1:40:43 hide the tapes and prevent cracking and it also makes you know the painting um last longer without cracking so once again it was a mock-up to make sure the the material is is sprayed on properly make sure they understand how it needs to be applied and then once that’s agreed upon they will move along and they’re they’re mostly you know working their way top down so right now the second floor is just about fitted out with sheetrock and um taped and they’re gonna be starting with the painting and moving forward

1:41:19 um this is the uh the lighthouse and as you can see they’re starting to do uh work on the interior structure and this is looking down from what will be the entryway um right about over where that scissor lift is they’ll be the the entryway stairs so for now the entryway stairs will go in last there’s stairs at the end of the building but based on the construction sequencing um those stairs aren’t going in but you’re starting to see you know the the um imitation lighthouse if you will come come together on the interior so that’s really exciting and um i thought i’d show this because you know this is an example of this is the extended learning space

1:42:05 out in the hallway and um you know thanks to steve’s input and and his team and uh working with others we had previously thought we were going to do projectors with screens and that technology is sort of fading into the sunset pretty quickly and the latest is this touch screen technology so when steve came on board he immediately um you know started asking questions about this what could we do how could we maybe change that um the committee voted last night a small change order of around thirty thousand dollars and as you can see you know the walls had to be sort of pulled out in this case um it’s it’s recessed but um so i think there’s i don’t know if steve still there’s like 24 28 of these touch screens both in the classroom

1:42:52 and out in the um extended learning spaces and then it’s you can start to see the view here there’s a white board that covers the flat screen and down below is where lockers will be so when they want to use the white board they pull the white board down to the floor level for the students and then cover the lockers and at the same time the touchscreen is exposed and when they’re not in session and the kids need to get to the lockers the um the whiteboard gets moved up so a real nice design feature that’s going to be pretty exciting that’s awesome david um this is probably the least exciting photo but um it’s the kitchen and you know it is pretty exciting to the extent that you know it’s the last concrete pour it was planned that way by design

1:43:38 um you know a lot of you know grease traps some things that had to be done in the flooring of the school and some of the final buy-out for the kitchen equipment but once again we know as a committee one of the exciting things about this is hot meals and lunches will be made right at this school they won’t be transported to the schools like like they are now and you know and then if there’s breakfast or things going on so really exciting um it’ll be a state-of-the-art kitchen and just to add to that david if i can from a sustainability part um we included a dish room in this kitchen in our design that was a big design feature that you know i know that

1:44:24 was a huge sustainability feature and um so we’ll be able to wash dishes here and you know not use the polystyrene it’s a giant step forward for us yep the next one so this is this is looking this is in the cafeteria uh looking looking through what will be the stage and then out into the um out into the gymnasium and while you also see those windows along the back wall that’s what looks out onto the playground so that’s the level where it comes um equal to the second floor of the building so when you exit the building you’ll be on the playground and the recreational fields but once that’s done that’s temporary there’s going to be uh

1:45:10 translucent panels that that go in between the windows that will also let in even more light so once again a really nice design feature that is going to just open up that area with so much light if you think about other gymnasiums that might just have a skylight or a cafeteria it’s just going to be uh full of light and um it’s gonna be a really nice feature and then lastly this is what’s called you know the storefront this is part of um if when you’re going to be entering the school so the the circular area where you drop off we drop off the students and the um administration offices uh you know are behind here so some of the storefront is going in and that’s pretty exciting as well and

1:45:56 that’s all i have i always love your updates because it’s so exciting to see how it changes just over the matter of like a few weeks so i feel like it’s moving at lightning speed and it’s just it looks amazing yeah yeah i want to go back to elementary school i know it’s going to be great for the next nine years how exciting is that yeah and then um sarah you can maybe so at last night’s meeting uh the mosaic is we’re going to present that we’re planning and looking to have a meeting either on the seventh or the eighth that we can um present the mosaic for the first time for the public to see and that’s really exciting that that’s uh you know going on and cindy schieffer’s been leading the team with with three artists and we have the

1:46:42 contract signed and they we authorized payment last night the first payment on some invoices to the artist so that that’s really exciting and then the um the final playground landscaping and site design is being finalized and um you know katie martin’s been working very closely with with the architect and the consultants on that and we hope to have the final presentation that will be made to the committee so that that process can be bought out and finished up wonderful good yeah very exciting i can’t wait to see that mosaic we reckon we recognized her at our meeting last night but i just want to recognize her tonight too um cindy schieffer has put a tremendous amount of effort into organizing all the pieces to this mosaic

1:47:27 um committee because there there are believe it or not a lot of moving pieces so i just want to recognize that thank you sarah thank you sir cindy schiffer is always an asset to wherever she’s at absolutely all right great thank you um so any new business all right then we’ve got one piece of correspondence um and that was in your dropbox as well there was a couple of documents with it regarding the um bike marble head and the pump track and then um some interest in the space over that we have the land over at green street in beacon so you know i’ll be brief because i think everybody probably has heard about this bike group um through town they’ve had a couple of of sort of

1:48:13 pieces that have come up they were trying to get this pump track built um they had been talking with the conservancy board but that wasn’t working out so um they had approached me a couple of months ago and i sort of said okay you know we’re headed into budget like this is kind of i’m not really sure how this would work um so we’ve there’s been a few quite a few emails that have been traded we we pushed it to the town at one point um because there was concern that um that when we were talking about school property that that it was actually needed to go through the town because technically our property is through the town because this would be non-school use of the property um but the town cleared it through town council and it pushed it back to us saying you know go go ahead

1:49:01 and do this if you want um so i’ve followed up with michelle and i followed up with it’s um pat milner is heading up this group um and so i explained to pat that um you know i was going to present it to the committee tonight just so that everybody’s aware because it is you know use of our land um and so then at some point in the very near future michelle and probably todd will work with pat and hopefully be able to work out elise um the spots that they’re looking at right now um so they are looking at that green and beacon um property and then they’re also looking at there’s and this is in the in the packet but there’s a space of what sounds to be sort of overgrown um growth at in between the tennis courts at the

1:49:46 high school and then the community center that’s where they’re looking for this pump track and then sort of in their larger um plans that’s that’s what they’re looking for at the beginning green property um so basically we’d be working out a lease and any liability um and and with them and then they they have interest in kind of clearing the land and and using it for what they want when i first talked with um he’s a neighbor of mine he had reached out and kind of talked about sort of that you know they’re raising all the funds and that these are not massive amounts of money so that you know if it’s something that gets used for a few years and then it needs to be used for some other uh reason by the school that you know that

1:50:31 that can can absolutely be a piece to this so um i’ll let you know michelle obviously can work out all of those details as far as leases go but i did want to bring it forward in the email pat kind of talks a little bit about time schedule that she’d like to see so there’s i think there’s something in april may and june um so when i emailed pat the other day i said you know john and i had discussed it and said that it would be great that as they kind of hit those milestones if she wanted to come and update the committee on that work and how that how the whole project is going that that would that we’d be interested in that and she was really excited to hear that and very eager to do that um with the committee so um i just wanted to put this on everybody’s radar sarah

1:51:17 so when you talk to the town did we get um did anybody touch i’m assuming the town touched space with maya to find out if there’s any liability uh even once we do the lease piece if we’re if we’re allowed liability wise to do this or if we need additional riders so they talked with town council i know and then um any liability and and where the assumption is that there would be some type of liability pieces going on with this and that would be on the the bike group the this group to sort of create and and then read that and um and and make sure that it meets standards and push forward so they’ll need their own liability insurance to cover this i would assume all right i just want to make sure that if something were to happen that this

1:52:04 isn’t going to be like um absolutely yeah liability has been discussed the entire time okay and then any liability during the construction since it’s by volunteers who wouldn’t be insured and bonded okay yep we can definitely make sure and that’s again this will this will head to michelle um because she’s our she’s our person with all of that um with all that licensure and everything so um and then at one point i know we talked about possibly putting beacon street on the warrant to get back to the town i can’t did we do that or not no nothing is on with the town um megan and i actually had a brief meeting with jason and jackie and john and we’re going to work to expand the moa

1:52:51 that we had signed i believe it was just last year um last school year and and include that because the town there’s a lot of moving parts with property with ours you know the the use of widget road you know we’ve kind of talked about all of these pieces at this point and so really to kind of officially kick that off um you know we had a correspondence a couple months ago regarding some property that is right sort of off of the vets area um you know jason’s got a property that that he needs to needs to deal with so there’s there’s mutual interest um on both school and town and so getting a group together with that um and kind of again memorializing it that that as through the town we sort of memorialize this financial piece and we’re going to work to expand that and that’ll be brought to the committee

1:53:38 obviously for approval then the only other question is are i know that there was an extensive study done on green street when we were during the building project and a portion of it was identified as wetlands so we just have to make sure that this pump track doesn’t impede on any of the wetlands areas absolutely yeah i’m pretty sure sarah they’d need to go through the internal town approval with whatever needs to get done with that property as well it’s a good point yeah so jason we’ve been working really closely with jason on all of this so he’s completely in the know he you know they’ve been talking with him before they were talking with us so um he you know he was working with them when it was at the conservancy level um so there’s been a

1:54:24 lot of back and forth on this one yeah they’ve this group has worked really hard so i just want to make sure that they’re aware of the stipulation like the parameters before they um get too far into their plan they know the areas you know they can’t they can’t go because they put a lot of effort into this absolutely

1:54:47 um i think it does call that out specifically in the document that we have that you know with their collaborators i mean the marblehead conservancy is listed there so i’m assuming that that’s all been you know they’re working together on that i guess the only thing that kind of stuck in my in my little head when you were talking is talking about clearing the land do you know what that entails like are they actually clearing stuff like knocking down a bunch like is that going to be cleared out on vegan and green yeah um i don’t i think that the plans of beacon and green are far more in their infancy stages than the pump track stuff yeah i think that’s the way i interpret it the pump track is overgrown weeds yep and the picture that they showed whereas what they want to do from what i’ve heard and seen is more like trails

1:55:33 like trails like trails in in the woods mm-hmm yeah definitely like a trail system not like clearing out that area yeah okay because that i would probably push back on a little bit but okay all right if that’s the case i’m okay i thought they did outline for one of the areas needing to clear trees maybe minimal but i thought it was outlined i thought it was more like fallen trees and stuff of that nature and i can absolutely oh sorry just stay in here clearing dead and unsafe trees okay okay all right sorry i missed that okay and then to um to your question there sarah that property that you’re speaking to is identified as 21 lincoln aves and

1:56:20 just because that’s where there’s access to the property that she mentioned up by tioga way and i will have some more information for the committee on that and hopefully we can we can discuss that as a committee about what we want to do because i think sarah’s right that property we should put it back to the town so it can be put to better use yeah yeah there’s there’s a few that i think would be useful and again again this is a this sort of this larger conversation with the town around land use um so yeah we’re working on on getting that moving along and yeah and so we don’t this doesn’t require this piece with the bike marblehead doesn’t require committee um approval or anything particularly at this point but i obviously wanted to put it on all of our radar and and let you guys know that that this is kind of

1:57:06 has been asked and we’re working on it will we need to approve future or lease if that if it comes to that um i don’t know that’s a good question michelle are you still with us

1:57:19 i am can you hear me yes um i do not believe it would require school committee um approval because it will be a rental agreement but we can double check that for sure

1:57:33 all right great thanks guys um so i know we still got a few hands raised so can i get a motion to add an additional public comment

1:57:48 all right sarah gold yes david harris yes uh sarah fox yes megan taylor yep yes emily baron yes all right so i will just again ask people to keep it respectful and keep it brief um and i’m going to start with the list that i had from earlier so kelly salowitz you’re up first hi kelly salowitz 23 dover street can you hear me okay um i guess i want to start by saying that i totally respect the need to keep these meetings um timely but pushing public comment to the end is pretty unfair it makes public participation feel less valued i’d like to speak to the plan that was discussed on tuesday for the upper

1:58:35 grades seven through 12. um these kids have waited so long to get this plan into place um my senior tribe dan howell spoke about senior project my senior has suffered senior project coverage problems and she cannot find a placement um because of kovid she wasn’t successful and nobody’s willing to take an extra person on in their work environment for her and what she was looking for and now with this plan in place the district is looking to get kids in school in april right around the time when senior project is starting it’s incredibly unfair for these kids who aren’t doing senior projects to be put into the classroom just as their peers are leaving for senior project with the exception of ap classes april and may are pretty much months for seniors where little to no learning

1:59:22 takes place these kids have been desperate for peer and adult interaction and this plan is just too late and too little there’s nothing magical about the start of the next quarter as the perfect time to do this please give these seniors a little more time together before it’s too late as for my middle schooler his ability to focus on his aha work and zoom he’s dwindling every day he’s lonely he needs more interaction with his peers and his teachers he was crushed on tuesday or tuesday night after he found out that he wasn’t part of the everyday five-day plan um i’m glad there’s a plan falling into the place for the lower grades my second grader is ecstatic to go back five days um i’m disappointed it was pushed off another two weeks um i also would like to speak to why can’t we make these days

2:00:08 longer it can work having children spend four hours in the classroom together go home and have lunch only get right back on a zoom with the very same group of people makes no sense if they can eat snack together in school with no transmission they can also safely eat lunch at school too we’re 11 months into this and there’s so much we know now that we didn’t know in the beginning beginning the data clearly shows that spread in schools isn’t happening it’s happening in our schools and it isn’t happening in other schools i’ve been going full time all along a great disservice has been done to our kids and their well-being by not getting them in the classroom sooner and not yet renegotiating the six foot distancing it’s hard to hear infectious disease specialists say three feet is more than enough and behold into it and still be beholden to an agreement that was signed back in the earlier time of this pandemic the science of this virus is

2:00:55 changing and evolving all the time how we handle the school plan should be too thank you kelly um i don’t see emily dewitt’s hand raised right now but i did have emily as wanting to speak earlier in the meeting emily are you still here

2:01:16 all right i don’t see emily if emily wants to speak she can absolutely raise her hand again and we’ll come back to her mary mccarriston are you still with us and would you like to speak yes i would i would i’m going to go in a little bit different direction first of all i want to thank everybody that’s on the school committee all the administrators and all the teachers unlike everybody else i’ve had an incredible remote experience i have an eight-year-old i’m going to be 65 years old and she is flourishing and i understand that other kids are struggling but i haven’t heard over the meetings that you ever get any positive

2:02:03 feedback so i just want to say thank you to her teacher mrs bergeron she’s done a wonderful job and mrs clean last year and i think you guys all deserve some kudos instead of always something negative and i get it but i just wanted to say thank you to you all okay thank you very much thank you thank you all right uh jeff st george i have you as next on my list yeah thanks and mary i appreciate your your kudos i think you’re you’re spot on um my my comments are not directed at teachers more at the committee

2:02:55 guys i’m very concerned about the recent trend what appears to be the discouragement of public comment the chair started this meeting stating that public comment was 15 minutes i’m not quite sure why are we limiting public comment are we discouraging public comment in my opinion the committee continues to try to limit the public your constituents what you want to hear in several meetings we have heard we are running late please make it quick we are running out of time you only have one minute this is not acceptable you this committee are discouraging and prohibiting

2:03:41 the public from commenting whether you know it or not people are afraid to speak up if these meetings are running late i’m sorry you need to manage your agenda with the priority on what parents and taxpayers need to express please stop limiting the marvel headers from stating their concerns based on your desire to end the meeting the town elected you you chose this you ran for this own it no matter how many hours it takes guys i’m sorry but this is what you ran for own this and run with it thank you jeff all right aaron noonan

2:04:31 hi erin noonan 15 beverly have um i wasn’t going to say that but i’m just because it just came up a couple times i think i’m going to respectfully disagree about the order of the public comment i actually i know this is a really difficult situation for public um uh committees in general it’s tough because you put the comment at the beginning and then people don’t you give a presentation maybe take a vote and people don’t get a chance to um you know weigh in on it until you know when it’s after it’s presented and so um i can appreciate that i can i can appreciate what you tried to do there and and you guys have a huge heavy agenda and um i i don’t have a problem with it you know splitting it in the beginning and the

2:05:17 end i actually kind of think it might be i don’t know i just my opinion i think it might be a nice way to go because i think that things come up and i thought it was creative i don’t know but that wasn’t where i was gonna say i was just gonna say um um i i attended the um show up for students um event tonight outside and i just i thought i just wanted to like acknowledge and and i thought it was wonderful to see school committee members and our superintendent um you know interacting with parents and um it was just nice to see people off zoom interacting and i know that um you know those that couldn’t couldn’t do that were busy um taking care of preparing for the meeting and setting up the technology and preparing for this meeting um so i just wanted to say that

2:06:05 with regard to pool testing real quick i um i i was a skeptical of the pool testing um after like a first initial introduction to it when you look into it when you understand that your children will not it’s minimally invasive children will not be kept out of school unless you individually your child tests positive after a rapid reef reflex testing um in school they will not or you know before they are back into the classroom they will not there is minimal interruption in terms of education our students and if you are one of the overwhelming majority of parents myself included that want these kids back in

2:06:51 school this is the least we can do for the safety of our teachers and staff it’s the least and if you figure out and you take the time to look into it it is as somebody who has done a 180 about this program i i encourage every parent to go on and register their kids for pool testing thank you aaron scott solberg

2:07:24 thank you um so i just want to say you know some of our committee members have been on since 8 this morning so i do appreciate having the comment at the end i appreciate the opportunity for the school committee and our principal and michelle cresta you’re amazing to be able to share and provide context before we comment i think that’s really critical and really appreciate the work that’s going on um you know as a town this is a crisis we’ve been in for over a year we just as a family we realized that we had not gone out of our house since last february until this last break it is a major issue and we need to appreciate the fact that we’re this is not the school committee’s fault by the

2:08:11 way they did not mandate a pandemic but we’re doing everything the best we can and i just want to say we’re all trying to make this work and i’m hoping we can continue to keep a positive um constructive uh conversation about what’s going on um i think the pool testing as we just heard is a great way to go i think that the three foot distancing is a great opportunity for us to look at i think we’ve had a doctor talk about how this goes i think we need to reevaluate that but i really believe in our committee i believe in the fact that we have now more transparency as a community about our economics about what’s happening and i just i want to say john thank you for being here because i don’t know how we would have gotten through this

2:08:56 sarah gold thank you for being here your leadership is phenomenal and the rest of the committee thank you this is a volunteer sport and you are outputting an amazing amount of time and i think we need to both appreciate that and value the fact that we have a community that can get through this it’s so challenging and recognized we’re almost to the point that we’re going to celebrate getting our kids back in school and let’s just embrace that so thank you thank you scott uh aleister conner

2:09:34 thank you um i’m excited about what we have coming for oh alistair connor nine cloutman’s lane sorry i’m excited about what we have coming for k through six um although you know the homeschoolers have to wait 30 days to get back in but we’ll figure that out i’m really excited that they’ll have more learning time but i have to reiterate that grades 7 through 12 need more learning time as well the current new plan does not give those children more learning time and they need more the current plan that you have laid out for the next step also is not feasible for a lot of working parents from a lot of comments made on the social media platforms the two different schedules the switching around

2:10:20 between am and pm is just really complicated and it doesn’t bring more learning time although more in person yes but from what i’ve seen the high schoolers need and the middle schoolers need more learning time whatever we need for the budget to make that happen let’s fight for it if it’s outdoor learning if it’s more air purifiers if it is more masks whatever we need for that to happen um i also am frustrated because we asked many times what do we need to make streaming happen and the speed at which we’ve investigated our tech issues we you know every year

2:11:06 merrymixers raises they’ve raised 80 000 easily for the hospital many years in a row if eighty thousand dollars was what we needed to get the tech system to not be crashing to have kids be able to zoom into classrooms to be able to make sure that their classes weren’t canceled due to tech crashing when the wi-fi we would have raised that if you had asked we kept asking what do you need we will make it happen and parents could have done that and so i’m frustrated to see that 80 000 is the number because we could have done that so i appreciate the k through 6 but i am asking you to consider more learning time for grades 7 through 12. thank you thank you aleister sarah wilson hi hi

2:11:51 my name is faro wolfson i’m a middle school teacher and i want to just acknowledge all the teachers who are still on this call because for many of us our day started at five or six but this is very important to us as well and our voices need to be heard as someone said previously about people not necessarily wanting to speak it doesn’t necessarily feel like the safest place to share all of what we feel um i do want to make two specific points separate from the school specific ones one is that this is very difficult for everybody and we know that but if we could shift to looking at the resilience of the students as part of the discussion

2:12:36 this is hard life is hard and i hear on this call a lot of people referring to districts that are full-time and we need to do better but i know first graders who are learning to read in revere in full remote and in lynn in full remote and i’m not sure who we’re comparing things to um and i would say that for my nephews and ib programs in california and in the state of washington so i i just want to point out there are just so many voices that aren’t being heard tonight that would shed a different perspective from those who were visible outside tonight and those whose voices are being

2:13:22 heard and the last thing i just want to say i was on a call the other day and like many calls are beginning with a land acknowledgement this call began with a covet acknowledgement just acknowledging in this pandemic the number of people on the call who maybe have lost people or are suffering now because of the pandemic and so while we’re asking for more i think it would be really powerful to acknowledge people in our community and beyond our community who are hurting for more so i applaud people for standing up what they want and what they believe is possible in this moment but also if we could keep some perspective

2:14:07 and maybe we can even look at some of that funding to go into service learning that would pay dividends back for our students help with social emotional pieces but also just we have to recognize the resilience of the students who have weathered this very well in addition to struggling with it and those struggles are real so that’s it thank you thank you farah amy whipple

2:14:40 hi hi everyone um first of all i just want to thank the incredible staff members at the village school at the middle school and the high school i have a ninth grader i have a seventh grader and a third grader and i do have to say they are all having very good experiences despite it being this hybrid model however you know we are in almost a year into this pandemic and i’m frankly just really concerned um you know listening to that seventh grader speak up tonight i mean what courage did it take a seventh grader to read a letter like that in front of all of the school committee members teachers parents maybe their friend’s parents i mean hats off to her and to think that she has to

2:15:27 write this letter to just share how difficult this learning experience has been and i think there’s a lot of kids out there like that they might not quite be significantly impaired where they’re in five days a week so they’re home they’re home you know three days out of the two days a week and i think it can be really really hard and i just don’t think that that’s always being shared because people are you know they’re quiet about the struggles that they go through and tonight when um it was discussed about the budget and i’m the first to say that’s not my area of expertise but when it was discussed a 42 000 position for community liaison i don’t know i just was thinking to myself how about using some of this money that we might have to getting these kids back

2:16:14 i mean these 7th 8th 9th 10th and 11th and 12th graders they’re struggling and you know i listened to the um the presentation by by uh mr fox and mr bauer and obviously they spent hours upon this and trying to figure out a way to get these kids back and i’m thinking to myself it’s another upheaval for a lot of families who have kids at multiple schools it’s not going to really be a really good working model for those families and for working parents who are out of the home and i’m thinking to myself what can we do to get to get these students back in i mean i think there’s so many parents out there if there was a fundraiser tomorrow they would donate is it dividers what can we do because you know right now it seems like it’s just very slow and i think a lot of

2:17:01 the parents have been really patient with the process after a full year and also i just wanted to mention the ten thousand dollar um that was set aside for mental health and i’m sure that there’s more that will be set aside because we know how much that type of cost is going to add up especially for all these kids that have been home for that long so i really hope that you know we start thinking about these middle school and high schoolers because i think a lot of them are really struggling and you know i’m thinking about my freshman who this week just started freshman football and i know there’s been a lot of talk about sports and the safety of it he is he has an energy level now that he hasn’t had for the last year knowing that he can go back his teammates are excited his friends are excited he has purpose now

2:17:48 to like to get up in the morning except for the two mornings a weekday gets up for school so you know i just i i think a lot of um i don’t know how many the school committee members have students in that age group but but they’re really struggling and i just really want to acknowledge all of those high schoolers out there especially the freshmen where you know this is their first year you know they don’t want to join clubs they don’t want to join activities i mean they’re brand new i mean it’s really hard to do all of this over zoom so you know i just want to you know really thank the teachers there because i know they’ve been really terrific with the kids so that’s it thank you amy uh jody kerbel hi i’m jody kerbel i have a 11th grade daughter at the high school i’m also a teacher at an independent school who’s

2:18:33 teaching during covid and we’re hybrid very different experience um but i i thought it was time that maybe i should speak up as well because um this is not that it’s been a positive experience for my child but it has worked for my child and the schedule she has become accustomed to i’m fearful that if we change to a new schedule not only would there be loss of learning time or actually interaction both zoom and in person that it’ll disrupt this schedule that she has now become used to and likes she has gotten a part-time job she takes herself independently to and from places um and that will all change significantly for her um but my main concern again is that change in schedule if we are sacrificing for the frequency of in-person meetings for

2:19:19 for for um less teaching time that’s a concern for me my daughter’s a junior i want her learning as much as possible um and so for the hybrid model that has really worked for us and um i really appreciate what other people have said tonight and also just to give you perspective i appreciate what the teachers are doing i know how hard it is um and thank you to everyone thank you jody uh kate um hello everyone ah can you just state your full name sorry can you just state your full name and address please um kate simcoe garfield street thank you um i just wanted to say thank you everyone tonight um for being here and to the teachers also i know it’s

2:20:04 really hard at the moment to teach us all i’m a junior in high school i know that the pandemic has been really tough for everyone and especially as a learner at the high school i am thrilled that the k-6 students are going to be able to go back i actually attended the peaceful pro school um rally tonight and that was awesome to see everyone out there i uh just really wanted to emphasize the fact that i really appreciate it if um you guys could please explore the three feet option um for for us to go back to school i really missed seeing um just seeing friends and and on teachers in person just it i can’t explain how how awesome it would be to if we could go back five mornings a week the science has shown

2:20:52 that as as a doctor um bernadette was saying that three to six feet is basically the same and i just really wanted to please please ask you to consider that thank you

2:21:06 thank you kate i think that that is the perfect way to end this tonight’s public comment i really appreciate you raising your hand and and speaking with us um i think we had you know our seventh grade student megan eaton and now to finish with kate simcoe um it’s just an excellent sort of book ends to this meeting sorry not to disrupt that great ending because it was but i just and i know it’s not um you know normal practice for us to say something but it was actually my suggestion um to split public comment tonight so i really don’t want the whole committee to take the hit for that so i apologize um in all honesty the only reason i made the suggestion was because we actually got quite a bit of positive feedback

2:21:51 about it and when i looked at the agenda i could see that the votes really um were pretty mundane and then i knew john had a number of updates especially around pool testing and um the k through six return that i wanted to make sure the public had a chance to hear so if they could factor that into their public comments so i apologize if that did not work out the way everybody hoped and i just don’t want the whole committee to take the hit for that so i apologize thanks megan all right so that brings us to the end of our agenda and so i will adjourn us at 9 22. thank you everyone