School Committee: March 4, 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.

1:11 all right we are live on youtube at this point and it’s all up on our uh school committee page and i will just one more second all right i will call the meeting to order at 703.

1:33 um i’ve prepared a statement for this evening uh just to sort things off um in the jewish tradition when someone has died the headstone gets placed at the grave it does not get placed at the grave until after the first anniversary of that person’s passing a small ceremony happens with the inner circle of family and friends and it creates a space to not grieve alone on that difficult first anniversary march 13th 2020 friday the 13th a day that will be ingrained in all of our memories it didn’t take long for us adults to figure out that this was another 9 11 or challenger moment in the making we were worried our kids were confused each passing week was another step away from normal

2:18 from normal from normal the medical professionals and essential workers in our lives worked fearful and exhausted we had a looming awareness of the fact that we weren’t going back to work and that our kids weren’t going back to school some of us tried to remain optimistic and find positives whenever possible but we’ve all experienced a great darkness settle into our lives our country and our world in turmoil we were warned that this winter would be long and dark these past few weeks have been some of the darkest and it is clear that so many of us are suffering this was made obvious recently in community feedback received by the school committee constructive feedback is invaluable as it helps us gauge the needs of our

3:04 stakeholders and the extent to which these needs are being met that being said the recent opinions were some of the most heated that i’ve seen in my time on the school committee we’ve heard pleas from some parents to bring children back more meanwhile others implored us to proceed with caution to give more time to make changes and to not make changes to learning models that have been working well for their children every issue has at least two sides and we want to reiterate our deep and sincere commitment to hearing all of them i know we’re all concerned about how our children are experiencing the pandemic whether kindergarten senior year or any of the years in between covid has taken away so many of the

3:50 exciting childhood rites of passage it has become increasingly clear that covet has taken over our children it took the typical phases of childhood and it changed things as parents it’s impossible to know what is normal and what is a problem in these unprecedented times as we sit on the eve of the anniversary of when everything normal stopped it all seemed so utterly unfair our babies deserve better than this we didn’t see things happening like this this wasn’t in our plan but we still have a ways to go in getting to the finish line that i simply ask you tonight to hold fast to the fact that we need each other to make it through this

4:35 as much as we all need a hug or to sit close to a good friend and share a full-throated unmasked laugh we need each other what we could do without is venting our anxieties and frustrations onto one another recently we have seen the language reach a fever pitch and in several cases take on a tone that was unproductive to put it kindly feelings are passionate and desperate on both sides what i need to ask is this please keep it simple neither the school committee our teachers or dr bucky has caused the pandemic and we are fully engaged in seeking solutions to get all of our students and teachers safely back into our buildings and on a normal school schedule please remember that all parties are

5:21 acting in a way that they believe to be best in the best interests of our children and community as elective volunteers we are spending countless hours trying to manage through the pandemic we are parents we are part of this community and we share the same goals to have our children’s lives returned to normal we have lived a very difficult year right alongside of you and the personal and abusive discourse helped no one and we respectively ask it to stop in public comment last week a teacher in our district shared that a meeting she recently attended began with a moment of silence while increased vaccination efforts and warmer weather on the horizon bring some hope to the coming months we sit here tonight staring at the anniversary of

6:10 one year from when kobit crashed into us i want to ask all of us to pause for a moment a moment of silence a break from the unending stress and anxiety that we all feel a pause to remember the year during which we lost so much let’s pause to honor those who have been on the front lines this past year each fighting in their own way for all of us let’s pause to remember that some of us have lost jobs and our livelihoods let’s pause to remember our children and how covid has indelibly it changed them lost birthdays lost proms lost graduations lost sports seasons and drama productions lost barn butt mitzvahs lost holidays

6:56 lost times with grandparents and cousins and friends let’s pause to remember those in our lives who kova took away forever and let’s pause to think about how we heal as a community none of us will ever be the same but we’ll still be here living together and sharing this place we call home so i ask that we take a moment and pause in quiet contemplation and honor that

7:42 all right all right we’ll move forward with commendations uh donna i’ve got you on for evoluth thank you sarah hello everyone donna zasky here thank you for the opportunity to uh highlight the educational team at eveless school as many of you may know that we have a very supportive school environment which is just perfect for incoming families that experience kindergarten and school for the very first time i believe the current kindergarten team is one of my strongest since my arrival 10 years ago and i’m sure things are very similar at glover as all

8:29 the teachers and paras have been working very hard this year on their wednesday afternoons coordinating lessons and activities tonight i’m going to highlight the work of our paraprofessionals as true contributors to our education throughout the covet pandemic rebecca brand has worked and trained our paris with effective ela instructional strategies and has introduced zoom technology and other educational platforms the pairs have managed the zoom lessons with a high degree of success and believe me it wasn’t easy for them to start when the environment was so different

9:14 and new to them with our hybrid model we had students in school and also at home and the at-home students were often supported by the pare paris with ela foundations and math lessons on a consistent basis the pairs made all the difference in providing the support when the students were learning remotely and this support helped complete a strong instructional support of excuse me strong instructional uh program while rounding out our educational team at evolith so i want to talk about each pair just for one second a few sentences about every single contributor and our first one is milena conley

9:59 melena plans engaging in fun lessons for the children and uses and creates her resources and games to play on zoom she seamlessly goes in and out of the classrooms to support students she is always flexible she’s described as indispensable and goes above and beyond to support the students linda ferris has learned a great deal over the years linda is very observant and has learned from classroom teachers she has worked under such as carol spelaine and this year our new teacher lauren catalano linda has embraced the opportunity for more instructional training most recently she was able to hold the reins of the classroom when lauren had

10:46 to be out for a three-day period linda pitches in without being asked and always thinks for thinks of ways to make things better and is always willing to help becky hastings becky works in beth hack’s classroom which many of you know and becky has worked collaboratively with the other parents to share ideas and lessons along with the other pairs she works closely with the kindergarten teachers to ensure curriculum and pacing is consistent across the kindergarten classroom additionally all the pairs have been flexible when they’ve had to a need for children to join from other classrooms and then finally we have kathy doman and kathy was the right fit for kara herron

11:32 dean cara handy as you know came down from first grade from the coffin school and basically kara said she couldn’t do her job without the help of kathy doleman this year because everything was brand new i know it was a switch from first grade to kindergarten but when you haven’t talked kindergarten for a few years it was definitely the needed support that karen needed kathy is invaluable and basically all the pairs have known for helping and pitching in and the feature that all of them have is they don’t need to be asked they just see what needs to be done if a little child needs support if something’s going a little bit amiss in

12:19 the classroom they always just pitch in they know exactly what to do instinctively and i have just been um so excited to work with this group of uh teachers and parents at the evolus school and i just want to make sure that we honor their work and um because they are working very hard every single day we are excited about walking welcoming the kids back in a week or so so um i just wanted to highlight the strong support and the working team that we have at the apple school thank you thank you donna i completely agree i don’t know all of those pairs that i know some of them and i know how hard they work and and what an asset they are to all all the classrooms across our district um so

13:06 thanks for highlighting a few of those sarah fox

13:12 um i just wanted to do a comma a school committee accommodation but i too i think that those kindergarten pairs have a level of patience that i can never achieve so they are clearly worth their weight in gold um i wanted to give accommodation to volunteers in the community that have been um spending hours at their computers getting vaccine appointments for any any teacher or faculty or staff that has asked for help um i think to date last number i heard no not all of these were staffed because they’ve been at this for a couple weeks before before the schools um were on here but there are over 200 people that they’ve gotten in marblehead appointments

13:59 um and i just it’s amazing and this is a real effort that is going to massively impact you know our ability to get people back quicker and more comfortable and safer and i encourage anyone and everyone to reach out to your child’s teacher your child’s para you know team chair anybody that you know and say make an offer to you know help someone get a vaccination appointment because these educators are at their desks all day and they don’t have time to keep refreshing and refreshing and anything we can do as a community even if it’s just one appointment it’s a huge help but also i’ll tell you

14:47 having gotten a chance um to do it it is like the most exciting feeling when you get that appointment for someone that it almost feels selfish because you’re so excited about it at the end of the day um so reach out to anybody you can and help them and i just want to thank these group of moms and i know there’s one dad i saw doing it too and it’s just it’s amazing the time they’re giving up to help in many cases total strangers so i just wanted to commend them thanks sarah i believe that i’m going to ask dan bauer he’s got some commendations um that that we asked him to make a special note of tonight not to steal donna’s thunder thank you very much um thank you for for

15:33 having me here and actually very humbled that the work a number of our students have been doing to make contact with our younger learners there’s a group called growing together and it was coordinated by our very own dr jamie slavitt our school psychologist and two other adults uh dr shell who’s done a lot of work with the social emotional learning committee as well as elizabeth peterson and they’ve helped organize the students to create outreach opportunities they meet with our k-6 students one time per week on zoom and i want to say that at this time at least 25 of the k-6 students have been participating at various times we have 13 students they do things such as yoga coloring board games and it’s just wonderful to hear our students being involved and

16:19 certainly the adults dr slavic said they’ve paved the way the students have run with this so we’re very proud of them for this and i just want to recognize the students involved with this in no particular order we have lucy new sophia vatnik kiva mckiernan sarah martin caroline wales maya amsler char platte miller celine eric lauren case amelia carr lilly childs andrea gast and marissa eisen all 13 have just been wonderful and done a great job with this and we’re very proud of them and proud of the adults for pointing the way so thank you very much

17:00 um i also wanted to recognize and dan i’m not sure if you have the names of these kids how well the family feud night had gone i think it was last night that it was a success and it seemed to really sort of brighten some spirits it was awesome we had over 80 seniors participate so to see them lined up coming in with great excitement they were in teams um they they gave himself team names and and it was just great it was a wide variety of students so it was awesome to see them come in and so excited and really our faculty and staff that rose to the occasion uh the the hosts had mask uh customized family feud i hope there’s no trademark infringements on that but um christina scholes did that and and our two senior class advisors need to shout

17:46 out drew bordeaux and jade demelo they helped organize this and they broke it down into the room so it was socially distanced broke up by teams and went through a number of rounds where our teachers were the hosts and hostesses and did just a great job of providing entertainment our senior class officers were outstanding they helped coordinate this and it was just a wonderful event that wrapped up with the final round which was live streamed um and it just was a lot of fun to have and a lot of feedback from the teachers we’re just just very excited to be part of it the students were excited um and we hope that we’re able to build on this and do other activities so we’re just very appreciative of all the efforts great thank you um dan my my kids have gotten the benefit of those programs

18:33 that your students are running first of all the how organized those kids are you know getting all that stuff out is amazing but also seeing my girls how excited they are afterwards and how you know they really love seeing the older kids and being part of something the older kids are doing it’s it’s really awesome yeah we’re very blessed thank you they’re awesome kids dan does anybody else have a commendation megan i have a quasi commendation um so i mentioned a few weeks ago that there’s a crossing guard appreciation um program going on right now so i just want to reiterate that because our crossing guards are keep our children safe we had the village sac and it came up there today and i think someone noted

19:19 that you know they’re shoveling the sidewalks for us when we have snow storms they’re holding umbrellas for our children so you know this is an opportunity to kind of acknowledge some of those unsung heroes that don’t get a lot of appreciation so um i believe the deadline is march 24th so you still have time to nominate your favorite crossing guard and we’ll make sure that that information is available i do believe it’s going out through um the pcos as well so keep your eyes out for it and let’s get show some love to our crossing guards john do you notice that up on back together it’s in the weekly update it was in next week it will be in tomorrow um so the weekly update writes itself at school committee meetings so you guys foreshadow all the things that will be listed

20:06 any way we can help john all right anybody else with a commendation um i wanted to just i don’t want to drag this on but um sustainable marblehead puts out an educational newsletter i think monthly and um they actually talked about the crossing guard thing but there’s a program and i’m gonna call it the wrong name it’s something to do with get outdoors get outside and there’s some tracking sheets by one of the high school students and her first name sadie i apologize for for not knowing her for not remembering her last name but it’s a really fun way to get kids kind of outside and doing a few things and also give them something new to do a year into this so um that’s great for sustainable and for

20:53 students that are participating as well thanks sarah through the chair yeah go ahead you just can’t make this up because the sustainable marblehead is also in tomorrow’s update

21:09 all right um that moves us on to uh dan howells our student representative welcome dan hi uh so first of all i i’d like to also talk about the family feud that happened uh last night it it just went really really well um when you’re uh you know the a senior class officer and trying to plan around things like that something really new and different like this uh was kind of uh we were kind of nervous about it because if kids aren’t engaged then you know it just doesn’t end up being a a fun time but everyone was super enthusiastic uh certain you know teams like wore their own uh you know uniforms like uh there was a group that all wore different colored track

21:56 suits and it was just great um and it was uh great to see people in the other cohort who in some cases you know i haven’t seen since a year ago now um which is uh hard to believe um so i really hope that we can uh you know we have one successful event under our belt so hopefully we can you know keep moving that forward and have more events in the future and more events for the other grades as well um so around a week ago a survey was sent out with a new proposed schedule for students and there were questions about how you prefer that schedule to the one that we currently have and i can’t say what the consensus of the survey was

22:43 because i i didn’t see the results um i can say that students definitely appreciate being included on decisions like this and just being heard in that way especially when it comes to their learning uh so last week i talked a bit about senior projects uh so i have a few examples of different things that kids are doing so senior project is a chance for seniors to spend the last quarter of the school year doing an internship of their choice so one student i talked to who is going to college for nursing will be doing a internship with nurse elizabeth at the glover school to learn about you know community-based

23:28 nursing the community-based nursing approach another student i spoke to who is very passionate about business uh we’ll be working with seaside alert a local company uh to make a product uh fully herself and then eventually have it uh being sold under the seaside alert name so uh start to finish the whole process another student i spoke to will be working with mr gadu the high school band director to learn about composing jazz arrangements uh another student i spoke to uh well is doing an internship with the third citizen theater company in salem uh and another student who i spoke to uh

24:15 who is passionate about mental health will be working with some of the health teachers at the high school to work on integrating more mental health things into the curriculum another student i spoke to will be working with miss hautman who is the middle school art teacher um and doing some work with her on art education and things like that and i for my senior project so just in the past summer the jewel tones and luminescence acapella groups recorded an album um so for my senior project i’ll be working with the uh the woman who uh helped us do that and her company to record uh two singles

25:01 one for each of those two groups so yeah that’s what i’m doing and i’m looking forward to it so there are lots of great opportunities for students to do you know all sorts of things this year it seems like based off the kids i talked to there’s a lot of people doing things with teachers either you know at the high school or at other schools which i think makes sense uh to you know kind of stay close to home in that sense but yeah just a lot of great opportunities and a lot of uh should be a good learning experience for all the students wonderful thanks so much stan and thanks for that um you know that kind of that view into what some of the kids are doing uh it’s always really interesting

25:47 to hear about where people’s ideas take them and then you know the reality of sort of where kids start with what they want to do and then what ends up being able to be pulled off and and attained so it’s it’s was fun to hear thank you no problem all right that brings us to public comment i do have two public comments noted on the agenda this evening um this first one at the start and then i’ve got another one at the end so i will just kind of keep an eye on our time um and um looks like we’ve got five people right now so uh we’ll probably take those people and then we’ll move forward and then have the public comment at the end of the meeting as well so please um remember to state your name and address for the record so first up i have kim day

26:38 hi there kim day 18 liberty road um i don’t have anything prepared i just wanted to um thank the committee and nurse amanda rivers again for moving forward with pool testing and just to share that both my third grader and my sixth grader were um participated this week they were part of the random selection for their class um they said it was a piece of cake um they didn’t lose any time in their classroom um and i just really can’t wait to hear more um about how that progresses um as we kind of get this is only our first week i know um so thank you again for moving forward with that and then i know i saw on the agenda that you are going to be discussing pool testing potentially for the

27:24 athletes and i just want to encourage the committee to um strongly consider mandating those that pool testing simply because um sports is optional for students and there are definitely students who are not participating in sports because they don’t necessarily feel comfortable with the modifications that are in place and yet our athletes are participating in these sports where they’re under six feet under three feet and then close contact and then some instances with towns that aren’t just marble head and then they’re coming into classrooms with students and teachers who aren’t participating in those sports right and who don’t have that so i don’t want it to come across as like you know a punishment for these athletes by any means i wanted i would hope that it would be a positive thing

28:09 that they’re doing all that they can do to keep their fellow classmates and their teachers and staff safe um so i just really want to encourage the committee to vote in favor of making pool testing for athletes mandatory and thank you again for moving forward with that program thanks kim next up i have jennifer eaton hi good evening um i’m just speaking tonight on behalf of the cpac committee um on a probably completely different topic but we just wanted to invite the community um to our conference series which starts next tuesday we’ve been having them monthly um but the next one will be next tuesday march 9th at 7 pm and this one will

28:54 feature dr zach rossetti who is a professor at boston university and he’ll be speaking on the topic of peer relationships which i think is sort of a timely topic and he has a background in research between friendships between students with and without intellectual and developmental disabilities and he’ll be sharing his insights on ways that parents educators and siblings can help or hinder the development of social opportunities and friendships he’s going to explore strategies which center on home school collaboration sibling roles and relationships as well as family engagement and community participation and this is a event that we’ve co-sponsored with

29:40 student services along with eric oxford and cpac so we welcome everybody to join us we have more information on our cpac website it’s also on our cpac facebook page you can find the zoom link directly on there if you need any assistance then knowing where to find that if you have any questions you can reach out to us and we’ll be happy to help so we look forward to seeing anyone that would like to join us next tuesday march 9th at 7 pm thanks so much thank you jen uh scott silberg i think i accidentally put your hand down um as jen was speaking did you still want to comment yes okay go ahead um scott solberg won ramsay road um i just wanted to give a couple of kudos thank you sarah for your statement i thought it was um

30:26 amazing elegant and really pulling us together getting us re-reoriented as a community um and that brings me to the second thing i’ve had a chance to um you know a lot of our parents are involved in volunteering on the different reopening committees and other seo committees and i just this week the things i’ve seen has just been amazing um brian nota hasn’t talked about his great teachers who spent all saturday uh redoing their classes you know to give up a whole weekend day is a huge commitment with families and everything else but you know brian was just amazed to see them all there working hard to get the classes i’m ready on behalf of our children that’s the commitment going on but i also um you know poor jamie slavic keeps getting called out for all the great stuff he does and certainly dan bauer is the leader behind all this as well but this scl work that’s going

31:14 on um in our district has students leading their voice so many students so many parents educators student services staff multiple combination of conversations to try to see how we can really support each other it is a testament to the kind of positive energy that’s going on in our community at the same time as we’re all dealing with the uncertainty of our time so just wanted to give a shout out to all that thank you thank you scott next up is aleister conner thank you thank you i’m speaking for many parents in business after a large campaign you do a team recap to capture best practice and improve the process for next time what have we learned and what actions are we taking to do better this budget season

32:00 two years ago we had a large deficit related to special education transportation and numbers increases we learned it is necessary to set aside money for these issues to remedy the situation the special education fund was created and funded through the town medicare surplus we had building issues at gary coffin bell and eveleth due to deferred maintenance we learned we need to plan ahead for large capital improvement and maintenance costs and start saving years in advance the stabilization fund was created to allow for future savings towards these costs unfortunately it remains unfunded and i have not heard of any planning in this year’s budget to put any money into it in 2018 bills were paid inappropriately to remedy a budget deficit we learned

32:45 that oversight is necessary to have checks and balances and avoid a mistake that has major impact from just one person’s choices that it’s important for school committee members to get into the nitty gritty of the budget and to ask hard questions yet at a recent budget subcommittee meeting very few questions were asked we had issues with technology this year that did not allow us to have options for quarantined or remote students to continue their teacher-led education we learned that many other districts had already upgraded their technology and wi-fi in recent years to allow for a one-to-one technology ratio we saw how pushing off upgrades set us up for failure and will not allow our district to remain competitive we are currently budgeting for the bare minimum of upgrades to be done during april

33:30 vacation minimally resolving this issue and still not matching the level of other districts or allowing us to develop a better plan for the fall kovid showed us that having a perfectly balanced budget does not prepare us for the unforeseen experts indicate that kovit is here to stay students will not likely have received vaccines by fall masks and spacing will still be necessary we have figured out how to return k through 6 students to school albeit in un uncomfortable setups but we have not figured out how to make lunch work for full days we have not budgeted to upgrade our air systems with higher air exchange uv lights or added humidity we have not budgeted for additional air purifiers properly fitting ppe additional space additional staff exhaust fans pool testing money for once

34:17 public funding ends or anything else that would make it more likely that all grades 7 through 12 students can also return at 3 feet or 6 let alone for a full day our current memorandum of agreement with the teachers union presented challenges as it did not allow for any flexibility as conditions changed and is based upon our current technology space and hvac limitations we have already negotiated a new three-year contract even though we have yet to make any leeway in altering our current contract or kermit limiting conditions parents are asking to be heard this year parents asked for more information clarification and answers than ever before and yet there were still answers that were not forthcoming such as how much space we actually had for students or what upgrades will cost until last week

35:02 week week parents are making it known that in-person learning and increased hours are a priority in the district yet budget discussions do not address how the situation will be improved now or in the fall the school committee represents the constituents your constituents are asking for the hard questions to be asked and answered it is time to learn from our past mistakes and take actions to remedy them to be proactive in our budgeting to fund the stabilization fund and budget for unforeseen circumstances the almost four hundred thousand dollars in covid grant money should not be used to balance next year’s budget but instead allocated now for this year and for next year to make up for the impact of covid in the many ways our students

35:48 need thank you for your time nine cloutman’s lane alistar connor thank you thank you aleister emily dewitt hi everybody emily dewitt 154 atlantic avenue i just wanted to thank sarah fox for shouting out to all those people out there who are booking vaccination teacher of appointments for the teachers it really is just showing how much our community is waiting on the sideline to help in any way we can nobody’s asking us to do very much right now and everybody wants to step up so i’d like to ask the school committee and and dr bucky tonight to advocate for a plan to cover classrooms if and when

36:35 our teachers need to physically be at their vaccination appointment if it coincides with the school day i’m nervous about you know a further learning loss if somebody has to cancel a class or there’s no substitute in place because i know we’re at a deficit when it comes to subs um you know parents who are quarried or parents who can be quarried quickly maybe some of our seniors at the high school even were willing to step up and step in for those vaccination appointment times or maybe in the aftermath of a vaccination appointment where a teacher suffers from some side effects i just

37:20 we’re we’re waiting on the sidelines to help and this is going to be a problem with thousands of teachers needing to be in thousands of places at different times of the school day and i hope you’ll consider our request to be of service thank you

37:40 thank you emily all right uh that will close out this section of public comment um we did not get around to getting the minutes for february 4th in this time so they’ll be in there next time um that one is up on youtube though so if anybody needed to go back to reference anything there um that meeting is available so john that leads us on oh sarah did you have a question um i had told nan in the teaching and learning committee that i would give a plug for volunteers and this seems like a good segue if you don’t mind uh i think actually john’s got a little bit going on with that this evening so maybe just hold off for a minute and uh john is that

38:25 sounds good sure yeah i can include that in my update actually if people go to the website we have put on the banner page of the traditional marblehead public schools website a place for people to start their quarry paperwork uh because as we look at different learning models the parent volunteers that are out there we’re going to be bringing them in so uh hopefully people will start that process so that they can be involved and i will just briefly dish to nan because she had sent me a text earlier to make sure that i said something and i want to make sure that i get it covered so nan if you could take it away well you just did a great job um and i think between you and sarah you’re tr you’re you were just about to hit both of the things that i was hoping that would get presented

39:12 um in teaching and learning we did talk about um our principals connecting personally with their um the lead either pto or pco presidents and having those presidents individually at schools create sign up geniuses and manage and organize the the vast amount as many volunteers as we can recruit there’ll be a central location for you to visit put your name in put the lo the times and dates that you can volunteer it will be very easy to to sign up we are asking that if you sign up that

39:59 you really double check your calendars and ensure that you can make that commitment to our schools because we will really be leaning into that support to be able to um run effective and healthy uh recesses lunch transitions and hallways um so that that will be happening and then also having the corey form um online is great and then finally i’ve um have been so lucky to be connected with muffy in town from our boosters they are organizing a fundraiser for our marblehead community to come together to help support the costs that are going to be related

40:44 to outdoor instruction and lunches and supervision so we are going to look for funding to bring a tents to every school and outdoor um spaces for kids to sit and eat lunch and recess so if you could be on the lookout in the community for some communication from your boosters that’s just been such a wonderful such an easy group to work with so easy eager to support um and get and so whether you can volunteer your time or you can contribute your finances we’re going to all pool our resources and bring our kids back and provide the best we can

41:30 and it’s going to be really exciting and i think it’s important just to underscore outdoor learning spaces and to give people a sense in the spirit of true transparency how much is a tent rental so that the one-tenth rental for the high school alone is sixteen thousand dollars okay and it’s just one tent and we’re hoping to get six and then hope and i was even hoping to get two for the high school um so it’s we’re talking close to a hundred thousand dollars um for and that’s that estimate is from march um like march 17th to may 22nd it’s not even until the end of the year

42:18 so it’s extremely expensive have we looked into purchasing tents and just paying the labor to tent companies to install and erect them so i have and it it comes down to the fabric is flammable and so unless um we can find companies and those are very expensive to find the tents that could that are not flammable all right so megan sorry yeah sorry um so i just want to um fall on from that nan i mean the boosters are always so supportive and i just want to you know really make sure that we recognize how lucky we are to have a group like that i mean obviously we have a number of people in groups who are willing to support us but i’m just

43:04 very appreciative nan um of you collaborating with them and vice versa um i think also just to highlight this piece because it came up in the sac that i sat in as well is and i promised that i would also make this public plea so for both substitutes lunch pairs but it also came up that we’re in need of crossing guards too i know i just obviously i’m on a crossing guard kick today but i think for substitutes especially we’ve talked about this especially when it comes to our budget a number of times that we have struggled this year to find substitutes so if there are people in our community who have experience with you know with teaching um then it would be great if we could really utilize those resources and the lunch pairs as well so we can get our kids back in they can have their lunches the teachers can have their

43:51 lunches as well um you know this is my public plea you know emily did just talk about it in in her public comments so this is where we could really use some help

44:03 great so um i’m going to uh turn it over to amanda rivers and to greg siglorski to give you an update on pool testing and uh pool testing for athletes in the fall two season hi um i guess to start off we started on monday i was able to get all the elementary schools on monday and tuesday in some capacity a lot of it was just trying to figure out how it was going to work how the kids were receptive to it um it was awesome honestly everyone i didn’t have any problems with it uh the kids are really good you’re able to take a couple kids out at the same time because i register them ahead of time it takes about 30 to 45 seconds it’s longer to kind of explain

44:50 it than to actually do the swabbing and then they go back to class they miss under a minute worth of class time um if anything some of the kids were like wait why am i not coming out so it was nice to see that like the kids that weren’t coming out were like wait but can i do it too and i’m like we’ll talk to your mom have your mom sign you up for your dad and you know next time i’ll come grab you um i had teachers stopping me in the halls asking if they could be part of a pool so for starting a program and having it you know kind of come to life over the two weeks to have so many people sign on and want to do it right away it was really awesome we’re up to 840 people which is just about a third of the student population um i went to the high school today so i

45:36 got a cohort at the end of the day and nan was there and uh and dan saw it we were able to get um 72 people teachers and students in probably 20 minutes uh and the kids were really awesome about waiting i took their names scanned it in swab them next one took their name saw them you know so it was it was really awesome to see the kids kind of take the initiative too especially high schoolers and say like yeah i want to be part of this so we had 225 high schoolers sign up so far so one cohorts about half of that and we had um 71 people show up so that is for me like personally way more than i um anticipated it and i was so impressed with the fact that the students themselves were willing to wait and do

46:22 it and wanted to be part of this um so next step would be the sports testing um so they did check with the lawyer the town lawyer and due to the fact that um the test or sports are voluntary it can we can mandate it it’s something that we are able to do as a school committee um and you know earlier in the week me and dan kind of or me and greg touched base to kind of see who was signed up so far and between all the teams there’s about 15 to 20 of each team that’s already signed up so not huge numbers um so obviously that would have to change if it was mandated and we were thinking of like how we would go about the testing and the best way to do

47:09 it um with what we have for our limiting factors which would be the carrier service only comes certain days to pick up samples and samples we can really only keep for about 24 hours before they need to get shipped out our courier comes on tuesday wednesday thursday so that really means we can only do the testing monday tuesday wednesday and there are several different teams that are practicing in different capacities whether inside or outside so greg and i sat down and kind of talked about it and what we would plan if we were to mandate this within there is to do a third of each team every week each team every student would be

47:55 designated into one of three groups and then you know week one we would do group one week two we would do group two week three we would do group three so we’d get a third of the population every time um going over what we have for resources which is me and greg that was what we could do um and get it done and get the samples out and be able to kind of utilize it it also gives us some wiggle room that if like someone in group one was absent we have like two more days to get them out on the friday or the thursday career service um and this means every student on every team would get tested twice over the course of the season um so then talking about if we had a positive pool what we would do

48:41 a lot of the stuff would be similar to kind of what we’re doing already when a positive pools identified i would go in i would do the binax test and we would find out who the actual positive is from there we would kind of just keep it to what we’re doing anyway with the positive um we would identify the positive on the team we would do the close contacts and quarantine as we need necessary um trying to like limit the amount of students that need a quarantine for every positive but it also gives us a good idea of looking at like the sports teams as a cluster population to see if there is an increase within that specific population um of coronavirus due to the fact that they are closer together you know they don’t have that six feet they’re wearing the mask but it’s not perfect it doesn’t always stay up during the sports um so that is

49:27 that is that is the plan that we wanted uh to present to you the school committee to do mandatory testing within there if it’s not mandatory and it’s just optional um we’re still able to go into the team and take what we have for numbers to kind of use again that as its own little cluster sample it obviously wouldn’t be as accurate or informative as being able to get a fourth of the team when we only have like or a third of the team when we own like 33 versus 10 is kind of a big difference every week

50:04 i think just just to tack on to the end a nice job amanda that was perfect um i think how would really look on a kind of week to week thing logistically um it would it would be a challenge but i think if if we had to do we would get it done similar to this year in general i would envision probably something like on monday having football and cheer go together tuesday volleyball and half of track go together because track practices half uh some days half the other days wednesday get the other half of track and then anybody else that we missed and that would allow for all of us uh all of the athletes to get tested if if you know we do go down this road

50:44 before we take questions just want to extend uh my appreciation for the work that greg and amanda are doing when you determine that you want to be an athletic director you didn’t realize you were going to be an epidemiologist and a team physician and pool testing is new for all of us and i just really think that they have both done a great job of addressing what school committee asked them to explore absolutely i completely agree and um you know both both amanda and greg touch face and in reopening this morning um and i appreciate sort of having um you know the additional information from just then so it’s a great great presentation thank you and just just to give you guys an idea of numbers as well we have about 234 athletes

51:30 234 athletes 234 athletes plus 19 coaches which would give us a 253 would be our number we’re working with um total

51:43 yeah any questions megan um so this was great as usual i mean we kind of greg i feel like we’re always like come back with information right away and you know you always you always get it done and amanda you know i i know i said last week that you’ve done an amazing job just pulling this together really quickly so i appreciate the work you’ve done on this again um i think the sports thing is one piece i guess one thing that we talked about as well is um other activities so i just didn’t know if either of you have some information on um you know i think one of the things that came up with marching band or some of those activities you know that are not necessarily just athletics yeah so just just from from an athletic side of things that the marching band would be out at our home football games

52:28 there’s three of them currently right now um that would be the only time they’ll really deal with with athletics in general but uh if someone else wants to chime in on as far as clubs or other extracurriculars that would be appreciated because that’s all i can really talk to so as far as like any other activity that’s going on i would kind of proceed in the same uh manner anything that we feel like um like with march we talked about marching band just because again you have the woodwinds you have the brass instruments and there’s a higher like even with spacing it’s an aerosolizing erosion sterilizing um potential there um so i think initially we were focusing on the sports because that is especially

53:15 with like football you’re tackling each other um but with any of the activities too if we would then want to go and add on to that we would kind of go like the same thing if we mandated it we would then say we’re going to do groups within each group and shoot for a third of the group every week and kind of continue on like week one week two week three so we’re getting a decent amount of samples of each group every week so amanda to sort of hop on that if we you know obviously you have a capacity like you yourself as a human being and then school nurses have a capacity so if we mandate um the clubs

53:59 along with marching band or whatever um how is that going to happen at what point do we have an impact on testing the general student population so i apologize this wasn’t a question i gave you earlier i know but if you so if you think about it in um like when you’re coming up with a sample size basically um what i’m trying to do is just like a random sample of anyone that’s signed on for the element like k through 12. um when you’re doing the clubs and you’re doing the sports that’s more of a cluster sample so you’re picking a specific group of people and you’re taking a random sample in between there or a selected random example if we’re doing like group one group two group three um so

54:47 as far as the capacity i imagine i don’t know a lot about high school um clubs so i might be misspeaking here but i’m pretty sure most of them have um like a teacher that runs it or supervises it if that’s the case there is ways to have them be able to do the testing with the biggest constraint is the monday tuesday wednesday is kind of one that needs to get done just because of the courier and we need to get the last samples out on thursday um if i can touch base with uh who’s doing it i can show them how to do the samples and we can work way around that like me and greg were talking today ways that he’d be able to test even the football players when they’re out on the field so we would know what the numbers are and then i can just do the computer

55:33 aspect before i ship them off okay uh sarah fox i i mean the sports makes very good sense because uh the respiratory increased respiratory rate the lack of being able to distance the marching band the increased arrows i’m gonna screw up this word too right you know what i mean um but you know so that makes a lot of sense um i don’t know the scope of some of our other clubs but if they’re able to not have increased um respiratory output and remain massed in distance i don’t see that those clubs offer a heightened wrist above and beyond the classroom setting if you will

56:19 whereas the other ones we identified do offer a heightened risk above and beyond um and i think that’s kind of the deciding factor here at least you know when you look at it kind of as from a analytical point of view um the other thing to remember is too these are part of our student body so these will all count towards the idea of testing more of our student body so if we’re hitting an extra 200 kids or an extra you know 75 kids each week that’s 75 more bodies we we’re hitting in our student body which is the the more the better because it gives us a more accurate view um um one of the questions that i had asked

57:06 this morning to just follow up on um and principal bauer may need to weigh in here regarding the marching band so that in how i understand it is a credited course and so i don’t i i wonder about the logistics of actually being able to mandate testing for participation if we’ve got kids who are in a class during the school day um and there and there are very specific guidelines um on how marching band and all and all bands is being pulled off at this point um and it’s at greater than than six foot distances um so i don’t know principal bauer were you able to find anything out on that um i i did in a couple of areas so certainly you know as they move on um into this piece

57:52 it’s it’s um with the spring they’ve already had the course in in the fall so and in fact a lot of our clubs haven’t really come back yet as if you remember from we talked about in the sac today we’re looking to bring more clubs back but uh to sarah fox’s point that the the clubs that would come back would be able to space in it in a different way so um you know it’s it’s a we do have our acapella groups that are coming back but as you know that they’ve allowed the singing doors and the spacing is 10 feet some of those are classes some of those aren’t so there’s a lot of juggling there so i guess i’m inclined to ask for emotion um and and feel free if people want to add on to this we don’t have to take the motion we can tweak it before we

58:39 actually actually sarah yeah where it got voted down last week procedurally we can’t make a new motion one of the people who voted with the prevailing party has to amend the previously voted motion so only emily megan or david can amend the previously voted um motion

59:03 if they choose to so does that negate me from asking for emotion i think so actually i think it’s just a weird procedural thing yeah i’m not so sure that we can’t bring another motion forward i think we can it’s just me i voted in the affirmative and sarah voted in the affirmative so what she’s saying is that i that i can’t ask for the motion or maybe we can’t move it you have to make it it’s not move it’s not just making a motion you have to make a motion to amend a previously voted motion it’s a weird roberts rules thing i will make in a motion to amend the previous vote motion to mandate that

59:49 participation in school athletics be contingent upon participation in the pool testing program as defined okay okay i’ll rewrite it to mandate that participation in school athletics be contingent upon participation in the pool testing program you’re going to need a second hold on yeah we’ve got a motion so moved in a second second all right megan moved uh david second

1:00:28 i’m sorry if i throw a wrench into this does this include coaches as well we have 19 coaches that would need to either be included or or excluded in this i just want to make sure that’s clear we cannot mandy employees um test i would agree with that okay can we suggest it officially suggested we can suggest they wear tutus every day i mean it’s their will

1:01:01 so i yeah so are we not including marching band and any kind of musical activity in this correct for this motion it would not be i think we’re wading into very sticky territory given that it is a class okay so it is still a class yes okay they’ve received right right then they’ve received credit for this yeah okay and and again i just want to make it clear marching band and and all all of the instrumental as well as the choral groups are all have all have specific guidance from the department of education on how they can occur where they can occur at what and they’re at greater distances i believe band is at 10 feet uh distances because it is

1:01:48 unmasked and it is aerosolized so you know there’s a lot of stipulations on that group can we highly encourage them to participate we can highly encourage them to participate yes i highly encourage everyone to participate

1:02:08 right any other questions on that no all right we’ve got emotion in it seconded uh sarah gold yes megan taylor yes sarah fox yes emily baron yes and david harris yes all right that passes five to zero so um greg thank you yeah can we get like a like a a timeline on this like when i would have to have them start at least right away is it i mean it’s going to take a little bit of time to get them registered through uh beacon health or i’m sorry whatever it’s called there um i’m not sure how long that’s going to take um and at the same time are we going to prevent kids from playing like starting monday starting tomorrow i think it’s reasonable to say by next anybody not registered by next friday

1:02:54 forfeits their ability to play until they register i actually think it’d be reasonable to say anybody not registered by monday it was it took 30 seconds it did no i know i was just being i’m trying to like everybody might not get the message but then again like these coaches see their kids and know how to get a hold of them so okay so so just just so i can i can relay that to them what what are we saying here um [Music] we have to also remember it’s not just getting them registered it’s great greg doing the the legwork and paperwork to it with amanda to find out who’s registered comparative to his roster so i just don’t want to give him an unrealistic idea of you know him and

1:03:40 amanda getting their piece of it done we need close to 200 kids to register maybe not quite maybe 175 kids to register um i think we’ve we’ve voted that we want the testing and i think we understand that

1:04:02 that that greg and amanda will make an effort to get it done as soon as possible we do need to set a date though i think well the most the motion the motion didn’t have a date so i guess now somebody wants to make a motion well i guess the motion is live now so goes into effect tomorrow without a debate i mean it’s effective immediately

1:04:30 we can give them a grievance period or a leeway period to what i mean you said monday i thought friday does wednesday seem reasonable yes so can i get a motion to allow for families to have until wednesday march 10th march 10th thank you john to enroll in the pool testing program and to enroll in the full testing program in order to be so moved continue in athletics

1:05:08 sarah moved uh i’ll second but i just want can i just get a point of clarification on that they just have to register i know that there’s work greg has to do too so we’re not putting that mandate on greg well no because he couldn’t even start till the next week because of the couriers and getting it all done anyway right so as long as they’re registered they need to register by wednesday okay okay and then also just to throw it out there too just so i’m aware so there’s a like i said about 253 athletes or athletes and coaches are amanda and i expected to do all the testing just saw him on the same page you talked about doing it in thirds right does that work right yes yeah okay what you put forth this evening as doing the thirds is is the program that we just voted on okay thank you okay

1:06:01 i mean i think amanda said that she can teach adults to do it right or to um you know help facilitate kids getting tested so can we maybe amanda can help coaches learn how to do it so that coaches are responsible for their team if that so it’s one less thing that you two have to like if they’re given the material and we just go like i go through it with the coaches they can get it done um before practice like they can even do it like on the field exactly so if that might be an easier way to facilitate it if the coaches are the ones who i think we’re getting out of our purview i was just gonna say through the through the chair if we could let the logistics up to the superintendent the athletic

1:06:46 director in the pool testing nurse we will get all of this now that you have given the mandate we will put it into effect we make the policy they do their thing all right so we do have a motion um to to enforce this by wednesday so um i’ll call for a vote sarah gold yes megan taylor yes sarah fox yep yeah emily baron yep and david harris uh can you turn your mic on

1:07:21 yes thank you all right that passes five to zero all right thank you both uh greg and amanda very much um you know this this is important um this is important to our teachers so i you know i’m very grateful that that you guys put so much effort into this and came to speak with us tonight right john great so that moves us to a learning model update and at our last meeting we uh had the middle school principal matt fox and the high school principal dan bauer outline a potential uh change in schedule and you all requested that they get some more information and so some surveys went out to parents and students and they’re going to report back on the results of those surveys and

1:08:07 then we’ll talk about next steps for 7 to 12. so we’ll start with principal fox at the middle school

1:08:16 am i able to share my screen i will allow you to do that right right now okay go ahead thank you

1:08:32 so dan and i put together um some of the numbers and some of the things we were looking at uh that we’ve figured out in the last week uh the first thing we’re looking at are two options we just want to remind everybody the two options we’re looking at option a so we’re staying with the current hybrid models um what we did is we took a look at both models with some positives and some implications obviously with nothing changing in the current hybrid models if that is for option a um we could there would be no impact on family drop-offs on time and learning um there’d be no schedule adjustments to make for students and things like that uh it would also continue to allow um some curriculum access for students who are absolutely quarantined um some implications obviously it differs greatly from the k-6 approach

1:09:17 that’s happening now um and in-person learning would stay at two days versus four so option b we took a look at we we described it to you uh last week uh this is what it would sort of look like generically uh because obviously the eight to eleven and the eleven thirty two thirty blocks will look different within the high school middle school um but essentially it would be three to four classes per three hour block uh with a remote day on on wednesday due to some shared staff and things like that um so some of the positives of option b uh obviously are more in-person time that’s why this model came to head is that you know we were tasked with finding some more in-person time we would go to 23 hours per week uh versus 16

1:10:04 um middle school the class would get a little bit longer and we’d be able to have some in-person advisories and it would reduce remote classes for hybrid students to only be in on wednesdays implications a loss of total instructional hours at the high school um a lot of the high school scheduled members both cohorts uh together remotely there’d be different arrival and departure times each day so that means current drop off and pick up plans for families need to change and that’s the that’s the big hump that we brought to you last week with the schedule um that was a worry with us uh it could lead to more students go to remote due to varied start times um and then there’s implications of that a jumper remote could lead to especially in my school rescheduling of a team a

1:10:51 grade or possibly the entire school which is impactful for the fourth quarter of the year uh and there’d be less access to curriculum remotes for classes that are students who are quarantined so our survey uh we had some we had fairly good responses for our survey we had 523 parents and 424 students this is a 7 through 12 survey um we asked basically four questions uh we started with something really basic which is do you like the current hybrid model um before i go into talking about these numbers you’re gonna see we asked four questions to basically well the next question is the big one to four different groups um we have high school uh parents high school students middle school parents middle school students

1:11:37 and then of sort of the fifth bonus uh was dan and i also asked our staffs which model they preferred to um i will summarize all our results with one word we had mixed results there was no solid leaning one way or the other for all uh five of those cohorts that we talked to um so if you take a look here this this sort of exemplifies this is the first sort of our first trip into mixed results uh you can see that when we asked do you like the current hybrid model students um overwhelmingly uh responded yes they do while parents did not you know parents were sore split 50 50 well both groups of students were really in the 70s so this is a just a taste of that mixed

1:12:23 approach dan’s going to go into the next question which was the big question one of the big questions which was which model do you prefer dan thank you matt so the next question as matt said we not only ask the high school students parents the middle school students we also asked our faculty so uh very mixed as you can see you can certainly see on the one side uh the model that would be considered or proposed the the parents have selected more along the lines of the proposed model the am pm where students really just wanted to stay in the current model so you can see the numbers as they are you can see the flip with the parents uh on both in both schools and when you we asked the faculty it was interesting to see that we had a mix

1:13:08 between our two schools where at the high school we had a 55 percent would like to stay in the current mile 45 in the proposed and in math school it was flip 25 in the current 75 in the proposed model so definitely flipped throughout um and any student feedback i had uh throughout the course of the week indicated the piece of uh just staying in the current schedule so question three um is really the big question too because as matt said the concern is movement to learning models being able to accommodate students going from remote to hybrid and hybrid to remote is certainly the one that is is most challenging to make sure that we we have and i can speak at the high school

1:13:54 high school high school as we know sections that have teachers in sections that do not so and you can certainly see with that piece uh we there was movement in that uh we we thought it was important to ask the same question to both parents and students to get their feedback so you can see that there was a considerable number that would move um cohort based on that piece on both sides and before we go to the next slide the vast majority of the movement that you’re going to see between this question the next question vast majority were from families that reported as hybrid so the move that they would be making would be to remote so that’s the vast majority of the movement that we’re looking at here this slide the next right so as we move on to the next uh question is the one that if we were to move from

1:14:41 six to three feet um would you change your current structural model um and as you can see the numbers uh crept up more um for those that would so we went from the teens up into the 20s um across the board on that with parents and students at both the high school and the middle school so that was a considerable jump um with that particular question

1:15:06 and then um just calling through all the data just so that you can see all the data that’s called through it’s basically put on one piece right here where you can see the comparison so you can see the mixed results that we have particularly uh with the students and the parents um and certainly both the current model like the current model and model preferred uh and the consistency with the the change that would occur if uh we did go with the am pm uh would they move and then a much higher increase of moving out of the instructional model if we went from six to three foot spacing

1:15:43 and then i felt um obliged to put this in because i did have the junior class officers reach out to me and they conducted their own survey without my uh soliciting and i actually met with them the other night uh because one of the themes that that i’ve heard from the students and we’ve had some students speak at school committee and done a great job doing that advocating for themselves um i felt very i was very proud of the juniors to come for me forward to speak with me uh it was a great discussion and and if you look at just their own feedback that they did with their own poll the majority prefer the old kermal over the new model i put some just anecdotal information some quotes they put in in terms of that the big piece the theme that goes through there is settling in the change and i

1:16:28 know today in our sac meeting was pointed out that the high school we’ve had uh nine schedule changes i guess i miscounted but every little change moving from the remote to hybrid back and forth that does count and it adds up uh and i think the other piece too is the students just felt frustrated that they feel like they’re not listened to and certainly that we can do a better job listening to the school martial at high school listening to their mental health concerns uh and certainly they do they do you know prefer to be in person classes but there’s a lot of hesitation um throughout with the model change at this time so i thought it was important that i told them i would present this information uh to the school committee so their voice is heard and i think in summary you know dan and

1:17:14 i spoke this morning at the at reopening and you know one of our overarching concerns is you know the feedback feedback that we’ve heard um had concerns about making a change if there might be another change coming down the road uh with so much happening at the state level at this point um you know would this be a short change in you know prior to moving to yet another change um and so that’s sort of the feedback we’ve heard that i’ve heard in particular uh from parents and from a couple students who said well does this mean we’re we’re not going to come back anymore um because then would that be another change and so dan i spoke to that this morning to the to the reopening committee

1:18:01 thank you um yeah i think that’s you know that’s a valid concern um i was at the high school sac this afternoon um and dan provided some time at the end of the meeting or towards the end of the meeting for students and parents to weigh in and teachers did as well and and that was definitely something i heard loud and clear um and i think from my feet um that that’s a concern as well um you know i’ve got an eighth grader um and and he and i actually had a conversation about this and we also are a divided household i would like to see them in more um and he sort of likes what what’s going on right now um so it’s certainly echoed the results that we’re seeing as a whole um

1:18:46 so i think you know in my mind we need to and one of the reasons i wanted this data was that we need to avoid making too many more changes like if we’re going to do a change let’s do a change and then get through to the end of the year with what that change is um and that’s that’s kind of where my head is at currently uh sarah i know you’ve got your hand raised so thank you so much for all this data um it’s very helpful to see it laid out this way um two things jump out at me one’s kind of surprised me that the majority of parents and students although it’s a minor major like a majority by a slim margin but the majority don’t want to change um and that

1:19:32 that has to be considered and then the other big thing is our focus and our precipitation for changing this quickly was the mental health status that we’re hearing of so many of our students and the students really seem to say they don’t want the change right now and from the the few comments we’re seeing they’re saying it’s because they feel it it’s it’s you know changing their new norm it’s another stress um and i i think it’s becoming upon us to look at the fact that are we changing just because we can change or are we changing because we are

1:20:17 listening to our students and hearing them say a change will help us and benefit us um because if if this is going to not benefit them in this mental health crisis and it’s also um possibly going to add a new layer to it um i i’d be hard-pressed to do that i mean at some point the state’s going to mandate certain things and will have no choice um but i want to make this as easy on our students as we can that’s the best way i think we can support them um because at the end of the day it’s about the students and so that’s just my my two cents i just want to piggyback on uh what

1:21:04 sarah is saying that you know we are listening to the students and it as a long time high school principle it shouldn’t come as any surprise that adolescents and their parents differ greatly in what they think is best and so the students i think first and foremost are saying if there’s a change on the horizon which the commissioner is speaking to the board of education tomorrow and requesting the latitude to what can be counted as structured learning time and that could change the ball game significantly for districts and we’re currently leading with the k-8 work

1:21:49 or k-6 work that we’re doing if he tomorrow mandates that it’s april 5th we will have gotten our students in weeks ahead of that and we are exploring you know adding lunch and the full day for that k-6 piece but making a change right now as the high school middle school quarter change is going to be april 5th um i think that we are well served to listen to the students and to teachers as well because making a change for three weeks for them is also difficult so it would be my recommendation to you uh that we stay with the current model uh until april 5th and see what happens over the next

1:22:35 several weeks particularly with the board of education and the commissioner and with vaccination and ongoing negotiations with uh mea um i think that we are well served to follow that path megan um so i agree with everything that you’ve said and um you know i want to echo sarah’s comments on thank you dan and matt for putting this together because it’s really useful information um to kind of see where everybody um you know where everybody’s perspective is and sarah as you said in your opening comments there are at least two sides to every every single scenario that we that we go through and here’s another example of that so i think one of the things that i’m hearing too um [Music]

1:23:21 is that there’s a lot of anxiety out there in the community across the board right from families students staff our school committee it’s a lot of anxiety just with covid um in general um i think also for where we’re leading up to getting k-6 in march 15th there’s some anxiety around that which i think we need to acknowledge um but i think also with the unknown piece of it and there’s a lack of control that that you fit you know there’s a sense of lack of control with that uncertainty so um you know i know john you and your leadership team have been working towards getting our students and our staff back in and do so in a safely in you know in a safe manner and we’ve talked about that now for quite a while

1:24:08 um and there’s been a lot of movement right so i think just prioritizing teacher vaccinations finally at the state level is a huge step forward for us um and you know as both john you and matt have acknowledged that there’s probably something from the state level coming down our way too but again it’s uncertain and we have a lack you know there’s a lack of control on our part for that so what i would really like us to consider is just drawing a line in the sand here’s what we’re working towards so we’re all clear what our plan is we’re all marching in the same direction and we can take some of that anxiety off the table so i would like us as a school committee i think to consider um

1:24:54 just drawing that line in the sand and saying that we are committing to getting our students back in five full days k through 12. and i i would like us to do that now if we could put a goal date around that um you know on my mind it would be april 5th and the reason why i’m suggesting that is because that is the change in um in the quarter for the high school and vets and that’s a natural cutoff point we’ve said to our students and families all along that they have to make a commitment for those quarters or terms or semesters whichever it is and so i think to honor what we’re asking for our students and families we should also commit to that so that would be my suggestion and

1:25:40 obviously i know that there would be a lot of planning and um you know potentially obstacles that would come along with that and i would say you know we would have to john to you and your leadership team to bring that back to us you know as soon as you find what the obstacle is so that we can problem solve and maybe we need to adjust at that point but i think we if we just kind of say this is the date we’re looking towards this is the goal that we’re trying to get to and everybody’s on the same page my only concern with that is i think it’s a great idea but we’re dealing with a legally binding contract right now that actually prohibits us from doing that i mean the the constraints of our legally binding contract at right now

1:26:26 now now don’t doesn’t allow us to get kids back in at those levels five days a week so it feels like a really good idea but i often have trouble with ideas if they’re not implementable so i think what we’re really saying is we’re committed to negotiating to the best of our capability to make that happen but i don’t want to give anybody false hope that this vote is by any means um a guarantee that that’s going to happen because we we are one half of the legally binding contract

1:27:09 um so i’ll clarify that a little bit in some of the work i’ve been doing this week is basically if we as a school committee change the learning model then it necessitates impact bargaining and within impact bargaining good faith and in good faith um we’re you know we’re working within the confines of of what our district can do so we if we say all of our children are coming back and we cannot do that at six feet then the negotiations have to start there so how do we get all of our learners back in classrooms

1:27:55 at less than six feet okay my concern was that we were and you it sounds like you’ve talked to legal so you’re probably going to have a much clearer answer to this my concern was we were taking a vote that would actually possibly force us into breach of contract because at the end of the day it’s the school committee that made the contract not the administration so it’s the five of us that are i mean as a as a body we are the um people of record for collective marketing so i just i want to make sure that we we can do this without being in breach can i just follow on from that because i think it’s a valid point sarah and it’s worth you know it’s work it’s worth raising and making sure that we’re all clear but i would say also recently there’s been precedence around this as well um

1:28:42 so i you know i think we’re we’re actually by doing this we’re it’s our responsibility and we’re following through on that responsibility

1:28:55 i just i wanted to make sure we i just i didn’t want to give the i didn’t want to give i know it you know we all read the swamp scot paper they’re going back and which was a little misleading to that community i don’t want to mislead our community and then stay tomorrow we’re going back it’s not this that easy so i think that’s a good point um and and um you know as i looked at this la over the this past week i went back to our february fourth meeting um because we did take a vote with a motion and we this is sort of what kind of got the got all the gears moving um and so the motion that we had taken was that we were supporting the superintendent and the principles to create a plan to bring our students back at lower distancing levels and fully in person so that is

1:29:40 then what actually tipped this off and when we started negotiating with mea again um and those negotiations are ongoing um as you know we’re looking at many different things so i think megan’s thoughts at this point are surrounding putting a date out there so that so that there’s clarity within the community of kind of that we aren’t

1:30:09 we aren’t in this unending process um because i think that is creating some angst out there um and i understand it and um you know again as i stated earlier there’s there’s so many sides to this and there’s frustration on all sides and there’s aggravation and and anxiety and um and data and so these are really tricky pieces to balance um

1:30:36 you know and i think i think you know i’ve told the story to a couple of people i got out of my car to walk into tower last week and i think it was last thursday and they play music as the kids are dropping off and stuck in the middle with you was playing was flaring through the parking lot and it just hit me as so apropos because i truly feel as though you know we we really as a school committee and um as a district were sort of and this as these decision makers and tasks with making these these choices and these motions that we’re really sort of weighing out these balances we’re stuck in them where we’re situated in the middle and and needing to listen to all sides and come up with a viable option that that feels supportive to everyone um and so i you know

1:31:22 these are the tricky things these are the sort of the minefields that that were we’re walking through right now um and there’s no easy answers i mean like i truly don’t think i could have forecasted a worse a worse situation with the surveys as to come out basically right in the middle um because you know what what do i do with that um you know i if i do one thing i’m i’m upsetting half of and if i do the other thing i’m setting the other half um so it’s um you know these are these are i’m struggling with with where we go with this so for matt and dan a question is was there um like a short answer part of these surveys because i know we got some email

1:32:08 feedback on but i don’t have a child in vets or high school so i didn’t you know get the survey but the feedback we got was you know some from some people i don’t like either any of these options i want option c which you know i think we’re always going to get for anything and and that’s why when we put the survey together we’re working with just those two options so we did not have an open-ended question you know we were tasked with taking a look at these two options and giving us giving you data on those two options i mean if we with you know 1800 people you know possibly answering which option they want best uh we’ll have a lot of suggestions for our schedule um so we worked on these two that we had brought to you last week

1:32:55 okay and then for dan um roughly a quarter of the population said if we did reduce to three feet they would switch from um hybrid to remote and can you accommodate that switch and still you know educate these kids i guess well honestly um you know if there’s movement out in terms of you know where they land and that would be a struggle um you know we would have to put our heads together and figure out the best opportunity and best plan for that to make sure that they have the needs met i mean you’re talking across four grades right we have sections of remote learning that are taught by marvel high school teachers but not in all sections some of the honors sections we just

1:33:41 didn’t have enough teachers so um you know we’d have to to take a look and reshuffle if we had to because i mean that’s not insignificant the idea that we could be unable to accommodate 25 percent of our our students um at our school because we’d be at 22 um i i don’t want to be more impactful because um you know the way we structured our elected remote learners is you know they’re being taught they follow the same schedules that we have being taught by our teachers that are then teaching in person too if i had 22 percent more i’m sitting at 11 now i would go up to a third of my school uh i

1:34:27 uh i uh i sitting here right now i i could not guarantee that not every single student’s schedule in the building would have to change and a chunk of students would have to change teams going into the fourth quarter and that’s not just our elective remote students and i’m not i’m not trying to be the naysayer i’m not trying to to be the negative but but i also want it to be very upfront um that if we have 25 more of our students leave the building um that’s that’s very difficult for us to balance and manage without moving around a lot of students so that’s just a reality um and i’m worried could you just clarify that you’re saying 25 more so it’s going to be 36

1:35:14 i’m at 11 right now remote 11 of my students are remote right now and if another 20 so you know 20 of the respondents if i extrapolate that to being 20 of the rest of my students that are here so i have 400 students that are not remote so that would be roughly another well it’s 22 23 so roughly about 90 more students going remote um that would be a challenge to deal with because again you know this is these the people who answer the survey i have to think worst case scenario and even if it’s not worst case scenario and only another 10 or 11 or 12 percent go um to match what we already have out there’s still a good number of students that would have their schedule changed um with fewer i should be able to keep more kids on the team that they’re in right now

1:35:59 now now but it’s it just comes to be a point of uh we just don’t have enough spaces uh to to do it within our current system now because nothing’s perfect it won’t be all x number of kids on one right it’s never going to be like that and i can’t run a team of right 35 i can’t run a class of 35 remote students and six in-person students and and say that’s the best for everybody educationally um so when we talk about social emotional learning there’s gonna be kids going in the fourth quarter that most likely are not making a decision about their instructional model but will be impacted by others it’s just the reality i mean i i want to be upfront you said to bring to you at

1:36:45 some point the impacts this will be the largest impact we have so i think some of the other takeaways that i had at the sac meeting for within high school this afternoon was it that many of the students there um expressed a lack of desire for a change um i think the parents were a little bit more amenable to the idea um and i think one of the things that i struggle with is sort of um and another parent suggested something like this that that there’s there’s an awareness raising campaign that regardless of whether we do this now or we do this or you know this is where we’re at in the fall um that that awareness raising needs to

1:37:32 happen um because there’s been so much data that has changed over the course of time that people kind of have have information that maybe is not as up to date as as it could be um i mean you know in public comment tonight somebody mentioned that our buildings aren’t ventilated well well actually dr buckley and i sat and looked at the data from the fuss and o’neill reports early from from august and september and our air exchange rates in almost all the buildings there’s a couple that we didn’t actually have the air exchange rates for but in all of the other buildings um were six air exchange rates per hour according to um dr joseph allen who is the big leading researcher on air

1:38:17 ventilation and everything out of harvard his ideal filtration has you know his recommended of like these are safe building is four to six exchange rates per hour so you know our buildings and if we take that into account as being even more important in a lot of the ways that our research is coming out then then distancing you know but that you know i sit and i read article after article after article here and and i i don’t think that most people are are spending that type of time because they’re leading their own busy lives digging into this type of thing and so if if we’re going to you know i think one of the pieces to these moves has to be a massive awareness raising campaign of we are saying our buildings are safe and

1:39:03 here is why here are the things that we’re doing here are the ways in which we’ve come to terms with the union so that you know our children and our teachers are safe going into these buildings um you know obviously there’s work to be done on on all of these things um so yeah megan um sorry can i just ask it’s not i don’t know if it’s a question or what but um you know i’m kind of listening to everything that everyone’s saying and that i take you know i take your point um i and i and i totally appreciate it i guess one of my concerns is we i think we can anticipate that the state is going to start to um to be a little bit more i don’t know what the right word is uh well i don’t know if i’d use

1:39:48 aggressive but you know they’re going to start to take a little bit more of a stand so i don’t want us to get into the situation where we’re mandated to do it and we’re not ready and it’s not on our timeline and it doesn’t you know especially when we’re talking about the terms etc i mean i just don’t want us to get into that situation and i want us to be prepared and i want us to be working towards you know an ultimate goal and again if i think about having some level of control on it we want to be able to control how that works so that it is in the best interest of our students we don’t want to be mandated into that so you know again there’s there’s no easy answer 100 um but i just think you know we i think we can predict that something will be coming

1:40:33 from the state and i would like us to be ahead of the curve and make sure that our plan is supporting our students and our community yeah i agree i agree yeah david did you have something

1:40:50 no i agree with what uh megan’s saying there i think i mean i mean surveys surveys are challenging i i don’t know that we’ve we necessarily

1:41:06 um addressed how many people responded out of the total population and that’s always another challenge with with surveys i mean i did you know as an example dan showed that there were about 106 juniors that responded to the survey and i’m i’m guessing there’s over 200 juniors in the high school so the response rate was about 50 so do we know what the response rate was to the survey by chance overall matt and daniel

1:41:39 i think that was on one about eighteen hundred students from well is that about it about eighteen hundred between well i have four hundred dan you’ve got eight

1:41:56 542 out of about 1400 for parents okay um sarah you’ve had your hand up and then emily i see yours so um i’m hoping that john can speak to what his thoughts on this are um and also what what budget implications that there would be with this scenario um and do you feel that the teachers and the principals um feel supported with the resources that we can allocate to them to implement this yeah i i thought that i made the recommendation that we uh follow what the principals are saying and stay in the current model until april 5th knowing that there’s guidance coming from the state

1:42:41 there have been recent department of labor relations for melrose public schools in terms of their agreements and so there’s almost a daily announcement i sat in on a legal workshop with mike long we have ongoing negotiations with the union so you know i’m not going to speak for the principles but i think that starting with k-6 on the 15th and then looking to make a change for the high school middle school at their quarter change on april 5th is our best path forward at this point yeah i think that that date makes a lot of sense and i think i think you know i completely agree with what megan had to say about you know we don’t want to

1:43:27 be mandated into this um it’s it’s one of my frustrations with with what’s going on at the state level at this point um because i don’t want anything coming from them that’s sort of you know isn’t isn’t tailored well enough to marblehead um i think you know we’ve been we’ve been at this um for a year now and and we have a really good grip on on what we’re doing with our community um so i do also want to stay ahead of of any kind of mandate and i think that quarter break makes a lot of sense um i personally i was really surprised as i was talking to my eighth grader that he even saw that he he was like well it just makes complete sense with that and i hadn’t said a thing

1:44:13 about it just makes complete sense that we wouldn’t do anything until the quarter why would why would we everybody’s caught up at the quarter um you know it just makes the most sense um so i think even on the younger side of the kids in this situation they’re seeing that that makes a lot of sense emily i know you had your hand up sorry for saying something before you okay um so i agree also with you know moving forward with april 5th we did it for the younger kids using march 15th as their trimester break or cut and so this just makes sense and how we’re doing it um kind of going off with david said about the survey um i have a hard time also kind of using

1:45:00 that as our decision maker because um did it go out to both hybrid and remote families yes so we don’t know if some of those kids are coming into the schools or do we or going back into hype like we do it’s a very very small percentage um of the students that said they were going to make a change um i think in in total it might have been [Music] 10 students across seven grades across this across 7-12 total that were remote to hybrid while the vast majority were hybrid to remote so how did so oh because you had to put your name in is that why because we knew who it was okay and then we can extrapolate that if

1:45:45 they’re going to change and they were hybrid um um so i just wanted to clarify that i guess i didn’t realize i briefly saw the survey so i didn’t know um and that it is a small selection of people so can we say that that’s going to kind of be the pattern if we were to get everyone to respond to the survey i guess you know it’s such how do we find you know i think if we just say i mean this is what we’re going to do are you going to change your model i don’t know yeah dan and i do sort of binding outreaches the the last three quarters um dan uses a form i use an email where they have to reach out to

1:46:31 the media their guidance counselor directly um you know we’ve been talking small enough numbers that i can then talk to every family about sort of their their reason behind their changes to make sure that’s going to really suit their needs as opposed to what they think the other model is um this you know i it’s i’m i’m done predicting anything i said that in my class size you know look at my class sizes this year it’s hard to predict and i was shocked i had a lot of requests last quarter much more than i thought um to move and but again you know you talk with families and and maybe they come to a point where it’s not

1:47:16 really the best thing once they learn the whole program but it’s it’s um it’s worrisome because i i’ve not seen these these types of numbers before you know upwards of 25 and in a survey um so that that’s yeah that’s not good just one second and then i’ll i also think there’s something to be said for um setting this april date and and having april in our minds instead of march in our minds that the concept of being able to go outside of having windows open all of the time of getting that much further out from surges or that much better data on any kind of variants that are coming into play at this point you know i think

1:48:02 when those surveys were sent out it was sort of it was being talked about of a march date and so my hope would be sort of to to kind of again push on this awareness piece that more data will come out that we will be able to explain things that people will get a better grasp on what what’s going on and what the reality of the situation on the ground is as we’re looking to make these changes what classrooms would look like and how this would all roll out so that they can make a truly informed decision instead of kind of a okay yes i’ve been for getting my child in more all along or this really makes me antsy i i need more time to feel comfortable with this and i think if i can just follow on from that too i mean we just heard

1:48:48 i’m kind of losing track of days but i’m pretty sure it was just yesterday when the teachers got priority on the vaccinations so this also gives us another month to move forward with vaccinations as well because you know i take i take the teacher’s concerns um to heart too as i’m sure we we all do um so i think you know really having a hard push to get teacher vaccinations done too and support that would you know is a is a good step in the right direction as well john you would wanted to yeah i’ll let matt go he had raised his hand sorry matt just a two second just to answer your question it was 101 to 12. so 101 uh elective to uh hybrid to remote versus 12 remote to hybrid

1:49:32 so i think there was a piece when we were talking about surveys that was initially discussed that if people did not respond that they would be locked into or kept in their current model and so i have found that people that respond to surveys are those that feel passionately about whatever the survey is seeking the information on so whether that’s going back more in person or staying more in the current model so the response rate well you know could be questioned is that a representative sample i think that it probably is because the people that responded to the survey wanted to make sure that their points of view were known i do want to address the budget concern

1:50:18 that sarah raised i’m not sure specifically if she could ask that in more detail the budget questions so that we can speak um so you know will the implications of this require us to have you know more than the tent the one tent at the high school or will it require an increase in cleaning which we just you know did away with that that was thirty thousand dollars a week um will it mean an increase in possibly nursing state like what what increases if any and there may be none would be implications of this change i just want to make sure if we build it and they come we fund it yep at this time i think funding the outdoor

1:51:04 learning spaces and this is where i think nan led with the parent volunteers and putting out there how much those will cost um that would be a budget implication if we’re not able to fundraise that money but in terms of cleaning or additional nursing uh none of that at this time i did ask john to price out a few things this week such as dr benedetto’s suggestion last last year last week about surgical masks and so we did get some information back on that i think it was about 8 500 to provide surgical masks for students in grades 7 to 12 every day upon entering the building we’re already doing all of the hand sanitizer pieces

1:51:49 so that those are at no additional cost and we’ll continue to be there um regardless of whether we make a change or not was there another piece that i had uh the glass shields or the plexiglas shields for teacher desk or student desks the dividers is what we were talking about and the air purifiers have already been purchased so any staff member that wants air purifiers so that’s in place

1:52:18 and then i think this one goes without asking but i you know we are in the business of educating children so let’s let’s ask what in the mind of dr bucky and the principals is the best educational outcome at this point with a quarter left and i want to make sure that we’re also making sure that we’re paying attention to how will we educate if we lose 25 to the remote program

1:52:49 i i think you know i have tried to be clear from the beginning the best is in person every day full days with their teachers getting to that is not as easy and clearly dan and matt outlined some of those particularly with the movement from hybrid to remote or remote to hybrid but the sooner that we can get to more normal school days the better it is for all of us it is the common goal that we’re all working toward so the negotiations with mea that’s the conversation we’re all working toward the same goal so i just want to be very clear that full in-person instruction is

1:53:35 what’s best for kids getting there safely is important that’s why we’re starting k-6 with the three weeks of half days before introducing lunch because march 15 is going to be like the first day of school again children will be in classes not of seven or eight but of 18 or 19. and so being in the classroom what is it like to get dropped off at school what is it like to come into school move through the corridors go to your specials go to the bathroom go to recess have a break i could see megan on april 5th transitioning to full days for k-6 we will have been able to get a group of parent volunteers to address the lunch supervision

1:54:21 supervision supervision recess supervision so if we have that opportunity to get into the structure get students used to what the new classrooms look like how to navigate the buildings then full days for k-6 and i think that the april fifth date is also a good target transition for seven to twelve as i’ve said several times the commissioner is meeting with the board of ed tomorrow so that conversation could dramatically change uh what happens if legal cases continue to be solved i will say anytime somebody sends me something i will reach out to an area superintendent and i’ve had several conversations this week where

1:55:10 people say to me what are you doing in marblehead because my school committee my parents say marblehead’s doing this why is marblehead able to do that and so i will laugh and i’m not going to name any districts that i talk to but they’re they’re hearing uh from their parents because we’re all experiencing the same thing everybody wants to be back full in person and i do think with the plan that we’ve outlined for k-6 for the half days leading up to and i do think the commissioner will announce april 5th tomorrow but we have to also remember that there are districts that not that have not yet had students in person

1:55:56 and so when they talk about uh hybrid and remote learning and the commissioner saying those models he would like to be able to change districts being able to count those as structured learning time i think it’s really more focused on those fully remote districts that have not been hybrid in person yet um we’ve talked about this for quite a while now um there is no easy answer i think based on what you’ve just said dr bucky i i would like to make a motion to have our kids back by april 5th i’m going to caveat that with if there are obstacles to making that happen come back to us as soon as you find them so that we can problem solve and if we need to adjust we will adjust but i’d like to

1:56:42 make that our target goal megan i appreciate that and i think having that directive from school committee helps us to get the pieces in place that we need to to whether we are able to hit the target you know i can’t commit to say april 5th it’s going to happen but that gives us a very focused date from which to work backwards okay so i have a motion can i get a second second emily seconded we don’t have another meeting for two weeks which is only you know about a week and a half before april 5th right i don’t have a calendar in front of me full disclosure um is there a way to get an update you know sooner so that we we

1:57:27 know that we’re making milestones and we know what our hurdles are because i you’ve heard me say this a million times we can’t fix a problem till we identify it so if if we need more another meeting or additional meetings to identify and address any issues let’s do that absolutely i think yeah you know this is what our third meeting in in three weeks three weeks yeah i think even less than three weeks i think it’s two weeks at this point um so you know i think there’s a strong commitment to doing what we need to do you know if if it needs if it’s best being sent out in informational you know sort of updates in emails from john or from the principals you know if there’s something that school committee needs to send out or if it doesn’t make the most sense to

1:58:13 to make it a school committee meeting and and get information out that way um and troubleshoot as megan is saying you know be able to ask for more volunteers all of that stuff so you know i think um that everything’s on the table at this point and i just want to make one clarifying point for this april 5th date but also kind of put it out there because fall is coming folks and we need plans for the fall because we need to be you know all set um that for families that don’t feel comfortable and or have a medical need they will be accommodated in a remote setting um i i know that as of right now we can do that my concern is what happens for you know the fall and i want

1:58:58 to make sure that we we are accommodating them with anytime we make a major change like this that we’re accommodating these people but we got several emails asking us about you know the fall so i want to make sure that we we address that maybe at our next meeting in to the best of our ability knowing that rules will come down from the state right yeah i think that that’s something that you know i mean the guidance is literally changing by the day at this point and so i don’t think that we can necessarily take any steps forward i think we’re all on top of the information that’s coming out and digging into it and and figuring it all out um so i think you know as we’re waiting it does seem like dessie is is going to hand out some guidance and some directives towards the fall at some point relatively soon and obviously

1:59:45 we’re we’re waiting on that and hopeful that they will you know do a little bit better job in guiding us in this fall this coming fall than last fall but for april 5th we will accommodate people if i mean if we’re switching distancing we will accommodate changes yes that the remote program will will be sustained through the end of this school year the remote program will be sustained through the end of this year and anybody that wants to move into it because we’ve changed distancing will be accommodated well sir you heard the principles say how challenging that will be so i don’t want to be held to something that i’m not going to be able to guarantee certainly

2:00:38 i just i just you know um matt and dan were very clear that they will do everything that they possibly can but i don’t want to sit at a school committee meeting on march 4th to commit to something that happens on april 5th and we see a 20 percent change to say that it will look exactly like the remote program that currently exists and that will have an impact on the families that are currently engaged in that program yeah just a point sarah i mean i i hear what you’re saying absolutely guys no one outside of that room can hear david we can hear he’s talking but not what he’s saying that’s odd he’s are you plugged in correctly

2:01:23 oh there you go can you hear me now here yeah can you hear me now yeah but i don’t i think 25 is just a little bit misleading based on the survey numbers so i don’t want this to be that 25 of the people aren’t going to come back to school because i’m not sure that that’s a real number so we know that there’s people obviously that will choose not to come back to school but i i don’t think it’s order of magnitude of 25 percent based on what we’ve seen tonight and i don’t want to leave this meeting with a perception that 25. i’m just using the numbers that came from the survey and you know not everybody you know i think they said a third of the people so we don’t know but i mean

2:02:08 we can only go on the data we have and that right now is the imperfect data we have right and i think that there is a commitment to continue the remote program or you know a remote program you know it it will and i think you know as that spoke to you know if if this 30 you know that’s going to impact in person as well um so you know there’s this is not just about impacting remote and that type of thing this will be you know we’re talking about a system change here that again most likely is going to be mandated so i think you know this is about a date and sort of getting people’s focus on on where we’re headed and i think sarah also asked dr bucky you know what the best outcome was and we all i mean we all i think we all agree the best outcome is

2:02:56 getting back to in-person learning and that’s the objective you know since uh the anniversary of kovid brought us to this point now the objective is to get back to where we were before march 13th and um i think we both heard dan and matt say that when we get back into learning there will be people that will need to be accommodated and they’re they’ll do just like they’ve done for the last year they’ll i’m sure they’ll do the best they can to um accommodate those people um one one way or another but i think the goal is to be back in school i mean that’s what we’ve been

2:03:43 hearing socially and emotionally but yes i i’m in full agreement sarah that there are people you know if if they’re not back in school but i think i think the district will will find the resources and find a way to work with those people just just like we just like we’ve done over the last year with all the different scenarios that we’ve had and i think a lot of this signaling from deci over the past week or week and a half is is indicative of where it’s headed you know there’s been a lot of local control over the past year and you know basically almost all local control and so but that you know on march 4th last year that did not exist you know this is we were heavily regulated as to how long we needed to be in our buildings how many days we needed to be in our building you know what all of that looked like time on learning all

2:04:29 of that and so we are headed back to a much more regulated state um in in total so i think you know we’re we’re still proceeding as we need to proceed i think as a school doing what needs necessary to be done i think you know talking about and making any kind of commitments to next fall i think would is foolish at this point um and that we’ve sort of set the state of and gotten it out there of april 5th um and that or you know we’re in the process of setting it i think we’ve got a motion in a second on the table right now um and that that sort of you know we will we will be updating regularly as to the progress on that and as to the dusty guidance to that and where all of this is headed and i think to speak to your point sarah um that

2:05:15 you know getting information out there will make people feel more comfortable if we get if we can post that fussing on your report and talk about the air exchange rates and things and get that out there that may um get some information out there that that changes people’s comfort level well i think the pool testing might change people’s comfort level as well that’s another factor that just started this week that we heard about an hour and a half ago i think and i’m hopeful that that will be yeah i think positive us moving in to get the athletes tested i think you know what i’ve heard it makes those kids a little antsy to be sitting next to kids who are playing football right now um at closer distancing so you know all of this information all of these steps forward i think you know we’re moving

2:06:01 we’re moving we’re moving i do have a motion and second on the table to set that april 5th date as as a goal to getting our children k-12 back into the building um so i will take a roll call vote sarah gold yes sarah fox yes yes megan taylor yes emily barron yes and david harris yes all right that motion passes five to zero thank you matt and dan um we appreciate all the work that you guys have done on those surveys all week and really kind of digging down and dan thank you um also for meeting with the juniors i did have a parent reach out to me regarding that the fact that that had gone on and so i’m i’m really grateful that you’ve sat down with them and kind of

2:06:47 understood their survey and where they were coming back and and what they’ve been hearing anything else john um i just needed to update uh the committee on two things the brown lucretia and joseph brown elementary school principal search we have put together a search committee for that on that committee will be myself nan murphy is the assistant superintendent matt fox as an education rep david harris as school committee rep and i apologize i learned uh that if there’s a school committee rep on a group that that is yours uh to pick and unfortunately i think the horse is out of the barn uh on this one but david

2:07:32 has agreed to be the school committee rep uh cindy schieffer as a parent rep uh brian burke as a parent and cpac representative emily moore as a parent representative rachel levitt as an educator rep and melissa mcginnis as an educator rep and we have a tentative meeting initial launch meetings scheduled for next wednesday for sounds like a great committee good luck just to kind of clear up past precedence i think you know this is a superintendent hire and and not a school committee hire and i think you know in the past i think you know a name has been brought to us by the superintendent um and and we just sort of give the nod of like yep thanks

2:08:18 sounds good you know and in this case it’s gonna be david so okay um can you just know which of those who are the parents are elementary school parents uh the parent representatives are cindy schieffer brian burke and emily moore okay is there a elementary school parent i don’t believe so nobody that would have a student in the school okay

2:08:51 and then the other committee that stephen uh quite tech is putting together is uh transitioning our website to the blackboard connect platform um and he has asked for a school committee rep and both emily and sarah fox have expressed interest in that and i don’t want to misstep again so i don’t know if the committee votes on that or it’s left to me or i just thought i would bring it to the group

2:09:23 i’m fine yielding that to emily yeah i think emily you know emily i know has done a lot on the building committee website and she certainly manages and puts up various things on the school committee website too um so i think that makes a lot of sense at this point she’s our uh resident techie on the committee is that the title you always wanted always probably not what you thought that you’d be pigeonholed into my husband would be proud all right all right sounds good good thank you lots of great work going on okay so that leads us to our schedule of bills let me find that um so we did have that schedule in our

2:10:09 uh packet in the dropbox um so can i get a motion to approve the identified schedule of bills totaling 3 million one hundred and twenty six thousand thirty three dollars and twenty six cents so moved megan moved

2:10:26 can i get a second oh second sorry emily second was there any questions on that

2:10:41 yes megan taylor yes david harris and emily baron yes all right thanks guys uh and so that will lead us up to michelle um we’ve got an fy 22 budget update do you want me to take that would that be easier sure um i’m here sorry michelle i didn’t um there really is no update at this point with the i mean fy22 yeah certainly maybe you can talk about the um meeting we had this week i thought it was fy21 there’s nothing to report on 21 since last week okay so on fiscal year 22 budget we did have a subcommittee meeting this week um what came out of it was john and his

2:11:27 team will prioritize his list of priorities yeah i know that sounds funny but we’ve got six of them so let’s you know kind of rank order those as well as you know the additional requests that have come out through the leadership team um deep dive so he’s you know working on that with his team um i do think it’s important to note that we um i think in our last meeting we had mentioned that we’d met with the town and that was a very positive meeting and we’ll be meeting with them again i don’t think it’s next week maybe the week after um but i just want to reiterate that that so far has been a really positive working relationship that you know the town is incredibly collaborative with us um and i am gonna have to push back on some of the public comment because i do think there is a lot of give and take um with that

2:12:14 relationship and i do think they ask us tough questions that make us kind of think about things and and we ask you know john and michelle the same types of things so i do think there’s a lot of give and take there and i would say also that i want to make very clear that from the town side the selectmen you know jackie does sit on you know she does attend our joint meetings fincom and the town administrator so how far have been incredibly supportive of funding our schools um so i think that’s an important point to make i don’t think i can say that enough times i think i’ve been saying the same thing for three years now but i just want to make sure that that’s clear i think the other thing just for this committee to be aware of is we did have tentatively scheduled the public hearing for the 18th we are going to be working with the town um on

2:13:00 on um work backing into that date based on when we need to present at fincom so we may be changing that date um and we’ll get back to you you know as soon as possible with that but just kind of a heads up i appreciate that note about the town megan um because i think you know that is something that we’ve worked incredibly hard on these last three budget cycles um and you know we’ve we’ve come a long ways we’ve been through a lot and you know as a as a school district as well as a town um and i think you know one you know there’s always there’s always bright spots in every you know tough spot that we we traverse and i think that’s one of them um you know we’ve talked a couple weeks ago about you know land and everything like that like i think that the the

2:13:47 relationship we have at all levels at the town right now is a really good one and that that is a really good thing that you know maintaining those those relationships and and having all of us on similar pages you know i think you know it’s silly to expect you know the five of us aren’t always on the same page um but we’re certainly on similar pages and headed in the in the same direction and that that’s a really good and really important note to make yeah and i think also you know this is my own opinion on it is that had we not been in a global pandemic we might be in a different place than where we are now and i i’m saying that really from a community perspective um because it’s hard i mean we’ve just spent like what almost two and a half hours talking

2:14:33 about this is a hard place to be but i think we’ve all i think in this regard we’re working all working really well together and supportive of each other so i think you know again given where we are i just wanted to make that point so thanks

2:14:52 all right um that was all that we had there so that moves us onto school committee things so as we did mentioned last week or have on our agenda last week we had quite a few different policies that were updating the face covering policy and then a couple that emily and i with john’s help have been working on from the policy subcommittee and then the j policies that are on there which were part of an audit um i believe at the dusty level um to the special education program and the ell program so um that those are reflected in that change so i will um this is you know and we’ve covered these quite a few times in open session we were at our at our voting time so i will ask for a motion to

2:15:37 accept the changes to policies ebcfa face coverings ihbaa observations of special education programs ihca summer schools j f a b d homeless students enrollment rights and services j f a b e educational opportunities for military children j f a b f education opportunities for children in foster care did you ask for a motion i did okay so moved thank you megan moved make it a second

2:16:26 all right this wasn’t on as a vote right was that just a mistake um it does say under one the vote is actually just over to the side uh policies okay um for the observations of the special education program that was the one where i saw the most redlining and i didn’t know if the way i was reading it if that was because of possibly you know things with covid that were worried about having more people in because there was a lot of redlining in that one um let me see if i can pull that one back up really quickly um most of what we’ve done is really looking at best practice with those so we will look um when we look at them at the policy

2:17:14 subcommittee level we we pull up quite a few other districts and kind of compare and contrast and then discuss what makes the most sense for our district um

2:17:31 at that we added that note at the bottom because that was on uh that was not we didn’t have it and it was on every single other one that we looked at so that’s it was like a huge piece that we just added okay all right so it doesn’t change the policy it just lends some clarification yeah yep

2:17:54 all right um sarah gold yes sarah fox yes megan taylor yes emily baron yes and david harris yes all right muted yes yes david yes emily yes sorry all right that was five to zero thank you everyone um that leads us to subcommittee and liaison updates [Applause] are there any i don’t think anybody met this week so i gave the budget update emily do you have something um i have a metco update or just an event the annual cultural celebration is happening um the date’s been set for may 14th

2:18:40 at 6 30. it’s going to be outside coveted friendly um and may what 14th i think and it’s just really exciting that we are able to do it this year and there’s a big committee that’s um working on getting everything together so that to save the date that is really exciting um i think that was basically the last thing that happened in the district last year i know megan and i went and it was a really fun event um great food great entertainment by the kids um so i’m i’m thrilled to hear that that’s happening oh that’s awesome yeah so um emily is the resident technology person i will be the resident nag here okay so um we have this new school committee

2:19:26 website which is great i would just like to implore us all to get our minutes approved at our subcommittee level and post it up on the website and if we add meetings or change them just try to you know with lisa and emily’s support to get that um calendar updated because the that website’s only as good as the data we put out out there and i did talk to emily again this week about looking into that push notification um functionality because i think that’s an important one for the community so that if we do make changes um we can get that out there i have no idea how easy or difficult it is um so but that is something that you know we’ll we’re aiming to get done but i just want to make sure you know we all get i know minutes are boring but they’re really important and if we can get those out there and updated that would be

2:20:14 great yeah absolutely thanks megan so for facilities as the same as last month um we’re in a holding pattern until we finish that review um michelle had said it’s going to be due in um she said a few i think last wednesday or a few days ago uh two to three weeks and so we um are going to have an off cycle meeting and probably an additional meeting as well um because once that report comes in we’ll have a lot of work to do okay and um policy just a note is gonna we we are meet on the second tuesday it should be next tuesday um john’s got a conflict this month so we’re punting it to the tuesday after i think is the 16th if i’m remembering correctly

2:20:55 all right can i just say minutes and dates and everything if you send them to me in an email or text me i can update the calendar with information and date changes pretty quickly so i just need to have and lisa has set up a drive folder for sub committees with a with one folder within it being strictly for minutes so that if we dump them there after they’ve been voted that then emily emily orly so whoever doing the posting can easily access them and i can get them up right away david anything new with the building project this week uh there is but i think dr bucky has a couple of quick updates related to um the meeting that you had today that you

2:21:41 told me about and right i’m sorry for looking at you blankly

2:21:48 we had a meeting uh with the moving company and had the initial discussion about uh what it will look like to take three buildings and pack up rooms and move them uh into uh the new building and having done this in two other districts i know that if you allocate five boxes teachers will want 15 and moving into a new building is not moving all the furniture and 20 years worth of supplies materials in that and so that was a good conversation with the moving company to talk about um kind of just preliminarily what the move will look like and some tentative benchmark dates about teachers packing up their rooms and

2:22:35 what they will use and where that stuff will be stored so uh not a long meeting today but a good one right and i and i think it’s it’s worth noting that um you know unlike a move where you might just get allied movers this is this is a very specialized moving group that um our opm and gilbane have worked with them before they specialize in in moving labs and hospitals and schools so um they’re very focused on they have a lot of leg work to do where they’ll you know take stock of what’s going to be moved and and it’s going to be a very precision move when i get when it comes down to it absolutely yeah so that’s real exciting and there have been some ongoing

2:23:21 discussions this week continuing on furniture and and equipment with the displays taking place right at the at the vet stage uh we had a kind of furniture gallery set up on the stage at vets for uh teachers and teams of teachers or interested people to go in and look at chairs and desks and other uh furnishings and to you know check out materials and textures and there’s uh small wares that for cafeteria and nurse and custodians in the stem lab and classrooms and so donna and sean have been working uh with teachers and teams of teachers to get those uh completed and then there will be an update i think at the building committee

2:24:09 meeting this month on where that uh the ffme process is this is an exciting process for teachers because so much of the building committee process has been the building committee and they have teacher reps which have done an amazing job but now it gets more personal what will my classroom look like what will the supplies materials equipment desks and to have voice in that process this is just a really exciting phase of the project for educators thank you and then i have one other thing here this will probably be um the least dramatic uh update that people have seen from from a picture standpoint but

2:24:55 this is really exciting i have to say it’s something that does keep people up at night on the construction project this was at 3 15 today as people know it’s over by tower school at the corner of dartmouth road and the new poll is in uh verizon puts the pole in in this part of town and then the infrastructure that goes on the pole between marblehead light and verizon starts from here but why this is critically important and it and it’s repositioned is the power will now go underground from this point out to dartmouth road and take a right-hand turn and hopefully within um by next week we’ll start to see digging in the road where the underground power will go to the school and we’ll be well on our way to having the three-phase power that we need at

2:25:41 the new school so i just want to say it’s a big milestone i was excited to see the poll up and i wanted to share that thanks david as always there’s exciting work going on over there all right so that takes us into our final portion um any new business

2:26:02 all right um we had a couple of things of correspondence um one um was of course a piece of correspondence that is in the dropbox this evening um john had written a letter to laurie ehrlich uh just asking that the johnson and johnson vaccines be prioritized for teachers um you know this letter was written and sent before um biden had made his mandate the other day and and baker followed suit in finding spaces for the teachers um but you know just to kind of highlight the the continued work on that um you know we we’re john’s been um hard at work trying to see if marvel head can um with the board of health can get some kind of a clinic um you know we’ve had heard from other um communities that they’ve been able to

2:26:48 pull this off so we’re you know kind of diligently turn to chip away at that in hopes that we can do that for our teachers and and staff which would be great um you know just kind of always always trying to to move things forward as quickly as possible and kind of using every avenue in which to do that um so um and you know i would just encourage everyone to stay up on when you they can get vaccinated because as we have this conversation around our older learners you know most of these vaccines are not okay for most of our learners but you know some of our learners are of age to be able to receive these vaccines and some of our learners do have medical conditions that allow them to be in the queue already so i think it’s important

2:27:34 to note that you know it’s not only just at the teacher level that our students can be involved in this too as well as our parents you know particularly those who might be volunteering to come into the schools you know anyone who can get that shot um is is you know that’s a good thing john is there talk about i mean we talk about the staff in everybody to get the students in but is there talk about making the students in that building part of you know bringing them into that phase two because that will add to the safety in the buildings so i don’t think most of our students because i think the of the students from the high school would be about half well and of the ones that qualify by age i highly doubt most of them have are qualified to actually receive the shot at this point are you that’s what i’m

2:28:21 saying could they qualify under that k through 12 stipulation or is it only yeah it’s it’s teachers and uh child care workers and it’s it’s pretty specific um um john and i received and this is just kind of coming into my head john and i received an email from helene hazlett today regarding the dollars for scholars scholarship and so they are working on a fundraising campaign i wanted to note it here because i would like for you know they’ve got various businesses throughout town that are offering percentages of their of purchases and sales that are going into the dollars for scholars um fund so i was just going to run it past the committee to see if maybe we could put that up on the school committee website

2:29:08 um to just get that a little bit more out there you know that that scholarship fund does do a lot for our students um in in giving funds out as they move on to higher education um so if that’s okay with everybody okay great send it over all right it is now official there is absolutely no reason to read the weekly update there is nothing in it tomorrow that has not been discussed tonight at school everything um i will note too um i got a very late request um you know that about from a petition that’s been going around i it is in our inboxes i believe um i’ll go through it you know i do want to just

2:29:53 note it in correspondence because it’s come in i have not really gone through it at all um i know it’s talking about a return of students to the classroom so hopefully you know a lot of what’s in it it has been covered this evening and um you know we’ll we’ll dig into that and put it in correspondence or somewhere else on our agenda in an upcoming meeting all right um that moves us to our second phase of public comment um i will start with donna weiner just uh state your name and address for the record again great it’s donna winer 36 mugford street and i just want to start by saying um it’s abundantly evident that everyone is working really hard at every level

2:30:39 from the teachers and the support staff to the school committee and the superintendent i just want to say thank you i very much appreciate that and then i remember mr fox and mr bauer stating a reason why vets and the high school were being considered as a unit when these decisions are made i can’t remember what that reason is but i just wanted to say that i would encourage you to consider veterans and high school their own entities i have a student in each building and they’re it’s a very unique and separate experience and there may be changes that you could make for one that you couldn’t roll to both and i wouldn’t want you to rule out something just because it’s not for

2:31:25 everyone because we’re already making changes for the k-6 and separating out that group so there may be additional segregation that we could do and then um i listen carefully but if you you’re not off for a minute you miss a lot so i may have missed it i heard um very clearly that we are working to get our k-6 back to full days by april 5th and then i also heard the motion to get all students back in the building by april 5th but 7 through 12 they are in the building right now what is the goal for the older kids on april 5th are we looking to to do one of the models that mr fox or

2:32:11 mr bauer proposed i just missed what you approved and i’m happy to read the superintendent’s update tomorrow to fully understand it but i just wanted to let you know that i missed it thank you so although we don’t usually respond to public comment because that motion was specifically about clarifying this information i’ll clarify it um we are looking for the superintendent to make plans to have all of our learners back in buildings five days a week by the fifth as the with the fifth as a goal so hopefully that clarifies it it does have five full days sarah or just five days a week i think that’s to be determined i think obviously through that it’s and megan maybe did you i i’m not remembering the the um

2:32:57 the emotion exactly um did you say full days in there that was my intent you know five full days um but again i want to caveat if there are obstacles then we need to bring those to the table and if we need to readjust we will readjust but i think that should be our goal that was said okay great all right donna did you have anything further i don’t thank you very much for the for the clarification thank you uh erin noonan

2:33:31 aaron noonan beverly ave um first thank you for your service on this committee the stress of sitting in your seats at this moment in history is surely enormous and i am sure that you have all had many sleepless nights nights um i am seriously concerned about the consequences of this year’s budget discussions honestly i am i’m i’m struggling to understand the attitude that we would have maybe been in a different circumstance have we not had the pandemic our needs have not changed because we are at a pandemic in fact actually they have only increased so the logic is isn’t sitting well with me personally and every year it’s another excuse after another first it was you know in fy 20 we need to restore credibility in the town and clean their house and

2:34:18 wait for to onboard our bill mccauldiff who’s gonna redo a deep dive into the budget and then then it was not that year we had to wait the next year um because we were on boarding a new superintendent and now this year we have a new superintendent and a quote pandemic like we are in the midst of a national crisis in public education the likes of which we have never experienced in history before if this is not reason alone to stand up and demand more funding i don’t know what is there will be a huge mental health as well as educational gap it is still unclear how our district plans to address the learning loss of students and resources we will provide to those that require remediation and academic support from this year i have attended every meeting and budget meeting for that matter and have yet to

2:35:04 hear any plans to address this i’d like to advocate for our school committee to direct our administration to identify and detail the educational gaps learning loss and needs that common sense informs us will exist due to the past year of significant school closure and pandemic i would like to see the school committee charge the administration with creating a plan to address this and a budget allocation as well the town is asking the school committee to level fund operating costs which does not even include the addition of any of the new budget priorities that you know are have been laid out which are very modest and you know it also doesn’t even account for the reduction of

2:35:49 staff a principal teachers and other positions i’ve also not heard any plans to address the long deferred maintenance needs or implement any of the forthcoming recommendations from the facilities assessment we just had paid for to have done this year um you know there’s just been a long list and everyone knows that you all know it of all the ways in which we could improve our schools again the maintenance i mean principal murphy has been asking for a curriculum coach for two years in a row now we could be ha we could be funding gifted and talented programs that our benchmark districts are offering we need more guidance counselors at the high school

2:36:35 we need to plan for curriculum review at the high school or reinvent the curriculum director roles and department heads that once existed that had supervisory roles and focused on curriculum we need to implement and develop steam innovation curriculum and programming and finally we need money to transition more special education students to a co-taught model to maximize inclusion in this district thank you

2:37:03 thank you erin catherine martin

2:37:13 sorry about that um catherine 29 west shore drive i wholeheartedly agree with every single thing aaron noonan just said i just heard a budget update that did not talk about the budget and that’s concerning to me because i sat in the budget subcommittee meeting the other day and we’re still a million dollars off from the town and does saying that we have an awesome working relationship mean that they’re we’re getting that million dollars because the way i heard it from michelle was we were going to start to need to make cuts so if we’re going to take that 212 hundred thousand dollars and get phones and wi-fi and wireless it’s coming off our in our operational budget that’s the way i’m hearing this we’re gonna choose between phones and personnel we’re gonna choose between

2:38:00 math curriculum and personnel we’re going to have to make these choices because we did not go forward like aaron said and look for an override this year or look for more funding we kicked the can down the road the road two more years i didn’t prepare a statement tonight i didn’t know i was going to speak i expected to hear a budget update that was going to address this gap that i heard about in subcommittee that’s not what i heard tonight i didn’t see any numbers we’re a month out from the budget hearing we’ve got a million dollar gap where just like aaron said we’re going into this horrible educational crisis and we were in bad shape before covent the maintenance the curriculum that’s overdue the guidance counselors that we need to

2:38:46 hire the curriculum coaches the technology if it wasn’t for covid i don’t know that the technology would come to light we have a million dollars in technology needs i i don’t understand how we’re going to resolve this budget in a manner that is student facing i have heard people going ballistic because we want to get a communications director i’m like why you should be going ballistic over the fact that 42 thousand dollars is such a large amount of money in a 42 million dollar budget that that we can’t even give our superintendent that leeway to hire that position this this budget this year is very concerning and

2:39:31 i’m going to quote bill mccalda you don’t find a million dollars in pencils he said that last year same holds true this year you guys need to get the work the budget falls on the school committee the five of you get your heads together if you need to put heat on our administration to get more of a needs-based budget you have a month to do it but right now it’s the funding for next year is scary thank you

2:40:00 thank you catherine all right um that’s all the hands that i have raised so that leads us to adjournment so i will adjourn us at 9 41. thank you everyone good night dan