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um hopefully i guess have a vote on the budget as and i believe that will be reorg time if i'm not mistaken no not that early the um the election is the tuesday yeah okay so we'll reorganize 26. all right and then we did we planned a meeting if you don't have it for any of the 26. and i'm assuming those will be zoom because they're not meeting the fifth well yeah yeah and um then moving on we're suggesting may 17th because we have memorial day in there and june 7th and then june 21st um noting that june 17th is the last day of school so we we have no more snow days my only concern about that is the one meeting date in may particularly as we're rolling everyone into school in in april if any i mean i'm confident that you guys have it handled but i think the we roll we have a meeting before the middle school rolls in if i have my dates right right there the 28th and then we don't meet until yep two and a half weeks after that um i'm not sure that we need a meeting but maybe we could all just like leave the third open in case anything comes up and that we need to i'm talking about us yeah i don't think we need to schedule a meeting but it might be good if we all left that monday night open the third okay yeah just in case yeah i think we didn't schedule it obviously just because it was the week right after right yeah that's fine and then had the holiday in there so it's kind of that's yeah i don't think we need it i just want to yeah i'm not a bill i'm not available to 10.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
okay so maybe we could all just put a marker on the third just in case we need something if anything comes up with the roll in or any of that sort of stuff i don't expect dr gifford have you have you heard anything around or the high school and whether desi has any indications about the high school nothing the only thing we were told which actually we have a commission meeting tomorrow was um we would find out in april and we'd have a two-week notice but we're planning i mean either way you know we're planning we're not waiting for that moment in time but it'll be interesting to see what the deadline is my goodness i'll be back for three weeks yeah i know right right there day final day is the 28th so yeah and there's a lot of testing coming up we were talking about that in our central office meeting today between the different mcas i say the bad word um ap tests we have the bi-literacy tests which num quite a large number of students are taking that which is good but it's just a lot of strategy a lot of manipulating schedules and so another thing that mr gala show has been doing is working with the high school on all of that so that they have the technology available etc so anyway excellent yesterday yes two quick questions uh on the schedule dates monday june 21st do we want to look at possibly starting that meeting at 4 30 since school is out uh it'd be fine with uh june 21st you said yeah the june 21st meeting sure should get unless you can't start till five o'clock okay and i have work i'm on the clock now i don't i don't get out until 4 30.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
yeah okay sorry i can't start oh i mean yeah but it's i mean instead of starting at 6 30 that's fine if we start at five o'clock that would work for me 5 5 30. i i don't get out of work until 4 30 so i can't be here at 4 30.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
yeah so 5 on the 21st yeah that's fine okay that's it all right and one other question i have uh just in regards to all the students coming back to school the uh fearless leader in deci made mention of the fact that uh students have to be in class there's no more hybrid there's no more remote what do we do with parents with students that the parents are saying i want my student they've been on remote all year and i want them on remote are they going to be able to stay remote and still get credit for the year yes okay that's that's yes okay as a follow-up to mr nunes question i know that survey was sent out a couple weeks ago regarding um you know what parents would want to do yeah um could you share with us maybe at the next i can't cure us about the data yeah and we're not sure about that data it seems it just didn't seem like it makes sense to us but we'll yeah so that's why at least at the high school one of the things we are doing is reaching out personally to the ingenuity kids offering them to come into the building you know they really can't switch curriculum that's it it'd be impossible sure yeah you have access to the building so that's one yeah one strategy and um mr doane has already you know fielded a couple of questions about what they can do that are people but most and i think we had a couple at the elementary level a couple of families that asked to come back they've been which is easier because they've been been on our curriculum they're being taught and their reason really was they had to worry about child care issues the co it was inconsistent with the um if they came in hybrid so now that we're coming in full time they can swing that so it hasn't been a huge outcry of people reaching out to the principals about who they want to switch i don't foresee it so that's why the data doesn't look right so we were trying to figure it out say did we not ask the right question but we think we did you know so so we'll see yeah but yeah well thank you doctor you're welcome uh as for the uh report of the chair just really quickly i just want to take this opportunity um you know i know um out there sometimes in the public some people choose uh choose to share their thoughts and their opinions and they really don't have the opportunity or they don't take the time to watch the school committee meetings and really educate themselves as to what's going on but let's make no mistake about it there's been planning from day one in the dartmouth public schools and dr gifford and mr kylie and the rest of the central office team and all the administration um has done their due diligence and you know we're we're constantly talking on a daily on a weekly basis and let's remember that at the very least dartmouth schools um we've been in every other day uh for in-person learning and there's other districts that uh they go a week at a time without direct instruction that are that are local so um i think dartmouth is doing a tremendous job um i think we are in front of some of the other local districts and i'm not going to name any but it's just it's frustrating sometimes as we all know um to hear in different different media reports or or different um different uh stories uh that uh people are saying otherwise but um you know people really take the time to listen to us and listen to what goes on at these school committee meetings and um what dr gifford and her office is putting out for correspondence uh to uh to families that i think at the end of the day you know i think we number first and foremost this district and the school committee is number one is safety for our students and for our faculty followed by the best education that we can deliver them i agree um so you know i i think thank you dr gifford and um i just want to set the record straight that you know right right from day one we we've been we've been this district has been very diligent um with planning and doing the best we can um with what we're given and let's remember that at the back in august that the state that the state department of education and the governor's office left this to local control to our own devices to every single community uh in the state to to do what they wanted to do what was deemed what they felt uh best for their district um and now they chose to go in the opposite direction um enforce our hands and um that's really for for those hundreds of thousands of students that have not stepped foot into a classroom um to date um so no i i just uh i'm pleased with the what we've done in the public schools and i just i thought that was important to you to just put that they sat here and they said that you know back in august they wanted you know three different ways of bringing students back type of deal they didn't even look at them and then you know at the 11th hour they said now you well we're going to change from 180 to 170 and those 10 days the teachers are going to be inside you can learn how to do the hybrid and remote and everything it's you know been a total disaster but our administration and faculty have stepped up to the plate and done yeoman work and much appreciated yeah one 100 percent complex so with that uh yes dr jenkins so i just have one thing we didn't have a spelling bee this year because of it but that's right covent has not ruined the grant application cycle for the dartmouth education foundation if any of our teachers are watching the grant application is open it's dartmoutheducationfoundation.org grants are due april 30th and so we encourage people miss waite is also on the the def board and uh we encourage our teachers to apply um hopefully we'll be in person to use some of the things that we have been uh purchasing in our grand cycles excellent thank you dr jenkins uh just a reminder on on april 5th the joint uh session with the select board and finance committee will be held via zoom at 6 30 um and also our next meeting of the regularly scheduled meeting the datmon school committee is scheduled also for monday april 5th and that's at 5 30 also via zoom um and we're hoping to take the vote on the proposed fy 22 budget at that time we're missing anything else jr will entertain a motion to adjourn most remember mr noon second by mrs amaral on the motion any further discussion chia hearing none all in favor aye aye opposed motion carriage unanimously meeting is adjourned yes [Music] do [Music] is so i expect everyone to be like fully informed
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
hello chris cooper superintendent of clearwater schools here with another brief update there are lots of things going on at the state and a county level with health mandates and so i want to give you a brief update about where we are as a district first of all i would say um we're not gonna we are not making a need your quick reaction we want to make a good decision so there's no immediate changes as of tomorrow or probably even as early as next week it is a complicated decision and we again want to make sure that we're making a good long-term decision one of the things that we did early on was i have an agreement with the teachers association and the school board that we wanted these decisions about mitigation strategies and how to have school left in the hands of the health experts so we agreed to not be less restrictive than the county or health order at the time and it's somewhat confusing because the legislator is working to strip the governor of any authority but my interpretation is that we are still under the governor's order 2059 until next wednesday march 35th 31st that would say that we would require mask and basically do all the things we've been doing the other thing about the 31st is that's unique is that we have provided opportunity for our staff to receive vaccines and that is the day that 10 days after the second dose where the producer of that vaccine would say that's at its effectiveness level that it needs to be so again i don't know that we'll have changes after the 31st but i don't feel like there will be any changes in place prior to that point so the other thing that we have in our district is we have a group of local health experts that work in our area hospitals and deal with this on the front lines and i'm going to ask that group to reconvene they're called the learning options committee that we've used several times this year but ask them to reconvene and give us advice as how we move forward and still have school a complicating factor in all this are the quarantine guidelines so uh we're currently under quarantine guidelines that if if somebody's covered positive but everybody's wearing a mask even the close contacts do not have to quarantine if we were to remove the mask from our district then if we did have a do have a positive case we would have to co quarantine all the students and staff that were close contacts for at least 10 days i guess it could be eight if there was a negative test as well but so it's it's very very uh complicated and again um we want to uh get the best decision we can made we also feel like the things we put in place have been effective so one that one last thing i would ask is that um as we have all year throughout this process that we communicate uh open and honestly and uh that we stick together stay together that we don't let this as time as hopefully we're coming out of this pandemic returning to a life of normal that we all desire so bad that we don't let these this transition divide us anyway because i've seen communities that have been divided and i'm i'm so proud of the way clearwater community has came together so let's just continue to focus on that we will work together uh to hear all all voices and also to make the best decision we can for all of our kids each day so that's all i have for today it's mr cooper signing off take care and have a great evening
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
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hi welcome everybody my name is lisa zepper and i am a school counselor at amherst regional high school i've been working at the high school since 2002 i am also the parent of three teenagers in the district so i am fully experiencing the local impact of covid both through my professional world as well as um at my home with three teenagers i'd like to introduce sheri hi i'm sherry belzano i'm a school counselor i've been at the school since 2005.
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
hello and good evening we're glad you're here tonight my name is sam camera and i'm an interim assistant principal and i'm mickey gramacki assistant principal and also administrative liaison to the special education department at the high school all right so we're here tonight to offer cpac families and possibly students if you're there an opportunity to go through next year's schedule which is changing to a 4x4 block for next year and we really wanted to give families an opportunity to ask specific questions that might not be as relevant in a much larger group setting so we really wanted to dedicate tonight to our families and students with ieps at the high school so we're going to get started with the presentation if you've been to one of our town halls or if you've watched a recent school committee meeting you may have already seen this presentation on the 4x4 block schedule but for those of you who haven't we thought we would go through it and then we'll just ask you to put any questions comments that you have in the stream and at the same time um sam's position uh she'll be building the master schedule this year and then i too will be closely involved with the schedule so we really urge you to reach out individually if you have specific questions and concerns obviously our liaisons our special education department head are also there for you so we just want you to feel that that more personalized approach that you certainly can reach out with specific questions or concerns um so i'm going to get started uh i'm going to have us disappear so this screen is it's just a little bit larger and keep in mind if you want it to be even larger you can click anywhere in the center of the screen and it'll go full screen okay great so are you able to advance the next slide nope okay we even tested this today all right multiple times maybe it's a lag let me give it a second so mickey let me stop sharing and then you can share yours okay so i have a timeline here i don't know if that's yours or mine oh that's yeah that's mine so i will once you're sharing it should show ella are you seeing it on the youtube channel is it showing it is no it's not yet okay our apologies everybody we tested this three times today and there's some glitch in my the way my communi my computer communicates okay so you're a little bit advanced there all right i'm gonna go back okay um so we're starting with the background in rationale for the 4x4 block um so the uncertainty about covid uncertainty about the fall and our need for a lot of time to actually build a master schedule and take student requests led to the superintendent directive to plan a block schedule for next year and the goal in that schedule is to reduce the number of cohorts within a school day so on february 9th the school committee actually made a statement about uh the high school being in person fully in the fall and so therefore we are implementing this 4x4 block schedule so here's the timeline we've moved through some of it in december and january we convened a scheduling committee to evaluate the past and present schedule we updated tnl which stands for teaching and learning those are the department heads on this process and then this is the these are the names of the folks that are on that committee um in february we gathered input and and feedback um from all of the faculty about the proposed schedule um and then in march which is now we're working pretty diligently on the program of studies so the department heads and the departments are meeting with all of the faculty members we're going to move into course registration very shortly here and then we're going to go ahead and finalize summer the summer school format and the offerings and then in early april we'll begin course registration and actually april 8th we have a date for the eighth grade family curriculum night i should fix this slide um and that's april 8th and then in may we'll do course verification and then as as the course verifications come in we'll build the schedule um throughout the summer so when when the directive came to go into a block schedule we looked at a couple different options for block schedules the by three you know would not give students a lot of choice um we also looked at what we're in now the three by three plus one um which would be slightly more choices but it would lead to this um potentially random year-long block that would be different for all students so that that was rather awkward and we really landed in in what we are going with the 4x4 block with the semester format so that means that students will have four classes in the fall and then they'll have four classes in the spring the ab block is a very popular block schedule but because all eight courses meet at a time for each day and it rotates every other day that really didn't accomplish the goal of minimizing cohorts oh and we did look at the trimester that question had come up those of you who might have older children know that many years ago we were in a trimester schedule and for many people that schedule worked really well we just felt that it would be such a redesign challenge for a one-year schedule so this is the the schedule itself i'm going to talk you through it the teacher day is approximately 805 to 3 35 and that's going to depend a little bit on the transportation and so the times here are our estimations as a result in the morning teachers will begin with collaboration iep and 504 meetings faculty meetings as well as department meetings on the left hand side you'll see a two lunch option and then on the right hand side of this table you'll see a three lunch option the two lunch option um is a little bit more compressed during that c block which means that there would be more students in the cafeteria in eating lunch and so one of the reasons we came up with both a two and three block schedule was to we're not quite sure if we can have that many students in the cafeteria at once and so my suspicion is we'll be going with the three lunch block which means again a period starts at 905 and then b period at 10 30 c period is 11 55 and you'll see there are three different slots there so one of them would function as a lunch block and then d block runs from 2 to 320 and then we have this sort of d plus which is some executive functioning support for students opportunities for students to check in what's their homework for the night what do they need to bring home do they need to go to their locker do they need to talk to the teacher do they need to send an email so there will be um a little bit of opportunity for for students to check in with adults at that time there are going to be um sports teams needing to to miss some of d block depending on the sport and depending on what time of year so all the students um all students will you know if they're on a team and need to leave early for a match or a game may miss some of d block um and so it will be their responsibility to to check in with that teacher um about their absence and to make sure that they they know what they're missing our athletic director is going to be communicating with area athletic directors to see if there are options um to start matches and games a little bit later so we're still working on that but in in general they won't miss a great deal so we tried to anticipate what questions would come up with one of the questions um being about music ensembles that that's definitely an important question so like most 4x4 blocks we will have a music block that will alternate every other day with one of the courses that the student selects and we will also be offering quarter electives so our goal was to have students that are involved in the music program and this next year it will also include a dance ensemble so students can be part of the dance theater ensemble every other day and um and students then would also have opportunities to take quarter electives um which is a segue into the next question so our most electives next year will run for 45 days so in the fall for each block students could elect two different electives and so basically each block allows students the opportunity for those two electives there's a question about directed studies that comes up with this schedule so um i'm not aware of any schools that have directed study we're not planning to have directed studies in the schedule next year we don't think that it's wise to have a quarter of a of an academic day be devoted to a directed study and at the same time we know that teachers really need to embed extra help support and time for students to catch up within that 80-minute block so the next question is what about academic skills so for students in special ed programming the teams that work on that program programming our needs are going to need to determine um this the services that individual students need so some students may require an 80-minute block but other students might not um so we will offer academic skills in an 80-minute block and again we'll have to decide that in individual teams to figure out um what what's needed for each individual student um will some courses run year-long in a by four block so the answer to that question is yes there will be a few courses that run for the full year that's known as double blocked examples of this are algebra one integrated math topics in math a b ap which is a bc calculus as well as ap physics some courses are actually going to run three quarters of the year as well which then would give a little which would give the last quarter or one quarter as an opportunity for an elective the next question is what about doubling up on math and world language so students are going to be permitted to request additional blocks in academic departments and we're going to do our best to accommodate those requests so as we end our presentation a question has come up about the following school year so for the 22-23 school year technically we would we would return to the negotiated seven drop one schedule but we will be convening a scheduling committee in late fall that will include student input family input faculty and staff to determine what schedule makes the most sense for amherst high school the following year and um and then we'll go through that process which could be continuing with a block modifying the block or potentially going back to the seven drop one so where can i learn more about the four by four block so locally northampton high school one of our neighboring high schools is in the four 4x4 block and cambridge ridge and latin is a school out near boston that has moved to a 4x4 block and has actually put a lot of wonderful resources on their website when we convened our first scheduling committee we referenced many of the documents that they had on their website so that's a place where you can certainly learn about how other schools have implemented the 4x4 block okay so we're going gonna go ahead and move into the question and answer form of this um so i there's a little bit of lag when the questions come in i will post the questions up so you can read them and we'll read them out loud but yes feel free to ask questions on anything we've spoken about just now i have a hard time believing there are no questions well so i checked the youtube channel to see if there are any questions over there and there are none um well so i checked the youtube channel to see and so i think we'll leave you with a reminder that you're always welcome to contact us directly um as well as your child's liaison and also a reminder that on april 8th we will have an eighth grade family night so that if you um know if you if your child's in eighth grade or you know anyone in eighth grade we will be doing a special evening presentation on the entire ninth grade uh course offerings as well as an introduction to the high school so we hope that you all attend that april 8th evening so again thank you so much very happy to to speak to cpac and uh we hope everyone has a good evening and i think the good news is you know how to reach us if you do have questions mickey i'm just going to give it another 30 seconds before i end the broadcast just in case someone thinks of something but i think i think we're good okay all right good evening everybody thank you
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
foreign okay hello everybody thanks for joining us i'm not sure how many people are gonna end up joining us so we're just gonna get started now and again happy that whoever is reviewing us is here with us hopefully after this show we get outside and get some fresh air it's a nice day i just wanted to kind of welcome everybody and run down what we're going to cover today so we'll talk a little bit about the 4x4 schedule and you'll see it for next year for next school year and you'll see in there the new start time and then we'll also talk about um the return in person this year and update on some sports stuff and we'll definitely have time for y'all to ask questions so right now i'm going to hand it over to camera and mr mackey to start us off sorry for the delay here we go okay so the first topic that we're going to talk to everyone about today is what next year's schedule is going to look like i know there might be a lot of questions about coming back in person in early may but the first part of this presentation is going to be about your schedule for next year go ahead and miss camera yes it's not advancing it does this it's having a delay i have this problem in a school committee meeting as well um all right miss stucker let's see if i do this i may need to turn this over to ms stocker who's got another version of this that's yup it won't advanced we're still having that problem that we had okay so miss camera i'm gonna um if you wanna bring your screen down and i will pull up pull up the slide deck on my computer it'll just take me a minute so fill the time with some witty banter for everything yes i know it's fascinating this worked we tested it a few minutes ago and it worked just fine so it's just not working now yeah for the for the most part what we're doing right now is we're developing the program of studies and this year actually it won't just be a booklet you're actually going to be able to go online to a website that miss della marco is setting up for us where you'll be able to click into each of the departments and read about all the courses that are being offered so this year and you know that it's kind of a different schedule it's this three by three so next year we're gonna go with a four by four which means you'll have four classes in the fall and you'll have four classes in the spring since most students have their five core academics which are math social studies science english and world language for a lot of students um we're building um an extra block for more electives for students because we know that that many of you missed out on some electives this year um you know depending on what you are taking so next year we're actually going to do some quarter electives and so i know they have the the slideshow back up so basically the the background and rationale for why we're talking about this new schedule for next year is to actually limit the number of classes that you have at one time um we know that while we hope that we're on the other side of covid that it's still going to potentially be important to um for students not to have seven classes at one time and interestingly we've gotten a lot of feedback from students telling us that they really like having fewer classes to focus on at a time so if you're in 9th or 10th grade you know this is going to be the schedule for next year and then and 11th but then the following year we're going to actually look at that in the fall and determine whether or not that's the schedule that we're going to go with um so you'll have input about that as well so i think i had mentioned that the program of studies is being developed there'll be a version that you can print as well as one online and then um i think we can we can advance to the next slide so i just noticed that the slideshow that was running was for the family forum and so the student forum one is a little bit different so we're gonna okay we can just yeah we can continue through that i think that students right now would probably want to see the times this is the right one now so she's got it she's okay sorry about that everyone so you can keep going to the um the times because i do think the students are going to want to see that um this was just explaining that we looked at several different block schedules and we ended up with the 4x4 so i'm going to turn it over to miss camera right so the good news is you all are are becoming more and more familiar with the block schedule so this shows what the teacher day is um but it also shows the student day so teachers will be working um between eight essentially 8 and 8 45 to collaborate and do iep 504 meetings have some faculty meetings department meetings and again these are estimations the estimations are only estimations because we're working with transportation to sort out bus schedules so take a look on the left side you'll see there's a two lunch option and a three lunch option the two lunch option um is just a tiny bit different and we will have more direction on that as time moves forward um from desi and so one of these has more people in one room um at a time than the other as you can imagine given two or three lunches so we're trying to figure that out we don't have an answer yet as to whether or not we'll have one or two lunches um so there are going to be you know if you're on a sports team you may need to miss some of d block and so it's going to be your responsibility to speak with your d period teacher um about those absences but you'll have you know time to plan for the absence and time in class to talk to teachers the athletic director is also going to be commuting with communicating with local other athletic directors to see if we can start games a little bit later so we put together some questions in advance you might actually have some of these questions so i'm just going to get started so if you're someone who is in a music or dance ensemble um you might be wondering how that's going to work if if you're going to have to use one or two blocks for that so next year we actually are going to run the music ensembles every other day and then on the opposite day you'll have one of the other courses that you've chosen i started to talk about this earlier so electives are actually going to be offered like they are now which is on a 45-day basis so for each block you'll be able to get two 45-day electives two different electives and um for those of you that were in the high school last year uh you know that directed studies was something that was part of you know a lot of you had directed studies when we move to a block where you only have four classes at a time we actually don't have directed studies the hope is that in an 80-minute block you'll be able to get extra help and support within your class and there's also not a good reason to necessarily give students a quarter of their day as a directed study so instead you will actually choose those eight blocks so um what about academic skills um for folks in special ed programs um individual teams are going to need to determine the services that you need and how much time do you need will you require a full block or you may require less than a full block um so we will offer academic skills in 80 minute blocks but some folks may decide that they need a little bit less than that so that will be determined on a sort of case-by-case basis another question is will some courses run year long in this block schedule and the answer is yes there will be a limited number of courses that will be double blocked which just means they run for the full year some examples of that are algebra one integrated math one topics in math a b and b c calculus as well as ap physics some courses will also run three quarters of the year um the last point which is you know an interesting question can you double up on math or world language and we're going to try and accommodate that right so you will be allowed to request additional blocks and we'll do our best to accommodate those requests so the last two points i i spoke to this for next year we are doing the 4x4 block and then for the year after we're either gonna go back to the seven drop one or we might maintain the four by four that's going to be up to our students our families our faculty and staff to determine whether or not you think that this 4x4 is a better schedule so we will have a process next fall we'll probably do forums like this to to get feedback and see what which schedule we're going to do for the 22-23 school year and then for those of you that are interested in learning more about the 4x4 block locally northampton high school does the 4x4 block and also if you want to go online and read more about the block a school cambridge ridge in latin out in the boston area that that school also has a 4x4 block and they have a lot of resources online so we've included a link for you to get more information about that all right hello everybody i'm going to talk to you a little bit about the return to school this spring so last night the school committee approved the may 3rd return date so on monday may 3rd all the schools in amherst k-12 the plan is to have us all back in person five days a week of course for those families students families who chose to be back you can see on the screen it says say friday april 30th we're going to have an orientation day for the ninth graders and folks new to the district who've never been in the building before only been in very briefly to get some supplies earlier in the year so we'll be actually looking for some of y'all to give tours to those students and we'll figure out what that day looks like and as it gets closer we'll get more information but i'm going to send this out in an email at the end of the week as well asking people who are interested in giving tours and being part of that orientation to get in touch with either me or you'll see the email return email address on the email that i do send out i mean there's a lot of stuff that has to go into getting the building ready to for all you all to come back and then for teachers to be back teaching in their rooms so that does take a lot of work and we do have students who are currently in the building and many of those students will be here in the building and right up until april 16th that last day of the third quarter and right before the april break starts and during the april break we're going to continue to do more work in the building you'll see there'll be signs on the floor you have one way signs distancing signs there are hand sanitizers in all the classrooms we have air purifiers in the classrooms we're trying to make sure all the windows work we want to take as many precautions as possible to keep everybody safe so once that work gets done in the following week that week of april 26 the first week of that of the fourth quarter when everyone's back you'll have a day or two of asynchronous learning why teachers are going to come into the building and work on getting their classes all set see i think that's about it for that slide thank you so your schedule is going to be the same obviously you have to get up a little earlier for those of you who are coming in person to either catch the bus or get a ride or walk or ride your bike or however you get here but the first class will start at nine o'clock eight block is still nine to ten twenty b block is still 11 30 to 11 50.
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yes great thank you so much carlos uh so now we're gonna go ahead and open session uh calling to order at 602. uh maribel if you can help us with the roll call can you hear me today is a special board meeting of march 23rd 2021 at 6 pm pm members of the board in attendance president corinare president vice president present thank you now we can all join in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the united states of america [Music] there's like a ton of feedback i'm not sure that's why i was having trouble responding earlier i am i turned off mine okay that should fix it thank you sorry about that okay so now before we move on to items okay sorry about that so i'll do my best here to um take care of that okay so before we move on uh i want to address the board just a reminder that we are here at our meeting um just as if you were here at the board of chambers i'm here myself looking forward to seeing you all eventually once we're able to do that safely but in the meantime we need to make sure that where we're at in our home um that you know we're not getting any feedback from others or notes um that we take it as if we're here um on the days as if we had the meeting um so just a reminder for that and also for closed session if you can make sure that we all log off this zoom and then re-log into the uh one that's set up for us our closed session um just a reminder and if you need help doing that make sure you raise your hand and you let us know so that we can help you through that and with that we'll go ahead and move on to the public members who wish to address the board um any requests to the address the board on this one any members of the public shall have an opportunity to address the board of trustees on the agenda items identified below so um at this time i'll go ahead and open it up but before we do that i see trustee beferano yes uh can you hear me okay do we have mr ruiz with us tonight is the question he was supposed to be here i i don't see him let me check well i was just gonna ask him to do this but i think i can probably do if you don't mind madam president i just wanted to do a reminder about public public comment and our ability to respond to questions and and just that just to make sure because i think at the last meeting there may have been there's a lot of people interested in these topics that may not have been participating up to this point and so they they may not be clear on the purpose so just for reference and for clarity for anyone who needs it when we do public comment the public has the opportunity to give any feedback ask any questions that they want unfortunately the board does not have the ability legally to respond or answer your questions we sometimes can ask for a clarification or make a very brief statement but we cannot answer your questions and so um i just want to make sure that the public is aware of that and and so so that um you know that there's transparency in that we're our responses are bound by by legal um parameters so that thank you trustee and rogelio just got on so i don't know if you want him to add anything or actually yeah i'm sorry the other thing if he could if he could just clarify because i think there was also a confusion about rogelio actually being here as the district's attorney not the district attorney but the attorney of the district so mr ruiz if you could just briefly clarify your role here just so that the public understands um the role of the attorney with the district just so there's everyone knows what we're doing here please um so if i could address the first issue which you discussed board member beccarano that's correct unless a matter has been agendized for board discussion then there cannot be under the brown act any discussion on that issue and so for today's purposes there are two items on the special meeting agenda the public has to have an opportunity to comment on both of those items on this special meeting agenda but that's that is the limit of public comment for purposes of this special meeting again if issues are raised unrelated to what's on the agenda then there can be no discussion by the board on that topic because for the brown act it all has to be agendized and then secondly as to my role in these meetings i'm here uh you know we our firm represents the district we do not represent individual board members and i'm just here to provide guidance on some of the legal issues that arise and on governance issues that's all thank you thank you miss madam president thank you for clarifying that uh now if i don't see anybody's hands up or any other comments we'll go ahead and move on to uh public comment so um carlos welcome and if you can let us know if anybody has their hand raised to talk on any of the items on the agenda today hello board president we have no hands raised okay i'll go ahead and count to five and give people a few seconds to um allow them to find the button if they'd like to speak to us do we have any now we have one becky mcguire okay welcome uh becky as soon as you begin speaking the timer will begin board president a message popped up to a lot of talk is not available because becky mcguire is using an older version of zoom so i would have to promote her to a panelist to talk okay um let's go ahead and promote her i'd like for her to address the board okay she's been promoted welcome becky as soon as you begin speaking the timer will begin she's still muted is that good now can you hear me now yes we can hear you now sorry i'm not so tech savvy anyway my husband and i are concerned about all the homeless encampments around um shepherd middle school where our son will hopefully attend just soon um and we were just wondering if that's going to be addressed by the city at any time that's all that's all for me we just wanted we just have a lot of concerns about them they're getting worse great thank you so much uh carlos do we have anybody else wishing to address support i'm checking uh looks like there is none okay um with that we'll go ahead and move on to um closed session and um at this point um just uh we're gonna uh go in and discuss item 301 um 302 303 uh 304 305 and 306.
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[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] please [Applause] [Music] [Applause] yes [Applause] [Music] [Applause] oh okay [Music] circle circle good job hey good job keep in the elbow [Applause] get a good time [Applause] [Music] um hey [Applause] in your pocket [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] good boys [Applause] oh [Applause] [Music] hey don't let him back out next [Applause] this time [Music] oh [Applause] break it break your grip oh thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] there you go [Applause] five seconds [Music] oh [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] stop putting it back [Applause] hey okay [Applause] oh [Applause] [Music] you're good [Applause] under control [Applause] hey hands up don't force anything make it right [Applause] [Music] hey [Applause] right up like this over here [Applause] together [Applause] hey [Applause] tell me [Applause] hey [Applause] oh [Applause] keep working keep working [Applause] okay so okay [Applause] [Music] [Applause] is the little box no yeah no that's tonight there's no other trophy no no no that's the little boxes this is the last stop yeah last tv no no there's one more there's a girl match oh okay [Music] there it is did you learn anything about this on [Applause] saturday [Applause] okay [Applause] hey all right go pressure forward [Applause] hey [Applause] can you get more remember open the purple [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay [Music] right [Music] i'm rolling down foreign [Music] oh uh um [Music] um [Music] i'm sorry um thank you i'm not saying oh all right oh [Music] oh [Music] yes [Music] guys 459 right at five last time [Music] good good evening everyone and welcome to the mayor gang here at east brunswick high school for tonight's greater real sex conference red division wrestling match between the knights of oak ridge high school and your east brunswick bears as we know we are all very fortunate to be here in these unprecedented times please remember to wear your mask covering your nose at all times please stay socially distant as best as possible remember there is no re-entry into east brunswick high school these are the requirements at all east frederick athletic events today's match is being conducted under the rules of the greater hostess conference in the new jersey state and the scholastic athletic association these roles provide for fair competition amongst participants spectators can help promote good sportsmanship by observing the rules of fair play any verbal written or physical conduct related to race gender ethnicity disability sexual orientation or religion shall not be tolerated and could subject the violator to ejection and may result in penalties being assessed against your team in accordance with the state fire marshal and the east brunswick board of education security we ask that you identify the exits in each of the corner of the gym that are closest to you in case of an emergency please pay close attention to the announcer and support staff in the gym for further instructions thank you we also remind all spectators that no food or drink is allowed in the gymnasium and smoking is strictly prohibited on east brunswick border education property at this time we ask that you please rise gentlemen please remove your hats and join us as we honor america with the playing of our national anthem is [Music] oh yes [Applause] ladies and gentlemen as part of the njsia student ambassador officials appreciation week please join us as we thank our official here today and all those officiating contests around the state for their support of new jersey into scholastic athletics without this official present here today this conduct could not be contested learn more about becoming an official yourself please visit highschoolofficials.com and let's give a nice round of applause for our official tonight dr ed marion [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hey [Applause] kowalski receives a forfeit at 106 for the knights [Music] [Applause] wrestling for over 213 pounds is logan roaming aidan sampson huggins hips up [Applause] off the legs [Applause] [Music] [Applause] up hurry up [Music] [Applause] red oh [Applause] oh [Applause] toys [Applause] um [Music] [Applause] together [Music] [Applause] change two and two okay two and three got two three i i didn't miss the two come on [Applause] how many sets of three did you give two twice six dollars yep yes [Applause] right [Applause] logan roman [Applause] hey with your feet [Music] cuomo [Applause] come here good job [Applause] hey got 30.
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um i am a parent not in amherst but i have a graduating senior and a seventh grader so for any of you especially those of you who have seniors i very much can appreciate um and am sharing all of that same experience you are karen sure good evening i'm karen peters i'm a clinician at the high school and i also run the bright transition program and principal tallah yeah i'm tom sadiq interim principal here at the high school and i have two children in the high school as well one in ninth grade and one in 11th grade so similar to our counselors it's here for support answer a few questions at the end but they're definitely going to be running the show thank you so we're really glad to have this opportunity to connect with parents and gardens guardians we see you as truly essential partners in our work to support your children during their time in high school the discussion topic for tonight is on how covid19 has impacted the social emotional well-being of our teens the flow of the evening will be in four parts first we're going to talk about some themes that we have seen in our teenagers at the high school then we will talk about some school-based and community supports then moving into tips for families and then move into questions so we do really look forward to the q a portion of the evening this said please note that we're not in the position right now to answer a lot of questions related to the specific plans for the return to school uh because these details are still being worked out through members of our faculty and admin team so share is going to start and talk to you all about some of the themes that we're seeing in our students with regards to social emotional help so the very first theme that we've seen um and i'm just going to say this because i hear it at my own house every day is i'm over it right i think we're all over it it's been you know on march 13th of last year we thought that this was a two-week process and we're now at week 54 right so understandably everyone is over it but for everyone to know families are adapting they're learning we're evolving and it's really hard work right one theme is that at least for myself and the other counselors when we talk and families we've talked to is this is hard work it's hard work we have seen a huge range of experiences among our students similar to what we see in person right we see a wide variety of experiences in person some students are struggling others are thriving some students are just moving along at a consistent pace kind of going their way we have students who have struggled in person in the past who are finding that a remote setting is working really great for them for a variety of reasons um social anxiety and pressure can be reduced they have attentional distractions gone the block schedule lesser classes in their day the time right having a break in the day one student said to me that hour break in the day is like my dream ms belzano and on the other side we have some students who may have excelled in the building who are having opposite effects right who are really feeling that loss of social interaction and their structured day and all of those things um other themes we're seeing students are excited about the spring and warm weather i think all the staff are excited about the spring or warm weather i know every friday right i'm like yeah it's nice out um we are seeing a major fatigue from remote learning but i want to caveat that that this is the time of year that we see fatigue anyway and remember that march is the longest month of the year in any school because it's the year that typically this month that doesn't really have a break or any sort of long weekend or anything in it um we've we're right now we're seeing some increased anxiety about coming back to school what is the social piece going to be like my energy level like what is what is the routine going to be like how am i gonna wear how many masks am i gonna wear where is the six feet all of those questions we're seeing um something that's fairly typical in a normal year but is a little more prevalent right now because social media is their major way of connecting we are seeing increase in peer conflict with social media um and the most thing that we're seeing that is really unique to right now is we're seeing a worry about increase in standardized tests right we're seeing students concerned about mcas the access testing the ap tests that are coming up the sats the acts do i need to take them don't i need to take them i didn't get to take the psats what does this mean for my future so those are all some of the themes that we're seeing in a and many are common in a typical school year they're just a little bit changed this year now i'm going to turn it over to lisa who's going to talk about some of the supports that we have available in the building thank you um yeah so i want to start with um you know how do we learn that students are struggling right how do we identify these kids um so one way is that students who are struggling reach out directly to their school counselor they express self-concerns or concerns about their peers but we also look at a lot of data so we'll look at attendance data because that's a big indicator that students are struggling if they have a high number of absences or a high number of tardies we see that as a big red flag we also look at grades so if a student is really struggling academically that's also a big red flag however um so we know that that's not always the full story because we could have students with straight a grades who are still struggling greatly so fortunately we have other ways to find out more about our students who might be having a really difficult social emotional time so at the start of the year as part of our staff mandated training sessions we let staff know when and how to reach out to the counseling team we created both a google form for more general social emotional concerns that they might have about a student and also an emergency urgent form if they think a student is in an acute situation uh highly urgent needs immediate attention our biggest message to staff in that training is when in doubt or anything is cause for pot cause for pause or discomfort to report it and to report it as soon as possible teachers and para educators have been instrumental in forwarding any concerns for example if a student is not regularly responding when called on in class you know there's there's some worry like is that student there are they okay um that's a situation where they would reach out to the counselor if a student is missing a lot of work oftentimes from english teachers or social studies teachers we will hear information based on what a student wrote in a paper if whether the assignment was for um fictional or not piece of writing if a student expressed a lot of uh panic anxiety being overwhelmed fears or concerns of violence really low mood eating irregularities concerns about their friends the teachers are great at bringing forth those papers you know and they'll tell the student i'm really sorry but i couldn't keep your paper confidential um there was cause there was cause for concern you're an incredible writer and i shared it with your counselor so that we can read it and then follow up of course there's also a system in place where if a student looks up a certain word or phrases in the chromebook it's flagged by the i.t department and the school counselor is notified and then a school counselor follows up with students and families as well um an example of what a student might look up that would get flagged is if they looked up um signs of depression or how do i know if i have depression those those searches are flagged um and we know about it and sometimes we'll reach out to students and they'll say oh i was just doing a health project and we'll check in with the health teacher and indeed that was the case and other times they were just really curious if they were um you know falling into a really difficult time um and i i want to note that parents and guardians are also a huge help when they're able to reach out to us we really see ourselves as a team with families we know that you're the experts on your children so when you reach out to us it's um it's really important and extremely helpful so what do we do when we find out that there is a level of concern we have a range of interventions possible for students caseload counselors are often the first point of contact we'll if we have if we hear of a concern we reach out to the students as soon as possible um during virtual learning we do have ways that we can communicate with teachers and pull a student from a class if the concern can't wait until the end of the school day or after um so we can check in with them right away to learn more about what's going on for them with any high high level of concern we always follow up with the families once we have a better idea of the mental health concern we determine next steps that we can offer if academic is the main stressor for students we will often reach out to the teachers that the student has we might have meetings with students and teachers possibly offering short-term accommodations while the student is really managing their difficult times and trying to get some additional supports so that they can ease some of their mental health stressors we can also connect students with free tutors we have a nice collaboration with umass fraternity i've been in close contact with the person overseeing the fraternity who is offering um one-to-one support for our students our district students if that's something that you feel like your student needs definitely reach out to the caseload counselor we can help get you connected with that there was information about that free tutoring also in the newsletter sent out by the superintendent um at the beginning of the year and then once about two weeks ago we also made a student might need some adjustment adjustments to their schedule to reduce some workload um they might just need you know in the meeting with teachers figuring out how to break down assignments into mandible manageable chunks um and i will note teachers have been incredibly supportive and accommodating this year they are very in tune to the fact that these students have gone through a lot and it's been a long road for them so they're they definitely want to help for certain and so depending on the depth and type of mental health concern we also have the opportunity to offer some short-term counseling in school with a clinician or a social work intern we helped some held some short-term stress reduction groups virtually and if families are feeling and the the team working to support the student feels like outside resources are needed such as a therapist we can we have a list of local therapists i acknowledge that there's a lot of wait lists right now um sometimes we have a better pulse on who has space in their schedule to take new students so again please reach out to us we also may recommend students talk to their primary care physician i know a lot of practices during covid have hired a clinician to work with their practice so that's another way to access counseling when students are in extreme emergency mental health situations we might recommend them for an urgent evaluation through clinical and support options and that's a way if if you have strong concern about your child and you feel like they have an urgent need right now that needs to be addressed it's a it's a free support program they can do a full evaluation uh the the main headquarters in florence i don't know the extent that they're doing virtual versus in-person but um the counselor at the high school could certainly guide you through that if a student needs time away from school prior to returning we could have a re-entry meeting for them and help ease back into school if they needed to take some time away i know i've said this already but if you have any questions or concerns about your child's emotional well-being we strongly encourage you to reach out to us because we do really want to want to help and support i'm going to turn it over to our clinician karen peters to talk about some tips and strategies for families sure thanks lisa um so before i get started i want to share a few things i do want to share a few things that maybe some reminders maybe some different ways to think about things but the first thing i want to ask everybody to do is to just take a minute and think for a second about a moment or an experience over the past week that you would describe as a parenting win um it might be a little moment it might be a big moment um and i just want you to to sort of think about that for a second remember what it felt like remember the situation and just sort of keep that close to you and now i want you to think for a minute about one of your your children um if you have more than one child at the high school but um think about a moment that you can think about that was a kid win what is something that you notice or observed in your child that you really felt um it was something they could be proud of or that you noticed um and were proud of and just take a second and remember what that felt like to feel and keep that close to you as as we talk as we continue and i wanted to highlight those those or or make a moment for us to remember some of those positive things because i think that we're all here most likely because we want to keep doing the best we can we're worried we love our children we want to do everything we can as parents and as family members to support their health and wellness and education and so we can often forget i know i can as a parent often forget the things that i feel like i'm doing pretty well and so taking a minute to do those things can be really helpful so as i said i don't think i'm going to share anything that you haven't heard before i'm going to share some of the things that i have found the most useful that families i work with have found the most useful from experts from literature and from other parents who might even be watching and listening right now that i've learned from um and so it's just a few things and then i'm hoping that's going to spark a dialogue because we're here to answer some questions um and support you through this this piece so as miss belzano said you're not alone right we know that all families are adjusting we're navigating the waters we feel like we finally have a sense of what we can count on and then something shifts and i think that all of you know the opportunities to to remember the things that we're doing well help us um navigate those shifting waters and during this time it's not just your teen that needs to survive right it's you um and we we know developmentally this is the time when they should be out there they should be connecting and socializing and um figuring out what they like about themselves and what they're struggling with in their home with you right now which is even more challenging to do those things from and with um so here's a couple of things that i just wanted to highlight so the first one is sort of what what i think are pretty key ingredients that we're probably all doing but i think again it's important to just um highlight that that part of our role as parent it it can often feel like opposites right but that it's that piece of being responsive and also setting important boundaries and limits so being warm being um open being empathic and being demanding setting limits setting boundaries and being clear about the things that are not negotiable for their safety and for their development so what does that look like it means that when you say no to a teenager right that's that's fun that's always fun um it what it means is when you say no to them help have a dialogue about it explain why we're saying no why this is something that is not an option for you right now or for us as a family um encourage problem-solving conversations with your with your student how help them help you come up with what we might call a plan b um it might not be perfect it might not be exactly what they want but they can be a part of sort of understanding why the limit is there and also helping to adjust and flex to that limit so keeping both sides of those of those roles in check i think is a really important thing to keep in mind and along those lines keeping lines of communication open asking open-ended questions i think a lot of families that i've that i've talked to over the um over the years and particularly this year talk a lot about how sometimes um i don't even want to get into it i just wanna i asked the question they didn't respond we're gonna move on um don't when you notice that um it's something you don't want to talk about use that as an opportunity to lean in and ask some more open-ended questions um and if your child is someone with big feelings and big reactions that may be hard to manage or um hard to sit with for them or for you those open-ended questions and that opportunity to have that dialogue can can often time help them feel those feelings communicate those feelings and understand what those are about model model for your students what you want to see so when you need a break when you need to communicate about something when you need to ask for help model the things that you want to see um i had a parent the other day say i i try really hard not to ask my my teen things that i wouldn't um ask of myself and i thought that was really a lovely way to think about it that the expectations um that we have for them are things that we want to model um for them as well um another thing that i think can be really um as parents we want we want things to be easy we want things to be possible and it's painful to see our kids hurt um or struggling and i think that one of the things that can be really easy to do is to say something like don't worry about it it's gonna be fine it's not a big deal and what we do when we say things like that is we inadvertently may minimize what um somebody has some really big feelings and thoughts and experiences about which is the opposite of what i know that we all want to do we all want to hear more we want to understand more and we want to make it better and so by rather than saying don't worry about it it's going to be fine this isn't a big deal asking more questions lean in this seems really hard for you tell me a little bit more about that i want to understand that better whoa i had no idea that this was such a big deal for you tell me more the other piece of that is that um you know sometimes when when it when a teen says something that we you know wanna don't worry about it it's gonna be fine there's also a lot of the and i thought another piece of that can be these um extremes right i don't have any more friends i haven't seen anybody in so long nobody's going to want to talk to me i'm going to have nothing to do um write these these um always or never sort of things and those can be really hard as parents to sort of figure out where's our entry point here whoa that was huge these are such extremes there's sort of no place in um what what i often encourage parents to do and what i see parents do that can be that's really successful is um trying to uh reframe that or sort of give some reflection there um so you know with the student i have no more friends i haven't talked to anybody i don't go anywhere i don't do anything nobody's going to want to be around me anymore saying something like it's been a long time since you've done things that have felt fun and typical and normal for you right something about just sort of reframing what they're saying can open up a conversation and it can help them um feel felt that's one of my favorite phrases from a psychologist dan siegel and i i can i know exactly what that means right when somebody says something to you when you feel felt um there's something that can just help your shoulders sink a little bit and you can sort of get into that a little bit more which is what we want we want to have that that conversation with our team the other piece um you know sort of that goes along with that don't worry about it sort of you know piece is try really hard not to fall into the trap of making stressors go away um right we we all know what it's like when we can see that our kid has so much on their plate and we know how to just sort of say don't worry about any of it don't do any of it it's too hard right avoidance is a strategy right avoidance is a strategy to help tolerate distress however it's not a long-term solution so when we um again sort of inadvertently sometimes may reinforce that avoidance what we might be doing is um sort of unconsciously letting our kids or or sort of reinforcing for them that maybe they don't have the skills to do something that we believe in them that they can do so um where this may come in is um you know particularly around schoolwork when a project feels too hard maybe they've waited until the last minute to to start to tackle it um and then it feels like it's never going to be possible don't worry about it we'll just email your teacher and say you couldn't do it or or or something along those lines versus trying to encourage kids to take manageable bites out of it to sort of acknowledge where they're at this stinks this is not where you want it to be this is important to you and it was so hard that we couldn't even face it and now here we are and this sucks um and as miss zephyr was saying our teachers are so interested in supporting kids in taking those manageable bites um and getting something done for the for the opportunity to learn and to build those skills and that's what we want to see students be able to do um it may not be about the full completed end project every single time it may be more about the fact that you worked hard enough not to avoid something that in the past you may have done because it was so difficult so as parents i think we all want we don't want to see our kids struggle we don't want to see them have to deal with things that are painful and helping them struggle is helping them build those muscles and it's helping them understand this is something hard i can do hard things um and again as miss suffer and miss falzano shared um reaching out to their counselor reaching out to their teacher to say something like i don't even know how to take the first step i don't even know what to do we're we're really good at at helping students figure out that piece and i know that you are too as parents so we all have that urge at times to sort of collude with the avoidance and so what i would encourage us all to do is to notice those things and try really hard to help them struggle through it which right now during a pandemic is even more difficult because we know all of the other things that our students are struggling with they're not seeing their friends they're not doing the the typical things that that they're used to doing and so one more thing feels like oftentimes too much and the more we help them sort of work through those things and not rely on avoidance the more the more they're going to be able to to tackle those hard things that i know that we all know that we want to help them do um and the last thing i would say right is we've got to take care of ourselves and this isn't i know that i feel like self-care every time i say it people roll their eyes now right i'm not um what that means for for you is is totally individual to you for one person it may be taking a walk um every day for one person it may be you know journaling you know there's such a host of things to do around our health around our wellness around our ability to stay connected with the people and the things that matter to us and again it goes back to that that that cliche on the airplane where we put our oxygen mask on first so that we can be there for for the others in our lives who count on us um and the last thing i just want to say is that um if and when you notice or have serious concerns or worries i just want to sort of highlight again what miss effer was talking about um i would really encourage you not to be afraid to bring things up if you're noticing that your your child is isolating more if you're noticing things that are really impacting their functioning in ways that are concerning to you don't be afraid to speak up to them you're not going to put any ideas in their head that aren't already there i have a lot of parents who worry i'm not going to ask them if they're engaging in self-harm because maybe they don't know about self-harm and maybe now i'm the one who's encouraging them to do it that's that's not what the research tells us the research tells us that when we can say things out loud it often times takes that first step of taking the weight off the kid's shoulder i have been thinking about this and i haven't felt safe or comfortable saying it out loud because i'm afraid of what you're going to think of me i'm afraid of what what's going to happen even if we are providing the most loving supportive environment that promotes communication kids are often going to feel those ways so don't be afraid to say out loud the things that are in your gut um that's what that's what we have as as parents that gut feeling and um your your your student um i think very often needs needs you to speak up about those things and then as miss effer said reach out to one of us so we can partner with you to sort of help you through those those next steps whether it's assessment or and and helping you connect to some resources um i think i'll stop there and um and see if there would this be a good time for questions ms suffer or what what makes sense um sort of at this point yes i think at this point we were going to move into questions that the viewers parents and guardians might have at this point so you're welcome to put them in a chat we do have our super fantastic ella stalker in the background she was our librarian and now she's sort of half part library and part technical genius for our school so if she gets and sees questions she's going to post them and and while we're waiting for that i i just want to say karen as soon as you said the winds to think about wins with your kids like that little piece um was so helpful like just i paused and thought of it i was you know as i mentioned they have through teenagers at home so to pause and think of like those little wins like not only is helpful for me but you know it can be helpful then when we go back and interact with our kids and um sort of you know just acknowledging the the positives from the week great i'm glad kind of off topic real quick you don't mind yeah audience all right so we've been surveying folks as many of you know to try to find out how many folks are going to come back to the school remain remote so we haven't filled up the survey we're going to send it out again so you have the opportunity to we had a student forum earlier today let's say we myself mr mackey in this camera we talked to students answered a lot of great questions about the 4x4 block schedule and slip time for next year and also by returning to school this year so they have a little bit more information as well so hopefully you can get those filled out this has helped us a lot in our planning to welcome all the students back throw that in there real quick thanks i think as we're as we're thinking about questions i want i wanted to just bring one up um that that a parent brought to me today that that we we talked about in our family session um and i thought it was really relevant um and the question was really about language that the student was talking so much about oh my gosh i'm so anxious i'm i i'm so depre like just a lot of big words about the about her feelings and um it really overwhelmed mom to say whoa i haven't heard you talk like that before what do i do do i call the counselor and get you into therapy right away and and what we talked about was um again um sometimes what kids say can sort of stop us in our tracks and we can be afraid around how to respond um so the first thing we did was just sort of slow down and say whoa you got a lot going on and just really notice with her um how how intense this was um and ask a little bit more and just thinking about sort of the power of words again for teenagers and so what what we did was we just really asked her to sort of define tell us what that means tell us what that's like um tell us what anxiety means to you and then what i encouraged um and and what we came up with in this particular situation was this felt like sort of um some escalated worry about some particular things that was not really a cause for major major concern but it was an opportunity for mom and daughter to really understand what worry does for for this kiddo and how worry sort of affects her day how she can sort of sit and stew with it and um and then oh my gosh it's three o'clock and what have i done and i've been sitting here staring at something right like worry sort of paralyzes her a little bit um so we talked about things like um doing some research together as a family to understand a little bit about what anxiety was and so we spent some time in our session sort of talking through the stress response in our body and about how this is our body's alarm system um which is an important important thing that we all need and sometimes that alarm system is um it's stuck it needs some maintenance um or it sort of rings when um when we're not in a crisis and so that was sort of some homework that they had for each other um and with each other to sort of understand a little bit more about what um what they were dealing with and so i would encourage families to sort of again take those things as opportunities to ask more questions tell me what that means you may think one thing that language means um and when you ask some more questions you may learn that it's something very different um that that your that your kiddo is sort of referring to so those can be some opportunities to have some shared understanding of things together so there's a question that came in it would be helpful to know how you are planning to deal with students who have become scream and dick screen addicted um over the last year is there any talk about using c books less once students are back in school follow up to it in the chat which is i ask because i fear that the violent games my child plays are giving him a distorted view of social reality and that the distorted vision will last once coveted restrictions are lifted so in terms of the use of chromebooks i think i would defer that to mr sadiq only because we've been using chromebooks for several years at the high school and i think through the whole district right um and then maybe we can talk about second part yeah so the use of chromebooks so for the rest of this school year we're going to still be relying pretty heavily on chromebooks because teachers are going to be teaching the students who are in front of them the teachers who come back we're teaching the students who said return in person but also teaching the students who have their words to remote so everybody's going to need to access their google classrooms through their chromebooks students are in person during the day they may not have it on for for the whole class but there will be times when they use it then once we are back next year fully in person that's what the plan is then they'll be we'll be using chromebooks the way we have in the past which is not throughout every class and all of the assignments won't they won't need to necessarily access them through their chromebooks so they'll be less used next year but we're still going to be using them again especially at this point there's there's no way to really completely get away from the technology unfortunately but we do want to try to minimize it but next year we're impressed um the other part of the question um ella is it possible to share that second part of that question again thank you so i'm happy to not completely answer it but to empathize um as a senior who is pretty video game obsessed right especially in the real heart of lockdown when sports were lost and he couldn't do that stuff um i think that i i think that that's a valid concern and i think it's been i think video games have been a valid concern for years prior to covid right um especially violent video games but your piece about a distorted view of social reality i think i would take karen's advice and that's the one thing that um i i think it may have been karen years ago when i complained about a video game being played who said you need to remind him that video games are not like real life right like what's the fate like what is a video game and it's a video game behind a screen for a reason so we have a lot of conversations about that in terms of social reality but if you're talking in terms of that's the only way for him to communicate with people um especially with the online gaming i think that my suggestion would be to have a really candid conversation with your child about what it means to have those that that you know to have that ra that social interaction strictly behind a screen and even more so on a video game they're doing it either with a headset on or they're typing into a computer and i think that that's a conversation to have and it there is going to be some transition back right so i appreciate what you're saying and i think that in some ways the use of screen at the school we can control at the school that they're not playing those video games during the school days so we can we can remind them there is good screen time and there is you know that like not it's not the video games are not bad but there is different ways to use your screen time and i think um unfortunately limiting screen time and i know that's a really hard thing to do and it it goes back to um what karen was talking about which was those conversations i'll speak just for my own house we used to have a no video games during the week roll right during school and then quarantine happened and i was like i don't know what else for you to do so go play video games because i really don't have anything for you to do um so then i had to when when school started again this year we had to have a bit of a conversation of okay so you're right you're still home and you're still behind the screen and you still can't go out but should we really be up till 2 a.m playing video games probably not so let's have that a b conversation and reach that compromise of here's the limit i'm setting and what can we agree to so i i think that that's probably my my best advice but that's more as a parent than a counselor so yeah and i would add i realized that every uh student is is really different and so they'll they'll take to this differently but um looking for more opportunities to get students involved which is harder now because of covid but as the the world sort of reopens again um whether it be through sports and art class even of even a club um i know we have a gaming club at the school um like every opportunity to be away from the electronic to be outside to have more of those real world interactions maybe you're that you know if your child's old enough to get a job um any opportunities to pull them away from the screen and have those real real world opportunities will help them with that current distorted view it's a it's a real concern i hear that so if we don't have any more questions um i just want to thank thank the people for coming and for for joining us tonight and as we have said from the beginning we fully want to partner with you um one of the things that i value the most about amherst regional high school and and and all the many years that i've worked there is the um highly committed staff who are very student focused and family focused um the willingness of people to be flexible accommodating and supportive so if you do have concerns and you feel like the school has no idea what your what your child is struggling with and you feel like it's important they know please don't hesitate to reach out thank you yeah and before we go if i could just say one thing am i is that okay okay i feel like i have some feedback sorry about that what's that i think we all might need to mute oh okay sorry um i would just you know in this in the spirit of we talked about sort of a parenting one at the beginning i would say as we close one of the things i i ask everybody to think about is um what is something over the next few days that you can um that that you can do for you to take care of you to be um as grounded as you want to be or as aware or as energized even if that's two percent more um and then i would also encourage you to think about what is something big or small i can let go of in the next day or two um and then what is something i can do that a way that i can validate what i notice about my child's efforts or energy or or accomplishments what is something that i can really notice and say out loud to them um that that i see um so that i can help them feel felt um and then the last one would be what is something that maybe you've that you may have been avoiding talking about or bringing up um that you could try to to talk about with with your teen you don't have to do all four those are just some ideas of things to um some homework for for us as parents to think about but you know a little bit more homework if you're interested in hearing some of the great questions that many of your students other students asked today about the return to school in the florida for schedule you can access that was recorded and you can access it through the arps youtube channel may start some conversations with your students some of them are a little bit nervous about coming back and excited that's all and again if there's more information that comes from those conversations please let us know we want to continue to work with you and support their transition back to school in any way we can thanks um thank you everyone i'm going to end our broadcast now but feel free to get in touch with any of the folks on this uh session and and uh follow up with any follow-up questions we didn't have a chance to get to or that you think of later i know sometimes after these live sessions then people go oh i should have asked that question so all of us are available by email have a wonderful rest of your night thank you
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
and when we do lunch before you get here you'll know exactly like which cohort you'll be in we're gonna do two lunches they're gonna be two cohorts so at noon when the first one or 12 11 50 when the first lunch starts if you're on cohort a you may you'll go to lunch and then chances are you'll be getting your food from the cafeteria you have the option right now we're thinking the options will be eaten the cafeteria and we'll have it set up so that everybody will be at least six feet apart in the cafeteria we're actually hoping though that most people will be eating outside right now the plan is to use the courtyard for those of you familiar with this school you know like across from the lunchroom outside the lunchroom there's the hall and on the other side of the hall there's a courtroom a courtyard there's also picnic tables outside of the um the cafeteria as well and then we'll may also have you may also have an option of eating in your classroom we're still trying to finalize the plan we're going to work with the food services folks who've been great delivering meals to the community figure out how much they're going to be doing that and then what the capabilities of are of having remote lunch stations and what they'll all look like but there's a lot of planning that has to be done but it'll all be sorted out before y'all get here so you know exactly where you're gonna go and where you'll be eating your the options of where you can eat so if you're not in cohort a you know cohort b that is when you'll do your dpi class you'll either be doing that remotely or some of you maybe even be doing it in person a lot for those of you in the building you still may be doing dp remotely or you may be with your d period teacher that all remains to be seen and for folks who have academic skills same thing they'll be if they're in person is when they will have their academic skills during that lunch block and then c block is 1 220 and then 2 at 2 20 we're asking everybody to leave the building at that time the classes are 80 minutes long you're going to be expected if you're in person you're going to be expected to get your questions answered during those 80-minute blocks and have any little conferences you need to have with your teachers and at 220 you're going to need to leave the building and something else i should have said also so some of you are going to be getting to the building you know 8 40 8 45 we're not going to open the door unless it's like thunder lightning until 8 50 because we'd much rather have you all kind of congregated outside than congregating in the hall so at 8 50 when the doors open that's when you go to class and so the same thing after school we don't want folks hanging around in the school [Music] being close to one another if you're gonna talk to your friends or wait for practice or whatever we're gonna ask that you do it outside because that 220 to 250 time that's when teachers are gonna offer extra help to the folks who are still remote because again if you're in person you're going to have a much better chance of getting your questions answered by the teachers be in the classroom with you and most teachers are coming back i'm going to talk a little bit more about that as we keep going go to the next slide please all righty all right so similar to the 404 block we thought of a few questions that y'all might have and i talked a little bit about the lunch so same thing when i try to make sure everyone's at least everyone will be at least six feet apart during lunch now in the classroom we cannot guarantee that we'll be able to set up the classroom where everyone will be six feet apart the average class here can hold 16 people spread six feet apart so chances are we'll be able to accommodate the six feet distance but and that's where our goal is but if a class has 20 people who show up everybody's going to be in the class small 20 people are going to be there in the classroom and we'll space you out as best we can and of course everyone who will be expected to wear masks of that nature and again the physical distancing you'll see the signs out in the hallway when you're in the hallway moving from one class to another when i ask that people are going to keep moving that don't get congregate in large crowds you don't want people to be safe we want you to have the interaction be able to see your peers you'll be able to do most of your socializing if you have breaks in your classes or during lunch time or maybe a little bit before school if you hear a little earlier a little bit after school if you're waiting around for sports but really in school you can walk and talk we don't want large groups of people gathering i did also talk about deep period how that's going to happen during the lunch block and a lot of this i tried to cover as i was talking about the schedule we all were going to add enter the building 850 and leave right after school all right hit the last thing it's the last slide [Music] and again so yeah 220 out of the building so clubs and these clubs will still be happening virtually but your club advisors may organize some activities for folks in person but it's still going to be mainly happening um virtually we do want to also arrange some sort of social activities for folks after school again reminds me seeing where it belongs the things that we're trying to do we do want to try to create ways for y'all to socialize if you don't play sports or if you're not in clubs but you still want to get together with some of your friends of course you can do that on your own but the school we want to help facilitate some of that as well we have a few good ideas many good ideas from y'all and we're also picking up some ourselves and we'll come up with a list of things in times that you all be able to get together let me see what else i have okay for students who remain remote will there be options in the fall to support them with their transition to high school yeah so similar to the orientation that we'll have on april 30th we'll definitely have an orientation in the fall and it's gonna be more than just a half a day thing so we're gonna we'll have a lot of welcoming back events and we want to try to because in the fall it's looking like right now the center for disease control and the massachusetts department of public health and the massachusetts department of education are saying that they want all schools back full no remote option for the fall we'll see how that all plays out but we're planning as if everyone will be back full in the fall more people will be vaccinated and hopefully the covert numbers will be way down by then and so we're planning on having one everyone back in the fall so we'll do a lot of welcome back events at that time let's see okay for students who remain remote whether it be oh did i just say that okay many teachers will return in person yet so most teachers will be back we're not exactly sure all who all the teachers are because things are going to change between now and may 3rd some teachers more teachers will be getting vaccinated and they will be back but not every teacher will be back but again most of them will so for the teachers who aren't going to be here they will have the google classroom it may look like the google class will be projected onto the whiteboard there'll be another adult in the classroom assisting the students that are there and they'll be on the teacher teaching remotely it'll be almost like the reverse of that for the teacher or the in person the teachers are in person we'll be teaching obviously everyone who's in front of them but they're also going to be running their google classroom for the folks who are remaining remote it's going to be a little tricky so you're going to be patient with us but everyone's working hard to figure out how to make that work very well for people only person and for the people who are remote and right now it does look like about two-thirds the people who filled up the survey are saying they want to be in person that's the number we kind of thought we would get and that's definitely where we're at right now there's still about 200 or so of y'all who haven't filled up the survey so if you haven't filled it out we will either be sending another survey to you or giving you a call because we want to make sure that we know what every family's intention is for the return to school now if you're thinking yeah i kind of want to go back but i'm not sure my suggestion would be to fill out the survey or let us know that yes you do want to come back in person because if you come back and you don't like it you can then switch to remote because that's an easy fix you just go back and you just join your google classroom remotely and then you know like if you're sick or if you had a travel or something you could potentially even you know still access your google classrooms but if you say no i want to be remote then that's it you're locked in to the remote version for the rest of the school year it's much more challenging with transportation and again trying to figure out how to situate the classrooms and getting everybody fed the contact tracing all the things that go in that we're going to have to worry about and focus on when people are in here so we're asking that if you choose remote that that we're telling you that that's going to be your final decision but if you do choose in person you can switch to remote hope that makes sense all right i think that's it for that slide that might be all the slides i'm not sure i can't advance that's all the slides so if you do have questions see there's a bunch of them now there's like two chat features and i wasn't looking at this one okay mr sadiq i wonder if we should start with questions um regarding the 4x4 block we should have probably paused um so we can answer those questions first and then move to the return does that make sense it does okay and i think miss stocker is going to go ahead and highlight the the questions for us um in order to answer them great [Music] this might take a minute because there are lots and i also just wanted to pop on screen and let folks know i i want to just highlight um something that jacob brought up which is really important which is that some folks were being locked out on their school chromebooks so sorry i'm showing my comment on jacob's comment and um said the same thing um we are going to this is recorded right now so we will make this recording available to students so anyone who was unable to watch the live version will absolutely be able to watch the recording later so i just want to make sure that's clear to folks before we dive into more specific questions on the 4x4 okay there is one question that i just want to that i'm seeing i just want to answer really quick because sure the answer the question is we don't know yet and the question is are we having mcas the answer is that we don't know yet we're still waiting for the state to tell us what if we have to have mcats or not they've given some information to the elementary schools and middle schools about it but they haven't said anything yet about the high school so as soon as we know we will let you know awesome okay so let's start off with this question back-to-back questions is the 4x4 already decided yes for the fall of the 21 22 school year we will be running the four by four block but as mrs cremacki mentioned in the fall or early next fall we will be surveying students and families and our faculty and staff to decide what the schedule will be for the 22 23 school year but because of the uncertainty of covid we thought it was and we have to get everybody start to make schedules for next year so we had to make a decision on that that's decided and it was it was also um a directive that came from the school committee superintendent so um this is not something that we as a administration just decided on our own because i see a number of concerns about the lack of input from you all and we do really care um about your thoughts on this because it really matters it is indeed for you but unfortunately we were handed a directive on this one so i'm just going through the comments here to make sure we're not missing anything major so here is a good one about the um let's see hang on this is all 4x4 next year just making sure we're getting here we go next year it's a good one from lucy about will we have to miss class every day during our sports seasons um hi lucy i'll answer this one guys um no the answer to that uh question is not every day um some days yes uh lucy i know you're a swimmer i'm not sure what else you may do but it does depend on what sport you do play we're gonna try to get later games practices will start um a little bit later so you should be able to make it work but you will not be missing class every day um here is a question this is a great question about for future years from audrey about will there be student input for the 4x4 schedule for next year and audrey i'm assuming you mean by that the 2022-2023 school year yes definitely yeah awesome now let's see what else here's another athletics question that i think is important to sort of address which is about whether we are prioritizing sports over school if we are having to miss class during a deep period [Music] i think it's we try to you know you're a student athlete so it's a balance and you know we do all of us do have to make some choices and the plan is and maybe mr kansas is a bit better but to coordinate with the other schools as best as possible to limit the amount of time that you will miss class i don't want to add anything let's do it no i think you also said that you said it really well um as a student athlete and guys you know some of you guys may know i did play at amherst regional high school i also played in college and i think high school is to prepare you for college um and your future going forward um even with my job right now right i have to have um strong time management skills and i'm not an athlete anymore but i can tell you that being an athlete it did set me up for this job so i think that will just better you at the in the long run tessa um and all these other athletes as well so here's a great question about do we have the choice to go back into school if we are choosing online or remote learning as we've been doing right now um because i can't go back in time vaccinating which might take a while so any answers for 8 in here yes so unfortunately aydian right now the the way things are going is students who are choosing remote are going to be expected to remain remote for the rest of the school year students who choose in person and start to come to school but realize it's not really working for them we'll have the option to switch because it's much more complicated to add in students after we've gotten the classrooms and the transportation and the lunch situation all situated so unfortunately after the fourth quarter people who may not be vaccinated until you know the end of may or june we'll miss those last three four or five weeks those after they won't miss it you just have to remain remote okay so here's a question from jacob um will d-period classes take place when will d-period classes take place for people who are back in the building some clarity on that schedule so that during that hour-long lunch block if you're there'll be two courts of students who will basically have two lunches so people are eating first lunch will go to lunch and then the people who are eating who have second lunch while first lunch is eating second lunch folks will be in either d block a directed study or an academic skills class so it will be during that hour long time and you do some of you who are in person may be meeting with your dp teacher in person or you may be also still doing it virtually even though you're in person and obviously people at home you'll be accessing dpi virtually awesome so this is a question about um desiring an option for directed study so i'm wondering if we can talk about maybe a little bit more about why we are not having directed studies or why that's the current plan so i'm i'm happy to start so um i i have i came from a school that was in a 4x4 block and um you know we didn't have directed studies i do think that um one thing we need to think about is thinking about each student as an individual and what you need and for most students who take the five core academic classes you're going to have two core academics in one semester and you're going to have three in another semester at the same time you know that our administration and our guidance team we're we're very invested in helping you develop alps independent studies community service work study and so for some students rather than just a directed study it might be that if you get all of your core courses in place and some electives that you love that you might choose to to do an alps or do something that you're really interested in that's going to help you as you think about your post-secondary education so i want us to think not so much like oh we're losing a directed study but let's think about ways that we can work together with your counselors to determine what you need and then how we can help you achieve that and like i said we're very open to working with you as you develop different ideas and and like i said those um options that i just laid out for you you certainly will still have those options and i can add one more thing so and next year next school year you will have after school help time so that no after school help time is just for the rest of this year so i say you see at the end it says especially won't have any after school time so after school time i'm assuming you're talking about help you may have sports other things you need to do after school but if you do need to stay with the teacher after school in the fall of 2021 you can that's not this spring i'm gonna give a follow-up question from the same person which is um will teachers give us more time in class for work and i i think the answer to that is yes but i would love for miss camera mr mac here mr city to clarify so the ia the hope is that there will be more time within that 80-minute block to actually give individual support and then also give time to do work awesome okay so i'm just trying to scroll through them there's a lot of there's so many questions and they're kind of mixed in with each other so i'm just sort of scrolling through i want to make sure we haven't left any major topics from the 4x4 um out of here i know there's a lot in here i'm just wanting to make sure we don't leave anyone behind or any topics behind as best we can and there's also maybe i'm wondering if we can maybe clarify that i don't believe students were ever surveyed about the 4x4 is that correct um there's a lot of surveys that have been floating around so i know it's a little confusing okay so let's see maybe this is a good sort of transition question maybe um because tessa is asking about rearranging our schedule to be safer for covid shouldn't it be safe enough to be regular before we go back and this is a good way to transition because this addresses both the 4x4 and our in-person learning this spring so this like this so we're starting school on may 3rd in person because the department of education told us what we have to do they and they anticipate that based on their research the data they've collected from schools across the country that there's going to be a risk there's no doubt i mean kobe it may be with us for the rest of our days and just similar to the flu and cold other things of that nature so they've decided that the risk is not high enough to keep folks out of school so they believe now is the time for us to go back and then also start planning for next year with the intent to be them back full person i mean full time they also believe that with mast lawn and hand sanitizer air purifiers and some other mitigating measures we're taking that it will keep the potential to spread down really low and we're hoping that there won't be a spread we won't have to go back to remote totally overall everybody's a little nervous a little excited about coming back but again this was something we told we had to do so we're trying to make the best of it um can i also add that i do think that two things happened at once and that was that we were directed to go to a four by four block at the same time that the community was surveyed about a flipped start and starting the elementary schools earlier than the high school and so even if we went back to the old schedule which was the seven blocks we were still ending school at 3 30.
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rogelio do i need to read each and every one of those no you do that sorry i didn't catch that no no you do not okay as long as you ask for public comment on the closed session items that's sufficient okay so at this time i'm going to go ahead and open it up for public comment on any one of those items before we break to closed session carlos do we have anybody wishing to address the board on these items at this time we have none okay i'm going to go ahead and count to five and give people enough time to find the raise hand button etc okay do we have any now yes we have one by the initials km okay km if you can uh state your name in the beginning of your um uh statement hello sure welcome to speaking the timer we'll begin sure thanks actually i just had a quick question um obviously this is my first time attending a board meeting on zoom how will we know when to rejoin the meeting or is there an opportunity to hear what happens at the closed session and when when should the participants rejoin i i can re review that i know we're not supposed to have a back and forth but i i can't do that before we break out and your first name kristen kristen thank you christine um and uh carlos i think you said only one at this time yes okay so um just to remind the public uh we will be breaking out and um we will give you an approximate um time to return to then address the next matters and i'm seeing um approximately one hour so we will be back here at 7 15.
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so that was a separate decision and like i said they just happened to occur at the same time so i can appreciate that that people are thinking that the block is what's leading us to end at 3 30 but it was really the flip start time and then also being told that we had to do the block so i just want to make sure we're making that distinction awesome um i'm wondering if we want to transition just for time if we want to transition to talking about in person more fully um i'm not seeing a ton of other questions that we haven't addressed or that don't address both schedules um unless there's anything else that anyone else is seeing they want to bring up real quick and if not i think we can transition into the spring um which i think oh sorry this is what i i did there was a question about sorry this is lots of questions to look through for next year for net for in person this spring so sorry guys you're asking so many good questions i just don't want to miss any i'm trying to read them all as quickly as i can okay here's a good here's a good question about just logistically is there going to be a school bus when we go back to school how's that going to work for this spring yes there will be school buses part of the survey that was sent out to families asking if they wanted to return if their students wanted to return in person there was also a question on there about school buses if you'll need transportation or not and so once we get all the information from everybody and know exactly who will need a school bus then transportation office is going to design the route the bus routes and try to do as much as they can to keep people safe on the buses with people keeping people you know one person do a seat buses windows windows being open trying to take as many preventative measures as possible to keep folks safe on the bus so here is a question that's sort of a four by four question but it's also a in person question about ap schedules and how they're going to be accommodated in may there's lots of ap questions in the chat so okay so some av classes similar to this year will be year-long classes but they will right now the plan is to do ap classes similar to next year they're similar to the way they were done this year with the majority of them well all of them starting in the fall and a few of them like ap physics bc calc and i may be missing one or two others that will go all year long if there's other ones that i forgot to name please yeah some will also go three quarters of the year so they'll end in april which is just a couple weeks before the test um actually there's an excellent question in here about college classes so i'm going to just take a minute and answer that so one thing you probably if there's any seniors or juniors on the call here who took college classes you know how difficult that was in the seven drop one because the schedule rotated every day so the same classes didn't occur at the same time so the four by four block is actually better aligned to a college schedule especially when they have those longer classes so you would block out one of those classes each semester or you know either semester for college classes so we actually think that the 4x4 is going to allow more students to be able to take college classes and not have to tie up like in the past there were some students that tied up three of their seven blocks just for college classes and in this case it could end up being just one of your eight so miguel's asking a great question about what will classrooms look like in person this spring i can i can take that one um so our our goal is to have six feet of physical distance between desks um the cdc is suggesting three feet but we're going to aim a little bit higher than that um for safety's sake um that it will look different right it will there will be the desks need to face forward which is really different than what we've had in the past and the way we run our classrooms the teacher will be sitting at the front of the class using a laptop and looking at the laptop but also and the folks that are on the laptop again are the remote students so they'll be running the meet and that you will be facing the teacher the teacher will be facing you and talking to you but they will also be able to project onto the board what the um you know what the individual remote students are are having to contribute um we're working on the bandwidth and the technology that may be a little bit of a trick for us um but we're we've doubled the bandwidth and we're adding access points and doing all sorts of work on that right now but it is going to look different than what you're used to okay so there was a great question in here about the cohorts and how are cohorts being split are there cohorts or some students coming back but not others just looking for some clarity on that right so the the cohorts are going to be designed around lunchtime that'll be similar to the way lectures have been done before they were lunches first lunch second lunch third lunch we divided up by department so it may be like math english and social studies woody first lunch and like helping pe in world language another class with the second life so it's going to be divided up something similar to that we'll definitely have but that's the only cohort division people are can decide if they want to come back to be in person or remain remote and at since net since we've been told we have to be in school five days a week we're not going to divide up in the into cohorts that determine who will be in school at which time it's only going to be around the lunches awesome here's another sort of related question about transition times during the day how do we make sure that students are socially distanced when they're going from class to class and sorry if we already answered this but it's always about thank you for asking again this is an excellent question and this is hard i think we're going to have to build a culture of health and safety and respect for each other and certainly we will have faculty members in the hallways certainly we will have people communicating and reminding students about health and safety and so but i think as as 9th through 12th graders we're going to have to be sure that students take some of the responsibility for this and that's tricky um because there are more students certainly than there are faculty but we certainly are going to do our best on that but in terms of walking in the hallways um we do have sort of directional arrows i know that you um haven't been in the building for a while so i wonder if mr mr sadiq would be willing to talk a little bit about what the building looks like and um because i think that may answer part of this question right so the things that have changed in the building will be the signage that's on the floors in the wall there's like in the main hallway there's the yellow tape mark down the middle and the one side arrow is pointing down the other side arrows pointing up so we're gonna expect you know people and generally that's how the hallway is kind of how people flow through the hallways but now we're just gonna have arrows to remind folks to also to stay six feet apart whenever possible and also to stay on your side of the high highway that your side of the hallway not on the highway yet and again you know as this camera said is we're gonna need the assistance of all of you so it's gonna be a challenge we don't want it to be you know adults come on keep moving at y'all all the time like that but we do have to our responsibility is to keep you safe and so that may mean you know what's getting on your nerves a little bit about asking y'all to keep it moving how to spread apart the more you help us with that the less it's gonna be like a struggle a little more smoothly it'll flow and things will be more peaceful and enjoyable for all of us if we work together to try to make keep everybody safe um i do see one question i've lost it in the chat so i'm just going to ask it out loud which is also from jane about masking and whether double masking or just single masks will be required yeah so right now it's my saying single masks are going to be required i know i have a believe most people have they don't match at this point but we will have extra mass in the school for people who if their breaks or if something happens to it during the day and but we will be expecting everybody who does not have a medical undocumented medical reason which there are some so there are some students who have a documented medical reason to not wear a mask but we're expecting that everyone else will have a mask on unless they have talked to the teacher and in the designated break mask break area whether that's a part of their classroom or outside or of course during lunch and during lunch is the time when we know most people will be unmasked can't eat through a mask obviously and so we're gonna have we'll put extra caution to try to spread everybody out as much as we can and keep people outside as much as possible and some of your classes will be outside as well we don't have like a exact schedule of which classes will be outside when we just know that the main goal is to have lunch outside every day as possible awesome so i'm seeing sort of a related questions that write back-to-back which is will there be staggered passing periods to reduce people in the hallway and then a related question was will we be rotating classrooms or just staying in one room and the teachers moving so those seem like related questions to me yeah so we can't stagger the dismissal and you will be going to all of your classes and that's the reason why we can't stagger it so the teachers are going to be back in their classrooms the classrooms that they were in for the most part before we left last march with you could be in an algebra class with 12 people and those 12 students may need to go to 12 different classes so if we staggered the dismissal and say we dismissed the second floor first then maybe the third floor would still have a lot of people in the hallways because they wouldn't be able to get into their classroom because there's still these there could be students and they're waiting inside the classroom waiting to get dismissed and if we our plan before we were told we had to come back five days a week was it going to be something similar to having students and like learning centers in the school but we expected a lot fewer folks to be in the school and we would be able to do that but now with at least two-thirds of the students in the building we have to run it very similar to the way it was before the shutdown except we'll have mass you know the hand sanitizers the air purifiers more windows will be open the signage in the hallway everybody will be more aware and trying to get one another everybody to stay a little bit further apart and things of that nature but in terms of moving through the hallways and all that that's gonna look really similar to the way it did before we shut down last march so there was a great question in here about traveling this spring i'm gonna see if i can find it here it is it's also from grant um if students travel out of state for whatever reason during the last quarter will they be expected to quarantine before returning to in-person learning i think that's a great question the answer is yes if you travel to a place that is on and it'll be determined by obviously where you go and what the restrictions are based on where you travel so if you travel to a state that the expectation is when you come back when you go back to your home state because of how high their numbers are you need to quarantine then you just access your your learning remotely for the time you're quarantined and then you'll be allowed to come back in to the school to join us in person great question all right so there's some other good ones in here lots of good ones i should say um there's some great questions about vaccines and whether or not um students will be expected to get vaccinated if they are eligible which we know not all students are but if you are eligible yeah that's totally a decision that you and your family have to make there's no the district is not requiring anybody to get vaccinated so again if you and your family decide and you have the opportunity to vaccinate and you want to do that that's up to you it's your decision awesome let me see here here's a question about testing while we have access to testing in person we are working on getting pooled testing up and running the district has been talking about it for a little while and we're trying to figure out how to really make that work and if we do get it up and running everyone's family will be sent a consent form and for those families who want to be involved in the testing they would sign a consent form and then we would set up a system to periodically other nurses here periodically test folks but we will have for people who are showing symptoms we do have i think it's called the binex text test is what i think the name is and it gives results in 15 minutes and we will have like a medical waiting room for anybody who does start to show symptoms then the nurse will be alerted they'll be taken in there you'll be talked to by the nurse your family will be contacted and there's a whole procedure in place for people who are showing symptoms during the school day and then there is also right now for the students who come their families get a text or an email and they're asked questions about you know if if you are have a fever if you've been exposed in the presence of anybody who's tested positive in the last day because every morning we'll have something similar to that for this spring and then i'm not really sure if we're going to continue that in the fall or not all right i am just scrolling through here to see if there's any other topics that we haven't covered i know there's many many questions but they some of them are covering the same thing multiple times so let me just make sure we're not missing anything major miss stocker i just want to offer up that you know everybody's circumstances is unique and so if you're thinking about next year's schedule and you're really stressed or concerned or want to talk through what that could look like please reach out to any one of us in addition to your counselor because i really would like to work with you to make sure you feel like you have a schedule that you really love for next year and um so just you know please consider doing that that's awesome um i think i can speak for everyone else in this call and say we fully agree with you and i'm sure other teachers would point you into one of us if you had questions they couldn't answer um there is a question about and i know we've talked about this a couple times already but i think it's worth reiterating which is if you are choosing to go back into school but you are not vaccinated yet and you want to wait to get your vaccine could you just stay remote until you are ready to go back in even though you've chosen remote or chosen in person rather on the survey even if i got that wrong if i misinterpreted your question please tell us [Music] that's that that's a good question so we're we're going to be planning to accommodate all the people who choose in person and we know some people will be absent for a variety of reasons and we'll have to play it by ear i'm hoping that people try to you know abide by whatever decision that they make if but you're gonna have to do what you have to do but again we're gonna go by the list of folks that we have who are we see who have chosen in person and we're gonna make the appropriate accommodations and adjust kind of around around that list mr sadiq do you mind if i add a little to that please do yeah um so the one of the challenges with this aiden is that um we're managing transportation routes um and that's very complex and so the bus routes are complicated but also we're managing in the in-school space um and so we can only accommodate approximately 16 kids per classroom um if we're trying to keep the six foot space and so if people decide to come in who hadn't or who get vaccinated and want to come in it may actually be that we don't have the physical space and it's really tricky to plan for that and so that's why we're asking you to decide now so we can plan for it in advance does that make sense i hope i hope that helps all right i'm just going through one more time there's about you know we're reaching 55 minutes of this meeting so i want to make sure people have a chance to get outside and enjoy their half day and not just remain glued to their screen um but i want to make sure we also aren't missing anything big so i'm just scrolling through carefully mira is asking us a great question mira thank you it hasn't quite come through yet to the chat but she is asking on youtube what will you do if there are more than 16 students who choose to return for a class here it is so they will be in the class and we'll try to keep you as distant as possible that's why we're saying we can't guarantee the three feet distance i mean the six feet distance but that's our goal is to have six feet between everybody but we're not gonna if 17 or 18 or 20 students show up for a class we're gonna accommodate what those everybody's gonna be in the class together but so the folks in that class just gonna have to have to be a little bit more mindful of keeping their mask up trying to stay as distant as possible right now the guidance from the state and the cdc is they only expect us to keep you all three feet apart but we want to try to keep you all at six feet apart whenever possible awesome thank you for that clarification i think that's a great question um and then this is a good one i think to end on because it is really pointing to the fact that students are being asked if they will get the survey to go back if they want to go in person or remain remote and i think it would be a good time for us to replug that survey and focus on where their parents or adults in their household can respond to it yeah so i'll say we've been sending it to families because we thought we sent it to the families and students and it may get filled out twice and it would not give us accurate data so we've been sending it just to families hoping that y'all talk to your families and let them know or they've talked once they got their survey that they asked you and consulted with you and let you know what was going on and figure out what is the best decision for your entire family for you and everybody in your house there is a i'm seeing a couple questions about mask wearing in school that i want to highlight because there's quite a few of them right in a row so um tessa is asking what would happen if the student who has their mask below their nose or is fooling around with it and then also a follow-up question from mira which is will students be asked to go home if they aren't complying with math squaring guidelines or i presume other social distancing measures that we have in place so it when we see students who aren't like following the rules you know our approach is going to be to try to find out like what's going on and maybe that there's something else happening with the student and this is kind of how it's playing out again you know as this camera said we're trying to we wanted to really develop a culture of health and safety and respect for one another we know that covert is not a game there's nothing funny about it so we're going to be relying on the maturity of a lot of you to abide by the rules and so it will start with a conversation but the expectation is that if you do if you don't have a medical exemption you're supposed to be wearing your mask unless you're outside on a break when you're eating lunch and that those times you're going to be expected to be at least six feet apart from everybody and if you can't do that then the conversation may if it gets extreme enough will have to lead to if being in person is the best choice for you we want people to who are going to be in the building want people back in the building who obviously you want to learn you want to see your friends not going to be able to socialize the way you did before which is unfortunate we want to provide this opportunity to as many people as possible and if people are not having their masks on and the spread happens then no one's gonna have the opportunity to be in person so we're gonna have to stick by those rules and it you know not a lot of wiggle room one conversation hopefully that will take care of it if it doesn't then we'll have to take next steps with maybe connected family and seeing if in person is the right place or not excellent answer there's also some questions about hand sanitizing and other sort of measures and there are hands i can testify i was in the high school about a week and a half ago and there are hand sanitizers all over the place so in every classroom yes and we will be asking um students to sanitize their hands before and after eating and then also if they are eating inside to to clean the desk that they've eaten on again we're hoping to have students eat outside as much as possible because it's much safer but in general we're gonna we're gonna be careful about this and make sure that people are awesome well it is 1 30.
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oh okay approximately seven okay perfect thank you so we'll see you all back here at 7 15. um unless i see anybody else with their hands up or anything that i'm missing no we'll go ahead and uh and see you all at 7 15.
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[Applause] vargas [Applause] [Music] yes [Applause] elbow [Applause] gabby miller [Applause] [Music] frankie distal hang out there frank you're well now are we scoring today we scoring today load up the bar good [Applause] oh [Applause] keep fighting keep fighting hey we're dropping our left hip down put your hips switch your hips [Applause] yes [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hey here's your elbow bring it back use your right elbow [Applause] hey [Applause] is [Applause] work up [Applause] oh [Music] [Applause] at 132 pounds the winner might fall the time three minutes 45 seconds for overage gabby miller [Applause] red choice right let's go baby all right let's go awesome go to work now wrestling at 138 pounds for old bridge austin miller and trace brunswick james milligan [Music] oh [Applause] oh [Applause] [Music] [Applause] thanks elbow back elbows and go reach back let me stand up [Music] so the wood would be [Applause] right [Music] [Applause] right [Applause] oh [Applause] oh [Applause] oh [Applause] [Music] right there go ahead is [Applause] oh [Applause] yes [Applause] [Music] [Applause] oh hold that elbow up i'm oh [Applause] [Music] [Applause] stop his first move [Applause] yes come on jimmy roll all the way up [Applause] at 138 pounds the winner might fall the time one minute 34 seconds for oak rage austin miller four minutes 34 seconds okay [Applause] a wrestling of 145 pounds for old bridge tyler saggy and for east brunswick isaac dambella [Applause] [Music] oh right in the beginning keep it tight on your head [Applause] [Music] [Applause] saggy wrestling at 150 pounds for old bridge eddie ferrante and for east brunswick mark andres [Applause] oh snap push [Applause] hold the trigger [Applause] you have to be the aggressor [Applause] [Music] [Applause] five [Applause] go in here yes tuck your elbows no no oh come on [Applause] oh [Applause] 255 or old bridge vinnie ferrante wrestling now 160 pounds for east front for old bridge stay in hennessy and for east brunswick ethan key good circle [Applause] all right working for it hey push yourself down [Music] get out of here we remind all the fans in the stands tonight to stay seated for the presentations of the 13th annual direct demarco memorial awards these awards will be presented to one wrestler from each team in honor of former oak ridge and his brother coach greg devarco we'll do that immediately following tonight's match your time [Applause] hey [Applause] okay [Music] okay good now come on guys [Applause] hey right back to the center let's go [Applause] hey he just wants to back up [Music] [Applause] oh [Applause] just because i missed it earlier today you're over the over tonight supposed for mr john post he's the city's in his second season as head coach of the knights he's assisted by mr robert weiss and mr josh baker and also mr mike gargano east front of his coach for mr joe langley who is in who is also in his second year as the head coach of the he is assisted by mr matt kozinko miss rachel daddio and mr pat dressler how much time 120.
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i'm just looking at the chat now i'm not seeing any other questions coming flying in but there are a few questions about just in general like some other sort of social distancing things including a really good one from grant and from andre actually back to back about bathrooms and in person limits on bathroom use as they're often a place where students congregate which we know to be true that is a great question so yeah i'm thinking that we're going to have to have some sort of limit how we're going to enforce that we will have hall monitors campus monitors as we did before and a lot of this is gonna be an opportunity for a lot of y'all to be really mature and work with us we're we're gonna have to all work together to make this to make this happen to be able to keep the school open for the rest of the fourth quarter so people who want to have the in-person option have it if people start you know taking their masks off and not following the rules that just increases the chances of school having to go back to full remote and you know people getting sick we don't want that that's the last thing we want so we're going to really be expecting everybody to take this serious and to be mature and to work with us and you know we'll have guidelines and clear expectations as well about the limits of folks who could be in the bathroom or in certain places i do see a really oh yeah vulture asked a great question i just i saw that this camera answered it in the chat as well but um students will be able to log into their meets whether if they're in person depends on what your teacher is doing obviously for class but that is our hope is that students will be able to still keep their classroom communities oh here's a good question from jane about after school or outside of schools issues so if someone is not social distancing outside of school will they be asked to return to remote learning i think they would only be asked to return online like if they were symptomatic or if they tested positive if they're asymptomatic like we couldn't we can never control what people do outside of school so but there if when things do happen outside of school that impact the school day then is when the school gets involved whatever that may be like cyberbullying or something crazy going on outside of the school but that will also now include um people who are like if you know you've been exposed if we find out that you've been in a presence with someone who has covet well when we find that out we would ask your family to keep you home until you are you follow those procedures that are set by the department of public health before you come be allowed to come back so there's a great question from sarah here about will students be able to leave during lunch if they are uncomfortable eating inside and the weather weather is not suitable for eating outside that day just for the hour for their half hour lunch break we're not gonna if we're not gonna have an open campus like that the students like if you get dismissed during the day you know we're asking that that would be the end of your day at school and of course there may be some specific exemptions to that but generally speaking students are not going to be allowed to leave during the half hour lunch block um and i will there's two question questions in here that i think are good hang on i just lost my last night please with my mouse um so um oh mirrors we got answered but mira asked about basically is our wi-fi capable enough maybe this camera maybe you can amplify your answer here yeah so we're doing an assessment of that right now and so we have to do individual classroom assessments as well as hall assessments in terms of the access points um as well as the additional drops so our hope is yes that the bandwidth will be good enough and if not we have lots of ideas um about how to do how to deal with that and it could be that you'll have to leave your chromebook at half mast while the teacher is teaching it may be that the students in the classroom will have to see the remote students just on the projected on the board um it may be that we have to coordinate synchronous and asynchronous um time between departments so there are a lot of ways to to mitigate that concern and we're working on it awesome so i wanted um lots of people asking to have jacob's question addressed which is about people are partying or traveling after school affect the school day waiting until someone is symptomatic or they get tested seems like it might be too late yes i agree jacob but it's really hard to keep track of what people are doing outside of school so we hope that people have been taking precautions all along and not partying people travel and hope they're cautious and follow the guidelines set by the department of public health we're going to be expecting and hoping and wanting people to do the same if like if someone's posting pictures of themselves online at a party where no one has a mask on that's one thing but we can't go by like rumors like we you know we have to we can't just tell someone because we heard that they might have been at a party that they can't come to in person when they choose in person we're trusting that people are going to be responsible and realize that their actions do now more than ever maybe affect other people so um yeah i don't really know what else to say if all your other you want to add to that one yeah all right so i think we'll take two more questions um just i want to be mindful of everyone's time um so there's a couple questions about this um about sort of before and after school social time or just social activities in general and after school activities that i think would be nice to emphasize for students yeah so i mentioned earlier that if students do get here earlier some students will get dropped off by the buses at 8 40 some will arrive here however they're gonna get here before 8 50 and you can socialize outside at that time and again if you have if your class is on the first floor you know it's going to take you two minutes to walk to your class you could stay outside you know until like 8 55 or so and then walk to your class have a little time then if you don't take a bus or get picked up right after school you can socialize that after 2 20 when you first leave class and we do we are still working on ways try to organize some activities for students who aren't playing sports not in clubs so you can socialize with one another a lot of that is based on student input input we've had a meeting with the senior class on the student advisory council to get some good ideas now i'm in the process of trying to organize that along with just bringing you all back to school and getting ready for next year and a lot of other things we're trying to organize there's a lot happening but we're thinking about it awesome so i'm gonna sneak in one extra question just because i think it's a good follow-up to jacob's question just a minute ago from mira which is what should students do if they see their peers doing things that are not safe yeah i think that you should so depending on who it is i know not everybody feels comfortable by you know advising telling their their peers like yeah you shouldn't be doing that but if you do if you please tell them like please don't do that doesn't have to be a rude jump on them calling them out type of thing but just a general reminder or let an adult know again this is not it's not snitching because now the the stakes are so much higher now we just don't we don't want anybody to catch covet ever especially not in school because somebody else is being careless and we just don't know how what people's home situations are if they catch covet and they bring it home we've heard all the terrible stories so we're really hoping that number one people are getting responsible again i'll go back to what this camera said with the culture of you know health and safety and respect for one another it's gonna be more important now than i think at any other time and we you know we're gonna ask that y'all remind each other we all forget everyone needs reminders and that you don't take it as a joke and that you you know are respectful awesome thank you so much i'm just seeing mira's uh have some funny hashtags in the chat i highly recommend looking at them i think a good last question is just as from kimberly that i said from a few other folks about maybe just giving us one last sort of overview of what the day will look like for both in-person and remote learners um and then i think lots of thank yous from folks about giving us the time to do this we really appreciate hearing from all of you so um uh so the day again the classes are gonna be happening at the same time some of it honestly i mean i have in my mind what i'm hoping the day will look like but it's you know we'll really see once we get here all the classrooms are going to be set up a little bit differently teachers have different styles on how they're going to do things we're expecting that remote learning will look the same for everybody well basically the same you may not really see as many folks in your google classroom you may see them through the teacher's camera in the class it kind of remains to be seen on what we can really figure out and make happen but in school some of it will look like it did before coveted shut down in terms of moving from one class to another fewer classes in the movie too i'm expecting just about everybody except those who have medical reasons not to everyone wearing a mask you'll see the signs on the floor flowing through your day and then you'll be leaving right after school when some a lot of people were used to kind of hanging out in the halls and in a rotunda after school that's not going to be happening this spring we're going to ask that if you want to hang out that you do it outside and do it right out in front of the school still expecting you to you know have your mask on or at least be six feet away from everybody else but yeah i also just oh go ahead go go ahead no i just also wanted to um say that you know to the extent that they can come in our guidance counselors and other support staff will be available um you can actually schedule appointments with them right on your computer like you do now so even when you're in school and um you know we're talking to the counselors about having some space for some support groups having opportunities for informal groups outside and um and they will you know they will find a way to meet with you you know whatever that's going to look like um so you will still have access to that support as well and actually the counselors are doing a coffee tonight with the pgo um with families and so if you're interested in more information about that you know please encourage your families to to sign on to that coffee tonight yeah that's a great great reminder and i think um with that i think we are ready to sort of end this this meeting i i want to just thank everyone for joining us um your questions are so good and it's it's really very moving to me as a teacher to hear from all of you and how invested you are in you and your peers safety and um the quality of your education so i'll let other people close off but yes thank you i'm so glad you're here we miss you all we're sorry we can't see your faces but it's good to see your your comments and your questions we look forward to seeing those of you um that come back but also those of you that are remote and in google meets which is also again both are great choices you'll need to make the decision that's best for you i said yeah hopefully everybody take care and get outside some fresh air bye everyone have a great rest of your day and let your friends know if they want to watch this later we'll make the link available
⚗ AI-reconstructed · cite from original above
thank you foreign okay welcome back everybody i see linda i also see men [Music] so we have quorum uh mr min if you can uh say hello please i know i see quintero mr pham or mr quintero if one of you can please uh say hello hi okay thank you yes just want to confirm quorum thank you so much um so we'll go ahead and um move into reconvening uh there was no um action taking place at quorum uh trustee chavez do you have something to add um i guess we first make the motion to open the school i'm sorry um we're gonna we're not there yet so we're right now but um we'll go ahead and move on to [Music] 501 um and before we move on because i i see dr bauer connecting so i just want to make sure that she was in um so that i can pass over the mic all right welcome back dr bauer uh so we're uh moving on to item 501 the board will consider the plan for the school reopenings in alan rock union school district and trustee chavez motion to open up the schools and now i'm wrong motion open up the schools uh dr bauer is there a presentation on this or somebody there is a presentation okay i don't know if you want to have a second and then we present or should we go ahead yeah i'll go ahead and second for purposes of moving forward and then so thank you so much everyone uh we are bringing uh to the board and to the public uh the plan to reopen our schools this plan focuses on the the safety of our campuses to be able to do this i'm going to turn it over i believe um you know we had a um uh a presentation for you during the the march board meeting where we presented the thing the chronology of our um the development of the plan i think that we're very excited to let you guys know that we're ready to do that so mr moran are you ready to begin the presentation with the rest of the staff and i will ask the staff for uh just because i don't see your names that were in a webinar to please introduce yourselves and your role for the public uh information thank you dr bauer if i can just uh uh pause we can pause and remind the public that if you are spanish speaking uh si hablan espanol por favor uh uh and if you're here for the english speaking if you can go down to the bottom area and click on what looks like a world and click on english i just want to make sure that we are there it is thank you so much uh los cablan espanol mariana decent interpretation yeah click espanol spanish trade you uh mr moran okay thank you board president uh i'm just waiting for mr gill is assisting me on his end you could hang in one second and mr good as you bring in some of our presenters if you can give me screen access sharing thank you okay okay so hopefully we can start right there can everybody see that screen okay all right so on this piece um okay hang on okay thank you all right so as dr bauer had shared where we have a team of presenters uh this evening myself my name is carlos moran assistant superintendent of human resources we have jason sorich barbara campbell maria martinez teresa smith and mr renee sanchez and so um dr barr i'm not sure if you wanted to uh introduce this piece real quick that's okay i'm mindful of the timing and this is basically the stating to our public and to the board that we're safe to reopen okay perfect so i'll hand it over to maria martinez hi good evening thank you uh for taking the time to listen to our presentation uh my part is to go ahead and share what the timeline and the orders were for this past and 2019 and 2020 school year so essentially with the timeline we all know that in march we had the order of the school closures and throughout the time we had the statewide shelter in place order for three weeks starting in march so the district um and the sites addressed the immediate needs in march through may of 2020 by making sure students had all of the materials and necessary items to make sure that uh that their instruction was not interrupted also when we moved into may towards the end of last school year we were told that we would be continuing with distance learning for the remainder of the year so we decided to go ahead and continue planning for fall reopening knowing that we would need to be looking at different potential scenarios uh for the school year and we wanted to make sure that our teachers were well prepared so we offered professional development to make sure that they were coming back ready to address social emotional needs through things such as morning meeting and advisory period and we also made sure that there was ample technology support available our it department went ahead and made sure to have extended hours access on the weekends and work to make sure that our community had internet access as well next slide please so looking into the summer time the tiered system was launched and we were told what each color tier meant and so november um i'm sorry august and july we came up with uh mou for distance learning and when we came back to school uh we made sure that uh we were following all of the county guidelines and in november we noticed that um we jumped two tears so we went from orange we skipped red and went straight to purple because there was a huge increase in cases and hospitalization and we know that in our area there was a lot of um of in a high infection rate and so october through december of 2020 we made sure to have our care pods in place working with our various aces providers to do that and we were also at the sites preparing to have elpac testing done virtually and online and we also offer town hall meetings to keep the community informed around how to stay safe and what was going on in the district um and again through the holidays there was a coveted spike january the uh coveted spike um where we were back in the purple tier and the alum rock case rate was extremely high and uh very um unsafe to return but now that we are in march some time has passed and our governor and legislature reached an agreement through senate bill and so it's been determined that our schools are safe for reopening and so we are looking to follow what the legislature is suggesting and so we know we are in the red tier i believe we're we're just on the cusp of being on the orange tier as well um so we're moving to safer level and this has just been a quick summary of the timeline and the actions and orders that we've done as a committee to support um during this time through the pandemic so now i am going to pass it on to mr moran for the next part of the presentation thank you great thank you miss martinez good evening everyone again uh so the next few presenters and i will review the following items reopening in-person instruction operations safety health and safety and mental health and scl so earlier this month on march 1st uh the state legislature passed senate bills and an assembly bill 86 sp sb and ab 86 allocates these grant funds to all local educational agencies all local educational agencies like alum rock who are in the red tier and about to go into the orange tier would receive these grant funding this grant funding but would be required to offer in-person instruction by april 1st districts that do not open on april 1st the amount of funding they would receive would be reduced by one percent a day through may 15th and then as defined by sb 86 the offer of in-person instruction is instruction under the immediate supervision and control of a certificated employee of the lea while engaged in educational activities required to the pupil or student in-person instruction may be a hybrid program the offering of an in-person instruction is provided to the greatest extent possible and once started instruction must be continuous and since we since i believe as of tomorrow we will be in orange tier schools may be able to reopen for full instruction um some of our as our open as our reopening committee and work groups uh worked over uh the last uh several months and prior to that back when the pandemic started we focus on several important principles ensuring safety of our students maintaining high quality teaching and learning focused on the needs of students the needs of our alumni community um providing face-to-face instruction uh and an instructional model again to the greatest extent possible and additional supports for students and social emotional needs as you may recall earlier this school year around i believe august the uh there was a presentation on the alum rock 2020 reopening model in phase one as you can see here is our current plan for all students uh currently it's in 100 of students are in distance learning but as we discuss and consider moving to some sort of reopening this would lead us to phase two in phase two we already have care pods in place at 24 of us at all of our sites and the second part of phase two would be some level of in-person instruction and then phase three of course which is 100 of students back in person i'm back in earlier this month we sent out a survey to families and so as you can see here one of the questions here was please indicate your instructional preference for the remainder of the 2021 school year and in blue you see here about 55 percent of our parents marked i would like my child to return to school through a combination of both in-person and distance learning and then in the red you see that 44 about 40 almost 45 percent would like to remain in distance learning so out of this survey there were we received 360 responses which represents roughly 34 percent of our arisd students and please note that the families that were were told that if they prefer distance learning they did not need to respond uh we also sent out um a teacher survey and one of the questions was if you have been vaccinated or planned to get vaccinated or you think you are likely to get vaccinated would you be willing to return in person um the survey was done in february we received 471 responses which represents roughly 93 uh percent of our arius d certificated staff you see that 21 uh marked yes uh about 15 marked probably 21 were neutral and and as you can see the rest of the slide um not likely and no so at this point i'd like to turn it over to barbara campbell who's going to share the next area on in-person targeted instruction barbara i'm here good evening board president board members and dr bauer i'm going to share a little bit of information around our um our instructional program and the structures that we have in place right now and what plan is for phase two go ahead next slide here you see the instructional components that are in place for the 2020-2021 school year teachers and students start the day off with a morning meeting with a focus on sel and check in with students on their well-being the the day transitions into a combination of small group and large group instruction in grade level standards daily students daily students have asynchronous instruction as part of their day this is this incorporates additional practice on content that they've learned that day review projects grade level standard specific work and some work on additional technology platforms at their own pace and at the bottom you see our last the last tag is in person instruction where as in ab and sb 86 it is um definitely in-person instruction with a focus on common core state standards and support for english language learners next slide please in phase 2b we're go we're looking at continuing distance learning um again distance learning the teachers use a variety of instructional tools as you can see here they they conduct again classes whole group small group one-on-one tutoring if needed there's an eld component either through designated time or integrated supports we have diagnostic assessments to measure growth for the students and that happens on a daily basis monday through friday and then fri monday through thursday and then fridays is an asynchronous day for teachers to be able to pull small groups and work in and targeted instruction next slide the other part of phase 2b is the in-person instruction in-person instruction will be provided for families that have opted in for in-person instruction with the following highlights we're going to again it'll be with a certificated teacher it'll be aligned to common core state standards we will be keeping cohorts 10 to 12 students as established in distancing requirements and also we will continue to address social emotional needs of our students because all these transitions for them have been very difficult and a portion of the school day will include this in person and again a lot of this depends on the number of families that have chosen to participate and also the number of teachers that have signed up go ahead right in phase 2a which was right where we are right now is the care pods we have care pods in every school we're serving up to 450 students some schools have two or three care pods and this is daily instructional support that we provide students that are in that are a high need and need to have accessibility and support go ahead these care pods and our after-school programs are working together the we continue to support distance learning with our after school providers they support our foster youth our migrant our els our tkk they support by doing pushing into the teachers classrooms small group instruction uh doing breakout rooms doing mindful activities so our after-school providers have really um stepped up and helped us out with the instruction and supporting the instruction that's happening in the classroom and supporting our teachers next slide in addition we have some additional supports that we have put in place that support our unhoused families our foster youth and migrant education and this just gives you an idea of what are some of those programs that and supports that we put in place to help them and the contact number if there is anybody out there still needing some of that support through our state and federal department and our student services and i'm going to hand it off to anthony colonna from our special ed department thank you so i'm anthony colon and i'm the director of special education just wanted to take a few moments to share some of the things uh that we're doing in special ed has we are currently on distance learning we're continuing to work with our families to develop distance learning plans that support all our students our staff utilize various uh platforms that meet the different student needs and even though we aren't all on a site together we still collaborate regularly with our special our general ed colleagues to create programs that help our students to progress i also want to say that we have been back in person working with students for months completing assessments um as part of the special ed continuum of services next slide we also have a care pod in which we do transport students and during a regular school year we transport over 258 special education students to our different sites we've continued that as part of our care pods putting in safety measures while students are on bus there's buses they're spaced out to the greatest extent possible we transport in stable cohorts so students come together go to class together and they're all in the same class all on the same bus we really work with our students to wear their face coverings unless they're exempted which the cd cde has guidelines on which students are exempted because we know not all students can tolerate face masks but all adults are masked our bus drivers use all recommended hygiene measures when coming into contact with students and at least nightly and following any exposure buses are completely cleaned and disinfected and as i said for the past six weeks or so we've been transporting students safely to our sites so we're excited for that to continue thank you mr kelowna i'm theresa smith the director of human resources in this section health and safety protocols will be reviewed i will begin by reviewing some uh cur information regarding current orders and required plans next slide this is a screenshot of the current health order which deems santa clara county to be in the red tier as of march 2nd 2021 next slide as part of the reopening requirements for schools a covid19 safety plan must be completed it consists of two parts the cal osha prevention plan or cpp which is required of all california employers as well as the school guidance checklist which goes over school-related safety protocols both are on our district website now i will turn it over to miss motijano from shepherd middle school good evening board president trustees dr bauer i am excited to share about our alum rock school site's readiness for reopening i'm jackie montejano principal at shepherd and in accordance with the school guidance checklist physical safety precautions and protocols are in place we are ready to maximize distancing and manage student cohorts while the expectation is that students come prepared daily with their own water bottle and protective face mask we do have supplies to support students as needed we are set up for personal hygiene and sanitation stations as well as routine sanitization of all physical spaces next slide please checklists assure alum classroom readiness making that list in accordance with california public health department is air purifiers desks six feet apart and sneeze guards we have posted signage and merv filters have been installed where compatible next slide the next part of our successful receipt of students is our required standard health check where parents will need to complete a daily health screener before students arrive to school additionally students excuse me additionally staff will perform visual wellness screening of all the students as they receive the student and confirm that the guardian has completed the daily health screener next what that looks like in our system is a daily self screening through parent square these are some snapshots of screens parents will encounter the symptoms screener is available in all three languages and again it must be submitted prior to students arrival on campus next you see here that the first step of arrival is verification of the student of that submitted screener as soon as students are dropped off in the designated drop-off zone staff will verify the submission at dismissal supervising staff monitor safety protocols at the pickup zone i will now turn it over ms norma flores who will share the district level supports in place for a safe return good evening board president board of trustees dr barton alum rock community and just an apology in advance if you happen to hear the family mascots okay um in terms of the safety signages that we're going to be having at all our school sites you can see that we created one that sent spanish english and vietnamese that will be in every single classroom at our school sites and like jackie was saying there is a protocol of a daily health check uh we want to make sure that students and staff are wearing masks also the messaging to our families that no visitors will be allowed on the school sites um we will be maintaining the six feet and also all areas will be disinfected daily next slide this is also a protocol that we will be messaging to families one is a protocol if kids are having symptoms at home and what steps need to be taken and reporting uh that to the school site next slide this is another protocol but this is when kids are at school and they're developing symptoms so we also have a protocol on what would take place as far as communicating to families and letting them know that they have to pick up kids if they display any type of symptoms at school next slide and again a daily reminder to all our kids uh to wash their hands 20 seconds frequently throughout the day next slide also a daily reminder to kids we will be having a signage throughout the school site um that they have to be wearing a face covering daily this is for all students and for all staff on our school sites next slide and i think this is goes to director denise mendes thank you thank you miss flores good evening board president and trustee superintendent dr bauer my name is denise mendes director of child nutrition services and our child nutrition services team is prepared to offer breakfast lunch and supper to every student via a grab-and-go style where all meals are pre-packaged and safe to handle students on site will have the opportunity to eat meals in the classroom outdoors or receive meals to take home for the following day we will continue to distribute meals to students who are 100 distant learning and children 18 and younger from our current 11 meal distribution locations an update will be provided later in the month with more information regarding dates and times of service all meals will be free to students and children 18 and younger meals will be provided for all days of the week including weekends and holidays our team is driven to serve nutritious meals and dedicated to adhere to all public health state and federal regulations to ensure that the safety of our students and staff is our priority i'm now going back and handing it over to miss flores thank you okay now i would like to give you some information in regards to our sel programming that we have at the district next slide so we want to be able to message our families that we have um a very robust sel program and i actually would like to recognize uh dr um aimee amazon and um dr artegas for being proactive on getting these type of services to our kids and families next slide we currently are still actively working with our community partners in terms of referring any kids or families to uplift bill wilson and crisis lines next slide again we have a resource page where families would be able to click on links and be referred to community resources in our county next slide please also we still have um full-time counselors at all our middle schools and this happens just to be a directory of the ones assigned to our school sites next next slide again these are our uh our our counselors at our middle school sites a continuous of the uh directory next slide again if if there is um any questions or wanting to know more about the counseling that's available at other all our school sites um we have counselor interns at our elementary school sites as well uh that's being funded by behavioral health of santa clara county so we do have coverage at all our schools for um supporting our kids and our families next slide also we have our schooling services coordinators that are now serving quadrants throughout our district as you can see here we have four quadrants which is travis painter hubbard and cureton next slide and this is the contact information for our schooling services coordinators and the schools that they're assigned to to service our families next slide and i think that's the end of our presentation well just to add i just wanted to share with the rest of the group this is uh rene sanchez uh assistant superintendent of instruction uh what you're seeing in your screen are two resource guides that we put together for our families as well as our general reopening handbook we will make these available in our website there's a lot more detail that what you've seen today outlining procedures and protocols expectations for students and families how to respond to different situations how we address meal services all of those pieces that you saw here this is outlined in a lot more detail in our reopening handbook as well as the handbook um that we're going to be sharing with parents just general procedures that we're expecting how to work with their students at home how to prepare them for coming back to school i can't reiterate enough the tremendous work that has gone into this from the first day of school this has been a tremendous team and you saw a few individuals that have been part of this but this has collectively been an effort by the entire alum rock family um we've done a tremendous job in getting things ready uh for reopening so we're excited about this new chapter we're excited about uh seeing our students back at school um and with that i will conclude this next slide please questions or comments thank you so much um dr bauer um was there anything else on this before we open it up no this is the presentation for the board if the board has any specific questions regarding the plan i think the staff is ready to respond to those questions if that is the will of the board at this at this time okay um i know that we um i guess we'll go ahead and open it up for public comment uh mr moran if you can let us know if we have any hands raised at this time so we can go ahead and open it up uh yes we do currently we have two the first person is maria carrasco okay maria welcome as soon as you begin speaking the clock will begin i accidentally hit the button sorry no worries thank you so much miss carrasco mr moran you said there was two do we have somebody else uh yes we do we have somebody by the name of char okay um char welcome as soon as you begin speaking the timer will begin hannah hernandez can you guys hear me yes okay my daughter hannah hernandez um is a student currently at uh shepherd middle school and um although we're really excited that the school is will be opening up i'm um i'm just wondering if there are any concerns about the homeless encampment that is there on rough and ready and if if we if there's anything that we have thought about doing um in terms of keeping the kids safe safe as they're walking to and from school was that it mister yeah that was that was it thank you so much for your comment um and i just want to highlight our next agenda item on the on our agenda for today we'll be speaking about that um this particular item uh so thank you for your question and uh mr moran do we have any others yes we do um we have uh looks like maria carrasco is back on uh we have several four other hands that just came up okay if we can go ahead and who do we have next we have maria carrasco miss carrasco welcome back as soon as you begin speaking the timer will begin you know what it keeps going up i don't know why i'll figure it out sorry about that no oh my worries okay the next person we have is delia avellante okay uh welcome as soon as you begin speaking that timer will begin okay sorry i totally forgot my question no worries come back if you remember it please okay carlos next person next person is kari gonzalez welcome katie as soon as you begin speaking the timer will begin if you could please uh unmute yourself okay now can you hear me yes okay welcome okay um just a quick question i hear all of the plans behind it but do we have an actual start date um and i apologize we're not allowed to have back and forth but um i don't know dr brower do you want to i wanted to make a recommendation to the board uh for the board to consider it and so then the public can speak to it okay it's okay with you board president so that everybody will see so if you please put just a pause on public comment that will answer perhaps some of the questions that the parents and the public has and i'm gonna ask to help me uh pre uh uh post my recommendation to the board for your consideration and then uh before i do this uh uh mr ruiz would you please talk to the public about moving from red tear to orange tear yes can you hear me yes okay uh so i i did want to inform the board and the public that there was a an important and significant development today uh in santa clara county and so uh today late yesterday early today the state moved santa clara county into the orange tier and per the state's direction on this and this is available on the on the state websites schools may now reopen fully for in-person instruction and per the state local school officials such as this board will decide whether and when that will occur and again that this is a new development that just happened today and just uh was released onto the state covid websites thank you and so i would like for the board to consider the recommendation that beginning the week of april 12th of 2021 alum rock union elementary school district district to reopen up to open up great levels pre-k through eighth on a face basis to provide in-person instruction for students who have elected to opt-in to returning to in-person instruction in our district schools so that is for the recommendation the recommendation that i have before the board for tonight um and if the board so desires um to consider the motion then then this the public has now some information some specific information about the reopening of the schools okay i know that um we had already made a motion um without that information so i mean we can go back to that before we go back to public comment to ensure that um i think trustee chavez you made that motion if you're okay with this specific amendment or if you have any thoughts around that and i believe you second karina i did second my only question around this is um i know that there was already uh something that went out to ask parents whoever opted and opted out um is does this just allow for them does it allow for any parents to change their mind um i just want to these will not allow for parents to change their mind atrocita i guess my only thing as a parent you know things change day to day especially in our communities um [Music] and i'm i i guess i i wouldn't want to just close it to just those you know and it might not change but if we just keep it as to beginning the week of april 12 2021 arua est will open up grade levels pre-k to eight on a faced basis to provide in person instruction for students i don't know i guess uh i want to be able to you know be to allow for those of you know parents that circumstance circumstances changed since the last time they filled out that survey and there might not be any i just don't want to like have a card cut off is my um you know what i'm getting caught up in on this well we we is it okay if i respond for president because i know this is this is a very difficult decision and i understand that but in order for us to provide the programming that needs to happen in terms of that face return we don't need to have the number of children whose parents have already made that decision and so it will be it will it it will delay our uh readiness for us to be read you know to have um everything that we have planned including you know ppe and some sanitizer and sneeze guards and all of that have been purchased knowing that we were we had already a cut-off date and so we want to make sure that we provide the best in the safest environment parents were told you know there was a cut-off date and i'm just trying to be fair to the process and to be a bit our ability to be able to open within a reasonable amount of time instead of continuously delaying the time i'm wondering if there's any way that we can put in a clause like um you know an emergency no purpose or um because i understand you know preparing us for the staff and i get it you know we want to make sure that we buy enough and we have enough space and all of that so i get that um so i'm not you know trying to have everybody change their mind you know thousands but i'm just thinking of the few who might you know um the exceptions like the emergencies whether you know and i understand what you're saying i'm just thinking that everybody's emergency is gonna be their own emergency yeah right and so it's gonna be difficult to set up a criteria of this is an emergency and this is not an emergency and then and i yeah no i understand i also trust staff that um as staff you know speaking of social emotional that will step in and we'll allow for those situations that are emergencies so you know we'll take those on [Music] you know as they come in hopefully none right but i also know that the community that we serve um and i also know our staff are willing to to also work with those families in different ways so i think just being mindful of those things right especially during this pandemic going from one tier to the next um you know people losing jobs people gaining jobs and things changing so um okay so sounds good we'll go ahead and um accept that trustee chavez and myself who's second uh we'll go ahead and go back to public comment i do see trustee i don't know uh waving your hand no worries i just want to make sure that we get the timer back on because we did interrupt our uh public comment which is very important and we apologize for that and mr trustee because we have something quickly yeah i just have a question so there was a a change i want to know what the amendment was to the initial um motion on the floor and i'm not clear what that is just said um that she motioned to open schools and the amendment were the specifics that dr bauer just gave with the detailed dates so is the is the amendment on the floor currently then everything that dr bauer said prior to your comments about the emergency right what you saw on the on the screen is though uh what we will be voting on today okay so then you need to see that again i didn't i didn't see it i have that minimized on my screen okay let's go ahead and put it back on the board dr bauer if you can put it on sorry about that thank you oh hold on i get it so the recommendation beginning the week of april 12 2021 a-r-u-e-s-d will open up grade levels pre-k to eight on a face basis to provide in-person instruction for students who have elected to opt-in to return to in-person instruction for district schools okay so i just wanted to clarify if that was the motion or if it included the other comments that you have no this is a motion okay um but before i accepted it i had i wanted to clarify some of those things so we'll go back to public comment and then we'll come back to uh the comments by the border questions so we apologize for the interruption and we were on um mr moran if we can bring it back bring back our the person we had on and i don't want to get the name wrong i'm hoping you had the name so i have two uh other people are you you're referring to the previous speaker yes because we interrupted her comment at like one minute and 23 seconds maybe buddy ben do you remember i think that was karina or gonzalez see if we can bring back gotti if she has any other uh anything else to add to her comment at one minute and 23 seconds okay uh miss gonzalez uh you have permission to speak now okay i think the conversation that just happened answered my question thank you great thank you so much uh mr moran the next person um also as you're bringing up the next person and unmuting them i'm just being mindful that our meeting was scheduled to go to 8 30 but there we have um another also important item on the agenda so most likely we will go um longer than 8 30.
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