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it took them a little while to go through that as you can imagine going through 54 different plans took them a little while to go through it and get back to us a couple of emails couple of qualifications to make sure that we're all on the same page um in the language we are required to award the funds that's not to be confused with obligated and spent in contract and all that stuff but award the funds no later than april 15 2021. for year two that is january of 2022 uh and right now it's just a january date that's just thrown out there there's no guidance beyond january um and that ties back to the the uh award period and then they have the funds for year one have to be obligated by september 30th 2022. so we've got some time um we had some time not only to award them but then also some time for those ones to be obligated and then for the year two funds they need to be obligated no later than september 2023.

what is the plaque below her that's on her face that really changed a lot of my thoughts give me your card give me your pour give your humble message yearning to breathe free that is what's supposed to happen here in america thank you for your time and your patience to hear my complaint thank you mr bryant so with added meaning if you might stand if you are able to offer the pledge beliefs of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right i apologize i didn't pay attention is kathy with us yes he's not okay all right so six of the seven of us are here that counts for quorum mr vernon thank you so much so we affirm the mission and the vision of our school corporation this is what leads our decision making by each and every meeting and also listed behind us are our high expectation objectives again here listed and those that guide the decisions that we make here each evening so we have much to celebrate this evening so i will start with miss heine to hear and learn about our 2021 teacher of the year nominations thank you dr shed second annual so different atmosphere this year though we can't have everybody all together in one place so we asked all of our teacher of the year nominees to join us virtually i think we have a video that we're going to play first and then i would like to introduce each one of them to you all [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so thanks to josh burnett who went out and recorded all those things teachers didn't know we were coming that day and so you just saw what you saw when we got there so proud of all of them they do a great job every every day of every year and lots of veteran teachers up here um so i just like to go through and name them all and dr roberts you're going to have to be the one that's waving to them okay they may have members of their family with them they may have their pets with them so we'll just see what we see uh and i'm doing this in alphabetical order so angie kirkham teaches fourth grade at clifty creek angie williams thank you lauren pearson fourth grade at csa fondrea delaney george fifth grade at csa lincoln jennifer justice fourth grade at matt healthy dana thompson fourth grade at parkside she was on there earlier okay uh taylor shark second grade at richards brittany boseman kindergarten at rock creek ally simpson third grade at schmidt susan bowie they're great at smith kristen davis kindergarten at southside carolyn bell third grade at taylorsville carla yudy social studies central lily hamilton science at northside matt morrell special ed at csa new tech stacey galb chemistry at north angie boyer math and mcdowell jessica anderson pre-k at johnson for pre-k but she's out of rock creek and lastly tony podwarf social studies at east and tony was with us for 18 years so thank all of you for your service and i have little gifts that i will be bringing around to your classroom here in the next few days so i thank you all for joining us it wasn't the same as last year where we had all of you here and all the families in the big celebration but i want you to know that you're appreciated just as much if not more this has been a challenging year so we appreciate all you've done thank you congratulations to each of you and thank you so much your efforts this year in particular have been just nothing short of awesome we appreciate everything you're doing for the children of our school corporation thank you so much teresa would you mind just maybe explaining a little bit more about how this next process will go so we have our our winners from each of our building that are being recognized this evening and so this is a process we put in place to then identify a bcsc teacher of the year so so as dr roberts said this process usually begins in january and nominations the information about nominating folks is out sent out through our social media and through the schools anybody can nominate a teacher and then the building teams get together and choose their building nominee for the district opportunity so these 18 folks will now have an opportunity to join us with their nominations themselves so now becomes part partly their responsibility and they can opt out of this process but they will take the second step which is a little more uh precise and a little more writing so tomorrow you'll be getting an email from me explaining that process like i said they can opt out if they choose not to go further but then we have a committee that will meet in may and we will choose a district nominee for teacher appear so like i said you'll get you'll get um information for me tomorrow from that point then the person that is nominated as as the district representative for teacher of the year works all year to prepare their their paperwork for the state teacher of the year nomination so every step along the way builds to get to that point and mindy summers was last year's teacher of the year and she has worked diligently and we have her um portfolio almost ready for the state competition and that has to be turned in by july so i'm just reiterating what the sign said in regards to this process is that there are besides what we're doing here locally in our own school corporation there are other awards that other entities give out in regards to teachers of the year including the indiana department of education whenever we see those awards being given to somebody else we wonder why shouldn't the bcsc teacher be receiving those awards so this process was put into place to work our way toward that to ensure that each year we have somebody from bcsc that went through the steps that are necessary they're required by those other entities to have an application in because we don't think there's anybody else besides the bcsc teachers that should be giving getting those awards so hopefully uh you all will participate in that and we'll help guide you through that process of getting some information submitted but we will choose a corporation person and then keep working through that so we can submit names to those other award-winning organizations who award teachers of the year one more thing dr evers caroline bell's on here caroline can't read them all she was not in the video and so we will get that fixed and get her in the video and to go forward okay thank you thank you all so much and you don't have to stay any longer you're free to enjoy yourself if you wish all right miss heine thank you and thank you to all of those in each of the buildings that facilitate this process and we're very excited for all those who've been nominated at each of their buildings and recognized by their peers that's very special to be recognized by your peers all right we get to move on for more excitement um our columbus north gymnastics i'm going to turn to mr brian lewis and mrs betsy warhol please okay um so we had the state beam champion this year miss emily moore has worked exceptionally hard all season to become the top theme champion she set a new school record in beam this year with a 9.8 and now has all but one of our school records under her belt so we finished our season undefeated all the way through sectionals regionals we came in second and then we took a sixth place win at state and um just look forward to celebrating emily and another exceptional year well thanks for having us um i just want to reiterate what bessie said so i had the opportunity obviously this is my first year and having an opportunity to to watch gymnastics move forward and also having a new coach has been very exciting for me i have a a seven-year-old daughter my daughter loves gymnastics so i became it became personal to me because my daughter would go up on surnames to actually watch them practice and emily was one of her favorite gymnasts so i'm kind of biased when he when he comes to her but overall our girls did an excellent job throughout the year and it clearly showed because we made it to state had opportunities my first time going up to our state and there were some really great teams and i would say that our girls competed at a very high level excellent thank you so very much anything that you would like to add okay we'd just like to congratulate you on an outstanding season and so besides being a champion on the main you also met in other events correct i think three total include me is that four four five in terms of your recognition congratulations you guys can come up if you want to take pictures up here you can come up okay is yeah [Music] actually when you get into the lift you i can't even walk before a straight line emily what's your favorite event probably beans probably she's crazy really very good congratulations all right i don't think this will top emily but we're equally excited to hear about our world language curricula so i'm i'm so glad to meet all of you but you'll have to have more names but i don't have a name and a face so marcia chief laura outlet brittany sullivan and corey williams thank you all very much for being here uh thank you we are here to talk about the secondary world language resource adoption the process that we just wrapped up started back in january and then the resources that we are looking at would be to take place starting in the fall so we headed into our resource adoption with a couple of goals in mind adoption with a couple of goals in mind first of all we know that we wanted to on the front end provide some professional development for our teachers ensuring that we were intentional about connecting udl and culturally responsive teaching to keep that in the forefront of our minds as we're moving forward with our adoption and to complete that goal we used we were heavy with the udl guidelines being sure that we brought the brought those up and made intentional connections as well as the extended metaphor of windows mirrors and sliding glass doors which corey will tell you more about on the next slide in addition to that goal after we were done with professional development what we really needed to do was just dig into the resources and begin evaluating what we had and ensuring that our teachers had a wide variety to choose from so we utilized the rubric that's already been created by committees in the past to look at a wide variety of vendor sessions we were able to utilize the hybrid wednesday for a lot of a lot of this so that we could watch a lot of vendor sessions to be able to make sure we had the right choice now a little bit about our timeline okay so we started in january and normally this is a process that would have taken the whole calendar year but um this year we began in january um once we were backing kind of on the hybrid schedule for me learning so we started with two days of professional development and so our first session we established our norms we had some reflection on our current resources and how well they aligned to the udl framework we had some shared learning opportunities around the seven aspects of culturally responsive teaching um which again is where we continue to tie in um from our diverse curriculum committee's work around windows mirrors and sliding glass doors it's an article a protocol and then really looking at how it could be used to evaluate resources so we really want to make sure what resources we're selecting and we'll make sure that they provide a window for our students into other cultures and other backgrounds and perspectives but also provide a mirror so that every student in our classroom sees themselves somewhere in their curriculum materials and then wherever we can find opportunities for students actually then through those sliding bus stores step into other cultures and experiences and then we worked on making sure everyone had a shared understanding of the rubric which is based entirely around the udl guidelines and then our second day we worked on a futures protocol where we really projected ourselves six years in the future when we're doing this again and where do we want to be then and how can we get to that point we worked on some technology and integrations information and then really just kind of addressed any remaining questions and concerns the teachers had picking up in february now that we had front ended with professional development it was time for us to move on into vendor sessions so we spent the first couple of weeks of february hearing from a lot of vendors so obviously we have several languages to represent we wanted to ensure that they all had decent choices so we had a lot of vendor sessions picking up after the first two weeks we moved into a check-in meeting with all of our teachers just to make sure that they didn't have any last-minute questions that they needed us to answer from the vendors before they made their selections and then we met with the bookstore managers at the two high schools and the two middle schools to make sure that we hadn't forgotten anything that we were providing them with all the information that they needed and checked it wanted to do a check-in with them that brings us to the week of march 1st where our teachers made their final evaluation had a chance to talk with each other and choose their final selection which they forwarded to us and we forwarded it to the bookstore these were our committee members so britney coomer who's also here our coordinator of instructional technology laura who's the ideal facilitator for the middle schools and myself the udl facilitator for the high schools along with we have two of our department coordinators here with us tonight um and then the two other middle school coordinators and then we were really lucky in this new kind of way that our book adoptions with this year and that we were able to really incorporate every single teacher in the department and because all of our sessions were virtual we were able to record them so even if a teacher couldn't make it live live in our zoom and google me meetings and they could watch the recording then on their own time so every teacher in the department at all four or five because new tech was on here as well secondary schools was able to participate so now with some of our decisions i'm going to speak for the two middle schools so for north side and central they came to a consensus that they would like to switch to the company's sabas formerly pearson they're going to use the book called altenzikos for levels one and two which are the two levels at the middle school the teachers are requesting to have a class set of textbooks in instead of one textbook for every child just one class set to have for the whole day and then digital access for all so with all of that the course fee is very close to what it was in the previous years with a minimal increase hi i'm marcia cheek i'm the department coordinator at columbus north high school and so being the middle school we we all came to agreement that we really liked the sabes altendico now we have to go back to that march 1st deadline where we had our choice picked out and i get a nice email from corey with lots of first two things we're really gonna spend the third item on the email was oh by the way um we can't even think hmh we can't even think of mcgraw-hill um they're gonna dismantle their spanish program in three years and so that we would have their books but we wouldn't have their own so that was our first choice and then our second choice who would and they were neck and neck all along but then we had some issues with chromebooks in this program the digital program on chromebooks but luckily corey and brittany were able to work that out and we're good so you know at north high school we were thinking about what's our end game and we do offer ap spanish and so as we were looking at these texts thinking of okay what texts are going to get us there to help us get these kids to that ap ap level and and they just align so greatly and one thing we've learned over this past year is we need a really strong digital component um um so but with our upper levels four and five we we chose a different series only because the authentico level um that it was not the the level four and five was their old textbook series and they had not updated was still called reality that is and the wayside is um once again it offers a digital platform and the alignment with ap curriculum it was just it was very valuable and i'm sticking with my ap they've updated it but with the vista higher learning and yes there is an increase in cost and they come with an ap prep book that is just so beneficial for the students i don't know if you've been on the college board website the ap classroom but it is a nightmare to navigate for teachers and for my students who are digital natives so um the cost is for the ap prep book and we've had such good success with our ap program that this will be a very valuable asset all right and i'm brady sullivan i'm the coordinator at columbus east high school and so um at columbus east we decided to go with somos for levels one through three um this program is based on comprehensible input strategies and we have some expert teachers at our school and and that using those strategies and felt like that the needs of our of our students and our teachers and our program um a little bit better and then huegas which is kind of the upper level of that for levels four through six we'll also have the garbanzo digital access for all levels which goes coordinates with the solmos and fuegas as well as some other online resources for all levels and also built in some fluency readers um to purchase for each of those levels and to be able to do that every few years get new ones so that as you know we have different students and different needs and different um just different things you know different current events that we can choose new new novels that are relevant to the students through over these next six years and next we have the new tech so for their spanish program and they have one teacher who covers levels one through two and another one for three and four so for one and two they're going with the somos and garbanzo similar to east and then level three and four they're doing the voices digital which is a fantastic digital platform with some great authentic texts and they also offer a world language class that actually has levels one through three german and french and one class and so for that class the german is going with the klett portfolio which we'll also see aligns with what german at north and east is doing in their upper levels and then the french also aligns with what is happening at north and east the carnegie program and they actually had a sizable decrease in their course fee there with these materials but again a strong online platform with each of these programs as well along with books in the classroom for the students and for french at both middle schools and high schools they'll be using the carnegie series as well um class sets of textbooks and digital access for all and again this is for levels one through five and all of the schools and then for german our german teacher is shared between north and east for the for the lower level she is adding some fluency matter german readers which really strengthen um to the current curriculum that they use now for the upper level she does teach acp dual credit and so i'm sorry for putting i cannot pronounce german but collect portfolio deutsche i guess i do everything with a spanish accent but three important since it is a dual credit course of course that has to be accredited with iu and the japanese resources will be changing adventures in japanese for levels one through three again class out of textbooks student workbooks and digital access for all and then with chinese on cengage okay and this was something that was fairly new that this happened she was so excited that they had asian languages are so they don't have very many choices and so this came in at the last minute and so um it will be used levels one through six which would be ap and once again text fix textbooks and workbooks and um a very a digital interactive site she said it was amazing to help also practice with the character writing also um and then the course fee there's a little bit of an increase and then finally enl is offered as a world language credit at columbus east and in the past we've just kind of used a variety of our own resources and um this year we were able to adopt um there's you know just like the world the asian languages we're seeing more and more good you know better quality resources we're starting to see that with esl as well and so this is the vervosis curriculum which is all digital and it's customizable and i'm really excited about being able to have a curriculum for this class and if you are interested in previewing any of the materials um we did organize all of the vendors through a google doc so that google doc has links to all of the session recordings or links to kind of online access and previews that the teachers had to to view the courses and the materials and so that's through that link or you can contact myself or laura and we do have a lot of physical samples um and kind of other ways to access and preview uh the content and the materials as well so any questions one colleague i do have some questions all right good point thank you you were describing your process in the beginning does every committee go through that process every six years yes yes this is our first time leading that process um but we will be back next week to talk to you about the ela adoption process and it's very similar yes and let's let's say about the digital resources that that you looked at in in contrast to you know book says do you even use printed books anymore i mean i know some people don't so anymore you know they don't use them for notebooks all they use is digital and so when um previewing or kind of talking to the students which a lot of the teachers did when we first started this process and surveying them a lot still wanted one for in the classroom or to be able to check out and take home so that's why most went with class sets because a lot of kids don't want it and aren't going to open it um so we wanted to still be able to provide that option for the students that did want it um or they left their laptop or chromebook at home that day they still have something in the room that they can look at and utilize so it was kind of that in-between option to be able to provide the the class set um without the cost of you know the hundreds of books then that didn't get used i'm not sure what is your um which language do students take i guess what is your highest class number for original spanish visit most of the most of the other languages have one teacher or two teachers and we're at three at east and five four four north and then two at each middle school yeah and our french and german are both split between north and east okay and then you said csa had a french and german class it's one classroom levels one through three german and levels one through three french yeah okay that's all i was just curious just kind of curious very interesting thank you so much there are additional questions um i like the ability that we have these days to to make choices it sounded like um and i want to make sure i've got this right at east at north and at new tech there are actually three different sets of materials based on what the teachers there wanted to use yeah there's there's spanish for example right um yeah i think i agree that it was it's nice that we do have the options you know our goals are the same in each level but there's different ways to to reach that goal and then we've talked there'll be some collaboration you know between the middle schools and the high schools because we do have students that you know take one and two at the middle school and then you know come to green so they'll be using the same curriculum at north but it might be a little bit different at east or csa and so there'll be collaboration you know among the teachers to kind of make sure we're all on the same page and are truly trying to reach the same goals and i wonder too i think dr bill's mentioned six years um of the gospels like 18 names on the on the slide changed a lot how many were here six years ago the materials that you're using i think i think just me and another spanish teacher in my department brittany and i were talking as we walked up here like oh it's been a long time since we did this and a lot of things have changed five to six original six maybe okay and then the other thing that the diversity of materials brings up is the opportunity to as you're going through the process to compare and say well uh i'm really happy with the set that we chose because of xyz maybe another teacher is really happier about ef how can that be documented so that four or five years from now as we're beginning the process again we can or will everything be so different at that i'd be time if there's any textbooks so when we were making our final decisions we did do a spreadsheet where we tried to list pros and cons so i'm thinking we could carry some of that information forward but as you said in six years we're not really sure what this is going to look like and when i think about the last time i was on the english language arts adoption the quality of digital resources has improved a thousand percent so it's hard to say where will be in six years not that something like this would happen but if um if everybody that took ap spanish at north passed their ap exam and nobody that took ap spanish at east passed the rape exam would we say it was because of materials east doesn't offer ap okay now it would be interesting to maybe have some means of collecting data to see you know how how students do with the different resources that was one thing we talked about the futures protocol was you know in the future the teachers really loved the fact that we were able to bring them together from both schools which doesn't happen a lot and so that was something in the futures protocol that came up a lot that was it would be really nice to have this opportunity to continue and to meet and collaborate and share between the buildings like they got to throughout this process and it's also nice i think just the freedom to to recognize that our schools are different and our programs are different our students are different our teachers are different and so to be able to have some freedom and make a decision what was best for our you know for each of our school population our population but our ultimate goal is the same right and i think you mentioned that maybe it was they signed a contract so they would have to honor their thank you very much it's her favorite class she speaks spanish to me and i'm going to assume it's nice things okay because i'm a little rusty but she's a good girl so i'm sure it's all nicely um i did i was a little um surprised that the cost of the programs at the higher levels on spanish was much higher than the other languages and that was a little surprising to me since it is kind of your higher volume option is that because the market can bear it and and they can charge that or is there a real reason that you think the costs are different well 8p across the board tends to cost more any material for the ap and there's also fewer students at each level so really beyond third year a lot of students start to drop out because they have the graduation requirement so there's fewer students in those courses which also we can't order in as much fault which increases the cost and the added component to the ap prep book added to that one this year too do you want to see open educational resources as a possibility in the future at all so we do use a lot of free type obviously we're all over that as much as we can but i'm not sure someone brought up to us about open resource anthologies and when we were poking around they're not there yet but we'll see where they're at in six years i'm just curious in a totally different perspective if uh that we focus on in your goals or udl and culturally responsive teaching are they all there is that something that these various resources have integrated into their materials consistently or so especially we were blown away by how culturally responsive some of the resources were so some really like rose to the top like it wasn't hard if we had five choices two usually were up at the top for us to choose between but i feel very pleased with the udl accessibility features that we see if it wasn't accessible it wouldn't be on our list so i i'm not concerned about our vendors meeting those good qualifications and it was clear in the vendor sessions who kind of knew what they were talking about and the udl rubric we shared with all the vendors up front so they knew the aspects that were essentially if you if you don't have these things we're not going to move forward because you know the video guidelines were really what we were focused on and the culturally responsive aspect how it fits in um and so you could tell um which ones knew what we were looking for and how to demonstrate it and very clearly which ones could not meet those categories no i had every confidence in your alls choices i was curious if the publishing companies are even close all right very good thank you are there other questions i i really enjoyed seeing the names of the people from all the departments that participated in the committee please thank you for us and i wonder who represented esl congratulations very good thank you all very very much thank you thank you just a reminder of the process so appreciate that presentation a lot of great information and a future for me i believe we will actually have those that information for approval so we provide it to you to digest see if you have some questions after and then another board me next board me will ask for your approval english language arts will be covered next time that's a presentation and then the following first one in may it will be up for adoption or approval additionally the presentation will be shared with you tomorrow morning be sent out to action all staff so you can get into this presentation and as was indicated with google docs other information here you can do some additional research on your own if you would like to do that thank you for that so we will hope for the day that we don't have to have a coveted update but we would love to hear that we just might keep it on here for the rest of this year uh getting so familiar with the topic um so just a relatively brief brilliantly based one of your questions um we are in person learning for five days a week with all students grades k through 12.

can you guys all hear me okay all right welcome i can't tell you how thankful i am for all of you to take this time out of your day you all are doing such important work and you're so so busy and i'm honored that you would do this for me and for the students who are watching for the parents who are watching it's really important um so this is our first event of our autism awareness acceptance week for um 2021 and our first event here is a panel discussion with colleagues of mine from different colleges pretty local up to vermont a little out eastern mass way a little bit but um when we thought about what we wanted to include this year we really wanted to include something about what people can expect in at the college level in terms of supports and i really wanted to make sure that i got a range of colleges and i've done that because we've got and you guys will talk about this but we've got uh some standard four years in private some community college some specialty college all of that and i'm just really happy to have that representation at the same time this is only a very tiny option for our students so for people watching just to keep that in mind this is just one two three four five six different options um but there are so many more at the same time this will give you a flavor for how different supports can be in terms of at the high school level versus moving out into the college level where under whole different set there's a different paradigm of how support works and um that's something i want us to start talking about now so let me see i'll just tell you a little bit about who is here and then i'll turn it over one by one and you guys can take five minutes and just discuss how support works at your school and people watching can put comments or questions in the chat and then jessica asks you who is watching she's behind the scenes here and she's watching the chat we'll then pull from that to help us direct the questions okay so on my screen going across we have joy for huerta and she is from springfield technical community college stick and then we have colin caffrey from greenfield community college and then marie trope from holyoke community college also the transition to college and career program and then brittany goodwin from um is it dean yes dean of course and then fern bork from landmark college and then paula koche from curry college so thank you all again and if that order works for you guys just go in that order okay so enjoy them unless you don't want to be first no problem okay all right well thank you again kathy for your willingness to to host this and i think it's just very timely too to get this information out early i think early planning is also really beneficial to all our students just so that they can get on track and and have you know a couple months to acclimate to preparing for college and and just um being as prepared as possible so again i work at springfield technical community college and i'm one of the three counselors in the office of disability services and for students who want to make use of our services the first step is to provide us with their disability documentation so that's often their psycho-educational evaluation from high school sometimes that information is embedded in an iep or 504 but we really want as much information about their learning as possible because that gives us the most information to work from to coordinate accommodations and support services um and certainly if a student has difficulty getting that they often will sign a release and then we can reach out directly you know to the school we also have on our website disability verification forms that's another measure there are forms that students share with their medical provider or therapist to fill out and that information then it's pretty streamlined just so that we know the information um to best determine again accommodation so again the first step is to provide us with documentation and then we'll review it and then reach out to the student and these days we're coordinating um either via phone google me zoom um and we're eager for the day when that can be in person but until then you know we're doing our best to have those intake appointments which are a very big piece of the process where we have the opportunity to talk with the student um what's been helpful them you know to them in the past how we can support them at stcc and then we talk about specific you know accommodations maybe some things that they had in high school that um we can still offer and then some things might be a little bit different they're used to having an iep or a 504 and when they come to stcc we use an accommodation plan and that's a document that after we discuss what types of accommodations may be helpful to them i'll just use you know time and a half for testing as an example um we felt that plan together and then it submitted to the professors so that they are aware of the student's accommodation needs uh for the semester ahead and at stcc we asked that students felt that paperwork each semester just the nature of their classes change and their needs may change um so that's kind of the formal piece of of accommodations but then our office really is is a lot more than that um and it comes down um just to having a relationship with the students so that they can keep us informed um because there are a lot of additional supports available to all students we have a variety of different tutor centers writing centers you know we want students to be connected with their professors they have office hours we also have coaching services academic coaching we have assistive technology um so really it's it's really you know the student provides the documentation we meet with them and then we really encourage ongoing um meetings again whether it's phone email just because the more we can stay connected i think the better we can keep them in contact with the resources but we do follow their lead you know it's a different environment from high school and so i really encourage students to meet with me weekly um especially as they're settling in and then certainly you know always available via phone or email um especially these days um but really that's kind of the the nutshell version of of registering with our office and being connected and i'm sure as our talk continues you know we'll plug in some other details but but that's the gist for now thank you joy yeah you really covered a lot and i'm sure a lot of these guys have similar i know have similar setups so you know you don't don't feel the need to repeat everything that joy did but you could underline certain aspects of it or add different pieces that apply to you thank you so much so hello i'm colleen caffrey i'm the coordinator of disability services at greenfield community college when kathy first told me i had five minutes to talk i thought oh my gosh how am i gonna fill five minutes and then i started writing some notes so forgive me for referring to them and just hope i don't go over so just some general information about gcc we're one of the smallest community colleges in massachusetts um with under 2 500 students maybe even under 2000 right now with the enrollment declines due to covet taking credit courses and most of those students are part-time for the 2019-2020 academic year my office sold just under 400 students 399 students which is about 16 of our student body and our office the disability office of disability services is part of the wellness center at gcc which also includes counseling services so i think that at gcc's small size is an asset for students with disability um the faculty and the staff all know each other so collaborating to provide support for students is pretty seamless in addition to disability services like what joy described we have a very robust peer tutoring service which also includes academic counseling and my office has a strong relationship with that group counseling which i mentioned earlier the women's resource center which actually serves students of any gender identity despite the name the veterans center academic advising food pantry and various studios in different academic areas such as the math studio where students can work one-on-one with faculty members just to give you an idea of some of the services that are also available to support students my office also includes carol who is our administrative assistant extraordinaire and usually the first face that students meet um when they contact the wellness center and cindy kunz who is a learning specialist and works uh 30 hours a week um so i meet with students and cindy also with disabilities one-on-one to talk about the challenges that they experience and to develop what we call academic agreements similar to joy's academic plans um this is how the process usually goes a student contacts our office we ask them to fill out our intake form to find out a little more about them and they submit any documentation they have or we also can help them obtain that documentation from their school so that they can send it directly to us um and then we schedule a meeting to talk about their needs um we also have been meeting mostly on zoom some phone and some google meet but um anxious to get back to meeting face-to-face with folks so the most common diagnosis of students that i see is adhd followed by anxiety often both together as of last october we had 22 students who identified as being on the autism spectrum and the most common accommodations are usually for testing extra time testing in a distraction-reduced environment but the accommodations aren't formulaic and and they depend on what each individual student needs um some accommodations that i've created specifically for students on the spectrum include like having access in class to stress reducing objects or doing hand work um getting support integrating into working with other students either in pairs or groups and taking breaks whenever they need to for like overexposure to sensory stimulations and things like that and gcc has a neurodiversity club which was started several years ago by a student on the spectrum who is actually now a phd student at umass in sociology but it's open to anybody who identifies as neurodiverse or not neurotypical last fall the neurodiversity club sponsored an event with a panel of students on the autism spectrum and we typically have an annual event to educate the campus committee about autism always featuring the voices of our students on the autism spectrum thanks for having me yeah thank you colleen that's really exciting stuff uh marie are you feeling ready yeah i am i love this circle on top of my head i keep trying to move one way or the other but i'm you know how the left right is different sometimes on the screen i'm just going to leave it there it's a nice nice little ornament for them it looks like one of those hats you know those small yeah exactly exactly so i'm coming to you from holyoke community college specifically a program called transition to college and careers and that is a program for adult students so that means young adults just out of high school 18 years old or or so um but it all it means adults of all ages and while our program is not specifically designed for students on the autism spectrum we find that every year we have a few students who are on the spectrum and do very well with the support in a program so what i want to say first is that transition to college and careers is a free program it's paid for by a grant so that's one nice thing about it and the whole point is to prepare students to be successful so we're offering career and educational advising we're trying to strengthen the reading math and writing foundational skills and then helping you to navigate the college in we have daytime and evening classes and right now of course we're fully remote but in the fall we plan to be you know partly in person partly hybrid and and and also have online courses so we we want to maintain the flexibility that the pandemic has kind of thrust upon us but um we know that many of our students benefit from face-to-face classes and many other students prefer fully online we have classes for fall and spring and and we also have a shorter program in the summer to help prepare for the fall um the only uh the only i guess requirement is is that you have your high school credential diploma or ged or high set and that you are um you know in intending to enroll in a degree program or certificate program after you complete transition to college let's see i'm looking at my notes too um we you know we teach things like study skills and computer skills and about the campus culture you know what expectations your uh instructors will have how that's different from high school um you know things that may not um be obvious at first but are really useful um when so we do work so we have an office on our campus called the office of students with disabilities and deaf services we work very closely with them so a student in our program would have an advisor in our program and an advisor in the office for students with disabilities and we also have a neurodiversity club on campus so that's another possibility and um the the model of our class is that um students are taking non-credit versions of credit college classes and then we are um working toward after if they earn a c minus or better we are working to get them credit for prior learning afterwards um so we we have a few departments that have already agreed to that and we're working on expanding that um but that's how we're doing it and that way people can students can really sort of test the waters and feel um a little bit like the risk has to is taken out of it and you can only gain because if you don't do well then there's nothing lost but if you do well and you you make the grade then um you or you can earn credits for that so um i'll talk a little bit about our our intake process we um usually ask folks to do an in-person or a zoom um short meet short meeting with us about 45 minutes and we just um fill out the application with you and have a conversation so we really get to know you and what your what your needs are what your story is where you're coming from let's see uh and then what we do is um we have two advisors who help you through the process their names are irving and krista and i i know kathy has all that information um so happy to answer any questions that you have um at the end if that's how we're doing that yes thank you marie yeah so the audience knows yes i have connections with all of these people um i've had students in each of the three that have spoken already go through their programs or work with them with some great results and i'm really happy with that so i can connect anybody after their questions that come to people's minds later uh brittany hi everyone um so dean college is we're located in franklin massachusetts we have about 1200 students both in undergraduate baccalaureate and associates degrees um i'm gonna focus in an effort to stay within my five minutes i'm gonna focus mostly on the uh arch program today but we do have a lot of the things that folks have already talked about like the accessibility services and tutoring and and all of that we have at dean but i'm going to kind of focus mostly on the arch program which i think is kind of different and unique to dean college um arch serves about um 200 students uh it's about 20 of our student population um we are a comprehensive four fee program uh for students with learning disabilities um and developmental disabilities across the board so we're pretty open in how we define students that um qualify for the program the goal is to taper our support start kind of heavy in the support and taper students to independence as they graduate and be ready career ready when they graduate our program is um a key component of our arts program is our academic coaching each student is assigned an academic coach who they work with one-on-one for the duration of their time in the arts program in the first year they meet with their coach three times a week for an hour for each meeting um that's scheduled like a class so the student goes to the same place same time each week to meet one-on-one um they're really working on executive functioning type of support in those meetings um going into our learning management system together to look at the course requirements the assignments making to-do lists uh review the assignment requirements make sure they understand what they're supposed to be doing those types of things um it's really individualized based on the student needs um the let's see where where am i in my notes um for first-year students the coaches are given a description of kind of what we think the students need based on what we've collected in their application process and then the student also does some advocating too so we don't expect the students to come in a perfect advocate on their first day and we do give them a little bit of a head start but then the student can kind of chime in as well and practice those advocacy skills that hopefully they've been working on um in preparation for college um let's see um for students who may need some support but don't think they need the full arch program um academic coaching is available available for fee um for students who just want kind of an hour or two hours a week of academic coaching and that is something that students can opt into without the full arts program or if they kind of graduate out of the arts program and want to continue with academic coaching that is a possibility for them in addition to academic coaching each art student has a designated arch academic advisor um the success and career advisor for arch all have backgrounds in working with students with disabilities we're located in the morton family learning center which gives us access to collaborate quickly and easily with the academic coaches and with the tutors and with all kind of the general different support people which is really helpful uh we work closely with faculty families coaches um athletic coaches as well uh we do have quite a few athletes in our program and campus resources to help students address concerns quickly and come up with plans to move forward successfully we do have ferpa releases for 100 of our student population in the arch program we don't require it um but that seems to be the way it works out um so we do communicate very frequently with our families and the student is kind of the lead of that communication but we do understand that families have often been a huge part of the advocacy team for students k-12 um and we don't kind of cut them off at the pass when they start in college and um we understand that sometimes having the parents involved is really helpful in term in terms of um moving forward with helping students come up with a success plan um while the arch population is fully integrated into the dean community and the curriculum is not at all modified we do have some specific arch classes that are designed with our population in mind uh the arch courses are core courses that every student has to take but specific arch sections are created in areas that tend to be more difficult for students with learning disabilities so like our core math class our core english writing class our public speaking class those that create some anxiety for our students with learning disabilities we do create art sections for they're taught by somebody who has chosen to teach a room full of students with learning disabilities they work closely with the arts advisors to kind of understand who's in the classroom and what a class might look like that's designed for those particular students uh they're taught multimodally with collaboration from the arch staff um those instructors are ready to pivot quickly when something maybe isn't working in their class i mean they work um quickly to kind of come up with a new plan um things like when they went online this past year uh and a lot of our instructors were putting things putting together discussion boards realizing that that maybe was too much writing in conjunction with the writing uh assignments that they already had planned um allowing students pivoting quickly and allowing students to put things up in video format or in um in um verbal notes or things like that was something that our instructors were really um responsive to right away um finally first year students in the arts program moved to campus three days before the rest of the first year student population for art orientation during this time they participate in programming designed to familiarize them with the physical campus campus resources each other the arch staff we understand it's important for students to be comfortable on campus and aware of their support and comfortable with the people before we expect them to go to all of those things for help on the first day of classes so we spend a lot of time kind of building those relationships with students in those first few days before classes begin and i think that's it for me right now i'll pass it over thank you bernie i look forward to for a time when i might have a student who goes to the program and hearing about how it actually pans out on the ground thank you very much fern well thank you kathy for inviting me to participate today i'm going to talk to you all about landmark college which is a very small private liberal arts college in putney vermont we have only 450 students they hail from all over the country and from 12 different countries as well we have a six to one student to faculty ratio which results in really small classes our average class size is eight to 12 students but what's really different about landmark is that we are an accredited college exclusively for neurodiverse students it is not our curriculum that sets us apart the curriculum is a traditional rigorous liberal arts curriculum what sets us apart is the fact that all of our students identify as neurodiverse landmark is built on the belief that neurodiversity is a strength that new ideas insights ways of viewing the world new ways of viewing the world come from diverse minds our students are likely to think of their learning difference as their superpower at landmark accommodations and support services are embedded into the very way that we teach um into the very fabric and functioning of the college the services are integrated they exist in and out of class the central person in the support system is a student's advisor and from the time students come on campus they meet with their advisor weekly so they really get to know one another no students slip through the cracks together with their advisor students establish their short and long term goals and if they desire executive function coaching all of our advisors are trained coaches in that as well all colleges have an academic support center at landmarks drake center students get one-to-one services and support both in content and in study skills from faculty or trained staff people who are specialists in teaching unique learners there is assistive technology available to all of our students and maybe the most loved support system on campus is our therapy dog program we have nine certified dogs on campus who can be found with their handlers all over the campus and because they actually have office hours students can arrange times to be one-on-one with one of our dogs mental health services i think are an important thing to think about when you're looking at your college options even if you find a perfect fit college can be a stressful experience we find at landmark that sixty percent of our students use the services of one of our counselors at some time during the semester or throughout a semester but i also want to specifically talk about services for students who are on the autism spectrum at landmark it begins as a does a dean with an early orientation students come to campus three days early to get acclimated to the campus to learn how to navigate to get familiar with the social pragmatic staff who are going to be supporting them to uh work with peer mentors to begin to establish relationships in a small safe supportive group we do very very careful roommate matching we are a completely residential campus and we understand how important that is for students so we approach it really analytically and in addition uh every dorm has a residential director who is a professional supported by student residential assistants who are available throughout the night to offer any kinds of support that are needed by our students the program that i get most excited talking about is a program called peers program for the education and enrichment of relational skills it was developed at ucla in the early 2000s by two doctors who wanted an evidenced based program for teaching motivated adolescents and young adults the social skills that will enable them enable you to establish and maintain really strong friendships and also romantic relationships as well so that is a really successful program on our campus our social pragmatics team are all certified peers trainers because of the success of the program which by the way includes meeting one-on-one with a peers coach we have recently developed two uh really great offshoots of the program we have piers dating boot camp which uh was inaugurated this past winter break it was so successful that it isn't an ongoing part of the program now and we have peers to careers to help set you up for success in interviewing in internships and in making uh yourself career ready to pursue the path that um your college studies lead you to i think that the most incredible thing for me about landmark is the community when you get 450 or so students on campus all of whom are neurodiverse all of whom are working on some kind of challenge everybody gets it so it is a welcoming inclusive supportive community nobody is ever on the outside looking in everyone feels that they are an integral part of this very vibrant and dynamic learning community landmark helps students become confident self-aware great self-advocacy practitioners and helps students develop the skills and strategies that are going to serve them not only while they're in college but they're going to draw on for their entire lives and i can speak in a very personal way about the transformative experience that landmark can be for students because my own son aaron graduated with an associate's degree in um and through aaron i was drawn to to this position at the college so again thank you kathy for inviting me uh to participate with you today a pleasure it's always so inspiring what goes on at landmark thank you um paula you want to wrap us up i always tell my student to go first during presentations because they can sit back and relax and here i am going left now let me remember to remind them to do that again well you're being a good sport thank you thank you um fernan was great listening to you i have had students transferred to curry from landmark and they've done very well they transfer in to get their bachelor's degree so thank you for joining today too thank you all i'm happy to be here um from curry college my name is paula kochi and i'm a senior lecturer in the program from advancement of learning pal um if you're not familiar with curry it's a small liberal arts four year liberal arts college in milton mass which is about seven miles from the boston border we have about 2 300 undergraduates 87 majors minors and concentrations five master's degree programs and fifth year master's degree programs in business administration criminal justice and education the pal program is part of the college community and it's a structured support service for students who have learning differences to be admitted into pal the student first applies to curry and applies to the pal program at the same time there's a checklist on the application process to do that the pal program requires that you submit the psycho-educational testing and then we will take a look at the profile of the student based on the psycho-educational testing that was submitted to pal and the application that was submitted into the admissions office at curry college then pal admissions and curry admissions gets together and we talk about the entire profile of the student about 20 of the curry population participates in cal at one point to the other um we do admit students with average to above average intelligence you know they have to be capable of doing the college coursework if your participants take anything away from today it's that colleges will provide accommodations for students but not the modifications they may have received in the high school level that's no longer the law so the pal program is structured and supportive in that once the student is admitted into the pal program and into curry they are matched up with a pal professor who meets with that student at least twice a week and the student remains with the same pal professor throughout their experience in the pal program we meet with them and talk about their their psycho-educational testing we actually review that with them and talk about their strengths um and how to utilize their strengths to overcome any areas of concern we go over their college course work based on the needs of each student whether that's study strategies time management organization of materials just navigating the whole process of receiving the accommodations that may be required we do offer academic credit for the first year of attending pal it's a credit and a half per semester for the first year so it gets the students a few extra credits towards graduation um the best thing that pal has to offer right now that the students really seem to be benefiting from are the peer mentor programs that we have in place we have pal peer mentors that help us study strategies and social skills and acclimating students to the campus and the pal program and we also have pal peer mobile tutors who are other students who are very adept at using the um the ipads that we give all first-year students and the applications for study strategies and any accommodations they might use so they are connected with the pal peer tutors and the pal peer mo mobile tutors if they would like to participate in those programs i mean this is in addition to being connected with the pal professor before the student arrives at pal they are offered a summer transition program which is called the summer pal program before covid it was offered as a three-week residential program where the students come and live in the residence halls they take many courses they work with pal professors they meet of course other students who will be attending in the fall so it's a great transition in that they learn the campus they learn to navigate things like the student center and the cafeteria and the residence halls they meet with pal professors they become familiar with some of the academic professors on campus they learn their way around campus and they meet a very cohesive group of other pal students so it takes the social anxiety out of arriving in the fall and all the students have to do is concentrate on the courses that they'll be taking in the fall once they do arrive so if you are thinking about applying to pal and takari that is the program that i would highly recommend this summer it will be offered online again and we're hoping to go back to the residential program next summer um i think i have sorry covered everything um i'm happy to answer any questions during the live session um and again thank you for having me on board thank you so much it's really exciting to hear about you know your program and britney's that i didn't know i heard a little bit about but i wanted to understand more about um and all the others i i was familiar with and it's just wonderful um it gives me a lot of hope you know i work with these students and i really hope that i'm sending them off to something you know and there is something right there sometimes we hear about oh everything drops off after high school and not necessarily um and part of my hope today was that i would bring that forward um and one thing i know that makes the difference is how much a student can advocate and how much they can reach out to get that you know in high school we might chase after them so to speak and that's not so much what's gonna happen when they're adults and i guess i wondered if if you had any of you had things to add to that or if there are um pieces that you say you know if you could work on one thing that i don't know that you're working on in high school it would be this to help them be prepared so i guess anybody could unmute and chime in well i'll start with a short one and that is simply we tell all of our students it's really important to learn how to ask for help and you'd be surprised and is even even adults who are in their 30s or 40s um they i had one student say to me recently you know i thought because i'm an adult i thought that i was supposed to know how to do all these things already i didn't know that it was okay to ask for help and that's that's the one thing if you can ask for help um you're halfway there because there's plenty of resources on campus but unless you tell someone that you're struggling we won't always know um sometimes we can see it and sometimes it's not visible so you're being aware of that and telling us and taking that step is is the most important piece i appreciate that when you become an adult it just doesn't happen to you that you have all the knowledge of how to do things and i think sometimes we put it out there as if it is so i appreciate that i'd like to add that if a student can practice at the high school level describing his or her learning difference and why they require the accommodations they do that's very helpful in talking to professors at the post-secondary level yes thank you we would probably all agree that any self-advocacy skills that you learn while you are in high school are to your benefit i don't know um what standard practices are at the school kathy but you know i always recommend that students learn to lead their own plan meetings you know so that they can do what paul's talking about articulate their learning difference because they are going to need the confidence to be able to talk about it and ask for help when they get to college i also want to add something about expectations at landmark our logo involves a very curved path students should not expect that from high school to college and to graduation is a straight line that it's a clear path you know it weaves in and out as you learn and i think if you approach it with that expectation um it will it will benefit you to understand that there will be certain challenges that you will have to meet along the road i really appreciate that i i just recently talked to a student who was so surprised to hear that there were older adults who attend college and it opened up so much hope for them oh i don't have to just follow this linear because that's what they've known to follow the linear path that doesn't have to go that way it's really important to point out thank you apollo alluded a little bit when she was talking about curry as well about moving away from modifications i think a lot of students think like i'm going to go to college and i'm going to everything's going to change in terms of how i have my accommodations and my modifications and also the work is going to be a little bit harder and if you could not do both of those things at once that would be great yeah so if you could move away from your modifications and start getting comfortable with assistive technology and things like that and then move to some of the more rigorous work it would be helpful to do those things separately makes so much sense yeah thank you i i think to add to what marie said about it being important for students to ask for help i think often students who have had an iep or a 504 plan in high school sometimes feel some reluctance to contact the support services particularly an office called disability services just may feel stigmatizing to them and i just want to assure students and their families that it's really a different environment in college there's no concerns about bullying and labeling most other students don't know if students have accommodations or not and if they do know they really don't care thank you important yeah i guess i i don't have too much more to add because i think so much of it um yeah relies on how how to ask for help and communication and i think um in recent years more of those kind of executive functioning coaching strategies um i think just learning that students sometimes are afraid to ask or as it was alluded to they don't like being the kid on the iep and asking for help but if you remind them many of the campus resources are available to support everyone and and sometimes just bridging it like these days our tutor services are remote too and students will know they exist but i think there's that apprehension of reaching out so it's like okay i'm just going to introduce you to them via email you know and then you can take it from there your comfort level still trying to give them some authority over it you know if they give me the go ahead then like let's open this door kind of virtually because again gone are the days at least for an hour i can just walk down the hall where there's that comfort of like a face-to-face meeting and then they kind of feel like okay i know where i should go um but just asking those questions that maybe like they have a stumbling block that we didn't anticipate because it was like i'm not sure what the next step is or i'm not sure what question they asked those sorts of things and just again getting them greater awareness of how to articulate their learning needs and how to ask for help i appreciate that joy i've definitely noticed and heard that in terms of i could make this referral or i could introduce you do you give me permission would you like me to do that and it puts them in the driver's seat and that that's huge and i appreciate when i've heard that so we have a few minutes left i don't actually know if there are any questions um from the audience that people wanted to ask but if anybody watching does have a question you could pop it in the chat you've been so comprehensive people just get it i see a comment that says students helping students is so important not only does it give confidence to the student who's helping out but it gives confidence to the student who's asking for help some of the students who come in as mentees become mentors after a while they learn how to navigate that leadership role so it's been great absolutely just pausing giving some wait time well so just in terms of you know what you might recommend to students or parents that they could do now i mean i know that there are a lot of virtual tours going on virtual events um that people can sign up for um should they just you know take to google and find that or do you would you have any more advice of people who are just starting out and feel kind of overwhelmed i mean we have people at the school and at every school there's somebody like a guidance counselor and such that can help them navigate that but from your angle what would you direct people to i think that there are a few if you could call it forgive me silver linings to covet um one of them is while students aren't able to physically be on a lot of college campuses right now in a way it opens you up to experiencing more open houses more virtual experiences so colleges have all gotten really really creative about the kinds of experiences we provide right now at landmark for example students can take demonstration classes during our open houses there are parent panels student panels and all colleges are doing so much to provide these virtual experiences so i think it's an opportunity to visit a lot of different kinds of colleges you know big and small urban rural colleges that are traditional colleges with disability services support and colleges that have specific programs but you can do all that much more easily right now and you can also ask for other kinds of virtual experiences even those that the college isn't necessarily putting on their website for example colleges will connect prospective students with a current student who may have a similar learning profile or similar interests so i think it's really actually a great time to start those kinds of explorations and explore many different kinds of colleges thank you i was going to say the same there's i i would also say don't just do it once so like if you go to a school and you see what they have in a month they might have 10 more things um there's like kind of a constant factory at most schools of kind of what's being put out in virtual content i also wouldn't assume you can't visit places i've had a lot of conversations with folks about you know it's so terrible we can't visit and we are doing campus visits um so do your research look at what it might look like if you do want to get on a campus you know there's restrictions there's things you have to do there's hoops to jump through but if you do really want to get onto a campus there are some campuses you can visit so um don't make assumptions kind of just look into the rules of the different colleges and i i would highly recommend setting up interviews with both the programs that you may require services from and in the admissions office not only does it give admissions personnel an opportunity to meet you and hear what you have to say but it's the students opportunity to ask questions you want to know if it's the right fit for you so um it's definitely an opportunity to shine and to learn more about on any of these schools that you might want to attend thank you i think just continuing on that same theme again the early planning and the ongoing communication because i think the more you can help the students see what to expect um the more comfortable they'll be if you can answer a lot of those questions now and in the summer time so that they you know can work on making the steps whether it's participation enrollment admission placement whatever those processes are um because then there's a level of comfort because i think sometimes a lot of anxiety is built up because they don't know and they're trying to make decisions and they're feeling pressure so you know i love that it's only april you know and we're having this conversation so there's still time to um coordinate those meetings and have questions answered because it's incredibly overwhelming i mean i think sometimes i have to do like a little overview and i'm like this is my daily life but when i have to sit in on a presentation for someone else it's like that's a whole lot of information you know for another department so just um the opportunity to come back and ask questions and make sure the students really comfortable with the next step so that they can you know develop those relationships with the different departments you know as they move forward so they know hey this is a really good fit for me and i feel like i have an ally with this person and they're going to walk me through the process thank you i appreciate that and i've um i've really been impressed with the neurodiversity groups that many of you have and it really is it's that community it's that connection it's that life of the school you know and a lot of times high schoolers you know they think okay maybe not but some may think oh college is just more school there's so much more and whether it's you know somewhere where you live or you don't live there there's still so much community going on and so i've really appreciated um i had a high schooler that connected with the neurodiversity group at gcc and that made the difference as far as the student actually wanting to try to go there so it means a lot so thank you very much parting words well i'll jump in um parting words understand the importance of your supports and your accommodations i think a lot of students underestimate just how important they are to their success and feel as though in approaching college they want to establish a new identity independent of their disability i would encourage you to set your foundation for success by recognizing that college is going to be more rigorous not just on an academic level but on an executive functioning level it's more rigorous in every in every way and so utilize your supports because they can be key to your success thank you would underline that absolutely well i won't keep you all because like i said in the beginning i know you're all very very busy and changing over to have being people in person or preparing for whatever you know we're just constantly pretty overwhelmed right now but um taking this time actually for me is everything because it gives me the energy to go back and do that hard work so thank you and enjoy your your rest of your day thank you you

second motion by mr nunes a second by mrs way on the motion any further discussion cheer hearing none all in favor aye opposed motion carries unanimously uh next up we're gonna i'm gonna turn it over to the our student representative to the uh school committee uh evan garcia mello is here this evening and i'd like to turn it over to you for an update of what's happening at dartmouth high school good evening evan good evening so my name is evan garcia and i'm a junior at dartmouth high school and i am one of the high school student representatives to the school committee so i'm here to update you all on the high school's recent activities so the robotics team held a virtual competition on march 18th the team competed in the qualifying round for the first tech challenge and you can view this at twitch.tv dhs robotics club ap students are preparing for upcoming exams the math department has been conducting mock exams in ap computer science students will complete mock exams later this week many other ap teachers are also holding study and review sessions for students as we enter testing season unified basketball kicked off their season thursday with a game against middleborough and they will continue tomorrow with a home game against durfee our fall to sports season continues to be a success and sign up for sign ups for spring sports have begun dhs is offering cheerleading baseball softball tennis lacrosse outdoor track and field unified track and sailing sign ups close on april 14th the psat 10 exam is scheduled for april 15th and april 16th for students who sign up to take that exam lastly dartmouth high's 21-21 campaign kicks off this friday with dartmouth's variety show dartmouth's finest this show features eight of dartmouth seniors but only one will be crowned dartmouth's finest and you can stream the show live on dhs tv media's youtube page so that concludes my update and thank you all for your time thank you very much thank you anyone have any questions comments thank you thank you if you don't mind i'd like to put you on the spot if that's okay with you i guess that's not true how do you think things are going so far uh today uh at dartmouth high school i think they're going very good i know that it's a very strange time with covert and all but i feel like i'm definitely still very busy and i'm still very involved in school activities i know for example i'm here tonight i will have a debate competition saturday i have track practice after school every day except for tomorrow when i have unified bowling instead okay i have a track meet thursday actually so i definitely feel like you know it is a very difficult time but i think everyone from the teachers to the administrators to of course you all i think everyone's just trying very hard to make it all work and i think it has been pretty successful so far so overall you feel like it's some kind of is the most normalcy you that you can get out of it in a not normal year i would say so yeah okay great and one of the things i'm going to be bringing back during the report of the chair is i think it would be great um dr gifford if maybe in one of our next school committee meetings may may not be the next one but maybe the following one of bringing the senior class officers here for to kind of share with us um what they've done for you know the 21 for 21.

good afternoon thank you for joining us for our informational briefing this is monday april 5th we are in conference room 229 it's three o'clock the committee on education and the informational briefing is to look at the governor's education emergency relief funds gear and the department of education's plan to address learning loss for students so do we have who do we have from the governor's office kim good afternoon this is kim from the governor's office uh and also with me is garrett yoshini from the university of hawaii who is also here to answer to some of the points as well as steve tristegi who is our project manager who can also answer some of the questions to the specific thank you kim would you guys proceed with your uh your powerpoint is that what you're doing yes please go ahead you may begin okay thank you and uh good afternoon uh cherokee donnie vice chair kim members of the committee thank you so much for this opportunity to share with you information on the governor's emergency education relief fund as stated and i'll just stated here again for the record i am kim sparling director of intergovernmental relations and policy in the office of the governor also with me today is garrett yoshini vice president information technology and chief information officer with the university of hawaii who is one of the recipients of the funds and steve trustege who's our project manager before i get too far into it i also want to thank those that were members of the advisory group that helped develop this plan as well as mr dara galera who is instrumental in bringing that group together he developed a group that's really well balanced and we'll show you that here after we go through some of the high level details and also keeps them engaged throughout this process so when i say those thank you um just real quick real quick overview of what the gear funds were for those that are not aware if the purpose of them is to provide local educational agencies institutions of higher learning and other educational related entities with assistance to address the impact that the coronavirus has had this is part of the cares act funding and it is in addition to other funding that was given to educational for educational purposes as many of you are aware there was several chances of money that were given directly to the department of education as well as the university of white and their roles as our ihe our institution of higher learning and our fda which is the state educational agency and learning a lot of the nuance between all of these different components and how hawaii is very unique compared with the rest of the continental united states and and a lot of negotiations that we get to have with us doing because of that the one big difference in this funding is it really was set aside for the discretion of the governor um and doesn't have some of the same requirements that general money go that other money that went directly to the doe and the ihds had so just real high level look here and there's two tranches of gear so in year one back in april of 2020 we were awarded just over 9.3 or 9.9 just under 10 million 10 million dollars um that has been awarded and we'll go through the breakdown of how that's going to be spent and then earlier this year uh another chance of money came out so there's another 4.4 almost 4.5 million that was awarded in february um and then i'm going to put a little asterisk here because of the way that this will then impact the gear ones potentially later on in august um there was an emergency appropriation for non-public schools about 9.8 million dollars that went directly to the department of education to administer on behalf of those non-public schools any money that is not spent from those funds will then revert to the gear fund so it's not money that we have right now we don't know what that money is we won't even know if that's something that will happen until august so i wanted to throw that out there as well um the governor is required to award these funds as eligible entities within one year of receiving them so real quick we'll have a timeline here in a second but just wanted to talk about the prohibited uses of these funds as well they can't go to administrative costs executive costs those kind of things they are to go to the schools they must include support for remote learning which was you know the biggest impact obviously that we all saw through this pandemic and the governor has the discretion like i said to to deploy these plans so the timing wanted to put them side by side so everybody can see how these get laid out uh the year one was certified back in april of 2020 year 2 was an automatic certification with the eams being a separate one that we had descended certification for and that was done in february the award notification came up a little bit later than that a little bit later than that certification for the the phase one funding wasn't uh applicable for phase two in june of 2020 we conducted several advisory group meetings we'll talk about those in a little bit to come up with a plan that was then submitted to the usdoe in july of 2020.

all right um so as i mentioned you know we put together an advisory group daryl galera led the charge on this and one again thank again thank those that were on this advisory group who devoted time away from their normal duties their pandemic duties uh and jumped on the phone a couple times during the month of june to help us really inform this plan and they have agreed to be an ongoing resource so as you can see from the group there's a balanced representation of higher and lower education as well as public private and charter schools including down to the principal level of several k through 12 schools across the state it was very deliberate that we had voices from again higher lower private public kindergarten through 12 and make sure that all of those voices were heard as you guys are really well aware of each school and community that it serves is unique and we wanted to make sure that this group was diverse and represented that that widespread view and those widespread means so that was really deliberate when we put we put that group together um the usdoe directions said that we had the opportunity to truly rethink education think outside the box so in june governor convened the group and fourthly convened the group and charged the group with rethinking and transforming their approach to education due to the impact of the pandemic themselves on june 16th his message to the group included things like this pandemic is changing hawaii and every organization needs to reinvent itself in the post folded 19 environment hopefully these emergency funds can do all of those things they can plug gaps that are necessary and can provide incentives and fund organizations and schools that are doing innovative things that both trans uh that both respond to the pandemic and most importantly set a course for educational change and reform so as you can see the charge to the group was not just put a band-aid on it we really want to look at how we can bounce forward from this pandemic and provide some tools and resources to our agencies and our educators so that they can have an ongoing benefit from this and it's not just a one-time influx of cash that that solves one problem this is an ongoing solution so the advisory group um set up you know after initial discussions of where everybody was coming from and what uh their experiences were really set themselves around the criteria to use the form the funds to build on the shared vision of you know thousands and thousands of educators parents teachers community members that developed and embraced the 2017 hawaii blueprint for education that was very much a stepping off point for this group i wanted to continue work that had already been done and make sure that we were not going back to recreating the wheel but take some ideas that had already been thrown out and maybe not addressed and take this opportunity to address them another criteria was to aspire for innovation and reinvention with the understanding that every organization needs to reinvent itself in the post-spoken 19 environment as governor had charged and then finally to be bold and future focused to set a course for educational change and reform that results in both relief and sustainability so those are the core principles that the group settled around throughout the discussions with the group it became clear that while every community is unique and every student is unique there were some commonalities amongst them it became clear that the most significant impact of the coronavirus on schools is the negative impact on student engagement and learning as a result of i'm going to go through a litany of the list that the group threw out in our discussions so the first two obviously i think this committee and several others have had many conversations around the lack of access to and the availability of devices and technology for the students directly especially for the most vulnerable students and the families in you know those areas that needed additional support and the lack of connectivity for that remote instruction so it doesn't matter if we can teach them if they can't get to it that's a problem as you know there was 39 million dollars that governor gave to the department of education to help address some of this another one that became really really clear early that the group kind of kind of grasped onto um and we'll talk about that a little bit more in detail later is the need for the parent or guardian training because even if we could get the devices to them they were finding that some of the the support at home that was anticipated wasn't necessarily there so things like being able to troubleshoot when the microphones not working you know how to get into the right zoom link and what do you do when you have three different teachers and three different uh methods so really talking about a parent or guardian training to support the remote instruction of the children so that's one thing that we want to highlight another one and this wasn't just in hawaii was the need to improve the quality of revolt instruction resulting from the abrupt transition you know due to the emergency that being the need for professional development for faculty staff school leaders that can all help improve the teaching practices for engaging students in the distance learning environment also talking about the need for resources including professional development for faculty staff and school leaders to address the emotional learning needs of the students and then of course i think again this committee as well as many others talked about the urgent need for safety equipment materials and resources for opening the schools and there was much of that funding that came through care other care's funding so we chose that yes that was a priority but was being addressed a little bit quicker in other areas we talked about the professional development and even the state of kentucky recognized this so i just wanted to call this out real quick is some of the research research that we did for this group they were also looking at professional development for their schools and their education their department of education and so it's just a highlight you know it's not just us uh we're we're we're all struggling through this um as a nation so to get into the plant elements themselves we just wanted to break it down a little bit here and i'm gonna kick off to a couple other people as we go through this to answer some more specific questions um but we talked a lot about you know helping the teachers you know educate the educator and train the trainer and so uh 5 million dollars was committed to this distance learning teacher academy that is being run through the university of hawaii they are developing the curriculum the education design and then will then turn that into educational opportunities for our educators so many of us know that our educators spend a lot of their money and their a lot of their time bettering themselves and this is one way that we can support them so before i go on too far i want to open it up to garrett to add a little bit more of where we are with this program in the last few months and just give you an overview thanks gail appreciate it um cherokee donnie what's good nice to be members of the community thanks for the opportunity this is um this is a really great opportunity to execute an investment in our both our public and our as well as our private school teachers um in the park in the pre-k through 12 range and the the project is is all about creating both the strategies as well as the methods of delivery to develop curriculum specifically tailored to deliver online so that we can deliver the maximum benefit to the to the kids in our community this is about creating both new ways as well as streamlining existing ways or existing methods of delivering curriculum it is about curriculum development and it it is an investment in that it both um is professional development for the teachers and this is specifically targeted at public divided in k-12 as well as creating an open educational resource essentially a free and open resource for for not only the teachers that have gone through the training but for all teachers from throughout the state of hawaii to take advantage of the materials developed as a result of the program the effort in this particular project has wrapped up through the fall as in terms of being able to organize on the leadership around the leadership includes representatives not only from the university of hawaii from the department of education the hawaii associate association of independent schools and represents both public and private teacher and institutional interests across the state of hawaii we have focused on a couple of delivery windows so the primary delivery of these resources and these this work will happen over the summer of 21 and summer of 22 leading up to both of those summer academies will be activities in the spring of 21 now and the spring of 22 to to kind of determine and best recruit the number of a lot of interested folks from across these different communities create a bunch of interest determine where the both the interest as well as the needs are in terms of developing curriculum and to the best extent be able to deliver that in the summers the approach in the summer going into the summer of 21 is to hit as many of these high-value topics as possible and then looking at the summer of 22 to be able to scale further in the areas that um are of the highest interest and that we can create the best the best value in terms of creating curriculum that's reusable on a going forward basis the outcome of the project is not only skills development but it's also to create this repository of free and open materials that can be used and be used well across all of our all of our public and private institutions happy to answer any other questions if you have at this time thank you garrett and the chair if you don't mind we'll leave questions to the end because i want to get through the next pieces um you know real quick so that we can have that ongoing kind of interrelated dialogue and you can see how these various pieces mesh together so um the next largest tranche of money is four million dollars to innovation grants and this is going to be functioned through the rcuh for a couple of reasons one is if we give the money directly to the department of education there's an equity of service component there were a lot of lawsuits at the back last year between things that betsy devos at the time was saying what normally happens with equity of services there's also some limitations on then how that can then be spent so we felt that it would be best not to necessarily go directly to the department of education but run it as a true grant program through our cuh so that the charter schools and the private schools can come in uh with a with a more level playing field so to speak when it comes to money not not innovation but when it comes to the money component of it and so it will be run through the rcuh and it's going to be informed by a lot of the work that uh is doing right now in this distance learning academy and then some other dialogues that steve cersegi is having with stakeholders with our office with the advisory board group and then a few other select folks from that that advisory board group that have just been a little bit more engaged so that that's another portion that's a large portion of it um we looked and and i apologize i neglected to forward my screen so i apologize for that so this is that four million dollars um it's to provide a relief for some of the forced distance learning that had to happen the emphasis will be on digital equity for access and connectivity as well as effective ways to deliver parent education parent training family support innovative practices for global learner outcomes and ultimately what the teachers can do in the classroom so it's a little bit a little bit bigger than this but as you can see we're looking for larger lump sum brands and so not the here because the teacher wants you know this kind of a platform or a certain kind of tool or anything like that we're really looking for these to be complex areas building collaborations between schools complexes different levels of the education so you're looking from your elementary transition up to your middle school transition from your middle school up to your high school and where all of those things can really tie together so again that's the reason of coursing the larger lump sum forcing more innovative thought processes and more collaborative solutions rather than one-off uh just immediately in the classroom kind of need so that's the innovation grants we talked a little bit about the impact that the group was seeing on parents and the support or the lack of support that they were seeing from the family and so right now there's a hundred thousand dollars put out there for this community of practice we initially called it a network improvement community that got a little wonky and a little scary so it's really just about um a support network for the parents themselves so right now that's at about a hundred thousand dollars department of education is doing some things around this area as well with all centers we don't want to again double spillable efforts i want to make sure that we're utilizing the money in the best way possible another thing that the university is doing that i think is really interesting and the governor's really proud of is this transition assistance for high school students um and again i'm going to kick it back to garrett to talk about this but i think we've all recognized that our four seniors from last year and this year aren't having that normal junior senior transition up into the college experience and so uh university of hawaii raised their hand and stepped in and said hey we want to help them out with this so i'll let garrett speak to that a little bit more thanks kim this particular one is directly focused on the graduating classes of 21 and 22 to provide access are you showing up to govern already sorry say that again senator favela did you have a question oh i'm sorry i'm sorry can you mute your mic please i'm sorry go ahead so the early engagement one is all about direct focus on providing support for the graduating classes of 21 and 22 public high school students and this is really about trying to help them bridge the um the change between their high school experience and to get them engaged in both interest of and directly taking the age classes so it provides the grant funds provide access to freelance courses as well as advising and support in particular over the summer period between their graduation from public high school and then going into hopefully going into a into a higher education program is you know again we're hopeful they'll they'll join us at the university of hawai'i but this is really about getting them into into some um useful and engaging way to get them into higher education thank you garrett appreciate that um last two components here real quick and then we'll be ready for questions um you know it doesn't do us any good to learn a whole bunch of things and then not have something left behind for the next the next time hopefully this never happens again but the next opportunity for remote learning um so we want to conduct an educational summit it will be held virtually as of right now um but this will be based off of some of that innovation some of this distance learning and then culminate in this virtual summit that will be available open in uh to educators um so that the lessons learned are not just contained to those that are in the immediate experience you know that we're able to open and share this uh with with anyone and everyone right at the point appropriate and you know it doesn't have to be just within our own shores it can be extended beyond our shores and and this can also bring things into our shores that maybe we haven't seen before as well so we're excited about this virtual summit that again will happen as part of part of threading all of these lessons learned together and the last component to this um that that holds all of this together will be this innovation team that will help uh design and and stand up that virtual summit because there's a lot of work to that we know our education educators are busy uh we want the information from them but somebody needs to do the work to put it together but this this innovation team will help keep those lessons moving make sure that uh you know you hear something over here somebody's having a problem but maybe you've heard a solution on the other side and bring those together and then you know provide lessons up you know what can be changed what can we do to make this better and again thread all of those lessons together so that they're not just disparate effort but there really is a continuity to all of this and so um those are the components to it i can go back you know in order to facilitate some of this discussion i can go back to the the um the plan elements if you like but i'd also like to just go ahead and share is what we hand it out to you there are some additional resources if you want to get into the super fun nitty-gritty components of what these different pieces of funding and what the different requirements are that's also in your powerpoint for your information wanted to share it on screen in case anybody wants to take a screenshot and and have those resources as well but if sheriff if you'd like i i'm happy to go back to the plan element and then open it up to discussion and questions okay we have about 15 minutes before we can move on to our next um uh presenter for our next item but uh kim um can we just start with questions now thank you members questions done senator kim hi kim good afternoon um i had a question about these funds that you're targeting to rcuh so are you anticipating what the cost is and how much is left over to actually run these programs or uh yes um so uh and rsuh has been very gracious um and the indirect costs are 132 000 on the 4.393 million quote on 132 000 there's about 3.1 percent now is that from both rch and uh uh that's just the rcuh portion uh garrett curriculum times wrong i think you guys went at five percent um we it's it's a mixture so it's ten percent of the direct cost which turns out to be about four and a half percent of the total it's two and a half thousand out of five a little higher because there's the other 600 000 but it's um only on direct costs and it's the 10 rate so the blended rate comes down to a little under 5 okay yeah so the university takes a percentage rch takes a percentage and then the left the money's left is rch go out and they hire people to to implement these programs is that what is that the motto excuse me so what will happen is there is a project manager steve who's on the line here um that will oversee that the innovation grants themselves will be run through him and several members of the advisory group that have volunteered to continue that uh on um so there's not necessarily a cost there um it's that four million that'll that'll be going out just just under four million that'll be going out yes so the part for the virtual summit part of the innovation team coordination and the parent network the the parent and family network will then also be contracted out um but i mean there's there's we only we only get so much money right so when we go to contract out they know that whatever it's going to be this is the bottom line you know so if it's uh we need a virtual summit for you know fifty thousand they're gonna get fifty thousand they've gotta figure out their own taxes they've gotta figure out their own ui they gotta figure out all that stuff on their own so under the governor's innovation team it's 150 000 going to rch to to manage this i guess i'm having a hard time understanding why you're running it through rcuh because again university will take a cost off the top and so will rcuh and um you know i'm not sure this innovation team basically is going to design the virtual summit but the virtual summit has an additional fifty thousand dollars and this one is 150.

and then they had a fire [Music] you're wrong um okay he's walking around so good afternoon it's wonderful to see so many people here this is the regular meeting of the bartholomew consolidated school corporation board of school trustees we are here on monday april 5th at 6 30. so welcome to those here in the room and those who are joining us on our bcsc youtube and on zoom so it's wonderful to have crowds everywhere for us so we start each of our meetings with reflections from one of our colleagues and and this evening i'll turn to mr pat bryant thank you in 1991 i walked into one of my sixth grade their classes 27 students i wasn't greeted like i normally would be greeted so i knew there was a problem i looked at it to each other specially looking back and i said you have to do a lot of explaining and i said okay what am i explaining what happened in los angeles with the police officers and mr king well i was confused i didn't know but i had to try and explain this to 27 students 6th graders what had happened i was scared for the very first time in my law enforcement career of 34 years i didn't know how to answer those questions in which they had but at the end of the class which normally would last 45 minutes took an hour and a half a young lady walked up to me and said that stuff like that is not supposed to happen in america i hear that voice quite often now milwaukee mr floyd i hear that young lady saying that stuff like that is not supposed to happen here in america the young lady that was killed in louisville kentucky my hometown that stuff like that is not supposed to happen here in america and i agree with her last week a friend of mine and i was leaving her restaurant we got to fork in washington we didn't have our mess on just yet the gentleman rolled by on his bike he looked at us and he said you need to go back to china well i know he wasn't talking about me my friend said that i've never been to china he said i'm korean i said not only that he was born in richmond indiana and he said yeah baseball and apple i said you can't play big spot he said but i love apple pie that stuff like that is not supposed to happen here in america we bumped the elbows and he took off one direction i went the other got to the library and i see the big arch out there green bluish white is green color and something came to life with me seeing that a lady stands in an island in new york with a torch high above her head set of books in her left arm it says july 4th 1776.

uh we began that back on monday march 22 following spring break and that was the first time we had all students in the buildings since friday november the night actually i think it's friday the sixth i remember this type there uh monday november the 9th was the first day we were out so i'll correct this friday november the 6th all mitigation strategies are still in place so the things that we adopt at the beginning of the year we're still trying to do those same things to keep going because our goals remain having all students in the buildings all the time and then we have prominent graduation we'd like to see come to fruition too uh approximately 700 students are still enrolled in all the e-learning options so we did have still quite a few students who continued uh in that that uh option i think they were lowering correctly but i'm wrong but maybe 715 or so that from the elvenar standpoint it's just off the top of my head that started in an e-learning options beginning and stated all the way throughout the year will have their entire school year in an e-learning option so there'll be more than this elementary off the top i have about 7-15 this is the information um yes i did this is from today so we have all the way up through yesterday which will be sunday april the 4th and this is the data that will be published on the communities code of 19 task force website so we got down to the yellow in march it got back to red and it didn't have been back in the year the last couple of days that's a good sign that the per capita number has dropped below 10 again and is decreasing uh the percent positive test rate uh similarly had been in a certain place even got into green for a for a day uh but it went back to red and that's always a pending number for us so we're hoping that given the per capita number the last couple days that that rate will also show a decrease over here as those numbers catch up um right now 17.6 is the last time that we have that goes back to march 31st uh the test turnaround time is 1.5 about as low as it's been i think and you see that hospitalization numbers are besides that zero and one is beginning or we're kind of middle of the month uh we're down to four so the number is looking okay uh our school corporation numbers um we are still having some positive test cases i'll jump into that in just a second but from a state perspective so this is local data we always share with you and this is state data in terms of across the state what's the color designation by counting we are at a 0.5 we do think even with this these numbers looking okay that that percent positive test rate may kick us to a 1.0 from a 0.5 which would be a a yellow color again for this week so that is a possibility as we get to wednesday chad stays up on this data very well and from his little uh review yesterday which the data from sunday is used for wednesday's color designation when the governor or the department of health announces that so we think we might actually go to yellow as a county um and then in in terms of our continued uh review of our own positive test cases within the school corporation we're at 614 now that's 382 students 161 support staff members and 71 teachers and we look at that group um or each of those populations three percent of our students the three percent doesn't make up all cases it's three percent of our students have tested positives sometime during the school year 13 of our support staff population and nine percent of our certified staff member population and then that uh as we go through the rest of the school year i'm sure we'll have plenty of code 19 related decisions still to make but the two that are on our minds uh the most at this point in time besides just trying to be in school every day with all our kids is prom and graduation so from each of those standpoints we are trying to have both it is that is the plan is to have a modified prompt it won't look the same as it has in past years we have modified prom and then i guess i'll use the word modified for graduation it won't look the same either we're not going to pack memorial stadium at columbus north uh with all of our graduates and everybody they want to bring it's just it's not going to be that way but we're working closely with dr b bolsky with holland county health department and we have to commend dr yvalsky we think sometimes our decisions have been challenging and it's been an interesting year and it too has been for uh anybody involved in the medical profession and dr dubalski has worked closely with us trying to get things accomplished that we need to ensuring that safety still does come first and so as we work on a modified prom plan that's the idea and so we want to have our prom sponsors making an announcement the next day or two of what that exactly looks like i don't want to preempt them with going through all of those details but would indicate to you that it would be outside at least a part of them so there'll be a an outside inside combination because we do want to take advantage of that ability outside of being tense we're not just going to necessarily have to expose them to all the weather related situations but if we have a weather problem we can get inside safely and take advantage of those facilities too and we'll be looking to use our own facilities as opposed to the complexities that sometimes occur with other facilities within the community we've looked at all kinds of other options and just there were challenges because as we look at the ability to be agile with our decisions and as things might change our our property gives us the the best ability to do that so it will not be downtown the commons there's too many challenges that exist there are even costs to create the kind of environment or situation that we would like so stay tuned for some more specific information uh about that coming from our buildings to their students and parents and and and then the community uh outlining that and how that can be done how tickets can be purchased all those kinds of things and then we'll have a set date that if things just don't go right this month in terms of combat 19 spread we might have to make a different decision so we ask everybody as we try to have problem and the date is again bill kelly uh excuse me may 1 saturday may 1st the first saturday in may so that's that's the date it was scheduled for it remains the date it is scheduled for uh and and we're looking to get there but we need to have people continue to do what they can to just uh be as safe as possible and ensure that those per capita numbers stay down into manageable areas so that as we work with the county health department and others uh we're able to have that and then the extra piece is graduation and i know that parents and seniors are hoping they can have something and we again i'm looking at a celebration where we can properly acknowledge our graduates in a way that they think maybe should be the way it is and have people be able to be in attendance to see that too and uh again will not be able to hold that inside but some outside uh possibility look at our facilities again to conduct that so plans in place for both of those to to make them real and to happen and um we'll continue to update you as as situation allows but the problem information will come out of the next next day or two in terms of the specifics around that questions please wonderful yeah some questions that individuals have so at this point for graduation how many visitors can we've not laid everything out yet dr biltz um as we as we navigate the facility and then based upon what things might look like at that time uh how many might each person be able to to uh invite and so that's again we're working closely with dr yvolsky just to understand that i keep having to say ryan's name he has a lot going on but but we we are getting our first fortune to have him uh working so hard to understand the circumstances and then bring uh good advice as to what might work best as we as we have it in a safe way but we haven't haven't come to the final number all right any other questions i'd like to come in real quick mr jensen uh in israel's director of secondary education a lot of things he has to do like overseas curriculum design and so forth this may be the most challenging thing this year is working on prom and graduation this last quarter of the school year but then kelly as you know thompson director of health services and dr bozeman with our facilities and overseeing them have been working closely together just to figure this out and again provide the opportunity in in a safe way so that we can have this but we do ask the community to continue to be uh vigilant and paying attention to numbers and circumstances and uh as i know more people get vaccinated and in case numbers come down all those kinds of things there might be um we might tend to take take a break from some of those mitigation strategies and we just want to remind you as a corporation of many of those paying attention online um that we are going to continue our mitigation strategies because we believe it's the way to get us through this school year as safely as possible all right thank you so we do afford the opportunity for public comments and mr strattomeier you signed up that you'd like to share your thoughts with us i will say it doesn't book it in my cover 19 i think josh slid this in here but my second chapter was today so what's the community mascot sleeves up yeah what's your way good evening everyone good evening my name is don spurdenmeier as a school board member or a member of the staff what is your priority a high priority of mine is american history what is taught how it is taught and what kind of books and material is used to guide this learning process so the student will have a clear picture of american history the founders of this country the many who led who served who died and sacrificed and those who labored in their occupation vocation or profession to build this country into what it is today help our students have a sense of gratitude and pride toward our nation apparently this has been missing in many of the educational institutions around america considering what we saw this past summer after the unfortunate death of a black man in minneapolis there were protests which turned to riots inspired by the antifa and black lives matter groups historical statues of prominent figures were torn down private businesses and institutions were looted and burned and a number of police officers were killed and many were injured and these rights were not so much about the death of this black man but more about tearing down america and destroying capitalism if you look closely at those involved in the riots it appeared that many were college age and perhaps students and others may have been unemployed college graduates why would these relatively young and immature young who grew up in this land of opportunity have such a negative attitude toward america in my opinion they would have had to be taught how bad this country is because of some of its early history which was overemphasized as though this is the only country in the world with some history of injustice occurring my question is what kind of history is being taught what books are used and what is being done to instill patriotism and a sense of pride to be an american a couple weeks ago the first question i thought i would ask you would be how many times is the pledge of allegiance retired in school i have a grandson it's a sophomore north i ask him he says well every day and i was surprised and i was thankful for that so that my you know question is would be the books that we use do they reflect a clear picture of american history are we preparing our students so that if they go to college and this is i think where they run into more of the negative instruction about america and its background and um they have to be strong enough to hold up i mean it's almost like a religion you teach your children if you're a christian you teach them christianity and you hope that they can stand up for what they've been taught and believe when they go to some other experience such as college so i'll close with that thank you very your much i was the only individual who signed up so i'll move to our what and board commendations so i'll turn to mr grimes he gave me a heads up yeah i've got a handful here but i'll try and go quickly i think they're all very important and worthy of mentioning the first one just a few weeks ago i had the opportunity to participate in a columbus north cross country fundraiser and the reason i bring it up it was a very impressive well-oiled machine thanks to mrs morrell teacher at csa new tech many of her new tech students and many members of the north cross country team it was just very impressive to see the kids out there highly organized and essentially running the event and so kudos to them um another thing let's see coach kudos to coach cooper again and the east wrestling team the indiana high school wrestling coaches association did something very unique this winter in that they conducted an academic challenge across teams across the state and they compared team gpas of the 32 sectional champions across the state and columbus east had the honor of being tied with noblesville for the best collective gpa of the 14 varsity wrestlers a collective gpa of 3.4 six of which have a 3.7 or higher and for the varsity wrestlers three of the varsity wrestlers have a 4.0 and coach cooper let me know that is something that they absolutely emphasize each day at practice and is something they take great pride in some more about student athletes the indiana basketball coaches association fairly recently released their academic all-state team to be for players to be considered they need to have at least a 3.5 gpa and be in the top 25 percent of their graduating class uh congratulations blake barker of north who was named first team academic all-state uh three other north seniors uh rhys herrmann jacob trusina max wilson also named honorable mention and coach ferguson said that he felt very fortunate this winter to coach a bunch of very what he considered to be true student athletes four seniors on the north girls team um all honorable mention emily herndon alexa mckinley cam matsuno and madison white congratulations to them and then also five east boys seniors all honorable mention coach jenny said that all five young men persevered and took great pride in their academics during what he called these crazy times and those were those players casey bartholomew tyler boyer jacob pierce ben major and daniel murphy two last quick things here so i mentioned before i think a couple meetings ago about a group of central students young writers who were getting all kinds of statewide recognition for their writing efforts this comes from mindy summers teacher at central last year's corporation teacher of the year she shared that in the statewide letters about literature contest yashika mehta placed third and anushka damlay was honorable was honorable mention and in addition mindy summers was also recognized for her efforts as teacher of the year for 2021 for the indiana letters about literature contests so great job there and then lastly a week and a half ago i had the opportunity to take a tour of the c4 facilities with dr gene hack and he took some time out of his afternoon we went around to north to mcdowell to east to see the c4 facilities had an opportunity to talk to a lot of the staff members several of the students in that program and uh to say it's very impressive would be an understatement um they got to got a little mini presentation from one of the students in the architecture program and bcsc's contribution to the exhibit columbus tunnel vision which was you know a super impressive thing so you know that's a program that bcsc should be uh should be very proud of so very good and i believe that is it for me thank you so much for sharing all those are there others to be sure i just wanted to mention in addition to our students doing great work that our bcsd food services department recently was awarded the golden delicious apple award by the indiana office of school and community nutrition so that award was based on the menus offered featuring a wide variety of colorful menu options including fresh fruits and vegetables a mix of hot and cold entrees as well as other healthy menu planning techniques our food service has provided thousands of meals to the community during e-learning sessions and continues to do so with weekend meals and offerings to our after-school programming so i do believe we have been famous for being the largest restaurant presently in the county so um i i applaud our food services department and staff as well all right next thank you for this school board member reports anybody had a committee meeting lately all right cabinet reports mr phillips evening dr shed thank you tonight we just have a quick review of a revision to our cpf plan this is part of the new process that the state has implemented anytime we make a modification to an expenditure of over ten thousand dollars on equipment or a repair we'll bring it to you for review we usually wait until about the six-month period to do that but in this case dr bozeman would like to start purchasing some vehicles as you remember during the year-end 2020 report our operations in the year-end balance was up significantly and so this is the beginning of the process of drawing down those funds on one-time expenditures that don't create long-term long-term expenses for us and address some of the needs in the that we have in our facilities and in our program so in this case we're asking this will come in the next board meeting but just uh an opportunity for you to ask questions tonight about purchasing five vehicles to replace staging vehicles in maintenance as well as uh two kitchen freezers that are in desperate need of replacement all right do colleagues have any questions about these this equipment or purchases all right so noted so thank you mr phillips roberts if you'd like to share with us that which we should approve sure i have a few items for you uh most of them the typical ones so i'll run through the the request for approval or my request for approval starting with the minutes of the regular school board meeting way back on march 1st it's been over a month since we've that doesn't often happen uh then we have supplemental contracts that were provided for you or to you field trips and professional ways we actually had uh some items in there we had we had not for a while uh school fundraisers and then claims our claims and payroll we have a set of claims dated today april 5th that about 1.3 million dollars in a pre-run that covered the month of march that was about 5.7 million dollars the details of those claims are in your packet additionally we had three pay rolls covered here so a little over nine million dollars is what take what it took to cover three pays within our school corporation you see how those are broken down from on february 26th that payroll covered a certain a number of work days it was a normal peril but in addition we also paid a covet false stipend support staff and teachers for uh the extra day our teachers receive to pay for next year they worked in january there was assignment sports staff extra day for teachers and then on march 12th it also covered the previous two weeks uh or a prior two weeks of time it also included winter sea stipends and and also some more covered planning pay for teachers and then on march 26th this last one was the middle one but we just covered the dates of march 1st through march 12th so three pays there and some additional things and some of those a couple of those payrolls uh these last three items are are ones that are are new a3 always the same uh letter fairs declare school buses as surplus and permission to donate and trade and i'll note that dr bozeman has of course here as well as mr leslie our transportation director will also ask for permission to purchase school buses and um we'd also like to sign our administration's building grounds maintenance contract with ingodo group which is the group that's currently taking care of the about five acres that we have here at the administration building so asking for those items and dr dozen can cover the last three if you have questions all right first if i could ask for approval of presentations um for a through h i what did i say move approval i'm sure i said they're wrong i haven't been here for a month um and is there a second thank you miss wilton now does anybody have any questions about items a3 doctor should yes i had a conversation with uh an interested taxpayer so i'll ask some questions that we routinely ask in particular about item e which is hundreds of pages and billions of dollars i assure the public the representative of the public that we do have processes and systems in place that assure that we're only making payments for goods and services that we've actually received that's that's correct dr roberts that's right mr sir that when there are exceptions uh we can track them down and look for the reason we institute new measures to make sure that it doesn't happen again correct uh in addition to the thank you department of local government finance that helps us with our budgeting and tracking we're also reviewed or audited by the state board of accounts on a regular basis and they make suggestions to us about how we might improve our oversight we take their suggestions and follow them we do thank you very much moving beyond just yes or okay for the clear answers uh we do have internal audits in place and policies that guide us recommended by the dlgf and and attorneys that we work closely with through viola who helps us set policies and then of course as you indicate that the department of local government finance certainly does do uh relatively frequent honest of our school corporation uh there is a lot of detail that's provided here i know it's a lot to get through i just looked as you were talking 194 pages is the amount of pages that you had that got into obviously a deep level of specificity in terms of what's being spent there but uh yes in terms of those controls mr phillips anything to add to mr stinner's questions i'll just add that we're often times making changes to our processes for the last uh eight years or so the state board of accounts that does our our audits has had a strong emphasis on developing internal controls they don't want to come in and find problems and point them out to us and have us fix those problems in arrears rather find those uh implement those internal controls that have two different people checking out the process before it occurs making sure that uh an invoice is accurate and those kinds of things the reason this report is included the payroll report has been included for the last four years as a result of the internal control we put in place to say that the board will seek every single payroll paid to every single employee thank you all right thank you thank you for the question any other items i've got one quick question on h the uh the building grounds maintenance contract is that is that contract entered into angled out on with on a yearly basis are there ever any kids other bids sought after it it is um open we do accept bids from other from other groups and the the reason that one comes to you specifically is because of the size of it it is an annual renewal though this year just for no there's no increase in the contract compared to last year and how many years have they have they had it three i think the previous contractor had just some internal it was a mutual they were they couldn't handle the size of the properties they had at the time so how many new buses are you thinking about purchasing uh uh mr leslie come up and speak to that with some more specifics but the total for the buses is 1.6 million i think we've got 13 bruce yes 14 13 new buses that come in well so it'll really help us uh get our fleet back up to where we knew we're running many 13 14 year old buses and this will help us really get back on track as far as maintenance we spend a lot of money on maintenance on buses so this is going to make a big big difference in that i mean v-bus is also going to have seat belts on them yes sir yes yeah mr bryant also note that 400 000 of that is uh due to our community approving the referendum african referendum this year so normally uh in our press replacement plan we always hope to buy 12 or so it's rare that we do usually by 8 7 9 somewhere in that range but thanks to the community and the approval of that referendum there are additional dollars to help us buy additional buses to help as mr laska said replenish and get back on track with our bus replacement so we our goal is to not have any buses on the road that are older than 12 years and this will help us get to that point in about four and a half years um one more question how many passengers progress 78 okay all right thank you i was going to ask on the same issue the buses we got the three uh companies mcallister midwest yes how did they end up comparing uh relatively close uh they're all dependent on you know we bid buses exactly the way it fits for our school corporation and some of the vendors don't have uh what we want but as far as price wise uh they roll within what a few thousand dollars yeah which is pretty close but but uh uh fortunately we were able to go with the least bid so that's what we look for you know the least bid but they also meet our recommendations that what we want for our students and our buses good question thank you gentlemen you're welcome thank you thank you all right so um i'll go with on 4 a through h those who approve of the present proposals as presented if you signify by saying i i and those opposed all right those just pass unanimously thank you we'll see if i can do this again miss heidi i'll turn to you regarding human resources thank you governor shed i'm rick excuse me i'm requesting approval of the revised human resource recommendations as presented this evening just to figure back on what the signing said there is a revised copy in front of you that had just a few additions that we were able to is there a motion to approve the human resources recommendations as presented thank you mr grimes are there questions to miss heine yes mr bennett i remember in the last board meeting we were going to use and a number of these positions specifically say that they're related how close are we to filling all 30 states at this point um we're not there yet we're getting closer day by day but we're not there yet off the top of my head i can't tell you how many of you haven't left bill did or just cares but it felt like the t the schools were filling those first and then coming back and filling the others so and then we also said that we normally have 60 or 70 is very good you've been extreme everyone's been extremely busy so with that um those who are proving the human resource recommendations as presented if you'd signify by saying i i those opposed all right those were pretty demanding all right lastly board input and review comments that you'd like to share mr grimes yeah congratulations again to all those teachers nominated for 21 teacher of the year it's been a trying year to say the least for students and teachers um and then the other thing i'd like to say if i can find the correct wording for it um as as a public school corporation i think vcsc has lots and lots of great things and i think it's very important for us to continue sharing those stories particularly in what i would call a very trying times and i think it's important for us to fight a good fight for lack of a better term in terms of securing adequate somewhat fair and equitable funding from the from the state legislature um you know 95 percent of the state's kids nearly 95 percent of the state students the 10 public schools like pcsc and the the imbalance between funding going to public schools and you know the amount of money being put towards private school vouchers the possibility of establishing education and savings accounts the imbalance just continues to grow so i think it's important to for us to continue contacting those legislators and putting up the good fight indeed mrs wilton uh i want to thank mr ryan for his opening remarks thank you very much for that i i thought it played nicely into our um and our topic on languages right learning learning the school system has a big world of life as everybody here knows but it was a good reminder of all of that but thank you i also want to commend the hr team so hiring that many people and a lot is amazing and work to um it's a grouping thank you for that mr maya we have a virtual teacher fair on wednesday too so we have a day of interviews set up virtually with secondary elementary positions yeah i the church i attend downtown columbus along with a number of other buildings i think both mr grimes in this building spoken out right on the top because the work that we have in progress in terms of liberty and justice for all i'm glad that bcsc is here i'm sure that eventually you win these fights but in the meantime sometimes you get discouraged so i've been on this board with pat ryan for some time he is a man of few words but they were very well spoken and i cannot thank you enough i can also say on my drive to bloomington i'm appreciating the signs that are saying that this is not the home for hate so i'm very proud of our community that we emphasize that we have upcoming dates and meetings that i hope it has is on everyone's calendars we will have a strategic planning session on thursday april 15th at five it will be here and i'm seeing signs as a work ahead and we will have the opportunity prior to our next school board meeting to tour a building at 2401 beam road in clover center which may be the home of our new virtual pathway school and our next school board meeting will be on monday the 19th at 6 30 in this location so thank all of you who have joined us on our youtube or come to visit or participate in our meeting virtually thank all of you who are here tonight anything else you'd like to add well thank you dr all right i call this meeting adjourned thank you

foreign hey everyone it's 12 28 so let's wait another minute and i can see there's one fern i remember our days as parents at um the full circle school and i saw your name and i thought that right away colleen okay so it is 12 30.

that was like is very happy that's great [Music] good evening everyone i'd like to call this meeting of the dartmouth school committee to order for monday april 5th 2021. would you please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic of which it stands well good evening everyone i hope everyone had a nice long uh weekend for those of you who had friday off uh at this time could we have a roll call please uh scanther chris oliver here shannon jenkins here kathleen admiral here john nunes mary waite here thank you very much for those of us in attendance this evening just a reminder to silence your cell phones um keep those on low vibrate and at this time this is where we typically allow a few minutes um to uh for public comment and just a reminder as well that per governor baker's audit suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law chapter 38 section 20 the public will not be allowed to physically access this school committee meeting members of the public can access the meeting via live stream at youtube.com forward slash dhs tv media in addition the event will be rebroadcast on dc tv channels 9 and 18 on the following days wednesday and thursday at 5 p.m friday at 6 a.m saturday at 8 a.m and sunday at 2 p.m the school committee reserves the right to implement additional remote participation procedures and we'll notify the public of these procedures as soon as it's practicable and as always a big shout out to dartmouth community television and the folks over there as well as mr peratti and his crew here um that's always uh so diligent and are we always coming up with new creative ways to broadcast our school committee meetings so uh thank you very much mr peratti at this time this will be typically a lot a few minutes for anyone wishing to comment on any of tonight's agenda items um as always you can also email those comments and i know we've received a few of them already uh to our recording secretary kathleen genther dartmouthschools.org uh besides the ones that you've afforded us ms guenther have you received any others i have not okay thank you very much uh mrs dr jenkins so i just have a question for you mr chair i uh we received a um a letter from the dartmouth high school public parking committee and i know you said we aren't talking about parking that's not an agenda item so public comments have to be out of agenda items but i don't wonder if that might not be considered under budget because the parking fee does have budgetary implications and if we were to make changes to the parking fee i'm not saying that we are or are not the budget will be voted most likely and closed this evening so any sort of changes that happen happen so i don't know if we want to at least read that now because it has budgetary implications it's up to you it's your rule sure thank you very much dr jenkins and i appreciate that and um i had annoyed ccu cc'd you on the email i think that is something i appreciate the students letter and i think that deserves a little bit of attention a little more discussion on an agenda item um i don't want to since we typically do not read public comments allowed during our meetings i don't want to set a precedence while we're away on zoo meetings right now or on youtube meetings so i would like to see that come up on one of the next agendas i do feel though that it's worthwhile and worth giving an attention i understand your role in what you're saying with uh under the budget but i think it's such a um my new portion of the budget that um you know i certainly if there could be some wiggle room if you know we choose to just vote on the budget the way it is that's fair enough and i think it's good that we've had this discussion in open meeting about that we're not going to read it tonight because we're going to put it on the agenda later so that's fine yeah no i i appreciate that and i thought the letter was very well written uh by that student so thank you mr chair if i might yes um i did receive information from mr kylie on that if i i could provide a little bit of information about that fee of what it goes through when we get to the budget discussion okay we don't have to read the letter but i can just give a quick overview and then you can lead in on more discussion at the future meeting sure and for everyone watching at home we were talking about student parking fees here at dartmouth high school um you know we can certainly um just give you a quick synopsis yeah thank you but i do think that it's worth bringing um bringing that student back for another meeting at this time uh the chair will entertain a motion to approve the regular session minutes of march 22 2021.

yes mr newsome we talked about this a while back when uh mr tebow was here and we talked about the like the 21 for 21 coming up and we talked about having the class offices here in person uh and mr tebow to number one so we could see them and say hello right number two more importantly they could kind of give us a synopsis as to what is going on that's right for year end and everything else so i mean if we're looking at like may 17th or something that that'd be fine that'd be great yeah you know not next meeting but you know in the next finding out they'll be winding down at that point but it would still be still be nice to have an idea what's going on yeah we just i think from the at least from my perspective i can only speak for myself but i think it would be great to have you folks have the senior class offices in here and you know along with the student rep to the committee just to share everything that's been going on and how the how much has been going on with planning especially yeah so and i'm glad you asked about the how things were going because that was something i wanted to know also and also after evan spoke the first meeting i obviously conversed with mr tebow and we were both so pleased he said he was so proud of you because he always gives the kids some tidbits of what's happening but he took it upon himself to add a little flair and extra things so he was exceptionally proud of the the work you did on our first meeting i'm really glad to hear that thank you well thank you so much for for presenting this evening evan you're welcome to stay but we know uh i'm busy we know you're very busy you're a busy man thank you have a good night have a good night you too and next up i'm going to turn it over to dr gifford for her introduction for our spotlight on joseph demello elementary school so we're happy to welcome the demelo school tonight we have of course principal katie pavello along with assistant principal is correa good evening ladies good evening okay i want that to happen again girl yeah yep sorry all right okay we won't touch it i promise okay well good evening um we'd like to thank you for the opportunity tonight to highlight to mello school given that today was the first day we welcomed back all our students we had a sneaking suspicion that you might want to hear a little bit about how that went therefore we've promised you just talk a little louder we've got the that's right and we can't hear sorry yes i will use my teacher teach your voice yes yeah thank you so we split our presentation into two parts we are going to talk a little bit about the work that went into getting us to the point where we were at today and then we will um highlight some specific things that we've been working at de melo throughout the year um with our traditions and just kind of uniquely to mellow so that's okay so as has been discussed back in august we had to submit three plans to the state including one for all in learning i would love to sit here and tell you that thanks to that work when the decision was made to transition to hybrid all we had to do was open our doors and welcome our students however that was just really not the case once we knew that all in learning was not a realistic option for us in the fall we shifted our emphasis to creating the safest and most robust hybrid and remote plans possible for our students and while some of the things we planned for in the fall were applicable to this transition a lot has changed in the six months from when we theoretically planned for having students in our building to actually having them with us guidance was updated functioning within the confines of the building became a reality and we learned and adjusted to situations that we just simply have never had to encounter before so tonight we'll give you a peek into some of the work that went into this latest transition and what the day-to-day operations of elementary school look like with all of our students back in school and while it's mrs corey and i speaking to you tonight we also know that our colleagues at quinn potter and cushman have all done similar work to what we're about to talk to talk about and that the middle school and high schools are deeply entrenched in this work as they look forward to welcoming more kids back to school so one of the biggest changes that needed to be made as we transitioned from hybrid to all in learning was the use of the spaces within our building since september our students have been eating lunch in their classrooms with updated guidance and the increased number of students in school student desks went from a minimum of six feet apart to a minimum of three feet apart and while we know that this is safe for our students while masked throughout the day students need to maintain that six foot minimum when their masks are off in their eating so to make this happen desks from the high school were brought down to our cafeteria and schedules were adjusted the domino effect of that or at least at potter and mellow was that our teacher's room which had been in our cafeteria needed to be moved to the gym which meant that all pe classes are now held outside or in our classrooms as someone who goes home to a pe teacher every night the impact of this decision was certainly not one that was lost on me we are extremely grateful to mrs schmick our pe teacher for her flexibility and we would appreciate any and all help from the committee and the community in doing the sun dance at least from monday to friday from now until june 17th our classrooms also went through a shift as more desks were brought in and measured at a minimum of three feet i know a lot has been said across various platforms about desk acquisition and we would just like to publicly thank both mr kylie's office and the maintenance staff for assuring that all kids who came to school today had a desk so there's been a lot of questions as to why we needed to order so many desks to get to this point and i'll just reiterate kind of what's been talked about at past meetings about how over the past several years we've had a big push towards creating inclusive and cooperative classrooms and lots of furniture has been purchased to get us to that but it's furniture that unfortunately in a pandemic is unusable so it's been a district effort to get all the schools what they need shifting desks between buildings ordering additional desks for students and while there were suggestions that desks should have been purchased earlier um i would just kind of bring attention back to that last slide when we talked about how every possible space in our buildings is being used for teaching and being used for learning and being used period um and we really there really was no place to um that was a foolproof or i guess more accurately waterproof place to store all these additional desks that might be used um you can just skip right over that this well actually i guess that's our custodians who have been moving and moving and moving uh desks throughout the last few weeks in our hallways um our our hallways are busy travel routes and they've been marked throughout the year to assist students with appropriate spacing as they walk in line up one of my favorite quotes that came out of this year came out of a first grade when we were talking to the kids at that point about six foot spacing and one of the kids raised their hand and they asked but is it an adult six feet or a kid's six feet well six feet of six feet and we um we actually had a monitor at the at the time who was subbing for us who happened to be about six foot two so we had him lay on the floor and we said it's a mr mccabe six feet so um so we have we do have visuals throughout the building to try to assist the kids on what that looks like and help them line up in a way that is safe and we've also our hallways have also become extended learning spaces as we'll talk about in a few minutes so the day-to-day logistics of what happens at an elementary school we thought you might want to get a little peek at how really every every part of our day gets touched and affected by by this transition getting our kids to and from school is obviously of the utmost importance and needed to be thought through in a way that's both safe and efficient if you've ever driven down dartmouth street a little before nine in the morning or around three in the afternoon you might have noticed that we have a lot of students who are picked up and dropped off we have staff that are sure our kids are masked and sanitized before coming into the building in the morning and we get our kids home safely and quickly as possible in the afternoon we continue to try to make tweaks to these procedures and make them more timely in nature but as mrs amaral can probably attest to the reality that is that the most important quality in a parent who's picking up their children from school these days remains patience i heard we set a new record today and our pickup line made it to the library so and as you probably know transportation guidance was updated and as a result of that update and the increased number of students in school we have an increased number of students on our buses students are still expected to wear a mask for the duration of the ride and to sanitize their hands as they enter or exit the bus procedures have been altered in loaning and unloading students to try to minimize the number of kids in the hallway at once so typically where the buses would pull up in the morning they would all sort of open their doors and the kids would flood through one bus at a time opens the kids come in we kind of hold that so there's a little bit of a holding pattern to sort of decrease the number of kids you see a picture of mrs schmick there with the sanitizers all our kids sanitized before they head into the building as we spoke about earlier the logistics of serving and eating lunch was an area that had to change as we transitioned at the elementary level though students also have a snack and a mask break every day that needed to be addressed again because students take off their masks when they eat there needs to be a minimum of six foot distance between students at snack time when the weather is nice we encourage our teachers to bring students outside to have their snack in mask break as most of our teachers are using this time as a read aloud time so it's kind of a two for one in that although we have an inclement weather plan because we do know that some days it's raining and that involves half of our kids when we talk about our hallways becoming sort of extended learning spaces half of our kids kind of go out to the hallway either with a book or an independent work activity um half the kids have their snack and then they switch keep going see there we go so recess um despite our best sunshine dances we have days when the weather makes it impossible for for us to go outside and on those days our recess is still considered a mass break and therefore we follow a format that's similar to our snack time when half the students take an activity and do it in the hall half of our students stay inside take off their mask have a mask break and then we switch go so outdoor recess is an area that we need to look at with student safety in the forefront of our minds we attempt to keep our kids potted as much as possible which means that despite being outside the traditional days of letting them the kids from all different classes at a grade level play together is just still not a reality for our students recess as we said is also considered a mask break so we need to ensure that students have an opportunity to spread apart take their masks down so we've worked with our monitors throughout the year to make sure that this is a process is there's a process in place and you see we kind of follow that five five ten five five format where there's a few minutes for all the things we need to do but we also um have worked with them on designing structured games because it is still recess this is still elementary school and our goal is to still have kids have fun get movement and get ready to learn for the rest of the day the only additional thing i'll add to what i've said about mask breaks is what can't be overlooked is teacher creativity as i walked our building last week looking over the progress to getting ready for today i saw lots of different ways that teachers have tried to accommodate their students by getting creative with their spaces in one of our bigger classrooms the teacher had x's marked on the floor away from the desks that she had measured at six feet apart that were designated places for kids to go if they were working independently that they could pull down their mask work on their on their stuff and still get a mass break a lot of the classrooms that potter and demelo have an alcove between the two joined classrooms teachers have designed math break spaces in there where students can still be listening to the instruction in the lesson but have a moment to be able to pull down their masks and for as strict and sort of sterile as all that might sound our teachers continue to think outside the box and come up with amazing ways to not only keep our kiddos safe but keep their learning spaces feeling welcoming and inviting so bathrooms when i said no space could be overlooked i meant every space including our bathrooms so we had to think of a way to decrease the amount of students in bathrooms to be able to maintain appropriate spacing so all of our bathrooms have hooks outside the door our kids have cards they hang their card on the hook kids have learned that if they have to use the bathroom they need to make sure that there's a space to hang their hook if there are two children in the bathroom they need to wait their turn and away they go we discussed classroom design but i'll just add that in addition to all the things that we've talked about we continue to run our universe and our air purifiers and all of our spaces throughout the day windows are open where they can be and we maintain that minimum of three foot distance and i put that emphasis on the word minimum because in the majority of our spaces our kids are maintaining a distance of greater than three feet so um we have our you know our trusty measuring sticks you saw the custodians with and they go through and they measure but by and large our kids you can see in that classroom that classroom is set and ready to go and those desks are far more than three feet apart the other thing i'll just say is that with and i will say this loud and proud with our custodian's blessings uh we have a lot of the classrooms that have marked the floors because the inevitable movement of six to eleven-year-olds is that desks are not going to stay put where you put them to start the day so it's a way for the kids to know kind of how to get back into their appropriate space and most of what we've talked about tonight really boils down to creating new rituals and routines that needed to be thought about through a new lens and so much of that work was done in conjunction with our superhero school nurses including creating a routine for actually seeing the nurse so we have traditionally sent our older kids independently or our younger kids with an adult or a buddy to see the nurse if they don't feel well or they need a little triage but this year our nurse makes house calls so she goes to classrooms to assess students and kind of make a decision about next steps all of our buildings have had to transition a space to an isolation room where students who display coveted like symptoms can be separate from healthy or injured kids who are not and as you can see when the nurse is already with a student and another student is sick liz or in this particular case i get to suit up in some good old ppe and go fetch our sick kiddos um i would just i would be completely remiss if i didn't take a minute to acknowledge that the only way this whole operation is able to function every day is because of the dedication flexibility and sheer awesomeness of the people that liz and i have the privilege of working with every day because we have our kids plotted throughout the day we needed a much larger number of individuals who were able to able to oversee a larger number of smaller groups if that makes sense so we are extremely appreciative to central office as they were able to extend our recess monitor and custodian hours to help with this but the reality is that absences happen substitutes are at a minimum and without the commitment of the members of our staff to literally do whatever it takes to get through the day i'm sometimes not sure we would uh this is most often accomplished by our secretary katie gobiel whose official title we've petitioned to change to chaos coordinator as she uh pieces together coverage every morning as you can see um up there is one of our daily updates and i think on this day i was a health teacher liz was a librarian and katie herself was a lunch and recess monitor but the names that you'll see on this list most often are those of our teaching assistants i just cannot overstate what a critical role these people have played in us being able to function on a day-to-day basis they act as our substitutes our lunch and recess monitors coverage for meetings truly they do it all and most times with little or no forewarning we are so grateful to them and to our entire staff for their flexibility and their willingness to do whatever it takes to be able to give the kids the positive experience and that's what i'll say that again the positive experience that we know that they are getting every day so i've talked a lot about the work that went into getting us to this point today and yes it was a lot of work but we would do it again a hundred times over because that's what's led to our kids being in school and that is why we do what we do and it makes every single thing that we've done worth it um all the teachers that i talked to last week while justifiably anxious about what they called their fourth first day of school or even more excited to welcome their kids back to school and our first grade teachers who have had their little munchkins back for two weeks now we'll tell you that life is in what we call little land is just as it should be now that the kiddos are back and while it's wonderful that the adults are excited about having their kids back it's even better to hear from our kiddos who are going to tell you a little bit about what they like in our look forward to about being back go ahead can you tell me what your favorite thing is about everyone being back in first grade my favorite thing is art and gym seeing your friends every day alrighty thanks hi jack can you tell me what your favorite part is about everyone being back at school together um having laughed with everyone have an art with everyone that's fantastic thank you hi lily hi can you tell me what the best part is about having everyone come to school every day um you can see your friends if you have trouble with something you can get help with that comes here every day yay thank you you're welcome hi landon can you tell me what your favorite part is about everyone being back at school i like to do art and gym and you get to do those all the time right when you're back every day awesome so emma tell us what you're most excited about when it comes to everyone coming back to school on april 5th seeing my friends again because over the past year or a few months i haven't got to see as many because they're in cohort bag and the fact that i'll be in school every day is kind of exciting because our teachers don't have to do as much work and like they won't freak out because if they got something on our checklist wrong even though we do have we'll probably have a little bit of homework but it won't be that hard and just like after the fact that i'll be in school and i'll get to see all my friends in the same classroom is pretty exciting i agree thank you very much sequoia tell us what you're most excited about when it comes to all students coming back to school in a couple of weeks i'm most excited about that like we're going to be able to socialize more and that we're going to be able to see more people and if we're struggling with something maybe other kids in our classroom could help and also maybe even the fact that like we could help with another kid in the classroom and look it'll be much more funner because there will be more kids and we can meet more people fantastic thank you so anna tell me what you're looking forward to when all students have returned to school in a couple of weeks i think i'm looking forward to how the schedule and how it used to be to kind of get more comfortable with an old schedule again and i'm also looking forward to seeing more possible friends in my classroom fantastic i'm excited for you too so maddie tell us why you're excited about everyone coming back to school on april 5th i'm excited for everybody to come back to school because i don't have to worry about using my computer as much and logging onto me doing all my work on life fantastic thank you so i'm not sure if you could hear some of our little guys up the top but across the board one of the things that they talked about was being obviously excited about seeing their friends and kind of having things that they get to do all the time but i was really i was kind of struck by the kids insightfulness that if they are stuck on something or if they need help that their teacher will be there to kind of help them and it's it's wonderful that they still know and view their teachers as that person that they know they can kind of go to if they need help with something so i'm going to hand it off to liz we'll talk you to a little bit about some of the dimelo initiatives that we've been working on throughout the year oh i just well i didn't need that overshot the runway so i'm going to be talking to you about keeping and growing our demelo traditions and in order to do that i need to dial back a little bit to last year so since last march mrs pebble and i have pretty much been spending many hours making plans for how to run a school in a pandemic and we knew early on that one of the most important things that we could do for our students and our staff was to keep as many of our demelo traditions alive as well as we could while maybe cultivating some new ones so from the onset of the stay-at-home order we understood the importance of being visibly present in our students daily lives that became crystal clear right out the gate when we were home and we needed to connect with our kids so one of the first things we did at this time was we started to record our daily morning announcements and closing messages that students and families could access through our facebook page or develop facebook page and we immediately started to receive messages from families just to let us know how much they appreciated this simple connection that they had with us um students look forward to hearing mrs paveo's daily birthday wishes and words of encouragement and i received quite a few knock-knock jokes from families to share in each uh of our days each day's closing message in a very simple way these videos kept our demelo community connected in a time when we were physically disconnected and as we launched this school year remotely and then moved to hybrid learning we decided to continue to record and send out morning announcements each day really for a logistical reason we knew it was kind of slow getting kids in um that teachers needed a little bit more time in previous years we used to just have morning announcements at 905 exactly every morning we thought that a big benefit of recording these words is just to have teachers have the ability to sit down with the whole class and press play and enjoy these wonderful morning announcements which they have so you're welcome so um as we launched this year we moved and moved to hybrid learning we we started to record them daily and i should say mrs did and during the first weeks of the school year um when we were remote actually students were watching them at home remotely so flash forward to hybrid learning in october classes watch these videos take videos together on their um in school days and the kids who are learning at home on those days could also join in and watch these videos which we think just kept everyone connected and now that we are all in together we will continue to post morning announcements and as you will see from our video we have a little clip that we brought along with us today mrs faber's daily videos are filled with important information what's for lunch what's going on warmth and a little bit of inspiration to start each day they've become a new demelo tradition and they continue to connect us all uh first thing every single day so here we go i also pause you at the greatest moment where you look like you're half asleep or sometimes your mouth opens there it is good mornings middle school and happy tuesday today is tuesday march 23rd we don't have any birthdays today at the middle school but a happy birthday to anyone that you might know having a birthday today as we continue with women's history month our quote today comes from famed scientist marie curie marie curie was a physicist and chemist she was the first woman to win the nobel prize and the only woman to ever win it twice and she says the first principle never let one's self be beaten down by persons or by events so i love that message like i love all our quotes of the day but this one friends think about what that's saying to you don't let your spirit be broken by other people or by events and sometimes that can be really hard to do so sometimes crummy things happen sometimes we have bad days sometimes events out of our control are happening in what she's saying is we can't let ourselves we can't let our spirit our positivity our gratitude be broken by that so even when you have a tough day even when you encounter someone that maybe you haven't gotten along with or maybe they were having a bad day and they did they tried to dip in your bucket we can't let ourselves our spirit be broken by those things and that takes perseverance that takes grit but remember friends we can do hard things at the middle of school so if you're having a tough day if the events are happening or if someone's maybe not being so kind to you remember marie curie's first principle never let yourself never let your spirit be broken by people or by events let's end our announcements today with a spring joke which hopefully i will deliver correctly what is a tree's favorite drink root beer of course i hope that you all have a terrific tuesday of teaching learning and we will see you right back here tomorrow morning such a simple video and the staff love them and the more importantly i think the kids really love them and they think that mrs pavel was somewhat as a celebrity because they watched her on the smart board in the morning and wave and go out of their way to say hello to her in the hallways she's the lady from the tv [Laughter] so moving right along as you may already know demelo's pbis framework is centered on recognizing our students for their positive choices on a regular basis again as we plan for a school year filled with uncertainties the dental staff fully understood that keeping pbis alive and strong this year was more important than ever and with a little creative thinking and tweaking this is what we've done each day teachers continue as we have in years past to recognize students who have exemplified our core values of being respectful responsible and safe with copying good coins and copying good slips and i think i can speak for mrs paveo when i say that fridays are our favorite days at de melo school not because it's necessarily the end of the week but because it's the one day of the week that we visit every single classroom we select our leaders of the pack who are pictured here some of them we celebrate those children and encourage invite their classmates to talk about what makes them such a wonderful leader of the pack for their classroom and it never gets old the kids truly light up when their names are selected and at that point we just dip our hands into a bowl of copy and good slips that students have earned in the class and just pick a name randomly and it is truly the most fulfilling wonderful or one of the most wonderful parts of our week because as you can see the kids are just jazzed by the whole experience and it really um when they get their brag tags um you can see the pride in their face and uh like i said never gets old and we get to reinforce that that's what you know that's part of what making these good choices is about is being recognized for the good little humans that you are let's keep it going at the melo we also recognize students who consistently demonstrate our core values with a tri-mesterly fun zone which typically in the past has been thank you a 30-minute celebration where students get to engage in various activities and by all accounts they enjoy themselves thoroughly so in the past we were always able to combine two classes at a time in the cafeteria for the celebration this year we had to reimagine our fun zones a little bit given the pandemic all of our fun has to be socially distanced now and so for our first fun zone which was back in december instead of holding 10 celebrations in the cafeteria we held 40 individual fun zones in the classroom we played a lot of bingo we did a lot of dance party kids loved pictionary we had a blast and again it's all prefaced with you have earned this this is a recognition for all of your good choices for making the school the safe happy place that it is and um for 40 fun zones flew by we um really they did we had a blast she was laughing but there were a lot of them they but they were wonderful and we were happy to report that the kids even though it looked different it felt different from fun zones of the past um they really enjoyed it in this uh these pictures you can see we had a socially distanced dance party for these classes and we're looking forward to our next celebration later on this month and it'll be a little bit easier because we're all in so i'll on to one of our most cherished uh demelo traditions and recognitions our student of the month um celebration so we've been doing um in-person student of the month assemblies at de melo school for about four years now and they're fantastic events that we have in the cafeteria we don't tell the students that they've been selected as a student of the month we call families and invite them to sneak in and then we surprise students of the month when we announce their names and read narratives that their teachers have written about them at the assembly so again we had to kind of reimagine this and this year we've put together student of the month videos and we've done one every month since we got back just to in-person learning um in october so with the help of our instructional tech coach mrs vosey as well as mr peratti and his wonderful interns at dartmouth high school we've been able to put these videos together and they are a true labor of love they take a bit of organizing um but we've been able to celebrate our students if not all together in the cafeteria through a video that teachers show on a drop day that we designate throughout the building and i would like to show you special questions [Music] hi and welcome to another virtual student of the month assembly friends i've heard that we've come to love watching these assemblies so we can see all of the kids from all the grade levels so i'm not going to talk very long because i want to get into the real important stuff which is recognizing some of our friends who are doing amazing things across the day friends i want to acknowledge how difficult this year could be for some of us remote learning isn't easy hybrid learning isn't easy virtual learning isn't easy but boys and girls we can still make great choices and we can still put best effort into what we're doing and so many of you are doing that every single day not just our students of the month but as we go around and see our copying good slips we know that so many of you are trying your very best and for that we are so unbelievably appreciative we are so proud of the kiddos that we're about to hear about we're so proud of so many of you here at middle school but it's our time right now to celebrate 20 amazing kids who are doing great things every day so let's get ready to roll mrs colbeck has this to say about her student it is with great pleasure that i nominate may amarillo as our december student of the month may is a wonderful young lady who is a joy to have in class her laugh is contagious and filled with happiness she exhibits our core values and can be counted on always to be respectful responsible and safe she is kind and is an extremely hard worker her work is always done to the very best of her ability and she can always be found applying all that she has learned she perseveres and then is it is an incredible role model she is humble and kind her ability to understand the situation and move to the greater good is awe-inspiring she is very insightful and thoughtful in addition to all of her accomplishments she is very safe mae understands what is needed to be safe in our classroom and puts her part into play in addition she cares for her things and her technology we are so very lucky to have mei as part of our classroom family this year this nomination is so well deserved congratulations on being our december student of the month bravo congratulations may hello kiss [Music] romeo kiss hi may congratulations to you i'm really not surprised because you are really a great kid but i'm so proud of you have a great day i'm a congratulations on your student of the month you really deserve it i'm proud of all your accomplishments keep up the great work love you congratulations sweetheart you always make me proud good job we truly truly enjoy those videos and i think when we were thinking of reimagining student of the month for this year we were thinking let's have families submit videos it is our favorite favorite part the videos the grandparents the siblings um i watch them all and put them into google folders as they come in and i will literally call mrs paveo and say i've just seen the most heartfelt proud parents like like warm congratulatory messages from families it's it really is something so i feel like we haven't lost anything by moving it to a video this year and i would look forward to the day when we get back to doing it in person but these videos are a huge hit with the students and the families and i just feel like it's such a positive thing to look forward to every month and everyone does yeah so as you can see we've worked really hard on keeping our community positive happy and strong at the mellow school this year despite all the challenges the de mello school continues to be a place of joy um and a place where we all come together it's a home away from home for everyone every day so i'm going to turn this back to mrs paveo who'll talk about the work we've done this year around literacy so one of our favorite things to do at the mellow school is to celebrate reading and with the hard work of mrs correa and dr lisa macioni we were able to modify but keep some of our favorite reading celebrations one such celebration is breakfast blankets and books which is a mouthful but also where students bring break a breakfast snack a blanket and they spread out around the room and we spend some quality time with a book we just drop everything and read for a little bit these are some pictures of our kids typically we would get a whole grade level together in a shared space but again we sort of thought outside the box the kids built tents and forts around their desks so they just had a great time reading another tradition that we kept this year was our bookmark contest students in all grade levels submit a reading theme design which is voted on and then the winning bookmark is distributed to all the students at that grade level we have a quick little video of from our winners this year every story has like a new story in it like it has like characters and there's all like new adventures it's perfect that's why i love reading thank you go hi my name is max beatty and i love reading because it's challenging go hi my name is emma and i'm in third grade i love reading because you learn interesting things and you have adventures in books hi my name is bobby i'm from mrs baker's fourth grade and um i like and this is my bookmark i really like reading because it can it can be really inspiring some sometimes and some of the stories can actually help you solve real life problems and also i can i can incorporate some words i can learn some new words from reading and i really love reading for that reason i'm sean king and i love reading books because it teaches lots of stuff so bingo for books is another beloved family event that we've held at demelo for the past several years and obviously this year we couldn't do that as an in-person event so with the help of our ics liz voce and our bingo caller extraordinaire melissa pickering if you've never heard melissa run a bingo you've missed out uh we were able to turn this into a google meet virtual family night um and it this just kind of encapsulates what we're talking about we had to take these things that we know our families and our kids love and just amend them and tweak them so that we could still do them they could still be done they just not quite done the way that we that we've done them before but i think we've found new and really wonderful ways to connect with our families um this was this event was just a couple weeks ago it was hysterical actually to see the kids also in their home environments playing bingo it was great and in celebration of read across america in the month of march we have traditionally looked forward to inviting guest readers into demelo to read to our students again not wanting to let that go we worked with our readers that mrs corey was able to corral into reading and most of you in this room tonight happen to make helped us make that happen uh guest readers were all able to read books from our diversity library which liz is going to talk about more in just a couple of minutes and finally one of the coolest things i think that we've done over the past couple of years is invite authors to de mello school to talk to the students about their process of writing editing and publishing their writing this year was no exception and we were thrilled to welcome scott magoon sadia faruqi julie berry josh funk and jarrett lerner virtually into our classrooms to discuss their books and careers as authors i think it's so empowering to our kids to be able to see people who have made a career out of writing i think a lot of them view writing as this thing that we make them do and they don't really see the purpose of it and they don't think that they could see themselves as someone who could take that into something that they could do as a career and as a living so you know pulling these authors in and they we've purchased the books for our classrooms so the kids can have those books um and then we're actually working with one of our authors to hopefully do a book walk he's going to give us some copyright uh rights to be able to blow his book up and post it outside and do kind of a gallery walk through so working with these authors has been amazing and just a really really wonderful and enriching and empowering event for our students i'm going to turn it back to liz who's going to wrap it up by talking about some of our diversity and inclusion initiatives so again winding the clock back to last spring as we looked ahead to planning for the 2021 school year mrs pavan and i set a goal around something of critical importance to the both of us increasing an awareness and nurturing and appreciation of diversity and inclusion throughout de melo school in keeping with radine sim bishop's work on transforming schools into places where children have access to mirrors and windows we can committed to making demelo a place where students could see themselves their cultures and identities reflected in the stories they read mirrors while at the same time have access to resources that offered them a clear view into others experiences windows while covert has prevented us from hosting the in-person cultural events we'd hope to offer this year we've been able to bring virtual cultural experiences to our students last december author sadie sadia farooqi visited virtually our first and second graders in class and at home to discuss her work and her meet yasmine book series about a pakistani american second grader and her family oh wait a minute i don't know i don't know i might need some technical assistance here mr galesha no oh we had a clip of sadia farooqi good morning first and second graders thank you for those of you who are tuning in from the classroom and thank you to those of you who are tuning in at home we are so lucky to have saria farooqi here with us today as you know she is the author of meet yasmin and um some other wonderful books so i am not going to talk too long because i want her to have as much time to talk as possible but the classroom teachers those of you here in school um when sadia is finished talking and it's time for questions i can go around and mute different classroom teachers and you can have the opportunity to ask her a question so um i will turn and of course you can use the chat um too so i will turn it over to sonia hello good morning i'm sadia farooqi i am the author like um like uh elisa said of the yasmine series but also other books for kids i wanted to introduce myself and then i'll take lots of questions um so i live in houston texas which is kind of far and probably less cold way less cold than you guys where you are but you know i wasn't um born here i was actually born in another country i'm an immigrant which means i was born somewhere else and now i live here i was born in pakistan which is if you don't know you can look it up ask your parents or teachers to help you it is a small country in asia it's neighbors with more popular well-known countries like china and india and that's where i was born i grew up there i went to school there and i went to college there and then when i was a grown-up i was 22 years old not very grown up but you know adult um that's when i got on a plane and i i flew all the way to the united states we wanted to know if you have a favorite book uh you mean in my book yes from your book series that we've been reading did you have a favorite one that's hard am i allowed to have favorites i feel like i shouldn't have favorites because i wrote all of them that's like asking your mom who's their favorite kid ah don't do that okay and this past february we received a grant through the mass cultural council sta's residency program to fund an artist residency at de mello school this year this has allowed us to bring japanese storyteller musician and visual artist motoko to our entire third grade to work virtually with our third graders on learning grade level math and science concept through the art of origami and there she was uh launching last the program last week and finally through a generous grant from the dartmouth education foundation last spring we've been able to create a de mello school diversity and inclusion library for our staff and students this library currently houses more than 70 student-friendly picture books devoted to a range of topics including race poverty religion family diversity and lgbtq issues our guest readers all month um parents and dartmouth staff alike all read books selected from this library and we have enjoyed it immensely we hope to add to it more and more as we move on so we'd like to thank you all for this opportunity tonight to take a look at our road to getting to students back in and a chance to shine a light on some of the things that we've been working on at mellow when we knew we were presenting today instead of on the 26th we sort of added that piece in so i appreciate your patience as this was way longer than we would have ever spoken otherwise um but we wanted to kind of give you that view and we'll happily kind of take any questions that you have for us now thank you so much ladies what a wonderful presentation it was very uh encompassing of everything um and i i have a couple of my own thoughts but i'm going to turn it over we can start down there with mrs waite hi so you know i just love demelo and i think you have such a fabulous amazing staff and you know certainly seeing all this is testimony to that so um it's very comprehensive you know it's everything i expected and know that would be happening um you know i love seeing that these traditions that i know were so beautiful for our family to go through are still being you know recast this year but and it's such a great lesson for the kids too to say you know we have to do something differently but we can still do it that's such awesome modeling and it's so i think it's empowering for them just to see how this year can play out in a positive way we can make the best out of what's a really tough you know reality for for everyone you know and just again and i think like i love seeing um you know mrs paveo just talking about that like honestly in these like conversations that you know we can it's hard sometimes as we you know interpret this quote you know there is like marie curie that is hard and really bringing that to their level and explaining that and then launching the day with you know we understand and but we're going to move forward and be inspired so again these are real you know so many things that are happening and are so meaningful and i you know i look at the video and i think wow you know i want to go back and watch it i want to watch you every day and i want to watch in the family story i can forward them to you but the family stories too i thought that was i mean you know may but that was a beautiful you know so important for those kids and that's families like i want to sit that down and watch all the students of the month because again and i i'm sure that's a great treasure for you know everyone who especially people that you know even in normal situations couldn't be there to be part of that ceremony so there are some you know again some i think positive legacies that will you know continue to come from this for sure tough time but um and again and i really appreciate the mirrors and windows program and i was i felt you know i love the book that i read and you know i felt that you know again just for these kids to be able to walk in and see like wait that's a book about me and something that i can identify with and you know i that is um you know it's it's all about that that self-image and that positivity and you know again it's just another everything that you guys do right and your staff does and so thank you and thanks especially to you your you know tas and your nurses you know your nurse and just everything that uh you know i know sharon's been i just everybody coming together it's uh it's a phenomenal job so thank you thank you good luck for the rest of the year thank you mr news thank you mr chairman ladies thank you very much for being here uh i know i took a i was fortunate enough mrs prevail gave me the tour uh before school open and uh got a chance to see what was going on when they were moving things in august to get to six feet and you know the uh the gym down in the back had all the excess furniture at the time and you know what are you going to do for john i don't know haven't gotten there yet you know you know pray for warm weather type of deal but uh thank you you know you you mary just misses wait just talked about you know sayings and everything else and i was sitting there going yep life gives you lemons you make lemonade so you've done a fantastic job and uh just a personal thank you for allowing me to pop into mr finclack's room that wednesday to uh to read the book it was a great book uh on you know 20 different americans with cultural diversities and such and some of them you know being a child of the 60s i can remember a lot of those that were going on so it was really to put my own little spin on some of them and you know i hope the students enjoyed it i did and i thank you and don't hesitate to send me a text or an email again i'd love to do it again we appreciate you coming thank you thank you mr nunes this is america thank you for being here um i uh just this weekend actually came across a pile of paperwork like you know it was actually a small pile proud to say that i just i guess i haven't gone through and it was a folder and i don't know maybe i knew it was coming i just was avoiding it but it was actually the friday afternoon reading log from mrs baker's fourth grade class and a in a you know a flyer dated march 13th and mae and i looked at it like ooh and there was a ymca catalog for a spring event and she she's she's a little bit of a comedian and not to make light of a serious situation she said well that camp didn't happen um and yeah so she just kind of rolled with it but that was something to see just to say oh my goodness this is this has been in this little pile here for for a very long time and we've been at this for a very long time um yup um i'm also one of the parent pickup parents i i i don't know i've been fortunate to be able to drop off and pick up all three of my kids even when they were in three different schools for three different reasons three different ages and uh it's been notable the the the change because you'll also probably see us there early because my daughter likes to be there early it's part of her starting her day and she wants to be prepared even with assigned seating so we engage her she's earlier when papa brings her but she's she's still early-ish when mom brings her i don't know jerry's out on dad no i'm just kidding but um we arrive you know early and wow even last week we talked about the the first the youngest kiddos coming in and we were like two minutes be it past our schedule and we were out to the street already dropping off i thought oh my goodness this is going to be really tough when when you know she starts on the 5th full time and but we were we were very early this morning embarrassed to say how early we were this morning but uh i will say i think we were there about quarter past eight uh and we were the third car we weren't the first car we were the third car in line which is so that's striking i'm sure it got quite chaotic but you always handle it everyone that is very organized and handle it with just patience and positive attitudes all the time sometimes have to wake people up to have them move along but the process that you put in place is very simple and you know we have a name tag so nobody has to go social distancing where they can call the name and everybody's prepared to come out in line and then it's just like a seamless process so really kudos to you and i don't miss all of your staff uh we personally the last couple years were able to experience like miss baker and this year we have miss colbeck and um just both scenarios and i'll just reference like this year knowing just just knowing what what amazed you know the teachers must have been feeling and just like the sense of repeating yourself every other day and double time and extra work and just not you know stuck in the mud unable to kind of really take time to straighten yourself out and and you know the the positivity the grace the excitement the energy the the obvious love to be there to do what she can to make those kids at home feel welcome and supported and to start their day with energy like you said those on and off days and starting back when the pandemic um started we would all tune in to to listen to you and to do the pledge of allegiance and at the end of the day and then to listen to the jokes um and then what you did you just made me choke up a little with that with the student of the month but the ways in which you constantly you know were trying to make things as normal as possible um that's so it was so special and then to be able to uh to be able to have like my dad you know record papa record that's that's her her favorite person in the world and then to have liam there and he normally would have been at school we wouldn't have wanted him to take the day off to come to something to celebrate like that or he he might not have wanted to stay there you know what wouldn't have been the best situation let's just say um especially knowing that the cafeteria will usually hold it is where his oldest sister used to play basketball so all bets are off with that but he was able to be part of that video i i don't know what she looked like when she watched it in person because she was totally surprised but i i'm sure she was she was uh quite overwhelmed with emotion because it's really her family is really important to her so just i want to thank you for everything you've done happy to be back may admittedly announced today that she in a happy she was thrilled to see her friends she told me who she saw they didn't say hi to each other but they waved she was happy there was music classical music at that lunch in the cafeteria and you played it there was a game i think had i forget we played a little would you rather yeah there's some games that you know so she had a blast but she was she was nervous she said she was a little bit nervous um but she was okay like she but i'm really glad that she is able to articulate that to me and she trusts that she she says what she wants to say when she feels she needs to say it and so um you know i'm sure kiddos were nervous i'm sure teachers were nervous um i was a little nervous she came home she put more hand sanitizer on right away she's really diligent but the work that you've done in making kids feel as safe as possible and has been tremendous so i just appreciate it i'm really thrilled i love all of our schools and and but i'm grateful that she gets to um be with you and uh experience this through the lent you know through the umbrella of of your little family school so thank you thank you mrs amaril dr jenkins i just want to echo my colleagues and saying thank you for the presentation um i think it was particularly useful because i think we see a lot of times in social media well why didn't they already have a plan and i don't think people understand that and i think it's really important to reiterate right the first plan you developed was for six feet right and then we waited and then we waited and then we waited and then the state was like oh and then you know less than a week you got it i'm exaggerating but now it's three feet and so part of the thing is is that it was impossible to plan for all possible scenarios that might have been coming from the state about how we were going to have to do that so showing all the work that went into figuring out once we got the guidance is really helpful i think for people to understand how much work so many people did to make this happen on such a short time i'm super appreciative of both you showing us that work because i think it illustrates to our community what was done it's not like people were you know sitting at home like my friend used to joke i'm gonna work from home i'm gonna eat cheetos and watch soap operas all day that's not what's happening people are working around the clock to make this happen and so i appreciate you showing that to us but also the work that that really went into bringing our kids um back to school so thank you and i'm sorry i forgot your book i promise i will bring it back i had a great time reading go ahead thank you dr jenkins yeah there's not a lot more that i can say um you know just a few things really ladies phenomenal presentation i thought it was really well done really well put together there was a lot of thought and effort and the fact that you were able to take away take some snippets out of you know the day and share with us some of the students comments um i thought that was huge so to me this video really highlights kind of like what dr jenkins was saying the culmination of hundreds and hundreds of hours of planning of you know to get kids fully back get students fully back in school and that's really what this video did it was the call it highlighted the culmination it was the culmination of how and why you did what you did in order to get our our students back in school so you know just a couple of little notes that i i jotted down that i thought were important you know keeping the traditions alive i thought that was huge how you used to do bingo now you turned into it i thought that was awesome i i'd love to be a virtual bingo caller sounds like a fun gig [Laughter] what did you ask for i know right continuing to um you know go after those grants to the mass cultural council through the dartmouth um education foundation um huge and then bringing the authors in um i love the morning pep talk pep talks um you know i was i was actually getting a little uh a few of my a few of my teachers said they're going to get me a little red cardigan and they joke that i'm like mr rogers of demillo school no um and just i think you said it you know the nurse is making the house calls the you know to the rooms there's just so many moving parts and um so you know hats off to you and your staff for a job well done thank you they really i have to say thank you but they you know listen listen i always say that our job is to sort of lift the barriers so that the teachers can do the important work so like yes this is as i said like this is a lot of work and this is what we do but we do it so that the teachers can get in there and teach the kids and they really are the superstars of this whole operation because we can we can move all the barriers we can do whatever we want but we need the people to get in there and do the important work of working with our kids every day and we're just eternally eternally grateful and it can't be said enough how amazing our staff has been through this whole thing so thank you for that but i'm just going to trickle it right down to the people who are who are doing that hard work every single day no i agreed i i couldn't agree with you more and that goes back to what you had showed us on the uh the morning i don't know if it was called the morning call sheet or whatever with all the different substitutions that need to be made yes actually and what i failed to point out in that picture is at one point you saw our custodian um we have a virtual class uh where our teacher from quinn comes in we have an extra fourth grade so our custodian at one point i got called out into a meeting and i literally saw him in the hallway and i said i need you for five minutes and he said what do i have to do i said nothing the teacher is on the smart board i just need you here in case anything happens so it is a literal all hands on deck because tonight we are just eternally appreciative of everyone's hard work teamwork yes yes thank you thank you thank you thank you all right next up under old business continuation of the fy 22 budget discussion and i'm looking to be to be taking a vote this evening um we'll start off i'm going to turn it over to dr gifford for any updates or anything that you want to share with the committee before we continue yep sure thank you so once again i'll just share with you some information mr kylie provided relative to the letter that we received about the parking just just so you have it in the back of your head so we've had that come forth before a number of years ago and just for your information the committee did reduce the fee one from 100 to 60 dollars and he said that was about eight years ago so the parking fee right now is sixty dollars and it pays for plowing the painting of lines lighting repairs maintenance of lots and any little paving that has to happen um and as we know or don't know but i'll make make you know that the maintenance staff our maintenance staff plows a lot ourselves so in most of the snowstorms and we have contracted out in the past if need be so obviously you all set the fee and again for future discussion if that was i know it's pretty slim pickings in that um little pot of money and it is used every year and if that were to be eliminated um that would be something that we would have to add to the operating budget so just a quick update from mr kylie on that and that's all the updates nothing else has changed can you do you know what the total amount of revenue is generated from the part i don't no i don't i don't have that yep it's not a whole lot but okay but it's sixty dollars we're doing 60 yeah just as an fyi 300 ballpark and other than that nothing else has changed right yeah because not yeah 18 000 max max yeah luckily we do have the maintenance crew doing most of the snowstorms so you know if we had to contract that out all the time it would be the town terrible yeah too thank you dr gifford and you do have the um yeah uh the motions that mr kylie provided yeah so does anyone have any other comments or questions about tonight dr jenkins so mr chair prior to approval of the budget i would like to make a motion to amend the budget to adjust the administrative budget to leave the current administrative structure that we have in place for the next fiscal year leaving the assistant superintendent position vacant and keeping their director of teaching and learning i'll second that yeah so i have a motion by dr jenkins a second by this is wait to and could you repeat the what to retain the current and administrative structure and the administrative the district office to not fill the vacant assistant superintendent position and to retain the current director of teaching and learning position thank you very much so i have a motion by dr jenkins a second by mrs waite on the motion and discussion mr nunes yeah thank you mr chairman uh i'm sorry i can't support that i think we need the assistant superintendent's position okay with everything that goes on everything that is needed in this system not only our system but every system type of deal i think you need an assistant superintendent an assistant superintendent that's going to handle you know the other things that the superintendent and the assistant superintendent of business and finance you know the in-between things type of deal uh to take that position out of the budget uh i think is wrong and uh i think we need to you know leave it there uh as a fail-safe so i mean i'm i am fortunate i will not support this motion okay this is amarillo i i would support this because i've been kind of mulling around in my head about this um because i know everyone's taking on so much extra but i was under the impression prior to like the budget proposal that we had sort of voted i don't remember what that vote was but to like revisit this kind of post kind of where when we're back in um and i just i just feel that you know tracy you know the curriculum piece is so important uh i just would i just feel like although i know people are taking on more than they typically would to make this happen i just am back to where we were that time we voted that we would revisit this like next year or something so i mean i would support this not to say that this is a forever thing but i i um so anyway that i i do feel that that it's been not sitting well with me in in in that just not now kind of thing i just i don't know i don't know so i know that sounds like very convoluted but that's my my thoughts around it um i don't know what else yeah i just say that i kind of echo what um miss amaral said that i had thought that we had voted on this and then you know it would come to an agreement and it was you know certainly it seemed that we were going to hold on this you know whether or not that was an official vote but it seemed like we were you know that seemed to be what wasn't unanimous like a consensus that we were gonna hold um and so i was just i've been struggling a little bit with it as well on that on that note so dr jenkins are you saying uh to leave the just leave the position vacant at this time to retain the current administrative structure which is to have that position vacant and to have a current director of teaching and learning so just to clarify you you said at the last time that you would take it up during budget not to vote for next year that's what you discussed so this budget process and as you know that by leaving it vacant it is 100 about 140 000 that we've reduced so we were asking for a simple about an eight thousand dollar increase to the current director of teaching learning salary to take on all those additional responsibilities that i gave you in that updated job description so with that said then i would have to cut that job description about in half um so i'm not quite sure what all the rest of what you would propose all of those other responsibilities because my my my day is pretty much on mr kylie's right now and you know as you know he's out right now so sure miss olivera took on a lot over the next few days including dea negotiations um unfair labor practice uh discussion that we have to have all day wednesday those are things that an assistant superintendent the title has to go with those responsibilities to be able to make decisions be on certain committees etc so those are kind of the things that we are um asking for yeah i guess my question dr gifford would be how how has the functionality been this to date through this year right now how are you operating with everybody picking picking all of that up but i think with the hope for the person that's been picking up the most of it with that this would take place so i can't guarantee that that that takes place continuing you know dr jenkins so i understand that there's a desire to make this happen you know i look at my own institution i'm currently doing the job of two people right we have not been able to replace budget times are uncertain and lean i'm not convinced at this point in time that this is the time to make this change right we still have to have all hands on deck second i'm not entirely convinced i would like to see an analysis of the administrative structures in other districts that i feel like over the past few you know time that i've been on the committee and that i've been watching this committee from the finance we have limited funds and we have lots of other needs and i know we're eliminating a position but i don't want i want us to do an analysis of what our needs are and i want a clear sort of com comparison to other districts before i feel comfortable approving this this is not a never for me this is a not now you know the third thing that i will say is that the assistant superintendent is a very important role in our district um i think that we should be posting such a position i really do this is nothing against the current occupant of the position of the director of teaching and learning but for a position of sort of that scope i believe we should search that's that's my position um you know not everyone has to agree with me but i just don't feel comfortable approving this because once we move forward it's hard to move back i don't know of many districts that don't have an assistant superintendent for teaching and learning if that's our our primary goal teaching and learning we don't have one now and also from my perspective having worked in this you know leading the district for the last six years there is no one better than tracy oliveira who has done the curriculum work the professional development work and leading all the committees so again we don't agree with that but that's my my opinion my perspective right now thank you dr gifford anyone else yeah mr news yeah just to go to uh dr jenkins about posting in that type of deal in my tenure here there have been a couple of times that we have posted for assistant superintendents because we had no one qualified in-house type of deal but there have also been other times that we've either done it strictly in-house or we've just you know the position has been available and we've moved someone in so i mean it's not it's a superintendent it's the superintendent's call it's not as to who she he or she would like to have in that position type of deal so i don't see a reason to you know spend money you're talking about trying to save some money with budgets and everything else to spend money and do a search it doesn't make sense i would just i i'm kind of torn mr nunes i can understand where you're coming from i certainly understand where dr jenkins is coming from but i am somewhat concerned at the the optics when positions aren't posted um and i don't want to go backwards in time but you know with other positions but when other positions were not posted and just appointments were made you know i i don't really want to go there but you know i think you know what i'm talking about i i think we need to really take a hard look like dr jenkins said at the administrative structure i think that's the right thing to do leave the position vacant and go from there any other discussion now how so we have a motion we have a second we had discussion how do we move forward then do we in terms of after we move on the motion we have that discussion okay so right now we're talking we're debating the motion on the table right so mr nunes let me let me no not mike because we'll just vote this and then it'll just be vacant um okay i was just trying to figure out the money portion of it but we'll we'll vote this and okay fix it later so on the motion on on dr jenkins motion to retain the current administrative structure all in favor aye aye opposed me one no abstentions motion passes with four or one against no abstentions and next up is the discussion or the vote for the fy 22 budget yeah mr chairman make a motion to approve the fy 22 budget appropriation for part of school classroom teachers in the amount of 1 million 784 314 dollars a second i have a motion by mr nunes a second by dr jenkins to approve the fy 22 budget appropriation potter cl potter school classroom teachers on the motion any further discussion cheer hearing none all in favor opposed abstentions i will abstain motion passes four to zero with one abstention so the question now becomes now the issue is at hand that kathleen was bringing up to how do we move forward we could make a motion i believe correct me if i'm wrong mr nunes to approve the budget as is yeah right with the total and then that would just any the savings would be left over if dr gifford needs to pay stipends to or whatever do some duties that money would be available correct yeah so i'll make a motion to approve the fiscal year 22 budget appropriation as amended no for the total budget excluding those items voted individually in the previous motion in the amount of 45 billion 396 234 dollars and 44 cents by dr jenkins a second by mrs amaral to approve the fy 22 budget appropriation for the total budget as amended as amended discussion mr nunes did you have something or no no i won't be voting for this okay so all in favor aye opposed me one no abstentions motion passes four in favor one against no abstentions thank you everyone next up is the superintendent's update i really don't have too much tonight one thing i want to mention is the summer reading program that will continue on and one thing that parents will be able to look for is um i think the letter went out not quite sure yet but there'll be a summer reading website that people will be able to have resources and also that we'll be sending books home as usual we did i think i mentioned it before we had received a grant to have a stem vacation camp uh excuse me stem vacation camp we have not been able to really get any teachers we've posted it twice um so i think everyone wants a summer i think so too so we've been trying to give the money back to deci and they won't take it at this point so we found out today that we can probably use it for any of our summer programs so hopefully we can attribute that to some of the esy program that we have planned but i i kind of get it that people don't really want to work anymore and for that dr gifford are you posting that can we post externally or are you posting externally is it just for internal it was internal it was a quick week and it was just um you know vacation stem camp but i understand that people are tired and probably just want a good break right so but at least we can use the money because they said they can't take it back which was kind of funny but we'll put it towards the esy programs and other than that just once again i want to thank rick ferreira and all the folks that helped him out over the good friday saturday the principles as well to get the dust put together assembled in the classrooms ready to go from my understanding i was over the middle school today and also had a discussion with rick ferrer again more like i don't know like 600 deaths came in today so they'll be getting those ready so that we'll have the middle school ready um just so you know also that involves moving things that were brought to the elementary schools back to some of the other schools as we're starting to use tables with plexiglas etc so they're making it work but we will be ready to go with the middle school and high school whenever we don't know the date on the high school but we're working towards i mean it doesn't mean we have to wait for that exact date but we're working towards having things ready so other than that we checked in with the schools today and things went well for the opening and except for the you know the traffic as you heard that's inevitable yeah but anyway that's about it so as far as just just so everyone's clear at home i'm sorry i didn't see you again just so everyone's clear at home dr gifford we're we're continuing even though we may not be publicly having full-out conversations about the high school there are talks absolutely at the high school level with your office with you with mr tebow about you know anything ready to go you know when guidance does come out and so everyone's aware guidance has not come out right dusty has not released any guidance in the height on high school students right yeah right okay i was just going to follow up on that we had a question from a parent asking about capacity issues and we know that that was an issue at the middle school and she you know had asked what is the are there capacity issues it's the high a newer building what were the concerns i know that in some cases from my experience of touring looks like the science labs would be an area of concern do you have the same you know i just want to kind of respond to her issues with capacity and fitting students at the high school or how absolutely but just as the middle school we're making it work they'll be moving kids around and yeah we were at a meeting well it was before last week was the week before as i reported on and i plan on stopping at the high school tomorrow um to get a sense of where exactly uh disregarding furniture right now what you need are your rooms are you ready do you have a sense of where everyone's going and i know they i'm sure they're just about ready at this point right so awesome excellent thank you yeah i mean it's not ideal but who was telling me today your your imperfections are perfect oh yeah i'm bringing kate into the conversation we were talking today about a book or a saying and it's just that's where we are right our imperfections are perfect like for the time being or i'm saying it backwards but you you get what i'm saying yeah yeah let me get what i'm saying making it work we're making it work making it work it seems as though the at least the students that demelo are having right next up report of the chair so um i just have actually one of the things was already addressed they just had guidance on dartmouth high school i'd also just had about bringing in just reminding a reminder to see if we can get the class senior class officers in here at some point um as well as i think it's important you know we had there was an article in dartmouth weekly recently regarding the our diversity committee um so i had reached out to masc um you know for some guidance on getting that off the ground and um i believe it was uh mr mr hardy over at jim jim hardy uh masc that said that as the chair i can go ahead and i can at least get a date on the books that works for um the two uh i believe it's dr jenkins and um this is the amarillo that's the two school committee members um that were elected to the diversity committee so obviously would be some dates that would work for the two of you but i'd love to see it then we can go for the we can go from there and you know i i would ask that the the first meeting um the objective would be to you know nominate a chair of the committee and um set some timelines and some some goals so do you have any uh preference dr jenkins uh so mr chair i emailed the committee to ask just sort of generally if there were evenings during the week that someone was not available like maybe they have another commitment they have to watch their kids on a tuesday night or something and generally speaking most of the committee members indicated that they were flexible one of the committee members just asked had a preference at the meetings not be on monday nights um so did they i i didn't yeah i didn't sorry sorry about that um i emailed the committee and i asked if when they were available if they had like a general night that they weren't available no dates we didn't talk dates i just want to know our monday's bad for you or tuesdays not everyone's going to be able to make every meeting one member said they would prefer not mondays yeah okay so if we can avoid mondays that would be fine i'm pretty flexible so i'll defer to miss amaral um so it is the beginning of the month is it possible that we can get a month on the books in april do tuesdays work for you um i've been apologetic on a one-to-one basis responding to some of the anxious other community members and and those that i've spoken to have been very gracious admittedly it's like all bets are off for me i mean once my son gets off the bus the side effect as we all know is i i've not kind of opted to have some personal care assistance with him and my husband works so i will i will attempt to be flexible i've had to step down from the rotary club and some other town councils to kind of um adhere to like what i can actually handle um i don't want to say that i'm not available but i will say that i will try to be flexible so i would not go with my availability in terms of if i find that if i find that i cannot commit i will bring that back to the committee and and potentially have somebody else take my place but i don't want you to go by my schedule because i'm kind of full all over the place and and stuck in the mud and kind of sure understood this is a cartoon i don't know caffeine thank you for your honesty yeah you know bring it back if you if you feel like you you know it's going to be tough you can certainly look to select an alternate so can i recommend maybe tuesday the 20th of april i would say the 27th but we have a meeting i think on the 26th of the school committee i would prefer not to do it vacation week okay so i i don't think the 13th i'm not that's just not going to work for me um [Music] i'm just worried about next week i'm i'm off most of this week so i'm not going to be ready for and i'd like to be ready get some stuff ready because i know that you're busy so next week doesn't work and it's april vacation so maybe wednesday the 28th either wednesday the 28th or may 4th would be my two recommendations you're going to have to post that with the town clerk we do i confirm with masc because it is a subcommittee appointed by the school committee we need to post an agenda we need to post meetings we need to do all that okay um yeah i will add uh may 4th tuesdays would be i think be better for me if i were to all right actually can we set may 4th as our first meeting this may work may 4th work all right there's nothing on the calendar as far as any other school events big school events i'm not seeing anything so we will set a date uh you prefer a time you want to wait until you just say 6 30 right now and i mean we don't have to post it yet but why don't we put it may 4th tentatively at 6 30.

it took them a little while to go through that as you can imagine going through 54 different plans took them a little while to go through it and get back to us a couple of emails couple of qualifications to make sure that we're all on the same page um in the language we are required to award the funds that's not to be confused with obligated and spent in contract and all that stuff but award the funds no later than april 15 2021. for year two that is january of 2022 uh and right now it's just a january date that's just thrown out there there's no guidance beyond january um and that ties back to the the uh award period and then they have the funds for year one have to be obligated by september 30th 2022. so we've got some time um we had some time not only to award them but then also some time for those ones to be obligated and then for the year two funds they need to be obligated no later than september 2023.

so can you guys give us the breakdown on these costs i mean it's easy to just say we're going to run it to rcuh but have you looked at what other up opportunities are there uh part of it was expediency you know being able to get them get it get it moving and not have to set up new budget costs and budget goals and those kind of things but i can definitely send a breakdown to the group of how exactly where every penny is going to go yeah because just because this is um federal funds doesn't necessarily mean we're just going to expend the money the most expedient way and maybe not the most efficient way appreciate that thank you so kim all of the funds uh for the first gear grant of 9.9 million has gone to either uh or rcuh and that's it only those two entities as the initial awardees and then they will be sub granted out although depending on who you talk to which which term you use uh can change but they'll eventually be subcontracted our sub awarded out the um the gear one monies was received a year ago in april 2020 it was awarded a year ago and then we just draw down as expenses come out as laid out in contract so can you can you give me um actual activities that have happened since we were awarded this monies so the programs that you've talked about have they started already has the distance learning teacher academy started already and how many teachers have been served in this distance learning teacher academy so kim let me answer that one so the of the initial activity through this spring will be primarily around a handful of teachers but more about organizing for this summer so we're putting together both levels of interest from the community of public and private teachers and then looking to the two summer programs in 21 and 22 for the primary delivery to teachers i believe the spring activities are serving a number of relatively small groups so on the order of a few dozen teachers but the real focus is to deliver the both of the um the teacher activities for both professional development as well as curriculum development in the two summers um to give you an idea of perspective so the bulk of the grant monies in the in the teacher academy cases actually go for participant stipends so to make sure that the um the teachers are some of their costs are offset as they work through the summer on list about 2.3 million 2.4 million is actually set aside for direct stipend payments to the teachers that participate in the academies as well as for any faculty time that needs to be or faculty for the academies that need to be compensated for to run the academies themselves so the teachers are getting stipends to participate in these classes that's correct that's correct because these are typically multiple weeks over the summer and and you know for for a lot of the teachers a lot of their summer activities is where they either do professional development or other activities or other um other teacher activities on their own which is how they supplement their income over the summer because they're not they're not compensated during the summer period so the stipends will offset the fact that they aren't um they aren't working with those periods at the same time so the grant awarded it was probably too late to help any learning loss type activities for the last school year but for this school year with your distance learning teacher academy how many teachers have actually taken the program or is this an ongoing program that they do more than once i'm not can you can you kind of lay out the program for me so the primary activity the program is going to be workshops over the summer where the teachers participate in both the professional development as well as development of the curriculum then just for from a budgetary purpose summer institute stipends for between two and three hundred students on each summer so that's the direct um number of teachers that we serve if we are able to and it's it's looking pretty good from the partnership point of view in terms of of having um faculty and external folks participate uh so here's a good example we're working with the folks at noaa because that's actually part of their outreach um programs that they're funded to do this stuff but they're having they need to be able to engage effectively with our public and private school teachers so the important thing for us is to make sure that we bring together folks with content folks that have the ability to deliver content as well as our teachers to get them up to speed to be able to not only have the right strategies to to best use some of this curriculum but also be able to develop it and then create this repository so it can be used further the idea is that starting as frankly starting in the fall so this is fall of 21 directly after the summer academies we'll be able to see some of those products actually in use on you know the home so are you saying that to answer my question zero teachers have had this have taken this academy yet the academies are under development for the summer summer 21.

what is the plaque below her that's on her face that really changed a lot of my thoughts give me your card give me your pour give your humble message yearning to breathe free that is what's supposed to happen here in america thank you for your time and your patience to hear my complaint thank you mr bryant so with added meaning if you might stand if you are able to offer the pledge beliefs of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right i apologize i didn't pay attention is kathy with us yes he's not okay all right so six of the seven of us are here that counts for quorum mr vernon thank you so much so we affirm the mission and the vision of our school corporation this is what leads our decision making by each and every meeting and also listed behind us are our high expectation objectives again here listed and those that guide the decisions that we make here each evening so we have much to celebrate this evening so i will start with miss heine to hear and learn about our 2021 teacher of the year nominations thank you dr shed second annual so different atmosphere this year though we can't have everybody all together in one place so we asked all of our teacher of the year nominees to join us virtually i think we have a video that we're going to play first and then i would like to introduce each one of them to you all [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so thanks to josh burnett who went out and recorded all those things teachers didn't know we were coming that day and so you just saw what you saw when we got there so proud of all of them they do a great job every every day of every year and lots of veteran teachers up here um so i just like to go through and name them all and dr roberts you're going to have to be the one that's waving to them okay they may have members of their family with them they may have their pets with them so we'll just see what we see uh and i'm doing this in alphabetical order so angie kirkham teaches fourth grade at clifty creek angie williams thank you lauren pearson fourth grade at csa fondrea delaney george fifth grade at csa lincoln jennifer justice fourth grade at matt healthy dana thompson fourth grade at parkside she was on there earlier okay uh taylor shark second grade at richards brittany boseman kindergarten at rock creek ally simpson third grade at schmidt susan bowie they're great at smith kristen davis kindergarten at southside carolyn bell third grade at taylorsville carla yudy social studies central lily hamilton science at northside matt morrell special ed at csa new tech stacey galb chemistry at north angie boyer math and mcdowell jessica anderson pre-k at johnson for pre-k but she's out of rock creek and lastly tony podwarf social studies at east and tony was with us for 18 years so thank all of you for your service and i have little gifts that i will be bringing around to your classroom here in the next few days so i thank you all for joining us it wasn't the same as last year where we had all of you here and all the families in the big celebration but i want you to know that you're appreciated just as much if not more this has been a challenging year so we appreciate all you've done thank you congratulations to each of you and thank you so much your efforts this year in particular have been just nothing short of awesome we appreciate everything you're doing for the children of our school corporation thank you so much teresa would you mind just maybe explaining a little bit more about how this next process will go so we have our our winners from each of our building that are being recognized this evening and so this is a process we put in place to then identify a bcsc teacher of the year so so as dr roberts said this process usually begins in january and nominations the information about nominating folks is out sent out through our social media and through the schools anybody can nominate a teacher and then the building teams get together and choose their building nominee for the district opportunity so these 18 folks will now have an opportunity to join us with their nominations themselves so now becomes part partly their responsibility and they can opt out of this process but they will take the second step which is a little more uh precise and a little more writing so tomorrow you'll be getting an email from me explaining that process like i said they can opt out if they choose not to go further but then we have a committee that will meet in may and we will choose a district nominee for teacher appear so like i said you'll get you'll get um information for me tomorrow from that point then the person that is nominated as as the district representative for teacher of the year works all year to prepare their their paperwork for the state teacher of the year nomination so every step along the way builds to get to that point and mindy summers was last year's teacher of the year and she has worked diligently and we have her um portfolio almost ready for the state competition and that has to be turned in by july so i'm just reiterating what the sign said in regards to this process is that there are besides what we're doing here locally in our own school corporation there are other awards that other entities give out in regards to teachers of the year including the indiana department of education whenever we see those awards being given to somebody else we wonder why shouldn't the bcsc teacher be receiving those awards so this process was put into place to work our way toward that to ensure that each year we have somebody from bcsc that went through the steps that are necessary they're required by those other entities to have an application in because we don't think there's anybody else besides the bcsc teachers that should be giving getting those awards so hopefully uh you all will participate in that and we'll help guide you through that process of getting some information submitted but we will choose a corporation person and then keep working through that so we can submit names to those other award-winning organizations who award teachers of the year one more thing dr evers caroline bell's on here caroline can't read them all she was not in the video and so we will get that fixed and get her in the video and to go forward okay thank you thank you all so much and you don't have to stay any longer you're free to enjoy yourself if you wish all right miss heine thank you and thank you to all of those in each of the buildings that facilitate this process and we're very excited for all those who've been nominated at each of their buildings and recognized by their peers that's very special to be recognized by your peers all right we get to move on for more excitement um our columbus north gymnastics i'm going to turn to mr brian lewis and mrs betsy warhol please okay um so we had the state beam champion this year miss emily moore has worked exceptionally hard all season to become the top theme champion she set a new school record in beam this year with a 9.8 and now has all but one of our school records under her belt so we finished our season undefeated all the way through sectionals regionals we came in second and then we took a sixth place win at state and um just look forward to celebrating emily and another exceptional year well thanks for having us um i just want to reiterate what bessie said so i had the opportunity obviously this is my first year and having an opportunity to to watch gymnastics move forward and also having a new coach has been very exciting for me i have a a seven-year-old daughter my daughter loves gymnastics so i became it became personal to me because my daughter would go up on surnames to actually watch them practice and emily was one of her favorite gymnasts so i'm kind of biased when he when he comes to her but overall our girls did an excellent job throughout the year and it clearly showed because we made it to state had opportunities my first time going up to our state and there were some really great teams and i would say that our girls competed at a very high level excellent thank you so very much anything that you would like to add okay we'd just like to congratulate you on an outstanding season and so besides being a champion on the main you also met in other events correct i think three total include me is that four four five in terms of your recognition congratulations you guys can come up if you want to take pictures up here you can come up okay is yeah [Music] actually when you get into the lift you i can't even walk before a straight line emily what's your favorite event probably beans probably she's crazy really very good congratulations all right i don't think this will top emily but we're equally excited to hear about our world language curricula so i'm i'm so glad to meet all of you but you'll have to have more names but i don't have a name and a face so marcia chief laura outlet brittany sullivan and corey williams thank you all very much for being here uh thank you we are here to talk about the secondary world language resource adoption the process that we just wrapped up started back in january and then the resources that we are looking at would be to take place starting in the fall so we headed into our resource adoption with a couple of goals in mind adoption with a couple of goals in mind first of all we know that we wanted to on the front end provide some professional development for our teachers ensuring that we were intentional about connecting udl and culturally responsive teaching to keep that in the forefront of our minds as we're moving forward with our adoption and to complete that goal we used we were heavy with the udl guidelines being sure that we brought the brought those up and made intentional connections as well as the extended metaphor of windows mirrors and sliding glass doors which corey will tell you more about on the next slide in addition to that goal after we were done with professional development what we really needed to do was just dig into the resources and begin evaluating what we had and ensuring that our teachers had a wide variety to choose from so we utilized the rubric that's already been created by committees in the past to look at a wide variety of vendor sessions we were able to utilize the hybrid wednesday for a lot of a lot of this so that we could watch a lot of vendor sessions to be able to make sure we had the right choice now a little bit about our timeline okay so we started in january and normally this is a process that would have taken the whole calendar year but um this year we began in january um once we were backing kind of on the hybrid schedule for me learning so we started with two days of professional development and so our first session we established our norms we had some reflection on our current resources and how well they aligned to the udl framework we had some shared learning opportunities around the seven aspects of culturally responsive teaching um which again is where we continue to tie in um from our diverse curriculum committee's work around windows mirrors and sliding glass doors it's an article a protocol and then really looking at how it could be used to evaluate resources so we really want to make sure what resources we're selecting and we'll make sure that they provide a window for our students into other cultures and other backgrounds and perspectives but also provide a mirror so that every student in our classroom sees themselves somewhere in their curriculum materials and then wherever we can find opportunities for students actually then through those sliding bus stores step into other cultures and experiences and then we worked on making sure everyone had a shared understanding of the rubric which is based entirely around the udl guidelines and then our second day we worked on a futures protocol where we really projected ourselves six years in the future when we're doing this again and where do we want to be then and how can we get to that point we worked on some technology and integrations information and then really just kind of addressed any remaining questions and concerns the teachers had picking up in february now that we had front ended with professional development it was time for us to move on into vendor sessions so we spent the first couple of weeks of february hearing from a lot of vendors so obviously we have several languages to represent we wanted to ensure that they all had decent choices so we had a lot of vendor sessions picking up after the first two weeks we moved into a check-in meeting with all of our teachers just to make sure that they didn't have any last-minute questions that they needed us to answer from the vendors before they made their selections and then we met with the bookstore managers at the two high schools and the two middle schools to make sure that we hadn't forgotten anything that we were providing them with all the information that they needed and checked it wanted to do a check-in with them that brings us to the week of march 1st where our teachers made their final evaluation had a chance to talk with each other and choose their final selection which they forwarded to us and we forwarded it to the bookstore these were our committee members so britney coomer who's also here our coordinator of instructional technology laura who's the ideal facilitator for the middle schools and myself the udl facilitator for the high schools along with we have two of our department coordinators here with us tonight um and then the two other middle school coordinators and then we were really lucky in this new kind of way that our book adoptions with this year and that we were able to really incorporate every single teacher in the department and because all of our sessions were virtual we were able to record them so even if a teacher couldn't make it live live in our zoom and google me meetings and they could watch the recording then on their own time so every teacher in the department at all four or five because new tech was on here as well secondary schools was able to participate so now with some of our decisions i'm going to speak for the two middle schools so for north side and central they came to a consensus that they would like to switch to the company's sabas formerly pearson they're going to use the book called altenzikos for levels one and two which are the two levels at the middle school the teachers are requesting to have a class set of textbooks in instead of one textbook for every child just one class set to have for the whole day and then digital access for all so with all of that the course fee is very close to what it was in the previous years with a minimal increase hi i'm marcia cheek i'm the department coordinator at columbus north high school and so being the middle school we we all came to agreement that we really liked the sabes altendico now we have to go back to that march 1st deadline where we had our choice picked out and i get a nice email from corey with lots of first two things we're really gonna spend the third item on the email was oh by the way um we can't even think hmh we can't even think of mcgraw-hill um they're gonna dismantle their spanish program in three years and so that we would have their books but we wouldn't have their own so that was our first choice and then our second choice who would and they were neck and neck all along but then we had some issues with chromebooks in this program the digital program on chromebooks but luckily corey and brittany were able to work that out and we're good so you know at north high school we were thinking about what's our end game and we do offer ap spanish and so as we were looking at these texts thinking of okay what texts are going to get us there to help us get these kids to that ap ap level and and they just align so greatly and one thing we've learned over this past year is we need a really strong digital component um um so but with our upper levels four and five we we chose a different series only because the authentico level um that it was not the the level four and five was their old textbook series and they had not updated was still called reality that is and the wayside is um once again it offers a digital platform and the alignment with ap curriculum it was just it was very valuable and i'm sticking with my ap they've updated it but with the vista higher learning and yes there is an increase in cost and they come with an ap prep book that is just so beneficial for the students i don't know if you've been on the college board website the ap classroom but it is a nightmare to navigate for teachers and for my students who are digital natives so um the cost is for the ap prep book and we've had such good success with our ap program that this will be a very valuable asset all right and i'm brady sullivan i'm the coordinator at columbus east high school and so um at columbus east we decided to go with somos for levels one through three um this program is based on comprehensible input strategies and we have some expert teachers at our school and and that using those strategies and felt like that the needs of our of our students and our teachers and our program um a little bit better and then huegas which is kind of the upper level of that for levels four through six we'll also have the garbanzo digital access for all levels which goes coordinates with the solmos and fuegas as well as some other online resources for all levels and also built in some fluency readers um to purchase for each of those levels and to be able to do that every few years get new ones so that as you know we have different students and different needs and different um just different things you know different current events that we can choose new new novels that are relevant to the students through over these next six years and next we have the new tech so for their spanish program and they have one teacher who covers levels one through two and another one for three and four so for one and two they're going with the somos and garbanzo similar to east and then level three and four they're doing the voices digital which is a fantastic digital platform with some great authentic texts and they also offer a world language class that actually has levels one through three german and french and one class and so for that class the german is going with the klett portfolio which we'll also see aligns with what german at north and east is doing in their upper levels and then the french also aligns with what is happening at north and east the carnegie program and they actually had a sizable decrease in their course fee there with these materials but again a strong online platform with each of these programs as well along with books in the classroom for the students and for french at both middle schools and high schools they'll be using the carnegie series as well um class sets of textbooks and digital access for all and again this is for levels one through five and all of the schools and then for german our german teacher is shared between north and east for the for the lower level she is adding some fluency matter german readers which really strengthen um to the current curriculum that they use now for the upper level she does teach acp dual credit and so i'm sorry for putting i cannot pronounce german but collect portfolio deutsche i guess i do everything with a spanish accent but three important since it is a dual credit course of course that has to be accredited with iu and the japanese resources will be changing adventures in japanese for levels one through three again class out of textbooks student workbooks and digital access for all and then with chinese on cengage okay and this was something that was fairly new that this happened she was so excited that they had asian languages are so they don't have very many choices and so this came in at the last minute and so um it will be used levels one through six which would be ap and once again text fix textbooks and workbooks and um a very a digital interactive site she said it was amazing to help also practice with the character writing also um and then the course fee there's a little bit of an increase and then finally enl is offered as a world language credit at columbus east and in the past we've just kind of used a variety of our own resources and um this year we were able to adopt um there's you know just like the world the asian languages we're seeing more and more good you know better quality resources we're starting to see that with esl as well and so this is the vervosis curriculum which is all digital and it's customizable and i'm really excited about being able to have a curriculum for this class and if you are interested in previewing any of the materials um we did organize all of the vendors through a google doc so that google doc has links to all of the session recordings or links to kind of online access and previews that the teachers had to to view the courses and the materials and so that's through that link or you can contact myself or laura and we do have a lot of physical samples um and kind of other ways to access and preview uh the content and the materials as well so any questions one colleague i do have some questions all right good point thank you you were describing your process in the beginning does every committee go through that process every six years yes yes this is our first time leading that process um but we will be back next week to talk to you about the ela adoption process and it's very similar yes and let's let's say about the digital resources that that you looked at in in contrast to you know book says do you even use printed books anymore i mean i know some people don't so anymore you know they don't use them for notebooks all they use is digital and so when um previewing or kind of talking to the students which a lot of the teachers did when we first started this process and surveying them a lot still wanted one for in the classroom or to be able to check out and take home so that's why most went with class sets because a lot of kids don't want it and aren't going to open it um so we wanted to still be able to provide that option for the students that did want it um or they left their laptop or chromebook at home that day they still have something in the room that they can look at and utilize so it was kind of that in-between option to be able to provide the the class set um without the cost of you know the hundreds of books then that didn't get used i'm not sure what is your um which language do students take i guess what is your highest class number for original spanish visit most of the most of the other languages have one teacher or two teachers and we're at three at east and five four four north and then two at each middle school yeah and our french and german are both split between north and east okay and then you said csa had a french and german class it's one classroom levels one through three german and levels one through three french yeah okay that's all i was just curious just kind of curious very interesting thank you so much there are additional questions um i like the ability that we have these days to to make choices it sounded like um and i want to make sure i've got this right at east at north and at new tech there are actually three different sets of materials based on what the teachers there wanted to use yeah there's there's spanish for example right um yeah i think i agree that it was it's nice that we do have the options you know our goals are the same in each level but there's different ways to to reach that goal and then we've talked there'll be some collaboration you know between the middle schools and the high schools because we do have students that you know take one and two at the middle school and then you know come to green so they'll be using the same curriculum at north but it might be a little bit different at east or csa and so there'll be collaboration you know among the teachers to kind of make sure we're all on the same page and are truly trying to reach the same goals and i wonder too i think dr bill's mentioned six years um of the gospels like 18 names on the on the slide changed a lot how many were here six years ago the materials that you're using i think i think just me and another spanish teacher in my department brittany and i were talking as we walked up here like oh it's been a long time since we did this and a lot of things have changed five to six original six maybe okay and then the other thing that the diversity of materials brings up is the opportunity to as you're going through the process to compare and say well uh i'm really happy with the set that we chose because of xyz maybe another teacher is really happier about ef how can that be documented so that four or five years from now as we're beginning the process again we can or will everything be so different at that i'd be time if there's any textbooks so when we were making our final decisions we did do a spreadsheet where we tried to list pros and cons so i'm thinking we could carry some of that information forward but as you said in six years we're not really sure what this is going to look like and when i think about the last time i was on the english language arts adoption the quality of digital resources has improved a thousand percent so it's hard to say where will be in six years not that something like this would happen but if um if everybody that took ap spanish at north passed their ap exam and nobody that took ap spanish at east passed the rape exam would we say it was because of materials east doesn't offer ap okay now it would be interesting to maybe have some means of collecting data to see you know how how students do with the different resources that was one thing we talked about the futures protocol was you know in the future the teachers really loved the fact that we were able to bring them together from both schools which doesn't happen a lot and so that was something in the futures protocol that came up a lot that was it would be really nice to have this opportunity to continue and to meet and collaborate and share between the buildings like they got to throughout this process and it's also nice i think just the freedom to to recognize that our schools are different and our programs are different our students are different our teachers are different and so to be able to have some freedom and make a decision what was best for our you know for each of our school population our population but our ultimate goal is the same right and i think you mentioned that maybe it was they signed a contract so they would have to honor their thank you very much it's her favorite class she speaks spanish to me and i'm going to assume it's nice things okay because i'm a little rusty but she's a good girl so i'm sure it's all nicely um i did i was a little um surprised that the cost of the programs at the higher levels on spanish was much higher than the other languages and that was a little surprising to me since it is kind of your higher volume option is that because the market can bear it and and they can charge that or is there a real reason that you think the costs are different well 8p across the board tends to cost more any material for the ap and there's also fewer students at each level so really beyond third year a lot of students start to drop out because they have the graduation requirement so there's fewer students in those courses which also we can't order in as much fault which increases the cost and the added component to the ap prep book added to that one this year too do you want to see open educational resources as a possibility in the future at all so we do use a lot of free type obviously we're all over that as much as we can but i'm not sure someone brought up to us about open resource anthologies and when we were poking around they're not there yet but we'll see where they're at in six years i'm just curious in a totally different perspective if uh that we focus on in your goals or udl and culturally responsive teaching are they all there is that something that these various resources have integrated into their materials consistently or so especially we were blown away by how culturally responsive some of the resources were so some really like rose to the top like it wasn't hard if we had five choices two usually were up at the top for us to choose between but i feel very pleased with the udl accessibility features that we see if it wasn't accessible it wouldn't be on our list so i i'm not concerned about our vendors meeting those good qualifications and it was clear in the vendor sessions who kind of knew what they were talking about and the udl rubric we shared with all the vendors up front so they knew the aspects that were essentially if you if you don't have these things we're not going to move forward because you know the video guidelines were really what we were focused on and the culturally responsive aspect how it fits in um and so you could tell um which ones knew what we were looking for and how to demonstrate it and very clearly which ones could not meet those categories no i had every confidence in your alls choices i was curious if the publishing companies are even close all right very good thank you are there other questions i i really enjoyed seeing the names of the people from all the departments that participated in the committee please thank you for us and i wonder who represented esl congratulations very good thank you all very very much thank you thank you just a reminder of the process so appreciate that presentation a lot of great information and a future for me i believe we will actually have those that information for approval so we provide it to you to digest see if you have some questions after and then another board me next board me will ask for your approval english language arts will be covered next time that's a presentation and then the following first one in may it will be up for adoption or approval additionally the presentation will be shared with you tomorrow morning be sent out to action all staff so you can get into this presentation and as was indicated with google docs other information here you can do some additional research on your own if you would like to do that thank you for that so we will hope for the day that we don't have to have a coveted update but we would love to hear that we just might keep it on here for the rest of this year uh getting so familiar with the topic um so just a relatively brief brilliantly based one of your questions um we are in person learning for five days a week with all students grades k through 12.

second motion by mr nunes a second by mrs way on the motion any further discussion cheer hearing none all in favor aye opposed motion carries unanimously uh next up we're gonna i'm gonna turn it over to the our student representative to the uh school committee uh evan garcia mello is here this evening and i'd like to turn it over to you for an update of what's happening at dartmouth high school good evening evan good evening so my name is evan garcia and i'm a junior at dartmouth high school and i am one of the high school student representatives to the school committee so i'm here to update you all on the high school's recent activities so the robotics team held a virtual competition on march 18th the team competed in the qualifying round for the first tech challenge and you can view this at twitch.tv dhs robotics club ap students are preparing for upcoming exams the math department has been conducting mock exams in ap computer science students will complete mock exams later this week many other ap teachers are also holding study and review sessions for students as we enter testing season unified basketball kicked off their season thursday with a game against middleborough and they will continue tomorrow with a home game against durfee our fall to sports season continues to be a success and sign up for sign ups for spring sports have begun dhs is offering cheerleading baseball softball tennis lacrosse outdoor track and field unified track and sailing sign ups close on april 14th the psat 10 exam is scheduled for april 15th and april 16th for students who sign up to take that exam lastly dartmouth high's 21-21 campaign kicks off this friday with dartmouth's variety show dartmouth's finest this show features eight of dartmouth seniors but only one will be crowned dartmouth's finest and you can stream the show live on dhs tv media's youtube page so that concludes my update and thank you all for your time thank you very much thank you anyone have any questions comments thank you thank you if you don't mind i'd like to put you on the spot if that's okay with you i guess that's not true how do you think things are going so far uh today uh at dartmouth high school i think they're going very good i know that it's a very strange time with covert and all but i feel like i'm definitely still very busy and i'm still very involved in school activities i know for example i'm here tonight i will have a debate competition saturday i have track practice after school every day except for tomorrow when i have unified bowling instead okay i have a track meet thursday actually so i definitely feel like you know it is a very difficult time but i think everyone from the teachers to the administrators to of course you all i think everyone's just trying very hard to make it all work and i think it has been pretty successful so far so overall you feel like it's some kind of is the most normalcy you that you can get out of it in a not normal year i would say so yeah okay great and one of the things i'm going to be bringing back during the report of the chair is i think it would be great um dr gifford if maybe in one of our next school committee meetings may may not be the next one but maybe the following one of bringing the senior class officers here for to kind of share with us um what they've done for you know the 21 for 21.

um and uh uh we'll we'll see do you need it to be a little later than that no 6 30 has been we're going to do zoom to start too anyway so um i think hopefully that should work we'll get that worked out and i can work um with kate to post the agenda and we can get that all set up perfect so just to confirm and for everyone watching at home it's going to be tuesday may 4th at 6 30 uh tentatively 6 30 and you can look for the posting in the town clerk's office um you know the week before um for our first meeting of the diversity and inclusion committee thank you everyone for that thank you thank you shannon no problem does anyone else have anything for so i'll stop down at that end of the day just a circle back you know for a future agenda we'll bring in the parking conversation about the parking fees is that yes we can yes i'd like to see that um i believe the next meeting is our reorganization um we argue the committee um but i assume i'll be setting the agenda for that meeting um so if we can make that work um you know i think it would be great if we could invite that um that student in um i don't know if it's possible or at least zoom in that that's going to be the joint meeting with the selection oh that's right that's right that's the yeah that's the joint maybe the one after that so that's going to be the finger which is going to be amazing may 17th to be blunt right they've already paid the parking fee for the year we've approved the budget so if we have it april 26 or may 17th it's six of one half dozen the other i think it's a phrase mr nunes likes to use and i believe that the gentleman who's head of who's been like leading this committee is also the senior class president so we'll kind of if we bring him both you know at the same time we want to hear from those representatives can you know or we can separate it out but you know yeah no yeah that's right the next meeting is representation right and it's before so no thank you anything else not for me mr nunes yeah on a very serious matter uh only because as we heard tonight and i heard with the student rep and that type of deal is it possible during our meetings to shut these air purifiers off trouble too because i know i know i'm not vaccinated yet i don't feel comfortable with that i'm sorry are they only over here like i was gonna say could they be moved maybe one because we can't maybe move them a little bit we'll have to defer to there's one there's one there one over there one over there i hope i'm vaccinated by our next meeting but i don't feel comfortable being indoors with with people unvaccinated um without air circulation let's move them because not only do you have that but you have the yes yeah above you yeah yeah i don't see why we couldn't at least move this one out of the way that's right in earshot of you get it out of your ears that was i mean seriously yeah and then move that one to that side yeah that was pretty loud i mean because i agree i i couldn't hear a lot of what he was saying with all due respect what he said tonight i could not yeah i couldn't i caught a couple of pieces about like what was used to be mr dartmouth i'm not sure what they're calling it now but i heard that but damn it's fine but other than that i heard nothing and no disrespect to the gentleman okay you know just in this will be coming back to the high school is there any conversation around i know we've been talking about the senior events but is there an offer is there any conversation around the junior banquet or is that something that's no that's not that's not things and matter of fact we just had guidance that we really shouldn't even have a prom okay i was just curious as we were yeah i haven't you can't you can't you can put you can you can put 100 people indoors right right so that's what i figured but i just yeah yeah it's just it's tough it's it's tough yes one quick thing really excited for those kiddos in fifth grade who who want to take up band um thrilled to say that that's happening this week i'm going to have a new trumpet player she's not taking up trombone like her sister and that starts this week after school really excited that they pulled it together and then the other only other thing that i have to to remind anybody who is interested is that next monday night via zoom is our it's a requirement of the state that we provide a parent's rights in special education once a year and so that will be happening next monday night the 12th and that and folks can we'll have an all call or a text go out with the link to register but and it's a webinar format so there'll be attendees and panelists so that'll be the you know to to lessen the noise of a meeting but um that will be uh next week and that people can email dartmouth cpac at gmail.com or our facebook page list the event and folks can get the link to register but like i said there'll be an announcement coming out for that how we'll have the link right in the text so i just wanted to remind folks of that that's all thank you mrs amaral dr jenkins so i just want to just ask for not now i don't want to put anything on your plate now or even until school but i think sometime in june i have to say i think the work that everyone is doing is great but what i see here is not a reflection of what my family's experience has been and i get emails from families all the time about how much their kids are struggling and so it's great to bring in a lot of our kiddos who are doing fabulous i don't want to bring in kiddos to have them but i would like to have some recap maybe in june um for us to talk about what our biggest struggles were and because i really want to be laser focused next year on how we try to bring these kids back and how we try to make them whole i know my family it has been and this is no disservice to anything in the schools this is about a pandemic my kids have really struggled and i've gotten a ton of emails i know we all have from families that are really struggling and so i think sometimes like they don't see themselves in what we talk about sometimes in our in our meetings and so i think it would be useful to have a little bit of maybe a debrief session sometime in in june right um maybe in the summer yeah but i'd like to ask maybe your staff to start thinking about that like what are the challenges that we saw we gave our everything but we weren't quite able to do this and so now we need to think of that i want our community to know that we are i know you probably are already thinking about that but i do want them to know that we're going to be laser focused on that for the for the next year and i really want us to have some discussions about that moving forward about what we're going to do to sort of help these kids who are struggling out that would be great so i just want to start thinking about it yeah and maybe it's worthwhile to have a working session you know at some point over the summer with the committee after dr giffords had the opportunity to share this you know with with her i mean i just think that i i and again this is this is about the pandemic and not the schools or the staff or anything they've done it's been a struggle for a lot of and and i would also say we can also talk about this related to our staff and our and our in our district i think all of you who work here are burnt out um how do we fix that next year what do we need to do for our staff to um to get them back to a better place i think we need to have some serious conversations around that i think having the kids back kind of rejuvenated people though yeah i think it does and not only seeing the kids but i think people don't understand they just think oh yeah you just kids zoom in that's not how it works it's so much more work to have kids on zoom kids at home it's a lot of work um and so it's good to have them all in in part because you can focus on that what's in front of you you're not constantly thinking about what's out there so it's good but i think we've got we're going to have a lot of work to do next year right and just you know to piggyback off of dr jenkins is there talk about some pro summer programs additional summer programs or just the esy comments but as you saw we tried to do next to what nobody wants anything to do but this is going to be another one we're sure the state is going to say in like mid-june or at the end of may you got to do this this and this and this this summer and good luck figuring it out i'm sure that's what's going to happen go back go back to last summer where somewhere around august 1st they said by august 10th we want three say in dissertations 1st we're going to say june 10th we want three plans for different types of summer schooling and there's nothing we can do but i suspect that's coming down the pipe oh yeah i do too they have nothing better to do up there yeah we'll get me started on that we'll say virtual or we're out i don't want to hear that word again it's so tough for these kids anything else just election day tomorrow mr chairman please yes get out and get out and vote in our town election they're open for everybody so excellent that's right and with that the next regular session meeting of the dartmouth school committee is scheduled for monday april 26 2021 this will be a joint session uh the joint session with the select board and finance committee was also moved to april 26th therefore the committee's regular session will be scheduled for 5 30 pm via zoom followed by the joint meeting and that will also be the annual reorg of the school committee does the chairman make a motion we adjourn a motion by mr nunes a second by mrs way on the motion any other discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye aye aye opposed chris gavin so my next-door neighbor she's actually from scotland but she [Music] elementary

all right um so as i mentioned you know we put together an advisory group daryl galera led the charge on this and one again thank again thank those that were on this advisory group who devoted time away from their normal duties their pandemic duties uh and jumped on the phone a couple times during the month of june to help us really inform this plan and they have agreed to be an ongoing resource so as you can see from the group there's a balanced representation of higher and lower education as well as public private and charter schools including down to the principal level of several k through 12 schools across the state it was very deliberate that we had voices from again higher lower private public kindergarten through 12 and make sure that all of those voices were heard as you guys are really well aware of each school and community that it serves is unique and we wanted to make sure that this group was diverse and represented that that widespread view and those widespread means so that was really deliberate when we put we put that group together um the usdoe directions said that we had the opportunity to truly rethink education think outside the box so in june governor convened the group and fourthly convened the group and charged the group with rethinking and transforming their approach to education due to the impact of the pandemic themselves on june 16th his message to the group included things like this pandemic is changing hawaii and every organization needs to reinvent itself in the post folded 19 environment hopefully these emergency funds can do all of those things they can plug gaps that are necessary and can provide incentives and fund organizations and schools that are doing innovative things that both trans uh that both respond to the pandemic and most importantly set a course for educational change and reform so as you can see the charge to the group was not just put a band-aid on it we really want to look at how we can bounce forward from this pandemic and provide some tools and resources to our agencies and our educators so that they can have an ongoing benefit from this and it's not just a one-time influx of cash that that solves one problem this is an ongoing solution so the advisory group um set up you know after initial discussions of where everybody was coming from and what uh their experiences were really set themselves around the criteria to use the form the funds to build on the shared vision of you know thousands and thousands of educators parents teachers community members that developed and embraced the 2017 hawaii blueprint for education that was very much a stepping off point for this group i wanted to continue work that had already been done and make sure that we were not going back to recreating the wheel but take some ideas that had already been thrown out and maybe not addressed and take this opportunity to address them another criteria was to aspire for innovation and reinvention with the understanding that every organization needs to reinvent itself in the post-spoken 19 environment as governor had charged and then finally to be bold and future focused to set a course for educational change and reform that results in both relief and sustainability so those are the core principles that the group settled around throughout the discussions with the group it became clear that while every community is unique and every student is unique there were some commonalities amongst them it became clear that the most significant impact of the coronavirus on schools is the negative impact on student engagement and learning as a result of i'm going to go through a litany of the list that the group threw out in our discussions so the first two obviously i think this committee and several others have had many conversations around the lack of access to and the availability of devices and technology for the students directly especially for the most vulnerable students and the families in you know those areas that needed additional support and the lack of connectivity for that remote instruction so it doesn't matter if we can teach them if they can't get to it that's a problem as you know there was 39 million dollars that governor gave to the department of education to help address some of this another one that became really really clear early that the group kind of kind of grasped onto um and we'll talk about that a little bit more in detail later is the need for the parent or guardian training because even if we could get the devices to them they were finding that some of the the support at home that was anticipated wasn't necessarily there so things like being able to troubleshoot when the microphones not working you know how to get into the right zoom link and what do you do when you have three different teachers and three different uh methods so really talking about a parent or guardian training to support the remote instruction of the children so that's one thing that we want to highlight another one and this wasn't just in hawaii was the need to improve the quality of revolt instruction resulting from the abrupt transition you know due to the emergency that being the need for professional development for faculty staff school leaders that can all help improve the teaching practices for engaging students in the distance learning environment also talking about the need for resources including professional development for faculty staff and school leaders to address the emotional learning needs of the students and then of course i think again this committee as well as many others talked about the urgent need for safety equipment materials and resources for opening the schools and there was much of that funding that came through care other care's funding so we chose that yes that was a priority but was being addressed a little bit quicker in other areas we talked about the professional development and even the state of kentucky recognized this so i just wanted to call this out real quick is some of the research research that we did for this group they were also looking at professional development for their schools and their education their department of education and so it's just a highlight you know it's not just us uh we're we're we're all struggling through this um as a nation so to get into the plant elements themselves we just wanted to break it down a little bit here and i'm gonna kick off to a couple other people as we go through this to answer some more specific questions um but we talked a lot about you know helping the teachers you know educate the educator and train the trainer and so uh 5 million dollars was committed to this distance learning teacher academy that is being run through the university of hawaii they are developing the curriculum the education design and then will then turn that into educational opportunities for our educators so many of us know that our educators spend a lot of their money and their a lot of their time bettering themselves and this is one way that we can support them so before i go on too far i want to open it up to garrett to add a little bit more of where we are with this program in the last few months and just give you an overview thanks gail appreciate it um cherokee donnie what's good nice to be members of the community thanks for the opportunity this is um this is a really great opportunity to execute an investment in our both our public and our as well as our private school teachers um in the park in the pre-k through 12 range and the the project is is all about creating both the strategies as well as the methods of delivery to develop curriculum specifically tailored to deliver online so that we can deliver the maximum benefit to the to the kids in our community this is about creating both new ways as well as streamlining existing ways or existing methods of delivering curriculum it is about curriculum development and it it is an investment in that it both um is professional development for the teachers and this is specifically targeted at public divided in k-12 as well as creating an open educational resource essentially a free and open resource for for not only the teachers that have gone through the training but for all teachers from throughout the state of hawaii to take advantage of the materials developed as a result of the program the effort in this particular project has wrapped up through the fall as in terms of being able to organize on the leadership around the leadership includes representatives not only from the university of hawaii from the department of education the hawaii associate association of independent schools and represents both public and private teacher and institutional interests across the state of hawaii we have focused on a couple of delivery windows so the primary delivery of these resources and these this work will happen over the summer of 21 and summer of 22 leading up to both of those summer academies will be activities in the spring of 21 now and the spring of 22 to to kind of determine and best recruit the number of a lot of interested folks from across these different communities create a bunch of interest determine where the both the interest as well as the needs are in terms of developing curriculum and to the best extent be able to deliver that in the summers the approach in the summer going into the summer of 21 is to hit as many of these high-value topics as possible and then looking at the summer of 22 to be able to scale further in the areas that um are of the highest interest and that we can create the best the best value in terms of creating curriculum that's reusable on a going forward basis the outcome of the project is not only skills development but it's also to create this repository of free and open materials that can be used and be used well across all of our all of our public and private institutions happy to answer any other questions if you have at this time thank you garrett and the chair if you don't mind we'll leave questions to the end because i want to get through the next pieces um you know real quick so that we can have that ongoing kind of interrelated dialogue and you can see how these various pieces mesh together so um the next largest tranche of money is four million dollars to innovation grants and this is going to be functioned through the rcuh for a couple of reasons one is if we give the money directly to the department of education there's an equity of service component there were a lot of lawsuits at the back last year between things that betsy devos at the time was saying what normally happens with equity of services there's also some limitations on then how that can then be spent so we felt that it would be best not to necessarily go directly to the department of education but run it as a true grant program through our cuh so that the charter schools and the private schools can come in uh with a with a more level playing field so to speak when it comes to money not not innovation but when it comes to the money component of it and so it will be run through the rcuh and it's going to be informed by a lot of the work that uh is doing right now in this distance learning academy and then some other dialogues that steve cersegi is having with stakeholders with our office with the advisory board group and then a few other select folks from that that advisory board group that have just been a little bit more engaged so that that's another portion that's a large portion of it um we looked and and i apologize i neglected to forward my screen so i apologize for that so this is that four million dollars um it's to provide a relief for some of the forced distance learning that had to happen the emphasis will be on digital equity for access and connectivity as well as effective ways to deliver parent education parent training family support innovative practices for global learner outcomes and ultimately what the teachers can do in the classroom so it's a little bit a little bit bigger than this but as you can see we're looking for larger lump sum brands and so not the here because the teacher wants you know this kind of a platform or a certain kind of tool or anything like that we're really looking for these to be complex areas building collaborations between schools complexes different levels of the education so you're looking from your elementary transition up to your middle school transition from your middle school up to your high school and where all of those things can really tie together so again that's the reason of coursing the larger lump sum forcing more innovative thought processes and more collaborative solutions rather than one-off uh just immediately in the classroom kind of need so that's the innovation grants we talked a little bit about the impact that the group was seeing on parents and the support or the lack of support that they were seeing from the family and so right now there's a hundred thousand dollars put out there for this community of practice we initially called it a network improvement community that got a little wonky and a little scary so it's really just about um a support network for the parents themselves so right now that's at about a hundred thousand dollars department of education is doing some things around this area as well with all centers we don't want to again double spillable efforts i want to make sure that we're utilizing the money in the best way possible another thing that the university is doing that i think is really interesting and the governor's really proud of is this transition assistance for high school students um and again i'm going to kick it back to garrett to talk about this but i think we've all recognized that our four seniors from last year and this year aren't having that normal junior senior transition up into the college experience and so uh university of hawaii raised their hand and stepped in and said hey we want to help them out with this so i'll let garrett speak to that a little bit more thanks kim this particular one is directly focused on the graduating classes of 21 and 22 to provide access are you showing up to govern already sorry say that again senator favela did you have a question oh i'm sorry i'm sorry can you mute your mic please i'm sorry go ahead so the early engagement one is all about direct focus on providing support for the graduating classes of 21 and 22 public high school students and this is really about trying to help them bridge the um the change between their high school experience and to get them engaged in both interest of and directly taking the age classes so it provides the grant funds provide access to freelance courses as well as advising and support in particular over the summer period between their graduation from public high school and then going into hopefully going into a into a higher education program is you know again we're hopeful they'll they'll join us at the university of hawai'i but this is really about getting them into into some um useful and engaging way to get them into higher education thank you garrett appreciate that um last two components here real quick and then we'll be ready for questions um you know it doesn't do us any good to learn a whole bunch of things and then not have something left behind for the next the next time hopefully this never happens again but the next opportunity for remote learning um so we want to conduct an educational summit it will be held virtually as of right now um but this will be based off of some of that innovation some of this distance learning and then culminate in this virtual summit that will be available open in uh to educators um so that the lessons learned are not just contained to those that are in the immediate experience you know that we're able to open and share this uh with with anyone and everyone right at the point appropriate and you know it doesn't have to be just within our own shores it can be extended beyond our shores and and this can also bring things into our shores that maybe we haven't seen before as well so we're excited about this virtual summit that again will happen as part of part of threading all of these lessons learned together and the last component to this um that that holds all of this together will be this innovation team that will help uh design and and stand up that virtual summit because there's a lot of work to that we know our education educators are busy uh we want the information from them but somebody needs to do the work to put it together but this this innovation team will help keep those lessons moving make sure that uh you know you hear something over here somebody's having a problem but maybe you've heard a solution on the other side and bring those together and then you know provide lessons up you know what can be changed what can we do to make this better and again thread all of those lessons together so that they're not just disparate effort but there really is a continuity to all of this and so um those are the components to it i can go back you know in order to facilitate some of this discussion i can go back to the the um the plan elements if you like but i'd also like to just go ahead and share is what we hand it out to you there are some additional resources if you want to get into the super fun nitty-gritty components of what these different pieces of funding and what the different requirements are that's also in your powerpoint for your information wanted to share it on screen in case anybody wants to take a screenshot and and have those resources as well but if sheriff if you'd like i i'm happy to go back to the plan element and then open it up to discussion and questions okay we have about 15 minutes before we can move on to our next um uh presenter for our next item but uh kim um can we just start with questions now thank you members questions done senator kim hi kim good afternoon um i had a question about these funds that you're targeting to rcuh so are you anticipating what the cost is and how much is left over to actually run these programs or uh yes um so uh and rsuh has been very gracious um and the indirect costs are 132 000 on the 4.393 million quote on 132 000 there's about 3.1 percent now is that from both rch and uh uh that's just the rcuh portion uh garrett curriculum times wrong i think you guys went at five percent um we it's it's a mixture so it's ten percent of the direct cost which turns out to be about four and a half percent of the total it's two and a half thousand out of five a little higher because there's the other 600 000 but it's um only on direct costs and it's the 10 rate so the blended rate comes down to a little under 5 okay yeah so the university takes a percentage rch takes a percentage and then the left the money's left is rch go out and they hire people to to implement these programs is that what is that the motto excuse me so what will happen is there is a project manager steve who's on the line here um that will oversee that the innovation grants themselves will be run through him and several members of the advisory group that have volunteered to continue that uh on um so there's not necessarily a cost there um it's that four million that'll that'll be going out just just under four million that'll be going out yes so the part for the virtual summit part of the innovation team coordination and the parent network the the parent and family network will then also be contracted out um but i mean there's there's we only we only get so much money right so when we go to contract out they know that whatever it's going to be this is the bottom line you know so if it's uh we need a virtual summit for you know fifty thousand they're gonna get fifty thousand they've gotta figure out their own taxes they've gotta figure out their own ui they gotta figure out all that stuff on their own so under the governor's innovation team it's 150 000 going to rch to to manage this i guess i'm having a hard time understanding why you're running it through rcuh because again university will take a cost off the top and so will rcuh and um you know i'm not sure this innovation team basically is going to design the virtual summit but the virtual summit has an additional fifty thousand dollars and this one is 150.

okay that kind of bothers me a lot i mean we got the award over a year ago we are in the pandemic now um the teachers need this uh learning academy now but we're going to wait till the summer is there a reason is this is this like a whole week's course is this a day course these are two to four weeks so these are um there aren't those concentrated times where they can spend on full time for two to four weeks going through these programs so the summer is the ideal opportunity um so it's really important for us to make sure that we're prep going into the summer with the right um both the right cohorts as well as the right faculty i know we've had other opportunities weekends we've had holidays we had spring break people staying home not working at all i mean i'm just i guess i'm flabbergasted that the purpose of this by the time you put it into action the you know my wish is that the pandemic will be over by then but um i i just they think that we have taken too long on this um can i follow up on that sure in addition to that by the time this summer comes around are you are they developing this going forward because the pandemic certainly has changed everything and by summer things will be different and i'm not saying there's going to be a new norm so will it's being developed now but is it going to be effective for the following school years yeah the idea is in fact to make sure that the curricular are effective for for both um in person as well as hybrid delivery but it's really focusing on the the changes that are um that are necessary for either hybrid or online delivery and this is the and again this is the focus of trying to get concentrated um time together with cohorts of teachers um to get the curriculum developed and then to get it get to get the strategies and approaches set so that it's not only trained the trainer but it's also the development of the curricular itself that can be used instead a going forward basis and one of the principles is free and open curriculum so it's not like it's developed and then somebody has to pay again to use it later on it's developed and paid for by by federal funds and state efforts and it really should be for the benefit of the community so how many teachers again i'm sorry that's going to be covered under this program so we're looking for between two and 300 teachers to be involved with the program every summer um we're actually hoping to get it over subscribed so that you know we will be we will we can take out basically take all comers that are willing to to participate in the workshop activities and so the stipends that set aside will cover for two to three hundred teachers great summer correct that's part of the budget for each summer each summer so this is going not just this summer but the following summer right so we're funded for the summer of 21 and the summer of 22.

yes mr newsome we talked about this a while back when uh mr tebow was here and we talked about the like the 21 for 21 coming up and we talked about having the class offices here in person uh and mr tebow to number one so we could see them and say hello right number two more importantly they could kind of give us a synopsis as to what is going on that's right for year end and everything else so i mean if we're looking at like may 17th or something that that'd be fine that'd be great yeah you know not next meeting but you know in the next finding out they'll be winding down at that point but it would still be still be nice to have an idea what's going on yeah we just i think from the at least from my perspective i can only speak for myself but i think it would be great to have you folks have the senior class offices in here and you know along with the student rep to the committee just to share everything that's been going on and how the how much has been going on with planning especially yeah so and i'm glad you asked about the how things were going because that was something i wanted to know also and also after evan spoke the first meeting i obviously conversed with mr tebow and we were both so pleased he said he was so proud of you because he always gives the kids some tidbits of what's happening but he took it upon himself to add a little flair and extra things so he was exceptionally proud of the the work you did on our first meeting i'm really glad to hear that thank you well thank you so much for for presenting this evening evan you're welcome to stay but we know uh i'm busy we know you're very busy you're a busy man thank you have a good night have a good night you too and next up i'm going to turn it over to dr gifford for her introduction for our spotlight on joseph demello elementary school so we're happy to welcome the demelo school tonight we have of course principal katie pavello along with assistant principal is correa good evening ladies good evening okay i want that to happen again girl yeah yep sorry all right okay we won't touch it i promise okay well good evening um we'd like to thank you for the opportunity tonight to highlight to mello school given that today was the first day we welcomed back all our students we had a sneaking suspicion that you might want to hear a little bit about how that went therefore we've promised you just talk a little louder we've got the that's right and we can't hear sorry yes i will use my teacher teach your voice yes yeah thank you so we split our presentation into two parts we are going to talk a little bit about the work that went into getting us to the point where we were at today and then we will um highlight some specific things that we've been working at de melo throughout the year um with our traditions and just kind of uniquely to mellow so that's okay so as has been discussed back in august we had to submit three plans to the state including one for all in learning i would love to sit here and tell you that thanks to that work when the decision was made to transition to hybrid all we had to do was open our doors and welcome our students however that was just really not the case once we knew that all in learning was not a realistic option for us in the fall we shifted our emphasis to creating the safest and most robust hybrid and remote plans possible for our students and while some of the things we planned for in the fall were applicable to this transition a lot has changed in the six months from when we theoretically planned for having students in our building to actually having them with us guidance was updated functioning within the confines of the building became a reality and we learned and adjusted to situations that we just simply have never had to encounter before so tonight we'll give you a peek into some of the work that went into this latest transition and what the day-to-day operations of elementary school look like with all of our students back in school and while it's mrs corey and i speaking to you tonight we also know that our colleagues at quinn potter and cushman have all done similar work to what we're about to talk to talk about and that the middle school and high schools are deeply entrenched in this work as they look forward to welcoming more kids back to school so one of the biggest changes that needed to be made as we transitioned from hybrid to all in learning was the use of the spaces within our building since september our students have been eating lunch in their classrooms with updated guidance and the increased number of students in school student desks went from a minimum of six feet apart to a minimum of three feet apart and while we know that this is safe for our students while masked throughout the day students need to maintain that six foot minimum when their masks are off in their eating so to make this happen desks from the high school were brought down to our cafeteria and schedules were adjusted the domino effect of that or at least at potter and mellow was that our teacher's room which had been in our cafeteria needed to be moved to the gym which meant that all pe classes are now held outside or in our classrooms as someone who goes home to a pe teacher every night the impact of this decision was certainly not one that was lost on me we are extremely grateful to mrs schmick our pe teacher for her flexibility and we would appreciate any and all help from the committee and the community in doing the sun dance at least from monday to friday from now until june 17th our classrooms also went through a shift as more desks were brought in and measured at a minimum of three feet i know a lot has been said across various platforms about desk acquisition and we would just like to publicly thank both mr kylie's office and the maintenance staff for assuring that all kids who came to school today had a desk so there's been a lot of questions as to why we needed to order so many desks to get to this point and i'll just reiterate kind of what's been talked about at past meetings about how over the past several years we've had a big push towards creating inclusive and cooperative classrooms and lots of furniture has been purchased to get us to that but it's furniture that unfortunately in a pandemic is unusable so it's been a district effort to get all the schools what they need shifting desks between buildings ordering additional desks for students and while there were suggestions that desks should have been purchased earlier um i would just kind of bring attention back to that last slide when we talked about how every possible space in our buildings is being used for teaching and being used for learning and being used period um and we really there really was no place to um that was a foolproof or i guess more accurately waterproof place to store all these additional desks that might be used um you can just skip right over that this well actually i guess that's our custodians who have been moving and moving and moving uh desks throughout the last few weeks in our hallways um our our hallways are busy travel routes and they've been marked throughout the year to assist students with appropriate spacing as they walk in line up one of my favorite quotes that came out of this year came out of a first grade when we were talking to the kids at that point about six foot spacing and one of the kids raised their hand and they asked but is it an adult six feet or a kid's six feet well six feet of six feet and we um we actually had a monitor at the at the time who was subbing for us who happened to be about six foot two so we had him lay on the floor and we said it's a mr mccabe six feet so um so we have we do have visuals throughout the building to try to assist the kids on what that looks like and help them line up in a way that is safe and we've also our hallways have also become extended learning spaces as we'll talk about in a few minutes so the day-to-day logistics of what happens at an elementary school we thought you might want to get a little peek at how really every every part of our day gets touched and affected by by this transition getting our kids to and from school is obviously of the utmost importance and needed to be thought through in a way that's both safe and efficient if you've ever driven down dartmouth street a little before nine in the morning or around three in the afternoon you might have noticed that we have a lot of students who are picked up and dropped off we have staff that are sure our kids are masked and sanitized before coming into the building in the morning and we get our kids home safely and quickly as possible in the afternoon we continue to try to make tweaks to these procedures and make them more timely in nature but as mrs amaral can probably attest to the reality that is that the most important quality in a parent who's picking up their children from school these days remains patience i heard we set a new record today and our pickup line made it to the library so and as you probably know transportation guidance was updated and as a result of that update and the increased number of students in school we have an increased number of students on our buses students are still expected to wear a mask for the duration of the ride and to sanitize their hands as they enter or exit the bus procedures have been altered in loaning and unloading students to try to minimize the number of kids in the hallway at once so typically where the buses would pull up in the morning they would all sort of open their doors and the kids would flood through one bus at a time opens the kids come in we kind of hold that so there's a little bit of a holding pattern to sort of decrease the number of kids you see a picture of mrs schmick there with the sanitizers all our kids sanitized before they head into the building as we spoke about earlier the logistics of serving and eating lunch was an area that had to change as we transitioned at the elementary level though students also have a snack and a mask break every day that needed to be addressed again because students take off their masks when they eat there needs to be a minimum of six foot distance between students at snack time when the weather is nice we encourage our teachers to bring students outside to have their snack in mask break as most of our teachers are using this time as a read aloud time so it's kind of a two for one in that although we have an inclement weather plan because we do know that some days it's raining and that involves half of our kids when we talk about our hallways becoming sort of extended learning spaces half of our kids kind of go out to the hallway either with a book or an independent work activity um half the kids have their snack and then they switch keep going see there we go so recess um despite our best sunshine dances we have days when the weather makes it impossible for for us to go outside and on those days our recess is still considered a mass break and therefore we follow a format that's similar to our snack time when half the students take an activity and do it in the hall half of our students stay inside take off their mask have a mask break and then we switch go so outdoor recess is an area that we need to look at with student safety in the forefront of our minds we attempt to keep our kids potted as much as possible which means that despite being outside the traditional days of letting them the kids from all different classes at a grade level play together is just still not a reality for our students recess as we said is also considered a mask break so we need to ensure that students have an opportunity to spread apart take their masks down so we've worked with our monitors throughout the year to make sure that this is a process is there's a process in place and you see we kind of follow that five five ten five five format where there's a few minutes for all the things we need to do but we also um have worked with them on designing structured games because it is still recess this is still elementary school and our goal is to still have kids have fun get movement and get ready to learn for the rest of the day the only additional thing i'll add to what i've said about mask breaks is what can't be overlooked is teacher creativity as i walked our building last week looking over the progress to getting ready for today i saw lots of different ways that teachers have tried to accommodate their students by getting creative with their spaces in one of our bigger classrooms the teacher had x's marked on the floor away from the desks that she had measured at six feet apart that were designated places for kids to go if they were working independently that they could pull down their mask work on their on their stuff and still get a mass break a lot of the classrooms that potter and demelo have an alcove between the two joined classrooms teachers have designed math break spaces in there where students can still be listening to the instruction in the lesson but have a moment to be able to pull down their masks and for as strict and sort of sterile as all that might sound our teachers continue to think outside the box and come up with amazing ways to not only keep our kiddos safe but keep their learning spaces feeling welcoming and inviting so bathrooms when i said no space could be overlooked i meant every space including our bathrooms so we had to think of a way to decrease the amount of students in bathrooms to be able to maintain appropriate spacing so all of our bathrooms have hooks outside the door our kids have cards they hang their card on the hook kids have learned that if they have to use the bathroom they need to make sure that there's a space to hang their hook if there are two children in the bathroom they need to wait their turn and away they go we discussed classroom design but i'll just add that in addition to all the things that we've talked about we continue to run our universe and our air purifiers and all of our spaces throughout the day windows are open where they can be and we maintain that minimum of three foot distance and i put that emphasis on the word minimum because in the majority of our spaces our kids are maintaining a distance of greater than three feet so um we have our you know our trusty measuring sticks you saw the custodians with and they go through and they measure but by and large our kids you can see in that classroom that classroom is set and ready to go and those desks are far more than three feet apart the other thing i'll just say is that with and i will say this loud and proud with our custodian's blessings uh we have a lot of the classrooms that have marked the floors because the inevitable movement of six to eleven-year-olds is that desks are not going to stay put where you put them to start the day so it's a way for the kids to know kind of how to get back into their appropriate space and most of what we've talked about tonight really boils down to creating new rituals and routines that needed to be thought about through a new lens and so much of that work was done in conjunction with our superhero school nurses including creating a routine for actually seeing the nurse so we have traditionally sent our older kids independently or our younger kids with an adult or a buddy to see the nurse if they don't feel well or they need a little triage but this year our nurse makes house calls so she goes to classrooms to assess students and kind of make a decision about next steps all of our buildings have had to transition a space to an isolation room where students who display coveted like symptoms can be separate from healthy or injured kids who are not and as you can see when the nurse is already with a student and another student is sick liz or in this particular case i get to suit up in some good old ppe and go fetch our sick kiddos um i would just i would be completely remiss if i didn't take a minute to acknowledge that the only way this whole operation is able to function every day is because of the dedication flexibility and sheer awesomeness of the people that liz and i have the privilege of working with every day because we have our kids plotted throughout the day we needed a much larger number of individuals who were able to able to oversee a larger number of smaller groups if that makes sense so we are extremely appreciative to central office as they were able to extend our recess monitor and custodian hours to help with this but the reality is that absences happen substitutes are at a minimum and without the commitment of the members of our staff to literally do whatever it takes to get through the day i'm sometimes not sure we would uh this is most often accomplished by our secretary katie gobiel whose official title we've petitioned to change to chaos coordinator as she uh pieces together coverage every morning as you can see um up there is one of our daily updates and i think on this day i was a health teacher liz was a librarian and katie herself was a lunch and recess monitor but the names that you'll see on this list most often are those of our teaching assistants i just cannot overstate what a critical role these people have played in us being able to function on a day-to-day basis they act as our substitutes our lunch and recess monitors coverage for meetings truly they do it all and most times with little or no forewarning we are so grateful to them and to our entire staff for their flexibility and their willingness to do whatever it takes to be able to give the kids the positive experience and that's what i'll say that again the positive experience that we know that they are getting every day so i've talked a lot about the work that went into getting us to this point today and yes it was a lot of work but we would do it again a hundred times over because that's what's led to our kids being in school and that is why we do what we do and it makes every single thing that we've done worth it um all the teachers that i talked to last week while justifiably anxious about what they called their fourth first day of school or even more excited to welcome their kids back to school and our first grade teachers who have had their little munchkins back for two weeks now we'll tell you that life is in what we call little land is just as it should be now that the kiddos are back and while it's wonderful that the adults are excited about having their kids back it's even better to hear from our kiddos who are going to tell you a little bit about what they like in our look forward to about being back go ahead can you tell me what your favorite thing is about everyone being back in first grade my favorite thing is art and gym seeing your friends every day alrighty thanks hi jack can you tell me what your favorite part is about everyone being back at school together um having laughed with everyone have an art with everyone that's fantastic thank you hi lily hi can you tell me what the best part is about having everyone come to school every day um you can see your friends if you have trouble with something you can get help with that comes here every day yay thank you you're welcome hi landon can you tell me what your favorite part is about everyone being back at school i like to do art and gym and you get to do those all the time right when you're back every day awesome so emma tell us what you're most excited about when it comes to everyone coming back to school on april 5th seeing my friends again because over the past year or a few months i haven't got to see as many because they're in cohort bag and the fact that i'll be in school every day is kind of exciting because our teachers don't have to do as much work and like they won't freak out because if they got something on our checklist wrong even though we do have we'll probably have a little bit of homework but it won't be that hard and just like after the fact that i'll be in school and i'll get to see all my friends in the same classroom is pretty exciting i agree thank you very much sequoia tell us what you're most excited about when it comes to all students coming back to school in a couple of weeks i'm most excited about that like we're going to be able to socialize more and that we're going to be able to see more people and if we're struggling with something maybe other kids in our classroom could help and also maybe even the fact that like we could help with another kid in the classroom and look it'll be much more funner because there will be more kids and we can meet more people fantastic thank you so anna tell me what you're looking forward to when all students have returned to school in a couple of weeks i think i'm looking forward to how the schedule and how it used to be to kind of get more comfortable with an old schedule again and i'm also looking forward to seeing more possible friends in my classroom fantastic i'm excited for you too so maddie tell us why you're excited about everyone coming back to school on april 5th i'm excited for everybody to come back to school because i don't have to worry about using my computer as much and logging onto me doing all my work on life fantastic thank you so i'm not sure if you could hear some of our little guys up the top but across the board one of the things that they talked about was being obviously excited about seeing their friends and kind of having things that they get to do all the time but i was really i was kind of struck by the kids insightfulness that if they are stuck on something or if they need help that their teacher will be there to kind of help them and it's it's wonderful that they still know and view their teachers as that person that they know they can kind of go to if they need help with something so i'm going to hand it off to liz we'll talk you to a little bit about some of the dimelo initiatives that we've been working on throughout the year oh i just well i didn't need that overshot the runway so i'm going to be talking to you about keeping and growing our demelo traditions and in order to do that i need to dial back a little bit to last year so since last march mrs pebble and i have pretty much been spending many hours making plans for how to run a school in a pandemic and we knew early on that one of the most important things that we could do for our students and our staff was to keep as many of our demelo traditions alive as well as we could while maybe cultivating some new ones so from the onset of the stay-at-home order we understood the importance of being visibly present in our students daily lives that became crystal clear right out the gate when we were home and we needed to connect with our kids so one of the first things we did at this time was we started to record our daily morning announcements and closing messages that students and families could access through our facebook page or develop facebook page and we immediately started to receive messages from families just to let us know how much they appreciated this simple connection that they had with us um students look forward to hearing mrs paveo's daily birthday wishes and words of encouragement and i received quite a few knock-knock jokes from families to share in each uh of our days each day's closing message in a very simple way these videos kept our demelo community connected in a time when we were physically disconnected and as we launched this school year remotely and then moved to hybrid learning we decided to continue to record and send out morning announcements each day really for a logistical reason we knew it was kind of slow getting kids in um that teachers needed a little bit more time in previous years we used to just have morning announcements at 905 exactly every morning we thought that a big benefit of recording these words is just to have teachers have the ability to sit down with the whole class and press play and enjoy these wonderful morning announcements which they have so you're welcome so um as we launched this year we moved and moved to hybrid learning we we started to record them daily and i should say mrs did and during the first weeks of the school year um when we were remote actually students were watching them at home remotely so flash forward to hybrid learning in october classes watch these videos take videos together on their um in school days and the kids who are learning at home on those days could also join in and watch these videos which we think just kept everyone connected and now that we are all in together we will continue to post morning announcements and as you will see from our video we have a little clip that we brought along with us today mrs faber's daily videos are filled with important information what's for lunch what's going on warmth and a little bit of inspiration to start each day they've become a new demelo tradition and they continue to connect us all uh first thing every single day so here we go i also pause you at the greatest moment where you look like you're half asleep or sometimes your mouth opens there it is good mornings middle school and happy tuesday today is tuesday march 23rd we don't have any birthdays today at the middle school but a happy birthday to anyone that you might know having a birthday today as we continue with women's history month our quote today comes from famed scientist marie curie marie curie was a physicist and chemist she was the first woman to win the nobel prize and the only woman to ever win it twice and she says the first principle never let one's self be beaten down by persons or by events so i love that message like i love all our quotes of the day but this one friends think about what that's saying to you don't let your spirit be broken by other people or by events and sometimes that can be really hard to do so sometimes crummy things happen sometimes we have bad days sometimes events out of our control are happening in what she's saying is we can't let ourselves we can't let our spirit our positivity our gratitude be broken by that so even when you have a tough day even when you encounter someone that maybe you haven't gotten along with or maybe they were having a bad day and they did they tried to dip in your bucket we can't let ourselves our spirit be broken by those things and that takes perseverance that takes grit but remember friends we can do hard things at the middle of school so if you're having a tough day if the events are happening or if someone's maybe not being so kind to you remember marie curie's first principle never let yourself never let your spirit be broken by people or by events let's end our announcements today with a spring joke which hopefully i will deliver correctly what is a tree's favorite drink root beer of course i hope that you all have a terrific tuesday of teaching learning and we will see you right back here tomorrow morning such a simple video and the staff love them and the more importantly i think the kids really love them and they think that mrs pavel was somewhat as a celebrity because they watched her on the smart board in the morning and wave and go out of their way to say hello to her in the hallways she's the lady from the tv [Laughter] so moving right along as you may already know demelo's pbis framework is centered on recognizing our students for their positive choices on a regular basis again as we plan for a school year filled with uncertainties the dental staff fully understood that keeping pbis alive and strong this year was more important than ever and with a little creative thinking and tweaking this is what we've done each day teachers continue as we have in years past to recognize students who have exemplified our core values of being respectful responsible and safe with copying good coins and copying good slips and i think i can speak for mrs paveo when i say that fridays are our favorite days at de melo school not because it's necessarily the end of the week but because it's the one day of the week that we visit every single classroom we select our leaders of the pack who are pictured here some of them we celebrate those children and encourage invite their classmates to talk about what makes them such a wonderful leader of the pack for their classroom and it never gets old the kids truly light up when their names are selected and at that point we just dip our hands into a bowl of copy and good slips that students have earned in the class and just pick a name randomly and it is truly the most fulfilling wonderful or one of the most wonderful parts of our week because as you can see the kids are just jazzed by the whole experience and it really um when they get their brag tags um you can see the pride in their face and uh like i said never gets old and we get to reinforce that that's what you know that's part of what making these good choices is about is being recognized for the good little humans that you are let's keep it going at the melo we also recognize students who consistently demonstrate our core values with a tri-mesterly fun zone which typically in the past has been thank you a 30-minute celebration where students get to engage in various activities and by all accounts they enjoy themselves thoroughly so in the past we were always able to combine two classes at a time in the cafeteria for the celebration this year we had to reimagine our fun zones a little bit given the pandemic all of our fun has to be socially distanced now and so for our first fun zone which was back in december instead of holding 10 celebrations in the cafeteria we held 40 individual fun zones in the classroom we played a lot of bingo we did a lot of dance party kids loved pictionary we had a blast and again it's all prefaced with you have earned this this is a recognition for all of your good choices for making the school the safe happy place that it is and um for 40 fun zones flew by we um really they did we had a blast she was laughing but there were a lot of them they but they were wonderful and we were happy to report that the kids even though it looked different it felt different from fun zones of the past um they really enjoyed it in this uh these pictures you can see we had a socially distanced dance party for these classes and we're looking forward to our next celebration later on this month and it'll be a little bit easier because we're all in so i'll on to one of our most cherished uh demelo traditions and recognitions our student of the month um celebration so we've been doing um in-person student of the month assemblies at de melo school for about four years now and they're fantastic events that we have in the cafeteria we don't tell the students that they've been selected as a student of the month we call families and invite them to sneak in and then we surprise students of the month when we announce their names and read narratives that their teachers have written about them at the assembly so again we had to kind of reimagine this and this year we've put together student of the month videos and we've done one every month since we got back just to in-person learning um in october so with the help of our instructional tech coach mrs vosey as well as mr peratti and his wonderful interns at dartmouth high school we've been able to put these videos together and they are a true labor of love they take a bit of organizing um but we've been able to celebrate our students if not all together in the cafeteria through a video that teachers show on a drop day that we designate throughout the building and i would like to show you special questions [Music] hi and welcome to another virtual student of the month assembly friends i've heard that we've come to love watching these assemblies so we can see all of the kids from all the grade levels so i'm not going to talk very long because i want to get into the real important stuff which is recognizing some of our friends who are doing amazing things across the day friends i want to acknowledge how difficult this year could be for some of us remote learning isn't easy hybrid learning isn't easy virtual learning isn't easy but boys and girls we can still make great choices and we can still put best effort into what we're doing and so many of you are doing that every single day not just our students of the month but as we go around and see our copying good slips we know that so many of you are trying your very best and for that we are so unbelievably appreciative we are so proud of the kiddos that we're about to hear about we're so proud of so many of you here at middle school but it's our time right now to celebrate 20 amazing kids who are doing great things every day so let's get ready to roll mrs colbeck has this to say about her student it is with great pleasure that i nominate may amarillo as our december student of the month may is a wonderful young lady who is a joy to have in class her laugh is contagious and filled with happiness she exhibits our core values and can be counted on always to be respectful responsible and safe she is kind and is an extremely hard worker her work is always done to the very best of her ability and she can always be found applying all that she has learned she perseveres and then is it is an incredible role model she is humble and kind her ability to understand the situation and move to the greater good is awe-inspiring she is very insightful and thoughtful in addition to all of her accomplishments she is very safe mae understands what is needed to be safe in our classroom and puts her part into play in addition she cares for her things and her technology we are so very lucky to have mei as part of our classroom family this year this nomination is so well deserved congratulations on being our december student of the month bravo congratulations may hello kiss [Music] romeo kiss hi may congratulations to you i'm really not surprised because you are really a great kid but i'm so proud of you have a great day i'm a congratulations on your student of the month you really deserve it i'm proud of all your accomplishments keep up the great work love you congratulations sweetheart you always make me proud good job we truly truly enjoy those videos and i think when we were thinking of reimagining student of the month for this year we were thinking let's have families submit videos it is our favorite favorite part the videos the grandparents the siblings um i watch them all and put them into google folders as they come in and i will literally call mrs paveo and say i've just seen the most heartfelt proud parents like like warm congratulatory messages from families it's it really is something so i feel like we haven't lost anything by moving it to a video this year and i would look forward to the day when we get back to doing it in person but these videos are a huge hit with the students and the families and i just feel like it's such a positive thing to look forward to every month and everyone does yeah so as you can see we've worked really hard on keeping our community positive happy and strong at the mellow school this year despite all the challenges the de mello school continues to be a place of joy um and a place where we all come together it's a home away from home for everyone every day so i'm going to turn this back to mrs paveo who'll talk about the work we've done this year around literacy so one of our favorite things to do at the mellow school is to celebrate reading and with the hard work of mrs correa and dr lisa macioni we were able to modify but keep some of our favorite reading celebrations one such celebration is breakfast blankets and books which is a mouthful but also where students bring break a breakfast snack a blanket and they spread out around the room and we spend some quality time with a book we just drop everything and read for a little bit these are some pictures of our kids typically we would get a whole grade level together in a shared space but again we sort of thought outside the box the kids built tents and forts around their desks so they just had a great time reading another tradition that we kept this year was our bookmark contest students in all grade levels submit a reading theme design which is voted on and then the winning bookmark is distributed to all the students at that grade level we have a quick little video of from our winners this year every story has like a new story in it like it has like characters and there's all like new adventures it's perfect that's why i love reading thank you go hi my name is max beatty and i love reading because it's challenging go hi my name is emma and i'm in third grade i love reading because you learn interesting things and you have adventures in books hi my name is bobby i'm from mrs baker's fourth grade and um i like and this is my bookmark i really like reading because it can it can be really inspiring some sometimes and some of the stories can actually help you solve real life problems and also i can i can incorporate some words i can learn some new words from reading and i really love reading for that reason i'm sean king and i love reading books because it teaches lots of stuff so bingo for books is another beloved family event that we've held at demelo for the past several years and obviously this year we couldn't do that as an in-person event so with the help of our ics liz voce and our bingo caller extraordinaire melissa pickering if you've never heard melissa run a bingo you've missed out uh we were able to turn this into a google meet virtual family night um and it this just kind of encapsulates what we're talking about we had to take these things that we know our families and our kids love and just amend them and tweak them so that we could still do them they could still be done they just not quite done the way that we that we've done them before but i think we've found new and really wonderful ways to connect with our families um this was this event was just a couple weeks ago it was hysterical actually to see the kids also in their home environments playing bingo it was great and in celebration of read across america in the month of march we have traditionally looked forward to inviting guest readers into demelo to read to our students again not wanting to let that go we worked with our readers that mrs corey was able to corral into reading and most of you in this room tonight happen to make helped us make that happen uh guest readers were all able to read books from our diversity library which liz is going to talk about more in just a couple of minutes and finally one of the coolest things i think that we've done over the past couple of years is invite authors to de mello school to talk to the students about their process of writing editing and publishing their writing this year was no exception and we were thrilled to welcome scott magoon sadia faruqi julie berry josh funk and jarrett lerner virtually into our classrooms to discuss their books and careers as authors i think it's so empowering to our kids to be able to see people who have made a career out of writing i think a lot of them view writing as this thing that we make them do and they don't really see the purpose of it and they don't think that they could see themselves as someone who could take that into something that they could do as a career and as a living so you know pulling these authors in and they we've purchased the books for our classrooms so the kids can have those books um and then we're actually working with one of our authors to hopefully do a book walk he's going to give us some copyright uh rights to be able to blow his book up and post it outside and do kind of a gallery walk through so working with these authors has been amazing and just a really really wonderful and enriching and empowering event for our students i'm going to turn it back to liz who's going to wrap it up by talking about some of our diversity and inclusion initiatives so again winding the clock back to last spring as we looked ahead to planning for the 2021 school year mrs pavan and i set a goal around something of critical importance to the both of us increasing an awareness and nurturing and appreciation of diversity and inclusion throughout de melo school in keeping with radine sim bishop's work on transforming schools into places where children have access to mirrors and windows we can committed to making demelo a place where students could see themselves their cultures and identities reflected in the stories they read mirrors while at the same time have access to resources that offered them a clear view into others experiences windows while covert has prevented us from hosting the in-person cultural events we'd hope to offer this year we've been able to bring virtual cultural experiences to our students last december author sadie sadia farooqi visited virtually our first and second graders in class and at home to discuss her work and her meet yasmine book series about a pakistani american second grader and her family oh wait a minute i don't know i don't know i might need some technical assistance here mr galesha no oh we had a clip of sadia farooqi good morning first and second graders thank you for those of you who are tuning in from the classroom and thank you to those of you who are tuning in at home we are so lucky to have saria farooqi here with us today as you know she is the author of meet yasmin and um some other wonderful books so i am not going to talk too long because i want her to have as much time to talk as possible but the classroom teachers those of you here in school um when sadia is finished talking and it's time for questions i can go around and mute different classroom teachers and you can have the opportunity to ask her a question so um i will turn and of course you can use the chat um too so i will turn it over to sonia hello good morning i'm sadia farooqi i am the author like um like uh elisa said of the yasmine series but also other books for kids i wanted to introduce myself and then i'll take lots of questions um so i live in houston texas which is kind of far and probably less cold way less cold than you guys where you are but you know i wasn't um born here i was actually born in another country i'm an immigrant which means i was born somewhere else and now i live here i was born in pakistan which is if you don't know you can look it up ask your parents or teachers to help you it is a small country in asia it's neighbors with more popular well-known countries like china and india and that's where i was born i grew up there i went to school there and i went to college there and then when i was a grown-up i was 22 years old not very grown up but you know adult um that's when i got on a plane and i i flew all the way to the united states we wanted to know if you have a favorite book uh you mean in my book yes from your book series that we've been reading did you have a favorite one that's hard am i allowed to have favorites i feel like i shouldn't have favorites because i wrote all of them that's like asking your mom who's their favorite kid ah don't do that okay and this past february we received a grant through the mass cultural council sta's residency program to fund an artist residency at de mello school this year this has allowed us to bring japanese storyteller musician and visual artist motoko to our entire third grade to work virtually with our third graders on learning grade level math and science concept through the art of origami and there she was uh launching last the program last week and finally through a generous grant from the dartmouth education foundation last spring we've been able to create a de mello school diversity and inclusion library for our staff and students this library currently houses more than 70 student-friendly picture books devoted to a range of topics including race poverty religion family diversity and lgbtq issues our guest readers all month um parents and dartmouth staff alike all read books selected from this library and we have enjoyed it immensely we hope to add to it more and more as we move on so we'd like to thank you all for this opportunity tonight to take a look at our road to getting to students back in and a chance to shine a light on some of the things that we've been working on at mellow when we knew we were presenting today instead of on the 26th we sort of added that piece in so i appreciate your patience as this was way longer than we would have ever spoken otherwise um but we wanted to kind of give you that view and we'll happily kind of take any questions that you have for us now thank you so much ladies what a wonderful presentation it was very uh encompassing of everything um and i i have a couple of my own thoughts but i'm going to turn it over we can start down there with mrs waite hi so you know i just love demelo and i think you have such a fabulous amazing staff and you know certainly seeing all this is testimony to that so um it's very comprehensive you know it's everything i expected and know that would be happening um you know i love seeing that these traditions that i know were so beautiful for our family to go through are still being you know recast this year but and it's such a great lesson for the kids too to say you know we have to do something differently but we can still do it that's such awesome modeling and it's so i think it's empowering for them just to see how this year can play out in a positive way we can make the best out of what's a really tough you know reality for for everyone you know and just again and i think like i love seeing um you know mrs paveo just talking about that like honestly in these like conversations that you know we can it's hard sometimes as we you know interpret this quote you know there is like marie curie that is hard and really bringing that to their level and explaining that and then launching the day with you know we understand and but we're going to move forward and be inspired so again these are real you know so many things that are happening and are so meaningful and i you know i look at the video and i think wow you know i want to go back and watch it i want to watch you every day and i want to watch in the family story i can forward them to you but the family stories too i thought that was i mean you know may but that was a beautiful you know so important for those kids and that's families like i want to sit that down and watch all the students of the month because again and i i'm sure that's a great treasure for you know everyone who especially people that you know even in normal situations couldn't be there to be part of that ceremony so there are some you know again some i think positive legacies that will you know continue to come from this for sure tough time but um and again and i really appreciate the mirrors and windows program and i was i felt you know i love the book that i read and you know i felt that you know again just for these kids to be able to walk in and see like wait that's a book about me and something that i can identify with and you know i that is um you know it's it's all about that that self-image and that positivity and you know again it's just another everything that you guys do right and your staff does and so thank you and thanks especially to you your you know tas and your nurses you know your nurse and just everything that uh you know i know sharon's been i just everybody coming together it's uh it's a phenomenal job so thank you thank you good luck for the rest of the year thank you mr news thank you mr chairman ladies thank you very much for being here uh i know i took a i was fortunate enough mrs prevail gave me the tour uh before school open and uh got a chance to see what was going on when they were moving things in august to get to six feet and you know the uh the gym down in the back had all the excess furniture at the time and you know what are you going to do for john i don't know haven't gotten there yet you know you know pray for warm weather type of deal but uh thank you you know you you mary just misses wait just talked about you know sayings and everything else and i was sitting there going yep life gives you lemons you make lemonade so you've done a fantastic job and uh just a personal thank you for allowing me to pop into mr finclack's room that wednesday to uh to read the book it was a great book uh on you know 20 different americans with cultural diversities and such and some of them you know being a child of the 60s i can remember a lot of those that were going on so it was really to put my own little spin on some of them and you know i hope the students enjoyed it i did and i thank you and don't hesitate to send me a text or an email again i'd love to do it again we appreciate you coming thank you thank you mr nunes this is america thank you for being here um i uh just this weekend actually came across a pile of paperwork like you know it was actually a small pile proud to say that i just i guess i haven't gone through and it was a folder and i don't know maybe i knew it was coming i just was avoiding it but it was actually the friday afternoon reading log from mrs baker's fourth grade class and a in a you know a flyer dated march 13th and mae and i looked at it like ooh and there was a ymca catalog for a spring event and she she's she's a little bit of a comedian and not to make light of a serious situation she said well that camp didn't happen um and yeah so she just kind of rolled with it but that was something to see just to say oh my goodness this is this has been in this little pile here for for a very long time and we've been at this for a very long time um yup um i'm also one of the parent pickup parents i i i don't know i've been fortunate to be able to drop off and pick up all three of my kids even when they were in three different schools for three different reasons three different ages and uh it's been notable the the the change because you'll also probably see us there early because my daughter likes to be there early it's part of her starting her day and she wants to be prepared even with assigned seating so we engage her she's earlier when papa brings her but she's she's still early-ish when mom brings her i don't know jerry's out on dad no i'm just kidding but um we arrive you know early and wow even last week we talked about the the first the youngest kiddos coming in and we were like two minutes be it past our schedule and we were out to the street already dropping off i thought oh my goodness this is going to be really tough when when you know she starts on the 5th full time and but we were we were very early this morning embarrassed to say how early we were this morning but uh i will say i think we were there about quarter past eight uh and we were the third car we weren't the first car we were the third car in line which is so that's striking i'm sure it got quite chaotic but you always handle it everyone that is very organized and handle it with just patience and positive attitudes all the time sometimes have to wake people up to have them move along but the process that you put in place is very simple and you know we have a name tag so nobody has to go social distancing where they can call the name and everybody's prepared to come out in line and then it's just like a seamless process so really kudos to you and i don't miss all of your staff uh we personally the last couple years were able to experience like miss baker and this year we have miss colbeck and um just both scenarios and i'll just reference like this year knowing just just knowing what what amazed you know the teachers must have been feeling and just like the sense of repeating yourself every other day and double time and extra work and just not you know stuck in the mud unable to kind of really take time to straighten yourself out and and you know the the positivity the grace the excitement the energy the the obvious love to be there to do what she can to make those kids at home feel welcome and supported and to start their day with energy like you said those on and off days and starting back when the pandemic um started we would all tune in to to listen to you and to do the pledge of allegiance and at the end of the day and then to listen to the jokes um and then what you did you just made me choke up a little with that with the student of the month but the ways in which you constantly you know were trying to make things as normal as possible um that's so it was so special and then to be able to uh to be able to have like my dad you know record papa record that's that's her her favorite person in the world and then to have liam there and he normally would have been at school we wouldn't have wanted him to take the day off to come to something to celebrate like that or he he might not have wanted to stay there you know what wouldn't have been the best situation let's just say um especially knowing that the cafeteria will usually hold it is where his oldest sister used to play basketball so all bets are off with that but he was able to be part of that video i i don't know what she looked like when she watched it in person because she was totally surprised but i i'm sure she was she was uh quite overwhelmed with emotion because it's really her family is really important to her so just i want to thank you for everything you've done happy to be back may admittedly announced today that she in a happy she was thrilled to see her friends she told me who she saw they didn't say hi to each other but they waved she was happy there was music classical music at that lunch in the cafeteria and you played it there was a game i think had i forget we played a little would you rather yeah there's some games that you know so she had a blast but she was she was nervous she said she was a little bit nervous um but she was okay like she but i'm really glad that she is able to articulate that to me and she trusts that she she says what she wants to say when she feels she needs to say it and so um you know i'm sure kiddos were nervous i'm sure teachers were nervous um i was a little nervous she came home she put more hand sanitizer on right away she's really diligent but the work that you've done in making kids feel as safe as possible and has been tremendous so i just appreciate it i'm really thrilled i love all of our schools and and but i'm grateful that she gets to um be with you and uh experience this through the lent you know through the umbrella of of your little family school so thank you thank you mrs amaril dr jenkins i just want to echo my colleagues and saying thank you for the presentation um i think it was particularly useful because i think we see a lot of times in social media well why didn't they already have a plan and i don't think people understand that and i think it's really important to reiterate right the first plan you developed was for six feet right and then we waited and then we waited and then we waited and then the state was like oh and then you know less than a week you got it i'm exaggerating but now it's three feet and so part of the thing is is that it was impossible to plan for all possible scenarios that might have been coming from the state about how we were going to have to do that so showing all the work that went into figuring out once we got the guidance is really helpful i think for people to understand how much work so many people did to make this happen on such a short time i'm super appreciative of both you showing us that work because i think it illustrates to our community what was done it's not like people were you know sitting at home like my friend used to joke i'm gonna work from home i'm gonna eat cheetos and watch soap operas all day that's not what's happening people are working around the clock to make this happen and so i appreciate you showing that to us but also the work that that really went into bringing our kids um back to school so thank you and i'm sorry i forgot your book i promise i will bring it back i had a great time reading go ahead thank you dr jenkins yeah there's not a lot more that i can say um you know just a few things really ladies phenomenal presentation i thought it was really well done really well put together there was a lot of thought and effort and the fact that you were able to take away take some snippets out of you know the day and share with us some of the students comments um i thought that was huge so to me this video really highlights kind of like what dr jenkins was saying the culmination of hundreds and hundreds of hours of planning of you know to get kids fully back get students fully back in school and that's really what this video did it was the call it highlighted the culmination it was the culmination of how and why you did what you did in order to get our our students back in school so you know just a couple of little notes that i i jotted down that i thought were important you know keeping the traditions alive i thought that was huge how you used to do bingo now you turned into it i thought that was awesome i i'd love to be a virtual bingo caller sounds like a fun gig [Laughter] what did you ask for i know right continuing to um you know go after those grants to the mass cultural council through the dartmouth um education foundation um huge and then bringing the authors in um i love the morning pep talk pep talks um you know i was i was actually getting a little uh a few of my a few of my teachers said they're going to get me a little red cardigan and they joke that i'm like mr rogers of demillo school no um and just i think you said it you know the nurse is making the house calls the you know to the rooms there's just so many moving parts and um so you know hats off to you and your staff for a job well done thank you they really i have to say thank you but they you know listen listen i always say that our job is to sort of lift the barriers so that the teachers can do the important work so like yes this is as i said like this is a lot of work and this is what we do but we do it so that the teachers can get in there and teach the kids and they really are the superstars of this whole operation because we can we can move all the barriers we can do whatever we want but we need the people to get in there and do the important work of working with our kids every day and we're just eternally eternally grateful and it can't be said enough how amazing our staff has been through this whole thing so thank you for that but i'm just going to trickle it right down to the people who are who are doing that hard work every single day no i agreed i i couldn't agree with you more and that goes back to what you had showed us on the uh the morning i don't know if it was called the morning call sheet or whatever with all the different substitutions that need to be made yes actually and what i failed to point out in that picture is at one point you saw our custodian um we have a virtual class uh where our teacher from quinn comes in we have an extra fourth grade so our custodian at one point i got called out into a meeting and i literally saw him in the hallway and i said i need you for five minutes and he said what do i have to do i said nothing the teacher is on the smart board i just need you here in case anything happens so it is a literal all hands on deck because tonight we are just eternally appreciative of everyone's hard work teamwork yes yes thank you thank you thank you thank you all right next up under old business continuation of the fy 22 budget discussion and i'm looking to be to be taking a vote this evening um we'll start off i'm going to turn it over to dr gifford for any updates or anything that you want to share with the committee before we continue yep sure thank you so once again i'll just share with you some information mr kylie provided relative to the letter that we received about the parking just just so you have it in the back of your head so we've had that come forth before a number of years ago and just for your information the committee did reduce the fee one from 100 to 60 dollars and he said that was about eight years ago so the parking fee right now is sixty dollars and it pays for plowing the painting of lines lighting repairs maintenance of lots and any little paving that has to happen um and as we know or don't know but i'll make make you know that the maintenance staff our maintenance staff plows a lot ourselves so in most of the snowstorms and we have contracted out in the past if need be so obviously you all set the fee and again for future discussion if that was i know it's pretty slim pickings in that um little pot of money and it is used every year and if that were to be eliminated um that would be something that we would have to add to the operating budget so just a quick update from mr kylie on that and that's all the updates nothing else has changed can you do you know what the total amount of revenue is generated from the part i don't no i don't i don't have that yep it's not a whole lot but okay but it's sixty dollars we're doing 60 yeah just as an fyi 300 ballpark and other than that nothing else has changed right yeah because not yeah 18 000 max max yeah luckily we do have the maintenance crew doing most of the snowstorms so you know if we had to contract that out all the time it would be the town terrible yeah too thank you dr gifford and you do have the um yeah uh the motions that mr kylie provided yeah so does anyone have any other comments or questions about tonight dr jenkins so mr chair prior to approval of the budget i would like to make a motion to amend the budget to adjust the administrative budget to leave the current administrative structure that we have in place for the next fiscal year leaving the assistant superintendent position vacant and keeping their director of teaching and learning i'll second that yeah so i have a motion by dr jenkins a second by this is wait to and could you repeat the what to retain the current and administrative structure and the administrative the district office to not fill the vacant assistant superintendent position and to retain the current director of teaching and learning position thank you very much so i have a motion by dr jenkins a second by mrs waite on the motion and discussion mr nunes yeah thank you mr chairman uh i'm sorry i can't support that i think we need the assistant superintendent's position okay with everything that goes on everything that is needed in this system not only our system but every system type of deal i think you need an assistant superintendent an assistant superintendent that's going to handle you know the other things that the superintendent and the assistant superintendent of business and finance you know the in-between things type of deal uh to take that position out of the budget uh i think is wrong and uh i think we need to you know leave it there uh as a fail-safe so i mean i'm i am fortunate i will not support this motion okay this is amarillo i i would support this because i've been kind of mulling around in my head about this um because i know everyone's taking on so much extra but i was under the impression prior to like the budget proposal that we had sort of voted i don't remember what that vote was but to like revisit this kind of post kind of where when we're back in um and i just i just feel that you know tracy you know the curriculum piece is so important uh i just would i just feel like although i know people are taking on more than they typically would to make this happen i just am back to where we were that time we voted that we would revisit this like next year or something so i mean i would support this not to say that this is a forever thing but i i um so anyway that i i do feel that that it's been not sitting well with me in in in that just not now kind of thing i just i don't know i don't know so i know that sounds like very convoluted but that's my my thoughts around it um i don't know what else yeah i just say that i kind of echo what um miss amaral said that i had thought that we had voted on this and then you know it would come to an agreement and it was you know certainly it seemed that we were going to hold on this you know whether or not that was an official vote but it seemed like we were you know that seemed to be what wasn't unanimous like a consensus that we were gonna hold um and so i was just i've been struggling a little bit with it as well on that on that note so dr jenkins are you saying uh to leave the just leave the position vacant at this time to retain the current administrative structure which is to have that position vacant and to have a current director of teaching and learning so just to clarify you you said at the last time that you would take it up during budget not to vote for next year that's what you discussed so this budget process and as you know that by leaving it vacant it is 100 about 140 000 that we've reduced so we were asking for a simple about an eight thousand dollar increase to the current director of teaching learning salary to take on all those additional responsibilities that i gave you in that updated job description so with that said then i would have to cut that job description about in half um so i'm not quite sure what all the rest of what you would propose all of those other responsibilities because my my my day is pretty much on mr kylie's right now and you know as you know he's out right now so sure miss olivera took on a lot over the next few days including dea negotiations um unfair labor practice uh discussion that we have to have all day wednesday those are things that an assistant superintendent the title has to go with those responsibilities to be able to make decisions be on certain committees etc so those are kind of the things that we are um asking for yeah i guess my question dr gifford would be how how has the functionality been this to date through this year right now how are you operating with everybody picking picking all of that up but i think with the hope for the person that's been picking up the most of it with that this would take place so i can't guarantee that that that takes place continuing you know dr jenkins so i understand that there's a desire to make this happen you know i look at my own institution i'm currently doing the job of two people right we have not been able to replace budget times are uncertain and lean i'm not convinced at this point in time that this is the time to make this change right we still have to have all hands on deck second i'm not entirely convinced i would like to see an analysis of the administrative structures in other districts that i feel like over the past few you know time that i've been on the committee and that i've been watching this committee from the finance we have limited funds and we have lots of other needs and i know we're eliminating a position but i don't want i want us to do an analysis of what our needs are and i want a clear sort of com comparison to other districts before i feel comfortable approving this this is not a never for me this is a not now you know the third thing that i will say is that the assistant superintendent is a very important role in our district um i think that we should be posting such a position i really do this is nothing against the current occupant of the position of the director of teaching and learning but for a position of sort of that scope i believe we should search that's that's my position um you know not everyone has to agree with me but i just don't feel comfortable approving this because once we move forward it's hard to move back i don't know of many districts that don't have an assistant superintendent for teaching and learning if that's our our primary goal teaching and learning we don't have one now and also from my perspective having worked in this you know leading the district for the last six years there is no one better than tracy oliveira who has done the curriculum work the professional development work and leading all the committees so again we don't agree with that but that's my my opinion my perspective right now thank you dr gifford anyone else yeah mr news yeah just to go to uh dr jenkins about posting in that type of deal in my tenure here there have been a couple of times that we have posted for assistant superintendents because we had no one qualified in-house type of deal but there have also been other times that we've either done it strictly in-house or we've just you know the position has been available and we've moved someone in so i mean it's not it's a superintendent it's the superintendent's call it's not as to who she he or she would like to have in that position type of deal so i don't see a reason to you know spend money you're talking about trying to save some money with budgets and everything else to spend money and do a search it doesn't make sense i would just i i'm kind of torn mr nunes i can understand where you're coming from i certainly understand where dr jenkins is coming from but i am somewhat concerned at the the optics when positions aren't posted um and i don't want to go backwards in time but you know with other positions but when other positions were not posted and just appointments were made you know i i don't really want to go there but you know i think you know what i'm talking about i i think we need to really take a hard look like dr jenkins said at the administrative structure i think that's the right thing to do leave the position vacant and go from there any other discussion now how so we have a motion we have a second we had discussion how do we move forward then do we in terms of after we move on the motion we have that discussion okay so right now we're talking we're debating the motion on the table right so mr nunes let me let me no not mike because we'll just vote this and then it'll just be vacant um okay i was just trying to figure out the money portion of it but we'll we'll vote this and okay fix it later so on the motion on on dr jenkins motion to retain the current administrative structure all in favor aye aye opposed me one no abstentions motion passes with four or one against no abstentions and next up is the discussion or the vote for the fy 22 budget yeah mr chairman make a motion to approve the fy 22 budget appropriation for part of school classroom teachers in the amount of 1 million 784 314 dollars a second i have a motion by mr nunes a second by dr jenkins to approve the fy 22 budget appropriation potter cl potter school classroom teachers on the motion any further discussion cheer hearing none all in favor opposed abstentions i will abstain motion passes four to zero with one abstention so the question now becomes now the issue is at hand that kathleen was bringing up to how do we move forward we could make a motion i believe correct me if i'm wrong mr nunes to approve the budget as is yeah right with the total and then that would just any the savings would be left over if dr gifford needs to pay stipends to or whatever do some duties that money would be available correct yeah so i'll make a motion to approve the fiscal year 22 budget appropriation as amended no for the total budget excluding those items voted individually in the previous motion in the amount of 45 billion 396 234 dollars and 44 cents by dr jenkins a second by mrs amaral to approve the fy 22 budget appropriation for the total budget as amended as amended discussion mr nunes did you have something or no no i won't be voting for this okay so all in favor aye opposed me one no abstentions motion passes four in favor one against no abstentions thank you everyone next up is the superintendent's update i really don't have too much tonight one thing i want to mention is the summer reading program that will continue on and one thing that parents will be able to look for is um i think the letter went out not quite sure yet but there'll be a summer reading website that people will be able to have resources and also that we'll be sending books home as usual we did i think i mentioned it before we had received a grant to have a stem vacation camp uh excuse me stem vacation camp we have not been able to really get any teachers we've posted it twice um so i think everyone wants a summer i think so too so we've been trying to give the money back to deci and they won't take it at this point so we found out today that we can probably use it for any of our summer programs so hopefully we can attribute that to some of the esy program that we have planned but i i kind of get it that people don't really want to work anymore and for that dr gifford are you posting that can we post externally or are you posting externally is it just for internal it was internal it was a quick week and it was just um you know vacation stem camp but i understand that people are tired and probably just want a good break right so but at least we can use the money because they said they can't take it back which was kind of funny but we'll put it towards the esy programs and other than that just once again i want to thank rick ferreira and all the folks that helped him out over the good friday saturday the principles as well to get the dust put together assembled in the classrooms ready to go from my understanding i was over the middle school today and also had a discussion with rick ferrer again more like i don't know like 600 deaths came in today so they'll be getting those ready so that we'll have the middle school ready um just so you know also that involves moving things that were brought to the elementary schools back to some of the other schools as we're starting to use tables with plexiglas etc so they're making it work but we will be ready to go with the middle school and high school whenever we don't know the date on the high school but we're working towards i mean it doesn't mean we have to wait for that exact date but we're working towards having things ready so other than that we checked in with the schools today and things went well for the opening and except for the you know the traffic as you heard that's inevitable yeah but anyway that's about it so as far as just just so everyone's clear at home i'm sorry i didn't see you again just so everyone's clear at home dr gifford we're we're continuing even though we may not be publicly having full-out conversations about the high school there are talks absolutely at the high school level with your office with you with mr tebow about you know anything ready to go you know when guidance does come out and so everyone's aware guidance has not come out right dusty has not released any guidance in the height on high school students right yeah right okay i was just going to follow up on that we had a question from a parent asking about capacity issues and we know that that was an issue at the middle school and she you know had asked what is the are there capacity issues it's the high a newer building what were the concerns i know that in some cases from my experience of touring looks like the science labs would be an area of concern do you have the same you know i just want to kind of respond to her issues with capacity and fitting students at the high school or how absolutely but just as the middle school we're making it work they'll be moving kids around and yeah we were at a meeting well it was before last week was the week before as i reported on and i plan on stopping at the high school tomorrow um to get a sense of where exactly uh disregarding furniture right now what you need are your rooms are you ready do you have a sense of where everyone's going and i know they i'm sure they're just about ready at this point right so awesome excellent thank you yeah i mean it's not ideal but who was telling me today your your imperfections are perfect oh yeah i'm bringing kate into the conversation we were talking today about a book or a saying and it's just that's where we are right our imperfections are perfect like for the time being or i'm saying it backwards but you you get what i'm saying yeah yeah let me get what i'm saying making it work we're making it work making it work it seems as though the at least the students that demelo are having right next up report of the chair so um i just have actually one of the things was already addressed they just had guidance on dartmouth high school i'd also just had about bringing in just reminding a reminder to see if we can get the class senior class officers in here at some point um as well as i think it's important you know we had there was an article in dartmouth weekly recently regarding the our diversity committee um so i had reached out to masc um you know for some guidance on getting that off the ground and um i believe it was uh mr mr hardy over at jim jim hardy uh masc that said that as the chair i can go ahead and i can at least get a date on the books that works for um the two uh i believe it's dr jenkins and um this is the amarillo that's the two school committee members um that were elected to the diversity committee so obviously would be some dates that would work for the two of you but i'd love to see it then we can go for the we can go from there and you know i i would ask that the the first meeting um the objective would be to you know nominate a chair of the committee and um set some timelines and some some goals so do you have any uh preference dr jenkins uh so mr chair i emailed the committee to ask just sort of generally if there were evenings during the week that someone was not available like maybe they have another commitment they have to watch their kids on a tuesday night or something and generally speaking most of the committee members indicated that they were flexible one of the committee members just asked had a preference at the meetings not be on monday nights um so did they i i didn't yeah i didn't sorry sorry about that um i emailed the committee and i asked if when they were available if they had like a general night that they weren't available no dates we didn't talk dates i just want to know our monday's bad for you or tuesdays not everyone's going to be able to make every meeting one member said they would prefer not mondays yeah okay so if we can avoid mondays that would be fine i'm pretty flexible so i'll defer to miss amaral um so it is the beginning of the month is it possible that we can get a month on the books in april do tuesdays work for you um i've been apologetic on a one-to-one basis responding to some of the anxious other community members and and those that i've spoken to have been very gracious admittedly it's like all bets are off for me i mean once my son gets off the bus the side effect as we all know is i i've not kind of opted to have some personal care assistance with him and my husband works so i will i will attempt to be flexible i've had to step down from the rotary club and some other town councils to kind of um adhere to like what i can actually handle um i don't want to say that i'm not available but i will say that i will try to be flexible so i would not go with my availability in terms of if i find that if i find that i cannot commit i will bring that back to the committee and and potentially have somebody else take my place but i don't want you to go by my schedule because i'm kind of full all over the place and and stuck in the mud and kind of sure understood this is a cartoon i don't know caffeine thank you for your honesty yeah you know bring it back if you if you feel like you you know it's going to be tough you can certainly look to select an alternate so can i recommend maybe tuesday the 20th of april i would say the 27th but we have a meeting i think on the 26th of the school committee i would prefer not to do it vacation week okay so i i don't think the 13th i'm not that's just not going to work for me um [Music] i'm just worried about next week i'm i'm off most of this week so i'm not going to be ready for and i'd like to be ready get some stuff ready because i know that you're busy so next week doesn't work and it's april vacation so maybe wednesday the 28th either wednesday the 28th or may 4th would be my two recommendations you're going to have to post that with the town clerk we do i confirm with masc because it is a subcommittee appointed by the school committee we need to post an agenda we need to post meetings we need to do all that okay um yeah i will add uh may 4th tuesdays would be i think be better for me if i were to all right actually can we set may 4th as our first meeting this may work may 4th work all right there's nothing on the calendar as far as any other school events big school events i'm not seeing anything so we will set a date uh you prefer a time you want to wait until you just say 6 30 right now and i mean we don't have to post it yet but why don't we put it may 4th tentatively at 6 30.

so can you guys give us the breakdown on these costs i mean it's easy to just say we're going to run it to rcuh but have you looked at what other up opportunities are there uh part of it was expediency you know being able to get them get it get it moving and not have to set up new budget costs and budget goals and those kind of things but i can definitely send a breakdown to the group of how exactly where every penny is going to go yeah because just because this is um federal funds doesn't necessarily mean we're just going to expend the money the most expedient way and maybe not the most efficient way appreciate that thank you so kim all of the funds uh for the first gear grant of 9.9 million has gone to either uh or rcuh and that's it only those two entities as the initial awardees and then they will be sub granted out although depending on who you talk to which which term you use uh can change but they'll eventually be subcontracted our sub awarded out the um the gear one monies was received a year ago in april 2020 it was awarded a year ago and then we just draw down as expenses come out as laid out in contract so can you can you give me um actual activities that have happened since we were awarded this monies so the programs that you've talked about have they started already has the distance learning teacher academy started already and how many teachers have been served in this distance learning teacher academy so kim let me answer that one so the of the initial activity through this spring will be primarily around a handful of teachers but more about organizing for this summer so we're putting together both levels of interest from the community of public and private teachers and then looking to the two summer programs in 21 and 22 for the primary delivery to teachers i believe the spring activities are serving a number of relatively small groups so on the order of a few dozen teachers but the real focus is to deliver the both of the um the teacher activities for both professional development as well as curriculum development in the two summers um to give you an idea of perspective so the bulk of the grant monies in the in the teacher academy cases actually go for participant stipends so to make sure that the um the teachers are some of their costs are offset as they work through the summer on list about 2.3 million 2.4 million is actually set aside for direct stipend payments to the teachers that participate in the academies as well as for any faculty time that needs to be or faculty for the academies that need to be compensated for to run the academies themselves so the teachers are getting stipends to participate in these classes that's correct that's correct because these are typically multiple weeks over the summer and and you know for for a lot of the teachers a lot of their summer activities is where they either do professional development or other activities or other um other teacher activities on their own which is how they supplement their income over the summer because they're not they're not compensated during the summer period so the stipends will offset the fact that they aren't um they aren't working with those periods at the same time so the grant awarded it was probably too late to help any learning loss type activities for the last school year but for this school year with your distance learning teacher academy how many teachers have actually taken the program or is this an ongoing program that they do more than once i'm not can you can you kind of lay out the program for me so the primary activity the program is going to be workshops over the summer where the teachers participate in both the professional development as well as development of the curriculum then just for from a budgetary purpose summer institute stipends for between two and three hundred students on each summer so that's the direct um number of teachers that we serve if we are able to and it's it's looking pretty good from the partnership point of view in terms of of having um faculty and external folks participate uh so here's a good example we're working with the folks at noaa because that's actually part of their outreach um programs that they're funded to do this stuff but they're having they need to be able to engage effectively with our public and private school teachers so the important thing for us is to make sure that we bring together folks with content folks that have the ability to deliver content as well as our teachers to get them up to speed to be able to not only have the right strategies to to best use some of this curriculum but also be able to develop it and then create this repository so it can be used further the idea is that starting as frankly starting in the fall so this is fall of 21 directly after the summer academies we'll be able to see some of those products actually in use on you know the home so are you saying that to answer my question zero teachers have had this have taken this academy yet the academies are under development for the summer summer 21.

so the curriculum in 22 is going to be different from 21. so the curriculum at 22 will build on the efforts of 21. in some cases we may be able to be able to scale to larger groups by repeating on the existing successes of creating curricula but also we expect to learn from the experience of the summer of 21 and frankly the following fall and spring to see what we can do to create more effective programs going forward okay my final question madam chair um what about the measurements or return on investment how are you folks why are you folks measuring that so the primary outputs of the of the workshops are going to be curriculum and programs develop and those will be um or those will be contained and served out of a out of a central repository that will be available from from the public so those that's the primary um outcome that we will measure as a result of the delivery it's also the number of participants through the programs both in our educational outreach as well as the actual workshops themselves and then we'll look to um as part of the of the following efforts in the fall of 21 and 22 look to evaluate the success or failures frankly the successes of the efforts that have gone on to create this curriculum through the through the initial summer program so you're not going to know the effectiveness of these curriculum and programs developed until it gets implemented in the school year right and if it turns out that it's not effective is that how you're measuring it well the programs will be um so the programs will be innovative and they will they will create and they will be created by teachers for use by teachers so you know where we we will have to see how the programs work in implementation but the programs will be developed in the core curriculum will be developed by the groups that have both the experience as well as the expertise in those areas okay thank you so um have all of the the grant funds for year one been awarded ken uh the final contract for rcuh uh is is brought in first signature we held off a little bit because of that timing and because this timing is such that we want the grants to for the innovation to the schools and the complexes to come out based on some of the education that we're learning through uh's effort we didn't want to get too ahead of the game and sign that contract too early and then and then force ourselves into a corner and so we wanted to uh make sure that we had the best opportunity to get the best responses to those brands that are robust and and innovative and forward-thinking and can continue you know beyond just the covenant response to a hurricane response when you know kids roads are blocked and they can't get to school or a lava flow or you know things like that that this is not just the one and done with hovid this is about distance learning completely you know and and how our teachers and how our schools can support those students beyond just this clothing pandemic [Music] that's true there is no risk of any money having to go back that's that's true but again let me emphasize that we are on the second year of students who have been impacted and this governor's emergency education relief fund i you know i want you guys to remember it's an emergency relief fund and we are in emergency now has anyone yet benefited from these funds teachers students i mean besides giving the funds to rcuh in uh to to do the programs has anyone directly received any benefit from this it's been a year now so i'm just asking uh senator so the answer is not yet um and the second part of that answer is there's quite a bit of work that's going on to make sure that we are delivering coming out the door as soon as some as soon as we get to the summer so there's a bunch of prep as well as screening and hiring effort that's going on for these advisors and for the curriculum and for the for the workshop participants in preparation for the summer so that is right around the corner for us but to answer your question there are there have not been funds directly expended as yet to um to deliver directly to you okay that's kind of disheartening i mean i know you guys are probably doing the best you can but i still find it disheartening because it is an emergency education relief fund and to date i don't think any of our students have had any emergency relief um you know a few years ago we had the the essa task force which uh daryl galera led and back then they talked about some of the things that we have discussed today including the digital divide and the need for digital devices the need for interconnectivity do you guys know yet how many students are without digital devices or interconnectivity has even that study been made you know i'm gonna um i'm gonna defer that to the next uh the next section i understand department of education is coming on um and part of the reason that we chose not to go down that path with these funds one is it's really a somewhat small amount of funds if you're looking at the number of students and the cost there but there was 39 million dollars of the cash funds that was given to doe to help with that device and that connectivity issue so i'm going to defer to them for the details a little bit more on that if you don't mind sure well i've asked them before and i've not gotten a clear answer so okay senator favela i don't know if you're still on but did you have questions i guess not can i ask the final question sure um it'd be interesting to find out from you folks what you've learned in this last year regarding these kinds of emergency funds so if it should happen again and you get emergency funds what things would you do differently so you can get these benefits to the students because we have a whole graduating class who's graduating in may and not benefit from these emergency funds and um you know and they're the ones most impacted so it i i share the concerns that the chair has raised and i hope you folks have learned something from this and find ways that we can utilize the emergency funds and get it to the students in a more efficient manner thank you if i could just briefly there are as kit mentioned there are other sources of funds that you know while some of the lead times especially for the of the private department foundations have taken a little bit longer to ramp up there has been activity occurring to support in particular the folk the kids that graduated last year um to try and also help them bridge them into the community college system as well as the leading system in general so i understand that part but i think the part of the learning in the classroom and learning distancely i think they've been a lot of complaints about that from parents and students they don't feel that the students really have been educated in the way they should have and so um yeah it's one thing to help them you know after the fact but what about during so um i hope we learn something from this and don't repeat these mistakes again because you know the new norm might be that these kinds of things will happen again that's quite well taken thank you there's a um some kind of forum being planned i'm sorry i can't remember i read that comment yeah the summit when is that going to be has a date been set for that that'll that'll be next year because it's going to be informed by the efforts that uh are doing the innovation grant bringing those grant awardees together to share what they have done and what they've accomplished and so it's really a 2022 possibly spring grade kind of 2022 event is what um the discussions have been around uh but again that's why it was kind of phased in the way that it was what about the summer transition to college is that helping is that absolutely absolutely and in fact i think um i think steve schatz who's the head of the 21 and 20 graduates say that again i didn't hear it it's specifically focused on the providing not only access to some free uh courses over the summer but also on college advising and support um so they're actually in the um that that program is in the midst of of hiring advisors and customers to help and to assist the 21 graduates this summer as they head into hopefully college activities in the fall so have have the students been notified this is the activity we did in the past summer with separate funding activity to try and give a leg up to the chair we'll get you a outreach plan another okay one more question i'm confused on this virtual summit sharing opportunity okay so we're spending how much money so we can have lessons shared lessons oh that shows 50 000 50 000 but also you're saying that some of these other monies where innovation grant was used to prep for the innovation and the and then the governor's innovation team hundred fifty thousand that's awesome you know that kind of thing um the the innovation and but that money will everybody as a virtual client so fifty thousand dollars for the virtual summit and that and then the 150 000 for the governor's innovation team is isn't that you to prep up for the how much is being spent for what what are the fees taken out and what's left can you guys get that to us thank you thank you kim how the department plans on meeting the twenty percent of the gay five students who meet who need remediation services and the timeline for doing so um so with us to testify is dr kishimoto the superintendent department of education aloha and good afternoon chair kadani vice chairman start with a data point from the last presentation i reported at the board meeting in january that two percent of our students approximately 3 400 students have are in our device gap that means we're meeting uh and have rarified that we have met 98 of the device demands and for connectivity which we also track it's at 2.6 connectivity and so we've been able to look at reasons for both the connectivity and the device gap usually it's because students had a device it wasn't sufficient it's not connecting it broke it's aged and so a refresh program is something we'll continue to focus on so i just wanted to mention that the question was asked about that data point uh so again i'm christina kishimoto superintendent of the hawaii state department of education and i'm going to present on the proposal to address learning lawsuits to the covet 19 pandemic and mahalo for the questions chair to help frame our presentation today following this presentation i have deputy superintendent rumor sami my assistant superintendents and a team of hazards who are also available to answer questions including complex air superintendent chad joni marias bob davis and they can give more insight to the planning being done statewide if you go to the next slide on slide two the american rescue plan which authorizes sr3 was signed into law march 11 2021.

okay that kind of bothers me a lot i mean we got the award over a year ago we are in the pandemic now um the teachers need this uh learning academy now but we're going to wait till the summer is there a reason is this is this like a whole week's course is this a day course these are two to four weeks so these are um there aren't those concentrated times where they can spend on full time for two to four weeks going through these programs so the summer is the ideal opportunity um so it's really important for us to make sure that we're prep going into the summer with the right um both the right cohorts as well as the right faculty i know we've had other opportunities weekends we've had holidays we had spring break people staying home not working at all i mean i'm just i guess i'm flabbergasted that the purpose of this by the time you put it into action the you know my wish is that the pandemic will be over by then but um i i just they think that we have taken too long on this um can i follow up on that sure in addition to that by the time this summer comes around are you are they developing this going forward because the pandemic certainly has changed everything and by summer things will be different and i'm not saying there's going to be a new norm so will it's being developed now but is it going to be effective for the following school years yeah the idea is in fact to make sure that the curricular are effective for for both um in person as well as hybrid delivery but it's really focusing on the the changes that are um that are necessary for either hybrid or online delivery and this is the and again this is the focus of trying to get concentrated um time together with cohorts of teachers um to get the curriculum developed and then to get it get to get the strategies and approaches set so that it's not only trained the trainer but it's also the development of the curricular itself that can be used instead a going forward basis and one of the principles is free and open curriculum so it's not like it's developed and then somebody has to pay again to use it later on it's developed and paid for by by federal funds and state efforts and it really should be for the benefit of the community so how many teachers again i'm sorry that's going to be covered under this program so we're looking for between two and 300 teachers to be involved with the program every summer um we're actually hoping to get it over subscribed so that you know we will be we will we can take out basically take all comers that are willing to to participate in the workshop activities and so the stipends that set aside will cover for two to three hundred teachers great summer correct that's part of the budget for each summer each summer so this is going not just this summer but the following summer right so we're funded for the summer of 21 and the summer of 22.

on march 24th of 2021 the department received 274.8 million or two-thirds of the sr3 funds with the remaining one-third being withheld pending submission and approval of the department's plan for the use of the funds and meeting the conditions for funding the application is due 45 days after it's released it has not been issued yet total sf3 funds to be used to address learning loss is a minimum requirement of 103 million dollars based on lea and sca responsibilities there are three components which define this one is that lea is required to a lot 20 of the s3 funds we receive for learning loss so for hawaii that would be 74.2 million at the sca or state education level we're required to unlock five percent of total as the three funds for learning lots to carry out directly or through grants or contracts implementation of evidence evidence-based intervention so that's estimated at 20.6 obligation in addition to this 5 set-aside sdas are required to unlock one percent for evidence-based summer enrichment programs and another one for evidence-based comprehensive after-school programs uh so that will amount to about 8.2 million for summer enrichment and after school programs the total is 103 million that's required to be allocated towards learning loss hawaii is a single sda lea the only state in the nation thus we need to be sure to meet the requirements that are stated in the law of both the sda and the lea we're also obligated to provide the charter schools with their fair share of funds that we receive as an sca and as an lea go to slide 3 the essa funds for learning loss must provide for the social emotional and academic needs of our students especially our students who were disproportionately impacted by the pandemics such as our students from low-income families students receiving special ed services english learners and students with unstable housing which also learned a lot about the impact of the pandemic on our most rural students as well we are planning to implement summer learning programs extended learning opportunities at after school programs as part of the learning loss mitigation and recovery plan as you will see in the presentation the department's tri-level leadership has been approaching learning loss through a stacked services model to implement the array of reliable uses for academic learning social emotional learning supports mental health services and supports to motivate students to be part of their learning community and other services which act as social safety networks such as transportation and some of the to increase student access to schools on slide four as we developed a plan for the use of sf3 learning loss funds we need to consider the requirements tied to the funding the allowable uses of the funds we received are outlined in the legislation safely returning to in-person instruction stakeholder input which includes students families civil rights organizations disability rights organizations school administrators educators and unions and the submission of an application outlining our plan for the sf3 funds are requirements of the american rescue plan act on slide five you'll see that the department previously shared learning loss mitigation strategies at the informational briefing in january prior to the american rescue plan being enacted learning law strategies include returning students to our campus for more in-person instruction summer programs specialized student support programs accelerated personalized learning program and on-campus and off-campus learning opportunities such as internships career explorations and athletics for students work groups are being organized and have been organized planned for learning loss as well as for distance learning one of the individuals that's on the panel and available for questions is kyone careers he along with teacher of the year former teacher of the year matthew williams are co-chairing our review of our distance learning plan that we use this year what what did we learn that worked well what did not work well so that we plan appropriately for next year and on their committee are a number of teachers and administrators we go to slide six uh just a quick summary on the 2021 summer learning program the summer learning framework which we are using for planning provides guidance for schools as they plan summer programs based on their student needs and estimated costs programs are prioritized for graduating seniors students who are academically behind students in transition grades such as incoming kindergarten elementary to middle middle to high school and high school to college or career and identify students with engagement challenges due to the pandemic of which each school principal and team carefully tracks those students with engagement challenges slide seven it's going to go over some programs and activities to mitigate and remediate learning loss we have ramped up in-person learning opportunities for fourth quarter our cases principals and school staff have done tremendous work to welcome back most students to a full in-person model for the elementary schools the middle and high schools have also made efforts to increase secondary students for full in-person or blended learning schools have been focused on monitoring seniors on their progress to graduate using longitudinal data systems and providing support for post-secondary plans whether that's community college trade four-year college military and so forth we are also providing opportunities for students to ramp up in the areas of talent and interest by offering workout and conditioning after school theater and music programming we believe this is essential for students who may need motivation to come to school in person go to slide eight opportunities for summer learning include official summer school at 17 sites including e-school school learning hubs at various sites in the complex areas there are plans for 212 school learning hubs in all 15 complexes or cross of 15 complexes 132 at the elementary level 36 at the middle intermediate 32 at the high school level and 11 schools with multiple grade levels and one community school for adult programs are focused on credit recovery credit advancement enrichment remediation transmission transition or intervention we also have a summer scott kindergarten transition program high school sports camps early college courses a doe summer internship program for vice rising and graduating seniors we had this last year and had a very successful first year of our internship program and next steps to your future for class which is the summer advising and personalized counseling support and uhcc career exploration classes various specialized student support programs are also offered to meet the needs of our students in special education english learner services and students in alternative learning programs schools also have the option to request funds to pay counsellors and social workers during the summer for additional support it will actually be looking at uh and and talking with the border bed about setting up or targeting part of our federal relief funds for and to increase our counselors particularly those working during the transition grades to reduce the student to counselor ratios during these next two years superintendent superintendent i'm sorry we have 25 minutes left and i still have to get to the board of education can you go quickly over the next few slides so that we can get to questions please yes that question on slide nine uh for four opening of schools uh the the planning before opening schools is also the beginning uh so principals and teachers can plan together as i mentioned our elementary schools have been opening which also helps to form preparation for in-person learning we are visiting elementary schools over these next few weeks to support schools today i was at iliahi elementary with principal yukumoto and cass davis and these visits really help with seeing the differences between schools and what the school principals need slide 10 i just want to mention that we continue to have a data dashboard with learning loss metrics course marks high risk attendance off track to graduation social emotional learning the hm tss all of those data points are there and available for the public slide 11 we also have been tracking quarter by quarter how students are progressing with their grades grades are grades and attendance are critical metrics for progress of students and so each quarter we see students are doing uh increasingly uh better in completing their cost requirements but there's a lot of support needed and we do see a delta or a disparity between where students are today in quarter four as we get in quarter four as compared to last year go to the next slide slide 12 high risk attendance is one of the critical measures as i mentioned and so we'll be looking at students who are at risk or already have entered the risk of 15 or more days missed for in-person instruction if you look at the next measure on slide that is the off track to graduate that's another measure to look at again each quarter we have more seniors meeting graduation requirements or credit requirements and so we are in a better place each quarter but that's support that we need to continue to provide if you go to slide 14 you see that we are also tracking students who are receiving special education services we schools have made tremendous efforts to support students as of march 27 2021 92 of students receiving special education services have had an iep meeting held this year to discuss support to address learning laws and so there's a whole array of services there heidi armstrong a.s armstrong is on with us and can answer questions related to special education students i will mention that we have have been prioritizing students receiving special ed services on campus since the start of the school year slide this slide provides a summary of data on mental health support provided during quarter two it really focuses on the provision of services for identified 504 and ibea students we continue to track again our mental health supports and again uh a.s armstrong can answer questions related to that and i will uh wrap up with the next slide and just thank you uh for the opportunity to provide some details again you have a team of asses and compensation superintendents available to answer questions tomorrow chair thank you superintendent that was um informational and i appreciate the slides and the data within here i have a few questions that i wanted to talk about to ask so for will there be overall consistency in all the learning loss programs offered at each school or and i you know for for summer or will this be specific schools in complex areas so we have some schools that and let me know if i'm answering the wrong question we have certain schools that are small or have uh staffing challenges and they are partnering up with other schools so there are groups of schools providing summer school in the closest hub school so two or three schools may be working together but there's over 200 schools that are providing at their school sites some are offering so many of our schools will be providing a number of options at their school site or at the nearest school as a partnership program thank you will elective courses be offered during summer or only required courses so there's a number of opportunities both for credit recovery for key required courses and core content errors but there are also courses that are enrichment enhancement or courses to get ahead on whether credits or areas of interest such as a robotics program or a stem program or a music program so we want the whole array of offspring and that's what schools are being encouraged to look at in their offerings thank you so will counselors be working during the summer to assist um post-secondary options for the college enrollment or assist with uh financial aid yes so we are already recruiting and started early with that recruitment even before the summer program is fully implemented because we need we need that support of counselors for students how do they assist those students that may have had hopes for athletic scholarships and and athletics did not happen this year how do they help those students so there are a number of areas of support uh whether that's if students need to videotape their practice or their performance uh athletic directors and athletic staff are providing those supports so it's you know it's by school depending on what students need we have opened up our gyms and our weight rooms for conditioning in our fields and so we work hand in hand our counselors work hand-in-hand with the colleges uh whether the student is ready to graduate or is trying to lead up to a uh a a scholarship if the student has a scholarship and there are specific needs the student comes with that documentation for what they need and it's either the athletic team that's leading that depending what that is or its accounts were at the school site they are all working they are all on board yes um so for the students who are graduating seniors this year that are involved in athletics are there opportunities for them to participate in co-curricular activities if any that are going to be offered during the summer so i if you don't mind i i want you to hear from one of the causes i know uh deesa hoggy is on and so is chad carrera so or bob davis one of you can unview and just talk from the school level what you're doing to provide the support for our athletic our athletes student athletes aloha this is disa from nanakuli um at waianae high school sorry yes at waianae high school um spring training so to speak has started we're following all the guidelines so we don't have any contact sports going on yet um once um once the guidance is loosened up somewhat there will be more activities but as superintendents stated the primary support we're providing to kids right now is support in helping them acquire any documentation they need to help them um use their route of athletics into college thank you lisa um aloha ed on the big guy and i would say about the same for kkp and and stretched across on hawaii island mostly training and then individualized supports um the 80s have been fantastic and pushing on us to try to get more openings but about the same thanks county have um so is this going to be not just for athletics what about for um those students who want to be music majors or arts are those activities also being opened up for for band members or yeah go ahead i'll just say this is kyoni again i've been to a couple of concerts on hawaii island had to sit in my car um and listen to the hilo intermediate one and i was able to see keau perform in person but people have been very creative um here on huawei island thank you yeah this is this is bob davis um similarly our schools have been actually um having their after school practices and such making sure you know they use their outdoor areas space themselves following all guidelines but i know all three high schools have been engaged for quite some time with their uh music students so they too can you know enjoy their enrichment activities and many of them do pursue that for college as well so we're very pleased that they had opened up thank you bob appreciate that superintendent then will all students be allowed to attend summer school who want to or only those who need to deal with their learning the loss will be given uh for learning laws but we are going to try to accommodate as many students as possible because there's also just the the time of re-engagement for students that in the sel just the social support that network that's so important so you know our goal is uh you know we're looking to put more money into summer school this year than last year about three million dollars more there's flexibility if there's a demand for more seats the big issue is going to be capacity of hiring enough staff our teachers are also and staff are looking for a break this summer it's been a really hard year as you know so we are going to be monitoring uh staffing uh great thing about the complex area superintendents is i have three of them here that i've talked to and i've been in their schools um they are working across schools if necessary um again to make sure that we can accommodate as many students as possible thank you superintendent my last question is um are there plans to create opportunities for seniors to repeat their senior year who want to beef up their academics to get into certain colleges or beef up their athletics or their music talents musical talents or arts or or are they not going to be allowed and just graduate with the grades that they have that may not be high enough to get accepted into the premier colleges i'm going to have deputy universami jump on and answer this question in part i will mention that and reiterate that the colleges and many of the posts high school opportunities whether that's military or workforce we're working with a lot of partners so that so that it's not just automatically looking at whether additional time in high school is the approach as opposed to transitioning well and providing that additional support through our partner organizations our colleges have been great because that's the demand nationally um phyllis senator um so for for seniors who um i think there's two types of seniors that we might be talking about one that has aspirations and may need extra support in completing their graduation credits and so for that in that instance we have created credit recovery and extra supports that allow them to uh to do dual credit early college um experiences that will help to build their identity as uh as as a college uh someone who belongs in college the second are people are maybe students who have completed their graduation requirements and may be looking for a higher level of college experience and i think that's the same for any senior that may not have gotten into their stretch college and um it is looking at a college that is uh that has accepted them but they may have a a stretch goal of going to a another type of college um in those instances what we do we will try to do is work with them and that's why the counseling and support services are set up during the summer and possibly throughout the year because i think that um in those cases um just like my daughter she might not have gotten me to the college that she wanted to get into but in her freshman year of college she worked towards what would it take to be accepted by the college of her choice and so there are ways in which kids can personalize on their experiences in their first year of college in order to show that they are a viable candidate for the college of their choice thank you for that phyllis um i appreciate something if you don't mind sure bob one of the things that that you know we've realized in talking to our high schools is that you know the colleges and universities are very understanding of where the current seniors are at due to the pandemic and what we've found is they've been in very good contact with the schools and with the students [Music] and i i can say that professionally and personally as my daughter is graduating this year and going away to college she applied to to you know state schools movie schools and private schools and they've been very accommodating knowing that she's at a public school in a pandemic i will also say that i'm aware of other students you know you know it was mentioned about playing sports and you know a kid playing playing football at a public school that's a pretty rural school but you know did pretty good academically and was pretty good in sports we celebrated him signing to play for west point you know so it is good to know that the colleges and universities are very understanding of the situation that the kids in 2021 are in so we're happy for those kids thank you for that bob superintendent and all of you thank you so much for being on and i'm sorry we didn't have more time to devote you know we are on a very strict timeline before we could go on forever but they're going to cut us off at 4 30 and i still have to get to the board of education but thank you very much for joining us aloha okay moving on to the last item on our agenda the board of education is catherine payne with us i'm here senator and kelly namau is also present keely i also have bruce and lynn fallon i don't know if they're on they're not in the zoo okay thank you um do you have something prepared catherine would you like to well you gave me three questions do you want me to answer those questions please okay the first question that you asked was when does the board plan on taking up the doe's plan on learning loss and we actually began that discussion earlier but in april at our april meeting there is a meeting of the finance and infrastructure committee that will address the part of the summer plan that was deferred from the essr to monies we asked the department to go back and take a look at those funds and they'll be presenting them and that's just on the funding part but also in the general board meeting on that day we will be asking for an update perhaps it will be similar to what you have heard today on the plans for what the department is doing to address learning loss with the federal monies that have been added to the resources that we have in the sr3 so that will be a discussion and an update on april 15th and in may the finance and infrastructure committee will also take up the funding for that because the process is that the board needs to approve the department's funding and as you know we did not approve all of it last time and we that was deferred until this meeting coming up on april 15th so do you want to take each one and ask questions or did you want me to go ahead and finish yeah okay so we the second question you asked me was what priorities has the board issued to the department um regarding the plan for learning loss and we actually had two resolutions that were given to the department one has expired because that was just specifically for last summer but the second resolution is ongoing and the primary part of that resolution is what is reflected in the plan that you just heard about is that the most vulnerable students will be prioritized but we certainly are in support of all students whatever their needs are that have accumulated during this time whatever their needs are will be addressed but the priority being for students who have the highest loss of learning the third question you asked was does the current meeting schedule meet the doe timeline and we do have one general board meeting scheduled each month which was a change this year but what we have discovered is that as things have come up we have scheduled several special meetings where we have addressed specific topics that were needed and sometimes two or three a month of these special meetings just focusing on a specific topic so the the board is is willing and ready to schedule whatever additional meetings are needed to make sure that we are addressing what needs to be done to make sure our summer and our fall openings are done smoothly and that the needs of the students are fully fully being met thank you did keely want to jump in and say anything keely are you there aloha oh yes i can see you too aloha i just wanted to say um just to add that i'm on in maui county anyways i'm just taking a personal interest in working with some of the schools on some of the their summer programming so just to say that i believe all hands are on deck this year to support the students with everything as best we can the department everybody's everybody is ready and willing to make whatever is needed to support the students and i'm certainly doing that right now here on in maui working with principals and other educators trying to help students and motivate them and engage them hopefully this summer thank you so i where i read and i'm not sure if it was the does uh notes or report that we have probably 16 of our seniors that may not make their requirements for graduation so it seems in the the report that superintendent just gave us that they are looking to do remedial work for those that have learning laws and they are going to look at doing those seniors or those that need their graduation credits too and so i guess my question is um do we know if um that 16 are actually wanting to come back to school or have you know i know that they also have some programs to work with the students but you know do they want to come back and get their degree and if they do are we is the doe or i don't know if this is a board decision able to give them a late graduate graduation certificate i'm not this is katherine and i'm not sure if um what the current practices are i know that for a number of high schools in the past we would graduate students in the summer because they completed their work at that point some students chose to come back in the following year because they wanted to have that experience of participating in a regular graduation but then we would give them a letter so that they could go on to community college or you know continue their their plan but they still wanted to participate with graduates so i believe the high schools are are thinking about this i don't have any data maybe i don't know if phyllis or the superintendent would have that but i am confident that every high school is gathering that information and reaching out as strongly as they possibly can to every student who is needing that kind of support and i doubt that there are too many that don't want to graduate that's that's kind of a thing where every kid wants to wants to walk and participate in graduation yeah so i guess and maybe phyllis this would be a question for you um i've just got word that we're being given are given a reprieve of 10 minutes so let's see if we can finish this in 10 minutes um so speaking of that 16 that right now does not have the requirements to graduate have the department reached out to them to know that there is help out there and that they can come back and take remedial courses during the summer and if they've reached out to them how many um are wanting to do that so i you know i i wouldn't have that number right now um the cases are still on the line and i do know that um it is a normal practice even pre-covet um that the counselors and the principals are always are really making a committed attempt to to reach out to every senior who may be off track at this point to take a look at on a case-by-case basis what is it that that that particular learner needs um catherine as a former principal knows that activity quite well you're tracking every single student and looking at credit recovery a concerted attempt in the class what is it going to take to get the passing grade and so forth and i just see bob jumping on the line so i'm going to turn it over to bob but i do know that we have ways of um of doing that under covet it's even clearer that we have to do that more carefully but i think having the the casualties explain what their schools are doing right now in terms of seniors would be very helpful thank you bob can you give us some input sure i met with all three of the high school principals and asked that specific question pertaining to their graduates and and what you know the lds data system shows and what they currently have occurring on their campus is slightly different because lds only refreshes you know for semester and yearly marks and so even like milani high school has the refresh class for those that needed the extra semester all three schools do have programming that students can take whether before school or after school down in high court because we're fortunate we have that program for taking those extra credits that are needed to ensure that they have the requirements for graduation and so all three high schools you know reported that the numbers that currently are reported in lds are are quite a bit higher than what is actually occurring they have prioritized their credit recovery for summer programming for those particular students they're trying their best to make it as equitable as possible whether it's in person and or online for those that needed it online and they really are poised to do what is best for students and they're working hard and they have specific counselors that are focusing on those kids and i'm sure that's pretty common throughout the high schools in the state so diesel what about um so these students that we're talking about that 16 that that i'm hearing about um are they the only ones who are allowed to come back and and repeat grade 12 or can other seniors who have lower grades are graduating but not with the grades that they want to or whether it's for athletics or music or whatever and trying to get into a better college if they need a higher gpa would they be allowed to retake their senior year or only the students who are failing so two things one is that um students who are um so number one the numbers are not as bad as uh lds shows at waianae we have approximate have anywhere between eight and ten students we're still tracking who are still on the cusp of not making it nanakuli has about five so we've whittled that really down um and we're not as worried as we were earlier in the year to answer your second question any student who is age 19 and not graduated as of the first day of school can remain in school for the remainder of the year even if they turn 20 the the day after so somebody would have to answer a legal question around when eagerly they can attend school if they've officially graduated and the second question would be it's a oia decision around the age that a student must be to participate and so i'm sorry i don't know the exact way a rule that would apply but we've had past students who have pretty severe emotional issues and we've held back ptp credits so that the student could repeat a year with us for emotional reasons but um so there are ways around it i just don't know if they can officially graduate and then return okay so how can we find that out for sure i mean is that this a decision the board makes or the department can make i would ask the ag oh okay okay sorry i have no problem with letting them uh back in for on an individual plan for an individual purpose i'm just i need assurance that it's legal because i don't know exactly what how the law would be interpreted so i know that if they're 19 on the first day of school and they have not graduated they can attend which is why i said we withheld like the ptp credit um so that a student could attend a second year okay yeah i'm i'm asking that question but i don't seem to be able to i see superintendent back on superintendent do you know what the answer is yeah we have a number of policies that come into play here so i think we're being careful about the nuances around this once you've graduated for liability reasons i don't think there's any high school destination that would let a student come back on to take courses once you're graduated you don't mix a graduate with young kids coming back in you know you know also you're not covered as a state we're also unique and that as a public education system we're a state agency and so we fall under state liability which is different from lea so we are very very unique which is why the tendency of saying we've got to run some of these unique situations by the ag it really depends our castles do a great job of running all of their kids by the various policies we have in place that are well documented anything outside of that we would run it by the ages to see if it's allowable and if it's allowable whether uh you know if it falls outside of liability coverage then it would not be allowable if it falls within liability and and within our scope of being a k-12 system otherwise we would be moving um to adulthood or to early college partnership with a local university rather than than doing that on a high school campus so so we do have very clear policy uh madam chair i don't want it to seem as if um this is a gray area because it's not it's mostly very black and white uh if there are specific nuances that we need to look at this year we will just like last year we did it but it's one very quick example last year our summer program for kids that were behind who were graduating was very very successful and part of it was that the high schools took part of quarter four and transitioned right into summer very seamlessly they did not wait to end the quarter four to then start some separate summer credit recovery they just made it all contiguous and so we'll be doing the same thing now because that was highly successful again if there are more specific questions you know we can look at answers to those specific questions so it's uh again there are so many different conditions thank you i think that you provided the answer basically if they don't have the credits to graduate they could repeat as long as they're not 20 before start of school but if they have the credits to graduate then you graduate then and or they can go transition to adult ed and and be connected with a college especially a community college they don't have to be a graduate uh to start community college courses and we will try to keep them going so they can be with their age peers thank you thank you very much thank you for uh staying on past 4 30 with me mahalo this hearing's adjourned you

so the curriculum in 22 is going to be different from 21. so the curriculum at 22 will build on the efforts of 21. in some cases we may be able to be able to scale to larger groups by repeating on the existing successes of creating curricula but also we expect to learn from the experience of the summer of 21 and frankly the following fall and spring to see what we can do to create more effective programs going forward okay my final question madam chair um what about the measurements or return on investment how are you folks why are you folks measuring that so the primary outputs of the of the workshops are going to be curriculum and programs develop and those will be um or those will be contained and served out of a out of a central repository that will be available from from the public so those that's the primary um outcome that we will measure as a result of the delivery it's also the number of participants through the programs both in our educational outreach as well as the actual workshops themselves and then we'll look to um as part of the of the following efforts in the fall of 21 and 22 look to evaluate the success or failures frankly the successes of the efforts that have gone on to create this curriculum through the through the initial summer program so you're not going to know the effectiveness of these curriculum and programs developed until it gets implemented in the school year right and if it turns out that it's not effective is that how you're measuring it well the programs will be um so the programs will be innovative and they will they will create and they will be created by teachers for use by teachers so you know where we we will have to see how the programs work in implementation but the programs will be developed in the core curriculum will be developed by the groups that have both the experience as well as the expertise in those areas okay thank you so um have all of the the grant funds for year one been awarded ken uh the final contract for rcuh uh is is brought in first signature we held off a little bit because of that timing and because this timing is such that we want the grants to for the innovation to the schools and the complexes to come out based on some of the education that we're learning through uh's effort we didn't want to get too ahead of the game and sign that contract too early and then and then force ourselves into a corner and so we wanted to uh make sure that we had the best opportunity to get the best responses to those brands that are robust and and innovative and forward-thinking and can continue you know beyond just the covenant response to a hurricane response when you know kids roads are blocked and they can't get to school or a lava flow or you know things like that that this is not just the one and done with hovid this is about distance learning completely you know and and how our teachers and how our schools can support those students beyond just this clothing pandemic [Music] that's true there is no risk of any money having to go back that's that's true but again let me emphasize that we are on the second year of students who have been impacted and this governor's emergency education relief fund i you know i want you guys to remember it's an emergency relief fund and we are in emergency now has anyone yet benefited from these funds teachers students i mean besides giving the funds to rcuh in uh to to do the programs has anyone directly received any benefit from this it's been a year now so i'm just asking uh senator so the answer is not yet um and the second part of that answer is there's quite a bit of work that's going on to make sure that we are delivering coming out the door as soon as some as soon as we get to the summer so there's a bunch of prep as well as screening and hiring effort that's going on for these advisors and for the curriculum and for the for the workshop participants in preparation for the summer so that is right around the corner for us but to answer your question there are there have not been funds directly expended as yet to um to deliver directly to you okay that's kind of disheartening i mean i know you guys are probably doing the best you can but i still find it disheartening because it is an emergency education relief fund and to date i don't think any of our students have had any emergency relief um you know a few years ago we had the the essa task force which uh daryl galera led and back then they talked about some of the things that we have discussed today including the digital divide and the need for digital devices the need for interconnectivity do you guys know yet how many students are without digital devices or interconnectivity has even that study been made you know i'm gonna um i'm gonna defer that to the next uh the next section i understand department of education is coming on um and part of the reason that we chose not to go down that path with these funds one is it's really a somewhat small amount of funds if you're looking at the number of students and the cost there but there was 39 million dollars of the cash funds that was given to doe to help with that device and that connectivity issue so i'm going to defer to them for the details a little bit more on that if you don't mind sure well i've asked them before and i've not gotten a clear answer so okay senator favela i don't know if you're still on but did you have questions i guess not can i ask the final question sure um it'd be interesting to find out from you folks what you've learned in this last year regarding these kinds of emergency funds so if it should happen again and you get emergency funds what things would you do differently so you can get these benefits to the students because we have a whole graduating class who's graduating in may and not benefit from these emergency funds and um you know and they're the ones most impacted so it i i share the concerns that the chair has raised and i hope you folks have learned something from this and find ways that we can utilize the emergency funds and get it to the students in a more efficient manner thank you if i could just briefly there are as kit mentioned there are other sources of funds that you know while some of the lead times especially for the of the private department foundations have taken a little bit longer to ramp up there has been activity occurring to support in particular the folk the kids that graduated last year um to try and also help them bridge them into the community college system as well as the leading system in general so i understand that part but i think the part of the learning in the classroom and learning distancely i think they've been a lot of complaints about that from parents and students they don't feel that the students really have been educated in the way they should have and so um yeah it's one thing to help them you know after the fact but what about during so um i hope we learn something from this and don't repeat these mistakes again because you know the new norm might be that these kinds of things will happen again that's quite well taken thank you there's a um some kind of forum being planned i'm sorry i can't remember i read that comment yeah the summit when is that going to be has a date been set for that that'll that'll be next year because it's going to be informed by the efforts that uh are doing the innovation grant bringing those grant awardees together to share what they have done and what they've accomplished and so it's really a 2022 possibly spring grade kind of 2022 event is what um the discussions have been around uh but again that's why it was kind of phased in the way that it was what about the summer transition to college is that helping is that absolutely absolutely and in fact i think um i think steve schatz who's the head of the 21 and 20 graduates say that again i didn't hear it it's specifically focused on the providing not only access to some free uh courses over the summer but also on college advising and support um so they're actually in the um that that program is in the midst of of hiring advisors and customers to help and to assist the 21 graduates this summer as they head into hopefully college activities in the fall so have have the students been notified this is the activity we did in the past summer with separate funding activity to try and give a leg up to the chair we'll get you a outreach plan another okay one more question i'm confused on this virtual summit sharing opportunity okay so we're spending how much money so we can have lessons shared lessons oh that shows 50 000 50 000 but also you're saying that some of these other monies where innovation grant was used to prep for the innovation and the and then the governor's innovation team hundred fifty thousand that's awesome you know that kind of thing um the the innovation and but that money will everybody as a virtual client so fifty thousand dollars for the virtual summit and that and then the 150 000 for the governor's innovation team is isn't that you to prep up for the how much is being spent for what what are the fees taken out and what's left can you guys get that to us thank you thank you kim how the department plans on meeting the twenty percent of the gay five students who meet who need remediation services and the timeline for doing so um so with us to testify is dr kishimoto the superintendent department of education aloha and good afternoon chair kadani vice chairman start with a data point from the last presentation i reported at the board meeting in january that two percent of our students approximately 3 400 students have are in our device gap that means we're meeting uh and have rarified that we have met 98 of the device demands and for connectivity which we also track it's at 2.6 connectivity and so we've been able to look at reasons for both the connectivity and the device gap usually it's because students had a device it wasn't sufficient it's not connecting it broke it's aged and so a refresh program is something we'll continue to focus on so i just wanted to mention that the question was asked about that data point uh so again i'm christina kishimoto superintendent of the hawaii state department of education and i'm going to present on the proposal to address learning lawsuits to the covet 19 pandemic and mahalo for the questions chair to help frame our presentation today following this presentation i have deputy superintendent rumor sami my assistant superintendents and a team of hazards who are also available to answer questions including complex air superintendent chad joni marias bob davis and they can give more insight to the planning being done statewide if you go to the next slide on slide two the american rescue plan which authorizes sr3 was signed into law march 11 2021.

it's his birthday today happy birthday tommy 85 and working hard like that that's amazing jeff akins will retire at the end of next year jeff is is going to be taking care of his mother she's moving in and he's taking care of his mother and he will need to pay attention and attention to her and so he's going to be completing his this will be his last contract for the upcoming school year of course he'll be sorely missed and larry garrison will be leaving us and i can't remember how many years off the top my head lauren could you speak to the tenure of mr garrison approximately i believe it's 15 17 years something like that here with the district okay thank you lauren similar to what uh brian crane's tenure has been brian is going to retire after next year and uh he of course has been lauren's right-hand person and uh those are big shoes to fill he's he's made a number of contributions over his about 17 years with blue ridge stephanie connigani i believe has been here about as long as i have about seven years she's an outstanding teacher and she will be retiring after the next school year and then dawn dawn works in our maintenance department and i'm unsure how long he's been with us but my guess is about 12 years and so these are um you know it's we're happy for him but we'll fill the will fill some of those voids we'll work really hard to do our best and each of those folks have have done an outstanding job and we extend our gratitude to each thank you dr wright so we need motion to accept the the retirements for these individuals listed in the agenda check uh motion from chuck have a second from diana all in favor accept these retirements gene animus thank you okay item two seven these were individuals who were going to retire and chose not to retire yes they were going to i think both folks were going to move and decided not to move and so we're we're glad that they're both stay they're classroom teachers and they've individually done a great job angela desmond is a kindergarten teacher she will remain in that capacity next year and at least with the board's blessing she will and jeffrey robinson wears a number of academic hats and will uh will continue supporting the high school are there any questions i i could have uh ryan or lauren answer more specific questions if there are any from the board looks like not so we have a recommendation to to accept these uh withdrawals of intent to resign from these two individuals have a motion from margaret have a second from diana all in favor be good can i ask a question really fast i'm sorry i didn't realize that 2.11 was actually in the consent agenda i think that if we're okay to review it maybe we don't approve it until next time because of some questions which is the school calendar year we're uh if i might just add we i i'm open for suggestions on it where it it's sort of a it's really not a school board function to prove it but we want to seek school board feedback so it's somewhere in between if there are some areas and if you want to pull it off i'm happy to do that and meet with you and discuss those items and bring them back for to may yes and then put it on that time if that that works for you i'm hoping if you want to withdraw that item from the agenda this time mr president that would work for us what any any other comment questions about the calendar the big concern is the lack of a fall break because it does not align with i know it aligns with mpc but it does not align with the tr what we have been there is a fall break it's we we have a two day fall break no it's 10.