>> a unit, yeah, I yeah, they they a lot of that times they're a a student-friendly language, I can, you know, of the I can statements in which lead to the standards. >> Okay. Okay, cuz that that part to me is huge, too. >> Yeah. And I think with that training, too, it is also the rubrics that are going to be attached to it. That's That has to be there cuz teachers need to know what to score. So, if I'm the teacher and she's the teacher, we should at least be able to say this is what we're doing and how I'm going to, so it's consistent. And that takes some There's some um hiccups there, too, at first. >> Anything else? >> Any more questions? Discussion? >> Thousand. No. >> [laughter] >> That was that all? I have nothing for you? Thank you, guys. >> Thanks, Cam.
And with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. Members, any questions? I think I've got two things. They're pretty simple. From a security standpoint, if you have a bring your own device, is there um any risk for someone to bring something in when they're on our Wi-Fi that there might be virus or something that would then transfer? Yes. Uh it definitely does increase risk with bring your own device. Um we don't have any anonymous browsing, so they have to log in with their username. So, we can usually pinpoint it. Um but that is that is definitely a concern that this will help with. Second piece to that is is what do the teachers that bring their own devices not have here that we could provide them to lessen the burden on them? Is it the computer? Is it the software that they're using? Is there Is there some way that we could prevent the bring your own device by giving them a tool that they can use where they wouldn't have to spend their money outside of here?
Um we also got to experience that NCAA um experience there in Indianapolis so we kind of stumbled Kids loved it. They had such neat comments, especially as the tournament played like we were there and just providing them that opportunity that outside of school they probably would not have had. Um we partnered with our PTO here recently to bring back a successful walkathon for our students. Um we have no state-mandated retentions due to ILEARN. Um those who have not We have a couple that who have not passed ILEARN and they have good cause exemptions um in place because of um some IEPs. Um as Dr. Ziffrin kind of mentioned, the construction of the music room and book room is wrapping up. Last week we officially moved out of the old book room and into the new book room. Um did some purging and reorganizing organizing. Painting of the gym has begun.
Um and it also would replace our current school messenger alert and mass messaging system, as well as our current website, making it more modern and most importantly, it would become mobile friendly, which is something that is definitely needed. Everybody works off of their phone now. As I said, we are in a final review of that, but it's very likely that we'll be switching over to Parent Square and we'll keep everybody posted on that. As for grants, we are full swing in the season of grants. Preliminary allocations for Title 1, high ability, all of that are starting to come out, and our pre-application for all of the title grants is now open, so I will be working through that, and that gets us everything for our Title 1, Title 2 for professional development, so it's just really really busy. That's it there.
Uh we ask that you wave the readings and approve this new language in our electronic device policy so that we may move forward with sharing this in our student handbooks and with our school. >> Thank you, Mr. Ka. Members, you heard a recommendation to wave the readings and approve the new uh policy language as set forth by Mr. Kiwa for uh policy number 5136, personal communication devices by Miss Basel.
So, this is where I think a little bit of you know, we kind of have to have a movement internally as well. One of the things that we are doing is steal that. We do have this little card um that that actually is intended for you to be able to go back to a business or a restaurant, basically tell them, "Look, I really want to do this and here are some benefits for you." Um but also share it. So, um Sam's got a bunch of those cards there. But, I'd also love to be able to introduce a bylaw maybe in in in fall town meeting. This town meeting was a little bit too much going on and then it uh so so we we skipped it, but um but would love to sort of expand that to then other types of plastics and reduction. And then if you have ideas, you know, we'd love to hear from them.
Um I can try I have another copy of it if you'd like me to take a minute to pull it up or you want to stick with this and we can just discuss it. You can see the color. You want to see this? Why don't you just Um So, the the the main point is this this portion of the site down here we have an 18,000-gallon frac tank. And this is where water will be stored and treated with the active with the carbon filtration. Um and then we've proposed our two discharge locations, option A and option B. Um this does need to be worked out further with the town. Option A, which is preferred, is to uh we have to coordinate with the DPW on this. Would be to discharge in >> 6 ft into the uh municipal system. Uh the alternative discharge location, option B, would be discharge by this this riprap pad here um before it goes into um the buffer of the canal.
Um but if we must proceed, I I do agree it needs to be equitable. It needs to be all the departments because this is a town. This is one Dartmouth and and I think that it's silly because we're the biggest part of the budget. I would argue I don't we probably got the tightest budget and uh the cleanest budget and I just I I'm I'm very proud of it. Um and so that's all I don't know if I said anything different than I said last meeting but that's where I stand on it. Mr. Nunes, [laughter] >> I'm not in favor of this. Okay. I haven't changed my uh thoughts from the uh from the last when we based you know we touched based on it uh at our last meeting. Uh I'm not sure you know what they're going to want. I know what they're going to want for information.
But one of the things um I discovered with the thanks of our superintendent and the head of transportation is they make a lot of efforts to try to cover the cost of that transportation by working with the other districts surrounding us to if there are other children in Turners Falls or on the way to Holyoke that we can stop and pick up and um get a fee we do that. Which I think is above and beyond um and I'm pretty proud of our district for doing that and it's really transportation people um in our small area all talking together. So like we have a child who goes to Brattleboro, but on the way there are other children that the driver stops and picks up who are also going to Brattleboro and we receive money for picking up those children to help cover the cost of taking that child to Brattleboro.
>> What about dyslexia? Have you had a lot of questions about pursuing them? Sure. I would say we've had more requests for IEs related to dyslexia than requests for outplacement. I think some of the Oh, I didn't mean outplacement. I just meant for a diagnosis. Absolutely. And I think some of that has come um, with us realizing we need to do PD PD for our staff on what comprehensive evaluations look like for literacy. Um, PD about what specialized instruction is for reading. Um, and educating families, too. Um, you know, there there's, you know, frequently in the media you hear about dyslexia, but really what you're hearing about are myths related to dyslexia. Um, and so it's really educating um, stakeholders on what the profile of dyslexia looks like, what best best practices are for specialized instruction related to dyslexia. Um, but also how where that significant gap is.
Take one of those tricky concepts in physics, take a couple of the texts that you're looking at, put side-by-side and one of the things that helped us forward the recommendation was really the depth of content and what was on here that some of the other resources were lacking. So, even if they may have overlaid instructional design on it, it was not going to get to the level of review that they were looking for. So. Yeah, I found that very helpful in the process um because like I said, when we went through the first review textbook, there were some questions. And so, when uh I met with Kevin and Maureen, you know, we really talked about, you know, how can we how can we really make sure this is going to be a good resource for our students? And we are talking about students in both the honors physics course and the standard physics, which is juniors and seniors.
Reduction in force is when we say, basically, "We're not going to use this position anymore ever again." That's a reduction in force. This is for non-tenured employees, uh the board for financial obligations or restructuring or performance. They they could just say, "Thank you very much." You know, just like if the board let a Latin teacher go last year, doesn't mean that they even have to rehire that person ever. There's no need to do that, as as you all know already. Or if we have a spot for 10 teachers, and I say we only need nine teachers, we don't have to fill that 10th spot. So, this is the same thing that's happening, so it's really not a reduction in any way. There is There is no supervisor supervising the central office. What you're seeing on there is that all of the administrators right now are reporting as central office because the board and I have not discussed any position locations for them yet.
>> Okay. >> So, >> okay, then that that should be good. >> Okay. So, then we'll send everybody an invite. I'll go ahead and put the 6:00 p.m., but then in the description we can put like um likely to begin closer to 6:15. Um and then I think then does truly nobody else want to be on the video? That's fine. But I feel like if if it's just Amy and I, we can coordinate like the time that we would get this to Hilda. What day do you need it though, Hilda? Would it be the 18th or is it the 16th >> in order to get it in advance to them? >> It would be whatever that Wednesday is >> before the board meeting. >> Okay. And then you guys wouldn't go on until probably a little bit later than 6:15 because by the time we get through um the gold the sof goals and stuff.
So, this is very personal for me as you know, I think it's so important to give back to my community as well. So, I have a fabulous team working that I'm so lucky to work with every single day. We have two directors in our department. We have Dr. Julie Fogarty, who is our director of curriculum. Ms. Libby Jeschke, who is our director of multilingual programs. Kristy Bowman, who is our curriculum coordinator and data specialist does all things data. We have a team of nine incredible instructional coaches as you can see there. And I would be remiss if I did not also mention our amazing administrative assistants that keep us in line, keep us organized, and keep us up and running. So, what we do. Uh, student learning, curriculum, instruction, and assessment all fall under instructional services. We are also responsible for all professional learning, professional development for our staff, and multilingual programming falls under instructional services as well.
40 students said, "I'm a ninth grader. I want to focus on my academics." And our ninth or our 10th, 11th, and 12th graders, 69 of them also reported that. We can't overlook that there's also students who have responsibilities outside of school, whether that's work, um, whether that is taking care of a sibling. Um, and so, we do have about 71 kids who reported that overall. And the low bar that we, um, always try to get across is the unsure how to get started, right? Um, sometimes, uh, email does not work for kids, right? Um, sometimes you There's so much on the TVs that are flashing by that that is also enough. Uh, that getting the email recap when there's the announcements happen during access, is everyone listening? Do we get all through all of the announcements? That it is a challenge to really hit the students, um, and making sure they know how to do that.
>> Thank you so much. >> Thanks. [laughter] Thank you. Thanks, Cam. >> All right. So, we have a motion and a second. Can we have roll call, please? >> Move it down. >> Yes. >> Cahill? I'm so conflicted. >> [laughter] >> I'm going to go no. Ward? Yes. Dugan? Yes. Gorman? First? Yes. Ward? Or Watson? Yes. Motion passes. >> Before we move on to the next one, I just wanted to take a minute to recognize. So, in our consent agenda earlier, with our personnel report, we had the hiring of our a new assistant principal for Prairie View, uh Tim Shermack. So, I just wanted to recognize you and say congratulations and welcome. >> [applause] >> All right. Next, I need a motion and a second to discuss and approve the FFA overnight trip. >> So moved. >> Second.
For the teachers? Yeah. So, the teachers, we do offer um several device options for them. Um so, they can select one that best fits their needs. And there's, you know, especially in C4 classes have some special uses. So, we've been able to procure those. Um if a teacher just prefers their personal um MacBook, let's say, versus the Dell that we give them, um, then then we can't help them there. But we are keeping staff bring your own devices as an option for some personal preference, but if they show instructional need for a different device than what we can or what we provide them, then we generally try to work with them to find that out. I just my my whole purpose with that question is to make sure that we are not presenting our hardship to them. If as long as we have stuff available for them, and it's their choice, that's that's their choice, right?
Um they asked if they could come in since we have the old floor down and we said absolutely we'll work with you. Um so we're excited to see that. And then obviously the new dining area, gym floor, and bleacher projects will begin on May 28th. Um all kindergarten through sixth grade teachers are automatically in grade crossing. I fully implemented the new CKLA curriculum with fidelity. Um Mrs. Fisher can attest to we have seen great growth in our scores with our dibbles by using that uh fidelity. And so I think a lot of teachers are seeing that hard work pay off. Um and last, we just continue to provide students with a fun, loving, yet structured year of learning while exposing them to experiences and enrichment opportunities they may not have otherwise outside of school. So overall it's been a very successful year. >> Yeah, we're ending on full throttle.
Any questions for Jamie? I have a quick question. So, for the Parent Square, when you make those decisions, are we including like coaches or, you know, like Austin? I don't know how that all affects them directly in that communication? >> Yeah, I believe Austin has talked to coaches, and I think that the two-way communication was the biggest thing, and just ease of use. Um, and on the district side then, it came up in our strategic plan often. Just we have teachers that use Remind, Class Dojo, Seesaw, even communicating through Canvas, and it was all different ways. This is something that would bring everything together. Perfect. Thank you. I we would not have done that without Austin. He was involved. I'm not sure, but I think he might have been in a driver's course or something. He was. I didn't want to hang him up to dry.