Mashpee School Committee Meeting including FY 23 Budget Public Hearing--1/5/22

001is hope not gonna be here and then how are we doing public comment um [Music] okay john are you gonna are you planning to speak are you just here to observe okay i just want wanted you to sign up if you want to speak during okay all right um okay so i think it's 5 30 3 so let's um call this a meeting of the masterpiece public school committee to order january 5th 2022 uh first order business is the pledge of allegiance um all right thank you i also want to begin by recognizing uh by saying that the masterpiece public schools recognize and honor many generations of weapons people who have lived and been sustained in this territory for more than 10 000 years um next we would like to ratify tonight's agenda do i

002have a motion i'll make a motion to ratify the agenda okay motion by kathy is there a second i'll second that second by matt or any um i'm not sure yes i i believe that um there has to be a vote to close the public hearing that's not listed okay yeah i don't see one so just to reiterate um what i had said so the audience can hear um i believe that it requires a vote to close the public hearing and that's not indicated on the current agenda do we need a vote to open the public hearing because there isn't a vote for that either technically yes hello i just thought i thought that the whole meeting was the public hearing so okay so are you proposing that we add a a vote at 5

00340 to open the public hearing and then a vote afterwards to close it um there would need to be at least one vote taken to to open it and then it would be up to the committee to okay all right so we'll add that at the 540 time mark any other comments or suggestions okay so a motion to ratify with that amendment kathy how do you vote yes matt yes brian yeah don yes i vote yes as well okay so next uh on the agenda is public comment i don't believe we have any in the room do we have any on the zoom no okay so um then we're just moving on to the minutes from um december 15th on pages one to three of the packet does anyone have any uh well actually i'll

004just say i move to approve these is there a second just a okay is there any discussion or edits to the minutes i don't have any okay kathy how do you vote yes matt yes brian abstain don yes can i vote yes as well okay at this point i will take a motion to open the public hearing on the superintendent's recommended fy 23 budget madam chair i believe you need to wait until 5 40 which is the published time for the year oh jeez thanks son do you want to switch seats um don't want you to get in trouble okay so i guess so in that case so we just move to the next item and just come back yeah okay all right so patty it's only two minutes okay um [Music] it's only two

005minutes yeah okay patty what would you like to do i would prefer to wait since it's sort of loaded okay just wait for two minutes and i don't know if mckenzie and john want to swing and so they can see the screen i don't know because you have a copy of it in front of you john yeah do you have a copy of it in front of you because if you want to move your chair you'll be able to see it on the screen okay now i will entertain a motion to open the public hearing on the superintendent's recommended fy 23 budget i'll make that motion thank you kathy do i have a second second thank you brian any discussion all right uh kathy how do you vote yes matt yes brian yes and don

006yes i vote yes as well and i'll turn it over to you superintendent deboer okay so what you have in your packet is our budget narrative it's my recommended budget at this point in time the fy 23 budget so the narrative that's in the packet was used to create the slides that we're going to sort of guide us through tonight but as a reminder you will be voting on the mastery public schools fy 23 budget on january 19th and so there is still time as we have journeyed together since september to make any edits as a committee that you wish to moving forward so um first slide just to highlight some of what we think is why we are a outstanding school district we really focus on learning experiences that prepare our students to be

007college career service and civic ready there are a lot of paths our students can take and we want to make sure that we've prepared them with the knowledge and skills for the choices that they want to make we honor diversity we provide equity and we are ensuring inclusion that ties into our current plan for success we have foundational pieces in place and many more additions to make as we move forward with our analysis we live in a community that greatly values education we have created a culture of excellence kindness and respect in our schools we strongly focus on the whole child not just the student that is in front of us our classes are taught by highly qualified teachers we use a framework called mtss which is a multi-tiered system of supports and that's designed

008to give every student what they need in varying degrees or intensity we have multi-age learning opportunities we definitely are not using our older students as often as we should as resources for our younger ones but that is part of our plan moving forward we have strong and productive community partnerships we were recognized in 2021 with a magna award which was recognizing us for the equity work we have done in partnership with the masterwompinoid tribe and we also pride ourselves unlike other districts we do not charge our students fees for riding buses or for athletics or from any other of the small items that often can be difficult for families to handle i need to minimize that little thing up there actually ashley can you minimize on that one so that it doesn't cover so the

009next one is just sort of the very 10 000 foot look at our fy 23 budget and it gives a little comparative data from fy 22. thank you so the recommended budget for fy23 is 24 million hundred and fifty seven thousand four hundred and fifty nine dollars that represents a 3.01 percent increase over fy 22. but we are also going to offset that total budget from our school choice program funds and that is an offset of six hundred and fifty four thousand one hundred and ninety eight dollars so that the town of mashb appropriated budget would be twenty four thousand twenty four million 3 261 dollars that represents a 3.02 increase from the prior year but there is one other piece to take into account is we have 201 000 in technology capital requests that

010will go before the capital improvement program committee and it's currently sitting in our operating budget but would be pulled out if that funding is approved through capital and so we do reflect that within anticipation that that will be approved our fy 23 total budget is 23 million 802 261 dollars which is 2.16 increase over fy22 part of what we do when we develop our budget is making sure that it is supporting our newly developed plan for success that is our four-year strategic plan that is shown for the next five months there we go it didn't include the entire plan for success but it is in our narrative if you're looking for a little bit more detail what i did include was the the cover piece uh the bigger piece picture i do want to emphasize

011that the mission statement oh and that this plan for success was developed with a large group of stakeholders not just school personnel but community members students as well and everything was looked at in terms of this new plan the mission of the masterpiece public schools is to ensure a student-centered comprehensive program of rigor scope and depth that prepares all students to be college career service and civic ready and teachers respect and acceptance of others our vision is that every student every day is safe respected and engaged to achieve academic and social growth in a personalized learning environment the core values that we share we value our students staff and community every decision we make is learner driven to improve student outcomes our classroom instruction you know i am negative for the virus when i do

012have a cold i'll do my best okay our classroom instruction and interventions are informed through observations and data informed problem solving our district academic and behavioral protocols are implemented with fidelity our professional learning and collaboration improve educator practice by focusing on student learning and on teaching practices that are implemented with fidelity we establish and sustain partnerships to ensure that all students are college career service and civic ready with our plan for success our theory of action states if we fully implement the four strategic objectives listed below then every student every day is safe respected and engaged to achieve academic and social growth in a personalized learning environment so our plan has four pillars of success one is our portrait of a graduate which you can see to the right of this you can also click

013on the qr codes which give you descriptors for each of our five competencies these are the knowledge and skills that we are working on a k-12 focus to make sure our students have acquired it's not just any one particular grade levels responsibility it is cumulative our second pillar for success is diversity equity and inclusion the third is teaching and learning and the last one is mash be a connected community there are initiatives under each of these but i'm just going to review each of them has one strategic objective for the first portrait of a graduate pillar it's to fully implement the portrait graduate this was also developed with a large stakeholder group over a significant number of months to to reach these agreed upon competencies that we want for our students so what we're doing

014now is making sure that at every grade level our teachers have identified how our students are able to demonstrate and what it looks like in first grade what it looks like in fifth grade what it looks like in 10th grade on up for diversity equity and inclusion the strategic objective is to honor that we will honor diversity provide equity and ensure inclusion throughout the massbe public schools and like i said before there are a lot of layers to this work and we have a lot of growth to achieve in this area but we have started down this path and we have this is a four year plan and so we have action steps in place for year one in the pillar teaching and learning it is to fully align teaching and learning pre-k to 12

015with our multi-tiered system of supports framework this framework was put in place several years back but as the pandemic interfered as well as many new staff members we felt that it was very important that this remains in the forefront of our work because it is our framework and so a lot of actions will be taken this year and in future years to make sure that this is happening the way it's supposed to the last one mash be a connected community is to strengthen and grow positive and reciprocal relationships between the district and the community and we have made inroads in that area but we can always continue to grow and add to the partnerships we have found such a benefit to our students from our partnerships with various businesses as well as organizations in mashb

016and beyond so we're going to keep working at that if you have any questions along the way feel free to stop me the next slide shows the timeline for the fy 23 budget development you can see that it starts in the spring of 21 for a budget that begins july 1 of 2023 so we do our very best to project as we move through this process but there are um and always remain unknowns particularly in a school district's budget but you can see the blue text at the bottom is what is is to come yet and so tonight is our public hearing on this budget i want to emphasize that we build this budget basically from a zero point the teachers are the ones who start with just telling their principals what they want and

017need the principals review those submissions with each team or with each department they then create their school based budget that then gets forward and sort of merged into a district budget but then our director of finance ashley lopes myself and the assistant superintendent we sit with each principal individually and go line by line over what they have submitted we ask for extra information where we think it's needed they have backup for all of their items and so that's the process that continues to go as we build the budget once it reaches sort of that review at a district level it then does go to the finance working group which is um comprised of two members of the school committee and so then they start to sort of review and analyze what's included in the budget

018ask questions we work from there and then it eventually comes to the whole committee i believe it was september-ish or october um anyway so then from september till january 19th it's on every school committee agenda with opportunities to continue to question or tweak anything that's in the budget and that has happened it was in the mashpee enterprise on christmas eve which is a requirement and so tonight is the public hearing tomorrow night is a community preservation committee vote which is related to a capital item that is shared between the dpw and the schools as i said the 19th is when the school committee will vote on the 20th we have to submit the school committee's fy 23 budget to the town manager in january we may have the date i'm not sure at this point

01924th january 24th is the capital improvement program meeting where the school requests are discussed and obviously we are also involved when dpw is sharing because some most of the many of their projects involve the schools march 18th is when we are scheduled to present our fy 23 budget to the finance committee and then may second is the annual town meeting which is when the voters will vote on our budget any questions okay one one of the things we want to make sure everyone is aware of is that when we go into or when i when we start the process of building our budget for any fiscal year there are guidelines put in place that the school committee has generally determined in advance that they want us to make sure we abide by so obviously we're

020always trying to strive to be fiscally responsible with any um allocation of money from the voters of mashpee but our budget for fy23 ensures that all legal and contractual mandates will be met it include includes sufficient operating and capital funds to address in this case the second year of our plan for success implementation to provide the current level of educational services to all mashpee students to move the district forward in meeting the increasing demands for technology in all educational settings to update our curriculum where necessary and it addresses the increasing social emotional needs of our students and that sometimes is staffing and it can be programming as well also part of the guidelines is the maintenance of a 250 000 dollar floor in our school choice program funds and then the last guideline or assumption

021is that ongoing practices and protocols to maintain facilities that are healthy and safe for our staff and students are funded through the dpw operating budget for fy 23 and beyond for example the merv 13 filters hand sanitizer sanitizing wipes and disinfectant because as we all know our facilities fall under the department of public works and the town of mashpee and therefore the maintenance of all of our buildings is not within the school's operating budget or our or the control of the school any questions the next slide shows our revenue sources for fy23 it does provide a comparative for fy 22. you'll notice that the total grants is quite a bit lower for fy23 and down below you will see that that is related to some of the covid funding so grant funding will remain at

022the same level and as fy20 or decrease fy 21 and 22 includes the one-time grant funding for covet 19. so we received 510 142 and one million six hundred and twenty eight thousand o twenty three respectively you see the school choice program funds for each of those years being allocated to our budget so the town of mashb allocation is shown and then the chapter 78 is listed that's remaining we've been told pretty static so we have the same amount do you want to add anything um the next slide shows our personnel budget are obviously the bulk of our mastery public schools budget generally around the 19 20 range is personnel and it's broken down here you can see fy22 and fy23 the dollar change as well as the percent change we've highlighted anything that was

023a swing of more than five percent in either direction so from ashby high school it's a 5.06 percent increase and if you look down below it included in that number is the addition of a science teacher for the new computer science program that is being started next year as well as the health services program that was put on hold during the pandemic but we were able to get a grant so we have all of the materials and um i don't know if it's hardware but we have everything to provide students with the opportunity to gain some industry licensure for the health field when they graduate from mastermind middle high school that's also an example of a great partnership with some health affiliates around the cape that are going to be supporting that program and it

024also allows the equipment that we have allows for some evening programming that may be something the fire department or other medical places will take advantage of so that increase represents an additional teacher there and then curriculum in technology has a 22.24 increase a small piece of that is the addition of an english language education teacher and that is due to the increase in english learners and i believe a couple school committee meetings ago dr hanscom did a pretty um thorough explanation and um of the ele program and what we have seen in terms of numbers one of the big areas is if you're a level one learner that means that you really don't speak english and so you have a long you know a long way to go but when we have level one students

025come in at the high school that's particularly challenging prior to this year we generally would not have a level one but we have um several right now so that i think that's a trend you're going to see continuing where there are more students who have challenges with english any other questions on that page i believe also in curriculum and technology which maybe ashley you can confirm includes the technology it does include the 201 000 in technology that hopefully is going to be funded through cip yes oh yeah that's on the operation side on the next page that's the operating side of the budget which is the smaller component of our budget generally around the 19 i don't know if i said the last personnel part right where i said it was about 80 generally 80

026to 81 percent of our budget is personnel and the rest is this operational piece um so you see fy 22 fy 23 and then the dollar changed and the percent change again we tried to look at um where there was a swing of more than five percent which is actually more detailed in the narrative so let me just look there i'm hearing a lot of rain out there so the question at school which was a 5.06 percent that reflects some planned purchases of classroom consumables and supplies um the mashbee middle high school is a decrease of 6.85 percent that reflection is due to off-cycle textbook replacement the mashb high school increase of 27.81 that increases that increase reflects health services pathway and expenses related to outdoor graduation for the technology line that is where the

027additional um 201 000 is housed that hopefully is going to land in the cip program um it includes so technology includes 895 000 roughly of proposed expenses offset in that line is our 654 198 from school choice and then the 201 000 is for the capital the the net increase is 39 960 which is primarily for subscription services and contractual obligations transportation has an 11.74 increase and that is due to driver wage increases the replacement of a bus and special education transportation i didn't talk about the the minus 10.73 in out of district tuitions that is very um it's not it's somewhat difficult to predict in the sense that most of the out of district locations do have some sort of an increase and then also the student population we can predict when students age

028out we cannot predict when students move into the district and sometimes have an out of district requirement on their iep and um under the other that 11.61 increase is in contractual obligations for internet service so you can see that the total operating side of our budget for fy 23 at the bottom of that chart is 4539 which represents 3.9 percent of an increase i don't think i um hit on the total i just went back for a minute the total personnel budget for fy 23 is 19 million 262 834 which is a 1.76 increase over the personnel budget of fy22 the next slide is our historical budget and so you can see the past four years going into fy 23 as the fifth year for our budget and the increase the percent increase over the

029prior year and as we've said or i've said i think so far in this presentation i'm going to read that bottom at this time we are quest requesting 24 million 3 261 dollars be appropriated by the town of mashpee for the masterpiece public schools fy 23 budget this amount a 3.02 increase over last year's appropriation incorporates an offset of 654 198 from school choice program funds and includes 201 000 in fy 23 technology capital requests if the town of mashb approves the technology capital request 201 000 will be removed from the operating budget reducing the fy 2023 requested appropriation to 23 million 802 261 dollars which is a 2.16 percent increase over last year's appropriation yes let me ask a question so on that previous slide were those uh those numbers for the previous year's

030absent capital or were that was that the total budget with our capital included capital because our final budget yeah okay that's what i thought anyone look apples to apples okay thank you did everybody hear that yes the next slide which is also um taken from our budget narrative just shows sort of a historical journey of the rate of budget growth so you have the blue columns which are actual expenditures and the orange line is the percent growth budget the next slide is our district enrollment and for fy23 we're projecting 1485 students that's pretty um sort of a static number from what we have for fy22 of 1480. we continue to see movement of families who have a hard time finding a place to live in mashpee and we really do hope that as a community

031we're able to problem solve around that because you know the wealth of a community to me is measured by the families and children that are part of it and we hope that our families are able to stay in mashpee so the school choice program does give some options there often when we see decreases in enrollment there is an automatic thought of a budget savings and sometimes there is this year we did reduce kindergarten by one teacher but often other times there it's a spread out sort of decline and it doesn't quite equate into a reduction in staff it takes a couple years to hit that point so but for fy23 we are projecting a stable student population this next slide shows the fy 23 personnel budget comparing all the past years so we have it

032broken down by schools you will notice fy 22 there's 136 those are full-time equivalent teachers that was as of october 1 of 21. we are we are projecting for fy 23 138 positions and as you recall i spoke about adding a science teacher at the middle high school and the ele teacher at the sort of district-wide but primarily high school not included in our budget narrative but included as these slides is just a little recap of our capital improvement program so our school requests for fy23 we have the the five bulleted items there so we have forty five thousand dollars for chromebook chromebook leases twenty five 000 for interaction interact well interactive board systems 25 400 for ipad replacement and 105 600 for pilot x interaction interactive i'm going to say podiums those four items

033together total the 201 thousand we've referenced a few times as the items that we're taking to cip for funding and then the 25 000 in food service kitchen upgrade equipment upgrades has been uh ongoing for a couple of years and that's just to um you know bring some of our kitchens in you know where they have equipment that is in the case of the high school you know that was built in 90 opened in so some of the items are original and need replacement so that is in there when we do present at the capital improvement committee sean maroney our technology director he will be there as well to explain a little bit more detail about the technology requests we also did provide backup when we submitted these requests in the capital improvement program as

034i discussed that our school buildings fall under the dpw in the town of mashby for the charter and so part of what the dpw has requested through cip that our school specific are shown on this slide there's flooring replacement that's generally on every year gym upgrades at the middle high school question at vestibule was something that was promised by the town when we moved the voting from christ the king back to the question school it was designed to be a permanent structure that would allow entry and exit off of the gymnasium so that there would be no interference with a school day when there was voting question at gymnasium upgrades have been something that we have requested in multiple years as well that floor is original to this school in 78 there have been student

035injuries there so we're looking to sort of refresh that and that is also a very highly used facility by our community members as well different recreational groups use it pickleball all of those people and then hvac upgrades throughout the district are also part of the dpw capital request and then um this item which is also part of the dpw's capital we have a proposed masterpie middle high school multi-purpose stadium field and track renovation project it was presented to the community preservation committee on december 2nd par portions of this project do qualify and meet the requirements for funding through that source and so the total projected cost of this project is two million nine hundred and seventy thousand three hundred and fifty dollars there are contingencies built in that so that hopefully that is the highest

036it's going to be and and we're hoping it would be lower a million seven hundred and nine thousand four hundred dollars has been requested for funding from the community preservation committee and like i said that committee is reviewing um all the submitted proposals again tomorrow night and i believe making the vote to recommend forward we're hoping that this project does make it to mashpee town meetings so that the voters in the town have an opportunity to weigh in on this and make their choice so the balance of the project 1 million is a request that is going through the capital improvement program and that that amount is mostly specific to the turf field which is not something that's eligible for through community preservation funds so the upgrades included in this project is the new six

037lane track the track is the current is basically the original track it did have a resurface sometime during its past 25 years but they the consultants that have come in said that that's not doable and it really is becoming unsafe so that is also something significantly used by community members so the project includes a total redo of that track the synthetic turf stadium field so we will no longer have the grass field there the lighting that's currently in the um stadium is being converted to led stadium lights and then it includes improved walkways access and fencing so right now when people who are visitors come to attend a game they basically walk on the track to get over to where their bleacher area is and that's not something that's going to help maintain the life

038of our tracks so this project includes sort of much better access as well it also includes a hydration station so the there will be water piping that goes to the fuller house to allow the boosters to potentially add sink or water usage there and then also the hydration station for athletes and visitors to use as well [Music] are at the 90 phase of completion in terms of planning for this project we've been working with gale associates um they're pretty expert at this work they have several projects going the idea or the hope is that the community preservation committee will approve this um request their share or that what we're requesting that the cip committee will also improve approve and that it would go to town meeting and be part of the special town meeting and

039that my understanding from town officials is that the million 260 would not be an outside debt they would be able to fund that through in an in-house way and um if this item is on the special town meeting and gets approved basically on the day after graduation in june we would be able to start the project they anticipate because we were going to put out proposals the bid proposals in february that it's basically would be shovel ready around june 5th and would be complete for the start of the fall season so that is the goal we are hoping for and that is it for my presentation for the fy 23 budget i will welcome any questions that you might have did i take my 30 minutes i don't know you did perfect thank you so

040are there any questions from the committee we've been through this a number of times so maybe there aren't adam chair i sent uh some questions to um the finance director and uh i'm waiting to hear that from her and those will be published once those interviews i'm sorry don can you speak into your microphone i couldn't hear you i sent uh several questions to the finance director regarding the budget and waiting to hear back response for those and those will be shared with the committee once they're available ashley can you say anything about those or i can't um i did follow the journal and you pull your mic in that with the air running it's really hard to hear you for sure the first question dawn asked me was about the transportation line item and

041if it was originally our original replacement schedules for two buses actually um we are done with our replacement schedule so we didn't need to do any buses this year but because in fy21 we only purchased two buses we still need to purchase one to fulfill that schedule so our current budget has one replacement bus when i initially did do the budget it was for two however with the changes to the wages that increase that contractual obligation i did not make a change to reduce the transportation line at this time okay were there other questions yes i didn't know if john had a follow-up right okay well so i have a follow-up on that so what was the time period for the original replacement schedule uh i it was to end in fy 22. right but

042how many we have i believe what six 16 full-size buses yes and we were replacing what two every year three a year three every year so basically over let's call it five years correct okay and so do we have a new replacement schedule we have okay going forward um we have not started a new replacement um schedule yet that is due to the conversations that we were having with electric buses and also the solar that can't be that's going to be put in at mmhs so i think that's a bigger conversation to start having for fy24 and beyond okay um and then the next question was um what was the cause for a wampanoag language teacher and was this included in the proposed budget no that is not included in the proposed budget at this

043time and we do not currently carry a cost for that teacher so i did not spec it out at this point yeah the current grant covers the 22-23 school year but we need to have that conversation for a subsequent year so it's covered for free 22. true uh through a grant by the wampanoag language reflection project so it's covered for 23. okay for the next yeah for this budget year we have a teacher that's paid for but for this year for every yes okay that was my question okay okay was there anything else sure i have some questions i guess um in regards to the grants who um on our side in the administration helps with those i know i think pope does some of them or does absolutely do some too or i can

044speak to that so it's a group of us um hope has she ranks for the title grant so that's title 1 2a in title iv she also goes out for the competitive grants that we've had in the past jamie curley the director of special education does the special education grants and there are two of them primarily each year some years there are more for instance this year we have five of them that she has written grants for i typically manage the money process of them i don't necessarily write for them however if there's a grant that comes in let's say for instance mike looney has written a grant over over the summer and that needs to be processed into the system with the state i do that processing okay the only reason why i was

045asking is because um it seems like in 2022 you know we got a significant amount in grants and then that's not the case in 2023 and i just didn't know why with a lot of this funding and packaging and things that are going out from the biden administration i think that there's a lot of funding out there for infrastructure and a lot of these things that are on our list um and i just think that we should i mean if we don't have somebody dedicated to that um i think that that's something that we should look at because it will be a return on our investment i think down the long road so um we're not eligible for any grants right now we've applied for all of the grants that are there for us so

046for instance in fy 22 that large item or that large grant number the 2 million includes the 1.5 million approximately that we received in sr3 funding which was the funding that came out when biden came in in the beginning of fy21 so that grant is actually open for three years we haven't actually received our approval yet for the state to use those funds and we're in the process of that so when the administration does send out grants like when they did the esther money for what they're calling arpa when arpa passed um we got our allotment of 1.5 and then as a team um patty hope and i sat down and with we know how he did the survey earlier this year about our priorities and then we wrote that grant based on those priorities

047and submitted it to the state so once that funding trickles down it goes from the federal level and then the state will decide how they want to have the local entities apply for it and then we will apply for it once we get our allocation okay yeah that makes sense as to why yeah we received a lot exactly 22. okay and the other thing was without personnel the budget um i was a little concerned about the special education and that's taking i mean it's not so much of a percentage but i think when we're asking for more money with curriculum and technology and stuff and the fact that we're asking for money that we think that would come back to us if it's approved um rather than give it back i think that we should

048look at i mean i don't know about special education but that's just something i think that we shouldn't really touch the budget and we should be looking at ways to fund them not take away funding when it comes to so i can speak to that if it helps brian um it's not a reduction in services in special education but we have had turnover over the last few years so it is a reflection of the current pay so we have people leaving at top step and when we hire we don't hire that top step so it's just a savings in personnel it's not a cut and services okay thank you any questions um no that seems like everything's been kind of covered through kathy i'm always that thank you the um the one last question that

049i posed to hope was or not to hope to um ashley was in regard to school lunches so currently [Music] school lunches are free to all students in mashpee that program currently is scheduled to end i believe at the end of this year and the question was what would that cost to um maintain that for next year knowing that there is a some potential legislation in front of the massachusetts legislature that would mandate that with funding to come from the federal government and the rest assuming it's funded to come from the department of education and i'm not sure actually if you have that information at this point um so i'm in the process of doing that analysis that you requested however just speaking in broad strokes currently we're receiving reimbursement at the free level from

050the federal government so that's a key factor the revenue we're receiving um for all of our students for food service this year if that goes away then we wouldn't be receiving the same reimbursement for non-eligible students if we make the program 100 free so meaning um there's different tiers there's the paid lunch there's the reduced lunch and then free lunch and we get reimbursement based on those numbers and it's a different allocation in a typical year currently we're receiving um the free amount from the federal government reimbursement so those are a few of the things that i need to look into to do a projection and analysis all right you anticipate having that information by the next meeting thank you i have not missed having to set the lunch prices have you no yeah i

051wish they would just keep paying for us once that legislation gets to vote i mean yeah following that too don and it's been a very interesting thing to watch yeah so my my concern with it is that the legislature has been known to do unfunded mandates and i can see this just being another unfunded one that's why it's been interesting to watch um so that's really why i want to know what's what's the whole um what would it cost for mashpee to continue that because we do have i recall 40 some percent of our students on free or reduced lunches currently almost half yeah the budget assumes what with regard to our lunch program um it only assumes the food service director in the operation operational budget um we have a separate revolving account for

052food service and that's where all those expenses are charged too so right so basically we have to take the money out of the school budget to put into the revolving account to fund the difference if we decided to make it free well i think when you separately when you do that analysis i would love to know what our lunches are what our numbers are with the free lunch program whether they've actually increased or remained about the same i know in the bartlett household nobody cares if lunches are free they still have to carry their lunch to school apparently so i was hoping my child would be enticed by the opportunity to save me some money in time but she was not um so okay um any other questions on the budget any any uh so

053i guess all there is to do now then is to to close the public hearing yeah yeah i'll make a notion that we close the public hearing on the fy 23 budget okay don makes a motion for a second kathy seconds any final discussion all right kathy how do you vote yes matt yes brian yes don yes i vote yes as well thanks patty that was a great presentation i appreciate really appreciated having the slides too um so next item on the agenda is a look at the superintendent's mid-cycle update on her current school year goals yes so in your packet you have in your package you have our plan for success which is all of our district goals from teachers to administrators to district leaders to school committee members are tied to our plan

054for success and in the packet on page 19 and 20 the highlighted in yellow are the areas that we are focusing on this year because remember it's a four year plan and then what i have is specific to my goals which actually it's hard a little hard to see up there um i have a district improvement goal student learning goal and a professional practice goal and then in december i added two additional they're not probably um worded exactly as smart as they should be but they are on here as well so i'll just go over the first district improvement goal is during school year 2122 in collaboration with district and school leaders i will monitor evaluate and support year one of the implementation of the mastery public schools plan for success i will oversee the

055strategic initiatives listed below and then i've referenced what they're connected to and also to the superintendent evaluation rubric those are the standards there so identify grade level expectations for each portrait of a graduate competency in the left on the right is an update on where we're at so far so i talked about how this is a continuum from k to 12 actually pre-k to 12. and so we have had teacher teams and department groups working on the first competency which is purposeful communicator and collaborator and there is a linked spreadsheet there to a couple of examples of that work they are going to be working on that again next monday uh the december half day you know we have to acknowledge that why i will acknowledge that we are um you know still struggling with

056this pandemic and as our students are not sort of their best selves our teachers are still struggling on many levels not only um in their teacher version of themselves but personally with colleagues there's just a lot going on and so i know in december we did have dr khalees warnham on our half day and the balance of that day rather than have them continuing to work on their portrait of a graduate was used for activities of their choice so we have sort of slowed the expected pace of the completion of this work we wanted to have initiative 1.1 completed by june of 2021 2022 i do expect that we'll make significant progress but we will not have all five competencies completed what has been done so far is has been reviewed by principals and when

057that's considered um to meet the expectation then a grade level team or department is going to move on to their second competency so that's where we're at with that we are using our half days the second um initiative there analyze and expand district-wide systems to ensure students especially those from historically marginalized groups can access the entire scope of opportunities and so this is preliminary stages of this very in-depth work that we need to accomplish but part of it is really what i've done so far is i've questioned many activities or events or programs to really say to the teacher or to the principal how do you know that every student that wants to access that is able to and are there transportation barriers all using that lens of really making sure we do much more

058than just assume because a student didn't return paperwork to be in a club or an honor society that they're not interested that we have to be more personalized and find out the why and problem solve if if there's a problem that needs that they need help with so there's a lot of layers to that one of the examples too i wrote here was the am basketball the coach wanted to run this seven to eight um you know extra opportunity for the players and i wouldn't let him do it unless he could guarantee me that every one of the players was able to attend um because even if some said they didn't they do because they don't want to be left behind in sort of developing their skills or be viewed as not the same as

059the other players so um i think it actually involved where one other player was going to pick up a student and the coach himself was picking up a student we're currently on hold but that's what the plan was for that activity third initiative 2.6 is provide training to ensure district-wide culture of diversity equity inclusion i did mention dr calise warnham we are working on additional resources for our staff for the march pd day as well to slowly sort of work on you know their own reflection of their biases when dr khalees warner was here she really did a great job of we were all together space six feet apart in the gymnasium and she's just such a thoughtful presenter of making everybody reflect on their past experiences with students or their role as a teacher

060and how they could have made handle the situation differently and so we'll continue to work with that 3.1 which is focused on the teaching and learning uh pillar we knew our mtss framework with all staff and ensure implementation thereof with fidelity so so far i have done this at all three staff meetings on those dates i will say that um we just had a staff meeting for january which part of the plan was i was going to take 20 minutes to do my mtss focused um piece but again being you know not with our head in the sand recognizing what was going on around us we changed that to 20 minutes with our cover 19 district health coordinator to present sort of the changes that took place over the the break and also to um

061allow for question and answers with staff because you know they came back after you know having to you know try to get their test kit and their masks and so there's just an elevated level of worry right now and it doesn't make sense to pile on something when their minds are really focused on something else provide relevant staff professional development this is again related to mtss there's not been anything on that and then create implement and maintain an integrated website to increase accessibility to for all users we did switch hosts for our website and totally revamped it final site is the company that helped us do that i will say this these past few days their site is down for some reason so every website they host has not been up um but that is

062not a problem on our end that's on their end and i believe that they are making progress any questions on that sort of district piece the next one is my student learning goal for school year 2122 in collaboration with district and school leaders i will support teachers and administrators in the application of masterpiece mtss framework to improve social-emotional and academic outcomes for our students but they're all mine as evidenced by data collected so there are three things there that we're i'm doing providing professional development on mtss to all of our employees again those are the two staff meetings so far there are slide presentation that can be shared with you i will in collaboration with building administrators ensure that the mtss problem-solving protocol is being used with fidelity to monitor student progress so at every

063one of our buildings we have what we call pulse teams which is proactive update of learners and the school environment that group of individuals it's a mixture is looking at specific um challenges that a um a student is facing or a group of students is facing and then we have a protocol that we use um and that's consistent in all three buildings to make sure that we are um sort of wondering about the reasons why and then doing some investigations to to confirm if our hypotheses are right and to take some steps to improve things the question school this year also has an mtss learning block which i give huge kudos to principal o'brien for that work because she leads those groups and it is really allowing sort of a higher level growth in this

064particular school i'd like to see it at all the other two schools and then i'm also involved with monitoring grade level departmental plcs where this work is also discussed and the department heads and the curriculum leaders at the elementary level are doing sort of the same work of making sure teachers have the knowledge and skills that they need to successfully follow the framework and then planning i will plan and advocate for funding to ensure that the mtss framework is fully implemented so that students can achieve learning social emotional and behavioral goals and so that's all built into the many layers of the fy 23 budget that starts with at the teacher level on up and it's programming and personnel and the last goal is to work collaboratively with teachers and administrators to identify and document

065the grade level expectations for the portrait of a graduate so we've talked about that already that is primarily the work of our half days although i will say that the masterpiece middle high school is working with the anti-defamation league so there's been a few interruptions there as those teachers receive the training that they need for that program but the goal is that we are working on those at the half days and um let's see the time to do that work and then again collaborating with the building leaders um to make sure that the grade level expectations are really representative of what they are doing at these grade levels to ensure that the students are going to achieve or gain those skills and um knowledge it's kind of looking at by the end of the year

066what does it look like when a second for a second grader to be a collaborative problem solver i see it when i go into classrooms so it's just making sure that in every classroom opportunities are given and teachers are having the chance to observe and assess that a student is where they should be at the end of second grade and that there's also that cohesive um approach among a grade level so it shouldn't matter which classroom that you're in you should you know come out of second grade come out of 10th grade with a similar experience and then the two that were added in december is facilitate engage in a successful search and hiring process for the next smash b mill high school principal that incorporates stakeholder voices including student staff families in the community

067and this is to be completed by june 30th 2022 with a new principle to begin on july 1 and then the second one is to continue to strategically navigate and manage the impact of the coveted 19 pandemic on the mashpee public schools students staff and operations with an ongoing focus on student learning and the health and wellness of our students and staff i know that the um this document was sent out to the two school committee members who were who serve on the superintendent evaluation subcommittee i did not receive any feedback prior to this meeting on those papers anybody have any questions patty i was just going to say that you know as we were going through kind of your goals i think what was um you know going through this document yes and relating

068that to your goals i think as i'm listening to it i'm like where's the bit about getting us through covet because right it's certainly a big part of what we're doing especially uh this week um so i was kind of glad to see that addition um and um i'm pleased that we that you found a way to include that in your you know evaluation criteria so thank you any other comments or questions from the committee i believe i come back in april it's an april meeting i have to look at the year-long agenda but i believe it's april that um i present sort of where we're at at that point might be early may but i'm not sure i i hope between now and then we'll i'm really curious about this portrait of a graduate

069you know the grade level competencies and it would be fun to kind of hear from some teachers about how they created those and obviously it's still a work in progress right now but i think it would be useful for the public too to understand you know how that's done for 10th grade versus you know fourth for example well we've talked about so the longer term is that we want our portrait of graduate competencies reflected on the elementary report cards we want our middle high school students to create their google site which we have their electronic portfolio and what what you would have is anyone who's familiar with the google site you'd have a page either and it could be set up consistently but it would either be by competency or by grade level and the

070students themselves their voice shows through where they're putting submissions of work that they say this shows that i'm a you know collaborative problem solver and so it's building that um portfolio in electronically that would allow students to sort of really monitor their own growth which is really important for us particularly i think from grades three on up they can definitely monitor their achievement and growth of our portrait of graduate competencies looking forward to seeing how that works any other questions comments uh okay thank you patty okay um the next item on the agenda is um the update on the mmhs multi-use artificial turf stadium project superintendent hit on frankly the the latest information in her presentation but the one item that we have for tonight is adopting this letter of support that you guys all

071have in front of you and you have the opportunity to review um yes um i believe you skipped over item seven yes oh gosh darn it don sophie i'm so screwed up tonight okay you're right i apologize um so the school committee um has adopted four goals um well one goal with four action steps um and so um we have the during the school year 21 22 the school committee will monitor evaluate and support the implementation of the mashpee public schools plan for success of which we spent a lot of time this evening discussing and so with those action steps we have um on page 24 of your packet our sort of a data collection sheet sort of identifying um ways that we can help track our progress on this and then page 25 of

072the packet is the self-evaluation worksheet that you all have access to i haven't seen a ton of contributions by the members so this is kind of a heads up to you to start to think about um you know whether there are some learning opportunities that you want to do for action step 2 or some um things sherry has been sending around some district activities that we can participate in and and that's going to keep coming that was one of the things when brian and i met in the subcommittee we thought it would be helpful to start to make sure that you guys are aware of opportunities that are there um it's a little tricky right now with covid but i uh really enjoyed watching the basketball team play from my living room the other night

073so that live feed for all of our athletics is pretty cool you don't necessarily have to go to the gym to be able to do that and then also thinking about connections to the schools with things like the mashpee youth commission um and some of our other activities related to amplifying student voice so i'm going to pause there and see if there's any comments questions contributions okay we good to move on all right so next letter of support for the stadium project um you have in front of you a final uh draft patty um if you had sent edits to patty there some of them were incorporated um don you had asked specifically about this third paragraph and um that was in that was put in specifically to address some of the um questions that

074came during the cpc presentation particularly about the shock pad and then subsequent conversations after the martha's vineyard discussions about the so-called forever chemicals the pfas so we wanted to make sure that and also the infill components which are not going to be chrome rubber so there was some question about student safety and making sure that student health and safety were included which is i think under our purview and so that's why i included that in there the other suggestions that you made were incorporated does anyone have any additional questions or changes to this to suggest no i appreciated that third paragraph actually because that i think is important to put out there okay great um okay with that i move that we approve this letter of support for the mmhs multi-use artificial turf stadium project

075do i have a second a second second from kathy is there any discussion so only add that this was um we were asked by cpc whether we had letters of support so our vote while unanimous and um and in support was we wanted to add a letter just to give the committee a little bit more to consider um and you guys also have a copy of the letter that um i think this was just shared with us today but this is from um the district leadership team of patti hope and ashley okay last sentence should i say portable or no potable is um drink drinkable yeah is also a letter um that the boosters so we presented the project to the boosters club on monday night it was ashley and myself and catherine laurent dpw

076director and um answered any questions that they had explained pretty much what we've talked about tonight and they um submitted a letter to catherine most of the letters are going to catherine because she's sort of the lead on on the project she submitted it to cpc southport falcons are also submitting a letter and i believe according to the boosters there was a student petition that was signed i don't know i haven't seen it but that was being submitted as well so that catherine can make sure that the committee members have all of the letters before the meeting i do know that tonight's planning board meeting that's why ashley left our meeting that they are going to be discussing this project at the planning board my understanding is that mary wagon who's the representative of from

077cpc on the planning board wants the planning board vote to guide her vote on cpc and i'm not sure i just wonder how many other projects in the past that have gone to cpc that involve land or buildings have had the requirement of going before the planning board prior to cpc but that is where ashley is because it's around seven o'clock that they were going to be discussing that project is that meaning virtual tonight's is not because it was already on the schedule as in person okay i thought that i thought that that had already happened and was dispensed with so i don't i don't well that's what i would lead to understand okay um thanks for that update so uh i think with if there's no more discussion we can take a vote uh

078kathy yes matt yes brian yes don yes i vote yes as well so that's unanimous thank you um catherine will what patty will make sure that that gets to katherine and captain tonight thank you uh okay next uh patty an update on the interim mmhs principal search okay so based on the school committee decision on the 21st of december we did post we have a an updated job description of the mastery middle high school principal the current one was quite old and outdated so we updated that and then we also labeled it similarly as an interim same requirements basically we posted that on school spring and we also sent it to mass and they shared it on their listserv of retired superintendents through today we've had eight applicants we are currently in the interview process

079the first interview the first uh interview there will be um more than one in terms of the candidates um consideration and then depending on what the situation is for um the candidate we don't know for sure when that person would be brought on but we would be hopeful sooner than later are you and hope continuing to assume the duties of the interim principle in that in-between period so from december 1st probably through at least february 1st i don't know when it could be march 1st uh it depends the situation with some candidates as they're in a current position and so there would be a need to respect whatever exit plan was needed from that situation great thank you any questions from the committee okay it looks like no um are there any other items i

080would appreciate an update from the superintendent regarding code 19. particularly i saw the email that went out regarding athletics at the middle high school if you could share some color to the committee i would appreciate it okay so i definitely think i heard that you want to know about covid so i did put on your table the most up-to-date data dashboard which was from two o'clock today um you can see that we're only on january what is this the fifth and we've had 59 students to uh test positive or show up as positives that's huge we've also had five staff members i will say that over the weekend when we distributed the test kit and the masks by sunday night we had distributed 156 individuals to individuals and none of those they were supposed to

081report a positive they're supposed to take the test within 24 hours of returning to school monday and report a positive case to our district coordinator so as of sunday night no one of the 156 had tested positive now they weren't required to test and we'll say this is all optional but most did i believe and so then we did open the superintendent's office at 6 30 two workers came in to allow all who could not come on the weekend to pick up the materials prior to the start of their work day granted on mondays we start work an hour early because of staff meetings but 6 30 allowed any middle high school person to come and get theirs and i know that another 50 to 60 picked up on that day one person who came

082to pick up their kit who was not feeling well did test positive but that allowed that person not to enter the building but i want to remind everyone who's watching or who will watch this when we post it that we do not want anyone with symptoms staff or students coming to school and yes like you can hear i have a cold i have taken two different tests not everything is covered but we want to just make sure at least at this point given that there's this surge so we continue to really um monitor now you'll notice on this form from today that as of today we're not going to include student close any close contacts on this sheet because it's become an enormous um almost unmanageable task with the resources we have available we're not

083alone that's across every school district because it's the contact tracing that takes hours for one particular positive and it's it's not that we can't locate the names but there's a lot of phone calls it's just so hard and if i were waiting for each case to have it be fully contact traced this would not be up to date in an in a timely manner so we just made the decision based on the current surge that we're halting that data on this chart on the back of the chart you can flip it over it's just the actual cases from august through december and it's by obviously by month and by school you'll see the students and you see the um the staff and so obviously december we can see was was definitely going up you can

084see the same data on the front of the chart as well it's just more graphic and like i said we have had um all of our staff members those so far who have ended up being positive were not from in school contact it's there's just a lot going on in our families there's siblings there's children and so it affects it affects um often they get it and i will say you know fully vaccinated you know with a booster is not is not saying you're not going to get it because we have staff members in that situation who have tested positive i don't believe they're sort of overly sick but it's still a positive by the uh january 19th meeting the december data down below for the health office will be added because that's our regular

085meeting for january stacy was very conscious of that not being there and i said i would explain to mr myers that it's coming on the 19th quick question how are we looking on substitutes well ashley actually just interviewed three new substitutes today that came on board coming on board doesn't necessarily mean they come to work but they are interested we do have quite a few uh students that are college kids college age that have sort of helped fill some gaps at the high school it's not ideal we definitely do not have the the coverage that we like but we are able to manage staff absences generally so we have i think today we had 31 absences but we have several who are out long term on other reasons we have a couple of maternities things

086like that so it's not it doesn't like it didn't strike me as being you know alarming because every day i look at that every morning and it's always in the 20s to 30s you know mondays and fridays are particularly high but we definitely want to make sure we support our staff members and their families and um the currently there's the federal 40 hours i think it goes through april of so anything covered related whether you have to stay home because your child is sick whether you had a reaction to your booster all of those um scenarios allow an employee to remain out without using their own sick leave up to 40 hours obviously if it's an mps reason that you're out because of a close contact or whatever that doesn't you never get charged you

087own sick leave for that so we monitor that and so most members so far have not had to use their own sick leave some are getting very close to exceeding the 40 hours so in regard to the pause that was implemented on um athletics at the middle high school is mashpee unique or is that taking place at this within the south shore league yeah so monomoy is just coming off of a one-week pause so that makes it a little complicated for our co-op hockey team so they haven't been playing this week now technically monomoy could go back but now we're on a pause so that particular team our kids have to honor what our you know what's happening in our world it just was based on our district health coordinator seeing the number of players

088that were coming out positive and you a whole team is considered close contacts with sports they're all considered zero to three so it just becomes it's really um overwhelming so we just kind of wanted to take a pause and hopefully get things a little bit more settled in terms of this the rampant spread we probably when we bring it back may limit attendance to just family members not students not that students aren't doing you know everything when they're not with us with each other but um i think across the social league today i think it was today the athletic directors sort of reached an agreement that they were going to move forward with that for a period of time where it would only be families allowed to go to the basketball games with which like

089nicole said with the huddle camera you can watch the games from your house under blanket so that's good well that would certainly be disappointing i think if we had to limit student attendance at those events i um i just put in a plug to say that our students are probably the most cognizant of covid protocols the most compliant since they do them every day when i did attend a basketball game on monday it was a few parents in the stands with their masks down at their chins not really obeying the district protocols whereas all the students were still wearing their masks because they wear them for school and sports and everything so yeah i'd hate to see um those after-school activities limited they've been it's been great for kids to have that social interaction and

090support of each other um so i totally understand why something like that might need to happen but i i would just add that off for that um the question i had about these close contacts is i'm worried that if you stop tallying them we're not stopping we have a spreadsheet that currently has about 400 students being monitored in various levels so stacy has a handle on all of it it's just not timing-wise it wouldn't be we tend to add the close contacts as we report the positive cases they're tied to a positive case so you might have one that had two siblings that are close con contacts and so that's included under you know positive cases 18 one of those kids had two close contacts so we we they're tied to specific positive cases i

091get that so if we're still tracking them we're still totaling them why would we not put it in here it eventually could be put in there it would be it could be a weaker it could be a week later than when that positive should be shared for transparency with our public okay so it's not that it will never be put in there it's just that we're it's sort of like yeah i mean she could eventually yes we continued there's multiple spreadsheets but they'll continue to add those it just allows me to i said i'm just going to keep posting daily and then we'll update the closed contacts not that came out available i read obviously as a parent i thought i read it pretty closely um i even looked at the flow chart and satisfied

092myself to think that because my kids are vaccinated they would fall into this certain category um and and then you know yesterday uh the the vaccine was approved the boosters were approved for this younger age and apparently if you so effectively if your kid was vaccinated i'm saying this to our growing audience out there if your kid was vaccinated prior to july 7th they're essentially unvaccinated right now now they're treated as unvaccinated because of this new cdc guidance and so part of the reason we have all these close contacts is because some vaccinated kids are now close contacts and have to quarantine or be out of school so i think this is a a huge thing obviously it impacts me personally so i think it's really weird just not to interrupt but they did we

093did have a commissioner call today and a specific component was addressed and i double checked with dr hanscom i'm like did i hear that correctly and they basically were saying and i'll confirm with the minutes but um that for school purposes if you have been back they're not doing the six then if you've been double vaccinated you're considered vaccinated they're not doing whether it's been six months whether you're 15 days past a booster so they're reframing that and i haven't had a chance to talk to stacey yet about that because that would change a lot for us and i feel not that it necessarily makes sense to me because so many of the scenarios are built for whatever narrative is needed but we're going to go by what we're told as a guideline so if

094in fact they have shifted to say for our students if you are double vaccinated whether you're boosted or not and whether it's six months or back you're considered vaccinated i don't know but that's what was said today uh okay so i talked to stacy at two o'clock that was not no because the commissioner call was at three and so she might not and she was i gave her the link to participate in that um call so i'm hoping she was able to okay so then so there might be a change coming so is the advice then to parents whose kids were i mean i think the other thing that was confusing to me it still confuses me and i've asked a few questions during these meetings is the pool testing program and the test and

095stay program are these two distinct things yes and if your kid is a close contact and is basically in either of those groups tell me if i've got this right if if they're in a pool testing program they could be vaccinated and just part of the pool program uh intestines stay that's for unvaccinated students and so if your kid is in either of those pools either of those groups that want to use the wrong terminology and is identified as a close contact theoretically they can still be coming to school unless they test the positive well definitely for the test and state the pool testing is only done on tuesdays so it's a you know one day capture that you know i wasn't positive yesterday on tuesday and um so that's not exactly the same and

096obviously if you're it's the pool testing is really to catch a symptomatic positives it's people who are coming to school they feel fine but they're carriers that's for that the test and stay allows people who have ident students who have been identified as close contacts to continue to come to school if they're still symptom free and they get tested every day to just confirm and they stay in school and then they come back the next day and come back the next day and i know there was something about vaccinated or unvaccinated on that i'm not sure yeah i just i think we could be clearer about my goal as a parent is to keep my kid in school to keep her healthy and to keep her in school and i i guess barring then the

097the things that i can do to keep my family you know wearing a mask and doing the things that all the protocols that we've become so used to short of that what are we advising families to do in order to keep their kids healthy and keep them in school well we definitely encourage involvement in both of those programs the test and state program you have to sign up ahead of time because we get materials sent based on the number who are participating so it's not like all of a sudden you're close contact oh i want my child to come to school let them do the test and stay so there's a weak lag there um and then as we we have like monday's letter i think increased pool testing by 30 to 40 participants not

098for yesterday's pool testing but for next tuesday because we have to get the materials but as that grows you also need the resource and human beings who are involved with that program so we have some resources that come through some program they're not consistent so stacy's very much involved like on pool testing day she's the one doing currently doing the test and stay we could possibly um connect with an emt through the fire department to be involved with the test and stay the time the trainer the master public school athletic trainer he is involved with the test and stay particularly for athletes but again everyone has you have to be signed up for that ahead of time um it's much you know i know of some students who attend sandwich their parent works here and

099that's been a real savior because they were already enrolled so they just get tested every day when they've been identified and assuming they're not symptomatic because if you're symptomatic you shouldn't be coming it's definitely i mean that's why we did our you know some time with the staff on monday it's it's very um complicated and the energy level sometimes of of all of us to read through a document and comprehend when you know we're not it's multiple times in some cases to just kind of make sure you have it so i definitely defer to stacy as our expert she goes to all the board health meetings and dph meetings we do have a board of health meetings set up for it was going to be tomorrow but i think there's a board of health meeting

100tomorrow night so they would prefer to do it on friday to just sort of get on the same page uh talk about i think the town is currently in the process of obtaining test kits and they would be ordering as enough for the school as well because if they're not i want to um but stacy in communication with glenn says that's in the works through whatever county it's through something so that would be something that we could also give families as sort of an extra measure of safety i will say the the antigen test according to stacy you can often get you know if it's positive you're likely to be positive but you can get some false negatives so i don't know if it's ever ever not enough yesterday's pool testing i'm not sure how

101many participated but i do know that two pools did spike as a positive so then those individual test tubes had to be readministered to determine which individuals are positive and they were here today so they had to be sent home one of the things today that the deci call was recommending is that pool testing goes down to two in a pool so which means a lot of pools but then if you have one that's that shows up as positive you're only dealing with two people i don't know you might as well just do everybody individually at some point what is the point of that so i don't know i just don't know i think they're just you know paddling as they go and figuring things out and you know swerving to avoid different things that

102that doesn't make a lot of sense to me although they were saying you would save testing materials i'm like i don't know but that's probably coming as a change too and just to add one last little summary piece related to attendance of students so january 3rd was monday when we came back uh we had 15 of our students absent so for coombs we had 64 students absent 307 students were there 80 students were absent from quant 349 were present and then middle school 24 absences 210 were there and at the high school 53 apps at 3.99 now they're not all coveted absences there couldn't get back from florida absences there's lots of reasons kids aren't there but just in general so we had 221 absences on monday 239 student absences on tuesday and 264 absences

103today and definitely like if i just look at high school it's gone from 53 to 59 to 75. [Music] did jesse say anything about remote options coming back no they're not going to have that as far as i know we did there were questions about you know attendance as an accountability factor uh there were questions about whether they're going to do do we have to do you know mcas tests which is tied federally so they have a meeting tomorrow with something related to that they really don't have any answers on that because attendance you know should not be an accountability factor this year because we are encouraging students to stay home when they have symptoms and it makes no sense to me but most of this year does not make sense to me sadly um

104any more questions on this topic um the only other item that i had i think i forwarded you guys the email i had been asked by the chair of the select board about [Music] some discussion at the state level about bonuses for frontline workers um and just inquiring about the status of that um i didn't hear back from senator sear but i did hear back from representative vieira who said that the governor's office or the executive branches is administering that process and i got a couple emails related but the short answer is they believe they're on track and moving swiftly whatever that means so that's all i've heard so if i continue as i get more information i will share that with them um i'll share that with you rather um any other topics that

105anyone wanted to raise so we do have another meeting this month to vote on the budget and i think i'm not aware of any other items that we needed to bring up tonight is there any final public comment all right um do you want to come to the microphone john and just uh say your name for the yeah good evening everyone my name is uh john miller i live on shell back way i was uh particularly interested in some of the statistics from the superintendent about the covet consequences and and especially the total counts of absences the first three days post of the post vacation offhand and i know it's not apples to apples but how do those numbers compare to a normal three days following christmas if you know i can share that at

106the next meeting specifically but we generally have attendance that's in the mid to higher 90s and usually after christmas break it's not a time when um there's an excessive absenteeism it could have been this year because it was a shorter break so there might have been family decisions made there but um being you know at the 15 or whatever i said generally it is lower but i don't know what it compares to i'd almost have to go back last year being hybrid i don't know that that's the greatest comparative year so i'd have to go back i think january 20 to see uh get a data for you but we could share that at the next meeting well i asked partly in the context of you know the last couple the last week especially you

107can't pick up a newspaper or watch a network newscast uh without the lead story being the impact of uh covet and in particular how it's affecting activity at the schools i was trying to get some i don't currently have a student or a grandchild enrolled in mashpee schools so it sounds like there was a letter that went to families earlier this week but i think there's a lot of general interest throughout the town whether families have a student in school at that time or not just trying to understand the impact and the consequences because they're being bombarded with it regionally and nationally because of the media coverage um and it was uh i don't know if this would have been a venue but the fact that the website has been inoperative for at least a

108couple of days uh i went there you could find nothing about it there's nothing in social media about the mashvik schools and how it's coping with him uh none of the statistics that you just mentioned tonight i know we're only three days into it so i i guess my suggestion would be to and on top of everything else that you and your staff are dealing with finding an effective way to communicate at least at a high level to the entire community of nash being not just parents uh what what this nightmare that we're dealing with is is impacting how it's impacting the schools in the early stages of the of the second half of the school year and maybe one way to do that would be to transition some of the internal some of the

109communications that would normally go on the website to the town's website where people do have access or utilizing social media or something but there's absolutely nothing out there that i could find in the last three days about how covert is affecting mashmi schools yeah so i mean i'm sure we could do a better job in sort of reaching out to uh other residents of mashpee i think we do an excellent job reaching out to our families not like when we you know put a monthly article in the enterprise not that many of our you know who reads you know not that many people subscribe to the enterprise that's one tool though we have our outreach coordinator who and we we're active i don't know if you follow instagram or if you follow um you know

110twitter but we do try to um put communications out there as well we always you know post and that's very commendable and don't rely on that but this is timely topical you know current information and data and i think all of all of the news coverage about how covetous impacting public schools and private schools teachers faculty staff members students and so forth is generating um a greater than usual interest and then how is that affecting my town even if i don't have a student in the schools so uh all of those other periodic uh mechanisms for to communicate is fine but i'd like to know and i think many others would just because the heightened interest that everybody has because of the intensity of the public awareness of this would like to know what's what

111happened in mashpee schools today and what's what's the plan for tomorrow not just three weeks later you know kind of about here's a roundup of what we've been doing uh over the last month or two yeah i guess i'd have to i don't mean to be critical but i'm just trying to suggest that uh the the public has more interest in what's going on and what the impact is then you might be aware no i appreciate your perspective what we've got tried to do throughout this journey through coven even among districts it's often varying from the very start and trying to make sure you know what was going on in falmouth would it would sort of ooze into what's going on in ashby we would try to make sure everybody realized that each of our

112districts is unique and different i do want to communicate to the residents i'm not going to commit you know communicate through the mashpee message that's not a tool that i would support but i do we do need to figure out a way to get to people like you or others who don't i mean everyone can get my friday communications but but and many in the town do who are not parents but how yeah you give me your email and you're part of every friday you get a pretty in-depth communication not that i'm looking for it to be shared on ashby message but you give me obviously i'm not here as an advocate of the mastery masters that i think the school does have i think you just said an instagram presence yeah we have a

113facebook we have facebook we have instagram we have twitter those and the absence of a website those would be the perfect outlets in the in the interim to get something out there without people having to come get it you know it's just push it out through whatever current timely mechanisms you have available maybe the town's website too temporarily well that that is more of uh there's more layers to get something that way i would suggest that the town's website linked to our website and i know that it is currently down which has nothing to do with us could be the other way around too temporarily right that's your it could create a temporary page on the town's website where you could put things that otherwise go on the town on the school it has to

114be linked though it can't be another task that i have to go and put something on the website but we can definitely do a good job of making sure other than families know what's going on absolutely i appreciate that thank you thank you for considering yes absolutely yep thanks john i think the timing of the website uh crash you know it could couldn't really happen at a worse time but but the covet dashboard the cases and the things that patty was referring to are on our website and have been there throughout uh that's public facing and anybody can access that information but john if you send me your email i will gladly add you to friday's communication i think you used to get it when your permission i'll bore that to anybody else that's interested

115sure okay and obviously uh if anybody is interested in what's going on with the school or how the schools are dealing with this um they can reach out directly to the superintendent's office and get any of that information the town manager does receive my friday communications as well um okay uh so i think with um out any additional business um i can uh oh this is scheduled i have a vote to adjourn here it's on my thing so uh i'll make a motion to adjourn you have a second whole second all right kathy how do you vote yes matt yes brian yes john yes i vote yes as well meetings adorn [Music]