Methuen School Committee Meeting

001all those in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed the eyes have it unanimously thank you let's stand and do the flags to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all i put my mic back on that brings us to public participation we don't have any letters but we have several individuals so when you come up to um speaking of public participation just echo your name and your address please if you will so jerry ann battelle you're first on the list good evening that's loud enough huh okay jeriam patel 334 hampshire road i'm here in um to defend this face mask that you people want to pass in the school system which is proven scientifically that

002it does not work okay which our children are going to get sicker and i don't know what you guys plan on doing if you're just gonna try to just push it and muzzle these kids for the next year i know my son did homeschool all last year so as me being a parent i feel like you're dividing it because when i read something that i didn't like that you're gonna start really pushing the vaccine and these face masks so when is it gonna stop because the face masks don't work it's a proven scientific fact that these face masks do not work they cause harm to the children forget breathing and touching the mask like i keep on touching here psychologically physically emotionally it is affecting these children so you people that are elected officials that

003are in here need to actually listen to the people that living in methuen that are supporting your salaries as the teachers and i'm sure i'm not the only one here that a teacher may not want to wear a mask but if i choose to keep my son home is it going to be online for him are you just going to cut it off and just push it because first of all you're going against my constitutional right my kid's constitutional right the bill of rights this is this is this stuff needs to stop kovit's going to be around for a while delta's going to be around for a while it's everyone's choice i don't knock someone to go get a shot i don't knock them because they want to wear a mask one i'm not going

004to live in fear two this stuff needs to stop because i will come to the meeting every two weeks if i have to go into boston look at the scientific facts you can't expect a kid to sit around look what i'm doing i'm touching this so i'm touching this you disinfecting every time they walk away or grab a pencil or do that or we're just gonna live in fear in the city of methuen so no i don't agree with these mass i'm very upset with this my son would love to come back to school but i'm really on the fence unless you're pulling the plug on the online schooling that's something i'd like to do so i need some answers here on how that avenue that you're going to go on because i will not

005stop i've been quiet for 15 12 or 15 years i'm not i'm not staying quiet anymore i am totally against what people are trying to do land of the free we just pledged allegiance to that flag land of the free freedom of speech freedom of choice so what's going to happen in methuen high because nobody wants to walk around with these damn masks on you're going to get the kids that are vaccinated and the kids that aren't on top of each other because they don't want to wear the masks anymore so you guys need to stand up for our children because we're the taxpayers that are paying your salaries and the teacher's salaries and i'm sure there's a heck of a lot more people that feel the same way i feel and besides the 2022

006class got screwed that should have had a prom with the 2021 class because they lost everything because of covid and it was a safety issue and i can respect that but they were told they would have had their prom in 2021 but this face mask if i have to go out and get a petition i'll do whatever i have to do but you guys are wrong and should not pass it they should not be mandated ever now it's done and that's it thank you [Applause] excuse me jennifer perrino good evening my name is jennifer perrino i'm on 125 hampstead street in methuen i'm not going to speak on the science because no matter what is said over and over again you're either going to trust this science or that science what i'm going to speak

007to you today is fact fact is i have a four and a half year old daughter who started school when she was three and a half fact when covet started back in early 2020 i was scared i pulled her out of school her school did not shut down she's in a private christian school i pulled her out of school for three weeks after three weeks i decided they're staying open everything looks okay nobody's dying let's get her back into school where she belongs she's been going to school five days a week since this beginning their school is completely mask free there has not been a single case of covid in her school not a single case we need to give these kids a shot to be kids at four and a half years old five

008and a half years old even 14 15 16 year olds it's so important to see facial expressions just looking at you all now and i respect you i have no idea what anybody is thinking because i can't see your face i can't see your face we're six feet apart we don't need to cover our face it's not doing anything you know i'm all about the hand washing i'm all about vitamins and and healthy and you know i'm working on it myself but i know how important that is covering our face with a piece of cloth especially these poor kids for six seven eight hours a day it's it's not helping i go to a church in salem where they had a mask not a mandate but a rule and once that lifted we went back

009to the church there were kids that did not wear a mask and there were kids that did wear a mask and you know what i s i serve i volunteer at this church and it was heartbreaking to see the children with masks on that just sat they just seemed to be in a completely different world watching these kids without masks smiling and laughing and and just being kids this is what they need to do you know just give them a chance to be kids we don't need to cover their face just take precautions like before covid there's not been a case in my child's school i'm not talking of any articles i've read i'm talking about what a virus of what i've experienced hand first just please keep that in mind thank you thank you

010dana you're shiloh hope i said that right hi good evening my name is dana ursula i live at five tremont street um basically um i'm quite nervous and i really don't do a lot of public speaking so you got to bear with me here a little bit um i just want to reiterate on some of the things that where i said obviously i'm here on the same same defense to to try to stop the mask mandate if there is going to be a mandate one we don't even know that there is as of right now massachusetts as we all know the governor has lifted the mask mandate so there is no mandate actually in the entire state so and i also believe that it is harmful to the children i mean again i can there's

011so many things that i want to say about the science about the other side obviously we know that the one side of the science that we hear through cdc and you know a lot of the news but there's there is a ton of other doctors that have been physicians and have been virologists and have been literally that's what they do for a living for the last 50 60 years and they have a whole other side of the science that tells us and and that it's harmful to you and i'm going to use my my um i'm a plumber by trade i'm a commercial plumber i um i'm osha certified 30 hours of certification in osha and it's like the same so the way the best way that i can explain it i guess would be

012through miosha training when you when you have um an area of where you're supposed to be breathing whether it's directly in your work area or if it's directly now with a respirator over your face one you need to be medically cleared to make sure that that respirator can actually be worn by a person that is healthy enough that can actually wear this thing two it's usually installed with one-way valves that'll allow your carbon dioxide which is a which is a waste from your body to be expelled out of your breathing area immediate breathing area so you can continue to breathe oxygen the mass that you weigh at especially excuse me especially even the homemade ones that i see that a lot of people wear are actually even more detrimental to your health because it actually

013creates an um a co2 uptake and an oxygen decrease i mean those are facts these are all science that that like literally are out there that that that is not debated these are actual facts i mean i've gone through that style of training if i'm in a confined space that has an uptake in any other any other um breathable gas that i need to immediately there's alarms that we immediately need to leave that area and get to an oxygen-rich place us as humans breathe 19 point whatever 19.5 or 19.8 percent oxygen you put one of those masks on your face that literally instantly lowers the levels i mean that's really what it comes down to i mean frankly it's i'm here for my children i have two children they're going to be in the tenney

014school and i don't want them to be masked if it's my choice to not send them to school to wear it then i should have that choice as a parent so basically i'm looking at you guys the same thing like i don't want you guys to wear masks but if you want to wear one then wear one but if you don't as a as a person of school you eat you know employment your employer shouldn't even be allowed to tell you that you must have you have to wear a specific thing especially covering your face i mean it's the same thing i'd love to see all you all everybody here smile a little bit and you know and we again it just it will do other damage other than just physical damage like uh to

015your immune system and and your your oxygen levels but again i i'm on the side of the psychological damage that's going to do to our kids i mean could you imagine being a child not even an adult right now and like half of this stuff is hard for a lot of us to take as individuals being adults can you imagine being a child and not even having an i'm here for their voice because they can't voice that opinion because they one they don't know how to do it and then two they don't even have have an avenue for that and so it's literally like we have like an overlord right now telling me and my children what they must do it's it's so broad there's so many things that i would want to say other

016than the fact that i just really care about you know all the every every not just my children but literally every every person's child that's going to school you know that their health is really a concern and for that matter too it'd be like that's really your job as individuals to get together and to be part of the committee is is to really look after our children's psychological well-being so i mean i just feel like having those things i mean all of all of us just want to literally return back to normalcy at least some sort of normalcy especially within school these these are the places that you know the children will have it you know and without it you know those are the things we're kind of like back to like a like a

017you know an unbearable you know lifestyle where it's like i know it sounds a little extreme just over a mass but it really is it really in my eye my opinion it really comes down to their psychological well-being as well as you know easily their physical so i mean again you know god made me too the same thing with an immune system and um you know we we all have ability to fight you know off whatever it may be i mean um you know some people are compromised we all know that and that's why some of the mastering does make sense you know it makes sense to like some of the elderly people and some of the people that are automatically compromised compromised but the children we have over 14 million or 15 million children

018in this country we have 458 cases that have led to death and i mean you know obviously none of us want to have any deaths but at over 14 million children and we've had we've had over over um you know hundreds of thousands of of you know adults died and that's that's because of you know compromise situations that they're in children deal with like you know if anything they're more resilient than any any adult that i know i mean as far as immune systems and and and being able to maintain you know a level of of health that you know we probably can't even maintain so i mean i just really wish that you guys would just consider i mean obviously it's going to be the commissioner's decision but i mean you guys have you

019guys have a have an influence on what's going to happen and i mean so i just really hope that you guys would be in the favor of of giving these children back some normalcy thank you and i have kim denolt kim denault here i'm hi my name is kimberly denald i live at 48 pilling street um i also am pretty nervous to speak take your time okay thank you um you know but i'm here because i'm terrified for my children so i i wrote and i also made some copies of some things because i can't possibly read it all so i would like to give some copies to you guys to um review at your leisure um i think it's wrong for children to be forced to wear masks um there's no absolutely no studies

020that have been done for children wearing masks for several hours a day five days a week over a long period of time like there simply has been no studies done on this and um nobody can say that no matter how you feel on the matter that it's the same you don't feel exactly the same wearing a mask and breathing as you do without so therefore um i liked all those points that guy just said but therefore there's obviously a little bit of oxygen depletion like some so if that's the kids are wearing masks six day a six hours eight hours um five days a week then their brains are still developing the human brain develops till age 25 nobody knows even if it's a little bit amount of oxygen depletion day in day out that

021accumulative effect like nobody can say that absolutely it's safe nobody can say that and i totally disagree with the way commissioner reilly um did this um how he announced uh what he was doing i i you know in at first glance it seems like he's just going to order the masks for a month but if you read it it's not bad he's saying until 80 percent of the students are vaccinated and there are some people that feel um the vaccine has not been proven safe yet and um i don't think that's fair because that kind of puts pressure on both parents and students um you guys have a discrimination and harassment policy and through in public schools and i feel that that's going to set up some children to be in danger of being perhaps

022discriminated or harassed and that's not fair to them and um also um um sorry um oh and as regards to the vaccine like i mean everybody says it's safe i know it got approval today but to me that really doesn't mean much because there's a long history um in america and probably every country that you know cigarettes um you know heroin was legal at one time bear aspirin made it like um there's so countless medications and drugs that were at one time deemed safe and come to find out that they were indeed not safe and um there's no long-term studies done on the vaccine nobody's had the vaccine and had a baby full term and then had that baby grow up and been checked on like i i pray and hope that there is nothing

023wrong with it but i'm not willing to take that chance um i go by also my experience in my life um i have i'm at risk i'm overweight i have high blood pressure um i um i've asthma i have narrow breathing tubes but i i do not wear a mask i i've never gotten sick i've been tested for covid i i don't barely know anybody actually that has it and i know some people do but all the people i know they recovered um i i just think that it it's just way too strong of a reaction i think people should have the right to choose if you want to wear a mask get a vaccine of course you should be able to but i do not think you should be able to force it on

024other people and um especially children i fear that that's what's coming next and i don't know i'm not a scientist obviously but um i did try to research information um it seems a lot of information nowadays is tainted for all sides of the argument so i just looked up basically some information pre-covered like just you know scientific scientific papers like how um dna and messenger rna works well you know messenger rna is like instructions and your dna copies it will there's a thing in that process called translation errors and it's just equivalent to like say i'm copying a page down maybe i wrote a few words wrong wrote spelled a few words wrong like that's an analogy for what that does and um i mean all the science isn't fully understood like it's not and

025i just don't want to ever take a chance on my children for any of that and um and and like yeah the mask like i even saw a video and i don't want to sound like stupid because i know that um andrew fauci like he took this back but i saw a video and it's a real video and he was saying basically all masks do is make people feel better because what they do is yeah if you talk and you like spit of course it's gonna stop that from happening or if you didn't cover your mouth and sneeze near a person oh yeah that would it would do something for that but in everyday day-to-day purposes that usually doesn't happen and like you it it doesn't it doesn't um it doesn't stop virus and germ

026transmission like the pores and cloth and like in surgical masks like there's small holes in them because it's woven fabric and it's it's simply not those holes are too big they're they're not small enough to stop passages of viruses or germs they're not and they're the masks even basically say that on the boxes and they're not allowed to label it otherwise because it's a fact the masks aren't were never invented for children to wear at school for hours a day every day that's not their use that's not why they were made they that fda did give them that eua approval but it said for the duration of the state emergency i thought the state of emergency was over and i just brought some stuff um like i said that i wanted to pass out um

027and you know some of the stuff is from children's health defense and i mean that's run by robert kennedy jr i think he's i don't think he's like a quote-unquote conspiracy theorist i don't think he's unintelligent i think he's an intelligent man and um there has been a lot of people and doctors and scientists that have spoken out against mask against the vaccines against a lot of stuff and why would they even like bother they don't have anything to gain like they actually have more to lose than to voice those opinions you know and um but the most of all um like i actually was kind of doing some research and you guys last night and one of you put something and there was just some quote like about like if you feel something's wrong

028and like my gut instinct like is so alarmed like i have alarm bells going off like when i heard that jeff riley when he made that announcement last friday um and like i i don't know i feel sick i'm like terrified i like i feel i wake up and i remember this like it's like a nightmare and like maybe people like that like you know are all for the vaccination and mass think like oh that's like why it's not even that big of a deal but it is it is because if if you even even if this was everything was correct even if the covert vaccine was 100 safe and mass were 100 safe which i obviously don't think so as i just said but hypothetically even if that were true people should if you

029allow government or or institutions or businesses to tell you what you can and can't do and what you have to put in your body like then that there's no question it will be exploited in the future like it's it's wrong to do that it's it's so wrong it's i i just can't even believe that everybody doesn't think that's wrong like i i i don't think it's right to force somebody to put something into their body or on their body your body is your sacred safe place and so if somebody by a mandate can tell you to put something in or on your body against your will and even if you agree because of you know you're you you oh i need to go to school i want to fit in or i want to do

030this like that's that's so invasive that's so wrong you cannot tell somebody what to put in or on their body because then that is violating their safe place that's violating them like i i feel that very strongly and i i do think it has psychological implications and i think a lot of these kids you know they just want to go and play and have school they they just they don't want to you know get into arguments with people and they're just going along with it but a lot of them like inside don't feel right about this so they're being like sent this message even if it's not on purpose to um you know do even if you feel wrong about something do it just go along just do it even if you feel uncomfortable eve

031and some kids probably can't even breathe and are afraid to speak up because um anatomically we all have different size fingers and hands and feet well inside is the same way people have different size like hearts and lungs my breathing tubes like i said i didn't even know it i had an operation my doctor my surgeon told me my breathing tubes are more narrow than most so like who knows i mean we're not all sitting here taking x-rays of people so um i just feel like fizzle does many problems like i just said with all of this and um this is something i printed out about the mandation of the masks of the testing also just like a bunch of stuff i would like you guys to at least consider and look at because um

032and you mentioned the american pediatric like there's a this is um association of american physicians and surgeons like just some things um you know that people are saying that um provides a different perspective if you would please read it at your leisure i'd really appreciate it okay thank you thank you okay thanks [Applause] is there anybody else that wishes to speak publicly okay so at this time we will close the public participation part of this meeting thank you uh superintendent would you like to update the committee on the methuen public schools covert 19 related protocols and procedures for the 2021-2022 school year sure thank you um so i do have mary gallant our director of health services is here with me tonight so she will share some some things we're working on and also answer

033questions from the committee as as needed we we received protocols from the state to in guidance to react to covet cases and quarantine and we want to be able to talk through some of those things this evening so i think a few things that just i want to reiterate that was said here tonight by some of our folks but the commissioner will be meeting with the board of education tomorrow at 10 a.m to ask for the authority to mandate masks in all public schools for this coming school year and correctly sustated also tonight was yes through october 1st but the only way it can be lifted in school according to his proposal is if the school has an 80 vaccination rate of combined uh students and staff uh so we we don't know uh tonight

034uh what that language is going to say we don't know the outcome of that meeting so hence us removing that from the agenda this evening which i did inform all families of that on friday so it was a very quick turnaround information for us we were not informed of that decision and meeting until about 10 30 on friday and then it was released publicly i would say at like 11 15 on friday so i tried to get the information out to families as soon as i received it so while we wait for that information we will still have to develop a mask policy i just don't know what is what it's going to include or not include based on that decision for tomorrow so that is why we're waiting and i will also be in

035touch with all families to give information from this evening to let them know about that decision that the commissioner will be making tomorrow from the board of education and also uh any further school committee meeting special meeting that we'll have uh which at this point i think we're earmarking it for thursday evening we just have to confirm that with all the members at this point um because school is starting next week so we do need to move on on some of these things so the packet that you have in front of you uh just goes through uh some of the information that i think is very important for all of you our families here tonight our families to get tomorrow as well from me that thank you that will uh just go through some of

036the things that we are going to maintain in place some of the new information which is why miss kallant is here tonight to talk to us about the test and stay program that we are absolutely in progress of signing up for what does that mean for our students and families and staff so we want to be able to go through that so i think one important piece the mayor myself the nurse leader last year and the health department in methuen i think one of the most important things to us was to maintain a consistent communication and we agreed the mayor and i spoke and we agreed that we want to continue that right this is this is going to be a little bit rocky and so we want to make sure that we're maintaining open

037communication between the city and the school department and then communicating out to school committee where are our coveted positive rates in schools when they start what's our vaccination rates what's our case rates in methuen uh you know just all things that are happening in the school are things going you know better than expected are things you know we're trying to uh are we gonna have to make some decisions and and make phone calls to deci on what's happening in the school so we don't know all of that so one thing that we did maintain uh we will be meeting every other week uh mary myself the mayor felix zimmel at the at the city and nancy zappos who's the school uh the department of uh city nurse there we go that's the easiest way to

038say uh city nurse so we will be meeting every two weeks to look at that prior to a school committee meeting so we've been setting those meetings up to do that so we did have a meeting last week as well to get ourselves familiar with the kind of information that we're going to be looking at um so that's just an important part of our protocols we're just going to set that up and have that be part of our practice much like we did last year those meetings were phase determination meetings they're going to have a very different focus this year but they're going to be consistent informative looking at data and then allow us to inform and have discussions here at the school committee so hopefully that makes sense to everybody the second thing there

039you'll see it says masking so i have to say i apologize a little bit this has to be updated because i printed this prior to 11 30 on friday when i was unaware that the commissioner would be bringing this to the board of education tomorrow so i put that statement in there that says methuen public schools students and staff will adhere to the school committee policy regarding masks so that i will update that accordingly depending on the outcome of tomorrow's meeting as well but two things that everybody should know and i've been putting this in my communication as well this summer uh ian goslin who's doing the bus transportation also put in his communication to parents a few weeks ago no matter what the decision uh the outcome for tomorrow's board of education meeting a

040federal mandate is that all students and staff bus drivers anybody in a school bus are we are mandated to wear masks so we need all of our students and bus drivers and again monitors to wear masks on bus that's a federal mandate and students will also have to wear masks again regardless of situation in the school nurse's office so any public health office which our school nurse's offices are students will have to wear a mask so we'll make sure that we have enough masks for students to wear and again that has been in my communication the past several weeks communicating with parents to make sure that that is clear regardless of any other decision that is made that's at a federal level that's not a decision that is left in local hands so any questions

041about information on that first page from the committee i'll keep going through this yes member mccloud i guess i'm just wondering how much just the district's um anticipating to incur for a cost if masking is optional to be able to provide masks for children whose families opt out of wearing them that's an unexpected cost i'm not um what's the anticipated dollar sign what will it cost the district to provide for children what families are not providing for them so that they can take the bus and go to the nurse's office gotcha so i don't know that dollar amount off the top of my head but we did provide masks for all buses last year as well the entire school year so for all of the hybrid students and then at the end of the year

042when they were full time we did provide masks and ppe to the but on the buses so that there were a ppe so i'd that's something i'd have to get from mr goslin so i can certainly get that information about what our projected cost would be good question okay so the next um the next piece is distancing so this is a question that has come up i think sort of in the community with our staff at the leadership level so the distancing mandates have all been lifted so so this we're in a very interesting position because if when we start to get to the protocols for dealing with covid related illnesses and close contacts there's distances in there that are outlined how do you identify a close contact and such which which ms gallant will

043go over so one of the things that we have to be really clear about is we are in and thank you to the school committee and to the city but um we are in a very good place with class sizes which is where we should be in this district so our class sizes are lower than they've ever been probably in i don't want to say my whole career here but at least within the last 10 years you know we have very few classes at the grammar school that have upwards of 23 students in a class the majority of our classes are going to be 20 or lower in the in the grammar schools 20 to 25 in some areas in the upper schools but at this point we don't have any classes over 25 in

044our high school as well we have some sections that we haven't been able to get below that number uh which we continue to work on with our budgeting but we're in a much better place than than we have been in the past so that helps us with distancing in the classroom we don't have 28 32 35 kids in a classroom all day long so in every classroom the desks are going to be distanced but i also want to be really clear that while we're distancing desks we also want education and the pedagogy of teaching and learning to happen this year so there is going to be some work done with teachers and administrators next week when we return you know if we're in an elementary setting do we keep kids in pods for the day

045right they sit at table groups so they can still have that learning experience and centers you know the play time and such but how do we monitor and track that so the principals are have already figured out how all that's going to work we definitely need teachers to keep seating charts that that all isn't going to go away uh because we will get phone calls you know to the teachers to parents to families to students about who they were around if indeed there's a positive case so it may not be possible to keep that three feet of distance in every classroom setting as many of you know there was a certain threshold in all of our classrooms and each classroom was a little different on how many desks and chairs could fit at three feet

046apart so we're going to do our best to maintain that in all classrooms but i want to be very clear that that is not with all kids returning to school i that is not something we can guarantee in all settings specials would be one of them in our grammar schools and our elective courses in the high school we typically have more students in those classrooms and we do expect that to happen again another big question that that came up is about lunches what are we going to do about lunches because we do not have the capacity to have students we don't have the alternative rooms anymore with a hybrid a hybrid b setting we were able to split kids up into different rooms last year because of that hybrid setting we were able to spread

047kids out in the cafeteria with desks and chairs because of the low numbers of kids in the building so basically what's going to happen this year is we are going to space as much as possible to eliminate all students in one area at one time so what i mean by that is the grammar school principals are scheduling lunches between cafeteria and classrooms so kids will be split so we're not going to necessarily have 150 kids sitting at every seat in the cafeteria some kids will eat in their classrooms so they're again their their exposure just will be limited during that unmasked time and some buildings uh we will also be using the media center uh as a secondary place as well those those spaces um were really important to us last year so we maintained

048those and we cleared all those spaces of books and shelves to maintain desks so that they could become those classroom areas time for you know places that kids could have snack and such so we will be maintaining that so that plan is in place we will also be 100 using tents in the schools that have those tents so that will be a place that will rotating be rotating kids through lunch at all five of the schools so we have that plan the principals have a very good plan in place to be able to again spread out we can i cannot guarantee the six feet of distance during that lunch but we certainly can guarantee that we don't have 300 kids in one space at one time sitting next to each other so that's what we're

049trying to do given the number of kids we're having in the building every day the number of staff that we have to supervise the students as well came into play as well at the high school level uh mr barton and his team we have the foyer area the media center if you sort of look around we're going to keep it set up with desks and chairs cafeteria and outside so there's going to be four sort of eating spaces depending on the grade levels some kids are going to have choices to go in certain spots so it's going to sort of automatically spread out the high school kids during the lunches so again it's not a guarantee of that six feet and most schools i don't know of any school at this point that school district

050that you know we're all struggling with that piece that was the reason why we couldn't have all kids back last year that that problem hasn't gone away for us so we're doing the best that we can to again make sure that we can spread students out to eliminate that that total ex you know lots of kids in one space for that short period of time and the other piece you know folks have asked and emailed and i've had many phone conversations is is the length of exposure why is it okay if indeed kids have to wear masks in school they can be unmasked and within three and six feet and it's okay i don't think anybody's saying it's okay but the length of expo time of exposure right that unmasked time is during eating i

051have to say that when we ended the school year last year and all all the kids that wanted to be back in person were back kids were amazing when they were eating their masks were off when they weren't eating their masks were back on whether they were still in the cafeteria or their classrooms so we anticipate the same exact situation this year that it would be unmasked time would be limited um you know when you're in a classroom with the same group of kids all day uh it's just a different amount of exposure that you're with the masks will help mitigate that if indeed that's the decision um so that was that was also very important for me to say this evening again i i think uh some of these things have been written in

052memos and sent to parents but it's this is the first time that i've been able to speak about it publicly and it is a really important topic and a point of conversation for sure so cafeteria tables will be back in cafeterias those desks have all been moved back out into classrooms from those cafeterias and or maintained and put in the media centers in all five buildings so there any questions about that one thank you mr mayor um thank you um dr quang um for that but i'm still the thing i'm having an issue with the distancing is last year and well it's going on to about a year and a half now we were told that we have to remain at least six feet apart unmasked yep unmask but now we're bunching all these kids

053together in a room and we're mass and we're remaining three six feet apart so you're everybody's telling me from this worksheet that we're not guaranteed that students are going to be able to remain these three six feet apart so what's the point how is the mass going to protect students if technically we were told you have to wear a mask and remain three six feet of pot that's what i was told the last year and a half now we're changing it and i'm not saying us i mean the commissioner and the cdc continues to change things constantly including distancing now distancing isn't an issue or we have to figure it out to remain distance but we're having all these kids back that's why we had a hybrid model last year because we couldn't have those

054kids interacting with each other if i'm correct i i could be wrong but now we're forcing everybody back in but we're not forcing we're bringing all the kids back but three it seems like the distancing is going away in a classroom that's what i'm concerned about and a lot of parents are confused about because we keep changing the rules the commissioner keeps changing the rules and the cdc and i think that's one of the reasons why people are so frustrated with the mask because the mass is not going to just protect us we need the distancing as well that's for my knowledge yeah so um thank you for that i think one of the most important things to recognize is that we're in a situation that uh there are certain things we can and cannot

055control at this point and the goal is to bring all students back to school right some of the folks that spoke tonight i know our team teachers we need we need to bring all kids back to school for their psychological academic social emotional well-being undoubtedly right so we've seen that in this country i think that is something that everybody feels very strongly about in order to do that the safest way possible is what has been handed to us right so sure and as in in the safest way possible if i was in a small school and have kids three six feet apart at all times i'd do it i do it but but what is feasible right now for us here in methuen and for many other districts in this state and country is we

056have to provide the best mitigation strategies that we can in order to bring kids all back safely my number one priority as a superintendent as a school district is to keep kids safe and teach them so so those are the two things that i have to focus on and yes the rules are ever evolving they are coming at us there are some we have to decide there are some decisions that are already made for us so it's not that it's going away it's what is feasible with a situation where now where all kids are coming back to school we need to provide them with the best education we can so so when i just you know i i'm i'm going to use something that that member zany patch said last school committee meeting is you

057know do does deciding that students have masks on does that allow for a different opportunity in this in the classroom because they can we can maybe lessen the the fear of the three feet right or not and i mean those are all things that i think have been public debate at this point but if it's a mitigation strategy that will work so that we can have kids in classrooms and we can have kids work in centers and go to kitchen play and do the labs that they need to do during their science class those are the things that we're looking at so so i think there's a false sense of it's not going away it's still there like i said to you it's still in the guidance right where we have to pay attention to

058distancing for close contact purposes and everything else it's not going away but feasibly i have to bring 6 500 7 000 kids back to school and i don't have six feet of space and a whole bunch of staff to be able to mitigate that distancing while they're unmasked so we are going to do the best we can to mitigate during those situations so that kids aren't being exposed uh unnecessarily so that's what i've put the leadership the task i've put in the leadership team is you know feasibly what can we do and the principles have been phenomenal in figuring out how we can split the staff that we have for supervision and how which classrooms can stay in their classrooms for lunch and you know rotate kids through that make sure they go outside for

059recess you know and have that time all of those things are going to be really critical so um i know that was a long answer but um you know i hope that addressed what you're saying i know that we're not making these rules um you know we're trying to do the best we can with the situation that we've been given and again my my number one priority is to make sure kids are safe in school feel safe so that they can learn and provide them with the best environment to do that right that includes windows open air purifiers masks on hand sanitizer everywhere whatever those strategies are that that i did see work last year i did see those things work last year because we had some of those mitigation strategies in place we didn't

060have as much transmission in the classrooms and so i'm hopeful that we'll be able to provide a similar environment as we open this school year next week again long answers i'm sorry thank you mayor um superintendent last year we saw some plexiglas prototypes for cafeteria tables ultimately we didn't go with those last year is that something worth revisiting so um thank you for bringing that up mr lucia and i uh already revisited that and and deci is very clear so are the scientists at hand saying that the plexiglas providers are not so productive and efficient they actually stop the air flow in classrooms and in the cafeteria so they could actually be counterproductive to what we're trying to do so we are not going to be revisiting those um yeah so thank you for bringing

061that up because we did uh revisit that we have you know we have the prototype we know it could work as far as actually getting it done um but the state and in the department of public health is telling us that is not the way to go and it actually can hinder uh proper air flow and ventilation in classrooms and in spaces thank you um thank you for this i don't even know where to start and um i'm gonna move away from the mass debate a little bit because um you know obviously some of that might be taken out of our hands at this point which i actually feel better about and i said it last meeting i don't feel comfortable i know how i feel but i don't feel comfortable ever making a blanket

062decision for everybody so i'm going to go back to the point that you actually raised and i have some specific questions because whatever happens with the masks i don't think you know wearing masks or ideas for children i don't think anybody does i don't think remote schooling is ideal for any children i don't think not having socialization or not having recess is ideal for any student i don't think you know any of these things not having a library accessible not you know being able to do things with your friends in school this whole situation is just a whole bunch of horrible you know instances that these children that these children have to endure throughout the school year and it's completely unfortunate and i just i want to say i don't think anybody here feels differently

063about that um i forgive me if i'm speaking out of term but i can't imagine anyone you know thinks this is ideal for the the children so um my my questions again like you said you brought up that i brought it up last time um again if we're gonna have pods i guess i'm just wondering what our jurisdiction is in these decisions right so for me if we are mandated to wear masks it brings me back to my original question can we then replace at least some of the socialization right like we're reducing clutter in classrooms but what is clutter right do we have shared materials for the kids will they be able to you know borrow books or exchange books reading is is huge right are we are they going to have access to

064these necessary tools to continue you know their learning experience i'm more interested in like the day-to-day and i thank you again i think you've tried to touch on it and i i'm sure you're having these discussions like every single day i'm just wondering when we're gonna actually know how this is gonna pan out because you know i see these one two three four five six seven eight bullet points and to me this is like i could talk about this for six months and i still don't know if i could completely figure it out right so i guess how are we dealing with the little issues and when are the teachers and the students going to find out how it's going to roll out exactly and um you know are we going to be checking on

065how those implementations are panning out you know every couple weeks as well so i can start answering that sorry it was long no it's okay so i think the most important part is um we are we are going back to classroom library shared materials that was very clear also in the spring that that isn't uh the uh primary transmission right so so teachers know teachers already knew this at the end of the year right we're going to put classroom libraries back in we're going to put some of your storage closets back in not all of it because we still have to maintain a cleaner environment in order to clean and sanitize spaces um so we're we're putting some things back and we're not putting all of it back so that has already been decided so

066kids will share materials library books classroom libraries we told teachers put those back in your classroom we will be able to do that so the rigidity of kids in the bubble and not being able to sort of go outside that bubble is not something that we'll be doing um again we just we're not at the capacity to be able to do that at this point either right so again we got seven thousand kids coming back in the building every day um the amount of uh material that i would have to purchase so that every kid had everything every day they needed on their own uh also not quite feasible right especially when you're talking about art classes and ceramics and things like that we want to get back to that so that's clear we're going

067to get back to that we're going to be cautiously optimistic getting back to that and again the principles are starting to roll out some of those procedures some of those newsletters are going out already some of the things that they put in place last year are staying which i think is great you know some some things that were put in place because of the pandemic actually became more an efficient way to do business so i appreciate those efforts as well our open houses are going to be remote because we had a much higher parent participation rate so we need to think about that is it important for parents to participate and meet the teacher uh you know or do we want them to physically have to be in the building you know what is our

068our purpose for those things so those are all rolling out now the day-to-day pieces to that um you know band will happen we're going to be spread out it's going to be in the auditorium the high school did it at the end of the year the grammar schools will pick up right where that left off so um we're going back to business again we're going to be cautiously optimistic about how we're doing that and i would say we're no different our team talks all the time and is planning this but all the superintendents in the area are doing the same thing right how are we rolling this out are we going to use locker rooms yes are we going to use lockers not to start because that congregates a lot of kids in one space

069at one time of the day in the grammar schools right so let's start off where we left off in the spring and and pull back things as we can if we look at the data and things are good right that's that's the that's the mantra we're going to use as we open up the school this year now how are you going to ensure equity between the schools as well are we going to have one standard across the district or is it going to vary from school to school because i think we ran into some problems there yes last year there will be recess at every school there will be band at every school there will be lunch in cafeterias and split in classrooms and cafeterias at every school yes so how does it work because

070i know i mean i've been to i'm sure we all have been to at least see some of the classrooms in each of the schools right and some just have unique classrooms um for instance like the marsh i know um has like built-in counter space right so will they be able to utilize that for their students or is that supposed to be completely void of everything and if they are able to utilize that then what about a teacher let's say in the cgs who might want like a small library or something on a shelf in her room yeah so i think every principal is dealing with all those things now to make sure teachers have what they need in each classroom so it's not it is different building to building because for example the timoney

071and the upper school they don't have shelving so they need more rolling carts with storage right so it's just going to look different and be different for every building what the teachers need but they'll have the same but they'll have the same accessibility absolutely okay we're not going to be using any rooms in the buildings for that store last year we had to put things like a small gym was actually not accessible for learning and we put teacher materials in there for teachers weren't using or whatever was you know in excess of the classroom that's not happening anymore that's the stuff that teachers went through if you if it's if you don't want it back in your classroom and it doesn't fit uh then it goes home and if if you need it and it's

072storage we're gonna put it back and get the table and you get the file cabinet you know those pieces the principals are doing that have been doing that all summer since actually more like may talking to teachers about that and the only thing can i just say one more thing yeah i just wanted to add something oh sure the question you're so i just want to be careful that we don't try to cement in a 100 answer yeah remember passion the reason i said is because well if you look at where we are this year compared to last year right and what we've learned and i thought of what you just said a few minutes ago superintendent about um you know surfaces not being the primary yep contingency right that's but it doesn't mean we

073stop cleaning correct of course right uh in fact i'll be frank and say the city side learned a lot from the school side when the virus first hit and we have stepped up our game to match what the school side did i i think you're going to continue and one of the things i'm cautioning parents is there's going to be a continued evolution if i could say it here right as we continue to learn things about the virus and how it's transmitted it's person to person right uh so you know is anybody willing to sign a document that said if i was sitting here at cove and you sat here after me you're not going to get it no no no but but it's not the primary right it's not the way you get it

074you get it through spit basically going back and forth right and that's really how it gets transmitted primarily so i think you know you're going to continue to see changing conditions here uh that will affect the classrooms and how the classrooms are operated and i i want to be careful that we yeah we don't submit to ourselves what i don't want to do is set parents up so they come back and say oh that's not what you guys said beginning of september you guys said this right and i think you know one of the things i keep pointing out is and i don't mean this an insult we've become almost like a drive-through society where we have a problem we want an answer um and this is a problem that the answer continues to evolve

075to right and that's something that we kind of have to measure ourselves along the way so the classrooms are going to have to continue to adjust and i think you guys have done a good job at that and i think there's more of it to come unfortunately yes thank you sorry and just the the thank you um you talked about looking into pods and stuff and i just want to go on a record that especially if the masks are going to be worn which it looks like they're going to be um you know i know one of the um public participants was talking about how you can't see smiles and you can't see certain things that i do think are an integral part of you know a classroom then i really would like to push

076for at least more working together if that's possible because there might be certain exchanges that can happen right even devoid of um that's i think you know whatever we can replace the more we can the better right if this is going to be the the the means of keeping us from closure which i actually think is probably the unhealthiest thing for children aside from anything we have to keep the schools open um so i just like like i said i just want to say that i i am all for trying to get us at least a little bit more interactive you know the peers more interactive with each other that that sort of thing i think that would be you know a nice change at least going forward yep thanks so i'll i'll keep going

077if there are no other questions about that facilitators and maintenance you all already saw but those are bullet points there about what we're going to maintain uh we're certainly maintaining the air quality maintenance that we started last year we have the merv 13 air filters that we learned so much about each classroom will maintain a supply kit with hand sanitizer masks cleaning supplies in them we have air large air filters in all the large spaces cafeterias gymnasiums media centers auditoriums um which we basically ended the school year with but we've made sure that every single one of those spaces has a large air purifier as well and classrooms will be cleaned daily and sanitized once a week in the classrooms but the high traffic areas just like we did last year are going to be

078sanitized every day right so the door handles the bathrooms the handrails things like that that kids use the custodians did an amazing job again especially when we returned in the spring when kids were there every day of just maintaining that daily sort of sanitizing routine of the high traffic areas worked really well it was a very important piece i think of what we're doing lots of little hands touching all kinds of doorknobs and and bathrooms and things like that so we'll maintain all of those things our tented spaces we're going to keep our tents up as long as we can so we know we have to take them down when the winter weather comes so you know we're looking forward to our students and staff being able to use those outdoor spaces you know in

079september and october i'm hoping through november uh but likely we'll be taking those down probably around thanksgiving time or december first before the snow starts um in here in new england um any questions about those uh pieces all right um all right so i'm gonna call mary up at this point we're gonna just start talking about the rent this there's a lot here so we have a much what we think is going to be a much easier visual to look at this that we're testing out a little bit tonight and if if it goes well this is what we would like attached to send to parents and use with staff um it just showcases thank you it showcases this narrative and just a little bit of an easier way to understand what happens when right

080i'm i'm i have symptoms i do this if i'm vaccinated or unvaccinated i do this if we have binex now which which mary will talk about this is the the system that we put in place um so we're we'll go through some of uh that at this point so that so as she's passing those out the test and stay program i do know i mentioned this at the last school committee meeting as well the test and stay program is something that the state is offering us for free they're paying for all of it for us um and mary already at this point has received uh the application to be a site to test uh so where we've gone through that process and we're now in the process of communicating with the company that will be

081supporting us with test and stay and basically it's it's a testing system that is a rapid test uh you i think you can actually buy the buy next now test in walgreens and cvs and things like that at this point but those test kits will be given to us will be given to us to be able to use for students who are close contacts or symptomatic for a first test so i'll let mary go through uh this do you need is this okay oh sure i have a couple extra too hi everybody um so what we've done is we have come in contact through the department of education there is a company called cic that will administer and monitor and work with our schools to provide on-site testing so the first page that you have

082in front of you this is if we find out that there is a positive case of covid within a classroom or a work environment here in the school department so we have our positive case okay if that person is vaccinated the protocol will be that they quarantine for 10 days from a positive pcr test or symptom onset if they are asymptomatic so if they develop no symptoms they may return to work and wear a mask until we know for sure that they're negative if they are not vaccinated they need to quarantine for 10 days and until there are no fever for 24 hours without medication and improvement in their symptoms in other words if they have a severe cough or respiratory issue or any other gi symptoms they need to have those symptoms improve as

083well as no fever for 24 hours without medication they should be tested after five days with a pcr test they should continue to mask around others monitor themselves for severe symptoms and rest and hydrate the context and we still consider a close contact someone that is within six feet for greater than 15 minutes okay if the vaccinated contact is not symptomatic if they have no symptoms no quarantine is necessary they need to monitor themselves for symptoms and mask in public for 14 days or until they have a negative test result they may have a pcr test within three to five days if the person is unvaccinated the person will know if they're vaccinated or not if what if i tell my kids i don't want them to sing so we can't engage yeah excuse me

084you can't you cannot plea you cannot submit sorry public participation is the time i apologize yeah i'm not trying to be a stickler here right you can ask her questions after yeah if the unvaccinated contact has no symptoms they need to stay home for 10 days after exposure they can test in five days or later if they have no symptoms and a negative test they can stop their quarantine after day seven in either case whether they're vaccinated or not or unvaccinated if they have symptoms from their contact with the positive case they need to stay home isolate from others rest and hydrate continue to monitor for severe symptoms get tested five days or more after exposure and that is the standard and quarantine for 10 days and until fever is gone for 24 hours without

085medication and their symptoms improve any questions on that part this is this is the standard yes i'm wondering how that standard that you just described um goes with or doesn't seem to be congruent with the test and stay policy that deci has put forth i'm getting it yeah so that one that this is this is without the testing this is standard if we did not have the test and stay policy okay i'm looking forward to hearing about that and giving you some push back on that yep so the next page what is binax testing binax testing i'm sorry yeah i'm just confused so if if i'm vaccinated yes so step one i would but if i'm asymptomatic i may return and where i'm at so if i'm positive no asymptomatic means you have no symptoms

086yeah but i'm positive yeah do you quarantine okay is it after i quarantine yes okay well you have to do first bullet to get to the second book okay but if i don't know if i don't have any symptoms how do i and i don't know that i have it and i walk into the school you would know if you were in contact with someone you would have been told that you were in contact with someone okay but it would be fun but what happens if i'm outside the building just say i was at a family event and i didn't know and the family member didn't tell me that like my aunt got sick but i haven't talked to my aunt after seven to ten days and i walk into the building and i'm asymptomatic

087there's nothing you can do about it if you if you haven't been told i mean we went through that all last year i'm just saying but then but if i but if someone's not vaccinated see this is where people kind of get nervous from either side now like wear a mask or not wear a mess but for people that say well we should be wearing masks the things that i would be worried about is that person doesn't know he's sick especially when i'm uh i have ms so i my immune system is shot so if i have a kid in my classroom that doesn't know and he's asymptomatic and that's gonna happen unfortunately yeah i mean there's no way to prevent there is a symptomatic transmission yeah you know and there's no way i'm just

088playing devil's africa both sides right now and i want people to understand that like there are people that might be not know that they have it and the mass might stop but the thing i'm still concerned about is the distance i will tell you i work in a classroom i i will tell you the mass this summer from from what that father was saying i saw better reactions from the students when i put my mask down and they saw my facial expressions but i will tell you with the mask i felt safe but at the same time the distance between me and the student was the safest spot i thought i thought it was more safe for the fact that we're three six feet a pot than actually wearing the mask but i'm just saying

089the question is these these i'm just looking at it through the the lines here that what these possible things could happen and that's why we're getting the pushback that we're getting from the other side i'm just i was just wondering what these questions and the bullet points and all that stuff so thank you yeah unfortunately there's no way to tell i mean hopefully contact tracing if if your aunt did get sick it was reported to department of public health and you were listed as a close contact you know that's what contact tracing is designed to do we're relying on that system is it foolproof absolutely not can someone be asymptomatic and have coveted absolutely um the masking is one one barrier distance is another barrier you know cohorting like dr kwong talked about is another

090really good way of contact tracing if i know that in the third grade classroom a group of five students work together all day long those are the five students i'm going to be worried about if one of them becomes positive the students that were in the other side of the room are no longer a close contact and that's where we're coming into the binax testing and where this is going to be so beneficial for us um it is contracted by desi um oh i'm so sorry thank you so um to a point that was um being made by someone in our audience what is our the nurse's um protection or how is my child going to be protected if she may or may not be in close contact with someone whose parent refuses to give

091information about their child's vaccination status like what what what is the district's right and responsibility and what is the parents right and responsibility because that feels really dangerous to the community to intentionally withhold information that could keep other children safe at this point we cannot mandate knowing vaccination status that could change because it is very very highly recommended as the best way of preventing transmission i when it comes to the classroom every parent when we know of a positive case will be notified any place that is testing and getting we're we would rec obviously if any child has symptoms they're going to go home and we're going to recommend that they be tested that test has to be reported to the department of public health this is a reportable illness the department of public health

092will have contract tracers that will call they will call me or the school nurse and say we have a case this is you know where the case is i'm also going to have the ability to look up active cases so i'll be able to tell on a daily basis if there are active cases in our class in our school the other school nurses same if i see one in one of their schools i can call them and say you have an active case this is the student name it will be their responsibility along with the people that are coming in to help us to get to that classroom and find out who the close contacts are so we have a system of tracing where the illness comes from and who the close contacts are so

093that we can notify those those families we have another question here yes i just want to understand it because i know we're going to have to compare it so i just want to make sure i understand um it was just mentioned that you have to qualify bulletproof bullet point one to move to two and i'm a little confused by that so under the vaccinated quarantine for 10 days from a positive pcr or symptom onset so what if they're neither present i read that to say if they're neither right if you're quarantining from a positive pcr or symptom onset then you wouldn't be quarantining if neither of them were present no so a pot i'm sorry a positive case is quarantining if you're a positive case not a close contact we're talking about so positive no

094right i'm just reading where it says it vaccinated right so it says quarantine for 10 days from a positive pcr yep right so that means if i test and i'm positive i'm quarantining for 10 days what if i don't test and i do not have any symptoms you're going to still quarantine for 10 days no matter what we have to keep you out for 10 days as long as you're symptom-free that's the minimum somebody can quarantine before they can be released from quarantine okay so the unvaccinated backs needed essentially are not they're exactly the same they're not if you're a positive case there's not a whole lot of difference between vaccinated unvaccinated for the positive case the differences become with the close contacts which you'll see here okay any other questions okay on the binax

095right so the next uh so we're going to talk what is binax testing and then we're going to go to the next so binax testing we are going to be able this company comes into the schools they supply the tests for us they supply people to assist us in testing and they will actually help us with the follow-up this is not pool testing we are not randomly testing people and i want to be very very clear about that the superintendent and i had discussions about this neither of us feel that at this point in time it would be beneficial for anybody okay this is only we are only testing children who would be simple symptomatic or close contacts of that child okay so if a child in a classroom is symptomatic okay parents will yes

096could be a redundant question before we do the testing is there a wave reform or anything that parents will be signing yes just want to put that out there for the records the state created it in english and spanish for us to send out i just wanted to put that out there yes so we when we initiate this the testing every parent will get a letter requesting permission to test if the child is symptomatic or is a close contact parents do have the right to refuse if they're not comfortable okay um the reason that we're doing this is to keep kids in school so if we have a child that has symptoms all right we're going to do that binax test okay it's there's a couple of different kinds one is a nasal swab one

097is a sp a little saliva sample okay depending on which one they bring into us okay if the child is positive there's they're going to go right back to very similar to what we were talking about before they're going to quarantine until for 10 days till no fever for 24 hours without medication they're going to call their physician to do a pcr test that is still recommended because that is a more definitive test i can honestly say that people i know that have had rapid tests have all had positive pcrs after some physicians will say if you have a positive binax i'm not going to bother doing the pcr they need to wear a mask around others they need to monitor the child for severe symptoms rest and hydrate okay after that as long as

098the child is doing better they can come back to school if the child has symptoms but the binax is negative again we're going to mask them and send them home to monitor their symptoms we're going to ask for a pcr test okay if they have a negative test and they have no fever for 24 hours without medication they may return to school now we're going to look at the close contacts of that child okay on the left hand side you see our test and stay this is what the purpose of this is if the child has no symptoms we will do daily school testing for seven days they will wear a mask we will keep them hydrated okay if they start to develop symptoms or if when any one of those seven days the test

099becomes positive we go back to the protocol but what we've done is that we've made sure that that child is safe to be in school we've not interrupted that child's learning other than for the five minutes it takes to do that test first thing in the morning if we do not do the school in the in-school testing if a parent opts not to test the child and they're asymptomatic they now still need to stay home for the 10 days after exposure because we have no way of knowing if they are actually developing the virus they may test in five days or later if they have no symptoms and a negative test they can come back after day seven okay if the child if the contact is symptomatic we're going to go right back into staying

100home isolating resting and hydrating monitoring for symptoms recommending the pcr test after five days or more and then quarantine for 10 days until fever is gone for 24 hours or until they're they're feeling better questions yes thank you um so testing stay will increase the likelihood of exposing other children to someone who could be thus far not presenting with covid but is indeed carrying kovid will it will give us an idea um we won't the only other way to not expose everybody would be to quarantine the entire group of people if they were in a cohort but the entire every close all the close contacts so what this will avoid is quarantine an entire classroom or half of a classroom but yes that child could be symptomatic i mean could be have coveted and not

101be symptomatic but that's why they do the daily testing for that many days so that if they did come back positive they would be immediately sent home i am can parents choose not to participate i wouldn't want to risk my daughter potentially exposing someone else i wouldn't want her to be a part of it yes they can certainly opt out it doesn't it seems to me to be incongruent with the priorities we've established to minimize positive exposure and potential exposure and i know this is desi's solution to minimizing absentee rates and the fact that there's no longer options for virtual learning and remote access it just seems like a very calculated risk at the hands of educator and children's health yeah thank you for that member mcleod i think that the piece that i was

102going to share is just that that we are in a position now where we don't have that as an option for students to be able to have remote access teach and learn remotely so to actually send kids home multiple kids home for 10 days without education and many of them you know this is what i think desi is trying to balance and it is it is part of the larger conversation of what we're trying to do but this is what we're up against right now and we do believe this is going to be the best option for us to be the least disruptive for students and their learning and their well-being i know that um seven days is only three days less than ten but a quarantine would only be you know seven days if

103they're asymptomatic within you know they're tested at day five and then they return at day seven um i just think it's risky just for simplicity for the audience can you define symptomatic versus asymptomatic and and describe some symptoms please if you will absolutely um symptomatic is a child who starts to become ill they may have a fever they may have vomiting they may have diarrhea they may have a cough the hard thing about covet honestly is it has it mimics symptoms of almost every other childhood illness we are actually being very vigilant with any of those symptoms we would go we would rule this out almost first before we look at other things even children who have allergies can have an allergic cough or a stuffy nose or things like that but we can't be

104sure which it is and allergies are not contagious that would be some asymptomatic is the child that feels fine acts fine has no fever has no of those other symptoms is acting completely normally i think one other thing to point out is not on those charts but in the guidelines um desi and the massachusetts department health also gave us a clear outline of who is exempt from being a close contact so it's important that that is recognized as well here so while close contacts are identified as people who have been within six feet for more than 15 minutes that's a cdc i believe right it's a cdc definition of close contact if you look at the bottom of page four there are four categories of students and staff who are exempt from being close contacts

105so this is this is also why we are being you know very thoughtful about um staff and students knowing who they've been around and how close they've been around each other so asymptomatic fully vaccinated close contacts which i think we've said on both both parts that that carries over from what was in the spring if you're fully vaccinated uh you do not have to quarantine or test uh just monitor symptoms if you if you have any obviously you go back to a different box in the chart so classroom close contacts this is how we ended the school year this is what deci is maintaining uh for us this year and the nurses will be working through this for close contacts so an individual who is exposed to covet positive individual in the classroom if both

106were masked so long as the individuals were spaced at three feet apart is exempt from testing and quarantine so this is the example that ms gallant just gave of if i have kids who i know were kind of together during the day but i have the other half of my class three quarters of my class i know weren't that does not automatically make the whole class close contacts so it is going to be part of that investigation for all of our nurses again which they did exemplary work last year on trying to figure out who those close contacts were they will still do that they will still ask their questions but i think it's important to note that here the third one is the bus as long as all kids are masked and windows are

107open on the bus none of those kids are considered close contacts and in the spring the reasoning behind that is for the most part and i know it's not the whole part the length of time kids are together on a bus is less than the time that they would be considered close contacts and again i totally understand that's not the case because we do have kids on the bus for 30 minutes at a time for all students so uh that was the reasoning behind the bus uh the windows have to be open everybody has to be masked um and then uh that one also the close contacts who have had coved within 90 days that also carries over from the guidance from the massachusetts department health from last year that is not something new for

108us if somebody already has had covid we do not quarantine them within the 90 day period so i just think those are a few pieces also to say out loud again this is information everybody will get but to say that out loud here there are going to be exemptions from that close contact identification we will not be quarantining whole classrooms we will be following these guidelines to the best of our ability and i mean that to the best of our ability which is exactly what we did last year we will maintain that this year thanks so we know that remote access is not a possibility this year we know that it's not going to count towards an actual day of learning um have we given any thought however if they're quarantining to even like a

109one-way stream i mean we have the capability it wouldn't be a burden you know wouldn't tax the teacher additionally if it weren't interactive but to at least allow even if it's not counting towards a day of learning to those students who must quarantine will we allow some sort of remote access or have we given thought to just live streaming the class so that they don't fall excessively behind so we have undoubtedly given that thought and have had a lot of conversation about that um mr noble do you want to share what our thoughts are on that one sure he's still there so we um you know part of what you were asking about earlier members on impact was was what the experience is going to be like for the kids and whether it's going to

110uh look more like the way school used to look and feel a couple years ago or look more like what we were the constraints we were under last year and we very much want to do as much like before as possible and so part of that means we don't expect teachers are going to be in the front of the room delivering instruction to rows of kids the way they did last year because they were attending in many cases the kids in front of them and kids remote and so it makes that one-way stream much more challenging and it does place a burden on the educator because it's gonna force them to sort of be at the front of the room engaging in a way that we know pedagogically is not the ideal way to instruct

111our kids so we don't want to set that structure up out of fear that it's going to create less than ideal learning circumstances for the kids who are in front of the educator however we are sensitive to the need to provide some way for those students who might be at home for a variety of reasons including quarantine to be able to access and keep pace with their classmates and so all we have talked to the mea about and what we do intend to do is have google classroom continue to be set up each day so that kids know what content's being covered what learning experiences the kids in the classroom are having and they can kind of track along with their classmates and not lose that that full instructional experience and that i think is

112the best balance between keying in kids who are at home and then keeping learning moving in as engaging and then in dynamic a way as possible for the kids who are in front of the teacher so i i appreciate that um i guess a couple questions i i guess and ultimately i mean i don't know the full discussion that was had i would have preferred to utilize like i said the the you know means that we have we know we have those cameras even if you're hearing the teacher give instruction moving away from the camera i'm not suggesting that the teachers teach to the remote students i'm merely almost like a camera you know you can look at your your house camera right online and just tune in and sometimes you catch things sometimes you

113don't but there might be something that a student could catch just by live streaming my thoughts my only last question is about that how does if someone's quarantining for 10 days how is that going to affect our like extended absentee numbers in the future with the state it will i mean there's no other way around it the state is not recognizing if students are in quarantine there's no remote access they are absent do are they having discussions about that do we expect any nope okay at this point it was what was told to us two weeks ago and i have not heard anything different uh since that point that if students are physically not in school they will be absent so for me whatever reason yeah for me personally i mean the test and stay

114just for that reason makes more sense is it even up for debate or is this something we already have ordered and have and have available so the testing stay we had to move very quickly in order to we had to apply to become a site by last friday so we've already moved in this direction so the only three options the state was giving us that they would pay for uh was pool testing which i think we went through that process last year this i we don't believe i still don't believe that this is that is the answer here in methuen um or test and stay for the option of symptomatic individuals staff and students which we said yes to and close contacts that we said yes to so those are the two pieces that mary

115checked off that we would like to participate in the test and stay with the binax so again it's it's moving with the company now who's going to support us with that testing and giving us the kits and going through that process we're hoping that we will have everything in place by the 31st which is when all the staff return but i'm being told that they're moving a little slower it was really fast and then now they're moving a little slower that's great it's state funded then total 100 percent stay funded great not a dime is coming out of our pocket for it great thank you they're also supplying staff to assist us um and all the nurses in doing administering the tests following up with the tests transporting the specimens everything is we're getting help

116with everything and again it is totally it is up to the parents they will have the opportunity to opt in or opt out yeah i i just want to follow up on member pressure's first question there because i think it's still a really good one that we're sort of answering but we're sort of not and i'm not blaming you guys for that so just so you know so um i'm a little worried about the everything's in school now and there's no remote i get the no remote and i get you know that there may be people who want to take advantage of the remote right and it may impact students we all want our kids in school all right that's the number one drive here we all want our kids in school but to me

117um and i say again you know sitting on the city side and knowing the technology that you have here in the schools with mr lucia my hat's off to you guys for what you've done there it would seem to me that we should be able to come up with some kind of in the middle solution that says if students are missing time that we're able to i'm going to use a i'm going to date myself record a class or take a class or a lecture or whatever canned lectures if you will that allow students to kind of take them at home while they're quarantined or whatever and learn at their own pace because after all isn't what we're all after getting the kid educated right we want each child to be educated i don't think

118anybody signs up for the covert deal intentionally to get it so that they can skip school nobody i've met has done that right but at the same time you know while i support the drive to put kids in school and you know the superintendent i'll say it publicly i was all for putting kids in school full-time last year right but um we we we need to you know we've got so many hard and fast we're going to do this we're not going to do that to me some of this burden could be lifted a little bit if we just use the technology that's at our disposal and makes some of the capability available to the students and and then if guys if we see that you know students or parents are abusing it then we

119address that right that's a problem that no doubt will happen but i think the other issue is i'd rather have you know a handful of students who are really good learners i don't want them to miss that gap that they miss when they're not in the class right and if there's no i've said this a million times publicly you guys have heard me i participated in five or six remote classrooms last year i don't know how people do it all right i had a hard time paying attention to the whole thing myself and i was in the mayor's office alone talking to 35 students and a teacher all right but i i think you know it's incumbent upon us to kind of put some thought into what could we do you know we have a

120tv channel that's at the disposal of the city basically we you know we have all these capabilities and it'd be good to come up with some solution that could kind of help people that the students that miss unintentionally i guess the key word i'll use right remember thank you um i guess my comment and my concern reflects what um uh the mayor and member uh zani pashov said is if a child is sent home for the reasons that we've previously discussed that's not their fault so then it's impacting their education they're now falling behind no child should be left behind we should absolutely i agree i just wanted to put that out there that i agree with the mayor there must be something that we can do and i know we have the ability and

121the capability of doing it we need to make something happen if i i'm a mom i have three children in the school system if one of them or all three of them are home because they've tested positive or for whatever reason need to be home during that time they're sitting there and now they've missed all of this work and it's not the same yes you can see it in the google classroom i appreciate that it's not the same as what members anipesh is saying even just hearing the instruction it makes a whole lot of a difference and it'll be less of a chance for them to fall that far behind so thank you all right thank you um well i was going to say like i i know for the summer program that i taught

122in this summer um i utilized google classroom i put all my work up there and it helped students when they were out and i also set it up in the way that they had like a summary of what i taught so they got my notes i don't know how teachers but there are programs out there that a teacher could actually sit on camera because i i learned that in my master's program that the teacher can actually sit teach the slideshow in a way as they're talking about the slideshow and then they could post it up on google classroom i can i i was trying to find it for the summer program but i was unable to find it uh i try to reach out to one of my professors um and he he was he

123was busy but there are programs out there that the teacher can actually sit teach the lesson record it actually show the slideshow as he's teaching it and then post it up on google classroom so as as the mayor and member santos and member pesh was saying there are actually programs out there but i don't know how that would work with bargaining with yeah that we would have to work with the teachers union and see if that would have to be part of their bargaining agreement i would assume correct okay so that's you all done yeah so i i don't want to renege my original comment um but i just want to make it clear and while i think recorded lessons would be fantastic i think that's really unfair to our teachers um to have to

124test to have to teach twice to the same topic um so my suggestion was and it still is do we have the capability that if any teacher has you know at least one student in quarantine just to access live stream you know and i understand you know they don't have to teach to that remote student it doesn't have to be interactive and it's not going to be interactive just like people at home are watching this meeting right now right they might be screaming at the tv but there's nothing it's one-sided so to me if someone's in conjunction with google classroom you know even if they're listening to that and going along with what's in google classroom i think it's better than nothing and again that's something to me that's an easy solution at least now

125that's not going to put another burden on our teachers so i think that would be something that's easy to do i'm not sure why it wouldn't there might be a reason why you guys decided against it i just i'm not sure what that is is it's if it's as easy as just turning on a videotape for a student to at least access some or all of you know the the lecture of the day so i do think you know to remember to zoglio's point that's that's a that's grounds for impact bargaining that's a change in working condition so we'd have to take that back to the mea and i think we already know uh dr kwang and i what the reaction is going to be to a proposal like that we heard it all spring

126last spring the the big burden that teachers felt when they had to turn their cameras on to attend to students who were quarantining or otherwise unable to attend school we also have to keep in mind that this this virus is going to eventually become endemic and it's going to be something we're living with by like many others and it's not new that kids are absent from school due to illness or symptoms so we have to whatever structure we build we have to be able to defend taking them away when the time comes and this is one where we feel like the best solution to maintain research-based teaching practices in the classroom is to rely on google classroom to remember to zoglio's point which has infinite capability for teachers to keep kids engaged while learning at

127home many of our teachers i don't think there's a teacher in the city who you know doesn't want to give some access to learning to kids who are not physically able to be in the classroom for two reasons one they care about their kids and two it's double the work to catch them up when they do return so i think there's every incentive built in intrinsically to have teachers make sure there's a way for kids to access what they're missing and our teachers use a variety of technological tools to do that we have teachers right now who are recording themselves every day to post their videos of their direct instruction on their google classroom we're going to see a lot of that we've got teachers who who build incredible hyper docs which are docs with

128all digital links to video tutorials and and youtube clips of natural phenomena to keep kids engaged that can be accessed just as easily at home so i think you know we have to we have to keep an open mind about what google classroom's potential is to be that solution and know that we're going to be able to support teachers to make it as robust and meaningful for those kids both in the in front of them accessing it in the classroom through their chromebooks you know or at home due to a variety of reasons why they they aren't able to be there physically so i think it's that balance that we've tried to you know consider a range of options and have landed where we've landed yeah i just like i said i'd like to see

129live streaming so if it's possible i don't i don't know if it's completely off the table i mean we talk about you know cut and dry going back to normalcy but we're not back at normalcy right we're just not and i understand that they can be a student can be out for a whole bunch of reasons but they're not necessarily out for a whole bunch of reasons i'm talking about people who are sent home for 10 days and may or may not ever even be positive for covid and that's just super unfortunate for a student you know if they want to participate or at least see i shouldn't say participate but at least see what's going on in in the classroom if that's how a student learn learns because from my perspective they don't have

130to do any of it right they're out so we can't it's not counting towards a day of learning they don't have to do any of it so how does this child best learn we don't know right so if they had the options and like you said mr noble i think it would save the teacher time as well when they come back if they at least retain some of something that they wouldn't have had they been not exposed to any of the learning that was missed i agree a thousand percent it's just a live stream but that's that's i feel very strongly about that as well so if there aren't yeah so if there aren't any other questions i think the most important part was for us to go through this and have ms gallant present

131to be able to answer your questions talk about we're still working through the test and stay but if there aren't any other questions about this at this time then we can move on to the next agenda item but since mary's still here if there's any other questions going once all right thank you thank you mary sure so um we prom so we're switching gears uh totally here uh this evening but um we did promise you or i did promise you that our leadership academy we would be looking at strategic objective number three and framing some key action items and measurable outcomes there during that time to be able to look at a complete three-year strategic plan and so we were able to do that we had an incredibly successful two-day leadership academy last week with

132all of our administrators here at the high school we spent some incredible time focused on um objective three um so i i'm gonna let mr noble uh sort of take over here i don't think there was much change to one and two from what you have seen previously it's really about the three which is that provides students from historically disadvantaged groups with equitable access to excellent education so we dissected that hours of dissecting that with our team so i will let mr noble sort of go through that process and some of the highlights from each of the strategic priorities under that larger objective at this time if you guys have questions again this is still this is a draft form this is the first time we're presenting it to you for you know questions and

133we're still synthesizing some things to fine-tune it but um we're getting uh much closer to having a three-year strategic plan that we are sort of living breathing and behaving by at this point to to look to improving student outcomes in methuen public schools so mr nobel thank you um we're excited to get your feedback this is hot off the presses as dr kwong mentioned we just met with the group last week and um tried to synthesize everything we heard from our administrative team our leadership team into what we're presenting tonight so this begins on page 16. this is all under the third objective as dr quang just mentioned and the first strategic priority is the teachers will provide all students with engaging grade appropriate instruction and so what the team did last week is kind

134of fleshed that out a little bit what do we mean when we say that and what are some of the commitments that we're prepared to make to advance that priority um so the first is is being really clear about our district-wide expectations for instruction and for the routines of the classroom and so you can see here in that first bullet and the sub-bullets underneath what are the what are some of the components of that we want to see teachers across the district embracing universal design for learning principles for example where they're really considering how they're giving students multiple ways of both expressing what they know and taking in new information we also in the second bullet we're also committing to providing ongoing professional development that's aligned specifically to the instructional materials that the districts put

135in place districts over over the last five years or so has done an amazing job uh securing high quality instructional materials and so now it's really about doubling down on on those investments and making sure teachers have the pd that they need to use them skillfully and i'm using that word deliberately we talked about skillful implementation versus implementation with fidelity i think when we talk about fidelity we often project this very rigid understanding of how to use a particular curriculum that can take creativity and joy right out of the classroom when we say skillfully it's about the teacher using their professional judgment to know how best to leverage those materials with the specific students they have in front of them and then we want to we want to continue to introduce new programs so so

136we've talked at this group about project lead the way which is a really exciting pilot we're going to be launching all of our lower school students are going to have project lead the way as a special this year in their technology special and then we've got one science teacher one teacher per building that's going to be piloting modules project lead the way modules during science time in grades k through five and so those those materials are starting to hit the buildings and we did an incredible couple days of training with all the teachers who are going to be involved in that pilot right here in this room um it was just great to see people with you know talk about sharing materials this stuff is really hands-on really engaging so we're excited to bring that

137to our kids and we think that's going to be a good model for you know what teaching and learning can look like across disciplines for methuen our second strategic priority is focused on on the culture that the adults in the system bring and are we all embracing the notion that we have to have high expectations for all learners with an explicit explicit emphasis on our students of color and so what does that look like first it looks like making sure we all have a shared understanding of systemic racism and implicit bias and the impact that that has on students and families then we have to interrogate our own systems and so we have tons of data in this district are we looking at that data through multiple different lenses and seeing how different types of

138students are impacted as they progress through our system and are there specific protocols and practices that we can that are perpetuating inequity that we can improve and then finally under that priority that final bullet we're committed to cultivating a community that values high expectations by educating stakeholders on the use of inclusive language the importance of rigorous academic curricula and the establishment of a welcoming and culturally informed environment across all areas so last last week we talked with leadership about how many for many families it's it's actually not a teacher who's going to be their first point of contact when they come into one of our buildings and what are we doing to help our custodians and our secretaries and all of our support staff who are meeting and greeting families in a normal year all

139the time what are we doing to help them develop their skills in those regards to make our schools as welcoming as possible and then the final strategic priority is that the district will adopt practices and procedures that promote educational equity so we really want to commit to building a district vision of educational equity informed by the community by our stakeholders that aligns to the things we've been working on here for many years like udl social emotional learning and pbis we want to look at the specifically we want to look at the service delivery plans for students such as english learners students with disabilities and students that are part of our school mental health program to ensure that they have adequate services and and that those services don't come at the expense of their ability to

140access grade level content and then finally we want to look at our classroom assignment process in grades k-8 and our course assignment process process at the high school to identify and seize opportunities to promote greater equity to improve equity for various types of courses so those were that's a that's a good summary of the conversations we had last week and i hope you'll agree it's it's a good you know sort of road map for where we need to go to to address our overall objective which is to again provide students from historically disadvantaged groups with equitable access to an excellent so education comments questions take it all in process either you wore us at all with a covert or you just did a great job there assistant superintendent right all right moving on uh uh

141i need a motion to approve the school committee fy 22 meeting calendar please second my member santos seconded by member halbar i believe i wasn't looking to my right was it you was it remember nicholson was a member pressure i work on my hearing sorry remember the second um all those in favor or any discussion excuse me remember design um for september 27th are we going to get in touch with grand lawrence tech yes okay i will also reach out to franz cirillo he's been asking about it i don't know if you've reached out to him already i have not no but that would be the meeting that we would i have it already for dodie to make sure that we have it on okay perfect thank you thank you mr mayor you're welcome any

142other questions or discussion hearing is seeing none all those favors signify approval of the school committee fy 22 calendar meeting calendar excuse me by saying i i oppose say nay the eyes carry unanimously thank you all right that takes us to may i have a motion to prove the superintendent's evaluation santos i got to write that time the hearing's good um would the subcommittee like to before we do the vote would the subcommittee like to go over the evaluation at this time yes yes you would thank you ladies if you would take us through thank you maya i would also like to thank uh school committee member uh karen halbauer for working on the subcommittee uh for her time her attention to detail excuse me i'd also like to thank the rest of the school

143committee for submitting their evaluations to us for review for those people who are not familiar with the evaluation tool that we use it is actually a 10-page document and so there are seven members of the school committee you multiply 7 times 10 we had 70 pages to review and i can tell you that we reviewed them multiple times to make sure that we did not miss anything along the way i'd also like to comment that [Music] the evaluation process is important it's important not only to our superintendent but to the methuen community it it's used to validate the work that is done in the district not only here in methuen but it's an evaluation tool that every school committee in massachusetts uses to evaluate the work of the superintendent it's certainly not [Music] a gotcha

144moment it is a thoroughly detailed prescriptive tool some of us around this table have participated in the evaluation process we have been evaluated on various levels whether we were teachers whether we were administrators and so some of us bring some experience and hopefully that experience has been helpful to our superintendent over the past couple of years the evaluation process began about a year ago when the superintendent brought to the school committee her professional practice goal her student learning goal and her district improvement goal she totally vetted them with us and we approve them and what she said was here is what we're going to do here is what i am going to do and at the end of the year we as a school committee looked at the evidence that she supplied to us to

145see if in fact she met her goals the school committee um received this booklet at the end of june and it is a compilation of all of the work she has presented to us that she has done in support of our goals additionally without a lot of time spent on this my colleague school committee member hal bauer and i sat down and brainstormed three pages of additional evidence that we were able to recall from our school committee meetings from our conversations with the superintendent because by and large the evaluation is all about the balance the the evidence that we are looking for to ensure that the work was done this document was sent to every member of the school committee and not only are there three pages of additional evidence but we aligned it for

146our colleagues to make their work a little bit easier we aligned it to either her student learning goal her professional practice goal her district improvement goal or the fourth standards and i think that um while not necessary we felt it would be helpful to all of you as you look through the booklet she gave us and then i'm sure that as you read through this three-page document you remember those conversations and those presentations that we had at various school committee meetings so up on the screen is the first page of the superintendent's evaluation and we'll start with her professional practice goal and again i have to reiterate that the evidence that we looked at and we did have some questions about the evidence we shared that with the school committee we sat down with the

147superintendent because some things went all clear to us and we had a great meeting superintendent answered our questions as we were looking at all of these documents the results of those conversations were emailed to every school committee member here so that you were current on the evidence questions were asked and answered so it was a a really detailed process what other areas of evidence did we talk about we talked about the superintendent being a guest on the program the mayor has called the mayor's minutes and i believe if i am remembering correctly she was a weekly visitor for about a 10-month period perhaps starting in september or october and ending in march i personally viewed some of those meetings the superintendent and the mayor shared with the public a lot of information about what was

148going on in our schools certainly covid was a driving force but there were also other opportunities for the superintendent and our guest speakers to talk about curriculum instruction assessment what we're doing to lower the rates of depression for our students anxiety for our students post traumatic stress so that was a vehicle that i i felt was very helpful in parents commented when i would see them in the methuen area about how helpful that communication was the evaluation itself is a three-step process we we had to as a committee assess her progress towards her goals we had to assess her performance on the standards and then we took an overall rating of the goals and the standards to generate an overall rating on her evaluation so her professional practice goal is not listed up there but

149i can tell you that her professional practice goal was participating in year two of the new superintendent's induction program and the three areas that she focused on uh were strategy development data analysis and instructional leadership what evidence did we find as we looked at her blue book as we looked at the three-page summary that the subcommittee generated as we thought about our school committee meetings there were documents that included a number of meetings that she attended through this program whether they were remote or in person she was also assigned a coach she met with him frequently some of you may remember he attended a number of our school committee meetings there were agendas for what was discussed at these induction meetings there were other documents with homework assignments on them in some strategic plans that

150she worked individually on or with a core group of people at this program so the school committee as a whole felt that the superintendent met her professional practice goal she participated in the program what we just heard tonight the update on the strategic plan that was part of the strategy that she was focusing on this past school year and part of the previous school year if we look at her student learning goal it was focused by and large on literacy she wanted to improve the reading ability for students particularly with an emphasis on students with disabilities and our english learners in addition there was also a focus on the analysis of intervention tools and we heard a little bit about that about five minutes ago on priority three for the strategic plan what evidence did

151we find that that goal was was met well first of all there were assessments uh k to eight there were literacy planning agendas that we were able to review there were opportunities for staff to participate in what we call problems of practice teachers had access to diagnostic and adaptive lessons we saw schedules of professional development for literacy we know from documents that she submitted that there were reviews at grade level data meetings we also know that there was unlimited reading plus licenses for each grammar school and we know that two grants were written and funded so the school committee felt that she met her student learning goal she also had two district improvement goals she didn't need to have two district improvement goals she could have had one but she had two one was a

152multi-year strategic plan we heard about that tonight she had three objectives literacy lowering the rate of student anxiety depression and post-traumatic stress and providing historically disadvantaged students equitable access to an excellent education the school committee felt that she made significant progress on that goal we had for literacy and for student anxiety a rationale we had metrics we had key actions we had measures of success the third objective was not yet unpacked for us at the time we evaluated her and the reason for that is she needed to meet with her leadership team because she is not a top-down administrator who would say here's what we're doing here's what you're doing here's what you're doing she wanted the input and she did get their input as assistant superintendent noble said about 10 minutes ago and that

153was done last week at their leadership retreat so we now have after tonight's presentation the unpacking of the third um objective but it was not ready for us no reflection on on the superintendent it's just something she needed to work with her team on so again the committee felt that she made significant progress her second district improvement goal was all about equity and anti-racism in our schools what evidence did we see of that well we saw a calendar of professional development we saw a mention of the use of the gleam grant to support that work we know that methuen participated in an equity review we also know that the superintendent's a member of the merrimack valley superintendents association and there were discussions at those meetings about anti-racism so not only was it a district discussion

154a leadership team discussion she brought it to her colleagues in the merrimack valley however the superintendent did acknowledge and we recognize and agree with her that the demands of the pandemic and the changing learning models in the late winter in the early spring became problematic it was clear to us that she certainly provided leadership in the areas of equity and anti-racism and while we did not rate that or assess that separately from the first district improvement goal we felt that well we know that the work will continue into the next school year but certainly we we acknowledge that she did provide the leadership and so we're saying she made significant progress with that the evaluation if we go to the next slide the evaluation process continues with what's known as the four standards of performance

155that would be instructional leadership management and operations family and community engagement and professional culture these areas were identified by the department of elementary and secondary education and they are very prescriptive for example under instructional leadership there are six indicators curriculum instruction assessment evaluation data informed decision making and student learning and we as a school committee needed to review all of those indicators and the definition of what that should look like under management and operations there are five indicators under family and community engagement four indicators and under professional culture six indicators a total of 21 indicators that describe those four standards the possible ratings for her performance would be unsatisfactory needs improvement proficient and exemplary so as a school committee individually and collectively we needed to assess her performance what evidence did we have well certainly

156every school committee meeting had had evidence of the work that she does that encompasses those four standards tonight was was another example there are discussions as you know at school committee meetings there are presentations there are updates from the superintendent there are documents there are emails she sends us between meetings [Music] so there was a lot of evidence that we could use as we tried to unpack these 21 indicators and as you can see from the slide up there this we found the superintendent to be proficient in all four standards now that doesn't mean the seven people around this table went through and checked proficient proficient proficient but when we compiled all of the evaluations from the school committee that's where we ended up um and there there were variations um on where she was

157on some of these indicators but all in all she was proficient and it's important for the public to know what the definition of proficient is it is fully satisfactory it is rigorous and it is the expected level of assessment for every superintendent and again uh it's not a definition we make up it's a definition given to us by the department of elementary in secondary education the next slide is the top of it speaks to the the third step in the processes which is what is her overall summative performance and that would be based on the ratings for her goals and her performance on the standards and i can tell you that unanimously this school committee assessed her work as proficient i i will also say that last year when i checked back on my notes

158we also unanimously rated her proficient overall the last piece would be comments and or highlights of the work that the superintendent has done and i would be remiss if i did not emphasize the connection that we all saw between and among her student learning goal her professional practice goal her district improvement goals the four standards for effective administrative leadership without question this district is focused on improvement one example that i can share is the focus on literacy no matter where we looked in the evidence we saw a strong support for literacy in the district professional development that's scheduled budget line items that support the necessary supplies and materials that the teachers and the students need for literacy the analysis of of data and the importance of analyzing the data the interventions um that we have

159in the district very important would be the classroom observations that took place this past school year whether it was the superintendent and the principal the superintendent and the assistant superintendent and the principal but visits to classrooms in which they were observing literacy instruction and probably most important would be as our educators are returning to the classroom and they will be doing an edu completing an educator plan also the number of our teachers the number of grade level teams and the number of administrators who will be supporting the literacy initiative or the initiative in the district to focus on and decrease the prevalence of student anxiety and stress and post post-traumatic stress i also think it's important that in several instances we saw references to a shared vision it was clear as to us as we

160looked at the literacy initiative that professional development is supporting it that professional development days in this district focused on generating from the ground level up a a focus a shared vision on the importance of literacy and that is uh k through 12. it's not just elementary so with that being said um and i only summarized you know the this this booklet is is full of evidence of the of the work that not only the superintendent has done but the assistant superintendent and the staff in the district to support by and large the strategy for improvement in this district and tonight we have a complete strategic plan i know it's a draft and there may be some tweaking but i think it's important that we have this roadmap for where the district is going and that

161comes down from the top working with the team her leadership team working with the staff in the district working with us so with with that being said it was an arduous process um we had a lot of conversations we had a lot of emails a lot of questions um that school committee member hall bauer and i had looking at the evaluations from from our colleagues um but by and large um we have a superintendent here who is overall proficient rigorous standards with that being said i know that my um fellow subcommittee member would like to speak for a few minutes about the focus indicators i said that they were 21 i didn't spend a lot of time with them but member hall balwa did so i like her input at this point thank you member

162nicholson good evening everyone i'm not going to go through this whole evaluation again she's done a wonderful job you can see how detailed uh this process was not just for us but for the other school committee members who were charged with filling out that 10-page evaluation as you can see just to review very quickly though the summative evaluation that was just presented to you is is kind of um putting together the superintendent's um you know her personal goals her professional goals her student learning goals her district goals and it's based upon the completion of those goals and or the progress made toward those goals at the same time they have to be aligned with the four standards that member nicholson mentioned and again those are standards that are and indicators for effective administrative leadership they

163including instructional leadership management and operations family and community engagement and professional culture and as member nicholson said each of those standards had um four between four and six what's called focus indicators or i like to call them descriptors that um were under each of those those headings and they were independently rated by each member of the community and then member nicholson and i took all of that we tallied it and we distilled it into one overall rating which as she said came out to be proficient now i just want to say something about the word proficient member nicholson already gave you the deci definition of that but to the viewing public sometimes the word proficient might have the perception of being satisfactory this is more than satisfactory proficient again is the rigorous expected level of

164performance for superintendents now what what i'd like to speak about right now i'd like to focus on those four standards because i know members of the committee are sitting in saying as member nicholson said there were how many focus indicators were there 21 there were 21. there were 21 focus indicators that we we had to consider and then distill into that one overall rating of proficient but i know that individual members checked off different categories and in fact we would be remiss if we did not publicly note that while the overall average was proficient there were a significant number of checks in the exemplary column under those focus indicators and especially in the areas of and you may recognize this other members of the committee if you checked off the the areas of curriculum instruction

165assessment data informed decision-making environment human resources management and development law ethics and policies fiscal systems engagement shared responsibility community family concerns and commitment to high standards now the rating of exemplary and and i think i counted up 33 checks for exemplary between all the members is that correct member nicholson yes the 33 okay although it was all distilled into the proficient as an overall rating but the rating of exemplary the definition of deci for exemplary indicates that practice significantly exceeds proficient and could serve as a model regionally or statewide now we've already seen evidence of the work in the two page highlights of some of the evidence that was presented to you so i don't have to be redundant no need to be redundant there but i would just like to add a couple of

166things that are not on those lists and i i consider that that this is pretty exemplary too that um the many protocols that were put in place last year by the superintendent and her team it was possible to bring back 75 percent of our students in person full-time from april until june there's also some recognition there that school closures and the disengagement of some students led to academic inequities and as we begin this academic year there are plans in place to assess and to address those inequities so i think um i thank you all for your input and i i think that we have a lot to be proud of in this district with our leadership team so i yield back to member nicholson now who will invite other members of the committee to comment

167if they'd like thank you last year and again this year i think it's important to afford all school committee members an opportunity to share if if they want to any comments any observations about the evaluation process about the work the superintendent has done and then i think we'll follow that up with um an opportunity for the superintendent to ask us any questions to comment on her evaluation or make any observations so any any members of the school committee want to say something i just wanted to thank both member uh habaur and nicholson for taking this on i originally had volunteered and due to personal reasons um they were very gracious and understanding and and took it on together so thank you for for understanding and and and taking on this work cause it's it was

168a lot so i appreciate it you're welcome thank you um so i would just like to um note that you know in the short time you've been assist or this the superintendent um the changes that have dumped that have happened in the district are remarkable um i've been paying attention to our schools as long as my child has been a part of them and it's been rocky and it's wonderfully exciting to see what's happening in the district now for our students and for our educators and for our families and to have made such a drastic mind shift in such a short period of time during which a global pandemic was manhandling any possible priority that you may have wanted to um to bring into place is quite exemplary and i'm really thankful for your leadership

169not just for my kiddo which obviously matters a lot to me but for all of the kids and it's really it's a gift to be able to be thankful for for the opportunities that methuen public schools affords to our students thanks mayor um first of all i too want to thank the evaluation subcommittee i participated in with uh last year and it definitely is a long process so i really do thank you guys for for delving into that and giving the public such a a great analysis of you know how we came about what we did i of course want to thank dr quang we know what a challenging year this has been and to be able to accomplish what you did and to continue to try to move forward in these circumstances is just

170so commendable you and your team i think the district should just be really proud at getting through what we did this year and understanding too obviously that we have new challenges now to meet next year so really a heartfelt thank you to you and your team and we really do appreciate everything that was accomplished this year that's what i said yeah even for my humor so so um i will let go thank you ladies outstanding job um and we appreciate that and i think uh people tend to forget and i i like what you said it was an historic year right an historic year and you know i can't help but sit here and wonder tonight you know some of it uh some nights it feels to me almost like deja vu when it must

171to you as well right and i think we we we went through an extremely difficult year and i think we did about as well as we absolutely could have all right and so i've said publicly in the mayor's minutes a million times and i say it again kudos to you and to the staff and the administration for um the willingness to constantly evolve all right that's a very difficult thing in this day and age and most people seem to be unwilling to do it and um we've got a lot of people to do now having said that you know i want to do want to give you one piece of feedback i i think we as a group and one of the feedbacks i gave was i think we as a community the school committee

172we need to find a way to get you know tonight was great to have people here and do public participation um i wish it wasn't always just the overly emotion i shouldn't say it that way you know what i mean emotional topics bring people out right we should get regular more regular parental involvement in the school committee meetings right and we need to figure a way to do that right so that we can make sure we hear that voice um going forward but we've got some great strategic goals for this next year and i'm just to let you all that you know i'm like leaves are focused on those goals right so i'm going to be pumping the questions you know at the quarter mark saying okay where are we against the goals where we

173get the goals right i don't want to be a pain in that you know what but um an outstanding year i appreciate everything you did for our community this is all gleal thank you mr mayor and um thank you um madam member hal bauer and nicholson for this great evaluation and uh dr quang i want to just praise you for all the work you've done um especially in it's almost two years now wow um um but i i i just want to commend you on your work um and i know it's been a difficult challenge for all of us this past year and a half and and as the mayor echoed it's great to have parents here that are very concerned about their children and i understand that and we all understand that i just

174wanted you all to know that as well um but yes we have goals in place for this year and hopefully with parents teachers at home um and parents at home and students at home may be watching this we can't do our jobs without all of you so please be involved please continue to be involved and and yes voice your concerns and we will continue to try and represent you in the best way possible thank you so thank you for all of that i would just say that a leader is only as good as her team and i've got a pretty darn good one around me with administrators and the teachers dedication to this community and the kids second to none so i couldn't do what we do without that team so it is critical and

175we will continue to carry on and focus on our goals to continuously improve student experiences and success and outcomes and achievement and social emotional learning so thank you for that but we have a lot of work ahead of us and i am ready to go to do it and i i don't think this year is going to be um an easy ride either so i'm i i hope it's a little different than last year but different is okay too but we'll make it through and we'll continue to be as transparent as we can and communicative as we can and again focus on the kids full return i know we have a lot of kids who are excited to come back to school anxious nervous all of those things all wrapped in one so we'll do

176everything we can and again the team that i have working with me is second to none very proud of all the administrators and staff dedicated to this community so so thank you and i look forward to another great year thank you mayor one last thing i probably did a disservice to the comments and the highlights but i i'm hoping that the public is is viewing these right now the district has much to be proud of the fact that we did not have to cut programs and we listed the phenomenal programs that we've had emerge over the past couple of years other districts sadly had to cut programs had to cut staff we're in a different place i'd like to thank the mayor for support of the school department budget the district is is moving forward

177and we can't do that without appropriate funding and so far all of these comments and highlights up here i hope the public will take some time and look at these i'm also hoping we'll get these posted on the website um may know some of these things they may not know all of these things and this is a great starting point for what's going well in methuen and what we want to continue to have going well um from all grade levels across all curriculum areas and that's it thank you thank you he undersold that by the way she's the number one ranked guest in the mayor's minutes she scores higher than the mayor so so we take her back anytime so all right anything else on that all right we have a motion on the floor

178and a second to approve the superintendent's evaluation all those of favor signify by saying aye aye opposed nay you guys have it carries unanimously congrats thank you very much all right is there any other business from the committee remember um matt um dr quang are there gonna be freshman um orientations to tour the building or to for i i had a parent ask me that so any parent that's uh asking kevin o'laughlin the associate principal for freshmen is setting up those we did not think it was prudent to have sort of an all an evening with that many students and parents so we're handling it that way any student who reaches out uh is able to come with their parents to view the school thank you you're welcome amber santos um i had a couple

179of emails requesting uh teacher assignments do we have an idea of when that will be out august 25th is wednesday yep all the the parent portal and student portal will open on the 25th so students and parents will be able to see their full class schedules great thank you you're welcome anything else nicholson thank you mayor um i really appreciated um these three pages rather than read page after page in the in the agenda i thought this was very very helpful is is this something that you think we'll move forward with and share with everybody yes so my hope is that uh miss kalantan and i can tweak that a little bit uh there's a few pieces of clarity i think i want to add before we use that to send out to parents but

180i do want to do that tomorrow and add that to this so i think a visual for staff and parents students everybody is just going to be that much more helpful thank you you're welcome when is our next school committee meeting after this september 13th okay for mom formal yeah yes we'll announce tomorrow for having a special meeting on thursday so i want to take this opportunity to say we do have the 20th anniversary of september 11th coming up i can't believe it and we are going to have an event uh remembering the four method when individuals who perished um so invitations are out for that and we invite the public to join us on saturday november 11th at noon time at freedom bridge and i can't believe it's 20 years but there it is

181anything else one more thing um there has been some discussion about whether we need another school committee meeting this this week correct and i think i heard thursday thursday i have my five-year-old and my seven-year-old grandson for the third night in a row and the fourth day in a row so i could i could participate remotely but as i understand it you'd have to vote to allow me to participate remotely so if we have a meeting i'll find a sitter for for the boys um so i can participate in the meeting if if you would uh vote uh for me to participate remotely i'm gonna be up in maine so go ahead i was going to say are we allowed to do it remotely because i'm actually going to be in new hampshire i'm actually

182supposed to be i believe you are yeah so i'll double check that with mike at the end here but i'm almost 100 positive you can yes so let me just say for the record based on my earlier statement that i'm a big fan of technology as you know so i would work with that to get your inputs into the meeting member nicholson remember design right that's that's my personal feelings unless unlawful or otherwise right i'll try to convince my fellow councils to do the same right dr kwang if the meeting is thursday is it going to be 5 30 or 6 30. i do have a conflict and i don't remotely or not i don't think i'll be able to make a 5 30 meeting yep so um if we if we need it which

183i do think that we're going to need it and have one agenda item so be a special meeting just to look at the face mask policy so that we have something in place to open um i i heard from a couple people that 5 30 is hard so we would certainly do 6 30 is fine with us we would want it in person i would want the opportunity if there was anybody who wanted to come to that meeting to come but it's to the will of the committee we absolutely can do it remotely for whoever all of us some of us it's it's the will of the committee to decide that not me actually mr mayor i was going to say that the public might want to come to this meeting yeah so if i

184have to i'll drive down i'll drive down from new hampshire they won't there's no vote that will be taken though correct or will they be about that there most likely will be a vote yeah it'll be sort of a revised final read of the school school starts on monday so i'm going to need something in place to start monday that we're all in agreement with so my goal is to revise whatever we have based on whatever decisions me i'm going to be watching this closely tomorrow to be able to get that information out to all of you and to make that decision on thursday night to take our current policy and again the language in it some of it's already outdated those board meetings they're live streamed are they yeah so i thought they are

185so we'll know as soon as it happens uh it's just we'll be waiting for the language right so the actual mandated language is what we'll be waiting for tomorrow uh depending on how the meeting goes uh that's what we'll have to work around it'll be interesting to see when that language is made available because the my understanding of the the vote that the board will take tomorrow is to give the commissioner the authority to then exercise his or her judgment to produce language so it'll be interesting to me to know whether that language is part of the packet that the board's going to see or whether the motion is purely going to be we grant the commissioner authority and then we wait as we often do for that guidance to come out i don't know

186whether we'll have that final answer tomorrow so again i will communicate that with all of you if it's going to happen this week i think thursday at 6 30 would be the time uh potentially accordingly we might have to push that back to the 30th 31st it might even be bef you know school is going to open and we don't have that language i don't i hope that's not the case but some schools are opening now yeah and since we brought it up i'm going to walk into the breach now so it just reminded the general public if you choose to come and make public comments you're limited to five minutes you must introduce yourself you must sign in beforehand right the the tenor of the meeting is and i hate to do i'm not

187trying to do this we don't do point and count a point with the audience there's a section of the meeting that allows for public participation where the public come in like they did tonight several members did and tell us how they feel and that's important to all of us i know that's important but one of the things that i want to caution the general public is no matter how strong you feel pro mask anti-mask or someplace else right just remember that no one i'm standing here with these six backs seven backs in behind me nobody is making this decision with malice of forethought thinking we're going to do this to hurt our children to hurt our staff to some of these are the most difficult decisions that we've ever had to make we went through

188this last year with the school opening and i look at you my fellow committee members and say you did one hell of a job you had to be congratulated right so when we do public participation it's important please i know it's passion it's great to see the passion but don't think for one minute that the people up here aren't real feeling individuals who care deeply about the people in the schools about the staff who work in schools because we do and we tend to think about these things long after the decisions are made right so please by all means if there's a meeting thursday night come down at 6 30 sign up for public participation and tell us how you feel but understand that this is not done again with malice forth nothing it's done

189mal's fourth thought whether we go one way or another all right and i say that simply because it's a very difficult decision that's really what it comes down to all right enough soapbox from me anything else all right um i need a motion and a second to enter an executive session so moved second by member who is the second remember pesh thank you helps me with that a little sorry all right um i have a motion in a second uh to move into executive session pursuant to mass general law chapter 30a section 21a3 to discuss the strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation if an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining or litigating position of the public body in the chair so declares all units we will not reconvene into

190open session at the conclusion of executive session madam secretary roll call vote please ryan dizoglio yes karen halbauer yes jessica mccloud yes susan nicholson yes luanne santos yes jaina zany patch yes maya neal perry yes the meeting is adjourned at 8 20 p.m