School Committee

001i will call the meeting to order i will ask to stand if you can join me and to the pledge of allegiance [Music] i pledge allegiance 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 thank you everyone and welcome first item on the agenda is public comment does anyone have anything they wish to comment on that is not on tonight's agenda and as we have in the past uh people can go on the youtube channel right now they come hand up oh oh public comment yeah go right ahead sure you just go right to the microphone please that i thought you could help me with regarding the test and stay policy that i assume is adopted

002from it's directly from desi right that's what you're following that's correct okay i have it here i'm trying to read through it so i just noticed in that test and stay policy that there's two separate standards for students that vaccinated students that are asymptomatic close contacts don't need to test to prove that they are not sick but that the second class citizen students who are also healthy must take a daily test to be allowed to stay and have access to their education um but mr with the glasses i'm sorry i will learn your names i'm sorry i didn't stephen mr stevens mr stevens i'm sorry i'll get to know you um okay uh all of you eventually knew um and actually i probably should have introduced i'm bridget my kids are new here and i

003just want to let you know what a phenomenal first week and a half they've had they have been welcomed and they love their new school so thank you teachers administrators everybody excuse me bridgette for one second sorry i think we can take that up under uh kobit 19 updates so you don't want to answer the questions now right so if we can wait for that because typically what public comment is for something not on the agenda okay and typically we if sort of people can ask their question and we get back to them because we're not allowed to have a conversation on anything not only ask questions later what was that i'm asking questions later during that right and so um you would definitely get the opportunity under okay it's just a couple of pieces

004away that's fine that's totally fine maybe you'll have answered my question i hope so but i'm not sure but we'll definitely get back okay anything else not on tonight's agenda great seeing no one um any member of the school committee have anything that we should bring up seeing no one and natalia you are up my friend thank you so for this week's update starting with the mec the mec had a successful kindergarten orientation and first days of school last week in pre-k orientation last week in the first days this week it is great to see the students families and staff in person their teachers really seem to appreciate being able to work and play with the students in smaller groups versus the whole class they are looking forward to a safe and fun journey this

005year for the mkg the mkg had a wonderful start to the 2021-2022 school year and they are excited to be back to learning they are in the process of setting up their classroom routines and building their positive classrooms they are focusing on their character strong word of the month which is courage learning that courage is to choose what is good right and kind even when it is hard or scary they are looking forward to their return to their town meetings in the next couple of weeks this time allows for the entire grade level to meet to review items such as bus safety school expectations word of the month activities mindfulness practices and social thinking activities they are looking forward to seeing their families at open house on wednesday september 29th from 6 30 to 8.

006more information will be sent home soon for hbb the hbb had a great start to their school year the kids and staff are excited about being back and they are looking forward to getting back to some of their normal events and yearly traditions starting off with clubs which they are now in person oh wait oh sorry in which they are now in the process of organizing and parents should be on the lookout for more information soon the clubs are some of the some of the clubs are first come first served so it is important that they send back their forms quickly lastly for mhs mhs had an extremely successful summer and start to their school year we began our school year with the annual summer freshman orientation start strong we were able to experience some

007normalcy and have fun to start the school year we want to thank elle doherty and zach lowell for organizing this event and all the orientation leaders for allowing this event to occur moving into the school year we held our first school-wide pep rally since the beginning of cover 19 last friday this event was a huge success and prepared us all for the upcoming year we want to thank mr breen for hosting this event and mr branigan and the student council executive board for their organization of the event we had our first ever back to school dance last friday with the disco theme everyone in attendance had so much fun as for upcoming events the annual fall open house will be held in person on wednesday september 15th beginning at 6 pm this evening will allow

008for parents to visit the new high school and meet the teachers of their students that oh wait that the student has this semester this event will conclude at 8pm the mhs school counseling department will be hosting the final workshop for the class of 2022 as part of the college planning workshop series this session will be held on wednesday september 22nd 2021 beginning at 6 p.m in the nhs auditorium the focus of this work workshop will be not the nuts and bolts of applying to college thank you natalie does anyone have any questions for anytime mr okay first of all thank you for always putting those together uh it seems like an awful lot of work um so i appreciate it i wanted to ask you just generally what do you think went really well the

009first few days back and and what didn't go so well um i think well for the high school the parking situation that didn't go so well but that was expected but i feel like for me personally everything else went well it was good to be back in person everyone was wearing their mask which was good to see so it was good awesome thank you thanks any other questions when son so thank you natalia we appreciate it no problem thank you at this point i'll turn it over to the superintendent for the superintendent's report thank you mr chair good evening members of the committee folks in the audience welcome my first piece here is the covet 19 update for the district and i just want to tell you as you guys know as most of you

010all already know out there that the covet 19 dashboard is back up last friday was the first day for that it'll be it'll be reinvigorated for reinvigorated for tomorrow every friday it will be updated and uh we had one positive case district-wide last week and i would anticipate we may have a couple more based on my information that i have for for this week that will be out tomorrow and will be posted tomorrow the comprehensive school health services grant which is a grant that was designed to grow and expand health services as a result of covet 19 i had a competitive grant piece out there and i'm happy to announce that paula magnesco our school nurse did apply for it and we were heard yesterday that we'll receive an additional 29 600 from that grant

011so we thank paula magnasco for applying for that grant and we look forward to expanding and growing our our health services on a side note covet 19 note i did meet with the program director for pcc program which is a summer program natalia i'm not sure if you went to pcc at all i did not but many of your friends did yeah but it is a program that has been in advance for a couple of years due to covid and the intent of that program is to start that program over again and try to get a kick started to have that six-week summer program at stonehill college get reinvigorated and looking forward to that and spreading that word amongst high schools in the area and trying to get that program back up and running it's

012going to be a heavy lift but it is something that i think is important for the well-being of those kids that really enjoyed that program and could enjoy that program in the future speaking as a former program director i know mr paul branigan was a former program director in the summer um but it is an important program for our youth and i think uh hopefully we'll get back up and running that's a covet 19 update that i have for the district i know there was no other some questions in the audience regarding covet 19 so at this time i think it would be well thank you bridget i appreciate you waiting um so as i was saying um i noticed the two separate policies um and as mr stevens pointed out last week very nicely

013to my son um he did a great job he didn't use fear anything like that but he says that the benefit of the shaw is to prevent you from not to prevent you from getting sick but to reduce the severity of the disease um the need for hospitalization and death which we know is not re your kids are really at low risk for this but with this in mind if we cannot go back to the tried and true method of decades past in which we just kept sick kids home and sent well kids to school because we are bound by this deathy guidance does it not make more sense to make one policy for all the children because we don't know if those vaccinated children are you know they're if they're a close contact they

014should be held to the same standard as all the other children and either be required to test or quarantine accordingly because this is what we're seeing now with the shot so is there a reason why we would not make one equitable policy for everybody that has a close contact mr chair if i could i'll try to respond to that bridget if i could um we are rolling out a state program that the state has put out an offer for us to take up that offer and we have taken up that offer um my understanding is that we have to abide by the state guidelines with regard to test and stay and that those adoptions include the fact that asymptomatic fully vaccinated close contacts do not have to are exempt from testing and the quarantine response

015protocols that's written into that into that program that we adopted or we brought we brought into the district uh as a result of that so i'm not sure if that's going to change with the delta variance could go above and beyond by stating that we're going to do better than that we're going to ask all of our close contacts because cdc did that in may by stop collecting data and not having data is is you know detrimental particularly when you're an experimental phase of something so we would need all that data that's important data that the cdc failed to do um so it doesn't make sense to me that you would have two separate policies and seeing as like middleborough has already gone above and beyond what jesse is asking because you know to have

016an exemption you need to have a doctor's note jesse doesn't require that but you are so you can seems that you can exceed things where you want to exceed them um so you're not going below what they're asking but you what i'm asking is there a reason why we're going to implement a discriminatory practice by making two policies based on somebody's medical status age or religion i i know you i know you see that as discriminatory i see it as a state program that's being rolled out and we've adopted it and we can certainly check to see if that's something that we can alter um and and certainly the committee could consider that that's great i'm glad that you're you're thinking that i know it's difficult for me to hear that you can't see that

017there's discrimination when you base something on medical status or somebody's religion but it is it is discrimination so um all right so the next question i had is if you're not willing to allow your child to participate in an experimental test at school your child is has to stay home to quarantine for 10 days per that correct policy yes yes um and once as long as they're asymptomatic then they can return are those absences excused if they're close contacts we do excuse the absences at our schools okay so there if they have to stay home then they're excused how do they gain access to their education so i know that the state is not allowing for you to offer remote like a full remote option but is there any reason that you can't offer quarantined

018students remote access to their education while they're stuck at home under that quarantine period our teachers and our principals have been very good in in trying to make accommodations and getting work to students but we do not we do not have the ability to remote teachers and classes to students at home i feel like after last year that seems like something you guys could do like this i mean you did a lot of work last year to get it up and running we didn't do that last year you didn't do remote we didn't do we didn't zoom into classrooms oh okay all right that's different from our district okay i didn't understand yeah some districts did both as you're aware in the past but we did not do that so okay so if you were

019at home you weren't you weren't um you had a separate teacher that taught only got to okay then i understand all right mr chair yep i just had a question kind of right on this um how are we determining actual close contacts in school i i know that it's just obviously changing all the time and i want to make sure that i'm we are using the latest yeast guidelines which indicates that close contacts are defined as individuals who have been within six feet of coba 19 positive individuals while indoors for at least 15 15 15 minutes during a 24 hour period okay can i read what does he says out loud it says in the deci guidelines it says classroom close context an individual who is exposed to a covet 19 positive individual in the

020classroom while both individuals were masked so long as the individuals were spaced at least three or three feet apart is exempt from testing and quarantine response protocols i i'm on the same page yeah as you are treating me i want to be sure that i mean that's different than what you're saying so i want to make sure that so it should be fairly minimal close contact right most students would be excused they're exempted exempted from so we're going to follow that this is the guidance we're following okay so hopefully there'll be minimal quarantine option opportunities we truly hope so okay so since you are collecting data on how many students are positive and then you have to trace how many close contacts you you have can you also actually keep track of how many of

021those close contacts become sick i think that understanding how many people actually have active infections would help us for planning next year and if we can collect the data on the vaccine status of the symptomatic students uh um so that we know what we're dealing with because i don't want to visit this next year so if you're going to do all this contact tracing can you then collect data on the not just positive case in close contacts but how many actually became physically sick or symptomatic we will have that information okay so you do collect that and then you'll understand from that you can collect you can attach their vaccine status because anybody who's volunteering that vaccine status to you you'd be able to put that not that i have to know who that person

022is but then we would know how many symptomatic vaccinated students and unvaccinated students we had i would certainly hope to glean that information be able to glean that information from the data that we have that's awesome that would be great because that's often left out of data sets when we see them when they say like oh flu preventable deaths they never tell you how many were vaccinated so they just say that they're flu you know vaccine preventable deaths but they don't actually say how many of those deaths were actually in vaccinated individuals so that's a piece of data that's often missing so if you could collect that as part of your protocols that would be awesome um the other question i had it's on my understanding that the sandwich school committee actually responded to deci

023in a letter asking them to support documents justifying this mandate that they um put in particularly because they actually stated that that kids remain at low risk for complications of covid even when not vaccinated um but they're still choosing to mandate these punitive practices so i'm just wondering if there's anything that this school committee could do in like you know i know your hands are tied but can you fight for our kids can you send them a letter saying please send us more information justifying why we're we're doing this to the least at-risk group i i would tell you that when i established the agenda for this meeting we didn't have the guidelines as of yet um so i would put it on the next meeting and have a part of a broader discussion about

024it and i think we can probably ask paula to come in and look at it too okay so maybe we can do something to just get some more clarity because it's really confusing and this is kind of a rhetorical question but if anybody can help me understand why we're targeting the least at-risk group rather than the high-risk group which we know is established it's the elderly the obese smokers people with copd we know who's at high risk we know who's at risk for hospitalization for severe disease and for death and the ones that are taking up beds in the hospital which seems to be the concern about overwhelming the hospitals and it's not the kids so if we're going to make mandates to me logically if we were making logical decisions based on the risk

025stratification of each group wouldn't it make more sense to put these punitive and coercive measures on the high at-risk group of the old um the if your bmi too high maybe you can't go into society if you're if that's the you know the problem or maybe if you're a smoker you don't get access to go to work because you are putting everybody at risk because you are a high risk person for hospitalization now that's not makes sense to me it seems discriminatory to me but right now we are instead making these measures on our kids when they're not at risk so it just isn't logical if anybody wants to make that make sense for me that'd be great no okay um just through your chair um could you uh like this is the secret school

026committee this is a sandwich oh sandwich okay sandwich school committee yes they sent out a letter um i went to print it but i didn't have to say if you could send me a copy of that yes i'll look for it again um i was trying to gather a lot of this stuff before i put it out here but yeah they actually put that together and that's great i know that you may not be able to do anything but i really feel it's important that we do the best in the best interest of our children and if that means you know at least questioning why we're doing this i mean i know it's to push a vaccine but question why that we're do we're trying to you know penalize these kids when they're the low-risk

027group we know they're the low-risk group um so really if there's punitive measures or measures such as mass mandates but adults get to walk around restaurants and grocery stores and you know make a choice why are we doing this to the kids in the school so so i'd be happy to look at that um i'm actually chair of the covet 19 subcommittee so um if you want to send me a documentation directly at my i know you have my email i'll have to look for another i'm sure it's on um but yeah if you want some of that stuff i'll look at it yeah that'd be great i mean even if you're just questioning and if enough school districts are saying why like why are we doing this to our kids they're not the at-risk

028group let's let's let's make logical decisions based on data and not punitive decisions to push a vaccine agenda which is clearly i mean they said it i mean the lieutenant governor and um the commissioner clearly made their statements that this is why we're doing this so um i'd like to do it for for logical reasons and not for coercive ones any other questions about that particular piece or the covert 19. um any questions from committee members um brian was that your code 19 report oh yes that completed my report okay so i do have a question regarding uh the testing for the the math i'm sorry the vaccinated kids that are don't have to get tested if we were to test them would that be at our cost then see that's what i don't know

029and i'd be interested that's why i'd rather what i'm hoping to do is have paula come in put in our dropbox what that policy is so everybody can see it okay and then we can ask questions for paula um that's one of the questions i have who has to pay for that particular piece right because if it's a it could be a budget question though if it's not following the state right guidelines maybe we can do it but it's our it's our funding right and that's what i want to make sure and then go from there okay thank you sorry can i just ask another question i mean these funds are coming to you for covid so no absolutely the funding is the funding is there um and i'm sure that if a student who

030was vaccinated want to be tested because they were nervous you wouldn't deny them testing so i feel like one policy could be a reasonable solution to not make a two um two policies that is discriminatory um but actually the other question i almost forgot about was it looks like they're only offering the like a nasal swab and i know that um i don't know a lot about i haven't looked into it but i know my nephews in college were able to spit into something and test that way is that an option for them because i really have an issue with some of the testing but i need to make some choices and need to understand my best options yeah and i'm not sure if that's an option not through he was the chair so we

031would we'll have uh paula magnesco our nurse leader at the next meeting uh to discuss that the test and stay program and the state guidelines associated with it all right if there's some alternatives because right now all of the tests are that's another thing that's in there they have pcr tests um they're talking about the antigen tests being used for test and stay but pcr tests which as of december 31st they're losing their eua they're not being granted approval because they're faulty so what happens you know beyond december we can't use the pcr so we're going to have to figure out some other solution i just didn't know um so these are all experimental tests right now but that would be maybe i don't know maybe a spit test might be a little more reasonable

032other questions uh yeah i actually had one about the uh grant uh that was applied for and and we got the what was it 29 twenty nine thousand twenty nine thousand um what do we plan on do you have any ideas what you would like to use this is a grant that we just received yesterday so i we don't know and we can ask paul and magnesium at the next meeting to get more involved i know sarah hickey was involved in it also so if if i can take that answer uh mr chair the that grant was so when you write a grant you have to say how you're going to use the money that grant was written for professional development for nurses and for um for substitute nurse for paying substitute nurses to come

033into the district excellent thank you so if we can go back just a little bit too to the pcc conversation given the fact that we have we spent this summer offering opportunities for kids for summer school to go to for free and we do have astr money for next summer i would really like us to look at and maybe come back to the idea of seeing if we can use money from those grants to pay for pcc um if i'm i could be incorrect but i believe that happened in the past yes it did and so um i think if it's an opportunity for our kids to go to pcc that if we can provide money for that i think we should try to do that especially with the grant opportunities that we have at

034least partially funded it's an expensive program and can be but because students go when they live at stonehill and they eat at stonehill and three meals and uh it can be an expensive program and there's there's a great deal of supervision involved in the program so there has to be a lot of people hired for it there's a core course in the humanities in the evening they bring in special speakers and there's a budget for that so it is something that uh certainly would be uh something that we should discuss uh further at some point that'd be great yeah so maybe we can look at it in the future okay moving on with my report to school reopening uh just in general uh we had an administrative meeting yesterday they had a chance to discuss

035reopening indeed more detail with the principles i was able to go to each school on the first day and um first day was a busy day certainly at the high school with 880 or so students coming in to a building for the for the first time in a long time um the floor didn't sink everything seemed to go well and uh but uh mr mr brannigan reports that the school opening went very well um i think everyone or a lot of people are are disappointed um that that the mass reappeared and we had to wear masks and that's understandable but it is something that everyone's living with and and uh so we're moving on with that nichols middle school also reported a smooth opening as well as the complex um like i said i was

036able to to attend a go to each building i was at the hpb i didn't get a chance to go up to mkg because i was escorting first graphics down the hallway in a couple of instances and those first graders you forget but the uh the look in their eyes when they arrive at a big school like that for the first time uh even though they might have been to an orientation etc so mec then opened on september 2nd for kindergartners i was able to be there that day and again those those little eyes coming off the bus and jumping on the yellow line and and going walking down and thankfully we have the orientation programs that certainly help out with those students going to schools for the first time but everything in the district

037opened up smoothly preschool opened up this past tuesday i'm sorry this past wednesday and yesterday actually and uh that went well also so uh generally a smooth opening i want to send along kudos to our administrative team throughout the district principals assistant principals coordinators etc um for ensuring that that did happen and for uh you know there was an increased anxiety level this year uh with everything going on and i do appreciate all the work that they did uh to make it a smooth opening so it's my quick report on on the reopening of our schools it's nice to see everybody there we can't all can't see the smiles as well you can certainly see the smiles in their eyes um and in some cases some some students were reluctant to come into school because

038they they just hadn't been in in a while and uh but uh it is something that we're that that we have people trained to help out with that and i did witness that in a couple of instances and that went well too eventually so um so any uh questions from the committee with regard to reopening if not i can move on mr chairman uh the next order of business tonight is the middlebury high school handbook revisions and we have i believe shanna milani is a teacher at middlebury high school and andy diezel assistant principal and they're going to talk about proposed handbook changes that need to be voted on by the committee welcome to you both shanna and andy thank you [Music] good evening everyone it's good to see everybody i think it's important to

039note that these proposed changes to our handbook come after extensive parental staff and student input that was gathered by way of google doc at the end of last school year everyone had a time for for them to take some thoughtful reflection on what they would like to see change altered in any way in our handbook and all that information came in and the administrative team met and uh and went with quite a few changes that were recommended sadly some of the recommendations we were unable to do due to circumstances beyond our control however what i submitted to the school committee maybe about a week and a half ago for their review there's a culmination of all those those efforts and before i do begin natalya october 15th mark your calendar that's the date where we

040were promised our parking lot in the front so parking at the high school hopefully will be remedied october 15th um so again mark your calendars so the first part that i'd like to review is just very general updates uh such as dates for open houses parent-teacher conferences etc we're all updated names of locations obviously when we're moving from one building to the other we had to do a wholesale change in what things are called now dining commons now was the cafeteria before so forth and so on the locations also of certain locations and the buildings obviously have changed with the new physical plant that we have here in line with the governing bodies that we need to work with we had to update uh honor society verbage and academic standards to reflect the mandated changes

041that those uh national or or regional bodies are now employing our school counseling department updated their school counseling goals for this year um and we also edited the academic requirement uh to participate in sports in line to the miaa standard so those are all general updates that were that we took cues from the natural move from one building to the other or um with with other governing bodies that we work with um very excited to highlight four new initiatives that um that are found now in the handbook the first one i'd like to start with is the e hall pass system uh which is a system that we acquired last year and really the impetus behind it was to respond to to covid needs we wanted to have less exchange of paper the physical exchange

042of any goods we wanted to try to go as hands off as we could so we sought out this system that has been remarkably effective in our building and also at the nichols middle school as far as i understand it and very simply staff and students have access to a url where they punch in their their middleboro uh credentials and they are entered into a system where they can request appointments with staff whether it's counseling staff administration another teacher they can request use to use the restroom etc um so it has taken over what we would have like a you know a paper pass system or a physical entity to to be passed back and forth um and further it's actually pretty great from an administration's point of view because you can limit a certain

043student's passes if wandering becomes an issue perhaps it does allow us to limit the number of passes and locations of passes where we can issue to certain students based on need and of course that can change as circumstances change the second piece i'd like to highlight is our in-school suspension space so our in-school suspension model that we call ace for alternative classroom environment has been in use for as long as i've been there for the last 20 years but now we've added an element to it um that i think it makes just perfect sense in uh for the the needs of today's students um so we were able to hire an excellent new staff person by the name of mr ryan king who has experience in transition spaces working with students with social and emotional

044uh needs and and deficits and mr king will now do a a two-pronged service for us one he will serve as the in-school suspension supervisor monitor if you will but also that space which is located right off of the school counseling department is used for students to transition back into school from a lengthy hospital stay lengthy absence for whatever reason really if a student has a social emotional need and they just need a cool down space anything that we can do to academically support a student but also support their social emotional needs this is a great staff member and a great space for them to utilize so that is a new highlight in in this year's handbook the third item that i'd like to highlight is um is not quite live just yet but it

045is our new high school's go to blue security system go to blue is a is a very new fledgling technology uh but it's a very important one and one that i hope that we never ever have to use um it is a two faceted system where there is a computer application and mobile panic button devices that would enable a staff person to alert every cruiser in the district a command center at middleborough police department and literally every screen that you see here at middleborough high school that there is a true emergency happening on campus um and again this is the caveat i hope that we never ever ever ever need to use this technology but we have it in the case that we do need it um and again under three tenths of a second

046basically the entire school community and first responders are notified and everybody is coming here when that alert is initiated a two-way communication application pops up on every um middleboro high school device that is logged into currently by a teacher and they can supply information uh as to the specific um whereabouts of the uh of the issue any information that would be pertinent to first responders they can communicate teachers to first responders in the cruisers and in the command center at the pd uh what's going on and where so um in it is absolutely in line with our active threat policy which we call the abcs of mps response options where it covers certainly the alert and the communication and it really does enhance both of those features so that is a new addition to our

047handbook and then the last piece that i'd like to hand to to discuss very briefly before i hand the mic over to ms milani is a note on restorative justice now i would like to think that not in name but in practice we have been a restorative justice school for quite some time but now we're affixing the name to our practice restorative justice is a very conversational engaging approach to school discipline that does not result in your standard in-school suspension out-of-school suspension expelling a student from where they really need to be which is school um it is the act of bringing um alleged you know aggressors or perpetrators together in an appropriate time and environment together with the aggrieved to have a mediated conversation where at the end um there is common ground or as

048close as we can get to common ground and a student is welcomed back into a classroom space or sitting next to a fellow student where there's not that awkward i still don't like you but i have to sit here because i've been told to so it's bridging the gap between aggrieved parties in an effort to improve our school culture um and really benefit everyone to to create that all-inclusive environment that we're always seeking to achieve um so that's the end of my my talk before i hand it over to mrs milani does anybody have any comments or questions or concerns about what anything that i've just presented to the school committee any questions about those pieces from mr daisa yeah i have i have one um about the go to blue is there one device

049for go to blue and one person has this i wouldn't want that falling in the hands of a student by accident or or some student just grabbing oh click certainly no there are more there's more than one device um they are i'd rather not discuss the location of said devices here in this public forum if you don't mind mr lewis um but i will absolutely say that there has been uh training staff training uh that uh we had wonderful assistance from uh officer wixton and lieutenant graham in the training and preparation with our staff in the days preceding our opening the mobile devices are out and about in the school but again they're not yet live and i want to highlight that it's not yet live because i made a promise to the staff that

050we would not go live with this until every staff member that has this at their fingertips is completely comfortable and and responsible for this technology so i want to make sure that we are 100 copasthetic with having that before we say uh mr spellman the the our contact our contractor who's uh who invented go to blue we'd like to go live um but there is more than one uh they are in place right now and i'd be happy to speak with you on that um another time mr zeisel yes more than likely given that we do have new members it may make sense to have an exact session around go to blue i know from the building committee we had one and talked about it um so it may make sense to have the conversation

051with the committee that would obviously be an exact session because it would be a safety feature certainly i'd be happy to do that any other questions from us today's update mr chair um please feel free to tell me i should wait on this uh there was a question in chat but i think it specifically relates to uh one of the general updates that mr daiso mentioned um around the updated school counseling goals sure um so maybe it doesn't work but you tell me the question was um i'd like to know what's happening with counseling for anxiety last year we were told that there was not enough support and i think this needs to be a priority for anxious kids i know it's not directly directed at you but i'm just curious if you can respond

052to that or absolutely in fact if memory serves the the change to the goals was to support all students in their social emotional needs but i will say also in response to that that as far as i'm aware per capita we have more counselors and adjustment counselors than any school that i'm aware of i have no data to support that it's just anecdotal in talking to colleagues at summer institutes and things of that nature um and and certainly um in talking about school culture um we want all of our students to know very clearly and i think that we do a pretty good job but maybe we need to do better in saying if you need anything if you are not comfortable if you have any questions comments concerns find a trusted adult in this

053building that you can talk to i can speak for the administrative team our doors are always open to students and i'd like to say again i'm biased but we this is not the administration that we might remember from our high school experience where you don't want to go there you don't want to see that person we are supports number one absolutely and completely um we have three school adjustment counselors we have three uh school guidance counselors school counselors uh we have a number of supportive entities and groups um and when i introduce mrs milani she's a co-co-adviser to one of those groups um i think we're pretty well versed in our offerings for support and i just would urge whoever's out there that might need it to find find me tomorrow find mr branigan tomorrow

054find one of us tomorrow and we will absolutely get you the help that you need or we'll do our darndest in trying to get that done excellent thank you very much sure other questions mr deisell i just had one question you had mentioned before that there was the opportunity for students and staff to become involved and i would um in looking at everything i was wondering if you had sort of rough numbers for how many staff participated how many students participate i would estimate across the board it was between 10 and 15 right in that wheelhouse of of parents and and staff and students that responded uh the the biggest group that responded were students uh maybe put them at 15 to 20. okay and they were they were mostly asking to wear their hats

055which we've allowed is that a percentage talk more about that in a few minutes but uh i need to wear my hat that was the the biggest gripe from students but uh and we met them where they need their the indians to be so and mr gizelle is that a percentage or an actual number of students a number of students thank you you're welcome um so i'm very happy to introduce mrs milani who is not only a fabulous english teacher at middleborough high school but the co-adviser to our gender and sexuality alliance along with ash baron they do a wonderful job in supporting all students and at the behest of mrs lyons who i believe reached out to ash baron last year to to lead the initiative in looking at equity pieces in our handbook

056um gave that job to to ash and shauna who did an amazing job so i'd like to turn the mic over to her and speak on some of the pieces that they were instrumental in getting done this is milan thank you can you hear me um okay so ash and i have been running gsa uh for several years now and we work really closely with safe schools through um through the dese and we kind of have learned from them and and worked with them to try to really make sure that all of our students are seen and heard and making sure that that's happening in our handbooks as well as what we see every day and so just having the gsa we felt wasn't enough that there was some more language we needed to add

057and then because we went down this path we found some other equity pieces that we could help out with as well and so as you can tell i'll just kind of explain each bullet um as we go but we just made sure that we had general neutral um language throughout the handbook um and i know last year you had worked on like focusing on families instead of just parents and right and guardians and that sort of thing and so we've made sure that that was more inclusive um as mr diezel mentioned we updated the dress code um and we really wanted to make sure that students had access to whatever they needed to wear that was more culturally and religiously like inclusive okay so just for this year as well as for years to come

058so that kiddos feel welcome when they're in our hallways and so we um change that language so that we don't allow hoods for a safety issue which i'm seeing this year as being a really easy and clear-cut rule for teachers to follow for students to follow but we are allowing head coverings of most sorts besides astronaut helmets um and we are allowing hats because we no longer have the um the need to keep those um in their cars or their lockers um we moved the anti-racism non-discrimination clause and the statement on civil rights to the front of the handbook to really emphasize how much we care about all of our kiddos we added articulation notes on names and pronouns again to emphasize how much we care about kiddos so these are things we're doing in

059our hallways but we wanted to make sure that our students we were acknowledging our students rights in their handbook so that they could then empower themselves when they choose to do so we also added some language in the school counseling section to make sure that people knew who in the building that they could go to some of those resources and just allocating again to kind of touch back on that anxiety piece right making sure that we're labeling who our people are um so that the kids can find them um we articulated the legally protected rights of transgender and non-binary students for their bathroom choice um but we really wanted to make sure that all students have access to our like non-gendered bathroom um so there's a men's room and a women's room and then a

060third option i think on all floors um and so because of e hall pass because of the new building we really wanted to make sure that that was labeled in the handbook as being a place that people can go in and access we deleted a section called gender issues from the athletic handbook it just didn't feel like it was necessary or irrelevant anymore um and we just shifted language from gender identity to gender expression mostly because when we think about gender expression it better describes a person's need for access to resources and for um bathrooms and for conversations with teachers and support from staff okay whereas gender and gender identity can be a totally like personal non-school right related um concept and so i think that covers it um but we just really wanted to

061focus on looking forward and aiming to always improve our school culture before like we have a really great school culture but we want it to remain that way um and we're always aiming to improve it and make sure that the kids are represented in their handbook and so we tried to take the time to do that this year do you have any questions sure i mean i'd just like to say thank you for doing all this work and and being so thoughtful about the way that you approach it a lot of stuff you covered but it seems like it's moving towards making everyone feel completely comfortable um no matter who they are so i appreciate that and thank you thanks my pleasure other things then i believe we need to approve the changes to the

062handbook so chair will entertain a motion to adopt the changes to the handbook so moved to her second second discussion seeing none from the community does anyone in the audience have any questions or thoughts see now other than thank you very much for the i know how much hard work you put into that particular piece um you know i wish both staff parents and students when given the opportunity we become more involved because the handbook is sort of the rules of how a school is run and to give them the opportunity to comment i think is fantastic and i wish that more people would participate um so maybe we can help with trying to get more participation for next time but without any other comments or questions seeing all those in favor say aye aye

063opposed it's unanimous thank you very much thank you very much thank you thank you shanna thank you andy i'm moving on with my report mr chair uh just this is more of a note we had talked about facility use at the last meeting um and we had agreed that uh we need to expand the facility use piece to include this auditorium and include the uh the track and field and that we need to expand that current policy which covers mostly inside facilities and sometimes outside fields to be much more specific um and with charges and and such so we need the policy subcommittee to convene and begin the process of uh looking at other school districts and what they're doing uh and and basically coming up with uh coming up with a new policy or

064an expanded policy on facility use and so that really relates to this building um the superintendent and i had a conversation with our athletic director um he's going to look at what um the facility agreements are for other like places for example you know we have the all-purpose stadium we also have a snack shack that goes with it those type of things so it's just putting all that together so people understand what that's going to entail and also making sure that you know there are pieces that fit into the custodial schedule and then there be a structure for those that don't fit into the custodial schedule so this is this is not about sort of what we've done in the past it's about newer things sure and mr chair to the policy subcommittee uh you

065know this is not something that we're going to have to reinvent the wheel we have a number of new high schools that have opened recently in the area uh including east bridgewater and brazil radium and places like that that have large facilities like this that have outlined programs that are sort of similar so we can certainly look at those art it'll be our own policy but uh if people could look at that that would be good thank you mr chair yes um meg and i are on the policy subcommittee and so we will uh set up a meeting and post it and do all that stuff and um with your with your blessing and maybe mr lynch as well we'll invite um hutch to be a part of that well i would also invite the

066athletic director and the high school principal sure to make sure that they're available for that sounds good thank you absolutely thank you and the next piece of my report there are no further questions on that uh is a sarah hickey will provide a school finance report update uh just a brief overview of everything that's going on so thank you superintendent lynch and chairman young and school committee members for having me here uh i wanted to draw your attention to the agenda you'll notice that we have a two-page agenda that's stapled together and there is a list of 62 resignations and new hires on the agenda to be acknowledged tonight every single one of those resignations and new hires is um additional work that has to happen in the business office people need to be added

067into the payroll system people need to um people need to be walked through the whole benefit process and i would like to thank paula reyna cheryl de benedictus and pam butler for the work that they've done just over the past month where things have been very um [Music] very very busy with everything that's going on the second thing i wanted to talk about is grants so we come to you and i talk about different grants that we get on a regular basis i want you to know that we're in the process of of applying for there's the regular grants that we get every year title one title two title four the idea in individuals with disability educational act grant so all of those grants get re-applied for every single year and so we're in the

068process of that i'm hoping that those will be submitted within the next few weeks and then um i personally have been spending a lot of time on the end-of-year report so as you know from previous years in september i put together a comprehensive analysis for the state of everything that we spent on the middleborough public schools in the previous year i have been working diligently on the end-of-year report i want you to know that there have been some intricacies with the end-of-year report this year in a normal year we'll have 10 maybe 11 grants last year we had 27 grants that were open so it takes me probably a week to a week and a half to go through all of the information from all of the grants and assign where the money was spent

069in what category and it's just a much much bigger job this year we're thankful that we received all the money that we had that we had received but this um you know now i'm paying the price with the spreadsheet spreadsheets um the last thing i wanted to talk about is budget i know that normally you expect me to be talking about budget in january and february and here i am letting you know that i have already started the budget process putting together these spreadsheets for the principals to go out to the directors and those will be going out in october and so there's a lot of behind the scenes that happen in october november december and then a budget will be brought to school committee the budget subcommittee in january but i wanted to just

070let you know that this is something that's already in the works thank you any questions for sarah no thank you very much if not mr chair we'll move on to uh summer programs summaries continued as you know at the last meeting we heard from a couple of excellent programs that went on this summer um tonight we're going to hear from justin pittley who's going to talk about his his reboot camp music reboot camp we're going to talk to ryan silvia about his athletic programs and mr branigan is going to represent the high school and sean kinney with regard to the credit recovery reboot program so justin pitsley i i would ask you to come on up and thank you for coming and thanks mr pretzel thanks for having me it's very strange being this far

071away from you all last time i was here right on top of each other so um so thank you for the opportunity to share a little bit about our program this summer we want to thank the district and in the administration for allowing us to put this program together for our students and this was born out of a lot of the ether stuff that was going on and trying to recoup some things for our programming as you know covid took a real hit on the performing arts in particular in our programming uh with the restrictions that we had last year it really limited what we were able to do and so mr branigan approached me and asked hey could you put something together really quick here to uh to put together a summer program and

072so within a couple days we launched a proposal thank you sean and put together a five-week program and i modeled it much after a program i used to run at the college i attended for undergrad way back when and so we put together this five-week program it was in three parts the first two weeks were for elementary students primarily fifth and sixth grade students were the biggest numbers and it was designed to give them opportunities to kind of recoup some of that time that they didn't get during the school year we had some students come in who never played an instrument and so we gave them two weeks of opportunities to explore all the different instrument families and and groups and pick an instrument they want to play give them kind of a jump start

073if we think back our middle school students have lost a lot of time between the end of the previous school year all of last year they did not get the same type of opportunities so they had two weeks of just intense focus with staff members on their instruments to improve their skills and abilities there and we also offered opportunities for our singers and our theater students and just really a dynamic staff that we had i just want to really thank the group that we had that came in and worked with our students they were just absolutely outstanding those first two weeks we also had about 10 high school students in here volunteering to help with the younger students i'll tell you there's nothing better than high school kids working with the younger students as a

074model that really fuels the program and inspires those kids to continue because they get to see what they get to do down the road so that was really a fantastic opportunity and then the third week was a workshop week kids got to experience kind of a different angle someone did some percussion some kids switched over the theater and the final two weeks were for high school students and to kind of reboot our program coming into this year and to have an opportunity to work together with some leadership training and a bunch of different things we did there in total we had about 90 students over the five weeks which i was incredibly happy with with the short turnaround time from the launch to enrollment to the first week of the program um and competing with

075a lot of the students who already signed up for summer splash we actually picked off a couple from summer splash i heard from christy goldman very clearly that a couple came over to me um but we were very excited for what they did for splash as well but i thought we did very well um some of the goals we had for the five weeks i think you can see that on your screen over there um just to provide high engagement activities in the performing arts um engagement with social emotional learning we really focused on their well-being we allowed them to kind of chart their own course with what we were offering and we wanted to feel good about being back together and creating performing or responding in in artistic ways um so you can see

076some of our goals here those are three weeks i just went over with you then here's just some pictures of our kiddos at work um i might know this guy with the m on his hat may or may not be my my middle child and he's trying out some different instruments to find out which one would work best for him i made a prediction before he even came in here which one he'd end up on and i was correct but he's now our newest trombone player in fifth grade but students get to try out the different instrument families and find the one that they thought worked best for them and you might notice some other kids you might recognize in here we had some percussion workshops with our students and they get to try out

077the different percussion instruments in our brand new band room you'll notice we had the opportunity to be mask free this summer which was great for them and for the performing arts made things a lot easier in that sense and so that was a good positive benefit we had at the time using our dining commons space and then using our black box theater with our lighting system in there and we had kids come in and i'll tell you the kids in that program the energy coming out of that space was just unbelievable and i think those kids really enjoyed the opportunity to work with our staff in there and just have a great time doing that during that that five-week session that they had and i think one final piece i don't have a picture of

078it but we offered a parent workshop something we've wanted to do for a long time is to sit down with our families and talk with them about ways to support the performing arts students it sometimes looks a little different and it's a little more invasive at home maybe than just like standard homework because they're playing an instrument and it can be loud and they always want to do it in the space that's like right where everybody is so we talked with our families about how to support their students as they're learning to become a performing artist in some way and some resources to help them and really try to engage the parents to help them because retention is one of the biggest obstacles we face and sometimes any barrier that's put in front of a

079student could mean they don't continue with it so we want to make sure that families have every opportunity every resource and every strategy to help them keep going because as they advance in their school years here in middleborough the opportunities become greater and greater and so we want them to develop in the younger years so that once they get up here they have all the great opportunities that we have hopefully post covert here at some time in the near future so thank you again thank you to mr branigan and to the committee for supporting this program and for allowing us to uh have the space we needed and the the opportunity to design something the program was very popular uh parents students were very happy with it um our staff met at the end to

080talk about what worked and what didn't and if we ever had the opportunity to do this again and how we that what that would look like and i just really think it was a popular opportunity for students this summer so so mr pizza i guess the question i have for you is given that we're able to do it this year for no charge for people um do you think if you had to you could run it over summertime with a fee much you know much like we do with the athletic programs yeah that's something we we discussed um with the team that i had this summer and actually with a number of parents and some of the feedback we got they said we we would be happy to if this was a summer camp opportunity

081to pay a user fee type of deal i think the more we minimize what that looks like the more successful will be with enrollment but i do think that it was popular enough and that we can do enough with that um i think that would be a great opportunity if that's a path that we decide to go down and so i would you know i would tell you as far as i'm concerned that given the things that we do over the summer um it seems like a natural progression to me so if granted this was a different summer in the sense that we had money available to to waive fees um and i don't know that we can do that all the time um if you wanted to set up a structure and a program

082for the summer i i think we'd be open to listening to that and and you know and all across the performing arts not just music but obviously drama and everything else because you know i think the more opportunities we can give kids um the better chance they have and we want to make sure and the other thing too is i assume especially with drama and to some extent music it it gives kids an opportunity to do something that they may not have a chance to do during the school year because they might have athletics or other after-school activities so they never get around to it but have always thought about maybe i should try it out um so i think again anytime we give people an opportunity to look at something and do something i

083think that's fantastic yeah i think right now it's it's particularly important as we've lost uh a substantial number our numbers are way down with the coveted restrictions that we've had so providing as many opportunities for kids to engage with this is going to help sustain us as long as we need to continue with what we're doing now and the popularity of it just in general i think is definitely something that we want to to build on as we move forward and it'll strengthen our program across the board throughout the district so we'll definitely be looking at that over the school year and i'll work with mr brannigan and um see what see what plays out other questions for mr pitzen uh greg go ahead i just have a kind of comment both my children were

084involved in this camp and i we had the planner somewhere around it you know we were told that we had to they had they had to go um and they both i think they most enjoyed helping out with the look the little kids that seemed to mean a lot to them so thank you for providing that opportunity and yes i'd be fully supportive of continuing that program that's sure i'm kind of loopholing this this question in it's not directly related but i was just curious if uh mr pitzl by the way thank you for running the program it sounds like a great way to keep that pipeline at least semi-intact but i was just curious similar to you know sports boosters and stuff like that is there a similar way that people can contribute to

085help music programs and kids afford instruments and stuff like that so we don't have a formalized group like masba in place that's something we'd love to look at as we move forward to help with the performing arts certainly each building staff has needs i know last year we had a student that needed a violin and we were able to come up with what we need to do things like that i think going through the building for anything like that and then as we get closer to perhaps another summer program and we'd look at how you know if a student needed a sponsor or something like that i'm not sure the intricacies of those details and how to best answer that but there are always ways to get involved we're always pulling in parents to help

086our best years are when we have the most parent involvement and so um we don't have a formal group put together but the parents certainly are a critical aspect of everything we do coming in to help out so great okay thanks other questions thank you mr president we appreciate it thank you thank you mr fitzlee speaking as a parent i would tell you that my daughter attended the music reboot camp for a couple of weeks and she very much enjoyed it um in fact it was might have been the highlight of her summer outside of occasional softball tournament here and there so uh moving on i think we have uh mr branigan at the desk and he's going to talk uh briefly about a credit recovery program that was expanded this year to include some

087some interesting items and mr sean kenny ran it was unavailable for the evening uh mr branding and welcome yeah thank you mr lynch and uh good evening everyone first and foremost i just want to thank sarah hickey and the district for making sure the fact that these programs could run and really utilizing utilizing the funding to be able to keep kids engaged over the summer from the performing arts camp and especially this credit recovery program that we also called summer splash um we ended up looking at the potential that we were going to have quite a number of students who are going to be retained um as we were closing out this school year and we could almost identify who these students were and so the summer splash program that we created was really about

088a way of collaborating with all of our content areas to make sure the fact that we could give every option for students to be able to maintain their graduation years that they would not be falling behind and working with the department leaders in all content areas we agreed the fact that students who participated in this program would be able to retain their credits to be able to move into the next scope and sequence of their academic program which was huge and then working with sean kinney um we decided to engage in our online learning platform that we used and from our online learning academy called admentum and we were really strategic about that because we really didn't know how many students were going to be engaging and so we knew that but some potential we

089were going to end up creating a little red schoolhouse where you would have a math teacher that would potentially do in algebra 1 with geometry and algebra 2 all at the same time and so utilizing the our online platform which is aligned to our curriculum we knew the fact that whatever the dynamic this was to be we knew that our students would be able to actually get the curriculum that they needed to be able to move forward we were able to work with sean to create the entire platform we were able to hire content area teachers in all content areas to ensure the fact that we had a teacher in the classrooms not just kind of city making sure the student was on the computer but actually taking the lessons from the online academy and

090really enhancing them to make sure we could personalize the learning and individualize the learning because one thing that's important for the school committee to know is that the students who participated in this program and there was just about 40 students who did that these students were probably some of the most reluctant learners that we had so we needed to make sure the fact that we had the ability to personalize the learning we also were able to work in the social emotional piece as well so working with our school psychologist who was also part of the program we had the counseling component there for students who were in need but then also the fact that every day started with opening activities team building events it allowed for mindfulness activities where students were able to engage with

091our physical education teacher who was part of the program to be able to get movement involved to get the students in the gym up in the weight room out in the fields and to really make sure the fact that it wasn't just about coming in every day to work on their recovery of credits it was a really about building a team and you saw this group of students that were some of the most reluctant of learners in during the their school year most of them were ninth graders mind you and then watching them come together in a summertime program where every day they were building a capacity with their step with the teachers but also with each other um and it was really really well done and almost i think we had one student who

092did not make it and all the others were able to actually get their credits move into the next grade or be very close to moving into the next grade which will has put them back on track for graduation so i just want to thank everyone for that i want to leave you with one story one of i think one of the most reluctant ninth graders we had last year um did the credit recovery program and i was chatting with her on the first day of school because i pulled her into my office to just say how wonderful she had done the first day and in all of that and i said to her i said well tell me about the summer because i know you did the program she said i didn't want to go

093at all but i ended up making such great connection with my teachers that i never had before and i thought to myself that's exactly why that credit recovery program was done um and now watching this group of students that are now 10th graders in particular watching how they engage now is like unbelievable and i i really attribute that directly to the program to sean kinney callie bowen and the entire teaching team of the credit recovery program so it really really was quite a success so thank you very much for allowing it to happen um paul can ask a question how for the summer program versus i know you added a january program how has the january program numbers been and um are you seeing you know what traditionally would happen you can correct me if

094i'm wrong if you had a bad semester even though it was the first semester you were coming back for the summer now you have the option to sort of bypass that provided you don't have a bad second semester um how have you seen both of those working out and do you think they're both successful that's what i'm wondering yeah i i think that both of them are very successful strangely enough we had more students engaged in the summer program than we've ever had before to be quite honest with you and i think because of the personalizing that between the teaching staff did the school counselors and myself of contacting each one of those families and saying you really need to be a part of it the winter school which we had the good fortune of

095creating a few years ago to your point mr young does exactly that it captures kids at the end of first semester and we end up doing a crash course with them in the summer and they can do at least one class um that would allow for them to be able to get five more credits into their bucket um and what we have found is is that sometimes those students who do the winter school piece it allows for them not having to engage in any summer work in in that coming summer this past school year we didn't have as many because everything is you know seemed off last year so our winter school program actually happened in the month of april during april vacation and we ended up taking over the middle school because of the

096move of the high school and we actually did a week a week crash course with i think we had probably about a dozen students who actually participated in that summer program and many of those students who did that sub excuse me the winter school or spring school ended up not needing to participate in the um in that summer splash that we did um and most of the students that were in the um april program were mostly upperclassmen awesome and i guess the other question i guess the question i have is maybe the one good thing that we've gone through in the past year is kids have gotten a piece of the remote um courses and so when they go to the extra learning does it make it a little easier for them paul it does

097i i think that they've been able to navigate an online platform very well i mean i i wouldn't say that people then you know do a backflip when they know they can do a remote experience because it's very very different but i think because of the hybrid last year for in even some of the students who were fully remote that being able to engage in that online platform for us that is aligned with our curriculum um really was a game changer so what allowed for students to be able to get the curriculum it allowed for the teacher i'll use mrs thomas as the example who was the math teacher who was on staff she could have an entire room of students that were a pod of students doing algebra one another small group doing geometry

098and even though they're working on the online platform she was able to actually then maneuver herself around the room to be able to actually personalize the learning um utilizing that entire experience but then also we were able to track the students to make sure the fact that they were literally on point in meeting the benchmarks each and every week to make sure that they were going to be able to be on track to finish the class and i guess the other question i have to paul is in most cases a lot of these kids are our most difficult learners and i'm wondering if you saw benefits for some of the kids going remote in the sense that maybe they liked that better and did better and didn't have them coming to programs like this because

099they they did well in remote as opposed to in a regular classroom and getting you know what i mean right i think we definitely had students who thrived in the remote world um last year i think that the students who participated in the summer splash the students who were remote for some of those students we really struggled to keep them engaged and i think that we this was an opportunity to bring them back into the fold again and to be able to get them back on track because as we know that last year in particular there were circumstances that happened for so many of our students that were beyond everyone's control and so to be able to provide an opportunity for them to be able to come back into the building one re-engage them back

100in in person school getting them inside the school to be able to engage with other students to be able to engage with their teachers i think when you had all of those ingredients come together it allowed for all of those students to be able to come back together again and to engage in school um and i think that was a game changer really and truly um we had one remote learner who really was in a in a space where they were going to be a fully retained ninth grader and based upon all the work that he did this summer that he was able to put himself in a position that he is a true sophomore starting in september and so i think that even just for the psyche of that it becomes like all right

101i'm back in action again and i think us recognizing the fact that these students from all from all of our students in every place um that there was some bumps in the road for all of us but i think to be able to offer that program this summer was an absolute game changer for students who i would have predicted we would have ended up losing at some point or it would have been an unbelievable struggle to get them to the finish line and i guess my last question i don't mean to keep asking questions but this is a piece that really i mean because they are our most difficult kids at times and they're they're the kids we want to reach out to do you see potential in running a program like this not to

102make up for things but to help throughout the year in a sort of a tutoring mode or something like that so that we could give them extra even if it's a remote extra to be able to work on their time to some extent and help them navigate through the classes so they don't have to attend this program i think there probably absolutely could be i mean the online platform that we use i think is by far one of the best and we've been very very pleased with it and i think that oftentimes it can only be used for the class per se but it also can be used as a remediation piece and it's important to note that before last year our entire online program was all really based upon credit recovery so it was

103students who needed to make up credits they were short we needed to give them some elective credit and so they could pick a course out of the online academy but it was never utilized in the way that we did last year and when we utilized that online platform last year out of necessity we ended up realizing the fact that there was some really good opportunities and a case in point um is really our american sign language class that we're running this year that was very popular it's been totally done virtually through edmentum um because we knew the fact that that was an elective that students were choosing that they absolutely had more students choosing that as an elective for those students who needed a course um and they loved it and so i think what

104we did is is working with sean kinney in particular who organizes all of our online learning that from his data points he was able to collect to be able to look and see well how are we utilizing this program and platform and what are the opportunities that we can be engaging students in moving forward of the lessons we learned both the good lessons we learned and also the things that were those learning opportunities so like we wouldn't do that again um and i think this is one thing especially this summer program that was a game changer for us i was just going to say um as a parent of a freshman last year who struggled with the hybrid the remote days he was a very different student in school now and it was very clear

105but as a parent i want to thank the teachers because they were the ones that got him through they really worked with him through those remote days and i i think we hadn't gone back to full time he may well have been one of those students there this summer but um that's a testament to to the work that you do mr brannigan and all the teachers in your school so thank you thank you thank you very much uh for for running it always and sounds like it it usually leads to success and i was kind of curious if there is uh you mentioned that there was a very small percentage of of kids that didn't make it through to the end i was curious if there's a program wide if you have kind of rough

106numbers for how many kids end up fully recovering the credits that they need is it near 100 or yeah it is i mean we always have students who start the year off retained there's always a small number um we treat them as the next grades so if you have a ninth grader who's a retained ninth grader who now is no longer part of the class of 24 they're now part of the class of 25 in aspen we engage them as if they're a sophomore they're in a sophomore advisory and all of that and most of those students by the time they finish the first term or the first semester they have enough credits to jump into the next into their formal grade what i would say is is that based upon the summer splash program

107this summer out of all of those students we only believe had one student who didn't make it and it was simply because they didn't come they just kind of just said it's not for me um but all the other students were able to get enough credits that they either moved totally into their correct grade their their grade or they're just shy a credit or two or three that by the end of the semester they would be back in action again so it put all of those students back on track to graduating on time which is really what the goal was um because we know the fact that especially for ninth grade if they end up having a really rocky experience in grade nine the research shows the fact that they're gonna have a rocky experience

108getting them right to the finish line and then ultimately some of those students wouldn't make it period so now that we're able to get them back on track again and have strong start in the fold you know the trajectory is a lot brighter than what it would have been if it was not the opportunity to run this program great so i thank you for that mr sheriff i can ask just a follow-up um it sounds like this to the truest sense of the word this is an intervention in a way and i'm speaking more in like a health sense but um i think we all had those moments where you just pull yourself out of your regular flow of things you think about things a little different and maybe it affects you later and so

109i was curious if if you have the ability to track the performance of those students that go to this credit recovery program long term um to see if you know not only do they just get back on track but does it actually result in a you know maybe a a slightly higher trajectory than if they maybe had never gone i know you'd probably need a control group to figure that out but i'm curious if you have data on that yeah not in the immediate we don't um mr okely but it's certainly i think as the year goes you'll see that but i can tell you one thing though is is a level engagement in these students that you didn't have a year ago um i think that one of the biggest things that between the

110work of sean kinney and his team is they they that they helped students understand the concept of connection that what they're doing in a classroom academically and the connections that it has to the greater scope that school makes sense i think that is really where you're seeing it now the engagement in school their their entire kind of persona in school this since the start has been very very different and i think that's because they understood actually or were able to see that what i do in the classroom and if i engage with what i'm supposed to be doing that everything starts to make sense about why i'm here every day and what the future holds for me and i think that alone just by the engagement piece is different in a good way excellent thank

111you any other question thank you paul thank you thank you thanks mr burning and now up next is ryan sylvia who's going to provide a summary of uh of what went on this summer down in the the gym in the fields and the is athletic program so welcome ryan sylvia thank you mr lynch thank you school committee for having me here tonight um yeah it was a little different this summer we this this uh program has been in place this was the fourth year um so this is not a new program but a little different just seeing the summer splash kids around and the um the music program did mr pitley leave already i was going to tell him that i i used to be a trombone player too because i knew i the music

112teacher said i had long arms so i had to hit the low note but anyway we had um 291 participants uh in grades three through 12. uh this is a fee-based program so basically the fees cover the costs uh associated with the program with coaches and equipment and things like that we've had nine different sports girls and boys soccer we started a new endurance track program which was a huge success with coach smith that was a that was a middle school all the way up through through 12th grade and even some post grads volunteers coming back the strength and conditioning program continued and it was a huge success just based off the fact that we had the new facility for the kids to take advantage of girls and boys basketball field hockey swimming volleyball and

113majorettes and the way we structure this program is basically we give every head coach an opportunity to run a summer program in a way that fits their schedule the basic structure of it is a four-day program four-day clinic for our our younger students really geared more towards our middle school population move that back a little bit towards me geared more towards our middle school population um and also some of the the elementary grade levels um the biggest kind of takeaway was just getting our our student athletes in our new facility and getting them excited about that that was probably the biggest um you know the biggest impact this year and then also getting them in front of our coaches our varsity coaches and their assistant coaches working with them and then also we have some

114student volunteers in certain sports uh that are there helping out with the younger students and getting some volunteer community service hours at the same time but that's that's basically the update um it was a successful program we ran the full summer and just had to coordinate the the facility to make it work so everybody had their own space any questions from the facility thank you ryan we appreciate it thank you to all the coaches too thanks ryan appreciate it have a nice weekend and mr chair that concludes my report for you today uh there's some questions that came up on the feed relating to some of the stuff on the report can i show you those now correct all right the first was uh circling back to the asymptomatic vaccinated children electing the have tests

115um i guess that's a question for next week right next meeting uh then they ask about another question about ventilation systems in the classrooms what's the question uh what are they yeah are there ventilation are there ventilation systems yes every single room has an hvac system in it that circulates the air and we also have air purifiers in every classroom okay and the last one i got was something about parking at hpv um can something be done about the hpv parking lot that was just repaved it's chaotic pick up cars are sneaking through parked cars and a kid is going to get hit and they address that with the principal that would be the first step that they would need to take all right yep okay bring it to the attention of the building level

116administration uh and they will they will hopefully address the person should contact the principal of the hbb yep derek thompson the principal of henry birkeland school will be happy to speak with that parent and and based on their observations uh go out and make some observations of his own okay thank you thank you mr oakley did you have anything that was related nope uh greg and i were on the same page there um so since we're back to our agenda um i'm gonna go to i'm gonna skip over our agenda for a minute i'm going to go to the um school resource officer so donna you had asked us to put on the agenda so i know you spoke at last meeting and i had to send a text to mr oakley and i apologize

117for that but um part of the open meeting law is we're not supposed to discuss things that aren't on our gender so i would open it up to you now donna go right ahead good evening thank you for adding it to the agenda rich i really appreciate it no problem so tonight there are a few parents here to speak regarding john graham i know we touched upon it um at the last school committee meeting i know there were some things that were said in regards to what we could potentially do so what we're looking to do right now is to find out from the school committee essentially where these stand with maintaining john graham in the school system so i know that um i guess let me start with this um we're here tonight to

118talk about lieutenant graham there are many people regarding parents students teachers who in the school system would really like to see lieutenant graham continue to stay um we felt it was really best to limit the number of people that come here because we don't want to make this into a bigger issue than it needs to be but again there are some people that are here tonight to speak on behalf of him overall i think we all know the importance of keeping lieutenant graham in our school system over the past several weeks i've reached out to the selectmen i had a conversation over a messenger with leilani dalpe sorry if i mispronounced her name the chairman on august 15th where she stated she would look into the situation i received a response the next day and

119her response was and i'll quote what she had said to me the structure is very clear in the union contract and lieutenant does not have the same duties as a sergeant if john did not wish to advance his career he creamed a sergeant on august 17th i responded to her that the srr job can be interchangeable the union contract does not specify nor stipulate the s or r position and it has to be a certain rank i'm sorry that the srr position has to be a certain rank the union contract is online for anybody to read um and i said to her this pretty much from my understanding comes down to dollars and cents can we make it work in the school system on august 25th because i did not receive any response back from

120leilani i voted my conversation to the entire selectmen in hopes of receiving an answer from one of our elected officials i did receive calls from two of our selectmen mark tremaine and nathan damiers the conversations with hope with both regarding the importance of maintaining lieutenant graham both individuals stated they would look into and follow with me as of today i've still not received a response i think it's important to note that yet again one of selectmen stated that lieutenant graham had the opportunity to not accept his promotion and i know someone else will also touch upon this um but i really found it disgraceful that our town and our second would feel it was okay to use as an excuse to push the blame on lieutenant graham for him leaving the school system and i

121think it's clear for everybody to understand that he did not vacate his position he accepted a promotion i also feel it's important to share the same selectmen stated that i did not believe in our police in this town to be able to do the job of lieutenant graham i think it's important to note as i said last time that i spoke that i believe every officer in this town and each of them are trained to respond to protect what i have said and what i stand by is the relationship that lieutenant graham has established with the students the parents the teachers and administrators this is not something that happened overnight this is something that ted graham has developed through the years not only by volunteering his time by running a softball league but by taking

122this position three years ago over the past three years lieutenant graham has been at most of the athletic and after-school activities he's at the open parents houses parent teacher conferences student government just to name a few and i know some of those are required he has taken the sro position to the next level and he has created an environment in which people feel safe again relationships the town has decided that what he has done is not important that's my perception and to me the town has said that my daughter's life is not important by putting a price tag on his salary the office that is replaced in him can do the job protecting and responding but the town gave him 15 days to develop that relationship which graham has done over three years no make

123no mistakes i understand that by keeping lieutenant graham in the school opens up other opportunities within the police force and it causes a ripple effect resulting in more money i have to ask you should we be putting a price tag on our children's safety especially today's climate i'm sure many people have thought that not my school district but we cannot think that way and what lieutenant graham has done should not be looked at lightly in closing i think i've said to be previous that i'm a daughter of a new york city detective i have never been more proud to say that than i am today my father is in charge was in charge of all the detectives in this precinct he stayed with his precinct through all his promotions because of all the relationships he

124had developed in his area after the 911 the police commissioner ray kelly called my father and asked him to return because of the relationship he had established throughout those years as a school system and as a town we need to understand the importance of lieutenant graham if you have any doubts you need to ask the teachers the administrators speak to the parents the students but please do not turn this into a price tag for the children's safety i'm now going to pass this to a former student who's going to come up tegan ambrose and speak on behalf of john graham sure hi um i'm tegan ambrose i graduated last year and having lieutenant john graham in our school made such a difference because i remember what it was like before we had him the second

125he stepped through the doors of mhs he had a constant smile on his face and made an effort to say hello to everyone who passed by he's the type of police officer that gives cops a good name and makes kids feel comfortable around the police rather than intimidated he made every student feel safe and welcome he's a kind he's such a kind person and always made sure everyone knew that if there was a problem we had that we could always go to him and talk about it in the old school i'd see him roaming the halls talking to students and teachers and keeping our school safe he did the same thing in our new school as well but now he has an office where he made sure his door was always open for us he

126still roamed the halls kept an eye on things and made sure everything was going smoothly he would always make time to ask all the students how their sports team is doing and just how things were going in general i can't remember a sporting event that he did not attend lieutenant john graham is just a genuinely nice person who i think is a great asset to our school system um his presence helped us feel protected and he always showed up with a smile on his face and i think it would be a shame to not have him here anymore thank you does anyone else just right hi there lynn mcdermott i've been a bus driver in town since 1999 same thing she just said i agree with all the same things about officer graham except i

127didn't graduate last year he he's great to the all the bus drivers he's great to all the kids we see him in a different light when he's outside directing traffic he's always going to hello for somebody he is a great guy and it would be a shame not to have him here and i can't say enough good things about him if he can be kept here i think it would be a good thing that's it okay thank you anybody else thank you very much hello again um andy daisel uh i am i i'm wearing many hats right now uh concurrently uh and i think i have some unique perspective that i hope that the committee finds valuable um i am not only the assistant principal here i am the chairperson of the district emergency response

128team and i've had the very good fortune of working with all of our sros past and present in a myriad of different ways and i'd like to say that we are exceptionally lucky to live in a town where our school system and our first responders the police and fire departments and brewster work so incredibly well together we communicate we train together we talk to each other and it's all under the the umbrella of keeping our kids and our communities safe so we're very lucky to live in a community where that happens i congratulate lieutenant graham on his promotion very well deserved promotion i congratulate sro wixton on his appointment i've had the good pleasure of knowing brian for quite some time as a student athlete and now an officer in the town you grew up

129in and uh and no matter how things fall fall out um wick is going to be a great addition to our team um officer trask started the same time i believe that i did as chairperson of the dirt team um and and he was my first uh experience working hand in hand with an sro he was an exceptional sro he was one officer charged with the task of of doing the job of five people having to be at five different buildings constantly rotating constantly making relationships happen making the kids connect with law enforcement connect with their community and feel safer he was an exceptional sro but i think it was exhausting for him to go all around town we were fortunate after sergeant trask left us in came sergeant graham then sergeant graham and officer

130phillips two officers able to do twice the time twice the presence twice the relationships an incredible asset and i i think a real feather in this district's cap to say that we have not one but two sros i think it's good practice in in in life is when you find a really valuable employee or an asset you work to retain it and to be totally candid with you i don't know whose hands are tied i don't know uh if this is all a moot point talking to you right now but i think i would wake up with regret if i didn't come before the board as an employee and also as a as a taxpayer and a father of two young children in this district that i feel very strongly that we are better with

131lieutenant graham than without um and i would just be remiss if i didn't say that in this venue um i think that his he has been a true resource to the students and the community i think that he's been very responsive i think that his attendance and his engagement has been through the roof and and that's it that's what i wanted to say i think he's a great asset for us and it would be a real shame if we were to lose him thank you thanks sir come on good evening my name is ron parkinson mr lynch school committee thanks for having me here to speak with you guys tonight um i just had a quick question how many students are currently enrolled in the district a little over three thousand just about three thousand

132a little bit plus three thousand okay thank you um it's gonna kind of whenever i'm gonna speak about something i do my due diligence and kind of investigate what exactly it is i'm talking about so i quite understand and can properly promote what i'm trying to present to excuse me and to reiterate what uh mr daisel said you know we got we have multiple schools with only two offices well those offices are trained by an organization called nazro i'm not sure if you guys are familiar with it but it's the national association of school resource officers this is an organization that we send our police officers to to be trained and then certified in fact multiple multiple agencies in the commonwealth and in the country send their offices to this one particular organization well this

133organization adopted a philosophy that their industrial industry standard for the amount of number of sros deployed per student is one sro per 1000 students so with that being said i'd like to ask as a taxpayer as a parent that we meet that minimum requirement and three sros assigned to our school system um lieutenant graham and officer wixton i think would be with officer phillips i think would be a great a great team um and as far as the selectmen you know they're not i'm not going to say they're not educated in this area but they're not law enforcement they're not educators that's our job as law enforcement as educators to let these folks know exactly the importance in this particular area and um you know i'm going to compare like kind of what mr daisel

134said every sporting event that i've attended for my kids or for my friends kids because i'm heavily involved in the in this community um i see officer graham there and i know it's not a requirement i know it's not a requirement but he's there because that's his investment in in our community and he takes his job very seriously and as a result of that we've seen the success i don't think anybody's going to argue that past sros i haven't i haven't seen that and i'm not discrediting them again it's not a requirement not everybody has the ability or the opportunity to be able to do that fortunately for us we have lieutenant graham who can kind of like mr branigan i see him at everything you know we are so lucky as a community to

135have people like principal branigan lieutenant graham that give their time for for our kids and uh i'm for i'll be forever grateful for that and i'm sure the community um will as well so again in closing you know i'd like to say as a taxpayer as a parent i really would like to see a way that we could implement the three offices in our sro program meet the industry standard that's that's required lieutenant grant being one of them officer wixton officer phillips it'd be a great opportunity to take for lieutenant graham to take officer wixton under his wing teach him everything that he knows so he could be just as successful as him and we're only as a community going to benefit from it and i don't know what it needs to take to make

136that happen i don't know whose support we need or who else we need to speak to but i think it's imperative that we we do something like that thank you thank you thank you um anybody else so i just want to say a couple of things um first this um have you guys had a conversation with the chief yeah okay so i would tell you this from my perspective um i don't want to start off on a negative i want to start off with a positive so and i agree with you donna that i'm not going to sit here in any way shape or form or blame anybody for taking a promotion that somehow this is their fault right so i think it's a great thing that lieutenant graham became lieutenant graham it shows that

137the police department think of him highly and clearly everybody here shows that everybody thanks them highly and i can't i've seen him at a wide variety of events i know how administrators feel and everything like that um that being said i will tell you i believe that the structure of the police department is the structure of the police department and the lieutenant the duties that lieutenant are decided by contractual means and also by the police chief um and also where sros are assigned is decided by the police chief um and so sergeant graham was promoted to lieutenant and assigned certain duties that were given to lieutenant um in order to have that conversation about a third sro i think that conversation we can have that conversation but it's going to be included as part of

138our budget discussion and i'm also going to include people from the police department mainly the chief to come down and talk about it and have conversations with these school committee and the superintendent about what adding a third sro would mean and and what that would be i don't mind having that i think it's it's a good point to have and and to be able to do um the school committee doesn't have anything to do with the assignment of sros sros are signed by the police and that's that's the way it's always been thankfully we have a very good relationship with the police department and i know brian you can correct him if i'm wrong in the most recent hiring he invited uh joe invited you and paul to meet with the candidates invited us for

139ask for our input okay so go ahead john please so my understanding is that and i don't want to speak on behalf of chief perkins that their chief perkins is from what i understand more than happy to keep lieutenant graham in the school system there seems to be some red tape between the selectmen and the town manager however we're not getting any straight answers so it seems to be that everybody that we go to has a different course of action to take but there are no answers being made and in the meantime we're at risk of losing lieutenant graham to another individual who will only have spent 15 days in the school system to get trained and that's a huge concern because that individual although a great individual has not had the opportunity to develop

140any relationships with any of these students and if we're continuing an sro type of opportunity in our school systems that we should be some type of basis of promotion of an individual that's worked with these kids prior before bringing some straight in from outside and i think we all know the climate of what's going on out there today and i think we all know you yourselves have been victims of threats made by the population within the town of middleborough mr graham or lieutenant graham excuse me has been right on that he has the pulse of everything that's going on and it's upsetting as a parent and a taxpayer that it would be taken i don't want to say callously but that nobody seems to be able to give an answer to the parents to understand

141why we cannot consider to keep him in this school system so my understanding why he can't be in the school system is he was promoted to lieutenant and the lieutenant job has specific duties assigned to the department but the contract also says that attendant can be a yes i'm not talking about the contract i'm talking about that specific duties that are assigned to that position and that's why he can't now i will also say and one thing that i want to make very clear donna i have full confidence in the chief for whom he selects for sros he selected the sros in the past i think done a fantastic job he selects people that make sense and are have been valuable members of our community so i i don't want to diminish that at all

142so i just want to be clear at this point there's not going to be any other additional means made to retain lieutenant graham in this position unless we go to the town manager or chief perkins to discuss this further i would i would start with a conversation with chief perkins okay okay all right thank you thank you any other questions mr chair sure while i realize that the school committee cannot have a say here i i do think maybe it makes sense for us to sort of give that support of this conversation i mean as a parent i completely agree and i mean i can tell you my senior that just graduated last year had a great relationship with lieutenant graham and my sophomore also does so as a parent and as a school committee

143member i would say you know that i support any conversations between that group and the chief and maybe just perhaps we can sort of give that school committee support as well um just publicly i don't know what that looks like it's obviously it's not a vote i get it but whoever would be in support of that maybe you could just say you know we want to we want to see this conversation continue and see where it can go i i just think i i agree that people can have that conversation i i think that it's difficult given my concern more than anything else and as we all know we have concerns when people step into our areas and have conversations i do have concerns when the area is not under our control stepping in and

144so i'd be very reluctant to do that i am perfectly fine with people as individuals obviously i'm having conversations with the chief and and having a conversations with the selectmen anything like that but i would be concerned as a community to overstep our role sure i i know that those the sros are in our school system and i understand that but it is not a function that we get to decide on um and so i respect um and i can't emphasize this enough and i understand why people um you know bring up lieutenant graham i get it lieutenant graham's a fantastic individual um he's been awesome for our community uh especially the school community but um you know i will say that these things are not dissimilar to what happens in school systems we have

145people promoted and they have to make choices about their promotion we've had people promoted to administrative positions and that meant they couldn't some of them couldn't do um other extracurriculars some of them couldn't do classes that they had done before those type of things so i understand that point and i would just hate to overstep our what really in my mind is out of our realm and so i would encourage everybody to have that conversation and continue to have the conversation and i'm sorry donna that the conversation was didn't go well with the selectmen and i don't know why um but i would i would have that conversation at the chief office first okay and and to the gentleman up there i will promise you that we will as part of the budget conversations have

146that conversation about an extra sro um because i i think that's reasonable and given how we've grown i think it's also good to look at so i don't want you to think that that piece was taken away it's just in my mind the process that we go through to get there if that makes sense and i'll be more than happy to have conversations with you about that aside now no problem any further questions about this thank you and donna i'm sorry that you're obviously not getting the answer that you want but [Music] no no and i thank you and you know like i said before it's just that opportunity to talk about it and i would say to anybody out there if there's a piece that people want to talk about please just email me

147or the superintendent because what happens is the public comment is you can talk about it but we can't and so by bringing it up and putting on the agenda it makes it the opportunity to have a dialogue and at least have some conversation and also like i said to look at things in different lights like the gentleman had mentioned the extra sro and we can continue that and go from there so thank you everybody and with that i'm going to move on if that's okay so at our last meeting the superintendent's evaluation was discussed the superintendent had an excellent evaluation as part of his contract if the superintendent has a good valuation he gets a salary increase um and so the chair would be open to um people's thoughts on that mr oakley mr chair

148um i remember we've we've obviously done this before yes i can't remember the specifics though there's some sort of guidance for for uh what that increase looks like so there's an open it's there's no necessarily numbers attached to it um it has been our standard policy given that the superintendent um the level the superintendent has been evaluated at that for the past several years we've given him a three percent race um and i will tell you that that stays in line with superintendents across the district and also maintains our district as being competitive in sort of the superintendent uh salary structure so in that case then mr chair um i would certainly given the rating that we as a committee gave mr lynch i would certainly support doing that again at that level if it's

149if it's something that the committee agrees with do i have a second for that a discussion i'm sorry are you uh are you recommending three percent um i move that we give the superintendent a three percent increase i'll second that okay and discussion good great okay so yeah i mean honestly i think this is the best review we've given mr lynch um i mean he started off good and just got better so i see no problem with that in this environment i mean i know all the administrators worked overtime this last two years i mean crazy crazy amounts of overtime so yeah i feel very comfortable with the three percent other comments or questions nope seeing no one um any questions from the audience hearing no one all those in favor say aye aye opposed

150um then thank you very much um mr chair yes thank you committee i appreciate that thank you very much i did want to note that that all of our principals did give three percent also for this year thank you and uh thank you for your fantastic work i didn't get to comment on the evaluation because i wasn't here last time the other thing that we had presented to everybody was the operational protocols for school committee first and foremost that is an operational protocol that is we have used for the past several years um given that we weren't meeting um in real person that's why we have updated it since these are um from mass association to school communities i know i don't believe you guys have attended the chatting the course yet but the chatting

151the course will essentially outline all of these pieces um these are sort of our guidelines so that we um we function well as a community we function well with the superintendent and i would welcome i would welcome any comments or thoughts on anything um yeah starting the course in person again or is that still being remote what was that the charting the course program is that still being offered is that in person that's a great question because i think it's in person i'm not 100 cert so i highly recommend i did that my second year and it's really illuminating about everything we do um and particularly around the budget um yeah yeah it's really i i can't emphasize enough it's like a half it's like a half day program but uh i'd highly recommend it

152for do we know when that is it's on the mess yeah so we're further away though um i think there's one in pittsfield so you're more than welcome to go to pittsfield for a nice drive you want to go to pittsfield with me yeah their birthplace [Laughter] it looks like there is one in at berkshire county community college is that that's is that the one and it looks like it's september 18th yeah um so coming right up i don't know if registration is still open but i would i would um piggyback on what greg said that uh the most valuable part for me i think i mean obviously the presentations were great the most valuable part for me was talking to other school committee members and learning about how things go in their districts and

153you know hard lessons learned and it was it was just it was very valuable i'd really recommend it i think the other one's in charlton math which is oh that's a little rough it's a little closer they try to move around and what's the website that we can go to to sort of find this information yes yeah m-a-s-c m-a-s-m-a-s-c.org it's more incense and trout it's more in central mass right yeah it's up by worcester i think yeah that's more exciting they usually run them um [Music] they rotate them all around to be honest with you so when i see them i'll let everyone know but i'm pretty sure it's charlton and pittsfield and i don't think everyone's going to pittsfield so i'll ignore that one so any further questions on the operating protocols nope then

154chairman entertain a motion to accept the operating process so moved do i hear a second second did i hear something yes thank you sorry a little further away any discussion hearing none all those in favor say aye aye opposed it's unanimous and the chair will pass this around to sign thank you thank you sir um so one thing i did put on the agenda was the meeting dates i did have a request from zeke um the second and fourth thursday of the month um interferes with his work if i'm correct yes so zeke asked us to change the first and third i would i would tell everybody this second and fourth have not always been the way we've done mr oakley asked at the time if we change from first and third to second and

155fourth so i don't have any objection to that i would also say to the full committee that it's a situation in which um any date is open to the committee we aren't bound by anything uh like that i need one from meg too um so um if no one in jacks what i'll do is starting october uh just because we'll meet we'll finish out the um this month um and then go from there if that does anyone have any objection to that then can i have a motion to change our commit dates to the first and third so move very second second discussion if i could sure november would be an issue for me on the november 4th i already have travel plans no that's fine and we'll probably have to reschedule that because that's

156masc anyways so we we may just go with one that month but i'll get back to everybody at next meeting on that with that we have a motion on the table in a second all those in favor to move to the first and third say aye aye opposed it's unanimous thank you thanks guys no problem in fact mr chair i think we ended up at the current second and fourth because i had asked for help so and i no longer have that commitment so this works out really well if i believe i'm correct it was the conservation committee yeah correct okay great um i sent everybody the letter from the me requesting uh professional contract process so i will be sending a note out we are going to have a workshop about contracts as i've

157said and also um we'll begin that in october that was just more informational than anything like that brian do you want to talk about building committee the other day uh yeah it was a lengthy meeting we heard a lot of information um we're getting down to the point where all of the contingency money asks on on the part of the high school project are wrapping up um furniture and such and uh then will that be at the point where we'll be in a waiting period uh between october when fontaine will leave us and uh the issue and the parking lot is done scheduled for october 15th to until the spring in the spring they will come back and they will do the tennis courts and the rest of the fields out back and then those

158will experience a growing season so that's the current plan the school building meeting they talked about a humidity issue here at the high school that's very concerning and it has affected a number of wood products around the building doors paneling gym floor etc and they're working diligently on solving that by decreasing the humidity and balancing the system which was not balanced over over the summer uh and went through a period of of bringing in humid air and conditioning it but not dehumidifying it so that's the issue right there with that and um that hopefully that hum that dehumidification system uh will be in place and and some of those issues with regard to wood expanding in the humid weather uh those will go back to their regular size um and that obviously is a concern

159that was brought up at the meeting and the committee was notified of that and we'll get an update at the next meeting certainly right now it is affecting where we're we're not utilizing the gym as we should um because of the the floor and uh the humidity that's caused that so uh that's an issue and uh will continue being an issue but that was uh the meeting was held yesterday afternoon uh and uh it was well attended quorum was reached it was a meeting that was both both remote and in person and that has worked the last couple meetings and trying to make sure that we did get a quorum because for the first time in july we did not get a quorum um because people were so busy et cetera so we rescheduled that

160meeting with the hybrid model and uh now we'll continue that i think until such time as the meetings are over made it convenient for a lot of people who were in different places who couldn't make the meeting were able to attend for example former school committee member uh brian given oni was at a job where he's an engineer and and he was working at the job and it was impossible for him to get back to the school committee meeting so he was able to do it uh from his truck i believe so it worked out well so any other questions we are still under budget so that that is not on schedule but under budget and uh it's gone well so let's think um any anything else anyone want to bring up anything else um

161just so everyone knows the mass m-a-s-c-m-a-s-s convention is november 3rd through 6th superintendent and i are signed up if anyone else wants to go it is virtual this year or there is a wait list to go in person so if people are interested um let me know and we'll make sure you're signed up mr chair item nine i don't uh the middle education association the letter i just said that oh you did yeah sorry no no problem i just said more for a thing so sorry so what are the times what are the times for uh it's usually like a 10 to four um but it's also it's a conference so you know like 10 to 12 is two conference sessions to go to so you can pick and choose zeke whatever would make sense

162for you and also um i think you'll be able to see the delegate assembly is on saturday um i think you can participate by watching but don't i don't believe you obviously you can't vote any further questions about that then with that um our next meeting is for september 23rd and then we'll move to the first and third the chair is asking for an executive session tonight for two reasons procedure number three to discuss 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 and the chair so declares and i do declare it's the teacher's contract and procedure seven to comply with or act on the authority of any general special or federal grant and aid requirement for

163the approval of executive session minutes for november 12th and february 25th we will reconvene an open session only to close so there'll be no other business happening here so with that um the chair would entertain a motion for an executive session do i hear a second second it requires a roll call vote see aye theresa aye craig aye mr oakley aye and the chair boats eyes so thank you very much everybody and have a great evening [Music] you