School Committee Meeting October 7, 2019

001[Music] good evening everyone I would like to call to order the school community meeting for this evening Monday October 7th 2019 please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance roll call please Kathleen Amaral yeah Chris Oliver here Shannon Jenkins I just want to remind everyone that this meeting is being taped by Dartmouth community television as well as through our high school students to be replayed and numerous times I just ask everyone if we're tonight if you just make sure that your phones are on vibrate or you know silent so we have allotted let's see we have allotted 10 minutes on the agenda for public comment having to do with anything that's listed on the agenda this morning I knew there was something on the news regarding a topic that's meant that we plan to discuss wrongfully

002they announced that they would be it would be on the agenda this evening it is not on the agenda it certainly is a priority for us to have a discussion about the use of our our mascot and that will be our next meeting during the new business so that's October 28th so I apologize to anyone because I to this morning early saw Brighton Center on our on my television screen I thought oh boy so if anyone would like to come up and speak to any of the topics on the agenda I ask that you limit your comments to two minutes and if you have and not come up if you've heard somebody else say what you have to say we are here to receive any information that you have and we are glad to receive

003it and it helps us inform us in our decision-making so without with with that said please come on up and identify yourself if you so choose to be heard good evening my name is Renee Vieira and I'm the president of the Dartmouth educators association I'm a teacher here at the high school I've been in this district for 23 years now and I stand before you this evening with a number of members we I represent the Dartmouth educators represents teachers teaching assistants secretaries and school nurses and I stand before you this evening because we are all asking that the School Committee and the town of Dartmouth recognize that we really truly enjoy the district that we work for many of us here are graduates from Dartmouth we stay in town we raise our families in town

004a number of us no longer live in town but we choose to bring our children here because we enjoy teaching in this district that being said the town of Dartmouth has gotten an awful lot from our backs and we give and we give and we give the health insurance premium split ratio is astronomical it's the lowest in the region 52 48 52 48 well the problem with that is that it costs us if you're in a 42 week pay schedule and you have a family plan that's three hundred and seventeen dollars that gets taken out of your paycheck weekly well I am a teacher I have a very good salary for being a teacher but when my health care goes up 1,000 dollars last year and $500 this year I need a cola that's going

005to be able to at least allow me to make ends meet so if I'm a teacher on a teacher's salary and I'm bringing home less this than I did last year could you please just imagine what it's doing to the teaching assistants in this town the secretaries I don't speak for other unions here yeah I don't represent them but I can speak for them and say we all love the town that we work in but we really need to be able to be able to afford to work in this town we will never do bad by your children but we need to be treated fairly we really do want to matter like our children do in this district I thank you for your time [Applause] thank you does anybody else thank you again okay next

006we have we have both regular and executive session minutes for regular session for September 9th meeting as well as executive session minutes for our September 25th meeting take them separately madam chair make a motion we approve the minutes of September regular session minutes of September 9th 2019 so moved any discussion okay motion carries and make a motion we approved the executive session minutes of both September 9th 2019 and September 25th 2019 and hold them until the matter for which was intended is complete okay any discussion okay motion carries oh I'm so sorry for executive motion carries we have Sophie wait here she's here too from Dartmouth high school to provide an update to the committee and you can do it right from your seat yeah about things that are happening about in your school and

007I am the student council school committee represent to afford the for this first half of the year so Dartmouth high school has undergone a lot of changes this year especially the schedule which was one really huge change it went from a 7 block or period scheduled to the 5 . + space well most of us students think that that's a really good change because the 7th period had was very cumbersome and when you went from class to class to class like constantly it was very fast and there wasn't a lot of time to absorb the content and now that you have the 5 period you have 10 extra minutes in each class which really helps with like closing statements and can give students more time to absorb the material and it definitely helps with homework

008with having about 5 classes giving you homework both I mean bout 3 that's three of the five usually other that's giving you homework versus last year which was at about five we have the pace block which is in between first and second period and it's basically a period which students can sign up to be with certain teachers or be in the library and they can we do tests we do tests quizzes work on projects get help on things they are confused on and just work on homework it's really useful for me because I'm in a couple AP classes and that's a lot of homework and it helps kids who can get confused not fall super behind because they have that time with teachers that could that would previously have to be spent before after school

009which some kids cannot get a ride to school in the lower grades and it just provides a really good opportunity for the kids to spend with the teachers a couple students a good amount of the students I've talked to though would find it a little early in the morning but it is a great step towards helping students our athletic program is off to a really great start with the volleyball team have a undefeated the marching band which it you know don't miss has a great marching band and it it's done really well winning two different weekends at two different shows the dear just had a ap kickoff rally where they kind of explained what was happening with the AP classes it's a ApS is a really good opportunity for students at the dome at high

010school because it's a college-level course in the high school and you can possibly get college level credits depending on how you do on the AP exam so that was explained to some students who might have been a little confused about it and the AP test when they were and certain resources in different weekends where you could go and study will explained and offered we had some clubs that were we had the club like exposition that lunch and that I'm in debate and there's a ton of new members this year from sophomore even junior and senior groups that have come in to the new clubs so they're really flourishing this week there has been a distract ology lab thing I can't do it because I don't have my license yet permit but I've heard that it's

011really good and it's helping students not be distracted which is something a lot of students need to get used to because we haven't had that type of responsibility in our lives where we're holding our own lives and the lives of others like behind the wheel so it's not only a great opportunity to help teach that but it's also they can receive a $15.00 gas gift card it's a great incentive so that's about it we've had a great beginning of the year it's going really fast a lot faster than I thought it would but yeah so it's going really fast and yeah that's about it thank you we told ya we told Sophie she can she doesn't have to stay but you did a fantastic job great that was fantastic so next on our agenda we're

012a little early but we next on our agenda is the introduction to our new district health physical Edie and athletic director and Andrew Krista fooly cooly yes yes I'm pleased to invite Andrew Crisafulli to the podium to give us a little bio on who and who he is and what he's been doing but we welcome him to Dartmouth as an experienced director in a Thank You Krista Foley this is my 20th year in education I've been fortunate enough to have worked in a couple different school departments I start off in Fall River at Durfee high school went to Bridgewater Raynham transferred over to Somerset and then went back to my hometown in Swansea for the last 12 years I taught health and phys-ed during that time along with the last eight years or seven years

013being the director of athletics and the department head of Health and phys-ed K to 12 so I'm currently the president of the Massachusetts Athletic Directors Association I serve on a variety of different m.i.a committees and I am very very excited to become part of this community and continue the growth of our effort or of our athletic programs I know along with athletics you're also the head of you know health and phys-ed in that type of deal and just your comments your thoughts about how we can get to our students with the vaping issues and cigarettes and joules or whatever God names they're called in this day and I mean it's an epidemic as you know many of us watch the news and it seems as though every night there there's another report of a sickness

014or you know in some cases a death it is an epidemic throughout the country it's not an isolated issue in just towns such as Dartmouth fund and we've we've handled it in in many different towns that I've been involved in unfortunately it seems as though what's growing is something that we address within our wellness classes at the high school level freshman sophomore year something that has been addressed in their advisory periods I know from the the mi mi a standpoint they have a lot of workshops that not only student athletes and teachers can participate in but they're starting to evolve into offering workshops for parents to become educated because again there's a lot of a lot of different ways that student a students student athletes students can explore some of the devices are very very

015common looking and if you don't know what you're looking for you don't realize that's what it is so again it's something that is continuing to to grow and it's continuing to be addressed you know on a yearly basis thank you I just like to welcome you yeah same here welcome aboard were we're happy to have you I was personally I was a little bit nervous losing uh if your predecessor Jeff Karen so a late in the summer but looking over your resume I think we're very lucky to have you and we wish you nothing but success thank you I just echo my colleagues and welcome you to the district so thank you I've seen you out and about around so yeah right into it right yes absolutely welcome thank you did the JB's win today

016yeah football yes thank you thank you and so next we have something pretty fun we get to recognize our our maintenance staff our facilities director and maintenance and custodial personnel yes if they would like to spread out over here so we can get here with a look at all of you we loved yeah thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so once again we just wanted to bring them here to recognize the hard work that they've done we always are amazed as we said before that they can get so much done not only the cleaning of the schools but also the repairs and updates that these folks do so I would like mr. Kiley once again to kind of go over some of those to remind us of some of the work that they are able to

017get done for us thank you dr. Gifford yeah it's it's you know an amazing job that this group of people do to maintain get the schools ready for the start of school then maintain them throughout the year and all the projects that we work on to keep these buildings in work good working order you know we have old buildings it's you know a fact of life for us even our high school is starting to age and that's our new building but we couldn't do what we do without these people it our buildings look great despite their age and that's due to the diligence of these folks on a daily basis our maintenance crew Rick Ferreira with all the projects that we work on throughout the summer and the custodians for getting it ready for every

018day for the kids it's such a critical component and it couldn't be you know there's such a valuable contribution that you're making and just want to let you know that we really appreciate that well just just seriously is thank you very much what you do you're kind of the behind-the-scenes of what goes on in a building you know keeping it clean fixing a light socket you know a leaky faucet repairing an air conditioner you know you know the students leave you know at between 2:00 and 3:30 and the custodians come you know the nightshift comes in and they're cleaning the building so the what students come into next morning it looks like you know nothing ever happened and you know there was never anything going on in the school during a day it's all clean

019and and span and ready to start again and it's not overlooked on this committee and we appreciate everything the ladies and gentlemen do so thank you very much as a former school principal I can really really really appreciate what you do I remember once having a custodian that I could never find and the amount of time I had to spend looking for him and looking for what he was doing took away from the other kinds of things I had to do for our education piece I always found our custodians and our maintenance people I just don't know what we would have done without you your amazing group of people and I so much appreciate everything you do not only with the way you take care of the buildings but how you interact with the students

020and you make them feel important just that you're a special group and we really appreciate you thank you hard for you guys to find seats that's exactly the kind of recognition you deserve for all of the work that you do I know we've all been sort of a little bit of a broken record talking about you know the need for new buildings and you guys are and women are the the ones that really helped keep it these old buildings together and and creating a great learning environment you know the physical environment for our kids and we really appreciate all that work that you do thank you so where's Ric for our hats off Ric I see you in the back yeah hats off rec to you to you in your to you I don't I

021don't know all of you by name but I think I have the opportunity to see most of you I want to thank you each individually for you for your work in front the work that we see every day and the work behind the scenes that takes place over the summer and after hours it's amazing what you folks do and I you know I personally cannot thank you enough echo my colleagues know the impact that you make building squeezing every little ounce of life left in these buildings that you can the impact that you make on the students it's really a wonderful thing and we're really grateful to have you late night early morning I mean I'm here different hours and you're working hard and I appreciate everything that you do so thank you thank you

022[Applause] thank you so next on our agenda we have a resolution around awarding a contract for driver training mr. Pelley thank you Miss Amaral so we have resolution number twenty point two it's the least exciting thing of the night so far but for some kids they're gonna find this pretty exciting I guess so resolution awarding a driver training program whereas bid invitations for driver training services were duly advertised and one bid proposal was received and opened at the Dartmouth public schools administration office at 11:15 a.m. on September 30th 2019 and whereas the following bid result was recorded Martin auto school Inc 487 Belleville Avenue New Bedford mass cost to be paid to the town by the bidder two hundred and five dollars per class the above bid proposal was analyzed and it's been judged to

023be the most advantageous and responsible therefore be it resolved that Martin auto school of 47 Belleville of New Bedford mass be awarded the Dartmouth high school driver training program for the 1920 school year and based on Dartmouth public school specifications dated September 16th 2019 so I'd recommend that that we award okay second discussion just one quick question have we ever had another bid on this other than we have mines we oh yeah we have Martin has now been it's been quite a few years but we've had other other companies before them it might say because I've heard Mickey we've heard mixed reviews over them yeah this the to be honest the structure of our bid is is not overly attractive to other companies coming in they pay us to do the class I talked to

024Triple A they said well we're not gonna pay we'll come in and do it for you and maybe we have to pay them or something you know some sort of an arrangement so this is about as good as we could do at the moment but thank you I know they're busy water went through it was really difficult but they they all parallel park in front of my house I should do a sidekick and take photos they students are really good but yeah every day they're in front of my house anyway all right so yes so can I just again what how does this compare to last year so it's exactly the same no it's significantly less okay where are their pay or receiving something future right what how many classes do it do they offer

025and so what about seven or so yeah yeah I mean it's it's money that goes into the Student Activity account the general fund it's not the earth shattering on my own but it's something that can be used for kids okay mr. Kyle is this a one-year contract or was it a three-year bid this is a one-year with two one-year renewals as options but we're really gonna look at ongoing issues with this bid going forward nothing if we can maybe change it up okay but it is nice to have some income into that Student Activity account and I think if we change the bid we're not going to have that so it's a consideration we have to think about okay okay so we have a motion do we have a second you did okay so all

026in favor aye okay that was um motion carries unanimous thank you thank you okay so we have some more consent agenda for fundraising activities unified art and music participation in national championship do we does anyone have a preference should we take this together do we have any questions or go ahead I would really like to hear about the the distance ones okay out of the country there's anyone here can I just move approval that we approve the fundraising activities for DMS Potter and Cushman D'Mello PT OS okay so any discussion on those or just okay okay so we've got one abstention four yeses so motion carries and so now we have some folks from the unified art department would you be available to come on up to speak to all the fun things that you

027have planned yes I was fortunate to accompany the unified arts department on a field trip recently and that was fantastic [Music] so make us proud so um this wasn't fundraising this is about the sorry yeah my partner's we're contemplating a trip to Greece during April Break which we would leave on Friday night of that week and return depending on the flight at home either Saturday evening or Sunday morning this is pretty much focuses around the mainland in Athens it's eight days and as you can see we have the itinerary this is through Globus tours the past three years we've used CIE tours they just we've kind of depleted their itineraries with going to Ireland Italy and last year a great trap into Iceland so we're going to start in Athens and we'll see all the

028sites such as the Acropolis the Parthenon porch of maidens the temple of Athena you must have been yes so you can really um the attempt of the Olympian Zeus the theatre of dionysus the the--some where Socrates taught just you know life changing places and our focus is going to be photography as the field trip you just went on the kids are really into it they just you know it's just great we've had a lot of asking you know students coming to us and asking can we go to Greece they wanted to go the Greek islands but it was a little offseason so we settled for the mainland so then we'll move on to Korn a--the and Athens and see where st. Paul preached also go to the beehive tombs the Lions Gate which is that

029Europe's oldest monument and go to Agamemnon's royal palace see the fortifications of the Citadel and then go to Epidaurus for a tour of twenty-three hundred year old open-air theatre so we'll really be looking at antiquity then we'll be moving on to Nepali uh and Olympia to see where the Olympic Games began we'll see the remains of the gymnasium in the temples of Hera and Zeus we will also have a little cooking demonstration and learn how to make 2z key which is yummy then we'll be moving on to Olympia and Delphi and see the ancient sanctuary of the god Apollo as well as seeing excavation sites and see the charioteer which is a fifth-century bronze statue and kids will also have a dance lesson and day six will bring us to meteora where we'll see that

030landscape is really amazing actually Morgan put together a PowerPoint but short for time they monasteries were built on the top of these mountains and we'll get to photograph that I think that would be really amazing they're also famous for their frescoes and their views and then we'll move on on day seven to see where the movie 300 was made with that the 300s part and fought against the Persian army we'll have to have that at one of our fundraisers then we'll go back to or back to Athens and we'll see the setting of Oedipus Rex and also another war where 10000 Athenians defeated defeated more than twice the number of Persians in 490 BC and then day 8 we'll have the morning and then we'll travel home it's a long flight at home so that's

031pretty much it in a nutshell we've also included pricing now some of the point we have locked in the pricing for the land tour which depending on if our students are 18 under 18 upon the return they'll get an extra 10 percent discount which the land tour would then be 1519 1519 if they're over 18 it will be 1709 we've priced out air it's ranged anywhere from 700 to 2800 so we have some homework on that I've just put kind of an average in and that that fluctuates like the stock market you have to just lock in when you lock in as everyone knows last year we saved quite a bit of money doing our own air we did not go with the tour guides air but making air just to Iceland was pretty easy

032but I think we got it for less than half so we will try to do that again also they'll have some cost for gratitude ease for the tour director in the driver as well as a fee for the bus we take a school bus from Dartmouth high school up to Logan and back home again so we this includes two ten percents as I had mentioned and this also includes lunch I mean breakfast each day and three dinners so they would have to provide for four dinners and so we're thinking depending on whether they go with insurance which is another charge of $199 if you're under 18 it's just a little over three thousand dollars inclusive of everything except those three meals dinner meals and if you're under 18 it's about almost twenty nine and over

03318 almost 33 and under 18 just deliver little over three now in the past three years Morgan our painter extraordinaire we've done on paint nights and they've been very successful because the kids sell tickets and it's pretty much like a 90 percent profit all we have to do is buy canvasses everything else we have so however they just keep the money for the tickets they sell and if they're motivated enough to do six of them and they can get a group most kids made between four and five hundred dollars if they sold all those tickets in one night and that's probably how long are we there about three and a half hours you know and they the kids Morgan instructs kids help out they clean up you know we're all there to supervise last year

034not your average joe's donated dinner so we could mark that up a little bit and we could look into that again we've done restaurants for fundraising jewelry making we can think of some new things this year maybe we're trying to set up like a photo studio maybe we'll do something with that pet portraits yes that would might be big you know whoever is willing to work we're here to work with them to help defray costs and I know we have one student that just brought up she said I'm still paying off Italy know which is really nice to hear that kids will work to do these trips and and I know from feedback we've received it's been life-altering for them as it has been for us it was such a joy to bring them and

035at first we didn't go on like student tours we were mixed with other people and they would see us coming and they'd look at us like oh my god kids so I'm like ah kids are great and by the end they're like we couldn't believe that it was actually a joy to be with them you know as you can vote we they listen and they're very grateful to be where they are and to see what they see and they're respectful and you know in the past I told you where we had picked up lunch before they had given the kids free tiramisu and I've gone there for years and they're like you're that lady that brought all those nice kids you know it's really nice so I think that covers just about everything does anyone

036have questions of you folks have a great track record I think it's we're very fortunate I think our students are very fortunate to have these opportunities and I hope that someday my eighth grade will have an opportunity to to attend one of them so best of luck with the I hope it works out yes thank you so much I think these trips are great but why the difference in pricing for under 18 and over 18 this is just by Globus tours they offer an incentive that's their incentive 18 and Greece I just wanted to make sure they weren't like because I knew our policies are that they cannot drink but I just wanted to verify that wasn't why the difference in price was there not that I heard you know sometimes if they're Parana companies

037I know the other group we used had given 20% discount if the parent in you know we have a lot of parents that go with us as well I just like my son when he's a senior if he were to go on a trip like this he would be over 18 so I was just kind of curious you know he's a man-size person now so it can't be food or space I'm sure you have a wonderful time and you're going at a wonderful time here - is that good weather yes when I've gone it's been in the summer and the last time we went on we were on the Acropolis it was so hot and lots of climbing - yeah we need our hiking sneakers and I was able to maintain yes we should the

038best that's a wonderful thank you it'll be very memorable I'm sure that's fantastic have a have a great time have a safe trip and you're all invited they will they will bring back they'll bring back a lot of memories and good pictures that we'll see at the yacht show and me yes for sure I have to bring the Iceland pictures down to Bush Street we have them all matted and ready to go now it sounds like a wonderful opportunity and yeah those students are just incredibly engaged and so mature and just really into and clearly they are so respectful and and appreciate your guidance and and everything with you when you came with us I mean we had one student that was ill and the other kids were so nice yeah to her and helpful

039I mean you saw that I was really nice yeah she was a trouper she was motion sickness yeah poor thing she was thing they all were troopers days like yeah it was incredible I know my I know my group of adult friends I don't think we're as resilient and his patient and is like stoic as they were it was really great and just from another hat if you I may have emailed you I don't know because things are a blur lately if your students are interested I know Mary Anne Santos has offered in the past to and the resource fair that we organize you have students come you do henna and sell their art or so I am I welcome that set up a table we so if you feel or they feel that they're

040available and that's something that they want to do just let me know and we'll have the space for you sorry thank you you're welcome so thank you motion second okay any more discussion samples some Greek cooking and pastry the church is having their gathering one across from Potter they cancelled it because of the Triple E but they're going to be doing something the weekend up with 20 years and that's right in town I'll let the kids know yeah okay all in favor motion passes unanimously thank you thank you very much you into the next I don't know if anyone's here to speak to oh there you are right in the second row sorry you're a little over stimulated with so this is a cultural excursion yes so it's been a while since we've done a

041trip to another to a spanish-speaking country and I chose Costa Rica for a couple of reasons I've been there twice myself and I really loved it and also it's um it's a pretty reasonable place to visit so I thought it'd be a good place where our students might be able to you know a variety of students might be able to afford to or raise money to go I went last February with my two kids and so I learned a couple of things one is that it's I mean I love it there it's totally awesome it's not like going to Greece because there aren't like a lot of big monuments and historic things to visit it's all about the nature and the outdoor adventure and about learning about conservation and how they as a country face

042a lot of environmental issues and deal with them in different ways and we do so so instead of you know going to the Parthenon and meteora in places like that there'll be you know ziplining and going tot Springs and kayaking and doing things outdoors so we visit a lot of different outdoor nature parks I chose an itinerary that doesn't really cover a ton of land cut a kind of ton of surface area because the roads there really are not that great and I don't really want the kids to be some of the roads are good they've done a lot of work there you know in the last 10 years they have some good like highways but a lot of roads like will just turn into dirt and when you're not expecting it so I don't

043really want the kids to spend their week on the on the bus you know I want them to be doing activities as much as possible but even though we're gonna be in a fairly small area they'll still be able to see you know they'll see tropical rainforest they'll see a cloud forest they'll get to spend a day at the beach on the west coast and they'll see a volcano they'll really it's going to be for kids that like the outdoors and like nature and outdoor adventures it's you know just the perfect trip for them also I chose to go with Explorer Co because some of my colleagues and my department had had good experiences with Explorer before and they do a really cool thing with the fundraising they helped the kids set up they that

044the kids can really easily setup their own kind of like GoFundMe page so they can make their own little personalized page and they can you know ask people that they know to help them with financing the trip but you guys have the number I think you have the proposal in front of you yeah um so you know probably it should be around $2,500 if we can get 15 kids to go if we have more than 20 then it would be less than $2,500 and this is not proposed until next February so a year from this February so if we can get things growing now then parents can get like on a monthly payment plan it'll be like one hundred and seventy dollars over the next 15 months so it makes it a lot more affordable

045for parents so that's part of the reason why I was planning it quite a bit in advance so that's it it's totally awesome I know the kids will love it I just have one question the other Judy's trip had the optional trip insurance and having been trying to travel out of Logan and February I've not been able to do that a few times does this disease come with trip insurance really Ross and I need to discuss Rachel was thinking that she might just want to require everybody to have trip insurance it's another like another hundred dollars per person so if Rachel and Ross if we decide that we would just want to require that yes and I can just require it and everybody has to get it yeah great that's it it looks like a

046great trip yeah okay so all in favor carries thank you alright so we have the permission to participate in the national championship for the Dartmouth school music Association I'll move approval okay laughs to a great start so okay all in favor okay motion passes unanimously right now it's a long night bring their pillows and thankies so we have presentation so we have school improvement plans from Quinn Potter de Mello and Cushman schools so we have all four plans we did change it up a little we'll just need to see the screen over there so normally what we do is we adjust the three areas of the school improvement plan but the first one being teaching and learning and sometimes it gets a little repetitive so this year we asked mrs. Oliveira does to summarize the

047teaching and learning a place as a whole and then each of the schools and we'll go in order Quinn Potter D'Mello Cushman that's on here we'll talk about their community and their access and equity and then we just asked them to mention something they were excited about great at the end so they'll follow the same format okay mrs. Oliveira thank you good evening so has dr. Rocha said I am going to present the teaching and learning parts of the elementary schools school improvement plans as you all know the improvement plans are based on the district improvement plan and the initiative of teaching and learning is been the same it has been we've been working on it we've made some great strides over the last three years so our new initiatives start out with implementing of

048St math and grades K into many you might have heard about Gigi or seen Gigi and in the schools she is a little penguin that is the mascot of st math and st math is a conceptual math program that is no language based so students are really trying to solve problems visually moving objects and trying to understand they're the conceptual part of math and the teachers come in and assign the academic language once the students have mastered it and it's it's a very interesting way to learn math I was in a kindergarten class with a little five-year-old who was kind of kicking my butt and doing some of the problems no problem I had to at one point say slow down just for one point so I could kind of understand what was happening but

049once they get it they can just keep moving with it and it's also ties in a little bit more in one of our other initiatives that we'll get to grades two three and four are developing math project-based lessons we're doing this work in conjunction with Highlander and our elementary CIA teams so we had our first meeting already in which we developed some priorities of practice which we were working on increasing student voice and our math lessons working on their perseverance and grit which is part of what the STF does - we're trying to teach kids don't give up try something what can you do in SD math we say play the grey because we have found that especially in math some of our kids just look at it and say I can't do it so

050part of our priority practices when we start redoing our lessons is trying to build up that perseverance in our kids and we're also almost at the very end of our balance literacy for K to five this year we're doing K to one phonics you might have met Mabel or Rasheed who was their mascots in our K class in our first grade class kids are loving it teachers are loving it they're really learning their snap words and coming up fast we have a group of teachers that was supposed to be a small pilot and when the teachers found out they started asking for kits and asking for kits so we have almost about 80% of arcane first grade teachers doing it this year and we will grab everyone else next year to move on I grade

051five is finishing up our readers and writers workshop with implementing the final year of readers workshop in fifth grade and so as you can see we kind of staggered our initiative so it wasn't heavy overload so we have kn1 doing phonics two three and four doing the math in grade five doing reading so it was a very strategic plan for the last five years to get everyone on board and our last one is one that excites me the most because it's really we're not really switching initiatives we're just going a little bit deeper into them so now that we have everyone doing a workshop model we're just going a little bit deeper with our mini lessons and there's a typo in there it should be focusing on the components of a mini lesson I apologize

052for that sometimes I work too fast and so we're really looking at those little parts it should be 10 to 12 minutes of strategic teaching we tell the teachers you get in you get dirty and you get out and it's it's their time for voice and the rest of the block is time for student voice so that's where all three schools are working on we have a very good alignment of the PD of what we're doing with the coaches embedded and after school and during a CPT time the teacher teams work together across the grade level so all three school are all four schools really are moving together at the same pace that's what I have for teaching and learning and I think I'm turning it over to good evening so I'm excited to share

053some of the work that the Cushman school staff I will be working on this year under access and equity I'll start there so this year going along with the district initiative for personalized and blended learning that's pretty much what early childhood is all about we have our workshop model going our small group instruction and differentiated differentiated learning centers and stations but we're going to be more mindful and more focused on expanding that work to include student voice choice and interests into those activities including some low-tech and some high-tech teaching tools so when I say low-tech we're talking about a variety of materials and resources and I'll talk a little bit deeper when I get into what we're excited about to explain what that would look like but we're also including in that specialized seating for

054our students sensory paths and movement activities built into our day as far as high tech we are excited that our kindergarten now has a Chromebook cart that we're using for GG but also in a variety of other areas as well and something new this year and I'm not Jonathan Galan Shah so bear with me but I'm gonna try to explain this Jonathan the we have now cleared touch interactive panels we have one in preschool and we have one in kindergarten so it's pretty much a smart board on wheels but we're excited that the one for kindergarten actually folds horizontally so you can have a group of students around it at the four corners so you can have four groups working at the same time so we're excited to see what that's gonna look like this

055year with our with one class in particular in addition under access and equity we're continuing our work with brain based therapeutic practices this year we're focusing on relationship building particularly through our morning meeting routine and our afternoon closing circle so why do we do this well we want kids to feel good when they're walking into the building and have fun so we're building trust with our students we're setting a positive tone for learning and at the same time merging some social and academic learning in there so the four components of our morning meeting will include a greeting where all students are invited to greet each other by name sometimes that giving high fives or hugs along with that there's a sharing so students can share maybe what they did last night or something fun that

056they did at home there's an activity built in which builds teamwork and collaboration and lastly there's a morning message which is something that the students can read and interact with too and also tells them what their day is going to look like and even at that preschool level we can do that so under community engagement we're always looking to refine our practices for a parent communication so we continue to add to our website our Twitter account we're using the remind app almost globally throughout the whole school and we continue our partnership with DC TV this year though I'm looking for our school council to do a parent survey to look for other ways to get parents involved and also to reach out to the parents with information so I kind of want to hear from

057them what are those early childhood topics that you want to hear about and then bringing that information back to possibly in addition to do may may be doing family nights we mind that sometimes that night might not work because their soccer and baseball and dance but maybe doing some taped virtual presentations that we can put up on the website so parents can view it at any time so that's our work there and also in addition enhancing our communication particularly with our preschool students with parents and early intervention providers so that we can have a smoother transition from E I to the public school so we are excited to continue updating our preschool brochure we have updated our website link as far as our preschool program goes and in addition I've created some partnerships with early

058intervention providers that we're now meeting twice a month excuse me twice a year and that's all the local schools along with our meeting streets so that's great and in addition I've seen a huge increase with Dessie and their early education and care group and Miss Brooks and I have attended many of their PD sessions so bringing all that information back to our staff and also I'm excited to talk about so you have to be here with me because I'm gonna I don't often get the podium someone to talk about play and the importance of it so just bear with me we are excited this year to be really working on purposeful play at both the pre-k and kindergarten level and we're gonna be doing a book study on purposeful play so I had the opportunity

059to go to a pre-k Institute over at the Teachers College of reading and writing in New York with Lucy Caulkins and got a lot of information to bring back as far as how we can refine play practices in the classroom so we are in a different place than than some of our older grades where we at the preschool and kindergarten level we teach the skills that are needed for the rest of your life not just to move on to the next grade level and what better way to do that then through Play so when we position our kids as agents of their own learning through Play that's what blended and personalized learning looks like play allows for creativity exploration and meaning making it supports language development and so emotional development development in a very highly

060motivating situation students learn to analyse and negotiate and play and if they play with details and they're gonna read and write in detail as they move on so for example you may say see students playing with blocks and thinking they're just building but in fact when that student makes a change to that block to make that tower work they are editing what's going to soon look like editing in their writing so they know to make that change this year our work for play will focus in on enhancing our classroom environments to support this play specifically through classroom space and materials so our spacing usually we prep it we buy you know the nice things to hang up we want the kids to be doing that and making it their space we often will have centers

061in our classroom so it's the blocks enter the kitchen Center and we're looking to change that so we leave it more open-ended so that block Center becomes the building center where kids can choose the materials that they want to build and then they can also go off to another Center and use some of those materials as well instead of just using blocks at that Center they can go off and borrow from the kitchen area another example would be typically in our kitchen area we have all the plastic food that the students will use well don't leave that I'll give them play-doh and paper so that they're creating and building that's what we want them to be working on also having materials centrally located in the classroom that they can take to bring to any center

062at all so open-ended materials like construction paper clay that kind of stuff in addition we'll be talking about the staff staff about types of balanced play how to observe stages of play and the teachers role in play because we want the teachers to get involved with the play as well and sometimes that's as a participant sometimes it's as a peacemaker a parallel player or what we call an artist apprentice which means you suggest a new material or a way to lift the level of play that's going on in that Center so that's what we are excited about for the Cushman school moving forward this year but I'd be happy to take any questions but no I'm you know very warm in here there's a lot of information it's amazing how it's we're forever evolving at

063the early childhood level the preschool the kindergarten level do we find as the district that the changes the rigorous teaching that we're doing at the early childhood level is making a difference you know and it's tough for you because you're only early childhood but moving on to first grade and into elementary school I've just I'm just wondering you know clearly where we're getting feedback and we're changing our ways and we're evolving so are we are we seeing we seeing a difference I guess the Department of Ed is actually collecting data now for all the incoming kindergartners from the parents as far as what kind of preschool experience if any that they had talking about where they full-day is half days number of hours in that and I think what they're looking to see is how

064does that correlate with am casual or whatever it might be in two or three years so thank you know you told me you're going to talk about play because I just think for our youngest learners play is so important I think the biggest thing that kids can learn in preschool is to love school and that really carries through throughout their education and so integrating play is just so critical for them so super happy to hear you talk about all the focus on play thank you for that I agree I was really pleased to see that it's really something you're focusing on in the different stages but I'd also make the case that play is important all the way through the elementary grades and kids really need that and of course it helps when we have

065people who are able to look at what the students are doing and help them to be more effective and how they deal with issues that come up on the playground which is sometimes very difficult to do but as I was reading over your your work I've heard of emergent the reading and the writing but you're doing emerging storytelling and that must be very interesting to have those little ones could you tell me a little bit more about so that kind of goes along with the play so it's when a teacher is doing a read aloud and that kids will they hear it repeated and they will then carry that that through so the idea would be that they would take the story that they listen to from the teacher and then bring it into the

066building area and maybe you know build a home for the character or something or carry that story on so again that has like a direct link writing later on when they're able to write their own story so that's kind of what it's about great your guys are doing a great job thank you thank you looks like you've got a busy year ahead of you and said you were going through everything between you know the access and equity the community involvement and things of that nature so I'm excited to see what's going on question I have everybody knows my computer literacy oh I hope I can open we're talking about seriously talking about that smoke side you know how are the students reacting with that so they haven't started using it yet we need to get

067it set up they're using it somewhat but without the internet component of it but the idea is that it kind of falls flat like a table and you could put a problem of the day on there you know maybe they're building something on there that you know has to with blocks and you're leveling or you have to use five blocks in a certain way that you could have four groups going at the same time or you could actually have four different activities in each corner that the kids rotate around so kind of like creating those centers in your classroom but right around this panel so I'll I'll let you know how it goes thank you yeah no this this is great thank you for for everything that you do have you know as along with

068like the community engagement if ever I could be of help and kind of partnering in any way and my professional role I do a lot of part parents as partners and you know you see people kind of go onto social media and like blast you know their neighbor their teacher or whatever if there's any way that working together I'm sure it's on your mind anyway getting them young getting those parents in there and realizing that it doesn't always have to be a boxing match that it that we're here for the long haul in that the kids matter and we want our kids to succeed so if ever I could partner in that way I'm happy to do so thank you thank you great work thank you so we so we are also excited to share

069a little bit of what's on the docket at the most school this year you see our first bullet point there is to foster diversity awareness and our staff and students through PD in some instructions so we have the Commission on LBJ LGBTQ coming to one of our staff meetings this spring to proactively discuss with our staff the topics of gender identity and sexual orientation and how these topics affect even our youngest learners we also have the Child Advocacy Center coming to another of our staff meetings to provide information on how to best handle some of the most sensitive situations that our students may find themselves in and how we can support students in school and their families as well as what supports they provide for families outside of our walls we just actually today had

070our student of the month our first suit in the month assembly and we found out that one of our parents did an interview on NPR that aired this morning on implicit bias so we are working with him on potentially setting up a date to come do a little work with our staff on that as well and then we have something called pineapple time which I'll talk a little bit about more in a minute but on the staff on the student ends of things every Friday mrs. Coria and I take a grade level and we work with the kids while the teachers are off doing something else that I'll talk about but we do a lot of activities and read Aloud's that come from this book so this is I also went to Teachers College at

071Columbia this summer and have the good fortune of hearing Sarah Ahmed speak and this is a book called being the change and it has a lot of read aloud suggestions in lessons and the focus of the book is teaching social comprehension to students so what do you want to work with our kids on self-identity and identifying these activities in here and what is your name mean and how do you share the celebrate your name and we're hoping to do some work with the kids on self-portraits that we can get out around our school and then also we are continuing to design learning spaces that are brain based therapeutic environments as mrs. you heard mrs. McHenry say we continue to have the four R's relationships routines reinforcements in that resource or reset guide all of the

072work that we're doing I'd like to give a shout out to my third grade teachers who this summer visited the South Coast educational collaborative school of behavioral setting and they observe some of the practices that they were doing there and how could we bring that back into our setting and they've done some really great things they're taking the last ten minutes of their day the kids are working on practice cards they're reinforcing the positive things the kids have done throughout the day the kids who need to practice something are doing it right in that moment and we're kind of trying to fix that behavior and get it right back on course they're doing a lot of collaboration with with dr. McCartney and you'll also see that our classrooms physically look different than maybe what you're

073used to seeing you certainly are not walking in and seeing desks and rows you're actually seeing less and less desks period we have standing desks floor desks wobble stools calming corners brain break stations we have completely flexible seating arrangements and we're really just working hard at meaning our students diverse needs and our teachers are working to create those optimal physical spaces for learning on the community engagement end of things mrs. Corey and I this summer had a long discussion about fully bringing back that discovered to malice series which was a night time series that we did it to mellow and we had workshops on all different facets of learning and then in a truth we read Potter's sit from last year where they were talking about their idea of a digital platform for parent presentations

074and we put our kind of realistic hat on in the reality that we know is that our parents are busy and that often times can't make it to a one-shot deal but just because it's they're busy it doesn't mean that they don't want to be informed I will speak on a personal level as a parent of school-age children my mom friends my dad friends and I talk a lot about how we're cooling and blogging parent blogs at 11 o'clock at night after my kids are in bed and after you know lunches are made for the next day and I might have even said hello to my husband but that's when we're doing some of the work in if we were trying to think how wouldn't it be great if parents had that option to click

075on a link at 10:30 at night and figure out what in the world of snap word is or how I can use an open number line to help my child add fractions so we are hoping to work with Liz voci our instructional tech specialist in maybe the DHS media and production students to create some visual seminars where parents can figure out what their needs are and then be able to do that when they're able to do it our first step in that process is to do a pure interest survey so that will happen at parent-teacher conferences it's a time that we really do get a lot of parents into the building so we need to figure out what topics it is they want to know about before we can take some next steps as to

076creating and producing those seminars we maintain our take home Tuesday our virtual backpack in our social media Monday where we get on Twitter and Facebook and trying to shout out all the things that weren't going are going on at D'Mello school and then with the help of our dedicated teachers really through our reading committee our math committee our PTO we have lots of pan we had our Fall Festival this weekend we have a bingo for books we have math night and reading night so it's really through the dedication and those people that were able to get that done but we'd like to bridge that gap between home and school and then the thing that we're excited about at D'Mello school is we have some embedded peer learning walk time so you heard me talk before

077about how every Friday misses Coria and I take one grade level and we do a social comprehension activity with them but during that half an hour teachers at that grade level are freed up to go into another classroom in the building and observe their peers teach so that's really something that we believe wholly in and research really backs being able to observe your colleagues so cheese might drop grade level and see what the kids who they got are learning and before them they might go up a level and see what they need to do to prepare the kids to go to the grade so you know time is always sort of the enemy of everything we do so we it's really a double win because it's the highlight of our week truly to be with

078the kids and it frees the teachers up to be able to go anywhere in the building and see what's going on fast I can talk [Laughter] start to wind down yeah we good congratulations and good luck it so again thank you very much for your presentation I really like the idea of teachers being able to get out into other classrooms I know you are covering a classroom for that to happen and I know there's a lot of professional development going on and probably need to get subs in for that I was just curious what is the sub situation is it I know we sometimes ever beat our target is 90 and we're only at 70 so we have days what we're short and often times some teacher's assistant have to cover the classroom so we

079do our best to try to get it up to that target of 90 now sounds like a lot of exciting things are going on over there so congratulations keep up the good work and wish you well thanks thanks it was great I also I'm really excited to hear and I know this is going on in the other schools to about just the variety of sort of seating and physical options sort of being offer for our kids I mean I know when my oldest was going into elementary school he was just not ready to sit at a desk and I know there's a lot of kids that aren't ready to do that and I and it's exciting to that we're also seeing it not just at the elementary level but in other places and I I'm

080happy to see that in the elementary school and all the districts to sort of give the kids the space they need to to be good learners right so that's awesome thank you to the df' because they funded a grant through one of our grade levels who wrote a grant for all kinds of great flexibility I mean they have cool stuff there's really cool stuff thank you so yeah I am I'm equally excited about the flexible seating I know every every fall or every at the end of every summer I take a ride with my wife to Ikea some flexible seating to add to the classroom so I think that's a great piece and I'm also I'm really happy to hear that you're making time for your teachers to go and observe each other but the

081PLC's and I think that's huge I I attended a UH I was meeting or a conference last year in which one of the one of the topics was about pineapple charting is that it sounds like that's that's what you're doing it's so the premise behind a pineapple is that it's the symbol for welcoming and greeting and similar to the high school has done a pineapple project as well so teachers we started with a pineapple project where people could sign up something that they were doing in their classroom we added to that a wish list of things that people wish they could see in the classroom to try to give people like oh I'm doing that why don't you come in and see it but I think even with that to your point that it's hard

082to get coverage for that it's hard to kind of make that work so we still have our pineapple chart and we saw people sign up for that but we this is sort of embedded time that we give to a grade level to say what do you want to do that's great thank you thank you yeah thank you for all that you do I'm fortunate I have a fourth grader at D'Mello who is just really eager to get to school every day and I didn't realize she's eager because she loves to learn and she she really is happy in the school environment but during open house I realized she's really trying to get the first choice at a seat in her class so we smartened up to that but no she's really so that's a thing

083I hear that the kids want to kind of be there because they want to pick their seating yeah and and just what a shift though for the teachers too because I know my daughter's teacher was like oh you want to kind of get in there but those kids are really doing their thing and learning and and and like you said they're those seats aren't facing the blackboard and you know and if you move you're in trouble it's sort of a moving thing and I think that the result is clearly the evidence is going to be in the data that these kids really are more comfortable more you know making those opportunities to learn from their mistakes and do better each day and it's a challenge and I mean I see it at home with you

084know my fourth grader and and just yeah just the attention to to the social-emotional I mean her emotional I always tell her you know you learn better than mommy did when she was your age so because she just you know is is repeating things that she's learning at school around how to redirect her own self and how to kind of manage her own emotions and she's those students are really out of advantage to have that as a part of their curriculum but so thank you for all that you are doing and I love how you're bringing in to foster that diversity awareness for your because it is something that's so important to to just everyone's different and and and that's okay and everyone learns differently and that's okay to support each other so wonderful thank

085you thank you thanks ladies thank you Cotter just going off script for a second I'm dr. Kara Fotis you had mentioned about the play at the upper grades and how important it is so it just made me think through the help of mrs. Brooks on our PTO we were able to purchase on this year life-size Jenga games and Kinect for and at our first staff meeting this year because we are like our other schools focusing on the four hours and our first staff meeting we had the teachers get together and look at these games and play these games and we gave them very little instruction on how to do them so they had to grapple with them as well but the idea behind that was we want the teachers to bring them into their classrooms

086to begin that relationship building with their new students but now we're going to bring in and have a station at recess so the monitors are getting together to decide would connect for make more sense here or Jenga and for those students who are maybe not so much into kickball and some of the other physical games it gives them another opportunity and it's a wonderful like strategy kind of base game for them to play so it is happening at the upper grades as well looking at access and equity this year Potter we're going to work with our ITF specialists and each occurred we're looking to integrate the technology skills and the digital literacy standards into our project-based personalized learning initiative the digital literacy standards that have come from DES say they focus on creating connecting collaborating

087and researching all of that is just right for the project-based experience so what mrs. Brooks has done is that every classroom has a time to work with Miss chica every classroom has that stem block that we've extended for them to really get in there and grapple with those skills but this year we've been able to take it one step further because we went down from four kindergarteners last year to three kindergarten classrooms we were able to give sandy a dedicated space so we're soon gonna be opening up our stem lab so our students previously in the past when Miss chicken would come to their classroom they be getting highly involved in that imaginative exciting experience but then when the forty minutes were up they had to close it down now the stem lab will be

088open for them for the teachers to sign up they can go down there they can work on the green screen they can work in the engineering projects and they don't have to think about putting it away so we're really looking forward to that to open up I'm also this year we are looking to look at the implementation of our intervention services and we're taking it one step further to focus on the fidelity of the services so we're gonna judge whether an intervention both academic and behavioral is successful by diving down deep we're going to look to see how often is that intervention happening what specifically skill wise is happening because if you don't look at the nitty-gritty of an intervention you won't be able to tell whether or not a child is succeeding and it

089also allows you to have open and honest discussions with staff it's okay to say I'm having a tough day as a staff member too I couldn't get to that behavior chart that they were working on and that's okay but if we don't recognize that then we can't fully measure whether an intervention service is working and then we can also work with staff and say okay how do we have to think of that differently so that we can make sure child and staff are successful so those are the two years in access and equity we're working on this year about our community engagement has we've referenced we're expanding the use of social media platforms to engage our families we attempted some things last year we did some Facebook live presentations we have Twitter accounts we did

090the electronic backpack and we then surveyed parents to say what did you like having well they want that all except if it comes in a form then they wanted to come home as a paper very often our families are not even accessing the information on a computer they're accessing on a phone and if they have a phone they can't send things something to print or they can't look at the full scope of that so we're still grappling with that that mix but we're definitely seeing that our parents for the most part really are looking for something that's going to be in their inbox or at the ready as mrs. Pavano said you know at 10:30 at night when they finally have a chance to look at that they don't necessarily take out their the you

091know paper copy of the Potter pages to read but they'll be on this screen sad but true the our other piece is engaging with community agencies and if you have a copy which I know school committee members do have a copy of the full school improvement plan you can see a list of all the outside agencies that we we work with and these typically are not one-shot experiences these are things that we do on a regular basis I'll just call to mine our Junior Achievement this is our fourth year being involved with during your achievement we have J a classes kindergarten through grade five and we're now starting to see that financial literacy piece when the new J starts the students are recalling the ga-ga experience of the previous year so we're seeing some of

092those things carry over and it's something that we've we've worked hard to instill in our in our fabric of Potter school and as I said all of these are are things that are important to us in our in our values what we're excited about is the opening of the north dartmouth branch library so it has a temporary occupancy permit right now so that we can start moving materials in and we're looking sometime in November to have the real opening and we're thrilled our students will be able to walk over which is actually through the sort of the back yard we have a path between the two spaces and the children's section of that library is what's facing Potter schools so as soon as we go in the door we'll have that space they also have

093a community space for 120 individuals and we're hoping to be able to access that space during the day we're relatively space poor so if we have an activity or either jamming in the classrooms or were kicking Jim to the classroom or outside or trying to figure it out around our lunch schedules and so we're going to be working with them to access during the school day the community space that they have at the library so we're we're very excited I'm also excited about the North Dartmouth library branch opening so I think you're finally getting a library that you deserve and you probably wanted for awhile what is your plans for your existing the existing space that's out Potter when and tooms is coming over to look at our collection and I will be honest you

094and we're very proud of our library space very proud of our collection but then when I look at it after visiting the new branch we look a bit tattered but the books that we have can certainly go into classroom libraries so then we're looking at that space I will say right now the path between the two buildings planned out by the landscape architects is a soft surface path meandering through the trees I'm not quite sure what that's going to look like in the heart of the winter so we're going to be doing this year a mix of using both the north dartmouth branch and our own library mrs. Jasmin will be taking the students when it's appropriate over we still have to get everyone you know cards and everything so we're looking forward to see

095how is this going to work and then making some decisions believe me there's a lot of people with their eyeballs on our library space it sounds like a great community partnership as well with I know as soon as it's open I encourage every resident north south east and west to come and visit it's really going to be a beautiful sight right thank you I was gonna say the same thing I'm really excited too because I work right by there so I'm excited to personally go there but I'm excited for not just part of school but the people in the north part of town who now have I mean it's far if you live up north to get down into South worth library and the other library in Tucker Road is not really great library so

096I'm super excited for that and for all the opportunities that it affords you guys and I'm really looking forward to seeing the sorts of things that you do over the next couple of years to use that space it'll be great for you I just want to say that I should have said it I mean it for all of the school improvement plans the summations that you give at the beginning about the work that you've done and the accomplishments that you feel that you've make from year-to-year it's it really is it tells a lot about the continuity of the changes that are coming along I think that we're listening to you talk about your technology how important it is for those technology specialists and in the buildings for what they have to offer you know we

097can get the hardware and the software in there but teachers are so busy with so many things but to have someone in there that can show them the best ways to enhance the curriculum and enhance instruction is so important so I think there are a lot of great things going on and I know it takes a lot of effort on everyone's potted I'm most appreciative thank you thank you the experience of going through every year to write the school improvement plan and reflecting on where we came with certain items is really helpful for us because sometimes it's a blur and we see that we've made we've accomplished something but I will tell you that there is at no time going forth that something is done and checked off it's an evolution so sometimes I'm looking

098and I said my gosh the plan is reading similar to last year's plan but we are still doing those things and maybe things are evolving with the students for example with the technology we've been really quite fortunate that our teachers the technology that that mr. Porter mentioned is being pushed into their classroom with miss chica it's the opportunity for classroom teachers to see these new technologies if they if it was something that they were just dropping the kids and going they would never really be able to include that in their classroom but we're seeing students who you know that's you know digital natives they know no other world you know they would never think of going to an excitement you know a hardbound encyclopedia to look something up that would be completely foreign to them

099they want to know how something works they look for a YouTube video mr. Brooks does as well but it really is something that we need to embrace and that's why we we don't typically say we just say social media Facebook is the thing now a few years ago it was myspace we don't know what then the next social media platform that people will be gravitating to but with that comes a lot of respect for the power and bad of social media getting instruction on the correct way to use media that's part of the digital citizenship that mr. Porter mentioned it's really very important you know when you explain to them that Wikipedia anyone can post something to Wikipedia doesn't mean it's true that's when I tell myself when I go to WebMD in panic yes

100just very very good and again you know talking about the stem you know getting the students involved there and with the library and you know the students all their own individual library cards and the ability to read is paramount in this day and age so that's and I'm happy for that and look forward like everybody else to get into that library and see exactly what it what it is and one of the how it looks yes they all pretty much said it going last has its benefits and you know its setbacks but I too am excited about your how I can just imagine how you're gonna utilize that space in the library in that pathway I just love how you're always so wise to utilize the resources that are out there like the J a

101coming in and offering that to the students it's invaluable and you know you and I you're always sharing you know we have the community resource fair you're always kind of hey did you hear about this and it's so helpful because the kids are benefiting families are benefiting so thank you for everything that you do really appreciate so thank you and good evening thank you for the opportunity to present tonight to start off someone to what mrs. Brooks was just saying when we were writing our school improvement plan over the summer and into September what we're pretty proud about and happy about is that there's not many changes to our school improvement plan so we're trying to highlight some of some of those changes for this year but it's a testament to the staff that we

102have at the Quinn school being a very large school that we have many different initiatives that go on throughout the course of a day or with that being said throughout the course of a year so the staff has been resilient with all the different time where we're meeting to talk about common language and the vertical and horizontal alignment from curriculum to social-emotional to just everything that makes up an entire school day which is a lot so last year for you recall one of the main talking points that we talked about was establishing committees to focus on four key areas to really solidify that common language and making sure as a staff of 100 plus people that we're all on the same page so we had embedded four different committees one being an instructional leadership committee

103that I should say all four committees ended this school year with kind of a fine product so the instructional leadership we ended up kind of putting together our vertical teams of what is what makes sense and what is practical as far as the amount of time to make sure that all students benefit from it it's just a fun day which led to building in time to plan as a staff to really kind of prep the students of what they're gonna be going into and having a good time so that was one of the outcomes from instructional leadership we had an RTI committee where we really talked about the process and what does it look like we revisited forms that had been in place for a period of time so that we could really talk about

104what that RTI process looks like mrs. Thomas led our PBIS committee which she'll talk more about but the final product was the peaceful playground and our integrated technology which was led by mrs. Leary is really just forever ongoing in her role and especially with the Fuca future focused initiative it was just really highlighting the tools that we have and how and all the technology really benefits instructional practices and it's not just something we have to say we have it so there's a lot of work in that along with tying in what digital literacy standards are and where they are and kind of bringing people on board with that so this year one of the things that we're gonna be focusing on is revisiting our school-wide PBIS PBIS initiative which is roughly eight to ten years

105old and feedback from staff from students and even from parents is it's tough to do with fidelity on a daily basis where right now we pass out coins and we fill Rockets classroom rockets great level rockets and just keeping in mind that classroom teachers have their own management style and we still have PBIS rallies where students are being recognized for monthly character traits that they're modeling so the system that we have it's it's just tough to do on a daily basis with fidelity so our goal this year is to have ongoing meetings starting next month since we just finished up a collar on that was a huge time commitment which was fantastic but our plan moving forward is to have a committee and try to get as many staff as possible to really talk about

106what moving forward for next school year makes sense is a kind of school-wide PBIS initiative outside of classroom management and our PBIS rallies that we do and through that we like to take that to our school council RP tío and then kind of update all families at throw out a monthly newsletter that we do and then bring it back to all staff that we'd love to have all staff there but make sure we're getting through to all stakeholders so that's a that's a huge goal for us this year good evening I'm really excited to talk about our community engagement which is Sunday storytime with mrs. Thomas and Friends so this idea was generated last March when Belinda George who is a principal from Texas made national news because she was reading to her students in

107her school once a week so as I was watching it I'm like why can't we do this I Quinn so with the busing from dr. Gifford and mr. Graham field I was able to make a proposal and start it in April we've had roughly 25 Sunday story times we did it through April to the end of the year and then over the summer and we've already started this school year so it is through our Quin PTO Facebook page and every Sunday at 7:30 either myself or a staff member goes online and reads one or two books to the kids of Quin the purpose really was for me I wanted kids to be excited about reading I thought it was really cool that they could kind of interact with whoever was doing the reading so when

108they come on at night they can say hi to me or whoever's reading we get to say hi back to them and then as we're reading we can ask them comprehension questions they're able to respond which is really cool and also another big thing just for them to have eyes on print parents love it it's one night that they get to share you know with their kids but they're not the ones doing the reading so a lot of the parents will say it's nice to have a night off just to sit with them and enjoy it with them some of them put it on their big screen they'll send me shots of them watching me or other staff members on their big screen TVs which is really cool and the other thing that I really

109wanted was to increase our members for our Quin PTO page because we do send out a lot of information on that and so far we've increased by 150 families have actually come on since we've been doing that which is really great so if we also invite community members so if anyone ever wants to read on Sunday night please let me know but also my amazing staff who volunteers their time on Sundays to read from their home it's really great for the kids and they absolutely love seeing their teachers reading to them and commenting and so if you're not a member of our page but want to be please join and you can also watch and the cool thing is is that they all stay archived so for people that join even now they could go

110back to last year's and watch all of them so some dress up with props it's really fun so that's I'm really excited about that as mr. Graham field was saying earlier we did have four committees last year that worked really hard on different aspects of the school one of them being our PBS PBIS committee which I chaired but had 25 staff members with me who really wanted to see a change with our playground specifically the blacktop area which is was bare because when you have five classrooms outside and only two really can go on the two black tops you have a lot of kids with not too much to do so that also can increase our behaviors because they're bored so they're coming to me so we wanted to make sure that that wasn't happening

111as much and we had over the summer a lot of awesome volunteers that came to Saturday's both parents and staff members who spent the entire day here painting our playground with our peaceful playground curriculum we have if you haven't seen it please go out and see it it was our phase one we will be doing Phase two with our older kids on the other side as well but they have a huge track there that they can walk and they love to just walk and talk with their friends they have twister we have a sensory path which the kids really love so just a lot of different game chutes and ladders but enlarged for them to play so every time I go out there and see the kids playing it's really awesome to see and it

112has decreased kids coming in because they're engaged in play which we've been talking about so it's been a really awesome thing to to see so if you haven't seen it please please come and visit one day so you can and the final thing that we wanted to highlight is that we're very excited about we're always trying to support staff of class strategies for all types of behavior or situations that they can encounter through a day and I don't think it's a surprise that the amount of students that we're seeing with trauma is significantly higher year after year after year so we've gotten really good feedback about dr. Charlie apples team with some of the work that he had done over the last year and it was in smaller pockets and after reaching out in the

113summer and talking about what that could look like we're excited that he's actually coming to our next two staff meetings the second October 1 in the first November 1 to really highlight what it feels like for a student with significant trauma as well as providing teachers with strategies and ideas that can hopefully ultimately help them in the classroom on a daily basis moving forward that thank you and happy to answer any questions Wow this is the good stuff that we get to listen to all night before the four the four sips have been have been all been wonderful in it a little different because each school is different and such but that's great but job well done I'm you know the reading on Sunday I gotta get I gotta try it I get it yeah

114see if I can figure out how to get on paper yeah get to that Facebook page okay thank you I appreciate that I can't I can't I am on Facebook but as you know to try and get someplace a little different hey that that that type of deal updating the PBIS manual is I think it's paramount and is very good and just a personal congratulations on I managed to get five minutes to stop by Saturday and it looked like it was well-received and fantastic job by everybody that was involved and you know even seeing you know the police department the fire department you know the ambulance you know stat ambulance here was just nice to see everyone here you really having a good time it was nice too that we volunteering all the different stations

115we had an increase in runners we had over 650 runners this year Wow just that ran other family and we had 30-plus vendors we had just so many different things happening but our staff and parents volunteering was just fantastic or we won't have been able to do it so thank you thank you for coming back well looks like a great things are happening at Quin something that you're all doing too is the focus on continuous progress and improvement you know like when you send out those forms and you want to keep improving them to make them more effective so you know it doesn't sound like a big thing but it's really extremely important I noticed too that you were you put down you restructured your master schedule what was that all about we're trying our

116best to continue having grade levels have common planning time not just on common planning time days and it was trickier this year because we went from five every grade level so we have six and k-6 and grade one we have a dip in grade 3 we have four so yeah it's worth it great work all of you thank you and I love the story time thank you yeah I love the story time - I see how excited people are on Facebook when story time is coming up people get really excited about that and it's good to see I love to read so I would love to come on sometimes one of my favorite things to do my kids are there are old teenagers now so they roll their eyes I think we've managed to pull

117it through - like middle school which was pretty good so I missed that so I'd love to do it and I think it's I particularly love it because it's a way to maintain those connections over breaks right you know to have them going on in the summer and to keep people engaged is it's really awesome and so that's I love to see it that's awesome so you know what what a commitment with the storytime piece that day yeah I give you guys a lot you folks a lot of props for for taking on that they volunteer their time so so it's just it's it's everyone anyone that wants to volunteer can can pretty much volunteer far I can only imagine make sure there's someone to read if not she reads but on our weekly backpack

118that we sent home she has a picture of the book kind of intriguing all families that we sent home to advertise of what that's gonna be on Sunday night so that's a massive time commitment and she every single week all throughout the entire summer going back to 25 weeks ago which hasn't missed a week yet so that is that's just great you know the couple of other things one thing the talking about the playground how you over the summer you had a bunch of volunteers I'm just looking I Drive by here all the time do you not have is there a playground structure there at all or is there so we our big toy in our new toy yep on both sides yeah and then we have that massive blacktop so that's really where we

119focused on the blacktop we painted the whole blacktop is a really dave did last summer okay so now there's literally an area for everyone to to kind of engage in that that's wonderful you know I since your since you're the last last school presenting I'll say that um I'm really amazed at what goes on in the public schools I'm very active in the k-12 community and in groups across you know in the south coast but - I always even though I work for another district I always somehow mention how good Dartmouth is and what we're doing in Dartmouth being on the school committee it never ceases to amaze me how we're always evolving the passion that our our administrators as well as our educators and powers and the TAS and the classrooms right down to

120- all the support staff in the district you know how much time and effort that goes into to making this district a better place and I commend I commend all of you for that and the last piece I'll leave with is and I don't know if this is something for maybe dr. Gifford or mrs. ROI or this is Oliveira but we've heard about all the all the great things is there a theme amongst in the district for a challenge is there any child like if you could if you could share with us one like really big challenge that we're facing as a district and I don't know if you I'm just I'm putting everyone mrs. Baldwin I'm referring to the education and not the union negotiations she's to a point I mean obviously the first

121thing I think of is first I want to say we have some of the best administrators every single building I am so thrilled and proud and pleased with the work that everyone here is doing at all high school they haven't spoken but you don't know what it's like to be an administrator in a building and the issues they're dealing with the programs we have to include all kids provide mental health support you know so for them to be able to coordinate with their staff and keep their staffs inspired and motivated and and play nice you know all of us as a team that they're pretty fantastic people every single one of them so to say that first but also its budget because in order to comes down to being able to maintain what we have

122and to keep moving forward and there to provide a fair and equitable contract and I know what we don't want to talk about that now but we we went away this weekend to Denver and and that was some of the things we talked about to be able to continue with our innovation or stem and have the proper personnel on board that can do these things if you have to start losing some of your folks these programs can't can you you know so it really does it's a challenge it's a challenge I don't think the work is the challenge really cuz everyone loves the work and they're digging in and I mean like Kyle said the teachers that were here this weekend they want to be here they want to be involved they want to do

123the best by the kids but if they start losing resources or you know that kind of thing many many districts I I've been around they don't have even like the technology we have to be able to have kids have that you know so I I say that's our big challenge to try to do what we do so well with perhaps limited funding and I think you saw one of the PTO s budget that they presented forth I was looking through that the amount of money and I know Shannon's mentioned it a million times the amount of money the various groups add to our what we're able to do so I just give all of these folks a lot of kudos and we try not baske to strategize to be able to continue supporting them with

124what they need ya know you mentioned you you're a large school and every school has its level of needs but you are a large school with a high level of needs and you are standing here Audra okay with smiles I should face excited about the work and there's just such a testament I mean everyone came up and was so excited about I love how he added that element of what you're excited about because it's so important but D'Mello is in the house for your Sunday reading and I wonder if I'm looking in the back I won't name any names but if you would thought about having some kind of contest as to who's the funniest with the props because I mean every week is yeah yes there you go there's a hysterical last night it

125was just I mean they're just hysterical the costumes and engaging the kids and calling them out all there are to hear their name oh I love watching it yeah I think that was the ultimate lift in my opinion the funny barrels are in and so I'm glad I didn't realize that they were archives but go back but yeah thank you for everything that you do considering your size and your level of need and like you said the Rubik's Cube of trying to kind of manage all of it all of you who came up really but just speaking to you now that you're up here and just a wonderful job so thank you madam chair that we need a motion do we need tofu yes do we need a motion yes yep okay no I will

126entertain make a motion that we approved the for school improvement plans as presented any other discussion on that Oh favor okay unanimous motion carries thank you everyone it's really a treat to get to hear about all without your planning and the great work that's being done in the schools all right what's next good stuff so we have dr. Gifford to talk about oh yeah an acknowledgement for funding yes yes you can read what this is but mr. Kylie and I met with Jim McBratney and a couple weeks back I guess and mr. Kylie knew a lot about the scholarship trust fund that already existed and we were thrilled to have him come and present us with more money to add to these and I guess I'll just read it because everyone doesn't know what it's

127about so it's short enough so the Dartmouth scholarship trust provides scholarships to Dartmouth high school graduates each year when originally established the donors had wished to remain anonymous however the trust has revised their wishes and will now be known as the Dartmouth scholarship trust funded by dr. J Greer and Elizabeth I McBratney in addition mr. Kiley sent this so he was pleased to announce that I'm September 12 2009 teen the McBratney trust contributed an additional $100,000 to increase the non expendable principal balance of the fund to two hundred and twenty nine thousand five hundred dollars to fund future scholarships through the interest earned in addition on September 12 2009 teen McBratney trust contributed $50,000 to the Dartmouth enrichment fund which they had previously established to be used for the benefit of all Dartmouth public school

128students and the balance of that fund now is 117 thousand seven hundred twenty four thousand fifty five cents so we were of course very appreciative of this um these folks have been passed away and the family is standing by their wishes to continue this for our kids and and the emergent programs and I'm as mr. Kiley noted we it will no longer be an anonymous fund so fantastic yeah assuming we'll proper thank-yous of being sent thank you and hopefully the stock market will do well so we'll make a lot of interest in principal increases so that we can give out a lot of scholarships out of them fantastic no I mean the scholarship itself has already been accepted so I just started my superintendent chats this past week last week and visited two schools and

129try to get up a schedule time so folks that want to can some come say hello or share some ideas mr. I'm gonna let mr. news talk about the band I know that lots have been happening I wanted to mention I know we heard from Sophia about the athletic program but the teams are doing so well I asked Andy tonight to give me their SATs Oh field hockey is 72 and one football one and three girls soccer five two and one boys soccer four three and one golf three and ten the cross-country boys one and two girls two and one and our volleyball team is 11 and oh so look forward to them in the state so wherever it happens next let's see you know we've been involved in the innovation and transformational netwo Leadership

130Network one of the things that came out of that recently was we had we were recommended by them to have a visit from a group k-12 education if you look online so virtual school k12 and they're continually trying to evolve so what they wanted to do was come out and visit schools that kind of look at best practices and I think about seeing how our innovation or technology was being used they could see it in person because as they're trying to implement things virtually what kind of projects are our teachers are doing with our students so that was a wonderful visit we took them to middle school the high school and Quinn to see some what was happening in the schools speaking of I also want to mention before I have a quick little video

131and Bob's discount furniture mr. Perotti once again Proactive trying to secure donations for the program which he always has DonorsChoose you can all donate to that but he was able to obtain a Bob's discount furniture $1,000 gift card so I guess he and mr. Tebow have been out looking at talk about like different kinds of furniture they professional-looking stools and things for their for the studio and they just I think got wireless mics as well so that was exciting but what I wanted to just highlight really quick tonight is we went to hope Jonathan has as I said we had a culminating visit this weekend the core team from the innovation Leadership Network went to Denver for our last session formalized session with the group and each of the groups were able to highlight talk

132to we were cohort one the 15 school districts that participated and cohort to members who are going to jump on we're also there so each of the cohort one groups were able to talk a little bit about the work we've been doing and then they wanted us to show a quick little five-minute video so I wanted to kind of show you that what we showed to the group you have it right Jonathan this weekend and then see where we go in the future the Dartmouth public school district is a high achieving district that excels in many areas including academics arts music athletics TV media stem and innovation this is due to an outstanding faculty a focus on relationships and a supportive community [Music] Dartmouth public schools join this network for the ultimate goal to expand

133and enhance the future focus mindset in our district the mindset leads to instructional practices that empower students through creative and critical thinking collaboration and communication to be successful in this ever-changing world diamond Public Schools believes this work is important to continue and build upon a movement towards personalized blended learning and project-based lessons and units when looking at our GPS statement we wanted first to get staff buy-in to develop a philosophy to shift instructional practices to meet kids today where they are when we stop and think we're preparing students for jobs that don't exist yet we wanted to empower our students by providing opportunities and therefore they can go off and grow mature and live interesting life's that develop their passions when starting any initiative it's important that the Y is clearly understood our efforts included

134helping people understand we are preparing students for their future not our past and that all students deserve to be prepared for this ever changing world so this is our first one we did not do this last year we're just violating it now so there's there's five stations there's sort of cohesion and adhesion so different properties of water plant adaptations two stations that are in Peters room were built cortex and recognizing teacher voice is a critical component in any initiative we started our work with a core team but quickly added ambassadors from each school these people helped develop our vision for personalized and blended learning that is purposeful intentional relevant and targeted and they also inspire and support all of those ready to take risks in our schools this year we launched our take a risk

135campaign establishing a risk free environment where teachers were encouraged to have students do the doing reduce whole class teacher talk and increase student choice and voice how they feel and if they can think of all the terms right they jump right to it so the engineering to classes at Dartmouth high school I'm Sam bratty I am the teacher of these classes this is a gravity car project it's kind of a culminating project for this class it's a great project because there's a lot of design involved and there's a lot of teamwork really hard to do it just by yourself you really need a bunch of people together and so that's a really great segment of this work it's also neat to build something bigger we start with much smaller projects in the classroom and when

136you build something on the scale that you're actually gonna ride it down the hill it's it's a whole different situation and you run into variables that you just can't make up [Music] I am mrs. Reidy and this is the marine science collection field trip [Music] moving forward we reflect on where we have been to solidify where we are going the shifts in instructional practice continue to support our teachers and students we have always been a district that performs high so we take our tradition and now mix it with innovation giving students multiple opportunities to collaborate think critically and explore [Music] you [Music] so and everybody's involved in I have at work thank you you're welcome maybe they have any comment on that great wonderful yeah will you be sharing this to parati yeah is that

137gonna be shared or is it already like share that we'll share it with we have great narration by the way I know but it highlights a little bit of everything that we're doing connected it all necessary don't ya great so reported the chair I Sophie did such a great job and dr. Gifford you covered pretty much everything oh I will put in a plug for the the community resource fair that will be happening on Sunday October 20th from 10:00 to 3:00 at the high school just a huge variety of South Coast community resources there to talk with people so I really encourage people to stop by for that and the only other thing that I do have as far as I guess for is that as a committee you remember we asked to invite our

138legislators to come and talk with us and so Kate invited our senator Mantegna and representative Chris Marquis I'm not sure if Chris Marquis replied but I do know that mock Mantegna staff person did reply and so we wanted them to come on to talk really about the to do with the legislation with the funding for public education and how that will affect our district because we do know that even though last year we put a resolution together in support of a more equitable split we knew that the that we would be vulnerable to losing money in that in that arrangement so Senator Monty knew is not available any of our upcoming meetings however and I can read this so it does not appear that the dates work for the senator but he's hoping to have

139some availability he will have some availability this upcoming week the week of the 14th so next week and so I guess I'm putting it forth to the committee to see what your thoughts are or your availability is in regards to how do we proceed as your servant leader I ask you kindly to share your thoughts on whether we take him up on meeting with him according to his availability and the representative that got back to to Kate said that you know he also welcomes representative Markey to attend that as well and just to let them know and they look forward to hearing from us yes rumors and information swirling around about how from the governor's analysis about how each of the communities are going to fare did you see anything any Dartmouth numbers nothing but

140nothing that looks any different than what we already know which is the Dartmouth is not really a beneficiary of any sizable amount yeah I guess my concern is that some of the communities are looking at sort of sharp reductions and they're the only reason why I ask is because if we're I mean bad enough or enough getting more money but if we're getting a lot less money that I think it would behoove us to have to try to meet with senator Montini before the bill moves through each of the chambers so we can at least sort of talk about that because I don't think it was just a wait until later after the bill has already passed then the horse is already out of the barn well if I could mean we've always been vulnerable

141in a vulnerable position because we are actually receiving more money from the state than what the state says we should receive according to the existing formula communities were held harmless at the time they were they revised the formula because for political reasons there was no way they were going to revise this formula give all the money from take money from certain communities and give it to others so they sort of held certain communities steady which has been our case here in Dartmouth and increased other communities we so we've always been vulnerable in the fact that if they ever really wanted to implement a true formula which I don't really think they can politically pull off we'd be hurt I mean we're getting more money than they think we should so it's been it's possible that

142that could happen but politically I can't imagine how they actually could implement it certainly though under the governor's analysis right there are numerous communities over the course of the funding that do stand to sort of see a reduction in their state aid and given how low our tax rate is I mean that's a historical problem when you compare a tax rate to other communities it's just well below where other communities are but so my concern is I didn't expect us to get a windfall in this but my concern is that we're gonna be in one of those numbers and communities in that analysis that actually loses money because of that because that Monday is going to school districts that have a higher level of need or they're kind of fully phasing in the the formula

143as it actually was supposed to work yeah yeah I think I think the legislators would have a should have a significant say in that you know and and the governor may propose something but that's yes you know it is it is the legislators yeah that's what it's like a five you know it's like a billion dollars for five years type of deal which is you know two hundred and fifty million dollars a year divided by three hundred and fifty one communities isn't a heck of a lot per se it's in the scheme of things it's less than you know a million dollars per community but when you sit here and you take as they just did in the you know in the spring or with the revised budgets that they came out with and you

144drop you know two million dollars in the Fall River and three million dollars in the New Bedford then and we saw what it did to us you know we're done we're out we're out in left field I would expect that we'll see more of the same which is they get more and we'd get nothing yeah basically that's what they'll stand on their high horses and say hey look what we did the AEA for us not so yeah I know try to meet with that I mean yeah I mean personally I'm I'm good with that but we've got town meeting Tuesday night next week and so I've got the commitment there is the night so I've got Wednesday and Friday those are my two nights so what time would we be talking about I believe it

145was just the the week of let me just say possible very yeah the week of the 14th and he wasn't specific as far as they would find availability that week so I don't there was no other correspondence after that so I think that go ahead I don't have to be there I mean I would be inclined to that's duck yeah that's fine but you know again I'm available Wednesday it depends on the time so I think for all of us it depends on time so yeah well I've got commitments Tuesday night Thursday night well Tuesday night's Town Meeting so I mean do we good each of you look and then send me your availability and then I'll work with Kate - yeah yes would that work sure okay yeah I know I was limited as

146well like you said there's I've got some work commitments in the evening I mean I could if I can fit it in thank goodness for Papa and babysitting but if I can fit it in I will as well but I don't certainly don't have to be there either so okay so will with me on that and yeah and I guess does anybody else have anything could you update us John on that sure I get just a couple I mean I already mentioned Town Meeting this is just a question and I'm gonna unless you guy are you talking about the spelling bee okay that's fine yeah serious I know thank you dr. Gifford we're off and running with our band season so far undefeated thing you know very fortunate we had two good shows this weekend

147sat the up and rent them at King Philip and Sunday afternoon at of effort McCoy we've got we head to Cranston Rhode Island this Saturday night and we've got a parade on Monday in Revere the Columbus Day Parade that we always do so you know we're off there you know as everybody else you know you know the athletic teams and anybody else is doing the triple e is made it very difficult you know it's having a you know rehearsals in the afternoon because a lot of the drill staff comes from other places and you know they can't get out of work or you know their afternoon commitment so it's been tough but you know the students are working hard at it and you know everybody's enjoying it and again my thanks to dr. Gifford Kathleen

148mr. Tebow for your time Saturday night at our home show it was it's nice it's the it's nice sitting up there in all seriousness and and being able to see the numbers yeah it really is anyone else have any oh Jenny with the spelling bee yes I just found that analysis I'll share it with you mr. Kylie it's not good yeah distracted right now our chapter 70 money as percent of the budget goes from 25 percent to 21 percent yeah so we're in a not good community sorry so yeah we should definitely talk to Senator bunting me about that the spelling bee is November 14th from 7 to 9 we are accepting donations we are also accepting team so anyone associated with the schools you don't have to give a donation to field the team

149you know mr. t-bo's already given some nudges over there I think mr. t who already has his team in yeah he's ready to go so we would love to have people come out it's a fun night to just visit or dispel or to make a donation and the forum for doing donations and teams it's de FM a Dartmouth education foundation in Massachusetts or you can google Dartmouth Education Foundation and you'll find that thank you we sponsoring the pair just going to say that yes I would like for us to sponsor teams so if you can give me donations that would be great um if it's too much for anyone I'll make up that difference okay so if that is yes I'll just add a couple of things I do I just want to go this

150is just me speaking from my own point of view but I would like to take the opportunity to thank mrs. Vieira for respectfully presenting her concerns to the and to the district I think they I think they are justified with the health insurance piece and you know I wanted to spell any misconceptions out there because some some of the signs but personally bother me that we're not doing anything or we're being disrespectful to the teachers so that does bother me personally but plea and I also ask that if you you have any questions for information for budgetary numbers that you either reach out directly to mr. Kylie or any of us on school committee because I there is there's misconceptions and half-truths out there about different information so in regards to the budget so I

151ask that you please reach out to the administration or one of us on the committee we'd always I I don't think any of us are unreasonable and we would always love to sit down and entertain a conversation with you so thank you mrs. Vieira thank you everyone so with that the chair will entertain a motion to adjourn into executive session to provide an update with respect to collective bargaining with Union personnel not to return to open session so move you