Greenfield School Committee Special Meeting October 27, 2020

001[Music] good evening and welcome to the greenfield public schools special school committee meeting it's tuesday october 27 2020. 6 pm this meeting is being held fully remotely in accordance with the governor of massachusetts march 12 2020 order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law glc 30a section 20. we will start with a roll call remember johnson moussad would you do a roll call for us please remember karen yeah vice chair extra here remember hollins here secretary johnson moussad i'm here chair priority here remember well may i read a gardener here well here except for a member wall okay so we do have a quorum i call the meeting to order it 601 and the first item is the approval of the minutes from the regular meeting of the school committee on monday october 14th

002do i have a motion to approve the minutes who was that katie in a second oh gosh guys don't all do this at once second second number extra with the second and any discussion of the minutes i'm gonna say no all right let's move to a vote remember johnson moussade please remember karen yes vice chair extra yes remember hollins yes secretary johnson moussade i'm going to abstain chair proyetti uh yes remember well i don't know what we're voting on i'm like oh sorry i appreciate it oh yes if you voted mayor rita gardner i didn't hear you she's muted she's waving yes she's waving okay oh yeah all right so the minutes are approved uh public comment what we do for public comment for those who haven't aren't familiar with our system during the pandemic

003we are indicating in the chat that you wish to comment uh we'll take those first if you are on the line and unable to comment in the chat because you're on a phone or whatnot we will take those second remember johnson do we have anyone indicating they want to comment i don't see anything in the chat yet but i also don't see the chat window itself there let me take a look at that yep i don't see any um requests for public comment all right so we'll move to anyone who might be on the line on the telephone just go ahead and unmute and indicate that you would like to make a public comment all right i'm not hearing anyone so we'll move ahead if we get an indication in the chat that someone wants

004to public comment um we'll give a few more minute after committee reports we can go back we're not trying to skip anyone who might want to comment all right committee reports is our next section chairs report i do not have a report this evening other than getting out of this meeting before nine o'clock would be awesome how about let me ask a question chair priority please um just wondering if you have a progress report for us on the uh we voted on october 1st for a written determination from a lawyer about our september 12th i'm hoping to get an update on that tomorrow okay great so yes i that's my update how's that terrific okay thank you uh so we can move right to the superintendent's report superintendent harper i think i saw you're on

005the line do you have a report for us there she is i'm here can you hear me yeah okay great good evening everyone um it's fun getting together like this isn't it [Laughter] it's just it's the best it's the best in your pockets you have a lot of information that we're going to go over in various items tonight so i won't spend too much time in my report but i do want to share a few updates that came from a call with the commissioner of education this afternoon with the superintendent we do have regular although a bit sporadic calls with the commissioner and they are useful in having an understanding of where the department is coming from and where sort of um sometimes helping us uh sort of foreshadow the changes coming at the state

006level um and some of the guidance that that is coming down the pike one of the things of note that they're talking about is the change to the covid metric that was released last week the way that the state reporting um now indicates um clusters and cases as the mayor and others know now has more specificity to help reflect where the community may be more impacted by long-term residential care facilities the presence of a jail universities other things that are in a community geographically but may be more specific to a particular group in the community rather than widespread throughout the school community or across the general population so the kovid reporting has been updated to provide some more specificity around that and i think that will be helpful to us as we try to move

007into the remote plus phases of this plan i know the committee is eager to return students to school as are those of us in the schools who are very much missing the face-to-face connection with our students and the in-person instruction and as you'll see later this evening we've been very hard at work preparing for phase two of our plan we're pleased at the progress getting there so far in phase one a which was what we're in we're expecting some updated guidance on athletics through the maya winter athletics soon but we don't have an update tonight we do expect that that will be coming shortly many of you are aware of changes statewide in hockey for example in the recent weeks um and these of course are very difficult for athletes that are um very much

008enjoying their their athletics but also important for health metrics um we're continuing to hear that there will be mcas this spring and that there has not been any uh indication that there will be federal waivers that's important because our teachers are very hard at work preparing our students as best they can in our remote environment and we are not getting an indication at this point that there has been any change to that although there's a possibility of a slight pilot around some modifications to mcas i don't anticipate at this point that it will be eliminated altogether unless there was a dramatic change after the election i want to talk briefly about snow days we are expecting some weather on friday it does not look like it's going to be a big winter snowstorm but we

009may see some white flakes falling to the ground and in the remote setting as far as i'm concerned it's right on time it's the it's the annual october snowstorm there you go halloween snowstorm get ready get out the skis and the snowshoes sorry to interrupt i could i couldn't resist um one of the benefits of being in our remote uh environment is that we will be able to continue instruction unless um conditions are such that really roads are impassable um if we had as we did before a widespread internet or power outage obviously that would prevent us from providing remote instruction we anticipate that on most days with inclement weather we will proceed with instruction it will not be a typical snow day in the sense that we can continue providing instruction remotely there are

010times that there may be a delay or a cancellation and those would only be if we had as i said earlier widespread interruption to power or internet where our teachers are teaching from which could be the buildings the school buildings themselves or their homes remotely if they're teaching from there and or other conditions that would make it unsafe to go about our remote instructional program as we move into phased in in person that will be obviously a key consideration as well but folks should expect that unless they get that lovely 6 a.m call from me that remote instruction is on as planned and i think in closing i just want to say i i'm going to ask folks to remember and to appreciate that um our teachers are working harder than i have ever seen

011it's maybe not a popular time to thank teachers because parents are also working an extraordinarily it's just impossible it's impossible for everyone it really is and i want to say that clearly um it's not that we think that this is a cakewalk um and we know that everyone is doing probably more than they feel they can and we want to thank you i also really don't want to lose in this that at the academy of early learning they're taking money out of their pockets to create manipulatives supplies things that will make at home learning work really well for our youngest learners and delivering those every two weeks home that many of our teachers are bringing books home to students and that across our district our teachers are reinventing how they teach and in most cases

012they're working 10 12 hours a day to do that and i i really i just wish that across our whole city right now the teachers could see a standing ovation in the way that we really know um that they are giving it their all nobody thinks that this is the perfect platform but it's certainly not for lack of teachers trying and for all the caregivers and families that are trying to manage everything you are and support your students learning from home we know that this is a challenge for you too and we want to thank you and to our committee members you're also in a bit of an impossible situation there are no answers that are good for everyone and so we appreciate your efforts to try to navigate this thanks thank you superintendent harper

013that certainly is uh echoed i'm sure by every committee member your sentiment there it's so true the teachers are working extraordinarily hard the parents are working extraordinarily hard i now can tell you for sure though the subject and the predicate of a sentence 100 percent of the time so i'm acing acing the second grade me too i got it now oh yeah we're yeah we're we're moving along right right along in second grade um anyone have any comments or questions for the superintendent uh i do in the mail raising her hand as well i do and the mayor and then the man and just a note it looks like someone has uh it looks like doug ass has figured out how to use the chat so after this if we can open up for public

014comment again that might be great sure no problem thank you uh superintendent harper thanks so much i i just wondering if you can tell us more about the mcas i know senator comerford has been an advocate against having the the mcas instituted so are you saying that the legislative effort to try to not have the mcas this year has failed and is unlikely to succeed or or where are we how does that what your reported connect with what senator comerford and other um legislators have been working on no in in no way am i commenting on or disparaging the legislative effort i was sharing the commissioner's update though which was that from the department's perspective they're still planning on administering mcas at this point based on what the federal government has said which is that

015there will be no state level waivers so if there is um you know obviously if there's a change to that the department will adjust from the legislative action if there is um any resulting effort so i i just wanted to share that the department of education is continuing to share with districts that we should prepare for the mcats even if that changes at some future point and they're continuing to emphasize the need for rigorous instruction even if you're in a remote environment and in essence sort of applauding folks like what is happening in greenfield where even in a remote environment there is a tremendous amount of live instruction and attendance is being taken and it's quite rigorous and i guess i'm confused about the connection with the feds so if say there was a successful

016legislative effort to not have the mcas this year could that have negative consequences for massachusetts in terms of federal funding or what would that mean in terms of a waiver from the federal government for mcas i think you have to ask somebody with a bigger crystal ball than i have okay all right great thank you i guess i have some more learning to do but what does it i guess let me mess to you a little bit more but what does it mean about the federal government not offering a waiver like what is the connection between the state empaths and the federal government uh so as i understand it secretary devos has the authority to issue or or has stated that she's not going to issue state level waivers from the federal no child left

017behind act which is how we end up with an annual testing measure um so this past year there was a waiver granted because of the extraordinary circumstances and there was no mcas senator comerford and others have taken up legislation to say there shouldn't be mcas this spring and in future day years as well but i think at what point those get reconciled i don't know i i believe the federal government is continuing to say there will be no waiver and obviously there are legislative efforts underway to address just that thank you thank you both uh everyone go vote mayor rita gardner please go ahead yes thank you uh superintendent for your report and especially for your recognition of everything teachers and parents and other support people are doing i wholeheartedly give my hand on that

018but with regard to friday in particular and the potential for the s word to land upon us as well as uh the uh future for the winter and any kind of snow reports i i luckily had my um weekly conversation um uh you know meeting i have conversations with him all the time but this is the update meeting on a weekly basis with marlo and paul raskovitz and um just wanted to simply say they are preparing for friday they are not necessarily preparing for the snowstorm of the century but they will be prepared and um he i think he would want us to all know that first and foremost um this the the streets are the most important uh secondly i know that this has the ability to impact our food um our lunch delivery

019our food delivery for for um those folks so um he will do everything he can to make sure that those roads uh that the roads are cleared enough for that to happen and also the access to pick up the meals is uh available um because we did actually ironically talk about it today he did not know i had a school committee meeting this evening so i'm i'm glad to be able to update you the best i can with regard to that i do think uh as important as um the delivery of uh the lunches uh is um is uh in order to get there you have to have the roads cleared so i think his priority will be roads first but by the time they're needed i think you will be in good shape mayor

020i just wanted i wanted to thank you for mentioning the meals and to say the food service director is also working on preparedness in the event of inclement weather there will be a decision made about meals that may be a separate decision from the remote learning platform in terms of meal delivery um because uh there are different layers to that so we will continue to update the community but the food service director will be in communication with myself and a decision will be made as timely as possible and i just want to reassure families that all efforts will be made to provide food service if at all possible so we will go to the greatest extent possible we if we cannot do food delivery we might offer it at the buildings as an example so

021we believe that food security is of critical importance and um that has really been a terrific track record from our food service team so thank you for mentioning that mayor and the connection with the dpw and their great work to get the roads cleared sure that's it for me all right thank you both um any other questions or discussion for the superintendent from the school committee members i just have one quick thing i can't believe but we have we both the mayor and i both have questions about um snow day stuff so and i've always wanted to have the job where i get to call a snow day for something and i'm so close right now that this is super exciting but here's my question because i don't really know where this all comes from

022um do we have a school district or school committee policy on cancelling on snow days or cancellations or what have you and does it need to be updated for remote instruction we do have a policy and it could be updated they can always be updated um what i would recommend is that we um first continue the process that we're going through and finalize with the association to make sure that we have kind of crossed her off as well and if the if there are any members of the committee that have suggestions to that policy that could certainly go to the policy subcommittee um for review and updating but it's fairly broad and it does allow the superintendent some discretion in the event of inclement weather and it also has provisions that allow um if something

023is isolated to a particular building for example for the rest of the operations of the district to continue as much as possible so it's very consistent with what i was just sharing about food services and maintaining um even maintaining remote instruction okay adapting existing language as it were yeah i i definitely saw a member holland smile when i brought up changing policy so we're we're making some good headway tonight aren't we all right any further questions for the superintendent okay so we will go on to uh subcommittee reports who's got a subcommittee report i don't know if we have any honestly budget was slated to meet but we didn't because basically it's we have our meeting so quickly and there's so much time spent in negotiations that i don't think there was time to even

024think about having a budget meeting truthfully sure it's been scheduling has been challenging and a lot of fun so totally understandable we should try to have one before the next um absolutely meeting yeah which i think we talked about yeah but it's on the 11th i don't i don't think we figured out an alternate date yet for the veterans day holiday um we'll do we'll do that later uh okay any other subcommittee we're going to have our second meeting of the redrawing district committee at 1 30 on friday yes remember well the redrawing of the district map 1 30 friday yes is that already posted yes awesome you're so good thank you um and as with all of our subcommittee meetings those are open to for folks to join thank you any other updates hearing

025none yes no remember holland is raising make a comment remember holland go ahead i just wanted to mention about the collaborative please there's letter bill dial who's been the ceo i don't know for how many years maybe six or eight is retiring december 31 and they're recruiting for someone new thank you effective december 31. i don't know if we want to thank him or something it's a hard job we should because it is a hard job and he's really good at it i believe that we can enter them through uh july 1st so they will be searching and the position they're looking for the new person effective as of the start of the fiscal year bill has been a terrific support to greenfield and a great collaborator and i think one of his um sort

026of legacies has been bringing the districts together and helping us focus on public education as not a competition sport but as the best interests of all of our commonwealth's children and in this area in particular and has really been a driver of helping us find cost-saving measures for our special education and we've also taken advantage of the collaborative for our entire website redesign and hosting professional development anti-racism training um you name it the collaborative is really a terrific value and a really um it's it's been a very responsive organization and it's always been great to have school committee reps that bring information back from greenfield there and vice versa and bill attends all of the superintendents meetings of franklin county and jointly with hampshire county so we have a lot of communication so that they're

027able to respond so thank you both for those updates yeah that's a big shoes to fill for sure any other subcommittee information reports i think we were probably done with that okay so we'll go into our new business items um i actually would like to say a chairman i interrupt you to let you know that you said you would i did i said i'd go back for public comment thank you i forgot all about it doug if yes there's no one else that i see in there so okay thank you very much i'm sorry about that doug if you have a comment is it is it mr selwyn is that what we're talking about um i think so okay i've been called worse okay great i just want to make sure i had the right

028dog please you have three minutes go ahead okay i won't need them um i wanted to say a couple of things one about the mcas first um there was a a joint meeting of the legislative education committees today down in in boston so i'm not sure what came out of that but i know they were pushing the offering the mcas again um to tremendous resistance from educators and families around the state and um i would want to strongly urge there's no there are no there's no one who would look at taking a standardized test which is kind of iffy to begin with and say that it's reliable or valid in the midst of the pandemic so there's nothing valuable that comes out of this in terms of educational value there's enormous stress put on kids

029put on educators put on families around this and i would urge the committee and this is you know sort of risky stuff and i'm not on it so i can say this without being at risk to really um to really put the kids front and center in terms of your decision about whether to go through with this i would urge you to join with other districts around the state to say no that the mcas is not an appropriate thing to do in the middle of a pandemic it again it provides no reliable information when kids are traumatized when teachers are traumatized when families are traumatized to say go take this test there are other economic and political reasons behind this more than educational ones so i would encourage you to reach out to other districts

030and see if there's any collaborative cooperative way to say no thank you very much so that's one thing secondly i would ask about the the superintendent search um again to urge you to find and make sure that you include in your list of must-haves somebody who has actual real experience in dealing with and addressing issues of racism and inequality etc and to make sure that the public is involved as much as possible especially families who come from underrepresented groups in the process of choosing a superintendent um so that it really does represent the search really does represent the entire district the entire range of people that um that we serve um i would say the same thing about the advisory committee meeting on friday to be absolutely as inclusive as possible in reaching out and

031i know that um chair wall has said that that was her intention i'm really at the last meeting so i'm really supportive of that and encouraging that to continue so you really hear from the people who are most affected um when i looked at statistics about who is where um the last round of redistricting ended up with having the so-called most challenging kids evenly distributed um between two of the schools with discovery school having many fewer of those quote unquote challenging kids and i don't think that's what we want so i'm hoping that there can be a process that really leads to equity across the district and i'm done thank you chair priyada you're a mute story in my life story of my pandemic life okay any further uh interest in public comment thank you

032doug for that not hearing any other are you seeing some no i just have something else on um on committees when you when we're done seeing if there's anything okay so we'll you need to go back to committee's committee reports if you don't mind yeah please go ahead just um i don't know chair priority if anyone has volunteered to be on the racial justice racial equity yes i do have some volunteers thank you very much i have i have not yet um gotten that off my to-do list how about that all right great it's it's on there though um terrific yes yes we'll be moving forward soon um having the meetings every two weeks is hard i feel like i can't get a lot of stuff done in between i'm trying to aim for um

033covering things in these special meetings that are more timely and not and and then covering things that are part of our regular business process um in the regular meeting so i will definitely have an update for that meeting and thank you for the the reminder thank you okay so we're on to new business and this is becoming a habit in these meetings um but i would actually like to start with a motion for item c on the agenda um i think we need to to uh table that one for now or move it to our next meeting um if someone would make a motion to actually remove that item i would appreciate it um that's a motion from member wall can you second remember johnson sure i'll second okay and um we just don't have

034the right information to move forward with the discussion right now so i'd feel more comfortable um tackling it another time and there's also a couple of things that we can do without having to bring it to the committee did you have a comment would you clarify oh i'm sorry it's member hollands yes go ahead would you clarify the topic you're talking about for those of us that don't have the agenda in front of us item c under new business because kids mask contract discussion i'd like to move it to the next meeting thank you but that's the reason it's just i think there's it's not necessarily at the right time okay any any further discussion or questions about that okay so we're gonna vote to just move that tablet for the next meeting move it

035to the next meeting remember johnson michael if you would do a roll call vote sure remember karen yes vice chair extra yes member hollins yes secretary johnson moussade i'm a yes terrified yes remember well yes mayor rita gardner yes motion carries okay thank you all now that we know that we can do that with emotion it's like we have to do it at every meeting i'm sorry but these things are moving so fast right now it's not where sometimes putting the cart before the horse with items on the agenda so we'll go now to item a which is the fiscal year 21 budget update um i don't know how you want to start this superintendent if you want to give an overview or if andy's going to do that um i think andy's on the

036line with us i see him andy do you want to begin with an overview uh sure hi andy welcome thank you so uh the governor has released an updated budget that has yet to then go through for approval from the legislature so what you have here in your packet is the impact of the revised governor's budget as compared to what was put forward presented and voted on by the mayor's budget for i we focused on the cherry sheet education components to it so uh the underneath number one you have the assessment the cost side where from the uh proposed budget and voted budget to the what the governor has revised uh you see there are two increases both in the choice in the uh charter sending assessment of numbers uh charters going up just under

037forty thousand dollars and choices going up uh just under 128 thousand six hundred eighty seven dollars um then we switch over to the revenue side uh there is a decrease in the chapter 70 from what was uh presented in the mayor's budget at the time to the revised governor's budget of ninety six thousand one hundred sixty six dollar decrease and also a decrease of twenty one thousand two hundred dollar decrease in a charter reimbursement so the overall impact on the cherry sheet side of educational assessments and aids is a negative impact of two hundred eighty six thousand fourteen dollars um now obviously this still has to go through the legislature for their approval but we figured it was good to give you an update as to what was presented and voted on uh by the

038city council from what the mayor presented and where it is that it stands now as obviously is clear from this um and you probably all are aware uh any aid from the student opportunities act has been postponed uh i mean they're saying until next year but fingers crossed uh that that even holds true so that's the impact from the cherry sheet side um superintendent harper do you want me to continue on or do you want to take a night item two as far as what to go through i can continue on if you'd like well i just want to see if the committee has any questions about that um i andy thank you for bringing that information together andy and i um took a look at this and wanted to simply present changes to revenue

039um and it really is you know as um as he's broken it down in terms of assessments costs that have been changed and revenue and there is some room here for the city council's final you know any changes that they make and the committee to make changes so there and again this is the governor's proposal which still has to move through the legislative legislature as andy has just said so if there are questions we'll take them on that part otherwise we'll move next into possible actions that the committee may want to entertain and again these are all possible knowing that this budget is still very much at play and that further changes are expected do you want to keep going handy sure um wait a minute um let me let me ask a question that

040says potential school committee actions to take actions to consider um i wonder if it would be better for us to look at this at the same time as we're looking at the sheep that has the open position sure you can go further on in the packet for those following along at home there is um greenfield open positions as of october 2020. um in between there is a quote for a van that's the best way to let's describe it also if you are asking for questions would you clarify what type of questions on what impact of the governor's budget yes sorry no that's fine section one of of the uh analysis from andy are you good member holland do you have a question yeah i said i had questions about the actual budget document but i'll

041wait okay yeah let's wait let's let's try to do it a little bit systematically thank you i appreciate the patience so i if i could just add one comment chair i think the the takeaway from this top section here as you know we've seen is that we have a decrease of 286 thousand dollars to greenfield's educational aid in these four different areas as a result of the mayor's budget so section two is talking about what potential actions the committee may want to take relative to that and as i said knowing that that number may change the document about vacant position is sort of supplementary to this so in anticipation of the fluidity of the budget during covid we kept open a number of positions that the committee had voted and we had the authority to

042fill them but it became clear that there was going to be a statewide decline in revenue that there was going to be unprecedented challenges and actually fy 22 was going to be even more challenging than fy21 and so as i've apprised the committee in the past you know while it's to all of our advantage to have key staffing key positions we also have a financial responsibility not to exceed the budget and to make sure that as the revenue was so late coming in and not even knowing what the budget was going to be for so long we were very careful not to over promise to staff and say you know you can count on this employment if in fact we didn't know solid budget numbers so as the committee is aware we committed to our

043unit a and unit c staff in order to start the year but we kept open a number of positions that were either currently vacant um or that were had been proposed as new positions and we remained cautious about any of those positions in order to get a better sense of the budget numbers andy if you want to go ahead in section two thank you superintendent harper i think that's a helpful perspective i appreciate that okay i said that i have another question i guess um so what is it jordana and andy that you're looking for us for tonight from tonight for from us for tonight um because there is based on just a little bit of information we have and not the full budget document in front of us i'm not certain that we can

044make any educated decisions so that you're just giving us information you're not asking for us to decide anything yeah i would say uh my thoughts remember extreme is that this this portion here in conjunction as far as with uh you know as superintendent harper said the uh i'll say the addendum to this of the open positions really is informational because ultimately this being general fund impact the ultimate decision rests with the mayor as to how she uh obviously with the finance team on the general government side potentially want to look at what the impact of this and the other impact of the other things as it goes through the process potentially of the i'll say the general general government revenue and assessment side of the cherry sheet on the unrestricted general government aid uh and

045everything so that's you know this really this portion here really is informational and for uh you know just kind of letting everybody know that this is where from our point of view on the educational side of things uh these are things that you know the committee can kind of keep in mind as as the process goes along and once we potentially hear back from uh the mayor liz gilman or however it is that they're gonna take the overall impact of this and if there is gonna be any impact on the schools uh then we can obviously have a more detailed robust discussion as to what action the committee would like to take not to put it on the mayor's plate or liz's plate but that's well so then every time i hear something like that

046and we all know me and i'm a little bit annoying every time i hear something like that i think why the hell do we even bother with all this when the mayor's just getting inside about the meredith sides god bless you mayor that's not what i meant but language and watch watch language sorry sorry my bad my apologies uh and so that's kind of how i feel about it at any rate i'll mute myself thank you remember extra i we all understand your point there's a there's a lot of frustration around how how this works but i think the reality that we're talking about right now is this is the process we need to um as we always do try to work with the various parties involved to to get to uh the right decision

047um so andy i think you've kind of started to talk about section two here do you want to sure i can keep going continue on no i can't continue on so these are again some considerations as once we uh you know i mean there's the open positions we can continue to keep them open um we can do the i'll say the standard action whenever things are tight of cutting supply lines and then also potentially eliminating any additional positions for the i'll say the little discretionary funds that are available you could reduce those further and then potentially the last consideration would be to uh impact anything as far as collective bargaining agreements or individual contracts anything in there to see of whether you open them up again or any other addendum potentially to uh cover if

048there are going to be any negative impacts of whatever comes out of the legislature you could do that and then also there's the take no action and wait for the legislature to finalize the budget and then the potential additional reserves that we have which would as stated not have an impact on the general fund but obviously impact under on the reserves and even i would say you know i would add and i neglected to add the fourth of and again looking towards the mayor and understanding remember extremes concerns whatever the city ultimately decides to do regarding this does play into that as well thank you i appreciate that so um what i'd like to do i hear mayor wedegartner is that you i would it is and i i will be ready to respond whenever

049you think that's appropriate i'm actually thank you and i'm trying to do something just to make sure we keep the discussion organized um let's try for a motion based on the choices in number two and remember this is discussion this is so we can have an organized discussion that doesn't mean this is necessarily where we settle on what we're going to do but i would like to try to organize how we discuss this and not have anything get lost so if if a member is ready to make some sort of motion based on these choices or their own choice i would be ready to hear it comment uh we're trying for a motion member hollins we got to have it organized something as simple as i would uh entertain a motion just so we can

050have discussion to take no action now and to wait until uh the state has finalized their fiscal year 21 budget anyone want to make the motion or something similar just so we can have discussion someone want to make a different motion i'll make a different motion please remember hollins go ahead um my motion is based on the fact that the budget committee hasn't reviewed the budget yet uh so my motion is that the budget committee take this issue up and carefully discuss what's in the budget and what might be some modifications to the current budget any second to remember holland's motion i'll second second remember johnson moussade and susan farber do you have the wording that you need yes i do thank you thank you okay discussion remember holland you were first and then we'll

051move oh i'm sorry mayor wieder honestly was first and then remember holland says it's you she tried to go before we even had a motion so mayor wiedergardner member hollins go ahead i'll just simply respond both to andy's uh excellent presentation and uh also to item number one which is where i think we are under two so 2.1 um just to let you know uh with return with regards to timing uh the city of greenfield will be cutting 370 thousand dollars from its general operating budget for this so it's not as if we're not doing anything and i don't want anyone to think we aren't um and that will go before the council uh next month's meeting uh so mayor can you give me that figure again 370 370 000. thank you that will be

052before the council to discuss and decide um i looking at the options under that's just as a point of information we are not going to at any point in time ask the school committee and the superintendent to cut the budget without knowing that we will feel the pain as well um so with regard to uh item number one almost any one of these options here and maybe maybe more than one are are good options to take and those deserve some discussion and where their potential impacts will be so you're talking specifically about item number one under item number two is that correct that is correct thank you so um the only one that i personally don't understand so i'll wait for an explanation is cut supply lines i i don't know if you mean cut

053ordering supplies or exactly what that means so i that deserves an explanation before i can begin to comment as school committee member and perhaps even as mayor uh on what that means um so but all the others are certainly um useful and um are things that i and also liz would probably recommend if we were asked directly so i think the reason i'm here is because i can have insight into that um and i believe that is all i have to say with regard to this except that i i i support obviously um member hollins's uh approach to this because i think the school committee needs to have their opportunity to look at the budget and see which of these 1 a b a through e would be useful so if andy or the superintendent

054want to provide the whole committee with an explanation of what exactly cut supply lines means uh it means a whole different thing uh to me than i think is what it means to you truly it truly is reducing what's available for ordering of consumable materials so you know and again i'll say you know regarding this we're not going to balance the budget on cutting supply lines quite honestly you know i mean so it's just you know it's a consideration to should the school committee decide to it's a consideration that could be taken i would imagine in conjunction with uh one of the others potentially if indeed that's the direction they choose to go in [Music] thanks andy let's go on to member holland please thank you the reason i made the motion is because we

055meet every two weeks and the committee has not reviewed the budget that i have in my packet that's prepared by tms um and in that budget there are some questions i would have before we for me cutting supplies until we know that the students who have to learn to read and write and do arithmetic have the supplies they need the teachers do that would be last for me but for example in the budget that i received there's 90 000 for the principal of north parish i don't think we've ever approved 90 000 for the principal of north i know it was somewhere around 40 as a part-time position i'm not it's just here as transfer and adjustment in that line number five and we still have um at some point we voted to add a

056line item called sro and there's still 38 000 in that in a line item number i don't remember the line item right now but it's there for truant officer we don't have a truant officer so that and and part of um part of looking at budget isn't just only i should say cut this or sometimes it's looking about if there's a different way to do something um you know we have schools that aren't in session we could talk about how many nurses we need when we're not in session or how many we need when we have small schools because with small schools you're allowed to share principles you're allowed to share nurses i just think there needs to be some discussion before we start saying let's cut this and that with the budget we were

057presented and um and to check our policy priorities for literacy i don't think that would take a long time if the budget subcommittee would meet and also i'd like to say in response to susan's comment i think the discussion is helpful because for many years we had a supplemental appropriation from the city as we can tell from our discussion everything's changing every minute or every other minute and we don't know you know this amount of money is up and this one's down and you need more for the police and less for the schools or something but years we always went back to the city when people knew how much they had and how much they didn't spend for supplemental appropriation and i think it's important to review that with the mayor because that should stay

058on the table as a possibility anyway i just feel bad we haven't been able to talk about the budget we're presented what's in it first thank you okay thank you thank you other comments or questions discussion chair yes please superintendent okay go ahead uh just a couple quick notes as we said earlier these are broad principles so um in in a broad way we're just trying to make the committee cognizant of things that you may want to consider broadly speaking so uh i think at the last committee meeting and and as the pair noted they're every two weeks so it it's a bit hard to anticipate exactly what business is going to occur between meetings because they're happening regularly so there was a request for more information about vacant positions and also an analysis of

059the governor's budget and so that's why this is being presented to you not that you have to take any specific action broadly on the budget knowing that the state aid figures are going to continue changing but really more for a basis for your understanding and as you pointed out remember holland uh as a basis of the dialogue for communication with the city the mayor and the business office there are some specific requests that we do want you to consider in a more timely way but just broadly speaking the idea of this is to let you know where we stand right now and what the committee may choose to do or not do just some specific notes i'm i'm not looking at the line for the principal at north parish but the way our budget is

060structured there's generally a salary and then an fte so there's a sort of a mathematical equation that goes across the line so if somebody is making 10 000 a year and they're a full-time employee the extension shows 10 000 if they're making ten thousand dollars a year in their half-time employee the extension shows that there's five thousand dollars in that line so generally speaking our budget shows in one place a salary as if they were a full-time employee and then an actual extension so um if there's any need to update that but it's always been a part-time position at least for the last many years so there's um generally that's that's how that is organized um the sro funding i think you noted that would be a good example of something i know the public

061has been interested in moving that funding into a line that's more specific and then i did want to talk a little bit about the vacant positions um is this chair is this an appropriate time to speak to that list or do you want to stay on the um items one and two i need i need a reminder of what our exact motion is before i can answer that so susan farber can you read for us remember holland's motion that we're discussing yes that the budget subcommittee take this issue up and carefully discuss what's in the budget and what might be modification to the current budget i i think it's a thank you uh susan farmer i think it is totally appropriate to make those comments now superintendent i think we're at it for all enough

062place that let's just have the discussion before you yeah go ahead and also i fully support the budget subcommittee continuing to look at this in more depth the full committee asked for a report on what is currently vacant and so you have a list of vacant positions um totaling about just over six hundred thousand dollars in positions that are currently unfilled of those um the majority of them are positions that are either a new position let's say a new student has moved in and we know that we need a paraprofessional for a new student because of their iep or somebody has left and we're actively filling it so most of these are positions that there's some kind of transition but we're actively filling it however there are at least four positions that are noted with

063the term bud freeze and this isn't a general budget freeze that applies to everything this doesn't mean that children can't get crayons and paper it means that in these specific lines we have intentionally not filled it and haven't actively been looking to fill it and those apply to the assistant principal at greenfield middle school the assistant principal at greenfield high school both of those had two assistant principals last year and we intentionally held them at only one assistant principal this year even though two are in the budget the pupil services assistant director in the past there have been two and there has been thus far only one in that position the admin assistant in the superintendent's office has been reduced and that position has been intentionally we've not been promoting or actively looking to fill

064that there are other positions that are currently vacant that we're actively seeking uh including the registrar curriculum director and many of these other much needed a paraprofessional at the kindergarten level for example so unless it's noted we're otherwise we're actively seeking to fill those positions but the request was for all vacant position which are of these two different types intentionally vacant for budgetary purposes and vacant temporarily until we find the best candidate i i want to note that those four that i just noted not knowing what the governor's budget would be these were the ones that we held the governor's budget reduced by 286 thousand dollars the educational aid to greenfield those four that we have held are 280 and change thousand dollars um and so you know it is never a good thing when

065we're losing state aid to the city um but this is why we are being cautious with our spending and not over committing i will say that if we are moving to in-person services uh when i speak to the high school principal and the middle school principal it is challenging to imagine uh students being in the buildings and providing services without these assistant principals they're it in the remote environment folks are working hard to sort of take on extra duties in the in-person situation it would be hard to operate without them so i want to keep drawing a distinction between the phases of our remote plan and the cost of staffing for those plans and that was a key consideration i think the committee was very clear that the cost of stash staffing according to the

066ratios in the state guidance was prohibitive for us at the time that the remote plan was adopted in august so that's just an important point of information finally at the bottom of this i was asked i believe number one may i ask the question i can't quite hear it and yeah it's remember extra can superintendent harper please finish what you're talking about and then the questions thanks sure at the very bottom are some of the requests that came from committee members um i was asked for some high priority needs um and so of the list above i've just indicated which are highest priority to fill right now in in our current phase of the plan and those actually include some things that weren't on the budget at the time because they couldn't be anticipated we've

067included job descriptions for those and we've talked about them at length at previous meetings but one of them is a remote learning specialist and you know we have every teacher in the district doing something quite new and learning a lot but we have no one person whose job it is to support teachers in the newest technology update to roll out professional development around remote learning to troubleshoot with them and there are a number of instances of really supportive families and sometimes kids cheering on teachers when the teacher has a tech glitch or something else i mean everyone's been terrific but in a district of our size having one staff member who's on the teacher contract or similarly situated to support this would be really appropriate and is an eligible use of the covid uh funds

068that are coming to our district so i would propose this as a one-year grant funded position with the person remaining in the unit a contract they're not a supervisor so the committee has a job description and we've talked about that a lot but this has really become clear that the scope of remote learning is really expansive and even if we return to in-person learning tomorrow some students will opt to remain remote and even if we return to in-person learning fully tomorrow there is a possibility that something outside our control could make us return to remote learning at some point so i'm just going to ask that of everything that's before you tonight this particular position is the only one that i would ask for your consideration specifically and i think that's only because it might

069be the third or fourth meeting that it's come up and we really do need the committee to either authorize the superintendent to go ahead with this repurpose other funds or to say there's not not funding for it and to allow us to sort of focus our energies elsewhere fish or cut bait superintendent harper i appreciate the overview uh member extreme i know you had a question why don't you go ahead sorry i have two screens on couldn't get to my button i actually now i have a couple of questions um the remote learning specialist yes we've talked about a couple times if we're going to be using grant funds why would it have to be a unit a teacher wouldn't that be sort of a contract position and we wouldn't need to have them be

070part of a union um it does not need to be a unit a position it could be an administrative position on an individual contract however i think somebody who's been teaching and knows our curriculum and is especially tech savvy would be a good fit for this type of role in our district we have had a lot of our technology teachers have done a lot of our professional development some of our schools have had sort of resident experts amongst their staff offer a lot of professional development my thought would be to post this internally amongst our teachers for somebody who's really a whiz at this and is already familiar with all of the technology we're using and our colleagues and that that would be a very good value and also pretty seamless i think you would

071have a higher cost if you posted it in a different type of position and so is it that you would and i realize this has to be flushed out um and so is it that that person would continue to be a teacher and then have a stipend put on top of their teaching abilities is that what you're thinking yeah it could work that way the main thing would be that they would not have a teaching load so they would not be this would be their full-time job would be supporting all of the schools in the district with remote learning providing professional development um staying up to date rolling out information so forth there could be a family support component as well but the primary job would be to support our district in implementing the remote

072learning okay and you can read two thoughtful single-spaced description pages yeah um i guess my other question is about the curriculum director it says that you're interviewing we haven't ever really spoken about hiring someone and with your deciding to not seek an extension of your contract we have had sort of informal discussions um of hiring both the superintendent and assistant superintendent with with a curriculum director piece and so i'm just curious how how i'm curious what's going on i see that it's grant funded so i suspect that part of it would be uh sort of the corporate funding if i'm incorrect feel free to tell me um but that's sort of that's sort of where i i had sort of seen that position going and so i'm curious about what's going on here in the

073interviewing process and all those things so um this is a position i think folks are aware we have been recruiting and interviewing for for some time it was paused temporarily during all of the covid related work but there's really quite a need for it it goes hand in hand with the other position not because it has anything to do with being remote but because there's a need to focus on teaching and learning and for the alignment between the schools in particular families experience this when their child goes from pre-k to elementary and then to the middle school in the middle school of course all three of our schools come together and so there's a great need for alignment amongst those schools this is not anything to do with covid funding it is funded through title

0741 and title 2a which has to do with some of our instructional services and our professional development funding and i believe it's 55 000 out of the general fund and another 25 000 something like that out of the grant so that's why it's part partially grant funded and a assistant superintendent generally would be more in the range of 125 000 sometimes closer to 140 000 so in terms of um purely dollars and cents i personally would be hard-pressed to advocate for the higher um salary figure on on this position at this time given the roughly 300 000 reduction in the governor's budget and the need for more specific support and help in the in the classrooms and is it that this is so this has been posted and you said it was taken down all

075those things are you actively interviewing or is the district can you rephrase that actively interviewing or is it that you're sort of looking around i'm i just i'm i i think sort of given our change of view with how having a new superintendent next year i feel like that might be a discussion that the school committee might want to have amongst i could be wrong um but it might be a larger discussion well i think that falls under section two option one two or three in terms of your budgetary approval and that's why i'm kind of outlining some of the steps that committee could take so it's a very odd time in late october to be restructuring the budget and that's because of the extraordinary difference in this year's timeline because of the state aid

076coming so late due to covid and so i'm just trying to it it's a little like i feel like we rebuild the budget every three months or every couple of months and it's a lot of work because that means you're reassessing revenue cost needs staffing over and over and over um there's there's a lot of moving pieces here and so we're just trying to make you aware of the district's needs and how much they're shifting and to keep that front and center um as these budgetary decisions are made i feel like it's moving and shifting every week yeah i appreciate that discussion um quite a bit that's very helpful um so any other questions or comments i have a few things but i want other school committee members to go first any other school committee

077members yes i i do remember johnson moussade please go ahead i'm just i'm a little unclear about what this what um the superintendent and the district need from the school committee on this we have kind of a range of strategies that have been on the offer so do you you're looking for a specific direction like give us a menu we want one three or four or um is it to authorize the administration to you know to use any and all of these strategies or i'm just not entirely clear what our our role is on this one may i respond no my question is to the superintendent okay member johnson i i believe that there's going to be a budget subcommittee meeting in short order that's what it sounds like to me and my understanding is

078that the subcommittee is going to look at this again sort of soup to nuts i don't see how the committee can take a definitive action right now without final state aid numbers it is still a moving target even though we're getting closer to knowing what how it's going to shake out because this number could potentially go up one of the big concerns just generally is that we received this sort of one-time covid money from the federal government this year and it and what we didn't receive was the recurring student opportunity act money that was scheduled to come to greenfield that looked a lot like 1.4 or 1.8 million dollars to greenfield and then growing each year from there so there's a need for state aid information that's very clear upon which to base our budget

079and it does put the committee in a difficult position as far as tonight it would be very helpful to know if there is support for a grant-funded remote learning specialist position because there are grant funds available and andy feel free to chime in here with any allowable funds that we could apply to this that's something that we actually need to encumber before december some of the grants um are only available through december and we need to you know sort of make hay while the sun shines i'm full of analogies tonight they're terrible sorry and um we need a vote on that if we're not going to do that we need to uh figure out how to support our teachers in other ways um so that vote i would appreciate any discussion on that particular position

080uh knowing it's grant funded and doesn't have a lot of overall budget impact and the last thing you'll note is that if you wanted to generally say there should be no freezes this is ridiculous we've approved the budget fill the positions if the committee felt that way we would go out and fill them tomorrow if the committee felt like just please do nothing until we've had a chance to vote any of these broad guidance um will be helpful to us uh otherwise we're going to continue to use our best judgment okay i'll just uh speak a little bit just to say that it sounds like we are on the right track then and having uh with remember hollins's motion um and then i guess and i i think i will definitely be um making or

081supporting a motion about the um remote learning specialist position when we're done with this business item thank you remember johnson moussade and superintendent harper other further discussion questions uh i would like to speak mayor wiedergartner please go ahead um actually i i think all of us probably would like uh to hear superintendent holland's motion one more time because uh as uh member johnson mentioned it is separate from the discussion about the remote learning specialist i don't want to correct confused yep did you have anything else other than that yes i do if i'm looking at what i think her motion is about we are somewhere between two potential school committee actions to consider uh dot one and uh we still have two and three to go uh which is the problem of her motion so

082and there's definitely an argument to be made uh from this standpoint about take no action now wait for the legislature to finalize the fy 21 budget as i said we are not waiting at the civil at the city level for that we are doing our cuts now that's neither here nor there i just want to make that clear and they may or may not be done in concert with when the legislature finalizes the fy 21 budget there is still the option of number three which is authorize additional spending from reserves no impact to the general fund i think that deserves a full discussion because you do have reserves that first quite some time now if i'm correct don't always get spent so now may be the time uh so i that's that's just my opinion

083on this discussion because i think under number one there are definitely things that could be done i think superintendent harper makes a credible request for the uh remote learning specialist and that deserves its own discussion as we've discussed so i think unfortunately we are taking these one at a time so i don't know if we get to number two or number three we're not we're not taking them one at a time we just put a motion on the table so we could discuss that's all right we'll we'll vote on the motion once once folks are done discussing and decide on a different motion okay but you should you should look at the items under number two as as options we could take as a school committee at any point but we we did not have

084i won't start discussion without emotion it's just the best way to organize the conversation so that's what we've done so i appreciate all your comments because you've gone over what each piece that is important to you so that's helpful that's super helpful do you have anything else mayor no i do not okay okay um i have a comment yes please remember holland go ahead i'm sorry i just want to say that um my discomfort is that we have never talked about how the budget and i'm looking at column e the revised budget has changed like there's zero in regards does that mean that even if we have children coming back to school we won't have any crossing guards i don't want the answer right now it's just that we've never talked about this particular document

085to start talking about cutting it and this afternoon i got three emails about new positions one is the they were all based on current needs to in technology for helping children with equipment i think and one for this uh position that supernanin has described that's exactly the point we're in a situation where we need some things we didn't need before and we don't need some things that we thought we were going to need before and that's why the discussion is needed to see not only new ideas of what we currently need but things that we had in the budget that maybe we don't need because we're going to have fewer students in school and that's that's why i i think it's early right now to change without even knowing what talking about these parts of

086the budget thank you that's it thank you thank you other ques questions i'm getting a really bad echo from somewhere this is member karen remember karen please go ahead um i'm i'm the way i understood susan's um motion was that all of the other actions underneath their you know uh reduction and all of those things are not would be on hold until the budget committee could come back to us with a more clear picture because i too am very uncomfortable making any cuts at the moment um i would feel more comfortable about the remote learning specialist position if i had a clear picture of where the money was coming from but i think we'll probably get that information as the night progresses i think that that's like a very specific i know it said was

087grant funded but some from the general fund or maybe i misheard um i i'm really uncomfortable making decisions without more clear picture so in my mind the answer is please do nothing budget subcommittee would meet in the next two weeks and give us a little bit more of a clear picture that's what i'm interpreting the motion as please correct me if i'm wrong or have better clarification you remember karen i'm seeing nodding from member hollands for the first time ever member hollins is on the same screen as me so i can see her so you you need to get in the habit of talking when you have something that was an intensive emotion yes thank you and thank you member karen for clearing more information before we start acting on a budget we've never discussed

088yep any other further comments okay so i just have a couple of things related to this so um just an interesting comment uh because i think it's important i did hear commissioner riley uh speaking about the student opportunity act money and the the coveted money that had come from the federal government to the state and implying that because we were getting all this covered money it kind of equated the student opportunity act money which is the biggest bunch of malarkey i've heard in a very very long time and i just want people to know that that's what the state is trying to say about these funds um and then the second thing is um we can't be in a hurry when we don't know what the funding is and it is important to take a

089better look as a budget subcommittee as people have said at the um at the budget before we take any action we're meeting every two weeks there is not a rush and now i am going to admit my ignorance a little bit on process which i have no problem doing because i work in financial aid all day long and i half the time have to ask what i've been doing and i've been doing it for 15 years because it's so complicated so my question is the grant funded remote learning specialist that is clearly needed this is not a position that's under the purview of the school committee to hire why are we being asked permission to put it into the budget is it specifically only because it doesn't have its own line item already i'm asking

090either andy or or the superintendent to to clarify that for me i'm sorry you're talking but i can't hear you sorry thank you are you asking why for example the grant the remote learning specialist if it's grant funded would be in the budget well why do you have to ask permission why do you have to ask our permission like so in in a way we're doing we're kind of um bringing more to the committee in a way then we might otherwise and it's precisely because there's so many moving parts usually when a committee votes a budget let's just wipe the slate for a minute and imagine that there's a state budget there's a local budget the committee has voted a bottom line and there are positions and we go out and kill them i mean

091i hate to make schools sound simple but it sounds kind of simple and what we have right now is as member extreme said situation that's changing all the time we've got a number of positions that we're intentionally keeping vacant and committee members keep saying what's the deal with all the vacant positions and we want to sort of say to you here here's why we've kept them vacant you're welcome to direct us to fill them but we'll be you know that's 300 000 of savings that we have managed to kind of try to prioritize what are based on your current needs remember holland was talking earlier about current needs versus what's in the budget and if we had filled all these positions simply because we were able to we would be in a more difficult position

092so but at the same time we want to create a new position and we believe we can use coveted funds and we just want to know uh is the school committee in support because it wasn't in the last budget that you voted okay we didn't have uh covid and we didn't have remote learning that makes perfect sense to me now i i needed to make sure i was understanding the process it's process is is if i can't trace it back to the root of why it's we're talking about it i have to ask so then my next question is hopefully a simple one um the pandemic goes away the grant funding goes away does the position stay i i would propose that this be um essentially a pilot let's hope that the pandemic goes away

093and in june everyone's saying gosh thank goodness we don't need that position anymore um i think we uh if if we opened it up to the teachers association maybe from greenfield maybe from other uh districts that we would uh allow somebody to take a one-year leave of absence anticipating that it's temporary and that they would go back to the classroom when it's over i think then it gives you a little time to see how it goes and hopefully like i said we're back in person way before you know uh we're talking about this position going away but it's there as a support for those students that are um still choosing to remain remote got it thank you so much for the clarification um okay further discussion on this before we take a vote and i

094will have uh susan farber read the motion before we take a vote hearing none uh susan farber would you be so kind as to read the motion on the table please yes that the budget subcommittee take this issue up and carefully discuss what's in the budget and what might be modifications to the current budget thank you and member johnson moussad would you do a roll call vote for us please remember karen yes vice chair extra yes member hollins yes secretary johnson we saw it i'm a yes chair priority yes remember well yes mayor wiedergardner abstain the motion carries with one extension thank you and it sounds like we are looking for another motion related to this uh uh author or a move to approve or support however you want to word it a grant funded

095remote learning specialist position for the district i'll make a motion please remember johnson we saw go ahead i moved to authorize the superintendent to hire one fte remote learning specialist per unit a teacher's salary is there a second second remember while with the second and let's discuss uh i'll speak to it i i just think it makes a lot of sense the learning environment has changed completely overnight and people need the expertise and it sounds like there's a realistic way for funding it and given the the cuts essentially given the reductions in budget due to deciding to freeze hiring on the other positions it looks like there's a way to kind of make up the loss so that's why i made the motion thank you any further discussion i have a question or a just

096a comment please mayor wiedergaard go ahead uh i believe superintendent harper discussed the possibility of opening it up internally first and i think very quickly towards the end she discussed what would happen if someone internally um took that position um so i simply want to know if someone that we are relying on in the classroom applied internally which is totally fine i have no problem with that um but and our and was accepted does that person's teaching job go away and therefore for a short period of time temporary leave of absence i believe um or whatever it was called that i believe that the superintendent discussed uh briefly towards the end uh but does that now create a need to fill that position it's a it's a process discussion and i just simply need before

097i could vote um to understand what happens to that position if someone internally was hired i have a comment okay so i'm wondering what's speaking i think that uh yeah that superintendent harper uh will respond to the mayor i was unmuted in one place but not the other it's a good question yes if an employee internally moves to a different position there's a bit of a chain reaction it happens sometimes already if a paraprofessional steps in to substitute when a teacher's on leave something like that or a teacher steps up into an administrative position and so forth so yes you would have to potentially backfill i say potentially because i don't know who might be interested or apply but if it were somebody i'm trying to scratch my brain thinking of somebody that we might

098be able to do um without filling immediately but if we we would likely fill their position yes a simple answer if we could somehow pause filling their position just for savings and that didn't uh jeopardize services we would look at that for additional cost savings if there's a chance to not fill it we would look at that it's a classroom teacher you're gonna have to fill it thank you for that clarification uh member collins go ahead i support the superintendent making adjustments and staffing that meet the needs of our students and teachers and i support all three proposals that came to us uh as school committee members my concern is if we're setting a precedent um the superintendent superintendent to make these adjustments someone mentioned that less less time how many people could have her

099football game which i just am worried that we're starting to micromanage and if this is what the superintendent feels is needed i appreciate the discussion but i think the superintendent that's doesn't need us because we don't hire this position i don't know i think use the resources to in the best way possible for what's needed and keep us advised that's my i'm just worried about setting a precedent on starting to act on positions under the superintendent's thank you remember holland thank you superintendent harper do you want to respond to that i think you kind of i mean i would entertain a motion to just let the superintendent use her discretion to fill positions it would make my job a lot easier well and that was kind of the same question sorry go ahead it was

100kind of the same question i i asked previously yeah worded slightly differently yes this position is not in the school committee approved budget so the reason i'm bringing it to you is because we are going to continue to wait for the legislature to finalize a budget and or the city of greenfield to finalize their budget and that either of those processes will take some time whereas there is an immediate need there was at last several meetings and we have tried to continue to bring forward the process folks asked for more information on funding on position on description on survey data so we've done those things um i appreciate the discretion thought had i had that a couple of months ago i would have certainly filled this position at that point well i think we're just

101in a really different place where there's a lot of unknowns and it's hard to manage and i think it more right now more information about how the budget is going is is better that's my personal opinion it's taken us a little bit to get through this agenda item but i don't think it was time that was poorly spent i think we've had a good discussion and there's a much better understanding from the whole school committee um about where we're headed but we also haven't made any giant decisions so um i fully support this motion and um i'll take any last comments or questions before we go to a vote i'll just just a quick comment please that there have been times in the past also when the superintendent has brought items to us which are

102under uh her preview but her purview but wanted to kind of get that extra support from the school committee and in those cases as well i mean i'm happy for the the communication and for the times when you've requested those extra votes of support um from us when it's going to you know require resources or attention from you um i've been appreciative of that and appreciate this today thank you any further discussion okay so let's move to a vote on this remember karen yes vice chair extreme all right yes member hollins secretary johnson moussade i mean yes chair project yes remember yes mayor wiedergardner abstain motion carries with one abstention thank you do we want to do any further emotions under the fiscal year 21 budget update wonderful news the silence is wonderful news let's

103move on to the reopening plan update item b and i'm assuming that uh superintendent harper you'll walk us through this okay all right so in your packet you have a reopening plan update and phase two readiness report um just a reminder for folks listening at home we always love when people tune in and we make all our packets accessible so if you haven't already found the packet please take a look gpsk12.org go to the right hand side click on school committee and then the materials and agendas are all at the top of the packet um so what we've done here is just try to summarize some of the many activities and it is a summary it's not exhaustive of the ways that we are um preparing and have been since last spring for students to

104be in person the committee at the last meeting asked for this report as a way to help gauge what the committee could reasonably do within their scope of authority to bring students back to school and um and of course in conjunction with uh the negotiations so this report is brought forward in that spirit and it sort of starts with our phase one a summary of where we've been so phase one started back in august um it included some in-person um meetings for example the uh pre the before school started meetings with uh parents and guardians which i shouldn't call preschool because it sounds like that's about the preschool but i meant before school started as in pre-school and um then we have recently approved a uh a start to in-person outdoor services that's a new

105agreement um member johnson moussad or extra may want to comment on that further um but that's been a really uh important focus um to begin be able to deliver in-person services um and at the same time have having started this evening talking about snow we know that that is not a permanent solution so the purpose of this report is really to talk about our readiness for phase two which is next and we propose um we being administration proposed to the school committee that this uh should begin in november at our last meeting two weeks ago i used a target date of november 2nd um i think we can discuss when in november the committee feels may be appropriate and so i'm just going to walk you through some of the steps that have been taken

106so that whenever the committee together with the teachers association reaches an agreement that we are prepared and we want to welcome children back to the buildings and we have been working around the clock i really want to start by thanking our custodians they've been unsung heroes the folks at central maintenance dpw and of course our custodial and facilities manager alan schmidt and george over on the city side so here are just a few of the ways that we have prepared the photos are examples not every single one so there are hand sanitizer stations that have been purchased and installed and underneath them are mats um and uh custodian came up to me one day and said you know it's great that we have hand sanitizer but it's gonna eat through the floor and it's gonna

107be a slip hazard unless we get these great slip free mats underneath and that he was right so we put in slip-free mats underneath throughout you looking at central office and north parish we've purchased electrostatic disinfectant sprayers this is important because when students are in the building more staff are in the building this is part of the nightly disinfecting routine that is a essential component of deep cleaning the buildings due to covid this is all new equipment it's quite expensive and very effective the next has to do with signage and floor decals these are three different examples of different types of signage and floor decals on the left you're looking at four corners but this type of stand pedestal sand with signage is in each of our buildings this sign is reminding about face masks

108in the middle you're looking at the entrance of the high school with a sign asking folks to sign in and out in the entryway with their modified arrival foyer and on the right you're looking at the middle school again these uh social distancing sort of signs are now floor decals if you will are throughout all of our buildings across the district helping folks remember to keep their space and follow those social distancing guidelines even indoors in the buildings that we know we'll be using in phase 2 we've purchased additional hepa air filters so we want to ensure that the quality indoors of the air is of good quality and is being scrubbed as it were so we have purchased additional air filters um this might be above and beyond we felt that it was a

109good step and we're using those as the results come in to deploy them where they're needed most i wanted to talk briefly about the hvac assessments and to give a status update we were hoping to have a new report for you tonight the testing that was scheduled for yesterday wasn't able to be completed on monday because it was an additional test that we had scheduled in but they are doing additional testing on thursday and friday i think this is the third or fourth set of testing that will be done in greenfield so um we get a little reports that come from our commissioning agent and we're working with nexus consulting they're licensed to do this type of work and they're expert in it and we get reports that detail the air changes per hour outdoor

110air and any concerns that are noted and then central maintenance the custodians our facilities crew have been going back in and doing repairs um as we talked about last time the example of an error an exhaust fan that just the motor wasn't working properly and so that has parts being ordered and then making replacements and repairs as necessary with additional retesting before we would return students to the building so we're looking for adequate air changes per hour in addition to box fans and negative pressure in the rooms and these standards are through the department of ed guidance as well as through a number of outside studies and agencies on how to make the room safe and appropriate for students and staff and i was hearing in a call with the commissioner today talking about between

111air filters and just air changes per hour coming through there's reported to be a ninety percent reduction in any harm through those two things alone uh plexiglas barriers that you're looking here at miss docile from four corners this is an example of a sort of administrative area that's been set up and installed at all of the entrances and then down below this is a prototype that we actually had made working with greenfield glass locally and we asked them to create a divider like this for some of our younger students so that they could still engage in closer work at our tables um and sort of see one another and engage in small group learning with a teacher sitting at a table so you could seat four at this distance and then be able to sanitize

112the plexi glass in between of course those students wearing masks we've talked a lot about the tens the power and the wi-fi and so we really wanted to just highlight and note that that is available to us as long as the weather does hold the and of course with thanks to g set and city and rec department and our own custodial staff and those are very high quality picnic tables and and things that will be available long past when the tents are no longer in use um some of the sort of protocols that have been reached this may seem small but they're not at all i would like to thank our lead nurse pam owen for her work as well as the board of health and um all of the uh school nurses in particular

113um these were all approved through our teachers association but with a lot of work from our nursing staff um hand washing protocol social distancing protocol the stay home and sick protocol and the mask wearing protocol have all been approved so those are ready to go and those are the guidelines we would follow and then we've digitized the health screening form so for any students when they do return in person they would fill out a simple google form with just an update to how their children are doing vis-a-vis any symptoms before they come to school each day and then the last note is about ppe um back when covid started i don't think anybody had heard the phrase ppe in general use personal protective equipment so we have ordered gps masks allen schmidt is here modeling

114one of our gps green wave logo masks and we've received those so there are youth sizes and adult sizes and then different styles so those are available many staff have picked theirs up and they would be available for students to each have one or two depending on which size that they in style they like in addition to backup supply of surgical masks and disposable masks face shields gowns gloves and 95 masks as appropriate for example our nurses require n95 masks if they were in a potential exposure situation whereas on a day-to-day basis the surgical mask or a cloth mask is appropriate so um those are some of our readiness activities and we set that forward um knowing that we believe that our students would be well served by coming back to school um when the

115committee feels it's appropriate moving through the next phases of our plan and there are still some components that need to be addressed such as staff with medical concerns about being in person but we do need uh we need the um it's sort of a bit of a circular in that the school committee needs to indicate that it's prepared to move to the next phase for us to be able to ready for that phase so we are bringing this forward to the committee for your discussion uh tonight thank you superintendent harper so it sounds like we could start the discussion with a motion to approve um a move to phase two and superintendent harper does that sound right and are you looking for a specific date for most this is a great question could we i

116mean did we say like move to phase two in early november could we say we we um authorize a move to phase two as uh on a timeline determined by the superintendent how would you like it phrased well i i never like to represent what the teachers association would say because understood because that's not my place it's an awkward question no i i get it what i would say is that the committee can authorize the negotiating committee you can also use executive session if you want to talk more about strategy but i think this is totally appropriate publicly the committee can indicate what it wants those of us that are negotiating on behalf of the committee to go um uh with as a target start date okay so the committee might like to have as

117a target start date november 9th um so that you we could those of us that are negotiating could go back and say the committee has asked us to begin phase two on such and such a date and come back to you with the results of that negotiation thank you so let's try a motion based on that information does anyone want to try it besides me i don't mind i'll do it go ahead i don't know who that was but go ahead as long as you're a school committee member of course remember member action go ahead i would like to make a motion that the school committee authorized the superintendent to move the uh uh geez i got all involved uh move to move into phase two of our fourth phase plan provided that all necessary

118precautions are taken to ensure safety inclusive of hvac appropriate levels do we do and and do we want the motion to say something about um authorizing the superintendent authorizing negotiations to that effect with the teachers union it sounds like that would be more uh helpful for lack of a better word um jordana you can chime in on that but i don't think necessarily that needs to be included i just think it it seems to me that it just needs to be that the school committee makes a motion to move into phase two with an expected maybe i'm now i'm making a different motion uh uh motion to move into place to an expected start date of november 9th period that really simplified it quite a bit i'm wondering if uh susan farber if you could

119use what was just um uttered as a summary and now appears to be better than the original motion if member extreme could repeat that i did not get it uh school committee would is proposing a move into phase two starting or beginning on november 9th great thank you chair i would i would i'm sorry if somebody else is going i can't quite tell nope go ahead i would say that this will need to be bargained so um the uh those school committee members that are representing the school committee will need to bargain it whether that's in the motion or not so recognizing that this vote of the committee indicates the committee's intent and there will be further negotiations on it yeah absolutely my my intent was that actually i intentionally left it a little bit

120okay at any rate we need a second to actually we need a second thank you any second on that second from member wall and everyone can hear me okay my screen has gone a little strange can everyone hear me okay yeah we can okay there's some questions we'll move to discussion go ahead member johnson um superintendent harper thanks for the um the report um i have a few questions um my understanding of the the science is that we're what people have been learning is that the primary vector of transmission is in the air but yet you know our schools and in many institutions are involved in these kind of deep cleaning is there any conversation with other superintendents or other places about you know these very expensive processes that we're doing and to what extent

121do they actually protect children and and staff or are we engaged in some kind of coronavirus security theater um thank you for the question i think everyone's interested in is in balancing health and safety of students and staff with reasonableness and affordability and making sure that we are implementing something that that you know that works that is evidence-based um what i can say is that there's a lot of evidence that masks are a very effective reduction and that wearing masks is from every expert that i've heard on the topic extremely important um that fresh air is tremendously important and that distance is tremendously important um all of the cdc guidance including hand washing and vigilance for symptoms is what we've based our protocols off of i i believe there is good science behind everything we've

122done but it is emerging and so if you were to look back on where we are you know in a year you might say sure maybe you didn't need to uh wipe down desks in between use as much but i i think at this point to member extremes earlier comment we're really looking to take all possible precautions in order to bring students back um i think because we aren't necessarily the health experts but we're implementing the health guidance we're just trying to do everything within our power that is available to us and i think there's a lot of hopefully we're trying to model a lot of common sense and um uh not fear but um confidence and common sense great thank you um i'll just also make a comment that i support the motion and

123as one of the members of the negotiating team i think it will be useful to us to have that sense of of the committee's uh uh interest in and timeline um in our negotiations care i wonder if you might allow me to read out loud what phase two means so that we're all a little bit more clear on that remember extra what a wonderful idea go ahead okay so i'm reading directly from the document that was produced that discusses each of the phases phase two is remote learning plus high needs learners remote learning plus high needs learners phase two includes all services in phase one which was as a reminder everyone being online and our high needs learners being outside to receive services that has that has not happened um and there there's also been

124an opportunity for people to go on site say if they were willing to go to someone's home and do some education there outside that has not happened either but that is an option so that would be phase one this is phase two high needs learners return for in-person instruction students attend full time or on a cohort model depending on social distancing guidelines and in parens space available basis high needs learners include one students enrolled in a substantially separate special education program beginning english learners wida one and two which i'm sure the superintendent has more knowledge on and can explain consideration for other high needs students example being weta three and four other students with disabilities homeless students or additional in-person students students in this model will attend on a space available basis in order to

125meet social distancing guidelines with frequency as determined by the team this model is staffing dependent that's the end but okay thank you for reading that that's helpful to to understand other questions discussion comments on the motion uh the mayor has questions please mayor wiedergartner go ahead so i may have missed it but i want to make sure that this is uh for all schools to open on um for all the high needs learners so separately so elementary schools will open uh high schools will open this would be this would be a district-wide motion okay yes that's good to know uh anything else yeah oh go ahead it has a specific date on it so i want to make sure that whatever we do tonight is made in concert with what the health department is going

126to recommend going forward um i it has been the case in the past so i'm a little uncomfortable with a specific date uh for a variety of reasons we have seen an uptick so i'm fine with it happening in november i think it's very important that remote that um in-person learning go forward if it can safely and according to health directives so i would hate to see us open too early uh in november when we might be able to open it might better be able to open a little bit later but but that's just my uh caution to you if we decide to do it um and we are intentionally in intending for it to go on throughout the year or at least until it becomes impossible to happen some outside learning do we do

127our tents that we've ordered have sides on them to make it um more um able to happen in a a a healthy and smart way those are questions they are not comments other than perhaps but be mindful of the health department's role in this because at the end of the day they will control whether we can do this or not thank you could i go ahead and respond please yeah mayor thank you so much for pointing that out absolutely the health department needs to be front and center i didn't specifically call that out although our school nurses lead nurse health department are very much in communication and there are regular meetings which i'm happy to participate in whenever my schedule allows it so there's regular communication happening and we absolutely would need to do this

128in consultation with them so thank you for mentioning that as far as the tents you know there were so many steps involved in these tents which included inspection by mark snow and the sides were not put on in sort of on purpose to allow for appropriate egress handicap accessibility um movement social distancing air flow however depending on you know how we go i could certainly look into whether we could make them more weatherproof as we go a little bit later into the season as well you get pretty quickly into needing heaters and things like that but i could certainly look into that if the weather is not sort of if we're not in nor'easter weather with a lot of snowfall you may be able to extend that and we did discuss that with our tent

129vendor uh that it's a bit weather dependent uh past uh the end of november thank you other questions or comments or mayor rita garner do you want to follow up no that's fine okay other questions or comments from the school committee hearing none it sounds like we can move to a vote and i would ask that uh susan farber could you please read the motion that we're going to vote on yes the motion is that the school committee authorized moving into phase two beginning on november 9th thank you and member johnson mussad would you do a roll call vote please i will remember karen yes vice chair extreme yes member hollins yes secretary johnson mossad i'm a yes chair yes yes mayor wiedergardner abstain motion carries thank you okay thank you all so that is

130um hopefully helpful for planning and negotiating um and let's actually move on to we've we've in our next we're good with this right we can move on to the next agenda item yes okay uh cooperation with neighboring school districts we've tabled item c we're on to item d superintendent harper please i think this came up out of the minutes from a discussion of cooperation with leiden i think in general this is something that i i touched on this earlier in our discussion about the collaborative i think there's been some really good communication and collaboration between districts in franklin county and beyond um and given the unique challenges i just want to re-raise ways that we might collaborate with neighboring districts um we are all facing some of the same challenges around enrollment uh kindergarten enrollment

131in across the state was less this year due to covid so there's some legislative advocacy around what this is going to mean for next year's budget if children weren't enrolled on october 1st this year and decided instead to take a gap year and next year's budget is based on how many children were enrolled this year that's a problem that greenfield and every other district across the state are going to face likewise homeschooling increased because of the conditions around covid and people being home and making different decisions than they might typically do so these are kind of some of the unique challenges that continuing to partner with neighboring districts may be very worthwhile again this is simply there's no specific agenda item except to discuss and to continue to remind the committee that we're looking for

132ways to collaborate there have been conversations about regionalizing in the past i think about a decade ago there was a conversation about cost sharing of superintendents you're in the middle of a superintendent search you could consider that um there there's a good way you could uh pitch yourself as the anyway there's there's some ideas there i will editorialize another time thank you uh so you're not you're not necessarily looking for a specific motion here just wanted to bring it up um so i would love to hear folks any comments or questions from school committee members on this topic i think it's an important thing to kind of keep front and center as we look to um identify ways to control costs to manage um our resources smarter yeah i think it's something we should keep

133front and center there are lots of simple things like um the cog has been the fur cog has been arranging some of the ordering of large purchases so it's sort of a co-op bid many different districts can pool our some of our face masks and ppe supplies we ordered in that way uh the clog kept calling us and say really you want that that many face masks yes really and we got a great discount by by ordering it that way um so sort of trying to think of innovative ways to collaborate and there may be other positions that are similar cost sharing so just want to keep in mind especially as the budget subcommittee looks at the budget that i think that's regional cost sharing and cooperation with neighboring districts particularly around school choice are

134really important thank you i i would am like to speak to this this is really it's it's a good issue to bring up it is precisely the wrong time it is something that we could be thinking about but it is worthy of a broader discussion um as the city goes forward specifically if your mention is with regards to leiden which is the obvious uh more contiguous thing town to be discussing it for so it is absolutely relative to the schools but it is absolutely relative to the city of greenfield as well and to the town of leiden so i would respectfully say this is um not particularly the right time to begin this discussion given the situation wherein it would be important to perhaps discuss it at some point before we have to produce a

135a budget for fy 22 but it is given the fact that we are going to enter into a superintendent search it's nice to have this put forward to us but it is truly not the right time to discuss it at length that is my comment for the sake okay thank you mayweather it sounds like you're specifically talking about regionalization uh it involves regionalization and it involves um other aspects that would affect the city that are not necessarily related to the schools they are possible they are generally related to this okay sure and what i'm hearing was was um more about perhaps my thought was to have um at the next collaborative meeting to actually have a member hollins or maybe even before that if they have an email distribution list or something discuss with the

136collaborative on how we can improve sharing of resources and maybe also we can look into what additional things the furcog can do for us but i agree with you in terms of the regionalization uh discussion this is not the time to start it and no one is talking about annexing lies lyden right now that's that's for sure no and it might be also very appropriate to a school city meeting going forward sure thank you uh other questions comments discussion on this topic comment from hollins please go ahead i just have a question i i don't uh there's an echo i don't know from where i i don't think i i support what the mayor just said completely about regional regionalizing i don't think this is a time for it i don't know if i'd support

137it anyway because it since it doesn't end up anything but i don't think you have to always regionalize in order to share a position um and i was wondering if it's ever usually all the the focus i'm aware of is on business services you know it doesn't matter who does payroll can there be one payroll center for multiple districts or something of that sort but i was wondering if there's been any discussion about a create a staffed curriculum office with someone who's a curriculum director and a grants [Music] an administrative assistant because generally my experience is when you're doing curriculum let's say on social studies you bring in people to talk about social studies you review the literature on social studies you review the materials on social studies and it doesn't have to be only

138one district doing that at a time people can come together i think all the small districts struggle to have a curriculum you know somebody who's consulting and bringing in resources and facilitating discussions has there been any discussion it's probably about a two hundred and thousand dollar office if it's staffed sharing it and um among multiple districts so it isn't cost prohibitive for anyone but the topics of curriculum can come up and then people can go back and do what they want in their districts i've i've never heard that considered actually and that's my comment remember holland um do you think in your knowledge of the of the collaborative or the superintendent could certainly respond as well do you think that's something they might entertain a discussion about i don't know if they would enter i

139don't know the answer but i know if you look at new hampshire and vermont and maine it isn't unusual to find five or six small districts that are sharing a curriculum director and you know like it's just something i've had experience with and i wonder we're in the same kind of region a lot of little small schools and districts and none can really afford to staff a curriculum office and could it be shared and the way that would work in the old days of the early collaboratives is the larger district would take on the staff and other people would pay a portion and there'd be a schedule and people would have shared in service and discussion i don't know maybe it's something new to consider maybe not thank you thank you superintendent well i i

140do think that the collaborative could play a role in this and does as it relates to professional development as an example the collaborative being a tremendous resource for us and a number of area districts and you can sort of pick and choose in an a la carte kind of way with experts that are most what you're looking for i you know i can't speak to vermont in new hampshire but i will say that this has been explored a couple of years years back we discussed it and and um you know sometimes things have a a time and a moment and so i'm happy to take this up again but there was a bit of a concern about you know sort of like what's in the secret sauce so if you were if you were talking

141with another district and sharing your curriculum director it's a bit of the you know trading recipes and school choice has made school districts a bit um competitive with one another so the curriculum director role in particular has a lot to do with the instructional direction and the sort of proprietary nature being that we're searching for this position i think it's a natural question to ask but that was something that came up at least a couple of years ago where um even if you want to share with other districts and want to collaborate the nature of the work that a particular district does is very specific to their textbooks their assessments the whether they're a mac or a pc district the technology that they have the sort of peculiarities of um the regional district like do

142you have to drive a lot between the buildings or is it all you know there's there's just any number of things that affect how you deliver um instruction that sort of takes on a flavor and in the past first of all it's a big job and so there wasn't like a lot of time left over and folks felt um to some extent that they were sort of in deep focus on their particular needs i'm happy to resurface it and see if there's a particular need amongst other districts if there's interest from other members of the committee thank you and thank you member hollins for the the thoughts and the question any other discussion on this johnson go ahead everybody who's raising their hand is on my screen tonight i don't know what's going on well

143we have a much smaller number of people i guess that's what it is yeah go ahead yeah it's just a thought that it seems like covet has kind of um moved us into you know ordering supplies through the cog and just wondering if there might be opportunities through the cog with other school districts for other types of supplies that might be purchased collectively like copy paper or whatever so just wondering if that's something we might explore that's been explored so the superintendent is speaking but we can't hear her i unmuted in the other place but not the other one i we've had some conversations with the cog about ways we can expand cost-saving measures and i will circle back to that thank you thank you other questions or comments remember holland yes i had one

144other thought on this subject has to do with um another area where it seems to me small districts struggle to fund and that's in recruitment and induction and orientation of personnel if we want to have more racial diversity it takes outreach not just outreach in the local paper or the local email service but really a cross-country outreach to try and recruit people to come into rural franklin county from other locations that are more diverse and would there be any interest in some shared it doesn't always have to be a full-time person it could just be a consultant that's recruiting in staff because there are job fairs all over at colleges and in the old days people actually travel sometimes to other states to try and recruit in but that's another area i don't think we'll

145get more diverse just searching your own homeland and i don't know if other towns would be interested in some shared outreach for staff thank you another another interesting idea thank you so i think it's a great discussion to have occasionally and we'll have to keep putting this on the agenda so we can share ideas uh especially as we embark on uh superintendent search and try to dig ourselves out of the coved hole for lack of a better term anything further on this before we uh move on okay i'm not hearing anything there's no vote to be had so um we actually do need to call an executive session this evening so i would i will just read the reasons and then we'll take a motion to open the executive session we are not voting on

146anything in that session so we will close this public session before we retire to our executive session board room okay executive session will be called massachusetts general ledger c30a subsection 21 exemptions number two and three to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with non-union personnel or to conduct collective bargaining sessions or contract negotiations with non-union personnel and exemption three to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation if an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining or litigation position of the public body and the chair does declare i do declare so a motion to open the executive session please i heard member johnson moussad we'll we'll get member extreme for the second on that and uh roll call vote please remember karen yes vice chair extreme yes member hollins yes

147secretary johnson moussade i'm a yes chair proyetty yes member wall yes mayor wiedegardner yes wonderful so now i'll take a motion to um adjourn the public session please [Music] i heard remember which you're in the public session at 8 23 p.m okay remember holland and i'll i'll have the second from whoever just said that maybe remember extreme i'm not sure uh uh let's do a roll call vote please i i have a discussion sure go ahead my my watch says 8 18 oh god sometime after eight sometime before nine let's just do the roll call vote please karen yes mr extreme yeah remember hollins yeah secretary johnson mossad i mean yes chair proyetty yes remember while yes mayor rita gardner yes motion carries okay so we are adjourned sometime after eight and before nine which

148i so declared at the beginning of the meeting we will move to executive session i will give you all a five minute break thank you [Music] thank you