001[Music] for wednesday october 14th 2020 at 6 p.m 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'll move right into our agenda for this evening i should ask if anyone other than gctv is recording tonight can you please identify yourself might need to unmute okay hearing none we'll go right into the agenda remember johnson moussad would you do a roll call for us please i will members please unmute yourselves remember karen here vice chair extra here member hollins uh secretary johnson i'm here chair proyetty here remember holland is having a hard time getting in just letting you know here now oh remember holland if you could unmute yourself and just note your presence
002here thank you susan remember well here mayor wiedergardner i'm here all right we're all present and accounted for awesome so we'll call the meeting or order officially at 601 pm and we do have a set of minutes to approve this evening that's the draft minutes from the last meeting on october 1st 2020 can i have a motion to approve so moved in a second second was member hollins and member jonathan moussad any discussion okay hearing none we'll go to a roll roll call vote to approve please remember karen yes vice chair extra yes amber hollins yes secretary johnson i'm a yes chair proyetty yes remember wall yes mayor wiedergartner yes all right motion carries wonderful so we'll move now into the third section of the meeting public comment uh so the way we work public
003comment is we will first take public comment from folks who have identified themselves on the webex in the chat identify yourself by name and that you'd like to make a public comment i'll give further instructions once we're ready to go and if you're unable to do that because you've joined us by phone that's fine at the end of the virtual public comment we will take comments by phone we do give time for people to make themselves known but please also don't be shy if you're ready now to uh type it in go ahead and type it in um and then a further note about public comment let's see how this goes uh we've had extensive public comment already at multiple meetings on the subject that is under new business item c anti-racism and sro funding
004we have not had much that waivers from the folks who are looking for us to implement anti-racism education in the schools and to use sro funding for that i will limit the folks who are on the line as is the chair's discretion in public comment if you have a contrary view you don't want us to do anti-racism education or you don't want us to use the funding for the school resource officer you may comment i will also give folks who are on the line and planning to make comment in support of item c on the new business agenda time to pick one person to be their spokesperson and that one person may comment this evening this is not to limit anyone but we haven't heard any new information we've gotten dozens of emails we've gotten
005dozens of folks commenting and we need to actually get into our agenda so uh public comment we will move into it now uh anyone in the chat yes we have several starting with lucy khan lucy khan can you state your name for us if it has an unusual spelling please spell it let us know what town you live in and you have three minutes yes my name is lucy khan l-u-c-y-k-a-h-n i live in greenfield massachusetts and i was called i'm logging in and commenting in this meeting to um support the racial justice programs that you just mentioned so yes i'm you know joining the chorus of voices that's calling for allocating funding to the racial justice youth programs such as community actions ongoing and successful stand up and stand together against racism programs and i'm
006also here to urge the council to establish an advisory committee to listen to and address the issue of racism in schools given that you just said that many people have been expressing similar views i will hold my time there but i'm glad to be in such good company in our town of people who are trying to make anti-racist education a priority and i'm commenting here as a former educator myself thank you lucy okay so we've had our one comment on school resource officer and anti-racism do we have anyone else on any other topics that would like to speak go ahead member johnson assad let us know um the folks haven't identified in the chat what the topic is of their open content the next person who's requested to speak is gina duncan or jenna jenna
007duncan are you here to speak about something other than anti-racism education no then we have to move on to the next person we have thank you anyone else daniel pina chadi and apologies for butchering names i'm just trying to read off of the chat yeah um i was about to mention uh anti-racism too but uh um i guess we're moving on did you have anything different than what we've already heard the first speaker was very succinct and and um pretty much identical to what we've heard before do you have anything different to add um no not really just i would like anti-racism program thank you thank you very much um daniel can you spell oh remember johnson we saw do you have the spelling of his name in the chat i do yes it's uh
008daniel standard spelling p-e-n-a with the n as in nancy c h a d e e thank you the next person on the list is chelsea field chelsea field hi i'm just here to echo lucy's sentiment so i don't want to take up more time nothing different to add thank you very much what town do you live in chelsea greenfield okay thank you anyone else yes helen purham hi everyone i'm helen parham i live in greenfield i am an alum from greenfield public schools and i wanted to support the anti-racism uh uh programs in greenfield public schools thank you anyone else that has a different topic uh we don't know the topics the next person's uh on the list is doug s uh hi doug selwyn uh from greenfield and i support what everybody else has
009has said but but but i'm not done okay um i do have uh another topic which is which which has to do with the future hiring of superintendent and curriculum coordinator please you have three minutes thank you um i want to make sure that the the people who are i'm not sure what the process is going to be for hiring um particularly the super next superintendent but i want to make sure that the people who are being considered have a strong commitment to racial justice to economic justice and that they have demonstrated that not just um said the words but actually have demonstrated their experience and commitment by action um in whatever their previous work has been so i hope that is a major consideration i would also like to another topic has to do
010with the redistricting committee i would like to argue strongly to that committee fully involve the community especially and particularly communities of color in looking at that issue so um so those two things thank you thank you doug anyone else um i have chelsea field would like to make a public movement in support of the anti-racism education he already commented okay then that is all for in the chat at the moment okay and we will definitely take any public comment from folks who are on the line uh who are unable to type into the chat don't be shy just unmute yourself and go ahead anyone going once going twice okay so i think we're going to move on to committee reports we have an extensive agenda tonight so i am going to refrain from giving a
011chairperson's report knowing that i sometimes get worked up and talk for too long we'll move right into the superintendent's report superintendent harper are you open chair you open to a question i know you didn't want to make a make a speech open to a question for the for the chair specifically yeah for the chairs report sure just wondering if you could give an update on the working from and consulting with council on that i've uh started the process of consulting with council we have a number of things that are in front of that needing the that person's attention and so i do not have a timeline at this point but he um he has been made aware um of what we're looking for and that process has started i'm actually going to mute everyone that
012is not a school committee member at this point and superintendent harper when you were ready we are ready for the superintendent's report sure good evening everyone uh thanks to everyone that commented everybody on the line committee members uh mayor good evening um in my report which i will keep brief i want to touch on in a few important and exciting updates the first is our everybody's favorite topic food um the home delivery service as we've talked about before started on september 16th and in september alone 43 698 meals were served um and recently we this past friday we learned that the usda waiver was granted so meals will continue to be able to be served by greenfield public schools in the way we have been serving them throughout the rest of the school year it's
013really good news we knew we had it for some period of time but we were waiting on that federal waiver to be extended to be able to continue that so i'm very pleased and want to continue to express my appreciation to the committee for your support and also to our food service team so we can continue that great service i'd like to give a shout out to the girls field hockey team for their 7-0 win over mohawk on friday uh makes them undefeated in our 2-0 season so far it's uh it's a great start to a great season we're going to talk about athletics later tonight everything's a little different right now so i feel like our athletes need our support more than ever and i wanted to give them a big shout out one
014of the most important things that just happened this afternoon is that governor baker has refiled a new budget and this is important because it's our budget it's our state budget and it's significantly more spending including federal dollars to help save off some of the cuts that would have otherwise been enacted we're just beginning an analysis of it since this was literally just released but it looks to be consistent with the chapter 70 numbers we got over the summer so that's good news and we'll keep you posted i'm going to defer to somebody else for a moment sure uh we do have a couple of subcommittee reports i actually want to go right to uh city planning and construction we'll have them go first you can see it's a little bit uh different on the agenda
015that's just a miscommunication between myself and the person who actually types up the agenda it shouldn't have been under the subcommittee reports but they had intended to give one last time and i rudely didn't allow it and so um either member hollins who i think is our official rep or member wall or both of you uh please if you would like to give us an update for city planning and construction go ahead i'd like to comment just on um the issues before uh planning and construction that involve the school gene wall chairs the committee so she has a broader view of the library and the police department and the fire station and how all of this impacts funding and what's going on but the primary issue involving the schools is uh green river school which
016has been shuttered uh temporarily and i'll just quickly read you from the minutes of the meeting we had this week um they applied for and received emergency waiver as regards the timeline they're still looking at february 2021 that's this year for installation of the heating system berkshire gas has confirmed access to the gas line the roof asbestos removal and ceiling work is complete and now they're just dealing with heating system and the rest of the talk was about the cost increased cost of electricity and gas district wide that they anticipate an increase of about 50 largely because of all the changes to heating and ventilation which improves this and there was a for all everybody in our schools meeting coveted requirements there was a question raised that until we reopened school had the school district
017thought about not opening every single building for a few children being served there because of the cost of electricity it wasn't a request i was just wondering if we'd thought about that because the cost of running every single school for habitation and all the air exchange is a very high cost so that's the main issue involving schools is green river and it's still expected that school will be ready for february of this year thank you chair yeah superintendent harper go ahead uh the planning and construction reports are extremely helpful and the work is really necessary to the rest of the committee is it possible to share the minutes from those meetings along with the reports yes i asked chair wall if she would send the last two meetings there each time the information school buildings
018is articulated we try to do that clearly and also there was an annual report last year described everything going on including school buildings and that and i'll ask chairwell to make sure those are sent to you to distribute thank you great thank you any questions for uh city planning and construction from school committee members all right so hearing none we'll go back to superintendent harper for any uh additional reporting no i'm good rose just gave you like a finale there is that what they're like all right um other subcommittee reports i've lost track at this point member wall please i'd like to speak to the redistricting subcommittee we had our first meeting and we have decided that in going forward we need to have a history of of the different elementary schools which is where
019we're going to focus and look at the criteria that's used for the assignment of students look at the current assignment of students and and study uh who they are and why they are assigned to that school our next meeting is going to be october the 26th at four o'clock if anyone would like to attend it you are welcome to come and we welcome public input into our meetings thank you thank you member wall any questions about the let's call it the redrawing of the district map rather than read restricting just just a pet peeve of mine um unless we want to invite lyden to become a regional school district with i'm kidding that was a joke that was a joke uh do we have any questions for member wall about that subcommittee any other subcommittee
020reports all right so can i ask a question please go ahead member college um until this year we've always had us this has to do with reporting and reporting has always included uh high school students telling us what's going on at the high school because we've had high school reps on the school committee i just wanted to mention that i miss it thank you news to me i'll follow up on that um any other mayor yes go ahead mayor wait a garden i just wanted to say in regards to your remark about lyden uh before coleman 19 hit they actually we had actually had a meeting scheduled about annexing lyden with the leiden people so um i think it was not and we never were able to follow through with it but we should put
021on an unreasonable thought we should put it on the agenda if we're going to seriously talk about it absolutely um it has merit certainly because of what's happening in other school districts around us right now um it definitely has merit but we would need to actually post it i shouldn't have joked yeah i'm sorry but yeah that's okay yes i'm not joking but it it's a subject that may be of interest yep thank you other any other questions comments okay i just like to support putting the leiden discussion great i think that's good it came up at planning and construction we were talking about fire services that there had been planning about life england yup absolutely i've heard that as well thank you all right uh let's actually move into what we have as section
022um six of the agenda is unfinished business uh folks who listen in regularly or with us regularly may recall our meeting on october 1st two weeks ago we set a time at which we would move into executive session and anything that we did not finish that was on the new business side portion of the agenda we would finish tonight we're starting with those items uh that are rollover from that october 1st meeting and the first item is a rep to the collaborative for educational services board of directors uh maybe it's just board of directors maybe it's committee i'm not sure but we normally have a school committee member that is our rep on this board of directors they meet uh quarterly i believe and it is um on the last wednesday of the month and
023i do know that they're doing the meetings virtually now um i had originally asked to appoint member hollins to this and she declined the appointment and they have since contacted us and said hey you don't have anyone from your uh school committee that's attending our meetings um i am unable to attend or i would i have another meeting that is at exactly the same time on the same frequency um but i would before i make an appointment i would take any self nominations from school committee members that would be interested in this and to give in can you all hear me yes i have been the person who was appointed and i enjoyed taking part in part of it and it was really great information related to services that are provided for various populations particularly
024people who have educational challenges i'll say um and the meetings when they're in person are held quarterly and they are either held at their offices in northampton or they're held at the transportation bus station thing that we have and dinner is provided um and i just i i i'm working 20 to 40 hours a week on school committee i am so over committed that i just can't do it and so i i really i've enjoyed it i would encourage people to become part of it um and i guess that's all i guess thank you thank you any other questions or nominations from school committee members i have a non-nomination comment which is just that my husband works for the collaborative so please don't appoint me to that because i think it would be a conflict
025of interest thank you glenn can i make a comment remember holland go ahead um x actually understand collaborative functioning and the reason i declined was that their meetings in person conflicted with my schedule if they're meeting remotely and no one has the interest i could do this oh i would like to appoint member hollands if there's no other nominations was anyone else uh interested in appointing themselves this is katie i was going to say i can do it but if member hollands would like to do it then that's you can take it no i'm fine with someone else doing it i was just going to save my second member holland i think it's an excellent fit for member hollands and i'm i'm delighted that your schedule has changed and katie i have to do another
026appointment tonight so you sit tight okay okay you said time for now um all right well i appreciate all of that um the comments as well as uh the interest from member hollins and from member karen thank you very much and remember holland i will appoint you and i will send you the information that we have about when the meetings are um we missed one i believe in september so i think december would be the next one but i'll make sure you get the information you need thank you we'll move on to item b which is a school committee rep for uh bargaining with the food services and custodian unions and member karen it is it is my plan to appoint you you are actually a member of the negotiating and personnel committee and um
027if you are able and willing i would like to make this appointment uh for you chair uh who is that talking that was the superintendent i cannot mute or we can let joe temporarily chair he's letting me know he's going to watch tv so i think we're good i just wanted to note that this could be the same person or it could be two different people um there's a good reason for it to be the same person um in terms of negotiating but if for any reason chair wanted to make two different appointments i just wanted to say that's entirely at your discretion thank you can you help me with why it's helpful to have it be the same person historically with the uh union representative is sometimes the same for both contracts and it
028is yeah this time and so um very often um things that are helpful in terms of bargaining one um i'll give it a simple example that's okay in public session if the city of greenfield updated its benefits package that would be addressed in one bargaining but it would also be addressed in the other and the person that had knowledge about it in one that would be pertinent to the other just as an example sure something um that you know um that may be relevant um it is time consuming so just to say we essentially have every single bargaining unit active right now and as member extreme said earlier um you know this year in particular there are so many changes to working conditions for all employees um so that would be one reason that you
029might consider two i i think there's an argument to be made for the same person i just wanted to note that thank you i appreciate that perspective i got a little nervous because i saw member karen left the meeting as soon as i said i was gonna appoint her but it appears she's back my sound just deleted itself i couldn't hear anybody okay all right you're back um remember karen if uh if you have no serious objections i will appoint you um to be our that's okay yep wonderful thank you very much uh that takes care of two agenda items we are cruising although i probably shouldn't have said that out loud um items referred from the budget subcommittee member extrem who is the chair of the budget subcommittee will need to give me um
030an overview here because i can't even remember when when what we last talked about right so what we had what had been carried over was a discussion about um the number of students who are registered i have to find my notes a number of students who are registered in the district um also by school as well as taking a look at who was registered at the academy of early learning because um when what it appeared is that there were uh 120 students is what we had hired for and we actually have 60 students who are enrolled and so the question came up in budget is isn't that we are hiring and staffing properly and responsibly based on the number of students within that singular school or and and within the rest of the district are
031we are are we being responsible and thoughtful about how we're using our funds so that's sort of the short version um i believe we had some materials prepared for us so we could look at the uh attend i don't want to say attendance registration at each school so perhaps uh superintendent you can take it away unless you're busy and then i'll see what i can do i am oh she is here but she's on mute oh there she goes i'm here but take it away [Laughter] go for it no that's fine let me uh let me pull up my paperwork i of course have misplaced it and we're all dealing with everything uh let's see i'm sorry friends it's in the um the general school committee materials packet correct and did you want to look
032specifically at um ael right now well that that was sort of my um focus so if we want to start a conversation with that what i what i did note is that compared to last year the number of students that we had in all of the other schools was comparable and so none of we we aren't necessarily over staffing with bodies at any of the other schools regardless of whether we're in person or not um which i was i was hurting to see so um if we would like to start with discussing that that would be great so the the ael topic because there's a few things under these items referred from the budget subcommittee that we didn't spell out on the agenda um ael staffing um and well let's put it this way the
033student population at ael is down compared to where it has been in previous years um did you say it's down by about half yes um and so the question then becomes in terms of uh uh sound budgetary policy do do we have ael staffed appropriately yes and i would look to someone besides a school committee member to talk about that whether that's the superintendent or that's um the business manager i'm not sure how we approach the conversation but it does probably warrant some discussion you know and there are also a number of sort of nuances to that in that we have um the academy of early learning has a fair number of students who don't pay any tuition but are receiving a lot of services because that's um that's mandated for lack of a better
034term or the actual term that we provide services for and so it isn't just how many bodies and how many teachers and how many ias we have it's are we adequately staffed given the needs of our population and the number of students who are there correct thank you uh any comment or questions from school committee members or the superintendent on this topic another nuance comment remember hollins please um there's seven classrooms in the building i believe we were staffed for six or seven classrooms plus the classroom we should clarify how many classrooms we need but in addition to the nuance that member extra mentioned that there's some students were required to provide services for and other students we elect to provide services for on a scale tuition that isn't all that that is not all
035there is to outreach to young children in our community and it might be an opportunity to look at how other districts in addition serve the early childhood population three to five you know through outreach that's all it's another nuance that there are more ways than one to serve children in this three to five age group make sure no children are missed thank you thank you anyone else chair could i comment oh please thank you so i i just wanted to you know provide a little context for people listening most staffing decisions are made first of all according to the budget approved by the school committee and that was voted as we know previous to most of the information that we have now including the state's budget that was re-released today some of the enrollment information
036the trajectory of kovid which of c of course nobody knows um and it was august when the school committee voted its um remote plus plan so at the that point we had already needed to make due to contractual timelines commitments to most staff to return for the school year not yet knowing which way the school committee would vote and so forth of course it is accurate that the academy of early learning has lower enrollment this year than uh previous years by about 60 students but it's also accurate that should the committee wish to implement some of the in-person services that are in our remote plus plan whether now or in a subsequent phase that the academy of early learning might be a really ideal place to implement social distancing and return students to an in-person
037model particularly for families with young children child care is a real problem in the sense that high quality early education experiences are essential and it can be very difficult for caregivers to find greenfield has historically offered both affordable and very high quality early childhood care at the academy of early learning the low ratio that we have right now compared to typical is about what we would need in order to implement those social distancing guidelines so while it is a decrease it is very close to the ratio we would need for one thing and second is that it's really important for the listening audience to understand this is has nothing to do with a greenfield particular situation what we're seeing across the commonwealth are preschool and kindergarten enrollment drops that are unprecedented a lot of families
038really trying to grapple with covid um many more of them working from home statewide trying to understand well how best does our family juggle this situation and some changes in employment situations for families as well so we are pleased to have offered tuition discounts at the preschool that i think have been successful in keeping some of our students able to participate and have a really high quality remote program at the preschool that has been doing really good things and i would encourage the committee to keep an eye towards the staffing that we have to be able to pilot in-person services for our youngest learners we know that in-person learning is of course where we all want to be we have a beautiful playground we have outdoor ability we have tents up at that school and
039we have terrific staff over there so um just as a it's difficult because we have to staff for not just what is today but what might be and so i think we're staffed in a way that gives us that flexibility and we want to you know continue to move as quickly as the committee is able to do so so there's a lot of nuance in this particular topic and thank you superintendent sure getting that background there was your you're very good at that i'm more focused on what's in front of me as we all know so in any case um i think it's important that we had the uh overview from superintendent harper i think it's critical that we brought this up in a public session um so that we're all aware that these are
040things we need to look at um the there's it's no secret that the district has a very very tight budget that does not meet all of our needs currently um and it's also important that we if we have flexibility built in which it sounds like that's exactly what this offers us right now in an uncertain time to be very cliche about it um that sounds like maybe a motion to do nothing would be appropriate with this one but we'll just leave it at that unless there's more comment from school committee members remember holland you're not on my screen are you raising your hand yep i was but i also saw the mayor raised her hand before me oh guys come on how many meetings have i said okay what what i like what i'd like
041to say is i i actually think it is a budget it would be important for us to understand how we have so many shortages now um to understand and the school had does have classrooms for social distancing as the superintendent said i'd like to know you know exactly what is our staffing now for the 60 children and how many teachers and personnel do we have and what i've been reading but this has nothing to do with greenfield is the teachers all over some are electing to retire early or leave for other reasons and do we have step i would just like to know more about our budget at the school and what the plans are thank you [Music] um superintendent hartford do you want to respond to that now or should i move on to
042mayor rita gartner um do we need is it something we want to prepare differently for the next meeting how would you want to approach that sure i mean in your packet you have an updated version of the budget with all the teaching staff and so forth so you know we're happy to provide any information you'd like about teaching staff if if there's a particular interest in talking more about the preschool program and in particular you know um this is a mandatory subject of collective bargaining in terms of returning to in-person versus remote um so i should just say that but if there's an interest in talking in particular about preschool and what that might look like it would be a really interesting topic i think for the public and it would be good to have
043the academy of early learning principal the director of pupil services um you could hear about transportation if you're interested in those different aspects of it we could certainly add it the model as as member holland said the model varies from place to place there's what you're required to do by law there's what individual communities decide to do greenfield has elected a model that's been very successful which sort of exceeds our legal requirement and provides high quality early education for our youngest learners that become some of our um very successful students when they enter in kindergarten so that sort of bridge um is is has benefits to the district um and obviously to the students and the families so that's the model that we've been using and if there's there's often a sort of discussion about
044cost-benefit analysis so that i would say if you wanted to have a more in-depth conversation we should invite some of those folks and hear a little bit from each of them thank you and uh it does seem like it's appropriate more for a full school committee than a than a budget subcommittee but i would go either way on that and then i know mayor rita gartner you had a comment please go ahead sure i really i just well first wanted to support what jordana said about the importance of the um early learning program in greenfield it's been around for quite a while and i do think it is a very successful model so i support her interest in continuing it um whether or not it's got 60 or 120 students in it and particularly i'm
045intrigued by the thought to make this a pilot for in-person learning if we have the time the budget and the facilities to do this because i do think that's a critical age for in-person learning i'm not alone in that thought i do think it's helpful to our community and this is probably part of another discussion that we have on our agenda under new business but just wanted to say i support the superintendent's thoughts and thinking on that and then i'll support what susan said too it's important to know exactly in in helping us make that decision in person alerting as well as how to budget for it um it's important for us to have more detail i think on um how it's staffed um and what all we need to know in order to make
046that decision from a financial perspective thank you mayor um so we can probably move on from this one and perhaps add it as an agenda item for the next meeting which will be in a short two weeks um other budget subcommittee items that we want to address tonight remember extreme um you're on mute yeah can you hear me no yes yeah okay so also what we wanted to discuss was a hiring grid in a list review that being the committee and budget committee budget committee and had carried over to the school committee a discussion about those positions which were not filled with a reduction after the reduction in force was sort of um rehired and those positions that were open that had never had a person working in them so um i unless i've missed
047something i don't see any i don't see any of that within our packet but i'm willing to say i may have missed it no i didn't see anything in the packet either it also is something that um i mean we can just note that we want to discuss at the next meeting in the interest of time that's fine given the new uh budget information today from the governor that you're not ready may be useful what we had in the summer was an administrative update and those numbers have been what we've been going off of um but they and they're very similar to to what we're seeing today we think but there are some changes in the low in income um how it's calculated and so that and of course this still needs to be approved
048by the legislature so uh this is the oddest budget cycle i think anybody's ever seen um so for what that's worth well and and slightly off topic um i know from my uh full-time job that uh gcc where i work was uh notified surprise we have some money for you to do this and it was completely out of the blue and it sounds like also the mayor's office received a similar notice from the state this this week's surprise you've never heard of us you've never heard of our office but we have all this money to give you um and so there's clearly some things happening whether that is state it sounds like it's probably federally allocated block grant money to the states that has gone unused that they're trying to figure out how now they
049use it it's coveted related um but i was i was very interested to see the mayor's email and then sitting down at work like two days later saw a very similarly worded email from a different person but related to funds they were giving to the college um so yeah odd budget cycle and lots of things kind of still unfolding that you know and you know to kind of help folks who are listening in who are trying to understand how we do budgeting as well um you know people have said over and over again we get questions uh have we applied for grants or i see on social media well is the school district applying for grants is the city applying for grants yes yes of course we are whenever there is a grant that we
050um think we would be successful with that we meet the criteria for we're going to apply district but what what folks need to understand about grant funds and um the these surprise funds that we've heard of this week hold true to that is it's not a blank check it's not money you put into your general fund it's a very granular way to be used and um i believe the money that is uh um the the money that the city is potentially getting is an even it's a very slim project um and so i i don't think we need to talk about it anymore but the point about the budget cycle the point about the funding and folks always asking us if we're getting grant funds um yeah it's a very very strange time to try
051to figure out how all of this is going to unfold and how we can use it to best help our students is of course the number one thing okay i've said enough um let's see i think we're ready to move on am i right to fy21 budget recommendations item d there am i in the right spot i've lost my spot entirely on the agenda let's go with that yes i think you're in the right spot someone just shut me up and tell me to move on um okay so overview maybe by andy i don't know who wants to give an overview of the budget recommendations piece um and then we'll chat hi andy hello there so what this was is as we've mentioned uh the the drawing the line in the sand to adjust the
052budget with what we know for personnel as of the most recent time so this reflects that so what it is and as i mentioned i know there's like the format looks different but the only reason why it was because i was you know going through and at the direction of the budget finance subcommittee was to you know not necessarily i'm gonna say concern with format but just get the information out there that this is what it is that we would be looking to for the full committee to vote as a i'm going to call it like a level reset of the fy 21 budget now this does dovetail with uh some of the discussions that was just going on regarding that personnel grid in the sense that there are still changes that are coming from
053uh a lot of the instructional aids area um so you know uh dr dickinson and i have been having regular discussions regarding those things but this i would say is what i would like to do and recommend to the committee to vote this as a revised fy 21 budget with the personnel changes that have occurred to date and then as they occur as we continue going on you will see those changes that are would occur after this through the salary encumbrance area and then ultimately budget transfers that we would bring forward uh in accordance with your policy so thanks andy so the the budget that we have in our materials for this evening um that is laid out uh very neatly this is the one we're talking about and it sounds like we're looking for
054a motion to approve this as our current fiscal year 21 budget would you say that's accurate andy that is correct okay so can i get a motion from a school committee member so moved and a second that was mayor wiederner in a second anyone second that was remember wall all right and let's have some discussion so hopefully folks have had a chance to look at this um it is uh the the biggest changes as andy said are um are personnel changes um when i looked through it although i'm not a budget person i didn't see anything that was hugely different from the ones the versions we've seen previously questions or further discussion reminder to members if you have questions or comments when we speak up don't raise your hand you have a couple comments remember
055holland please go ahead i have three comments uh actually um i noticed i wish that we would um accept this and then vote it next time so we could have time to look at and we could have hard copies visually it's really hard for me to see this on the computer screen but my comment is one of the changes i noted is in out of district special ed play placements which is a probably i think the most important line item in the whole budget because it can go up and down by several hundred thousand dollars without notice and there's nothing we can do about it often but i noticed that we have changed the budget from something like 1.2 million to 893 000 and i'm wondering how you trans where you put the other 341
056800 482 000 that's one question and this do you want me to go all the comments at once or one at a time go ahead and give them all now please the second one has to do with um high school instructional elective program i've been an advocate of keeping this in its own cost center where it was approved by city council in 2008 which i know is outdated but um that allowed the high school principal with staff to make decisions about what the elected program was but there's no change there and with regard to so many people asking for more money for racial justice programs i'm wondering if those lines could be increased in this budget i don't know what happened to the sro but those lines are line 85 and line uh uh 103.
057one is the instructional electives at the high school i think that's personnel and the other is the instructional elective supplies which i believe is supplies and maybe contracted services and if that were increased then the high school principal could um bring on more elective programs which is what we're talking about with racial equity programs that's a second and the third um we have been buying a lot of technology i have no complaint with that but if you look at the technology budget i raised this before our equipment budget in this budget is 000 i don't know how many hundreds we've spent but i think we need to be more realistic about what we're spending in technology or at least to know where is the money coming from because we certainly spent more than 14 000
058and my particular interest is in understanding the instructional and non-instructional software licenses which this budget has at 198 000 which seems high to me but i don't know anymore what we buy it we have a lot of non-instructional software licenses just for reporting to the state and reporting health and reporting this that the other thing and i think it would be really helpful if we could get just an understanding of what's in the those two lines include and where are we buying all our technology from it's not out of the 14 000 line so that was three items that interest me in particular besides preschool and supplies for our students thank you chair chair i just wanted to go ahead uh a couple of quick responses to that i i don't have in front of
059me a list of all the subscriptions but i can tell you that they increased significantly this year um and the vast majority of that funding somebody is happening furiously on their keyboard the vast majority of that is something andy is a very fast typist the vast majority of that funding is um is grant funded so it covid specific expenses so when we had to buy additional remote learning software that would support a district-wide platform that was more robust for example that is new technology new software and new expenses that was due to moving into remote and that was covid related expense so we we do have access to federal funding earmarked for expenses and whatever method your district is operating and so that that cost center has gone up significantly however there is a a
060very high proportion of it is funded through this sort of one-time money federal money cares act money um in grants uh i i don't at all disagree and if our tech director were speaking now she would say you know hallelujah please absolutely increase the line for subscriptions because um in just a regular year this goes up every year because um schools are becoming more and more digitally fluent students need access to evolving technologies our textbooks move online so on and so forth that's just the way things are going so it's sort of shifted and that there is a need as you put it for more realistic budgeting in this line and just to note that we have always had this discussion around capital which is coming up soon so this is very timely um we're
061we're woefully underfunded in technology in general in our budget and it it is not wise to rely on a patchwork of grants for something that is central to the service you provide to students so i i really do fully agree with that um i also want to note that there's a special ed and people services component so when you think about um when you think about access like if you have a physical building and children need to get into the building then you think about americans with disability act accommodations like ada like you have to make the door wide enough for a wheelchair things like that but in remote learning we're we're also responsible for making access to students even in that so there are a number of subscriptions that over the summer the director
062of pupil services myself our tech director teachers worked to build additional tech based supports for students is that need a particular software because the screen glare you know is bad for their uh inocular condition just as an example that kind of thing um so i i would say you're you're spot on to notice the need and increase um we can certainly bring together a list much of it is interesting and exciting a lot of it came from our teachers and we are fortunate to have the the funding mostly federal i did want to ask a question i was um i guess i'm looking for clarification you noted about the sro funding and a desire to earmark the elective line but i don't really see the connection between the social justice um racial equity work and
063an elective line i think i know at least from the folks that have contacted the district that i've heard the public interest is in sort of broad curriculum components professional development a lot of which is ongoing but some additional support as well as counselors and staffing that are specifically helping to support and work with students of color students with a background in trauma so on and so forth so um and community programs like stand up we've heard that a number of times that can directly work with our students so i don't know that there are so much elective programs as uh broad uh district-wide supports and i'm maybe trying to clarify that and you're welcome to do it now or another remember holland did you want to respond to that yes um uh the two
064lines i mentioned that you know it doesn't have to be there but what i understood was initially the interest was really bringing programs into the high school but also looking through a district-wide lens and the elective or extracurricular alliance allow for consultants additional staff i was very interested someone referred me to portland oregon reading listening to their consultant and you know the professional development the materials the programs they offered this programs for students i think some of that would come in under electives and that's why i thought um moving that money over because it's not the core program it's woven in as new and different um student faculty i thought it went there but in some way or another i'd like to see that money some money go to the high school to allow the
065staff the superintendent the principal i thought some of it was purchasing services or purchasing program support or resources for the library or speakers or trips or something whatever it would just give more flexibility to what they're doing there for additional programs because otherwise that money is kind of fixed and that's why i thought we should act on that in this year's budget since there's great keen interest and it's important hope that helped i don't care where it goes but i think we should get some money there thank you mary collins sheriff chairman please go ahead regarding the tuitions remember hollins um due to the uh closure mid-year we have carryover funds in the special ed 240 grant from the prior fiscal year so we're able to use those to offset the tuition so that we're
066able to reduce from the local appropriation that's great thank you other questions or comments on this issue the budget i did like remember holland i did appreciate and i think we should um do a vote and a re-vote a second vote to affirm um at our next meeting uh regarding the changes but to to push through with the motion that's already on the table now and then after folks have had a chance to review and ask any question more detailed questions from the superintendent or from uh the business manager we could at our next meeting actually do an official a final vote i like that idea a lot thank you for bringing that up uh further questions or comments from the school committee members can i ask something sure who is that it's extreme i
067can't tell but yes go ahead so here's my question given what the superintendents told us about the budget from the governor finally having some movement i wonder if and i'm gonna shoot myself in the foot with this i wonder if the budget subcommittee should meet and so we can do a more pause hands-on poke and prod of funding so that it doesn't that level of work doesn't have to be done at the full committee level um but also to ask questions and and get some feedback on more smaller minutiae pieces that wouldn't typically interest everybody in their brother i'm asking if we meet next week um hold on jordan i was going to say something oh please go ahead i was just going to say i support that i think the budget and finance subcommittee
068should feel very clear on the new um recommendations the new chapter 70 coming out of the governor's budget yeah given just given the timing of it and have a chance to um look at that uh member holland's raised some questions tonight i think the previous comments about how the sro funding will be applied in this budget i think that the budget and finance subcommittee should feel crystal clear on all of that um with the new information from the state budget as well yeah common remember holland go ahead i very much support member extremes thought and could we please have hard copies those of us would like to have a copy that's more readable than a screen copy and you leave it outside and pick it up but i'd appreciate that yeah we can get hard
069copies mailed out to all the members that need them um if you need a if you prefer or want a hard copy of this revised budget can you please send me an email so that we can get those so jean's gonna want one as well thank you and i'm not gonna lie i'll want one because i want to make notes on it and i don't have the appropriate kind of paper to print it on okay um anyone else who is not on that list just email me and we'll make sure that we get those out to you um other questions or comments okay so what i would like to do is we'll move to a vote on this now i'll have uh um susan farber read us the the motion and then as we just
070discussed we will bring it up for a vote at our next school committee meeting as well um susan farber can you just read us what we're voting on are you on mute susan she's not on youtube try again oh yeah all right the motion is to approve the revised budget as presented as the current fy 21 budget okay let's move to a vote remember johnson moussad can you do a roll call vote please yes members please unmute yourselves member karen yes nice chair extra yes remember hollins is secretary johnson i'm a yes chair priyetty yes member wall yes mayor rita gardner yes martian carries unanimously wonderful thank you all for that and again we will uh do a deep dive at the budget subcommittee meeting that we'll schedule uh likely for next week and then
071um we will bring it up again and have another discussion at the next school committee meeting all right so we're going to move into new business and in the interest of uh being respectful of time for two of our guests that are going to be speaking tonight i am interested in getting a motion uh to actually have uh the report from transportation which is currently item b and then the report from athletics which is currently item d actually become item a and item b respectfully so we can get those done could i have a motion to amend the agenda so moved second that was mayor wiedegartner and a second i think from member extreme and any discussion of that okay so let's just move to a vote make sure we're okay with that remember johnson
072was sad glenn you're on mute i was like remember karen you're mine [Laughter] all right remember karen yes vice chair extreme yes remember holland i'm sorry i don't know what we're voting we're voting to change the order of some items in the agenda yeah yeah okay yes uh secretary johnson i'm a yes chair priority yes member wall yes mayor wiedergartner yes wonderful thank you all right thank you and so uh please ed rudran we would love to hear from you about transportation you can go ahead thank you for joining us good evening everybody thank you for this opportunity um i explained by what i sent in a line item by a line item and there's a certain point i want to talk to the mayor regarding the dpw and what they were able to do
073for us and we've already thanked them once but we're going to make sure that's clear to begin with on our timetable of march uh to june um and i have jake uh walt smith with me now also uh we delivered assisted in delivering chromebooks we assisted in delivering lunches with the cafeteria who my heart goes out to them they're working very hard for the community uh and we've enjoyed working with them we trained with pmo for new cohort regulations and those are the cdl drivers in the original group that was called in in june of our staff in july and august we started delivering students to springdale and center school for the summer school programs at the same time we deep cleaned every piece of equipment we have available to us all the buses and
074vans and the deep cleaning means they were cleaned thoroughly and disinfected uh the other thing we did is we stocked all the vehicles with cleaning supplies every day the school deliver ppe gear and uh pickup packages and from the post office to have delivered we received at this point in july and august the seven new vans which were desperately needed at by this point we managed to get them registered and outfitted and assigned now this is where i want to speak to the mayor and thank her very much and especially like paul newell and his crew because those seven nubians were outfitted a day at a time which is almost unheard of everything works and we spoke to them that on that already but i wanted to reiterate it in front of the mayor they
075did an excellent job for us and and we all thank them i just said thank you okay welcome on august to october we completed another training with pm owen who has been also a thankful soul for our crew because she's been excellent in our training and works with us every day on the covet issues when we pick up children we completed that training with pm and we've had a final structure for the whole year of what we need to do every day at the end of august the out of district students are returned to a full school year employees were called back as they were needed now we deliver children to springdale education center the center school heck academy cutchens the tech school neri and valley west and just a reminder to the school committee
076that we're we could only put two children to a van so it's been very stressful getting everybody delivered we have 13 vans and a lot more children we have vans at this point i'd like to have jake say a few comments what it's like to the school committee at this time getting schedules even just with special ed uh completed and jake go ahead yeah so we in order to get all of this done um it's it's very complicated because a lot of these schools don't go every single day we have we have schools that you know they have uh students that go three days out of the week some of them that are they take a day off in order to um do deep cleaning at their respective schools and just moving them all with
077the equipment that we have with only two students to a van and really it can only be one student to a van if a child requires a monitor that's been a huge challenge for us um and we're we're using all of our equipment every single day in order to move these just you know 24 students and obviously if we move to doing more in-district transportation where we we won't have the ability to move all of the students uh with the equipment that we currently have and with the restrictions that are that are placed on us with um the the covid regulations uh i hope that was clear from jay we have a good team that works in this everyday imaging schedule and i thank them um what we have going forward uh is we are
078delivering lunches three times a week with the lunch program for the entire district uh which has been a tough job for the people that you employ in the food service industries but it's been excellent working and i want to put my compliments out to star who keeps everything organized including a schedule to jake so that we can keep assisting them on a daily basis we call our incoming vans from out of district uber deliveries because they go to star or wherever else we need them before they go out on their next run we also completed athletics uh discussions with mike uh jake's got a schedule and we have drivers available to them to continue completing their athletic schedule for the year mike's an excellent guy to work with and jake and our crew have been
079working well to get them together and get them to their different sports events we want to continue that the buses all our buses were inspected once we shut down uh at the end of march uh we lost um a lot of training time we lost uh licenses to drivers and uh cdl drivers and uh class b drivers we rejuvenated that through the registry which was closed which was trust me a a a real challenge um paul newell could tell you that he went from pittsfield to springfield to chickamay just to get registration plates uh all in one day and it was still not successful that's how hard it's been to keep things running but we do have them running and i want to thank all the people that i mentioned uh pm paul uh and
080jake and our entire transportation crew and star we want to continue working and keeping the district moving every day the last part of what i want to tell the school committee today is that changes are also being made in the registry we have one 7d bus which is the white one which used to be an frta bus it has been well kept well maintained uh we can no longer use it as a 7d bus it has to be decommissioned by november 30th and the reason being is it's over 10 000 pounds which needs to be painted yellow and you have to have a cdl driver therefore it's got to be discontinued but my recommendation to the school committee at this time is that we put a blue plate on that bus and we use it
081both for athletics in our division of transportation after most the school day is over and also let star use it for her general transportation of food services to the community it would be an excellent use for that bus rather than just put it out to auction um the other thing the thing of it is with the 70 disc continuation of that bus it's over ten thousand pounds and we have to have anything 9500 or under with a yellow plate on it from here on out and to replace that f2 frta bus right now we would need two 10 passenger vans rated at under 95 100 pounds and that would assist in completing our fleet him the way it is now uh in in regard to that because they're 7d we would most likely have to
082replace or bring in two more drivers but that would be able to keep us going the way we are now throughout the year and if i'm open for questions and so isn't jake if you have any on what we've presented here thank you both so much it what is jake's last name i need that for the record his name is william walt smith jr aka third the third aka jake william wald smith is that his head over there on the far right side just the top of it that we're seeing oh yeah oh there you go okay we just need that for the record thank you for that update guys um any questions from school committee members i have a question remember holland go ahead a question and comment could you give us the approximate
083cost of the type of bus vehicle you're saying or need and my comment is we just can't keep adding buses to our already limited instructional budget for children we've got to really uh persuade capital borrowing for vehicles but i just we we just have to make sure we're educating children with their money and it's just i don't need the actual cause just as a forty thousand fifty thousand eighty thousand hundred thousand what are you talking about thank you remember holland it looks like ed may have frozen up and if you if you're there can you try to respond uh i miss what was that i'm sorry you're breaking up no you're breaking up quite a bit try again can you hear us we're trying to reload nothing yes yep can you hear us yep okay
084susan i heard your question i do not know the answer to that yet that was something i'm going to work with paul newell and the procurement system that the city has to look at either used or new i would suspect we'd be spending at least at least 30 000 a piece for those vehicles however i have to make a point regarding what we do in a lot of cases those vehicles you can't educate the kids if we can't get them there and i know that's not a problem right now because we're remote but when we come out a remote it i feel like there's going to be a lot of pressure on us to produce the kids at school i want to be ready and i'm just putting this out ahead of time we're fine
085the way we are right now until november 30th when that white bus has to be decommissioned it's something we continue to we can continue to discuss and i'll ask paul newell to take a look thank you other questions or comments from school committee members all right hearing none we will thank you very much for your time tonight gentlemen we appreciate it and we'll actually move into our update from um coach kaczowski and athletics thank you thanks thank you ed thank you jake hi everyone good good evening go ahead just trying to get a bite deep thank you for moving me forward i appreciate everything that's going on um i'm here tonight just to give you a little update with um athletics our our teams are uh doing very well in the comp competition part of
086it field hockey one again tonight i know uh superintendent harper mentioned um they've got a good start they won again today um our golf team won again today um so we're competing very well our cross country team won today uh we're competing very well in our little bubble here um we have some numbers and soccer that we haven't seen in a while coach rupp and boys soccer has started a junior program to try to get some younger kids involved on sundays at the high school um coach riddell has got the girls out there um twice a week and myself with football we've got a few schools now for the co-op that we've got over 30 kids that have been coming out um knock on wood we haven't had any health issues um things are going
087pretty well and uh you know we're getting kids trying to get some kids back to normalcy so the reason why i'm here tonight is with governor baker changing the the the laws of my i guess i shouldn't say laws but the um the numbers allowed at outdoor venues um we've been getting some feedback from from certain individuals um parents um who i want to see their kids play in in of course in in the activity that they're they might be participating in and so we we had an athletic director's meeting last week and we discussed it and most of us didn't have any um school committee meetings until this week or next and the season's going to be over at the end of october and so i base basically what i'm going to be asking
088for is if if the committee would consider amending the zero fan rule and consider um two fans per student athlete home only um and only two student not two per student athlete at home games it would be basically they would come in they had two coveted coaches for field hockey their covert coaches would have the student's name on a piece of paper and the two that would be representing the student athlete would write their names down for for um contact tracing purposes they would be allowed inside the field social distancing purposes of course all the way through and it wouldn't put us over the number of 50 because right now we're we're carrying about 20 um on field hockey uh 14 and cross country in cross country is a little different because you run in
089a park in highland it's public it's it would be more of a at the finish line type of keeping the people distancing we've had a 60-foot finish line start and finish line at highland park so there is a lot of social distance going on uh the away team is dropped off at the tennis courts up on highland ave and we'll walk down so that's not a problem um golf golf is a country club that's a very large area very hard to police they've been doing a pretty good job as the green greenfield country club has been social distance seen over the past six months since covert has started of keeping everybody safe up there so i'm basically just asking if we could move on to um allowing two home fans uh per home student athlete
090at home games and right now we have two um and just add on to that i have talked to gctv philippe got back to me today they plan on doing a live broadcast of a field hockey game on october 23rd i think that's the day he had i don't have it in front of me but i think that's against pioneer it's a friday october 23rd just give you update so that's why i'm here and i'll also hear that you know if anybody has any questions or comments if anybody wants to say anything feel free because i'm here for you okay so stick with us coach and what we'll do is we'll make a motion and uh move to discussion and hopefully you can answer questions for us so um can i get a motion to
091hang on uh a motion to allow uh two spectators per home athlete at our home games does that work coach does that sound good yes can i get a motion to that effect anyone i moved from the mayor and a second and that was i think katie karen and uh discussion questions comments mayor would like to speak go ahead mayor wait a gardner please um i support i support mike's request i think it's very it's important for families to be out out there and supporting their children and our students um i think this motion i think i heard mike say so he can answer this um i think i heard hey they wouldn't be random people they would be people who are part of that student's family are very close friends so i don't know
092if you have a criteria for that but two per family or two per player doesn't seem like a an unreasonable request to me and i i think we can handle that right now well you have someone doing contact tracing yes and i think that's very important and i support that as well of course my health director would be um if i didn't mayor just to answer your question you know it's not going to be random you know people i think that the point being the two uh parents would be or grandparents yeah um one mom grandparent i think it's gonna be more like that i mean um my daughter's not gonna be asking her next door neighbors down the road to come and be one of the two i mean so i don't think that's
093going to be happening i think it's more in tune to get the parents involved and um especially our senior parents who who've only got about four games left to be able to see their kids play their senior year so no i i agree and i support it wholeheartedly thank you question amber holland go ahead um could somebody identify where this guideline is that we are voting to change because i'm not aware that this is a school committee guideline unless it's embedded in we voted we voted on this previously when uh mike came to talk to us at a previous school committee meeting what we voted on was uh to allow us to do the fall one category spectators i see so this has to do with the covet yeah and uh it was explained to
094us that um franklin county had put together its own conference for this yeah i remember that just not we yeah we voted on the fall one uh sports and it was at that time uh that we did those spectators yeah okay thank you thank you for the question any other questions comments care could i have a comment please i want to support coach k's request here um we've had some conversation with the board of health and i actually think that this could be more safe than our current practice i think what we heard from everybody and what makes sense is that everyone wants to support their athletes and their family and so we end up with people that are sort of just outside the area um and it's very difficult to enforce the court coaches
095are focused on the game and the players um so we really want to have it be small and manageable and focus on the athletes and i think this really accomplishes that and gives the players the support they need while keeping it safe so i think it's thoughtful um and i would endorse it thank you any other questions or comments awesome let's move to a vote remember johnson moussad would you do a vote for us please absolutely remember karen yes vice chair extra yes remember hollins yes secretary johnson i mean yes chair proyetty yes member wall yes mayor wiedergardner yes motion carries unanimously wonderful i wonder if i hear a cheer going up across greenfield we might well i appreciate it i appreciate everybody all you've done through all these times and um you know past
096six months have been uh some bad words and some bad verbage and i appreciate all the things that you have done to try to make it the best for our student athletes and um hopefully we'll see you at one of the last two games come out and support our kids yeah how do we get a ticket coach well am i can wait a minute which one of the two people am i oh you could you could stand over on silver street and i'll give you some binoculars oh okay thank you well and come by or anything yeah you've made our job very easy by outlining exactly what you all uh have planned and agreed to and so we appreciate all the extra effort you put into uh being patient with us and coming to see
097us and uh i look forward to hearing the the uh thank yous from all the uh parents of the student athletes who've been contacting us as well so good luck to everyone at the end of the season and i'll probably be back first week in november talking about winter sports that's just came on my table today so awesome please stand up have a good night all right thank you very much take care you too all right so we are thank you all for that moving forward the remote plus update discussion would be the next thing on our agenda and let me just get out my notes here um georgiana do you want to give us an update or a overview or maybe it's an extra i'm not sure probably appropriate to start with the superintendent
098but i'll like let you guys fight it out superintendent superintendent feel please feel free to go ahead i get a lot of stuff to say sure i'm not exactly sure what you're looking for here in there's a lot that could be said um the committee has uh is aware that we've recently adopted several uh policies protocols that have um really been designed to support and enhance what we're doing in remote learning we are in phase one which is the fully remote portion of our remote plus plan our remote plus plan has four phases and part of the design of this plan was to phase in in-person services my original proposal to this committee was we phase those in every two weeks there was some thought that that was too soon um one of the most
099critical things that's happening in the district right now are upgrades to our hvac systems in uh preparation for any use of the buildings in person um we that work is going on in that the initial assessments are completed um george vanderlinder on the city side dpw maintenance crew alan schmidt on the school side principals and custodians are we've completed the assessments and now we're into the repair phase so an example would be that if an uh air exchange was too low in a particular space that george or the custodians might have been going into the space and fixing a fan belt to literally mechanically move the air through the space better um or to repair something or to install filters or something like that our first round of assessments focus primarily on the rooms that
100would be used in the first phase of in-person services this was done intentionally to speed up instead of assessing every room in every building and repairing every room in every building we really tried to prioritize when those guidelines came out in late august and say which rooms do we need right away and get those in the queue you can imagine that every district in the commonwealth went through a similar process at the same at a similar time so that's why we prioritize that way and i'm really pleased that that initial work has been done like i said and now we're into the repair phase that means that very soon i'm expecting another report from george in the next couple of days that means that very soon those phase one rooms will be ready um obviously
101negotiations are ongoing this is something that is subject to collective bargaining because whether we're working remotely or in person obviously changes working conditions but the committee's plan calls for phasing in in-person services um so that's just as it relates to the plan and our sense that students would benefit from the ability to receive the in-person services that are in the plan that the committee voted as soon as possible and we want to thank everyone who's been so patient so flexible our teachers are working regularly reporting double hours i mean they're literally bending over backwards to make this a successful experience because we know it's not the same as the classroom and families are working just as hard um and it's not ideal for some students so we know that all of those things being the
102case our initial results are helping us fine-tune it um there's a lot of positive results overall we are experiencing very few technical issues we've not had any major outages except for the city-wide power outages that had nothing to do with greenfield at all or related to the storm in eversource um and in general we are really heartened by uh the attendance the participation the support from families and the hard work of our educators um we believe that the new attendance protocol will help students understand the importance of being visibly participating and we do ask that students have their cameras on while they're participating in live synchronous instruction um or that they're participating in some other way that's been discussed with the teacher an example is a student with a iep or a 504 plan accommodation
103that has a challenge with the camera being on can it of course work on an accommodation that's appropriate for them but we do want to ensure that we have uh the active engagement of our students throughout remote learning it is a different way of learning but by and large it's being really successful so far our wednesday half day program looks a little different than the rest of the week students are not in live synchronous learning on wednesday afternoons we were really pleased to be able to streamline that time across the district as we heard overwhelmingly from families we were also pleased to stagger our start times from pre-k through high school throughout the district so we think that the really thoughtful work of the great team over the summer the very comprehensive plan that this
104committee approved and the training around technology the expert work we had through the collaborative and our in-district uh tech teachers and in-district teacher experts have really helped make this a very strong start to remote learning our attendance is generally good um and and we we really think we're making the most of the situation having said that i think it's really essential that we're moving next into the phases of the plan that are defined in the plan um we have a short window while outdoor weather is still very useful or conducive to learning we've been doing testing in-person testing some in-person meetings and i really hope to accelerate that and it's a little tricky to talk more because it borders on some of the negotiations uh that are ongoing um so i i think i'll stop
105there unless there are specific questions i i hope that's what you're looking for that's what speaking for myself that's exactly what we're looking for that's a super helpful update i know as you probably recall i've been a little bit obsessed with the hvac um consideration so it's nice to hear that that's ongoing and thoughtfully planned out uh i would be interested in hearing what other school committee members have in terms of comments or questions i have something and i've got a touchdown and remember that and whoever that was was that the mayor was the may that was the thing i got johnson i can go last i don't mind and then the mayor yep go ahead glenn please um superintendent harper can you remind us uh the name i'm forgetting the acronym of the team
106that did the planning for the the different stages a great team the great team and is the great team continuing to meet so the idea was that the great team would continue um in practicality a lot of the great team are educators that are completely consumed with uh focused on remote learning right now so we have a little bit asked the school committee to be that interim bridge because we are meeting on the same frequency that we had recommended the great team meet and also if there's a specific change or departure from the school committee remote plus plan that would be a good way to sort of reinvigorate the great team the other group that's meeting as you know member johnson who's on more and more often than anyone often is anyone understood no i
107don't mean to laugh the the negotiations team is also meeting very very often so i think between those two groups there hasn't been a formal meeting of the great teams what there is is an awful lot of informal collaboration amongst the teachers um a bit focused on the tech implementation and training um so we've created some um sort of informal sort of chat room style ways for teachers to continue to update one another and share resources and technology roommates related to the implementation of the current phase that we're in but um i think it has been less focused so far just within the district in terms of teachers on implementing the next phase um and the school committee just want to remind you all has a role in voting the next phase and sort of
108pulling that trigger so we are focused on doing the best we can within the phase that we're at which is phase one and the school committee is really the gatekeeper of moving from phase one into more in-person services if that makes sense yeah so if community members i mean i know some community members have different opinions about when we should launch into the next phase um or they might have questions and comments should they direct those to us or at one point i think there was an email address for the great team so i'm just wondering where community feedback should go on on topics related to this the great team email is great at gpsk12.org and you can certainly use it at any time but as i indicated they're really focused right now on implementing
109a phase one and a lot of them are teachers and also we have school committee reps and so forth i would strongly recommend members of the public that want to express their opinion about in-person versus remote learning direct that directly to the school committee uh so the committee is hearing uh very clearly you're also always welcome to contact myself but as the committee is in the decision-making role and again just to say publicly that um the process is an extremely complex one because it requires the negotiation we don't just have one union we have the teachers the unit c instructional assistants we also have food service transportation custodial everybody heard about today admin assistants and the working conditions in each phase change for every employee as we move through this so it's not to make
110excuses whatsoever we understand that um that's a very important issue to families and to our students and obviously to our teachers we take the health and safety of our students very seriously and we take their education seriously this is what we're here to do but having said all of that i recommend people reach out directly to the committee with any questions or concerns using that schoolcom email address schoolcom at gpsk12 it's on our website folks seem to have access to that and that goes fully to the full committee thank you superintendent harper thanks for your leadership on this comment this is katie i also have a comment [Music] uh chair priority here um you if you're trying to run the trains yep thank you we are going in order we have member extra next then
111the mayor and i did hear katie karen um susan and then susan hollins so go ahead member epster please so uh thank you superintendent you did a great um overview of everything that's been going on um i am the committee member who is consistently attending all the negotiations for every single piece of things that we're doing and that is anywhere from i don't know eight to ten hours a week typically um yesterday when i left our meeting i was enraged i was offended and this is just me i'm not suggesting that anyone that i'm speaking for anyone but myself and i am concerned that the negotiations are not being conducted in a equal manner and are not being conducted in good faith it is my own opinion um part of the reason that i was
112interested in and let me step back i spent the better part of my day spinning because i was so angry and so frustrated and then i just you know and i sent an email off to the the other members of the committee's team the negotiating committee's team saying this is what's happening for me and the superintendent was wonderful and there was a statement that she made that settled me back quite a bit and um superintendent do you mind if i share your last sentence of the email you sent you're fine to say no and i won't i don't know which one you're referring to so so let me say it this way it's a public record so you may okay so i'll say this um i was very i was very angry and really feel
113like negotiating in good faith is not what's happening on on the side of the mta i will not say that about the gea i think our teachers are invested and working very hard and want to be teaching our students to the best of their abilities very hard and all of those things um i if the email you're referring to was part of our strategy for bargaining i might caution you against jerry all right so let me just say the superintendent's last sentence of her email to me made me think you know what you're right um and she settled me down based on what i've said earlier i suspect you can all imagine what it may have said what i may have said um so i want to i want to say that the great team
114did an amazing job we are still in phase one and it was phase one with also um like 20. phase one services fully remote instruction with certified teachers as the basis for all curriculum some in-person services begin outdoors immediately family and student meetings take place outdoors that happened it took a long time to get that to happen high needs learners begin or continue receiving in-person services outdoors at home or at school we're still working on that i'm talking about phase one b two never mind so the live instruction piece is happening remote learning and plat platform subscriptions is happening seesaw powerschool attendance feedback we have done an amazing job pushing through all of those things the reason that i voted for was interested in the remote plus is because i thought it would get our
115students high high needs at-risk students back in schools getting the services that they needed as soon as possible that isn't happening and that is not because we haven't been working to make it happen we have schools around us and and the superintendent was very good about explaining to me the difference between remote plus and hybrid we have districts around us that were hybrid and now they're back in school we have there are kindergartens like they're elementary schools that have been in school since september 21st and they're hybrid which means that they um were partially at school and partially at home as opposed to what we had elected to do which was remote learning have high risk high needs students going to the student go into schools and then see how it is from there and
116are we ready to move forward the next step it's october 14th and we don't even have those students in the schools and in fact we're arguing about who's going to sit with them sometimes or not arguing i'll say there's some things on the table it's offensive to me remember experiment the interest of time i'm going to ask you to wrap it up do you have it all right so so here's my point i think that at this point this is me i would like to see all of our high needs students and high risk students back in the schools somehow i also think that we need to talk about because this is a pandemic and we can alter our plans for whatever it is and and again this is a discussion for what we think
117is appropriate i think it would be appropriate for us to get our kids back into the el into the preschool because as the superintendent mentioned earlier we do have the rooms and that's an ideal place to start with hybrid or with hybrids or with having people back in school and i think we start with kindergarteners because those are the two groups that are having the hardest time sort of independently teaching or independently learning and take more hands on time and structure i am i so and so that's what i'd like to see and i'm really offended that we aren't there yet and i know how hard everyone is working except maybe not quite so much i think there might be some other reasoning that has nothing to do with the gea and i'm offended and
118frustrated with it on a regular basis and honestly i'm i i don't know that i can continue and i'm saying this out loud because i need feedback from everyone i don't know that i can continue to do this negotiation because there is so much obfuscation and avoidance of the elephant in the room and as typically happens when i open my mouth appropriate or not or not verbally worded no one ever has any responses for me and i'm not asking hard questions i just want to know you know what's it going to take to do x no response why don't we have these people in schools no response and i'm tired of it and i'm really frustrated and i so okay thank you thank you the mayor thank you for stopping me mayor wiedergartner yes and
119now i'm not exactly sure what to say i um i hear the passion that um susan is expressing uh both as a parent and a school committee member and i was there once and i understand how hard that is um to be an independent voice on the school committee but also advocate for your child and um and the rest of the children in the schools and um it concerns me greatly that the great team did all their work to create this program that we call remote learning remote plus and um i signed on to it and i voted in favor of because i i was respectful of all the work they'd put into it and it seemed like a really good um way for us to approach it i guess i assumed at that time
120that there had been communication with our bargaining units and they were reasonably okay with that but it doesn't sound like that's the ques the the case now and it sounds as or if it was the case then but something has changed so it troubles me greatly now i will say this i i don't think we went back to work until i mean we went back to school until september 17 but somebody can create you can correct me if i'm wrong about that yeah we're not quite there yet you know we've got whatever until the end of the week um so but the fact that the remote learning remote place is not in place yet fully so apparently it's the it part the in-person learning part for our students in need troubles me greatly and i
121am very very very disappointed to hear that the bargaining units are cr it sounds to me from susan's uh and i have not attended any of those meetings so i cannot speak beyond what she has said but it sounds to me as if there are um concerns that they may have that do not support this plan quite frankly i my preference would have been for something that was akin more to hybrid learning but i thought this was a good compromise given our district and our needs but we are now almost a month into this and we don't have remote plus and i'm wondering um why not and i think every school committee member should be asking why not and they should not rest until they get an answer for that and if there are good
122reasons for that then um i'm i'm willing to be open to listening to them but at this point in time um i would like us al almost be considering how we move into phase two not whether or not we can even complete phase one in a timely manner so this is very disappointing to me and um it's not exactly what i was going to say but it's almost exactly what i was going to say i wanted to know when we were going to move into the additional phase and if there had been some thinking and thought process and if need be negotiating towards that phase but it doesn't even sound like we've even gotten off the dime on phase one so i am not pleased thank you mayor and superintendent harper before i move on
123to the next school can you remember did you want to say something here you're looking like you do i can wait until after the next committee member comes so we have two we have uh remember karen and then member hollins do you still want to wait okay remember karen please go ahead hi um i hate so many thoughts okay so my first thought is how can we make this move and i know that yes we're talking about that this is held up in negotiations but if we as a school committee make a statement that we believe our special needs students our kindergartners and our preschoolers should be in a building on november 1st i'm pulling a date out of the air would that make a statement that make the negotiations easier because we are clear
124that we have a set expectation and that if that expectation cannot be met then we're going to be looking to the next step that's thought number one number two is um i was on that great team and i i don't remember who said it but a important part point was made about how me they were i think it was mayor that said she was surprised that negotiations hadn't begun before the great team finished their work or at least not conversations happening um [Music] i think what the important part of that is people on the great team on different levels and different roles are in those negotiations happening so a lot almost most of the people were aware of the situation so i'm not sure that we need to have a specific bargaining conversation necessarily but
125they were aware and it felt to me from the people on the great team that everybody was on board so that was a lot of work a lot of work and for it to be held up is frustrating and i can hear susan's frustration and i don't know how i can be best supportive and if that means i jump in and listen to those meetings or step in to fulfill a second negotiator role or whatever it means i want to do that because that is a lot of work and it's a lot of burnout and it needs the support to get it done because we have many students that this is not working the best for and we need to be doing our job as a school committee to making sure education is going at
126the appropriate level to every child i am not saying that people aren't working really hard i'm not i have no idea i've not been in any of those meetings i don't know what's happening exactly um but it's important that we're all working towards a common goal and whatever we can do as a committee to make that happen needs to start now susan can i make one quick comment jordana i think i know what you're going to say is it really really quick yeah it is go ahead um i what i do want to say that yes i am here being frustrated and saying we need to get moving i also want to say that it takes planning and time to move to things so if we say we want to be in phase three in
127three weeks all the things that have to enable buildings um all of the transportation there are nine million things that need to happen before you can actually do that however we need to do some moving am i kind of jordan i just hit it on the head a little bit i want to remind everyone of that and i'm i'm more conscious of that than most people i think just in general sorry go ahead yeah chair could i weigh in oh was there another committee member i can wait go ahead and remember there was um i don't remember every detail of the great team but i'd like to say that what's happening in greenfield and all over the country and if not the world it's fluid so whatever the best laid plan is people are having
128to make recommend you know changes and think about things but what i want to say is i think the burden on susan is too great this isn't a single issue like just negotiating this is the entire educational program of our entire school system and every everyone we hire because that's what we're about is educating students and i think we should not discuss this only at school committee it's too important there's too many details to put this on the back of one person and so my recommendation would be to really create a subcommittee if the great team are compromised because some are working or some or whatever those issues are and to really uh back up susan and give this some more muscle in terms of recommendations i just think it's too big to be resting
129on one person's back it isn't typical negotiation is the entire education program of our entire system and and one thing about a subcommittee they can go into executive session and talk about these uh contractual issues that are bogging it down and that's my thought it's i think we need to be more supportive then give it more attention than it's getting and we're we're constrained just talking about a school committee that's my thought so georgetown before you go in i want to be quick uh thank you susan i appreciate that that's a great thought i want to also be clear that jordana has been really good at conducting these negotiations and has probably talked me off the ledge more than once or twice a day and uh well once or twice a time when we're conducting
130negotiations and uh so i do what i i want to be clear that that all of those that sort of that supportive group is happening it's just i'm i'm losing it with all the ridiculous things that go on anyway okay jordan i'm done go ahead okay so first a couple clarifications first it is not accurate that there's only one school committee member on the negotiating team so member extreme and member johnson moussad are on the negotiating team so there is um a second school committee member um these scheduled uh negotiating sessions are very frequent and they're often scheduled you know during the meeting we set you know the next several meetings so it's not possible for every person on both sides to attend every meeting but members johnson musad and ekstrom are very much often
131both present the second is i really want to encourage you all to take use of executive session for the purpose of strategy related to collective bargaining to have discussions about collective bargaining i i think there is some limited value in a public discussion about negotiations so while i understand there are strong feelings on all sides of this because it is important to our students and our teachers and our parents in the community i really want to encourage that that's an avenue that's available to the committee and i do just want to say that member eckstrom's entitled to her perspective and an opinion and other people may have a different perspective and opinion so i just want to caution folks from taking um too much one way or the other um from this because there actually
132has been quite a lot of movement within um there's a lot of work to be done so i don't i don't mean to say this to defend one side or the other um because i think we all want to see our kids back in school so i want to be clear about that but at the same time i want to be clear that there's a lot of work getting done and there's a lot of work going into these that's all i want to say so i don't want to jeopardize any future movement either i think that's one of the my goals in that if our goal is everybody safely returning to the buildings in the plan that the committee voted let's make use of tools available to us to make sure that we continue on
133that goal this is katie i'd like to speak again i promise to keep it brief please remember karen go ahead um i just wanted to clarify what i meant um i believe in our town and our employees and our schools and i believe that everyone wants what's best for everyone i really was trying to get to the point of if we pick a date even if it's a reasonable date that we're all working towards i think it helps sometimes not all the time sometimes it's pressure and sometimes it's not great but if we are all working towards a goal on a specific date of whatever happening then we know that while we're doing the negotiating we can be working on transportation and also ensuring that our hvac is up to systems or whatever but without
134a specified date it sort of is just well as soon as we get it done we can do it and that can lead to stress on everybody of when it's going when's that going to be i know committing to a date is difficult large because if for some reason it falls apart then you have an entire community angry so i certainly don't want to do that um but i just think that and i think superintendent was right that we should be having a lot of this conversation so we can be more clear in um executive session uh this is the mayor i'd like to speak as well um assuming i'm not taking some of susan's time because i thought she wanted to speak again but maybe i'm wrong remember holland did you want to speak
135again and then the mayor can go you're muted did you have more you wanted to speak on member hollandes i've thought of making a motion but i i'd like to hear from the mayor okay the mayor and then we'll come back to you if need be go ahead um i was just gonna say i agree with um uh superintendent and with member karen that we have um touched on the edge of what should be done in an executive session here tonight and so i don't think we need to belabor that point anymore uh we can plan a you know we have one after this but i'm sure it's on something else but uh strategy is um a very appropriate and i think we may be at that point i'm optimistic from what jordana has said
136that some movement has come forward and i think i recognize that susan's um um opinions were her own as she recognized herself but there's no substitute for the person in the room and she sees it the way she sees it so i i would recommend that we do an executive session on this topic uh very soon uh so perhaps at the next meeting in the quote-unquote short two weeks that you're talking about um but i think that the executive sessions should focus on this because if we are are having progress but we're not there yet and we're a month into this we need to have a strategy for how we get through the entire um recommendations on a reasonably good schedule that the that the great team has put forward and i one have appreciated
137their work on it and to i appreciate the work of member johnson mazzad and susan extreme for sitting through those meetings and doing their part to participate so um i would like very much for us to consider doing that at the same time i i do think it's important that we well i think i just said that that we chart the course to move right yes i do have a follow-up comment remember holland go ahead yeah i'd just like to say that when we pass the original plan i don't think we had the information at that time uh on how many members of our personnel have reasons to um for not returning for some allowable reason we didn't have that information and i and i don't know if the plan that we had needs to
138be reviewed based on some more information that's come in on who's retired or who's here who has whatever in addition to uh student issues and i think it might be okay to ask that that plan be reviewed based on uh more current information i agree with what everyone's saying i agree with the mayor bringing this up so we can have a more full discussion but i wouldn't mind if we went back and looked at the plan uh with with the nuance of new information because maybe the plan needs to have options within the options based on faculty information personal information that's my thought thank you chair sure superintendent please go ahead okay so um one uh two things the first is i want to be very clear that in many many public situations we said
139here is the plan and it is just that it is a plan we don't know the course of covid we don't know what student enrollment will look like we don't know teachers may retire or make choices that have to do with their own families there are a lot of unknown this is our plan as best we know it we're asking you to vote on what you think is the best knowing that nobody has a crystal ball we were also very clear that it was subject to collective bargaining it's i believe it's written right in the plan it's it's just state law there's not there's nothing there's nothing magical about that and the department of education guidance told us to do it this way they said bring your plan without public input or discussion to your
140school committee vote a plan and then bargain it and i spent much of my summer saying how on earth does that make any sense and that's what we did because that's what we had to do and and we're in the midst of that so i don't want to um i don't want anybody to feel like we've somehow failed our mission we're doing exactly what we said we were going to do and set out to do and people are working very hard to do it so i want to make that clear that while some people might want for us to be faster in person some people might want for us never to go in person which is right where we were in august when we voted this plan it is an impossible situation and everyone is
141not going to be pleased no matter what you do one tool that the committee has at your disposal in terms of an action you could take tonight is it would be helpful to those of us in the administration if you said at our next meeting we would like a full report on the status of our readiness to implement phase two as an example so if you gave me that much lead time to go back and assess here's where the hvac systems are here's the status um if you all said to me i want you in buildings tomorrow i would say i'm sorry i can't do that i don't have hvac results that tell me it's safe to be back in the buildings we had some rooms that had no airflow because there was a motor
142a small part in a motor that was broken that wasn't circulating it and that needs to be corrected it's being done but you want that information before we begin so if you said bring me a report of our readiness i could say this is ready this is ready this is ready this is not ready and we're doing all of that work but we could bring forward to you all so you're empowered to make a decision and knowing that negotiations will continue and that process is running simultaneously and that way you you all and the public both have a clear sense of where we are where we're headed um we'll be looking at public health data the readiness of the buildings uh the personnel information that member hollins uh mentioned is very important uh our updated
143enrollment that's all part of the picture so rather than redoing the whole plan if if you're interested in that next step i'd be happy to bring back a sort of summary report of where we are and if it looks like all systems go that's great if it looks like you know we still have snags in let's say hvac or something related you all need to know that as well i have a question remember johnson we saw it go ahead so that um report would be on current readiness for hybrid learning is that uh is that what you were recommending superintendent harper you can ask for a report on anything you'd like i can tell you we will not be ready to implement hybrid learning in two weeks because our plan is not for a hybrid
144plan it's a remote plus plan at this point but if you were interested in readiness for phase two as an example just because it's the next phase to go to we could give you a report at that point i think that's within the authority of the committee doesn't negate collective bargaining and you can still um take actions that are available to you at that point including any um strategy that results from any executive session discussion i have a motion shoot i'm move that the superintendent present a report on the current readiness for phase two at our next meeting second that was the second from member extreme discussion um i'm uh claren is would you consider adding to that including any modifications of the original great plan that are needed now or would that be subsumed
145by your motion i think i can subsume but i think it's good that it's noted in the in the discussion for this item that i think the superintendent can take that to heart it could be part of the discussion in executive session discussion or questions okay so let's let's move to a vote remember karen yes nice chair extra yes remember hollins yes secretary johnson i'm a yes chair proyetty yes never well yes mayor wiedergardner yes motion carries unanimously thank you for that uh is that enough discussion and movement to close out that topic i think it is but would anyone else want to address anything further i think i support what you think okay so we will move on considering it's uh quarter after eight um we are on to item c under new business
146anti-racism and the school resource officer funding and i think that uh member johnson had agreed to give us an overview and kind of set up the discussion for us absolutely um thank you chair priyetty so back in june george floyd was killed in an event that was uh televised and broadcast and uh it upset many people like it woke us up from our uh mock many of us up about racism and wanting to do more um two items came out of that in terms of school committee business oh my god uh chair priority if you don't mind muting other other folks sorry about that um so uh let's see so two items came out of that um in our discussions as as a committee one of those was the school resource officer funding and well
147one of them was the school resource officer position and the other was drafting an anti-racism statement so taking those in order the school resource officer we directed the superintendent to discuss with the police department not having an active school resource officer in the schools um nothing was done with the with the um funding that was allocated for that in the budget but the um we had directed the superintendent to uh essentially withdraw from having a school resource resource officer actively in the schools we also agreed to form a committee that would draft an anti-racism statement we did not state at the time what form that committee would take and we uh we the chair was to designate two members to be on that committee and those folks have yet to be formally designated so uh
148so that's kind of the history it's i guess the other the other piece in the packets for tonight's meeting are the uh is a presentation from the mask uh massachusetts association of school committees and that's just a little bit of context um for a refresher for us and a reminder to the community about what our role really is as uh school committee members that we don't actually get involved in um directing specific programming but more setting goals and and helping to determine policy in order to achieve in order to reach our responsibility which is uh student achievement and so in the packet it kind of talks about our job is to have a vision of high expectations focus on accountability foster strong relationships use data to monitor progress lead as a united team and build
149collaboration trust and respect um that we set goals and monitor progress we have varied and purposeful meetings that are focused on student achieve achievement we govern ourselves we're involved in professional development and have a strong relationship with our superintendent and then there's kind of a graphic on page seven that kind of outlines you know essentially that the the committee sets the ends or the results that we're trying to achieve in terms of missions and vision goals policy and budget uh the superintendent establishes the means the strategies action plans regulations procedures so that's all just kind of a reminder in some context in thinking about um race and racism and racial justice and how we as a school committee might set goals and policies um in in that direction so i think that uh in terms
150of context i think there's kind of three three items for us tonight related to this one is a chair priority to appoint members to be on this committee and the other is perhaps to get greater clarity of what type of committee this is and what it's what its charge is uh in terms of the the committee that we discussed related to coming up with an anti-racism statement and then finally whether there's um discussion or any motions related to this the funding for the school resource officer position there's a lot been a lot of community interest in designating those funds for racial justice activities in the schools thank you member johnson that was an excellent overview um do we have i think we should try to start with emotion you kind of had some sections to
151what you were proposing and i think that would help guide the discussion um and you and i had spoke about something potential do you want to try with that and see where it goes sure um i move that the committee established to draft an anti-racism statement be structured as an advisory committee and that this advisory committee in dialogue with the community also draft a recommended scope of anti-racism work for consideration by the school committee and do we have a second for that motion all second tell me who that was was that member karen extra remember remember extreme i seriously could not tell you two apart i'm so sorry remember extra with the second um let's discuss i can start with kind of what the thinking is behind this essentially that an advisory committee structure would
152allow us to actually involve community members and other stakeholders in the advisory committee school school representatives community members et cetera so in that way it may be more in line with what we're seeking in terms of racial justice in terms of seeking a broader representation and diversity of opinions and identities perhaps and also i think there it was implied in our discussion from the june meeting that there was going to be a discussion of next steps but i think explicitly having it not just be a statement that gets drafted but also a scope of work essentially would would be useful and reassuring to the community an other comments or discussion question from the school committee i agree with um amber johnson messiah but i don't think a statement um is what i would recommend i
153would recommend that we have a policy and a goal and um following that we could talk about what's the work of implementing the policy what's our expectation i don't think we have to reinvent the wheel i've been looking at school districts on the west coast particularly in the northwest some from and there's already so many wonderful policy statements and goal statements for school committees and i think your statements anyway i think we should just have a goal and a policy on racial justice but i agree with the direction other comments questions i just would like to call it gartner go ahead well if if the role of the um if the role of the school committee is to set education goals and this is um a teaching moment and more than one then i think
154we can certainly do that and i think that's something that we could legitimately work on as a school committee together whether it's in the advisory committee or otherwise um and the other piece is the budgetary piece that is also within our purview so if there is a need at the end of this discussion to um appropriate some level of funding beyond the funding that was um in the budget originally for the sro um then that would be something that would be appropriate for us to do too and i i haven't heard yet and i would i guess i would like to hear tonight what happened to the money that was in there for the sro if i'm if i missed it then i apologize but i don't know that we even know what there is
155available but i guess where i'm going is the goals of this are um i agree with what johnson uh member johnson mossad said and i think we need to begin to work on this uh i just want us to do it within what's appropriate for our role and i will caution again there are seven of us so an advisory committee i think is a is a good thing because we can involve many members of the community who may be in who are i know interested in this as well as school committee members so it doesn't have to be all of us working all of us members of the school committee working just um just uh involving other people in the community which i think is very appropriate thank you mayor other member wall please i
156think that it would be a wonderful thing to have an advisory committee and there are so many community uh members who have been doing work on this for quite a long time and it would rather than our trying to invent the wheel i think it would be helpful to have those people uh advise us on the thoughts that they have to support this completely and totally thank you member well other discussion i'm going to remind the community the chat is not for comments the chat is to remain completely empty other discussion from the school committee is part of this discussion i guess so what is it that we're talking about because what and and clarify for me because what the push has been from the community is that the money that was allocated for an
157sro be used to develop programs or racial equality and justice type education yeah i think i can speak to that just that this is the first of i mean i think i mentioned there's kind of three different parts that's fine i just wanted to see where we were yep so we're on this we also have the appointment of of members to the committee and then we have the uh budget piece to discuss excellent thank you glenn budget piece is not a part of the motion that we're talking about right now there is nothing in that mode that's correct the budget okay other other comments questions discussion from school committee i have a couple of things i want to make sure everyone else is done though first okay so i will happily appoint school committee members
158to this advisory committee um please email me and let you know your let me know your interest and we will do those appointments if this motion passes at the next meeting and then i'm i'm struggling with this um the scope of the work piece which i know will be a part of the of the the advisory committee and what i'm struggling with is our school district is an inherently racist system that's what it is that's how it was established and to put programming on top of an inherently racist system is not the most effective way to rebuild that system as an anti-racist system i would be much more interested in finding funding and finding solutions that fix the system that don't sprinkle programming on top of an inherently racist system that to me just sounds
159more patriarchal than i probably want to admit um we have never done a that i'm aware of we have never hired um a consultant to identify for us how to hire staff that look like our students we have never used our funds to break down the pieces of the system that are racist and that's what i'm interested in what what i'm hearing uh from the emails we've gotten from the the community discussion around this is um all very well intentioned but as far as i'm concerned it doesn't go far enough and the other thing that i will say and i'm aware that this is beyond the scope of the motion that's on the table when we cut one point eight million dollars to meet the mayor's budget we did not leave on the table thirty
160thousand dollars for the school resource officer i need to be very clear about that because i really really don't it's not how budgets work and that's not how any of this is going to work we did not we we don't have thirty thousand dollars sitting there to be reassigned and i need the community to hear that and that's the last thing i'll say and then we'll move on chair pretty i have a response please uh first respectfully i urge you to appoint uh at least one commit committee member to this um advisory board tonight um we voted in june for this to to for the for the committee to be established and uh for you to appoint someone and i think that given if it is structured as an advisory committee i mean i know
161i emailed you to express interest in this um you could appoint me and i could involve community members and we could loop in additional committee members in the future if we wanted but um i just want to encourage you on that front sure point thank you and then i'll also say that i i haven't had the opportunity to learn in depth uh about one of the programs i mean i think different community members have written with different ideas just to say that um one of them in particular sounded like it was talking about exactly what you're discussing like how to have a youth led but community involved discussion or work on the kind of the more systemic issues that you're you're discussing so i just want to say that that's definitely a possibility we can
162pursue okay um let's see if we a further discussion questions comments come in collins go ahead and then so does the mayor after member holland okay i am i agree with your comments uh chair priority if we want to deal with systemic issues of school culture i might describe it differently i've been online for several hours looking at the demographics of each of our schools over 15 years they have demographics by race blah blah blah but i think if we want to do something systemic about culture it needs to to be a goal um to address uh cultural issues and i uh one of the things that was really interesting to me is looking at portland is there's a whole hour of their consultant reviewing how to make systemic change in the school district i
163don't think the role of the school committee is to direct what programs the administration is going to use i feel pretty comfortable that's not a role um it doesn't doesn't offend me at all that there's a committee that's really talking about this aggressively but i think as a school committee we really need to get a goal to to address systemic change um particularly looking at looking at these issues and and possibly having a consultant to work with us on how to make that change within the school all we can do is really set goals and expectations so i'm inclined to agree with you that that's the approach for us thank you that's it thank you remember holland mayor wiedergarden go ahead i was just gonna say rosemary yeah what did you say i didn't hear
164anything you said go ahead say it again oh okay you froze oh interesting i didn't i wasn't aware of that uh watching the video here um i am not aware if remember johnson mossad mentioned it i i missed that piece but i'm not aware that we have a sense of who this advisory committee beyond a school committee member and members of the community but who are those members of the community not specific names i'm just saying do we have an idea of what i mean certainly parents and parents of children of color are extremely important to have on it do we have an idea of how many who and so forth and so on and if not who is going to be responsible for beyond you as chair going to be responsible for attempting to
165create this committee it's it's that's all very procedural and perhaps this is not certainly not right now the the time to discuss it but just reminding everyone saying we want and passing a motion that we want to have an advisory committee is one thing but how do people let us know how do people um have input into how the advisory committee ought to be put together um so that's the only thing that i um need to say at this point i i certainly support the comments that you made um earlier chair pro eddie so i'm just wanting us to make sure that if we're going to do this and we vote to do it that we actually get it done and it has the structure thank you other questions or comments from the committee i've
166spoken a few times but i if no one else wants to speak go ahead just that the you know we have a um we have policy on advisory committees and it kind of lists the items that um that advisory committees need to have but it's kind of a chicken of the egg thing an advisory committee could also play a role in making a recommendation to the school committee of how those questions should be answered so that was what i was trying to get at um in my motion was that the the the uh the advisory committee would both draft this um statement but also um draft a scope of work which could also include all the details that the advisory committee requires the school committee to charge them with thank you member johnson moussad other
167questions comments discussion from the school committee this is member karen go ahead i really agree with everything that's being said um i believe it is an important thing for us to do and work towards and get community involvement and i also believe that this is a tiny drop in a much larger problem that we need to address um and that it's important that we don't just say okay we made this committee and we've done this and we made a statement and we're listening to members that we really do use our money what little we have at this point um to go to the root of the problem it's the same as everything in our society money speaks and we have to put money towards it i also agree with you amy that that sro money
168is not just sitting there um the sro is still mandated by the state for us to have and it's fine that we got rid of it but it also mandates that we have a truancy officer so there are things in our budget that we have to do by state date and we have to be careful that we do those things and um otherwise state money may not show up in our budget so i think that i like the plan of reality allocating the money but i don't know that that's the right way to go i was just gonna save that for the budget car part of this conversation but i think we're kind of encompassing it all at the moment i appreciate that perspective um and just so as a reminder uh the no budgetary
169consideration is a part of the motion that's on the table any further discussion questions comments okay so we've moved to a vote and um i'm not gonna bother uh susan farber but i will read what i believe is the motion um again uh the motion is move that the committee established to draft an anti-racism statement be structured as an advisory committee and that this advisory committee in dialogue with the community also draft a recommended scope of anti-racism work for consideration by the school committee and member johnson musa would you do a roll call for us please yes remember karen yes vice chair ekstrom if you're yep yes okay remember hollins you're on mute member hollins i'm uncomfortable with how the motions worded so i'll abstain [Music] secretary johnson i'm es chair proyetti yes member well
170yes mayor rita gardner yes all right great wonderful so the motion passes um i will at this point appoint a member johnson mousad as a school committee member on the anti-racism advisory committee maybe you want to come up with a different name i don't know i'll take that under under the charge yeah yeah and uh i will appoint another member but i'm not prepared to do that at this time great but i certainly would take uh emails of interest from folks okay and um i have a motion related to the the budget item that we're discussing okay go ahead um let's see i move that fifteen thousand dollars be allocated to the high school for racial justice programs is there a second second um speaking to it i think it it you know related to
171member karen's concerns um about you know needing to keep perhaps keep that line item in our budget um but also wanting to make some financial commitment uh towards racial justice work happening in the schools beyond what's already happening and i guess i'll also speak to that i think that it might be good for us at some point to have this superintendent give a report to us on all the great um racial justice work that's already happening in in the public schools um i think there's a lot more going on than many people may recognize but um i think making um a financial commitment um to this work along with the um the kind of planning commitment that we've made tonight makes a lot of sense and that's kind of a an interesting symbolic amount i
172think that it's connected to the amount that we used to have for the school resource officer but other discussion just to comment i'd be happy to provide a report a summary um sort of initiatives currently in place and also initiatives that are planned um as we've made commitments to intensify our work in this area comment remember how let's go ahead i support the motion but we have other schools where these are issues of concern and if we're going to look at systemic culture it's not just about programs at the high school so i think you know again my pitch is we have to do training but we have to look at our resource materials that our children are being you know using every day and boost our allocation even if it's by 500 per school
173for materials that uh address this topic with other younger children thank you other discussion me i'm gonna guess that's a member extra yeah go ahead so what i've really struggled with with all is allocating specifically money that had been previously um determined to be for the sro when i think about this i i just i don't understand what's the goal here is the goal a symbol or is the goal to actually do something if people want something actually done why does it matter where the money comes from this is about teaching our students and the community about racial equality a symbol doesn't do anything i've i you know you can have symbols all day long but if nothing actually happens it doesn't really matter if we're going to teach people what we teach them is
174it doesn't matter where the money comes from if you want to learn this we're going to make it possible for you to learn this and we want you to understand that systemically there are a lot of problems and we need to have open discussion about this and if the money comes from i don't know leftover transportation so be it and i'm not saying i can't i'm not saying that's an appropriate analogy but specifically targeting one piece of the budget and i'm going to echo the chair and saying that's not how budgets work when you are at this sort of level and it's public funding it's be thankful i'm just i'm be thankful that that people are saying i agree we're going to do some funding for this if you want to pinpoint a specific spot
175then you're not so thankful you're demanding that something happens the way you want it to happen and you don't really care about the comment that's my personal opinion and so that's that this is member karen i would like to speak go ahead member karen um i think that yes it can be symbolic and it could be really a really good symbol and i understand what you're saying but i think possibly it's just a clear place that people realize the budget without actually understanding what may have happened to that money in this sense we eliminated that position they know that there was money there that has no longer for a position that no longer exists so it's really easy to latch on to yes i it could be symbolic but i think it just was very
176clearly oh hey they eliminated this position they don't need to refill it so there's this money and it would be really great to use it for this other thing other questions discussion comments i think it's imp can i speak please member wall i don't speak enough as far as i'm concerned i think it's more important that the group that meets finds a use for money and then comes back to the school committee and says we need this money for this purpose and we we discuss it in that context not do it as a symbol of anything thank you member well other comments discussion questions i will say it sounds like we're ready to go to a vote i will just quickly say i will not be voting for this i do not think that this
177is how we should oops um okay remember johnson moves out if you would do a roll call vote please chair priority i think we unfortunately missed your comments because um the video froze for a second so you may want to repeat what you were going to say oh i didn't realize that okay sure thank you i just was going to say um that i did say that i will not be voting for this uh this isn't how budgets work and i don't think that this is the way we want to get off with what i think is a very um strong advisory committee model and a very well-intentioned structure for making real change to be honest if we were going to spend fifteen thousand dollars on anything let's put that towards um a superintendent search
178that is nationwide and looks for candidates who have as as uh someone mentioned in public comment candidates that have real commitment to anti-racist education that money would be much better spent there and that's why i get to vote no on this could i hear the motion again yes the motion was uh that fifteen thousand dollars be allocated to the high school for racial justice programs and let's go to a roll call vote please okay remember karen um can i can you skip me for a second please vice chair extra are you on mute no i'm not uh i'm gonna say no because i'd rather that we take a look across the system as opposed to just at the high school i think learning happens earlier than that um i i think i i just want
179to make a point of order that when we're voting we just get to vote yes or no like discussion correct over you're right you're right um remember hollins i thought no secretary johnson i'm a yes chair priority no um member well no mayor rita gardner no uh member karen yes uh two yeses the motion does not carry i think that is the first motion that has not passed in in my time as chair and i don't know how i feel about that but i i will say that it's a very it's clearly a very uh a subject we all care a lot about and a subject that we all um need to do some real work on just like everyone else in greenfield let's keep doing the work and let's have uh some ongoing commitment
180to this could i make a comment as well this is susan i need some clarification please let's do susan farber please please okay um just to let you know i've been having a hard time most of the evening to um hearing some members especially member karen i don't know how members karen wall and rita gartner voted i'll go through the roll call and let you know who voted uh how people voted remember karen voted yes vice chair extra voted no remember hollins voted no i voted yes chair priority voted no member wall voted no and mayor rita gardner voted no thank you very much comment um i heard before that i heard two people that wanted to comment i know remember holland you were one i did not catch who the other one was mayor
181wiedegartner okay and then just you two and then we're going to wrap this up because we have gone on long enough before we still have to do executive session yeah so please make it succinct is it possible to make a second motion that addresses this different motion um if so this is what it would be and then you decide for the budget subcommittee in bringing back recommendations for the fy 21 budget include adjustments for racial and social justice [Music] um i certainly don't have a problem with that i feel like it's solution oriented and i would entertain a second second okay so we have a motion from member hollins with the second from member johnson moussad and it is can you repeat the motion yes i have motion for the budget subcommittee in bringing back
182recommendations for the fy 21 budget include adjustments for racial and social justice initiatives or something susan farver do you have what you need now yes i do thank you okay so let's move to the discussion remember we the gartner would like to speak gardner go ahead oh i didn't speak to the last one even though i was second in line so i just wanted everyone on the call to know that a vote of no does not mean that we don't support the idea a vote of no meant that we don't support that specific motion second i want everyone on the the school committee to understand that while remember johnson massage said that the votes are yes or no up or down it is totally appropriate for school committee members or any other members of a
183voting body to explain their vote prior to voting so it doesn't have to be a long-winded explanation it can simply be why they are voting no why they're voting yes why they're abstaining so i would prefer it if future votes are taken and whenever anyone wants to explain why they're voting the way they are that they should be allowed at least you know 30 seconds or 40 seconds to do that i think i think that i think the nod mainly is to the remote format with that it's very difficult to organize everything once we move to a roll call vote i would encourage school committee members that if they want to uh stress how they're going to vote they do that before we close discussion and move to the roll call vote that's all that's
184that's okay uh then i'll i'll accept that but i just wanted uh to make those comments um the third thing i wanted to say with regard to this is if we have an advisory committee um for forming or formed or at some point i i think it's more appropriate uh at some point for them to come forward to us and give us an idea of what their recommendations are before we try to establish a budget number for 21 that may or may not be adequate so i think we need to hear from this advisory committee that's what they're there for their recommendations for the advisory uh to us may well yield a different result in terms of how much funding we might need to bring this about other discussion questions comments okay so it sounds
185like oh who's that yes no maybe okay so uh it sounds like we're ready to move to a vote okay remember karen yes vice chair extreme yes member hollins yes secretary johnson yes chair priority yes member wall yes may wait a gardener can i hear the motion again before i vote please for the budget subcommittee in bringing back recommendations on the fy 21 budget include recommendations for racial and social justice uh no the motion carries thank you all i think that was a really important and uh pretty well organized discussion um and i appreciate the thought everyone's putting into uh making all of this move forward i believe susan harbor again please i'm sorry i certain members just are not coming through on my audio i'm sorry you're having trouble left that chair for yeti
186um chair karen i'm sorry remember karen and the mayor i don't know how you voted i can help you i can help you susan farber it was all all yeses except mayor wiedergartner voted no thank you okay so we are at the end of our agenda with the exception of the executive session which will we will be calling according to maths general ledger c30a subsections 21 exemptions number two and three number two is 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 number three to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation if an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining or litigation position of the public body and the chair so declares and i do
187declare do i have a oh a motion to let's see i don't we will not need to come back to this so to the public session so i need a motion um to open the executive session please so moved second okay so we've got i think it was member karen and member hollins extreme holland sorry i real obviously i can't tell the difference um and i think we can probably just move to a vote on that without any discussion please please please please remember karen yes vice chair ekstrom yes remember hollins yes secretary johnson yes chair pray eddie yes remember well yes mayor rita gardner yes okay thank you and now we'll do a motion to adjourn the public session of the meeting please second city in unison we will take we will take a
18810 minute break so i can put my son to bed thank you wow so we need to vote on that yeah yeah amy put your kid to bed all right remember karen yes vice chair extra yep remember hollins yes secretary johnson yes chair priority assuming that's a yes number one yes mayor rita gardner yes all right would someone share the link before we return thank you remember holland remember holland i will i will do that but i would also like to make an appointment with you to help you figure out how to find the link yourself in the future i'm ending the meeting i'll see you all in executive session in 10 minutes [Music] you