School Committee 7.8.20

001c is that correct we have five all right so well there aren't a lot of choices i was trying to do the um the brady bunch thing but it doesn't look like you can do that from the ipad oh i spot it gallery view let me see if i can switch sorry this is bothering me there we go thank you okay so um during normal times we would do the pledge of allegiance i know that's always first but i guess the first thing tonight would be if we had any people who wanted to make comments from the public um let me see if i can we have absolutely zero people i see three we have three attendees michelle i don't see any hands raised strictly speaking michelle do we have to call the meeting to

002order yeah i did but when i said we had a quorum here so okay that's but i guess the official word is called the meeting the order 601. um okay so let me sorry about that i was trying to find my ipad because it wasn't where i thought it was agenda um it's july august today's 8th great so there were no citizen comments so the first thing is new business is discussion about the chat function and zoom so we had talked about that a little bit at our last meeting about whether or not to keep it on we have done a little research and found that the chat is a public document so if we have the chat open then we need to be sure and keep that somewhere um so i guess does anybody

003is anybody in love with keeping the chat function on let's start with that no no i um i thought that one of the comments on the exhibit you provided was really helpful which is that um inadvertently can allow one person to dominate conversation in a way that would not naturally happen in an actual meeting i hadn't considered that uh but i think that's a really valid point that you could get someone who's dominant and if you think as long as it's clear there's an opportunity for public comment so i guess i would say you know i don't think we should ever not have public comment um i think if we didn't have that then i might feel differently but as long as there's always public comment i would be comfortable turning it off after that

004period for record keeping but also just to reflect sort of general order in a meeting because it's a it's a meeting in public not a public meeting and we would not just allow anybody to blurt out comments okay so for tonight's meeting um just in anticipation of us possibly turning it off i put in the opportunity for a q a um so maybe later on we'll just see how that works um if that is distracting or not um but i guess going forward we're not hearing any objections we'll just turn the chat off after a public comment great okay perfect um then i see um in my screen he is in the i believe cindy position um but it is mr tracy is here to give us an update on school high school graduation which

005um is happening on the 25th i believe um school committee members are invited if you are planning to attend you should let lisa heights know um first of all because there's tickets this year but also it helps them to arrange seating and also just you know how many chairs to get so um mr tracy did you want to give us an update thank you very much i um i think i believe you received the document that i sent out and shared with parents so i tried to be as specific as possible with that trying to answer the questions and and uh we're we really can't have we weren't allowed to have an outdoor graduation before july 18th for jesse regs so we chose to do the 25th there's a number of schools around us so

006they can do the same thing in the first couple weeks after that so we're going to do ours at 10 a.m on the 25th we are going to try to model it as closely as we can as we have in the past we are not able to use a tent so we're going to be outside on the football field and we will spread everybody out six feet minimum probably more because our numbers will really keep us in the 450 range across the whole field including grads and everybody there so it'll be a fairly manageable setup and then we we do have all the similar graduation events happening the speakers will be speaking the um the kids will be coming up to get their diplomas there'll be no formal handoff of the diploma other than we'll

007have it on the table and they'll pick it up from the table turn get their picture taken by our photographer who's always on the bottom right hand side of the stage then they'll walk back off and go to their seat and um other than that it should it should be fine we're crossing our fingers on the weather if it does rain it'll be the next day the next morning and if it rains two days in a row i'll have to figure something out but um it's where the kids really wanted to try to preserve as much of a ceremony as possible um we have gotten a lot of information from some new hampshire schools who did outside ceremonies who kind of laid the groundwork if you will and you know the feedback was i never

008saw my friends graduate they just you know we we got up got a diploma and we were sent off the field so we're trying to keep it as as close to normal as possible while also adhering to all the current guidelines of the state and we could get more in the next round of guideline updates or changes but i'm gonna for now just keep it the way it's outlined in that form uh and certainly any school committee members i believe invites were sent out by lisa heights um if you're coming just let us know and if you're bringing someone just let us know we'll make sure we get you tickets so you can get by the gate and eric since candlelight wasn't held is is that sort of like being rolled into graduation or yeah

009kind of yeah it's i mean it's hard to to let that go but there's really no good time to do it we can't do an inside ceremony so um we do have a candlelight speaker we went through the process of choosing a candlelight speaker uh in fact she's on my list to call tomorrow to remind that she'll be part of the ceremony so that'll be really the only addition we're going to cut off a couple of other speakers just to give room for that but also so the kids can celebrate together so the adult candlelight speaker is out too correct oh man that's the best okay all right okay so and then on this on the night before we're gonna send to all the seniors the departmental awards which we created a video for and

010we usually do that during their senior farewell and it's just department heads giving you know the academic awards for their departments plus a few others uh the regional prize which hasn't been given out in a few years will be will be uh given out this year so that's exciting um i can't tell you who it is yet so we'll have to wait but um that so those will get sent out friday night as kind of a lead up to graduation and then we have a rehearsal on friday morning at 10. we know that all students won't be able to come we have at least one in the military possibly two by that time and then um a couple um if either moved or just decided they didn't want to come so well a few more

011than the total amount um just thank you eric for following through with this and making sure that the kids you know get a proper send off and um just again i know i've said this six times to sunday since this has all happened but thank you for really caring about our kids in our community so we appreciate it yes thank you these in fact i'm even especially excited because these were my very first students in my first year teaching oh awesome to see that is a big deal for me okay any questions hope it sounds good it's just that um that was we won't be having a meeting between now and then i just wanted to be sure that in case people ask us questions um you have the answers for them so that's great

012you can always send them my way i'm around just a quick question eric logistically are parents going to be in the stadium or on the field they'll be they'll be on the field okay yeah we have um so we have we have a little bit of a complex seating arrangement because we have each pers each student gets two tickets um most families will sit together some you know by choice just don't want to so we're we're we have some singleton seats out there we're gonna try to try and keep everybody happy so they can see their sons and daughters graduate thank you thank you oh and i saw in your letter that it's going to be on hw cam is that going to be live or is that going to be reported live stream yeah

013let's go so came back to the high school last week and tested the live stream so as far as he's aware it works fine but it's also helpful we're closer to the uh we're going to be closer to the to the um stands on the on our side so it makes things a little bit easier all right well that sounds great thank you very much all right thank you sir um may ask a quick question about the chat do do we need to vote on that or is it going to be a policy function later on or i think it policy's going to work on it until then we'll just follow off the procedure but yeah i think write that down peter good idea oh i already haven't noted i've reached out to ms presser

014to schedule the next meeting yeah did you get my text about how to post a meeting i did not but i spoke i spoke with janelle and okay yeah sorry about that it seems weird like if i type you a message in texting from my computer you might not be getting it so okay oh no worries all right um mary beth were you asked to give a speech at graduation i i will do a a small piece uh during graduation on our graduates nothing too extensive at all yeah right i'm looking forward to it super um yeah candlelight is like like our graduation can be less than 45 minutes on a normal time because all of the hoopla happens really at candlelight so um okay so the next thing on our agenda it says the

015masc anti-racism um what do you wanna call it resolution the massachusetts school committee's massive association of school committees has their own board of directors and they wrote an anti-racism whatever resolution and they are asking other school communities if they are interested in equally passing it um it's in your packet basically there's a whole bunch of whereases and then resolved that the district and the school that the hamilton went on regional school district and all the school districts in the commonwealth must guarantee that racist practices are eradicated and diversity equity and inclusion is embedded and practiced for our students families faculty and staff we must ensure our own school culture that and that of every district in the commonwealth is anti-racist that acknowledges that all lives cannot matter until black lives matter and the black lives

016matter part is not in capitals because it's not specific to a group it's a concept it's sort of similar to when you go to protestant churches and they talk about the catholic church with the little c but when you're in the catholic church it's with the big c so it's um uh dana do you want to make a motion about it and then we'll have any sort of discussion around it sure i move that the hamilton wedding regional school committee adopt the anti-racism uh masc resolution as written is there a second second second by anna um great so is there any discussion about this um i mean i i i think it's a i think it's a great policy i've i've read it i think the language is strong but leaves open to district level

017interpretation on some level it's uh guidance but not prescriptive which i think is good for policy um and i think that it's important for school districts to show leadership on these issues which are sort of the core of educational learning so i think it's great that our governing association our leadership group wrote it and i personally think we should adopt it i have no reservations at all and in some cases where most of it we're already doing it like the history of racial oppression in the works of black authors uh different perspectives i know that's embedded uh in the civics program tyler and i curriculum that we came up with um embeds that heavily within the curriculum okay one of the things that offer i don't know if people have seen the reading list for

018the summer but it is really asking students to take a deep dive into these complex issues and appreciate the leadership there um from the english department yeah yeah both the history and the english department um addressed this yeah it's really a who's the the reading list is really a not a who's who is but a what's what of you if you want to repeat read read and be educated on this topic so um great so we had a motion and a second um is there anyone else who wants to be heard on this topic so we'll vote by a roll call um so try alphabetical again this week just because i didn't come up with something better so dana yes um michelle bailey yes michelle horrigan yes um anna seasick yes and peter walczyk yes

019great can i ask a um logistical question now um for dana so it doesn't happen what happened on the last resolution so dana will take control of this and shall she should she have janelle email it to um um m.a or tracy novak i know right and that's it yes yes because everyone isn't addressed to having the legislature do anything okay okay so you're going to give them to tracy novik at masc dana and um i have an email from i think two weeks ago we could go out forward too dana thank you actually um in the salem news today the peabody school committee adopted basically the same thing they added a few things specific to peabody but um yeah so it's it's moving along around the state i think it's getting a lot of

020traction sorry i do want to do a media um like we did with the other resolution normally i would say yes but since peabody like stole the thunder and got it in the paper you know it would be like we're carpet bag and now you know well i i mean at the same time i think it's good for us to show leadership they might pick it up i think it's i mean our district is its own thing i don't know i mean is there a cost implication for us for doing media on it or we could do we could send it over to um the patch yeah yeah i think just because someone else is doing it i think um if we've done it we should make note because sometimes our absence of action could

021be misinterpreted even though we've done it um my question was going to be do we also need to circulate it on our own website or to the schools or let the public know in some other forum [Music] do you want to wait till masc takes some leadership there so i think what we might want to do maybe at some maybe we should have a i mean it's part of this meeting this meeting is part of the public so it's a couple quick thoughts on that if you look at our website currently it is extremely out of date um it is on the to-do list to get that updated i could certainly see this is a very timely matter and posting this resolution and also as a reminder the the leadership team put out a communication

022expressing very similar sentiments and we have that reading list from the high school so potentially what we could do when you enter our website right now is to have all three of those documents that help our visitors know the values of this district yeah we have an issue and i'm not sure exactly what it is but then news feed isn't being fed so the like whenever we have the latest and greatest news it's not being fed into the district's news page so yeah it would be yeah so you're right if we fed those three things into the news that would show up that'd be nice would we would we need it sorry go ahead i should say there are other uh resolutions we've adopted is presently is there already a holding tank of some kind

023for other resolutions that are unrelated to anti-racism because i think that actually might be good so maybe actually instead of it being specifically focused on this issue we could have a you know a resolutions page of things that we've signed on to because we've also had the code funding resolution and i'm sure there are other things that we've adopted that maybe we're not aware of i think that would be a good place to capture it more globally yeah we did something a while ago about chapter 75 but that's all we've done in recent years but yeah maybe that's it um trying to think if it's is it part of policies i mean but i kind of agree with mary beth i like the idea of having being higher level than that so that people see

024it more outwardly but i i like the idea very much of it being on michelle what you're saying the news feed that it's you know in that way i actually don't know exactly what's typically on the news feed but it just seems like that it's sort of it's current it's what's going on right now and then it doesn't need to be on a specific topic going forward i like that idea yeah the other thing is that i was thinking um other school committees have used this to develop action so in the future we might want to just think about okay so if this is what we are what is our action going to be um there's been some committees that have formed like task forces and stuff like that i don't think with what's going

025on in our lives and the fact that mary beth has been in the door like a week that this is the time to like put in some sort of new initiative but it is something that we should just keep in mind so well that's what i sort of meant by it's it's um guidance but not prescriptive and i think to peter's point um and i actually sat in on it today you know there is a group of students at the high school that have formed a black lives matter group and with the school's blessing they've had two different racial justice forums so i think um i think some of it is already happening but i also think you know it's one thing to have a student-led initiative i think it'd be a different thing if

026it was a district-led initiative or a teacher-led initiative they're not necessarily the same i think they i could see them you know playing together but i think um i just think the leadership component is important if we're going to be the district we're going to be the schools i think it's important that we exercise leadership on this issue yeah well and this resolution supports those actions so all right so let's just um let's revisit this like maybe after yeah one of the things that we've talked about is developing a work plan at the retreat and i think that that would be a good place for us to identify some days where we bring back action steps to the committee for um for an update and for feedback okay yeah sounds good all right um so

027mary beth and julie created a presentation to give at the hamilton um town meeting and that worked out well um but when i'm is not going through the expense of having the led projection screen that hamilton did um one of them went with a bigger tent you know so everybody's got to decide where to spend their money when i don't want with a bigger tent so that means that mary beth um will be able to speak about our budget but there won't be any slides so to that end she did create a slideshow and anna arts and crafted together 350 packets today and delivered them to the town hall um but just so that we all know what mary beth will be saying um we have that presentation here and she can just you just

028want to talk about it a little bit do you want to share it or what do you want to do the um exhibit is in the agenda what you'll notice is that it is selective items from the full hamilton presentation um so the the two-page document um and david updated if you see the second page of that two-page document david has updated what has passed and hamilton went in hamilton and what is passed in the election um and then what you you'll see are kind of key budget items to be to be spoken about uh along with limited detail um but they're there if the community would like to see that and then what you don't say here were some of the key messages that were spoken about in hamilton so i will speak to

029those key messages in when them but just in terms of a cost saving and paper saving device we did not include those in the packet we included items that we thought people might want to reference and i'd be happy to take any questions or suggestions you might have about this you know despite having looked at it for most of the day today um michelle can you confirm that under what a yes means it says both warrant articles must pass by two-thirds i thought that was only applicable to the override and the debt exclusion where do you see the both articles um page two middle section nope it shouldn't that's what i thought that's okay that just gives us a goal but it isn't true okay i just know that that's been a subject of much

030um conversation and i think it's good to be uh accurate in what we put out so yeah seven number seven that's that's what i thought okay one and six are majority seven is two-thirds that's what i thought okay and i'll make note of that anna and when i'm speaking about it i can clarify that for folks okay perfect okay thank you for catching that ah the devil's in the details but that's okay this sets it sets us a goal all right okay so um after mary beth gives her presentation there may be questions um you know if committee members so we um the the one of members and mary bath um can sit in the front row um there's been a spot designated for us anthony says if it's raining he'll be sure it's on

031the rainy side for us so that we can keep nice and clean but uh so um if you are a hamilton resident and you would like to sit with us that is also fine you are also welcome to go to what they're calling the overflow or the non-voting tent um so like department chairs you know dpw director or police chief those kinds of people will also be there so um just whatever you want but we should definitely try and be there well us voters should try and be there probably by 8 30 so that we can be sure to get checked in on time maybe even a little earlier earlier and hamilton it took a good couple of hours well i don't know a couple hours no but the check-in process i mean the line

032was long it was long it took i want to say like an hour from the time it started to the time the last people checked through michelle michelle's point i was gonna say if you get there at 8 30 you'll be fine because i was there at 8 30 and no one was there and one of the things that the one of selectmen will say about having their meeting later is that they've been able to learn and observe and one of the things that they learned is they really need to have a better check-in process so there's instead of there just being two tables or i think maybe three in hamilton there's gonna be five for us wenomites which you know there's hardly any of us anyway um so we'll be able to check in

033faster and they're also not going to allow people to wander they're going to tell you where to see it sit so there won't be any of this can i find a seat kind of thing um so that'll be good and they've also set up the chairs so that some chairs are in pairs and some chairs are in singletons so there won't be like people who come together moving the chairs and any issues with that so hopefully the extra time will make for more efficiency so um hopefully we'll be done i also heard like that maybe brad hill is not speaking um just based on the fact that i know about some paperwork that's at the town hall and normally that stuff he would bring with him so we may even have a shorter time for

034that so it's good we're looking forward to it we're looking forward to seeing all of the best galoshes in town i know people are just dying to get their wellies out so we're gonna have a great time um all right so the next thing if the power goes out we're about to get a storm here we will um see you on saturday but the power is not going to go out okay you might want to shut some of your windows all right so the next thing is that um during anna's onboarding um she really dived into the ethics um training and uh she was mentioning to me about being designated as a special employee and like that kind of rang a bell to some training naomi had done like a decade ago or so um

035so through investigation she has found out that the town of wenom has designated us as special town employees however we cannot actually get any confirmation from all of the right places that hamilton has done that what it basically means is myself for instance i am on the when i'm affordable housing trust and i'm also on the school committee that could be viewed as a conflict because i'm working for two different government agencies in that even though they're both not employed also the biggest issue is if one of us were to be like a lawyer or you know maybe even a contractor or something like that and then you were to want to represent your client in front of one of the town boards or even our board you wouldn't really be able to do that

036so um this special designation seems to be like what most school committees normally would have but we just haven't done it um so we'd like to request that hamilton do that designate us a special and special municipal employees um and i ask michelle so um so if it's hamilton wenham and we are the hamilton one and regional school district our own entity why are we then why do we then have to be be a hamilton employee special employee or one of special employee well because i like you i too am on a couple of boards and the ethics but i talked with the ethics department and at the um at the state level last year many conversations and they were like you're fine your school committee supersedes everything um yeah that the lady i talked

037to and i talked to district council as well she offered a different opinion which is uh we are employees of both towns technically the school committee is not an is not a municipality right like we don't exist outside of municipal structure we're elected within the town so her opinion was that we are in fact employees of both towns which is why the talent's after the ones to designate the special status and it's very common in municipalities that are small that everyone is special because everyone is special but this conflict is very often people serve on boards they represent people they work as private contractors so uh it's interesting actually by statute the select boards are automatically special in a population under ten thousand however those select words then have to designate every other border committee

038as special um and it's routine that they do so and one of um did so diane was able to put her hands on the list from 2008 very quickly um hamilton was not able to find the same documentation the state ethics attorney did a database search for them and could also not find any documentation that anyone other than the planning board and the conservation commission appear to also be special in hamilton so technically right now all of us and anyone who's on the cultural council the recreation committee um the library trustees anyone who spans both towns is technically considered a regular town employee of both towns because hamilton has not made anybody special and this is for ethics purposes only right it's not like now we can be into some sort of like benefit pool

039or we're going to be part of the pension fund or anything it's solely about ethics so it would allow um like michelle if you were to be the chair of the hamilton housing authority and you wanted to represent them in front of the cpc for an application unless you're a special employee you shouldn't be doing that all right and i just uh michelle horgan i just want to sort of let you like you sounds like you had a different experience a year ago because my experience was the same that anna had um in the sense that the person i was working with asking a question was unable to give me an answer she said she she actually indicated that because the two towns were undecided that it was unclear whether i was special or not

040and so she couldn't answer my question um i don't it sounds like you're a person and i told you that you were there for not special my personal she was she was pretty unequivocal and and i also sought counsel from the district's attorney just to see what her take on it was and she affirmed uh that you have to be designated by both towns so um and then michelle didn't you put it on the list serve wasn't that part of part of the exhibit yeah yeah so mike gilberg who's retired he used to be he used to be our dorothy presser until he retired and then um tracy novik both were just like you know it just is a good idea in a small town because you just you fill in so many roles i

041mean for you know and you might want to go and advocate for one of those roles and if you do you just want to be clear that you're eligible to do that and it's not none of us none of us is trying to take advantage of anything we're all trying to volunteer and help our towns and our communities run and this just makes sure that we're all meeting the regulations so it just seems i mean it seems pro-forma to be the fact that wenham did it in its entirety in 2008 for everyone i mean it's it's pretty routine and the ethical um the ethical reference she pointed me to was document 88-01 which laid out all these different scenarios and it was also interesting that i said the select words are made special by statute

042so really all we're doing is asking to have all the other boards also be considered special um which i thought was an interesting point so the one exception was and i don't think this would ever necessarily happen although it could um that we can never appear before our own board on behalf of something so for example i'm a girl scout leader if the girl scouts wanted to use the buker school for some event i could not appear in front of the school district in any capacity on behalf of the third party because i'm also on the school committee which makes total sense so um that was the one sort of qualification so it's it should be routine um and i think it's just it's really more of a procedural issue but uh i brought it

043to everyone's attention because it affects all of us and it's actually not to us individually it's to the position the position of the school member the position of a cultural council member it's not individual in any way it's the position that gets made special and it's in perpetuity so once you do it it's done forever so um so does anybody do we need a motion and basically what you're what we're asked what you're making the motion is is for maybe me write a letter sean farrell affirming that this is our request so so okay so the motion would be to write the letter yeah it's probably going to be an email like like michelle bailey should let me let me give let me give it a shot and see all right um i move that

044the hamilton wenham regional school committee uh requests that the uh hamilton board of selectmen designate the school committee members as special municipal employees second by anna um great so if this passes the action will be that i will let them know that we did that so um peter did you want to speak at all to this at all [Applause] uh nope okay and we'll vote um by roll call anna anna dana yes michelle bailey yes uh michelle horrigan yes anna seasick yes and peter walzick yes great all right we did that um now we have okay school committee liaison assignment so basically there are people who operate for the benefit of the schools and who also sometimes need to have information from us or would like for us to have information um and it's just

045nice for us to just check in especially like the friends groups um just to know who they are how they're going you know sometimes you can hear things through the grapevine so that we know something's happening before it bubbles up and we can try and address it so um the hard one on here is the wellness committee because it meets at like 7 a.m on a weekday um so michelle horgan did it last year and they actually cranked out a lot we actually got the wellness policy through and they got their guidelines so a lot of background work has been done um do you want to continue that yeah no i enjoyed it it was it was really good um to be part of that committee so i'm fine going back with that that sounds

046good um so then the next one that's so the other ones are then the three elementary school and then the middle school high school friends groups um i would be willing to do cutler because i still have a tie there peter can you do bucher yes i can continue gene was at cutler right that was one of james yeah um i'm i'm happy to do whatever school makes sense um yeah so would you be able to just check in at the high school middle school occasionally just with i think right now it's lorraine miller but her twins might be graduating so she might be moving on so i don't know who the next person is no they're rising seniors they're there oh they are okay great okay so perfect um did you do that one

047because i'll be yeah at the middle of high school yeah yeah sure okay um and dana do you know i'm lorraine lorraine who miller miller nope okay i can make the introduction well they don't they never they never overlapped they were kids yeah daniel was a senior and the twins were eighth grade so i can make the introduction introduction you know her her email is keep keisha rayne oh i do know her yeah she had that she's had that email for her forever you know her you know i do i do know her via email you're correct okay all right and then oh lucky stacy just arrived stacey hi how are you thanks for coming um we're talking about uh liaisons would you we're making dana do middle school high school would you be doing

048uh either one thrip or the c-pack anybody want to do them i i i get my years into it i i have a lot going on so i'm happy to do another one if you know i would i you know happy to if there's um all right so if you can do winthrop also and then david or i'll either do the cpac depending upon if he wants to do it or not so um okay then we right now we have the hamilton board of select and fincom and we have the wenham board of selectmen vincom and i am i'm kind of interested in doing hamilton i'd be willing to do hamilton yeah and that's great and i but i am thinking about um i was talking to triton and triton has what they call a

049communications group and what that is is sort of like a couple of school committee members a you know like a couple of boards of selectmen members that just get together quarterly or maybe every other month just talk about like hey this is what's coming down the pike and this is one of our challenges is and also they give them an update on um like the year-to-date forecast so that they know like where where we stand um so we might not need it as much if that actually happens but otherwise we definitely will and i don't know michelle and stacy would it be better if there was like one person for the selectmen and one person for the fincom or do you think it should be the same person because you guys did it this year

050um i i can speak to um that i dealt more with the fincom than the board of selectmen um i probably met four times with christina hargrove yeah and once with david wanger and the boar selectmen you know introduced myself and i sent them a couple of emails but that's it so um i think maybe two people um each person take a group would be better but stacy what do you think yeah i well i have to say i didn't really meet as much as you did but because i know i know everybody and i have a relationship so i see them and whatnot and um i basically i emailed the whole group but i also included um anthony because he wants to be included so it was basically they wanted like one email is

051the way when him wanted it so went to fincom bos and anthony um it's okay with everybody i guess i would prefer to do that just this year i just what kind of what's the so i mean i like the idea of a communications group i think that's actually come up in conversation i've heard that informally um within the towns just other people as well kind of like stacy i mean sort of been discussed if that weren't to happen what is the expectation of frequency for do we attend the meetings do we reach out by email is there any sort of established practice of of how often how much there's not but i would say a good practice would be to check in every other month either by phone or by going to their meeting

052particularly around times when we're not going to be talking to them a lot because they're still i mean we're still like when we get our year-to-date um presentations from vinnie like just to make sure they get it because they might not be sitting around watching this meeting and we're certainly not getting that covered in the press so how would they know um you know just that kind of thing and occasionally like this year we might get information from the dese about funding or we you know like that this year that student opportunity act thing that was kind of a big deal then finding out that we weren't going to get that money that's kind of a big deal like letting people know around that kind of stuff so sort of like around major events you

053know not necessarily every routine thing but if there's something i would say especially something that is major policy or something major financial they would want to know and then also if they have questions the other direction right i mean it would be a way for them to ask us questions as well right yeah they definitely communications for to the community or to the board of selectmen i was speaking to the boards but yeah all right um i can um continue with the border selectmen fincom if you want okay okay i don't care it's up to you i mean i'm fine with that if there's anything that like the chair should communicate to them then i'll do it but otherwise i'm fine if you want to do it well did you like the idea of having

054two people could you could you work on it together let's take vincom and i'll take the board of selectmen sure i mean okay so let's do that and then michelle horrigan would you either either way i mean i have a real relationship with christina she is moving on i think valerie mccormick is going to take on as elise take over as a liaison okay um so we're gonna do income and we'll have anna for selectmen and if you know what and also is it okay if something if we find a better fit with we should switch yeah yeah we'll switch it up or if there's something major happening and for some reason someone's not available and it's important someone's there i mean again i think i like the idea that these are designated liaisons but

055if something's happening i think it's more important to get the information there not necessarily stand on ceremony about who does it so it's about them having someone they can call when they have a question and someone that we can call when we want to share information okay or if we have a question mary beth yeah i just wanted to confirm michelle would you be the preliminary um liaison to the board of selectmen or fincom i just missed that which one michelle b or michelle h i'm sorry one more time so michelle you would be um hamilton board of selectmen no no i think it was michelle horgan is hamilton i anna and hamilton selectmen stacy was one of fincom michelle bailey is one of selectmen if i heard it right bingo there we go and

056you can check the um it's there now so hopefully we've got this correct um do do people feel we need to vote on that they look like great we have a list it's been created that is the list great okay so then the next thing on the agenda is our summer schedule so a couple things on that um you'll notice stacy joined late and also david is not here at all it has to do with uh conflicts around the timing um we i've always met at seven o'clock but during the non-commuting days of um being locked in our houses we thought gee we don't have anything to do let's meet earlier so that we could get done earlier um [Music] do people still feel they want to meet at six or but then a lot

057of us have been you know like turning the cameras off and eating and you know trying to get our meals in because we're at six um do people wanna stay at six do people wanna just promise to be super efficient and start at seven do what do people wanna do if we can be efficient i think a seven o'clock start is reasonable and i don't know if it's possible to look at the agenda and pivot but i think seven o'clock would be reasonable yeah i would love seven o'clock and and those four to five hour meetings just can't go anymore because it wore me out we're not doing we didn't get anywhere with the four to five hour meetings there wasn't really a lot of decision they got dragged on and so if we could

058be efficient that would go back to what we used to do a year ago awesome yeah i mean i think it was great but i think now as people's lives are starting to become a little more busy and they're you know we have more things going on it's a little bit more difficult um sucks for mary beth but maybe she'll have more time between her work and the meeting to get like something to eat or maybe even get home if we're doing this event so um i would support seven o'clock but i echo the idea that you know i don't know if we want to set a hard maximum unless there's dire circumstances but to me i mean sometimes we're going to be yeah we're going to be trying to move it along and be

059done by tech because yeah no i i mean in my mind a three-hour meeting is about the duration that seems humane for everybody including people trying to watch but i would also prefer seven o'clock uh that would be better for me so we'll we'll start at seven so our next meeting would be wednesday the 29th at seven pm um and then we're trying to schedule a retreat on um monday august the 10th um from five to eight um but we know stacy won't be there so we'll just figure out a way to update you um and then get any input we'll probably still need to have a meeting on wednesday august the 12th probably that will probably be when we're approving our opening plans but who knows um and then september the 2nd um yeah

060and yeah i was going to ask about something else but i don't think i can ask about it so i'm not going to ask about it but um do those sound good for people starting at seven except for the retreat which will be a three hours anticipated so we'll start at five because we might might meet outside somewhere like in person maybe not definite possibly not for sure being flexible that's the that's what we're looking for being flexible there is more guidance coming on that i'm sure okay uh mary beth can you work with seven and absolutely absolutely no problem and if something comes up obviously in these longer breaks let us know maybe we'll have a meeting especially if we can have like a short meeting like a you know 30-minute meeting a 45-minute

061meeting something like that all right all right so that's good um okay then the next item was added today um and i don't know mary beth did you get my text i did okay so today mary beth brought to my attention um there's a policy about hiring a family member and it came to our attention because one of our principals has a child who is an ideal candidate for working in our summer school program but after i read the policy i also realized that my own child um falls under this policy so we're here to inform you about that um do you want to give the specifics mary beth on the extended school year yeah and what we have here just in the policy is just that there's a public notice that this is happening

062it doesn't even need to be a vote around it uh but basically we have the extended school year program at winthrop which is for a special education student that need additional support over the summer in order not to regress [Music] carolyn was the principal at winthrop's daughter was identified as a strong candidate they would like to move forward with her she would be working with students over the summer but per this policy we need to let you know that an administrator's child would be hired over the summer and then as michelle indicated she shared that her son would also be working for the district and again just to to note this publicly so that everything feels on the up and up so the two groups around this are administrators and school committee members so it's

063just what it is like so now you know um great so then there is a superintendent report and i asked mary beth um give us an update on athletics one about registration and two about a lot of um summer conditioning happens and is that happening and the like so she's gonna cover that and then um some really important information so okay michelle did you mean to skip over did you skip over the words oh i did what that's super important so every other week the district pays their bills those come out in a warrant um which is just a long list of bills and checks and invoices and then they're all summed up to a total amount and then that money gets transferred between different banking accounts so that the checks can get paid um

064so school committee members the whole school committee is responsible for making sure that happens and there's no embezzlement or fraud um but the state law under the municipal modernization allows us to have one person sign on behalf of all of us and then report at the next meeting so when we have those consent agenda warrants basically we're just being notified that someone signed to have that amount of money build if you are wicked curious about the invoices you could obviously ask for them and that information be provided to you it is quite the learning experience what you say michelle oregon given that you get to see like where the money's going right in different accounts and it's eye-opening it's it's your home on on steroids especially like that the ones for the lunch like you're

065like oh we're getting pizza from here and lettuce from there and tomatoes from down the street so um so this happens usually on wednesday afternoon uh at 3 30 that we said yep 3 30 3 30. um it probably could happen thursday morning if it had to because i think the bank transfers happen on thursday but anyways um so would you be interested in doing it again would you like to pass it off if someone else is interested do you want to um i mean i have the flexibility because i do work in town um but it is a good learning experience um and then you're just you get to know the vibe too of the administration you know what's happening and it's it's a good it's a good op opportunity to get delve in

066so i'm happy to do it if no one um if anyone else doesn't have the flexibility that i do but i'd be more than happy to let's see i i also have flexibility and interest in learning um my only reservation is you know from time to time there might be an error wednesday at 3 30 that i you know might need the second person so but i think did you say i remember in a meeting that you have a list right there's an order so if there is yes because we were afraid people might get sick mary beth it looks like david's over yeah i'm looking at it too yeah if you can pull him over that would be great um we were afraid when we were afraid for michelle's health and we wanted to

067be sure that if anything happened to michelle or her family where she needed to be there for them that other people could sign so we made the whole committee and then we pulled names out of the hat and you know there was a falling down order um i don't know i think i was like fifth or sixth i was like sweet i totally got out of that but um yeah if if anna wanted to be first we could have someone else be second someone else be third and you know it does look like we're all going to survive now but you know we've had our public health nurses and our fellow residents really take this seriously um and get it under control that we're not all in imminent danger at this point um yeah i

068don't mind being the first person because i do love the idea of learning i mean we're all on boarding here and i definitely am new so i don't mind being the first name but i do want to make sure that whoever the second name is is somebody who also is somewhat available because i might have a conflict from time to time that's i have unless dana you want to step in um i have no problem i'm actually also available at those times so you know maybe i mean it may be it even makes sense i don't know how you did that list but like put the people at the top anna michelle dana if any of them if all three of you are sick then we've got a lot more problems to worry about than

069that so um how long does it take michelle usually like if it's at 3 30 is it like an hour of signing or oh no no no no no uh 15 minutes once you get that you know you go like the first time you're looking through everything and then john gallant our treasurer will say okay here's you know the revolving account here's here's the you know so it's not like a two-hour commitment from 3 30 to 5 30 every no no no like the first first time yes you were there a long time and then yeah sorry to interrupt i'm having some difficulty getting david over have you i'm gonna try let's see if i can do it from this ipad because i haven't done like i said i couldn't see oh there's the attendees

070no i don't see him over there he's not even there sorry about that guys scheduling snafu i said it was actually fine over there too because we have to sneak away at some point too for a little league board meeting tonight so perfect storm of uh activities up on this fine wednesday so let's just have our warrant group be anna michelle and dana in that order if you want to give us a motion dana and then we'll um approve that and then if you all are really sick in the future then we'll have an emergency meeting and change that uh i move that the hamiltonian regional school committee appoint uh members to sign warrants in the following order anna c dick michelle horgan dana alera second uh second by michelle horrigan um all right so

071we'll vote on that i'm gonna test my alphabetizing skills okay um we'll do a roll call vote um dana yes uh michelle bailey yes michelle horrigan yes stacy matanick yes david pelito yes anna cezak yes and peter walczyk yes fantastic okay thank you for reminding me about that i'm sorry um all right so now we're at the superintendent's report which was much anticipated all right the first thing that i wanted to share with the the committee was a couple of things that have transpired related to athletics since our last meeting um so one of the things you should be aware of is that at this point uh d-e-s-e nor the governor has made any formal announcement about fall sports um currently the miaa which is the state's athletic organization is saying that all sports they're

072planning for all sports to resume on time i would again caution around that because that is not um yet what the the governor or the dese is saying there has been a task force set up to go over some of the potential guidelines so in terms of whether we will have sports in the fall and or which sports we will have that is still an open question but know that that is being processed and there is a task force in place um one of the things that you will start seeing starting on monday is that our our teams will have the ability to start hosting conditioning work workouts on the fields this will start again on monday and what what has been done and i think a high level of caution is that the the

073workouts are being conducted under phase two guidelines even though by monday we will be in phase three so there and i've seen the email go out they're very careful restrictions around how these workouts are to be handled and our athletic director is is doing a an excellent job in terms of communicating and being sure that everybody is on top of that the other thing that you should be aware of is that at this time this is typically the time that small sports registration occurs um and so we want to go ahead and get those registrations started we will not be collecting any money at this point so that if the fall sports do not transpire for any reason we will not be in a situation we would have to return any funds to families but

074if they are able to move forward we will have our teams and our paperwork set and ready to go so those are the the three things that have transpired from last wednesday to this wednesday can i ask a quick question about that um one thing that we're going to need to hopefully have some guidance on is i know like my own child's um physical expired in the spring so we were had him all set to get his his physical in the spring but that's been canceled and they are not taking appointments um for physicals at this point so a lot of students are going to have that issue and so i imagine the mia will have some guidance about that because they tend to try and push everyone to get their physicals in the summer

075anyway so but they are starting to do doctor physicals because both my kids have already had their physicals for summer my daughter going to college she um had it there's a big backlog though there's a big backlog so i you know it's just one of those things that you know when we put send that out we should just you know you should definitely try and get your appointment scheduled and we're you know we're awaiting guidance on what's going to happen so yeah we'll keep an eye on that okay great okay um the next item that we have is the fall um reopening timeline when will decisions be made when um will we be getting together to move certain things forward so at this point i'm going to share my screen with you everybody able to

076see that okay yeah so first of all we we know that this is this is a tentative plan because things are moving and changing all the time but this is what we anticipate it's going to look like in terms of flow of decision making over the course of the summer so as a remain reminder on june 25th we received the initial fall guidance um from the desc that allows us to to start some planning work um and i'll talk about this a little bit later down particularly related to the change in 343 foot social distancing that was moved from six foot and that has some implications so that came out at the end of june um at this school committee meeting we're talking about the graduation update the athletics update and i have an uh

077an elementary conversation i'd like to move forward related to the covid issue that will come after this we have the town meeting on the 11th what has already begun and will be complete by july 17th is a full study of our available space so tom gary our director of buildings and grounds and our elementary principals have walked through every classroom taken measurements look at desks looked at the unique features of each room tom is creating a spreadsheet so that we will know given our existing facilities you know where we are able to open up classrooms and maintain the three foot social distancing and where in the district we may have challenges related to that uh suspended may ask a very quick question absolutely um one thing that i that came to mind when i was

078trying to special order a door recently is that the lead times are into the months because manufacturers are shut down like normally this door would have been here in a week to two weeks but it was a 65 day lead time and i'm i'm just wondering if especially we're in competition with the rest of the country if we do have to buy furniture it may not arrive in time yeah so you you're bringing to light a very real issue which is the supply chain and we have that not only with furniture we have that with technology we have puppies right so that's that's very real um what we are hoping for is to see on july 11th if the capital budget passes so that we know we've got a funding source for furniture and the

079other piece of it if we are purchasing furniture we want to be mindful that we're not purchasing furniture that's going to just get us through this six-month nine-month covet phase we want to be able to purchase furniture that is going to make sense down the road so we are looking at a number of different possibilities in terms of what furniture would look like um and so at that point we're probably looking at a question of seven days which is is not going to have a significant impact on the the supply chain and their thought is know that we have funding to do it and two that we've we've done some deeper processing so whatever it is that we purchase has value in the community beyond the coven social distancing situation thank you um so we

080we are working on that um then on july 29th what i am anticipating we will have ready for you is an actual formal presentation about the results of our space evaluation and any problem solving that we needed to do in terms of problem areas you know depending on where our final data lands we may need to be looking at community resources for extra space so the intent on july 29th is to come to and say here is where we would have our children located for education in the fall at that time i also believe we will be prepared to give you a technology update and a ppe update the other piece that i think will be important at that meeting is there just needs to be a general policy from the school committee indicating that

081the district is following dese covid reopening guidelines and i know that's been a recommendation um across an asc the massachusetts association of school committees so that would be on the 29th and now they and i know there's a there was a lot of confusion on the news today about the cdc's guidelines which change daily based on politics and the situation but does jesse follow the cdc or are we having our own state guidelines yeah what is happening at deci is that they are in communication with some identified experts in the field out of mass general out of the american pediatrics association the rep for massachusetts so well cdc is certainly being taken into consider into account they are also vetting the information through some of the experts in our area we happen to be a

082place in the country that has uh some very highly regarded medical experts i know uh um one of the people they are working with is somebody that is also advising major athletic teams around this so i don't think it's it's a if it's said by the cdc that's exactly what's going to happen um that those conversations are ongoing and being vetted through local experts and peter one of the purposes of this is also um you know the guidelines require wearing a mask so we we're going to affirm that that is going to be the school district's stance the guidelines are about the three feet so if we're going to have that be our standard in our district then we need to have some policy around that so um one point on this is um if

083we're going to do that peter that policy would need to meet before that and we would also need to waive the requirement to have a first and second reading um in that meeting itself so do you think that's doable or not peter i don't know what oh well i'm available i in fact i reached out to miss presser today okay to set up you know to see check her availability um i'm i'm available so that's not a that's not a problem on my end but i know miss presser she's pulled in a bunch of different directions so it's yeah okay so let us know and i don't know david david are you who else is on policy david no it's me and michelle horgan oh okay oh so there's three of us okay great so

084it also depends on your availability as well uh offline can you share the dates you're talking about with her and i can let you know uh we have we haven't picked any dates yet she has to get back to me michelle michelle can we back up a step i have a question about some of the galaxy um guidance are we gonna have the ability to have like a line-item veto if jesse comes out with something where they say you know we could say yes to masks here but maybe no to something else or is it an all or nothing kind of thing that's right what we're seeing so far in policy is that certain things are mandated certain things are highly recommended so if we have something that would be highly recommended but not mandated

085that could be a place where we may have some flexibility depending on the unique needs of our district um but where the the state is mandating things so for example nothing smaller than three foot social distancing we know that's gonna be that's not going to be flexible um so what we're saying is sometime between now and july 29th not only does the policy subcommittee have to meet and sort of process it with dorothy but we also have to have a better sense of what those requirements are because i thought it'd be hard to write a policy when we don't know what the guidance is my recommendation to the committee is that the policy is very broad that it basically says that the district will be in alignment with the dese covered guidelines so that we're

086going to be following the guidelines so in places where they say recommend but not mandated we could make some adjustments and that would fall within the policy okay and where the desc is clear that this is the expectation um for example mask wearing for for students at a certain age and up then that also gets covered because it would fall within the desc reopening guidelines i think that the time frame here is short um so you want an umbrella document that is basically sending the message we're going to follow asking us to follow caught up in individual issues i mean if if that can't be done by the 29th i mean we can do it on the 12th when we do the reopening plan but we just we just need something that says you know

087you're gonna have to wear a mask we will keep children safe based on the guidance that we're being yeah no i mean that totally makes sense we have to affirm you know we have to go upstream with our affirmations so that so peter i feel like that shouldn't be that hard to do that like i don't that doesn't sound like a tremendous time sink to get a policy like that no and i and i liked what the superintendent said that you know there's mandated things that we will follow there's recommendations that we could follow or even be stricter so um i'm happy would we want to reserve the right to add additional things unique to our district if we had them but until we know what they are i think sure i mean talk to

088dorothy about it i'm sure there are um i don't know probably a hundred 200 school districts writing a policy like this right now so okay he'll probably have some guidance for us i'll leave her again right after we hang up here thank you yeah so just so we know that's the target date but if it slips to the 12th that's fine but we'll try and so the guy have the guidelines been written or are they morphing every day well what we have right now is the initial guidance from the state what we are being told is that we will get more complete guidance from the state um mid to late jan on july um so the it is going to continue to evolve and it is going to continue to go to a different level

089of brain granularity um right now there's still some pretty broad brush strokes um and so we can anticipate hearing more about specifics that are currently missing from the guidance because this there's going to i'm just concerned about that the time frame because if we have to install physical structures like screens will we how will that be done or install hand washing stations or hire hire staff to watch kids while the teacher you know they have lunch in their rooms it's i don't envy you this is this is yeah i mean this is an incredibly tight timeline um i'm also here to tell you that i think we have really good people who are working on this um and it's not going to be an easy lift by any chance by any stretch of the imagination

090but i i think if we all pull together um we can get something that is going to both meet the safety needs of our students and the academic needs of our students yeah and i'm worried about the cost of trying to get all this implemented um by with a lot of extra yeah just contractors and i think this is going to blow up the budget can can i ask mary beth on the three feet social distancing space evaluation there's obviously some controversy about the three feet right all in the same direction too so when we are doing that are we going to be evaluating like this is what six feet would look like this is what three feet would look like so that there's an understanding of what benefit you're getting from the additional risk

091you're taking yeah i mean i i would say it was it would probably be highly unlikely that we could get all students back to school in the fall if we were six foot social distancing that's just a reality so the the state has asked us to come up with three plans one to bring all students back in the fall if we do that we are most likely looking at three foot social distancing we may have some situations we'll be where we will be able to expand that but in general i think we're going to have to be in that ballpark um we're asked to do develop a hybrid plan um in a hybrid plan you may be able to do as a six foot social distancing and then there's the fully remote plan um but

092what they are asking us is to put particular focus on getting kids back to school and i i think it would be unrealistic to think that that could happen much outside that three foot social distancing well i think people are having a little bit of a hard time swallowing the eight humans per thousand square feet if you're in a business and then we're gonna scram in way more humans than that into a classroom so like i just want where we avoid con if if it's just easy to develop that information while we're doing the three feet to have it in advance versus trying to track it down later but it sounds like that is part of your plan so well but isn't that also part of the deci guidance itself there's all of that medical

093evidence which again it depends on how you interpret it but there was a lot of discussion about why i thought those jesse guidelines made clear why they pivoted to three feet and they had a lot of medical background to say why they thought free was not irresponsible so i was actually um somewhat reassured i wouldn't say convinced but i was reassured that three feet was based on some notion of sound medical evidence i i don't get the sense it was done just for convenience sake although i do agree with mary beth that i can't imagine doing it under six but i don't i didn't get the impression from reading the district that the deci guidance that three was being presented as irresponsible in light of the medical information they had and also the case studies

094with information coming out of other parts of the world so i don't know i'll be curious to see what that looks like again in a couple weeks when we have a little more information but um i think one question i have just in general about this is you know as peter is alluding we may have a perfect plan and we are doing our very best to adhere to the guidance and our supply order might fall through you know and all of a sudden the deaths we thought we were going to have we just don't have um has there been any conversation at the state level about sure we have a reopening plan and if xyz fall into place that's great but maybe our desk order will be delayed by a month and has there been

095any conversation about going back i mean which i could see being real it seems like it would be frustrating to have planned to go back to place to supply order have everything seem fine and then find out a week before school started you know what you're going to get your desks but you're not going to get them for next week you're going to get it for next month yeah there's some prohibition for like a holding pattern i mean how does that how does that work well again what the state is saying is plan to combat be ready to go to the other models if you need be um so if that were to happen you know that would be that could suggest that you could shift the other two models i think that one of

096the things as we are doing this space planning and looking at furniture tom is very well aware of what lead time is for different types of furniture so we are paying attention to not only what kind of furniture could work what kind of furniture can work long term what what other options may be out there in terms of filling gaps but we it is a real issue supply supply chains and that is part of the conversation that is currently happening so again i am anticipating when we present you on july 29th we will be able to give you a reasonable level of assurance that what we are putting forth as a plan is going to be able to be implemented uh superintendent may ask one more question sure today for my district we filled out

097a survey surveying teachers about their comfort level coming back in what conditions would they come back what conditions wouldn't they come back do we know how our teachers feel and our other staff members feel about coming back um it's actually just having this conversation with the union president today and what we have decided to do is i'm going to send an email out asking people to indicate to us if they they believe knowing what they know at this time that they would have some they would have concerns coming back particularly if they have a high-risk condition something like that at this point we don't know the numbers um and we we spoke and we we decided it would make sense to offer for people to either reach out to me or to david so that

098either either person so that we have a sense of the number of staff that may fall into that category if you're interested i can follow you the survey to see if you want to mirror it because it was it it asked a lot of good questions yeah i would appreciate that peter thank you save you some work yeah as teachers we all plagiarize from other teachers right it's called research it's a research right yeah no sense reinventing the bike you just borrow another teacher's bike okay on july 27th on to july 27th so the last week in july we have 25 teachers coming in within the entire week a number of our administrators will be in that week as well working with teams and this is the time in which we will look at the

099what i'm hoping is guiding from the state um start to develop a plan what would with special subjects how are we going to assess students when they come in and what is going to be our mechanism to deliver interventions what are the opportunities and instruction that made it might exist and so we are going to have a brain trust working together doing some design work uh to start to come up and draft the opening plans that entire week um that is that is some place i intend to be that week um working and rolling up sleeves and and trying to figure this out and we have a a wonderful group of teachers coming in just to speak to the level of investment that our teachers have in this district we had initially kind of advertised

100with 20 open slots we had 43 teachers apply we took five more but it it speaks to the level of investment i think of our educators in working on this challenge and and making sure that that we come up with a plan that is going to do the absolute best for our students so i was really pleased at the level of engagement from our teaching staff around this one thing that i heard that i thought was very it's a pretty good idea was that once you have the plan you need to spend a whole day doing it yeah you know be to see if it's tolerable to see if it works just you know and so um you know you mean in terms of like actual role play like we pretend those are people yeah

101like people literally sit in the desk with the mask on doing what they're supposed to do for a whole day and i know you know it's time consuming but it it allows you to see where the flaws are before the children get there because sometimes you don't know until you've actually done it absolutely that's a good suggestion michelle if you need unholy people will come and be unruly um i don't want to get into the weeds too much but mary beth do you know it has um have they said anything about decreasing the school um required days the number of days the only thing that i've heard and i i can quickly jump if you want to the end this is where it comes in there has been some conversation although no confirmation that this

102will be the case the commissioner is suggesting that he will back off of the 180 day requirement um by three days so that students would be in 177 days that and to take those three days and front load them at the beginning of school so if if that does in fact move forward our student are voted on calendar will shift and students will come back on august 31st as opposed to august 22nd and 26th and our teachers will be in that full week of august 24th um helping helping to get prepared getting training um doing some of the things that you're mentioning to michelle like let's let's play this out what does this look like and we may do and may do that in advance of this as well but um from my own personal

103perspective is i i would be very pleased to see if the if the commissioner makes this decision i think having the time to prepare you know and this is a major change for public education and i think our students are well served if we are well prepared when they come back and this would enable us to do that to continue to work through see where challenges lie let people play play some things out so that is the only calendar change that i have heard to date michelle thank you let me continue on here so that last week in july is the teacher design team and again we are anticipating finishing up with some drafts the following week we have our our second leadership team retreat they're going to be reviewing the work of the teacher

104design teams and also sending out surveys um to our community to get feedback on on the plans um and at that during that week as well we would be sending out a transportation survey to families um trying to get a sense of how many of our families would actually put students on a bus and how many of our families would want to transport them on their own because that could have some big implications either way right either that could mean that very few families want to put their students on on buses and that could reduce our need for busing services or that the same number are want to do that and we're going to need additional space and we may need to add buses so we need to get that information into our hands so

105that we can make good decisions however right now families don't have anything to react to because they do not know what the transportation guidelines are we do not have that information from the state yet and again we are hoping that's guidance that we will be receiving shortly superintendent may ask you a question yes do we know what the private schools are going to be doing because that could affect whether students also we we may lose enrollment or we may gain a bunch of enrollment if depending on what those students are doing yeah you know at this point i there there's not a specific pattern i i think one of the things that we will be able to do as we get a little bit further is the the independent schools where we send a lot

106of our students to we will we can reach out to them and get a sense of whether or not they are going to be on site in the fall or if they're going to be remote and to your point peter if they're going to be remote would that mean that we would see more students entering our district we need to get a little bit further down the process but it's it's certainly something that we need to keep an eye on thank you um if i can continue down here midweek of um august third to the seventh wednesday what we will do is actually take a break from our meeting and do some zoom focus groups you know here's our plan k2 parents how does this sound special education parents how does this sound middle school

107high school parents how does this sound high school middle school students give us some feedback about the plan other teachers that have not been part of the design team so we will be pulling together some focus groups during that week um so by the end of the week on august 7th our hope is that we will have had people respond to surveys we will have done the focus group the plans would have been drafted by our teacher's design team embedded by our our district leaders um and so on august 12th we should be able to bring to you a plan that has been fairly well vetted right again we would all like more time i'm not going to tell you it's going to be perfect with every t crossed and i dotted but we should

108have something that you should be able to re react to um and then we can once you vote on the plan um we can start to get that pushed out as a final document to our communities and the caveat is going to continue to be there that this is currently the plan and you know a month from now things spike we may have to shift but at least you know if we're shifting what it's going to look like how are people being recruited recruited for or selected for the focus groups um excellent question michelle uh not quite there yet um of two minds right now just in terms of how we can do this efficiently one would be to just do a general invite to people that are interested um the second thought here is

109one of the things that i would like to do next year is to start up a parent advisory council that meets with the superintendent at district levels so do we try to get that formulated prior to the state and use that group similarly we are in the process of trying to set up a faculty advisory council so would that be the group of teachers or are we going to do a broader invitation and right now i have to say the answer is stay tuned and i just think well i'll give my opinion a couple of first of all we had a superintendent here who did those two account advisory council things that particular superintendent didn't turn out to be so good but i did hear positive things from the people who participated in those so

110that seems like a good idea but i think um where this is affecting every family i think there should be some sort of equal opportunity to participate in it um so you know if it's picked at random or something like that but i think selecting it might be not we might not get the best cross section of the community so okay and the other thing too that's that's helpful feedback michelle and i appreciate that um that will help to inform our decision making around that the other component that we have along with the focus group is to also email out a survey so that we are sure that we have captured as many voices as we possibly can and then taken a deeper dive with a smaller group but i i appreciate your your thinking

111there that it's important that it's it's not at all perceived that there's this select group that is um giving feedback and that we're interested in the entire community's voice um then again that august 12 meeting will be an important meeting um and right now it seems under any circumstance the teachers first stay back will be august 24th and again there there is this question at this point as to whether or not the students will return on august 26th as is currently scheduled for the calendar calendar or if we will push that back to august 31st and give a full week of preparation time for our teachers and staff um mary beth i think i mentioned to you or at least i intended to mention to you um that on august 12th we should probably invite

112um the selectmen to come and at least so they'll know what our plan is because they will get some they may have you know community members asking them questions but also so that they can just understand the complexity of some of the challenges that we're going through um especially or when it comes to funding or you know or there may be may see like oh hey that's the same thing we're going through let's see if we can find a solution together so good good yep i've added it to the calendar thank you for that excellent any other questions from the committee okay so i i want the community to know that we are we are hard at work on this um and we will get information out to you as soon as we have something

113that feels fairly definitive to report i just hope just to comment i just hope the public understands that this could all blow up tomorrow because of you know spiking cases because of lead time because of changing student enrollment because of teacher teacher availability it's just everything could blow up in them in a day well and i also think it's important to note that it could blow up after saturday too it could indeed so stay tuned people need to vote i have your galoshes again i will put uh get your wellies whatever you want to call it well i mean i just that would affect the plan notably i just want to make sure i've been following the timeline correctly because if if the budget doesn't pass the amount of time required to turn around a

114new budget and get it reapproved by both towns my brain says that if it doesn't pass that there's no way we start school on anything other than a 112 budget so it's almost like we have to consider four plans we have the three versions of a plan assuming the budget passes but plan four means we actually are starting the same plans on a 112 budget which is a major funding cut so i think i i think i wouldn't get too settled on any particular idea until we know what happens on saturday because if you have to if you have to do all this plan on a net reduction of 3.3 million from last year that's going to be a major difference indeed it will be okay so then today mary beth called me um mary

115i don't exactly know like who all has heard this idea because i've heard you say it a few times but i'm not exactly sure where i've heard it um but mary beth was able to get some confirmation around um an idea from uh the union president um so she wants to present that idea to us and um under the spirit of much is evolving right now this is a this is a conceptual idea um and so i'd like to present it to you as an idea that i would like to to start to move forward with understanding that you would not be able to give your full support till you had more details around it and i'm just not prepared yet to provide that level of detail for you but what i can tell you

116is that i am deeply concerned about capacity particularly at the elementary level um in in terms of looking at issues related to losing two of the curriculum people one that looks deeply at our reading program one that looks deeply at our mathematics program the district curriculum coordinator and i and knowing how critical it is to be sure that our our young readers are getting up to speed very very quickly and that we we have a way of designing curriculum and supporting our elementary teachers through this this instructional change that is going to occur at the middle school high school level it's it's not perfect but we do have curriculum coordinators in each department so we have some capacity there we have no capacity at the elementary level um i i see that and and we

117also know that we have significant budget challenges um and the the third piece is that i i see this also as an opportunity for teacher leadership so what i would like to propose to the committee that you um support moving forward in posting and continuing to um explore the idea of uh elementary teacher on special assignment um and conceptually what i mean by that is we we take a teacher from their regular teaching role and we put them on special assignment to help support their colleagues help support the elementary program during this covet crisis it is a one-year position um that allows one of our teachers to really step into a leadership role role supporting both principals and their their their colleagues in the critical work ahead um i need more time and need to

118have more conversations with folks to to better define exactly the work that this individual would be doing and i need more time to be able to give you the definitive budget impact of that um so i this is not something certainly the board could or should vote on at this point because you need more information from me but i would like to move forward post it continue to have conversations about what this would might look like and i did not want to do that and move it along any further without the board being aware that i i think this is worth exploring um and that i could be a blessing and to do that um and obviously along with getting more details about what the role would entail i would also come to you with

119a funding plan so would they be when you take talk about classroom teachers would this work be in addition to their classroom capacity or would they no longer have classroom responsibility it would be a new position of some kind correct they would come out of the classroom for a year supporting colleagues and elementary programming we would need to backfill that position for the so you'd have to replace them in the classroom role okay okay and could they be replaced with somebody who's lost their uh who's just laid off one of the folks yeah this was a conversation that that john and i had today and unfortunately the places where we have had to eliminate roles are not the people that have lost their positions are not people that have elementary teaching licenses so it most

120likely would be a a new hire for the year um because of the fact that people that that did lose their positions do not hold these these certifications or skill sets and just as a reminder to me because i wasn't yet on the commitment happened some of the positions that were eliminated were at the elementary reading specialist level right was it 4.3 fte something like that of elementary specialists would it be pop is that right uh they were people that were providing direct service to students and their teaching assistants so they were not licensed staff uh they were teaching assistants so that those positions were eliminated as well would any of those people be eligible for this new special position or would you have to have a classroom license to do it they the individual

121that would backflow whoever moved into this position would need to be licensed but would the person and any of the teaching assistants be eligible for the new position you know i don't have the level of detail in terms of knowing what their background they would need to have a license so unless they are licensed to be an elementary school teacher they would not be eligible but they could because hamilton went him is very lucky in that a lot of our teaching assistants actually have a license to do right now that's what i was getting at is i i think i'm just i'm just i'm just throwing it out there to think because i'm just thinking about the act of onboarding new people and new hires in a time of transition if there are people who

122are already in our system who are knowledgeable that are qualified i don't know i'm just i'm just thinking out loud about how to preserve that um what i would recommend anna in that is that if we have anybody that found themselves in the situation where their position was eliminated and they had the appropriate license the first thing that we would guarantee is that they would have an interview right um and the other piece that i would say is that it's always our responsibility to put the best qualified teacher in front of kids so we want to honor the the the quality individuals that we have here but it's always about fit for the position yeah so a typical protocol is if somebody was interested and had a license they would absolutely be part of the

123pool of people that would be considered but i would i would always land in the space that we put the absolute best person for the job in front of kids yeah good okay and mary beth we're talking one teacher to service um the three elementary schools correct currently right you know i'm mindful of budget right and you may in the upcoming meetings hear more from me if i can figure out a way to fund this within the existing budget if there are other resources that come online you may hear me ask for other critical pieces that i think we might need but when i when i'm surveying the district right now i have great concerns about the elementary piece where their all of these supports have been eliminated i think this is a efficient um

124a cost-effective and efficient way to provide more capacity i think it gives an opportunity for teacher leadership and so if we can figure out how to fund this i think it it's a it's a possible solution that has a lot of pluses to it and again you may see me coming back with other possible solutions that that i would ask you to consider um and knowing that we are in a challenging budget situation so anything that i come to you with would have to would not be something that i would be asking for more money but figuring out what resources we have and how we might deploy them differently we are still in the process of closing out fiscal year 20 so we don't know where that's going to land there's some grant monies out

125there so know that i would not just start coming saying oh we need this position or that position i would come to you as i would am planning to do around this position saying here's how we could fund it and still not change what we've asked of taxpayers and you're thinking it's one for the overall elementaries or one per building i missed that part right now i would say one for all the elementaries okay um that you know from a fiscal perspective i think that we need to start there and see if we could figure out something that would make sense um but again given the the reductions that happened there is capacity although not perfect at the middle school high school there is no capacity at the elementary level in terms of some of

126this this programming work and your support i'm on a scale of one to ten how fuzzy and warm was john to this idea you know i i have to say that i really appreciated our conversation um he he understood and agreed that we have got a capacity issue at the elementary level um that again as i said there there is support at the middle school high school it's not i think what what he would want and not what we would like to see but he understood that there is a a hole at the elementary level and i felt we had a really collaborative and productive conversation around it and i i felt he was supportive of it great super thank you yeah and i would just lend my support i know like some of us

127that have older kids were here when we didn't really have a district-wide curriculum cohesion there was always talk about well cutler does this and beuker does that and when there does this and who's better and once we kind of brought that in and we had the same pd for all the teachers on the wednesdays that that helped that a lot so it does bring some cohesion to the whole district instead of like different principles going off in different ways with whatever their passion is and so um you know especially where we're limping through here for a few years um okay so you'll come back to us probably so what i would plan to do with a candidate and a foreign funding information right yes at the july meeting at the end of july i would

128hope to come back and say i think we've identified somebody that would would be a strong person to take on this work and here's what i think we can do in terms of funding yet i didn't want to put it out there and start putting it out there as an opportunity that exists without you being aware that i was doing this exploration and was planning on coming back to with this recommendation great thank you all right um next thing is shares report and the only thing i kind of have let's see let me so yeah only thing i have to report town meeting um i did have communication from when i'm selectmen former chair because they did not elect a chair last night but um just in general when we have disagreements that's fine um

129but we shouldn't say disparaging things about each other um just in general um so even when we disagree we don't need to necessarily harp on that so if we can just sometimes watch what we say and um be a little more careful around that so i um you know we don't want to antagonize each other because we're all on the same team so if you're on offense and defense against each other you can't actually be playing to be to win so we're gonna try and play to win this year so um okay so [Music] i don't think any of our subcommittees have met um and capital finance planning subcommittee hasn't been selected yet we'll decide that probably at the retreat because i i don't think they have work necessarily to do right now do you

130stacy michelle how come you do it in the reorganization meeting because usually we do all of our working groups mostly because you were there and we didn't want to place you somewhere that we didn't know for sure you wanted to be on and we also thought we might want to have like we may want to split that group or we might want to have some different groups but we knew we needed negotiation and we knew we needed policy that's mostly why um but in a um a retreat or workshop usually it's not usually when you pick it you usually define your goals in a workshop and retreat yeah we you know how the bylaws don't have specific ones and so each year we're supposed to decide what we need so we were thinking about doing

131that but really don't have an issue with appointing him i just didn't think we didn't have any work and because you had been on it and you weren't there we didn't want to say yes you should stay or no we should do something different and you know i'm indifferent to it to be honest with you so um dude it's since you're here and we don't know if you'll be here later are you interested in being on that subcommittee or yeah i'd like to continue and i know there's some work that still needs to be done we um never final finalized one piece actually there is some work that needs to be done that needs we approved it it's just getting the mou signed by the chair and getting the um the turf group to um

132sign it so it's on their end right now waiting for them to sign and also they haven't met also i think there's not really something that triggers by this vote it's after we do the study right i don't remember the mou is just for um we just wanted to get that signed and done so with the new committee that they don't say okay what's going on what not that i personally that was my goal to get that done before we reorganized but that didn't happen because um the group the hamilton went on turf hasn't been able to meet to sign it okay and then send it back we had there was a couple of errors that we changed minor errors and so right now it's in their hands to sign and then once i get

133that back from them then it will go to you michelle is assigned and then it's all set for the mou okay and for those of you who don't know what mou is um olson i'm like uh music thank you awesome i'm like ah yeah okay so um why don't since there's these minor changes why don't you bring it back and we'll have that be our reaffirmation vote our annual reaffirmation vote uh they're going to sign it it doesn't need to have a reaffirmation we our last vote was to have those changes we said we approved it with those minor changes no that's you know you know how in the mou it says that annually the school committee will vote to whatever uphold this yep to refer their support for the agreement like when without those

134come back we could just have that be our vote and next year the next group can reinform it again for however long it takes to raise enough money to build a turf field is that okay how so but i guess stacy how long do you think that's gonna take sorry this is taking this is way off topic i'm sorry this is why don't why don't we see if we can get it done by the next meeting and then we'll is that okay you and i can talk about it later okay yep all right um policy is going to try and meet and negotiations probably doesn't have anything to talk about unless the guidelines come out yeah i can share that as part of my conversation with john today we we discussed then that we will

135need some negotiation sessions as these guidelines come out um he was thinking about putting a formal proposal in but we she i shared with them that that the committee was anticipating having these negotiations and that there were dates on the calendar and we would just kind of watch it so that when we actually get the guidance we can get together and talk through these these pieces is that going to inform the plan the dese plans or are the dse plans going to mold that so my question is does our agreement need to kind of happen before or at the same time or does it not really start until after yeah and i think that there's a couple of things going on there so you know it it's the nea and the the state are continuing

136to talk right because you know the more that we can get the state plan to have uh components that are going to feel um like the nea and teachers organizations can support the better off we are so that's that's certainly a piece of that um we again have teachers helping us to build out this plan right so that this is something that that that teachers are going to help us put together and i'm hoping a lot of the things that will be of concern um to our teaching staff and our our support staff will come out as as part of that thinking so that when we put a plan together we can say this was collectively built um and then there there will be specific issues that we're going to need to talk through and

137make sure that we're all clear and what we're committing to right and what makes sense and i think that that clarity negotiation will be important um we want our our students to feel safe and we want our teachers to feel safe when they come back and if we can understand what the challenges are and work together to come up with solutions i think that that's going to make some sense um and you know hopefully we won't get to a place where we're we've got some real critical things that we can't get beyond i'm i'm hopeful um that we will be able to work together and and solve them all right i don't know i'm thinking probably not on the 15th but maybe we can just the 15th probably not i mean i that i guess

138that would be a question i have from the negotiations committee my my sense is that we are not going to have enough actionable data to actually start those negotiations yeah we should yeah um maybe negotiations should meet pick a chair and then that person can tell john we'll meet with him on the 22nd but we'll go ahead and just let him know um michelle do you have his number you can okay yeah yeah if you give it to me i'll call him tell him okay so we have um sent agenda which is left we have several warrants and we have a couple of minutes michelle before we move on to so just to be clear since stacy's here the rest of the subcommittees will determine those at the retreat is that right okay unless we

139should do it in the next meeting because if we're going to talk about the mlu then that has to be for that subcommittee has to be formed i mean there's no how i mean if we're going to redo the vote and you want to ha and the subcommittee hasn't even been formed the retreat is scheduled for the 10th and the next board meeting is the 29th 29th 29th with that does that help in terms of sequence stacy to do it at the retreat and then bring the moa does that not work okay i think we should um do this at our next meeting is trying to do that unfortunately i'm not able to make the retreat i have a really hectic august travel schedule and um i can't commit to meetings in august just i'm

140because with the whole coven everything got pushed off in august and so i am gone every single week and i'm home for maybe one day um so i think that's um and plus just i mean i don't know what's going to be discussed in the retreat i just think we should have that working group we we don't wanna we don't know exactly what's gonna be discussed at the retreat either stacy i'm just like it's evolving and but one of the things was just thinking about like what what sorts of reports should we be getting when and who should be working on different things is kind of the general theme but yeah so i don't care do people want to form the working group next week i really don't care well why don't we just move

141ahead and form it at the next meeting on the 20th and then if we decide that that work plan doesn't work for us then we'll just reform that's fine so agenda 29. okay all right and is budget the only sort of defined group that we're certain that we're going to need is that the only one we haven't done well that one is called finance and turf um because of efficiencies of people meeting so that's one we know okay we need to finance working group we know that that isn't um but we should define what that is a little bit i see i say where you're headed all right um all right so i would move on to the consent agenda now if people are good with that i'm gonna personally admit i did i'm not

142sure i read the fifth i know i read the first but um does anybody want to pull any of these items i'd like to pull the july 1st july 1st okay anything else all right so since the consent agenda dana if you can make a motion that no discussion will be made or whatever it is okay i move that the hamilton regional school committee approved the consent agenda with the exception of the pulled july first minutes as written great fine um do we have a second to that second great we're gonna call michelle horrigan on that one it was close though all right so there's no discussion because the consent agenda we'll go roll call vote dana yes michelle bailey yes um michelle horgan yes jason yes anna i'm gonna say yes but like we

143had last week i technically was not part of the committee on the may 5th minutes so over there so are you so yes or abstain go for it well that's my only question is if i abstain now that we don't have is peter still here do we still yep easier okay in that case i would feel more comfortable abstaining because i technically did not attend the may 5th meeting and peter yes super okay so that passes um stacy what did you want to say about the first i just want to pull it out because i want to abstain from that vote because i wasn't there for that oh okay no problem um now i'm looking at i am not sure i did read them there i did read it and there were some things i

144had questions on and i wasn't there so i'm like some of it didn't make sense to me so i thought dana you read them right i did i'm gonna trust you in that okay um does anybody want to hold these to the next meeting i read them i thought they seemed fine do you want to make a motion to approve them i move that the hamilton regional school committee approves the july 1st 2020 minutes second second by anna anybody want to discuss anything um okay uh dana yes michelle bailey yes michelle horrigan yes stacy epstein anna yes on those theater yes great okay um all right so we are closing in on the end we have um if there's just anything that people will at the next meeting so far i have um things that

145were on my best list and setting up um finance 12 working group and i i will reach out i've already reached out to miss presser yep okay email and phone to see if she's when she's available to have that vote on the policy of hearing to desi covet uh reopening guidelines as well as the zoom chat feature for school committee meetings super i have go i have one thing and i don't know if you discussed it last meeting but i think the communication to um our community has gone way down and in the last last year or that basically last several years and i'm not sure if last maybe you discussed how um about communication at all no but i think we never have some kind of plan because it it really was not the

146um communication in the last i mean it's gone down for the last several years probably three four years and i mean last year we didn't get any communication from the superintendent and then the year before that it was hardly at all and i know six yes i'm on my seventh year six years seven years ago that um we had asked the superintendent at that time make sure that you know there's we had a communications working group and that working group discus you know put out a newsletter on everything two years ago the chair decided that it wasn't needed and so we have no communication from the school committee or the superintendent so i just think we need to get that back especially with what's going on we've got a lot going on and i just

147think that the community needs to hear in some way have some we need a plan that's definitely part of the retreat and i know mary beth mentioned to me something about working on some sort of a regular i just like mary beth actually talked about making it just a newsletter again and then um i know that in the training we did with dorothy i know i've mentioned it specifically but i feel like we did kind of talk about whether or not we wanted a communications group again and made reference to that so i think during the training i feel like i felt like stacey to answer your question i felt like we talked a lot about the need to improve communication and it's felt to me like we were tabling that to the retreat to

148kind of figure out what format that might take and how it would look so i bet i i will affirm i agree with you 100 i think right now the communication is um inconsistent and to be honest i feel like you know is sort of ad hoc in a way that there's nothing official coming out on behalf of the entire school committee except under rare circumstances i know michelle and i individually in our individual capacities and i think all of us have lots of conversations with people but it doesn't feel normalized to me that feels ad hoc and i think we would be improved to um to standardize something so even what we just talked about like stuff that should be feeding into the news feed on the website isn't so it's either not automated

149or someone's not doing it so we just need to figure that out yeah no we agree with you stacy 100 so i would echo those comments that i think that that is an area for growth and and improvement in the district um we do have a um newsletter template that we'll be using it's an organization called some more that will help us push out district newsletters it's a pretty easy um format to use that allows you to incorporate incorporate video different types of media um so we we've got a structure to do it but communication is bigger than that and i i would agree that that's an important conversation certainly after the uh went on vote on saturday i will push out a district communication with what we know right now um and i i

150would appreciate the opportunity at the retreat to take a deeper dive into this topic okay that would be great thank you i just think it's i mean during this time we really need the communication more than ever and s'more is a great newsletter i use that actually for my communication with work so yeah all right okay so it sounds good does anybody want to go we'll we'll we'll still continue to see the plan for opening timelines each meeting right we're gonna each meeting that's on there right yep okay excellent that's all i have okay i move that we adjourn at 8 12. sometimes the secretary doesn't make a motion because we are ready to go well actually can i ask you a question before we do that at one point i thought you said you

151wanted me to second everything dana makes the motion and i second it so from a hollow sake or well for efficiency sake in general we should try and have dana this is just my idea to have dana say them and anna approve them and then especially right now because it's weird and awkward or not you know it's just that way mahalo just knows it's always dana it's always anna copy paste boom but unless i disagree and i refuse to second which or it looks really fast and then it's stacy does anybody and also hard habits are um you know hard to kick so that's not like second oh wait it's not me anymore no that's why i was asking that's why i was asking because i was like wait am i not supposed to do

152that then i won't do that i'll just sit quietly yeah i didn't know we were doing how to be a certain person second because we've never done that before that's something new let's let's try really quick does anybody want to second this raise your hand second great and a second ain't great let's not discuss it in my vote dana yes uh me yes um michelle horgan yes jason yeah anna yes yes yes fantastic see everybody in three weeks maybe see some of you on saturday maybe see some of you at graduation