MGRSD School Committee 2/11/2021

001awesome all right uh great i'm gonna go ahead and make myself invisible have a good meeting everybody thank you um all right when you see me looking up and off to the right that's because brian has hooked up this giant tv as a second screen nice it makes such a big difference yeah but i'm gonna look like i'm not looking at anyone because i'm reading stuff off the screen so yeah that's okay hi carrie okay hello your background looks very dark yeah i don't know why that is the lighting is really weird hi julia hi it looks like you have a virtual background on christina i don't that's that's really my bed too i don't know what's going on the rim of your chair is kind of this fluorescent maybe you've already discussed it i

002would just like someone to use a cat filter this evening [Laughter] i have plenty of cats but i don't have a cat filter no neither that poor guy no i think he's embraced it it seems like he has what's the story on how it happened like does anybody know like did somebody joe has it there we go oh oh there you go but but did he didn't do it he didn't do it to himself did he yes he did oh okay i think he was using his assistant's comp his secretary's computer and somehow they didn't know how to take it off i think he was trying to give himself a little touch-up and he clicked the wrong button really yeah maybe that's why i'm always so red and everyone else looks all right we're waiting

003for curtis and stephen and then we can get started i see jose hi jose hi everyone sorry hey jose hi charlie well harley i don't get to see you nearly as often as i used to i know i know we missed the the school council crew but i'm i'm glad to be able to catch up now have you guys here can't wait this is steve i'm here i'll be eventually transitioning from a uh phone to a ipad great thank you i was guessing that was you hi curtis hello all right we have everyone we'll just wait well it's six o'clock should we start jake you're not waiting for any are you waiting for anybody else um let me see we should have another person or two maybe joining us later as we work through the

004agenda but i think we're okay okay okay great i would like to call the mount greylock regional school district school committee to order it is thursday february 11th 2021 it is 6 p.m we are meeting remotely via zoom per governor baker's order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law mglc 30a section 20 the public will not be allowed to physically access this school committee meeting we are being broadcast live on willingnet tv channel 1302 in williamstown and the recording of this video will be posted on the mount greylock regional school district youtube page within 24 hours of the meeting at mount gridlock regional school district our mission is to create a community of learners working together in a safe and challenging learning environment that encourages restorative based processes respect inclusive diversity courtesy integrity and

005a responsibility through high expectations and cooperation resulting in lifelong learning and personal growth next up on our agenda is public comment we currently have five people on our sign-in sheet four of which are um written emails that we are going to read and the last um public comment is from andrew skinner so we will start by reading an email from greylock multicultural student union this was received january 22nd 2021. two principals schutz and superintendent mcfanless we the students of the mount greylock multicultural student union were outraged by the report of an incident of racism yesterday against one of our peers we are aware that the investigation is ongoing but we as a group of non-white students and white allies want to make clear that we condemn any acts of racial violence in our community and

006urge you to take action to prevent an incident like this from happening again when issues of racism come to light people are often tempted to talk about how out of character or unlike their community the incident is but the gmsu urges against this mindset however mount greylock is not immune we as a community are not exempt from the national conversation surrounding race and racism we the members of the gmsu wish to meet with teachers to discuss what they can do to support their non-white students we would like to help them foster a culture of inclusion and provide insight for them on how to best respond to acts of blatant racism we were relieved to hear at today's assembly that mount greylock will be providing and requiring specific staff training for zoom bombing events such as

007the one that occurred today as recent recipients of an of a se fund grant we are excited to bring in speakers to not only educate us as a club but to educate the entire student body and staff on issues of diversity and inclusion we are also planning to hold a number of peer-to-peer discussion sessions with our classmates about instances of racism that we have personally experienced or been party to at mount greylock we hope to kick off the speaker series and discussions with staff and students in the coming weeks we have appreciated your willingness to respond to the current concerns of the gmsu and we look forward to working with you further rachel payne rachel payne okay our next comment julia do you want to have us share the burden of reading those out loud

008that would really be fantastic um would you like to read the next comment sure sure it should be zero three two in the packet uh is the one from carrie kerrywara yes great um so this uh email was a written comment was received monday january 25th 2021 from kerrywara and i apologize if i'm mispronouncing that name dear dr mccandless administration and school committee of mgrhs and williamstown select board members i was dismayed disheartened and angry to learn about the online racist assault on a student of color during a class last week i've also heard that the administration is responding quickly and supportively to the student of color who was targeted and clearly condemning the act to our community i am grateful and urge you all to continue our common commitment to anti-racism i raised a

009daughter of color in williamstown and she graduated from mgrhs in 2013. some of her classmates are anti-racist activists today i wish their mgrhs education had been the catalyst for their empowered civic engagement to combat systemic racism but all of them attribute their college experiences for their understanding and motivation it is sad that it took that long especially knowing how capable our young people really are in high school i remember myself as a first year college student angered to realize what i had never been taught in secondary school about our world why didn't we learn about this in high school was my furious question now mgrhs has the multicultural student union a powerful resource for the whole school volunteering to speak directly with teachers to help them foster a culture of inclusion and provide insight for

010them on how to best respond to acts of blatant racism they also intend to use a c see grant to bring speakers to educate the entire student body and staff on issues of diversity and inclusion i urge everyone to whom this email is addressed to be faithful to our towns not in our county pledge to be faithful to our students to be faithful to our bipock families and follow the leadership of these young people as public servants it is imperative that you give full-throated public condemnation of racist acts and stand in solidarity within a growing multi-age anti-racism coalition finally i request that the school committee read my letter aloud in the public comments part of your meeting tonight thank you sincerely yours kerry warra thank you for reading that julia i can read the next

011one unless somebody else would like to volunteer um this is from hugh gilderson and arlene kirsch um it was received monday january 25th dear members of the mount graylock regional high school school committee with the acknowledgment that there is an ongoing investigation as to what happened with the zoom bombing a few days ago we as white allies want to state our support for the focus of mount greylock multicultural student union preventing zoom bombings generally and any acts of racism specifically is vital to the overall safety of the school community as well as our community at large not only are racist acts traumatic for the targeted person and their family they can also harm student witnesses zoom bombing training is a step but as the multicultural student union suggests a culture of inclusion which also provides

012for appropriate responses to racist acts is key we would add that a curriculum of inclusion is essential to foster a true culture of inclusion allow us to add our voices and urge the district hire at least one full-time staff member with expertise in dei and belonging work for k-12 education mgrhs students and teachers should have readily available support to help them confront the scourge of racism inclusive curricula which offer opportunities to discuss issues around race in which acknowledge and celebrate difference will help the district both prevent racism and foster inclusion further we ask that you consider committing the district to and investing in restorative practices in our district as you go forward to address the harm done finally we request that the school committee read our letter aloud in the public comments part of your

013meeting thank you respectfully hugh gilderson arlene kirsch of williamstown the next comment is from mollypoke and peter lowe julia did you want to read this one happy too or happy to have someone else either way curtis would you like to read it thank you all right there we go uh dear members of the school committee we submit the letter below for oh this is i'm sorry from uh molly polk we submit the letter below for public comment at your january 28 uh 2021 school committee meeting it was with pain and outrage that we read the report from principal schutz last week regarding the racist act that occurred in an online class at mount greylock we wish to thank the school administration publicly for swiftly sharing a report about the incident with an unequivocal censure of

014the racism that was perpetrated against a member of our community we are writing now in support of the students in the multicultural student union who with great courage and insight have asked to meet with teachers to discuss ways to promote a more inclusive culture at mount greylock and to have called for staff training it has been encouraging to hear from dr mccandless mr schutz and members of the school council and others over the last months about the district's commitment to diversity equity inclusion and belonging we hope that we can redouble our efforts together with all hands in students teachers administrators and families to live the nioc pledge adopted by the town of williamstown and to determine how specifically we can quote reassess and refocus our multi-pronged approach to change mindsets and behavior around equity and

015confront systemic oppression and racism unquote as set forth by the school council in the school improvement plan as part of this work we write to urge you to continue listening to student voices particularly students of color as a way of seeking to understand their experience ideas and needs we also ask that you consider hiring at least one full-time staff member in the district who has extensive training in dei and belonging work in the k-12 education sector our students and teachers need support and opportunities for dialogue that are embedded in their school days and that are continually happening throughout the year in order to be able to confront and dismantle systemic oppression and racism just as we have staff dedicated to literacy we must have staff dedicated to racial literacy staff with expertise in deib can

016help link what students and teachers are learning and teaching across content areas to discussions about race so that students and teachers have the opportunities to practice learning and speaking language that acknowledges and celebrates difference to develop healthy racial identities to confront and combat racism and oppression and to nurture empathy so that there is no longer such a large vacuum into which someone can insert themselves and knowingly seek to harm someone through racial violence we believe that we must with great urgency do this work as a community acting in ways that will lift up and center the lives voices and perspectives of the most vulnerable and underrepresented students and families among us and we believe that this work will surely be of value to everyone thank you for your time and dedication to the students families

017and teachers in the mgrsd sincerely molly polk and peter lowe williamstown thank you for reading that curtis next up for public comment we have andrew skinner from williamstown speaking about the agenda topic the cannabis bylaw hello good evening um nice to see so many familiar friendly faces i guess since uh we're taking volunteers to read statements i'll read mine um just by way of quick introduction i'm a parent of four children in town uh one of them just graduated from mount greylock i have a sophomore at greylock and uh two more little ones coming up from west i struggled to do the math but i think there are classes of 2027 and 2035. um and also my wife and i both went to mount greylock and it is the the main reason we moved back

018here when it became possible to send our kids to mount greylock uh so i'm attending tonight because of the marijuana cultivation bylaws and how they may possibly affect mount greylock i've been involved in this issue for a couple years now from when the mass flora proposal coming out of colorado first loomed large over some friends of mine living on blair road bob and carolyn baer carolyn being the carolyn bear who by the way previously served on this very committee in the 1980s while mass flora ultimately withdrew their application the possibility of future large-scale marijuana cultivations remains for blair road and now it seems also the high school two of the main issues are the half-mile plus range of an early fall dead skunk stench and the intense security posture of these large-scale facilities the learning

019curve has been steep so i have submitted to you some of my notes on the issue in hopes you will find them helpful i've tried to keep them as objective and fact-based as possible but if anyone sees something that needs correcting i hope you will please reach out so mainly i want to call your attention to the school map in that document that i borrowed from the planning boards uh faq promoting their proposed bylaw the planning boards map shows a cluster of example grow sites around the school but i have further annotated it with what i consider more likely scenarios and their position relative to school amenities like the athletic trails and fields the state recently adopted a new regulation that limits a municipality's marijuana setback from a school to no further than 500 feet

020from the school's main entrance in that context i'm hoping you can work with the planning board to find the appropriate allowable grow size as well as some approach to reduce the proliferation risk of a cannabis valley like cluster of groves surrounding mount greylock thank you thank you very much okay we do not have any other public comments so we will move on to our next agenda item which is approval of minutes do i have a motion to approve the january 14th 2021 minutes moves do i have a second second uh michelle seconds any discussion carrie um yeah i just wanted to make a clarification on page [Music] four okay the last page under finance subcommittee report it says motion to approve the cost of putting rev coils in place by and then it says motion

021and seconded individuals not discussed in meeting um this was motioned and seconded in the finance subcommittee so i think it should indicate that that's why it came to the table without needing a motion in a second okay thank you and i could say even finance subcommittee that day or that afternoon okay thank you anything else okay all in favor owen i connery i constantine i elephant eye green eye johnson eye thank you that motion passes do i have a motion to approve the january 16 2021 masc workshop minutes so i moved was that you julia i think julia moves do i have a second jose's second um any discussion all in favor oh and i connery i constantine eye dolphin by an eye green eye johnson eye miller eye okay thank you that motion passes

022do i have a motion to approve the january 28 2021 minutes so moved julia moves curtis seconds any discussion all in favor sorry oh no no problem super simple thing but i know um some i just and maybe it doesn't matter because it would be in the video but um in section four uh to go into executive session having just gone to charting the course i know that you have to have an um a roll call vote and i don't know if the minutes should reflect that okay um they probably should and we can definitely do that yeah the minute should absolutely reflect when there's a role called i think it needs to say like bo and i did every you know it can't just say roll call vote it has to say each name

023with what they said okay okay thank you julia um all in favor oh and i connery i constantine eye elephant eye green eye johnson miller hi great thank you that motion passes moving on to our next agenda item we have our student update from charlie mcweeney from the mount greylock regional school council good evening everyone uh thanks so much for having me i'm i'm excited to be here as always i want to start by noting that uh for many students today was our our first day back in person school um which we were incredibly excited for so i want to thank all the administrators and teachers and custodial staff who made that safe return to in-person learning happen um i know this is my first day back since before thanksgiving break um so it's certainly

024been a while and i think we were all really appreciative of the chance to get back in that in-person learning environment um with the engagement and the energy that brings um in class discussions um even just the ability to you know have conversations with friends um during lunch i think makes a big difference um so we're we're really thankful for that and we're looking forward to hopefully um you know as long as things go well uh continuing that uh in the future um i want to address first off um tonight that the student council has spent the vast majority of her time over the past uh couple of weeks uh uh on the racist zoom bombing that happened uh last month um i'm going to quickly read a statement that the council released um the

025day that happened and then i can get more into our response since then um so the statement reads the mount girlock student council condemns in the strongest terms the racist actions directed at a mount greylock student during school today it is our mission to meet this institute incident with purposeful discussion and action as we work to realize our role as a council in establishing an inclusive and respectful school as we seek to value diversity we are committed to creating a more equitable community in which every student has access to a safe and productive learning environment no student deserves to face this harassment and tonight our thoughts are focused on expressing our solidarity with the student who faced this attack um so since that that took place um we've we've met multiple times to look at

026first of all our council's past actions um in in working towards a more uh acura dual and inclusive school community and identifying ways we can increase uh those are our role in that um we had a joint meeting with the gorilla multi multicultural student union uh just earlier this week um which was super productive and we're really looking forward to supporting them um and collaborating with them in any way we can um and and lifting up the voices um especially of the students of color uh both on the council and in the wider student community um we we talked uh kind of about the the school's debrief after the event um and a lot of students really appreciated the assembly we had um but also expressed a desire to have some more uh personal classroom

027discussions um both to kind of address this incident specifically um but also kind of you know the the larger issues of racism um in in the school and steps we can take to to create more equitable community um i think you know students students appreciated the assembly but didn't quite feel like it gave enough of an opportunity um to to respond and to speak with their peers about these issues um and i know lots of us had you know maybe one teacher who who brought this up during classes um but that was about it and plenty of us did not do not have a single teacher um who kind of took time during their class to address those issues and i know as the gmsu uh statement read um we are working with them to

028kind of create more of those opportunities both within class and in dialogue groups outside the class but as as part of her efforts to kind of quickly address that we've created a subcommittee that is reaching out to department heads um to the administration and to the school council who's also been doing a lot of work on diversity equity and inclusion um to a figure out ways we can kind of get those conversations uh into the classroom and then b uh kind of more broadly work these issues into the curriculum um to make sure they're they're really ingrained and that these are uh topics students are learning about and addressing and talking about um in every class because we we frankly see a lot of valuable opportunities um to look at these issues in in history

029classes and in english classes um and even in in science classes um and the the role each one of those teachers with the support of the school can can play in uh shaping uh better citizens of tomorrow better leaders of tomorrow uh and and students who are gonna really value diversity equity inclusion and and take the actions they need uh to make sure those are values that are expressed within our school and within our wider community um and then the the last thing i want to talk about is that earlier last week after our discussion with superintendent mccandless um we had our first early release and snow day of the year uh which lots of students were incredibly excited for um so we wanted to take the chance to thank superintendent mccann less all the

030teachers and administrators that made that happen uh if anyone saw on the mount relic instagram you could check out lots of photos uh of how students spent their days outside in the snail um and we all agreed it was just kind of a really great opportunity to reset um take a break from from the screens and return to school uh ready to to learn better than before um so that's all i have for tonight i'm happy to take any questions anyone might have thank you charlie if not that is perfect too thank you so much charlie perfect thank you all okay next up on the agenda is the athletic director update and i turn it over to lindsey von holtz good evening everyone um thanks for allowing me to to speak again it's that time

031of the year that we're finishing one season and getting ready for another so just wanting to touch base with the school committee as we go forward on behalf of all the students that have participated in an athletic season so far i want to thank the committee for the support and thank the principal and superintendent for working with me as we make adjustments and changes um each week and and things that that need to happen um but it has definitely definitely been appreciated by the student body um i'm continuously getting messages from parents or students just saying hey thanks for making this happen thanks for to to me to the school committee for allowing this to happen as the release they are experiencing after school is incredibly beneficial to them both on the social aspect and

032just being able to to exercise and and get away from the screens for a little bit as charlie just mentioned um it has been extremely important so thank you for everything so far and i'll just i am hoping to share hopefully it works just a brief summary of what has happened so far as i know there are some committee members that heard me speak briefly about it last time but just as a summary especially because our fall season affects what's coming next uh but in september we were able to have two competitive seasons cross country and golf uh but the other four traditional seasons that happen in the fall we were lucky enough to be able to run a practice program a couple days a week for some football was three weeks unified basketball was

033six um soccer and volleyball for a little bit longer but those programs were practice only we didn't have any school sponsored competition at mount greylock or in berkshire county um for those events we were able to do that for cross-country and golf and i share that because it's the four on the right that we're hoping to be able to start in the coming weeks we are currently um in in the midst of a nordic ski season in a basketball season and they have both gone incredibly incredibly well it's been a joy to be able to host these and travel to some of these but we hosted a nordic ski race two weeks ago when we host another one this saturday it's just amazing to be able to watch the kids ski around and we are

034wakona and hoozick are joining us on the on the nordic ski side of things so we've had three races so far and six were originally scheduled on the basketball side of things uh while we started practices on time we had some pauses and changes as things happened um to make sure that we were being accountable to everything going on they were able to start contests uh the first week of february so each team has had about five contests i'll get more into that specifics in a little bit and i have 12 scheduled so it's 109 students this season which is smaller but given two programs that's still a pretty impressive amount that have been participating so far and the reason i talk about winter is that's kind of the first adjustment that the county has

035made originally the winter season the county had asked to end on march 5th we have two adjustments to that that have happened this week we would like the nordic ski season to go one additional day to march 6th just in case and hopeful that we still have snow on the ground on that saturday we've been running saturday races and ending on a friday when they couldn't possibly race on snow the next day seemed kind of silly so we are as a county moving that to march 6 to get that seventh ski race in for our skiers this year on the basketball side of things there's been some big developments this week and you've probably read about some of them in the paper this week as other school committees have now approved winter programs so there

036were five schools that started when we did or close to when we did uh with competitions but there's likely going to be three or four more that join the group um in the coming weeks and so berkshire county has adjusted the winter basketball season to end on march 19th instead of the original uh march 5th and going into a little bit more specifics on what that does um at mount greylock i am actually planning to have the season end a week prior to that so we at mount greylock won't go all the way to the 19th um it's still going to be a week later than we originally thought which will allow the teams to compete against a couple more schools that to get the opportunity to do that it will add four more contests

037to the schedule one of the big ones are jv girls right now there are only two other schools that have jv girls programs so by extending that additional week it'll allow our jv girls the opportunity to compete against three or four more schools but they haven't been able to instead they have to miss those games each time um the season did start a little bit late so it just provides a little bit more opportunity however ending it a week prior to not only the rest of the county a week prior to the county and allows the mount greylock students to transition into that fall two season a little bit earlier and it also allows the four berkshire county schools that have not been participating to participate to compete against each other for that week and

038also kind of stepping out gives them more contest opportunities um so again mount greylock i am planning to end our basketball season on the 13th um instead of the original fifth and instead of the 19th that four of the schools in the county will be doing um so that would lead us to this as our season currently moving forward so ending winter either on the 6th of the 13th the fall would then start that next monday and indoor sports and outdoor sports would have a slightly different schedule based on the weather our indoor sports could start pretty regularly practicing our outdoor sports uh would be utilizing some off-site synthetic turf to get a few practices in they'd also have a couple practices in the gym hopefully competing towards the end of march on a local

039off-site facility and then maybe by the second week of april is the normal time that we get on our fields here at mount greylock so by that point transitioning to the fields here at mount greylock for the last three weeks or so of the season to have contests during that you will notice that the spring in the fall two and the spring overlap by a week the point of that was purely for conditioning to allow the spring athletes we have many spring athletes that don't participate in any other sport that is their season and so we wanted that week to help the conditioning and help reduce any possible injuries that might occur if they're trying to go too fast and get into games too fast so starting that a week earlier for those that are

040not participating in a fall to sport to just get some conditioning in and then the next week everybody starting to end on june 30. so that is the the current plan um yeah i guess that's it if you have any questions let me know thank you lindsay looking to see if anybody out there has any questions for you i'm not jose do you have a question no just just a uh a brief comment i just want to thank lindsay for all your efforts and for the coaches and staff that help support our kids because i i speak as a parent of kids who who need to move and enjoy moving how important i know how important sports can be for kids and their mental health and their their well-being so thank you for all the

041work that you do for for our kids thank you and i and i um also thank the coaches as you just said because this season is they're coaching very differently than they ever have in the past with all the modifications and regulations and they're doing a fantastic job with it so i i know they're spending extra hours and time and so i'll extend what you just said on to the coaches there as well please do barry so i wanted to expand just a little bit on that comment to um note the amount of collaboration that's going on through the county i can tell just from the way you're talking about planning the seasons and working with the other schools who are coming in that it's been beyond challenging but also an opportunity to really um

042engage with everyone and work out what's best for you know each of the schools and um so thanks for that extra um effort to uh to work with with our schools throughout the county which i know you do every season but this is just especially this not every season while we are hybrid officially the school committee does not have to to vote on a season however if we were ever to go back to remote it would need school committee approval so if it's something to consider that an approval now moving forward that would be appreciated if not if we go remote then we will have to go to a school committee meeting to get approval to continue going forward jose yeah just just to confirm lizzie um i think it sounds like you'd prefer us

043to to have a vote now just to make it easier so that if we do go remote you're you're ready to go and you and this season can continue is that is that what you'd prefer us to do that would be my preference because otherwise we have to scramble and and get everyone together and maybe stop in the middle of a week or something like that to make sure everybody could be together and to um also have respect for your time as well so you're not on my whim going hey i need to meet quick to to have this i would appreciate it if it's possible carrie so i know that we have voted to support um continuing with athletics while we've been remote in the past and i certainly have supported it but are

044there scenarios that we can imagine where we wouldn't want to be supporting continued athletics um i just worry about giving a pre-approval since we don't know what the conditions will be understood and i will admit that uh the super if mr mccandless is okay with me saying uh the superintendent and i worked together a few times already this season where we paused basketball for a little bit just because of everything going on so that is something that i still plan to do if it is not safe to continue i am not going to continue and the superintendent and the principal are obviously going to be involved in that decision as well but i i see your point but i think um mr mc jake and i have been constantly communicating to make sure those changes

045did occur yeah and and carrie you actually anticipated you asked the question that i wanted to give the answer to before it was asked which is um this is still an event by event week by week decision based on what you know local data is telling us what lanesboro williamstown data is telling us and then what our own student body and their families the data directly connected to them is telling us so this this i guess is a blanket approval but it's a blanket approval with a lot of um daily human oversight between uh or among the the school administration the central administration and uh in ms von holtz and would we be approving just fall two or fall to end spring whatever is easier but i guess at this point point in time i'm

046asking for fall two because that is the next season okay julia did you have a question i i don't know if it's a question or maybe just a thought to consider um i couldn't i first of all i want to add on um my gratitude for lindsay and the coaches um for making this work i and i agree with jose's point that we all know children who need to move um for their physical and mental health and so i'm incredibly supportive of finding all the ways to have students moving their bodies and working with each other and the socialization of the sports is obviously so important as well one of my concerns is that we need our communities to follow all the covid rules all the coveted you know cautions in order to ensure that

047we keep communities spread down and that we are um so that we can be in school um i don't i believe and actually fully trust um dr mccandless and lindsey and athletic charger van holtz to do that to to run these programs i just want to know if there's a way we can communicate to the community that this is still a safe set of activities lest others say the school doesn't isn't worrying about their you know that isn't following all the right protocols that's that's i guess the kind of i don't want to have a mixed message coming from the school about the importance of following all the copic protocols long way to say that thank you thank you julia so i i would be happy to make a motion to um approve pre-approve fall

048to sports in the event that we should go remote [Music] with the understanding that the athletic director and the superintendent will use their discretion to um maintain safety and um you know during during covert time this is steve i'll second that okay i have a motion from cherry seconded by steve any further discussion oh i guess i would just leave again go ahead i know i'll just say that in some sense this is what we did at the start of the year where we were remote but had approved for the sports to be happening right i think we are being consistent and i guess i would um just also follow up on julia's uh comment that you know i assume that part of the protocol now is sending out information about coveted safety to all

049of our athletes and families and coaches and you know if you want to take a moment to assure us that you're still doing that um that might i think the athletes and parents on the call are saying a little bit too much so as they are getting messages from me all of the time even meetings with me prior to first contests um i'm literally standing on the basketball point court and pointing at the sanitizer machine when they come on and off so yes there that message is getting out thank you okay so we have um a motion from carrie seconded by steve any further discussion hearing none all in favor oh and i connery i constantine i opened by an eye green eye johnson okay thank you that motion passes thank you okay next up

050on the agenda is principal updates and i think i'm turning this over to jake schutz i still have the national honor society background up yeah i didn't i didn't know if i was up first among the principles here so um good evening everybody i have a couple points to touch on tonight five points first is about current academics second is going to be about future academics and then i'm going to mention a couple points on the pool testing but dr mccandless will follow up with more details then i'm going to mention the zoom bomb incident which dr mccandless will also follow up on and then last but not least i'm going to turn it over to mr louie's engineering course for a presentation so first current academic so we just started our second semester we

051welcome back our students for um we had one day with our cohort a and one day so far with our cohort b so far so good it was great to have people back in the building even though we had some snow days in between so we did see a an improvement between quarter one and quarter three as far as academic success and we hope that continues into quarter three are tiered interventions that i've touched upon before based on need they remain in effect for both academic and social emotional support that's something we're constantly evaluating and uh and reassessing um our january faculty family and student survey was closed in the 25th and we've just finished our initial analysis of that data it highlighted some areas across the board that should be sustained such as a

052couple of those high points are pacing of the day time students spend with staff and content covered in the school day a complimentary data point i'd like to men also mention is that currently our average is 84 of our students have a 90 or higher attendance rate so that's that's that's pretty good um there were a couple areas to address to address that surround the concepts of homework and building community in the classrooms so those are just a couple of the highlights we plan on sending out this the survey results in our analysis with a couple action items to to families sometime after break which we can compile into easy easily disseminated chunks of data so the the second part is going to flow right into future academics so we're our anticipated program of study

053for next year is being developed departments provided their their input and right now administration and guidance are finalizing the program of studies there are three three parts or three three things i'd like to highlight in there the first is our personal finance or personal financial literacy requirement and so that is going to be a requirement moving forward with the class of 24 so those are our current freshmen there are likely to be multiple avenues to achieve this requirement we currently have an elective set up but also courses like economics math as business will be will be courses that meet this competency the freshman class have already gone through and met the standard um and so so this is a it's a new initiative starting this year and basically how we do it is going to

054change a little bit uh let's see the third highlight is um we have a quarter long we're going to have a quarter long social emotional wellness class that'll be organic to the 9th grade wellness program so that that is going to be a new it's not an additional requirement but it's not an additional graduation requirement because the wellness cap will remain the same there's just going to be a designator with within that wellness requirement that is a social emotional uh class and then third is earth science will now replace our environmental science that being said chemistry is going to remain in in the junior year and that earth science will for the most part be offered senior year now to touch on pool testing so today we completed testing for the staff we're prepared to

055make it available to all students after february break i'd like to thank our nurse nicole russell and our assistant principal collin shebar who who helped plan and execute a seamless process based off today's trial i'm confident that we're going to be able to effectively batch or pool test our students with minimal impact to student learning time my fourth point just to touch upon the zoom bomb incident i'm impressed but i'm not surprised by the response in general from our our community specifically our students our student groups and our student leadership in reaction to the zoom bomb to include the student council the gmsu and a host of various individual students i'd like to mention a few approaches that are in the works that address some of our anti-racist initiatives the first i'm excited to announce

056um the the next two series of freelock talks the first is a series with um on food sustainability and the second is a series from the abc alumni speaker um uh abc alumni speakers that's supported by the c fund and they've already started meeting with some of our groups the rev and the gmsu thirdly or secondly the technology support and training that i believe charlie mentioned for our staff that continues it's being bolstered it's being um it's being offered multiple you know more times and it's scheduled and funded and this is in order to have our staff more readily um um more ready to respond quickly to a not only in purses in person incident but a digital incident an incident that happens um while on zoom or well on or while online that's something

057many of us haven't had practice with responding to behavioral issues or issues of racism bias or oppression online so that's something we are we're going to start to practice and also i'm looking forward to discussing the not in our county pledge launched in launched a couple years ago by um the bridge berkshire resources integration for diverse groups groups through education um so basically this campaign is to unify communities through the county to stop hate address bullying build safe and build safe communities so it's something that williamstown has done and i'm looking to meeting with some folks over break and and potentially joining that that pledge um so before i turn it over to i believe will mcdonough is going to take the lead for the solar presentation i'd like to open it up for any

058questions or comments from the uh from the committee jose thanks jake for that that presentation it's uh um and i want to thank you for for the leadership and the response that you uh you had you know to to the incident that unfolded and and to all the work that you do to to help make all of our students you know experience that that sense of belonging um the for the first question and i may have a second let's not clear my mind if if it's a good question but the first one you know do you have a sense you know um in your time at mount greylock both as the assistant principal now is our our principal about whether you know you could use additional resources you know perhaps professional resources as we've heard

059in in public comment that folks in our community would like to see in place um or do are you or do you have a sense that you know with with what the resources that you do have at your disposal both within the district and across the county that that you know what what's your what's your sense well i am not one to turn anything down i am uh you know i i consider myself a jack of all trades and and you know a master of probably yeah probably none so i don't want to say no but i i do think as a community as a as a greater community as a school community i mean even i mean just using our student body in general as a gauge i mean that's why i'm i'm so

060impressed with their response that that gives me hope that yeah we're we're getting better as as a group on our own um using the resources we have at hand you um you know not just in town but but uh throughout the county and um so we i think we do have a handle on it but it needs to be better it could be better um and that's what we're striving for so if you guys are offering something i'm certainly not gonna say i'm not gonna say no um but but i think we're heading we're headed in the right direction um and and um i'm sure that and i'm i'm proud of that and i'm confident that we'll we're going to continue to go in that direction it's um you know i guess how how quickly

061and how far um you know if we do stall out i'll be the first asking for help but but right now i do think we have a wealth of resources around us and um and we do have you know the supported at district level to help harness harness them uh as well as you know our uh at a from a grassroots effort i mean our the efforts from our gmsu and student union and rev and their advisors so i mean we're we're in a decent spot but um we can always we can always use the help and um and uh i'm definitely not going to turn it down there's nothing that answers your question without being around the bush no thanks jake that's great thanks michelle did you have a question yeah well both a

062statement and a question um one i'm wondering if a a position that focuses on dei would be more of a district position that can be utilized between between the three buildings so it could be a more coordinated effort um so that's in my mind what i was thinking when people are asking for resources i can assure you that it is not just mount greylock that needs some work we all need all three schools need work in this area so i i would like to see that if we were going to add resources to that area i'd like to see it be a district level position and two i will say that i was i was incredibly pleased which i've already shared i think with the jakes um about um the response to the incident um

063and i'm open to feedback on this but i can't think of a of a better way that it could have been handled aside from preventing it which i also feel like we're making plans for in the future um and i will say that i i obviously i'm a teacher in a different district and um that people did actually uh mention to me how you know like that's how you should handle it so i think uh kudos to the administration you guys did a great job i i appreciate that um one thought so last a couple meetings ago jake mentioned you know what i what i didn't say outright as far as looking for another fte specifically around a social worker so maybe that's something we can parlay and if the unicorn of a person exists

064out there who's a social worker who may have an expertise in and dei or anti-racist um work that might not you know that would be a good place to capitalize um if that's if that's moving forward jose yeah michelle thank you for for uh for those for that for that uh comment that uh that important point about this being a district-wide certainly a district-wide communities-wide problem that we that we have to address um jake there's uh just just curious about um and i know we can't um you know we don't want to uh i'm sure about a way to rephrase this how well do you think you know the administration has supported the victim and have we learned lessons about how to better support students who might suffer this these these kinds of events i

065think any time anything happens we we always look back and see what could we have done different what could we have done sooner um and so that that does happen we've we've done that um as as an administrative team um and as a student support team um and it's it's hard it's hard to gauge how much support is is enough so um i i'm i'm not sure if i can and and i'm not sure if there is enough support um that that we could give a person and so we we're not uh we're not finished yet with the investigation um we plan well the investigation is finished colin's just finishing up his his report and we plan on providing some sort of press release or release like we did before um sort of closing closing

066the loop um and and outlining some steps moving forward so i mean that i think is a huge part of the process as far as even supporting to supporting the victim um so it's not done yet so like we're still we're still doing it um and and that's and no matter what i think i think it we'd have to find out from from the victim in the victim's family themselves and if they say and if they think it wasn't enough that's we need to listen to them and get the feedback and figure out how to do it better next time hopefully there's not a next time but um you know if there is we need to be prepared to do it better is that something that you you could do for us jake and as

067as our principles to reach out to to the family and get get that feedback and and perhaps report back to us that would be that would be great if you could do that yes sir thank you julia this is maybe more of a process question for you christina this question of a dei resource for the district has been raised in the public comment in this portion of the meeting um i don't know i don't want to go down that discussion if that's if this isn't the appropriate place to be having that discussion um and so i just wanted to kind of first raise that point and say is is now the time we should be having that conversation yes jake i'm gonna let jake answer that question you know if i may i i start

068to get really nervous when we wander too far from posted agenda items i would say i think this is absolutely worthy of an agenda item in an upcoming meeting not only because it has budget implications but but uh i think those of us that are they're trying to do this work in the district have some thoughts on that that we would like to share not only with with the school committee but with the wider community via the school committee but i i don't think tonight is um in totally grateful for the the public comment and i think almost to a person all of those folks were good enough to send those to to to mr uh shuts and i two or three weeks ago um and we're grateful for it i've had some conversation uh

069back and forth with with some of those folks but i don't think tonight's the night thank you so hearing hearing nothing else is i believe i will turn it over to mr louie or will mcdonough for a presentation of a solar proposal and i believe they have a presentation so i'm not sure if um can you give will permission will mcdonough share permission to share a screen action yeah actually i'll be the one sharing the presentation okay i will give you permission then was that you ben that said that yes yeah okay sure ben before you start can you just do introductions um i see will will's here i think mr louie's on too good evening everybody um uh my name is will um ben and i are part of mr louise engineering class and

070in that class we put together a um possible solar proposal um for the montgomery elementary school so ben and i will be presenting that to you right now so every uh executive summary of our proposal is um mount greylock regional school uses about eighty thous eight hundred thousand uh kilowatt hours of electricity every year the school's electric bill was around a hundred thousand dollars a year uh the production of this electricity produces approximately eight hundred thousand pounds of carbon dioxide annually in selling solar panels on or oh did we lose um will will you he's still there i will i'll just jump in for him here then so installing solar panels on or around the school would save money and reduce pollution and uh the expected simple payback for most of our plans would be

071about eight years so you'd see a return investment in approximately eight years all right next slide so the main objectives with solarizing mount greylock would just be to decrease the school's electric bill and reduce the school's greenhouse gas emissions and this would be helpful just because it would save us money over time after we got our investment returned after eight years and we'd be using more green energy within the school that's always nice all right so net metering net metering allows entities to receive credit for excess electricity produced and use these credits at times when solar production is low so as a public entity in massachusetts there would be no limits or costs involving net reading for mount greylock so what this means is that the solar panels aren't directly connected to our school they're

072connected straight to the grid and so we're putting more electricity into the into the national grid which then they reduce our price for electricity because we are returning essentially product to the grid so if we ever are producing low amounts of electricity they can then give us more of it if that makes sense so like it we kind of you can build up like a worth of it you can kind of like it's like putting money in a bank almost but with electricity so we picked out three possible array locations around the school because and there were two main things we were concerned about we wanted to make sure we weren't taking up space for sports fields and the panels also needed to be facing towards the sun when it's at its peak which is

073around southwest so we picked out the top of the gym roof an area behind the soccer field by the road which is the yellow square and then we also came up with putting solar panels above like i would describe they're they're set up standing in the parking lot so you'd still be able to park underneath it it that is our least favorite option because that cost significantly more money than it would produce but we still considered it so data for the south side of the gym roof which is where we would put it it would cost about forty five thousand dollars forty five thousand seven hundred fifty dollars to install it we calculated all of the the cost of the installations and how much power then so the size would array they would produce using

074pv watts that's what um national grid uses to calculate their cost so all of these are approximations but they're as close as we could we could get them with the information we had so there would be around we can fit around 100 panels on the gym roof and we are installing 250 watt panels in this approximation and so this would produce around 25 kilowatts per day so it's not a lot but it would give us about five thousand nine hundred thirty five dollars back per year so that's a really small fraction of what our initial bill is cost but this is our smallest array size and we'd still get a return on our investment in around eight years um and then the data for the field by route 7 would cost around 457 thousand dollars

075to install but it would produce around 456 000 kilowatt hours per year so this is just over half of our estimated energy use per year we're using a thousand 250 watt panels this produces 250 kilowatts per day and this would give us around 59 000 back per year so it would cut our electric bill nearly in half um depending on the production each year but because this is still just an approximation and we'd still get a return investment on eight years and solar panels tend to have a lifetime for anywhere between 20 to 30 years so this would be like 60 000 on average we have extra in the budget after like another 12 years at least if we went along with this plan um then the parking lot data is 1.6 million dollars installation

076cost this is so much higher simply because you need to build the arrays up above the parking lot so it saves the parking space this is why it's our least favorite option because it still produces around the same amount of energy that the field by the behind the soccer field would produce because it's the same number of panels with the same 250 watts and this would only give us the 60 000 back per year so it would take around 27 years to get our return investment and that's just a little too long because at that point it's not overly worth it so but then our favorite proposal is the data for the field and jim roof so we combine the two proposals because one that's the most efficient use of the space and it only

077cost a little bit more than just the for the soccer field installation so it would cost around 500 3 000 to install we'd produce around 502 000 kilowatt hours per year so we get around sixty five hundred dollars back per year and we'd still have the same return investment date which is around eight years but we'd be getting another five thousand dollars back so and that's basically it we just have our conclusion so mount greylock regional high school should solarize some of its property to help the planet save money and help the community relic would benefit from installing solar panels as we could greatly reduce the electricity cost for the school once installing the solar panel arrays it would only take eight years for the solar panels to pay off the cost of the installation

078and afterwards the electricity cost would be significantly reduced this would save money for the school to spend on more important areas as needed but we recommend putting out a request for proposed solarize mount greylock we actually tried to get in touch with uh someone who installed solar panels but unfortunately they never returned our email so we just had to stick with the calculation from pv watt but this might just be something something interesting to think about in the coming years obviously with this being such a strange year it's out of the picture right now but it's just something to think about and if you guys have any questions i'd be happy to answer it unless internet issues take a note for me um but yes i have a question um do you know if we

079participate in the solar array in uh williamstown um because i know when we were doing the building project we talked about solar but we had bought into the solar array in williamstown and the thinking was that we really shouldn't do both um joe's nodding his head so what's the story there i cannot say for sure that we should not do both but i do know that we participate and benefit from the solar field that williamstown constructed um with the partnership of williams college um at in a very large scale um and that both mount greylock and williamstown elementary schools electricity purchasing benefits from that but i don't want to rain on the idea of do you know how much though do you know like whatever i don't have numbers yeah it would be that would

080be great to see actually we weren't made aware of that when we were making this project for class but that would be cool to see the numbers for that i think we pay about 11 cents a kilowatt hour um it's too i don't know we don't we don't buy our energy electricity from national grid it's coming from i just saw the bills you know some group in texas we we participate with the town of williamstown putting our electricity consumption out for bid and then we benefit from net metering credits related to the town of williamstown solar project that that covers a large portion of the former town dump well if there's another question that's all we have for you guys tonight thank you so much i think i see a question from steve and julia

081sorry steve no no problem uh excellent presentation we actually put seoul in our house last year so i'm aware of some of these numbers and i was wondering if you could talk to me a little bit about some of the assumptions in the model uh which one particular so you know again since you said the rate of the return on investment is about eight years even if it's off by a little bit it's still much less than the life of the solar cell so it's still your strong argument in its favor even if you're off by a little bit are you taking into account uh the different rates that the electric companies pay for the electricity um when using the calculations i believe we use the same price that we're paying for electricity now because

082i i don't know if it's actually a one to one i think they actually give you it might be a different amount okay that would make sense though um are you talking about the net metering credits something like that okay so since it's a publix uh entity then it's uh you get 100 back okay if we were a business then we'd only get let's say 60 back okay perfect you julia did you have a question i i really just wanted to say i'm deeply appreciative of this project and um bringing up these questions so um really just wanted to say thank you i had another small question oh can michelle ask her a question first or yeah um so i'm curious um i don't know the gym roof all that well so i'm not sure

083if there's any um equipment on top of the roof already like often there's hvac equipment on top of roofs so i'm i'm wondering i'm assuming you looked at that yeah we picked out the locations beforehand and uh there's it's quite open on the south side of it there are some uh like vents towards the right side so we decrease the amount of square foot on average on top of the roof so we believe we could fit uh 100 panels another um part of the benefit of using the south side was that it gets the most sunlight and we based a lot of our calculations on how many hours of sunlight we would expect to get given the locations we used um so a lot of it came down to the fact that they were facing

084in a certain way and then that affected our size locations and our energy right and i i assume the roof would handle the load i assume you did that too so um i just want to say thank you i thought that was i think it's a great idea i also we also installed solar a couple of years ago and we love it so i think it's a great idea i see steve and then jose and then just one other quick question because you get electricity at the same rate in which you you give and take back there's no need for battery in this plan correct because you get a full credit for all the stuff so you don't actually have to store anything yeah there i believe we could do something along those lines if

085we chose to but because we it would feed directly into the grid there yeah we we wouldn't have to right and that's a huge savings in the fact that we're a school district that we don't actually have to pay for battery in your proposal yeah exactly thank you thank you steven jose did you have a question no i i thank you both for for this presentation for the work uh of your team and putting it together i um it seems so obvious that this is this is something that we should have considered which means that uh it sounds like this is this is something we should consider moving forward um so thank you both i i i'm genuinely eager to to learn more about about what we can do and how how close we can

086make this a reality thanks cool thank you guys great thank you okay next up on our agenda is the business administrator updates yes and i am going to very quickly turn this over to principal nolan pratt of lanes elementary school and principal kristen thompson and assistant principal cindy sheehy of williamstown elementary school they're going to speak tonight about uh the priorities that they have developed jointly with their school councils um that go above and beyond just maintenance and and continuity in terms of how how we look at the budget and things at the district level in terms of initiatives that we know that we need to push across all three schools so without further ado i'm going to turn it over to principal pratt hello good evening everyone um christina can i please share my

087screen yes excellent thank you um i'm so happy that students are back a little quick embarrassing story as we set this up on monday i was getting the i was in the main office all by myself getting ready getting school ready and ashley uh the school administrative assistant walked in on me singing i'm so so excited by the pointer sisters um so that's how my monday started i'm just really happy to have students back in the building so this presentation so um first i'd like to thank the school council we sat down starting in december to think about our budget for the upcoming school year and this year we spent probably every two weeks we were sitting down together talking about every single thing looking at data in order to best prepare um for the

088school year 2122 and we came up with a list of five critical priority items um and this five the list you see here is in the order that the school committee if the school council thought of the first thing was maintaining class sections right now we have two kindergarten classes two first grade classes two second grade classes one third grade two fourth grade one fifth grade and two sixth grade and based on the census it looks like we're gonna have about 22 kindergartners coming in approximately give or take like three or four um so we'll probably have 2k again which looks like our keyboard section is the same through the entire year so that's we want to maintain those class sections going forward for the next school year the one thing we talked about a

089lot in our meetings was the technology management this new school year we had a whole bunch of new technology come into play which means there's more databases to take care of so we're looking to create a stipend for um that takes care of all the databases and on top of the databases also manages chromebook distribution and repair and stuff like that so right now julian haskins who is a 1.0 teacher um is doing a lot of that stuff in her prep time she's just getting completely swamped in work that really isn't um teaching or preparing to teach so this position will take her that um it'll also help troubleshoot so a lot of times um in a less like julianne will be teaching and a teacher will have an issue with technology that is involved

090in their lesson and we have no one in the building to take care of that so this stipend would be able to take care of that and get someone to that position quickly so then the social worker this one we had on the priority budget list last year and it's on this year again last year with the pandemic we decided not to bring anyone in based on the fact building relationships over zoom is not the easiest thing to do especially at a young age so we're going to try to get a social worker again this year um and it's definitely more necessary than it was last year with all the impact of stress in the pandemic based on the best screener which is the universal screener that the all the schools are doing so far

091it looks like based on just the parent surveys it is six students per every grade level that is not currently being seen by the school's school counselor that would need to be seen that number is probably going to come down as teachers fill out the survey however um sometimes i'm looking for 30 new students that will need someone to talk to throughout the school day some type of counseling to help cope with all that happened this current year and is currently happening just because we're back in school doesn't mean the effects of the pandemic are not still weighing on the students um and then with the culture and climate committee who is a branch of the school council it would also ask so we talked about what happened at mount greylock and like what can

092we do to be proactive uh and you know create a really strong community and this social worker would actually be part of running community circles uh with each grade level once a week so it would be a great level of meeting just not always talking about race but building that community having a difficult conversation and creating a place that everyone feels safe to communicate to each other um in each class that the social worker will also take care of that as well as with the addition of the social worker we would be able to have a small lunch group for every single student between the counselor and the social worker so that means all students would have a small group with a trained person to have conversations with so then the ela curriculum i think

093joelle has already spoke to the weaknesses in the ela curriculum the writing component is not strong at all and the um spelling part the language acquisition is kind of all over the place we'll be learning the short a sound and then we'll be working on blends in the same week so right now joel is i think has a narrower down to two different groups and she brought a team together uh from williamstown and lanesboro to look at the ela curriculum and make a final decision and lastly instructional technology we have done so much to make interactive lessons and interactive um instructions throughout this entire year so we would look to get three new short throw projectors into the building to continue that interactive piece as the school year goes on next year now i'm sure

094you're asked wondering this all has a cost and here are the costs for the projected cost for each of these items i'll let you look at that and then i'll take any questions jose nolan thank you and uh and and thank you for all the work that you do he said sincerely um just just a question here about the ela curriculum because he brought up uh a presentation that joelle gave us and uh my memory being never good and certainly less good now than it used to be um could you could you refresh our memory about what what exactly you want us to to remember about her her presentation and then um what are we what are we looking at here in terms of what these costs are what are they going towards so the

095so the curriculum we have is outdated um i know so i mean writing component is weak and when you're learning to read you should learn to write as well so the um like i think it's about six years old four to six years old depending on the grade level and it's lacking in um meaningful text and language acquisition so i think joel would be able to speak to it more the 35 to 55 000 cost is a box set so what that would be is a um prescribed curriculum grades k through six so it's it's a package that uh that would be purchasing it would this be a district-wide cost or this is this is for lanesboro this is just for lanesboro i imagine uh tristan will have a cost maybe a little bit more

096because williamstown is a lot bigger and then just a quick follow-up sorry nolan the um i i apologize when you were communicating it to us um this uh group um that was brought together from williamstown in lanesboro with with the administrators you were evaluating two curriculum packages is that is that what you were you were telling us or so i think uh joella would be able to speak this more but she evaluated a lot of curriculums um and i think she's narrowed it down to a few i think it's two great curriculums and then she's gonna have the reading specialists from both schools and teachers that teach ela from both schools diving in really getting into the weeds of each and every piece of it to make sure it's the best fit for the district

097and the 20k spread and costs reflect the the varying costs of these curriculums uh yes and i think a lot has to do with like there's individual student prices and i think joe might be able to speak a little bit more to that yeah i mean the the a new ela curriculum it goes from uh training professional development you know to to gear up as well as throughout the year all the basic materials and then all of the [Music] the the classroom library the last year it's both based on which vendor those various ways you're breaking up different different options within their packages so joe i think i i didn't hear you i sound better now uh no but i think if i were just uh i think what we heard you say was that

098the the costs here um relate not just to you know physical items like items that would be i think you mentioned things that you know to support the library and teaching materials but also professional development support and helping helping roll out the the curriculum effectively in lanesboro okay is that is that right any other questions all right i will oh jose all right nolan i i uh just to confirm at the moment there is there is no social worker in place at lanesboro that's is that correct so we have a 0.5 school counselor and a 0.5 school psychologist and she spends the majority of her time working on iep testing and consulting and she maybe spends i think it's 30 she gave i was talking with her about how much we need this new position

099she's like yeah i spend like 30 of my time with students and the rest of it's doing the the nitty-gritty of the paperwork and testing so this would be the current post that would move to full-time support for learning services and then and then we'd be adding uh the social worker to work alongside this person so so i think she would stay i would hope to keep her 0.5 to do all the testing and then 0.5 for the counseling and then another social worker to do the the implementation of the community circles and all that good stuff plus with the addition of student counseling et cetera thanks all right going once all right i'll pass it right on to kristen thank you thanks no one hi everyone um can you hear me first of all

100just making sure um and if i could share my screen christina that would be really awesome i've got it thank you okay so um this is our preliminary budget ideas for our for williamstown elementary school um for next year and my presentation is set up a lot like nolan's is we have our priorities laid out here starting with providing appropriate staffing for our sixth grade our our rising sixth grade class um is um larger um than our current one and we are also looking at um needing to provide some additional support and accommodations for a a wide range of supports for the students so is it could be possible that we would need an additional fte in this area again we would look at what the class sizes would actually be and look at enrollment

101at that time whether we would need to hire additionally or whether we would be able to shift within our own staff to make sure that we're providing the appropriate staffing for the sixth grade our number two is reviewing and updating the ela curriculum much like mr pratt presented we're looking district-wide at the ela curriculum we run into the same issues as far as writing and the language language acquisition pieces of the curriculum um our numbers are going to look a little bit different in this combat in this situation because wes is a lot larger than lanesboro um we are also looking at reviewing and purchasing a math universal screener for wes in our school improvement plan last year we wanted to start a math intervention program for our tier two and we did that this

102year by being able to hire the actual interventionist to do the program um what we're finding out is that um our interventionist is kind of having to piece things together um for the program to figure out and target skills for students she does use track my progress but we would like to find something that's more universal that she can use to further support the students and support the students um more efficiently um uh i would like to for a number four i would like to create a grade level teacher leader program at west this was something that wes has done before um with a focus um on really looking at building based data and analyzing and creating a communication line between grade levels not only between grade levels but also between um teachers and admin

103um i kind of see it as sort of a guiding coalition so we could we would be establishing this leadership within the building analyzing data reporting to and on behalf of their grade levels and their peers and and even down to helping to problem solve any issues that come up in the building even if it's something as um looking at dismissal and arrival processes or um how lunch duty is going and those sorts of things at a building level so we are able to collaborate um with you know teachers who are actually actually doing it and what this would also consist of also is myself the assistant principal um a teacher leader from each grade level pre-k through six i would also ask for representation from our special education program our specialists our service providers

104and our paraprofessionals so that we have a wide range of stakeholders in in this group looking at these ideas and our different initiatives that may be come across i think the biggest thing is really establishing that that line of communication and and having this team to really uplift wes and um look deeper at some of the issues and and work together um should those issues arise and then number five um is we would like to support the social emotional needs of students um by fostering a culture of diversity equity and inclusion this is a big topic right now um nationwide and then of course with the incident that happened um with the zoom bombing um and so we would like to take some time to really do a comprehensive review of the literature that we

105have in our library and in our classrooms so starting that that'd be kind of the first stage of wanting to do this review um sorry i'm looking at my notes here um so we're looking at like the first phase of this would really be focused on the wes library itself that's available to all of the students the second piece of this would be looking at classroom libraries or grade level libraries using curated lists and then we would also really like to look and review our sel program and how because right now we use second step and choose to be kind and right now we're kind of running into some issues specifically with a lot of the texts that this program uses um we're finding that as we're looking at these texts we're having to shift

106and change within the units that the program has to find literature and find texts that are more inclusive for our students than the program is suggesting that we use um so that's where we'd like to start with this um of course like mr pratt said every everything has a cost so here are costs um that grade level teacher would be one fte um which varies um with teacher experience and education and who we would bring in the ela curriculum is you'll see is much more expensive than lanesboro just due to our size anywhere from sixty five thousand to eighty five thousand dollars we project the math screener should we find one that would improve what we already have would be about three thousand dollars the general um cost is about five dollars per child um

107to have access and to use the screener um one of the other um reasons we're looking at this is we have this in dibbles for our reading program so we don't really have that for our math program to be able to look at things specifically and so that's why we would also want to to pull in this math screener and be able to use this screener and also progress monitor our students the grade level teacher leaders this would be a stipend position with about 12 people on on the team not including um administration it's about a thousand dollar stipend to be able to do this i have already had teachers when i've talked about this before saying you know i wanna let's get it together let's do it let's do it um and so i

108think there's going to be a lot of buy-in and a lot of excitement um to get students or sorry teachers on this um this team and then student social emotional needs with dei we're looking at a starting point um again this would be sort of a phased approach of about four thousand dollars to really overhaul and look at our literature within the library um we're looking at about a hundred books of the the kits that we've seen in the lists that we've seen um we're looking at about um sixteen hundred dollars just for the library itself and within that sixteen hundred dollars um that would be about a hundred books we would be looking at to add to our library as a starting point and then looking at classroom libraries um with grade at least

109starting with the grade level sets it's about 300 per grade level um so we gave ourselves about four thousand dollars on that and that's that's about it as far as um the money goes so if anybody has questions mr constantine thanks kristen um the uh we're i'm i'm new with this so it's unclear to me like where we are in in the process and uh and i think from from what i heard from your presentation there are some decisions that that need to get made at some point at west so for instance with the grade six teacher i think you said that you know one possibility that the school the administration is exploring is whether a teacher from another grade level could could be could could fill this need you know in terms of a

110reshuffling of of the teaching teaching staff you have available is that so what where are you in that in that process or where is the the the administration in this process of of determining whether you actually need a new fte or or not so we're looking at at all possible options and really the impact it's going to have going to have on students um because obviously if we're going to shift a teacher to a different grade that's going to impact that grade as well and we really want to look at and and maintain our class sizes especially in the lower grades so really we kind of have to decide what that impact is worth for our students and i mean if the impact is greater and our class sizes can support having um a full

111fte i would definitely like to add that fte just because of the the outcome um that it can have for our kiddos especially this this rising sixth grade group and the wide array of their needs um and support that they need so we're we're in the process of getting real numbers but we're also weighing out the implications of doing it of adding someone or possibly shifting within the building and i think so it sounds like your preference would be to minimize the disruption across the grade levels and the impacts that they would have in the younger grade levels and and propose hiring a new or propose this new fte at the sixth grade level that's that would be your preference yes if i had it my way i would add i would add the ft

112yes michelle i see your hand up and julia hi so um it sounds like you're looking to use uh for your math screener um i'm guessing something like fastbridge is that right we we've started kind of looking um i've i've tried to reach out to some representatives of universal math screeners the problem that we're running into is that we're trying to find something that's more effective than trust track my progress when we're kind of really limited in options um so the whole idea is to um not purchase anything that's not going to enhance what we already have um so yeah we've looked at um a couple of different options um the last one being eye station um and what eye station can bring to us i'm supposed to meet with that representative because i have

113lots of questions about i station um and really it's sort of in the research process right now of what's even out there um as far as what would what's out there is it better than what we have and if it's not better than what we have how can we improve um and if we're looking further to changing curriculum at any point in the math at you know some point then do we maintain what we have and then go for something else that's kind of all-inclusive further down the line right so i think my question is why we wouldn't look for universal screeners that cover all areas that you would progress monitor because i would think that that would be more cost effective like for for example fastbridge you know has both a doubles like component

114to it as well as a whole host of other things but um also has a mass screener so you would get you know it would be an all-in-one thing which ideally wouldn't cost any extra money so okay that's one question for me and then the other question is i see that we have um a math screener and this really maybe isn't necessarily for you necessarily but we have a math screener and grade level teacher leaders um which to me would seem to create a bit of an equity issue between lanesboro and williamstown if those same things aren't going to be available at lanesboro so my guess my question is maybe for nolan will these same things be available at lanesboro i can definitely look at it i know i do not like to track my

115progress screener by any means um you can't dive into any specific data um which i ran into this year as i dove in uh and it's definitely something chris and i can talk about as we move forward i i always wasn't a priority for our school council so i think they were more concerned i mean they were really concerned about the social worker and other things so it could be on our docket for next year and who knows how the budget shakes out there might be room for it this year yeah and this comes directly off of our school improvement plan based off of what we asked for last year and in starting a tier 2 math intervention program so that's kind of where it started and then now that we actually have the interventionists

116we're looking at where can how can we support the program and this is one of the the ideas we came up with and like mr pratt said um track my progress hasn't been quite an effective tool for her to be able to pinpoint these data points so that's why we're wondering if we can find something a little bit better but i think something all-inclusive um is definite would definitely be you know would definitely be on the the plate i like i yeah right so i guess i i'm just suggesting that it maybe should be a district-wide initiative if it's if it's if we're going to have a screener in general but i'm i am concerned about the um giving teachers at wes a stipend and not teachers at lanesboro stipend i think that because a

117siphon ends up being a negotiated stipend right so i i have some concerns about some inequities there so i'm not sure who answers that question but those are my concerns about that just to jump in how is my audio can you all hear me okay um just to jump in at the district level a little bit part of what's happening here is you're seeing the nuances between a 380 student school and 180 students school in that when you have three or four class sections within a grade how do you handle that versus one to two class sections within a grade and i think your question is a it's a very good one and the nuanced answer needs to come from plenty of work trying to understand what it means to to be a grade level

118teacher leader um and how that translates between the two schools um so i think it's that's exactly the kind of conversation that should happen um and it ends up becoming a very detailed kind of look at what it means and what it means to be across the district in that form as well but julia did you have a question and then carrie um maybe two thoughts i i really appreciated the concept of of many of all of these things of course but the grade level teacher leaders um and i like joe how you just described how it might work across the two the two schools um just to distribute that leadership across the school um and i think that that's certainly um there's so much expertise that resides in all of our educators so i

119appreciate this um push to have that those voices come to the table and help solve the problems of the school so it might it might be that it needs to be named maybe something a little bit different to understand how it how it would work in both schools um i had a question though when i look at numbers like these um and and nolan's as well i think about what are the one-time costs and what are the ongoing costs so um you know maybe there's grant money or some you know short term influx of cash that can help pay for the curriculum but when you hire someone you're committing to a much longer time and when i look at the sixth grade teacher i guess i come back to is that if that's a because

120we have a bubble of students coming up through the system um but they're going into sixth grade and on to mount greylock what what happens to that teacher after next year right exactly you bring up a perfect point um which is part of you know balancing that question of do we shift within the the school itself to try to accommodate like or do we just do the full-time fte um like i said if i had it my way it would be the full fte just because of the support and the um the support of the kiddos and knowing what they need but again when you when you do that you're also playing with someone's well-being you know how they make their money and their their life when you do that and you have a position

121um so it's something to completely still consider to take into consideration and um yeah um carrie you were next and then michelle so um commenting on the discrepancies or the unevenness of the schools you know i think it's okay to have programs at one school and not the other um i think you know it's part of the process of looking at you know the school adjustment the school improvement plans each school is um really looking at its its own you know it's it's it's students it's community it's teachers and we don't in the regionalization process we talked about this a lot that each school should maintain its identity that each school can have programs that are distinctive um now that doesn't mean that there couldn't be equity issues and i'm not saying that that may

122not be an issue the one that michelle raised but i think it's important for us to also say we don't need to do everything across the board right because it is the responsibility of the um school councils to really look at what is it that that particular building needs in that particular year and to bring those requests to the school committee which is what's happening now this is the process that we outlined when we went to a full pre-k-12 region so i think rather than saying if we're doing it here we have to do it there i think it's important for us to respect that the work is being done the way it's supposed to be done that it's building based and the requests are coming up through the system the way they should come

123you know in the budget season um and so i just wanted to i just wanted to add that perspective um the question that i have though is one about potential loss of learning this year i'm not seeing anything in either school request and of course this wouldn't be in a school improvement plan right but has there been discussion about budget implications around potential loss of learning during this remote year and what we might need to budget in for summer programs or additional after-school programs um and is that something that that we should be thinking about tonight um go ahead well thank you kristen i'm sorry to interrupt you but i i think i can answer that on a district-wide perspective and it was certainly a topic of conversation with the statewide superintendents on a zoom

124call with with commissioner riley today we have been discussing summer programming the needs for additional after school enrichment next year and we'll we'll be bringing that as sort of a a centralized budget request um looking first toward you know covet act and recovery money but but perhaps needing an injection from the communities uh and also i think you know uh the lanesboro school council wisely anticipating the need for a social worker to help students be be fully attentive to learning and and and be able to work through and get past some of the challenges of the past year uh even the the grade six fte at williamstown elementary um really represents and again going back to lanesboro the need to to maintain at a minimum um the class sizes that we have now really wanting

125to if we can have smaller class sizes allowing for more personal attention that's a winner if we can have more attention coming from a mental health expert rather than less that's a winner so um so some of that is addressed in here but that we will be bringing some recommendations um from the district for four extra uh areas of of expenditure that that really get at the heart of if we're able to um in a in a safe way provide more and more opportunity to be at school for kids thank you you're welcome michelle i think you were next and yeah um i think michelle was next and then you and then i think i saw jose's hand go up so um i just have um just a quick thing about the the fast fast

126british is the one i'm using so it's top of my head was not uh this building should have it so that that is actually that building has it so this building should have it because that's educational and curriculum related so in that instance yes i think they should be equal in all ways um so that was just it for the screeners um i'm wondering if we can get a list of class sizes at west per grade level okay absolutely we can do that thank you um steve you're up next uh yes so i i agree that we want to make sure that all of our schools have the resources they need one thing i like about the ability to have different schools try things out is this is almost like the old laboratories of democracy

127to try a program and see how well does it work before we go district-wide i think there can be advantages to trying something like that although this is balanced with the benefits of having one program that everyone is using everyone is familiar with you can have a lot of interplay between the two elementary schools leading in together the other thing i wanted to just briefly remark about assessing where students are i think would be very useful to get some data as to how much content is being covered in classes this year relative to last year we are still you know a little bit before the new normal set in so it would be interesting to see how much of the curriculum is being covered this year and how well the students are grasping it to

128get some sense of what might be needed for the summer as well as what might be needed for classes next year in terms of you know which material is truly essential to be covered and which material would be nice but you can work around it i know i'm having to do stuff like that with the classes i'm teaching thanks jose thanks christina um i'll start here and i i don't think this this may be no i was gonna get a joke that maybe this is the first time that michelle and i part ways but not no we haven't parted ways but i all i want to say is that uh i think you know at at one level i'm okay with um i think michelle raises some very important points but you know as as

129carrie had pointed out you know the the school councils with the school administrators are evaluating student experiences learning experiences and challenges and opportunities and they identify the priorities that they want to address and support and and build in their in their individual school and that process because it's it's playing out you know in the two schools separately will well i think ultimately ultimately lead in many cases to a different list of priorities but i think as long as i i'm committed i think as a school committee member to supporting fully you know the the list of priorities that nolan laid out for us informed by the school council made up of of parents you know of of of lanesboro as i am with with wes um the issue i think i'm i'm struggling with with

130uh with the west budget as it's laid out before us is that um i think we need oh i i personally would like to see more information i heard i think you've heard kristin from michelle a request about uh class sizes and that that to me i'm just wondering about what what our demographics look like at west and how we how we see students progressing through the school and if we expect um you know we heard earlier uh in this academic year uh a very sobering presentation from jake that our district student population numbers are expected to gradually decline and and i'm curious about if we're seeing that and we're expecting to see that in in the school population at west the the math screener if we could get more information or a better sense

131from from you chris and your your team of what it what what particular math screener your your team's identified as being the one that you'd like to pursue or even if if it's two of them um and and describe you know pros and cons of implementing them to us that would certainly give me more confidence and a better understanding of where this money is going to go you know i think it's also helpful to address michelle's question about you know whether there are packages out there holistic packages that that can do this in in one go i think the same could be said for the ela curriculum uh proposal that's very unclear to us now about what what's going on in that process so i expect to hear that we'll hear more detail um the

132last point here i could go on the grade level teacher leaders it looks like i think kristin is the the stipend that um you cited i think it was it was a thousand dollars per grade level teacher leader so that would does that mean that there are two grade level teacher leaders per grade um through wes is that correct that the propaganda also would support it would be one teacher leader per grade level so we have pre-k through six so that's eight and then and then our um our specialists our service providers special education and um and a paraprofessional okay and you know i i'm the face of that you know i given given my pair by perspective as a parent from west could definitely see that the benefit of having you know having a

133point person per grade you know liaise with you and your team i i could see the benefit of that one of the questions that i i'm unclear what the students social emotional needs that that number is purchasing are these reading materials or these learning support materials that you'd like the libraries to have what exactly um is is is the plan for for this for this fund yeah absolutely so the the plan for that fund is is literature it's it's books for for kiddos um we have been working with well cindy has been working with a williams student um who is um i'm trying to think of the the word for it entrepreneur uh it's something oh it's a phrase i had never heard before i have it right here just a sec um what is

134that called we're working with um she's working with a williams student um is it oh an entrepreneur dash sprint entrepreneur sprint sorry i couldn't think of the word um through the davis center and um we're using the student is working on how to provide resources website and apps for families surrounding dei and so we're trying to um kind of marry these ideas of what we have and what we need in our library with the work that this student is also doing currently we're looking at the conscious kid and the state list of the culturally responsive books for us to review so we can see how we can add them and use them in our school and just as a quick follow-up i think part of this process you said was an evaluation or an assessment

135of the reading materials that are already in place so is there a expectation that some reading materials are going to get pulled and then replaced with with new reading materials identified through um you know this process is that is that the idea that you you have that the that your team has yes so i think for me again i i would love to to see some examples of of the reading materials that are being proposed and and to hear more about about these plans because um yeah and jose jose if i if i could jump in uh and again speak from a district level um i think there's a good amount of research out there that would suggest if you ask a second grader what does an author look like they are not necessarily going

136to be apt to describe an individual of color uh and so just speaking very generally and based on every school and district i've ever worked in our our libraries be they individual classroom libraries or the library generally under represent uh authors of color authors of um [Music] various religious backgrounds um and so it it some really uh some easy work to do to say to kids and their families and our community that you matter you belong here and you are represented here is to make sure that there are books by people that look like them by people that worship like them by people that linguistically may share and culturally share characteristics uh and books about individuals that that share all those characteristics so this is really um uh you know just looking at at having

137some monies available to make sure that our library just like we're looking at one of the reasons we're looking at a new ela curriculum it is about the quality of the curriculum it's also about the the cultural appropriateness of the curriculum and making sure that that all of our students in all of the ways they they come to us are represented in positive powerful proactive ways uh through our ela curriculum and we want our libraries to deliver those same messages so that's um that's really at in in its simplest form what this is about is making sure kids understand through what we have available for them to check out of the library that they matter and they belong and they're represented thanks jake you're welcome michelle i just have a point of clarification i i

138think i made an assumption i just want to make sure i'm correct about that um would a stipend position be part of collective bargaining i don't know uh yes yes michelle um it it yes um you know to to steve's point when you have multiple schools of one level you you can have a you can run a pilot in one school and see if it's worth investing in in the other school um that's that's a good side of of not necessarily doing things always the same kerry's already spoken about the fact that you know we do want to protect individual identities although i would tend to say if we want everybody to have access to great curricula and great teaching and great teacher leadership and paraprofessional leadership um the the downside of doing one thing

139and another particularly around curricula is we get better pricing the more stuff we buy the more training we buy the more pd we buy and so we do want to approach things from a district-wide perspective there and um i i think the union might have something to say about uh i would if i were them about you know particularly when we're talking about a stipend which is indeed a part of the the negotiated uh collective bargaining agreement so your your your assumption is is a good one yeah so i'm sorry no no go ahead um obviously i am a teacher in a different district um and what i'm thinking is if this represents 12 people at a thousand dollars per stipend that would be exceptionally low based on what i know about other districts around

140us um and then i think there's going to be some so i i i think that if this is something you truly want to do that that twelve thousand dollar number is extremely low so that has a bunch of implications i just think that we should maybe revisit that yeah i was basing it off of i when i was starting to talk about this with teachers too they said oh we had something kind of like that and so i did a little bit of you know trying to pull out of them well how about how much was the stipend what you know can you remember that sort of thing and everyone i asked it was right around a thousand dollars so that's what i i based on as what it used to be as a

141starting point i guess that was a while ago just saying okay any further questions or are we ready to move on okay so next up on the agenda are these superintendent updates yeah and christina with with your permission and with the committee's position uh our permission um i i think i'd like to ask stephanie boyd to present on the marijuana cultivation bylaws before before uh i speak about the the zoom bomb and joe speaks about pooled testing simply i told stephanie yeah it'd be about seven o'clock and so i am uh i am already a debtor to her or uh for the fact we're past that so i don't want to make you any later stephanie if that's okay with you and christina if it's okay with you that's fine i knew it was going

142to be seven o'clock school committee time so i was like i am going to oh can i share my screen uh christina should be all set now i'll accept my screen as a big mess and i have to figure out where i want to uh to be can you guys see that do you see that does it say cannabis bylaw draft no no not yet no it doesn't what do i do there we have your emails stephanie there does that work there it is okay great so thank you um very much for inviting me i not quite sure how i got involved with drafting bylaws about growing uh marijuana but that's what we're working on at the planning board um last year and and this year and i'm the chair of the planning board and

143we thought it would be a good idea to have a chat with the school committee for a number of reasons one is that the proposed bylaw has implications for properties that surround the school and i want to make sure that you're informed there may be parents that have question and you know you'd be the interface there and as educators and administrators of our schools you may have some insights that we haven't considered in crafting our bylaws so i certainly would like to hear about those and finally some of you live in williamstown or people watching this meeting will live in williamstown and you may be voting on the on the bylaw that we are proposing as um as the planning board so a little bit of history uh and i'll try to go quickly because

144i know you have a long evening and i will leave this with you so if you want to review it in more detail afterwards you can but in 2016 the state voted to legalize marijuana and in 2017 at our town meeting williamstown passed a bylaw 85 in favor of allowing marijuana and marijuana establishments in town but i think many of us at that time didn't really understand the implications of what that what that meant so since then we've had one company mass flora who submitted an application to have an outdoor grow facility on the corner of blair road and water street and it eventually was withdrawn for a number of reasons last year some of you may remember the planning board uh took a draft by law for indoor growing of marijuana to town meeting

145and the agriculture commission brought a bylaw for outdoor growing of marijuana and both of these were rejected along with various floor amendments so we're kind of starting fresh this year and hopefully we'll have something that that will work so a little bit of context and a little bit of about our process as a planning board so at the we have to allow the growing of cannabis in marijuana of cannabis in williamstown in some form there is some complicated process to get out of that but you know for all intents and purposes we have to make some allowance for growing of cannabis and our regulations that we propose that the town work in conjunction with a big uh mound of state regulations around safety you know control of the material as it moves to and from

146areas licensing disposals ownership markets etc so there's a lot of regulation at the state level and at the town level we are primarily looking at land use because land use is generally regulated at the town level and we need for any um zoning regulation well there was recently a change but housing zoning but mostly any zoning relation regulations require a two-thirds vote at town meetings so a lot of the work at the planning board is thinking about how we want to change regulations to make our town work better but then we need to spend a lot of time communicating and um gathering input from our constituents so that we achieve a two-thirds vote at town meeting so that's kind of the process that we're going through now um as i mentioned we've been talking about

147this issue close to two years at our regular board meetings and many people attend those meetings but we're also reaching out to the fire district the police the zoning board of appeals select board agricultural commission school committee the board of health so all the town committees that may or may not have interest in this issue we're contacting them for for their input uh it's a way to help with the communication things are a little bit more challenging to communicate now in the world of covid um we have a lot of documentation on our website i had sent links to two documents for you before this meeting but we are continually populating that with new information we will have an official public hearing on the 13th if you want to attend at 7 pm information about

148that is on the town website and then we have our town vote in june i don't think the town meeting date is set yet but it'll be outdoors again unfortunately and sometime in june so when we craft bylaws we try to make sure that you know we're trying to follow some kind of principled approach we look at various documents that we have in town from economic development plans and master plans to kind of inform where we want to be some of the principles that inform this bylaw in particular have to do with uh the fact that we're an agricultural community and we value agriculture we have we're a right to farm um community the history of williamstown is based on agriculture for example at one point the start of the 20th century in the 1900s

149uh williamstown was one of the top four agricultural towns in the state now since that time a lot of our farmland is um changing we have big you know estate homes now we're on farmland it's very difficult to be a farm farmer in the last a couple of decades we've lost a couple of dozen dairy farms we now have only three dairy farms so we're losing our farmland we're losing that way of life and i think all of us really appreciated farmers markets and being able to have local food particularly um this year and this um enabling farmers to grow cannabis is one real area of economic opportunity that that they value at this time and also uh in williamstown we are you know for the most part concerned about the environment we are a

150green community in the state and the cool committee is encouraging us to um incorporate clean energy and waste reduction and ways of incorporating any new business that will be a good environmental citizen as well and unfortunately indoor growing of marijuana is hugely energy intensive and generates volumes of waste so we have some causes in our by law that try to mitigate some of those impacts so what can we do today currently any residents can grow any resident can grow six plants or 12 per household if you have two people or more living in a household we have one retail outlet that's in operation one's permitted and another one had been permitted but their permit expired you are currently allowed to grow marijuana in rural residents two three and in limited industrial zones and i'll show

151you a little bit where those are in town and outdoor cultivation is permitted in those same zones as well along with manufacturing of various cannabis products or testing of cannabis etc so and we don't have a lot of constraints around how you can do those things uh and so that's what we're trying to do now is improve our bylaws and put some rules around how we would allow those activities to happen uh for interest of time i'm going to leave the indoor regulations aside is not so applicable to what you might be interested in at the schools um so let's just take a moment and compare existing regulations with how we're proposing to change them in a little bit about why we're proposing that those changes so as i mentioned currently you can grow marijuana

152outdoors and rural residents two three and in limited industrial we are proposing in the future that we would only allow outdoor growing in rural residents two and three and those are the areas around mount greylock essentially and lots of other areas in town but those are the ones that affect what you might be thinking about um you require a special permit that means any applicant has to go before the zoning board of appeals and the community can weigh in on and give their opinion on what they think of the plan the minimum lot size that you could grow is going to increase from two and a half acres to five acres we're increasing the setbacks from property lines from 50 and 25 feet that they are today to 150 feet to property lines 50 feet

153500 feet from an existing residence and 500 feet from a school now the state has made an interesting call where they will allow communities to reduce the distance from a school but they won't allow us to increase the distance from a school so while we may want to say hey you should stay a thousand feet away from a school that's that's not possible um in that method the state requires that uh these growing facilities be entirely fenced in for security purposes and when they're with the applicant on um on blair road that was one of the things that the neighbors complained about was how ugly this fence was going to be and it would be seen so we are now requiring that the fenced has to be screened by either new native plantings behind you

154know existing uh vegetation such as you know trees or a large farm etc or uh hidden behind topography so if it's behind a hill or whatnot so that the fence is not seen as any kind of you know eyesore the state allows uh a grow area to be as large as a hundred thousand square feet they have different tiers from one to eleven hundred hundred thousand is the largest that's a little bit over two acres a little bit bigger than the size of an artificial turf field that we are all familiar with um and we are also proposing that the zoning board of appeals could hire outside expertise to help them evaluate a proposal at the cost of the of the applicant uh the state requires that there is a lot of security at these

155sites that they have cameras that can take pictures 24 hours a day we are requiring that this technology work without lights besides lighting that is required by the building code on entrances and egress from a building and i guess one of the more difficult things to try to mitigate or reduce the impact is odor but we're adding a clause a nuisance clause in the proposed bylaw and we're increasing the setback so that these cultivation areas would be farther away from from neighbors so most of our this is a little map of our town um and most of the area in our town is zoned rural residents south williamstown there's a bit up in north williamstown this is like kind of white oaks road area and then off toward vermont over here uh these are all

156the areas that in theory one could grow marijuana outdoors this yellow area is you know the denser center of town uh general residence and planned business zones are there and then around the periphery of the town it's called r1 it's up in the high heels it's pretty much you're not allowed to do anything up there so you might be concerned how close could a potential grow facility be to the elementary school so here's a little map showing the elementary school the closest place that you could potentially uh have a growth facility is this industrial zone that's at the foot of um coal avenue very unlikely that anything would happen here given that it's a very narrow piece of property you require 150 foot setbacks there's a railroad going through there and it's contaminated with coal

157silos so the likelihood of any uh indoor facility ever happening on that side is pretty slim and almost non-existent so the closest it can be is 2 000 feet and it's not likely to happen so i don't think we have even have to discuss whether there's any concerns about nearby marijuana to the elementary school now at the high school what i'm showing on this map this is the property should have indicated that a little bit better of the high school from the school to the back corner is about 1800 feet just to give you an idea of size this area that i've colored in pink is called apr land agricultural preservation restriction and um so farmers are not allowed to grow marijuana on these properties up um to the north or just above the high

158school as you know is a sweetwood sweetbrook facility so unlikely that any marijuana would ever happen there so there are a couple of properties where there is some possibility that somebody someday would have a marijuana cultivation so as i said the largest grow area is a hundred thousand square feet that's about the size of this little gray rectangle but the way a grow area is measured is you only count the actual plant area you don't count any rows in between the plants so it physically could take up more than a hundred thousand square feet so i'm just kind of eyeballing how big the maximum size would be could be on properties near the school um here's another very confusing looking map so when we originally looked at the zones it looked like you could you

159know potentially grow marijuana in quite a number of areas in town but then there are lots of places where we can't do it those zones that i talked about earlier general residence village business etc any lots that are less than five acres this agricultural restriction other conservation restrictions town properties private schools state land so there's a lot of land that it's very very unlikely to happen and there's even more like there's properties here like right here in the middle this property that looks like a shoe that is the um you know the purple partners and the mount hope in so you know property owned by williams college very unlikely that anything would happen there but it is possible so if we zoom back in on the high school again i've i've colored the high school

160in on pink and this topographic map shows like some forested area so if this farm behind the school decided they might want to cultivate marijuana it's more likely that they would put the grow area over here rather than close to the school property because this is very hilly and forested it's going to be much more difficult and not really an ideal uh growing opportunity so you start ruling out properties as well because of various you know topographical or um other issues so um some people have talked about the size of uh marijuana and why are we advocating that williamstown should accept the largest size and i mean one of the reasons is that the largest size that is allowable in massachusetts is really pretty small in what's going on in the industry for example in

161california their largest permit is 43 000 square feet so you go okay well that's like half what you know massachusetts is but they do not limit how many permits any individual cultivator could have so there are farms in california that are 140 acres 65 times the size what you could do in massachusetts and sometimes i think those scary articles that we read about about how bad the smell is they rarely mention exactly where that smell is coming from and i think because i have not seen any indication that the smell is really bad from a small or you know hardly even significant from a small um marijuana farm uh again washington is sort of similar size to williamstown 30 000 square foot is the size of a permit but you're allowed to have three of

162these so now you're talking 90 000 square feet which is comparable to massachusetts in canada um recently the largest outdoor harvest ever was from um a farm in british columbia that was you know close to 50 acres so i think the state has done a lot of work to determine that this size is kind of appropriate for the agricultural environment that we are in and so we are advocating for that and that's what i have if i'd be happy to take questions or comments or you can also you know email me at either one of these email addresses thank you stephanie michelle did you have a question shocking i know um so i i don't know how big the field is um in lanesboro um when what it's right on route 7. um that's hemp

163i think is that him oh yes you don't even know the difference how bad is that that's very interesting because hemp is a very very similar plant to marijuana in terms of what it looks like and what it smells like it doesn't have the active ingredient let's say and the rules around hemp are very different for example there's no fence around that one if i'm thinking about yeah so that's definitely happened it grows almost right out to the edge of the road well it okay well i guess it really doesn't matter in this sense then because my serious concern is the smell yeah when you drive by that in the summer with your windows down it is most certainly odorous that'll work odorous so i have some significant concerns about a farm even and that's

164a small that's smaller than what you're talking about right i'm not i don't know i think that could be i don't know the size of it so let me check on the size of that and get back to you um it certainly is not nearly set back that you know from the property because it's right up to the road if there were one near um high school as i mentioned you know most of them would be separated by a fairly significant forested area which is also going to disguise some of the smell but there is smell yeah yeah okay yeah i mean i i'm i'm going back to the to the letter that we got and he made a really good point about kids who struggle with addiction and getting a whiff of that is

165not going to help with that so i do have some concerns about that yeah and you know um yeah jose thank you so much stephanie for for being here and and putting this together for us um i have two questions more on on the process so uh this the planning board will has or will be after public it sounds like there's a there's a public forum or an opportunity for for public input and comment but ultimately one could see this proposal being being submitted to the town for town vote so this is up to williamstown to decide whether to implement these these plans so there's really nothing that this school committee can do this is this is you informing us of what could happen and what could impact in some way shape or form um

166the schools right so so in terms of process so every week or every month we need and we always take public comments so you know we i mean two-thirds of the town have to vote for for our bylaws so we you know we need public comment and you know we work for the town so that's our job right to um to put forward a bylaw that meets you know the need so what the school committee can do i mean i think you're an interested party clearly we all care about the school children and you know you're near an area where this could happen so you have you know i'm here to hear what you have to say and um incorporate anything that we can into the bylaw so the the question that i have then

167then is why tier 11. i don't you might you might have explained it in terms of uh but i missed it so why not year five so that's a good question and you know let me tell you every day i go around like what is the right size so last year tier five was proposed and there was significant pushback on that it seems the people that i have heard from that are opposing outdoor cultivation or the size of it wanted at five thousand or zero they're not that i've heard suggesting tier five or six that was proposed last year so that's one reason like i'm not sure that that would resolve issues that people who have i've heard from that don't want large i also don't think that fundamentally [Music] it's that much different one

168acre or two acres in terms of what the impact of smell might be so you know does it really make a difference on the negative impacts when it could make a significant positive impact for a farmer but i don't have the magic answer um i mean the the thing it looks like what what uh according to massachusetts guidance maybe maybe laws or some sort of ordinance it sounds like marijuana cultivators can have up to three licenses but those licenses cannot altogether exceed 100 000 square feet so if we were to go we as a town for instance or the planning board were to uh for instance what's tier tier four is up to 30 000 square feet [Laughter] to prevent that you know licensee from from applying for three licenses and just ultimately getting getting

169up to 100 000 square feet could that be limited is that something that the town can control i'd have to ask the lawyers whether we could control that i think we could probably yeah [Music] i mean they may have to do it on three different properties yeah because i think when we limited it it would be like per application per property so if they wanted to do more or we yeah i that's a good question i'd have to ask the lawyers yeah and i'll just leave this this last bit i think you know the simplest way to view potential environmental impact is that the more of the thing causing the impact the more the impact so that i think that's it's my initial uh concern to to to going going full full gusto here and

170going to 11. i think we we can acknowledge that there will be an impact to air quality um how that then may affect our students is is is a real cause for concern um and one that i hope you know are right so here's one of the other struggles that we have is you know given that we have to allow cultivation in williamstown uh there's been a bit of debate about whether it should be indoor versus outdoor so we take the school out of the question for a second and in an indoor cultivation you are growing year-round so there's year-round odor being generated from a concentrated place and it uses 18 times the energy that it takes to grow it outdoors like it's a hugely um energy intensive business um so given those considerations you

171know my tendency is toward outdoor because it you know assists our farming population in a number of different ways and um it's better for the environment farming has always been uh an industry that causes smells we've kind of gotten away from that because many of our farms have disappeared so it's not something that we're used to in our community as much anymore and uh you know the smells do happen at the end of summer early fall when school is in session so i just want you know make sure you you know that but it's one you know it's one time a year so there's a lot of time during the year when there is not an order but i like i don't know i don't think it is i visited a number of marijuana um

172cultivation last year outdoor and i'm like i can barely smell this when i'm at the fence so you know maybe it was that day and that wind or whatever but it i don't think it is as drastic as what as what we hear julia um yes thank you stephanie for um the really thoughtful presentation um and to you know andrew in in public comment as well for sharing some of the concerns so we can think about this in a balanced way the smell so the smell presents two things one is just a nuisance of an odor um and i live right near farms i understand the nuisance of odors of the farming motors um that's one thing that you know we could talk about and try to work around the question of whether this is

173a trigger for students in some negative way feels like um i would want to hear information from experts who work with students around issues of addiction or drug use um and i don't know if there's you know that person is in the district or if that person is from you know somewhere outside of the district um but to you know i i find it interesting we haven't heard that perspective coming from somebody who works with you know people who have addictions so i'm i'm curious about that yeah my understanding is that people who work with people who have addictions are um possibly more concerned about retail outlets like having some of the the visual because it has to do with you know a bit of the habituation of it's you know normal part of life

174um the grow facilities i mean they're still very fairly new there are not that many yet in the state um it's only been a couple of years since we've been permitting them but you know one thing is they are behind a fence right so you won't and then the fence is behind you know some vegetation or topography so you will not see it and there may be times when you will get some smell but uh yeah so i you know i don't think it has the same impact i also think that it is relatively new that we probably don't know yet um because we used to just grow this in other countries or in the woods and uh yeah but i mean we can certainly ask nbcc for you know a comment um i've had

175some you know very informal discussions with them i guess maybe then to follow up well i guess the question is uh to jose's point um maybe the the bigger this the canopy the greater the smell the potential greater the risk and if there isn't good research is there a reason why you wouldn't start with a much smaller grow area and then um over time as as an understanding of this field no pun intended um developed um that you could you could expand if that made sense yeah i mean that is definitely a good question one of the reasons not to do that is market pressures so in states that have legalized marijuana for a little bit longer you know they're seeing a huge drop in prices um the projections of what will happen in massachusetts

176that prices will drop over time particularly you know right now if you are selling marijuana within the state you have to buy it within the state because it's still illegal at the federal level so therefore you can't transport across state boundaries so right now we kind of have this like locked in little bubble but eventually that will change and interstate trade will have a big impact so i think we have this fairly small window where we can give farmers the best opportunity to um you know have some economic benefit and the benefit to farmers happens in different ways like not all of them engage in the industry in the same way for example we had had a seminar earlier at a planning board meeting and we had a cultivator from pittsfield who was leasing land

177from bittersweet farm a long-standing vegetable farm there so now we've given that farmer you know the opportunity to have steady income from this cannabis cultivation without having to be engaged in the hard work of making that work that opportunity would not have been available to him if he wasn't able to you know to offer the full grow so we are liv you know we are limiting farmers for being able to take advantage of this economic opportunity and they have very few of them you know many of the small farms that we have around here you know cannot the farmer can't make a living they end up having like a day job and then trying to grow their you know their vegetables on the side and so it's really difficult so i i like i think

178we're talking the difference between small and smaller not small and large when we're going from one acre to two acre so uh the the other issue and many people you know say this to us on the planning board we'll you know like just do incremental changes then we can come back later um i think you know you know you particularly on a public committee know how difficult it is so we can really only take on one issue per year because so much time is spent on communicating with people making presentations like this you know doing a lot of work and you know we have a lot of other important work that we'd like to do as well so i'm not sure when we'll come back to this to this issue so i would rather aim

179to get it right now and fix it if we have to rather than kind of plan in that we got to come back and visit this every every year jose yeah i think you you raise a good point stephanie i think um i think what's unclear to me just as a as a as a resident of williamstown and a member of this committee um you know is the the the financial costs if we're gonna talk about it in those terms of for instance pursuing a tier vii approach rather than a tier 11 how much less income will a farmer generate for instance and will would a tier vii just be not economically feasible or or rewarding enough to continue pursuing this type of of agriculture that's something that's unclear i think all those questions are

180really hard because it may just be like the yes or no thing like say their opportunity is that somebody wants to lease the land and that person says i need to be able to have a hundred thousand right so they get they don't get anything um it's not necessarily that a tier vii operation isn't viable when a tier 11 is um you know i looked at some of the data and there's been i think like 20 or so within that faq um outdoor permits have been given to date but they seem to be the farmers like the small operation or the big one so i think any of them may be viable but might not fit with whatever opportunity you're faced with for example another farmer in um sheffield ted dobson he talked at an

181eggcom meeting and i went down and visited his farm so his permit is through the local retailer did all the permitting and hires ted as like a contract farmer to do it so i don't know if he would have had the opportunity if he couldn't you know do the largest scale it seems i think in you just get two points to to raise in in a matter that that will come across as a as a question but you know it it looks like you know regarding the impact on air quality that marijuana cultivation has is you know certainly there's the the impact on on on smell you know and and uh and how that would affect quality of life and quality of being but it looks like there's some concern around this particular plant because

182it does produce a whole range of oils some of which that folks want to take advantage of but some of those oils many of those oils end up getting volatilized and so there's a concern and research that that's being done in colorado on on the you know the volatilization of of mono terpenes and the impact on that has on on on air quality so it seems to me you know if we by going tier 11 given that i think there are genuine and justified concerns about the impact of marijuana cultivation on air quality and and quality of life for folks who live and work and study near these these these farms um you know if the town doesn't approve of tier 11 are we back to square one or or is it a a more

183likely positive scenario by michael go halfway but we've gone the whole way so a number of things could happen so let's you know like the bylaw that the planning board is going to bring to town meetings not finalized yet so that that could change but let's say we go with the version that's on the table at the moment um so we go to town meeting somebody could make a floor amendment and say hey i like all this except i think tier five should be the maximum so it could get modified on the floor an attempt to make a floor amendment was made last year and that didn't pass you need 50 to be amended and then you have to then vote again the whole article and then you need two thirds so who knows what

184will happen at town meeting but once we start getting to floor amendments it usually gets messy so we try to get it right before town meeting for example that question you just asked me about if we reduced it to tier five does that mean somebody could come in and apply for three permits and therefore like we're back to where we were in the first place i don't know i'd have to ask the lawyer and those kind of things can happen at town meeting and then we pass the bylaw and then it doesn't work so you know that's another reason we want to get it right before we go to town meeting all this to say who knows what happens when we go to town meeting so say all of that gets turned down the amendments

185get turned down the proposal gets turned down then we are back to the situation where our laws today allow the maximum growth with no um none of the protections that we've put in place about the screening and the lighting and the setbacks we don't get any of those good things either and i'll i'll just say this just just for record you know that um as a parent and a school committee member i i think i i share the genuine concerns that marijuana cultivation might have the impacts that that this type of cultivation might have on on certainly in the high school middle school and on our students faculty and student teachers and admin can can you just say that again so you're concerned i i think i i do worry about um the sighting of

186a marijuana farm near school property the impacts that that farm would have on the quality of being at the middle school high school um in terms of the biggest impact clearly would be on air quality on um the the things that that we can smell and those that we can't smell i think those are genuine concerns i i think i would feel more comfortable you know if we didn't go the full tier 11 it's not clear to me what what justifies going the you know the what size would that's a great question that i don't know what guys do you want i have the pen i think i think the i think i would like to see better justification for why the planning board is proposing tier 11. why tier 11 and not tier 7

187because we don't know the answer to that question and because size i think you know the the more of these plants growing the the bigger the impact i i unless unless there's research out there that that demonstrates you know that's uh that's uh you know that the impacts don't increase linearly or with or quickly as these foreign let me reassure you as much as i can we clearly on the board all of us and the agricultural community as well do not want to do anything that you know harms children especially right so um that is certainly foremost in our thinking and one of the reasons that we're here tonight so i wish that there was really definitive research that says yeah this size is okay and you get up to that size and it's not

188so okay anymore i haven't seen anything that specific everything that i've seen that's talked about how you know bad smells have been on very large um gross and there was a report i can it's in our file but i'll send it to you as well from the department of health in ontario canada that um was trying to find you know are there any negative health impacts and they have not yet now none of this to say that anybody can say any of this definitively because it's a relatively new industry you know so uh but i keep searching for the answers to those very questions that you're asking and i'm not i've yet to find anything that says there's a risk not that helpful that answer no no looks like we just don't know you know

189we really don't know um what the what the uh the environmental impacts are um associated with with marijuana cultivation outdoor marijuana cultivation for sure but yeah yeah i mean we're dealing with a very tricky balancing act right of given that we have to allow something what do we allow and um it's just not it's not easy it's not easy and it's not clear what the answer is thank you stephanie thank you so much i hope i didn't take up too much time i know you guys will have a long uh it is very appreciated and please i um you know if anybody has other questions or they want to talk further offline you know email me or call me i'm i'm happy to discuss thank you thanks jake i am turning it back over to

190you oh can i just make one little comment sure about the solar i've got some info coming in but i my uh my team is thinking that you guys may already get 100 of your solar from the solar field but the cool committee would be happy to work with you on that good night thank you stephanie uh i i am i don't think going to be uh terribly long here this evening uh with with just an update on on the zoom uh incident in one of our classrooms uh and i am just you'll forgive me i am going to read to you um just sort of a a rather lengthy mess message that i put together and then we can transition into talking about uh the pool covid testing that we're doing but i will

191ask you to bear with me while i talk about where we are with this investigation uh and and some of the information that you're going to hear this evening we will be sending out as as uh the younger jake said to our community soon from from our our mount greylock administration but in the meantime i did want to report to you all and to those watching our school committee meeting that the school administration has completed their investigation of the zoom bombing of one of our classes several weeks ago i am very grateful to the heist to the middle and high school administration they did an ethical sensitive and thorough investigation i'm likewise grateful to the williamstown police department for doing the same and i am grateful to a neighboring school district which which partnered with

192us to do the same as one of the primary perpetrators was from a neighboring school district this incident did have a victim in our first thoughts and our first concerns remain with that victim and the family of that victim this incident had another layer of victims on top of of an individual and a family and the friends and community that surround that individual and family and that was our students and our staff who were all taken aback shocked and hurt by the actions that were taken that day when someone used the name of one of our students to log into a class and play music which contained language that none of none of us would condone and none of us should be forced to hear as the students were this incident suggests several things to

193me as i consider it uh as i consider the incident as i consider the victim the perpetrators our community and the lessons we as a school community and i as the leader of that school community owe the community to learn from this experience a major lesson i take from this is that whether this particular incident was based in racism or not it will be reported ultimately that that the person that perpetrated this incident incident was a young person of color um another person that was involved who who allowed this to happen may also be an individual of color but whether this incident was based in racism or not racism is very real bias is very real and it exists and exists in our communities and in every school and in every community across our nation

194we owe our students teachers staff and community continuous efforts to stifle racism in continuous efforts to work to become more actively anti-racist anybody that looks at what the final outcome of this situation is and determines that racism bullying harassment bias is not a problem is deluding themselves if we say racism is not real or that we are immune from it here we're deluding ourselves hate and mistrust exist everywhere as any of our neighbors of color any of our students of color any of our families of color or anybody whose religion or ways of simply being cross the very real lines of what america has too long defined as quote unquote normal every human being needs to know that they belong here right where we are and where they are simply because they are a human

195being every human being has the right to define themselves for themselves and to share equally in the peace and the opportunities that come from existing in a community our long-standing work as a school district must continue down this pathway until we've achieved our goal the investigation into this incident suggests that the incident was perhaps not racially motivated i do not claim and will not claim to know the mind of any individual outside of myself ever i do know that we must continue that includes the two students who facilitated and caused this event i certainly don't know what was in their minds i do know that we must continue to work to help the young people who are close to us and just young people in general understand that in the end an individual's motivation sometimes

196doesn't matter what actually matters is how the victim of the incident perceived the motivation in the event family friends neighbors our entire community has drawn their own conclusions around what motivated this event young people do deserve second chances and they deserve third and fourth and fifth and sixth and seventh chances american history shows us that some young people get dozens and dozens of chances while some young people in america often because of the color of their skin get no second chance ever we will not repeat those historical sins here in our communities or in our school district we will work to further develop restorative opportunities opportunities to learn from mistakes and to make things right we will work to we will continue to work to build character and empathy and understanding rather than build the

197resentments that come from mere punishment and then being done and walking away i know as a professional educator since and is a superintendent since 2005 that there's ultimately nothing that i can do or that we can do to fully restore what gets taken away from a victim of any type of harassment bias hate or bullying i know we had a student in a family who were hurt and angered which is utterly unacceptable i know that the school district owes clear communications and honest reflection on our own individual and corporate beliefs biases and practices not only to the victim not only to our students not only to our staff but to our entire community i know we owe the community we serve the work to learn from this event and to move forward better and wiser

198as a school community and as a community in general we all owe it to each other as human beings to continue to work for equity justice and belonging for everyone and so no matter what the ultimate outcome of this investigation was nor in the end what the motivation was we continue to to approach our work knowing full well that hate is real bias is real racism is real it's present in every community everywhere in every school across the country and we know that we must redouble and triple our efforts to um pursue to the very end uh creating a more inclusive diverse and in just school system where every child and every family know that irregardless of their income level their ability or disability their religion their sexual orientation how they identify no matter that

199their race their culture their language that they have a home here and that they belong here uh and that is i thank you for listening to that lengthy statement as we uh continue to wrestle with this uh with this issue and wrap up our investigation thank you jake you're welcome thank you and i i i you know certainly happy to have any any questions or comments we will be um pushing another uh informational bulletin out um and if there are no questions or comments on that uh segwaying into the the next piece of my report which which joe is actually going to deliver about pull testing um before i hand off to joe it would be really remiss of me not to say that all of you on the school committee know some of the

200things i've been dealing with in my personal life over the last three or four weeks and i am incredibly grateful to each of you for the support and the kindness and the patience as my family and i um dealt with those things i'm likewise grateful to these entire school community for their support and their help and their patience as as we work through some things and i am particularly grateful to uh joe who has has um he kind of jokingly describes making this pool testing happen as his version of the moon shot uh i'm i'm assuming he's jfk and that uh you know or some nasa higher up in that metaphor and i and he does that jokingly and i know this is crushing him to do this publicly but if getting this pull testing

201going is a massive undertaking on a call with the commissioner today and a couple hundred superintendents it became really clear to me that we are one of the few places in the commonwealth that went from thinking about this to actually doing it and having it work within really just two or three weeks of time and that's thanks to a lot of people including our school nurses nicole and carol and kathy but it is primarily due to the work of our next presenter joe and he will deflect that and he will shy away from that but i assure you that it is uh absolutely true and joe thank you thank you for making this happen so that we can provide one more level of security and safety to our students and with that i will finally

202shut my mouth and allow you to uh present about pooled testing so if we go back to last summer we often thought of a regular testing program as being something that would give us the opportunity to offer in-person learning with a lot more confidence and a greater ability to respond to anything that would pop up within our schools at that point it was financially not practical at fifty dollars per test if we attempted a regular testing program even just with all staff much less all students it was going to be prohibitively expensive so when the opportunity popped up at the beginning of january to potentially offer a pooled testing program that could be offered weekly to all staff and all students um we did think of it as our chance to put somebody on the

203moon pretty quickly um and and so pooled testing you know we've been communicating this out to the to the staff into the community but it's the process of taking a series of individual samples and then allowing a lab to combine all of those into a single test to more economically run those tests and then if a pool of five to ten people turned up positive we could then quickly respond with a follow-up test for each of them to identify which person within that pool was positive or is positive and the type of follow-up test that we can offer is one that we can do within our school buildings very quickly with only 15 minutes from the time that we administer the tests to when we have the result and and the whole series of events

204that we can that we can have unfold can happen very quickly very cost effectively and with really accurate testing underlying all of it and so the state announced the program the beginning of january we hopped on it and jake that the nurses have carried just an unbelievable load i mean you know they've been making their way through the year taking amazing care of all of our students and staff of all of us and and when this popped up it was yet another massive undertaking on top of everything that they have taken on this year and all three of them embraced it with just energy and happiness with joy where they knew the impact that it would have and so they they really tackled it with just grace and tenacity it was it's been amazing um

205and so where we stand right now is today was our first full staff testing availability day um about 130 individual staff their tests are on their way to boston right now we should have the results hopefully tomorrow during the day we'll have to see what the turnaround time is like but that is the hope and and then we have vacation week next week the week following will be another full staff testing week and we are going to add as many students to that as we can right now our our sped up timeline is that we're hoping to add all students to that um that week of february 22nd originally we were planning on mount greylock regional school students that week and then adding the elementary schools the following week but the nurses really have really

206pushed organizationally to try to get going with the elementary school students as well part of the part of the challenge of course is we're we're testing across three different sites with um numerous age and ability ranges a lot of different dynamics around the am and pm groups at the elementary schools the a and b cohorts at the middle high school so the logistics that we've had to try to figure out have been a bit challenging within that you know we don't have a central location that we can bring every we can invite everybody through on on a day or two a week we really need to do it where people are um when they are there um in order for it to be equitable and to and to fly um so right now we're in

207the final process of planning for that student testing launch right after vacation but it's looking good and we're really appreciative of the opportunity to do it in terms of funding it the first six weeks of the program are funded uh by the shaw foundation um providing all the funds necessary to go through cic health our testing provider um so that so that that's covered after that six week period the the belief is that there will be additional federal funds um coming down the pipeline that can help us sustain that without needing to dig into the other wells of funding that that we have available in terms of covert relief but just today seeing the seeing the appreciation and the sense of light at the end of some tunnel that staff were showing as they were

208coming through and receiving those tests was pretty it's pretty inspiring so i really hope we can continue the program and ramp it up and have it have a really positive impact on the education that we're able to provide and the safety that we're able to provide the comfort that we're able to provide for all of our all of our students and staff so questions carrie sorry this is amazing thank you so much for um putting this together and thanks to all the people who made this happen um my question is about communicating results out to the community what is our plan for that so the the state's recommendation along with the the testing provider's recommendation is that we we teach people that that no result is a good result or that if you know if

209you look at the the city of watertown that has been um piloting this program for for the last six seven weeks they've gone for a month solid without having a single positive pooled test across all of their students and staff and i think part of that is is low prevalence generally but it's also that this testing program it's it's designed to test people who for all intents and purposes believe that they don't have covet in the first place they are they're coming into school they've passed through the symptoms screener they're not symptomatic um they they have no reason to believe that they've been in close contact of anybody with covet so generally negative negative negative negative is going to be the norm our promise to the community is that as soon as we receive results

210we will respond if if there is a positive pool we will be very proactive about trying to administer those follow-ups as quickly as we can and make sure that people people know that we're taking the best care that we possibly can thanks to any other questions for joe jose yeah i'll i'll just reiterate uh what jake so eloquently said joe we we owe you much and and and uh the nurses and and uh we do we do you shake your head now we do for all the efforts that went into this um just just for for clarification um and and and just to hear it how will the data um that will result from from the pool testing um be integrated with the the weekly decision making that uh our new committee is there you

211know we these are 24-hour results or you know what does that process look like in terms of um being able to respond to an outbreak that occurs on a monday for instance and and whatever what does that process look like yeah so we will be um conducting testing on mondays tuesdays and thursdays across the the various groupings within our schools we should get results back within 24 hours of them arriving at the lab um the data that will come out of that will be number of positive pulled tests and then once we drill down into that um the the positive you know absolute number of people within those positive pools um and that will feed into the same data flow that we already have in terms of number of people in quarantine number of people

212who have tested positive number of people who have returned um so that that anonymized statistical data that allows us to know what trends exist and and what that means for um our ability to operate safely and and confidently you know that that's where that that data will go was it what was that what you were asking or yeah i i think it was just to visualize um because it seems that uh we we could be in a position to make decisions more quickly than or before this this this committee meets whenever whenever it does mean and uh um and what you know what will who who i ultimately i guess will be jake who who has to make make the call but um so we've got flexibility in terms of how we respond um we're

213not limited to the to the weekly or can this committee meet you know this put two answers there one if if if numbers popped up on on a day that we get results jake will be the first person to to know and he certainly has every ability to respond exceedingly quickly um to anything that happens the the jlmc um can you know i i think that that part of the concept around it is to bring a more of a team approach um with the union to be able to understand what's happening and so it certainly can it has it has the ability to meet more frequently than than just once a week at the end of the week so hey any other questions for joe thank you so much joe okay moving on to our

214next agenda item we have finance subcommittee update and i will turn it over to carrie so um this is going to be really short um today we reviewed the financial implications uh focusing on the financial implications of what we heard tonight from the principal's presentations so we had a little bit of a preview of those budget items and talked about in a little bit more detail and you'll see it in the minutes of the finance committee i don't have really anything to add but just so that you know we're going to be doing that um as we go forward just previewing those budget implications um we talked a little bit about the communication that joe has had with the town managers and select boards um joe i should let you talk about this but we

215i want to highlight what's on the agenda which is that the new budget hearing date is march 11th it had previously been march 4th but in some communication with town officials in williamstown specifically uh there was a request for kind of a budget 101 conversation how do regional budgets work um prior to our budget hearing and then we have our budget hearing on the 11th and then another conversation with the town officials talking specifically about the budget that we had presented and voted presumably on the 11th so um just letting you know that those conversations are happening between the administration and the towns and we're getting all our ducks in a row and thank you to joe for facilitating that as well and finally the meeting before this one so i guess a couple of

216weeks ago we talked about the fields uh very briefly just um what should we be doing and when should we be thinking about it how should we proceed the consensus is that we should wait until after budget season to really bring it back to the school committee for conversation of how to move forward so we've not forgotten about it and we're not going to drop the topic altogether but this will give us some breathing room we need to really work with the administration and figuring out the best way to strategize moving forward with whether it's a fields project or the entire campus infrastructure a more strategic thinking about what we're going to be doing as a as a district um some of the things that have come up in conversations with the school committee around

217strategic plans and those kinds of things so stay tuned um you'll be hearing more about it but just not immediately thanks gary okay next up we're getting close to the end you guys upcoming meeting um february 25th there's a finance subcommittee meeting at four um on february 25th there's our school committee meeting and this is um the second meeting it's a you know it's a special meeting but we're we've gotten into um budget season so we're gonna start to have more meetings and march 11th as carrie mentioned will be the public budget hearing and a school committee meeting at six o'clock any questions there julia um previously we were talking about the budget um public hearing happening not on the at the same time as a school committee meeting um when they happen together are

218we are we setting ourselves up for another really long night or should we perhaps reschedule that school committee meeting for a different night so i'll just say that traditionally the budget hearing and the school committee meeting have always gone together so i think it's very doable the budget hearing itself would be an hour at most i would think so would run from six to seven um there would be opportunity uh for public questions i think in the budget hearing right so but i think the presentation and the question period from the committee and the public should be contained within an hour but it does mean starting our regular meeting at seven so being careful to not schedule too much on that regular agenda um you're right that that's a good point i mean i suppose

219we could start earlier i don't know no okay i that's my own personal perspective but yeah i think there's also a finance committee meeting that afternoon we should think about whether we need that so okay anything else on upcoming meetings i have no other business so do i have a motion to a journey so moved michelle moves do i have a second second curtis seconds any discussions hearing none all in favor owen i connery i constantine i dolphin by and i green i johnson i thank you this meeting is adjourned at 9 22 p.m thanks everybody thank you good night good night oh piece of cake