Norton School Committee Meeting 10/14/2021

001okay we've got some sparks so let's start it up okay um welcome to the number two uh we are being recorded if anybody else is recording please let us know so that we have record of it uh we're gonna start with the pledge of allegiance flags to my left pledge allegiance to the fight of the united states and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice okay we're straight from the agenda just briefly here i'm going to turn it over to dr bayern mr chairman thank you i'd ask that the committee and the public had said tonight join me in a brief moment of silence the recent passing of kindergarten student abraela rose zarosha tonight the wake is 48 and it's being buried tomorrow morning thank you

002mr chairman thank you i appreciate it okay first up on the agenda we have the vote to approve the minutes of september 23rd uh 2021 both opening executive session meetings because then we have a chance to look those over yes there are any corrections or comments oh i apologize uh before we continue i do want to for the record state that uh mrs kathleen stern is actually joining us via zoom so she is present as well um sorry back to the meeting minutes now um see no questions comments or criticisms i would entertain a motion to approve both the open and executive session um minutes from september 23rd 2021. so move second second all those in favor mrs stern yes mrs gallagher yes this is cohen yes sushi yes yes yes alright next up is

003the warrants i've reviewed and approved the following warrants school expense warrants september 21st 2021 473 026.29 october 7th 2021 432 721 and 18 cents school payroll warrant september 23rd 2021 one million two hundred and eighteen thousand two hundred fifty three dollars and forty cents and october seventh twenty twenty one one million ninety three thousand eight hundred and thirty thousand uh eight hundred and thirty dollars and two cents i wish to enter them into public record thank you very much okay next on the agenda is the student representative update do we have zoe and malia with us yep we're here hi um so this week we actually asked the principals to kind of get the kids to talk about how it's been um transferring from hybrid or remote completely um to now fully in person and

004just kind of like what were the disadvantages if the if there are any or um mainly what how is teaching been different how has learning been different just kind of overall how are the changes and we've got pretty good responses um i'll start with the lgn um not very much on topic but they did get a couple um they said i love getting to make new friends and playing with them during recess i like the teachers at the lgn i like that we are in person and then i get to see all my friends in class i like all of it and i like that we have great choices for lunch in cafeteria um it was a good one to add but um yeah it's pretty positive over there and malia has the uh next

005school yell i think yeah um okay so mr gagan said that the benefits of in person for them were being able to make and be with friends learn from the comfort of school get to interact with others get to have fun in school uh have the ability to be more creative in person than just being online with better projects and hands-on activities uh seeing everyone in the cafeteria at lunch and being able to play with everyone at recess uh then for the disadvantages they didn't really have much they they kind of looked at me blankly and said i don't know so it's a good thing um how has learning changed since before covid they said it's gotten a lot harder and when asked why they said well everything is getting harder since last time i

006was in second or third grade um so for fifth graders they said that they now have two switch teachers which is just too much it's a lot to handle um and they said that they looked at things from from the above in terms of benefits more in school projects group work fun activities experiments and fun for the middle school they the nms step program just participated in unified bocce at beckwith middle school in rehoboth and it was a great day with nine student athletes and four staff members attending uh mrs sullivan mrs smith mrs fitton and principal hayward and the team's next match is wednesday october 20th at case junior high school in swansea if you want to go support them so that was it for the yell in the middle school i think zoe's

007going to the high school um yep so high school has a little bit more responses for the benefits of in-person learning they said i seem to get better grades less procrastination easier to pay attention more hands-on learning activities and see teachers more for things that they miss from hybrid they miss working from home the staggered late arrival um the staggered arrival and late arrival there was less traffic which is a problem that student council is working on right now hopefully um got to sleep in and stay at home some of the time and remote mondays were great some disadvantages is that five days a week is tough and waking up every day and that they're always at school but post cova changes a lot more online resources generally teachers have been more flexible with deadlines

008some people say less homework some people say more homework and there is definitely a lot less paperwork but yeah um going back to how student council is working on the traffic maybe we also did a school-wide poll and i think malia has a little bit more information about that yeah so we decided um that we were seeing a lot of stuff that we were looking into like what students were thinking about the high school from like the schedule changes and the traffic and just transferring back to in person so i think like a week ago right a week or two ago we sent out a poll just trying to cover you know what students want to kind of touch base on so uh we included things such as like what do you do during llb

009which is like our our study hall block what do you use that time for um during llb how much of the time do you use for school and how long should it be to meet your needs uh what's your preference for the llb because this year we switched to a schedule where we alternate between um 10 and 30 minutes so we're curious to see what kids staying kid friends having like a consistent time or the alternating schedule and we talked about morning traffic to see how it's affected students because it's a pretty general thing that a lot of kids have impacted just getting to school on time and being late um masks and we also included a question just to talk about any other issues or things they might want to look at talking about

010um so we really work it into the like tonight's kind of report because we didn't really fully look at the results yet but just um that's something right now from the student council point of view is trying to get more kids involved at the high school and having more stuff to say to you guys so yeah that's um something that'll be coming up once we can figure out kind of how to quantify the data a little bit more and figure out what we're going to do with it but yeah just wanted to mention that really quickly because i think i mentioned last time that we were going to be doing a poll and that's how it turned out oh yeah i think that's it for us if zoe doesn't have anything else to add oh

011all good great thank you very much guys appreciate it i certainly empathize with the kid who didn't want to do five days a week try to get that by my bosses if i don't quite whatever okay next up on the agenda we have the superintendent's revised goals for 2020 through 2022. right so these are a continuation of 20 20 21 21 22 7 june i gave the action items with the update um the update of the continuation and then resetting is some a couple of the goals um the panorama student surveys grades three through 12 on school climate parent uh notifications are going out um and then the health survey for six to twelve if you remember the health server that also requires a parental agreement those will be going out and those students will

012be taking that during the months of october and early november the survey the health survey will be collated as it normally is um and then we get the graphs and we get the actual report the panorama survey i'm just the same thing and jen the o'neill assistant superintendent will come back to you with uh some of the things that we've learned from the data that we're seeing and then those will be incorporated into the next plan which really is aligning with my professional development plan in terms of putting together a plan about what we what are we seeing in the survey so for example if we see an increase in bullying being reported by students in the survey then we should act on that through curriculum through speakers all of that stuff if we see

013uh increase in marijuana usage for example it's legal in massachusetts but it's illegal for children and on school grounds then um how is that how is that happening all of it um on the health survey is 100 anonymous we do not take any tracking whatsoever um so it's it's literally filling what you think the panorama can be done in multiple ways through actually looking at individual students to create students who are saying that they don't feel connected to school for example which is one of the questions that we learned um pre-covert that we did with the students is that we had bodies of students that didn't feel that they were felt connected to school on a daily basis that's good information to have either as a group from grade 3 or to then track it

014individually that becomes part of the panorama platform which actually keeps track of their grades their discipline their self-reporting um and their attendance and then it shows up as a marker for us to work with kids all of a sudden we start to see grades going down the market might show a yellow or a red they're on task or on grade level et cetera so um we've had really some success with reactive strikes and again it's controlled it's controlled uh by parents if they don't want to do it they don't have to do it and that's basically requirement by the way so that's um that's on there for uh your information and um you'll get a report in probably december january on some items and then early spring and then we'll wrap it up by typically

015we go into the first meeting september so that i can put it all together over the summertime but my goal is to give it to you to the june school committee meeting as much as possible it's one clarification journal one so is that a completed goal or is that a completed and revised thing that's it so that's a that's a um completed goal um i have some data to share with you in terms of the evaluations and stuff um and i'll get that to you okay so no revision that's just great exactly and that was if you remember we used four four goals for teachers last year as all administrators those four goals what we completed because we were such an awkward teaching and learning situation with the hybrid model until march okay anybody have

016any questions or comments on that all right we'll move right along to item number five that's grades pk through 12 enrollment updates right so you'll see that you have two sheets tonight um the both of these are reflective of what is typically done in massachusetts which is which we report according to our internal data from october 1st it's actually been extended this year um because they want us to take a look by sami public schools look at the number of students who are socioeconomically struggling and spend more time figuring that out if you will but you'll see that just a moment overall this would be students that are in district students that we provide services to out of district school choice enrollment reads which is part of our not part of our enrollment but part

017of being here with us is a total of 2458 the prior year was 24.54 we're actually up over all four we're down six in district enrollment um the positive one is the out of district number you'll see went from 44 students out of district to currently 32 but i will tell you ain't growing um we're probably going to see a number of getting closer to 40 before the end of the year because of special education needs during the iep process that takes place and we have an increase of 23 students in school choice up from 163 to 186. it's based on the team the parent the team coming together using the data and the best process if it cannot be done in a least restrictive environment within the school system and then students can go

018out and then we protect the tuition costs the services costs including transportation refresh my memory do we have a cap on school choice uh we have a cap uh we close choice september one for your vote um we had no cap at the middle in high school and i believe we had caps of five um and ten throughout and that didn't count semblance okay any any thoughts on those caps well just to be quite honest because of coming back from covert i'm actually trying to have coming back from the models that we've been in i'm kind of happy that we don't have um classrooms with 26 and 27 kids at the elementary level i'm i'm elementary level classes at the yale roughly around 22 23 which is actually lower than usual some of those might

019change just because the service delivery model special education with inclusion um at the early elementary grades during really good shape around 22 and as low as 18 in the kindergarten class of 18 and 19. which is what we prefer and that was due to the hiring of that teacher through the savings that we made which became a priority during the summer time because we've seen some numbers go with the lgn um so i i would say um what we did for this year was a good idea i think we look at it again next year um one of the things that's really interesting not in these numbers is that 52 students are currently home schooled that's double what we normally get and that has a number of different reasons as you know the homeschooling decision

020is one that's a very private decision at the district we can't ask too many questions all we do is review the curriculum that is going to be provided and sign off on it and go through that process so we could have actually seen an increase in our local student body meeting in district student body this year we had a ton of registrations in the month of august and it hasn't basically stopped we've been tracking our numbers every day so this 24 um this just 24 58 which encompasses everything that's been pretty steady for the last two weeks but the first three weeks of school that that went down to up to down to up to um we had some families that went from district to school choice because they bought a house out of town

021so it's fluctuated a little bit how do our numbers look for the alternative schools in the area like charter schools southeastern so we don't have those numbers yet uh we'll get those afterwards but i think you'll see that both of those are pretty stable high 80s low 90s for the for the charter school has been where we've been the last couple years i think you'll see um and we did have returning families again this year and then the southeastern and the aggie um are pretty stable they're gonna roughly be in that mid 90 for southeastern reaching 100 and the aggie the numbers getting to the less than 20 less than 12 some years really fluctuates they are opening or have opened a brand new school at the ag so yeah you could see something that's

022a trick yesterday 200 million dollars that 100 million dollars at all of the towns are like paying for i believe you have a look at the town of norton's cost is 70 000 a year every year for 20 years not including tuition now in the event we don't place a child at that school are we still on the hook for that no it's it's per it's tuition based performance so student goes you get charged student doesn't go you don't get charged so if they all of a sudden went from 15 kids enrolled at the aggie to 35 kids then you'd see an increase in tuition of probably well over or close to a million dollars john i'm thinking about this right school choice we could probably absorb larger numbers at the jcs the lg but

023the way that we model our middle school would make it difficult to take them in going forward in other words we could add a teacher at the jcs clg like adding one at the middle school is a little tougher because of the way it's structured yeah so your middle school concept for teaching and learning is that you have two teams and then you have the content areas divided into those two changes on each side correct so you have an english math science social studies the common core and then you have your electives and and your required pe health classes so what happens is if all of a sudden you you added and we've done this in the past with aia math and english and all of that we didn't see some of the foods without

024that labor over time so that's one of the reasons why we went back to the traditional model um when it comes to the elementary it's a straight if you have 180 kids and all of a sudden you have 100 you have 200 kids you add another section you're distributing the students which is what we did with kindergarten right um the only other issue though that you know we have a lot of debates or views about the space in the buildings i can tell you that the space is getting a little crunchy because you know once again we started another special education in internal program at the lg that took up another space which is a good thing that's not a bad thing but if you're trying to open up another section that becomes more of

025an issue a way to use that to move people around any other questions on that no all right let's move right on to the special environment so the the special education enrollment update um is again just taking a look at um the total number of students that are receiving some type of services in the district and that number is 546 as a total um i think um that's come that's come down since september we track it every month this is a student that's out of district uh a student that's getting it services for example a homeschool student might be getting speech that's on this count um and it's not broken down by disability type um because i always worry that that could actually communicate to a group of people you know staff members that the

026public on who has a certain disability and i don't think that's appropriate but you will see that um there are some areas where the total number of students in comparison to the enrollment uh gets us pretty high and i'll give you an example your fourth grade current fourth grade percentages is you know climate 30 now a lot of that is those secondary services that are primary services for that student so that would be your speech your ot pt um and a lot of inclusion kids but there are 94 students getting specialized services and as you can see those continue all the way through high school and we currently have three students that are over 18 but not yet 22 um and those are part of our responsibility um so that's kind of like the breakdown

027so that you can see and these numbers fluctuate more than any other number in the district because meetings are taking place every day in all five schools around service delivery models any questions on that all right uh next up we have the superintendent's report on pathway options so we as you know pre-covered we started working on some of this and during covet i back to march of 2020 we were spending a lot of time taking a look at different pathways for our students um i'm a big very big supporter of attending college but i don't think that you have to attend college to be a successful community member in any community in in massachusetts and so there are things that we need to start looking to do for students that provide them an option so

028there are fourth here that we're working on there's an early college i'll go back and explain them a little bit there's an innovation pathway is a career technical education also vocational as some of you would call it and then there's one that we're currently calling alternative education but we want to come up with something that's better than the word alternative because it places a label on it that i think is inappropriate the early college has been the one we spent a lot of time on this is the opportunity starting as early as this spring for students at one high school to earn 12 to 18 college credits at umass dartmouth bachelor the boston architectural college is also going to be involved with this and we're currently not ready to announce a private school but we're

029going to be working with a private school what's different about this approach is that it's different from dual enrollment number one it's literally these courses count for both high school credit and college credit so a student could earn 12 to 18 credits in in for example the area of biology they could check off two years of science first or one year of science at the high school but literally transfer an entire semester to umass dartmouth or the umass college system because they're the use the same our partners that we're working with is remastered we're also working on the funding source for that what's different is that we are currently including high schools in the area so we're working with the oliver reems in easton east bridgewater mansfield taunton brockton we're coming in with another school

030that's on there plus hanover attleboro public schools and it's a growing list the cohort model right now is that these classes would be a combination of hybrid and online after school hours and evening because as you know high school schedules are so different from place to place trying to fix it however students could have a time period during the school day where they have a place to go and work on that course so that they're not just totally overwhelmed especially if they're in the arts in sports after school or they're working after school the innovation um yes so they would be taught by somebody from they're being taught by umass dominar professors and or the potential that our staff could become umass mountain umass dartmouth uh adjunct professors or other school systems uh high school

031teachers and and they're learning at a college level they're learning at a college level the same material but with a high school cohort of students so instead of having a high school student take classes with a college student it's high school students from the area taking the cohort together and how does that work for their gpa is it rated differently it'll be part of their um ap process so the same thing because it is considered a college class it's not taking a test to get credit for those colleges that accept credit that we all know is minimal but it does work for the gpa so it would work that way you'll eventually be hearing about that too um the innovation pathway is the state application process jen and ethan are actually that it's pretty complicated

032process where we have to use local workforce needs so we're in bristol county so we would have to use bristol county information we have to work with our school to careers partners that we work with currently which is consists of seacon public schools attleboro north dakota or mansfield and us um and we're looking in areas of steam um to really concentrate for the pathway that application process is probably going to be filed over the next i'd say 18 months to 24 months because it is a pretty specific process that you have to utilize it so it's really trying to figure out what what are the needs of the area of norton that would actually support the labor force uh which right now i would say is a lot considering that everybody's having a hard time

033finding the fourth the third one is career technical education some of you would know that in the traditional sense of vocational technical education we do have a southeastern this is not about um for the public to know we currently have a chapter 74 business technology marketing program already that we started two years ago we enrolled about 66 to 66 kids last year in the program they're taking courses that are aligned to career technical education what we're looking at next is public safety we're looking in the area of emt and criminal justice and all of that that again that's an application process with the state to become certified um that one particular also probably needs the hiring of staff so we really have to take a look we're not looking to duplicate electrical employment we have

034that type of space and materials etc but there are a number of new career tech ed programs that are very much workforce and or community college and or specific technical school or even four years so again each of these can go in so many different directions and actually intertwine the alternative education um um program model that's before you hear and again i'd like to change this name to something more creative and doesn't have a stereotype with it is to really take a look at our graduation requirements for students who are not in the traditional sense uh students that beyond having to take four years of english and having to take u.s history and having to take pe which are all state requirements what would those local requirements look like for a student um so you're

035looking in those particular areas and all of these as well but in that particular area you're looking at cooperative education working with students who are working who want to work who are in uh specifically working as a could be working as a laborer for example and learning a trade but not necessarily in the traditional sense of a vocational program and what does that look like or go to a student who can actually take courses here so they want to go to college but they want to take a cna program could we put a cna program and allow as you guys all know a couple years ago we had a student who graduated with a cna and is now at boston college in the nursing program i'm sure getting that background didn't hurt her in her

036process although she was also a fantastic student um so in this particular case the reason why i don't like alternative education because it labels some type of a student this could be any student you know um and and um that's important to me because you know once the kid gets labeled um this could also be motivational depending on that so this is just the general report you're going to start to see some more information at the school committee meetings about these we we do have some administrators that are working on some of this and then we want to bring in some staff and then we also need professional expertise and two of the three of these are three of the four of these we're going to need professional expertise we have the edu education alliance

037already working with us with the early college the innovation pathways requires all that data and information such as the workforce so that's going to require that we also have people in the industry be part of that careertech requires that you have um a advisory board of people that are actually working in the field uh that's part of the requirement um so just to give you that general information can i answer a couple questions sure um go back to the early college who covers the tuition not necessarily how much but who covers that right now we're working on trying to create between all of the schools and umass the best tuition for students so um typically for example a graduate course at a state college might cost six thousand dollars and you're basically dividing it by

038all the parties however we are also going after some federal funds as a cohort um that's one of the ideas is that if it's just not in high school going after it it's going to be a problem but if we have kids from different types of communities and in different backgrounds that will only help in the application process and then third parties is the other way as well um federal stimulus money is something that all of the superintendents that are in this group have had some discussions about because it would be it does fit the criteria um but eventually as you'll know that money goes away so you have to come up with a scenario that keeps some type of finances coming in um including partners the innovation pathway one does potentially have some grant

039money that comes with it for start-up costs and then another question so what's in it for umass is is the expectation that they're going to capture some students for the umass system sure but there isn't a requirement right the expectation is that we have planning enrollment in every community that's not a city in bristol thailand and and around us right now and what's happening is they have currently in the umass system seen declines in some of the umass college and state colleges and um as high as one-third 33 less students attending in one of the state colleges state universities in north shore um umass garment themselves are down 10 um and all of the schools one of the best success stories has been umass lowell another success story has been umass boston uh umass amherst

040is huge as we all know i'm not hearing statistics coming out of them that it's hurting but the competition is becoming more significant the other issue that is important is that we're starting to see more and more private schools no longer do a needs-based um financial aid but solely america merit-based um if you remember three years ago holy cross announced that although they have a hundred million dollar endowment that over the next uh 30 years they would have zero and so they moved to a merit-based uh system and not a needs-based system so what this does is also make our kids more competitive regardless if they're applying so if they're applying the same answers for example uh they're applying to to um to stonehill they might not get any per se credit but they could

041make an argument for some type of credit depending on the major but more importantly working around the idea that they didn't take a ap test just to show that they could do college work they actually took a college class to show them college work i think we all know that the umass system um umass amherst it costs kids from massachusetts more money to go there than to go out of state well look at the uh look at the humane you may have the umass price pretty creative uh right approach so it would be nice for our students to have a little bit of a buffer if they chose to go into the umass system to have those courses accepted as part of their college credit to save them a semester or a full year or

042yeah and i think if you have declining enrollment it's kind of like this choice decision you try to you know market yourself and fill a seat uh even though you're only getting three and a half years of tuition instead of four or do you just say no i'm not going to take four years of tuition i'll tell you i don't understand how the people in massachusetts aren't up in arms about the the cost of their state tuition expenses yeah yeah it was cheaper for business college age kids to leave the state i didn't realize that jennifer so you're basically paying for them through your taxes and then when your kid gets in and it's supposed to be that's really they they screw you up as well and it's mainly um it's a great opportunity any

043other questions on that um yeah i just i just want to make one comment i think that that's a great idea for the kids to be going to school with students of their own peer their own peers because some kids might be intimidated by it and they might not take the class because they're too intimidated but knowing that their peers are going to be part of it that makes a huge difference and speaking from umass amherst where both of my kids went it was cheaper for them to go to southern new hampshire university franklin pierce or the other one just because of the money that they gave umass was the most expensive one of the things that i learned about king state i'm interested that you just brought that up i just recently learned that

044keene state will take any student that's in a traditional career tech education program in massachusetts and if they're going to keep state for four years to major in the major that they graduated from the vote they're giving them a full a full semester credit so they're only going there for three and a half years or they decide to go for four years because they're going to piggyback on what usually happens as you know is they pick it back on studying abroad or they end up with another minor or a double major or go for another certificate but it was interesting that the college some colleges are being creative like that um as part of their approach and it might not hurt um joe i know that wheaton is in the process of a major transition

045with sort of a president's search but um it might not be bad to sort of start a conversation with them yeah their new president comes on board i believe in january the president has been named and i plan to short weeks after that to introduce myself and see if we can have some further conversations okay okay uh we're gonna move on to number eight vote kathleen stern is school committee delegate at the massachusetts association of school committee's annual business meeting on november 6 2021. tonight you are not voting on the resolution but you do have them um you'll vote at your next meeting but uh mr has been here telling it um the delegate is that she attends at minimum the meeting on the 6th of november where they vote on all the resolutions and

046she represents your vote at that meeting unless you just give her the realm to vote the way that she wants kathleen do you want to do that again um i have to be honest so right now i guess nobody from our district is attending and right now it's only virtual um so i'm on a wait list for an in-person um if it does come through um you know i would go in person but usually the delegate meeting is either wednesday thursday or friday for some reason this year it's on a saturday morning so unless we unless i wanted to make sure that you guys did get the resolutions because unless you have strong feelings about one or another um i i don't even know how they're gonna do it virtually yeah i don't i don't

047love i don't love number nine but outside of that i really didn't have any issues with him and and nines it's not a hill i'm gonna die on so yeah well here's my if i may miss the chairman um so kathleen i i i'm also as you typically know i go down there um you know through all this that we've actually presented at it and all of that um where the idea of attending one of those meetings virtually all day from workshop to workshop just as it enticed me to be quite honest i think my concern um that maybe needs to be discussed at some point is the purposes of the resolution they seem to be to to get a lot of things started and then they seem to die and so wouldn't it be

048better to take a resolution and vote it and bang on the door some elected officials and say can you file this bill please um i totally agree because we we voted i think it was two years ago um we voted an end cast thing that i have never seen again and we also voted on the mtels that i've never seen again so i i don't know why we vote for some like you say you vote for something it passes or doesn't pass and then there's not nothing ever done about it it it is frustrating i i think my response to that probably is i think there might be a vast overestimation of how much power we hold for sure that's just the reality of it that's what it is so you could vote tonight to

049put kathleen into that situation and then and then rescind the vote the week of and or you know before the next meeting or she may be able to attend that meeting the issue is going to be that it's going to be a little bit like this if you're there they're still allowing for people online so then how are we gonna when voting on something that's resolutions that's going to be part of of uh you know something that's shared with the governor and all of that the legislature and all of that i don't know how you're going to do that but maybe some maybe they have a clicker thing that they're using or some type of or as we just discussed it's not shared with the governor or the reps so we're just voting on it

050right we're spinning right now yeah so uh so how does that leave us kathleen do you are you okay with doing it again yeah yeah i have no problem doing it i just um it might come down to the point of if if they have it i will go but if they don't have it then but like dr baeta says um we can rescind it i guess so okay all right let's let's do that then um all right i would entertain a motion to let kathleen stern is our school committee delegate at the massachusetts association school coming annual business meetings on november 6 2021 second second all those in favor catherine stern yes allen gallagher yes charlie cohen yes yes that's the boss okay yes that's going to bring us to other business uh and

051dan i think i'm going to start with you know you have something yeah um we have a open invitation from the norton veterans council uh regarding the veterans day parade in town the parade will be held thursday november 11th 2021 in the event of bad weather ceremonies will be inside of the yell participants in the parade will include boys and girls shows up norton um free will start at the yale school at 9 30 and step off at 10 so meeting at 9 30 all military personnel are welcome to march parade will go down uh east on main street to the veterans stone monument at the corner of pine and maine for a brief ceremony upon completion the procession will reform and proceed west from the town common for continued veterans day ceremonies this year's

052parade marshals are william mcneill and linda winship upon completion all formation will return to the yell for refreshments in the cafeteria please rsvp by calling gary cameron 508-265-0442 anybody down there no no just one of the handoffs that you have um from by code reports that's for your information and is required by statute that i provide that to you and you'll see that there's a employee of the dexter dean sullivan now the executive director uh okay i have one thing and it's kind of a follow on some that's been going on for a while here um after kind of discussing with with members of the school committee individually and putting out some feelers to um some other people i think with respect to the the policy issue that we have right now in front of

053the union um joe you and i have kind of discussed this slightly i think we need to start thinking about moving forward here um so i think we we're all in agreeance that what we're going to look at is not this coming monday but the following monday to start that up it should give you enough time to get whatever information you need from parents as far as who's in or who's not in um it's not to say that we're not going to continue to engage with the mta about this we have to um and certainly again it's it's it's their right and they should um but at some point we need to start looking forward on this so okay we'll do okay does everybody have any objections to that just i don't i don't so

054october 25th october 25th is the date that i know yeah so not this monday but the following day which is awesome yeah yeah all right meetings that evening at seven that's the difference no i just i was wondering why i had the date in my head for some reason okay um no other business priority here i don't know i just have a quick question i'm wondering if it's possible i know there was some talk about um people wondering and a lot of speculation about what the numbers are at the high school as far as getting to that 80 percent number is that something that we can publicly share sure with people is that something you want to talk about i don't know if we have numbers for high school and middle school just so people

055know where we're at middle school is a working project because as you know we have an entire grade that that's a bubble in terms of the high school we just reached 70 percent that's all in 70.8 i think it was um i'll get i should get a new number monday or tuesday i did get a request today um from a third party about doing another clinic just for the high school and as you know the boosters are also up for potentially staff um but people can also just use cdso welcomes right now so um hopkinton has just received permission for the 80 rule at their high school i know that um ashland that's what they're approved they're approved we'll now have to go back to the school committee to have the school committee change the

056policy to say that for this school it's fresh it's eighty percent will have been met and they must be leading that way if they're they're seeking the approval i believe so yeah it sounded like from the article that the the numbers came in before they could get everything together for their meetings to push the photo sure yeah that requires jesse again deci is requiring us to basically file a statement saying that i hereby certify that so on and so forth we did have numbers so to sherry's question we had about 34 students at the high school that are not part of the state registry system so that may mean that that just the information hasn't gone through yet it could be that um they went to their doctor's office and hasn't gone through it or

057some other way um so those families are being reached out and being asked if they would like to share one way or the other and then if they do they say yes it gets added to the to the pile so the likelihood of us getting to 80 um i will tell you that the commissioner's call for the public as well the commission is called this week was the hopkinton situation being a success there are a number of high schools on the 495 belt that are there um in talking to a local superintendent the state numbers show that they are as a community but their actual numbers aren't there again so and remember when you show look at the community number um what you're seeing is all students in that bracket so they may not attend

058northern public schools so they may not attend one eye they may be at phoenix they may be at southeastern they may be at the aggie they may be it's varying but they're still in the 16 to 19 bracket or the right and so that bracket may include people who are not students as well correct right so the 19 year olds that are very you know that are that are not part of our enrollment per se and then um some of the questions that have come in um it's like school systems that are six to twelve like a middle high school they've asked well do you count that as six to eight and then nine to twelve or you were just six to twelve and they actually could go six to twelve and then the question

059becomes the the secondary questions becomes well if they're not vaccinated at all potentially are they part of the eighty percent so the state's working out those situations and as far as staff they've been asked we've had staff staff staff were asked at the high school through the nurse's office we are utilizing the nurses office for for the major reason that they are significantly confidential yeah medical personnel and then i get the the data and i've asked for that from all of our schools in terms of the staffing and that staff would include anybody that's in the building at any point so if you come in and sell once a week you're part of that you're part of that collection of data i just think it's important to share that information because there's a lot of

060love stories going around so yeah it's always nice to see them the biggest the biggest success so far without you know getting into a huge debate the biggest success so far is intestines stay for us it is it is vocal numbers that are that are able to just go to the nurse in the morning 15 minutes back to classical um and that's where we identified someone that tested it right well the testing positive is through the contact tracing protocols and then the only negative that we're seeing is in this building in particular the middle school more and more students coming to school not covet sick but sick and then us trying to figure out what the sickness is and as you know there's a lot of crossover between the flu and the bug or i

061myself am vaccinated but i had a test done the other day because i was stuffy i had no cough i had no fever it was allergies for me it was gone three days later but because i visit classrooms because i am in the buildings i just did what i thought for me was the best medical decision there was another question i can't remember no okay i feel like we're gonna have time for that question yeah okay if nobody has any other business to bring forth i'm going to open it up to public comment i'm assuming that everybody who's come to our meeting because we never ever get people with these meetings i'm assuming everybody wants to speak so open comment session what we're going to do is we're going to limit it to three minutes

062for a speaker if you can um try and stay on topic uh and we'll give it a run-through there was before i just remembered my question if you don't mind for a second joe do we have any clarification on kids who are vaccinated um because in reading the the print of the test and stay kids who are vaccinated cannot participate in test and stay they have no quarantine restrictions right so even so far that's the regulation right so even though kids even though people who are vaccinated can be carriers and can still get covered there's no test and state for them there's no if they're close contact go continue on that's correct right okay here we'll just one second okay suspension are we all doing uh nick schlicker 40 north worcester street north mess um

063glad to hear that we're at least starting to move forward um but i got a little thing here just because i didn't know where we're at gonna just read it because it's easier for me to collect my thoughts when it's on the paper uh chairman savage who told me mr schleicher hold our feet to the fire well i'm the type of person who will and now i am uh i've asked for instance virtually and i keep getting sent in different directions so now everyone is together hopefully we can actually get some concrete answers i want to take this time to explore i want to take this time and explain the frustration over the past five weeks or so in this district here's the timeline of my experience over the past five weeks nine eight norton

064school committee holds an open forum for all taxpayers and parents from stress concerns with desi mandates of mass gay students in public schools september 9th school committee votes unanimously in favor of making mass optional at the little lances program as the art of power of the decision state mandate 9 15 jcs assistant principal mrs baker is instructed by dr baeda to send out a survey to little lance's parents asking their opinions on the mass wearing procedures september 24th the the survey results are sent to the little lancers community in which 52 percent of parents voted for no mass or optional mass 48 percented for mandated mass 76 said they would not leave the program regardless of this decision 21 were still undecided at that time and three percent even said they would pull their child

065if they didn't get their way on uh 9 25 i believe sorry uh 14 days after the policy was voted on unanimously by all of you to update uh the town citizens received at the last school committee meeting were very vague and something along the lines of our negotiation with norton teachers association september 24th 15 days after the policy change i emailed five school committee members asking for clarification on what exactly was going on with the situation and what was the holdup i got a response from no one wednesday september 29th 20 days after the policy was voted on and five days after my original email i followed up with a second email asking for a response finally mrs cohen responded to me telling me that dr bader would uh be able to answer specific

066questions uh around the negotiations i forwarded the original email to dr baieta as instructed dr biden said he was not on the original email and thinks it should be kept on the school committee uh dr bahader did comment that if he said chairperson savas thinks that it was appropriate dr beta will respond uh thursday september 30th chairperson savas uh responds approving dr bye edited to answer my questions dr biden sends an email later that morning responding to my questions here we are five weeks later no public communication of the little lance's community no updates no transparency whatsoever from the school committee we get absolutely nothing unless we have to reach out and even that communication is very limited we are just left to sit wait and become increasingly increasingly frustrated with the process and it

067has me questioning what exactly is the point of the normal school committee my hope here is that the school committee would have pushed us further already that you were being proactive with your information rather than reactive why are we sitting back for five weeks and not asking updates from dr baieta and communicating those updates to the little lance's parents your job is to be the liaison from the taxpayers and parents of this of this town to our schools you're supposed to be our advocates your extension of us i assume the reason you got involved in schools and on the school committee is to enhance that relationship this is why you've been elected to the position you hold it's knocked out doctor by his job to respond to me and waste time in his day uh

068responding to emails that our electoral leaders on the school committee should be able to handle he does not need to answer to me i'm not his boss and quite frankly i'm just probably open to him at this point i imagine he cringes when he sees an email from me i certainly appreciate the responses from him but why is he dealing with this mess the words of we are parents too we want the best for our children we want to communicate with parents we stress transparency we want norse norton school parents to be involved in our schools we want our schools to fit within the norton community those words i've heard over and over throughout the years with this group your peer you appeared to take actions on those words you voted for a change in

069policy you seem to be around the right path and then the execution of the policy came and that has made me think where your true intentions lie i cannot fathom how you can sit back as a committee and not demand answers and accountability of an educational policy you changed because clearly the uh committee felt strong enough about it it appears you have also been informed uh as as a have i dr vader informed that the policy requires impact bargaining with the norton teachers association because this directly affects some of the members working conditions has the school committee asked why has there been has been any conversations with dr baeta with legal counsel with the nta asking what exactly needs to be in part impact bargained i don't know all the collective bargaining policies and procedures

070i'm not going to sit here and pretend i do however i did my research i prepared myself for this meeting as much as i possibly could i found chapter 150e on masslegislative.gov which includes language about labor relations and public employees and i also found the 11th edition of a guide to massachusetts public employee collective bargaining law i've read both documents pretty thoroughly over the last two weeks i want i want to ask the committee was that you're running over you're actually a couple minutes over your time someone else wants to yield time away to okay anybody else okay good thank you appreciate it guys uh i want to ask the committee and superintendent what exactly is changing in the teacher's working conditions from september 8th to september 9th they are still in the classroom they

071are still teachers of the little lance's program they're still going to be required to wear a mask as teachers they have all the proper ppe cleaning supplies air purifiers updated hvac systems windows open to provide fresh fresh air test and stay protocols in place and have ample opportunity to protect themselves with the vaccine the common sense here is simple nothing nothing is changing in their working conditions and there's no difference from a teacher little lancers to a teacher in first grade at the jcs the only thing that is changing is students learning conditions and finally after 19 months i think we can all agree they were finally about to change for the better we know we know those times are from pre-march 2020. to me this is not a working condition issue this has been

072mislabeled by the nta union representatives and as appears no one has been able to push this matter correctly this is a matter of educational policy because it directly affects the students not the teachers the school committee voted on an educational policy on 99 and by given definition on page 156 and 157 of the document permissive subjects of bargaining involved core governmental decisions either the employee or the union may refuse to negotiate over a permissive subject and right there among other things is a list of examples of permissive subjects it reads educational policy i'm putting myself in your shoes i understand you lose a teacher's union respect your job becomes much more challenging and quite frankly impossible with the amount of power the unions have on our districts and our law school committees we have seen

073this across the country for the past few weeks however my suggestion is we implement the educational policy change that you all made and if dr baeto or the school committee feels it's worth negotiating with the nta you can continue negotiations and keep the union admin relationship strong however the policy of recommending and not requiring mass and little lances is carried out immediately the teachers worked through the negotiations and the educational policy change when both sides reach an agreement and where everybody wins this is nothing new to cba's the norton police and the norton fire have worked in this town without contracts and without cbas and still provided outstanding services as their unions were negotiating with town officials it's our public safety departments if our publication departments can provide life-saving emergency response responses i believe our

074teachers can handle small educational policy change but says the community pushed us finally across the finish line this matter does not need to be collectively bargained the nta leadership needs to simply drop the grievance accept the school committee's decision uh decision on that off sorry accept the school committee's decision on optical optimal masking optional masking and the little lance's program and look out for the best interest of our children the parents have spoken the survey has spoken your school committee has spoken stop hiding behind the union language stop using our children as pawns stop holding our children hostage because your agenda has been interrupted and start giving our children a chance to thrive in the northern public school system thank you okay i've been advised during these sessions not to respond so of course i'm

075going to completely ignore that and respond anyways um so just a couple of thoughts uh first of all on communication um the the lack of communication wasn't for lack of desire to communicate more so it was there was not much to say quite frankly um i appreciate you holding our feet to the fire um trying to i'm trying to remember the different questions you asked um you know we we're moving forward uh you heard earlier starting not discovering what it means finally we're moving forward with the policy i understand the frustration that this thing moves slowly um i i don't know that i agree with with you that the teachers association is using your response um they have the right to do this you know i i get that you think that we can go

076around that somehow um i appreciate that you realize that that puts us in a weird tenuous position kevin you don't need to it's i don't want it yeah i don't wanna i'm sorry okay i don't wanna back and forth with you but um you know it's it i get it i do and we're moving it forward and most of the stuff you actually all probably all the factual stuff you said i i don't disagree with you um you know we we can only do so much i think we all a little bit frustrated with the pace of it um maybe not as much as you guys but you know we're frustrated with it as well we don't like to do things up here and say hey we want we want to do this this direction

077and then not get there so we are trying to get there trust me i i i get it i get the frustration i it's we're not trying to stonewall it i i think i could speak for myself and i'll just speak for themselves here you know we didn't vote put that through because we didn't want it that's how we feel so you know i i don't know what to tell you on that you know it's some of the stuff you said it was you know it was pretty harsh but honestly i don't i don't think we're we're not trying to serve you guys i think we are and yeah i mean 100 we you know we ran for this to to make the educational system better this isn't something we signed on for but you

078know it's quote belt check it is what it is right you get you get the cards you're dealt you you play that hand so we're playing it as best we can right now we're trying to get this thing through um you know we're looking at our numbers and hopefully we get to 80 percent maybe we can pull hopkinton and do what they do i don't know we're going to get there but you know i don't think we're in disagreement and and i get the idea that you guys want to start very quickly believe it or not this is as quickly as we can moving forward right now it's it's where we're at so so come on october 25th is little lance's unmasked little well not unmasked it is not happening that's optional it's optional so

079why can we put it through october 25th but we can't vote through now well i want to give doctor about some time to give five weeks um the survey you understand the purpose of the survey i think there might be some misunderstanding about the survey the survey was not to find out hey what does everybody want to do and because we we want to change our policy based on what you want the survey was and and doctor and i talked about this before it went out and and i was instrumental in having that go on it was to find out where we were going to stand because that can matter right if if we send it out and only three people come back and say yeah we don't want masks that's a whole different situation

080than half the people not wanting masks so we just needed to know where we stood i i think it might have been some misunderstanding of what the purpose i think ultimately the survey doing it after you made a policy was probably a bad move that probably should have been done before a policy was made to get a sudden get out after the fact isn't going to help us because we have voted on a policy and then all those numbers come back and say hey we're going to yank our kids it would have been a very easy decision for to say hey we're going to go back on the policy right the only thing is i i and this is my own personal preference i hate to see us in a situation where every time we

081decide something we're sending out a poll you know i mean i don't want to do that you know this is this is how i feel about this so you know i get what you're saying could we could we pull people before him yeah we could have but i'm not sure how much we're gonna get out of that too like you know it's it's unless you get every single person responding you can almost kind of say all right we gotta throw the data away because in any type of those polls right any anytime somebody whatever the people that respond are the people who feel most vehemently about it one way or the other and so that's not necessarily you kind of get the tips and details on the argument so i get what you're saying you

082know uh with respect to the the last question before we kind of got sidetracked yeah it's it's been five weeks i understand and we're moving forward now and you know dr bennett has not heard a lot about this you know we want this done it's i'm sure surprising him slightly as well so i want to give him a little time i think a week is fair to let him get data back from parents and say yep my kid has to be masked my kid could be mask optional whatever i think it's a fair amount of time if you don't i get it i get why you're frustrated but it's it's a reasonable amount of time for myself why wasn't this done over the last five weeks why are we just starting this path i don't

083have any service i don't know i have an answer given the answer um the school committee made a decision to go with an early childhood vote versus a k-12 vote um they are one of the only companies in the state that's done that most of the other school districts that have that have a preschool that is actually not physically in the same building with the rest of in our case of k-3 that's what complicates matters in terms of working conditions is that you have to work through those students are not just in the preschool they are in parts of the other parts of the building where kuk plus grades are required to wear a basket so that's part of the process of getting to a resolution and if you remember the biggest complaint that i

084had on behalf of the committee and myself to you folks was we literally found out right at the beginning of school on what the regulations were going to be they were left originally if you remember to the school committee and they were taken from the school committee on the 24th or 25th of august that don't quote me on the day but it's around there and then we were starting school i think with the teachers that tuesday or wednesday and we didn't have a full school committee meeting scheduled until the 8th that's part of that process okay as you guys are having that conversation i was having this against my mask it did not move at all i'm going to put it in real quick and i got a couple questions is there um an industrial

085hygienist that's actually stated that these kids have to wear masks inside schools and if so there should be one for each single building individually and the parents have the right to see the documentation of the industrial hygienist that says to put the mass on the school because otherwise that's means wrong i said you can't just say you need it for the mascot that's that's why they they put in stores master option my only response to that would be that i'm in one very clear particular case i'm following a k-12 state mandate back to the district i don't have an option on if they're wearing masculinity today another industrial hygienist saying that each building is cleared to do so you're not supposed to well it sounds like a great question for the commissioner that's that's that's

086serious technically like this shouldn't there should not be no sort of mandate at all but you're coming at us when we're we're doing what we're being told to do yeah i mean i think you know by our vote of 5-0 where we kind of all feel about this yeah i'm not even going to do this because i already did it last time and i i actually didn't even start that's a valid question i already here's the things last year we had a we had a state of emergency right we had a statewide mass mandate we did it we were told right now we don't have either of those things but we have a commissioner telling us what needs to happen in the schools right can us as parents ask if you guys can request the

087industrial hygienist that says that these kids have to win the mass in schools the department of elementary second education worked with the department of public health i don't know if they have a hygienist i know there's a lot of titles on on on the memo system that i get from them there's only and that's in massachusetts and they they're the ones who made the decision on public schools they came from deci in conjunction with the department of public health that's how the decision was made i i don't know what specialist they used or didn't use i don't have any of that i can tell you that we spent time and money looking at our air exchanges in our buildings and our air quality we paid for tests at the beginning of covert way back and

088we did it again for the start of the school year because in march it's when we moved there all the kids being back with masks not the hyper clock so we did that at our own and shared that as part of our showing that our buildings air quality is safe and that the air exchanges are taking place according to the recommended uh minimum requirement didn't mean to cut you off i'm sorry no that's okay i just i think that you feel as though we have more power than we do we we really don't not in this case we really don't and it is beyond frustrating i feel your frustration because i'm there personally i'm done with this i mean i followed the rules last year now you've got clubs in boston where people are side

089by side drinking singing with no masks on and now yet our children are sitting at desks with masks on i understand your frustration i am right there with you unfortunately the commissioner that we don't matter it doesn't matter we send a letter off saying give it back to the local level nothing nothing so maybe if parents like yourself start to form and you guys go storm the state house then maybe they'll start to listen he won't speak to us either yeah they won't speak to us i called out baker to have a one-on-one debate on fox 25 news and he would not respond i called out desi i i contacted them i reached out i've done everything i hear you and they're not responding and it's not right because right everybody is being abused you

090guys are all being abused being forced to wear a mask that's not right at children and i was under the impression that the school could not give my child a mask is that correct or is that am i wrong about that we've been providing mass since day one even if they have a mask yeah we we our policy states that it has to be uh a mask and not a gator um originally because we had instead of a basement instead of a face covering we had a actual mass policy that was yeah because the shield don't make no sense like we do have iris going under and around well we do have students and staff medically that do their issues that has happened tonight that that doesn't make sense but my daughter was at recess

091and she goes to school with two masks a day and she's changed she's supposed to change our mask in the middle of the day at least after lunch and instead of her getting i don't know exactly what happened she is only six years old um i guess at recess she lost the mask or whatever but she was given this mask right here instead of the mask that she has and i personally send her an ender with a mask that has one thin layer because i do not want no triple coated double thing trapping even more in because as everybody knows i already proved the co2 i feel like an idiot though i didn't i didn't hit the stop pumping right so i gotta cut you off because you're actually three minutes over unless somebody wants

092to yield to them that's this all right we'll hold answers to anything until the end just because it's hard for me to to keep track of the time i have to like if we're answering in the middle i have to stop this time it's starting restarting so um does there have to be a title but there's so many people here yeah yeah we we've got to keep it to the previous i mean it's it's it's our last time we didn't we haven't like yeah i'm on the planet i understand right okay um well i have a lot of questions so hopefully you can write quickly then um so my first question is what's the update on the letter than is that you had handed out the last couple to me signed today okay can we

093get a copy of that uh sure i'm sure i have my email yeah send that to me thank you um also are you aware of the proposal that was submitted by um a few superintendents out of the old colony round table to desi is anybody familiar with this so this is something i'm asking if you guys would be interested in doing as well to help do something for us they submitted a proposal to the commissioner which was that if a school cannot demonstrate the 80 percent vaccination rate then each community could use their own town or county data to determine a mass requirement each school district may also overrule the metric listed below if the percent positivity in an individual building meets these criteria this would be the case for berkeley this is their proposal

094we've been below one percent since school opened all quarantine and testing protocols through deci would still be applied and followed and so their proposal was if you are at one percent or below positivity rate no masks would be required for students or staff if you're between 1.1 and 2.9 masks would be recommended for all unvaccinated students and staff if you're between excuse me between 3.0 and 4.9 percent math strongly recommended for all students and staff and if you're at 5.0 or higher masks required for all students and staff um so this is something i thought was a very creative proposal i was wondering if you guys might be interested in doing something similar to that i know you're in a different roundtable superintendents are maybe i have plenty of contacts i would love to work

095with you guys to get you connected with other school committee members who also want to do something like this um and then my other question during this subject is does the district receive any money for hosting an injection clinic just curious on that it does not thank you um and then something completely different is regarding the letter that was um basically publicized by the u.s attorney general merrick garland regard to the fbi and doj regarding parents in school boards are you all familiar with this letter yes no yes yes thank you um i just want to know are you aware that merrick garland's son-in-law is the co-founder of a company that supports and pushes critical race theory material are you aware of the name of this company it's panorama education panorama is the service that's

096being used for the survey of our students um i'm curious what research have you done on this group who is responsible for that research i thought i heard dr bennett mention that it was a state requirement earlier is that true no those are two different surveys i was mentioning the health survey it's not a state requirement but it comes to the state okay so who's responsible for signing a contract with this company how long is that contract for can we get a copy of that if you go to panorama's website they make it very clear in their faqs that they are not associated with crt at all however i'd like to read a few quotes from panorama's co-founder in which he published in his company blog this must change as millions of people across the

097country stand up to protest this system of racism and oppression we stand with them we commit to dismantling systemic racism we commit to embodying and spreading anti-racist practices education represents one of the most important levers for change in america at worst our education system can perpetuate oppression and injustice withholding opportunity from children of marginalized communities and allowing racism to continue unchecked we now serve 10 million students and 1500 school districts this puts us in a unique position to make change to our institutions through our partnership with school districts a reimagined education system is our anti-racist protest and then here are a few questions that were part of a panorama education survey on par um that were part of a social emotional learning survey by panorama that was sent to rhode island students at your school

098how often are you encouraged to think more deeply about race related topics when there are major news events related to race how often do adults at your school talk about billwood students do you know that rhode island state law allows rhode island residents who are u.s citizens to pre-register to vote at age 16. why are these questions relevant what is the end goal how do these questions improve the education of our children one panorama's workshop is titled s-e-l as social justice dismantling white supremacy within systems in self and is designed to explore actionable strategies for using social and emotional learning as a vehicle for social justice and advocacy in your community panorama defines systemic racism as a systematic distribution of resources power and opportunity in our society to the benefit of people who are white

099i'd like to know the school committee members thoughts on this do you believe school should be teaching things other than academics it's the school's place to push an ideology on the children what would you like to do about this if anything i'd like to get a copy of the survey that's being sent out to grades three through twelve and dr baieta you mentioned homeschooling number is doubling from last year and um you know maybe this was part of the reason why one second anybody want to heal you have two yielders left you've already you can't kill twice i'm done you're done i'm done thank you um so i'll i'll start by saying the the initial um the initial comment about the the proposal to uh to allow towns to have their own metrics etc i

100i would look at it i don't know much about it and obviously it was a little bit hard to follow what everything was as you were going on i will tell you positivity rate i know it's what they use i think positivity rate is is a little bit of a sketchy metric quite frankly um telling me how many people were positive and tested doesn't necessarily mean anything right if one guy goes in and tests positive it's not a hundred percent and that's what you know um but but i would look at it certainly i mean if it's something that makes sense yeah because it doesn't sound like we're gonna get to the 80. so i'm not against that quite frankly um with respect to like you know can we see this that is there everything

101we do is public record every single thing by law is public record so you can see whatever you want to see quite frankly um uh and then with with respect to the whole crt thing i mean listen i'm the wrong guy you're talking to about that you know i i judge people on the merits and that's that i mean i i don't follow this whole thing i don't understand it quite frankly as far as i know we don't teach it and i get that it's kind of the movement du jour um i don't i don't really have a ton of comments don't expect please state that if you're the chair of the school committee you probably should read up on it and crt is now being re-labeled social emotional learning i understand what you're saying

102but i don't know if you're following what i'm saying like i i don't i don't i don't believe in it i guess is what i'm trying to say like i don't think it's i don't think it's the way we should approach things you know everybody's different that's it that's a story every single person is different every single thing that you do and decide in your life and every interaction you have with somebody that changes who you are slightly right so tonight you and i are talking right now things about you and things about me are going to slightly change we base our lives based on how we perceive things on our lives our lives past that's it i don't need to sit here and say oh it's because i'm this or that or i'm tall

103or short or you know like whatever i i don't i don't prescribe to that quite frankly so i get what you're saying i should i should read up on it but i i think i know where i stand on it without reading but i've read i read enough to know where i started on it quite frankly are you comfortable with that being a student part of the norton school district it's just not part of this northern solidarity this yeah they're not the same thing like you know are you okay in school or do you feel bullied is very different than crt they're very very different things but so that's why i like a copy of that specific survey being sent out because i would like to see the questions that are being again public give

104you whatever you want and yeah and if it's something you see you say hey you know i don't like this and i look and say yeah i get what you're saying i i agree with you yeah we'll we'll discuss that you know but to my knowledge and and i feel like i have decent knowledge of it there's nothing like that being taught in our schools i i know that it's again it's the the thing to shore now for for people on on either side of the you know the aisle if you will we're just trying to teach our kids we're trying to make our kids ready to to go out to the world and get a career and be good citizens and i don't mean that to say like you have to do this to

105be good at everything just to make make smart decisions you know make them make them thinkers i guess that's to me that's what education is about that's that's it it's make them make them able to think on their feet make them able to look through a problem and say okay what are the logical solutions to this problem that's that's all we're trying to do here we're just trying to better kids i i'm still trying to figure out how we went from talking about masks to crt i don't even i don't know how we even just got here open forum hey hi uh um i have a couple questions that are coming in from our guests at home if you wouldn't mind um me sharing those as well since we're having this open forum component um

106the first one is from a gentleman named david does the school committee see the extremely high covered cases since the start of school especially the jcs school with a little answers program is housed do they still feel masks shouldn't be required what are you going to do to keep our children safe when unmasked kids are in the same room um do they still feel masks shouldn't be required what are you going to do to keep our kids safe when unmasked kids are in the same room i i think i mean when with the policy that we voted on we're not we're not telling people to walk through the door and take your mask off if you feel more comfortable with a mask on weigh your mask we're just saying that if you if parents choose

107not to then then don't i think it comes down to what the state gives us this guidance i mean we're talking again we're sitting here talking k to 12 and little lancers i mean you know little lance's policy is what it is but k 12 is covered by what the state tells us if they say this is what you have to do this is what we have to do that's just helpful so i mean i think you know this i don't know i don't have a real answer but we're talking about two different scenarios we have had cases in all schools it's just that's how it's been i mean the numbers are published weekly on fridays i believe so the data is there but what's it all showing um there's another question here um if

108we get close to 80 percent at school how can we ensure that those students who have chosen not to get vaccinated will not be bullied because they are ruining it for others so my quick answer would be if we get close to 80 percent but not over 80 percent yes if yuri jesse would still have everybody masked so there really wouldn't be any way to know who did and did not get vaccinated so i don't i don't see it as a valid question that's all we have for well i think also we already have bullying um protocols in place they would they would be the things that we would go to yeah just for the record uh the anti-bullying law is very very clear it is the only disciplinary issue that stays with the student

109during their entire time pre-k 12. the student moves from eighth grade to ninth grade discipline starts at noon the bullying report stays with the student so right we would carry out under state statute same protocols um different students those are built upon right those are builders including uh potential uh being a police matter also one of the only ones besides drugs and alcohol and guns and assaulting someone okay clarification can i just ask um i don't think anybody would really know who's vaccinated and who isn't that's not public that's what i'm saying so i would assume that it's all confidential correct and that um it's not like unless a person is sharing that information themselves nobody else would really know the status whether they were were not vaccinated so unless if you got over 80

110then you would because someone would have to wear a mask first take guidelines right now we'll tell you as a former high school principal it's a nightmare anything anything you you're going to say 60 80 90 i'm not i'm not agreeing with her just i'm just saying any type of a thing that isn't either you can or you can't is it's a cycle it's a segregation it's a cycle and i've said this regardless of what you think of my certain my views on maskies the fact of the matter is as a former high school principal i can tell you it's a nightmare to say that 60 80 of kids you can do this but the other 20 we're going to say and then how you police it it's it's a nightmare to police a nightmare

111anybody else jen matters no okay if i if there's no there's one more two more i'm sorry um my name is jeanette i'm a grandmother of a kindergartener um boys basically we've talked about masking stuff everything but i have a high uh industrial hygienist steve petty he's one of the top of the country and he's um he's done over 400 cases and everything and i have a chart here that this is the diameter of a magnified hair and this little dot is a one micron with the small little red dot and the coronavirus is forty is a tenth of a right so it's forty thousand times smaller than this area and a thousand times smaller diameter so it goes through any mask you're wearing the mat is like a mosquito going through a fence and

112that's the facts that i mean i don't think that we should deal with fat if we're going to deal with science and facts we should deal with science effects and like the sunlight does that you see going it's 500 times larger than corona 19. so masks really don't protect your small aerosols that come through and i i think um i've sent you yeah i actually read it you did it i did it i promised you i didn't i am reading the stuff i get all right and also so he was saying the best thing was for air ventilation air opening up windows getting air systems that that's way better because mass really don't do anything for getting rid of that and then also scientific studies have shown that it lowers the oxygen levels in the

113blood while rising carbon dioxide levels affects respiratory function actually straps exhale viral pathogens which increases the severity of viral overload by neglect and colonize viruses and bacteria and they're dangerous for those with asthma and respiratory issues a major threat to a child's development due to anxiety sleep disorders and creative fear of germs and then he had a whole list of things that dr penny also had so testing has problems because it falls positive i don't know if you're aware of this the guy kerry mullis that invented the pcr test says it doesn't detect viruses or infections their illness the pcr tests were set at 40 cycles the error rate at 35 cycles is 97 he said that the more cycles the greater the false positives 30 would be a max to ever be used a

114dna test he says if you do it well you can find anything and anyone this is why we have false positives and my people with no symptoms so i have a whole cheat on when we're told in february march 2020 by dr fauci that mass don't work he was telling the truth about the science when he said that because in 2008 he wrote a paper on spanish fluent 1918 and he said most of the depths not from the flu but they were from bacterial pneumonia caused by wearing masks so he said so he went against his own science of his own words those children are more risky no more risky hope is in the flu and they are behind mutually immensely so now that everybody knows the facts i hope that people can just maybe

115go to the dvds making a short character you can wrap an upgrade if not i'm going to cut you off did we have one of the person who wanted to speak or not um i have one i have one more on online than us they can they can wake up people in place they can go i just i haven't erased some things that she just talked about i don't want to all right jen what do we got everything um we know the case rates for each school per the mps website is it possible to be shown data for close contacts that end up becoming positive no right now between everything that we're doing i i don't know where what the intent of that data ultimately they're saying um it would help to show if the

116spread in schools is happening i mean the fact of the matter is um we we have two situations thus far this year that we quote may consider an in-school situation but again the details of where these things start it is what it is what we try to do is if the student was positive and then they happen to be sitting next to a close contact and then that student becomes content it was a close contact during the school day then we traced that back as being a situation that happened in school but again it's me i can't factually say one way or the other i think it's 100. hello gina argentina's 207 bay road um i just have a few questions and a couple comments um one being in regards to that social emotional learning

117um and i was just wondering if you guys could elaborate on what's being taught or what will be taught as dr mayeda did mention that that will be addressed somehow so i'm wondering um i want i would like access to that and requesting access to the curriculum being used or what will be used at each grade level for my personal review and uh where can i find that material um [Music] skip over a few things also quickly i just wanted to comment about the vaccine clinics um in general and why are they taking place during school um a school is a place for learning not for medical procedures or anything like that to be done that's my personal opinion i do keep my children home on those days with um on wednesdays on the days

118that you guys have like the flu vaccine or whatever was done in the past we've done the flu vaccine has been here in the district for years i understand that but i'm just wondering why it's being i mean it's not relating to like the mask or the kodi shot but just generally speaking i heard you guys talking about more clinics and stuff like that just wondering why it is being done at school during school hours well the flu test has been done for permission of parents only um so that's an individual parent choice to allow for it to happen during school um that's not all parents so if you don't want it you don't do it does it impact your child and the covenant covet testing has not been done during the vaccinations for covet

119have not been done during school time at all okay and back to the flu i do understand that i need you need consent for that but mistakes do happen um and i don't feel comfortable sending my kids to school when medical procedures are taking place at school i just wanted to make that aware because they are missing time on learning um and in regards to the covid facts um so vaccinated students don't need to test and stay but they can still get it and spread it so i'm asking for vaccinated students to be including in the test and stay procedure um is this something that the school committee would support um actually fauci and i had a cdc publicly stated that the vaccine can't prevent transmission or infection the vaccinated have the same or higher

120viral levels than the unvaccinated they should be included in the test and stay program too marshfield actually just changed their policy to reflect that information i have to look into it i don't i don't it's my understanding through the protocols i'll verify tomorrow but it's a dph and desi outline it was actually shared with all families online are sent to all of you it's a package and it has the actual scenarios in it sent out before the status quo um happy to send that to you again as well and i can ask that question yeah i do have that i'm just wondering why like the cdc and fauci like the big you know people who are well i give them guidance and we're it's just it doesn't make sense so much of this does not

121make sense well i don't disagree with you on that i agree with you so let's go back for a couple on on the same type of situation without um prolonging this for you um if you remember cdc and destiny originally didn't agree on 356 there are recommendations right uh if you look at air quality testing their recommendations not requirements if you look at um air exchanges in schools they're recommendations not requirements they're considered best practices around when you have 24 kids in the classroom you have 30 bodies in the classroom whatever the case may be so i think that's just another what you're bringing up is yet another example of feds versus state and state decision being let's do this through their department everything that we've gotten has come through jesse and mass department of

122public health okay so if marshfield has changed it i mean would that be would that be something i know you'd have to look into it but would that be something you all would be interested in considering i think there's a difference between if they changed it and if their change was approved because a change like that would likely have to go through destiny the dph so they we as a school committee could could make the change but it might not get approved by the state which governs how we put the program into place so i mean i i just i didn't i want to say like i just don't want to hear like a blanket statement like you know this town changed it that's fine but it doesn't mean it was approved and allowed by

123the state okay so is that something that you guys would look into and i just had um a meeting with the nashville superintendent interesting yesterday you say i'm trying to find so i'll reach out to them tomorrow that sounds great i've been looking forward to that update thank you okay ken do we have any other questions online no other questions okay that is going to conclude the open forum and does anybody the school playing of any other business okay uh next meeting is going to be thursday october 28th right here at the middle school six o'clock in the library i would entertain a motion to adjourn absolutely second all those in favor captain stern yes carolyn gallagher yes sherry cohen yes dan sheedy yes tonight yes thank you everybody good night everybody you