001welcome back everyone um madam secretary can you let us know when we're recording again megan it looks like we're recording okay left there just want to make sure rebecca are we recording now yep all right i got the nod all right um we're gonna restart our meeting tonight we just met an executive session as a committee with public comments um tonight for public comment i have three comments so i will begin reading those tonight um the first is coming from heidi leahy good evening heidi leahy 166 bullard rhoden holden i'm the multi-sensory reading teacher for the wachusett regional school district writing as an individual educator asking the committee to join other school committees in supporting the masc resolution and mcas our governor charlie baker the education and secretary jim piser and the commissioner of education
002jeff riley continue to demand the reopening of schools to address the educational physical and emotional well-being of students pediatricians are seeing unhealthy weight gain in children in an uptick in mental health we know there has been significant challenges in many districts around providing and engaging students in ongoing learning clearly there will be gaps to close when we have come out the other side of this pandemic this is not that time the state is demanding that districts do in-person access testing for ells they are proposing in person and cast possibly as early as january the height of flu season meanwhile why choose it inches ever closer to returning large numbers of our children to school under hybrid with a variety of options for students the strength of the connections created between teachers and students even during
003remote instruction has prompted parents to demand that the same teachers will continue to teach all students who are assigned to them in september regardless of cohort choice the continuation of current teachers during hybrid was pushed on the wrsd reopening faq site under teaching and learning parents should understand that this decision prioritizes connection over education teachers who are already working at maximum capacity to manage one model of instruction are not going to be able to manage multiple models under hybrid simultaneously with the same level of expertise and support for students the multitude of demands being placed on educators must be clearly stated to students and families otherwise educators are being set up to fail and take the blame our students and staff deserve better students working fully remote deserve a teacher who's available to work with
004them to provide focus and targeted synchronous and asynchronous instruction at feedback at various points in a day students returning to school buildings deserve the full attention of the teacher teachers will now be responsible for educating kids on covet protocols and procedures monitoring safety teaching content curriculum and addressing the physical and psychological needs of students during a pandemic students working at home on the alternating remote days deserve a teacher who can instruct and support them in real time without having their attention split between the students in the classroom and remote when educators tell you they're already working at full capacity you need to believe and support them parents should understand that they are sacrificing the best possible pandemic education in exchange for a preferred location while assuming a significant public health risk for their family in
005the community at large given everything this committee in the community appears to expect from our educators i call on the wachusett regional school district school committee to sign on to the mass association of school committees resolution to suspend mcas with 20 20 21 school year there is no educational value whatsoever in administering mcas and pandemic and the administration of mcas will further decrease time on learning while adding yet another mental health stressor for children let's get one thing done to reduce stress on children and educators support the msa masc resolution thank you next tonight we're going to hear from lily michelowski and holden mass dear school committee members my name is lily mitchelowski i live in holden and i'm a freshman at monty tech i'm running you because i want to share with you i
006had an experience in school last year in hopes that i'll start a conversation in the district about adaptive games and pe classes i was born with spina bifida which is a physical disability that impacts me in a lot of different ways and makes doing sports and other physical activities more challenging than it is for others i participated in pe classes throughout elementary school but in middle school my physical challenges were the primary reasons why i didn't take pe missing pe was okay with me but it did take away a fun class where i would have a chance to interact with my classmates in a different way outside of school had been participating in adaptive sports for a number of years training in swimming and in track last school year before schools closed down i completed
007my girl scout silver award project for my project i hosted a sitting volleyball clinic and my goal was to educate others and spread awareness for adaptive sports during the project i worked with miss leblanc and some members of last year's volleyball team and after the clinic was completed i was able to come to a couple of eighth grade gym classes and teach some students who might not have participated in my clinic had a place sitting volleyball one thing i learned as a result was that many students didn't know about adaptive sports they thought it'd be less competitive than traditional volleyball but their minds changed by the end of the clinic when i came to pe classes to teach sitting volleyball a small number of students chose to learn that versus learn that versus the traditional
008game though i really appreciate that my teacher let me come into the class it would be great if the district considered a curriculum for pe that included adaptive games on a regular basis there's a lot of kids that could benefit from adaptive games not just kids with physical issues but many others who might feel like there aren't as athletic as their peers i hope the leaders of the district will think about my experience and consider changing the pe curriculum to include adaptive games thank you for considering my request finally tonight we're going to hear from mary shepard good evening my name is mary shepard president of the wachusett regional educator association 1320 wachusett street in jefferson today i asked the school committee and district administrators are you listening to the educators in your schools at
009naiqual elementary school in rutland students are taught to listen with their ears their eyes their body language and their hearts they are instructed on how to truly listen to others as skill many adults still strive to perfect myself included let's reflect on some district communication breakdowns first because watch use it as a large district any message sent to parents and students should be well developed concise and clearly written for instance this is just one of several examples teachers found out about the hybrid model on a friday afternoon via an email post on facebook from a parent why couldn't that message go out to teachers at the same time maybe ahead of time with some directives so staffs were prepared to field questions the lack of communication divides us as a community staff members felt omitted
010from correspondence that should have brought everyone together as we move forward during a pandemic we need the district administration to embrace not reject a community-centered culture and bridge personal uh and bridge the many personal agendas by listening for understanding second in one of our professional development sessions with jessica minahan a board certified behavior analysis author special educator and consultant to schools intention internationally we learned that when anxiety increases these skills decrease self-regulation thought stopping social skills executive functioning skills and flexible thinking let's think about this for a minute we are in a pandemic and our anxieties are high for teachers parents and students for many wreaa members who've transitioned and will transition to hybrid these concerns overwhelm them what do i need to teach in hybrid will i receive training or do i have to
011figure it out myself again do i or my students wipe their desks down every hour every day every cohort change what kind inside chemicals will i be exposed to cleaning what about hvac systems is the air safe how will i keep the cohorts on the same pace do parents understand with the hybrid model there'll be less face-to-face time with teachers how come i haven't heard anything yet when will i hear something i want someone to listen i have concerns i want answers my success and prior planning affects the success of my students please listen if you understand these challenges need real and concrete solutions third we have teachers in the buildings we have students in the buildings what we do not have our district administrators in the buildings in fact the one administrator who did
012enter a school declined declined to enter a room to protect the bubble what bubble these students and staff go back to the community every day just as the administrator does that person doesn't feel safe how can wreaa members safety concerns are real for special educators in the buildings special education staff are working in close proximity to students reminding students who are mass and socially distance throughout the day despite these efforts the classrooms have been affected by coveted positive cases with the rising covet cases in the communities all around the governor has actually increased precautions for the general public yet decreased the metrics for keeping schools open we understand this is blatantly contradictory don't hold thanksgiving dinner with more than 10 guests but put 23 kids on the school bus and more in a school is
013disney's office open to the public why aren't we holding school committee meetings in person how will you lead by example educators are listening to understand and want to know how this contradiction can be cleared up finally wreaa members would like to know are we ready to bring even more students back planning takes time it takes vision and intuition our orientation day originally scheduled for september 1st is now a tbd day in the district calendar and must be used by the end of school year teachers want this day to complete the transition into hybrid and call for an opportunity to meet with dr mccall to answer questions about the hybrid experience not only would that show the district understands the immense pressure teachers face and turn the hybrid model it would also empower district educators and
014us to allow assurance and strength to our students we are all human beings on life's journey so let's start acting like it we must raise our words not our voices and begin the healing process our nation's president-elect is talking about let us listen to each and understand each other and make connections create community-centered culture where everyone belongs next on our agenda tonight our cheers opening remarks i'm going to forego my remarks um in the pursuit of a timely meeting next we hear from our student reps kenichi and catherine hi so um tonight i do they have a few things um so our sports teams are entering pod playoffs this week so that includes our boys soccer team who plays tonight our girls soccer team plays tomorrow night and then our cross country teams and then
015field hockey play on wednesday oh wait maybe i was a day off on that yeah i think i had it right um the other thing is sorry about that and then the other thing is our spirit week happened this week or last week so we had a pj day a sports day a mass day color wars and then a green and white day and so all the different grades including the staff competed against each other um and then our student council has been reading books to younger students within the district so the last most recent one they did was a halloween buck read and so student council members went into classrooms at mayo paxon and glenwood and read to those students um so that was a fun thing that happened for the holiday and then
016our echo is back up and running which is the what you sit school newspaper so that wants to read about what's going on in the school and then last week in this week our guidance has been working with the shrewsbury youth and family services to provide seo workshops for um juniors or sophomores and juniors and so they did one last week for sophomores and then this thursday there will be a workshop for the junior and that's all i have thank you so much can you see anything from you oh all right next time i need to take one thing out of order on the agenda tonight we do have a um we're going to take some one committee report out of order because i have a representative from cpac with us um and i want
017to get to them before the end of the agenda tonight um so taking that single committee report out of order um melissa are you with us tonight yes we're here you have the floor okay all right good evening um and thank you for adding us to your agenda this evening my name is tammy todd i am a newly elected um chief co-chair to the um wachusett regional school district special education parent advisory council and with me tonight is melissa martin who has been on as co-chair for the past few years to the um cpac the special education parent advisory council is a state mandated council which is one of the few regulations under old chapter 766 which was left in place when the state went from the state level maximum feasible benefit to the federal
018level of free inappropriate education what is the cpac a cpac is a special education parade advisory council every public school district in massachusetts is required to establish a cpac massachusetts state law assigns both advisory and participatory function to the cpacs a cpac is a public body which serves as an advisor to the school committee on matters that pertain in education and safety of students with disabilities in addition the cpac has the duty to meet regularly with the school officials to participate in the planning and development and evaluation of the school district's special education programs the cpac is a self-governing body creates its own bylaws and procedures and is open to all parents of children with disabilities and anyone interested parties a cpac is different from a pta a pto or a simcoe it does not
019represent families from one school but serves all families of uh children with special needs for the entire school district massachusetts state law and regs of a cpac chapter 71 section 1c workshops on the rights of students and their parents under special education laws in the commonwealth and federal government each school district shall conduct in cooperation with the parents advisory council at least one workshop annually and the for the students their guardians their parents the special education laws of the commonwealth and for the federal government shall make written materials explaining such rights available massachusetts regulations 603 cmr 2807 each school district shall create a district-wide parent advisory council offering membership to all parents eligible for special education and interested parties the parent advisory council duty shall include but not be limiting to advising the district on
020matters pertaining to the education safety of all students with disabilities meeting regularly with school officials and participating planning and development parent advisory council shall establish bylaws regarding operational procedures the parent advisory council shall receive assistance from the district school committee the district school without charge upon reasonable notice and subject to the availability of the staff and resources so the reason we read this to you and wanted to know because i know that this is unusual for us to speak it hasn't been done in years past in fact it probably hasn't done since i started the cpac in 1998 but we did have a seat on the school committee at that time we wanted to share with you our goals for this year we want to revise our bylaws and go over them we want to
021meet with the district's special education administration on a regular basis with the purpose of ed for purpose of evaluating developing and planning the school district's educational programs we have already reached out to christine smith the director of special education invited her to meet with us along with her staff christine has enthusiastically accepted and our first meeting is going to be december 8th so we're really looking forward to that we are also looking forward to meeting with the wachusett regional school district committee since we are the board that does report to you directly at least one once every quarter we want to be able to share and receive feedback from you as a committee this year will be viewed as an organizational year as the format is new to our district to our school committee and
022to the administration this is something that we realize that you are not used to we would also invite want to invite anyone from the public who has a child on an iep or a 504 plan and we encourage you to join us as we move forward with this new direction we also encourage any teachers staff and administrators to join us as well your voice does matter and we do encourage you to join us we are looking forward to working with each and every one of you throughout this next year 2021. thank you um for your time this evening does anyone have any questions thank you so much um and thank you for for sharing with us tonight um and just to let the committee know this is the direction we'll be going in um hearing
023from c back quarterly and and not just as a report um to have a kind of a back and forth dialogue um we're not really prepared for the back and forth dialogue tonight um but if you guys have some quick questions or comments just to thank tammy for coming on um i i'd be amenable to that um i have uh adam uh remember young i'm sorry um i will defer to malaya if she would like to speak first it is her committee report oh i can't hear you though i can't hear you malaya actually tammy's report so we we've uncovered all that so malaya i can't hear you but until you figure out your sound um i mean i i 100 report this uh support this i think it's a really really good move um
024you know that just just so everybody knows i mean this this cpac this is this is our responsibility to make sure it's there it's our responsibility to make sure that we're getting input from them it's our responsibility to make sure that we're giving them feedback and it's our responsibility to make sure that our administration is doing what they want um so you know it i absolutely tammy great job good report um you know let us know what you need and we look forward to hearing from you um and that's it thank you very much thank you put a smile on our faces tonight and we look forward to working with you more closely emilia i got a thumb but no voice in my back okay i'm sorry i could hear you all so that's weird
025um what i was going to say and i missed the very end of adam because i had to re-log in but everyone's everyone's happy and they they're looking forward to working with with cpac i just wanted to say thank you because i know it took some organizing and creativeness to get this on the agenda after a long agenda um so i appreciate that um i know that i mean i am i'm liaison and in such i i help them get to this but i i don't make decisions with cpac they make their own decisions um i just relay information so if there are questions you can certainly funnel them through me also because i go to their officer meetings i am going to one tomorrow they do have an officer meeting tomorrow night which is
026posted publicly so anyone can join um but i appreciate their willingness to have a more open dialogue and megan's willingness to allow it as well and facilitate that so thank you i think that's a good direction so and and quickly before we move on tammy um we have two absolutely wonderful student reps um here kenichi and catherine who've also developed a really great resourced website um for people of the district so if you guys can connect i'm sure they would link um to your email address and other things that cpac um posted that sounds wonderful thank you and for weeks if i could just jump in so i've been working with um tammy now for probably 20 years tammy give or take at least so uh you know we're just really thankful that you're going
027to be participating uh you and melissa just you know going through this process and just having more involvement because i really feel as though it's a great way to go so thank you so much thank you awesome thank you guys and thank you for bearing with a quick agenda change on the fly as we work through this kind of last minute today we're going to now move into the superintendent's report um again we're going to have daryl highlight some things i'm sure there's a lot to highlight but for members i'm going to be very strict about our two minutes tonight as it is already 9 12 in the evening there's a couple policies that we absolutely have to get to this evening after the superintendent's report so again a very strict two minutes we'll go
028round table when we do begin this and again for school committee members especially um it's essential to keep your camera on if you have the bandwidth to do so so dr mccall you ready sure thank you uh chair week so uh i'm i have a small presentation to do for you this evening just in terms of an update so i thought it would be a little easier to do a visual uh for everyone so what i'm going to do is uh share my screen with everyone and then we can um you know i'll go through this so i'll just do this and just someone let me know if that's working because i can't see anybody yes it's working thanks thank you so much you had about 10 thumbs ups and then you said you couldn't
029see us so yeah yeah all i can see is my screen so uh so yeah you know again this is uh just just wanted to go through um some of the information that people have been asking about in reference to um transitioning to the hybrid model remote model and you know again this is just something that um bob's going to jump in a little bit brandon will jump in a little bit we'll talk through these so this is just kind of the overview of what we're looking at as we transition to hybrid so we'll talk a little bit about facilities a little bit about transportation um touch base on the family model selection results we'll also talk about the health and safety metrics uh we'll also discuss instruction and then just communication plan which is
030a big one toward the end so uh facilities analysis uh this goes along with the building ventilation capacity that we've been uh talking about um for the past uh several weeks so deci guidance you know it's really the overall guidance is to look at increasing outdoor air ventilation instead of using recirculated air and you know increase air filtration as much as possible for ventilation and filtration systems so along with that um you know one of the things several things that they offer up are items such as adjusting hvac settings opening windows or doors prevent or minimize air recirculation and also maintain ventilation for longer hours so and what we've been doing is we've been looking at the deci guidance and tapping into the guidance in order to um make sure that our buildings when they
031open fully uh in a few weeks or you know next week you know we have the capacity to bring staff and students in safely so other guidance that we've been using include guidance from centers for disease control and prevention as well as osha occupational safety and health administration and you know again it that comes down to looking at ventilation systems operating properly and increasing air circulation of outdoor air as as much as possible um and one of the one of the items that they note and deci also notes this is that if um you know they say not to open windows if there's a risk of a student falling or asthma or uh safety security uh concerns are something that's also there as well so these are all things that we're we're looking at as
032we kind of move forward and we're also looking um the th chan school of public health at harvard has also put out quite a bit of documentation pertaining to schools reopening and they talk about um there are times when you can't actually have additional outdoor air in so on those days when windows are open they're really talking about the highest tolerable amount of outdoor air should still be used when the ventilation systems you know might not be able to recirculate the type of wear and they even say you know if it's really cold you know have students wear a jacket indoors during winters which is probably going to be similar to what happens on the buses where buses have their windows cracked just a little bit you know i've talked about this with school committee
033i believe at the last meeting and we've been talking about this at our facilities the security subcommittee meeting um the fact that we've brought on atc uh environmental engineers are their company out of worcester and atc has done two air assessments they did one prior to us bringing students back in for our special ed programs and they've just completed a second one and we're waiting for their report so again they're looking at kind of air exchange air exchange per hour how that looks um in a sampling of spaces throughout the district so they're looking at um all of our schools um and they did another i think 75 to 80 spaces so in terms of a heating and ventilation update so all of our air handlers have new filters you know any of the issues
034that we've discovered or are being brought forth we'll have those rectified prior to november 18th i've told you this we have air flow meters as well as carbon dioxide meters that we've purchased that will be utilized by our own support staff as we check air throughout the building and we'll keep track of all of those uh exhaust fans have been checked uh air damp dampers have been um opened fully to ensure that there's a massive amount of air that's going to be allowed into the room from the outside and then uh air handlers are set to start at least an hour before an hour after students are are in the building just to keep the air moving right off the bat classroom social distancing capacity so this is another thing this is a um i
035believe that central tree from the floor that's what it looks like uh and again um you know what we did here was we used a tool and there's a link actually in this slideshow that i will we'll post online and we'll share with all the all of the school committee members that was developed by canada design and it uh calculates socially distanced classrooms so all of our building principals worked with deputy burleau with doing this and you know all of us are all of our classrooms are um three to six feet of space in between them um probably about 85 percent of the classrooms are six feet and then uh it drops down a little bit for that 15 percent so as you can see in this classroom at central tree they have their six
036feet of space and then all cafeteria seating has at least six feet of space between students transportation capacity analysis um again these are some items that we've talked about in the past but um all students are required to to wear a mask according to the state guidance on transportation we students should sit no more than one per bench and they'll alternate sides for each row which means basically there's about three foot of distance you know they do allow for students from the same household to sit together and in closer proximity which is one of the things we're looking at as we develop bus routes ventilation i just mentioned this a little earlier keeping windows open unless it's extreme weather conditions windows open to keep the air circulation throughout the bus moving and then students uh
037having assigned seats all students in our district will have assigned seats for busing they'll be on one bus and one seat all year this is the way uh you know again the top right hand side shows the picture of the bus how students would be sitting our bus capacity right now is basically for 24 students which is about 32 percent of the typical capacity that our buses have based upon the most up-to-date information that barry has shared with me in reference to uh how this is playing out in terms of the number of students looking for um bus services we're averaging about 18 students and then bus routes are being finalized over the next week and you know ultimately you're going to be fine fine-tuned based upon bus ridership but again as we as we
038look at this we want to just make sure that people understand uh we are doing everything in our power just to try to help families figure out um you know the best bus routes uh are really important for us to follow up on and you know again um our aaa transportation is doing a a fantastic job at working um so late in the year at pulling this together and the good thing is they've done this in a couple of other districts that that opened up earlier than us so they kind of know the subtle nuances that they have to deal with moving forward and again you know with transportation you know one of the things we're going to be doing is offering up more entryways into the school in reference to social distancing so that
039will allow kids to be able to come in there will be hand washing stations as they come into the buildings they're going to be defined parent pickup and drop off areas hand sanitizing stations will be on each bus so when a student gets onto the bus they'll sanitize their hands and then we'll also have suggested time for walkers in order to stagger entrance into the building so we don't have everyone kind of convening into the buildings at the same time this is a family model selection results and again this is the learning model um based upon hybrid and remote in terms of what families chose so about 79 chose hybrid uh 5098 students and 21 or 1 393 students uh chose remote and this was uh these were the final numbers based upon our october
04023rd kind of deadline to get that information into power school in terms of model selection change we've already had many families kind of reach out and say well you know what i'd really like to switch to this model or that model you know one thing that we you know have been able to convey to families and please you know we want to make sure they understand it's not a overnight um i it's not an overnight concept where we are able to just flip the switch and move a student from remote to hybrid primarily because we have to look at busing we have to look at spacing in classrooms we have to look at cohort numbers and so forth so it does take time so you know we just ask that families are patient if they
041make that decision to move from one model to another health and safety metrics you know again as we've kind of looked at this we have several different places where information has come to us so we have our center for disease control and there's actually a readiness tool that they have put together as well as a screening for students for symptoms of covert 19 and all of these links are live there's also the massachusetts chapter of american academy of pediatrics and again that's all about it's a decision tool on um covet testing and then desi has also put together several scenarios in reference to um school bus or community settings and those are really protocols responding to covid many of those protocols have been put into play in our um reopening um of school plans and
042basically the district plan that was put forth a few weeks ago desi you know really key considerations there from desi they're really not recommending universal symptoms screenings uh right now by schools they strongly recommend that families monitor monitor their children for any uh infectious illness that they might think their their child might have and and and really encourage students to stay home who are sick and not not come into school and then from the massachusetts chapter of american academy of pediatrics uh again you know when we're talking about um in the annual flu vaccine um unless there are some other conditions that would not not behoove a student they're really encouraging that all families have their students vaccinated this year for the flu there's also a decision tool and a parent faq that is comes
043up after this this is one that is really nice because it has everything together in terms of the symptoms in terms of um what the kind of tree looks like in terms of testing do here's what happens here to the test here's no yes as you look at that what the isolation means what quarantine means um and ultimately you know these are things that i think are helpful for families as they kind of go through this i can tell you that brendan keenan our director of sel who has done a bang-up job at just pulling a lot of information together at the district level he also has information that we will be sharing as well and again this is another one talking about quarantine and testing so again major considerations that we've taken into account
044when we've looked at deci guidance you know it's really about you know making sure that we're taking many different strategies into play when we're looking at the entire process so having staff monitor themselves um making sure staff and students stay home if they're ill you know making sure that students are wearing masks and staff are wearing masks uh high hand hygiene um has to be you know first and foremost in terms of uh people you know making sure that they're washing their hands or using um a disinfectant um physical distance again you know doing our best to you know have students and staff maintain their physical distance you know having cohorts and assigned seats and then really having a way to communicate with families as we kind of go through this process and i can
045tell you we've already had um you know a few cases here in the district and our boards of health have been fantastic at working with us and um you know we're been we've been able to communicate with families um you know as as quickly as we can as the information comes to us these are some more helpful um parent resources from the cdc this is a document that director keenan pulled together in terms of basically a return to school plan um i review this at our uh town hall uh with families a couple of weeks ago but this this goes through and talks about the different kind of different type of experiences that you might have so if you have have symptoms and test positive for covet 19 if you're if a close contact test
046positive for covet 19 covet 19 symptoms diagnoses alternative diagnosis covet 19 symptoms and negative cova test results and covet 19 symptoms but not tested so those are all kind of the ways in which you could possibly move forward with that and this is an another one of brendan's documents so when will the district notify my family about a covet 19 case and again this kind of lays out how um if it that if that happens and um how it would happen and again protocols for closing of a classroom uh the building of the district and you know on friday uh last friday uh we had a quick five-minute call with a commissioner um who basically told superintendents that the governor was going to make some uh make an announcement on friday afternoon concerning the new
047metrics that the state has come up with in reference to uh the color coding associated with covet 19 and because of that we're going to be working on some draft protocols with our facilities and security subcommittee at our next meeting as the you know again the target continues to change in terms of how that is playing out this is the updated deci guidance and this is important um i did i shared with with principals as soon as this came out on friday afternoon but districts are expected to prioritize in-person learning regardless of what color your community is in districts and schools in communities designated gray green or yellow are expected of students learning fully in person and feasible of course our transportation here is a it's an issue in our district getting everyone in so
048that would be a challenge schools in red communities should implement hybrid models while maximizing in-person learning time for high needs students something that we continue to do even though we're not read the highest covet 19 caseloads again those are communities i think i believe there are about 15 or 16 communities now that drop dramatically after they changed the metric last friday they'll continue to look at having strategies for their own in uh school health risks and fully remoteness russian models should only be implemented as a last resort which is why we're looking at what we can do to get our kids back into the building again this is the new color coding in terms of how this is playing out so if you look at under 10 000 more than 25 total cases that was
049a lower number before and or in if you were to be red so they've kind of modified all of these these numbers from red yellow green and gray and this is a color map and uh or a map and this little this little place here is holding this yellow and right here uh the green one is paxton uh so we have two communities right now that um are not red but both of those communities if we had had our um metric that had been in play last last week at this time both of those communities would have been red this week as would probably have half the state bob you want to talk a little bit about the ppe um that we've we've been uh bringing on board for uh several months now sure happy
050to do that darrell essentially here on this slide the the gist of it is um we've already ordered and distributed a lot of things out to schools and we're ordering another chunk we have ordered another chunk some of that's due uh anywhere from in a day or two to in a week or two but all of it we're expected to be in um very soon we're trying to stay about two months ahead of where we believe we're going to be we didn't want to buy for instance uh enough protective equipment for the whole rest of the year because we don't quite know where we're going to be and if we're going to be in session for the whole rest of the year so we're trying to manage be frugal with our spending but still stay
051at least two months ahead in terms of the ppe and that's what's reflected here in this in this chart great thank you bob and i know this is this is something that has taken a great deal of time in terms of organizing and um you know you know once it gets in here uh again uh it all comes to either the high school or central office and we have to actually break it down and have it ready for all of the schools to pick up in terms of instruction uh you know our goal our instructional goal is really to provide all students independent of their mode of instruction with daily high quality effective instruction that ties back to the curriculum frameworks and it's focused on the depths of understanding critical thinking creativity and collaboration so
052we we really want to ensure that we're continuing to work with our students to get them to the point where they are you know solid students in terms of their understanding of the curriculum in terms of power standards and something that the staff has been working on so diligently for the past several weeks supports for learning again so structures to support our learning we have um you know one of the things we're doing and we've been talking about this is you know again meeting the requirements associated with um the time that students have to be in school at both the high school level and also the elementary level in elementary is k-8 um you know classrooms are to be well organized whether or not they're virtual or they're school based we'll have a variety of
053learning learning experiences that take place and students are not going to be on their computers continuously throughout the day there's going to be differentiated instruction and this goes back to what they're doing now is you know and also in terms of what's going to happen when they come back into hybrid and then also really consistent regular feedback uh to help students um you know really refine thinking and um again improve their performance bob you want to talk a little bit about some of the items that we brought on board sure one of our goals was to make sure that we were listening to teachers a lot of this slide and the next one the what we ended up purchasing initially the ideas came from teachers um and we've tried to follow up and do our
054due diligence on what we see as being effective and also that we can afford so essentially on this slide these were programs that we had in place to some some some respect of these programs in place uh prior to the covid other than seesaw that you see there and we've expanded those in a variety of ways uh this slide here that daryl just clicked to and these are brand new things that we've added and our uh have trained teachers on or are about to train teachers on these are a variety of new applications and programs that support primarily remote learning we wanted to really make sure that we're engaging students and providing them with ways to access the curriculum that would keep them engaged and and also give them what they need our technology support
055as well where we got the news today that uh we've got uh about 1200 chromebooks that are due in a day or two coming coming in and that's a good challenge for us is to try to start to get those things set up um we're in the midst of trying to finish our bus routes and and setting all that up with each cohort so our tech department's pretty knee-deep and bus routes right now but once we surface from that we'll begin to set up these uh these chromebooks and get those out our primary goal with the new chromebooks is to support uh the one-to-one initiative in grades six seven and eight and then to also restock uh the uh carts uh in all the schools so we're excited about that some other things that we've
056added in here we've increased the bandwidth across the district and we're keeping an eye on that in case we need to increase it even further the last thing that we want is for something that every teacher depends on and every student depends on which is internet access to be somehow holding up what they're trying to do with with learning and with teaching so we want to stay ahead of that and that's a goal of ours the last thing on this slide though that i really wanted to point out and daryl said he'd share these out to people afterwards that link to the tech help center that's for students that's for parents and that's for staff and we're we're committed to revising and up updating that the ed sub uh committee gave us gave me some
057great ideas on how we could make that more user-friendly and we're look we will be looking to to make some changes there great thank you bob sure daily protocols and procedures uh again all of our schools have uh their own reopening plans and uh this this actually links to all of the schools so you can check those out individually uh they were all based upon a template that we use for our district plan but then they were individualized based upon some of the start times scan schedules um you know again lunch times and so forth so they're all based upon the school in which your child might go to your remote learning we've you know been talking a lot about this you know again we're gonna they're gonna follow the same schedule um as the
058students who are in person we're still gonna have the daily check-ins with teachers it's gonna be synchronous and ins asynchronous instruction as well as independent learning um and again you know much of what we're looking at around remote learning it's part of our negotiation process right now we're still in progress of that but once that is finalized i think we'll be able to better define this for everyone communication plan you know one of the things we've been talking about you know in our district now for several months is just the importance of robust communication from the central office down and you know as we've kind of looked at this we've talked to families and families are very much interested in more communication from the district and from schools so you know what we want to
059do is continue to do that so that we're sharing our protocols and procedures we're talking with uh families and staff about issues and concerns and we're really trying to meet the needs of all students so some of the action steps that we've been taking and you know this is since um you know middle of october we had our task force meetings we brought our task force back together on october 4th 14th and uh director keenan did a great job leading that uh we also established a feedback at wrcnet.net email uh to provide um really the opportunity for families to um ask questions of uh you know of me of uh uh of the district just in general we held two town hall events um on the 21st and 22nd of october we now have a
060frequently asked questions website we also have a covet 19 data dashboard that's now up and running and then we had our hybrid remote survey that was completed by by parents and guardians and that was all in the month of october so um you know this is our task force meeting this goes back to the parabola project talking about what is the problem um and we had some really good discussions uh at that meeting this is a town hall virtual meeting that's a really bad picture of me uh but that's okay he's probably the only one that was there but i can tell you that we had um the the first one that we had we had over 1500 views um which was uh you know a good number of people were very much interested in
061what we were talking about uh this is the school reopening um in covet 19 uh faq page and uh director kenyon did a great job pulling all this together in terms of breaking this down by teaching learning health and safety covenanting guidelines and there is a link to that website right on our diversity.net website brandon do you want to talk a little bit about the dashboard sure thanks daryl um so this dashboard is now up and running on the website uh it's a way that we can be really open and transparent as much as is possible with you know the really private information about infections to look at trends across the district by building uh also by week and by month uh so this is updated um as frequently as we have incidents happen so
062typically within the same day and it's uh it would always happen after a notification to the school that's impacted that's really important that that goes up first to parents and staff so um the other piece we're looking at here too are cases that are traced to exposure within a school which is you know a data point that we are interested in um so far we've had none of our five positive cases we haven't had any that have been the result of uh exposure during uh school or at a school building uh so that is again something i'd invite people to look at and um they'll be updated regularly as well great thank you brendan again you know we're always looking for the opportunity for um you know parents in schools to have communication back and
063forth so again principals have chats they have coffees they have newsletters and this is all on a monthly basis uh there are simcoe meetings where um you know again those are open to the public and those are typically once a month there are parent guardian conferences and then we also encourage continued ongoing communication with teachers in reference to the town hall meetings we're going to continue to do those so we'll have one on the 16th which is this coming monday at 5 p.m it'll be a student forum it'll be about 45 minutes and we'll be putting some information out about that um then after that we will have a few parent forums another um probably one or two student forums um we have april and may we still have to figure out the dates and
064time for those but the other ones are already set up and that's it for this evening and kind of summarizes everything we wanted to talk about so thank you so much i appreciate that you for your presentation is really helpful um for myself um so again we're gonna go around the table please be as concise as you can possibly be um and then also please ensure that your comments are directed to the superintendent's report as is per our agenda tonight um and so we'll go around um and please um keep those comments to two minutes and have that camera on uh so first remember amos hi i just have a quick question that i want to make sure i understand the um the governor's um push for having students in person um does the current
065plan the hybrid plan um meet what he's looking for or is he looking for full everybody full and personal hybrid so he is he's looking for um and again so what i shared with you was guidance directly from dese which is coming basically from the governor's office where they're they really want everyone back in person now how that kind of plays out with the distancing with busing that's another story the best we can do right now would be hybrid we we could not bring all students back uh in person it you know with the restrictions that are currently out there it would be impossible okay that was i know everyone else has lots of questions and i'm sure everything i think of will get covered by sorry you're back to being first tonight it's been
066a while remember hi um all right so i guess the biggest question i have because i haven't heard much about it is um on cohort c how i'm wondering basically if we have more information on how life teaching will go cohort c when hybrid is in motion on the 18th yeah so melissa i kind of mentioned it in the slideshow where we talked a little bit about what the um synchronous asynchronous um you know might look like you know again we're because we're in the midst of negotiations right now it's it's a little more challenging for us to define at this specific moment but i can tell you that um we do have a pretty good plan that we we already have in play uh in terms of our our thinking process for this and
067um you know hopefully we can get everything settled pretty soon so we can get that out to everyone okay thank you for your question remember bennett um okay so i have a couple of like questiony comments but they might not even have answers um so um a couple of things struck me uh the governor wants to or what was what was written in the presentation says that um that we're supposed to prioritize in person learning so i'm wondering if that is um you know cutting down on uh uh the um remote learners so if we're not prioritizing that we're only prioritizing in person and if we're trying to sort of bully people into being in person in in that case and then i also have a a question about how you know uh we're not
068supposed to meet in groups of of 10 or more in in a room and we're not supposed to have thanksgiving right um and that's something that he made very clear during his his little speechy thing um and then um but uh in schools that's like a magical place where what copic doesn't uh exist or something so um i'm wondering what our responsibility is towards that because it's not a magical place where people can just mingle and cope it doesn't exist and and what kind of responsibility we can take um in that and maybe not be bullied by the by that because that's not it's not true um and then the map that we just looked at really has me very concerned because you mentioned um that the numbers that that we've been seeing uh two
069weeks ago with a different map and a different a different uh thing there would have been red but now we're yellow and it's cool because they changed the numbers around and that doesn't make me feel comfortable and i don't know if that makes any of you feel comfortable but that is ridiculous in my opinion so any answers um would be great to any of that i don't know if there are any more right on the money with your two minutes and thank you for your candor i've been thinking certain things and i can't say them out loud so go ahead okay so chris those are good questions um i mean i can tell you that the um yes that that map would look would have looked very different last week um i think one of
070the thoughts so as you know we're schools are excluded from you know many of the restrictions that they they talk about so it doesn't necessarily apply to a school um but when they're talking about social gatherings and so forth the concern and this is something that they're bringing back and they're looking at it nationally is that a lot of places that are open already the trans the transmission doesn't necessarily happen within schools it's happening outside of schools where people are having parties or they're hanging out or it's family gathering whatever it is and masks maybe aren't being worn um there's maybe a little less hand washing what they're what they're saying is that schools are a place where there's just um pretty structured um uh steps and protocols are in place to keep kids and
071staff safe so i think that's what they're saying they're you're coming into a building kids are washing their hands they're wearing masks they're socially distancing yet on the weekend they might be at home playing with their friend and so forth and there's not a lot of social distancing going on so they're just saying if it's going to happen it's probably going to happen outside of school that's that's really kind of now how that then gets brought in another story i i i appreciate that um i but i also want to mention and i think that this that everyone understands this if they've ever had a kid um and we're parents here uh no kids get more sick at school than than than they would if they were were at home and i i so and
072again we're so concerned with safety as well i think that's you know one of the big things we're kind of looking at just in general and again that friday map was new to all superintendents no one knew that was coming until 12 30 in the afternoon so that kind of threw everything kind of off a little bit in terms of what we're looking at which is why we need to come back to facilities and security and look at just kind of the metrics associated with safety because i want to ensure that we're doing this right we're not putting kids or or staff into a position where um it's not safe so we are being bullied a little bit i don't know if you know i'm just gonna next question next question all right uh remember
073bennett you're magically out of time just like uh copenhagen magically only happens uh between the hours of 10 p.m and 5 a.m the empire is a vampire virus all right member brown i think had to leave so we'll go to member dennis thank you so um so two questions um one you know back in september um we passed a motion asking for a number of things one of them was a list of things that need to happen uh in order for um students to return to hybrid learning um i don't believe we've seen that list yet and i think we're about a week away from students scheduled to return to hybrid learning so i'll ask my first question which is very simple um are we ready our teacher is ready our building's ready our bus
074is ready and and what uh if anything still needs to be done in order to satisfy all the conditions for students to return to hybrid learning sure so um when we're talking about busing again we have our transportation company working as bob mentioned closely with uh barry in the in the tech group because they they have to you know ensure that they're tapping into the power school information correctly and that's getting um put into our software that we use to develop the roots so all of that comes into play so we're in a we're in a good place with that right now uh in terms of the buildings you know we are waiting for the atc report which should be in you know should be in tomorrow uh wednesday at the latest uh and then
075from there we'll go back through make any modifications or corrections to any equipment that needs to be fixed uh if the air extreme exchange rate is not adequate um but other than that we're in really good shape i know principals and teachers have been doing a lot of work on prepping their classrooms prepping bathrooms cafeterias uh having everything socially distanced in terms of the spacing um you know the tech again one of the places again i would say we're behind a little bit mike is the tech piece and barry literally just told us today oh my gosh the 12 you know we're getting half of our chromebooks in um and they're you know he just was notified this morning so uh that would have been an area we're still waiting for another 1300 chromebooks uh
076on order that will be here and again those are those are going into the hands of sixth seventh and eighth graders so that we can move that one-to-one program uh straight down to the middle school level but those big things uh you know we have our um our spaces for students uh you know so that the the coveted spaces uh if a student is uh suspected of having coveted those are all set ready to go um in um all the schools uh all the entryways have been marked so again i and i believe we're gonna have the opportunity for some of the facility security subcommittee members to take take a couple tours of some of the schools over the next few days so so thank you so i think i if i understand correctly the
077lack of chromebook would keep um the district from reopening uh to hybrid on the 18th but do i understand that we're still waiting for reports for all but two buildings and is it the case that if there is something that needs to be addressed as a result of it being identified for that report that there is that that is a prerequisite to opening that building uh no because let's just say it was one classroom um if we had to we would have to you know we'd move kids if it was something that we couldn't fix by the 18th you know we know all of our systems are working right now uh yeah we have paxton center school has you know we have just has to be calibrated so it's a matter of turning the heat
078on calibrating the thermostats and they're ready to go uh so we we we should be fine but we wouldn't we wouldn't have to keep the whole school shut unless it was an entire system that that went down so it sounds like all the conditions for reopening for hybrid learning or return to hybrid learning are satisfied or plan to be satisfied by the 18th so that's good to hear my second question is um you know you showed us your communication plan that there are a number of forums for parents and for um students um i i just would encourage the and ask that the administration consider um sometime soon sooner rather than later including the third leg of that school which are teachers and putting forward an opportunity for teachers to [Music] ask any kind of
079clarifying questions that they need to process communications i think we've received seems to indicate that they need it yeah thank you mike thank you member dennis uh we're going to move to member gustafson okay um i had a couple questions about things later in the agenda so i'll save those um that were in the report but i'll save those um like the goals so i think those are later um so my couple questions about things that daryl just talked about um the first is the forms i'm very happy to see those i would encourage those to be um do you need to do that first i can wait okay i'd encourage those to be at some point interactive because some of the feedback i've heard is that the forums that happened in october were not
080really interactive they were town hall meetings but they were actually submitting questions and then you doing a presentation and people were wanting an opportunity to have some dialogue or at least in real time exchange of questions and answers so i would encourage the district to be creative and finding a way to do that um at some point i think that's important um i can tell you you we're we're looking at a way to do that you can't do it with google meets i know it's very challenging but if worcester can find a way to do it with their district i hope we can figure it out well worcester is paying money for their zoom yeah i'm not upset i just i hope we can figure it out it's a little different but yes even if
081it's a login reserve your time to answer a question then exit something like that to meet our capacity limit i just think that would be really helpful um and i'm sure we can figure it out you guys are very smart at doing that um second question um or comment is about the density metrics i know we were talking about that um i know that's partially out of our hands but my thoughts on that um are also reminding everyone that in the spring desi also did not close schools until and the governor did not close schools until every superintendent in the state close schools on their own so i would hope or be curious to hear what conversations the superintendents will be having around this most of the data i read their lengthy discussion most of
082the data they cite is based on countries and communities where the spread was under more control than we're having here a lot of them are international studies where the community spread is a very much a lower level i have personal friends right now that have covert that they got in a school under remote learning because it just is in their community and it spread to the school um so those are my couples we're short on time for your comment if you want to quickly wrap up because we also need a motion and you're over the two minutes i'm sorry yes um those were my main comments on that i did have a quick question about the enrollment report but i don't know if we'll get to that i will share the question that i didn't
083know if the public school category what that included and i hope we'll get some clarification on that down the road but i know that doesn't have to be this moment thank you um remember young did you have a were you in my chat for a hand raised oh remember ottmar got you guys confused crazy i'm usually on top of things so uh in that and adam said i've put a motion to extend our meeting to 10 30. i'll second that uh there's a motion and a second any discussion all right seeing numb remember amo ayala oh yeah yes bennett bennett yes dennis dennis yes justin yes eber hey brian amber embryos christian bomb christian bomb yes matt are you with us let me pass that over for now remember longbow leo megan matt left the
084meeting matt left to me yes mitchell mitchell yes outlaw omar yes shapiro shapiro yes silva athema yes we are extended to 10 30. hold up yes sorry about that megan thanks thanks awesome i appreciate it um we're going to move on to another haber please hi um my biggest concern right now beyond the plan which i know is is in the works is a possible disparity of numbers i mean we encouraged people if you really didn't know what you wanted to do choose remote and choose hybrid and then you can switch to remote if you need to um i'm worried that we're making these plans we're setting our cohorts we're getting our bus routes ready and with the possibility that these numbers could really shift uh once our hybrid and remote plans come out and
085i just hope that we're preparing for that in some way i'm hoping that buses aren't going to end up with with 10 kids on them and then we needed more buses and then we're ready to shift shift gears if need be another concern is that i've been hearing from a lot of teachers about their wednesday pd days uh so many of them being self-led that they're feeling like they're they're looking for things that they're interested in and spending their time on youtube trying to figure out uh how to use the new programs hoping that we can shift some of those to a more district letter even building lead based on what we're finding is needed once we move to hybrid i'm happy to see that our faq pages up and running from the task force
086i am afraid that it's not being updated with current information just one question i happen to look at didn't have up-to-date information so i'd like to make sure that happens um and and my biggest takeaway from everything is if we can really work on consistency back to middle school schedules we have some kids who are going every day full day right now we have other kids that are half day in holden and we have kids in princeton who are not all five days is what i understand i don't understand what what is going on there but i'm hoping that district-wide were consistent in terms of that in terms of response the time is up for now okay administration is there any response to um consistency or i believe that's about the faq yeah we're definitely
087looking at the faq we'll update thank you for pointing that out sherry but also the consistency piece is really important as we move into this hybrid model so we're we're looking to do that as best we can remember amber so i'm hoping under as a new business item um that are at our next meeting uh daryl and the u.n administration can address any potential needs for um support services that are increased and and particular areas that you know i'd be looking at or um for sure uh technology and then secondarily custodial and uh maybe paraprofessionals in terms of being able to escort kids around the schools if we need to um and and other support services of cleaning and those sorts of things so you know i i just want to know that you have
088the support that you need or the well really the district has the support it needs and my guess is that that you know things are just very thin right now um and not going to get better thanks thank you member invert remember christian bone thank you um i i want to echo uh member amber's uh comments about the needs staffing needs that are that might be uh needed uh checked around uh instructional specialists um curriculum specialists and so forth i think that given the number of uh technology and apps and new resources that are available to teachers there's going to be some uh some need there also i would really like some some greater clarity on the state's hours mandated hours for the year um elementary middle school requires 850 hours of instructional time breaks
089down to about five hours of instructional time per day high school requires 935 that's about five and a half hours per day i just i know we are running very tight on that now given our remote model um given the number of transitions mask breaks uh early releases so that kids can get on buses and so on and so forth i'm afraid we're going to be cutting too close into that um and the potential for uh for uh issues that result from that so i'd really like to see some greater clarity on how those hours are going to be um are going to be met given this new hybrid um and especially for that cohort c thank you thank you very much um i'm gonna put that time on learning request um in informally remember
090christian bond is that okay with you yes i would like to i've asked this a number of times so i'd like it to actually be responded to thank you as we've done in the past i'm going to put that in our formal request for information um so again if if members if something comes to you tonight that you didn't get to ask but you'd like it in a formal request please do send that to me by friday and i'll send those requests in on friday um remember lavoy has left us uh member long below thank you um the emails and calls i've gotten from members of our communities indicate that our communities are split between those who think that we should remain remote and and those who feel strongly we should move to hybrid plus
091remote um we've given families the opportunity to choose between those two and a substantial majority of chosen hybrids so i think it's reasonable to give people that chance although i certainly do have concerns about the spread of the virus i'm also hearing a lot about pretty significant difficulties that kids are having um because they are currently only remote uh mental health problems serious mental health problems that they didn't have before um we all we went all remote and children being uh uncomfortable speaking up in class when um which for them is is not a typical behavior i so i do think it is important to continue to give people those options um i don't recall getting any emails or calls asking that we go to full in-person learning and so i think we feel very
092strongly we should hold the line and hybrid is the most uh in school that we that that children should be spending especially since the virus is is uh expanding at this point um i do have a question um that i haven't heard answered yet which is that i know that our policy is that if a chi if a kid or our teacher is diagnosed uh as positive that anyone within six feet any close contacts will be asked to quarantine as i understand it um but how does that work at the classroom level would it be only kids within six feet of that that kid or that teacher would it be the entire classroom um if it can can you please explain that a little bit more sure so so that's why we have uh students
093spaced out you know that you know within a certain amount of space around another student so it's um within six feet uh for 15 minutes and it's 15 minutes cumulative over 24 hours so um you wouldn't necessarily close an entire class if you had a student that um tested positive and you had a student that was on you know that was 10 feet away but i can tell you that even even in a place where if you're uh within six feet but you're wearing a mask they're wearing a mask there's a divider between them that's still considered within six feet and the board of health will say well you know what you were within six feet you're close contact so um for the most part though the when the initial guidance came out linda you're
094correct it did say that all you know it said whole classroom just gets shut down and then they modify the guidance so it would be some children within the classroom who were within six feet of that kid who was who was uh affected is that right yes and if a teacher is affected is it just the front row of kids or it's all based upon the spacing so what happens is the board of health uh goes through when they do the close contact uh verification and they make that determination okay thank you those are my questions thank you so much um remember here we'll circle back to you after everybody's had a chance to speak um remember mitchell thank you um two hopefully quick questions uh the first is how i don't think i've seen
095anything as it relates to the um i guess sick policy sick days how what what are the guidelines that um we have to work with i.e if the quarantine because you were with someone that had coveted or no so i'm not sure what considers a a day off versus a quarantine versus where does that all flow as it relates to days in school then i guess the so that's question one the second question is as it relates to holding that hour of time um for remote students at the end of the day um whose responsibility is it to kind of hold that hour um because i think it'll be i think it's going to be really key to either the kids that are remote or the kids that are remote for those two days that
096the teacher is able to uh get online and be able to help them i mean i've i've seen dismissals from k through 12. the younger kids it takes a lot in a normal situation let alone a situation where we're going to be releasing one kid at a time out of a class or 12 kids for a bus i mean i can imagine that dismissal could run 45 minutes so how how is the district and whether that's a school thing a district gonna make sure that um that is actually really held sacred for those kids that are uh learning remote okay those are those are the two so uh you know in reference to that that time at the end of the day i think one of the things principals have been doing diligently over the
097past several weeks is looking at their staffing and how they can best you know bring kids into the building and then have kids exit the building while socially distancing all the students getting them onto the bus into their correct seats because they're all remember i mean that's it you know and again other schools are doing this they've been doing this for a little while now uh so uh it's not like this isn't happening in other places it's happening in a lot of places um but that is going to you know hit hit uh some of those areas you know in some form or fashion we're going to have to as time kind of goes on and this is one of the things that i said the principles uh last week um you know the first
098three four or five weeks it's going to be tough this is going to be challenging uh getting the kids back in it's going to take a lot of time it's not going to look quite the same but at the same time you know i i have talked to other superintendents in other districts and they're like yeah hey listen when we transitioned we thought it was going to take yeah kids were kind of they got into it pretty fast uh so once the kids are into it and they're used to it and we can get them moving you know it'll it'll be a little slower maybe at the k-1-2 level um you know but by the time at the high school they're gonna they're gonna be in into it within a day or two so that
099you know again that my hope is that ends up uh being compressed so we have more time for the teachers to work with those kids and then your first question ben was around i'm sorry the the question was around uh i guess sick days okay yep yes so uh if it's a quarantine situation a kid's just gonna be remote so we're not going to say that they're uh they'll just jump into remote learning they're not gonna be uh they won't be considered sick if a student's sick sick and they're not participating in anything then then it'll qualify as a sick time sick day okay and if someone does get covered and and things like that they'll be extenuating circumstances that they won't they won't end up uh you know let's 14 days 20 days they
100won't end up having to repeat something no no no no we're going to be careful we'll be careful about that the one thing we have to also again the state's trying to is really holding everybody's feet to the fire concerning attendance um just like they are mcas just like they are everything else so they're kind of trying to treat this year as a normal year as much as humanly possible and we'll just see where that goes because again i think a lot of people are going to run into these situations especially as flu season kicks in okay thank you thank you so much member mitchell remember ottmar please all right so i have just one question for administration tonight and it is in regards to attachment five now for my colleagues that don't have attachment
101five right at hand that is in regards to that is in regards to class sizes specifically i'm going to hone in on fourth grade so if we take a look at houghton elementary school you'll see that in the fourth grade they have 49 students at paxton we have 52. however i would like to have administration explain why they chose to take the 49 students at houghton and divide them into three classrooms of a very manageable 16 16 and 17 whereas they chose to take the 52 at paxton and pack them into two classes of 26. thank you so it's not as easy as saying well we decided to keep three teachers there and two teachers here some of that carl comes down to the numbers of students who were actually at houghton school so if
102you if you had many students that left um because we would not have been in a situation where uh you know five six months ago or you know even more than that when we were actually putting everything together in reference to class sizes and staffing because the staffing is all done pre-pre-now so that's how it would have played out when we're looking at um you know grade four those numbers are based upon the numbers associated with kids that we're now currently seeing so again that's that's why that number looks like that so to sort of clarify those it was based on last year's enrollment and it's right under the stick this year it was so when we look right when we when we're looking at these you know in in particular um you know planning
103out for next year so the budget that was proposed to you had staff based upon the um projections associated with uh enrollment that we would have for this year so that's how that kind of played that played out i didn't have any other questions that was my only one and megan you're showing up twice we can't get enough of her oh that was bad laura yeah well it's late it's late it's late i don't have the uh alphabet of people here so whoever thinks is the next one is there anybody who hasn't gone who would like the girl i think i'm next i think i'm usually after oh is that true okay i'll go so i think usually you're before me okay good all right so i'll go just a quick um i just want
104to go kind of support kind of and reiterate what member bennett said kind of at the beginning um about the um coding of the towns and the colors of the towns and everything like that i think that um as a committee um when we talked about all sorts of different metrics and all sorts of different expectations we were looking at a coding that existed before friday and i think a lot of parents made decisions based on whether or not to send their child to school hybrid or keep them home based on a coding that exists before friday and so i would like to encourage the administration to whatever point we can and and as a um as a committee to consider that we hold to the coding of the towns and the colors of the
105towns that existed before friday because i don't believe in the magical change that happened um so i think that that would only be fair to um to the parents and the information that we were given um prior to i keep saying friday but that's kind of where i want to kind of you know stress and have everyone think about please thank you thank you i think we have member silva up next look at you mike you got it hey whatever i'm glad you're back uh basically i'm going to keep mine short because a lot of my concerns have already been voiced um but just wanted to stress that i really would like to see details on the remote versus hybrid so i know we all voted as parents sending out in october but with numbers
106changing and with how the schedules might have changed for some students i really want to know more details going forward and really hoping that honestly that you know whatever is best for all our students and families is what's been decided and what will happen thank you member silva um we'll move on to member smith please okay thank you so um daryl thank you for your presentation um and your team for us and i understand mine's not really a question it's more commentary i understand the commissioner's desire for for fully in-person learning i too would like for life to be normal in the way that it was a year ago the sheer irresponsibility schools to be fully in person um is followed in the desi guidance if you look carefully by the word visible right and
107something that you sort of mentioned with your with the spacing and how we probably can't really get everyone in person and transportation as it is we as a district are not promising our community six feet of distance for their children we're somewhere between three and six feet depending the assumption that schools are protected from this disease as many have mentioned is a fallacy some of the early data suggests schools are not places of transmission and this is due in major part to mitigation strategies which include mass squaring sanitizing and physical distancing of 60 or greater we cannot be held hostage by a commissioner of education and a governor who are butting into our local school system our district is in this committee's hand and not in the governor or commissioner riley's and the threat of
108an audit is not really a threat audit us come in tell us what we need i welcome that i think we all would give us some help if they have that kind of personnel which i highly doubt as i've been trying to get an issue resolved for over a month that they haven't taken care of so but bring the audit on um dr mccall and deputy superintendent berlo let's hold and uh everyone in our district leadership let's hold our ground with what is best and safest for our community and i suggest that when we open in the hybrid model that we invite commissioner riley to come and visit us it's been two years since he's been in our district come on over come visit us for a day or two and he can sit in
109the front row of that classroom that linda was mentioning that has the three feet of distancing with that teacher and see what our teachers do see what a classroom is like in hybrid learning i remember smith you're so passionate but you are over your time i'm done that was it but thank you very much thank you your words are are heard very very close to my heart um remember williamson please um i was i just wanted to to maybe make a recommendation for the facilities committee i know they're you know you said that they were going to be considering um protocols for closing and things like that um i think it's it's worth considering staffing as um a factor that might require a school to go remote um i know as a building principle that's
110one of those things that i i panic about is you know what if i have eight teachers that suddenly have to quarantine for two weeks and i can't cover that within you know the building that's a real concern and i think you know i i feel like that should fall under that feasibility um you know consideration um and then i just had a question have they given you any definition of what the evidence for school transmission would be so uh the that would get defined through the board of health okay so if they were to say that again it didn't happen at home they got it from you know a student had it in school the you know their friend who was next to them ended up getting it as well that would be considered
111in school transmission so that does happen um i to go to your first point i i'm also concerned about as are the building principles uh staffing we've had there have been schools in the state who have not been able to open they've had to actually go remote for a day or close for a day or two if they have um too many teachers out um i've i met with principals thursday morning for for three hours and we kind of went through just you know an enormous amount of kind of information around what we might do in these types of situations but you know i did tell them that they could get a full-time substitute at least one to start off with in their building at all time uh so high school level you know i
112think three i think that's what i told principal biando but just to help cover with things because the other thing that people have to realize is you have a building principal and an assistant principal in most schools some schools only have a principal and a half you know nick wagon glenwood chair and assistant principal so if dixie or karen if those two principles are out and we're trying to cover well then i'm saying hey uh brendan can you go help out over there i mean that's how thin we are as a district so we need to get more bodies into the schools to help deal with the things as carl said hey what's going to happen how are we going to get the kids out because i want to assure that that time is is
113set aside for students you know who are remote that day b or c so again those are things that we're we're you know putting forward i can tell you that it's really hard to get um people to sub in the same way we talked about busing with our bus company uh even the coordinator has to drive a bus this this year because they do not have enough bus drivers that was all i had thank you thank you member williamson um remember woodland please all right so i would like to echo what the past several committee members have said about uh to please reject the governor and desi's threats and don't let them belittle the amazing feats that our remote learning model has achieved our teachers have created a lot of great great learning opportunities there's
114been a lot of engagement this is a legitimate way of teaching our students and i encourage you don't let the governor and desi take that away from us our district created this for our students it is it's not perfect but nothing is it is still a legitimate way to be teaching our students um and just don't give in to the double think that they're asking our school districts to do by saying you can only have 10 people unless it's a classroom i understand this whole idea that a classroom is going to be more vigilant but the data is not lining up the way they want it to and no amount of repeating and repeating is going to fix that um so that's my soap box but i do have a question um in terms of
115those spaces and i've asked this in facilities in some regards but i'd like another follow-up um those classrooms that cannot maintain a six feet of distance you said that it's about roughly 15 of the classrooms what is the extra mitigation for those classrooms because if you're taking away that distance protection there needs to be something else as a moral obligation to our staff and our students and so that's what i would love to learn thank you so that is again a very good question um at the uh kindergarten level uh where you have the opportunity for kids to sit at um tables uh so you know the you know where you have the the um six-sided tables that the hex tables that we have and they're divided into we actually are putting in uh the
116acrylic dividers to help space even if the kids are within six feet they'll have a divider between them so i know that's happening in certain schools the place where it's the most i guess the most consistent in terms of not getting that six foot spacing is really the high school um that's that's the place where it's most challenging and again i guess the number one mitigation strategy is is making sure that the students are wearing their masks all the time and again you know that's something that if there was a way for us to put barriers in between and so forth i just i you know i'm not even sure how how that might happen because even if you're at a three foot level linda or or a five foot level or whatever it might
117be you know you're under the six foot level um even with the the you know because i've seen the acrylic ones that sit on desks well unless you're like in the desk like this the entire time as soon as you sit back you're you're kind of in the same spot even you know even with your mask on so um it's it that's a that's a more challenging thing for us to deal with i i hear what you're saying dr mccall i believe there's a point of order yeah um to extend the meeting until 11. thank you there's there's a motion and sorry i didn't say emotion you couldn't hear me sorry i got you this emotion is there a second second okay so made in second is there any further discussion on the motion on
118this left remember bennett yes remember dennis let us know remember gustafson yes remember avery yes remember ember embryos remember christian bomb version remember remember mitchell venice left us remember ottmar umar with regrets yes member shapiro member smith smith no remember williamson yes remember woodland woodland yes remember young young yes at least till we get to the policy i know there's some really important policies in there um and the chair votes yes um we will continue um thank you member woodland remember young it's your turn to go to the superintendence report if you wish sure um actually the last several people came in to keep count uh pretty much hit on it you know that my only comments really that chasing a moving target is a fool's errand you know um i think everybody's kind of
119made the point that you know let's let's do what this administration this committee decides you know deci set guidance a while ago the state wants to keep changing stuff let him keep changing it let's keep moving forward with what we have um and you know just keep making smart fact-based decisions um lean on the other superintendents dr mccall you know and that are already through this and learn from the people around us uh and that's really it um there's other little things but that's the only thing i think for tonight thanks thank you member young um that concludes our discussion of the superintendent's report next on the agenda tonight recommendations requiring action by the school committee there's emotional floor to authorize the school committee to appoint fletcher tilton and nuttall and mcevoy and joyce pc
120as legal counsel for the period of july 1 2020 to june 30th 2021 is there a motion so much second been moved in second remember brown had it had to step out for a moment um or step out for the night i'm sorry i am also very tired and trying to trying to keep it coherent in legal we did approve this as a subcommittee these are two of the councils that we're wishing to hire for the year one of the councils is attorney bertulas the other council is regarding special education as you guys know um attorney stoneberg is is seeking to retire um but was going to stick with us through the completion of our mousse um i believe she's sticking with us much longer than she had hoped to stick with us and is
121very much looking forward to some time with her grandchildren um so we will be seeking um a third attorney um for the district um but we will be doing um different sorts of interviews and that sort of thing um moving forward with legal in the next couple months so that's the overview are there any questions okay seeing none um we'll go to a roll call vote remember amos amis yes remember ayala melissa is still with us sorry it's my mute yes remember bennett yes remember dennis dennis yes remember gustafson justice and yes remember haber hebrew yes remember amber ambria remember kersham yes yes remember ottmar oh marius member shapiro shapiro yeah remember yes member smith smith yes remember williamson williamson yes remember woodland next on our agenda tonight is unfinished business we don't have any
122unfinished business on our agenda next is the secretary's report and the approval of a number of minutes i'm going to pass over these items in the agenda and get to them at our next meeting next on the agenda is the treasurer's report please direct any questions you have to director dede next are committee reports i'll speak for management we met recently and we had the pleasure of really getting to know our new consultant for the district dr mary mead montagu who was in on our meeting that evening we did spend the majority of our meeting talking about reopening plans with the consultant and dr mccall we had to pass over items of our agenda which is going over the 1000 series of our school committee policies to update them that will be the foci of
123our next meeting which will be next week and if you have any questions for management please let me know next on the agenda um is ed sub chair smith can you give a very brief update yes we met tonight um we didn't go over what was on our agenda we put that off until next monday unless we have a special meeting in which we'll adjust our time we discussed the presentation um some pieces of the presentation that dr mccall shared with us educational components you uh next on the agenda is business finance uh member dennis can you give us a brief synopsis and um i believe we might have just enough time to go over your policy if you wish or we can put that off to another meeting um sure no either way it's
124fine with me in terms of our business finance meeting we reviewed the fiscal year close for 2020 we reviewed various components of the fiscal year 21 budget i think it's important to say that it appears as though all but for the unknown of what our transportation reimbursement will be and we know it will be less because we spent less that our funding would appear to be on par with what we've budgeted for fiscal year 21. that is we've the towns have passed the budget and while different portions of state funding some might come in less some might come in higher um are are basically netting out um so that's an important piece of information um one of the things that we're trying to get to we still have not gotten to an understanding of what
125our revised budget number is based on all of these different changes and both in terms of revenue and in terms of expenses and we've asked the administration to come back and bring that forward to us as we have several times previously we are very close now to the planning to commence for the fiscal year 2022 budget um typically these are discussions that we start having in january and towns to to vote as as early as april which is only you know three to five months away one of the points of emphasis that we gave was to bring forward an opportunity for the school committee members this body to opine on priorities before the budget is developed so given the timeline that they've shared with us at least preliminarily i think that we can expect that
126to happen within the next month or two in order to fit into the overall timeline our next meeting is about a week prior to the next school committee meeting at the end of this month and we'll take it up from there thank you mr dennis um if you don't mind let's pass over your policy and get to that next meeting as we do have a couple more policies i have to go over in the next couple couple um oh my gosh i'm losing my words over committee reports thank you um legal chair brown has has stepped away um remember mars anything you need to add other than what we've spoken about this evening uh i mean just i mean briefly as we've already talked about the negotiating with paraprofessionals also working on with a transportation
127bandpool and then also in regards to the turf field so those are kind of the three ongoing things that we have and our next meeting is going to be next thursday thank you um i'm going to just take one thing out of order in case we don't get another motion to extend that i hope we will i'm going to go to facilities next um chair young can you briefly explain the amended policy sure um let me do a 30 second report and then i'll make the motion thank you we met last week um we addressed this policy that i'm going to make a motion to in just a minute um then we also discussed uh some of the hvac stuff and members of the subcommittee will be looking to tour some buildings within the district
128at the end of this week and then we will have another meeting on monday where we will go over those tours and also discuss the upcoming hvac report so that we can do it before reopening i'd like to make a motion to um make a motion for the first reading of amended policy 661 2.3 policy relating to pupil services face coverings um waiving that reading and after i get a second i'd like to just discuss what we changed and why okay second second go ahead remember young okay so very quickly i'm just going to try to present this so that everybody understands what we're doing let me know if you see it i do okay so the first thing we did was we deleted the exempted exempting this policy for students in below grade one
129um basically it applies um by changing his policy it applies to everybody in the building all the time um you know there there's discussion around it um you know we understand the younger students in ecc kindergarten grade one um wearing a mask all the time 100 percent may not be the easiest thing but the expectation is that we teach them and can make that happen so you know through uh this statement down here that you know the building principle ultimately has the um overall approval of who needs to wear it when and how that is basically looking to the building principles to again enforce that all students will wear the masks but understanding that the younger students it's more of an education issue and less of a disciplinary issue especially at the beginning whereas you're
130looking at older students if they're refusing to wear a mask you know that's nice come back later um and that's me speaking not the committee for that last little bit um the other thing we did uh was just rewording this um we got rid of it was kind of clumsy wording just said that when following deci guidelines for social distancing mass may not be required under these specific scenarios and again you know it's not saying that all the time during those scenarios such as pe but if you're able to follow the deci guidelines for the distancing um during pe as laid out then there may be a situation like if you're outside everybody's 10 feet apart whatever it is um you may not need to wear a mask but you know inside your clothes definitely
131you need to even if you're in pe um yeah we just laid out specifically the district is responsible for providing mass and face coverings for staff um and also it was again awkward wording um that staff members are responsible for arriving at the building wearing the face coverings that are provided by the district so even if it's given you in school you need to bring it home bring it back in and put it on before you enter the building that was the only changes and again the big one is adding the students below second grade and that's it i'm open to questions remember smith i just um have a question about the the part that says students may not have to wear a mask under the certain circumstances with the governor's recent friday announcement that
132earlier in the week he had actually announced it but the requirement that we wear masks in public even when we can physically distance i just um i feel like that takes precedent over the deci guidelines i'm also concerned about something like this when it says while outside that kids at the high school may think it's okay um because this happened at my high school to not wear masks while they're in the parking lot and they congregate together and it's just very upsetting to see because of all the mitigation strategies you have going on in the building and then out in the parking lot it's like what are we doing as a community so that would be something i would ask i know this is our second reading of this but um i don't know if
133we need to look at that again based on the recent order so am i immune no okay this is the first reading of the amendment um so we thank you yeah so we if there is something you'd like to change we could we could entertain that with emotion oh it's so late for a motion i don't know how to do that let's see um i mean i just kind of even i mean my amendment might be to strike the whole section but i don't know that would be my easy way out someone else who has a better idea or who may be thinking like me can make an offer i would believe um member smith i wouldn't strike the whole section because you don't need to wear it during your mass break or when you're
134eating or drinking um i i would think you were more in line with trying to um get rid of the last bullet especially the one outside and perhaps pull it above it but i don't know if there's exceptions i think the exception when phys ed was when they're outside but if we're saying you need it when you're outside you can just say you need to wear it so just to jump in i i actually support getting rid of the bottom one um but you know did just depending on what we're doing um you know again this is this is how far down we flow this you know building principals know what they need to do um physical education teachers know what they need to do um i i do see that um having students outside
135when they're unsupervised you know okay let's get rid of that that's that's not an option if you're on school property and you're near each other yeah you shouldn't be wearing a mask i mean you should be wearing a mask um i mean i would say even during like i'm just thinking about and just for the committee i'm thinking of the miaa guidelines and they require mask wearing with the kids playing sports and i think that when jesse made their guidelines that you're referencing they're from july before the miaa came out with their um with their guidelines so we're requiring kids in sports foreign the amendment to strike the final two bullets in that paragraph um it has been seconded by member ember um so i believe member dennis was first in line to have um
136a question on this yeah well i had my hand raised before the amendment was made but i don't know if um you know christine's the maker of the amendment so she you know if she has comments on the motion or the amendment she should probably talk to him first i'd be happy to talk after that christina do you think you've spoken on your amendment or do you have more to add i think people probably understand it but thank you mike i think i'm good yeah i mean you know for me um i i don't see it as necessary change because the you know bolded language at the front of it talks about masks may may not be required under these specific scenarios and you know um i i think that um that language is loose
137enough i mean if the issue here is that are we are we in conflict um with the latest um uh advisory from the governor i i don't see this the way that it reads as being in conflict and and so i i would be fine with it and i think it's um i guess i'll just leave it at that i i would i'm fine with it the way that it is thank you member dennis um i have member woodland and then member heber um so i just wanted to point out that actually what member dennis said about it's may not required um i i know offhand that the physical education classes it's only you students could only take off masks if they are outside and 10 feet apart and i'm not as familiar with the
138mia i don't even know if i got that acronym right sorry um i'm not as familiar with their guidance are they um ever 10 feet apart and requiring masks um and if if not then i think then this still creates that flexibility you know there's it's part of why we didn't put in a definition of what a mask is exactly like the um and we're leaving that to student handbooks because we don't want to keep this too rigid for what the future may hold and so i'm hoping that that may does a good amount of work i mean others are free to disagree and um and and go where they like but i i think that this um gives the building principles and the superintendent wiggle room for how they're going to enact this plan
139um that's my two cents thank you we have member paper please i think that the may not be required really covers it and i think we should leave it as is but i will say that if we are going to take off those last two items then i think that it needs to say masks are not required because otherwise it doesn't make sense mask breaks and eating and drinking are two times where you certainly could not be wearing a mask so it shouldn't say may anymore if that's the amended language thank you remember young so um i think just to speak to it um you know i i definitely agree with member dennis member woodland remember haber um yeah the intent of this policy is not just a short-term uh policy but you know longer
140guidance if we if we want to see this this or anything similar to it again we have something on the books that we can address um and it also provides that the policy of this school committee while still allowing the administration and building administration to you know enact um regulations that meet this policy and possibly even stricter you know but they can't go beyond this you know they they can't say oh well you can use it all these other times like you know we lay out these four times where it may not be required and that's it um so i think this gets the intent of the committee across um and this discussion does too that you know we we definitely want people wearing masks as much as possible whenever they can um you know
141there may be a few situations where they're allowed not to you know if they're on a mass break outside whatever it is that's it so thank you member bennett um i'd like to suggest that we combine the last two bullet points um so during physical education class that is outside um remember bennett so that would be a different amendment so we have to speak to the amendment that member smith um has made on the floor if you'd like to you could make a motion to amend the amendment if you wish i would like to make a motion to amend the amendment then okay so the current element on the floor is to strike the last two bullet points we would like to amend the motion on the floor to state during education classes while outside
142which would in theory only be striking the last bullet point right and making it more specific for the second to last bullet point okay so you're making a motion to amend the amendment on the floor is there a second not seeing one i'm sorry all right so we go back to the motion on the floor which is the amendment to strike the last two bullet points is there any further discussion on that okay see none will go to a roll call vote again you're not voting on the policy you're voting on the amendment so you're voting on member smith's amendment remember amos had to log off remember ayala i can't see you all because we're screen sharing so if you're not hearing sorry um okay uh yellow yes um remember bennett um and and that
143is we're voting to remove them correct yes member brown insight here remember dennis dennis no member gustafson gustafson [Music] yes christopher uh i forget what i just voted uh hold on voting uh yes okay remember longbow won't believe yes remember mitchell's not with us remember ottmar martinel member shapiro shapiro yes member silva silva yes member smith smith yes remember williamson williamson now remember woodland what then now remember young young no chair is gonna vote no madam secretary can i get a tally on that i know we're close give me one second megan thank you take your time hmm it it appears to be tied eight eight okay so we have a tie on the amendment uh this is my first tie madam secretary do you have what do we do in the case of a
144tie i don't know so i would suggest that if it does not you're my voice of reason in my exhaustion so if the the amendment then fails um we go back to the original motion on the floor which is passing the first reading of adam's motion of facilities motion do we have any other discussion on the motion on the floor seeing no hands so now we are voting on the policy itself remember ayala ayala yes remember bennett yes remember bro remember dennis donna yeah member gustafson yes remember whoever hey where yes number ember member yes member christian mom yes remember long beaulieu member smith smith yes remember williamson yes remember woodland woodland yes remember young young yes the chair votes yes and the pa the motion passes unanimously thank you member young um we would
145need a motion to extend at this point i did um promise or not promise hope to give the floor to the diversity committee as well if possible i move that we extend the meeting thank you is there a second exactly second it's been moved in second we're gonna go any discussion um to the motion to extend megan i just put in the comment that we need to talk about the goals yep time yep we've got we've got probably at least another half hour ahead of us my friend if we can it's important we can sleep tomorrow night hopefully remember ella oh yeah a very hesitant yes i will i will try to deliver dunkin donuts to the world tomorrow remember bennett wait you're you're bringing us dunkin donuts then yes finally that worked nine years
146ago i'd be asking all right here we go before we all go cuckoo all right remember dennis dennis no member gustason member haber yes remember ottmar marnell member shapiro yes shakira yes how do you like your coffee younger silva as i'm yawning i'm saying yes member smith smith now remember williamson williamson yes remember woodland i'm conflicted because this could have been two meetings i think but i'll do yes remember young through a warped sense of civic duty yes the chair votes yes and i would like to thank our student reps for staying on with us as well you guys are exempt for any homework you have not yet done today next on our agenda we're going to go to diversity next um cheer silva uh we would like to have that reading for the i
147believe it was a diversity appreciation policy if i remember the title correctly um and it's a very simple read go ahead go ahead yeah it's a very simple read very um we spent a lot of time go ahead sorry i don't have the agenda because i haven't please want to grab it and share my screen yep that would be good so you can speak to it and i will pull it up um very very simple read our committee spent a lot of time discussing um to be honest practically every phrase and word and made sure that you know it covered a lot of different aspects um uh in terms of inclusion and diversity and all different types of diversity so hopefully you guys will appreciate all our hard work on this and uh like i
148said it's a very simple read thank you just a point of order we need a second and there's emotion on the floor is there a a second wonderful thank you hold on one moment i'm trying to find it in all of the attachments all right not seeing me find it quickly to bring it up um i believe members silva spoke to it well and you guys have it in your attachments um are there any questions or comments um to the appreciation of diversity on policy scene none will go to a roll call vote remember ayala ayala yes remember bennett yes remember dennis i think he's gone okay he left remember gustafson augustus and yes remember heber hey brian remember ember embryos remember christian bomb number long bolillo long really is remember atmar omar yes member
149shapiro shapiro yes remember silva yes remember smith smith yes member williamson yes remember woodland with then yeah remember young young yes all right and the motion passes next on our agenda tonight um we're going to move backwards to the superintendent's goals and evaluation committee um to speak on the goals of the superintendent so uh our chair isn't here would our vice chair like to take over that discussion sure thank you megan um on behalf of the um the superintendent goals and evaluation subcommittee we recommend that the full committee approve the um the 2020 2021 goals you have in your report um so i'm i'm making the motion right first so i've made the motion second has been made is there a second young second okay so uh vice versa um overview yeah i'll just give
150you a quick overview um so we've been meeting with the superintendent um over since the end of september the superintendent has um reviewed with us his goals his draft goals we've given him feedback along the way and we've finally settled on four uh goals for this year goals around the goals around student learning diversity equity inclusion goals around communication and goals around student retention based on some thorough discussions that we had earlier in this year based on current trends and things that we were hearing both from community members as well as from committee members we've also settled on consensus around eight indicators as well one on curriculum instruction environment and scheduling and management information systems uh sharing responsibility and family concerns and communications and continuous learning so um dr mccall would you like to speak
151to your goals sure i know it's late um i am going to share with you i'm going to bring these up or do you want me to talk through them well i think you can speak to them they were in everybody's pocket um so i think everybody's been able to review them sure okay just uh you know real quick uh first goal is around um the superintendent's team will provide an outline identifying and prioritizing improvements to tech resource acquisition and newly discovered uh educational best practices and informs the vision of our next strategic plan so this is really around you know looking at what we're currently doing in terms of our um kind of we you know we call the modern learning but you know how are we now using that to help us develop
152a vision for our next strategic plan which is coming up very soon and what i shared with you was the plan with the action steps and dates associated with that for goal two as part of a district improvement goal um working with the district and school leadership superintendent will promote diversity equity and inclusion district-wide by defining and outline lining sustainable practices needed to transform our culture so this is really around me leading discussions uh around equity this is kind of a carryover uh goal that um i was unable to complete last year because of covid that kicked in so it takes it takes part of that and carries it through especially in terms of the book study um talks about then developing kind of a relationship with um a group that we could bring on
153board to look at how we could incorporate this back into our uh you know own program of study let's say for staff and students and ultimately the community at large for goal number three professional practice the superintendent will establish and implement a system that enhances the communication between home and school for all families with school-aged children who reside within the district this is really around tapping into decisions building blocks of equitable it's remote learning but they have a great um kind of framework for you know looking at communication as well so it's really looking at um improving the the whole process of how we communicate with with families and number four for district improvement by the 21st of june or june 2021 districts will create a plan of action that proactively addresses student retention issues
154in the school district and again all the data um that ties back to what you know we'd be looking at um why students are leaving we'd be interviewing people we'd be talking about um looking at retention trends and so forth and then really developing a plan that we can share with the community by the end of it thank you dr if i could just say one more thing uh in support of this motion um and that is the committee expressed that dr mccall's leadership skills should be fully incorporated to build capacity provide vision and management but not be solely responsible to complete each task for each goal as delegation is a quality of leadership it's the hope that through this work the district will be well positioned to begin the next strategic planning process thank
155you that was very well put yes um i promise also that i'm not crying i just have a very angry four-legged friend behind me that is upset about the late hour um remember gusen with a question um well laura's comment just spoke to um one of my questions which was that i noticed all the goals were team goals and there were no individual goals this year um but i'm guessing that might be intentional based on your comment um i just noticed that was a change um my second question is is there a plan for tracking progress on these goals i know in the past we've talked about getting monthly updates in the reports and that has not actually happened and i'm with these detailed action steps i hope that is part of the discussion um
156i have a third question too but i'll wait because it's about a specific goal um so those are my two main umbrella points and my third was about um a specific the specific goal about diversity and inclusion um specifically the action step that is due in march talking the first two action steps um are talking about um things that are definitely carried over from last year and things within the district that i guess the superintendent is leading discussions um one of the things that i recall um coming up last year when we did the evaluation and talked about this was the need to have outside input into that rather than leading it ourself and we don't get to that in this goal until march however i also know because i'm on the diversity subcommittee that
157this piece that is saying talking about an external consultant in march is actually i think being discussed now so i wondered why it was delayed until march in this goal when that seemed to be a very key component because reflecting lead the kind of work that is encompassed in this goal we talked about in the spring that you sometimes need to involve an outside perspective to do it well um those are my questions about that goal thank you um so in terms of the the the timeline for um for for review um we have quite a a speedy timeline if you will because the nature of our approval for these goals is is happening much later than would normally be the case um so i guess i'm not going to be very eloquent here because
158i'm exhausted um but i i think that we plan to meet up with the superintendent moving forward very quickly and get some status reports um i hear what you're saying about the um the outside consultant my understanding is that is happening uh sort of concurrently um but things might not be finalized until until march for that that's helpful that was what i was hoping so thank you thank you um remember long beau yes um as everyone has said it's a late hour um so i may not be as articulate as i might like but i don't see anything here about ensuring compliance with financial and other regulations um i think that's should be a piece of this which goal linda um well i think it should be a goal shouldn't it be a goal i
159mean i'm a little confused i will admit because i'm tired um these are district goals or these are goals in which we're going to measure our superintendent sort of he's he's for the superintendent for his for his professional practice and student learning goals for this year right there are that we we did have a discussion um about uh some other parts of his job that were um were going to happen anyways but did not uh in terms of there are things that are going to be happening like creating the groundwork for a strategic plan and generating a budget there are elements of his job that he is doing anyways that are not necessary we can't have a goal for every aspect of his job these are just things that we felt based on uh based
160on feedback based on current realities that these were things we'd like to see him focus on and he would like to also see i mean these are essentially starting from him right right um well i mean i sort of think that ensuring compliance is is something that's always important um and it has come up in the past the recent past and i really hate bringing this up just so you know um so um anyway thank you thank you linda uh remember ember comment question yeah hi so so i guess i'm wondering there are a couple of meetings that i've missed over the past year and i don't know that that i i guess the question is did the full committee ever accept a modified and revised staffing plan because if they hadn't i i just
161i'm not going to vote yes for this because well one it's late and it's rushed and it's important but secondly um that was a an essential five-year plan or seven-year plan that the committee really needed to come up with that was was presented to them through the superintendent and i think it's essential we have to have a five or seven year or eight year plan for staffing and if that's not a goal i'm not gonna vote in favor of this if we haven't if the committee when i was absent uh didn't vote on such a thing well then i can't vote for this because i think it's an essential goal you know it wasn't achieved last year um and coven wasn't i don't think a reason for it even though it was compelling because it
162was something that should have been done even a year or two before that so it's so long in coming and it's so essential for us to have um that i i don't support this thank you thank you member ember is there any other discussion on these goals okay seeing none we'll go to a roll call vote we're gonna start remember emails yeah she's left remember ayala ale yes remember bennett bennett yes remember gossiping i will reluctantly vote yes i i think there's some gaps but i will vote yes for now remember i agree with malaya but i vote yes remember ember no remember kirschenbaum yes number one remember now member shapiro shapiro yes member silva silva yes remember smith christina's left remember williamson williamson yes remember woodland woodland yes remember young young yes the chair
163votes yes and the motion passes um i believe next on our agenda tonight was um audit advisory um remember young i believe there's no update no no i i know and then we had school committee reports i'm gonna pass over the school rep school committee reports um there is no further public comment so with that i would take a motion to adjourn so moved second second it's been moved and seconded any discussion okay anyone who's left remember ayala oh yes remember bennett bennett yes remember gustafson justice and yes member leader hey mr yes oh remember amber are you still here remember christian bomb yes remember yes remember atmar umar yes membership hero yes yes thank you remember williamson williamson yes remember woodland woodland yes remember young i agree with your four-legged friend yes thank you
164and thank you for letting me get my dog out the chair votes yes thank you guys so much tonight for your patrons you guys are rock stars i appreciate each and every one of you thank you so much good night you