Regular Meeting 9/14/20

001finally feels like fall um to a regular meeting 1351 of the wachusett regional school district school committee we're coming to you tonight via google meets um as per the orders of gunner charlie baker we are also streaming live tonight on youtube but we are not streaming live on holden cable tv this evening as the holden select board meeting is happening simultaneously and they are using our airwaves there but i think many of our constituents have really enjoyed viewing us on youtube it's always an interesting movie that unfolds here tonight we're going to start tonight with public hearing i do have a number of comments to read many of which are from students and i take those with the utmost seriousness the first tonight comes from resident julie reno she says twice in my daughter's time

002in this district from k-8 we have either met with the team or about bullying or submitted a former formal bullying complaint the end result of the meeting was that the vice principal at the time saying that it is good that she'll be at a new school next year we had just moved to the mayo region this should never have been the resolution these kids reunited in middle school in fifth grade my daughter was called a [ __ ] several times by a fifth grade boy nothing happened with this in sixth grade on the third day of school the same boy said the same thing the teacher addressed it and it never happened again however several days in the bus she heard the same boy call a classmate the n-word she knew this was bad and stood up

003for the classmate and it continued then in eighth grade last year she was bullied by a troubled kid so badly that she became suicidal and was hospitalized i made a report and requested an investigation again nothing came of it nothing and now my daughter is thankfully out of the district and again the comment made to me by one of the administrators was well it's a good thing for her to be in a different school next year why is this the go-to response of the district why while i'm thrilled my daughter is out of wrsd i still have a child in second grade perhaps that it could be a good time to revisit celebrations in the classroom by not having birthday parties and recognizing religious holidays instead of making kids feel welcome it is backfiring and

004creating a very limited exposure to anything outside of what each student's family celebrates why not do the opposite poll families at the beginning of each school year and ask what they'd like to share about the family celebration and maybe you can have families volunteer they'll be willing to come in and share what their culture and religions do to celebrate a birth death or holiday it's a great opportunity to include everybody and to open the conversation for kids who maybe feel like they don't have anything common where their opposite sex different race different religion peers this would build learning opportunities the time is now to review view how education is happening clearly our district is failing at many levels let's try something different let's be proactive instead of reactive also tonight we hear from tammy todd

005of three orchard hill drive in rutland massachusetts after watching the last four meetings i feel compelled to write this letter to you as a lifelong resident of the district a former school committee member i am saddened to see the behavior of the school committee and how you treat one another remember the boy after consulting with chair weeks and not getting a satisfactory response failed the grievance which he perceived to be a violation of oml just not an attack against anyone's character but a perception of an act which he perceived to be a violation of oml proper protocol was followed in determinations made by the district's attorney the school committee then had a vote whether they agreed with the determination of the attorney or if they wanted to pursue the complaint any further the person who

006filed the grievance spoke then member lavoie explained why he filed what happened next was inexcusable the motion on the table was to discuss whether to take action further remember haynes had a verbal attack this is a direct violation of the bullying policy which you're obliged to follow remember haynes was not speaking on the motion i feel that memory haines owe member lavoy as well as the chair of public apology also chair please be fair in giving school committee members the same amount of time if it's two minutes limited to time to speak that's a rule for several uh everyone not just some sometimes you cut off some members yet you allow others to ramble on please keep in mind that any resident can place a grievance with the attorney general for a violation of oml

007also any resident wrc can file a complaint with ethics committee if they feel like there's been an ethics violation this committee keeps preaching to the public empowering us at patience and to show kindness i think you should work look within your own group and practice what you're asking of your constituents thank you for your time we're now going to hear from a number of students tonight um this is actually a condensed version of a longer email written by the student um i do want to let the committee know that this is a lengthy letter but the student took an exceptional amount of time to put this together and i let her know that i would read her response in full her name is isabella leblanc and she attends the high school thank you very much

008for giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts regarding the urgent need to retire the current image of the wachusett regional high school mascot and the need to increase education on differences through an actively anti-racist curriculum my name is isabella leblanc and i live in holden i've attended schools in wrsd since kindergarten i began my educational career at the mayo elementary school went to mountain view and i'm a current junior at wachusett i've had a very positive experience in each of my schools unlike my peers of various minority groups i have never been silenced or faced prejudiced by teachers or peers the absence of understanding racial and cultural divides is an immense problem education is paramount to truly expose the systematic hatred within our nation and our community our current mascot does not represent the

009current student body or the ideas we share with the world changing world around us the current image of the mountaineer is of a man who wears a clothing of a farmer with a rifle in his hand the weapon is extended into position as if ready to be fired and the man is at a defensive stance at wachusett visitors are welcome as the students learn about the myriad of subjects and cultures it seems that iran it seems ironic that wachuset has a word welcome written in several languages on the wall near the auditorium entrance yet by the entrance to the driveway with the image of a threatening man with a weapon as if ready to intimidate any incoming visitors there are countless talented students who can participate and collaborate to design a new improved image for

010the mascot to acknowledge a the second amendment writes in the united states constitution describes the right individual right to bear arms which is irrelevant to the alteration the wachusett mascot by removing the man's weapon the school is no way changing its support in alignment with the constitution american ideals rather relying the mascot to the morale of the school and its students is crucial at this time a symbol should unify a body of people a symbol unites one group and divides another group a symbol can divide another group from outsiders for example the united states flag unites citizens from the 50 states yet does not include citizens from other nations the wachuset mascot should unite all that students teachers staff and residents within the five towns through the past months we learned that school is more

011than just what occurs between walls of a building it transfers to homes and is found within students as they continue to enrich themselves from a distance change is never an easy task yet tradition or heritage is never a strong enough excuse to remain in the habits or practices of our ancestors wachuset's mountaineer mascot first appeared in 1955 the same year rosa parks was arrested for refusing to change seats on the bus due to the color of her skin the mountaineer appeared before the civil rights act of 1964 which ended segregation and it was printed before the famous eye of a dream speech was delivered the mountaineer imposed in 1955 was not created or voted on by students at that time the current mascot image only represents one type of person injustices happen far too often

012in our country and the recent attention has been called to these issues changing the mascot will not end racism and bigotry in the country but even a small adjustment contributes to a greater change for the better section 2 of article 26 in a universal declaration of human rights states education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to strengthen the respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms it shall promote understanding tolerance and friendship above all nations racial or religious groups and shall further the activities of united nations for the maintenance of peace teachers and students at wachusett strive to develop understanding and compassion for all individuals if just one student feels uncomfortable or excluded from the wachuset community that one student is too many if we do nothing and do not

013make conscious change we support those who are opposed to inclusion acceptance in the world and essential that immediate and productive action is taken to address racism we must ponder the following questions does the current image represent the diversity of what you use it and does the image represent cultural diversity in which our school wishes to embrace and celebrate will watchuset address xenophobia anti-semitism homophobia sexism and racism to create change we must call upon experts to share understanding within our community how will we uphold professional suggestions for reform and have ongoing recognition of injustice in our school community is white privilege recognized by the logistic community and are the discriminatory events that unfold every day understood just because something is always was or always has been does not make it right an understanding of an abstract

014concept like anti-racism tolerance and appreciation and diversity without visible change is ultimately meaningless when the mountaineer is rightfully changed our work for the fight for equality is not done the paradox of administrators speaking about the core values of wachusett such of acceptance kindness and tolerance from a podium where the image of a man holding a weapon must be addressed we cannot believe that all students will internalize rhetoric when is not backed with action the majority of the american public schools including ours have fostered racers thought and have not in and have inadvertently raised racist young adults these students unintentionally share racist messages and do not recognize the malice behind their words for example one watchers student said all i have to say about our mascot is that there's nothing wrong with it there's nothing to

015fight for at wachusett the student does not understand the hate field dialogue that occurs every day at the wachusett regional high school and the unequal challenges of students and minority backgrounds face every time they attempt to be heard enter a classroom discussion or in social discourse education is paramount is the only way to break the cycle of learning from one side from an early age students must be taught how to question events and view situations from a variety of perspectives the current educational system and our mascot assist white male students and alumni asking beneficiaries to speak for the oppressed will rarely work we cannot expect the majority to stand up for the minority surveys are excellent tools to collect data however it is only logical that our students in the racial majority will have indifference

016to change we're currently in a global pandemic the nation is divided and every endeavor is placed politically either to the left or right continuous education and the mascot change must occur simultaneously to researching psychological and sociological patterns students studies demonstrate that teenagers are psychologically proven to be apathetic studies have shown that adults are able to have a deeper understanding of how the others feel in a situation while teenagers responses are often self-focused it is unrealistic to propose that students will be able to unite to fight for a minority group of students without a solid anti-racist educational background we cannot expect the students to rise above their biological instincts and patterns of behavior images one views on a daily basis subconsciously register in the mind in the subconscious brain is where decisions are made an executive

017decision to retire the mascot is necessary a consensus will not be reached by apathetic students with white privilege or contin condition to the current image there are individuals who state that taking down an image of racist history and we may be ignoring our past and taking down images we are no we are in no form of racing or rewriting history but instead we are recognizing it facing it head on and making an informed change for the present in fact by taking down monuments and old images each person who sees a change will be able to truly rethink history in his or her perspective by removing the image that promotes only one group we're honoring the work of the group groups that have gone for years unrecognized and undervalued at why choose it if we truly

018want to remember our history we must remember that our land our school is built upon is of the nipmuck tribe the name of the schools will choose it an algonquin word meaning near the mountain or mountain place to recognize their history we need to acknowledge that our ancestors have actually devastated the land of native americans and we rarely speak of this horrific invasion only two native tribes are recognized by the united states bureau of indian affairs in the state of massachusetts today our current mascot holds a pointed gun and although not physically damage a student it is mentally degrading our school's mission in individual mental clarity the mascot promotes a patriarchal society which not represent the wachuset district the way the watchers district wishes to empower young women in minority groups those attached to an

019image cannot be ruled by nostalgia sentimental thought is entrenching and the reminiscent thoughts lack intention we must make immediate change when it's necessary we did not go to school for the last quarter of 2019 2020 to keep others safe although it was a challenge for each student in a unique way administrators did not question the idea as health consequences were known we retired the mascot image and reform curriculum if it's prioritized in the same way as mitigating coven 19 and keeping students physically and mentally safe we admiringly remember historical figures who did the unexpected who make drastic changes and were not persistent in the pursuit for equal rights of humanity avoiding confrontation staying apathetic and not diligently looking for ways to assist others significantly degrades one's reputation especially when future generations look back in the

020past and are dismayed by lack of action strong leaders take responsibility for inequities in issues that are not recognized individuals in leadership roles make difficult yet politically ethically and morally correct decisions to which not everyone agrees in a conversation i had with dr mccall he posed the question who owns the mascot i now request that the school committee express its dissatisfaction with the current racist sexist and violent mascot and call for a change i ask current w-r-h-s students and alumni three questions how do you see watchers and students reflected in the mountaineer what does the mountaineer mean to you and what qualities of the mountaineer are important for students to gain their time at wachusett i anonymously included responses from individuals who agree and disagree with the notion of changing the mascot i intended to

021ask unbiased non-leading questions as to allow for the honest thought of each individual in responses i noted patterns of students and alumni recognizing how the current mountaineer does not encompass all members of the high school community the need to reform the education system and the need to address racism and other forms of discrimination lower below are some articulate and pertinent responses to the first question as the diversity in the wachuset student body grows i continued to see many students of color minority students isolated by the image in the mountaineer as a member of the lgbt community i feel that many students who are minorities through their sexuality or race have seen their communities experience gun violence through a history until modern day the image of the white mountaineer with a gun simply serves to recall

022this violent history another response why choose its students reflect the mountaineer through their determination and endurance it takes a lot to climb a mountain in each of our lives why choose its students climb to the top of their mountains with their best ability what does a mountaineer mean to you being one in a school of thousands integrity honesty being a well-rounded student and putting one's best effort forth being determined and strong-willed but also means teamwork mountaineers don't climb mountains alone since it can be dangerous to be part of something greater than you being independent in my beliefs having strength and will to stand up against them but also open-minded to discuss other viewpoints it means being educated unbiased and understanding three what qualities of a mountaineer are important for students to gain at their time

023at wachusett the ability to work through conflicts peacefully accept care for others and take responsibility of their learning while choosing must do its best to prepare adults for the future as citizens and voters this should include teaching against bias and hatred i hope that why choose it teaches students expand their world views coming from the small town of rutland watches inform the first places i got to experience different viewpoints and cultures i think learning to respect and include all's is the most important thing to learn respect for other people and to accept other people to have confidence in themselves general responses which did not directly answer one to three questions but valuable thoughts to be considered are there are three thoughts i think that logo and mascot don't represent the values our school claims to

024support the mountaineer is a gun-toting hick there's no other way to say it he is shoeless has a long beard an unkept hair and a shotgun our school claims to be modern and accepting but when strangers drive by to our parking lot they're greeted by the mountaineer is that the face of communion wants to put forward being educated means not only having an extensive amount of knowledge about the world its people and past in its numerous cultures but also to be aware of every individual the student also asked that the school committee received the full written response that she wrote and i will be sending that to you all after tonight's meeting next there are six student comments that were collected from our student rep um catherine i'm actually going to let you speak um

025during um your report um your intro and i'll just read from the students um words themselves if you don't mind we're going to start with an eighth grade student at choxit who states i attend chocks at middle school i am white however i notice instances of racism and it hurts me to see and it has motivated me to make a difference at talks that there are core values that are constantly talked about in school and pushed on students i feel as though none of these values talk about equality it may help if they did or if equality was a core value itself so that more awareness about anti-racism is spread even if equality isn't made a core value of toxic i still feel that anti-racism needs to be talked about more equality isn't a belief

026that doesn't just affect school it affects the rest of your lives and should be taught at a young age next from a senior at wachusett i think teachers should be more aware of what they're saying to students they're teachers who are supposed to teach students how to be good people so it's especially harmful when they say ignorant things there's one thing that especially sticks out in my mind i clearly remember because it's so blatantly ignorant even though it happened a year ago last year there's a student in one of my classes who was hispanic the teacher was especially problematic she even shut slut-shamed celebrities in front of class so honestly i'm not surprised she would get extremely irritated and be rude to students once in class she gave a really confusing instruction so we asked

027her to repeat it when the student asked her to repeat instructions that were still unclear she said something along the lines of how many times i have to say it for you to understand do you need me to say it in spanish for you it was shocking and the whole class was silent the student was obviously uncomfortable i'm not sure if it was her intention to be racist but as i said teachers should hold themselves to a greater level of responsibility their position is teaching the future of america i literally couldn't believe a teacher would say that to a student and humiliate them and from the whole class my point is after i experience teachers need to understand the consequences of things they say i face so many microaggressions and witness other peoplc experience them

028as well if necessary teachers should be educated on what a microaggression is because hard to understand if you never experience it yourself not only teachers but students once in my homeroom i was asking another student in my class questions about the different chinese empires another girl overheard and said shouldn't you know that you're chinese which again maybe didn't seem offensive but microaggressions are not obviously racist not all asians are chinese and just because i have a heritage from another country doesn't mean i know the history of that country i was born in america and gone to that country twice in my life but just because i don't look white the student assumed i should know everything about my other country from another senior at wachusett racism in racist language is far too common at wachusett

029as a white student i've been told to put some pants on the n-word by a group of laughing boys when i quietly walked to the school sidewalk wearing store wearing shorts i've heard my classmates scream the n-word in the cafeteria and receive no discipline despite the multiple adults with an ear shot one of my friends immigrated to america when she was in elementary school within her first week at wachusett she heard the boy next to her joking that she'd line up with the immigrant legal or illegal and shoot them in the head imagine a person you just met suggesting that your family should be murdered this conversation happened directly in front of a teacher no one said anything there needs to be an emphasis in teaching the origin of certain racial slurs and their place

030in dehumanizing others teach why they're wrong teach students the hard and horrifying truths of these words history cannot be ignored and so be repeated we need to eliminate the ignorance and disregard for others that's so common in the sheltered school there needs to be a stated emphasis on reporting these emphasis in a verbal outline of what happens if these incidents occur have students hold each other accountable speak on the importance on coming to administration and normalize it many students never report anything for fear of retaliation others don't believe the system works or cares i'm a senior at wachusett as a white student at wachusett i see racism less than a student who isn't white the main thing i see at the high school is the use of the n word primarily by white students i

031think that's highly inappropriate especially hearing it being screened across a room or out loud for fun when no administrator does anything to stop the use of this language other racial slurs aren't uncommon either the main they mainly come from the students who like to use the n-word things that make it and thinks that it makes them funny or cool at the high school maybe even starting before we should be taught about how it divides have been caused by race and learn to be sensitive to others and not use actions that target one student or group many white students are allies who stand with their non-online peers in reprimanding behavior but it does scare me the amount of hatred other students possess towards a certain race gender or sexual orientation we should be taught against hate

032in the work together as one species rather than many different races in some categories personally i only know of one black teacher at the high school i know that the school has to hire whoever they can find that many underclassmen of holidays spoke with which they have more teachers like them they can go for support in the high school because so many majority are white i think the high school one to form a club or committee of students of color to check in might be a wonderful idea i will stand up to hate and bigotry whenever i see it and work actively to stop it from happening next from elise a senior at wachusett each year in english class i have read a book that include includes racial slurs examples of clue mice and men

033and huck finn when we read this book aloud i've seen many students stay the slur out loud i've also seen the teacher brush this off and not talk about the history of the word i think it's important that teachers talk about the history of racial slurs and how saying them is harmful i think if students learn this in class they also learn how it's wrong to use them outside of school this message is message is that people of color cannot make great works of literature i also think this limits student perspective and therefore limits student education from another student hi i'm an alumna of wrhs i want to share my experiences first and foremost racism watches it is 92 percent white and even if people don't realize caters to the white majority as a white

034woman myself i had the privilege of not being affected by this but i know plenty of people who have as i moved through the high school i noticed the micro regressions more and more students would drive in when confederate flags tied to their trucks and face no consequences everyone would turn in glance at the one or two black people in the room when we talked about slavery and civil rights posters some open the wall that say shoot them up watch use it and black people get stopped in the hallway way more than whites furthermore there's only one black teacher in the entire school and people always tell her she looks like michelle obama simply because she's black shares her name which perpetuates the stereotype that all black people look the same during my senior year

035one issue in particular took place that i'm sure everyone's heard about because of how bad it was but a girl in my graduating class sent some very racist comments to another girl in my class saying that she looked like a probus monkey with a nose being the shape of a legit penis and having eyes that don't open adding that she'll drop off my cat later as a peace offering so you don't starve tonight she posted a photo on social media of a cat in a paper bag with a captioned chinese takeout in which she and her friends proceeded to kick this year with everything going on with the black lives matter movement the racimeter school has become more clear a student answering question about how we can solve police brutality said well having a black

036man dead is as normal as most black people are the ones that commit the crimes they have given themselves that and that's their fault they can change their ways of being who they are administration has proven to be horrible in dealing with these issues as well and the whole situation my senior year administration did barely anything to punish the girl who said all those racist comments and still punish the girl who received the comments who was trying to stand up for herself as soon as a couple years old and remembers that she and her friends while just sitting at a table in the cafe nelson get passed by the police officer on duty would stare at them grab her taser and let go when she walked by one of her friends would also get stopped

037repeatedly in a hall when doing nothing wrong just because he was black and looked suspicious in fact administration had been so bad in choosing who they stopped in the hallway based on looks or during my four years if i wanted to i could have left left the building at any time i brought daylight no one would stop or question me because i looked the way i was and how i carried myself finally i felt myself very uncomfortable having police officers in the school in the first place especially now that they carry guns the holden police station is across the street and there's any problem they can come very fast beyond racism watches as other social justice issues for instance sexism is a problem at school i've experienced it um by watching students twice this summer

038alone and i've graduated so don't spend a lot of time with watching students but i know many other girls past and present which is it faced a similar problem in my class i heard about a nude collection that some of the boys had which they share girls nudes with one another and ranked them from common to rare i don't know if the administration knew about this but if they did they didn't do anything other than the way students read each other however the administration deals with it and the way they talk about it isn't great either while some point out the dress-up code makes sense of wearing pants and shirts and shoes and not hiding your face most parts are directed towards female girls such as tops without straps that reveal midriffs or backless shirts

039these rules imply that it's okay to objectify women based on the way they dress i've seen boys show up to school wearing not barely a shirt and not facing any consequences for it so why should girls be prohibited from wearing a crop top a strapless shirt or baffle shirt on a hot day if they feel like it furthermore i'll agree that self-defense for women's class is needed and i appreciate it being offered the school shouldn't just be teaching girls how to defend ourselves they should be teaching boys how to respect women it's not enough to treat the symptom of the problem it will only be solved when we get to the root with that i'm going to yield my time for my comments this evening and go to the student rep report catherine kenichi hi

040so those six comments that you just heard from catherine i think you're frozen kenichi do you want to start tonight and then we can go back to catherine i'm sure my screen share do i am i joined am i able to do that um what do you need to share it's just a tab um it's a website that we made that just has a collection of all the reports and sure i'm not sure if you're i'm not sure if you're able to but if you email it to me i could probably help i'm just going to try this real quick this is working no i think i have to do it can you say okay kathleen's back so i'll let you start chatting and then i'll work through the tech issues catherine are you with

041us i think you're muted on your phone on i'm sorry i don't know what's going on my chromebook right now just like knows that school is coming one day i know i hope that doesn't happen wednesday that'd be very scary um but those six comments that you guys just heard were read as part of comments i collected for the diversity equity and anti-racism subcommittee so there are 50 of those comments and they were all emailed to you i think they're in um dr mccall's report but there's over 50 of them and they're all student statements about racism they received in what you said they were collected through google a google form or conversations with me um through either our instagram or through my email and so those were all shared with the um subcommittee and

042chair weeks was on the call and she thought they were so moving that she asked me to pick out a few that i could share with you guys and then the public as well um and then so for like the report um textbook pickup has been happening at the end of last week and then this like today and then tomorrow is the seniors for the last day um we also distributed all the chromebooks all the freshmen um so that is happening so students will be getting textbooks or any books they need for classes if they um teacher chooses to provide them um senior boot camp happened the past week so call it um college admissions people came to t um and to report about their school so like schools like umass amherst talked about their

043test optional policy guidance counselors gave presentations on how to use some of the different online platforms like the common app um so that was all really helpful for seniors about how college admissions stuff works and then um freshman orientation i had talked about that last time that was overall very successful we combined two freshman home rooms so we had 10 senior mentors about 40 freshmen a few administrators on the call and then miss monteverdi who runs the nhs senior mentor program all come on the call to help the freshmen get ready to go back to school and to help them feel a little bit more of a normalcy event um stucco has begun to plan fall events so a few examples are there's a senior sunrise on wednesday morning for the seniors to kick off

044their senior year as well as a senior drive-through that will be happening for the seniors to drive through the school as sort of a mini rolling rally like the seniors did last year um to just kick off the senior year and there are several events for all grades in the works to make sure everyone feels included and we can get some of those events um one thing from our social media side we do have an instagram and we just created a facebook group it's um what you said student reports or wrsd student reports so you can join that group it's a public group anyone can see that if facebook is your preferred social media compared to um instagram all the posts are the same you get the same information so this week we've been running

045a countdown to school with tips from our student reps we also had several teachers and administrators from all grade levels work on that so that those weren't just tailored to high schools kids but middle school students as well and then there are parent tips on our facebook page to help the parents to help the kids get ready to go back to school well so those were shared this week and all of our reports and anything that you need about school committee that we have we share on that facebook as well as our instagram which we mentioned earlier in the year which is wrsdc dot student dot reports that's all i have for tonight i know there was a lot wow that school hasn't even started yet um kenichi i i don't think the did you

046send over that website to me i you should have sent um got it now let me see if i can get it up for you thank you yeah give me two seconds yep i think i should be able to hold on one second let's see um there we go are you guys seeing this you see it yep um wait not yet what there was a small notification that popped up in the corner and i don't know what that meant oh no i see it yeah i'll i'll put this on uh do not disturb so you won't be bothered all right here we go yup so this is the website that we made um for the student uh representatives this is it's just called wrcc student reports this is where we have all of our student

047reports so if you go under the reports page yep um you can see that we have there's a button that that's a link to all the google docs uh and then we also added the videos uh that are recorded for every single meeting there's also a resources tab and a links tab both of them you can use to access the different resources that are presented in these meetings most of these resources can also be found on the wrc website so if they're not here then please go to the wrc website um that should be under the links page yeah yeah actually this is that's the school committee website okay but if you go to the home page of the wrc website all the resources that are presented in these meetings can be found there's also

048a small social media tab on the very right hand side that is a link to the facebook and instagram pages that kate uh talked about earlier awesome i feel like we actually planned this presentation even though we didn't this is fantastic i have never seen um such an amazing effort thank you so much to you and to catherine um is there an easy way to access the sites i think i mean i have it in my browser but um um if you go to the facebook page uh the link to the website is in its bio okay so if they go here to the this the facebook group then they can access the webpage okay wonderful thank you so much for your hard work and diligence and you haven't even started school yet so you're

049gonna get busier once things get rolling okay thank you so much catherine and thank you so much kenichi um next is the superintendent's report does the superintendent wish to highlight anything from his report well um you know if you don't mind i'd just like to talk a little bit about some of the things we just heard from um you know our student representatives and some of our other students first um you know first and foremost um when um you know we start talking about some of the different things that you know have happened over the past you know several months um you know i think it's it's really good for us to kind of pull back and look at the complexities associated with everything that's been going on in this country for over 250 years

050um i you know i did have the opportunity to talk with the student um several weeks ago about the concept of the even you know the mountaineer um that you know the mountaineer is something that i know principal biendo and other students have brought this uh kind of to the forefront of discussion in the past and i think in the same way that people are connected to certain symbols or people from the past it it's definitely something i think we need to think about seriously because um when i think about um you know the whole concept of welcoming that's really kind of the issue that i have to deal with um but i did want to thank them for their comments i also wanted to thank uh catherine and tanichi for all of their hard

051work around pulling all this together they're probably not gonna have quite as much time when school starts really rolling um and i but i appreciate the all the the groundwork that has been laid for this um i you know having input at this level from students that's really what makes a school um you know i really feel as though we're in a situation where um you know this is this is your school this is your school district you know the adults are here to help guide but ultimately um you know we're looking toward you and we're looking for you to take on these leadership roles because you're going to be the ones sitting in these seats hopefully not virtually you'll be able to do it in person someday but you'll be the ones sitting in

052these seats making these important decisions so the fact that you're taking these active um you know persistent caring thoughtful reflective um decisions and bringing them to the forefront and conversations that i think are difficult and i think many people try to stray away from difficult conversations but the fact that they're continuing i think just shows the fortitude that you as as a student body that you have so i'm very proud of everything that i heard this evening in terms of the support that you're looking to help to provide other people the growth that you're looking for from from us from our community from me as your superintendent i take that personally in terms of i i want to show you that we can be a better district um and i believe all of us want

053to do that so um you know thank you and i i appreciate that you know in reference uh to my report tonight um you know again there were many different items uh in the report that kind of tied back to some of the different things that we were looking at in reference to um schedules and so forth i did have the opportunity to share uh two more schedules that were you know basically you know i want to make sure that they were you know they were really finalized before they went out so we were able to share those with uh school committee a little earlier this evening um before the meeting um but those were just again the high school is at the high school schedule the middle school schedule is a representation of the

054middle school schedule of one in the district elementary same thing but the preschool schedule is uh the preschool schedule um you know again principals uh deputy burleau uh you know have spent an inordinate amount of time you know just piecing these items together so that we're in a place where we're going to be able to provide the best possible remote education experience that we can for our kids you know right now um that was an important thing that i wanted to you know make sure we got out there um you know there was also and you know we'll talk about this in in some of the motions but uh we did have the opportunity to speak um last week i had the opportunity to speak with um aaa transportation and um you know also vanpool

055and you know we've you know we're having our conversations around how things are going to work with buses and vans and so forth in terms of transporting our kids safely to and from school and you know i know we're also looking at continuing our relationship with both of those companies for the foreseeable future and you know as we kind of go through what we're thinking we want to be able to do to support them um again administration's making the recommendation that we support the motion that's on the table this evening for um the 75 payment for lasts you know from basically march of july for these companies uh these are companies that we've and again i lay it out um in my report so i won't go back into it but um you know i

056can tell you that these are companies that have stepped up when we've asked them to step up they have been there to help us out they they helped take over when we were in dire straits when atlantic express filed for bankruptcy and basically gave us 30 days to um you know come up with a a new plan because they weren't going to provide transportation services to our district and many other districts in new england after uh january 1st so um i did just want to emphasize that you know i can tell you we had a um an excellent turnout the other evening uh you know and i'll ask director keenan to can talk a little bit about the the presentation that occurred the other the other night but we had an excellent turnout for that

057and um brandon do you want to talk a little bit about that sure thank you um so this is the uh what daryl's referencing is the caring for your child during covent webinar that we hosted the other night this was done in partnership with the umass medical child trauma training center and the director and the co-trainer are parents that live within the district so um we've decided to do this based on what we've been hearing from parents just about the stress that was accumulating at home and really questions about parenting that uh wouldn't really be our place to speak to so um we really had a great turnout um i just want to tell people that you can still view the webinar on our youtube channel and uh you know the feedback we receive from

058people is that it did exactly what we hoped it uh gave practical strategies and really a road map for how to navigate this difficult terrain um and home has been a very stressful place for people and we recognize that so uh you know i just want to thank you know publicly barry square our tech department who are the uh they should be the song heroes and they are uh you know we didn't think we'd be in the webinar business before all of this so we're able to host these things pretty readily now so um and also you know umass medical has been a great partner to us as well so we're lucky to have people that step up during our times of need here thank you brendan uh and again that again i i want

059to echo brendan's um praise for barry and his crew they continue to do yeoman's work and go well above and beyond anything that you you know we would have expected at this time um you know so thank you to them and you know thank you to brendan for keeping that rolling um again the sel piece is an important part that we keep looking at and how we can help support families through this this time is going to be vital for us as a as a community and as a school district one other item i did want to just quickly touch on within my report we just had our facility and security subcommittee meeting uh prior to this meeting this evening at six o'clock and i reviewed uh kind of the status of where we're at

060with all the buildings um that was in my report so i just talked through that a little bit more at this at our meeting um prior to this you know i can tell you we're in a pretty good place all the way around in reference to hvac systems in reference to our air circulation um in our buildings um you know we're continuing to work on a couple places where we have some pneumatic line issues and that comes back to heating um but um the air circulation works um in almost every one of our classrooms in the in the district so we're really happy with that we're fixing some motors or some you know you know a few different places where we're fixing thermostats we're doing some other things like that um but you know overall

061you know we feel like we're in a really good position right now um you know as as a you know in terms of our buildings so i would like to thank um jim cavallo you know bob um craig our our crew that has been going around really pulling all this together um you know and our custodial staff and our building principals they've done a fantastic job in terms of you know making sure that all the mechanisms that we need to ensure that the you know the buildings are safe um are are being met um you know i think i talked about this maybe last time we are purchasing co2 co2 meters for all the classrooms to measure uh the co2 in classes once kids are actually back in in the classrooms and we're also purchasing

062air flow meters to ensure that we have enough airflow going through our univents and those will be spot checked uh during the day and we'll keep keep logs of all of the all of that information so that we're we're managing to have a safe learning environment and also a safe working environment you know for our staff so that's about it thank you thank you so much dr mccall um we're now going to be able to have discussion of the report um as a member pointed out as a point of order earlier we typically discussed the report itself and what's included in the report um i'm going to try to say to our two minutes tonight the only option guys that i have other than trying to keep you guys honest is to put up a

063timer and i don't want to do that so i do ask that you look at your own clock when you do begin your your speaking and do police yourself um maybe write out your comments in advance so you know what you need to ask um we're going to start tonight remember ember he's actually never gone first and he had his hand raised yeah so hi i hope everybody's doing okay daryl i i noticed the shifting numbers with homeschooling and also um with uh private or independent schools and so i'm wondering what we're doing in terms of reaching out to our legislators and desi so that they take a look at that october first deadline given the anomaly of this year and either waive that deadline or not use it in terms of um funding for

064next year can you tell me where we are with that and what your plans are please um i i can tell you i was on a call with a commissioner late last week and we that question was thrown out there gosh i believe to uh russ johnson around the october one deadline the october one deadline is not going to change according to desi right now but they are collecting information pertaining to and again it's very informal but how many kids are are coming in for kindergarten how many kids are you know going to homeschool how many kids are you know leaving for pro field schools or private school so they're what they're doing is they're building a base or an argument around what we might have to do not us what might have to happen

065at the legislative level around the chapter 70 funding and how that's going to play out because every district is being adversely affected by kids leaving the districts their districts uh in some form or fashion so um you know i can tell you we have you know more homeschool kids more um kids who are going to parochial and um private schools than we we we've ever had um but then what's interesting is that we also have about 60 more kids in kindergarten this year than we did last year at this time so we're we're definitely standing uh in kind of an interesting mix you know occurring but um you know i do know that we're um you know senator goby and representative ferguson are actively working through this situation as well and they're advocating on our

066behalf i know mars the mass association of regional school districts as well as mafs the superintendents group um you know we're all working to push this um concept of re uh basically revamping how the system works in terms of um the allocation per per pupil not per pupil but the dollar amount for chapter 70 bob okay so would you please keep us informed and and if we can play an advocacy role that's great um and of course um if the superintendent's association can play an advocacy role that would be great uh because i think it's going to be needed so thanks i agree i i definitely will okay thank you member ember we're going to go straight down to member christian bomb please uh thank you i just want to thank the administration for uh

067this report and all the details in it i know that you are doing uh yeoman's work at this point uh trying to get everything up and running uh for a hybrid uh transition um and i just appreciate everything that you're doing i have no further questions thank you member kirshenbaum um we're going to remember lavoy please all right i want to um thank administration for the report i do um want to raise a few concerns to this school committee we've all been cc'd on emails this past week from stakeholders that might be impacted as our most needy students and really a call for help for them to get back to school and i do find it disheartening that um i didn't see any response from the superintendent to any of those emails and in the

068past we've seen the superintendent actually respond i took the time to respond to a few individuals and they responded back saying that they hadn't heard from anybody and that concerns me when i hear the superintendent um mention that in schools are in good shape we heard the same thing for extended school year and there doesn't seem to be a definitive plan to get these kids back to school and i i guess i have a question for administration which is what are we waiting for besides the dates in the quote-unquote fluid plan what are we waiting for thank you member lavoy i'll allow the superintendent um so what what is the um other than the fact that we put dates on paper i think he's asking what are we waiting for to return to school matt

069is your question specifically for on that october fifth date uh it's specifically for everything daryl for the last three um i'll give you an example um i drive into rutland every day and there's a sign advertising a fluke clinic at daycog elementary for november 7th so we're going to have our most vulnerable people in rutland go to get flu shots in a school yet we're not going to have our kids back in a hybrid model so i'm trying to figure out what our plan was talked about as being fluid we know there's a need to get kids back in school we know in rutland we have seen zero increasing coveted cases in three weeks straight we know states like montana are facing their third week of back to school and they've done contact tracing and

070said that the two causes of covid are bars and weddings they haven't traced anything back to school so i'm trying to get an answer from you in terms of what metrics are we gauging our return to school on thank you member leboy so um you know it's interesting we had the opportunity to meet with the boards of health today and several of our school nurses and we talked about uh the metrics that i think i shared with with you that came out from desi probably about three weeks ago now maybe four weeks ago um you know in reference to um the number of cases uh and the ratio associated with you know a number of a hundred thousand people per community so um as as of last week holden was uh had just been classified

071as yellow so last week in the week before they were um holden was in the yellow kind of um area which is the um hybrid ore remote if you look at it in that light um i'm not sure where they're going to be this week i have a feeling it's it's probably going to drop down a little bit um i'm not concerned with olden dale i'm concerned with the district every other you had your two minutes one question we've been writing around rutland i'm not concerned about holdings remember you've had your two minutes and actually you've had three to four so i'm going to let the superintendent answer so okay so i'll try to answer this as succinctly as possible um we will again when i met with the boards of health today we talked

072about you know what might happen if it's one if one town's really high and one town's really low we need to talk about that i need to reach out directly to desi and that's what i said to today to them then i'm going to reach out to the commissioner to ask him about that because other regional districts are going to run into this situation where you're going to have one community um very high and can that community just be shut down go remote while the other ones stay hybrid or yeah say in a hybrid model so i will share that information back out with the committee i guess my time's up but my question wasn't answered in terms of what metrics were following i just heard that we have a report that says told indiana

073okay thank you sometimes uh what matt if you did you did you read my report did i read your report yeah no did you look like did you look at the metrics in the report i did i did okay okay thank you both remember mongolia thank you um thank you uh daryl and the rest of the administration for all the hard work you've been putting into this it's clear that you put a tremendous amount of thought into things um i did also have the same concern that member lavoy had about a couple of emails we got from parents of kids in special education who were unclear as to when their children were going to be back in school i know that we were going to face some kids in october 5th and then some others

074october 26th and those parents did not seem to know if their if those their children were part of those cohorts or not and i just wondered what have parents in special education been told about about when their children will be back in the classroom and how have they been told by letter by email um i just want to be clear about that you know thank you for that question linda i'll i'm going to defer this to christine smith um because chris christine and i talked a little bit about this a little earlier today christine you won sure absolutely thank you thank you so all of our special education coordinators over the course of the last uh two weeks have been contacting families that will be starting for the october 5th with that have students that

075will be starting on october the 5th um those and then all of the special education teachers across the district have been in touch with all of the families over the course of the last two weeks in creating the parent engagement special education learning plan um as of last friday we had about 40 parents that we had reached out to that we hadn't heard back from that we were still waiting for their responses and in fact we are still waiting to hear from quite a few families as we try to create the transportation lists and class lists and and align ppe resources to the buildings that will be in use so as of um tomorrow night um at the very latest all of our families should have all of the special education families should have a

076document in hand that is um describing how the iep services um will be either will be implemented differently than how the iep describes so we were given that permission from jesse to talk about how how accommodations and services would be provided differently during the remote or hybrid time and that would be denoted on this parent engagement special education learning plan okay thank you that's my only question for now thank you number one thank you um director smith um member mills please all right two observations and a question the first observation is i concur with previous members that we need to be clear about what our metric is for reopening or not reopening uh three high schools two regionals in the state um this week there was a party and they're closed for two weeks because

077of a party and i think there's teacher their students were unaware that party was a metric right um and that wasn't set up ahead of time so i think it's important that we establish what the metrics are and i think we've been asking for that for quite some time and i really don't have that answer and i do believe jesse's been pretty clear that there's a bellwether town in each of the regionals which is the largest town so holden is is the gatekeeper and i'm pretty sure does he was clear about that so if that's not the case please share that with us secondly um hybrid versus remote in your report you mentioned again is we're going to send out a survey every meeting have said this but i really think you need to be

078telling the parents what they're being surveyed for if i don't know what remote looks like and i don't know what hybrid looks like i don't know what to say my kid's going to do so i think that's really only meaningful if you give some idea about what those options are going to look like if my kids remote but everyone else is hybrid what is she going to get vice versa third my question i was kind of disturbed in an email we got from the district that was actually sent to to staff um but also is in mr carlson's report about the fact that we weren't using a particular that our electronic system for substitutes i was concerned that the implication there is that we wouldn't have substitutes and uh you know if teachers are sick

079which they'll still be when they're remote we can't just give the kids the day off so i know we might not be getting external substitutes but what is the plan for substitutes when teachers are sick it can't just be schools off thank you member mills and remember longville really if you don't mind muting and there's a little feedback coming from you so okay 143 megan are you one more 143 time yes 143 okay thank you for timing yourself yes 17 seconds left ken so um yes uh holden is a bellwether uh community in terms of uh the the five towns that we look at um in reference to the survey that's information that we're you know defining so that we can get that out because i agree that we want to have something out there

080so people can actually compare and then finally um in reference to substitutes uh one of the things we will be looking at will because we have paraprofessionals who will be sitting in on most of those classrooms we'll be looking at having them serve as substitutes if that is necessary for a teacher that is calling in sick remotely during this time so that we're able to have that consistency because trying to bring somebody in that has no idea what's going on in a remote setting is is impossible thank you both sometimes i can't get the unmute to go at the bottom bar keeps google meets issues um i don't believe uh madam secretary that remember mitchell is with us tonight no ben is not okay uh so then we'll go to member atmar please all right

081thank you uh again just want to echo thank you to all the students that contributed through uh public comment as well as uh all the work that our student reps have done with everything you guys put together looks amazing well well done um the only thing i'll just say um pretty much for our next meeting i'm looking forward to hearing uh kind of some of the lessons that we're able to gain from some of these other districts that have maybe already started hybrid um like i said hopefully you've been darrell you've got something for some mechanism to reach out to some of your peer superintendents to be like hey how's how things going what's working what's not working so that um hopefully our next meeting the end of the month we'll be able to kind

082of hear some of those thoughts and hopefully they'll be kind of able to feed into kind of some more information about what our hybrid is going to look like thank you sure yes just to jump in real quick carl i i know on friday afternoon principal biendo and i had a lengthy lengthy conversation just about his conversations that he is have he will be having with a couple of high school principals in the in the the the wachusett area who will be going back hybrid who um have larger schools um some that there's no none are as large as ours uh but have larger schools because again we're you know we continue to look at okay you know ensuring that we have capacity to uh adequately get through lunch adequately bring all the kids into

083the building adequately have all the kids exit out of the building because we have so many kids coming in even at half capacity we're still talking between 900 and 1000 students entering that building with approximately 200 adults who also worked there so it's still a large number of people in that space so yes um we're already on that and uh mass yeah we do have a really strong listserv where uh we've been throwing questions out to one another about how how things are working thus far thank you thank you member antmar membershapiro has already let me know that she's unable to attend tonight um remember silva are you with us yes yes i am um so just wanted to say thank you for the information that you provided darrell uh i just wanted to reiterate

084um you know the previous comments of we really need matrix to understand what we're gonna what we're really abiding about in terms of when we would be going hybrid um i mean i'm always going to push for whatever is the most safest first each and every student like um i truly believe just like what the student rep said when it came to you know the image and how it makes every student feel it's the same policy that i believe in in you know even the hybrid is making sure that each and every student is safe and we can assure that now the other thing is i would like to um see that uh what member of mills had said uh if you provided like what the remote schedule would look like for preschoolers and middle

085schoolers i'd like to compare what would it look like if my child was in hybrid uh so that as member military stated i would know with the survey what am i voting for what does my day-to-day look like for my child and certainly i'd like to reiterate we talked a lot about you know safety and opening of schools and you know ventilation um i was a little concerned last time in our meeting we mentioned you know uh air filters or uh and um what was it air purifiers and i have not seen any um if we could share with us any actually data from reputable source that says that is what can prevent or helps prevent because from what i've seen it was only you know outdoor or opening the windows not necessarily an air

086purifier so that would that concerns me and lastly i just wanted to reiterate that whatever numbers we're looking at uh we need to remember that's from past two weeks so whatever decision we're going to be making we're making a decision from the past two weeks so whatever numbers we're seeing we need to remember we had a long weekend so until you know people have accepted that they have parties or they have met over the long weekend we can accept those until two weeks from now thank you member silva and actually madam secretary um could you move yourself when you have a moment thank you dr mccall yeah and just um ask me your you're right you know as we look at this the commissioner did send something out a little earlier this evening basically saying

087that before districts make decisions um i think some people are probably familiar with what happened at the end of last week i believe uh dedham and another school district both of whom had uh were slated to start this week in hybrid because they had had upticks in numbers and they jumped into the red um they actually decided to just um go full out remote um without a you know without a an end date they just said we're going remote so there was some clarification that was put out there around a three-week window to look at um not just a two-week window but you're exactly right it is past one of the concerns that we talked about today with the board boards of health um was the fact that um after all the recent holidays so

088after july the fourth of july are for i'm sorry memorial day fourth of july um you know now labor day for those two holidays there were good good sized spikes in terms of the covid numbers because of get-togethers and gatherings and so forth so people are preparing for that as well uh in terms of numbers going up maybe not immediately but again that's it we're going to see a i think a steady trend in the next few days in terms of that going up and hopefully it doesn't go up too high but yeah i agree that that's something that we're going to keep an eye on as well thank you very much member smith i think she's having a connection issue she just dropped off for a moment i'm gonna go to member williamson and

089then circle back so thank you for waiting for a minute so um number one um i'll be brief in your report you mentioned paxton passing the fy 21 budget and bringing us to five out of five towns supporting the budget for this year and i'm grateful as well for our five town community support so thank you to all the um supporters in all five of our towns and um recently in paxton thank you i'd also like to thank the administration for hosting the caring for your child during covid seminar that you put on and that director kenan spoke about wrote about as well in his report thank you for doing that and for posting that on the website for the community i think that's very important as you've already mentioned i also echoed the desire

090for clarity on the metrics to open and close schools especially in our complicated situation in having as member mills described with all of the the different entities in our different schools in our towns and the the large mileage that we have and the number of people that we have in our town and i'd also like to just thank you all for your work and for um to thank you daryl and to thank your staff for everything that they're doing i know this is a demanding time for everyone and for everyone at home as well all the families everyone in our community in our society and i thank you for everything that you're doing as you try to balance the many needs that we have that we all have but also keeping in mind our health

091and safety as a school in our school district and our community and i really appreciate that and that is it so thank you very much thank you member smith member williamson um i just wanted to start by wishing the administration and the teachers and the staff a good first few days with uh with the kids it's been a ton of work to get here um but i i think that the um the overwhelming feeling is going to be that that everybody's glad to be back together um even in a remote setting um i also loved having um the opportunity to see dr forkey's presentation for our caregivers and the one thing that i would ask is that the administration consider having her do some work with the staff um her you know she she has

092the the potential to impact the staff in a huge way i think our staff is going to see more students struggling emotionally this year than we have in the past and if she can provide the the teachers with some some strategies that go hand in hand with what the caregivers have i think that's going to be really powerful for kids so i just think that'd be a good thing to consider thank you yeah you know and that's a great point i know um director keenan did say that she worked with our counselors and nurses last week already so we're starting that process right that's awesome thank you so much member woodland please hi um so i have a few things one um i just want to make a note that um at least i have

093not been getting parent emails about sped issues or remote versus hybrid i've gotten some general ones but um if you're not getting a response back to me it's because i didn't see this get an email um otherwise my i have a question about the in the report about the cuts that were made the tiered cuts and about how there's still a one and a half custodian positions cut and i was curious about that because there's going to be an increased amount of sanitizing protocols whenever we do enter into hybrid and in person and that seems like an odd place to cut um so that's one question and then the other point is just the question about communication of our hardest to reach students we know that there are three groups of students who are the

094hardest to reach remotely versus in person there's the special education there's pre-k there's elementary and i found it curious that those were the three areas that we did not have an update on in the report this time and that's my only comment at this time thank you thank you yeah linda and thank you for that question around um the the the staffing so uh in terms of the the custodial um i believe um one of those it was a position that was already not filled and hadn't been filled for a while so that was that was where that reduction happened so it was one that had literally been open for a long time and the half a position i believe i'm trying to recall jeff if you can just jump in on this one if

095you remember where the half one came from uh yes daryl the half was uh from the thomas prince school okay okay thank you and again i think thanks jeff so um you know when going through this you know all of these with building principles and so forth um they were really confident that they had the custodial staff that they would need you know in terms of being able to continue to maintain um their their their model for cleanliness no matter what what's going to happen this time you know once kids are in buildings it's going to look different in the sense that there's going to be um you know custodians are going to be spending time wiping down high touch areas i mean that's that's going to be their their focus you know for much

096of the day so yes they'll have to deal with um you know somebody unfortunately getting sick someplace or something else that they're gonna have to deal with completely but what the the part that's going to be i think different is the ongoing it's just going to be non-stop they're going to be walking by cleaning handles cleaning um you know surface areas where people touch cleaning door door pushes so all of those types of things are going to be you know something that they're just going to do so it's going to be it'll be a change in routine but it's one that um you know we're very confident they're going to be able to handle thank you very much um bob i'll get back to you once we do our go round we're almost back around

097so when you remember young um we'll get through the top of the order and then we'll get back to you bob thanks i had a panic second i just undocked my computer but i'm back um all right so two quick things um you know in the report you had um all the hvac issues in the buildings uh we discussed that at the facilities and security meeting i'll go a little more into detail during the um updates but basically it was it was great i was really impressed with it we went through every building they should all be online by october 5th and a few just need thermostat work after that for the heating season um then other things that can be put off and will be done later this year um and the other thing

098is you know i feel a little like a broken record i mean it's it's what i've been saying for several weeks and what a lot of other people have been saying i am deeply concerned about getting those students that are unable to fully access remote learning you know getting them back in the building on october 5th um you know it's many of these students are just unable to access it remotely and they've missed over 20 weeks of school already if you're looking at including the summer you know they didn't have that either and that's that's over a hundred days of schooling um you know add in another three weeks from now until october 5th so you know really make that effort really try to make that happen um and then getting in all the other

099kids after that if we can but i mean that's right now that's that's the next target that's that's the key that's all i got adam you're breaking up a little bit when i think you i think you said that's all i got yeah sorry i think my computer's still reconnecting i i i read lips well um dr mccall any response to that but i think we've covered most of adam's points already yeah i think we did now i'm muted remember emails please um actually all of my questions and concerns have been mentioned by other people so i will save my time to someone else thank you oh man now i gotta split two minutes like another ten ways i'll figure it out somehow um remember ayala okay hi i think everybody pretty much hit every

100question i had um i just want to echo in special education and communication even for my own sake it wasn't that it wasn't what i expected um it to be i guess um i expected to have more communication through through sped for my own child even and it was lacking so um definitely want to make sure that those kids are not forgotten and i think that's all i have thank you thank you memorial member bennett please hi um so yeah thank you for everything um that you have been doing and i would i would like to um mention that uh i was i was personally called um about my uh child uh coming going into the school um i got a personal phone call i got several emails um introducing uh themselves uh to me

101um and in inviting you know my my child to uh you know to meet with them and everything like that so i do know that the school is working really hard um to reach out to everybody that is in place it is occurring um and uh people should be you know if they haven't heard should be hearing really really soon from people um so thank you very much for actually being you know very very on top of that i have not been you know questioning you know what what's been going on with that um and uh yeah that's about it everybody else has echoed everything uh that uh that i was thinking all my notes thank you thank you member bennett uh member brown please hi yeah i want to thank the administration for putting

102together that report very detailed um and i also want to thank the five towns for supporting our budget um and because they did support our budget and i know we're not getting everything from the state but i do believe that we should be paying aaa transportation uh we have obligations we do have the funding um and they did come down 25 and i know we're going to be taking that up later on tonight also i do my son is a high needs uh student we did get notified on friday um and asked a lot of questions and we got regarding the van situation and things like that so um we are getting uh communicated through the sped department and i know the public really wants us to get the students back in and the teachers

103back into the building and you know we do have this october 50 we do have the date in november we just need to make sure that we do it safely um because again there are students there are employees so we don't want to risk their health um rushing this and that's all i have [Music] thank you member brown um remember ella i will put you on the list for the return uh go around uh member dennis please thank you so a couple of questions or or or thoughts um first you know i think i'm now the seventh member um tonight to to mention um you know the metrics for uh what was termed the metrics for uh moving the hybrid with the different phases of hybrid and what i suggest is that um i'm not

104so sure that these are metrics as much as what i'm referring to as entry criteria right so this isn't necessarily just about um metrics that you might um discuss with the board of health although that might be a component i think that there are several criteria that need to be met for us to meet the no sooner than october 5th date right and so we think we've been asking now you know the things at least it's the fourth meeting where we've been asking for you know what are those criteria i'm sure that they when we first talked about um uh opening schools why could we do it sooner the buildings weren't ready so what's the criteria around buildings what's the criteria around cost what's the criteria around staffing what's criteria around health metrics if we

105were to have a dashboard that we could show to the administration to the school committee to the public um what would be on that dashboard to let us know that we're on track for october 5th and so i guess i'll ask the question this way are we on track for opening for phase one on october 5th and how do we know so i can tell you you know if we had a dashboard that actually is a decent idea in terms of putting uh information out there for people to see um buildings are an important part of what we want to ensure that we have um you know ready to roll and um you we feel as though we're in a really good place with uh where we're at in terms of our hvac systems and

106our upgrading um some of our heating systems i spoke about that this evening in terms of the pneumatic lines over at pax and center and we have a couple systems over at central tree that we're updating right now um so that would be one of the areas you know having um our staff um you know in terms of having an moa so we're ready to go with that um moving forward with um our transportation vendor and having the capacity to do that um correctly uh and you know ultimately it's just we want to ensure that we have um you know a time frame that is established that is is doable so by looking at at this um in terms of what we have that we're in control of that's that's where we're at um i

107understand what you're saying about the the metrics that i talk about with the boards of health um and you know those have been the things that we've been going back and forth on because again they're also kind of at that point where they're like well you know we're not really sure what the metrics might be for uh for school in many many communities where it's one district in one town they make that decision um collectively and say okay here's what it's going to be for this town and uh you know they might look at some of the other surrounding communities so that's that's where we're at with that but um you know when we're just talking about what a a dashboard might have it would be um uh building preparedness it would be the staffing

108it would be um the the busing as well so i'm not sure that i that you've answered whether we're on track for phase one but i would suggest that what needs to be clear for for the public yeah we're on we're on track for phase one thank you so i think what would make it clear for for the public and and for those trying to understand and consume this again for each phase understandings explicitly what those criteria are again subject to you know whether or not there are things that we don't think of that are subject to change um the second and final question or thought that i want to share is around those roughly 300 students that have left the district um you know we've talked about this at business of finance and and

109there are really two types of impacts one is a financial impact that we're expecting uh will present itself for next year and two is that there's a service level impact and so i encourage the administration to do as the guidance in the different schools are processing uh transfers out i know that the district um has been collecting information on why students are leaving i think that's important if you can be a little concise that would be helpful i was just wrapping up thank you so i was asking that the administration present information on why students are leaving the district and continue to update us on those numbers as i see that one of the categories was updated since we've left with since we've met last but the others have not thank you all right thank

110you very much uh member augustine i know your connection okay i know you're kind of for now okay i've got you loud and clear if not i'll get rid of my video we'll see um i appreciate i will try to talk fast because the two minutes i always do um i appreciate the detail in the report this week and having um the details of schedules and the hvac information it was very helpful um i appreciate having reports from other administrators um on their areas um one question i had for jeff which he can answer later if he's here or maybe daryl can answer is that i noticed we're adding we're hiring paraprofessionals or maybe christine can answer this um i'm curious if those are new positions or if those are replacing you know people who

111have who have retired or chosen not to come back for some reason um so that is one question and then i have a bigger question um you wanted to get to one at a time because sometimes i forget no problem okay yeah certainly so um the positions that are um posted are positions that are replacing folks that have left we've gone through all of the um staff that were um um furloughed or laid off and and have gone through all of the callbacks and um the positions remain vacant sorry i lost that word for a minute no worries i appreciate that i was just curious when i saw that report um since i knew we were cutting some so thank you um so my bigger question is that the building readiness question which has come

112up and at business and finance this week we also talked about building readiness and during that discussion um one thing that was made clear was that most of our buildings should be ready by october a lot of them are almost ready now but that if a few individual classrooms are not ready by then it would not prevent us from using the entire building and we would still be able to have students return as planned um hearing this and given what i had heard at our last school committee meeting when i asked the same question of of the superintendent and was told well when the entire building is ready um i have some concerns about the district inconsistency around this if and why if this is a good enough rationale and standard in october why we

113can't start applying it now this week if we have buildings that are ready by our own reports why we can't begin to have students our most needy students in those buildings now instead of october and november um i i know we've tried in earnest over the summer and there were other reasons they couldn't return but given that i was told this rationale was what we would use in october um on monday i really have concerns about why we can't apply that now and we'll also remind us as we know that we do you know we don't have a legal obligation to offer ap classes or athletics to our students but we do have a legal obligation to educate every single one of our students including the most needy and i'm very concerned as are a

114lot of our families that we are not doing that as soon as humanly possible like tomorrow or the next day and and they don't travel a lot of them on the regular buses they have other transportation so that i think takes away a lot of that concern and i'm really just i don't think we've gotten a really good answer and i'm very concerned if it's good enough in october to use most of the building and not those few classrooms why we can't apply that rationale right now to the buildings that some of those students would be in so thank you so chris i don't know if you want to jump in a little bit on this as well on my microphone that would be better sorry guys okay um you know we are making progress

115we are making uh we we have the date of october the fifth looming on us and we still feel like that is even we're still pushing ourselves uh faster and faster to get things done the multi-layered impact of each decision is so complex and i don't mean to like there's not this huge force of people that are making this all possible you know um we are at the process of talking to families we couldn't talk to families till we had our staff back in place we now have our staff back in place while they were doing training they were also talking to families about whether or not they're coming in on the bus we don't have our bus routes ready yet we don't have um you know we have to figure out how to get

116the home 171 students that are identified as high needs students into our buildings and on these buses when before we would put about eight kids on a bus in some cases and now we can at the most put four students on a bus so that's just like one sort of aspect of how do we open our buildings again so for me on a daily basis it feels like we are recreating what school is there's like there's no paradigm of this that we can rely on how we've always done business so for every layer of decision it's um it's complicated by well at first it was the teachers weren't back in place and then the negotiation and then you know over the summer it was the guidance from desi in the multi-layered of the multiple layers

117of how do we how do we reach that level of um of either ppe or building awareness or or social distancing so i guess uh i'm struggling to communicate that the multiple layers that we go through to make these decisions doesn't look like any other paradigm that we've done before and so with all of us leaning in you know i i need daryl for a decision and he is as available as he can be because he also has six or seven other competing demands that are also brand new and multi-layered and so we make one decision and i guess a good example of that is trying to determine the shortened day schedule for students who are returning to school on october 5th that shortened day schedule is also impacting the full day schedule for students

118who the following week may be able to go or this or the next week be able to go to full days so i i don't i don't know how else to share with you the complexity of all of that and then you spread that out to the 11 buildings that we're using and the you know 200 staff people that are associated with all of this work um and everybody wants answers i've held meetings every day with various groups of people that have um you know really important questions that they need answers to because they need to make decisions whether it's you know regarding trickling down to you know how are we going to make sure there are enough ipads or devices in each student's hand so that they don't have to share and what is

119that i mean it's just mind-blowing that we cannot rely on any of the work that we've done in the past on opening school opening school in a regular year is tricky opening school and this year is mind-blowing christmas i do appreciate that i i i do wish that i know we did a lot of work this summer and and i appreciate that and and this is not a christian question this is a general district question um but i know we did a lot of work this summer and we did a lot of that prep work and so i think that's where some of the families are particularly frustrated from what i'm hearing that they were told they were coming back this summer and then we're not and all the work was done until jesse put

120out new regulations and then we've had all this time since then to meet those regulations and we just haven't figured out a way to do it so i think they're very frustrated um so that's why i asked the question i appreciate it i have a budget question as well but i can save that for later thank you thank you that was great thank you guys all so much um remember heber a few things that just weren't touched on um part of your report discussed school sports and i did talk to um jen lynch about a sub varsity level she did say that they are going to play this this fall which a bunch of people had asked about so i just wanted to mention it [Music] in the report about how many kids have left

121the district i had hoped that we were going to see in your report this time how many of the kindergartners are being homeschooled and how many we should expect back in district it seems to me like that's a number that's going to jump back up for first grade um and the same thing on a on a level of each of the grade levels seniors who are homeschooling this year who won't be coming back obviously um and i'm not trying to put the cart before the horse on this one but there's so many questions still about hybrid i know that plans are still in the works but parents and teachers for that matter are looking for schedule they're looking for time of day is the hybrid day going to be the same times as the remote

122scheduled day are the cohorts going to be done by alphabet how do they know if they're going to be monday tuesday or thursday friday i mean even if we don't have a full schedule yet and we don't know exactly what's going on it seems like we should be able to figure that out they're looking at child care for november and they can't plan without knowing what days of the week they're going to need it and to echo what member mill said we certainly can't survey before all that hybrid information is sent out my biggest concern in our last meeting was it sounded to me like the off days of not in school were going to be pretty much asynchronous with check-ins from the teachers to make sure that they were attending and my kids at

123least cannot learn that way um i really if if i have to choose i want my kids to go back to school i want them all back in school but if they're going to go hybrid and be asynchronous two days out of the week then i will keep my kids remote um hoping for a more synchronous time um so the sooner you can hybrid information out the better that's all thank you sure yeah definitely and you had a you did have a question in there um if you go back to like your third comment i believe um the homeschooling kindergartners the number you're right so um you know i think i mentioned it earlier you know we're actually about 60 students higher in terms of k um this year we're at like 474 uh and

124um last year october 1 was 4 24. so that's an interesting dynamic in terms of how the numbers are kind of playing out most places are seeing major hits to their full-day kindergarten programs or their kindergarten programs just in general director keenan is pulling that information together by grade so that will be something that we'll be um sharing out thank you very much um last but not least member haynes and then i'm going to circle back to two people i do want to remind members that we do have a full agenda coming after the discussion of the report okay good evening i want to thank the students who commented earlier tonight and they have some of these same students commented at the diversity subcommittee meeting uh earlier i think it's a week ago so thank

125you for uh for that and for your efforts and i also want to thank director keenan i know he is working on this we talked a lot about that and i i'm hopeful that we can make some some real progress on some things that were talked about earlier tonight that's it thank you um i believe remember ember was the first with his handwritten so so daryl your comments about custodial um staff and their needs reminded me of an issue we had raised a couple of meetings ago about needs of the district even short term in terms of hires and whether we in fact need to hire more custodians or more nurses and i understand that would probably be pretty difficult but you know as the administration thought about um increases of personnel to sort of

126meet uh specific needs short-term needs uh we could be in that situation in terms of getting more nursing support bob um but again you know the way this is kind of playing out with the budget um it sounds as though there's not going to be any type of federal support or federal relief until after the election uh november so that that's not going to help the state which means the state's probably not going to come out with a real budget um until after that so there's going to be a too much of a wait game waiting game for us in terms of that so we're really trying to be careful um how we kind of play that out and custodial um we'll take a look um but again we don't have a lot of money

127just sitting around ready to go so um we we're just being very careful and cautious right now but you know if we're a place where we are so unbelievably short and we cannot keep up with whatever it is that's happening um then we'll we'll have to you know look at that you know even the good thing is by moving to a hybrid model we're only bringing in half the number of students so it's a very different level of cleaning so a school like um you know glenwood's going to have 200 kids in it so um some parts are not going to feel like there are a lot of kids there and it will make the cleaning part a little easier in that sense the day-to-day cleaning um it's just we just have to really focus

128on the wipe down the the high touch areas and that's what we keep talking about we actually have a cleaning company working with custodians i i believe this weekend next week and they're going to be talking with them about the knee cleaning that they're going to be doing okay i mean i just really have a concern about trying to be proactive about areas that we know are likely to be problematic thanks thank you remember ayala was next um yeah i'll try to be brief sorry i just wanted to clarify on my comment i made earlier because i know others have had better better luck with um seeing um communication across the board with special education i guess my thoughts are from what i've seen and heard from others including myself is the communication and the

129logistics of um remote learning and having services um i think people i don't know i'm guessing this i'm guessing the most vulnerable population is being looked at first and communicated with first because the october 5th date which you totally understand but um our kids go back wednesday for remote learning and like my my i myself didn't have a plan for my son's services um i didn't have anything other than knowing i have a new ot that's all i had and i've heard from others also that they didn't have a plan um in place or they didn't hear anything so i think that is my biggest concern um i just wanted to clarify but i know i know you guys are working really hard and i get that from from when christine was explaining so i

130thank you for that thanks thank you remember allah um let's see i've got remember gus the same member long bullio um catherine um and then uh i guess malia you're just clarifying so malia um and my question was um a budget related question which is somewhat related to what was just brought up about extra hiring and if we have the ability to do that and and federal funds coming in um what has been missing or what is still missing i think from the finance information that i would like to see and i said this this week at business and finance is a um i would like to see the top tier where we illustrate the reduction in revenue that we are not getting which tells us exactly how much we now need to cut because

131we did have some found money during the past um found money we ended up with more money in some areas in our um fy20 budget than we anticipated and some other things that we carried over more than we thought we would and i would like to see that final top tier to reflect that before we start i know we've cut positions but before we get to that i'd like to see that bottom line number before we start factoring in all the extra covert related ppe and all of those expenses and before we factor in so we can know for sure as a committee how much we had to cut and why so it reflects our actual revenues lost and then looking at our spending after that because i think that's not clear because it seems

132like we should have more funds than we do and flexibility to meet some of those flexible needs we don't have extra money but i think we need a very clear picture of what that looks like and we have not seen that so i appreciate that thank you remember gustafson um remember wrongfully please yes very quickly um thank you for sending out the revised schedules for elementary and ecc um and i wondered if you could explain a little bit um about how the time in the afternoon works and then i think you would also send out a revised a somewhat revised schedule for the the high school um where you talked about uh and with the idea that it would there would be more structure in the afternoons and i was so i wondered if you

133could talk about how that how those revisions work for the the different levels of school the additional structure in the afternoons sure so um bob and i have spent an awful lot of time talking about this but you want to do you want to go through um the you want you if you want to hit elementary middle and high yeah i'll be happy to speak to any of that how about you share them on the screen so people can see what's going on uh yes they just have to find them yeah i don't have those okay linda could your question you wanted to know specifically about the focus of the afternoons yeah exactly yes exactly and what's going to happen in the afternoon sure i can speak in generalities and and maybe we don't even

134have to get the these up on the screen what we shared originally was that the afternoons were going to be focused on small group as well as individual teaching and learning and after receiving feedback from all of you a couple weeks ago maybe even a month ago i've worked with the principals to refine the way the afternoon looks and so what we're doing is we're still um allowing time during the afternoon to be able to look at maybe special ed pull out services individual student needs small group needs but we've also added in a focus to the afternoon so for instance let's say i had ela and math in the morning what we've done is in the afternoon we we've scheduled time specifically for students to now meet a second time with their ela or

135math teacher to receive some reteaching some feedback on homework to have a formal check-in to see how things are going so that's what we've done that's different and that was based on the feedback of the committee as a whole and that's true for preschool it's true for our k-5 schools and it's true for our middle and high schools as well and that's reflected in all those schedules that were shared okay so is that going to be mandatory for them to participate in that or yeah optional i think there were actually some words that i listed underneath the high school plan where those are mandatory times so that will be communicated out by each school as well it's time where it's not optional students are being required to check in um and and that's what's different

136so we reacted to the feedback that you guys gave us to try to move in that direction thank you that's a a very positive step thank you you're welcome thank you member long billion thank you thank you deputy burlo um we're going to go to catherine and then we're going to go to recommendations i just have one quick question what is like the metric to know if the remote model is working and that students are learning um i know we've talked a lot about how we're gonna make like us like fall better than the spring but how are we measuring that like it's actually working like any student can take a test and pass it but it doesn't mean they're learning i guess so i think that's probably one of the best questions that uh

137is out there it's probably one of the most asked questions uh that's out there it's not just for our district it's for you know all districts it's same thing goes with hybrid catherine um you know how we're going to know so a big part of what we're going to be doing is you know doing assessments um that go along with the power standards and uh you know looking at how you know what kids are learning and you know ultimately how they're doing um it it this is going to be different um you know again remote versus in person versus just fully in person uh they're they're just completely different uh ways of learning so again we're just making sure that we want to um look at what we can do around all kids around you

138know attempting to meet their needs as best as best we can so that they're able to succeed um through this you know initial part and then getting into hybrid and then if we have to go back to remote or if they decide to stay remote uh you know we still have the capacity to support them there but a lot of it will be done through um you know our our assessments okay so are you planning to pull like students like google forms or parents or families or are you just like what do you mean assessments like by like test the teachers yeah so yep there's that but there will always be some survey information that goes out there specifically from buildings um as we as we move forward uh were that way we can actually

139you know work around okay here's what's working you know you know one of the things we found out was um we had some there were some issues with synchronous versus asynchronous last year so we heard an awful lot about there weren't there weren't enough time for uh synchronous learning and um students and parents were really looking for that from us and from staff so we we rolled that in so we'll be doing the same type of thing so what is working what isn't working what can we do we can't we can't make everyone you know happy in this situation because it's not perfect but you know we're going to do our best to try to meet everyone's needs all right thank you thank you everybody um so now moving on um we're going to recommendations

140requiring action by the school committee um i'm going to read a motion to accept the settlement between aaa transportation to for home to school transportation special ed in district and special education out of district and the wachusett regional school district whereby i inhibit this for the closer um somebody isn't needed if you don't mind guys um whereby invoices for the closure of 62 days are through rated with oh linda i think it's you oh sorry i think you hear my kid in the background that's okay i just got distracted with all these words sorry um whereby invoices for the total closure of 62 days are prorated with a payment to the vendor of 75 of total invoice with the district realizing a savings of 25 is there a motion on the floor so move second

141moved and seconded um would the administration like to um have a discussion of this sure i know director dede's been um you know working on this project for a long time so i'll i'll you know give him the floor to speak dan all right thank you daryl um and uh first of all i want to thank uh the business and finance subcommittee for their due diligence on this as well over the past uh several months um back in um august uh uh ron earning wine who's the president of aaa transportation sent another proposal um in terms of hopefully responding to some of the the questions from business and finance at the end of day um in in the superintendent's report um we've identified some potential issues that that may be the the end result uh

142um if if this is not um passed but i think i'd like to go back to a couple years ago and uh this predates me um being here in the district but as uh superintendent mccall stated um several years ago when atlantic express uh bellied up um the district reached out uh to both aaa transportation and into vanpool and they made them aware of the issues and in in both vendors particularly um a a transportation um was able to provide transportation for the district students seamlessly i believe atlantic express bellied up just prior to to the uh the christmas break and when the students returned in early january uh the buses were were rolling again um without interruption um i i think that um after all the analysis is is done and there's been a

143great deal of analysis done here i i think that this this this comes down to to relationships and um as aaa and vanpool were there for us several years ago um again we're we're looking to ensure their continued viability so they they can be there for us as as we move forward thank you very much um do members um have questions oh member dennis thank you hi thank you so um just um to provide some some context as uh director dede has mentioned um i think daryl has mentioned um this topic has been a topic on the agenda for business of finance probably since may we've had numerous hours of discussion on it i do think that we've done due diligence and at our most recent meeting this past monday the committee voted four to

144one um not to recommend that the uh full school committee adopt this uh settlement so i want to give some context a little bit of history as to why um i think that's the case and and perhaps uh what the pathway forward might be um so back in early may um there was guidance uh from the deci um i think so it was original guidance even before that as we were in a school closure going from uh month to month to for to advise districts to continue to pay their contractors and employees and once the decision was made that we were not going to be reopening for the spring uh there was a meeting with deci associate commissioner jay sullivan back in early may that school districts may emphasis on the word may make a

145reading ready-mint readiness payment to school transportation providers based on any type of negotiated settlement um in anticipation of making that transportation vendor uh ready for for next year um in one of our meetings and we've had um you know discussions around you know the proposal of 75 25 um numerous times that much hasn't changed um we had a district council uh at business and finance in june 17th where district council affirmed that we were under no legal obligation to pay for services that were not used [Music] so you know it's important to understand the the dollar values that are associated here my understanding is that there's about 1.4 million dollars uh that is encumbered 75 of that is just a little over a million dollars that would be a million dollar payment uh for services

146that we were not able you know simply did not use for for reasons that were not related to anything that anyone is responsible for um certainly you know aaa has come back and said well we'll give you a rate freeze uh which is equal to about 160 thousand dollars for this year of course we're not fully using our transportation this year so we don't know how that's going to be impacted um they further have said that we calculate that the uh ppp forgiveness if we get it uh would be 95 000 and we would give you that credit however director devi um did caution us that um uh they their employees would have need to be um uh made whole and in fact we were informed that the employees were put on unemployment uh back

147when schools began to close in in march um the thing that's changed about um the settlement agreement uh really um is time and we knew that there would be time periods where um our our decisions and our ability to maneuver uh would be limited and that has in fact been the case so as we close the fiscal year we were no longer able to move funds into a transportation or at least the fulfillment of these funds into a transportation stabilization fund which allows us to roll them over and take advantage of them regularly for next year um as of our meeting uh this past monday um it was uh unclear um so so it was unclear whether or not the funds if we were to enter into a settlement at this point uh whether or

148not those funds uh could be counted in our transportation reimbursement schedule to be reimbursed um we've since we've been informed by director duty that he approximates a reduction in transportation reimbursement of about four hundred thousand dollars um because obviously we didn't use all the transportation for last year and we also didn't make a readiness payment which we could have otherwise counted so as time has gone on um the dollar impact uh for this deal has just gotten worse and worse and we have not seen uh and i appreciate the the words around a couple of years ago about thus bailing them out but we've seen no movement or very little movement off of the 75 25 position that they've taken with us to try to get to some place uh in the middle and so

149you know one of our members had mentioned that i do think it's it's um you know an interesting potential path forward is that perhaps these discussions be taken in the context of not only what did we have for last year but um broaden it to include what is it that we need to have for this coming year and develop a settlement um that's based on our renewed are our new needs for this year uh as well as what's um what's taken place for last year but again as it stands right now our committee after hearing all of these different pieces of information voted to not support his adoption at the full school committee thank you thank you member dennis as a very comprehensive report um we do have some hands from members so i remember

150gustafson and member young i was going to um add a couple more points of context um from the previous discussions that may not be evident in the proposal people currently see because i am on business and finance as well and we have had extensive discussions about this since march or april many um one of the things that you cannot see is that in the interim between various proposals the 2575 is where we landed there was at one point of discussion of going to 50 we changed it i'm not going to get into all that but he didn't accept that so we he he left it at 75. um but the piece that was the most troublesome and the most uh we went back and forth about all summer was the amount we'd be forgiven and

151what would happen if his loan was forgiven um he was very reluctant to give us information about that um when he did we had made a proposal back after we talked in june after we talked with um had our last meeting actually about this issue um and in that proposal we had proposed something like 20 i think 25 percent be forgiven back to us we've looked at how much of their services we contributed to and things like that and he countered with 25 000 um instead of 25 we obviously weren't very amenable to that and so now we've gotten to this this higher amount which i appreciate um but i guess my point is is that if we had started with this proposal in june we perhaps might have had been more amenable to it

152at least from my perspective i can only speak for me but um it solves part of our problems but he really was very reluctant to give us a lot of information about why he needed these funds and what they would be used to cover and if you look at the letter that he wrote i don't know if you could see the whole information we have in the packet from business and finance um one of his main one of the main um issues with their funding and why they are asking for more funds is because they did not have any summer revenues the wachusett district is not usually a huge source of their summer revenues from my understanding so he's explaining why their business needs to remain solvent and needs these funds to make up for

153lost revenues of which our district really has nothing to do with um and so some of us at least i and i think some of us had some concerns with that um so i just think some of that history is perhaps useful and i appreciate what he's done i think that the um what is in this proposal with the loan forgiveness is much better than where we started and i'd actually be probably fine with that but i don't think they fully justified the 75 25 request and i also think that the history of him drawing this out all summer we had to go back to them about four or five times asking for the detail we finally just got and trying to get a justification out of him we got in this in june i

154think we might have been able to figure this out so that's my context that i think is maybe relevant to all of you it's not just that we didn't want to bring this to your attention or support it we didn't have enough information thank you member gustafson um we're going to grab a couple questions i just want you guys know we have uh other motions as well remembering young um what is your question thanks um i just have a question through the chair to uh member dennis as the chair of business and finance um you know in the in what we were given we can't see attachments l m n o um relating to the transportation settlement were were the documents there that justified the 75 number or was it just documentations and things didn't

155add up close i mean was there was 75 just picked or is there actual justification behind some of these numbers sure to the chair i'm happy to respond without being able to see the attachments that we're referring to i'll answer the the gist of your question um so the information that was provided the business and finance was a calculation from their payroll company as to how much money would be eligible to be reimbursed to watch usage for ppe um the question of 75 25 um has never really been articulated to us from a principle-based negotiation standpoint or from any principle for that matter um what we've come to understand is that 7525 is what was negotiated um you know director dede mentioned earlier that he and a colleague were charged with negotiating on behalf of

156several member towns and coming up with a model um settlement agreement for those towns and so the 7525 i believe came from that but we've been asking from day one you know what are the fixed costs what are the principles um that that mean something to us uh why we should be at 75 25 and we never did get that level of detail thank you remember young i think i'll have a question from member long bolivia please yes um i have a question for mr dede which is how do you see this uh you know any decision not to approve this agreement affecting our relationship with uh a transportation going forward and and uh impacting operations so through the chair um i i can't speak uh for from mr ernin wine um i mean he's

157well aware of this discussion this evening um you know he's he's made me aware that um the the handful of other districts that hadn't paid that um uh there's a a lawsuit out there however however um he has said to me he he he didn't jump into that lawsuit um he chose not to um and um he's he's not quite sure what his next step would be if there is anything he's he's committed to to working with us uh this year he's he's committed to providing services uh across the board we've as dr mccall has stated earlier we we had meetings uh the past couple weeks so we've got a meeting this week to sort out uh you know the transportation uh once the buses begin to roll uh meetings to sort out special education

158and transportation um ron um is a professional and he's going to um keep these two two items uh separate um and um and as we go forward he'll he'll be a partner in in in working out our transportation challenges um as as they relate to the start of school um and um again in in dr mccall's report there are there are you know suggestions given as to what the consequences may be but um i i think as i as i look at those again i think it comes back to to to a partnership to relationship um you know to mike's point as if i made just another minute or two um you know the 75-25 is end result of lengthy conversations that my colleague from the shoesby public schools and i had back in back

159in april and early may um uh we we we we drilled down as as far as we could and um to to get that figure uh less than 75 percent and at the end of the day it wasn't possible um i i i do want to point out though that um as as part of the the process um um as part of this that this negotiations that again mr earning wine is willing to to freeze um this year's rates saving approximately 116 000 and change he's willing to to freeze uh spent in district rates and again that's savings approximately 43 000 and and yes um if if keyword is if um if his ppp loan is is forgiven um key word is if um there's a potential another 95 000 and change again that that's

160that's that's potential um and um again um i guess time will time will tell um how he reacts i i didn't quite understand what you meant when you said that he didn't jump into those lawsuits did did he sue the districts that didn't pay anything no no they're they're there are a handful of other districts um that whatever reason chose not to pay either and then they are very few and far between uh there there is a law firm in boston that has taken on the case for a transportation provider and when he was approached to be a part of that he declined thank you thank you uh so when i was looking at this um i i realized busting is just one of you know one of the services that was cut short or

161cut out completely with the closure in the spring and i was trying to think about our other various service providers other contracts in play and i do remember there was a question about the coaches for the spring sports and i believe that they were given a a reduced rate uh for payment and i guess there were probably a few other exceptions like that but i'm trying to think was there any other vendor any other service provider any out of district tuition anybody else besides this one single company that we did not pay that or yeah that we did not pay is is are is the business company are they the only ones that we are not looking to not pay at all anything out of everybody uh from what happened in the spring through the

162chair yes thank you member hands we're gonna move down the list now um to member woodland um i just have a question for uh the business and finance committee um did your committee see the or discuss the um bullets that were in tonight's uh superintendent's report about this issue so megan i can respond to that through the chair um so so while they were not um articulated in the bulleted form that they're listed in tonight um they have been brought up uh and we have discussed them and in fact that's part of the reason why i provided some of the context regarding uh the opinion that we received from district uh council uh back in june next to our requirement to pay um it also um addresses in my comments um the notion that uh

163that there are um uh um transportation transportation reimbursement i think it's also mentioned in their circuit breaker to a much lesser extent medicaid to a much much greater extent uh reimbursement um and again um as at the time of our meeting um the administration did not know whether or not uh now the time has passed whether even if we did have a settlement today um those reimbursement figures could be updated to reflect the writing thank you member dennis so we're going to go to member we have hammer brown um back to dennis and malloy and umu yep working on it so when i read all this information it's not that i don't think that we should pay them anything i certainly think that we should cover their expenses i really don't think that we need

164to make them whole i don't think any any company any school anyone in the state has been made whole i mean we're at a point where we're losing teachers and we're going to pay a bus company so they end up with revenue it just doesn't seem right to me in the bullet points in the um report we received it says you know for the cares act funding we're expected to make a considerable effort and it doesn't say that you have to pay them their full revenue again if we can get a list of their verified expenses i have no problem with that at all but it seems to me that with the amount that we're paying them plus the ppp loan that they will then be making a profit and i have a big problem

165with that when we let go teachers thank you member heber member brown please so seven years ago i was on the committee i was on the legal affairs uh subcommittee and i really know how uh aaa came to bat for us we were looking at um a disaster when the um new york bus company went um bankrupt and so we scrambled um aaa did come through i know he had to go and buy all new buses for us back seven years ago and i know since then he has been uh purchasing new buses um and so just keep that in mind and also i am a business owner i did receive a ppp loan um the ppp loan only covers eight weeks of payroll and rent or lease and so you can apply for forgiveness

166it's not a guarantee but if he still has bank loans on all those buses that he purchasing um he still has bills to pay and so um you know he should come and and give us that information what kind of bills does he have but just you know the ppp only covers a certain period of time it's eight weeks and again there's no guarantee on him getting that back thank you member brown i remember dennis member lavoie and then member ayala please thank you so just a quick response to hayne's comment um perhaps this is the only vendor that we're choosing not to pay i don't think anyone has had the perspective that we're choosing not to pay um in this case in this case you know we're trying to come up with quote unquote

167settlement agreement for services that we did not use and um aaa has held a pretty firm line on the 75 25 split which i believe our committee has felt is just too high and when we try to understand the principles along you know trying to cover fixed costs for example um we were really not met uh with uh information that would support um that level of payment so you know again at some point in time you know time has gone on and um you know if you're unwilling to to try to meet some place in the middle that's in a principle-based negotiation then then perhaps the default answer becomes zero over time um and in fact we're losing money by or losing the opportunity they even have reimbursement um by having this go on but

168um to me that doesn't justify just uh agreeing to to the amount that we don't think is an appropriate amount to pay thank you so much um i believe next is um member lavoy please i appreciate the clarification by member dennis i actually wanted to just state that i'm not looking at this as a vote of zero dollars versus 75 percent what i do um look at is i have a lot of respect for our subcommittees the work that they do and if the subcommittee in business and finance doesn't feel as if a 75 amount is justified i respect that i can honor that and i can certainly go to sleep comfortably at night knowing that it's a reasonable request to to have a reasonable amount to be able to agree to at this this

169committee thank you so much boy um i have member ayala please or our list is growing a little bit so we have ayala amber ottmar emos um just a question um when will we know when the ppp will be forgiven or do we know through the chair i don't have that information i can certainly find out um i don't know if he's applied for forgiveness yet or not okay and then um i know we're trying for the 75 percent but how how was how was he the owner of double a uh transportation aaa sorry um double a transportation when um if lower amounts were asked was he just not willing to budge below the 75 percent uh through the chair there there were other figures uh presented uh to mr ernin wine and uh they

170they were not acceptable okay thank you um uh next member ember please so i have a hard time supporting um this motion uh when we as matt pointed out and and i agree we have business and finance who are recommending against this and i and i know that they've been working on this for a very long time and and in a detailed way um and i think there needs to be a true basis for what what those costs are and i do appreciate what the aaa has done um when we were in the crunch time but that doesn't mean that they don't have a responsibility to sort of lay out their numbers and say here's where we're going to get hurt this is why and here's our application and the fact that that he hasn't

171even applied for that money yet is disturbing so and and i know that he had um some some um resistance to even applying in the first place because it was a bother and and i'm disturbed by that as well just the the entire attitude so i also feel we have a responsibility to help them out at some point but it has to be based on on something and not arbitrary um percentages and so i can't support this thanks yes um and i just just wanted to add something that uh a member member dennis had mentioned alluded to this briefly um and one of the things that had come up in our business and finance meeting was um the possibility about rather than treating this as a settlement for one fiscal year knowing that full well

172we're going to need another settlement for this fiscal year because two days time frame we've got our first date and we're not going to have buses running and so um it the 7525 at least my thought was that for maybe that's a reasonable number for last year with conditions on free rate freeze this year plus once we start doing hybrid we know that we're going to need more buses based on our limitations on people and there's going to be a lot of cleaning involved and so it seems as though maybe maybe maybe it is the right could be the right number for last year but there's unknowns with this year as well and they're really it's really the same conditions it's this covet environment that we're in and i my thought was that we might

173be able to work something out with one settlement that kind of really covers these changing conditions different years and so i think that was part that was kind of part of what was kind of part of the reasons why i think it's just as it stands right now it there's still a lot of questions that are out there especially two days time frame we've got a new year on and we're still we still kind of have a unsolved puzzle to work at so just wanted to add some of that context thank you member op member analyst please hi um newbie question here so if we vote no that we do not support this 7525 based on the information provided what happens then um does it do the conversations continues what happens so through the chair

174uh i'll need to have a conversation with the superintendent tomorrow morning um to see if we if if we just pursue if we just end this end this discussion and move on are are do we uh drill down deeper um i will give a recommendation to the superintendent tomorrow morning happy to share that with the chair of business finance as well thank you um member brown please i do respect um all the subcommittee's work and that's since i've been on this committee i don't believe i've ever voted against a recommendation by a subcommittee so i'm not gonna do it this evening um because again in our subcommittees this is pretty much how we run the school committee um pretty much all in subcommittee so i just wanted to say that thank you member brown um

175seeing no other hands um we will go to a roll call vote starting from the top remember emote a list no remember ayala ayala no remember bennett bennett now remember brown brown gnome remember dennis dennis no member gustafson justice and no remember hey no remember haynes no remember in birth amber no remember christian bomb no another boy lavoy no remember longville one wheel no remember no no snow remember uh mitchell is not here tonight remember ottmar mar no member silva silva no member smith smith now member williamson williamson now remember woodland woodland no number young young no and the chair votes now the motion fails next on our agenda tonight to accept the settlement agreement between vanpool transportation for special education out of district transportation and the wachuset regional school district whereby invoices for the

176total closure days of 62 days are prorated with a payment to the vendor of 75 percent total invoice with the district realizing a savings of 25 percent um chair if um administration withdraws this motion okay at this time human infusion has withdrawn emotion on the floor next on our agenda tonight to extend the contract with malanson cpas to continue to serve as a district's auditing firm for the 2020-2021 school year and in doing so exercise the first two option years of said contract is there a motion second it's been moved and seconded um any information before we go to discussion uh madam chair this is uh there was a procurement done several years ago it was a three-year procurement with two option years uh we'd be looking to exercise the first of the two option

177years starting uh this fiscal year thank you is there any discussion on promotion on the floor remember dennis yes i mean it's just um we haven't certainly have not talked about it in business and finance but has there been any discussions on this topic um how satisfied we are with regards to our auditor in the audit advisory committee is there anybody who's here from that committee that can speak to that so for the chair uh member uh mitchell was not here uh this evening um so he'd be the only person i think that to speak to that yeah i'm on the committee but i'm i'm new so i did good at the one meeting i was at and i guess i wonder um you know through the chair to the administration is there any time

178sensitivity um to this being done tonight or can this be passed over to the next meeting uh through the chair i mean we're you know they've begun work on on the 20 audits um um sure the answer is no no no the answer is no we um then i would um i would move to um postpone the motion to a time certain which is the next goal for community second remember dennis has made a motion to table this to a time certain which is our next school committee meeting and has been moved and seconded is there any discussion on the motion on the floor seeing none we'll go to a roll call vote remember amos amos yes remember ayala ayelias remember bennett bennett yes emma brown bronius remember dennis dennis yes i'm augustuson yes member

179amber yes remember christian bomb christian bomb yes remember lavoy remember mitchell i'm sorry remember mitchell's not here remember ottmar or williamson williamson yes member woodland woodland yes i remember young young yes the chair votes yes the motion passes there's no unfinished business on today's agenda next is the secretary's report first is the approval of the 1350 regular meeting minutes at the wachusett regional school district held on august 24 2020 as enclosed is there a motion moved second it's been moved in second is there any discussion on the motion on the floor seeing none a roll call vote remember amos yes remember ayala yes emma bennett bennett yes wilma brown brian yes senator dennis danny yeah remember yes remember mills oh yes remember ottmar oh more yes member silva nova yes remember smith yes member williamson

180williamson yes remember woodland woodland yes young young yes and the chair votes yes next marriage ended tonight is the approval of the executive session minutes of the wachusett regional school district committee held on august 24th 2020 is there a motion second okay and seconded and seconded um any discussion guys uh megan the minutes were not shared okay so can we um can we hold those to the next meeting madam secretary um executive session minutes should not really be shared electronically which is why they should be deferred until they can be released so we will defer that until they can be released oh the sharing of the minutes of course um we saw the motion on the floor though is there a discussion um regarding the release of these executive session minutes so this motion is

181the release of the executive session minutes megan the minutes have not been shared at all nobody has seen the minutes yet okay uh remember dennis yeah i mean if you're looking for something procedural i don't know if it would be in order to make a motion to withdraw the motion yeah um but if it were i would do it would you like to make a motion to withdraw the motion sure thank you so there's a motion to withdraw the motion on the floor second been moved in i believe we still need to vote on the motion to withdraw the motion on the floor so we will remember amos yes remember ayala alias remember bennett yes brown yes dennis guest remember gus member hey brian yes yes remember mills stain remember atmore i'm our abstain member

182silva silva yes remember smith yes i remember williamson williamson yes remember woodland woodland yes remember young young yes the chair of stains next on our agenda is the approval of the 324 special meeting minutes of the watches at regional school district held on august 31st 2020 as in close do we have a motion here for the special network all right thank you again moved in second discussion seeing none member emails yes remember ayala ayala yes bennett bennett yes [Music] yes megan do you mind just repeating what the motion was i stepped away for a second yep so this is the special meeting minutes oh the the one on 31st correct uh abstain member smith yes member williamson williamson abstains remember woodland woodland yes remember young young yes mature votes yes next on our agenda tonight

183is the treasurer's report and financial statements please direct those questions to director deedy next on our agenda tonight our committee reports um starting with management we actually do meet next week the 21st of september and then we will have a report out to you after our meeting um ed sub uh chair smith sorry having trouble with that button again so let me get my notes here for education subcommittee we did meet this evening prior to this meeting and we continued our work looking at policies that masd suggested we look at in relation to the covid19 challenges and our next meeting will be on tuesday september 29th before the full committee meeting so we do have a policy for that we just sorry let me start over i'd like to make a motion to prove the

184second reading of amended policy 3813 policy relating to education audio video and or cinegraphic recordings of parent teacher conferences and team meetings waiting the reading do i have a second second it's been within second is there further discussion on this policy okay seeing none we'll go to a roll call vote remember amos amos yes number ayala ayeli yes never bennett bennett yes brown bronies remember dennis yes yes i'm regressing justice and yes remember hey yes yes remember number remember ottmar umar yes member silva silva yes member smith matthias member williamson williamson yes remember woodland woodland gas never young young yes your chair votes yes uh next on our agenda is business and finance chair dennis thank you so very briefly in addition to uh we did meet this past monday in addition to transportation reimbursement

185and the impact of enrollment trends we discussed the fiscal year uh 20 closeout which is being closed out very very thin but it has been alluded to we did have a greater than expected um revolving fund rollovers so that helps us for this year um we also spent a conservation talking about fiscal year 21. one of the things i thought was interesting is that we learned that the administration is currently acting on budget budgeted level budgeted fiscal year 20 levels we have asked for our next meeting to provide us with a build up from fiscal year 21 both the anticipated reduction of revenues as well as the increase in expenses and any grants that have been applied that we expect to receive against those expect could get those expenses so that we can understand better

186um how we should be operating for fiscal year 21. any questions or business finance seeing none um legal affairs chair brown we have not met i will be scheduling a meeting um probably coming up in the next uh two weeks um as you all know we've been uh negotiating with the wra with the moa for uh remote and i'm to be going over that in executive session later on that's it any questions for legal okay moving on to superintendent uh goals and evaluations chairmills yes we'll be meeting next week for the first time in front of the management meeting thank you chair mills um facilities and security chair young thank you um we have met twice since the last meeting uh the first meeting was on september 1st and the second meeting was at six

187o'clock this afternoon this evening um both meetings had a lot of talk about the hvac review and repair um we went through that i mean in detail both at september 1st and then you know we got the updates today that everybody saw in the packet um beyond that some of the other topics of discussion were have been safety and security for both remote learning and regarding student health records since we may be handling a little bit more health information this year um and one of the other topics was basically use of the fields regarding the high school fields it was uh something brought up by the select board of holden um and dr mccall is supposed to be talking with him soon and then we're looking at further prioritization of subcommittee policies for this subcommittee

188to take on and then i have a motion so it's a motion to approve the second reading of draft policy 661 2.3 policy relating to pupil services for face covering uh while waiving the reading thank you so much there's a motion on the floor is there a second thank you it's been moved and seconded any further questions regarding this policy seeing then we'll go to a roll call vote oh never got the sentence sorry i have one uh well yes one um i assume it's been discussed with the boards of health because i've read about other subcommittees having policies based on the template and then having the boards of health amend them um so i wanted to make sure that's been discussed and my second question is also that i've seen some having one of

189those amendments having to do with specifying what type of base covering is acceptable and that may just vary according to boards of health but i wanted to make sure we've covered that with ours um that's a good question as far as i know um it has not been reviewed by the boards of health um a little bit of time if that's something we want to do we could or we could vote on it tonight and do that after yeah i have no problem with that again i know you put a lot of work into it i just had seen that from some other districts so it was a question um it did a good question um i guess i have a question of procedure if we don't do the second reading tonight and we amend

190it and move forward with the second reading as opposed to it and amending it later and doing two more readings does anybody know how that works so you could pass the motion tonight all right and then if there were amendments being made by boards of health um later we would come back and make those amendments later yeah if we were to resend the motion and not this policy forward today we would have to wait until the next meeting your next subcommittee meeting where you would make amendments and then you would do two more meetings again i didn't want to hold it up based on that i was just asking the question because school does start in you know a few days so um dr mccall have you heard from any boards of health that this

191policy may be an issue no no i haven't specifically spoken with the boards of health about this um policy and again i yeah i can't speak for them but um you know when i'm thinking about you know their take on it they're really interested in you know ensuring that masks are being worn and protocols are in play um and you know for instance today we we spent a lot of time talking about the emergency covet teams that come in if we have a you know you know a cluster of cases two or three cases in the classroom those types of things but um other than that they're um they're pretty supportive of everything we've been putting out there so far and i know they they are highly variable across the state so it may just

192be a local issue so i am fine with that i just wanted to ask thank you okay i'm gonna keep the motion on the floor then and megan you're on mute this bar tonight is killing me all right member um member silva i know i know you're following the daisy guidelines when you wrote this up but how exactly is this generalization this statement kind of concerns me during physical education classes um because does that mean that they're still following the the distancing or i'm a little confused on that one so when we wrote it you know we were very careful about how this was worded and it was a long topic of discussion um you know it's basically each bullet point is you know separate and dependent upon that sentence before that face master face

193coverings will not be required when destiny guidelines for social justice distancing for the scenario are enforced during physical education so they still need to meet all the social distancing um and all of that um as outlined by deci um you know it's not just oh it's a gym class we can take our mass off it's you know every deci guideline has to be followed okay thank you for clarifying that no problem thank you remember ember had a question well really a comment and and that is i'm happy to support the the motion um as long as the uh committee will uh subcommittee will go back and sort of get advice of the boards of health and if there's anything substantive then we can certainly modify just so that we have a policy in place you

194know initially which i think would be a good thing so thanks thank you i'll withdraw that was bob that was my comment okay thank you with no other questions regarding the policy on the floor we will go to a rope paul vote remember emails hey yes yes remember christian bomb yes remember lavoy lavoy yes remember mongolia along with yes lumber mills how's this remember ottmar um res member shapiro oh she's not with us member silva silva yes remember smith remember williamson williamson yes remember woodland woodland yes remember young young yes and the chair votes yes thank you adam and facilities for your work i'm sure it's a much busier subcommittee than usual this year moving on to diversity equity in anti-racism chair silva uh before i start ma megan can i ask like a process

195question i didn't i wasn't able to attend the last meeting but i wanted to speak also on principal lanes a couple of things that i think actually contribute and enhance what in terms of this subcommittee in terms of their goals and it gives an example i'd like to be able to do that but i wasn't sure in terms of process if i'm allowed to do that process wise um that would not technically be in order but if you would like to speak about um what your sub committee has um spoken on um and if that has something that has come into your discussions that would be appropriate um it hasn't so okay i'll i can do it at the end when it's allowed in terms of process um in terms of uh the update on

196our subcommittee meeting we have decided that we need to meet twice a month um we actually read out some of the student statements uh similar to what you read out today uh and there was a lot of comments on uh topics such as racism colorism religion sex orientation and ethnicity um the request from students we found um was that they required a safe space for advocacy they wanted a designated staff member a lot of the comments talked about how there was only one african-american teacher that was in the high school and they didn't feel that they had any other adult to go and you know confide in or get advice from uh for who they will for for things that they might need to actually uh vent to dick depending upon what they're going through

197so a kind of like a safe space for advocacy and a designated staff member for them to do so some of the questions and discussions we discussed on was coming up with the administration to come up with um actually disciplinary action like disciplinary guidelines of exactly what types of actions are going to entail certain consequences because from the comments of the students it was very clear that certain actions to particular uh students were taken more drastically and for others taken you know less less drastically and maybe even you know uh overlooked so we were asking administration to actually maybe help us come up with guidelines that would uh identify that certain types of behavior require certain types of consequences similarly also for teacher guidelines for example similar to one of the comments that you read

198this today this evening was one student said that they heard some sort of discriminatory comment made to another student in front of teachers and the teachers did not take any action so um giving the you know benefit of the doubt we would like to actually outline what types of actions should teachers take action on and what can they do about it uh so it's cl so it's clear what is considered um unacceptable and what is considered okay this is minor this is this is something we can handle within the classroom or uh or or or it needs to be taken and taken more to the administration so that is overall what we kind of discussed but and we're going to be meeting every two weeks any questions um yes um a member atmar has a

199point of order uh so that we can get ensure we get public comment and motion to extend to 10 30. second move in second in any discussion of the motion on the floor roll call vote remember amos yes i yell yes remember bennett bennett yes amber brown and yes remember dennis dennis yes emma gusmanson yesterday i'm rehaber hey brian remember mitchell i'm sorry mitchell's not here remember aunt mark uh marty yes silva yes former smith matthias williamson williamson yes remember woodland woodland yes never young young yes the chair votes yes um are there any questions for diversity before we move on seeing none audit advisory board uh chair mills is not here um remember young do you have anything for us um i don't remember when we met i thought it was before our last

200meeting so i have no updates all right thank you um there are no building committees at the moment uh school council i believe there's a cpac a report but others have not met yet yep i have a a brief one they just sent me they sent a summary last week we did have another question and answer session with christine smith which we appreciate her time for um i don't remember how many people have attended but i know over a hundred have seen the video so it's been well received and parents really appreciate those opportunities so i think her for that um the cpac said they have held the second in a series of 90-minute q a meetings with more to come there was strong participation from parents educators administration and community and were very many

201clarifications and updates about communication to families remote learning um also i think compensatory services was mentioned and there were also will be follow-ups regarding strategies to further support students remotely as well we have many families who have reported receiving engagement from their schools and will continue to partner with the administration to work through the year so that was their summary um the second update that i have is that anarch they're having a meeting october 5th which is not posted yet but they have told me they've scheduled it where they will formally elect their officers for this year it was delayed from the spring and they will have some other things on the agenda but that is one of the first things they have to do by law so if anyone is um following cpec or

202has students involved in special education in the district or an interest in what they do they would appreciate attendance at that so that they can have a fully functioning board for this coming year and continue to do their work so that's the update i have from them thank you very much um we are on to our second public hearing i actually only have one comment that has come in during our meeting but i would like to read it um it comes from emily miller hello as a parent of a second grader in the district i'm writing to express my support for changing the name of columbus day we should not be glorifying a murderer students in the district still learned that this man discovered america and see him as a hero we need to stop

203teaching inaccurate history changing the name of this holiday as a move in the right direction thank you um new business is there any new business before i get your new business i do also want to keep up what we've been doing um if you have requests for information please send that to me within the next day or so and i will get that to the administration um i feel like that's been very helpful in getting the superintendent's report including things that that we need answered um any official new business to put on on the agenda for next time member lawboy i would like to and i've requested this information but i'd like to put on the agenda a formal discussion as to as we look past the october one date the impact of what our

204student population is going to look at when it comes to the budget next year i don't think it's prudent for us to wait for legislation to happen so i'd like to have a meaningful discussion as to what things look like at that point in time all right so this specific request for information is specific budget impacts um if it were to go through today as is as of october 1st what i'd like to know is we know right now there are roughly 300 additional i want to write it down correctly i know what what are you asking to have now and i just want to write down a discussion on that on the budgetary impact of next year okay would you like that to go through budget and uh budget and finance first or do

205you want that for school what i'm hoping to understand megan is not just a number but if the budget we're say impacted by x millions of dollars what that might mean to our staffing our services whatever i want to start to have that discussion okay so the number and then what that number means in real person in curriculum terms what that impact might be sure okay i'll make sure i'll get that out tonight thank you um any other new business i know member silva needed wanted to make a statement um if you would like to put that on new business for um next meetings report that would be um in order i wish i knew you had a statement before the beginning of this meeting no that's fine okay so i'll put that on new

206business for the next meeting all right any other new business okay see none we need a motion to adjourn so moved here we need to adjourn negotiations with the washington regional education association on 2020 2021 school opening at the chairman's discussion in a public sector would have an adverse effect on the district's revenue division not to return the public session second we'll move in a second on adjournment we need to go through a roll call vote and then you guys have the second link for the executive session after we close this meeting remember emails amos yes remember ella yes remember bennett bennett yes remember brown bronies remember dennis yeah that's yes embarrassing justice and yes remember haber hey brian yes member mills ljs mar marias andre silva julius member smith messiest member williamson williamson yes

207remember woodland woodland yes and then we're young yes yes i'll see you guys in the other meeting you