001[Music] good evening everybody and welcome to the one three four seventh meeting of the wachusett regional school district school committee we're meeting tonight on monday july 13th 2020 here at 7pm we're going to start tonight with public comment um i already have four comments that have come through in the past day to fellow members of the public who are watching please forward all questions to the email questions at wrsd.net at any time during our meeting tonight and i'd be happy to read them at our second public comments section at the end of our meeting so to start off tonight i'm going to read a comment from lauren salomon garrett who lives at 49 cook street in holden she says i thank you all for the incredible amount of work that you have done since the
002pandemic closed their schools and the work yet to be done for the budget and reopening plans it's been obvious from the science that carbon 19 is already spreading again our r0 rate is rising in massachusetts 1.07 today when it was 0.99 last week anything above one is not good as opposed to the spread decreasing with hopes of opening schools fully moving towards restrictions again although this is not how desi is framing that guidance this is why why choose its remote plan for 20 20 21 must be robust and consistent they need to align with curriculum and students must have regular face-to-face contact with teachers and staff all this will take great time and effort to coordinate so i hope that you do not waste time drawing up desk diagrams like desi wants you to do
003and get down to the real business educating our children how to wear not how to wear a mask and wash their hands but rather in curriculum and content commissioner reilly made it clear that districts had to fully provide a full remote plan for families i as an at-risk person may go this route and not may not be sending my kids back into buildings in the fall i want to know that this plan is good as any plan for returning to school you've got seven weeks as of right now i hope that you use this time to couple come up with plans to support and train our teachers and staff get technology in place and create the best scenario for every learner in our district i like many want my kids back in school with their
004friends and teachers but it's just not realistic please use the little time you have wisely secondly tonight we're hearing from mary shepard the new president of the wachusett regional education association located at 1320 watt houston street in jefferson she states as i developed my visions for this role i chose to accept i see a kinder community and it begins with every one of us in this meeting the global pandemic over 19 has brought to light in the many divides and inequalities of our current society is loaded with is pushing us to face and to walk alongside things that make us uncomfortable hello people this is where the true growth begins for our students pushing them beyond their comfort zone let us be like a student my leadership vision of a kinder community begins on two
005fronts the first being the pandemic and the importance of returning to school safely at the appropriate time conversations are happening on this front and i stay current by reading social media posts guidelines from desi and proposals from the mta second are the racial and socioeconomic injustices exposed like a zip popping during the pandemic this popping zip requires immediate attention so where's our district leadership on black lives matter we've heard from many minority students who have walked through the judging walls of our schools and my heart was sad and listening looking at former chair ken mills weighted expression after reading reading those letters was a wake-up call however i think our district is stirring and the deafening silence is making us late you must choose to be leaders on this front these students demonstrated strength in
006showing the human side of vulnerability asking us to be kinder let us teach kindness and fill all our hearts in my first grade classroom i've seen the blatant discrimination between peer students one black and one white to this day i'm not sure if i handled the situation correctly but i would rather show up imperfectly than standby silently my first education center di center diversity class came after this incident where i learned that we all have work to do to expand our knowledge of race and multiculturalism to ensure that our students feel represented and heard during their time with us how do we as a district foster a sense of multiculturalism and anti-racism it begins with our curriculum in my class i developed an approach to teaching art through the artist introducing artists of other races
007and discussing the physical difference between the artist myself and the classroom students this summer one middle school teacher is reading many age-appropriate literatures on racial inequities to use in her classroom and one high school teacher is designing a course on the history of race and racism in the united states but the speckled approach to education our students on the broad subject of systemic racism must take a district-wide approach it should begin with the training of our staff all staff when i was sharing my diversity class experiences with the paris one day they ask why how don't we have any pd like that we can use that information and i agreed racism is deep my undergraduate degrees in urban studies delved into the many challenges black and brown people face and in my opinion in almost
00840 years that have passed it's gotten worse in life there are no erasers but as louise hay one of my favorite authors would say the mind means cleaning just like your closets every so often so i invite you in to join me in changing the conversation to embrace the uncomfortable because we all especially are shunned students whether because they color their skin and clothes they wear deserve a sincerely kinder community and it begins with listening and sharing each other's stories i want all watchus and students know they fit in our community and we have their backs next we're hearing from corey burnham howard who lives at 11 osgood road in princeton she writes dear superintendent mccall deputy superintendent burlo and school committee members i'm writing as a concern and invested member of the wrsc community
009to share my thoughts on reopening schools with a 2020-2020 school year i have voiced my concerns as have many others in online social media forums realize that that vocalization can't reach you i've also shared my thoughts on the wrsd reopening task force survey that was sent to the community i realized my comments in that survey may not also reach you i express my friends my concerns and some reassure me there are many smart dedicated people working on a recommendation for how school will operate come september i realize there are so many smart dedicated people who have not been included in the conversation the wrc reopening task force was created without a call from volunteers but by appointment the wrsc reopening task force survey was sent to the community a month ago but results of the
010survey have not been shared with the community i understand by june 24th the task force already presented its findings for the administration and those recommendations have not been shared with the community i see that other school districts are hosting forums for parents and for teachers that may be involved to awful valuable perspectives feedback and ideas here in the wrsd the lack of communication and lack of parent teacher involvement and recommendations could pretend to be a large issue in the acceptance and cooperation in whatever successful implementation of any final action plans whatever they may be while my singular opinion might not have any influence and while it should not be given its own the thousands of people in our community i feel compelled to share it since the health and education of our children are at
011stake in my opinion the only safe realistic impenetrable option will be that's that will be sustainable for any length of time and will ensure academic rigor is remote learning any other option seems unrealistic when considering safety and risk with education given inadequate funding current teacher to student classroom ratios hvac systems shared bathrooms shared buses and the general nation of children to be intimate in their socialization and the general environment needed for successful in-person education coupled with a current exponential increase in covered cases nationwide and a cdc guidance and considerations related to the risk of coven 19 spreading in schools if the wrc school committee can or does not feel safe meeting in person at this time how can you expect our children and staff and teachers to meet in person for six hours a day
012i understand all the reasons advocated for in person despite the pandemic from educational quality to student socialization and development but as you know this will not be a return of normalcy i think the focus needs to be on the health safety of maintaining academic rigor remote learning cleaning needs to be a primary focus if there is a return to the school building i should assume that if one person in school building is diagnosed with coping 19 the building will be shut down for some period of time and remote learning will be the default if there is a return to the school buildings i assume that if cases spike in massachusetts the school bidding buildings may again be ordered to be closed while remote learning was an emergency measure implemented last spring it was in general
013despite the best efforts of many teachers neither adequately planned or executed to a normal degree of academic rigor that was accepted and understood by the nature of the pandemic emergency but now months later with remote learning the best option for consideration and likely to default in any scenario there has been time to plan for a rigorous remote learning program no matter the decision to be made on the path forward with regard to school opening the decision needs to be made now and shared with the community now understand these are unprecedented times that the state and federal guidance may shift and continues to be forthcoming i understand the need for careful consideration and deliberate decision making and i do appreciate the efforts in that regard but now is the time for the decision to ensure successful
014implementation of a start to a school year that's just in six weeks leadership is about making tough decisions and executing those decisions again decisions need to be made now and shared now not sometime in august so that teachers and parents and students can make decisions on whether they feel safe returning to the school building teachers can prepare lessons on the chosen format families can plan work and life schedules in wrsd investments of time and energy and resources can be made to ensure adequate resources for and successful implementation of the chosen plan thank you for your consideration and your continued efforts on behalf of the school committee be well corey burnham howard finally we hear from two invested parents sarah smith and benjamin smith who live at 47 birchwood road in holden they say as parents
015and concerned residents of the district we are again writing or to express our concern and displeasure about the proposal to pay aa transportation 75 of the money the district would have been paid for the service during the covid shutdown period it is important to note that paying for services not rendered has long been illegal and only recently become legal under emergency legislation signed by the governor on june 5th this speaks volumes on whether or not such actions are in the public interest clearly spending taxpayer money for nothing in return is not in the public interest but these are unprecedented times and it is understandable that the law was changed to help vendors who are at risk of becoming financially insolvent however this does not excuse the school committee from its responsibility to perform financial due
016diligence on the behalf of the students of the district and the taxpayers of the towns it is vital that the school committee and the school district are confident that a.a transportation is indeed at risk for significant financial insolvency before committing tax dollars for services that were not delivered anything less would be a delection of your fiduciary responsibility to students and taxpayers to date the district administration has been unable to demonstrate aa's financial vulnerability this is not the administration's fault but rather the owner of aa transportation mr ron erwinstein mr ron irwin has been unwilling to share company financial information that would demonstrate the need for the 75 percent figure he is demanding if he has concerns about the sensitivity of disclosing financial information an independent financial analysis by a cpa could be conducted and should
017be a precondition to settling at any amount in the absence of financial documentation offered by aaa there are some reasons to doubt the claim that the company needs a figure that was presented in the ultimatum one aaa transportation has argued they need the money to protect our employees but aaa bus drivers were laid off and presumably receiving unemployment including state and federal bonus money two fuel is a substantial cost for a transportation company but during the shutdown period the company was not using any fuel three between the last school committee meeting in this meeting the federal small business administration has made their reports public local reporting has shown aaa transportation received federal relief assistance the sba figures do not report an exact amount but aaa transportation was listed at receiving over two million dollars in
018ppp aid some district administration and committee members seem concerned that a.a transportation might refuse to provide bus service next year if we do not meet demands those in support of paying 75 percent frame their argument around the importance of maintaining an amicable relationship with partners yet during the june 17th finance subcommittee meeting one member described the district as being backed into the corner our district businesses business director stated that if we don't agree to 75 percent he was told that the owner of aaa transportation would do what he has to do is this the behavior of a quote-unquote community partner no this sounds like a threat through the concerns mentioned at previous meetings are understandable they should not drive hasty and uninformed decisions a decision of this magnitude worth over one million dollars cannot be
019made without full cooperation and transparency from the vendor besides we're in a multi-year contract for the company surely the contract has protections in place for the district and avenues of financial and legal recourse for breach of contract further still the threat to pull out the contract seems to undermine their claim of financial vulnerability companies in desperate need of income don't willingly drop clients in closing it is clear the school committee does not have the information needed to make a fiscally responsible decision at this moment during the lack of transportation by aa transport if anything the last revelation that aa just received 2 million and possibly aid and possibly supports the need for to legitimate legitimate ties than negotiated amount despite the good news that the school budget passed and state a figures remain uncertain wrsc
020already laid off 52 teachers and other staff and is planning for additional cuts that would total about 148 teachers and related staff these cuts include an art limited 2 eliminating music for elementary and world language for middle school this is serious loss for our students how many classes or programs could be funded with 1.2 million dollars the committee is considering paying the bus company the school committee is literally facing a choice to either provide programs for students or blindly play aaa transportation for services never delivered as parents this is no contest our money should be going to ensuring kids have access to music class world language programs teachers and counselors will help them recover and thrive in these challenging times we understand this not a simple decision we're just absolutely appalled at the apparent bullying
021behavior of the bus company who according to a member on your committee has backed you into a corner we urge the community to do the right thing not the easy thing remember the district is the customer and aaa is not in the position to issue an ultimatum offer a fair payment based on the information and clear evidence do not be cowed by threats thank you for your consideration thank you so much for all members of the public who did email tonight and again if you have comment that you have not already emailed please feel free to do so at questions wrsd.net okay so welcome tonight um i do have some opening remarks to offer and then i will be yielding my floor to our student reps and then to dr mccall so to begin tonight
022and i'm sorry that i'm not as brief as i i always like to be but i've had opportunity of the last two weeks to really kind of sit and um and to think about my new role here on the committee i wanted to say welcome tonight and first welcome back um to member melissa ayala who has been appointed by sterling and is returning to our committee thank you so much for coming back and giving us a full committee to move forward with it really has been an awesome couple of weeks for me by stepping into this new role as chair i've taken an opportunity to step back and consider my own foundation as an educator constituent and a parent that foundation is firmly rooted in our country's promise of education that is we have a
023commitment to fulfill our collective responsibility to provide an opportunity for academic social and personal success to every student who walks through our doors we believe in this promise because it is the primary means by which we support all children to craft their dreams for the future and to equip them with the tools they need to achieve those dreams moreover this type of high quality rigorous equitable education serves as the anchor of our democracy and thus acts as our true moral imperative for each and every one of us who support our students to fill to fulfill that promise as a committee we must be committed to our charge first to set policy and second to direct the goals of the wrsd as such during our time tonight and moving forward we must be succinct and inclusive
024to all school committee members as you've seen tonight i've set aside two items from the superintendent's report to initially focus our discussion on once those items have been covered we will open the floor to further discussion as stated in our bylaws commons and questions by members should be limited to two minutes and i will be reminding members of that time limit i will also be asking that follow-up questions be held until all are able to speak finally please ensure that comments raised in our chat feature here on google meets are limited to hand raises or points of order in order to adhere to the open meeting laws tonight i do also want to make note that business and finance was unable to meet tonight previous to this meeting due to lack of quorum because of
025emergencies of a number of members thus questions and comments regarding the bus contracts will be postponed to our next meeting as will items four and five on our agenda tonight with that being said um do our student reps have a report they wish to offer um i'll be really brief really just quickly there's not really much to say we're all on break for the summer so we're really just enjoying our break um we're just like waiting for answers from you guys and we're just trying to communicate better right now me and canice are working together and that to try to communicate better what we learned here so the students do get some sort of answers and just to make it more connected for all of us that's all i have i don't have much to
026say either all right thank you guys and thanks for joining us tonight superintendent mccall would you like to take it away sure thank you um so welcome everybody um i appreciate the the feedback that was shared with us this evening from some of our constituents i have received many emails from um parents a few from staff just around where we are in terms of the opening and um you know what our what our next steps are going to be so first and foremost what what i did want to do is um again review the um you know director keenan has a uh powerpoint presentation that um goes back to the findings of the task force so what i'm going to do is have director keenan run through the powerpoint um i do have another slideshow
027as well real quick after that that desc shared with us um a week and a half ago and one of the things we like i would like to do is just again review that at the same time so um director keenan if you want to pull your screen up and you can start your presentation that would be great you're muted thank you very much now you can hear me sorry about that uh the last task force meeting uh i'm sorry the last school committee meeting i went over just a brief overview of the task force and at that time we were working on the final report so in tonight's attachments you'll have the full task force report that was put together by the group and tonight i'll just be going over some of the the
028general details uh because it would be impossible to go through everything in detail but uh just to give the uh the whole school committee and the public uh more of a glimpse into the work of the task force it's really important that that work is out there for everyone to see also on the website for people in the public the task force recommendations report will be made available on the district website and that should be up uh tonight or tomorrow morning at the latest uh so again just to go over who we had on the task force we had a group of about 35 people a stakeholder group that we put together deliberately we did miss some constituents in putting this together so quickly uh which is something we're going to correct uh as the
029task force goes forward school nurses with central office administration and school principals and assistant principals faculty and staff that the wreaa helped us identify and put together parents and students who really added a lot to our discussions the parents also many of them were medical are medical doctors working in the field we also have somebody who is a late edition parent who can connect with us through the survey actually and that uh person is on the committee at umass memorial for their coveted response and is already bringing a lot of helpful suggestions medical professionals school nurses again we're a big part of that mental health professionals including the director of the umass medical trauma child training center uh jessica griffin who's also a parent in our district really is amazing the wealth of knowledge we
030have in our parent group uh and school committee members last but definitely not least we had three school committee members that were um that were on the task force so the goals of the task force were to develop a set of recommendations for the fall 2020 school potential reopening focusing on student health emotional and academic domains and just to put this in context in june we had um during the work of this task force we didn't have any guidance from the department of ed yet so we really were going off of plans from other states including maryland uh and guidance from the cdc and other reputable sources so number two we reviewed state and federal guidance for reopening schools in a safe manner collected and consolidated local stakeholder feedback about what is needed for a
031safe school reopening at the end of this presentation i will get more into detail on those results and to explore possible contingency plans for reopening schools and we did this last time but it's just we these are the uh the different focus areas of each meeting and it was a really ambitious timeline we had to do a lot in a short amount of time we were able to meet that deadline for the final report these are the major domains we looked at the ones at the top are the the um were the most pressing and the ones that we spent the most time on uh student health and adult health and medical mental health and academics and you can see the sub domains are still pretty ambitious tasks but um again they are all in
032the service of those three main domains at the top communication plan is one that is going to be really really important as we roll out finalized plans as the district plans um because you know this two-way communication not only through the task force but just through regular conversation with all the stakeholders it's going to be really really important to make sure we're on track so in terms of the health and medical group that worked um these are just some of the highlights again the details are going to be in the task force report these are just some of the overarching themes that they came up with they recognize that they could not eliminate eliminate kobit 19 risk to staff students and community and this is something that's it's one of these harsh realities that uh
033we realized through our conversations the total elimination of risk is not possible uh unfortunately but that the group looked for opportunities for risk reduction and this is directly from their work we are not necessarily limiting our recommendations to resource or budget limits of the wrsd basically their recommendations were not constrained by any budget limitations they were really just looking at what is being recommended so they did recognize that they may not be feasible given budgetary limitations the major areas they focused on were prevention screening surveillance which is monitoring and supplies and ppe they did a really nice job with this looking at the um uh ways that you know we can support all stakeholders by providing information training and responding to questions and concerns as they arise information is uh you know knowledge is power
034and i think in this case knowledge and understanding what the district plan is as it as we get to uh the roll out of it really will help because it will help people understand what their options are and how parents understand what their options are a very useful activity that this group did was they looked at different protocols and procedures that are available and adapted them as drafts for our district this was a big uh a heavy lift i'll say and they uh in the document you'll actually see links to drafts they did it's a starting point for us we need to make these work for the district but uh the health and medical group did this nicely moving on the mental health group this is made up of we had a principal in this
035group a school psychologist school and a few school counselors actually um and this group looked at uh focusing on reconnecting relationships between and among students faculty and staff this really is the foundation for um a solid mental health you know just being feeling connected to school feeling connected to each other is the foundation for being mentally healthy and this group recognized that strategies for supporting all students to reconnect to school and it's not just mental health it's also academically figuring out where they are where there might be gaps this is really an important part of coming back in additionally not just for all students but students who might be struggling with coming back to school and we might consider them in tiers two and three for purposes of this having supportive interventions ready that uh
036in some cases sit in the counseling office in some cases that are also teachers are trained on how to provide those supports to connect students to counselors and to recognize warning signs and also to leverage community-based referrals such as interface which is a is available to anybody that lives in the five towns and other referral sources for students who require supplemental supports outside of the school environment this is something we've had in place but it's very important at this point to to leverage those getting into the academics we had a nice mix of teachers we had a principal in this group and we have parents in here as well and also our students from the high school who i should mention our students really were all the group members and the evaluations that they were
037a highlight uh they really brought so much to the group evangeline welch and alexis pratt i'll mention them they really did a fantastic job and they were in this group this group looked at remote learning classroom configuration staffing implications special education and professional development this was the most involved domain for sure discussions about high school specific concerns that our student representatives brought to the task force as we all know the high school has more students than any other school in our district and it's obviously where we're um focusing a lot of attention on how can we make uh make it safe and make everything work given the pandemic at the high school for elementary classrooms one of the recommendations was to remain self-contained to decrease the need for transitions and again these are all recommendations
038too uh but it's important to know that the task force this group of people thought that this was an important one to minimize exposure and developmental considerations to always focus on the best ways to intervene with students based on their developmental needs and this is not a black or white endeavor this is very very gray and all students are different so you know one size fits all uh is is not going to work as we go back into the fall we do the best we can to to make it work for all students so i want to jump into the stakeholder survey and again uh for anybody listening this will be available on our district website uh more details on the survey the survey window is open from june 12th to june 22nd we had
039a i think a very good response we had 6250 total respondents and hopefully you can read the text there i'll read it briefly we had 4 347 parent guardians we had 986 students 436 teachers from the district 260 community members and those would be people who live in one of our five towns but do not have students currently in our schools and non-teaching staff we had 221. and again i'm just going to increase my screen here and i apologize if that's a little small on your screens one of the things we looked at was we asked the question what conditions do you feel are important to have in place in order to facilitate a return to in-person schooling and this really was to look at what did people what would they endorse at that time
040that would be important to go back in school a few that i want to highlight um because you can see it's broken down by group mass for students and master staff you can see those there just want to point that out that when you look at the parent guardian response that we had 35 percent of the respondents endorsed mass for students as being something they would support at that time mass for staff similarly for parents was about 42 you can see as you go down that there's more support for mass but still not um much more than that's going to be something that um we're going to uh i think as a task force and also as a district just need to think about about ways that uh now that that we understand that as
041a requirement from the department of ed ways that we can can help garner support for that if that's going to be something we need to do and it is another question we asked was which elements do you believe are most essential for students as we respond to guidance from the massachusetts state authority and please select only three so this is a forced choice question and it's a way to find out really what people are prioritizing the most uh what is most important to them i thought the school committee would be interested in this face-to-face learning you can see was our um had our highest marks there are most endorsed and that's something that we've talked about at these meetings as well that there really is nothing that can replace face-to-face teaching and learning um that
042uh also could be looked at as remote learning if it was face-to-face and virtual but you know that uh feature contact is something that in the comments is also very important to people um you can look at the other results too in the report extracurricular opportunities you can see would be as it's clustered the lowest rating there you can see that for students that was uh they were the ones that endorsed that the most okay so this is a readiness scale this is something that comes out of the mental health world we wanted to apply it just to see where people were in relation to this question so at this time how ready are you to support a return to regular school routines including in school teaching and learning so this is broken down by
043stakeholder group a few that jump out as outliers or i would say as the highest rating if you look at the five rating which would mean very ready to return to school again this was in uh early mid-june parents and guardians and students were endorsing that the most saying that they were at five where if you look at say the the teacher group which is gray there is a it's a little bit more spread out you know you don't see as uh as much of a high endorsement there just something to consider uh the task force we discussed how um we expect that um this could change quite a bit you know if we were to pull people right now it might look very different because it's so day-to-day but it's at least a way
044that we can have a new numerical measure of what what's on people's minds and how ready they are at this time to to go back to in school teaching and learning okay and just this is what i'll end on uh there were some themes and the open responses too where people could just write in uh there was a lot of fear a lot of uh you know qualitative when i look through qualitatively it's a lot about anxiety and fear uh about going back and you'll see the examples of that in the final report remote learning was definitely um something that came up quite a bit and um it was both ends of the spectrum uh and anywhere in between uh remote learning experiences that were very positive and students and parents saying i actually prefer
045this over in school and then also um some that weren't so positive and students really long to be back in school and then wearing masks as i mentioned too that that was definitely a hot button topic and a range you know some stakeholders saying uh whatever it takes i'll wear a mask and you know parents saying it's okay if my child wears a mask to saying on the other end of things i absolutely won't send my child in if they have to wear a mask and that type of thing so it's just it's good to know what's on people's minds so that we can respond in that way again these recommendations are not the district plan for reopening their recommendations from the task force and i think that's an important distinction i probably went over
046my time but that gives you a little bit of an idea and again to say the website will have our task force uh full report on it um i'm happy that if people have questions for the public as well you can feel free to email me or contact me i'm happy to i've been responding to a lot of people's questions and ideas great thank you brendan i i appreciate that um you know again um as we kind of went through this and uh brenda did a great job pulling that that entire task force together uh it was um just so interesting to kind of get all of the different perspectives uh in terms of where people were coming from uh parents students uh medical professionals uh here in our community so um it was really
047a um you know well-formed group and now it's a matter of taking that um you know those recommendations some of that information and also information that we're i'm going to share with you right now that brendan's going to bring up through his uh computer because mine's not working correctly so uh he'll he'll walk through uh this this next slideshow which is again pretty brief but this is what um was shared with or by desc in terms of the initial fall opening guidance so brendan if you can move to the next slide so again um deci has reached out they have health experts from the medical community and again they've spent an awful lot of time working with doctors from boston from mass general in particular um you know there's a return to school working group
048and that's a much larger group and you know there are some superintendents on that group from um the mass group that i'm part of i mean there was also collaborations with us key stakeholders and again that's where um you know working with the teachers union working with the superintendent's union the administrators parents uh you know experts in the field so all of that kind of came into play with this you can so again quick table of contents goals for fall health and safety requirements reopening plans upcoming guidance and then an appendix so we can go through these so i think again there was an um an initial fall memo and it was really around helping districts achieve achieve safe in-person student learning so those were um really the the the guiding terms um you know
049making sure that we could get kids into school safely so um they're looking for health and safety requirements for in-person learning all schools will be developing reopening plans we'll talk a little bit about that and there's also going to be more deci guidance so again this is just you know part of the the goals associated with where desi came from so it was really the safe return to school for as many students as possible for the in-person setting um we have heard that there is a great deal that is lost when kids aren't able to be in school uh for the the face-to-face piece so that was um a large portion of what jesse was really focusing on um you know they've looked through the medical uh literature um we're fortunate that we have such
050great hospitals and medical professionals in our in our state um you're looking at the third bullet there it's really around balancing the health and safety risks covered 19 with the health and safety and socioeconomic and achievement risks of keeping students out of school so that was really the the balance that they were looking at and there's really not one mitigation strategy but a combination of many so these are some of the different items that uh they've been talking about and we've been you know sharing with families so masks and face covering so you know really it's it's making it so that almost everyone in a school is wearing a mask for the most part physical distancing looking at um and this is a little different so i think this is where we've had um the
051most conversation at the superintendent's level and i think maybe at um uh the the state level as well um it's it's the six feet versus the three feet so we've been told by cdc six feet is really the length um the or the space in which we should separate from one another um but uh there's been some research around um how the distance associated with um you know with wearing a mask and you know from one seat to another seat the edge of one seat to another seat it could be three feet uh desi and medical professionals feel as though that could be uh something that would be safe in a school setting um hand washing and hand sanitizing that's something we've been talking about since last end of february beginning of march uh before
052we uh even um ended our our year um remote and move to remote learning and then staying home when sick this is this is going to be one that people are really going to have to pay attention to and and focus on because as we kind of go through this process we're going to have to talk about okay how do we um you know define okay here's the flu well well it's is it the flu or is it covered 19 or is it something else and we're all just going to have to be extra careful and cautious and then um so this is the medical literature and again this is uh some of the information that i mentioned a little earlier schools do not appear to have played a major role in the cover 19
053transmission um basically 8 out of 210 involved in school transmission so it's a small number uh covet 19 infection rates are lower for children than for adults if exposed children may be less likely to become infected with covid19 and if infected children may be less likely to infect others with cobra 19. so these are all based on a variety of studies that desi had access to over the past several months so as i mentioned earlier what is going to happen what the commissioner of education has asked all school districts to do is create three possible plans associated with a continuum of learning so there's really one in-person learning with new safety requirements so basically where we were last year at this time but with the masks and the distancing and everything else that's going along
054with um hand washing and sanitizing safety cleanliness so all of that would be in play as well a second model is a hybrid model and that's one that has been discussed and you've probably heard about um and that's a model where you might have half the students in the school for one week and then the following week half the students come in you know in order to space out the the classrooms correctly the lunchrooms um all the different areas where you know a school could be heavily congested and the final model is the remote learning model and that is uh the model where students are home it's completely remote um they're learning through a learning platform and um it's it's something that um you know again they're they're asking us to plan for as well
055so um you know as as you know i mentioned a little earlier we will be developing these three models and sharing them with desc by the end of july and then what will happen is in august they're actually going to and so this says august but it's the end of july um the the commissioner is has asked us to hold off on really creating the plans and defining where um and when everything is going to happen until uh the start of august i can tell you i was part of a conversation a larger conversation today with uh superintendents from the assabet valley collaborative and you know we were talking about you know the concerns that um people are hearing from their constituents from families around day care around setting up um you know what what
056daycare might look like work schedules and so forth and we know we all know superintendents know this the earlier we can pull all of this together the better off we are all going to be um again that is still one of the challenges at the national level we do have um our president uh saying you know what we i do want everyone back in the school um you know regardless of what's going on but at the same time um i think someone mentioned in in the um comments that were read earlier uh that we are starting to see a little bit of a bump up in terms of our covet 19 numbers here in the commonwealth and that is evident across the nation right now uh in several different in many many states so we're
057actually seeing you know some of the highest numbers of uh covid infection um during this entire during this entire time and then let's see and again uh this just kind of goes into how desi is planning on working through this and helping districts out and so forth and as you can see those all those items around comprehensive guidance coming in july it's probably going to be a little you know a little more hopefully a little more defined but um you know what are the prerequisites for reopening for school what are the what are remote learning resources desi is developing some resources and some connections with some companies in which districts will be able to buy into some of these learning systems special programs and populations athletics extracurriculars uh and um electives transportation that's a big
058one for us uh because again one of the things they talk about um in terms of how how some districts are trying to think about doing this is to have split schedules or to have staggered schedules staggered schedules for a district our size with 49 buses is very very challenging would be very challenging also facilities and operations how they're going to kind of assist us in terms of what we're looking at process for handling a covet 19 positive case in the school community and then key policies including academic calendar and consideration so i can tell you that there's talk of um commissioner looking at a lower number of days that students actually have to be in school so that there there would be the opportunity for teachers and administrators to be in the school three
059to five days before school actually starts in order to you know ensure that all of the safety precautions and measures are put into place that is a discussion that's um actively occurring and i'm participating in participating in the mass conference over the next two days remotely and uh one of the discussion um discussion points will be you know looking at how we can safely do this in a in a manner that's consistent or as consistent as we can be throughout the commonwealth so that's that part of it thank you very much brendan uh in terms of what we're looking at again moving forward i did want to just you know thank brendan and the task force for pulling that information together um we are looking at the development of the plan we will have that
060together we're also going to be sending out a survey to um parents and staff this week in reference to technology and access to technology because there's a 25 million dollar tech grant that is due next week that we are going to um probably put um in for as well as there's an there's another um amount of money associated with uh the state it's a little over 200 million dollars that's going to be made available to um all districts and it comes out to be about 220 dollars a student which would you know give us more funds for ppe uh more funds for maybe some more tech support and those types of things in order to ensure that we're able to kind of deal with a continuum associated with uh in-person um remote or a hybrid
061model and what i can tell you is that they've asked us to attempt to be as flexible as possible in terms of looking at how we can you know if we're in school maybe we get the kids in school and then um eight weeks into it we've got to move to a different model so it's this is something that we're all attempting to work through right now and i think once we know okay this is what we're doing that first day of school and this is the model that we're going to be using that will assist i think everybody kind of just you know thinking about okay this is what it's going to look like this is how we're going to talk to our kids about this it's it's going to be a challenge and
062you know i can tell you there probably aren't a lot of people that want to be in a superintendent seat right now because um you know it's it's uh it's you know there aren't a lot of answers and that's what we're looking to do we're trying to define what we need to do thank you so much dr mccall are there any other aspects of your report you'd like to highlight before i move to the committee you know i think we're um i think we're in a pretty good place right now um i appreciate the time that everybody's given me with this thank you all right so for today's um roundtable so on your on your agenda there are two major bullet points so the first is this reopening task force and next steps and you
063just got two presentations on that so on our first time around the virtual table i'm going to ask you to have your comments focused on that topic we're then going to move to any updates on tiered reductions and then after that if you have a pertinent topic you would like to discuss we'll move on to the third kind of parking lot issues if we still have time because all items on the agenda really do need to be covered tonight all right and so for tonight's meeting i'm going to start in the middle i'm going to try to mix this up every meeting and laura's already smiling at me because i think she knows she's in the middle um so we're going to start in the middle go down and then back up um so members
064have an opportunity to speak first um so remember christian baum your comments thank you very much um and uh i appreciate all the work that's been done on the task force i'm thankful for the committee's work on this plan it appears to address many aspects of the school day operations and i would like to see greater detail in many aspects of the plan i'd like to see uh i'd like to see more detail on the one-to-one device start to the school year um in in the learning plans um i think that uh that that's going to be a major critical piece to being able to be fluid among these three plans i'd also like to see teachers utilize the online learning platforms like the google classroom and so forth in a consistent manner so that
065we can build in flexibility to our year to transition in and out of the three learning plans i really feel that will probably be in in most cases uh needing to be very fluid through these plans depending on you know the conditions of the outbreaks and so forth i'd like to see a school calendar plan to maximize flexibility in the school year uh it was just briefly noted in the plan and i think that i'd like to see more detail about how we could be responsible to potential covet outbreak threats and i'd like to see a curriculum plan that optimizes low covet outbreak days so that's sort of my term to say hey when things are going well we want to make sure that we cover as efficiently as possible those in the the most
066essential curriculum materials essentially sort of front loading those materials and then spiraling back at uh to content um later in the year so really trying to get the kids up and running when things are going well so that if we do need to pull back and and move out into a hybrid model or a remote model that the kids can feel we can feel confident that they've at least gotten some of the most critical pieces of the curriculum for the for that age group i think program agility must be the focus of this year so that teaching and learning tr transitions across the three learning plans can be efficient and effective i liked that in the in the plan we saw a focus on face-to-face um learning and i think that even if it's remote
067it can be synchronous learning and i think that that provides a more robust learning plan so um you know i think that uh that making sure that we can move uh through those three phases those three learning plans is going to be uh the best way that we can um we can make it that's all thank you thank you so much and thanks for keeping to your two minutes i tried one down to go all right remember lavoy well i'm as excited as remember kersham was to to be called on as the middle of the alphabet never gets picked first um a couple of things um just to to build upon i think what remember kirschenbach mentioned access to technology so i definitely want to see more of of that but also what the plan
068is to make sure that our learners can use that technology to access a curriculum if they need to so when a member weeks talked initially about thinking of all of our learners thinking about that that it's not just a one-to-one device it's how do we equip our learners to do that and how do we equip teachers to help motivate those students that could require that that face-to-face and what are the options for that i also would would be very um very concerned with whatever approach it is on how we define services to our most needy kids certainly that is going to have an impact on on a plan going forward so what does that look like and to the point on school calendar um i i truly think that you know when you look at
069the survey results parents really in other stakeholders were very much concerned on the face-to-face interactions the social interactions both of those were very high up so when you think about the weather you know we're all used to having summers off and i'm not saying to to put full school curriculum but there has to be consideration for the beautiful weather that we have in the summer could that be an opportunity to think if something does happen could you have outdoor classes could you have better interactions that could promote some of that social distancing not to say that you don't need the confines of a building and all of that but we're in a time that even if a vaccine were to come you're looking at perhaps a 75 success rate and best case scenario they're saying
07066 percent of people would get a vaccination so as a math person with a 75 percent ratio rate of success and only 66 percent of people getting it your vaccine is only 50 percent effective to begin with with those numbers so we have to think about ways of doing education in a safe manner that meets everybody irregardless of the the idea of a vaccine coming because none of us can predict that future what we can do is take what the hand that's dealt to us and figure out the safest way to educate our students but also keep our teachers safe so that's the point that i think is is critical here is that that understanding that what is important for teachers to feel safe and i think that it's really important to to have that
071because without that the foundation kind of cracks right there and and a good learning experience is not going to happen so that's all i have to say thank you member lavoy you were also right right on time i'm like i'm liking my odds tonight uh number long belial so i want to echo what member kirshenbaum said about the importance of face-to-face learning regardless of whether that's in person or online i think it's absolutely key and also what she had to say about program agility we may have to switch modalities very quickly depending on any number of circumstances that might arise so i think that's very important and it's very very difficult to pull off i think but i think we need to put as much effort as we can into into being as agile as
072possible um one thing that i think might be helpful is uh if we could seek some funding for teacher professional development over the summer to ensure that teachers to the extent possible can hit the ground running in the fall with with whatever degree of remote learning might be needed at that time and then i'm wondering what is the current thinking about how we respond if a child is diagnosed positive do we quarantine that child for 14 days do we quarantine other students in the class in the grade in the school these are all really tough questions that you know i think would be help it would be helpful to have some the beginnings of some answers uh about how we will approach that because it certainly is a distinct possibility so those are my thoughts
073and questions dr mccall i thought you said um desi will be having forthcoming uh guidance on what to do if there is a case in the building yes they will okay thank you um thank you member long bolio um remember rachel be with us tonight rebecca i don't believe so megan megan no ben yeah no mike dennis no bob imber yeah no ken gotcha all right remember ottmar then all right thank you so the thing that i'll just i want to uh key in on from the report was uh and looking at the survey results actually one of the things that wasn't mentioned that was kind of the first block in regards to percentages of respondents that felt a vaccine would be important and so uh to refresh everyone's memory it was 36 for parents
07448 for students which i thought was interesting and then teachers non-teaching staff were around 50 um certainly i think one of the things that would behoove us would be to survey or kind of follow up with our parents guardian and say we're looking at looking at our guidance for opening there's going to be either some version of in-person hybrid mix and then there's an option for remote learning only and so uh we using these numbers we can probably have a starting estimate of 30 um maybe a little bit higher maybe a little bit lower but um that we definitely will need that information i think to refine our plans because even if we're looking at 30 percent that's 190 students per grade for every grade and so on one hand that's a big chunk um
075but and so you could figure something out for like how many virtual classrooms that look like and so as i said last meeting for my family and for our risk our daughters will be doing remote learning until there's a vaccine and so if that means they're in a remote classroom that has some students from princeton from students from rutland from holden because that's kind of the way it works out hey great they're still getting a good our wrsd education we're good with that um but we got to figure out kind of what those numbers are going to look like for us and then that also helps us with for the folks in the building doing hybrid because if it's 30 that are going to be at home then that's only 70 we've got in the
076building and that makes a little more workable than if we've got 100 in the building but i think that's some information that we're going to need to help with our planning um we've got some numbers that can kind of give us the starting point to at least get some ballpark information but hopefully we'll be able to get to that thank you thank you so much remember membership hero hi yes um i just had a couple comments um first of all i appreciate the comments made so far um calling out the um the needs of the special needs students and how they need to be looked at um and not grouped in with all of the other students um the other thing too that i was concerned about when i read the report with the task
077force is that it seemed that they were grouping all students together as if they were the same when we look at the elementary middle and high school students rather than saying these are the needs of the elementary school population these are the needs of the middle school and these are the maids of the high school and what i'm thinking about mostly when i was responding as a parent to that um survey was like are you asking about his realistic for my incoming kindergartner or are you asking is this realistic for my high school student so i had a hard time even answering those questions because the answer was like no yes no it's like contending so um i'd like to see them kind of consider and drill down a little bit more and to consider
078that you know the reality of online learning for a high school student is probably a lot more real than the reality of a elementary school student and then the middle school students somewhere in between some classes online would work some classes might not is that a bell telling me to stop megan no but that would be super clever if i can figure that out for next time i just want to be like it rang twice and i'm like i don't feel like that was two minutes um okay so those were my comments um about you know considering that not all students in our district across you know all of our schools um elementary middle and high school are should be glumped together as in the same because they're going to be different needs so thank
079you thank you and no bell no no no no cowbell tonight uh thank you uh member silva yeah thank you uh i think the task force actually did a great job of outlining a lot of the concerns that i myself had but in terms of my comments um i want to thank member christian baum for really outlining some of the same questions i had um and she did a great job and um same concern i had that member lavoy pointed out is the numbers when it comes to vaccine versus you know uh the risk to students and parents coming back into school um and lastly i mentioned in this last meeting but member opmeier also brought it up again they're going to be a lot of families that will still opt for 100 remote learning
080and um so i know we talked about you know that um this is going to you know recommend one of those three options but i believe that uh you know giving the parents a say in which option they prefer work that works for their family is definitely key moving forward thank you so much member silva member smith okay thank you i'm very concerned with any return to the physical school building and i think as dr mccall mentioned getting students to school will be a monumental task i'm also leery of putting our students faculty and staff in danger with so little known about this virus i'm concerned about a return about a return to in-school learning remote learning and augmenting the stakes with it and expectation seems like a better use of our time in my
081own life i've been thinking a lot about this as many as you know i'm a teacher at algonquin and at high school and i started mapping out just what the day might be like for someone for students arriving to school um at seven o'clock on the bus and then getting to homeroom and what that might look like and then what happens in the classroom setting and it just reminded me of all of the variables that happen all of the things the events that happen in just that one hour of time and there are so many things that will be so unaccounted for in any plan that is developed for example what happens when a student needs to use the restroom and they're sitting in the first period class what happens when a student sneezes that
082seems silly but the mask becomes soiled what happens when the teacher sneezes and needs to change the mask and then needs to wash hands but can't because the water is access to water is halfway down the hallway and she he or she cannot leave the class unattended what about the overwhelming smell of sanitizer from the 10 to 15 kids or however many kids in the classroom what does that do what about the 90 degree heat in classrooms where air quality is all already questionable so so many questions um uh let's see got off a little bit here um so there are a lot of things to think about i know that many people want their students back in school my kids want me back and want me back in school and want to be back
083in school and in fact are insisting um that you know we get back um they they want it but just because there's a desire doesn't mean that risking the health safety and well-being of our students staff and faculty is worth it frankly i am fearful of the debt of having death in our community due to a decision to open schools even the loss of one child one staff member one faculty member because of the decision that we may make something that we overlook that's a lot to bear and i'm that is really what my worry is thank you so much member smith member williamson thank you um i i i wanted to um comment remember smith um captured quite a bit of of what i was going to mention um we have to create these
084three plans and send them to the state and one will be a hybrid model and i think when we when we put that model together and we're thinking about the schedule i would love to see some teachers and administrators have the opportunity to do a time on learning analysis um kind of from when the kids walk into the building social distancing and all the things that we have to do to keep them safe how long is that process going to take and then once they're in the classroom considering those things like hand washing and you know getting up to use the restroom and all of those things um you know how much time is going to be spent trying to keep our kids and our staff safe versus how much time is going to be
085spent actually learning um and is it worth the risk and i think you know the teachers and administrators are going to have you know they know what this is going to look like when when the rubber meets the road um and i think that's going to help to make the decision about whether or not we feel like it is you know it's worth the the time on learning to actually put people back into the buildings um you know i i also there's a great responsibility that i feel for keeping the kids and the staff and the community healthy um and that's you know in our hands and you know that's just my my one thought is is having some analysis done by the people in the buildings um just to give us that that sense
086of how much learning will happen if we're there in a hybrid model um with all of these restrictions thank you thank you member hi um uh a lot of what i had to say um member smith already said uh so i should be brief and remember williamson i agree that is exactly where uh my thinking is for what is the point in a way of um going through looking at how we can be most agile if we're realistic if we look at where we are budget wise plan wise with seven weeks out it seems um like we're squandering any time thinking about in-person hybrids when realistically looking at the rate of transmission looking at how quickly it gets out into the community and we don't know what to expect and we don't know truly the
087children uh spreading the risk of how much children spread the disease we don't the i know that the those um uh studies were listed but they are plagued with small sample size or this kind of problem or this kind of consideration our kids haven't been in school for us to know how we do school and how it transmits the virus so i don't really like putting that much stock in that kind of a study it doesn't seem um like it's giving us good information uh but when we're looking at where we are um the other point that i wanted to make uh was about professional development and the timeline to begin it uh because we do we only have these few weeks left um and so whether it is professional development for working on remote
088or like the suggestion of um teachers developing plans to within their lesson plans to encourage physical distancing is that something that is known how to do now i mean i feel like that's so far out of left field of what our teachers generally want to do i'm thinking of the elementary school level you know there's just a lot of these detailed things that would be off the table with remote and we wouldn't have that burden of what if our decision led to community spread um the other point i want to make very quickly is about the survey um just in terms of you know it is from about a month ago and this moves quickly um and changes quickly so i think that there is there are a lot of opinions that probably have since
089changed um and the other part was for that last question about regular school routines how are the readiness scale um if we highlight the teachers readiness and the staff readiness they are both in the three it's the parents who had a much larger response rate who are pushing that five response and i think that there's a it's a disproportionate number of people who answer the survey with 4 000 some parents and 400 some teachers but the burden is going to be on the teachers and so i think that it's we would do well to remember that it's disproportionate low response but it's a disproportionately high level of burden um and that's really just what i wanna wanted to express and hope we can think about thank you thank you so much remember young yes thank
090you um so i mean as as a member of the task force i know that you know all the effort that went into the recommendations you know it was a lot of work with the people from all over and it's still a plan that only covers some very general recommendations um you know we we definitely need to support the superintendent now as he works with the staff to develop the actual implementation um because it's it's going to be difficult and there's there's a lot of very very my new details that need to be addressed and it's also things that we do need to see moving forward that we want to see as a committee and your parents want to see um you know i've been seeing around a lot that yeah there's parents that they
091wanted to see the plan two weeks ago um you know and what it is for the upcoming year you know they're they're seeing tonight what the the general recommendations are for that plan um then you know that's where we are that's that's as far as we can be and it's it's very good at this point um but you know everybody needs to understand that any plan for opening day that we make could change on day two i mean it it could change you know on very short notice due to someone coughing in a classroom showing symptoms someone you know just general statistics in communities around us and not necessarily our community you know it so not the district doesn't just need to develop the plans for all three scenarios like every parent every family and
092you know these are the people i'm speaking to right now you need to develop the plans for all three situations you know don't wait until it's too late develop the plans now and be ready for it because there's a very real chance we'll see every single one of these plans implemented this fall you know we want to get people in the building we may not be able to um it's not something we can just offload to school administration and run with it um you know as for um something to talk about tonight um in general personally i'm hesitant to you know recommend that the district do their best to piece people that want their kids in the building and people that don't want their kid in a building under any circumstance but this is the
093scenario we're in um you know we need to address it it's people aren't making these decisions on you know just willy-nilly like that there's very real situations where students can't go to school no matter what this year that harvey means that has recovered from leukemia she's lost portions of her lungs she can't go to school she can't risk the attendance in school which means her sister can't risk the attendance in school you know um it's just it's it's very real it's scary for those families that need to work and it's it's just it just shows how much we need to really get people started on that remote learning plan you know what what i saw in the spring even even at the end of the spring it was it wasn't remote learning it was remote
094remote recommendations on things to look up you know i talking to some people they had different experiences than me some of the teachers did really really well um but you know we had i know of at least one teacher that my daughter had he had one meeting over the entire time with the kids one online meeting and was like hey how's it going okay yep there's only one thing that's due and it's due the last day over the whole time like it was like little recommendations but nothing was due like it was so you know there were other teachers that did really well but it needs to be consistent it needs to be consistent across grades needs to be consistent across towns and we need to get focused on it because no matter what i
095think we're looking at remote learning too thank you member young i'll let you go a minute over oh thanks all right i thought i'd be under and then i just started typing out what i wanted to say thank you though your comments were very well received remember amos hi um so i think you know most things have been said i just um wanted to mention that i've been thinking a lot lately about solutions that um we're planning to use in higher ed for the potential scenario of having some kids in the building while some kids are remote which is from a teaching perspective uh just very complicated and a nightmare um so one of the things we're gonna be doing is using tech to stream on zoom while teaching our classes so that um students
096are getting the same explanations of academic content without teachers doubling their work by having an in class class and then doing explanation videos so i don't know if that's something to think about um if anyone wants more details on like how i know at my school how we're doing that and how we're getting it set up um and if i in the earlier there was mention of the tech um grant so if there's any sort of possibility i just wanted to throw that out there because it's gonna be a nightmare for teachers if they have some kids in the classroom some at home have to get the same content to everyone so i just want to throw out that one idea that's one way to do it and if if i can just jump in
097on that um my wife's a professor at western state as you know and one of the things that um you know we spoke about today was the fact that they're actually moving to that model with half the kids at home half the kids in the classroom and then flipping over but having the hovercams in order to show what's on the screen you know show some video that's something that we talked about in our superintendent group also a little earlier today uh so definitely on to um that's a good idea um we just have to see how it might play out okay thank you that's all i wanted to say thank you member emails um remember ayala welcome back hi thanks it's good to be back i didn't know i would be until last minute um
098so i i agree with mostly whatever well i do agree with everything everybody said so far um uh my comments are after reading the cdc and deci statistics on transmission rate for children was kind of alarming because our kids kids are asymptomatic and we don't have enough data what member woodland was kind of saying we definitely don't have enough data because kids were taken out of the scenario so early on i think that's why statistics aren't showing um exactly what's happening with kids and if kids are asymptomatic you don't know and they're gonna give it to their teacher their parent their grandparent whoever might have um might be at risk so i definitely question about kids being able to go back into the building um it's scary the thought of that i do agree with
099carl with getting more numbers on how many parents would want to do remote learning versus the ones that say definitely keeping my child home due to due to a low immune system whatever it may be i think getting those numbers and then getting numbers on how many parents are able to transport their kids to and from school or caregivers as their grandparents that can transport kids and not put them on the bus to get less kids on in transportation um maybe this was all said i'm not sure it wasn't at last meeting but um those are my thoughts about that thanks thank you so much member bennett can you hear me a lot of clear um all right so uh not not a lot uh to add i think everyone is incredibly thoughtful um here
100everyone's put a lot into this and i know that the task force is is working super hard um and um oh man it's just it's such a huge task so um i was just i just have like a couple of of of thoughts in there and and maybe it's been and you know addressed uh uh you know previously um but you know limiting the amount of like vectors for um contamination when you have a school um you know open if you were to do a hybrid which um is is in my opinion a super scary uh thing to to do but um you know if there was going to be a an opening of schools you know limiting the vectors um by maybe making sure that the kids because those are that's the biggest group
101of contaminators who are running around the school make sure that they stay you know like contained um in in one spot for the most part and then maybe moving the teachers around instead um would limit um the amount of exposure um and then uh of course you know um uh with communication you know everyone having a walkie-talkie i'm sure that everybody's you know thought of these these things um and then online learning i think you know that should definitely be the the focus and then maybe because it is going to be a little bit of a struggle for most people to get that done and a lot of kids can't necessarily work online as well as others um maybe allowing you know the the school year to be as long as it needs to be
102for the kids to get that work done you know maybe kind of like um a you know instead of you know the limiting it to this extended um amount of time allowing it to be when they get that done they advance more a little bit more fluid for that um and that just would allow for the kids to actually get the work done that they need to get done um and without the immense pressure of the online situation um and then when it comes to the um uh the the graphs that we went through just um uh finding out the reason why behind the need um is important to me because when the parents are saying oh yes we're ready to put our kids back in school um from what i read of of that
103um and all of the explanations on you know like social media and talking with parents myself it's because it's very hard to have the kids home um but it it's not necessarily for the the best situation health-wise um for the the community so having a reason behind why they're saying those things i think might be important and that's that's it you know thank you those are a great point thank you so much remember brown hi i um also want to thank the administration and task force for putting uh that report together it's a lot of work and um i believe uh number one priority as the school committee is the safety of uh students and our employees um the past few weeks have been bargaining with the teachers union and the paraprofessionals and when you're
104on google hangout with them and we're talking moas and things like that it always bubbles up and they're concerned and i really hear their concern about going back into the building and so we our number one priority is the safety and we all want the kids to go back into the building um i agree i have a special needs kid up at the high school um that has very little engagement um since we shut down the schools and so i believe that we do need to plan we need to plan plan and plan especially if we're going to be doing remote learning because some of our buildings did remote learning pretty well a lot of them didn't and we were not prepared for remote learning and so i think we have this time to make
105plans going ahead as a worst case scenario that we do have to have remote learning and so i just really don't want to see what we did back in march in april uh in may um it didn't work for a lot of students it did work for some but it didn't work for especially um the special needs students um it's very hard to engage over a tablet and so we really need to plan accordingly um especially if it's going to be remote so and also the consistency in our district i've spoken to many parents some parents had a good experience um a lot of them didn't and it tends to go from building the building is what i'm finding so the consistency of the remote learning really needs to be looked at that's all i
106have remember question malaya are you there okay can you hear me i had to find my microphone okay hope this works this week so a lot of my concerns have been mentioned by other people about being in person the things that i did want to mention um i am very curious to hear the administration's timeline for decision making i know that jesse has laid out a requirement of the end of july and also this other recommendation that they urge us not to share any information for a week however when they close schools initially they also didn't want to close schools and the superintendents did what they thought was best anyways so i i am very curious about the timeline because we have things that depend on whether we're remote or hybrid for example the teachers
107deciding whether they're going to retire i believe their deadline is in july and um you know that might be a major factor for some of them so to not tell them that information i think is um not necessarily a wise decision so and whereas it's a recommendation by desi i'd be curious to hear how that gets sorted out in time um i'm concerned about that um i also have a question about the remote learning um all a lot of our emphasis is on ppe and how we get into the building safely but really two of the three options involve some element of remote learning and i would like to know what the district has done and is doing to enhance remote learning since the spring we did the survey we never saw the results of
108the building survey we never saw the results of the teacher survey so we don't know what they think and what elements you've taken from that and what work has been done since then to work on really looking at how we did remote learning how we can improve it because we're saying that we need to have a robust remote learning process and we need to do better than the spring which we do because it will actually be teaching and learning not an emergency situation so the expectations are higher but i i know there's been a lot going on but i'm curious what the curriculum groups have done and what the plan is for taking what we learned in the spring and building on it and or just starting over and building a new plan because i
109don't think we've put enough time into that i haven't seen any evidence of us putting any time into that so i i'm very concerned about that um there's also a time issue in that our teachers if we do want to do professional development or even very simple things like how do you consistently use um google classroom i mean half of them use google forms and then there's no feedback to the families or students once you submit that you don't see comments you don't even see the questions once you send it in so there's there's some very basic things that we need to do better to be more consistent all the way up to how you develop and teach you know things to students who will never set foot in the school and with our teachers
110on essentially break until two days before school starts i'm kind of concerned about how we plan to do that if we've talked with the unions about professional development this summer in this unique situation or i mean i really those are my concerns in those areas thank you sorry for mark um dr mccall do you want to respond to any of her questions yes again those are good questions malaya you know in reference to you know remote learning and again you have to remember you know we started off with not necessarily remote learning but it was more exposure so once we transitioned over to the learning part uh you know that was a challenge i think that was a and all of that was something that we attempted to do um and i think certain people
111as i think remember brown mentioned certain teachers certain schools had it down and they were able to do it a little more fluidly than others so what we're looking at is really talking about how we can move forward with a remote learning plan that's a remote learning plan and that's a conversation that we're having um as superintendents throughout massachusetts right now because again everyone was put into the same situation at the same time i think member lavoy mentioned technology the the access technology uh the importance of that and that that can't be understated as we move forward with with what we're doing you know we also have to look at you know again how were someone i think someone else mentioned the amount of time that um you know if we're online if it's a
112hybrid or if it's in person in any model the the time on learning time is going to look different and we're not going to have our 900 plus hours it's going to be it's going to be shorter because of the amount of time it'll take to wash hands to um you know change ppe to um you know move from one space to another staggered entries into schools uh principal biendo and i have talked on several occasions just about okay you know even if we're um at a thousand kids coming into a building which is what would happen if the high school had a uh you know half on half off um that's a thousand kids pretty much coming into the building all at the same time well how do we get the you know are
113they going directly to their classrooms do they use lockers because the lockers are on top of one another there's no way that you can get six foot spacing or even three foot spacing um you know at the high school in that sense so those are all things that we're also uh taking into consideration so yes malay we are working on all of those things those also go along with the plans that we have super important focusing on the remote learning i do agree that is something that we need to focus on um at the same time we also have to be able to say what might it look like if all of our kids are back in school um you know at the beginning of the school year thank you so much for your response
114remember haber hi um i i pretty much agree with what everybody said uh i do think that you know so much of this rides on what jesse's final guidelines are uh that you know hopefully we're focusing on the things that we have control over that we can handle that we can work on until that point and it's clear to me that you know we have a great handle on how we deal with kids in school and the task force is working on the procedure part of that i'd really like to see us working more on the actual curriculum for remote learning and especially the training for the teachers everything from methods to curriculum and especially in the the lower grades i think that the the high schoolers you know you can you can set them
115up with their chromebooks and and let them be fairly independent um but how do you teach a kindergartner to to read and pronounce uh words properly uh over a computer it's just seems so much more difficult and it also seems to me that those teachers are the ones who really really need training before we open and i don't know if that means that we start later so that the teachers have time to go in and get that training ahead of time but i hope that we do have flexibility in that calendar for that as well as for taking time for closures if need be and and making the most of the times that we can have windows open in classrooms and and taking into consideration you know the snow days in in january and february
116that we would be closed anyway a better time to be home if need be so again flexibility i think is key thank you so much um last but not least member haynes hello uh thank you to the task force uh lots of great work thank you so much um i agree uh i agree with everything good night uh great job everybody i appreciate all the comments um i i would have to emphasize yes remote learning is almost certainly going to be part of our lives uh next year so i too like everybody i look forward to the specifics on how that's going to be improved over what we had in the spring which is absolutely critical i think everybody agrees uh yes there were some teachers and i could name them who were absolutely awesome
117and could provide a clinic on how to do it and then there were others who weren't so consistency and improvement would be that'd be great a lot i really like the talk about the um early emphasis on pd days for the teachers you know not just curriculum but you know how to use the tools to present this to kids i think that's important and there was a discussion uh this was probably a few weeks ago about the possibility of looking at the calendar and i realized this would involve having to talk to the union i understand that but it might be worth doing where we look at the calendar and actually front load uh the calendar with some of the pd days instead of scattering them throughout the year maybe to take advantage of of
118getting some of this training early i know there was a discussion about having a few days right at the beginning of school but i know there are pd days that are scattered throughout the calendar and maybe there's a way to kind of move some of those up to the front of the year to to help with some of these issues because they are going to be very important it's going to be it's almost certainly going to be part of what we're doing this coming year as far as reopening goes i wonder if a phased approach might be similar as somewhat like what the state's been doing i wonder if that might be something to consider i feel like if we open the door at the end of august and all the kids come back and
119it's you know full capacity and we're going with the absolute minimum requirements of three foot distancing i feel like that's basically just a race to remote learning in the first couple weeks i i i wonder if it wouldn't be wiser to at least uh if we're gonna if we're going to bring kids back and if we decide we're going to bring them back i'm wondering if it isn't wiser to at least try to do it on a gradual basis to see what's working if it's working before we just race and and try it uh that that's just a thought and and the last crazy idea i had i promise this is it this is it i promise um if we do alternate days would it uh is it possible to do the busing in such
120a way where we we get the kids from like this neighborhood on this day and that neighborhood on the next day and the reason for that is is so that mom and dad if they have kids in multiple grades they know that this week that my kids in school and they know that next week both my kids are home and it's just from a parent's perspective that's going to be easier to plan and manage if you know all my kids are at school this week and all my kids are at home next week rather than trying to juggle well johnny's home this week and susie's home next week it just seems like if if we are looking at mixing up or alternating days for kids that might be a better way to help parents that's
121all thank you thank you um i was gonna circle back remember christian bomb had her hand raised thank you um in an effort to maintain my two-minute timeline in the beginning i i miss uh missed a couple of key points that um i feel uh if i didn't address uh now i would um miss an opportunity to and i didn't hear these echoed um in our comments um one is on a question about do we know since each district is really up on its own to decide what phase we're entering into whether it's remote or hybrid or in person do we know what the impact is to teachers in the district who have families in other districts that is a a major obstacle for some teaching families who may have to balance child care for
122their kids who are not going to school dr michelle do you want to address that because i think desi's telling us what mode we have to go into yeah they they are and i think this is um i you know laura like hear what you're saying with that that's something that i think would you know if a you know one you know a district next to another district that has a lot of uh teachers that that live in that community and work in another district i think that's one of the ways that that might be able to work out um you know we're i guess we're a little more fortunate in our community in the sense that we have a lot of teachers who live within our five towns so you know it's not quite
123as you know as maybe challenging as a you know as maybe a place like shrewsbury where you have a lot of people who live in surrounding communities who drive into shrewsbury so how might that affect um what happens with it with those parents or you know teachers and parents at home when their kids might have to be home or they have to be in school and um so yeah it's but again what we're it's a really that's a really challenging thing to do i i agree i i i hear you on that i have one more uh quick question uh thought actually that came up uh member haber and actually member haines reminded me of this idea which is to to look at uh particular groups who are in need of in-person services sort of
124prioritizing those groups and actually separating groups not necessarily by the age but by their um their reading acquisition so sort of partition kids off from learning to read and reading to learn and that students who are needing direct instruction on how to read should probably be prioritized to getting back into school that might be younger kids but it also might be kids with ieps and so forth and in small groups they might be able to make strides academically that they wouldn't otherwise so those are my only two points that i wanted to make sure i addressed thank you thank you and then i think our student rep katherine you had a question can i just say something really quickly i'll be really brief go ahead of course i meant to echo what a lot of
125you guys have been saying from like a student's perspective because i think a lot of us want to go back to school from what i can tell and this has probably already been addressed but like we a lot of us especially me like i'm a senior i know a lot of my friends are eager to like get back to normal life in the fall but like i think someone else said this but just because there's a desire doesn't mean there's a need and i think that's absolutely the case here and that we need to do what's best because if it means that my favorite teacher isn't in the hospital with covet or whatever then it's worth me staying home and missing out on a few activities for my friend's mom to not be sick or
126whatever else and i think just we need to we need to do like what's right and a lot of those student surveys are definitely biased based off what we want and what we what we want isn't necessarily exactly what we need but i do think if we go back to remote learning it needs to be addressed because a lot of what i was doing was busy work or not helpful at all and it was just frustrating and a lot of a waste of time and i think just like one thing is this is a really evolving situation so maybe if we did like weekly surveys or just like quick questions of like overall to see how the situation's changing and maybe weekly is too much and the other thing i was wondering is could we
127do some sort of simulation of different models like bring 30 students into the school and try to figure that out if like over the summer to see which things would work and which ways didn't work and trying to like fix some of the like nooks and crannies out thank you catherine dr mccall and he responds to that final part and then members smith had a question i do want to leave a little time for a quick discussion before nine o'clock on tiered reductions as well sure so catherine yeah that's interesting idea bringing kids back in you know we have been looking at classrooms moving desks around uh you know we have the square footage for all the classrooms so you know deci recommends taking everything out of the classroom with the exception of maybe a
128teacher's desk and the desks in order to fit that that three foot model um that's hard to do especially up at the high school high schools has small classrooms so um we're we're looking at that very closely most of the elementary schools i think we're going to be pretty good you know in that sense but it would require us to look at the tables that we use versus the desks and how that how that might play out and jessie's actually you know coming up with some guidance around tables versus desks so thank you catherine and dr mccall uh member smith i'll leave you with the last question before we move on to the next thing thank you it's more of a comment um i think it's in relation to what member christian bond asked about
129the exact plan that we might use and from my understanding while a commissioner can recommend a particular particular model or mode that is up to school committees and local communities so school committees making that decision with obviously consultation with the district leadership and all the other pieces that fall into place but um i mean it would it and let the obviously the exception to that is if the governor not the commissioner but if the governor decided to close the schools again the school buildings so that's something to keep in mind that this is in our control and that we are not at the um i guess uh jesse's back beckon call for how we do this and while there is guidance from jesse our district we and we get to decide those parameters for opening
130um and not jesse so we have to keep that in mind i think as we move forward and make these decisions and that's it thank you thank you so much for your comment um second on the discussion of the report there was actually some positive news in the superintendent's report regarding tiered reductions i'm assuming we might have fewer comments on this as we did with the reopening task force but i did want to open this portion of the report to any comments and questions perhaps if we can go just with hand raised if you had a comment or question on this section of the report remember a little boy we'll start with you you're first hand in the room thank you yeah just have a you know a quick comment for reductions i think there
131was a lot of um there was some action taken by community members to start a petition um through change.org specifically talking about cuts to athletics middle school athletics the arts and those types of things and what i saw was an outstanding um reach out by members of the community i saw members of the community offering to sponsor middle school athletic teams i saw members of the community offering to coach and volunteer i saw members of the community offering transportation for kids to games i saw a lot of creative ideas in terms of having centralized meets on a weekend day and i would just stress to admin that there is an overwhelming opportunity here to engage with the community and think about perhaps and this is not to take away stipends from any teachers but if
132there's a difference between taking away a stipend for a teacher um assisting in coaching athletics or having a volunteer from the community and using that money to help provide a teacher in the classroom i think it's paramount to make those decisions so i would also tell you i saw um information from students who said that's what they're looking for forward to kids going into eighth grade in their last year of middle school saying you know what i'm looking at baseball in the spring and how can we think about cutting something that's over almost a year away and that's what i'm looking forward to as a motivating factor so i'm not saying that sports are more paramount but what i saw was there's an overwhelming opportunity to engage and think outside of the box from how
133we would traditionally approach these programs thank you so much uh remember ottmar you're next in my chat box thank you my questions pertaining to um kind of the numbers that we that are shown in this in regards to how much to reduce and the tiers associated with it i'm curious as to why we kind of stuck with this 1 12 reduction goal of like four point almost 4.3 million um when whereas before when we had our full five tiers we had one twelfth which was our starting point and then we had another six million on top of that which was potential reductions in state aid um with the passing of with the with for the the four towns and passing the budget it would seem that would close off that four point the four million
134which was the 112th but we could still be end up end up being short 6 million which was kind of the number that we've always been looking at with our worst case scenario with state a reduction in state aid and so i think that if we if that's kind of if we kept if that was our original worst case scenario for state aid and we don't know anything about state aid yet we probably should have at least held on to that artifact and looking at this that probably would have had us dipping into the former tier four tier five the the the four million for the one not having a 112th i i don't have it right in front of me but i believe that would have cleared out tier five but i think if
135we're looking at the worst that could possibly happen with the state still um i think that's there's still a little bit more than what this would represent um and so that's i'll just kind of ask that question as to why we went with that um or if maybe that was a typo or just or if it's something that we've missed because if if six million is really the worst cut that we can still expect we at least need to be to recognize that yes if we have to cut six million because the state cuts six million this is what we'd be looking at so dr mccall can you answer the question just to what is our current worst case scenario i suppose sure sure and um director deity you can join in anytime if you
136like but when um when we've gone through and taken a look at our that's why again you're gonna might you've gotta do your mic dan can you mute for just a moment okay so um you know when we when we recently just reviewed rfi 20 and fy 21 budget we um you know we're able to carry forward quite a bit of money um and you know the other part of it is that we aren't touching excess and deficiency so our end numbers are going to be uh higher by at least 450 000 than what we had anticipated on top of the fact that you know deci has basically said you know plan for for like a 112 budget um with extra funds for um for ppe so what we're looking at is you know if
137if worst case a worst case scenario that was like the ultimate worst case scenario you know the sky is falling that there has never been um an event that has been that catastrophic for a school district district you know at our level or in our area in massachusetts um because there has been some type of bailout in some form or fashion so there there will be some type of federal bailout in in terms of funds that come to schools um via the state and that will help make up the difference the other thing that we have to think about is if we don't bring these people back we're gonna have a really hard time um you know filling either classrooms or the opportunity for people to do online learning or remote learning so um it's
138you know it's i think prudent for us to yes not jump all the way through and say you know what everything's gonna be fine um but uh you know have the understanding that we we have to ensure that we're gonna be able to educate our quid our kids adequately um and with the number of reductions based upon a 10 million and based upon you know you get rid of tier five you go into tier four there's still a lot of teachers so this basically brought back 40 out of the 54 non-professional status features that we're still reducing 14. that's that's a that's a lot uh you know i in my time i can't remember in my tenure in this district over 21 years having a reduction of that amount for for teachers dan was there
139anything you wanted to add no uh through the chair that that's a pretty good summation and again our fy 21 state aid payments uh specifically uh chapter 70 uh school choice and the charter charter reimbursement uh those those payments are based upon uh the final fy 20 payments so so we're going with those numbers also um as we come to to the end of fy 20 and begin to to wrap things up we have picked up several more dollars especially in terms of uh school choice and and in circuit breaker and we're not done yet uh we have a couple more days to wrap up business so um all those um uh you know we we look to to make these uh adjustments in in these reduction in these tier reductions thank you member gusman
140so i have um two i think two questions um my first is that i'm glad we're restoring teachers um i was curious if at some point i was curious first when they would be notified of their reinstatement so we're not the last to know um and second if you would be able to provide us a list of those positions that would be restored because i think some of the arts positions may have fallen into that batch but i'm not sure and i i would like to know since that was a big issue in our community um so i that is a request that perhaps we could get that level of detail at some point and how the the positions correlated how many of those are in tier two or three two so they're still being
141reduced and how many were in four and five so they're being um restored um the second question was just a general question about athletics i know middle school athletics has been a popular topic in the community i suspect that may be largely out of our control i have heard a lot of things about the state probably not having athletics at least in the fall i i would be shocked if they did i just don't see how they possibly can so i think we need to um try to get some clarification on that and also be honest with our community members about the fact that that's a real possibility that might be beyond our control it might also benefit our budget but it might be beyond our control it's not just us taking it away um
142it's that really the state might do that on our behalf in the interest of safety um so that's a question and my third is that as you said we still have 14 positions we're cutting we still have a couple of positions um in tier one that we wanted to put in this year that we're not being able to at this point um i'm thinking particularly of things like the counselors that really would be very beneficial in this current situation um and i would encourage the district to not stop looking for areas of reduction not just the little things because the purchase orders work out a certain way and school choice and circuit breaker give us a little more money but significant reductions that haven't been discussed in real time like the salary phrases that the
143union hasn't talked about or that's the first one that comes to mind because it's the largest but there may be other things like that i'd like us to not stop pursuing those if there is a way to not reduce positions um i think those conversations still need to be had even if they're not ideal thank you so much uh we have two more members with questions um and then uh we are going to move on to the rest of our agenda as that is our charge as a school committee um member haynes okay thank you uh malaya i did ask my question but i'll just i'll ask the administration as well when when will the teachers who are being brought back when will they be notified uh so director carlson already has a letter composed
144and we'll be sending that out tomorrow thank you member christian bomb yes thank you um regarding the the the staff uh we are um going to be reducing having a reduction in staff starting next year uh even though it's not going to be as big as it as it was um we were we were losing new staff uh malia brought up the counselors that we were supposed to have and so forth i would like to see um an aggressive final draft of a staffing plan that when this is all over we can say to the state we can say bring this to the feds and say you know had this never happened this is where we would have been on our timeline and our plan because when this is all over i i really feel
145strongly that we will have to be the biggest cheerleaders to rectify the losses and we won't have we should not have to take ten years to uh you know pull ourselves out of this hole that is a generation of kids lost if we are waiting that long and so i would like to make sure that we um we keep our eye on the staffing plan so that we can advocate both locally and and statewide and federally for much needed funds to to make sure that we can become whole again thank you thank you so much um are there any quick parking lot issues in the report that we did not cover megan i have one quick thing okay sorry i didn't raise my hand this was faster um i just wanted to say thank you
146to um christine smith for the very detailed information on the extended school year as well as the deci plans for special education i thought that was very helpful and if anyone is watching at home i hope they will dive into that because really literally just about every piece of current information about special education students returning to school was shared with us and all of the sub links and all of their data and i really found that very helpful because we've been asking for more information and transparency in that area so i just wanted to thank her for that and encourage our families to look into that thank you so much so this is actually a great transition as we are moving into the next part of our agenda the recommendations requiring action by the school
147committee um the first on the agenda tonight is to support the resolution in support of education funding for coven 19. are there any motions on the floor i'll make the motion to accept second okay in a matter of um discussion i would like to read the resolution aloud um this is a resolution supported by masc that we as a school committee are taking up tonight to decide whether or not we would also like to support this resolution whereas if schools are to reopen this fall in the miss a coven 19 pandemic it is a responsibility of each school district to do so safely and responsibly and whereas is the responsibility of the state to ensure that each school district is able to pay for the enormous additional staffing transportation and material expenses required to do
148this and whereas the state cannot expect mandatory covenanting safety guidelines to be followed without ensuring that each school district has the funds required to implement these guidelines therefore let it be resolved that the state must guarantee every school district fully reimbursement for whatever coven 19 expenses are required to follow state mandates we must ensure a statewide school reopening that is safe responsible and equitable there can be no unfunded mandates for covid 19. is there any discussion regarding this resolution seeing none we will start with a roll call vote starting from the top remember the question oh go ahead oh did i miss i'm sorry member little boy yeah i just had a quick question i fully support the resolution but i wanted to make sure um dr mccall or um director dede can verify that
149we are accounting for any additional covert related expenses so we can itemize those and be able to to have a follow-up to this resolution with the state i was lip-reading doctor mccauley you said you are yes matt we are so um again you know we've already purchased um ppe uh spent quite a bit of money and we're um in in the process of uh keeping track of that and director dd has an entire uh line just set aside for any ppp where ppe were purchasing and i can tell you it's it's going to be substantial absolutely substantial thank you are there any other questions i'm sorry to miss yours remember lavoy okay actually seeing none this time we'll go to our roll call vote remember amos amos both yes remember ayala rayali yes remember bennett
150bennett yes remember brown yes [Music] yes yes remember haines yes remember christian bomb christian bomb yes remember lavoy lavoy yes remember long believe linda you still with us i think her volume isn't working but you're yes thank you remember ottmar omar yes membership hero shapiro yes member silva remember williamson williamson yes remember woodwind woodland yes remember young young yes the chair also votes yes motion passes unanimously next on our agenda tonight is a second resolution this resolution is to support anti-racism is there a motion on the floor so moved second second it's been moved and seconded i am also going to read this resolution that is also from masc whereas schools have the responsibility to equip students with their civil rights of obtaining a free and appropriate education it is a responsibility of each school
151to ensure we create a welcoming environment for all students and whereas it is the responsibility that every district provides to district staff including school committee members annual professional development in diversity equity inclusion and whereas every district will commit to recruiting and retaining a diverse and culturally responsive teaching workforce and whereas every district will examine their policies for institutional and systemic racialized practices and implement change with sustainable policies that are evidence-based and whereas each district will incorporate into their curriculum the history of racial oppression and works by black authors and works from diverse perspectives and whereas we as school leaders can no longer remain silent to the issues of racism and hate that continue to plague our public and private institutions resolve that the wachusett regional school district in all the school districts in the commonwealth
152must guarantee that racist practices are eradicated and diversity equity and inclusion is embedded and practiced for our students families faculty and staff we must ensure our own school culture and that of every district in the commonwealth is anti-racist and acknowledges that all lives cannot matter until black lives matter is there discussion seeing none will go to a roll call vote again remember amos amos yes remember ayala oh yellow yes remember bennett bennett yes remember brown brown yes remember gustafson yes member heber haber yes member haynes yes remember christian bomb yes remember leboy lavoie yes remember longvoleo i think she mouthed yesterday again you're sorry about your mic and she's in the chat as yes remember atmar yes member shapiro member shapiro yes yes member williamson williamson yes remember woodland woodland yes remember young young yes
153and the chair also votes yes that resolution also passes unanimously the next motion on the floor would be to approve the school committee 2020 2021 meeting calendar is there a motion on the floor so moved second second uh just quickly to speak to the portions of this um which i was involved in i had asked the administration to revise the current school committee calendar to include meetings on a bi-weekly basis through at least september we can come back and revisit the calendar at this at that time but i thought it was very important through the summer um i know many of us are very busy and trying to enjoy some summer fun but with how quickly things are progressing um at the state level and at the local level i didn't think it would behoove
154us to wait a month between meetings so that is why you'll see on the updated calendar there are more meetings than there were last time we looked at this is there any discussion on the floor uh remember the boy you have your hand raised yeah i just had a quick question um i appreciate having more meetings than than fewer and having them um so we can continue to move forward have we thought about perhaps figuring out a way that we could meet in person whether that be in a remote setting um i think it would be pertinent at some point in the future that that we as a committee think about ways that we could potentially meet and i open it up to administration to see if there's an opportunity to do that in a
155safe and effective manner thank you member boy um i do um have been thinking about that my concern would also be i don't want to limit the public from attending um and if we are meeting in person first we have to be spaced appropriately but then with the 22 of us plus administration in the room plus hold in tv um we're kind of pushing towards 30 um and to invite members of the public also in i don't want to say like the first five people get to come in and the rest don't but i i would like to put that also on administration's plate when they feel safe that we should be coming back into person that that we should do so remember christian bomb uh i also uh am glad to see that the
156additional uh meeting dates were uh put on to to get us through this summer um i think on our last meeting we had asked for for a reflection on the meeting dates to make sure that they were accommodating of uh various uh members of our committee um to be mindful of their uh religious observances and so i i expect at this point that that has been um looked at and adjusted as needed superintendent is nodding yes okay thank you yeah yeah rebecca went through it thank you remember gupsterson okay one original question and one follow-up on the meeting in person i would i was going to ask about that but i also would like to ask the administration to consider when that does happen this fall or whenever um that there be some sort of
157hybrid model because some of us are actually immunocompromised and trying to limit our interaction with people for various reasons including myself it's a completely biased question but it's not because i don't think we should be gathering it's just that some of us have expressed tonight that we're being excessively cautious for various reasons so um when that does happen i hope that there would be some kind of hybrid model that still allows us to to zoom in or whatever this is whatever we are doing um you know so we can still be active participants um my other random question is that um i know this past year our meetings overlapped with the holden board of selectmen meetings did anyone look into that i know i'd raise that question with the administration and i raised it with
158the town and didn't hear back from them but i'm just curious of that that pattern has not been the case every year but last year it was so we always conflicted with their every other week meetings our meetings always conflicted and i'm hoping that's not the case for every week this year so uh rebecca did go through that i think malaya there may be one or two but rebecca checked with holden i think we're good to go one or two was fine i just wanted to make sure it wasn't hopefully wasn't everybody no it's not everyone it's not like it wasn't i appreciate that thank you that was rebecca she was good any other questions okay now we'll go back to our roll call vote and uh we'll start at the bottom this time give
159member young a chance to go first remember young young yes remember woodland woodland yes member williamson yes remember smith yes member silva remember long beau can you hear me now yes yes yes unless i can hear you thank you remember the boy yes lavoy yes member christian bomb christian bomb yes remember haines yes number haber paper yes remember gustafson gustafson yes remember brown brown yes yes the chair votes yes and that also passes unanimously i'm going to be passing over um numbers four and five on the agenda as we are waiting to hear from business finance once they are able to meet there are a number of budget transfers on the agenda tonight that were also on the agenda at our last meeting these budget transfers have been discussed um and they are of a
160very timely manner as the district is trying to close out their fy20 accounts by wednesday so these do need some action so do i have a motion on the floor to authorize a budget transfer of three hundred and twelve thousand dollars one three hundred twelve thousand one hundred seventy one dollars from the instruction support appropriation to the benefits and insurance appropriation so move second director deedy would you like to discuss this thank you madam chair the reason for this transfer is that we're looking to make adjustments between the general fund and uh several revolving funds uh but primarily our school choice uh uh to bring forward um a a greater balance in school choice for the fy21 budget thank you is there any discussion okay seeing none we'll go back to our roll call vote
161starting from the bottom again i'm sorry megan i'm sorry i just had a question i wasn't able to get it out there fast enough um i just and maybe i'm late to the party on this question but um the this is coming from the instructional support appropriations can i can somebody help me understand what this what we didn't get for the instructional support like why is this money there i guess is my question through the chair um with with the closure we did realize a great deal of savings on instructional support there was less spending in the various uh school accounts uh uh for for the year um we did make a a last-minute purchase um um in in the last part of june for textbooks so so those uh those costs uh were were
162realized any other questions okay now seeing none we'll start from the bottom again remember young young yes remember woodland woodland yes remember williamson williamson yes number seven yes [Music] remember haines yes remember haber haber yes remember gustafson festival yes remember brown brown yes remember bennett bennett yes remember ayola yes remember emos amos yes chair votes yes that passes unanimously next on our agenda tonight is to authorize a budget transfer of 42 476 dollars from the operations and maintenance appropriation to the special education tuitions appropriation is there a motion on the floor second second it's been moved and seconded um i owe again um director newton is there uh through the chair uh again we did realize the savings um uh with the closure um obviously our utilities uh we realized the savings on utilities there
163and what we're looking to do is to shift dollars from this appropriation to the special ed tuitions um to to bring forward an additional savings um from circuit breaker where we will increase the expense in the general fund um and bring forward a greater value in circuit breaker the estimated carry forward now in circuit breakers approximately 800 000 assuming that this goes forward estimated thank you is there any discussion on the floor questions for director dede see none i believe um we'll go back to the top for the next couple remember amos amos yes remember ayala ayala remember bennett bennett yes remember brown brown yes remember justice and yes remember haber haber yes remember haynes yes remember kershaw christian bomb yes member lavoy lavoy yes member long bolil yes memmer atmar oh maury yes number
164shapiro shapiro yes number silva member williamson williamson yes remember woodland woodland yes remember young young yes the chair votes yes that also passes unanimously number eight on our agenda tonight to authorize the listed fy 21 revolving funds in accordance with the mgl chapter section 53 e and a half to be expensed under the direction of the superintendent of schools or designee to be credited with the receipts from acknowledged revenue sources to be expended for their respective stated purposes and not to exceed authorized amounts beatty uh through the chair this item uh was discussed uh by finance um at our meeting on june 17th and it received support from finance at that time um it was on the agenda for the meeting here on on june 3rd we just ran out of time that that evening
165it was on the agenda for finance again this evening but but just more of an informational um purposes there these are our revolving funds and it is required each year to bring these to the full school committee to to vote the value uh that can't be expensed i did make some slight reductions in these funds given the activity or the past year but i also made some adjustments too uh in particular uh with uh circuit breaker in school choice and the reason for those adjustments is that again as i said a moment ago as i've explained to finance and all of our meetings that we're looking to bring forward a sum of money um for both uh circuit breaker and in school choice um in in fy21 uh this is the first year in in
166probably a number of years that the district has has brought forward uh funds from those to revolving funds and we're also looking to anticipate um state aid uh for for fy21 as well so all those were taken into consideration in in terms of these values here thank you are there discussions or questions uh megan i don't believe we uh so moved or seconded this motion do we have emotion would anybody like to move it remember ground so moved second now moved in second a little discussion how to order my apologies as we get later into the evening um are there questions or comments from members seeing none go back to our roll call vote from the top remember amos famous yes remember ayala are yelling yes remember bennett uh bennett yes remember brown brown yes
167[Music] yes member kirshenbaum pressure bomb yes remember lavoy lavoy yes remember long billio yes remember ottmar umar yes member shapiro shapiro yes remember smith remember williamson williamson yes remember woodland woodlands yes remember young [Music] the chair votes yes megan i'm here too but i vote yes remember silva yes that also passes unanimously number nine on our agenda tonight to authorize the listed fy21 student activity funds in accordance with mgl chapter 71 section 47 for funds belonging to the students and not to the district or school control to be credited with receipts from acknowledged revenue sources to be expended for the respective stated purposes and not to exceed the authorized amounts is there a motion on the floor so moved second it's been moved and seconded director deity uh through the chair again under chapter 71
168section 47 this is a requirement every year where these uh funds need to be voted by by school committee and and our auditors look for this information every year when they do the the audit of student activity funds um again this information was presented to finance um back at a meeting on on june 17th and and they gave us their support uh again it was on the agenda for june 30. we ran out of time that evening so it was pushed um out to this evening it was on finance's agenda this evening but again just for more or less um informational purposes in in the values um i did a review of the actuals uh for fy18 and fy19 in in these figures here are based on that data there thank you i believe there's
169already a question from member gustafson i really this is just an explanation question that comes up every year we do this um can you explain particularly to the newer members i know these are student funds but why do we know why are the values so much higher for example the high school has something like 500 000 um what kinds of things do those cover i don't expect those are all i mean i have an idea but i know this comes up every year when we do this and we have a lot of new members so i wanted to ask that question so through the chair there are various activities um that each each club has and oftentimes the the value associated with that activity depends upon how successful they are uh there there are some
170um the scene there may be activity at the high school for example and i'll just say the the math club um they may have an event um and it may not be as as successful say as if they were having a dance and and again um um those particular um events um have um some some end up uh to the good and and others uh may uh uh break even or may even uh lose uh money uh with with that event um again the figures that you see there um i looked at the actuals for fy 18 and 19 in in these numbers here pretty much spot on with that activity does that answer your question amelia remember augustus and does it answer your question or do you need further clarification yes it does okay
171um do other members have questions okay seeing none we'll go to the roll call vote remember amos mscs remember ayala oh yellow yes remember bennett bennett yes remember brown brownian remember yes amber haber haber member haynes yes member christian bomb crusher mom yes member lavoie lavoy yes remember long bullion yes remember ottmar umar member shapiro shapiro yes member silva remember smith yeah williamson yes remember whitman woodland yes and remember young young yes the chair votes yes that motion passes unanimously next our agenda number 10. to appoint an ad hoc subcommittee on diversity equity and anti-racism is there a motion so move second second fourth and fifth thank you guys so much um just to speak to this for a moment myself um the moment i was appointed chair um through your vote this was the
172first thing that i wanted to do from hearing from our constituents from our students in our community it is clear that action must take place words are one thing and the words from dr mccall and various school committee members have been powerful but they just have presentation value if we stop short here we stop short on the actual mission that these words have we need action swiss decisive and comprehensive action in this district so the charge of this subcommittee will be three-tiered and it really kind of stems from the anti-racism resolution that we read earlier tonight i would be looking for this subcommittee to be looking towards three things to review and perhaps revise curriculum in all areas to give voice to those of color and promote multiculturalism in our schools second to form a
173anti a racism intervention and prevention plan similar to our bullying prevention and intervention plan so that those who are targets of racism in our district have a very specific and outlined course of action they can take in order to ensure that action never happens again and to third provide professional development to our teachers on diversity equity and anti-racism and review our hiring practices so that we can open our arms to more diverse teachers administrators paraprofessionals janitors and other staff who work in our district so that we can better represent the multiculturalism that makes our district in our country great and finally simply put black lives matter and us as a school committee need to ensure that these black lives know that they matter those who are interested in joining the subcommittee please send me an
174email if it is so appointed tonight this week and we'll make sure this charge begins immediately is there further discussion on the floor or questions i have my hand raised remember a little boy i think you beat her by a second all right i'm not going to beat her she's got all good insightful comments i should probably wait i guess you get to go so my question is this and i appreciate this um subcommittee i really appreciate the charges but i typically see an ad hoc subcommittee as one that is formed and then when charges are met it's discharged and and um taken away so i would actually propose that we look at our bylaws and think about um creating a standard standing subcommittee and look at some of those charges and see how a
175standing subcommittee might interact with an existing subcommittee for instance one of the charges on reviewing and revising curriculum would be a really good opportunity to interact with an education subcommittee um the the um adherence with a bully is something similar to a bullying intervention plan that's something that's going to need continuous work so my concern is a subcommittee an ad hoc subcommittee is going to be discharged and that work is just going to fall dormant until a new ad hoc subcommittee is reappointed so for the new members of the committee the superintendent goals and evaluation subcommittee never existed years ago and there was a need brought to the committee and that was formed we can always disband a standing subcommittee but i would definitely look at supporting a standing committee as opposed to an ad
176hoc subcommittee thank you member christian bomb you were next thank you mr lavoy for your uh very kind words number one uh number two i'd like to echo what you said about um making it a standing committee in addition i not seeing the actual language of the three charges um i just only heard them um i tried to write them down i i have a little um conflict with some of the wording to it and so i'd like to be able to refine that wording a little bit more i'm not sure that i i want to support the motion but i i'm not sure i can support it as written like for example i think it said something like provide professional development right we recommend professional development yeah right i just want to make sure
177that we're wording it correctly yes i'm sorry for that okay fine um and then also i think review and revise curriculum i think we can make recommendations as well yeah you're correct okay then i would be able to support that then thank you see you are the eloquent one tonight you should be doing all that um remember gustafson um yeah i just forgot my question oh shoot okay um it's getting late so uh one question is that i do agree with the notion that this probably is useful as a standing committee um i disagree with the notion that while it is related to what existing committees are doing um those committees are already very busy i think particularly of ed sub which already has a mile long list of policies and i think this work
178might get lost in if it was left just to the existing committees that already have a very large workload so i definitely think it needs to be a standing committee that can certainly interact with other committees and that's what we all do anyways we consider different things but not in a silo we share information with other committees we solicit their input we bring it back to the full committee we're all connected um so i think that's essential um i also had a question though about that i mean i i understand the the ad hoc notion is probably so it can get started a lot more quickly than the time it would take to go through our bylaws and revise them to create a new standing subcommittee um if my understanding is correct so is it
179possible in that case that we could create i don't know if you'd want to call it a task force or something less formal while we work on creating the bylaws or if we create an ad hoc subcommittee while we work on the bylaws or to create a permanent committee and then transition it to that whenever that we reach that point um i don't think i would rule out creating an ad hoc subcommittee as long as we have some longer term process um also there is really no rule as i understand it to how long an ad hoc subcommittee can exist so um i think it may be a valuable workaround while we work on a longer term solution um so those are my thoughts and that yeah that was my intent um member gustafson and
180they don't have the ad hoc does not have a personality right so that may be a valid way of doing it so we can get started on the work quickly which we need to do while we also maybe one of the things the committee can work with you on is how and the district is how to move forward to make it a more permanent um you know working group or whatever we want to call it um because i'm sure it will involve more than just school committee members um as we do this work so yes um member haynes thanks and my questions have been answered thanks um and then student member catherine you had a question we can't put our questions in the chat yep take your time can you hear me now yes okay
181i'm just i'm wondering how students will be heard because a lot of these um words you heard were from students and a lot of the students are the people that are raising majority of the concerns not to say that no one else is concerned but i know that we're not allowed to join subcommittees as student reps so how are we going to make it so that students feel representative and represented on this board and make it so that they understand that there's change being made in the future and that is a good question and one that the subcommittee would take up yes typically the student reps are not part of the subcommittees but we would be working through survey data and administration in order to get feedback from students um remember christian bomb had a
182point of clarification um do we need to amend the emotion formally for the the misspoken um with the with the recommendation not um changing the curriculum book recommendations to look at reviewing and revising um i would like to make sure that is done correctly yes and i will do also do we need to do we want to amend to also make this a task force for the time being versus a ad hoc committee or does that matter i'm just not sure where we are right now um you could amend the motion on the floor to create a task force but then it would not be um a subcommittee of the school committee that would be something you'd be charging um the district with doing that might have some representation from school committee but would also
183um kind of include kind of the same way that the task force worked through the reopening plan thank you um remember lavoy has a point of order question and that trumps um regular hand raising i know there's three questions so i'm hoping perhaps if um if rebecca madame secretary's on the call perhaps she could read um our bylaws and what it says about a a standing subcommittee because i i do believe that a motion can be made to revise this to be a standing subcommittee because it was on the agenda tonight but i do want to clarify that with our bylaws before making that motion thank you um madam secretary are you still in the call tonight nope i i left i'm gone okay bye bye hold on a second okay thank you all right
184i'm gonna i'm going to read the whole section that's section four can you hear me fine yep the chair shall appoint standing subcommittees no member of the committee shall be appointed to more than three standing subcommittees the chair may appoint additional ad hoc subcommittees as necessary should a management subcommittee be appointed the chair of the committee shall serve as the chair of the management subcommittee the vice chair of the school committee shall serve as the vice chair of the sub management subcommittee uh the vice chair of the committee and the chairs of the standing sub committee shall be appointed members of the management subcommittee the chair shall appoint a chair to each standing subcommittee or ad hoc subcommittee each subcommittee shall elect its vice chair the committee by a majority vote of the membership may
185require the establishment of a standing or ad hoc subcommittee then it goes on to know more than one half of the membership can participate um so point of order um i believe that the motion could be amended to be a standing subcommittee so i'll wait for a turn on that as i did not have my hand raised it was just a point of order but if i heard that correctly i believe that could be amended to do that i believe i heard the same thing um but i do want to get to um remember atmar member young um member long before you'll remember gustafson um unless there is a motion on the floor to make an amendment remember i'm good i had a i just i had just pulled up the section four of our
186bylaws and i was going to say the same thing that are that has already eloquently been laid out so it's already in there so we don't have to worry about making a change to our bylaws remember young uh two quick things um one to answer a little bit more of catherine's question um you know any subcommittee meeting is open to the public and definitely um you'll find that subcommittee meetings are a little less formal and the public tends to participate a little bit more in the meeting you know there's still some order to it but i think students any student would absolutely be welcome during any subcommittee meeting um you know if there are going to be a lot of students showing up to one meeting maybe just let the chair know so they can
187make sure it's at a place that is large enough or if it's online whatever but that's that's definitely a recommendation i would make and two correct me if i'm wrong but the the bylaws actually just state that the chair can appoint subcommittees um and it doesn't necessarily need action by the committee um so based on that i would like to amend the motion on the floor to state um that the committee supports the chair appointing a standing subcommittee on diversity equity and anti-racism there is amendment to the motion on the floor is there a second second it's been seconded by member brown at this point our discussion would revolve around the amendment not the original motion on the floor member lavoy has a point of order yeah i i would agree with member young's um
188motion but i do believe that it still needs to be voted on it's it's it does specifically state that a new standing subcommittee would need to be voted on by the majority of the committee that's how that was my interpretation as well do you see where that is want me to reread that quick paragraph yeah just that portion there about uploading please the committee by a majority vote of the membership may require the establishment of a standing or ad hoc subcommittee there you go okay would you like to can i emotion i'll ask matt because he's really good at this stuff how can i pull that back and resubmit it your motion is already moved or seconded though at this point um so i do believe at this point we have to vote on it
189or he didn't kick him withdraw his motion he could withdraw his motion okay i i will withdraw my motion so the motion to amend the motion on the floor has been withdrawn so we go back to the original motion which is to appoint an ad hoc subcommittee on diversity equity and anti-racism um next after member young was member longbow wheel my question has been answered uh remember ottmar has a point of order so i i guess just to add on um to the the language in the bylaws it states the committee may require the establishment and as i read that that means that we can as a committee we can vote and say we're going to add this standing subcommittee but it also says the chair shall appoint so i by default as a committee
190if we do nothing my reading of this is that as the chair you can still appoint it all entirely on your own it was the chairs to intend to have the support of the subcommittee on this before moving forward um or if you didn't support it i would not move forward with it so that was the purpose of putting it on the agenda specifically um so we got to long bolillo um atmar um malia you had a question i think there was a point of order after me though so [Music] not to be labeled the point but the reason why it says that the chair can appoint a sub subcommittee is because our bylaws used to specifically state the actual subcommittees in each of the bylaws and above that and the reason why it's there
191is to say that you can appoint any standing subcommittee the establishment of a new one does require a vote our last standing subcommittee that we established was done by a vote in in a similar um format to to a motion so i think we have to follow precedent here and it's my understanding from those previous dialogues that that is the the proper point of order so i just want to point that out thank you member of the boy and again that was my intent remember augustus in okay um i'll be quick because i just noticed the time so so my question was really about um i respect your intent so i think we certainly should honor that regardless of if we have to or not i think that was your intent to get our support
192and we should move forward with that um my question was around your broader intent um and the notion of of you know students having input that i i wonder do you see this as a limited scope committee that is dealing with just policy and curriculum kind of issues or do you see this as part of a larger district conversation such as a task force or something that would also involve students and the curriculum development team and teachers and input from different stakeholders or does the district have a plan in that regard that this committee would feed into um that may help so to quickly answer yes i wanted the subcommittee to meet and to work on policy related issues and then make some recommendations to the administration and if they believe a task force would
193be the appropriate manner to get better feedback then they would do so right i just wanted to clarify because i hadn't we hadn't heard from them about their thoughts so thank you yeah um member haynes so i just wanted to i i remember young had made an amendment took it back i would like to make an amendment that would make this a standing subcommittee there is an amendment on the floor to make the ad hoc subcommittee on diversity equity and anti-racism we to amend that to be a standing subject seeing no discussion on the floor regarding the amendment we'll go through a roll call group so this is to just change it from an ad hoc to a standing just so everybody understands yes remember ayala ayala remember bennett senate yes member brown brown yes
194member justice augustus and yes remember hey yes member haines yes yes sorry about that no worries remember christian bomb christian bomb yes remember the boy lavoie yes remember longbow leo yes remember ottmar oh yes number shapiro shapiro yes remember silva philip remember smith remember williamson williamson yes remember woodland woodland yes remember young young yes and the chair also votes yes um we're going back to discussion on the newly amended motion which is to create a standing subcommittee um remember lavoy i believe you also had a hand um i was gonna make the motion but um member haynes made it so is there any further discussion before we vote on the motion on floor and thank you guys for using the hand features tonight everything moved on very smoothly so far okay roll call vote remember
195amos remember bennett bennett yes remember brown brown yes best of cines remember heber hammer yes member haynes yes remember kirschenbaum persian bomb yes member lavoy lavoy yes remember long believe yes remember ottmar about mar yes member shapiro shapiro yes member silva silva yes member smith netcast member williamson williamson yes remember woodland woodland yes remember young yes the chair votes yes and the motion passes unanimously thank you is there a point of order anybody would like to raise no tonight megan yes um i'm just going to ask this because our meetings are going very long we have i think seven sets of minutes to approve is that worth extending the meeting to get to some of those because that alone might take about 20 minutes to roll call every one of them and some of them
196are quite old so i'll ask your discretion on that but it's a question that would be up to the approval of the committee [Music] i would suggest if people are amenable to that that it may be worth doing but i'm not the only one so right now i don't have a border i will make a motion to extend until 10 30. second that's been moving second thank you is there any further questions not [Music] yes yes yes paper we're doing better than last week guys yes haynes yes christian bomb no little boy sorry i like you guys but no longer leo yes atmar yes shapiro shapiro yes silva silva no smith matthias williamson williamson yes woodland woodland yes young young yes chair votes yes um madam secretary does that is that motion is that motion
197approved yes 15 to 3. okay so next um unfinished business we don't have anything in that um moving on to the secretary's report there are a number of minutes that have been sitting here for quite some time um and just a clarification with the minutes in a and the minutes in b um these minutes are to um they're not to approve the executive session minutes at that time um your approval would then move to make that um public for their release they're to be approved and released reproved and released okay um so the first is approval of the executive session minutes of the wachusett regional school district held on march 9th 2020 as in close is there a motion on the floor second and is there any discussion of those minutes they've been included in
198your packets seeing none amos yes ayala i yelled yes there was a hand raised yeah that's that's that's me megan yes membership hero yeah i have a question um is there any opportunity again i don't know how this is done before but is there any opportunity to us approving these in batches like you know they have to be done individually yeah in case there's discussion on individual minutes or clarifications or you know things that need to be amended now just asking if we could if you can ask if there's a question on in each one and then approve and batch no okay just trying to move things along i know we've just been kicking the can on these for so long that they just gotta get done okay um so we did amos we did
199ayala bennett uh yes brown brown yes yes bieber yes means yes christian bomb yes lavoy leverage yes long bolil yes atmar omar abstain shapiro young young yes the chair votes yes next is the approval of the executive session minutes of the watching regional school district held on may 11 2020. is there a motion yes yes bennett bennett yes brown brown yes yes uber weber yes means yes christian bomb yes live away lavoy yes one goal yes mar ahmar yes shapiro shapiro abstain silva williamson williamson abstain woodland woodland yes young yes the chair votes yes next is the approval of the 1344th regular meeting minutes of the wachusett regional school district committee held on may 26 2020 as in close is there a motion on the floor moved back it's been moved and seconded is your
200discussion seeing none back to the top amos unless it stayed ayala yes bennett yes brown brownies justin yes abra yes yes christian bomb yes the boy smith christina sorry yes williamson williamson abstain woodland woodland yes young yes the chair votes yes those are approved next on our agenda tonight is the approval of the 1345th regular meeting of the wachusett meeting minutes of the wachusett regional school district committee held on june 8 2020 as in close is there a motion on the floor so moved second it's been moved and seconded is there discussion seeing none amos amos abstain hi ella bennett bennett yes brown francis jefferson justice and yes abra yes haynes yes christian bomb yes little boy lavoy yes long below yes oh maris shapiro shapiro abstain thank you smith yes williamson abstain woodland woodland
201yes young yes and the chair votes yes next to our agenda would be the approval of the organization meeting minutes of the wachusett regional school district committee held on june 30th 2020 as enclosed is there a motion on the floor [Music] second second second it's been moved in second and is there any discussion on the floor see none one more time let's do it amos mcs ayala a yellow abstain bennett yes brown yes eber yes chains abstain shapiro shapiro yes silva silva yes smith yeah williamson williamson yes woodland woodland yes young young yes final group of minutes is the approval of the 1346 regular meeting minutes of the wachusett regional school district committee held on june 30th 2020 as in closes their motion on the floor so move second and move in second is their
202discussion yes yes live away happy birthday member guftison yes i don't know if that was a point of order mr lavoy i'm sorry but nobody said it and i know we're running out of time here so i just wanted to say one more time i'm fading quickly here my vote is yeah shapiro um shapiro yes after 10 o'clock we all get a little wonky okay silva awesome are you still with us yup silva yes smith happy birthday malaya and smith yes williamson williamson yes woodland woodland yes and young young yes and the chair votes yes that is important yeah we gotta we gotta do our business next in the agenda is the treasures report and financial statements please direct those questions to director dd um there are no committee reports that i know of i
203don't believe any committees have yet have met yet it would be my intention as chair to make sure those committees form um and decide in their first meeting and to begin their business um as soon as possible um there i'm going to be passing over um agenda item h from the ad hoc subcommittee to negotiate the superintendent's contract um as we do have one small um piece of business we did not get to which was a change in the superintendent's job description and i'll be putting that item on the agenda for next meeting there are no building committees and we do not yet have school council reports but as of today all schools have a um have a member that is appointed so thank you all for volunteering and being a part of school councils
204next then the agenda is a public hearing number two and i did have um a few um public committees come in to us during our meeting tonight so our next um reading comes from jennifer paoli who lives at 99 pleasant street in holland massachusetts she writes drwrsd committee after reading through the reopening task force report i have two specific concerns one in the report is recommended that older students wipe down their own services however i strongly urge students to properly wash hands after doing so as chemicals are not meant for skin contact i'm concerned that this will not happen and students will expose the unnecessary chemicals and there will not be time or knowledge for them to do so second and report surfaces are planned to be cleaned and wiped down multiple times during the
205day however you'll need to take in to account additional time for proper usage of the chemicals most disinfectants require three to ten minute dwell time where the product remains wet on the surface students should not be allowed to touch everything not work correctly and students are now in contact with a chemical that needs to wash off thank you all for your hard work there is a second comment that came in as well from lynn on 11 wyoming drive in holden massachusetts good evening and thank you for the opportunity to comment on tonight's meaning one it is curious that there's been no survey yet of families as noted by one committee member to help determine families that do not intend to send their children back to school this year two to continue on membership heroes comments
206about disinfecting considerations desi's use of research about child transmission is in fact to generalize and therefore misleading about lower risk recent research in other countries have reopened their schools such as cited in the sunday's new york times learned that transmission risk increases with age therefore it might be wiser to consider remote learning from middle and high while elementary students might might have some planned days of in-school learning it was noted that desi is giving consideration to an altered school calendar which might mean further days required for students however there is no mention of mcas what does the school committee and superintendents view about waving m tasks given the loss of time on learning last spring and future loss coming next year with the elimination of tier four and five cuts it would be beneficial to
207confirm for the community and middle school foreign language and elementary music may continue to be available and fully stacked thank you again for communicating with my comments and the work that you do as a committee that is our second public hearing is there any new business um that members would like to put on an agenda for a future meeting being none i would be amenable to an emotion on the floor for a german 10 10 my goal is 10 o'clock guys i'm getting there um remember amos yes remember iowa remember bennett yes brown brown yes birthday girl gossip yes and thank you all haber yes yes christian bomb yes lavoy lavoy yes long but we all yes marias shapiro shapiro yes silva williamson williamson yes woodland woodland yes young young yes and the chair votes
208yes i'll see you guys in two weeks thank you all so much for everything tonight thank you good night great care good night good night