001of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all our first agenda item is the approval of minutes for january 12 2022. does anybody have any questions or discussion points no okay can i have a motion to approve motion carries uh we have an initial public comment um let's see if i can read this uh the comments from the public section of the media is an opportunity for members of the community to address issues of concern about policy budget or administrative matters or share ideas about how we can work together to improve the next space public schools we value your input and respective urgent views we only ask you limit your remarks for three minutes and refrain from earning agreements
002with individual members of the school community thank you we do have a sign-in sheet podium if anyone wants to speak i'll just go ahead and acknowledge that the school committee has received numerous emails supporting the list uh the lift of the mass mandate um including a letter signed by 104 individuals um if anybody from that group wants to read the letter into the record um that would be great uh we also received a request to play a video for public comments which we is not um customary and so therefore we will not be playing the video into the record as are possible copyright issues etcetera for doing that i will um so we will refrain from doing that i can read out the youtube address if anybody wants to go look it's https on slash
003www.youtube.com watch question mark y is u z o u 7452 capital f d o but again we're not going to be showing the video because that's not customary practice moving on meetings but anyway is there anybody else who would like to make a comment are you going to read that winner yeah i will i just i will say that we you know we've been making that uh adjustment to reading public comments because of because of covid and because of trying to be respectful of people not wanting to be in person and also the zoo meetings um i do think it's a little no okay it would be nice if one of the 104 had actually come in person to our meeting to read it so i will read it on the path to the dexterity
004school committee the following families are in support of immediately ending the mass mandate in our schools we ask that we give an opportunity please vote to end this mandate for all of our children and public schools thank you okay you can come to the podium and sign in please name and address laura mark and 17 saying your record so um i wasn't on that list i was working today and didn't get to it but i did end up sending an email just to voice my concerns about children wearing masks and when i picked him up today after school you know i was like what do you think about um not wearing masks today and they lit up so like happiness so um i think that it's something especially for our younger children i don't have
005older children so i can't relate to them but he looks very forward to it so i i would just see it sooner than later so thank you thank you appreciate and it okay so move on to our reports for the school committee uh first one from dr kingman yep good evening everyone i just have a few announcements first of all we i wanted to share that permanent postings for the position of assistant superintendent school business manager and athletic director have been posted and we are developing screening committees for those three positions then we should be able to provide an update for that as we move through the process over the next few weeks um also on march 24th we are going to be hosting a community showing of the film race to be human and
006this is being sponsored by duxbury schools duxbury for all duxbury student union in the duxbury free library this film examines the impact of race on mental health through the lens of students experts and educators and race to be human is on a mission to join the global conversation and raise awareness with a more comfortable and positive approach so please save the date for the evening of march 24th also this week is national school counselors week so we wanted to recognize and thank our many wonderful school counselors here in duxbury schools we couldn't do the work that we do without their support and so this is our week to just recognize and appreciate them so i wanted to add that to my comments tonight thank you in the whole community folder there are three folders um
007each that have different revisions or proposed revisions to school committee policy the first is darkness light and darkness delight is a non-profit organization that provides child sexual abuse education prevention and awareness and we worked with darkness delight to provide some professional development and they also conducted a policy and handbook review so those suggested revisions are located in the folder in the school community for review for for the school committee some um i'm sorry the policy subcommittee i shouldn't read i should just talk and then not read these facts between them apparently um in addition there is also a folder for wellness fiscal wellness advisory council the school wellness advisory council has met twice this year at our last meeting we reviewed suggested changes to the language and the suggested changes came from the work done
008last year in addition to a brief review conducted this year in addition this year the school wellness advisory council suggested that our dei director review the policies and provide input so that has also been done and those suggested revisions are included in the folder in addition we have been talking a little bit about the student opportunities act and the student opportunities act emphasizes a continued focus ensuring that all students have access to excellent education in 2020 school districts were required to submit a three-year evidence-based plan aiming at closing persistent disparities and achievement among student subjects so our plan what we were asked to do by the state is to take a look at our car plan and to determine if any revisions were required were needed or required and so what we did is we
009are continuing on our focused areas and that includes um improved literacy instruction working to have our special education teachers certified in gordon gillingham in addition to providing research-based intervention um training and also the science of reading training for all of our teachers so that's something that has been happening throughout the year and um we also focused on that at our last professional development set as well as the last update that i wanted to provide to the committee as the civil rights data collection is a federally mandated survey administered by the office of civil rights to help ocr administer and enforce statutes our civil rights data collection will be complete and submitted by the end of this week the submissions are due by february 28th so we are in a good place and i would just
010like to thank elizabeth burns and brian bach for their work and help on the data function piece of that lastly we have recognizing our colleagues this week we would like to highlight terry zafran michael powett catherine hart connie roland and karen lowe they were recognized by their colleagues for going above and beyond and um for doing things for others and really supporting each other and colleagues and going above and beyond for students those are the staff that we'd like to that were recognized over the past few weeks thank you thank you thank you um on the darkness delight uh policy reviews the um the handbook suggestions for handbook revisions those will go to the school councils first yes so those are provided to the school principal right and they will provide the school principles and
011then they will work with their teams to determine what suggestions will be made and what changes should be made to the handbooks okay so that will happen so but that's going to be a process that will happen over the spring it will happen over the summer that's not something that we'll see that will change you know overnight that's certainly something that will be a process that will take time well but the process that we have here is that the school councils review the handbooks and then come to school committee for their approval right and that typically happens in june all right yeah so will you guys have enough time to digest all of this and do that work with school counselors by june okay okay just checking okay good thank you and then the other
012thing uh was um you mentioned in the discussion about your letter about the student opportunity act that you're planning an audit by the center for leadership and educational equity can you explain a bit more about that so the center for leadership um the equity audit is something that we've been working with our dei director katelyn sheehan and what caitlin has been doing is she has been reaching out to different organizations that conduct audit equity audits and so we have gone through and looked at the different proposals and we met for a pre-meeting with the what is known as cli and we spoke with the pre-representatives and so they talked about different options of what they can do and really the beginning stages are meeting with subgroups of stakeholders just to discuss the process and we
013are in the pre-planning stages of that right so it's um more something that we are looking at to be part of the work that we're doing in the upcoming years okay how will it i'm just i'm trying to understand but because you mentioned that it's going to be part of the strategic planning process but we're actually trying to do this strategic plan by june so so the strategic planning process will be um the initial work will be done which i'll talk about a little bit later but i think the equity product is for the um 2022-2023 school year so i believe that we'll be able to establish goals and um that will be actually part of our action plan when we develop the strategic plan um and i think that um right now we're just
014setting the stage for that audit to be able to take place but i think when we look at our priorities moving forward in three years we'll include the data that we collect from that audit to be able to inform our future years because the next strategic plan that we write won't be um set in stone for three years it will be more action oriented and so we'll be establishing yearly yearly goals and objectives and so we'll be able to incorporate some of those pieces into the new strategic plan because it won't be done but we'll have the framework to be able to um move forward for three years thank you we're getting feedback that we have to speak up okay so i'm sorry everyone i can see in the chat that it's hard for the
015people that are tuning in over the zoo to be able to hear us so if we can talk in our nice clear loud teacher voices that will be helpful okay all right moving on to the update from the slave hey everyone hang on shannon nice quick question oh yeah absolutely sorry we don't have any do we have a school committee member on the school wellness committee advisory yes we do so kristin has done the loans advisory council okay thank you okay so we have two invoice warrants that were processed since our last meeting in january it was warrant 30 which was processed on january 21st and it was processed in the amount of 848 and 18 cents um we also had warrants 32 and that was processed on february 4th and that was processed in
016the amount of 483.84 last thursday night we had the opportunity to attend the finance committee meeting where the committee discussed the school department's recommendation for the operating budget for fiscal year 23. during that meeting we had the opportunity to answer a number of questions that were put forth by the committee um in regards to enrollment in regards to staffing requests um and also in regards to year end balances the finance committee did approve the school committee recommended budget which is an overall 4.02 percentage increase from fiscal year 22 and that includes a number of new positions that we do feel will make a positive impact on the district moving forward and just as a point of reference the average operating budget increase over the last 14 years has been 2.97 and the last time that
017we had an annual budget increase for the operating budget over four percent was in fiscal year zero 9 which will be 14 years ago so i think that's really positive news obviously um that number needs to be supported by the town and approved a town meeting in march um but we think it's really positive that we're on the same page moving into into the in-wall town meeting so i just wanted to provide that update to you all tonight that's great news thank you for all your hard work on that oh this is your last meeting i don't think any of us were prepared no way or a really great speech but i don't think any of us can thank you enough for your work in the district and i didn't realize this was your last
018meeting i'm very sad but you've done a wonderful job here and your time and you've set us up for future success and we're going to miss you a lot thank you thank you very much absolutely and it is i think it bears mentioning that the finance committee commended katie um at their meeting and noted that the understanding between the business office at the school district and the finance committee has has improved under her leadership and um that that may want to be one of the contributing factors to the fact that our they supported our increased budget this year so thank you very much and thank you on behalf of our students for that work thank you [Laughter] so a few exciting things are happening in special education we are continuing our work using the um
019the platform called q interactive which is a way for us to do student evaluations um before we work paper pencil um to do um a cognitive or an achievement test for eligibility and this we have um leading up to this year we have done a large ipad purchase we're working on purchasing more but essentially students and their test administrator are each using an ipad to conduct uh these evaluations which we require to determine eligibility for special education and i have to say the staff has been very hard at work in not only learning um there's different types of evaluations that i'm going to achieve in a valve particularly and there's different tools that all measure the same thing so they're learning a new measure as well as the interactive piece of the um ipads and
020i have to say they're doing a great job and there's a lot of really good discussion that is happening so that has been a preponderance of our professional development but it is exciting to continue to see the growth through the staff and really understanding and embracing all of the great qualities that come with the new evaluation system uh something else that is really exciting is when we talk about assistive technology there are two small veins to assistive technology there are um what is called augmentative and alternative communication and that's for students who require assistance um with communication and then we also have to access the curriculum and utilize um you know technology to kind of enhance and support that access to the curriculum so um we had had somebody for a couple of years they
021brought her out of retirement like three times and she finally said no more so i'm leading into this year i needed to find a new professional and we have just on boarded um a new professional um as a contract service provider to work with the students who require that level of support in order and the staff um and so she's been doing observations but if i can just talk a little bit about the augmentative alternative communication it describes multiple ways to communicate that can supplement or compensate for an impairment or disability and disability patterns of an individual with severe expressive communication disorders and its nickname is aac abc is used by people who some or all cannot necessarily rely on their speech as a method of communication of verbal speech and it really looks to
022[Music] include and incorporate any existing speech or vocalizations gestures manual signs or aided communication pictures and it really is a multimodal approach to really facilitating communication so people can make their wants gnomes um any sort of expression of um so we are actually excited that this professional has joined us um she's really talented she is teaching at the graduate level at emerson she has been working at the waltham children's hospital uh speech program and so she has come and she's been here the past three wednesday or three wednesdays she's been doing reservations consulting with staff so we're going to start to build a schedule for her but really exciting to be able to bring um a talented person with this level of discrete professional knowledge to work with the staff so that's exciting and my
023three or four upcoming events are the soulful girls club uh has hit so big that it was supposed to happen in april and they started a there's a one on february the 18th so a week from this friday um we had talked about the special education department trying to build programming to kind of communicate and collaborate with parents so uh staff presentations uh katie drain she is a special education teacher at the middle school she's also my special education intern for an administrator so that's exciting there's not very many people wanting to come into this role and we'll be presenting accommodations in the classroom uh february 16th from 9 15 to 10 a.m i have to um just i'll release the to be determined to the location but it will be in person um i
024have on deck for my um iep binder in management of all of that paperwork that comes with uh becoming a special education parent and that will be on march 16th um and i'm hoping to do that at the high school middle school it'll be from 10 30 to 11 30 and then the last thing on deck is the cpac meeting march 21st at five o'clock it is a business meeting i mean a parent meeting so administration is not present it's a time for parents to connect and communicate um around all sorts of varieties but i'm sure more information will be coming with regard to that from cpac thank you lots of good stuff yeah the is that a computer program that has numerous other um testing materials on there or is that a test in
025and of itself so it's it's actually a platform with a variety of different tests so they have cognitive batteries they have achievement batteries there are some speech batteries so as part of this um i had a job alike with the speech pathologist i told the district once and they were talking about some different functions of digging into vocabulary and language processing that so they're they're involved in that part um there's been some so yeah it's a platform that houses a variety of different evaluation tools perfect and as new editions of those evaluation tools come out is that something that will be updated and teachers trained on automatically so the great thing great question and the great thing about that is every so many years the pearson or the manufacturers of these testing protocols go through
026and they update the testing kits through you know a pretty rigid process to make sure they're standardized um by using this program with the the package that we got to access the full digital assessment library we will get all of those updates free of charge so yeah so anything that comes out with a new version or anything um new we should be able to access those and the training would that just be like a professional development day for so depending upon what the assessment is if um so for example it's called the wyatt which is one of the the westward assessment achievement tests they came out with from the three to the four we were using the woodcock johnson achievements so we're kind of doubling down on our professional development to get people used to
027the wyatt and as well as the cute roll thank you next we have updates from our student representatives mike and faith okay hi everyone hope you're all doing well um since our last meeting uh term two has ended in terms of underwear which is crazy thanks for halfway through the school year so i just want to thank all the teachers and staff who has made this school year as easy as it can be especially with all the difficulties we found um and then also i want to recognize and talk about last week the high school had their best of lunch awards which is an award program um where 59 students were recognized and they're recognized by teachers and staff and it's pretty much the students who you know represent good character teamwork responsibility and kindness
028just an overall good characteristics um and then also on january 27th which was holocaust remembrance day the uh high school students and i'm not sure if the middle school did this but i don't know high school um we watched a video which was made by under tippett who is a former nfl player and miss currently in the hall of fame and i heard that he was supposed to come to the school but because of kovid we were given a video that was made by him which was really awesome to watch because you know he just talked about what paul house was why it's important to talk about it and to reflect and remember on it and so after we watched the video the students completed a reflection survey and then uh also an upcoming event
029is seamask which is the southeastern massachusetts association of student councils and our student council is sending members to the cms conference which is on thursday the 17th and they're sending a mix of class officers as well as student council officers and overall just great student council members who are most active um and that's at rockland high school and then i also want to give a shout out to our recent athletics which i know the winter sports are wrapping up soon but i want to recognize i think a notable mention is both swim teams with the girls swim winning their 30th consecutive title which is crazy they've you know garnered after 30 years as well as the boyfriend team who um got a patriot league title which is ten years in the running as well and
030that's all i have hi everyone oh jay covered nearly everything i was going to say but in addition to swimming that dive success cyrus tiana regan and magic and safari both came first among like the entire patriot league which i think is incredible uh on and then finally on friday afternoon jake and i will be meeting with dr clingerman john plans for superintendent student uh advisory which is something we're all looking forward to i was the last [Laughter] all right okay so um the one item i had just um somebody in our committee uh has raised a question about policy bia which is committee candidate orientation and it basically gives all school committee candidates equal access and impartial access to information about the school committee and how we operate and and that and i think
031i don't think i need to read it it's posted on my website um i just want to acknowledge that there is that access for all candidates running although i did notice much clipper today that we have two candidates for two spots so i don't think there's gonna be um a lot of campaigning etcetera at this point so um let's see and then i decided to correct myself on the first public comments and if you can if we just make a note the video that i read in that was from name lynn greenwood and that was my mistake i should have said her name i don't her address so we do have to kind of track that down so we have the right record for that public comment um and then the only other thing i
032was a follow up on katie's comments to thank the um finance committee in town for the support of the budget because this is a big one um and the the amount of uh support from government um the town government has been fantastic and i think that really is a large effort to to katie's efforts in dr clinton's efforts as well so thank you and thank you for the town officials and that's it then the next item is correspondence and new business i'll just have one something first i feel like we should congratulate dr clingerman on her appointment and um her first official meeting isn't official that's why i hesitated as well uh because we did announce with the last one and we don't have a sign there's no contract yet so it is pending congratulations
033about having the superintendent goals be like the assessment be done prior to the elections so they coincide more fairly am i saying this correctly so i just wanted to have another conversation about it i know this this time it might be too quick but i think going forward i think it's a lot easier me coming on last year it was very difficult to do an assessment on a superintendent that i've only been on this position for like six weeks at that point time so i definitely think it would be better if we have the assessments at the last meeting before the election and kind of have the um the goals kind of go in that type of year march to march or whatever it may be i we've all started six weeks you know before
034and so i totally appreciate it um i do think it's gonna take some planning of the committee to restructure that so i do think it's i don't think we'll be able to get it in before the next meeting and so yeah and i think we may be able to have the opportunity for any outgoing school committee members to provide feedback that the school committee could then incorporate into the annual review at a later time but i think certainly we could work on making that process make sense it's just a little bit tricky to do mid-year goals um off cycle but i think there's certainly a way to capture everyone's feedback um in a way that makes a little more sense than doing it so soon after new members are elected uh so discussion items we
035have the school calendar for 2022 2023 with dr clinton i'm going to try to share the screen with people watching at home it's probably a little bit hard to see but in your folder we had a draft of the calendar and when we developed this calendar we certainly always have input from the building principles and we all take a look at it many many times making sure that we have 180 school days as well as five snow days planned into the calendar by regulation and then as you'll notice next year we do have to take into consideration juneteenth which is a new holiday and that will likely fall into that additional five days each year so we have incorporated that into this calendar um i don't think there's anything notable um we have a later
036again labor day but um it's similar in the way that we developed the early release day schedule as well as the professional day schedule trying to maximize time for families to put those in strategic locations so that we weren't having too many weeks in a row with interrupted school weeks we tried to spread that out we also took into consideration the jewish holidays to make sure that we weren't scheduling any open houses or early release days that would impact those so i think that we were clear with those um and i don't know if anyone when you had a chance to review them had any questions or concerns about the structure my only question danielle is if um i see we have may 25th is the half phoebe day which is the thursday of memorial
037weekend and i didn't know why it couldn't be may 26 friday for the long weekend well that's a good question um we try to not do early release days on fridays because contractually we run into some challenges with us with the timing of the school day um so whenever possible we avoid the fridays on early release days because it's a little bit tricky when we're trying to we have limited time that all the teachers are together because of the staggered start on those early release days and so we we do tend to try to avoid fridays but that's certainly something that we can take feedback on and take a look at i think also um it's preferable uh mrs lisahon the principal from chandler's school has shared that the later we can do the last
038early release day the better because we use our spring benchmark testing to assist us with development of the student placements when we're making classes and so we also are trying to navigate around graduation because that those weeks before graduation get very very busy at the high school so that day we can take a look at um to see if we can move that to june but then if we get into the first week of june it's a little tricky with graduation vacation that's where my brain is vaccination threshold update yes this is the moment everyone's been waiting for i think all of our principals are going to step forward and so this presentation has [Music] kind of been a moving target today i'm sure many of you heard the news um that the governor announced
039that the statewide actually the governor and commissioner o'reilly announced that the mandate in schools would be lifted as of february 28th allowing communities to make local decisions about masking and so this evening we're prepared to share with you our fully vaccinated percentages as well as the number of students that have opted into the new testing program for testing at home and we also the timing was very exciting for us because we finally reached the 80 vaccination threshold at the middle in high school so we had submitted our attestation to jesse on monday stating that we had passed the 80 benchmark and so we received approval from approval from the department of education last evening late which i added a letter to your school committee folder late so uh at that point we would have been
040able to even if the governor and the commissioner hadn't made their announcement today this evening we would have been able to have a discussion about middle and high school and the potential of entering a flexible environment but now that the governor and the commissioner made the announcement today i think what we'll need to do is have a conversation about pre-k through 12 so that we can make a determination about next steps i also just wanted to hear before we start that i've been talking to um town manager rainey reed and the board of health so that they're they're making sure that um the town-wide mask mandate is it that is in place that they're um also making adjustments to that with the board of health recommendations although that's um not something that really is going
041to play into our decision um tonight but that's something that we're in communication about because we feel as though it's important to have a um we're looking at the town-wide level of um positive coveted cases and uh what the recommendations are from the whole from our board of health as well as our town nurse there is no town wide mass mistake it's a mass mandate on the municipal building which is totally different than a town mass mandate and our town manager does not have authority over the schools it's in his thigh wall if anyone wants to look at it page 121 number 12 the town manager shall manage and be responsible for all town buildings properties and facilities except those under the jurisdiction of the school committee and the board of library trustees unless require
042requested by either in jesus i feel like we have two separate conversations to have we have a conversation about the middle school high school because we received the attestation letter and then we have a conversation about the entire suxbury public schools on that february 28th all right before we get started let's have a quick just a clarification question um the governor's announcement doesn't nullify the um the 80 threshold deal from now until uh um i think we're ready to talk about all of those things tonight so we have a few things to share with you um we just have the total vaccination rates for each school which you can see on the slide um chandler is at including students and staff 60.7 percent vaccination called in that 68 dms 76 and dhs at 84 just
043note that the um dhs numbers do include the planetary collaborative students and staff and that the chandler numbers do not include the magic dragon students and staff at this point yet um because um you know likely that our vaccination rate will go down once those numbers are included because so many of the magic guys and students are ineligible for the vaccination at this point how much interaction is there between the kids and magic dragons and i know it's just building but just curious how much interactions go between the kids um so our integrated preschool shared the hallway and playgrounds with about driving students so they they are you know interacting just even just in the hallway and you know outside surely um but that's about it yeah um so as dr clinton mentioned cannon i
044couldn't shannon yeah i i can't really hear so was it 60.7 percent of younger kids or vaccinated i think yes yeah yes 60.7 for chandler okay now it's back on that it should be back on yeah all right keep it on that okay [Laughter] um so as we begin with um as dr klingham mentioned we had actually come prepared tonight to talk about the middle of the high school um numbers and then the announcement happened earlier today um so uh as she mentioned the middle of high school we have been keeping track of that vaccination rate since the fall when the high school attempted the attestation was hitting 80 and we were rejected by the state because of the co-located building um and so we've been accumulating that information looking at the building as a
045whole as well um we just want to take a minute and thank our nurses so um karen doyle margie malone and andrea o'neil were really key to accumulating this information we just want to thank them for using the information from families into aspen as well as the miiss database to be able to get us this information that was a lot of work on their end um and like we said we hit that threshold for 80 across the complete middle high school building um and submitted that attestation um and were approved as of late last night next slide so since we started the uh the at-home test uh program we've been keeping track of how many the percentages of staff and students in each building who are enrolled and participating in that program so that's that's
046essentially what you're seeing here so um as you can see there's a there's a much higher percentage of staff participating in the program um chandler's school staff is at participation in the program all been 70 middle school 43 participation and the high schools at 73 participation for staff that's again staff participation in the at home covet test program um students student participation has been much lower it ranges from 23 to 29 uh depending on the building but it's pretty consistent and so uh you know finally for as much as today was kind of a shock to the system in some ways with all the breaking news uh we have been planning at the most of the high school for our students to return at some point uh tasks being at least uh having flexibility therefore
047now and so under the the newest guidance that came out today um there's a very small change but most of this has been in place over the last couple months and many of the schools that have already made that switch have been operating under these rules so um you know as of today uh everyone will still be required to wear a mask with their nurses office and uh any when they're on the bus at any time that includes any co-curricular events that those athletics that includes any transportation uh regulations are under federal uh rules at the moment so the state doesn't have the ability to make those changes um they've also added uh people returning from warranty out of isolation and returning after five days have to wear masks for the next five days to
048reach day 10. that is not really a functional change at all apparently um and um no the big thing everyone is still in their life right anyone who wants to wear it can wear one uh it's important that our students our families feel safe when they're in the building and that they begin to feel comfortable in our new environment um sarah and i in conversations with schools uh those anywhere between 50 to 70 percent of people have remained masked over the first couple weeks while that transition has occurred and that's that's what we would we would expect nothing less we'd expect the same thing here um and then we'll continue to provide um masks to everyone as needed whatever they want whatever we want for transportation or other laws we thought that you would probably
049have some questions about this process and so i think everyone's prepared to answer any questions that might come up about what it would look like if you were to relax the current masking policy um what that sort of transition would look like and the timing and then we also i know mr mcguire did speak to her staff to get some feedback about um potential of this eventuality that the mass would become optional for our students and staff i do want to say that if the masks do become a flexible flexible environment i want to be really clear that there will probably be many staff members that will continue to want to wear their mask um in school and i think that when we say that we want it to be up to each individual we
050truly want to respect that decision um for teachers and for students we want to make sure that there's not a lot of questions being asked about why people have a mask on it could be for any number of reasons they could not wear a mask for two weeks and then have one on but we want to make that continue to be an individual decision so whatever happens with the status i think that we're like mr donovan said we may not see everyone removing their masks overnight and having it just switch over um in that manner personally i feel like it's medical information so if we can kind of get the kids to understand that you know this medical information is protected we shouldn't be asking each other about it we should know our staff you
051know it's one of those things you do you know whatever it's up to you but it's realistically people's medical decisions and they need to do it based off that so you know that's optional and i think i mean if you just look in stores around town i mean pretty much that's how it's going about what i've seen so i feel like people at this point have under under understand the environment did text me their child wanted to write a letter they did not have time so they just texted me um i did not get the back and forth because he was busy so i'm just going to read you what the parents sent me um he just wrote and i'm sure you guys have more than this but the masks are uncomfortable distracting they make
052it difficult to breathe talk and hear others talking and communicate it will be nice to see people smile in school so that was from 11th grader we'll pass along so actually i'd like to oh yeah thanks um i do have a question do we have any feedback from the schools who have gone through the 80 have already been following these rules in terms of how they're navigating the five to ten day foreign team requirement come back after five days and you have five more days where they need to be wearing the mask that seems a little challenging in terms of personal information and enforcement yeah so what principles they did they did speak with kids uh when they needed to about putting their nest back on um and so you know for us if we
053were in that situation that conversation would start with the nurse and uh that's the problem so um and that's that's how that's how we would and i think that's that's something tricky that's only been introduced in the last four or five weeks right that that that timing change last fall you know you would have been out ten days so i think that's yeah because right exactly that makes it a little bit harder for the schools i think to administer um my other question was that the test number the new testing program with the staff number so much higher than the students do we have any um information from other districts whether it's consistent yeah i think just from speaking to other areas superintendents and principals i think that the testing numbers are similar um i
054think it's great that we have them available and we'll continue to um encourage our families who have not signed up that they can continue to sign up to receive the tests every other week so um i don't think we're lower than typical i think that we're right in there but we'd definitely like to see more people take advantage of getting the free tests and keeping track of that because i think that's just part of limiting the spread in the schools when we start to relax some of these mitigation strategies it's just being responsible and testing regularly to make sure that we are not spreading it unnecessarily yeah so i would just i would just encourage more communication and education around that program because i think i missed i personally missed the first communication about it
055and i caught it in another round and i was like i didn't really understand to be very honest um so i would just encourage the principals at a building level to continue to share information about that with the parents and the families um because i do think that's an important part of keeping the whole entire community safe it's still not a joke um okay now other comments or questions jake and mike when the announcement was made by governor baker today i know that so many students and teachers were talking about it and they feel pretty much the same way but that other student said that it's uncomfortable and it's time to unmask obviously if you want to wear your mask you should be able to and that should i think you know be okay but
056we've been doing this for two years and it's been such a learning curve for a junior who's never had a normal year of high school i think we're all ready for it you know we've reached that 80 threshold we have preventative preventive strategies in place um and we have a great health office that is able to you know aid us in an effort but i just think at this point you know if the governor has now you know lifted that mandate if we reach out 80 and we followed all of the proper guidelines i don't see a reason that we would continue to mandate masks and i think that's the majority of students feel i know that almost every student i've talked to is like ecstatic that it was addictive and that we can be
057able to actually have that return to normalcy that we have not had in so long so i would personally definitely push for it to not be in existence anymore yeah i completely agree with jake i'm sorry to get our name but during public comment they already mentioned they're all the students being overjoyed it really wasn't just all the students there's like overwhelming excitement and joy i'd say to them um and honestly i think we have a very respectful student body like people are just understanding so if someone's gonna wear a mask i really don't think there will be issues because everyone respects each other's health and their well-being and finally i think i think uh christian said this like with the 11th grader and the text i think with remote learning and math especially among
058teenagers we've seen made full on mental health which is something crucial to consider when making a decision and of course you want to consider what's best for the children so that's all thank you thanks man so to clarify the combination of the announcement from the governor and the memo from mr riley plus a letter from mr riley means that the middle school high school can be mass optional from today and the rest of the school is from the 28th all right well that was a good point because i had a clarifying question on that as well um so the governor's um the governor's announcement did the government's announcement give any um authority to the district to make a decision to lift the mandate before the 28th so it can only start on the 20th so
059we're only talking about two things so that's important i think for the community to understand because a lot of the letters we got today and there was like a ton but a lot of the letters were like lift the mandate immediately across the whole school and that's uh that one's out of our control we you know i mean like there's still two and a half weeks if i'm getting right where we cannot lift the mandate across the whole district that's we just can't do that but the other so i think i just want to make sure that everyone understands we're talking about two specific things um one is obviously middle and high school whether we lift it starting today and then um do we want to lift it on the 28th for everybody else does
060that make sense um i had a question about the um continuing to make masks available jim uh since all right so let's assume that or another let's um hypothesize that we lift the mandate like sooner rather than later for like the middle high school um are the masks that are given up now are they like the regular medical masks like the blue masks [Music] we could do it i don't know if we can but um if if and when the mass mandates get lifted it probably shines maybe a hotter spotlight on people who want to continue to wear masks and i would recommend we try to figure out a way to make sort of like kn 95 the floor of the minimal and then 95 because you know everything that i read is like those
061are the two that really protect and maybe there's more opportunity for us to be um yeah more uh able to do those high quality masks if we're not gonna get as many people there we found them to be more durable for the middle schoolers as well again it would be great to give everyone the option yeah all all high school students have the opportunity to have a canon 95 mask i believe almost every day this year since like october at least so on the best of my issue and people made good use of them yeah that's great so we were provided the ak 95 maps from the state so we've had the opportunity to actually receive the mass free of charge for the elementary level we had to purchase the mass and it's more of
062the blue surgical mass just because of the sizing so yeah to be really mindful of the younger kiddos they have to have the smaller mass and then obviously at the secondary level um they're typically provided they know because that we've been able to like i said receive at no charge just um because they've been allocated up to the district so that's just one of the reasons why there may be a difference between the elementary level and the secondary level as to what they're provided and it's similar um for the school buses as well just making sure that everyone has a mess that's actually going to be able to fit their face correctly and how are the teachers feeling about this transition are they ready for it or is there like what is this what would
063you say the split be for teacher comfort level well uh so we had our background being today with the high school so uh and we had i've been preparing the meeting knowing that the attestation was possibly coming you know uh certainly the the statewide nature of the announcement today i think changed the dynamic a little bit you know um because it wasn't just a local necessarily a local issue for us to consider i mean i think like uh our staff are just like everyone else right there's a spectrum of of kind of how people feel about it so people are are ready to do it now um some people are really so scared that means they get comfortable in that and some people change four or five times over the course of the day and
064how they feel about it so um but i also think that you know we're very professional staff we have been through some pretty significant changes um over the last couple of years i think there's there was a concern certainly i don't have a meeting about being in a position to have to do something like this tomorrow because we haven't communicated you know uh it is no surprise we've been expecting that this day would come at the high school since november you know so uh uh it's not surprising that we're here now were the staff surprised at all or they've been getting prepared throughout the faculty meetings like we're at this percentage this is gonna you know this may be happening do you feel like they're in a good spot now i'll host people in my
065school we have not really talked about percentages since december right so um it just wasn't part of how he was rolled out on the other hand the middle school i think the last one of the last times i was here i had not yet gotten feedback from my staff and so the last faculty meeting we had was last week and in preparation for the members approaching that 80 percent i collected some feedback and um similarly to the high school there's this there's a spectrum there's a there's a lot of folks that i think very much like our families and kids are really ready um and then some some folks that are have questions or feel uncomfortable that we'll just have to support through the decision we make and similarly at the at the middle school
066um having time to communicate that really clearly and then support those people i think will be important um so like jim said i i have some thoughts about what i would recommend we make that move um to allow for some of that space can you share that yeah yeah [Music] i think um i think we could be ready for monday i think that would allow us to communicate effectively um tomorrow throughout the day with families and staff and then um receive the the questions we get from those concerned folks and support them through um through for monday starting i think it's reasonable and we also have a lot of like arguably there's a lot of community use you know so uh this afternoon we've got a lot of different organizations that use our and how
067we communicate with all of those organizations as well and we have a little bit of work that we need to do there so that we can get the message from everywhere now on the flip side would your staff be ready at the expense february for the younger ones february 28th we'll return for march 1st whenever we return yeah so um you know obviously with this announcement coming up today we didn't really have a lot of time to collect any feedback but we did um send a message to our staff with saying that you know we were going to be having this conversation tonight um and just anecdotally i got some feedback you know one teacher said to me you know what i'm going to continue wearing my mask because my little kids were in factories
068and i said that's that's great of course you know other people were yelling hippy down the hall you know the same you know there's a spectrum but i think yeah my recommendation would be we will be ready february i agree i mean i think this news is probably a little more jarring for the staff at alden in chandler just because this isn't something i mean we've been keeping track of percentages and so forth but i think it's been a discussion at the high school in middle school obviously trying to reset 80 and so we've been tracking it but it's for us was a little bit more oh okay like we're in this group now too um yeah i heard from one staff member she's watching i'm sure hallelujah was the email so uh you know
069but but that being said i'm sure it's just like the middle school high school i'm sure there are some some folks who want to keep on their match maybe be upset that there's a room full of kids without that song but others who are ready you know thank you for all your work during this process kelly do you have any questions yeah i just wanted to say i reached out to matt files from the dta today because i wanted some feedback on teacher feelings about it um and basically the same he echoed what you're saying it's you know some people feel one way some people feel another way um and they did feel it was a little quick which i guess i was surprised that everybody knew the date which i was february 28th um
070so it wasn't a surprise to me but um i think that um my only concern would be you know if the numbers go up and we start and teachers start getting sick you know i would certainly hope that um we can cover that in that you know i think you guys might have to do some creative coverage and shifting and you know deal with some uncomfortable situations um but so you know lost your audio kelly i don't know if you can still hear us okay sorry i killed we lost your audio but i think you know i think the point was clear you know but i think everybody's going into this eyes wide open that there are going to be continued challenges and um it's going to be a big shift so that's a good
071point okay any other specimen questions so will our vote be two separate votes i think i i think we can make a decision about that right it's how you guys want us to do the motions how we set up the motions but about so i think that makes the most sense yeah yeah it probably makes more sense to do two separate votes rather than they get a package deal yeah um i also think we have to kind of think about a few different pieces within this and i think you guys refer to this you know there's levels within the announcement you know for example recommending you know all these different details i don't know if that goes in the policy or your implementation of the policy but for example if you're unvaccinated recommended that you
072still wear a mask right the five days or ten days the on the buses i don't know if that all needs to be included in our updated policy or not i don't know if this tonight's vote is just the overall premise that this is where we're going and then we have to actually vote on the updated language in the policy that's what i would recommend i think you could vote to update the language in your face coverings policy to reflect the current jessie recommendations because that would include the recommendations for unvaccinated individuals to continue the mass but not the requirements of unvaccinated yeah so there is language in there that you can pull from pull from there so we just do a motion to update based on the desi recommendation okay but what would the
073end result be ostensibly because like one of the things we're talking about is that there's uh there's some people that are saying it would be good to wait at the middle high school would be good to start on monday yeah effective monday um do we need to discuss that as a committee or is everyone sort of feeling like that's that should be the date because we didn't really talk about that we're just talking about we're talking about like doing it possibly but not when because technically we can do it tomorrow but would that be wise if our staff are telling exactly why [Music] yeah i think that's the recommendation of the staff i think everybody sounds good so i think those are the two votes right those are the two motions that people need to
074make is one for the middle school high school and one for everybody based on jesse yeah kelly are you still with us yes can you hear me yeah now we can hear you we lost you at the end of your comments did you did you hear that exchange about the two motions that we'll go into when we do the vote yeah so one for monday the 14th for middle school high school yeah and then for the 28th virginia yeah good yes all right thank you okay thank you very much [Music] okay so next on our agenda is uh spring 2022 strategic plan timeline yes let me okay so in your folders i had shared a draft timeline for our spring strategic planning process and if i can find it in all my papers it just
075started with a little bit of a summary of what the strategic planning process looked like last time um i think most of our school committee members were here when we last did our strategic planning but we have a few people that weren't and so what happened last time we had a strategic planning committee that included many different stakeholder representatives from students teachers administrators um town government different organizations and towns magic dragon before and after dark uh duxbury student union etc so our current plan is set to expire at the end of the school year and so in the proposal that i shared today um the department of education has a new strategic planning process called planning for success and it is a um it's a process that many school districts have been using over the
076past couple of years and i think it's been around since we last did our strategic plan but we didn't use this process last time and so with this planning for success it is similar um in scope to what we did last time in that there is a full process that's designed to build district and school capacity um while also building community understanding and support and so in this document i had some links if you wanted to look at the strategic planning process using this planning for success model um and i think that we're in a really good place to be able to do our next strategic plan based on the work that was done last school year with the portrait of a graduate and some of the areas that we identified as focus areas for
077our community and the fact that we did the portrait of a graduate as a k-12 initiative is really helpful because some school districts only use the high school for that portrait of a graduate work but we wanted ours to really have touch upon every grade level so when our students graduate they're not just working on those key attributes for four years of high school and so we have a pretty aggressive timeline for the strategic planning development so we would have a strategic planning facilitator for that planning for success that would work with us throughout this process and so what we what would what we would be doing in march and april would be establishing that strategic planning committee and i just included some of the stakeholders that we would be gathering to ask if they
078would be able to commit to the um four planning sessions so there's six sessions that go in this planning for success development so four would be the full team and two are with the district administrative team in between and so it's pretty similar to last time in that we would with our committee be identifying current trends in education focused areas in our community incorporating some of that portrait of a graduate feedback and then we'd be developing action plans for the 22 23 school year that we would have in june so that when we went into the summer i know it was important to the committee that we have our school councils established in june so that there's not a delay in being able to work on our school improvement plans um drafts in the summer
079time as well as in september because typically we share our school improvement plan this october meeting which is early because then we jump right into our budget process here in duxbury um and so when i spoke to the planning for success facilitator um what she shared was that the action plans as i said earlier in the meeting about some of the equity audit work we won't be establishing action plans for three years we'll be doing one year at a time and if they're very measurable and action oriented and they have key goals that are identified and the facilitator shared with me that the way we had written our plan last time is going to look different because we're going to possibly have fewer initiatives that we're working for but they'll be very targeted and measurable
080as opposed to having many initiatives that we're working with at once so the planning for success really narrows down the scope um and it's very action oriented and um i think we'll probably be reviewing we might not um have a new full mission vision and value statement um we spent a lot of time on that last time so i think some of the groundwork is fun we as well established but we may not have the four instructional pillars we may have some a little bit different language but i think i think you'll see a lot of as we work through this process similarities to the last plan and just next steps with some of those areas so um if there is we would need two school committee members to take part in this process and
081so um we have some of the draft dates that we're looking at so if you'd like i can share those um with all of you to see if you can check your calendars for availability to see who might be interested in doing that and i know we will potentially have new members on the school committee when we are in that some of that phase of planning can i ask a couple questions about that so um the uh the stakeholders that you've got listed on their back are those planning for success uh are those according to like the planning for success framework it's like or just in other words just planning for sex say you need two school clinton vendors this many community members i came up with that i think there's flexibility communities to community
082so we could identify if you had any feedback of stakeholders that may not have been included in this draft i think it's whatever works best for us and that's very in terms of who we want input from on that committee um but i think along the way they'll also be opportunities for people that are not on that committee to provide input through focus groups and surveys yeah i was more just i'm more just trying to get a beat on like what for success does and what you do um but i appreciate that so you said you talked to the facilitator so there's like a dozen or so listed on the desi website which one did you or which one working so the person that i spoke to is the um retired superintendent that i've been
083working with this year as my mentor and so she is really familiar with duxbury um she's the former superintendent from whitman hanson and so she's been in districts doing walk throughs with us she's she's not very sought after facilitator so i was afraid to ask her if she had time to do one more school district but when she looked over our strategic plan and portrait of a graduate she felt as though we were in good shape to be able to go through this whole process but we had some good a good starting point so um so ruth gilbert whitner is a trained facilitator that would be working with us um she'd be the person that worked with us throughout the process and then she would continue on into the fall if we had some continued
084work to finalize the plan in the fall and uh so it's typically um around um i would say seven thousand dollars for the consultant for a facilitator to be able to help us with this process this was just to orient you and just um to get your blessing to be able to move forward to start setting some of the meetings start establishing reaching out to who might be interested in serving on this if there's any parents or teachers or students that are interested that are listening tonight um you can certainly reach out to any one of us but we'll also i'll put out just a call that will be starting this process so um if there's anyone interested in participating that we can um just let people know that they're welcome to let us know
085and we'll narrow down who eventually makes it onto the committee we don't want it to be too large because that's a really um it's important that that committee actually be able to get work done but we also don't want to exclude anyone that wants to be part of the process so we'll see if we can find a place for anyone that's interested whose grade range are you looking at for students um i think last time we did it we found ways to seek input from all four buildings um in terms of focus groups we held at chandler school and the students did a wonderful job so we'll probably be looking at possibly um fifth grade and up um but i'm not sure we can talk to mr e about whether we can have all been
086representatives but certainly middle school and high school students okay and your emails yes thank you absolutely okay i'd love that okay so our last discussion item is proposal for overnight spring lacrosse game mr donovan good evening again so i'm i'm here with another field trip request all right with the boys lacrosse team they have had a lot of relationship with a heart coaches somehow extended relationship with coach uh who coaches the very albany area and we have had uh sister schools or playing back and forth on the way for um uh out there and so this is that proposal it's a it's a one-day trip it's a little more than um 30 hours uh there in back i'll spend the night in boston's fall play at home hills uh eat with the team and then
087return on that in the proposal documents uh because uh the way i wrote the document the cost is approximately 137. 42 cents a person of that number approximately 14 officially covers the expenses associated with chaperones code of guidance is and obviously mess with us um and then whatever the specific rules are of birth high school um growth and that's wearing or distancing the locker rooms or whatever those are yeah all school rules are fine on you know when we go and travel somewhere we will follow the rules of the horsemen yes so next week for example if you were to change the policy and we go to another school of literate league to play our kids would be wearing masks and following all the rules of that post for christmas okay any other questions okay
088thank you okay next we have another opportunity for public comment the comments from the public section of the media opportunity for members of the community to address issues of concern about policy budget or administrative matters or share ideas about how we can work together to improve the x-ray public schools we value your input and respect divergent views we only ask that we limit the remarks at three minutes and we're training for mailing provinces with individual members of the school community thank you we have a sign up sheet on the podium if anybody wants to come up just say your name and your address um first of all i just want to say uh uh thank you to the staff i actually found your comments uh very insightful and something really about figuring out the false
089your teachers and their students and i know today's news kind of thought some people might survive something but i was actually very impressed and i think your input will help us on the committee or i'm sure the community members find it very helpful making that decision today so thank you and also for the um the student reps i find you actually very impressive as well as the first time i've attended a person there are three young boys in the school system 12. i'm sure they'd be very happy to have folks like you representing them and the students so thank you i would just say um the primary premise of my comments are sort of putting putting the kids first the kids in the school system i think over the last couple of years as adults
090we've been put in a difficult position a lot of times having to make adult decisions so the kids unfortunately don't have a voice and i think going forward with where we are today with this pandemic now hopefully at the end um i really want to go with the comments of putting the kids first uh during the last couple years um as i read the press release from jessie this is the sentence the decision was made in consultation with infectious disease physicians the massive department of public health and other medical experts um these folks are both consulting the governor his counsel and the destiny council separate groups but medical experts that are from the city and i think we can all agree the city of austin is one of the medical capitals of the world healthcare
091capital of the world so we had some very insightful input before they made that decision today and really i just want to read the popular term used uh to express underlying ethical rules of modern medicine specific specifically physicians and epidemiologists the term called do no harm so any recommendation they make is under that promise of do no laws and that's the first sort of uh hurdle to clear to make a decision like the movie mass mandates or making uh mass optional in schools one other piece here and the same release that founded after was uh this was from coach o'reilly during the past two years uh the impact over 19 on children has caused the strain on the mental health emotional well-being and academic success where we need to now be in a place where
092we can provide young people additional relief from cohort 19 restrictions so they can continue to return to normalcy in the classroom and again operating under that promise of do no harm putting the kids health and them first they made that decision across the board uh what they think is something that i don't want to overlook so when you make your uh decisions whether it's another important time just sort of keep that uh keep that in the back your mind if you should and finally i just have one thing i'd like to submit to the committee it's uh i get 104 families and i apologize it's probably quite a bit more now at the time of night but we just put them together this afternoon uh they would like um these families are offering support of
093immediately ending the mass mandate in our school one appropriate based on the date setting mr gambino aligned um we asked that one given the opportunity that the human physical to end the mandate uh for all children industrial public schools so i have this i can electronically or yeah thank you thank you very much appreciate it we appreciate your coming here tonight nice to see you anybody else you'd like to please thank you [Music] optional i did want to make a comment i was listening on soon earlier and there was a comment about um wishing some of the families who would sign that letter i'd actually come here in person to the meeting and i know the mask vote agenda item was added today and i did speak to quite a few families to sign that
094letter and it was just hard for them to reschedule and get child care this evening but it certainly wasn't out of disrespect or not caring um enough to be here i just wanted to do something that i had prepared children of all ages need to see their fellow human beings with expressions in order to be able to interact richly and wholly yet we have been denying our children these crucial opportunities for social emotional and intellectual engagement undermining both their happiness and their potential in the process we now know that fascinating people can spread this virus back and forth and so there should be no need to wait for an 80 vaccination threshold in the k through 6 grades it's time to end the mass mandates and let parents choose for their children or children for
095themselves if they're in high school if they want to wear a house thank you i appreciate coming here tonight thank you and also appreciate your comment about the average gender item thank you for that okay anybody else republican all right we have uh two agenda items for us one is a vote to approve the overnight springlet box game that means motion to approve the spring overnight spring will cross games [Music] they couldn't hear the details and we were discussing the um okay right so the motion to approve the overnight spring lacrosse game just carried unanimously now we need some motions about amending our face covering policy e b c f a and uh the discussion earlier was that we would split it into two votes one for the high school and one for the remaining
096school high school middle school and one for everybody else so i will i think we're clear amongst ourselves so i'll let you guys go ahead and say the motion loudly uh i move that we um amend the face cutting policy for the middle and high school to reflect a optional mask man an optional masking beginning monday february 14 14 valentine's day should we add consistent with destiny guidance consistent with deafy guidance okay all in favor okay i hear that that motion carried unanimously uh so then we need a second motion regarding romanian schools [Music] covering policy uh to reflect optional masking across the district k through pre-k through 12 um consistent with the governor's announcement beginning february that motion also carries unanimously that our next meeting will be wednesday march uh ninth location tva uh
097tva uh start time six pm without any other items i'd like a motion to adjourn all in favor [Music] all right unanimous have a good night everyone [Music]