001you should be going to youtube okay so i'd like to call the meeting of the narragansett regional school district school committee to order your meeting remotely um as per the emergency orders from the governor so um let me see here we'll start with the pledge of allegiance and i believe mrs matson do you have your flag for us again and if we can all stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all i'd like to announce that this meeting is being live streamed and recorded by templeton community tv it's also out on the local cable stations as well and we thank you tctv for your help in
002partnering with us to make these meetings available and let me just see here okay so the first order of business has to do with the minutes from october 21st i made a um a chairperson error when we voted on the minutes we didn't have a majority to approve them and because we had a quorum but it still was four to one so that's not an actual majority for our committee though so i would like to go through the motion of reapproving those uh formality of reapproving those minutes so that we do it properly so we had already looked at these minutes for october 21st i would take a motion to approve the minutes of october 21st 2020 um as presented [Music] second and i have a were there any questions or comments on the minutes
003seeing none will do a roll call vote uh mr marks [Music] yeah mrs matson mrs matson yes guardian yes and mrs hughes says i so now we actually have a majority for that vote and those minutes are approved um our next item um on the agenda was to approve the minutes of november 12th unfortunately mrs varney didn't have a chance to um get them all completed and before sending them to the committee prior to the meeting so we'll hold off on the november 12th until the next meeting that we have next up we have um payroll i would uh take a motion to recommend to accept the bills and peril warrants as presented [Music] somebody's got really bad static that wasn't um any questions or comments on the bills um yes this is yes mrs
004cosil this is causal i can't hear you i'm going to skip over you i'll come back to you in a moment mrs matson yes this is guardian yes and mrs says yes mrs cosil her screen she's frozen does appear she's frozen um i'll give one more try and we'll try and get her back on um we do have five votes in favor so we do have a majority um yes okay i hear mrs cosil now she did say yes so we do have uh that was unanimous so we've passed the bills so next um before i go on to our i'm next trying to take those before we go on to our next um appearance i just want to announce who's on the call um for the school committee we have mr marks this is
005robichrod mr kozil mrs matson this is chartier myself mrs hughes and mrs triffalo is just joining our meeting and it is 505. thank you hello um we have dr casimir we have assistant superintendent police we have anne-marie geister our business manager we also have the principal of the high school uh colby young we have the assistant principal of the high school janet brown just want to write that down because i see you but i didn't name them and we also have a couple of students um i see i'm just going to look on my screen i see patrick warden abby bennett callie weadle and i think that's the three that i see now and we'll get to you guys in just a second because we'll have an introduction to you i also see mrs parker
006is um here she doesn't have video on but she is on the screen and i'm sure that we'll see her momentarily when it's her turn to speak um and with that i'm going to turn it over to first dr kazavant um to talk about our student representatives and i'm sure he'll turn it over for their introduction well thank you madam pierre so um good evening everyone uh so this has really been a long time coming we've been trying to figure out when would be a good time um and we really did want to uh do this live but it just we just don't know when that's gonna happen so um as we started a couple years ago we have student representatives to the school committee generally we have two um and you know this year
007um we still have two but uh we have a very active group and i believe and i'm gonna let mr uh mr young get into this a little bit but um we have actually some some backups to those to those uh to those representatives so i'll turn it over to mr um mr young so he can introduce the four and the primaries and of course the alternates you know as they said thank you dr casavann so colby young principal of the high school uh janet brown and i the assistant principal miss brown and i are incredibly proud to introduce briefly to you the student representatives i want to first thank the school committee and our wider community for supporting students being on this committee uh miss hughes in particular has been incredibly helpful to us
008in making sure that we have student representation um in our district and i just really want to say thank you um the students i'm about to introduce to you are like so many of our other students an absolute shining light um to our community and to our school and we really could not be uh more proud of them so we have four representatives three of them in attendance today and as dr casavant mentioned the hope is that each one of them will um have some face time with you all and provide the committee with excellent representation every member here was voted on by an open election by their peers to serve as part of the state student advisory council and then additionally help support our school um and so without further ado i would like
009to introduce to you the juniors first so as ms hughes mentioned um and then i'm going to have the students say a word or two a quick word or two about themselves um we have uh miss samantha lovewell miss lovewell is diligently working uh this evening so could not be in attendance uh case in point of the responsibility and the dedication uh we have uh mr patrick warden um who is an 11th grader uh patrick would you be willing to say a couple words about yourself yeah sure um so yeah patrick gordon 11th grade um [Music] i'm uh um let's see your interest patrick yeah well for you this year would be great um i'm in uh mostly you know ap and honors courses um i'm i really like history that's probably what i plan
010on on studying later in life um in college and and what not um potentially going on to teach or well we'll see um just don't breeze over that patrick that's that's really the that is a highlight which you pause and go i'm going to be a teacher let it hang for a minute and then move on this is this is an important thing okay all right pretty impressive reading collection behind you patrick there yeah like your graduate level international relations star wars there yep i think that's uh that's yeah thank you patrick appreciate that so as i mentioned miss samantha lovewell is working tonight so i'm going to move into the 12th grade students uh so miss abby bennett who will be one of the primary representatives working with school uh committee abby could you
011say a couple words about yourself please phil hi my name is abby i'm in 12th grade as you mentioned i'm very active in band and theater and i also really like doing scouting so i'm in scouts psa and girl scouts and then looking into the future i want to major in environmental science thank you very much abby and finally we have miss cali lewin also a 12th grader callie if you could go ahead and say a word or two about you you'd all appreciate it [Music] hi i am also creative i love to travel i love free and i'm planning on going to clash i think we might have missed the end of cali's did callie freeze or is that me oh i think she okay great so uh cali and uh abby uh will
012be the primary uh but we have a system worked out where patrick and samantha will also be working with you all and i just wanna say thanks so so much for the opportunity to come before you and introduce these wonderful students uh miss brown and i are incredibly proud thank you great thank you and welcome to abby and callie and patrick and samantha um and we're very excited to have you as a part of our committee this year as our student representatives and we look forward to you bringing to us things that are going on in the school and offering commentary um and mr young i'll circle back with you and we can talk a little bit about um what expectations the committee has just based on what we've done in the past and anything
013you might want to change with that so i could reach out to you and we can talk a little bit so you can give some guidance to the student reps and have them prepared for um our next meeting wonderful thank you thank you and thank you um to our student reps for being here um you're certainly welcome to hang out and um you know to watch and and uh even have commentary if you do on our meeting um if you have to drop off if you've got homework and other things we certainly understand that um but you're certainly welcome to hang out with us for this evening so thank you right and thank you mr young and miss brown um for coming tonight and doing the introductions and for supporting the students um as you
014know i'm a big advocate for student voice so i'm hoping that um our reps will have some good voice for us um that we can listen to and then react to so thank you all right um next up we have public input um and as far as i know there was no public input that came in this up until this evening to be read we will keep an eye on the chat stream and i see there's nothing out there yet but if some comments come across as we continue with our meeting if we can address them during the meeting we will otherwise um you know we'll get to them as soon as we can or respond offline to those public comments next up we have the ndea and i see mrs parker's smiling face so
015i'll turn it over to you mrs parker i don't have much to share out just the fact that um it's the teachers and students have smoothly transitioned back into remote for a couple of weeks um it seems like it's a little easier this time now that we've been through it so hopefully hopefully it's a couple weeks somewhere back in but everyone's right back at it today and back to teaching remotely and the students were in their meetings when they were supposed to be today so hopefully everything goes well and we can get them back to school great thank you and again i thank everyone you know as as like we continue to say and i know everyone on the committee says you know for all of the work that goes into it's not easy um
016to i believe oscillate is our word from one um form to another of instruction and we appreciate the hard work and effort um and the the struggles that that go along with that and and uh you know i just wanna say thank you to everybody um teacher staff um for making that happen and doing it um somewhat seamlessly i say somewhat because obviously it's tough with everybody remote um but it seems to be working and i'm glad to hear that it was a little smoother this time and we have to thank the parents too for trying to be as flexible as they can i know it's got to be hard especially when you have little ones but everyone's you know doing the best they can and just trying to keep everybody safe right and that's
017a very good point thank you for uh reminding me that yes thanks do go out to the parents the guardians and the community as a whole to make this happen for us so great thank you uh next up we have just an update um a status update on fy21 i'll say a few words and then dr casavant if you want to add anything there's not much to say we're still waiting for final numbers from the state to come out the governor had redone his budget the house ways and means got together the senate got together um they're in the amendment process so they're still voting on that so there's not much of an update on fy21 i don't know if dr kaz event you want to add anything to that yeah thank you ma'am chair
018no um there really isn't i know that we've seen the you know the uh the usual list of of numbers such as um you know transportation circuit breaker and those numbers you know they'll evan flow um until until they actually land on an actual number so but you're right there's a lot more to come i think they're that you know these trying they're trying to keep us um you know they're trying to keep us as balanced as possible or as is level funded as possible i think that um we'll see um you know because level funded isn't really level funded uh because things of course costs go up but um yep we wait but we're still going to uh move forward with our budget um certainly our expenses are known or at least you know
019as known as can be and we'll start we'll start that process in the very near future so that way we can get a jump on it like we did last year great thank you next up we have the business managers report um mrs geister had put out some files for us to review um i will turn it over to ms geister for any sort of updates or information that she wants to bring to our attention first um i just want to talk about the grants a little bit they're they're pretty much all going they're all in full force now we're kind of concentrating on spending down the one that expires december 31st that's um part of the cares reopening money so that's kind of my top priority to make sure that one is on track
020and doing what it's supposed to be the other ones are just kind of falling into place most of them are covering salaries so there's not a lot to um do with them except monitor them and as you can see from the general fund that's it's right on track um we have a good bottom line right now going into sort of like the second half of the year coming up um so we will keep an eye on that and make sure that it's being spent down appropriately sorry i was muted um anyone on the committee have any questions or comments from ms geister on the numbers seeing none um we'll move on thank you miss geister for the update and um i'm sure that once we get probably through december i will have a better feel
021for um you know what the the year will look like because that'll take us about halfway through so thank you for putting those numbers together for us uh next up we're going to go into covid updates and any votes if necessary if we needed to take any we're going to discuss the lists that we have transportation school lunches athletics instructional updates facilities including the ventilation so um whatever there um i did want to start with um i think this dr kasim you want to start with the school lunch um topic um because i did want to just make a note that the school committee has received a series of letters um from staff members with uh commentary on the school lunch program and i wanted to be sure that we acknowledge the fact that our
022staff has sent us information um and that we were acknowledging it and also taking it under advisement and sharing it um if the committee i i put the the letters out there for the committee because i believe we all received the same ones um if it's the will of the committee i'd be happy to read them if you think that would be helpful what is the does the committee with the committee like that i see some head shaking okay um so i'm going to just take a few moments and just read some of the communications that we have received um from some of our staff members regarding school lunch and if everyone remembers this is about i believe it was hybrid phase b which would be adding school lunches into the school day so first
023i have a letter from mrs mandy fliss good morning school committee members i wanted to take a minute to sincerely thank you for all of your hard work and continued efforts for our students and staff this year you've been faced with difficult budget issues and making decisions for a school district during a global pandemic and you've handled it with grace and strength our union has informed us that we're looking to start full days in mid-november and i can't tell you just how excited i am to hear this as a teacher in the high school and as a parent to a third grader i believe the students need as much in-person time as we can safely manage i'm willing to do whatever it takes to give my students some normalcy during these difficult times most importantly
024i wanted you to know that there are staff who are grateful for the hard work that you and dr kazavan are doing to move us along to the next phase of hybrid i for one support that decision and thank you for your efforts so uh next is the letter that we received and this one here um this was from the kindergarten team of gene tui justine welch and martha poultrepec dear members of the nrsd school committee we come to you as the kindergarten team with our concerns about moving forward with the full-day hybrid b model that was proposed at the school committee meeting last night october 21st we would like you to be aware of our concerns as you make this important decision first the later elementary start time from our own experience as kindergarten
025teachers and as research shows all students learn best in the morning especially the younger ones this later start time will affect time on learning and student performance this latest start time may also affect our working families in adverse ways snack time at this time we currently use the cafeteria two classes at a time for our snack break we cannot safely social distance our students for snack time in our classrooms because they must be six feet apart when eating if we're to have snack in our classrooms we'll have to have two separate snacks half the class will eat we will disinfect and then the other half of the class will be able to eat snack time will significantly increase due to this procedure therefore decreasing time on learning lunch we're concerned about the amount of time
026it is going to take to serve all students approximately 45 plus students per grade level within a 30-minute lunch time this will also affect the amount of student of time students have to eat we're concerned with the amount of time it will take to profit properly disinfect the cafeteria between grade levels with this many students in the cafeteria at once how is it going to affect contact tracing as well as increased exposure paris our class sizes continue to grow weekly when will our powers be returning to the classroom to help support our students needs we're told that we would get them back but have not heard when specials if we're moving forward to the hybrid b model where the students be receiving unified art classes they are currently fully remote now it's our hope that
027all students will get the opportunity to experience a true full day of school and all that it entails including title 1 and intervention services in person hybrid responsibilities between the planning and the stress zoom check-ins to remote kids the grading the meetings and the 9-12 instructional videos we make weekly to assist with the weekly packets that are sent home adding even more to the day seems daunting if impossible we feel strongly that moving to a full-day hybrid model is not in the best academic interests of our children as a number of coveted cases rise in the state of massachusetts we believe that moving to a full-day hybrid model at this time will put students staff and families at risk we would like nothing more than having all of our students face to face for full
028day learning we look forward to when it is safe to do so thank you for taking the time to hear our concerns that was the kindergarten team this was a email from uh denise moulton good morning uh good afternoon school committee members it's been brought to my attention that we're considering a full day hybrid plan for our district i'd like to share with you some of my concerns after 10 days of intense training we opened schools uh we opened the schools school doors to in-person learners as well as cohort a and b it took a great amount of time to not only teach ourselves but the students the routines protocols and procedures we the teachers students and administration have worked extremely hard to be sure that we are following social distancing protocols mask safety and
029proper cleaning pre and post cleaning for every class these tasks are never ending and we constantly remind students about the safety protocols along the way a few more trainings such as star cpr first aid and teach point all while teaching our students i do love my job and i am super appreciated appreciative that i am able to do my job and be able to talk interact and teach the students in person and both my cohorts remote as well i do believe the students feel the same way as we want to stay open the days i should have made these the words bigger i'm sorry the days go by so fast there is no time for the restroom till closing time lol please know that i'm not complaining just painting the picture i do believe after
030all these weeks of being in school i feel like it is a well-oiled machine with a few bumps here and there the students have settled in and finally found their groove as well as the teachers my feeling is that if it's not broken why try to fix it we're finally feeling like there's some kind of consistency and that feels really good we're all in this together for sure i hope we stay the way we are and continue to connect teach embrace and enjoy our days in the schedule cohort system that we have now i just want what's best for our narragansett community i fear if we move to something with less restrictive guidelines that'll lead us to closing our school doors and i pretty please do not want that to happen i know this is
031just one person's opinion but think of it as a backpack with all our students staff and admin inside of it we're in this together hashtag it's against the thing with my best intentions again this is moulton uh this is from mrs michelle smith dear school committee members and dr kazavant i want to thank all of you for discussing and advocating for a full day hybrid schedule the executive board does not speak for all of us as i fully agree with moving forward to a full day model we've done an amazing job thus far keeping students and faculty staff while managing an effective alternative learning environment for our students and i finally firmly believe that we can safely move into full days while i agree with the executive board that we are burning the candle at
032both ends and have taken on many extra hours of planning creating all digitally accessible materials teaching live and zooming at the same time grading etc i also feel it is for the betterment of our students to be in person as much as possible lunch duty does not have to be complicated and if staff members feel uncomfortable they can double up on masks and wear a face shield it can be done and we can all accomplish this together it's time to move forward and i appreciate that you are considering a change to the current schedule this next one is from ms kate cormier dear school committee chair hughes this was also sent to all the committee but this is my my specific letter firstly i'd like to thank you for all you've done to ensure a
033safe reopening for our teachers and students in the narragansett regional school district that said i am alarmed to hear that the district has begun to move forward with a plan utilizing full days of in-person instruction as cases of covet 19 begin to surge in the area as a parent of three school-age children i understand the desire for students to be spending more time in person at school however as a teacher at templeton elementary school i find this decision to move forward to be one with little to no substantial benefits and huge risks this plan is significantly out of touch with the reality that hybrid teaching poses at the elementary level and one that has not taken into consideration the needs and desires of the teachers who are pouring their hearts into reaching every student right
034now there are several reasons for which i am adamantly opposed to moving toward full days the incorporation of lunch within the school day poses a significant increase in disease transmission risk the website for our nation's center for disease control advises for the closing of indoor communal use spaces our cafeteria should be closed basically on that soul based solely on that recommendation furthermore mit recently published an article that warns of the inevitable spike in cases through the winter months as people move indoors this specific article states it's now increasingly clear that tiny particles carrying the virus can remain airborne possibly for hours meaning they can accumulate in a room until someone breeds them in it's not enough to simply avoid standing too close to an infected unmasked person indoors people can be infected by someone who's
035standing 20 or more feet away even if they're wearing a mask and even if the infected person has left the room that's because the virus can travel further and linger for a longer period of time building up through the space end of the quote to think we would use our indoor cafeteria space to hold dozens of unmath students who are eating lunch is reckless and provides no increase to on time to time on learning finally the school committee should know how much the workload has already increased for teachers in the hybrid mode we're overwhelmed and burning out at a rate i have never experienced elementary students do not have the developmental capacity to attend to synchronous live streaming of classroom instructions to that end many of our in-class learning opportunities cannot be recreated virtually for
036at-home learners to participate simultaneously therefore we are spending our afternoons and evenings making instructional videos to accompany the learning packets we send home with student students each week we are giving our all and then some to our students much to the detriment of our own well-being and that of our own families i invite you to come into our classrooms shadow us for a day and then decide if you feel we should put even more on the line by increasing the length of our in-person school day and opening up our cafeteria for lunch very respectfully submitted i said kate cormier third grade teacher templeman elementary school and then the last one that i have is from mr shea tower hughes members of the school committee i hope the events of the last week have made clear
037that the superintendent's recommendation that nrsd moved to the hybrid b model was premature and ill-advised cases of covet-19 are on the rise nationwide statewide and locally an unmasked lunch in the cafeteria even at six feet is unsafe for both students and staff please do not rush us into something dangerous again from mr tower hughes so those were the um the communications that we've received as a school committee as i said i wanted to to read them because i think it's important that they go on the record um to show that one you know we're paying attention and listening to what everyone's saying um and there would be a record of these comments and concerns so um with that i'm actually um going to apologize and turn it over to dr kasman to follow that up
038um and hopefully you can speak to you know lunch and then some of the other uh related issues and items that we have with our covet 19 update thank you madam chair yeah so i think that um you know i you know the benefit of hindsight you know when we when we developed our plan so many months ago you know hybrid a and hybrid b really was born from the necessity of making sure that we that we had planned accordingly but again you know that's what a you know another bring up old bad news but you know the um 112th budget was also something that we we were contending with at the time in terms of staffing and you know so we knew that we had to we had to wait um or at the
039very least so um you fast forward to november which you know we've we've talked about and we've um we've created a plan for for lunch to ultimately you know extend um the uh the in-person time uh through the uh the balance of the day whether you be cohort a or b um and uh because one you know we feel that obviously when kids are in school um it's the best thing for them uh two we think um that it could be done safely um and there is um a body of i would say evidence uh research et cetera that says that so now you know what we've we're certainly not going to embark on this you know um haphazardly so we we understand that right now we've um we have a situation in which we're
040uh we're in full remote which we can talk about in a few minutes but uh the local if you know it's funny because you never i never compare us really uh to anyone quite quite honestly and uh but you know we do have neighbors around us or you know our fellow districts whom are offering lunch um whether it be at the elementary or at the high school whatever they may have in person and they've been doing so since the very beginning um you know you know since the very beginning and although when folks when all of us go in and out of remote as we as we all have um over the past you know three four months what we understand is that um from our neighbors is that um it wasn't because of lunch
041um you know so i think that we it's it's inevitable that we're going to go to lunch um why do i say that because well one it's in our plan two um it's it's the right thing to do and three we need to prepare uh quite frankly to be ready to provide lunch um for the time when we are either asked politely back by the state or told abruptly by the state um to resume um you know full days which i don't believe is is is on the way i don't believe that we are um that's going to happen anytime soon but the fact of the matter is that it's coming and that's all of our goal so what we've done and what i've promised to do and so far have almost completed the entire
042plan is that we have administratively mapped out lunch in both schools both at templeton elementary and at the middle and high school utilizing both cat well at the at tes that a little bit of their gym but most of their cafeteria and up at the middle high school a portion of the middle school gym in the cafeteria the numbers are fairly low um in each i don't have those numbers in front of me but we we administratively sat down we we mapped it out we talked to the food service folks of course then we set up the mock again and showed the board of health etc and to see what they thought about the plan um you know there was there were no issues from their end my next our next um step and i
043was going to do it actually tomorrow but we're a little busy yesterday to get the information out so what i plan to do on getting all things being equal is that next wednesday i invite any of the staff who can who can make it out of course we'll send this information out um in the school committee to see what uh the plan uh that we have right now get some feedback um you know again more more brains are better than one and if we can um if we can tweak something if we can improve uh something we will again without seeing it i mean you need to see these you know six foot apart and facing in one direction or facing a wall or etc so what i what i've asked folks who and i
044appreciate i do i do appreciate um the feedback it it inevitably is the next step um we haven't made any we haven't made any rash decisions um so far uh they've all been based on safety um both for staff and for student we've been abundantly um you know we've made those decisions um with abundance of caution i'm almost sick of writing that i'm gonna have to think of something else um with an abundance of caution but we've we have done that and this is just the next step uh quite frankly um you know again winchenin monitec gardner ash west quabbin athol one school or another if not all depending um are having lunch and so we not because they are but because it's good for kids we're going to have lunch as well um so
045we're going to continue that we're going to continue those plans um and we're going gonna do so you know fidelity um and with safety in mind um but everyone is gonna have a voice and so far we just haven't we just haven't been able to get to the wednesday um where folks can you know to invite uh the school committee and of course the teachers then to um to do that oops pardon me i'm gonna say this though um because we'll get into my spiel a little bit later about going full remote um it is st education is staff intensive everyone knows that there you you can't replicate what we do um the human the human being is needed and necessary we of course are short staff given what we need to do for covet
046element you know when we had these conversations with the uh with the parents um and the community um i was very candid and said look we've had three or four lunch monitors you know posted for i forget how much time at this point but we're going to repost them but we're going to need to have people apply and uh to be lunch monitors uh quite frankly um it's we just again we just don't have the sheer number of bodies to do everything and everything as well you don't have as many kids you're right but we're also having to space out and do things very very differently than we than we've ever had before so um it is going to be a matter of staffing um to the safety part if i may uh real quick
047i understand that the concern from what i can i can gather is that you'll have x amount of kids in one space at six feet with no masks okay so it the the question becomes well that poses that potentially poses a risk back for the you know for the teacher or for someone who may be doing lunch duty etc the fact is though the adults will never have their masks off so it my point is that one could argue that there could be schools you know um a school-related case uh transfer right because if you know if you're in one spot and people are breathing and talking and like we're talking about right now with thanksgiving etc um then okay but it it doesn't that does not necessarily translate back to um you know being
048unsafe for staff as long as folks are still taking the same precautions that we have diligently throughout you know since september so and i've asked those questions directly not only to the board of health but to my to the to my colleagues and i'm going to knock on wood because i have the worst we all we have the worst luck ever every time i say something it seems like you know it happens but we have not had a school-related transmission i don't believe we've had a school-aged transmission in any of the schools around us i could be wrong about that i know they don't keep track of everyone else but i don't believe there has been many if if any at all so i think we're i think we're in good um i think we're
049in good hands i think we have a we have a solid plan i certainly would look forward to folks feedback but um lunch is going to happen um we're going to do so you know cautiously and when it's appropriate but that that's that idea or that you know moving moving forward just not going to go away thank you um and i think it's that's an important message is is the whole um this whole time our plan has been to move towards serving lunch so um we we need to determine you know what are the logistics around doing that is it safe um so thank you for getting your team together to try and put those logistics um around that making lunch happen bringing the board of health and we look forward to when we have
050the opportunity to come in and see what it would look like so that we can give you feedback and more importantly that the teachers and the staff will be able to see what those plans are as well and offer feedback so um it's it's been it's it's been an interesting couple of weeks so i'm going to turn it back to you to kind of go into what's going on and some of the other options yes so um when we last left our heroes um last week we were you know we were buoyed by the fact that we had come out of uh another um remote and we were kind of you know we were kind of you know moving back into um what is now normalcy um the weekend didn't start off that great uh
051quite frankly uh we we started off um with um you know the notification of a positive um to a fourth grade member of our you know fourth grade community member um and that created of course a lot of the case tracing which our nurses do and um and then on or about well monday morning at some point um money after you know it was money late monday morning we were notified of um a member of our sixth grade community who um tested positive so you know these letters that i put out um i realize have kind of a um kind of a rubber stamp kind of feel to them they almost look like a you know a form letter and because we're you know we're putting out so many letters like there's only so many
052ways i can say that we have you know a positive but i this letter that we sent out yesterday was different because i wanted to make sure that folks understood you know the reasonings behind why why we make the decisions that we make and as i put two positive cases you know required the quarantine of with memory serves right 11 11 staff members 25 students and those are all possible right those are close contacts that now need to be traced and tested and quarantined etc so in a matter of almost well actually if you think about it one business day one school day i lost 11 staff members right off the bat um no district has the ability and what did we do so we we did we just quarantined one grade uh quite frankly
053and that was that's going to be the kind of thing that we can do but once we moved into another grade it became impossible to well again now we're up to at that point i believe was 30 35 to 637 on close contacts whatever i had said so those all those could potentially have more so you know in consultation with our school doc and um board of health we made we you know we made the decision um to do what we did um but you know that is uh the unfortunate reality that's gonna you know that's gonna take place for quite a bit here's the good news quite frankly is that we did it very quickly um we transitioned from hybrid into full remote within 12 hours probably less i don't remember when my letter
054went out but we had already you know transitioned from from that to full remote um honestly the you know there are a lot of all-stars here mvps but parents absolutely i'm granted they didn't like it i don't blame them i think they understood but they you know they were able to adjust our our teachers went right into it um there's no delay and those are the type of things that um we've been quote unquote training for so to speak um we're able to do that we don't want to lag time because we don't want kids to or adults quite frankly but um just to kind of you know kind of hang there for a bit until we can get our act together our act is together um we have an excellent hybrid model um we
055we have probably one of the stronger um uh you know technological infrastructures around thanks to our tech team and the commitments of so many um so we're able to move in and out pretty pretty seamlessly um that's good news um our our medical team is our nursing team worked all weekend they case traced and spoke to i think it was 80 parents it's 80 parents in three days that's not easy because there's not like a list they talked to one parent they figured out okay now i gotta go to this parent now i gotta go to this person um that's a lot of work over period friday saturday and sunday that's what that's what needs to take place in order for me to be able to make decisions based on what we're going to do
056next so is is as fine-tuned and machine as you can possibly have in these situations we have them uh we do we have one we have it just like this and we can come in and out i feel bad for parents i feel bad for the i feel bad for our students we still have patrick here online callie and abby are still with us um i think and the fact of the matter is that um they you know a lot of the stuff that they want to do are being we had sports planned we had games planned this was the last week of athletics um for fall one season all of that was cancelled it these are just you know just one disappointment we had crazy hair day for gosh sakes i mean if if
057we can't have crazy hair day folks i mean where where are we at um but these are the things that it seems like one disappointment after another um and our kids and our staff are handling this but in one of those letters it says being stressed beyond belief um i can absolutely vouch for that our teachers are incredibly stressed our parents are stressed our kids are stressed um it is it's they are working harder than they ever had before because you know not for nothing you know it took ford motor company quite a long time to switch for making cars into respirators and thankfully they did it took my teachers two weeks two weeks we changed the learning model i'm going to say to you that if if there's better out there let me know
058um quite frankly our teachers changed to a completely different model in two weeks um and that just doesn't happen um just on a day-to-day basis so but it's an incredible amount of work and so we're trying to be as consistent as possible but we have to be safe and so our goal is to come back into school every time we need to get our kids back into school we need to get our teachers back into school we need longer time in school you know we know that's what's the best but you know we're going to need some help again and where do we need help so folks again complaining and so i i answered as many questions as i possibly could we need substitutes miss lafreniere was looking for one teacher for an hour and
059a half and a substitute one substitute for an hour and a half which didn't come to fruition because we went full remote if it takes an hour and a half to find one substitute and i need 11 let's just let's just say it's not going to happen we need a bit we need a bigger pool of subs every time this happens i say i say something people say where can i sign up to be a sub i say again it's on our school district website everything can be done right from there susan varney will be in touch we need substitute teachers and so the more substitute teachers we have the the even more flexible we can be when we have these situations either by grade um or by building or whatever the case is and
060we'll be able to keep moving forward so our update is this we're getting better at coming in and out of remote that's not a good thing i guess um because we don't want to come into remote we will because it's important and so that's that's the that's it's it's in order to keep everyone safe so um we're doing better at that but i'm happy to answer any questions i would imagine community members must be asking you questions or you know from the list serbs or anything to that effect thank you dr kazman um i have a question or a comment but i would love for you to address it um as these cases start to creep up on us i know communications have gone out in the past um but let's let's talk about if
061my my child or my family um contracts covet it gets a positive test who do i call so um it would be the easiest thing that i would say to that is to call the main office and and we will find if it's not the building principal or the school nurse to the nurse leader that's how that would go um we do we we receive a lot of we receive a lot of information from parents and parents have been fantastic so parents will either send us an email um if if it's like during the weekend let's say or it's at night or they'll call the main office we really what i'm to make it easy is just to call that main office or send an email um from the website um and we will we
062will take it from there we'll you know we'll put you in touch with the right person um and you know granted in the very beginning there were lots and lots of emails and it was hard to answer all of them but now they've kind of kind of fallen into a groove and so when we do receive it it's a lot easier to um you know to uh to move them to wherever we need to be but um to make it simple just call that main off your call or email you know the office great thank you um anyone on the committee have any questions or comments for dr casivant chris i have a quick question chris regarding the um in particular the lunch stuff i know that one of the big concerns that i've heard
063and i did see it in the letters was the um the turnover or the cleaning between shifts lunch lunch shifts like that can you just talk a little bit about that i know that um because of the covert we have reduced staffing and stuff like that i know rick has some some um the spraying equipment and things like that can you just talk about how we're gonna clean it and and how that happens so the um when we went through kind of our mock you know uh lunch you know the cafeteria monitors for example um they play you know you see cafeteria monitors mostly at the elementary level but um they play a big part in helping wipe down tables so we wouldn't spray we could we could spray them we could do that with
064the solvent which is you know healthy but we we would just wipe them down um or depending on the because if i'm thinking about the middle in high school there's no reason why that spray can't be sprayed then the and the student um can can wipe down their area but either one um you can go uh i don't think we have enough um we don't we don't have enough uh tables yet to go every other so what a lot of folks do is they they took student desks and let's say i've got i got six student desks okay and by the way every spot would be um some some kid spot for the year for case trading so in other words casavant front to the left and the next lunch would be you know geister
065and the next per you know there'd be the only certain certain uh spots but you would go every other so in other words i would sit and chair you know in seat one um and then when the next lunch comes in six feet late uh over there is seat two that's where lunch two starts and then i have an opportunity to clean seat one um we you know we probably you know thinking about all that we don't have enough tables chairs and all that stuff to do that but um we we don't have a lot of people in our lunches right now anyway um i think it's oh gosh it's maybe angry you can remember some of these numbers but maybe 60 in the calf and maybe 40 or 50 in the in the um
066in the uh gymnasium that's not a lot of kids when you're used to seeing 200 and 250 kids okay so we have all of our cafeteria staff lunches will always be pre-made um there'll be no lines so those folks will be available to us to um to help clean so we've got a pretty good plan when it comes to that thank you chris anyone else on the committee have any um questions or comments for dr kazavan okay um just just so that we um make a statement um obviously with going full remote everything has been paused i know that the athletic season was really ending anyway um i believe that on friday was the last day um i know we've got the f what is it winter winter one i forget what they're calling all
067these seasons um so i assume once we get back into school um some kind of notification will be sent out um as to what the status of of which sports and and whatnot will happen at that at that point in time yeah i just got off a meeting yesterday about ice hockey quite frankly so yesterday and um and uh basketball and so friday um friday they will uh the state slash miaa will push out kind of the um how will basketball look and what just like they did for fall one with a big packet of information about how each sport would work in fall they're going to put one out um for basketball hockey and i know there's one more sport but i cannot think about it i can't think of it right now um
068of course it's coming at a bad time right now um and a lot of folks in this area superintendents etc are are starting to in school committees are starting to you know think about what is um if it's if it's feasible or not quite honestly um but what we what we're led to believe right now and we won't know until friday um is that most of these sports will have zero um fans zero spectators um and you know basketball hockey we don't that's not all written in stone but um we don't know what the rules look like but um they're still pushing forward um and you know we'll see basketball and hockey were the two were two sports that folks were worried about the most when even when we were back this summer so i
069you know we'll have to figure it out great thank you um and just a follow-up to our meeting that we had last thursday where we had that wonderful report from our consultant on the hvac and the ventilation i don't know if you have any you want to give on um i know we were looking for a bid and some other things if you had anything that you wanted to add to that at this point so we put out the um we put out uh the request for quotes and um the it was uh we determined through that process that um that the uh mike neto who you had met um his company uh you know had the most desirable bid so they're actually gonna start wednesday tomorrow as a matter of fact and as promised
070and as is as as detailed they're going to start with those 17 rooms right off the bat um now that we have that and you know we have that moving forward um i'm going to send the report over to both towns um and you know certainly speak with you know templeton about the green communities piece and the things moving forward i don't know that we have an update on the maya grant um i'd look to embry for that but she would have she would have told us if if we yeah so we haven't got any word on that yet but we're still going to move forward because we we need to fix the you know the actuators and uh the pieces that need to be um fixed as we discussed so we're we're moving forward
071with that and that's that's a great thing great thank you okay i think we'll talk about um instructional updates etc i know miss police you're going to talk to us to us a little bit about that later um i think we've covered everything covid i'm sure we haven't covered everything covered related but the um the important things that we we needed to go over this evening was there anything um any other school committee member had questions or comments um or wanted to know something else about our plans okay um seeing none we'll move on to our next agenda item which was a strategic plan update and i know when we initially talked about this um we were like yep we're ready to do it i know some things have gotten busy and i just didn't
072know if dr kazamit you were prepared to talk about a strategic plan update today or not well thanks um to miss cake police we are um quite frankly so um we've we haven't done a lot of work to it because but we we have tried to tweak it as best we can um given what we're in because again when we made this you know a pandemic wasn't even you know no one even thought of about a pandemic so i'm really going to turn over to kate and kind of give her kind of quick overview and if you have any questions about you know direction or pace et cetera that'd be that you know we can go from there great thank you okay so i'm going to share my screen which has the um update on
073it um i i wanted to just start at the top and say um our vision has really served us well throughout this pandemic um we our mission excuse me we had um worked on this you know together as a group and then as you know with various partners and our mission is the nrsd is committed to providing a physically and emotionally safe learning environment that promotes academic success responsible relationships and civic engagement and that couldn't have served us better having that mindset as we move forward with our plans during these times so as you know we've done this before i'm sorry for scrolling and making you dizzy um in april i made updates in red so these updates are in purple i didn't want to lose our red update so i'm going to scroll again
074and you can see that we have three strategic objectives and under those we have five strategic initiatives so i am going to go kind of column by column and just share some um work that we've been doing so the first strategic initiative is around implementing standards-based curriculum maps and the outcome was that by the spring of 2020 we'd be using maps to guide our teaching i'm going to skip the red because we've talked about that but this project has been repurposed a little bit to allow teachers to adjust instructional calendars in light of our 170-day hybrid learning model to prioritize learning standards so rather than continue to or to finish writing some curriculum maps that really don't fit the circumstances right now with 170 days and hybrid and sometimes remote we really have to prioritize
075because of the face time we have with kids what standards we're teaching and so teachers have worked on those instructional calendars to do that work another thing that we um did in this area around curriculum is that we had previously purchased into reading for grade k to five and we've expanded that to into literature for six and seven with the online component only because they really needed that online in order to um to teach in the manner that they have to in grade six and seven so that really wasn't um it's new to grade six and seven but it's um part of the the extension of that um original purchase that has served us so well and then this one here by the spring of we'll have some history maps written so again um teachers
076have been working on this in grades six to nine to align their curriculum to the new standards because there's a significant as you know civics component among other changes in the grades and as you know we did purchase we talked about this i think at academic subcommittee a history curriculum for grades five through eight so that has really helped with that curriculum work there so that's in in pretty good shape actually um the next one is around um research based instructional practices we have done some work on this what really i i wanted to highlight here which is kind of a good byproduct of our circumstances is that as a result of the learning that was required throughout the district by teachers at all grade levels we've they really have learned and continue to learn
077new strategies to effectively utilize um teaching tools remotely and in person and using technology which is really um kind of a side benefit that they've been on a you know steep learning curve it's been stressful but they really have risen to that and we've done our best to support them by providing the training that they need and this has moved the teachers along the samer model which i just want to show you this graph this graphic thank you sorry of the sammer model so when districts adopt uh technology often they follow this progression first they use the technology just as a substitution a direct substitute they were doing a worksheet on paper now they're doing a worksheet on using the technology then they move to augmentation where it might still be a direct substitute but
078it functionally improves that product after that is modification where the technology actually allows you to significantly redesign your task because of the technology and last is redefinition which is where the technology helps you to create new tasks that previously you might not have even thought of and i think a fair number of our teachers have really moved up in this model it's not as it's not something where every single minute every time you're in class that you would maybe be at the modification level or the redefinition level but teachers are really using the technology um in in these more refined ways so i think that has been a side benefit that has really um helped us this area of research-based instructional practices the next area is using our multi-tiered system of support to provide interventions
079for students and we had a a goal of using star reading and and star math assessments k to a and we've actually exceeded that goal because of covid we really needed to extend that to 12th grade and so we have implemented star reading and star math assessments k to 12 and all teachers um completed the beginning of the year that's what boi is administration of those so we have data from from the beginning of well from this month let's say right or the month previous to now which is our beginning of year administration to really look at what gaps students might have as a result of our spring closure and and going in and out of remote and so forth so that's a really terrific tool i have to give a shout out to i
080don't know if they're still here but i have to give a shout out to the high school because they took this task of implementing this assessment in reading and in math for grades 8 through 12 really and they had never done it before and they accomplished it very expeditiously and very professionally so that was awesome in addition we have special ed staff english language staff and teachers who are on student assistance teams using some of the data that we get from that the next one is similar but instead of academic using tiered supports for social emotional and we had um by the spring of 2020 that was you know when we went remote right that we would expand this system to include social emotional learning and supports for students and the district really has expanded
081its clinical and student support teams in addition this really should be a separate bullet um templeton elementary teachers this fall received training on trauma-informed practices which are very relevant because the persistent stress of the covet situation has you know causes um difficulties this we're on target for this which is terrific as well by the spring of 2021 we wanted a data cycle of inquiry where we were using data to look at social emotional learning and behavior needs and the district is in the process of implementing a social emotional learning survey that's going to be done three times this year the first time is in the coming couple weeks all teachers throughout the district will do this survey about a set of students so they'll they do the survey for each student but they'll each have
082like a set of 20 students to do and then in addition all students in grades 7 through 12 complete the survey for themselves to answer regarding their own social emotional um status and needs and then we'll use that data to think about um supports that we can provide for our students you know this winter and then we'll repeat the with the survey in mid-year and then at the end of the year to kind of help us to improve those practices so that's that's really um terrific and i would say that that's really um you know kudos should go to matt holloway and ashley niggle in the student support office for bringing that survey to implementation and then the last one is around communication and the administrative team will be working on this in december through
083you know the winter time december through february we've certainly had lots of clear communication and lots of communication but because the need for communicating has been so great that actually putting down a formal process on paper has kind of taken a back seat so that's pretty much it for our five initiatives you know within these three objectives great thank you for that update um is there anyone on the committee who have any questions or comments and unfortunately i can't see everyone so just feel free to unmute yourself and i'll stop sharing so you can have a bigger screen thank you um anyone with comments or questions um i will make one then again thank you for putting the update together um i know when we initially started with the planning for the pandemic back in
084in march we had a lot of conversations around our ability to follow those objectives and initiatives in our strategic plan and what would it do to us um and i say that purposely because it was doing something to us this this panda um to prevent us from reaching those goals so it really looks like we've been able to take um the situation we're in and apply it to those initiatives which to me says that we actually created a strategic plan that's flexible and pertinent to this district so i want to just congratulate you again on putting such a well thought plan out together and of course as your school committee has approving it of course we're wonderful too but thank you for doing all the hard work um i think it really speaks um to
085the fact that we have a thumb really on the pulse of what this district needs yeah yep that we need to get there um and it's it's exciting to hear some of the modifications and changes um that we have been able to exceed some of the the goals we set for ourselves so thank you um for that we look to hearing a lot more um i'm especially interested um once uh matt holloway and his team have a chance to look at that social emotional information here's some feedback from that because i think i've heard everybody on this committee and everyone that i've spoken to an administration and staff speak to the fact that social emotional is huge not just for the students but for our our entire staff and the community so it'll be interesting
086to hear some of the feedback that we get from doing those um you know uh assessments and what strategy i i agree and i i think that um the fact that we've stayed more or less on target with our plan is really a testament to the fact that our plan reflects what we believe in about learning and what we believe in about our district and so that doesn't change based on the circumstances anybody else have any comments or questions okay seeing none we'll we'll keep this on the agenda every um you know a few months for updates so we look forward to hearing more as we continue to make progress against those initiatives so uh let's see what my page sorry okay next up um school committee comments is there any any other comments from
087the school committee on anything at this point okay seeing none uh we will i'm sorry mrs cosil yes can you hear me am i coming through yes you are all right i just want to thank everybody for all the hard work i'm pretty proud of our district and brag about it to a lot of people so thank you teachers administration all staff custodians nice job all right thank you mrs coachell um any anyone else want to say anything okay so we'll move on at this point surplus items there were none uh to be had for this meeting so we'll pass over that um we have one item the student activity fee approval um for non-athletics when we met i think two meetings ago dr casavant had recommended that we not charge an athletic fee in
088further discussion we said you know there are a few other non-athletic related events or organizations or activities that we normally charge some sort of participation fee so i'm just going to turn it over to dr casavant for a recommendation um as to how we should handle those particular situations thank you madam chair so um they're they're few and far between um but they would be things like or activities like um like the band or you know it's funny because we just had this conversation i think it was a year ago or two years ago to actually charge your fee to for example to be part of the play or the band or gosh i'm i'm starting to to [Music] forget some others but there are very few extracurricular activities that we would that we would
089actually charge because they have an advisor okay so it's not just we're just charging because we can yeah there's it's an advisor and it's generally um uh generally it's time intensive et cetera et cetera so um again i think we were just i was concentrated on sports as we were trying to get that out the door but um we have had interest in a um i'm gonna get this name wrong miss lyons and if you're listening i apologize but it's the virtual um a virtual uh oh gosh abby do you know if you remember abby bennett if you're if you're listening right now i don't say it's not a virtual play but they've got something planned in which um they will do something virtually like a play um maybe it's virtual play i don't know
090um but those those are things that we are still going to try to do but we're certainly not going to um or we don't want to i'm not recommending that we um charge a user fee uh because again much of this may be dependent on whether or not we are in school or not so just like athletics and i'll be i'll come before you um again for winter one sports once we kind of figure out what you know how that's going to you know come about um for your you know for recommendations or with a recommendation in regards to use your fees for that as well hi if you'd like me to add in the um theater program we're trying to do like a zoom reading of a christmas carol or um try to do
091something like that and we've been trying to have like some zoom drama club meetings so we've been talking about independent projects that you know maybe we can present to the student body and community later on great thank you for that and put a happy that's wonderful i hope we can get them all done okay so based on dr kasimet's recommendation um that we would not charge user or participation fees for these types of events and i i'm going to apologize because i forget what what time frame did you call it winter i forget what they're they're calling all these you're muted winter one i believe um and then it would be fall two after winter one because that'll have football in it so um uh but yes we're talking about winter one okay out of
092fall one okay so winter one so based upon dr casavant's recommendation i would entertain a motion to approve the non-collection of any fees associated with non-athletic activities for the winter one session so moved i have a motion by mr marks do i have a second second and i have a second by mrs triffalo are there any questions or comments um about the user fees none we'll do a roll call vote mr marks yes mrs robichaud yes mrs cosil yes mrs matson yes mrs chartier yeah and mrs hughes oh sorry mrs truffalo yes had my finger over your name sorry and mrs hughes says yes so that was unanimous so we will not um collect any sort of user activity fees um for the winter one session and we will review it um when it comes
093closer to fall two i believe is what it's called um which is in the winter so but we'll readdress it when it gets closer to the next session so thank you for that next up we have the keystone educational cooperative membership so i'm going to turn this over to dr kazavant and probably mrs geister to discuss what this means and what it would do for us thank you madam chair so um as uh matt holloway our pupil personnel um director presented um the idea of joining what has been commonly known as flack um but um is is rebranded or changed its name to a keystone and that's another collaborative um just when i say just like caps it's a collaborative and simply what that does uh some of the services that the keystone can offer
094um really uh it just gives us another option and there there will certainly be some price there'll be some money savings there um by joining that collaborative as well many of our districts uh surrounding districts here are part of both caps and flack parame keystone um so it would require it would require i guess myself to be on the um on the board of directors or or a lucky school committee member um to be on the board of directors um it's it's the same as the requirements for caps collaborative yes matt holloway can in fact sit in um i would say occasionally i would think would be the the key word there um but it does need to have a the superintendent or a very very very lucky school to make member um as part
095of its board so i recommend that we um i recommend that we uh we that you entertain the idea for keystone i think it's a great opportunity for us and um and there'll certainly be some cost savings to them yeah i can just talk about the cost savings it's a 2500 yearly membership fee but we had we we have a spreadsheet that shows it but it didn't get attached to the agenda with the current students that we have there even after paying the twenty five hundred dollar membership fee for the year we would have a thirty five thousand dollar savings by spending the twenty five hundred right that kinda seems like uh i hate to say no brainer but there's definitely it's a win-win for the additional supports um because i know we spoke about
096this in administrative academic meeting um just um matt had spoken about professional development they may offer and some other really great things but the dollar savings obviously is uh very good uh right up front um any questions from the committee on the collaborative so seeing none and we certainly do it after we make a motion i would entertain a motion to seek membership in the keystone education cooperative so moved i have a motion by mrs cosil do i have a second second and i have a second from mrs truffalo any questions or comments um on that seeing none we'll do a roll call mr marks yes mrs robichaud yes mrs cosil yes mrs matson yes mrs chartier yes this is triphala yes and mrs hughes says yes so that was unanimous so thank you for
097um you know to matt holloway for bringing that to our attention um once we get the paperwork filled out and are formally accepted into the cooperative we can then address the appointment of either doctor kazam because it looks like he really wants to do it or the lucky school committee member that would be assigned to the board so thank you so much all right there are no other items that came up within 48 hours i'm gonna go to the superintendent report and i'll turn this over to dr kazavant to talk about a few other things that we have left to talk about sure so i'll keep it quick so um i know that we folks have been looking for a staff listing because you know new staff and and i believe miss skyster um but
098i don't know if a tasker she has it i we were kind of talking back and forth earlier so i'll kind of just put a pin in that um one of the things that i want to run by uh the committee uh quite frankly is that um we talked about this in academy in our academic subcommittee is that you know we felt horrible for our seniors last year because it was we were really blindsided you know here comes march and then of course nothing nothing happened uh quite frankly and so as we barrel through you know 2020 into you know 21 our seniors you know we don't know quite frankly what we'll be able to do um in terms of what uh was considered typical um you know celebratory uh senior stuff but as juniors
099you start really fundraising as many of you know you really start fundraising for your senior year um as a junior you start seriously stuck to fundraising as a junior so some of the traditional things that we you know we've done we do normally are we have meat raffles et cetera well none of those things of course took place so our current seniors the class of 21 um are you know financially and this is no fault of their own because they've had no opportunity to do any of their typical fundraisers um sit in a hole really financially in a whole uh quite honest and and yes the class have dues and they and they pay dues um you know for gowns and caps and gowns pardon me and uh et cetera but what we want to
100do um and and mr uh mr young has done a great job with you know taking uh yearbook you know folks to task not our yearbook i'm talking about the company etc so because we've been doing some things for a while traditionally um and that you know that we we need to rely on financially so what what i want to uh what i'm what i'm considering and i start i talked with miss fliss for quite some time is that she they have two really great ideas coming up um and but what she's been very very cognizant to do is not to ask um our local businesses because you know local businesses are hurting you know we were trying to and also you know our community is hurting this is not a time to you know
101to really be uh going out and you know and being the bushes for monies but we we also have a lot of other organizations and we've talked about this i think um you know a couple times since you know in my tenure about the timing of fundraising you know so like you know you're buying a pie one minute and then you know somebody's coming at you with which i'm i'm happy to buy any pies brownies or anything like that i'm i'm game uh girl scout cookie whatever the case is you know i'm i'm i'm good um but when it comes to the school type of uh you know fundraisers what i what i want to do is really put um laboratorium on all fundraising with the uh not the ones that are currently going on
102so let me just you know i know that we're selling wreaths and you know uh you know those type of things which we've done you know terms of booster clubs i want to put a moratorium on any type of fundraising moving forward except for the senior class um i think that the message is this um that whatever we're going to do you know you know school sometimes you know many people to many people school really exists for the 12th grade right so when you come to graduate that's that's the job right that's our job that's their job it's our job we get them from kindergarten all the way to 12th grade and you graduate they really when we talk about the high school being the flagship we're really talking about the 12th grade um it's
103all about them right that's the celebration i don't know what the celebration is going to look like this year no one does and what we'll be able to do but whatever we do or whatever we're able to do i want to focus whatever limited resources we have to them to the seniors um and not take and not put folks in a position to um you know with multiple fundraisers for lots of and yes there's a there's a need everywhere there's no doubt but i i want to i want to put that out there and uh to the school committee because i we really are here for the in in a sense we're here for everybody but it's we do want to make sure that we honor these seniors the best way we can and they're
104trying their very best but they just don't have a lot of opportunity just given everything that's going on comments from the committee on that um seeing none i'll offer just um i i think that sounds like a very good plan um we need to be committed as you said to all the students um but knowing and of course i had a myself and i know mrs matson we had two students that graduated last year um and all the things they didn't have um and i always said i felt for the next class coming up because they're they were gonna have more challenges and i i think that's certainly true um i think that if we pulled the committee when the time comes you know our commitment to supporting the senior class and any other class
105that had a need of course um you know would we we'd be right there so um i think the only thing that i would say is you know once we get a plan in place of and i know everything is fluid because we don't know what we're going to be allowed to do um you know whatever the the committee needs to do to support that and ensure that whatever we can do that we'll be able to fund properly and not put an additional burden on not just the students but you know every time there's a fundraiser our staff is always right there you know buying everything um the parents and the community members you know whatever we can do just let us know um and we'll figure out how to get that done so thank
106you yep and i think that um again it's a it's a great class they're working hard i just you know we want to just focus whatever energies we have on them um at this point in time in in terms of fundraising um by the time we speak next which will be sometime in december i would imagine um what what i hope will be posted i don't hope but it's it's just part of the we're going to have to do it mike wakefield is going to retire um sometime at the end of march um and um to his credit i believe he's been here 22 23 years and marie i'm gonna um around yeah yeah he's been here since 1990 i believe so um he's you know we it's it's it's not hard it's impossible quite
107frankly to replace that type of institutional knowledge but we're going to try our best and what we've done is we've been we've been talking with mike for at least a year um just this through this entire process so um true to form you know we spoke of you know at length about the the process and so what we're going to do is um we're going to post his position we're going to post this position um at or about probably right after the holiday right after uh right after thanksgiving um we're going to again through the school committee we're going to look at a refurbished and an updated job description um that we've been working on with mike um and at that point what we'll do after the probably after the christmas break uh so uh
108around that time frame we'll start the um the process of um you know uh seeking candidates whittling down you know interviews and moving forward so that there's time for transition um with mike uh whoever the person might be uh mike to really kind of spill the tea um i'll try to be cool here for a minute um and and really to talk about what's you know what kind of things are moving forward so um i didn't want that to be come as a surprise or i mean we've we've been talking about it so much in central office that um that it's uh it's you know it's really kind of um really kind of matter of fact but it's it's it's a it's a big deal um but we're gonna do our very best to uh
109get out in front of it and you'll start seeing posts and we'll obviously review the uh the job description moving forward great thank you for letting us know that um and we look forward to hearing more from you as you you get the logistics of the replacement and getting the job posted um and share that was with the committee so thank you so the last thing real quick and i don't know who has the um the con here but i if i could so if i could have the screen for a minute um one of the things that we've been talking about are october one numbers and um and it's it's interesting because um well i'll just kind of hopefully hopefully this works we'll see so yep well i gotta move this little bar though
110so if i do a kind of a year-over-year comparison this is fy21 although there is fy20 so fy20 last year just to kind of give you an idea um you know we had a district total okay to include um school choice etc of 1 you know 1482 right on october 1st and that number is a snapshot and we keep that number and we use that number you know moving moving forward um does the does the number change you say october 2nd yes but we really keep this you know where we focus on um the october one number so chelsea uh mason who um is doing a fantastic job not only has a new mom but during all this enrollment information so i try not to call her too much but she uh she provided this
111for us and um so as you whoops i don't need a dictionary i don't think let's look up a new word um you know we're at 1345. so you know what what you see right off the bat i mean simple math will tell you that you know you had 1482 you had you know you now have you know you know 85 um some of those obvious numbers that you'll see uh is that we are about roughly give or take 50 kids short school choice um we're down um we have well we did at that moment in time 200. when you start looking at residents you see 160 residents for phillipston um you see 95 985 pardon me for uh for templeton and when you um i have to move this bar again sorry folks i'm
112trying not to um get anything uh you you know when you start talking about 1049 versus 985 that's that's quite a jump you know 180 to 160. so where have these kids gone well we've talked about this before uh quite frankly and uh we have 110 give or take uh school uh pardon me homeschool so you know on a normal year we generally have 50 55 give or take so you add those 55 or 50 somewhat kids back into this mix and you start you know you start looking at um you know you start seeing the numbers you know creep up to what they were but yeah we're you know it's it's quite a departure from where we were um last year at this time many districts are in the same boat where did they
113go uh again a lot has you know a lot has to do with with homeschool um why well not so much for districts who are held harmless quite frankly but um the the bigger concern is that when they start you know when you start trying to figure out your you know your foundation you know budget or your foundation enrollment number you know you you need they they do not count towards that um and you do not receive any monies for um for students who are either going to private schools or are homeschooled so last month i believe we talked about the fact that the state is going to look at maybe creating a second opportunity to capture what um you know what you're what your enrollment is um and being somewhere around in march or
114april um when things start to settle down we don't know we'll have to see quite frankly but it's it's quite a drop um and you know i i spoke to chelsea very briefly today and i can see that she she just posted the um the november um report that monthly as you know we have a student enrollment report and she had simply just said to me there was quite a bit of movement um in the month of november i don't know what that means quite frankly um but the snapshot for any type of you know for all of our um for all types of purposes for the budget um will you know have in you know have been generated so what does this leave us well you know we we certainly we didn't take any
115school choice kids as everybody know except for six so you know you know that's that was by design we've had a lot of kids we've we talked about this quite a bit is that folks have moved um who were they were schooled they were here and wanted to stay at school choice um but they couldn't under normal conditions we would have done that right we were just school choice them in place as they call it we did not do that um and we didn't you know didn't replace the school choice numbers from that leave every year through uh the senior class or or those who are school choiced here who then go to money tech from other towns right so we always we talked about this a lot last year so you know it when
116i say it is what it is that's that's your enrollment you know that's that's what we'll do the uh percentages is interesting oops well i won't share it again but the percentages uh give or take stay the same um roughly give or take uh you know that kind of that people like to use that 80 20 type of you know kind of roundabout um it's you know it's more it's a little bit it's it's it's certainly a little bit different than 80 20 but give or take one or two percentage points it's it's about the same so um you know that's i think a lot of districts are in the same boat i don't i don't know that until i see there until they start publishing those type you know the reports right thank you
117for the update um i mean obviously the two things that strike a i'll say a nerve um you know one just the the residential uh reduction in numbers um and i think you've explained that um and then of course our school choice numbers and i think it bears being said once again that this district has lived off of its school choice for the past i know six seven eight years whatever it's been and this is concerning um it was strategic and i understand that but it is something that we need to address because if we continue to see a reduction in the number of school choice students that all of the items that get funded with those monies would have to move over to the general fund and you know we've said this multiple times
118every single year when we get to the budget season but now seeing these numbers where we are seeing the decrease which we haven't up until this point this now becomes very important that we let our our communities understand the potential impact and we come up with a strategy to decide how we want to handle that and going forward mrs truffalo i see you on muted yes yes um i'd like to have our request that on the future agenda we look we announce or look again at what is funded um out of that school choice budget so that the community really has a real feel for how we've been living off of school choice money i think that's a great idea bring that back up thank you yeah and i think that i'm going to jump
119ahead a little bit because um further on on our agenda we were going to talk about our next meeting which um was december 2nd because we've added these second meetings in and the finance subcommittee met last week and we talked about using that meeting but not on the second we wanted to move it to the ninth just to give us a little more time to focus on finances and that's probably a good time to spend looking at just that information so maybe mrs geister if you could add that which i'm sure you were going to have that anyway but we'll make sure that that we discuss that you know right out in front as to what we're using those funds for um so we can get that out in front so thank you all right
120anything else dr kazam i know the regional agreement amendment committee we're um we're getting ready we're actually meeting tomorrow um to just go for housekeeping so that committee should be kicking off soon um anything else that you wanted to offer no i think that i think that pretty much does it thank you all right uh next up was a curriculum and instruction update um ms kalisa's additional things that you'd like to bring to the committee on curriculum instruction i think we pretty much covered it in this strategic improvement plan update great i i think so too i know one thing that um we'd love to see and we've kind of talked about this in an academic administrative is we did our star assessments we'd love to hear some follow-up with any of the data once
121you have that and you've had a chance to go through it and i know you're still working through that so that would be great but thank you all right um subcommittee and committee reports i think we've pretty much covered um with exception of policy where we do have one policy we need to vote on um but i'm just going to go quickly through the list um academic administrative mrs truffalo anything to add no i think you brought that you brought up um what we've discussed uh throughout the meeting thank you um finance mr mason is the chair of that and he's not here but again i will talk in just a moment about rescheduling that that meeting that we had set for the second and go over that um we've just been discussing fy21 and
122fy22 um facilities no we've discussed it it was um the the last meeting we had was um very heavily into the coveted stuff the ventilation and things like that so i think uh most of that most of that has been discussed here in the um in the meetings already great um policy mrs cosil it looks you it looks like you're frozen but if you want to try if not um myself or mrs matson yeah i think she's frozen my internet is out okay it comes and it goes so do you want to do that presentation for jfapd sure i'd be happy to this way you won't get cut off thank you because it keeps telling me my internet is low my internet is low so okay the policy subcommittee met um on actually it was
123yesterday it feels like it was weeks ago but it was just yesterday um we had had this policy jf abd homeless students enrollment rights and services it's actually been on our agenda to bring forth but with covid it got lost in the shuffle of things because there's three policies that needed to be updated um mostly for changes to the essa laws when we met with matt holloway he brought it up because part of our consolidated performance review the cpr review they look at our policies so this one he noted was had not been updated and when we looked at it we said oh this is in the queue it was actually up next so this policy is modifies the reading to for enrollment rights and services for homeless students and it updated the language for
124deci compliance just the highlights of the changes as it expands the definition of the homeless students it updates transportation guidelines it adds language to address living arrangements and student privacy it adds language to cover parental notification on enrollment disagreements and it updates some district liaison requirements including staff pd and other support on issues involving homeless students what the policy subcommittee was asking for the committee to do was to waive the first and second reading process on this so we could immediately adopt it so we'd be in compliance with the new regulations and and put the revised jfabd policy in place so with that being said i would entertain a motion to waive the first and second reading process and immediately adopt the updated policy jfabd homeless students enrollment rights and services i think it was
125mrs truffalo do i have a second second okay and that i think was mrs cosil um any questions or comments on the policy or mrs matson did you want to add anything to it nope okay um seeing none we'll do a roll call mr marks yes mrs robichon yeah mrs cosil yes mrs matson yes mrs chartier yeah this is truffalo yes and mrs hughes says yes so we have unanimously adopted the revisions to jf abd um as of this evening so we'll get that updated online for everybody uh next uh long-term planning we had a quick meeting yesterday anything you wanted to add mrs matson there was really not a lot of discussion no okay uh diversity equity and inclusion i believe you guys are meeting tomorrow that is correct yes um and then the
126templeton elementary school building committee have there i don't know if there's been any updates no i see dr kasmit shaking his head um and pms building committees last but it leads me to correspondence um i sent a note to the committee just to alert you but i did want to just reflect the correspondence that some members of our committee received dated november 6th regarding an invitation to attend the next select board meeting i'm going to read you my letter but it says dear ms hughes the board of selectmen invite you and the other phillipston members of the narragansett regional school committee to attend its next meeting on wednesday november 18th 2020 at 7 15 pm to discuss matters related to the return of the phillipston elementary school to the town including but not limited to
127timing of the transfer responsibility for an exchange of utility accounts security systems etc please rsvp to me etc etc so i know that i spoke with mrs charlier mr marks and myself we will be attending the meeting i did forward everybody phillipston allows everyone to dial in via zoom um if you'd like to watch the uh the meeting um we had sent just um for the record on november 3rd based upon our school committee meeting vote on october 21st we sent a letter to the board of selectmen and this we asked dr casavant to do from his hand asking them to reach out and set up a meeting to discuss these things um so my guess is when we meet tomorrow i'm not sure how much you know three members of the committee can speak
128because we cannot speak for the full committee nor do i think we have most of the information or knowledge to do so we'll probably end up um forwarding them back to dr kazavant to engage in the discussions but we'll attend and we'll see what they have to say and we'll update the committee afterwards and let you know what happened all right so with that being said we're going to come to the next school committee meeting um initially it was on the agenda for december 2nd we'd like to move that to december 9th and it will be a finance focused meeting we'll look to kick off the fy 22 budgeting process even though we don't have fy21 nailed down with the state we're going to move ahead um based on our last finance committee meeting dr
129casavant ms geister said you know they're ready to go with the expense piece of it so that's where we need to start anyway and we'll kick that off on december 9th um i will ask um mrs varney to send out an invite to everybody and we'll make sure that we have a quorum and whatnot um but if you could please put that on your calendars december 9th at 5 00. yep um i don't know if it'll be in person or via zoom so um we'll we'll call that as we see it we'll probably post it via zoom and if we can somehow get to be in person because sometimes when we talk about numbers that's easier um we'll do so but we'll we'll um you know we'll let you know and take it under advisement
130as it gets closer with that any last comments or questions from anybody okay seeing none um we will be going into executive session this evening um we had initially anticipated possibly coming out for a vote um that will not be happening so i would entertain a motion to go into um executive session for reason number three to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining uh we will also place or litigation with the ndea and or ufcw if an open meeting may have detrimental effect on the bargaining or litigating position of the public body and the chair so declares the meeting will return into open session and i'm sorry the meeting will not return into public session immediately following i didn't update my notes so i would entertain a motion as such not coming out of
131executive session back into public what moved i have a motion by mr marks do i have a second second and i have a second by mrs truffalo uh any questions or comments i will just say thank you to everyone for uh watching us i see we do some people watching on the youtube stream and hopefully some people are watching on a on the channel eight i believe in templeton i'm not sure what channel is in phillipston um and i thank you for tuning in and thank you for um all of the feedback that we've received uh with that being said we'll do a roll call vote mr marks yes this is robichaud yes mrs cosil yeah mrs matson man yes mrs chartier mrs triffelo yes and mrs hughes says yes so we will now be
132going into executive session and not coming out in public so thank you and good night to everybody and school committee members we should get an invite to head out to a meeting room so thank you you