001hey sydney how are you reid how are you doing good glad to see you got in okay yeah yeah no issues [Music] um leslie just texted me she's just working on a little wi-fi issue and she'll be here in a minute so uh hello mrs reed hello you're here all right sorry about that total mess okay one two three all right so um just to clarify for everybody i'm gonna open the meeting because this is our reorganization meeting so uh that happens every year after the election which means we don't technically have um board positions yet so i'm just gonna go over the original opening for the reason that we're meeting via zoom as per the governor's emergency orders we will be meeting electronically we have ensured that the public has access and we have
00262 attendees so it looks like there's no problem with anybody getting access to the meeting which is good um if anybody does have any concerns about being able to log into the meeting you can call six three 603 six eight nine and mrs malloy will be happy to walk you through how to make sure that you can join or she can help you join by phone if you need to join by phone we are going to convene this meeting and we're going to start with some um introductions of our board members overall and per the rsa each board member will need to say that they are present and and administrators too and say anyone who might be in the room with you tonight so um let's start with our newest board member and if you
003can just introduce yourself and say if anybody else is in the room uh i'm edward upson and i am alone in the room thank you okay christine christine conroy and there's no one else in the room uh britney britney pie and there is no one else in the room denise denise sullivan and there's no one in the room at the time kristen kristen reed um and there's no one in the room and leslie leslie nesbit and no one not even a dog in the room with me and i'm sydney leggett and there is nobody in the room with me as well we will call this meeting to order and the first thing we're going to do is go over an approval of the agenda i do have two changes that i would like to make
004to because we have guests our usual board practice is when we have guests joining us that we try and let them go first so that they are not spending hours on the meeting with us although they'd probably love to so i would request that we move the audit report in the civil war day and graduation to right after number three the district treasurer appointment i don't think either of those will take um an incredibly long period of time because i know we do have some big discussions that a lot of people are here tonight um to listen to does anybody else have any changes to the agenda that they'd like to make i have one brief edition i'd like to add um just a number 12 um to talk briefly about teacher appreciation week so
005teacher appreciation week is the first week of may so that'll be the week that we meet so we should have something planned before our may meeting and we don't necessarily need to hash out all the details tonight but maybe just get a sense of um what our game plan wants to be to tackle that because i think it'll get up it'll sneak up on us quick okay any other changes or additions okay can i have somebody make a motion to approve the agenda as amended moved a second second okay and we do roll call votes so ed would you say yay or nay uh yay okay christine yay brittany yay denise and leslie okay great all right thank you um we're gonna move into public participation and we i see that we already have some
006in the chat um i did want i i'm hoping that a lot of people read my newsletter that went home and some of the information i do feel like we're at a really critical juncture in terms of public participation at our board meetings and making sure that everybody no matter what their opinion is feels that this is a really safe place and i also want to make sure that some parameters of public meeting are outlined so if you just give me one second i'm just going to share a few brief things to make sure that we continue the tradition that grantham has always had in our very good and strong democratic process okay so hopefully everybody can see my screen at this point hold on sometimes when it's behind to the uh pictures it goes
007to share instead of present when we're looking at public input i just want to make sure that there are some considerations for public input because i think it's incredibly unfortunate that i've heard from a variety of people i've heard from some staff members from some community members from some educators that they're really concerned about speaking because we've been in such a a heated place of trying to make some really difficult decisions so i'm really hoping that we can make sure that we don't let that happen long term so some considerations for public input every voice and opinion deserves to be heard the community needs public input to be a safe place to be heard no one should ever be afraid to speak and let the board know their thoughts um no disrespect to individuals or
008incivility will be tolerated and then i'm just going to ask before everyone speaks please check to make sure that your statement is is it kind and thoughtful is it something you'd like the board to hear and consider and is it authentic to grantham schools we do hear a lot about things that are happening nationally which may affect grantham schools but please make sure that information that you feel you would like to have us consider is authentic to the grantham school board and to grantham as well and before you speak please check to make sure that your statement is not disrespectful to any individuals or groups and i'm going to ask people kind of double check what they're going to say to make sure something isn't machiavellian you know i think we've had some tough situations
009that we've had to go through and i i don't want people to say things or feel that they have to say anything to get the end result that they want you know everything will be considered here by the board and public input is completely open and we just want to make sure that that statements kind of don't go to that unfortunate place the board responsibility during public input is really important to review as well the board's primary responsibility and actually only responsibility during public input is to listen it's a it's a time for the board to listen very carefully it's not the time for the board to have a dialogue or to discuss anything or to make decisions those have to happen during the actual meeting portion of this board meeting somebody may ask a
010clarifying question to be sure that they understand but other than that really the board is just here to listen to absolutely everything that anybody feels like they would like to share so uh given that um mr james do you want me to read your comment that you put in chat or do you want to do would you like to speak and i think i'll just read it but maybe maybe peter will join us in a bit he wants me to read it okay um from peter james 28 split rock road and thank you very much we do need a name and address when information comes in i wish that adults were as good about wearing masks as the children that i see around i'm amazed at how good the kids are about it i assume
011they i assumed they would be pulling them off or not covering their noses but they're doing a really great job and they are doing a really great job okay and i see a hand up um mrs buckman i'm going to move you over so you can speak and let's see i think mrs buckman you're still muted oh she didn't intend to raise her hand okay sorry okay moving into the q a sarah walsh nine alpine vista first my kids are going back five days so i'm not saying this out of self-interest i know from my work as a child psychiatrist that many kids that have been fully remote have really been struggling i would love to have my kids in five days but i also want to be mindful of allowing teachers time to support
012our students who are staying fully remote especially those with ieps and needing additional services for me personally and i think many parents i've talked to shortening all school days would be very difficult if teachers need more prep time i would strongly encourage consideration a much shorter day on wednesdays for example 8 30 to 11 30 and keep the other days the same length if possible any other public input for this evening okay we have stephanie lozito 11 greensward drive i have a three-part question how are we responding to the governor's order to reopen all schools full-time on april 19th how are we responding to the new cdc guidelines to move to three feet distancing and three why do we feel like we don't have enough time to implement okay kyle and lauren loose 60 troon
013drive in order to go to a five-day model gvs would need to remove cohorts this makes us feel very uncomfortable and anxious cohorting is still a recommendation from the cdc positive cases continue to rise in our area parents are sending sick students to school variants that are easier to spread and more deadly are floating around how can now be a good time to remove a safety protocol that prevents the spread okay um i'm sorry if i'm not pronouncing your last name correctly but uh sue um tarot trevor and i apologize 46 bright slope way is it even an option to stay four days after the mandate is there an exemption we can apply for okay i see a hand up isabelle bober i'll move you over to speak if you can just unmute you should
014be good to go hello hi isabel isabelle bober 30 slalom drive um i just want to send a shout out to everyone who's listening please speak up and um i know it's scary and so i hope people can feel comfortable typing in the chat or um saying things so i just would say good evening and i'd like to start by thanking the incredible staff of gvs and the school board including our new board member ed upson the work in front of the gvs staff and the school board is nothing short of incredibly challenging and i'm really appreciative of the time and care that everyone involved has and continues to put into educating the children of grantham as some of you know i've been involved with the progress monitoring committee this year and i'm so appreciative
015of the board in terms of having the opportunity for various members of the community to come together and to share our experiences from different perspectives i personally have found it really valuable to learn more about the inner workings of the school and to really just see the value of broad community input in terms of managing these incredibly difficult scenarios that we're facing so the questions facing the board tonight are complex and impactful i really hope that the board will comply with the governor's recent executive order to move to five days a week of in-person instruction it is clear from a public health perspective that there are not additional health risks for students or staff in moving to a five-day model however i understand that changing the instructional model is not solely based on public health
016there are significant impacts for staffing common planning time for teachers and services that we are legally required to offer my concern is that many of these challenges will not necessarily be changed by the fall i have heard many members of the staff and of the community talk about well of course we'll go back to five days in the fall i feel that the recent order by the governor really forces our hand that we need to move back to five days i have shared with the progress monitoring committee that many parents are divided um in terms of staying the course seven more wednesdays or seven weeks as as i think about it but i think that at this point we need to comply i am very concerned with the idea of gvs not following a state
017guideline as i feel that this really presents a slippery slope i recognize that even if the board does decide to comply with that mandate there are still many other choices and decisions that the board has to make i have you know spent time with the pmc and on my own reviewing many of the updated guidelines from the cdc in the state of new hampshire i feel that there are many options or many moments during the school day where we can move to three feet that it has been proven by multiple studies that the difference between six feet and three feet is not shown to increase transmission of covet in schools um obviously we are still going to keep following many of the cdc's core tenets of mitigation um social distancing the three whether it's three
018feet or six feet masks we're doing cleaning air exchange there are many ways that the swiss cheese model as sydney has said herself that we are maintaining many of the protocols there are some that we can begin to peel back and i really hope that the board considers those and how it can help us move towards a five-day model so thank you for the time and the care that you put into this work um this has been an incredibly challenging pandemic on many fronts um you know there's a health pandemic going on there is an economic pandemic going on there's a racial justice pandemic going on and i just hope that we can consider how the gvs instructional model is impacting all of our constituents and really work to come together as a community to
019help everyone be heard and also make the necessary steps towards getting back to what will be our new normal for quite some time thank you for taking the time to listen thank you uh we have denise breedlove five knob hill what example are we setting for our children by not following the mandate we've been asking them to follow all mandates up to this date kristen demaris 174 woodland heights i hope that gvs does not apply for an exemption our children deserve school five days in person with all due respect our coven numbers are incredibly low and there is no reason why we would not follow the new mandate put out by the governor just as we have followed all other mandates he has put out mask wearing and quarantine uh courtney massey ate wedgewood there
020are many schools in our county and area that have managed to reopen five full days and still provide the same level of care and needs to their students i think opening five days moving to three foot distancing and remaining masked should be our focus i completely support moving back to a safe five full day model and i'm willing to help support that movement in any way possible stan henkin 63 anderson pond road going back to five oh sorry it jumped away when another comment came in going back to five days may be a complex issue from an administrative standpoint i really do not think it's a question from a medical scientific standpoint five days is the safest four days julianne barrett 10 sandy bray i just want to say that my husband and i both
021believe it is time for us to bring some normalcy back to all of our children while cohorts are still a recommended intervention perhaps it's time for us to reinvent what cohorts look like and also realize that there is sorry flexibility to allow teachers to move in between classes while keeping students grouped please remember a person who was in contact with a positive is not a positive i think moving to five days now allows us to work out the kinks okay rachel ripley 57 bright slope way i truly appreciate everything that gvs has done to get children in school to this point and hope that the board will consider moving to a five-day model i truly understand that this is difficult for everyone involved and many factors come into play when making this decision i feel
022as though that we have followed the guidelines previously set forth by the governor for everyone's safety as requested the governor has mandated that school return five days because studies show that it is safe for children and staff to do so based on data all schools and surrounding towns have moved to a five-day model with protocols in place including the towns that are old that our older children attend thank you for your time aaron ames 901 dunbar hill road in regard to the travel quarantine i am in favor of following the dhhs recommendation to allow domestic travel our current model is arbitrary lifting the restrictions will give families more freedom and reduce the quarantined prep workload cara johnston i'm just going to move you over so you can speak i don't have a comment to make
023i'm just listening oh okay thank you okay and sarah walsh nine alpine vista i'm not sure sarah if you had something else that you wanted to type in there if you do just let us know okay nine alpine vista sarah walsh i have some concerns about allowing any travel in the us without quarantining many states are not following cdc guidelines and do we want people coming back from those states without quarantine okay any other comments or any other information for the board okay kathy buckley reading teacher reading specialist at gvs and an ell teacher at gbs i work with a small population at gvs my students are in need of daily support with reading and language currently i see students on a daily basis and use larger available spaces scheduling changes for a five day
024will impact the available spaces and i will have to return to using just my office space the smaller space will require a change in the number of students i can work with meredith mcmartin 28 route 114 remote learning has been very challenging for our family as it has been for everyone that said we have finally settled into a routine i would ver i would very much like to see cohorting continue and i worry that if a change to five days requires a significant reorganization it will be very disruptive especially for the younger kids this okay christy pack i will move you over and you should be able to speak thanks sydney um christy peck 28 butternut road um i didn't prepare anything so i'll apologize in advance if i sound a little bit like i'm
025rambling um i just wanted to say that i recognize that the board is hearing from a lot of parents talking about parents needs and children's needs but that the board also has an obligation to consider the needs of our administration faculty or staff and and employees within the school system and so um i thank you for your work and that you acknowledge the needs of everyone in within the organization and that for students and parents and teachers and staff there's the physical health concerns that we've been hearing about but also the mental or behavioral health concerns and the stressors that have been put on the entire community um i don't have a strong opinion one way or the other but i know that this decision tonight for you all is significant and important and perhaps
026fraught so thank you for considering everyone who you support and work with and serve thank you okay any other comments okay thank you very much everybody for speaking and the board for listening oh sorry oh thank you so much sue tavara yes remote days have been hard but we have also settled into a routine and my child is not good with change i fear that we would lose the rest of the year by making another change okay just a reminder we need a name and another and an address thanks steph riordan 1426 route 10 north the reason for our four-day schedule has always been about space not time we've been able to keep up with spacing recommendations up to this point by cohorting in a way that that's possible because of the current model i
027don't think the cdc has changed its definition of a close contact how will this affect our need to quarantine and attendance problems should a case arise and just for the record um sue wrote in 46 right slow way okay is there anything else we're at 99 attendees like i feel like i want to ask one more person to join just so we hit a hundred q a um isabelle bober 30 slalom drive two additional thoughts one when will the decision be made about the fall it is critical for parents to be able to plan for the next school year and can you speak instead of type sure all right there you go thanks sydney sorry this one is a little bit less formed in my brain um isabelle bober 30 slalom um one thing i
028just want to encourage the board to think about and consider is that you know we are in this messy stage of the pandemic where we are slowly getting access to vaccines where guidelines are changing and where kind of the broader public sentiment of what about what people feel comfortable with um is not all going to move forward at the same time and so sydney you opened with a lovely statement about you know wanting everyone to feel as safe as possible and attending gvs but i'm not sure that that is really possible given the stage of the pandemic that we're in which is maybe the middle maybe the middle end maybe the end if we're being really optimistic today but i'm just concerned that there will be a point at which gv gvs has to make
029changes and that there will be some people that aren't comfortable and we want to make sure that everyone has access to an education which is why i believe some of the state mandates have talked about continuing access uh to a remote education but you know for example i'm not personally super comfortable with people traveling and not quarantining but that's my um assessment of the situation and i'm not judging other people for doing things um but that is what the state has said is okay that is what the cdc has said is okay and so this just ties back to my concern that we as a district will be making different assessments about what is okay behavior and not and i just think the board needs to recognize that there will be choices um that the
030district will make that some people may not be comfortable with and that's challenging and difficult um but something that you as a board may need to wrestle with so i just wanted to put that out there for for consideration thank you thanks and aaron uh is coming over see there we go hi aaron zagada love 178 meadow brook road not currently a gvs parent but i'm here for essentially the same reason that isabelle just talked about maybe presumptuous but hoping my daughter will attend the preschool in the fall so i'm kind of listening in thinking ahead about how today's decision making does or does not impact how school will proceed in the fall and so i guess my question is is very similar to isabelle's and sort of understanding how does um what decisions are
031made today impact or not impact or sort of lay sort of sisters etc for how we um operate in the fall thank you for your consideration i i will add that i think the the board is um not going to please everybody and and any decision that they make and i think there is a lot of pressure under them to quote unquote do the right thing from a lot of people and i don't think there is a right answer in this case so um just recognizing that i think um i appreciate that the board is is being very inclusive and encouraging people to voice their opinions and their concerns today thank you for that thank you another comment in the chat um peter james 28 split rock road now with all the new variants going
032around is this really the time to loosen things up some of these are affecting children more than in the past okay james waxman yeah hey sorry um a couple things so uh i haven't heard it mentioned yet but there's there's children including my own that are falling behind significantly so mine's you know neither been high nor low in academics kind of in the middle um but for the first time he's he's failing some subjects he's been recommended for summer school he's also one of the children that cannot function in a remote learning setting he just doesn't do well with a managed screen and trying to learn from that the other thing is um you know we've got a mandate from the governor and i understand the town you know the more majority of this did
033not vote for that governor um but i just would hate for politics to kind of play a role in whether that order from the governor gets ignored i feel like it's a mandate you know exceptions are for really ed cases you know extreme situations and i think we have a lot of resources in grantham i don't think we're an edge case like that um so that said uh full respect to teachers married to one for 15 years hopefully another 15 years or much longer and that's all by the way 12 fair wage thanks thank you okay um courtney massey ate wedgwood i understand that changing from the four day to the five full day would be an immediate change but for all of our kids the four day model is still considered a change i
034think the safest return to normal would be a welcome change for a lot of kids that being full five days three feet and mast i know it will be hard but we've been telling the kids for over a year that we can do hard things and i would like to show that in application as well as in speech um peter james 28 split rock road does the governor really have the authority to order five day okay another sort of call for final input for the board okay i think we are going to close public input thank you so much for everybody very respectful very thoughtful comments so thank you um this is exactly how we need to move forward and it's very much appreciated so what we need to do is we're going to go
035into our first agenda item and it is the board reorganization so at this point what we need is for the um new board to um elect a board chair a vice chair and a secretary so basically the way that this works is i will ask for a nomination for board chair once that is settled then from that point on i will hand over the rest of the meeting to whoever that board chair is and that board chair will go through the process of electing the vice chair and the secretary and move through the rest of the agenda um so do i have a nomination for board chair i nominate brittany pie for board chair if she will accept and is there a second all second with gratitude by the way okay let's see we're going
036to do a roll call vote so um do i have to accept it do i have to accept it sydney are you going to skip over that part we're going to skip over that part because we actually need a vote first um leslie hi christine aye denise denise you could do it okay and uh hi and brittany i okay and do you accept i do thank you um so brittany pai is now the grantham school board chair and i very happily hand over the rest of the meeting to her thank you thank you thank you guys very very much i really um appreciate this and um feel really grateful and will try not to say too much so um i appreciate serving on this board with all of you and um now with ed welcome
037aboard um and i certainly after 13 months i'm tired but i'm inspired by uh working with this board and with the community and i'll just echo what sydney said to thank everybody for the community input that we just had um really really important to hear from everyone and we really value um that and i will say uh just jotting down some of the questions that were asked during that i will just want to reassure folks if they can stick around many most all of those questions will be answered during the board's um discussion of the the instructional model so um really appreciate that so we will move forward to um nominating and selecting a vice chair for the board so do i have a nomination for vice chair i nominate leslie nesbit i'll second that
038okay so we have a nomination of leslie from denise and a second from christine and so we will take a roll call on this so uh christine i ed hi leslie denise hi and brittany i and so leslie do you accept the position of vice chair new thank you denise i appreciate that vote of confidence thank you that's excellent all right and so our last position is um for secretary so do i have a nomination for the position of secretary i hope christine doesn't mind if i nominate her again she's awesome [Music] all right so i have a nomination for christine conrad for secretary second excellent so we have a second from ed and so we will take a roll call christine i ed hi leslie hi denise hi brittany i and christine do you
039accept the position of secretary i do excellent all right thank you all i appreciate it we have our um new board positions and we will move forward with our agenda so our next agenda item is our to hear from our school board liaisons we haven't heard from them in a little while so it'll be nice to check in and um sydney if you want to just i actually haven't even had a chance to scroll through with our participants because we have so many or our um attendees to see who's here so if you want to just yep we have facilitate that for us mariana and ellen are here with us tonight um seth couldn't make it tonight excellent all right hi mariana hi ellen okay so um ellen why don't we hear from you first
040and if you want to just give us a quick report out of how things are going if there's been anything new or noteworthy for you and your experience these last couple of months we'd just love to get sort of a pulse check on how things are for you yeah so um in terms of covid uh we have gone back to a five day week um with wednesday is optional but you can also come into school obviously um it's a shorter day as well which is great especially for remote students because you get like an hour before an hour after school to check in with teachers i know that being remote is hard to speak out during class so getting that one-on-one is like super helpful um also i heard a lot of people talking about
041cohorts uh we don't have cohorts anymore um but i know that we take um the school takes uh precautions as to who sits where and in large areas like in the gym you have to log in so people know where people were this can be seen i think a couple of weeks ago there was a covered case and within a day or two all the people who had been in contact with that person were out in remote so i thought that was pretty um helpful the cleaning's been great the custodians have done a great job they're so hard working uh yeah thank you and mariana we'd love to hear the same from you just how things are going if there's been any changes since the last time we saw you yeah so um the middle
042school also has the optional wednesdays and for me i personally like to stay home on wednesdays i think it's a nice break in the week and it's a little more flexible when when you're at home and teachers usually use it as like a ketchup day for for work and things like that and um the middle school has been through almost every single model that there is we've been through five days a week like completely we've been through five days remote we've been through hybrid and i actually like this model the best because students can choose if they want to go in if that works better for them or if they want to stay home thank you any questions from the board for two of our school board liaisons um i have a question um so
043when you have the option to be in school or not on wednesdays what does your day look like it would be for i guess both of you are are able to select to go in or not on wednesdays so for me personally i have ellos in the morning and after school so i would go in at the regular time at 7 30 and participate in my science yellow and then i have to go through the classes as usual um there are 30 minute classes not the regular time and lunch is a bit longer for people who are remote and then at the end of the day i will go to my other elo and that will be my day for me when i stay remote we log in at 7 45 and we go through
044our classes as normal it's same time periods for people in school and people out of school it's pretty much the same for people in school and out of school it's only people in school have less kids in their class thank you both so i have a question for the two of you one of the things that the board is looking at tonight is a policy about animals in schools so either therapy animals or animals working with students not necessarily as service animals but more as animals to come in and and do things like be a reading buddy or have a student go and take a a dog for a walk as a movement break for them during the day and i'm wondering if as the board looks at approving and and looking at these policies
045if you have either had any experience with that or if you have any thoughts on that from the student perspective yes actually at the high school we have a dog called ellie she's actually one of the teachers dogs and she comes in once in a while she's a hypoallergenic dog so all the students can kind of hang out with her uh she kind of hangs out in the library she has a little kind of area she sits in and she can just wander around and i think it's really nice um de-stressor because school is stressful um but yeah you know we really enjoy it i have never had experience with that before but i think that's a really good idea i would personally really like to have something like that in the middle school thank
046you any other questions from the board okay well thank you both we really appreciate you checking in with us i know it's been a little while since we've gotten to see you and we appreciate hearing from you and getting your perspective on a couple things and as always feel free to stick around and watch the fun but we don't blame you one bit if you need to step out and we also won't notice because there's like 100 people so um so thank you both and hopefully we will have a chance to touch base with you guys next month as we head into the end of the year thank you bye all right so our next agenda item is um district treasurer appointment and we have action to take on that item yep um we didn't
047have anybody sign up to run for district treasurer and we did have somebody who won by a write-in vote with two votes and that person is not interested in accepting the position um so we did find somebody who is willing to do it so i would like to ask the board to um officially appoint um dave christie uh yeah dave christie to be the treasurer and to start in um with our next round of manifest and financials so the ones that you would see in april and go over at the main meeting the position usually starts july 1 but we did check with our auditors and we would prefer that it just starts now okay so we would need a motion to appoint dave christie as district treasurer to start with the april manifest i'll
048move second okay so i have a motion from leslie and a second from i think i got it from christine there um is there any discussion about this item before we go ahead with the vote okay so we will take a roll call vote if you're in favor please say i if you're opposed say nay denise hi leslie hi christine hi ed hi brittany i welcome aboard dave all right so our next agenda item we're going to move up the civil war day and graduation discussion in action and there was yeah there was some information on that in the board packet and then i think sydney has some stuff for us as well yeah well there's um d.b um bechta and kim johnson are here to discuss civil war day so i'm going to pull
049them over and they can go over some of their plans to modify civil war day but to still try and have it and the same for sixth grade graduation there's some text that you received about the plans for sixth grade graduation but we also have mrs berger here to answer any questions or do some further explanation so we'll start i'm going to move um mrs bechta and johnson over so they can tell you a little bit about what we hope civil war day will be this year and hopefully we're good to go okay sorry sorry and i just want to clarify the reason this is coming before the board is because both of these are technically exceptions to the closed campus okay so they're but they're trying to figure out ways to make sure that
050these things still happen okay great thanks everybody this um has been a long-standing tradition since i got here in 2001. um so civil war day 2021 uh we're going it's held outside on the playground um i know we have to discuss the date on this um later in this meeting i believe the event is going gonna include grades five and six because the um this is an event that that kids look forward to their entire time at gvs and you know our current sixth graders obviously didn't get a chance to have their civil war day so we're going to have um if this is acceptable uh both five and six um at this it's an all-day event between 9 a.m and 2 45 p.m um the students will will be combined in groups of fifth
051and sixth graders uh they're on the playgrounds already together um every day and they'll be rotating through stations and distanced at each stations while they're wearing masks according to the guidelines there will be sanitation stations at each station so they will sanitize before they come into the station and then when exiting the station they'll be sanitizing they'll only be allowed the kids will only be allowed to handle hard served i surfaced items that we can sanitize between the rotations the stations are would be manned by a combination of gvs staff members and the fifth mass battery which is our educational consultants that come in every year um and in terms of the gbs staff would be uh me d.b bachta um kim johnson arlene brown casey sylvain astrid berger michelle gillian randy britton who will
052be on call for tech issues if he needs to be taken off chris hayes as needed hopefully theresa quinn is needed in pollard would be doing recess games a period game called town ball the battery members um most of them live in new hampshire and share households with either myself or miss johnson that would be nick johnson and jake johnson possibly uh and conor roussel all reside in the johnson household and um and or my household and uh the battery members from massachusetts would be uh bill knowles uh dave schlagel possibly [Music] tony artuso all of them have had their first shot and will probably have their second shot by that time the battery members would be wearing masks and distance from students they will not be entering the building at all any food items
053that we would normally have at our stations like hard tack or stew we would have in sealed individual containers and there would be no going back for seconds or snacking or anything like that no other classes unfortunately we can't allow them to interact with the stations during the day as they have in the past um and um the only time they they would come out uh into the field just for the cannon firing socially distanced and masked so they could um be part of that ending ceremony and the the fifth and sixth graders they're going to have lunch uh lunch and recess outside monitored by adults while the fifth and s folks and other adults take their lunch and um hopefully kristen will take care of getting the supervision for that as we will all
054be completely exhausted and hopefully that will be acceptable precautions thank you um kim did you want to add anything uh no db covered it um pretty well i just you know we are cognizant of the fact that the kids are going to need to make sure that they are distanced and sanitized and they will know that before we head out anybody who's out there with them is going to know that so they they'll know the routine by the time they get out there um what level of grumbling are you expecting from the other grades the fact that they can't participate this year well i i i would hope that and i know that um our staff will be talking to them about uh and i i think they all get it right the the kids
055have been exceptionally adaptable to to everything that's happened i think they get it that they're not going to be allowed to be out there but their time is going to come right i mean the only ones that really got um truly ripped off for the ripped off are the the current sixth graders who you know yes we're so looking forward to it since kindergarten and just it would be a shame if they had to miss it um and and the fifth graders but then again if if we if this isn't acceptable and we can't do it this year at least they they would have a shot next year um i have no doubt that your extensive planning will be perfect um but i have to say what's the plan if it rains yeah that's always
056a thing so please ask we have um we're going to be requesting um we already request some some easy ups and i think by then we'll have um those big tents out will we not for for lunch and stuff i mean i think we can um with the easy ups and the the tents out there i think we can still make it happen unless it's an outright downpour we're not gonna be in the past we would have kids you know getting dressed up in the different outfits and the you know the uniforms and the civilian wear and all that stuff but that those soft items we can't disinfect none of them are going to be allowed to do that so it's a modified and that's really a fun part but you know they can't do
057it and they they know it and they get it um so i think without having those soft parts out there that are going to get really damaged by the rain we can hack it we're from we're from new hampshire unless it's a downpour and then and then it is what it is you know we can't um you know the the fifth mass battery uh takes a day off of their own personal jobs as a personal day to come out and do this so you know i can't really ask them to you know and it being so close to the end of the year it would be difficult for a rainy day we'll make it happen thank you both for um putting so much thought and time into this i know we all appreciate the the
058planning that goes into it this and it's thinking about that how to approach that closed campus is something that the board ourselves talked about for our meetings so um you know we really appreciate the work that you guys are doing with us um i just want to nudge a door open for both of you and i am happy to hear if you have thoughts right now on this and but i would be interested in seeing if we can sort of springboard this year into hopefully kind of a potential future conversation um and i know how valuable and how loved this tradition is at gvs and i think we're really lucky to have both of you to to help us create this educational opportunity for our students um but i will say just personally and i
059think this is a time that we can sort of nudge this door open um i would like to see if this year if it's if it is a scaled back event if there's a way for us to look um at how the event is held um as a in the community as a whole and just to sort of like not talk around the the facts of the case um we're a very white community and a very white school and um this event has impact and significance for families that may be different than sort of what the culture of it currently is um i think you know having a child that's come up through younger grades in the school what i have seen is there's um almost a feeling of civil war day being a second
060field day for some of the younger grades that there's there is a real feeling of celebration around it and i wonder if that feeling is felt equally for all of our families depending on what their own cultural or family history with the civil war is um and just wanting to be cognizant of sort of the um the experience of a very insulated very white community having a celebration that or an event that has sort of almost become a school-wide celebration and i think that those are topics that i am sure are very um you know clearly defined in the curriculum for the upper grades but how is that handled and focused for the lower grades and again i certainly don't anticipate either of you being able to sort of answer that for us tonight and
061i also imagine that neither of you are creating the curriculum of how civil war day is talked about in kindergarten um but i know just and i will say just one of the reasons that this came up for me is um in my own personal history my i grew up um hearing the sort of family lore that my dad's side of the family my descendants are related to robert e lee and there was a lot of joy about that and when i got to high school and i announced to my high school history teacher that i was related to robert e lee his reaction did not meet my level of joy over that information and it was a very very challenging realization that this figure that had been celebrated within my family structure was not
062celebrated everywhere and i wonder um if we're in some way studying some of our younger kids up to have a sort of reckoning moment when they realize oh this historical event is not um as sort of celebratory as as maybe we have seen it demonstrated to be um and what's a way that we can um perhaps use a year where it's a little bit scaled back to look at some of that uh tradition around what's the what's the culture of the school as a whole around this event so i know that that's a totally different direction than how do we plan for it to be pandemic safety but i also want to recognize that we do we might have community members within our school who are looking at this a little sideways and saying this
063is a group of white people celebrating the civil war okay so um the the the main focus of this is actually a culminary activity for the fifth grade uh and so how the other visitors come out and how that's addressed that's definitely something that we we should look into as in you know you know prepping them for that but i'll tell you that um uh teaching hard history is difficult but it's one that we have to you know acknowledge and we've got to acknowledge it earlier on okay because you know our nation was built on slavery yeah and and it's foundational i mean the the reason why uh explorers came out here wasn't just like fun and adventure let's look at something new it's really about you know economic gain um wealth and power to
064the mother nation and all this sort of thing this sort of conquest and it's important to you know to realize that that you know the issue of of slavery was in the north and the south um and that um and that you have to like explicitly you know talk about how these these issues culminated the cause of the civil war was you know these issues of of slavery and the difference in in race um and and i think you know we do a really good job of that i think in in fifth grade you know we go we go right back to you know the first americans and and how the the impact of the the europeans coming here and all of that and i think a lot of as you know like the history
065books were written by rich white guys right i mean i mean you know typically that history is written by the guy who wins right so you know there's so much in in our history that hasn't been um the hard part of the history hasn't really been you know addressed so there is this ideological you know belief going forward um that you know like robert e lee or any of these other you know southern southern heroes were like heroes however they were standing for um a going against our country and it's fun fundamental beliefs and um and they're erected as a as a a symbol of you know sort of dominance over another you know sort of race or culture so i i'm sorry for rambling i'm not really prepared but but i you know i
066i feel like you know if we teach history correctly from an early time and i you gotta scale it down because you know kids developmentally but you can't make it all like roses and you know because it's not what it is it's that's not what any history is you know slavery was around way before it came here you know when it came here it became racialized you know over prior hit prior slavery way back didn't really have to do with race it was like who was captured in war who was you know a debtor or whatever um really became racially charged when the atlantic slavery became became a thing i'm i just want to jump in because before covet hit we were making some really great strides towards our non-discrimination committee and planning for how
067we work with issues in the district and well we might not solve all of this tonight i do hope that when we get to do things that aren't specific related that we can jump back in and have this be part of that at that time yeah so sorry i was rambling oh no no i'm just saying i it's so important but um and it was work that was interrupted you know so i'm hoping that we can just sort of pick it up again i'd be happy to to work on that with you as a historian i just wanted to mention i'm assuming the kids learned about frederick douglass and the underground railroad and all those of course yeah of course i mean we go right back to native america and how uh you couldn't keep
068those as slaves because they knew the territory and you know they you know and you know they were you know strong and you know rebellious and you know they knew where to hide and so and it and it was way easier to import people who you could clearly tell as a slave and that has impacted us to this day i also mentioned a book i read recently i mentioned this to sydney it's called 400 souls and people from the 1619 project were involved in it yes yes um yeah and it's a really good source yep yeah and i just wanted to say i just i really really really appreciate this conversation and i so appreciate and i have like so much faith and and trust in sort of what's happening at the the grade level
069you know i think it sounds like it's such a an you know an appropriate event and we're lucky to be able to have this event with you know with the two of you um and i i like i said i and like sydney said certainly not looking to answer it all or solve it tonight or how you know hash it all out i want to just sort of like nudge the door open as were as we are talking about um will this event happen and the scope of what it will look like so i just really appreciate that so any other questions from the board in terms of what the um questions of close campus open campus having folks come from outside of the gbs community eat any of that stuff brittany if i could
070talk just yet please do now um the when the children the the fifth graders come out and do civil war day they are really really taking it very seriously because they've had a whole month basically of living civil war in both of our classrooms we work it into writing it's social studies it is their life and um they understand at you know even at their age the discrepancies between the two races and how it was unfair and what can we do to make things better but they it it's not so much of a celebration as it is um being able to walk a mile in the shoes of a soldier yeah and i i really appreciate that that clarification too and i think for me i think more about um the the grades leading up
071to fifth grade and sort of their interaction with the event and and of course you know for most of our students they'll be up through the process and then have the experience of being in your classes and getting that full picture built um but we we also will have students who are here up until third grade or fourth grade and leave before they have a chance to have that full fifth grade experience and what are they leaving gvs with the impression of um and and is that impression a more full picture in an age-appropriate full picture of what this event is before anything happens i would be remiss that i have an audience of 92 people here when we do pick up the non-discrimination committee again i would love volunteers from the um community and
072parents so db already modeled this by volunteering to be part of it so while i have everybody's attention i would love it if you contacted to me contacting me to be part of that work i don't have a question i hope you'll all bear with me i feel really comfortable with the planning and especially since it's outside uh d.b i appreciate you laying it all out for us i'm very comfortable with uh the plan for rolling it out i'll second that it sounds like you've thought this through and the fact that it's limited to just the two grades um it's outside yeah it sounds safe i'm also very appreciative all the work that goes into modifying something that's been a standard and that's not for lack of passion it just i'm very impressed thank you
073for taking that time and i think the kids need this too okay so it sounds like we've had a good conversation about it and folks are feeling like they're ready to move forward and we would take action to um this would be to wave uh the closed campus is that how we would you would wave wave the closed campus um for this event and um you need to throw in there the we do this every time you need to uh throw in their waiver of our weapons policy to allow the cannon okay so the motion would be to wave the closed campus for the civil war day event and wave the weapons policy for to have the cannon and musket and musket sentences i didn't anticipate saying tonight so moved all right we have a
074motion from ed so we'll need a second second and a second from leslie so if you're in favor please say aye and if you're opposed say nay denise hi leslie i ed hi christine hi brittany aye all right move forward with your planning thank you we really appreciate it thank you both so so so much thank you very much okay so now we will look at uh same conversation different topic of graduation probably we won't be talking about a canon uh no i don't think so so you have uh more written information about this in advance so you probably i don't think mrs burger needs to go through everything but i'm just going to move her in for a minute in case you have any questions about sixth grade graduation can they still do the
075hand bell chorus doing pomp and circumstance well the issue i think with that is that they have not been meeting and practicing this year so i think it could still happen except they don't know how to play pomp and circle could be an issue i don't want to put a damper on it i think it's great that we can still have the event and have it outside and again this seems like a lot of thought went into how to arrange things to keep everybody safe yeah there's still a few details to work out um i think but uh it's a big space so i think we can divide the field so that each family group can occupy one grid square i think it's going to be a little tricky since we don't have a stage
076we can have people up on so i think visibility is going to be a little tricky we're thinking of having ipads in boxes so families can view on the ipad at the same time as they're viewing in person but that's that's a detail where we're still tinkering with with the option of a flatbed truck type stage be impossible i i don't know um i i guess that would be that's above my pay grade i guess so we'd have to talk to scott i think scott taylor and um kristen and sydney also is there a portable stage at the school that could be used for this i don't think so no we we don't and i don't think we have um the risers that we've used for concerts but not big enough to social distance all
077the kids that are in sixth grade um i'm just wondering if if eastman recreation might have something you could use have you checked with anybody there um no um but casey sylvain lives at eastman and she's in contact with people there so that's certainly something we can look into yeah it's leslie moses you'd want to speak with there used to be some some drama presentations that eastman residents put on so there may be something lurking somewhere in storage i wanted to say just say thank you to you and casey for putting together the you know for doing the work ahead of time on this and for trying to find a way to make this happen um for our students and our families i think it's really important and it was one of the really hardest
078parts of this time last year was watching that sort of slip away as we realized it wasn't going to be able to happen so we appreciate it um just one suggestion i would make is as you guys if you know if the board does vote to approve this which i'll just go on the record i'm in favor of i think it's you guys have done a lot of planning i think it's really this is a safe way to do it um one suggestion i would make is in your communications with families to just ask families even if they're potted with another family to stay in their own family box because the other families that are in attendance may not know um you know oh those families have been potted together and so they may see
079two families join up together and then think that they can join up with the family next to them and then it just sort of like spirals out of control and all of a sudden all of your work of measuring and lining the field is undone because everyone's just sort of mixed each other up together and it's just more about families not knowing sort of the intricacies of of which groups other families are connecting with and i think um there's a natural sort of tendency of families who are spending a lot of time together to say oh we're potted together so we'll just pull all our chairs together in one box and we don't need to distance from each other um just one suggestion as you're communicating with families okay thank you um and i'll just
080say that it's really casey who deserves the majority of the credit for the planning she's the planner extraordinaire of the two of us so she's done a lot of work on that any other questions from the board okay if others are feeling similar to i am i would need a motion to wave the closed campus for the sixth grade graduation with the um safety parameters as outlined by the sixth grade teachers so moved okay so we have a motion from leslie second a second from christine so we'll roll call if you're in favor please say aye if you're opposed to say nay denise hi leslie i christine hi ed hi brittany aye all right thank you astrid thank you okay we're gonna move on to our next agenda item uh which is the audit report
081and the discussion and the action to accept the audit report okay we are going to quickly move in our auditor so that he can go start the rest of his evening and i'm also going to move in karen lessard our business administrator and they can go over the you all already received the audit so they're just going to go over some of the big picture things and then the board's responsibility you know in addition to just asking any questions that you have is simply to accept this year's audit with a hi tyler you want to go ahead that's great absolutely so my name is tyler payne i'm a manager at pods against anderson i understand you guys got a lot on your plate tonight so i'm going to keep it super quick for you so
082i don't know if you have the reports in front of you but i'm just going to give up some references page numbers and schedules of areas where you probably want to focus just some of the highlights here so most important part of our of our audit is the opinion that's found on page one and two that opinion letter contains management responsibilities it also describes our responsibilities as the auditor most importantly that opinion paragraph there you know it summarizes the results of the audit and the grantham school district received an unmod unmodified opinion which in you know in our audit business that is the the best opinion the cleanest opinion that you can receive what we also use this letter for is to draw attention to to new accounting items that impacted your financial statements so
083if you're comparing to prior periods they wouldn't necessarily be comparable so for this period gasby 84 impacted your financial statements essentially just changing how your student activity funds were reported they're labeling them as a special revenue special revenue fund now as opposed to a fiduciary fund so they're being reported similar to your food service program your grants program those types of things so the the most important schedule here probably for you guys on page 47 schedule three it just summarizes the changes in your unassigned fund balance that's available so at the top it shows the amount that you had available to start the year what used to reduce the school district assessment obviously there's a two dollar rounding difference somewhere along the line there and the amount that was set aside probably funding a capital
084reserve or an expendable trust at 50 000 you'll also see your budgetary results the revenue surplus from schedule 1 can be found found on page 45. you had surplus revenue of 73 366 dollars that was mainly due to catastrophic aid that was more than what was anticipated additionally you have your unexpected balance the appropriation of 102 255 dollars that was mainly driven by a savings in special education tuition mainly a student with severe and aids anticipated in the district was no longer a student of the district is what it seems like so these these statements are what we consider your budgetary basis they are what you know how you track your information internally it's how you report your information to the state um the generally accepted accounting principles require us to also report two different
085bases of accounting the modified accrual and the full accrual basis of accounting uh the modified accruals can be found in exhibit c1 page 14. that's the balance sheet the difference here is it displays the general fund and all of your other funds that i was talking about the difference here between the general fund at this stage and at the other statement is this combines your capital reserve and your expendable trust into the general fund as one reporting unit and you'll notice a column labeled other governmental funds that's a roll-up of what you consider your non-major funds they have less activity less assets we do provide detailed schedule of those and those can be found schedule four and five pages 48 and pages 49. and for the revenue and expenditures in the modified rule that's exhibit
086c3 page 16. same idea same presentation that i was just going over but just revenue and expenditures for the modified accrual basis we do provide a note disclosure that kind of walks you through that change in the revenue expenditures that's on 2b page 26. that starts with your the budgetary totals your budgetary expenditure totals and it shows the changes that are necessary to report it those the general fund on a modified accrual basis of accounting last basis of accounting is full accrual and that's similar to how corporations or private businesses report their financial statements but the main difference here is all of your governmental funds are rolled up into one call and we include the long-term assets which are your capital assets and your long-term liabilities you know if you have any outstanding bonds notes
087capital leases the reporting of your share of the liability for the new hampshire retirement system pension and other post-employment benefit program are also in those liabilities as well and additionally there's new inflows and outflows that are reserved there are as a result of the actuarial calculations that are provided by the state's retirement system and essentially long and short of it they are they're ways to account for differences in what the projected what the actual investment experience in their portfolio versus what they actually projected and other various item elements like that the other full cruel statement is exhibit b that just shows your revenue expenditures and it has a different way of presenting them it it takes a functional approach it looks at you know your tuition your charges for services operating grants and capital grants
088how those go towards a specific function of the school district and then beneath that we have the general revenues the school district assessment and other grants that aren't directly tied to a program or a function and at the bottom you'll see net position was restated and we refer to note 13 and that was due to the implementation of gatsby 84 so it was the addition of the student activity funds into that net position essentially so nothing that was an error or anything like that it was a reporting requirement that was necessary to comply with with gaspi and as i brought up the reconciliation schedule before we have two schedules that reconcile the modified accrual of the full accrual that is found on exhibit c2 page 15 that walks you through the changes in fund balance
089and you know adding the capital assets and other various items an exhibit c4 on page 17 takes the the change in your fund balance and show how that works forward to the change in that position so it accounts for all the impacts of your your depreciation in your changes and your other long-term liabilities that are reported on that full accrual basis so i i know i speak very quickly and i know i want to try to cover things fast for you guys but i also wanted to say that the audit went very smooth for a first year audit they can they can be challenging from time to time and it was a pleasure working with karen again and the school district staff was wonderful so at this point just if there's any questions you know
090from karen or from yourself i'd like to open it up to that i don't have a question thank you tyler uh that was great i just want to give a shout out to karen who's just the absolute best just that you're the best so thanks for the smooth audit tyler and karen but karen big shout out we appreciate you thank you i did have a couple questions sure i mean there um and i'm not sure these are material um but i'll go ahead um on page six um in the last group there net investment in capital um under assets looking across it shows that the percent change is a negative and i didn't get that no it's likely a formula error in this is uh the md and a schedules these are on audited so
091they were i believe were they prepared internally karen i don't recall either way i think i got that most of the information from you guys did we you know we it's very likely that a formula error could have got missed there so my apologies for the negative okay all right i thought it was something i didn't understand no likely what happened is filling a formula dragging it across didn't reverse it for the negative yeah okay and on the next page page seven yep under um program expenses there's general administration and executive administration sure was that some change in the way the accounts were set up because i think it's a change in the reporting between the two different audit firms oh okay yep um likely oh go ahead okay um and the other question i
092had was in the i guess it's a cover letter um on page three the new gatsby pronouncements sure so you're referring to the governance letter i believe is that what it's called yeah yeah oh okay on page three um the first one is about leases and i was just wondering i think we leased the van is this going to have any material effect on lucky for you guys the this pronouncement's mainly a reporting change so it's it's something that the financial statement prepares that we kind of have to you know obviously make you aware of but it's more of terminology change in the report if they're doing capital leases and they're coming up with all sorts of other fun terminology for us to put in the report okay all right well i'm glad none of
093this is anything major and there's some other things down there i just didn't know are any of the others listed there applicable to our bear with me for a quick moment i did not have that with me open let's see let's see all right no to be honest with you a lot of those are not going to be applicable for the school district of your size okay that's what i figured we want to make everybody aware of everything under the sun that could potentially arise in the financial statements but my experience this year i don't anticipate any of those having significant impact on your information okay thank you no problem any other questions from board members okay all right i'll again thank you karen thank you tyler we appreciate it um christine's our copy editor
094so if you would ever like to borrow her you can't have her because she's not you know we're accountants we make mistakes just like everybody else from time to time um okay so we do need a motion to accept um the audit report we have a motion to accept the audit report from ed we need a second okay and we have a second from leslie so we'll do a roll call and if you're in favor please say aye if you're opposed say nay denise hi christine i ed hi leslie hi brittany hi all right thank you tyler thank you karen all right bye bye everybody take care thanks tyler all right so we'll move to the next agenda item which is um taking action on the proposed calendar for the 2021-2022 school year and that
095is a copy of that is in the board packet so as usual just very quickly we follow the lebanon school calendar so our families can have the vacations together and um just everybody always wants to know what the first day of school is so uh it's pretty easy to remember september 1st is our scheduled birthday of school next year it's the typical number of days it's 177 student days and 185 days for teachers so there really isn't much different here i guess i should say the only thing that's different is all of our schedules really go around the hub of the hartford tech center so because all of our students all of our area students will access the tech center and one thing that is a little bit different is um presidents day will actually
096be a school day and we are celebrating president's day the week before during our vacation and we have the ability to do that and that is what lebanon plainfield and hartford are all doing as well it just happens to be where vacation falls sydney i know there was some discussion in previous years about like modifying either conference days or you know some of those things and where where did those shake out for this calendar they stayed pretty much the same but we've really learned a lot about how much more accessible a lot of parents are by zooming conferences that's been a good side effect of the pandemic so right now conferences are scheduled the way that they are in previous years but they might actually look a little bit different and how we can find
097ways to connect with more families okay okay any other questions from the board about the calendar okay so we'll need a motion to accept the calendar as proposed for the 2021-2022 school year no moved all second all right so i have a motion from leslie and then a second from denise and so if you're in favor please say aye if you're opposed say nay denise hi christine i leslie i ed and brittany i all right so we'll move to the uh last day of school for this year okay i'm quickly just going to share my screen so all of our parents who are watching can um see what we're talking about so and sydney just a heads up we do have it changed we do have two um folks joining us by phone yeah okay
098so i'll read it thank you yeah so this is a request um my proposal for when our last day of school is this year and um this is something that we do every year in april after we look at snow days and everything like that so my proposal this year is that the last day of school for students which is a half day as we've had in the last few years would be friday june 11 and that the last day of work for school year employees would be the following wednesday june 16th this will meet our required hours for the new hampshire department of education in terms of our partner area schools lebanon's last day of school is monday the 14th um i wasn't really excited about bringing everybody back for a monday um so
099my that's why i think it would probably be a nice half day on friday and then plainfield's last day of school currently is june 22nd they're going pretty late so um this is what i believe is going to be the best for gvs this year okay any questions or discussion from the board okay so we'll need a motion to approve um the last day of school for now i've lost it dude what was the date half day june 11th first day june perfect so a half day of june 11th and that would make the last day for school year employees the following wednesday june 16th okay so we need perfect so i have a motion from leslie and i need a second second i have a second from ed so um we'll take a roll
100call all those in favor please say i in any opposed say nay denise hi christine hi leslie hi ed hi brittany aye all right okay so we will move on to our discussion and possible action for the instructional model review and i just want to um start our conversation just with a couple of quick points um and i'll try to keep them brief so that we can just really get into the conversation that the board needs to have tonight first of all i wanted to just acknowledge again that this was a conversation that the board had planned to be having tonight uh way back from our last meeting and so the conversation will most likely take a similar but now slightly different form given the executive order from the governor so much of the information
101that we're going to talk about tonight are things that we would have talked about uh whether or not that executive order had come down and so um i think it's really important for the board to talk through our process of what this looks like and what the changes will mean for families um and what the the benefits and what the challenges or potential costs would be for a change at this point and i did also want to acknowledge um that the board did receive a petition and it was submitted um by stephanie stephanie lozito who um did speak during the public comment period as well so we do have her information on record and the petition was signed by uh i believe the count was we had about 20 um individuals with grantham addresses that
102signed that petition to ask the board to look at a five-day model and so much of what was requested in that petition again will be discussed tonight as part of this board's conversation so um and but i did want to just acknowledge that the board did receive that and to let the community know that um the board members all had a chance to review that and i think with that i'm going to turn things over to sydney to give us a presentation of some of the information that we would have been getting tonight whether or not there was an executive order for us to consider along with some additional considerations of what that executive order means for our district thanks um so i'm going to actually start and i believe i do want to say
103i believe that everybody's questions and comments will be addressed from public input i was trying to make a list of everything that people were asking and i don't think that there's anything that we missed in here so this is where we stand right now in terms of our monthly review of our instructional model and here we are in april i really wanted to start framing the board decision um for what the board options are so the board decision and your options are basically and there's been a lot of information coming out because the governor's order took everybody by surprise so there's still a lot being figured out option one is to for the board to make a decision to move to open for five days in person instruction and following the governor's orders and i
104can give you a few more details about what i believe gvs will need to make that happen the second option is that you can decide to write the state for a waiver to stay in the four-day model and some of the parameters that you would need to put in that waiver would be to show how it is the board's belief that it is either unsafe or not possible to move to five days and you would have to explain um specifically those two things in detail and see if and then see if the waiver would be granted um for um from i think it would go to the commissioner first and then i'm not sure if it would actually go to the governor and then the third option is you could take no action and to
105answer mr james question is this still is legally a local jurisdictional decision the instructional model is up to the grantham school board so a lot of the questions that have been asked lately are the you know the or what questions so if if the board does decide to uh not move to five days and stick with our current model what would what are the consequences and i think people want to know those answers so um while i don't have all the answers i have some so one possibility is that one of the governor's previous executive orders had said that violating a mandate would result in the charge of a misdemeanor and a thousand dollar fine per day that executive order came out specifically for businesses who were violating the mass mandate um and then the
106governor has actually pulled back on some of that and actually not making some of the businesses pay fines as we know but that is part of the discussion that's that's been coming up um another um possibility is to just for the board to say this is our local decision and we are sticking to it and we can provide you the reasons why we're sticking to it um and then there's there's some discussion of whether funding could be withheld because the sr money that's coming especially the third round requires your plan of how you're going to open in in a five-day model because everybody knows that that's the expectation for schools but the federal um package doesn't include like a deadline like the governor's deadline of april 19th you just have to say we will move
107back to five days instruction and here's our plan on how we're going to do it so you have a couple of different options here and if you have questions more about those after i you know present the rest of the information we can go over that in a little bit more detail so this is the same slide first couple of slides are the same as last time just to do some updates of where the guidance is so um from the cdc the five layers of the mitigation components and we have the consistent implementation of layered mitigation strategies i'm going to go into more detail that about that in the next slide um indicators of community transmission has been updated so we're going to go over that also the phased mitigation and learning modes has been
108updated i'll give you a brief presentation on that surveillance testing i just want to say there's a lot of talk about it but no action yet um that would be the proactive testing in the school or of employees or kids or in the community sewage testing those kind of things and vaccinations um adults yes going great there is new hope for teens especially with some of the pfizer work and then there are several trials underway for kids under 12. so when we look at the um layered mitigation strategies with universal and correct use of masks as priority there's no change with that there's absolutely no change in in the fact that mask wearing is essential to open schools and for safety physical distancing has changed um there's a new recommendation of a three-foot distancing for
109kids not for adults and that six feet for eating because masks obviously have to come off during eating so if we would remain in six foot distance for eating it still remains a six foot recommendation for all adults and for eight to ten feet for music for any blowing or singing that's involved in terms of hand washing and respiratory etiquette there is no change um that's still up there as a priority no change in that cleaning and maintaining healthy facilities the new guidance really emphasizes as it always has the regular cleaning and sanitizing as well as the specific cleaning protocols after you have a positive case um but also no uh no mandate or recommendation for regular deep cleaning contact tracing in combination with isolate quarantine and there are some changes in quarantine requirements that
110are basically due to two things we're going to discuss one would be just the basic change that if you go from six to three feet the quarantine requirements change of who gets quarantined also vaccinations will play a role in terms of who does or does not need to be quarantined after vaccination after being fully vaccinated so that's the full vaccination plus the 14 days after and then the change in the quarantine requirements for travel is something that we're going to have to address throughout this process so when we were looking at the indicators at the february meeting we were at 78.8 cases per hundred thousand as of today we were at 78.8 cases per hundred thousand i was kind of struck by the fact that it's the same exact number still in substantial transmission for
111sullivan county um the test positivity rate is down so at our february meeting we are at 9.7 percent and we are currently at 3.65 so we're considered low for the test positivity rate this is the new phased mitigation and learning modes with the updated march cdc guidance so this is in red is circled but if you're thinking of the february meeting this is a different chart than you were looking at at the february meeting so this is the new chart which is basically saying that if we are in substantial transmission elementary schools should practice physical distancing at least three feet of distance between students and classrooms and cohorting recommended when possible so that's a little bit different than we saw last time where there was a recommendation to specifically be in hybrid um the governor's
112executive order the if you look up dhhs and their level of community and transmission in their modes um since the governor's order happened so quickly and he's saying that all schools need to be open five days in person except for positive cases i don't even know what we would do with this chart at this point to be honest um one of the things that we've been hearing a lot about is why we you know what about gvs and why are all the schools around us in five days and we're not and i get that question very often so i really want to go through some of the specifics of why we really need to look at gvs and not what other schools do um when you're in a k-12 district you can draw from other
113buildings you know if you're short you might be able to find somebody from another building who might be available if you're really in a bind when it's just our pre-k through six it's just us um and that does play a significant factor when we're looking at our sub pool and we've talked about from the beginning how difficult it is for us to find subs we have a population of 3000 which is 10 times that in the upper valley and i know that some people might say there's economies of scale but basically we just don't have a sub-population to draw from it's really difficult for us when we looked at our subs we have had 20 people actually sign up and get background checked and and decide to be subs for us of those 20 people
114only seven have actually accepted assignments this year and of those seven only three have accepted more than two assignments this year so just to give you some perspective on on how difficult it has been for us to get subs in a close look at schools with in-person five days um we have to look at you know if you've been in five days how many of those schools may have been quarantined or in and out a lot you know we've been incredibly lucky with our low cases um what percentage of those two schools student population have returned um i know that things are very different for gvs because we're at 96 percent of our students have actually returned to in-person instruction if you do look at some schools and say hey they're in five days i
115know that some of them may have only 75 or 80 percent of their students actually in person and the rest are remote things like that do make a difference for us and just very generally what space do they have because not every building is the same you know so um it is the most common question that i get so i was i was hoping to just provide some context on why when we make these decisions we look at gvs um and i really do want to say a few things about what gvs has been doing right and what's been working incredibly well so we've worked successfully in the 4-1 model since november 3rd we've only had two days of quarantine for one grade level and while this wasn't planned a nice side effect was of
116our last three positive cases we had no need to quarantine because wednesday specifically we've carefully structured time for educators to do their jobs as professionals and as a result we sure we show no signs of school-wide learning loss at this point and we should be really proud of that as a community we've prioritized the social emotional health of all of our children from the beginning we've delivered special education modifications and services and 504 accommodations in every model that we've been in and believe me that's been no easy task we've provided free and reduced meals for every family in need and just a little bit of a shout out to our new principal we haven't yet had to close because every morning mrs reed does a juggling act so you can see how hard it is
117for us to get subs and every morning mrs reed spends her morning trying to move people here and there to make sure that we can open school and i think she should really be commended for that some of the key pros and cons which is something we go over every month in terms of the four and five day um or moving specifically in this case the question of do we move to a five to five day at this point some of the real pros are it is always good to have more time with kids that's an absolute given we all recognize that this can help with some equity issues in terms of variation in how every household is able to manage remote time it's different for different families and there could be more equity achieved
118by having that everybody in on five days it can help some of our struggling families with the ability to work um gvs educator vaccinations hooray we are estimated at about 90 percent uh of our staff to be vaccinated which is fantastic and um if we did go back five to five days now or you know soon this would be a good opportunity for us to learn what will or won't work next year and i think that that could be helpful for us in our planning over the summer about what next year will look like and it can also help children who have trouble transitioning so you know as you've probably heard or read in some of our progress monitoring minutes that um some kids who have difficulty with transitions every thursday is also another monday
119transition you know and so this could help with some of that in terms of some of the cons to consider loss of cohorting which i know some people brought up there is really no way we would be able to go to five days without losing cohorting um so there is some um elevated risk of having to move remote or having more people possibly have to move to remote it is another significant change for kids teachers and families and we've heard some people tonight express that another change is going to be hard on some of our kids some kids will love it absolutely but there are some kids and families where it's going to be really hard and we have to recognize both of those perspectives there will be a decrease in our educator time for
120planning preparation and meetings for our staff it will require more subs especially since with less time to meet we will have to pull people from instructional time to have meetings and again that role will require more subs our space is really at a maximum capacity so we would just have to we as you heard earlier some of our um and this is down below either some of our lack of space will cause possible decreases in student supports or group changes or maybe we won't be able to give as much of that individual time as we can where we have things available like a library or the music room or the cafeteria again we are hoping to use that outside and outdoor space as much as possible but so we're not talking about that being a
121possibility every day obviously um the elevation of risk is you know there is a bigger risk without um cohorting for remote instruction and the variance nobody really knows what's going on with the variance but we're hearing a lot about those now one of the hard things is that this means we really wouldn't be able to have any hybrid option at all for families we would have to move to a you know you are in or you're in our remote academy or the family would have to make another choice so at the beginning of the year we um i think took a lot of pride in being able to offer families a variety of things and now we really wouldn't be able to offer a hybrid option with this and just you know just to highlight
122again in the bottom there is no pro and no con when we're looking at this with kids and families because each individual child and family is going to react differently to this change some other considerations that i really wanted to bring up that are just a little bit on a bigger picture level um the governor's order actually removes some of our working parents ability to collect covet unemployment due to the school closures so there's you know specific unemployment if your school is not open some of our parents have made decisions to leave their jobs or alter their jobs or get different jobs the governor's mandate actually if we are open five days takes this away so again just something to consider because everybody thinks this is easier on working families it's not easier on every
123working family um there i really do want to say i feel like the mandate was a lack of consideration for the larger structure of our state's education and it puts many families and districts in jeopardy i think we're very fortunate in grantham because this is something we were going to talk about anyway tonight and there are a lot of districts who have actually just opened in hybrid several weeks ago and they're expected to go full time there are other districts where they've actually closed entire facilities and they don't know how they can open them again so in that way i do feel lucky to be at least where we are in this decision making process and i have to say that i did a right to know request with the commissioner of education to see
124the full survey results that the governor used to make his announcement that 60 of schools are already in five person or five days in person and it's very misleading um the survey that was given had an option because i took it and one of the options was that you're in a four-in-one model 16 percent of schools answered that they were in that model and they were lumped in with the five day full in person to make the 60 so when you're looking at the schools that answered the survey um you know 44 of them are actually open five days that's a little misleading compared to 60 and only 380 out of 570 schools answered the survey you know so we're missing quite a few schools there and i do know from discussions with other administrators
125that that a lot of the schools who didn't answer the survey didn't want to answer it because it's not anonymous and they don't feel like being shamed for not being open five days and they're struggling so the statements about the percentage of schools that were open in five days and the availability of funding are inaccurate and i think it's important for people to know that if you if the board does choose to go to a five-day model tonight um these are some of the things that i'm going to recommend and we've had a lot of discussions with staff we've heard from a lot of families and this is how we can make it work we would like to obviously keep mandatory mask wearing hand hygiene outdoor time whenever weather permits we will be ordering two
126tents instead of one and some extra tables and chairs to try and get everybody outside more we plan on continuing the morning screening just to have parents just do a mental check to make sure that they're not sending kids to school sick um we agree with the flexibility of three feet distancing for students and lunch always at six feet and the three feet does give us some flexibility in how we schedule our specials with kids we are going to recommend that you rescind the jh addendum um so that there are no covet exceptions anymore if we are expected to be in a five-day model that um again we need to be in a position where we are either in or out so students are either in school or we go back to our usual absence
127reasons um i would like to ask that you designate april 21st as a full professional development day no school for students that's a wednesday anyway but that would give our staff at least that one day of getting everything ready to open up five days in person on april 26th the reason we would look at that date is because that would be 14 days post our staff vaccinations we have no ability right now whatsoever to offer any before or after school program that just is not going to happen this year we'd like to request that we continue the quarantine guidance of the outside new england travel and quarantine until the next board meeting and then reassess and the big uh ask for that has to do with a lot of people in our families who we've
128heard about traveling to some areas that where variants are are pretty high over april break and this is imminent and that would be in our opinion too many changes and too much risk as we were also moving into a five-day model i would recommend that we keep our bus guidance as it is which is one student per seat unless it's specifically requested by a parent to share our bus company with whom we contract is allowing um some districts to have two kids per seat there's really no way that that's three feet social distancing so we haven't had anybody been denied a seat who needs a regular bus seat so i don't really see any reason to change this we will maintain a closed campus except for the exceptions that you made this evening and there
129are some ways where we would if we are going back to what would be considered more of a usual five-day schedule we would need to be back to our usual practices one of those that's really big for us is if students are out quarantined they're just out sick and it would be the same as if a student is out sick any other year and they will be provided makeup work upon return or as the classroom teacher is able to summarize without planning and preparation time there's absolutely no way we can expect our teachers to teach everybody in school and provide all of that work for kids who are quarantined at home and then special education services will revert to our four and one day week model which is what we had pre-covered so it's nothing
130new it would be going back to what we had unless five days is specifically determined by an iep team which it would be in any other year but some of our students have been receiving additional services on wednesdays which has been an advantage of our four in one model and um we won't be able to do that going back to five days we would need to go back to four days of services and one day for meetings and assessments and evaluation and planning for special education in in terms of things that we would need and things that i would ask the board some permission to spend some of our sr money would be we would need to increase the custodial hours by 10 hours a week and a lot of this would have to do
131with the fact that since we have to eat lunch as we're eating now and with the schedule being the way that it needs to be for us to be in five days a week and cover duties and provide supervision we need extra custodial staff on to be able to handle the cleanup after lunch deliveries to all the classrooms and i just do want to remind people that we still don't have a cafeteria that our cafeteria is still a grade level classroom and then finally hire additional people person or possibly two people for up to 15 hours a week to help with duty coverage meeting coverage if we can get somebody to come in for just a few hours a day regularly we really haven't had luck float finding somebody to kind of float sub like
132that but you know we will try again and that would be a huge help especially around those times where we need extra duty coverage for lunch and recess and questions and comments a lot to think about so thank you for listening for that sydney it was really thorough i appreciate that very much um and i can i just want to say one really good thing is that this is the last time you have to make this decision this year because i know it's excruciating for everybody to have to keep making these decisions so we're almost there we've almost really successfully made it through a year and so no matter what the decision is you know we can we can move forward and we can have a strong finish to the year um does going to
133five days mean that some classrooms are going to have to be moved reconfigured we we talked a lot about that and we don't feel that it's fair to anyone to move anybody it's really too much and it i'm not sure what we would get for it because we would have seven weeks of school after april 26 and to cause that kind of move would be um i think really exhausting and disruptive for students and staff also one of the considerations from the teachers especially from our two grade levels who are split among three classrooms is that those classrooms where we've had somebody in that third classroom that's been that student's classroom and home base and homeroom since november 3rd um and and that's that's disruptive to suddenly ask all of those kids to you know
134get up and reconfigure themselves again sydney that leads to one of my questions when when we say we are going to lose cohorting does that really mean that we're go the adult are not going to have the ability anymore to stay really self-contained it seems like the kids are largely class you know they're largely still classroom confined i understand there's probably a little variability with movement in the school but it sounds like losing cohorting means we're losing adult cohorting that there will have to be different adult bodies in different configurations to cover the kids right for five days is that right speaking right that's true but there are pros and cons to that um i wouldn't actually not pros and cons there are just two things to consider with that one is that's true and
135it will depend on who needs to quarantine at any given time because we're probably going to reach a point where we're thinking much more about kids needing to quarantine than adults because if adults are fully vaccinated and after the foreign 14 days depending on the situation they might not have to quarantine but yes we're going to have everybody all over the place again we're not going to have groups that we can easily track and that's where you do run an elevated risk of having more individuals having to quarantine more kids and maybe some adults cynthia leslie are you all set um sydney are we in danger of going out of compliance for our um special ed and 504 students if we go to the five day week um no my recommendation would be very specifically
136that you know we really are talking about a finite period of time we're talking about seven weeks i think it would be really cruel and unusual to ask everybody to do amendments to all those plans again while everybody is also doing the end of year um iep process or 504s to get ready for next year so i think that just has to be once there may be ieps that need to be revised because they've had that fifth day of service that i was talking about um but other than that i can tell you that we will figure out a way to make sure that we are in compliance because we have this whole way through i mean there are there are a few minor cases where we need compensatory services where somebody a provider wasn't
137available um but those are extremely rare sydney or kristen is this is this even doable without those two additional the additional custodial time of 10 hours and then if you are able to find someone within the next say i guess three weeks um you know that 50 the additional 15 hours a day let's say neither of those materialize in a timely manner is this does this does that put an end to this plan or are there contingencies in place for that i'll answer the custodial part because this is somebody who's part-time that we can move to full-time so i feel confident that that can happen and i'll defer to kristen who has been the schedule guru in terms of again a juggling act of if we don't have enough enough help or float help or
138sub help in the middle is that a is that a deal breaker kristin [Music] um so without that what we're looking at is potentially teachers having a duty every single day um every every day we're looking at using front office staff to cover duties as well um me doing duties which it seems like that would be an easy fix but lunch and recess is generally the time that students need to um come have some time with with me and my office or teachers need some support and they they come and talk to me so it's just pulling people from other places then they're not available in those places and then i'm assuming if you don't if there's no way to cover for a certain day it is a fully remote day on i would say
139relatively short notice for people so if we don't have coverage on a certain day sorry if my dog starts barking um we have to we we do the juggling act so there are times that we have to pull a para educator out of a classroom to cover um which means that classroom doesn't have a para educator for the day and we have to be really careful in terms of um requirements of children's ieps to make sure they're getting the services they need when we pull those para educators uh was one part of the staffing requirement to put together a five-day program was that you had to have more subs it's certainly going to help so one of the reasons is um you know with five days we have the potential of having more need for
140people being out um and with the whole juggling act even now this week we've had a couple days i've had to pull pair educators out of the classroom to um cover for teachers or other positions that i don't want to say anyone any position is more important than another but trying to to balance it to make sure coverage is happening in the most paramount places and there's there's no reason to anticipate that the sub situation is going to improve we've been trying all year um i'd also like to ask kristen or sydney so the way we are using wednesdays now i'm assuming that a lot of the meetings that are taking place will now have to take place during regular instructional time for the students resulting in probably less teacher contact to get these meetings
141in during the school time they they would go back to the way that we would have had meetings before which is we try whenever possible to do them before or after school um or during common planning time and then if none of those work we would um have people actually have to be pulled and then find somebody to cover their classes and then just um piggybacking that we do have some meetings that are scheduled for wednesdays already moving all the way to the end of the school year that are parent meetings so some of those could get rescheduled but at the same time parents have altered their work schedules to be available for those meetings as well so potentially having to find coverage on the wednesday meetings that we've scheduled already um just want to
142also i've just got a whole bunch of questions that i wrote down during the last couple of days sydney are the uh s or funds adequate to cover the costs that we might need yes they are i can tell you that the funding would allow us to do these things that we would need to do i don't want to be a question hog um are there any teachers working remotely presently we have um well we've hired our person specifically to work with our remote students um but we do not have anybody who uh is is working remotely that that we didn't intend for them to work remotely with remote kits and i think we're incredibly lucky and thankful that our staff is all here would that would that position still stay in place if we
143moved back to a 5-day model yeah um we would definitely not um take away the full remote option and some families have really enjoyed that and been thriving it we have had some change where people are coming back to school they felt ready to send their kids back some kids have left that gvs remote academy and gone to a private school and some have actually homeschooled we've had a variety of things happen but um i wouldn't recommend making any changes at all for those families who've chosen to be remote this year we can just keep them going for the whole year but this would be a change for anyone that was not going in full time but maybe twice a week or something like this sort of the did i think you said something in
144your presentation that we do have some families that aren't back to the full four days so it's really it's not just that it's not that families aren't back for four days it's that when this conversation started to happen we have a lot of families who really love wednesdays just absolutely love wednesdays and i've been getting questions from those families saying can i keep those wednesdays because i just want to send my students four days a week and hang on to those wednesdays it is um not really going to be possible for us to have smooth instruction to just have to just say wednesdays are optional um it becomes legally kind of murky you know attendance wise and who's here so we really need to be in a position to say if we are in then
145everybody is expected to be in school every day with our regular attendance policy so it had more to do with that okay so i'm gonna jump in because denise has asked some questions and i see the chat comments coming in and um for me i i really appreciate the what you might look like conservancy on our part of being four days for a long time and a lot of others we say a lot of other schools but like let's just name them like especially hanover is a big contrast point for a lot of us who work there and whatever they've been five days the whole time with with a lot of success um and for me now that our teachers will be vaccinated almost you know with a very high rate of vaccination among our
146adults and with very very little if any evidence to show that we need to worry about our kids giving each other covid and with the adults vaccinated i i i i would really like to advocate that we try for five days and i really want to emphasize i appreciate i've worked in schools i understand this is no small endeavor but when i really think about what's important to me and and how to make this kind of decision um equity and access just keeps coming up for me and we are lucky to live in a town with resources and a lot of families who can weather this um with varying degrees of resilience and stability um but as i have said like as i said back in september october i just i think about the families
147who are less visible um who this is very hard for their child it's very hard for them and gvs is one of its greatest strengths is our consistency and our nurturing and and being in that building for students including my own fourth grader who desperately wants to go back to school five days um and when when i said we were still going to talk about it tonight he was very distressed which is not why i'm bringing this up i'm just sharing that you know all families like you said sydney all families and every child is going to weather this change whenever it comes differently so i'm just i'm i'm putting out there that i i'm listening carefully but i st i feel strongly that we should try the five days i think your timeline that
148you laid out sydney of um the first five day the first day of five days would be whatever it was that monday following the 21st i think you said um so that would be what i would be in favor of um with all acknowledgments of what kind of effort and lift this is going to be and the variables that get tossed in the air i just want to do a quick reminder for the people who are putting things in chat that this is not a public input time so the board will not respond um and this is that's why i really wanted to emphasize at the beginning that everybody say things in public input and that we the board had a chance to hear everything so i don't want people who are putting things in
149the chat thinking they're being ignored ignored it's just not time for public input okay thanks cindy and i was just gonna i'd leslie i was headed in a similar direction to sort of dive into the conversation and and certainly you know denise and other folks if you have more questions please ask them too because i think it's important for us to all hear the questions that each board member is having and i just um i have been up and down and around every single side of this over the since our last meeting um and it has changed for me as i've watched case counts in our area go down and then start to go back up again it's changed for me as i've seen new recommendations from the cdc with the governor's executive order all
150of those things have been an incredible amount of information for us to take in and synthesize and process um between the last meeting and and tonight and i think um it's really really important that this board um be very transparent in our decision making and that means us discussing um all sort of angles of this and discussing um you know leslie i think you know you raise a great point that there's you know sort of those those unseen folks that are really struggling and i think um in in the terms of the pandemic there isn't sort of a race to who's struggling hardest i think even the folks who support and enjoy or are seeing success in the four-day model are also having a hard time um there are kids who are thriving in a
151four-day model who are also having a hard time and whose families are having a hard time because we are in a global health crisis and um a school model is not going to solve some of those issues for anyone or everyone and i think we just need to acknowledge the fact that uh i'm really grateful that we heard from folks with a variety of opinions tonight and the board has heard from from folks outside of this meeting uh with a variety of opinions and that those voices all be honored and that um we ask uh sydney and we asked kristen to come and present this information to the board as our educational experts and they're giving us their perspective on what this means in terms of our school and our education and i just really
152appreciate getting their perspective from them because we have great resources to get the medical information both from our progress monitoring committee and from um you know guidance from dr chan at the state level um from cdc so i just appreciate sydney and kristen being our experts in what it means educationally locally based for our students i will say i um i'm going to be very forthright and say that one of the factors that is really weighing on me is um i think sydney has shown us and kristin and their work have shown us how it's possible for us to do this and to make this move um and i am um i'm grateful that they've shown us that i also don't want the board to feel like we are in a corner that we can't
153come out of because of the executive order and is this a decision that we feel is best for our school and the answer to that might be yes um and before we head into taking that vote i want um to make it very very can i introduce at least i would like i need to legally ask all board members to close their chat please because people are still typing in in a session that isn't public input i i think that if you would like to post to each other or communicate with each other if you are an attendee that's absolutely fine but we set up some parameters about public input and if i could just ask the board to be able to focus on their conversation that's what you need to do legally right now
154um and i would just like to just uh let the board know i think um you know as we move through this conversation i trust and i know that everybody on this board is going to make um the vote that they are um taking that's the right choice for our district and um that there isn't our school board has never and will never um be a uh partisan body we don't take votes on our on our board along party lines i frankly don't even know the affiliation of anyone on this board um and it is not a um a vote that is something that is reflective of any kind of political action on our part and i just want the the board members to um recognize and honor that we're taking a vote for what's
155best for our school and our community um and i you know i'm happy to sort of open the conversation back up for board members to be able to talk this through since we did hear from our public during public input in in a really productive way thanks brittany that's very helpful to um hear your perspective um i find myself in a position where if this order hadn't come through would we be having some of this discussion tonight we can't answer that but we now have to um deal with the fact that an order has been given so my questions have been around are we obligated to following this order and if so how can we make this the best model for our students the other side of it is if we have local control to
156say this has been working as well as we can with four days in would we be changing the whole setup for seven wednesdays seven different days of instruction and change the entire routine of the students i'm following the news with variants being rapidly spread i feel like we provided a very safe environment for our students and i just don't know if this would be sustainable in a five-day model i'm just going to pop in um because this is a frequently cited um concern it's super real um but i'm just going to go back to um i think stan said early on and i have felt this all along and it's just built ahead of steam for me that in terms of what's safe for the kids um i'm not worried about their safe their health
157and their safety i mean that's why even the president i mean we're talking about sununu but the president has also said we want kids to be in school five days as as much as possible as frequently as possible um and again like i think for me you all know and and everyone on this call knows i've been pretty clear about like how i feel about um getting the kids in school as much as possible and if anything the time has only shown that um we don't need we should be keeping these measures in place as sydney set up um and i appreciate that but we have lots of models around us of schools that are open five days and the kids are not spreading covet and now that our teachers will be vaccinated i just
158it's a for me it's a very different um set of variables now and we would be having this conversation because last month we didn't have quite as much participation because of the power outage and um and at that point i i i was listening and i felt like we should compromise and stay with four days i don't feel that way i feel like there's a lot of um momentum at the local level at the state level at the federal level to take some brave steps forward to lit to figure out start to figure out our post-covet it's not post meaning we won't have covid it's life with coved that we have to learn how to live um and so i i just i think there's a lot of momentum building behind it and i feel
159like we are such a um safe thoughtful community um it's sort of what britney was saying i do have every confidence in kristin and sydney um pulling this off um and our kids are incredibly resilient um so i'm not so worried about the disruption to their and some will be very disrupted and some will not write everything's on a spectrum but um i'm gonna stop talking i made my opinion clear elsa thanks um leslie i'm also not opposed to the five days i just want to have a very good overall perspective um if it were perfect i would say let's go five days in now and the problem i'm having is taking all the spaghetti and figuring out what is the best and safest route and i feel like we've got to make this quickly
160and i don't want to be pressed to do it without as much information as i can get my concern about um five days and the loss of cohorting is that if we should get cases the variance there are variants now in new hampshire i checked that today they're more transmissible and if we do have cases show up it means more people are likely to have to quarantine and the situation could actually be worse in that and that kids will lose more in school time but if our adults are vaccinated christine it's much less of a concern for me um there is there is some there's a limited i've seen limited evidence around kids transmitting it to each other but if our adults are vaccinated it could be the variant we i mean we don't i
161can't predict that nobody can but given all the data that i'm seeing i'm less concerned now that our teachers will be vaccinated because we're losing cohorting for the adults but much less so for the kids the kids are still staying essentially in their right now because they're in their classrooms like most of the time with their one adult most of the time and when we lose that what we're talking about this is why i asked sydney that question the adults are now going to understandably have to cover for each other because we're asking for flexible more flexible time right with the meetings and the coverage that's how things are going to work so we're not so much losing kid cohorting we will lose some of it because the adults are moving but they're vaccinated and
162there isn't evidence there's growing body of research showing that you are not likely to pass covid when you are vaccinated do we have a sense of what the teachers are thinking about this because i think that's i mean i know you've sort of gone around in different areas but i haven't heard a lot from you know we even once fully vaccinated you know with all the juggling that will have to be happening here and that what do the teachers feel is the best path forward i mean our teachers are are um i are mixed like everybody else you know they have different feelings some are excited to go back five days and some would like to spend the rest of the year in four days i can tell you that we've met twice over this
163last week once last monday even before the executive order knowing that this board meeting was coming up and then um we met again today to discuss the executive order and to see how everybody was for the meeting i can tell you that the teachers love their work and love the kids of grantham and no matter what you do they're going to do it the way that they always do things and i really am sorry i'm almost at the point where i need to shut down chat and i really am not interested in doing that but this is not facebook you're not on social media um chat is there for public input so please please stop communicating through chat at this point i hope i don't have to close it down in case there's you know
164something that does come up that's urgent so ed i would echo what sydney said in that um the teachers at grantham village school are totally on board to make anything happen that they have to make happen um and there's people who are like sydney said all for it and people that are very nervous and i will say that regardless of whether the staff member is nervous or super excited for it they all do realize that it's going to be another big change as it will be for everybody yeah other questions from anybody else on the board uh i'm sure that christian or sydney probably can't answer this but i have this question in my mind too if are we having some families who would have some real hesitation about going into five days and might
165we lose those students for the rest of the year i know that i've spoken to families who have hesitation i don't know what their decision would be about the rest of the year i haven't had anybody directly tell me that if we go five days they will remove their kids from school i've had one family say that if we go five days they'll seriously consider removing their child from school but um not a definite i want to just acknowledge how uh hard this decision is for the board and i want to say um i have not um i haven't heard anyone uh that's on the board or on the administration tonight making a vocal case for why we shouldn't do five days i've heard some legitimate concerns and some legitimate uh things that will be
166presented as challenges to us um and one of the things that really is was sort of like buoyed me a little bit was during the last progress monitoring committee meeting was hearing from our school counselor chris whidman that when she said our kids have shown incredible resilience this year and they will continue to show resilience um and you know that they will you know of course we can't say 100 across the board that every kid will embrace this um but that she didn't express to us any concerns at a social emotional level for the students to be able to uh navigate this transition that was one of the pieces for me that um it it's really important that we have this conversation um i will say you know just to sort of move us in
167the direction of getting to the point where we're taking a vote um i think probably in a different way but the end result comes down to um i'm i feel the same way that you do leslie i think that you know we are perhaps how we got here is not the ideal of how we would have wanted to get here but sometimes the way that you get there is different than how you want it to happen um and i think we i have heard from staff that they can do this um and that they will do this i've heard you know from chris woodman that our kids will do this um i think it like any of the transitions in this pandemic it's been difficult i i think it's important to just acknowledge that i
168in the conversations that i had with board members i didn't hear one single board member that came into tonight with their mind made up about how they were going to vote for this that it was going to be a conversation between all of us and to hear the the work that cindy presented to us um and hearing from sydney sort of the recommendations that her and kristen would make for if the board does vote to go for five days uh really made me feel like there's a lot of intention and a lot of thought for how we can do this safely one of the things that was the very hardest for me on thursday when the governor's executive order came through was thinking about families who have reached out to us throughout the course of
169this pandemic to say thank you for being really transparent on how you're going to do your very best to keep our kids and our families the safest they can be and i felt like that executive order sort of took our legs out from under us to be able to have that conversation publicly and to say this is how we're going to do it and i think sydney put that information up on the screen really well to say this is how we are going to do it and i'm just grateful to have that opportunity to be able to say to those families this is how we will continue to keep kids as safe as we can um in a learning environment that we know will continue um to be the best that it can be for
170them um and i am certainly welcome you know to hear from other board members who may have a different opinion at this point but i would be in support of us going to the five days with those recommendations that sydney outlined in terms of continuing masking continuing um three foot dist or moving to three foot distancing with the exception of eating and music and adults that thinking of making sure our staff are fully vaccinated at the time that we go to a full five days so looking at that date that following week all of those recommendations i think really demonstrate a lot of thought and intention behind what some of the challenges are and how we will face them you know certainly for me the vaccines are the biggest bonus and gift and i could
171not imagine attempting this until everyone was fully vaccinated and i also have to ask would this be the remaining model for the rest of the school year and if it's not working well what do we have as an alternate i think this has to be the model that we um end the year with i really don't think anybody could handle trying to make another change i think whatever decision is made we stick with it to the end of the year and we deal with any uh quarantines or remote as we need to and hopefully not and i would say with the caveat that there may be situations where there's adjustments as necessary under the executive order for any kind of situations that might come from cases or anything like that so there may be individual
172short-term needs um this wouldn't be a five-day and compeller high water even if there's cases that come up you know those things would be addressed just as we normally would brittany do you need a second or do you want to restate i certainly would it sounded it was close it was close to me it was it was close it was moving us that next step do you want us to make a motion and then you can we can move the discussion forward i know it's agonizing yeah brittany's snotting so let's do it yeah yeah so um i would the motion that i would make at this point would be uh that we would make a motion to move to a five-day in-person model starting monday uh april 19th with a professional development day on april
17321st um and that this would be through the end of the 2020-2021 academic year and that this would not withstand um any adjustments to model as necessary to respond to covet cases within the school community i have a question i thought we were talking about april 26th so that would be the question we could either pose it as for the model to begin on the 19th with a professional development day on the 21st or we could say a motion to begin um on the 26th but that would mean that the 21st would still be a remote learning day right so christine the the the that wednesday the 21st would accomplish a couple of purposes it would um give our staff some time that they would need to prepare for the five days starting on that
174next monday the 26th and get us to the point where we're not starting the five-day schedule with the loss of cohorting until the 26th but technically speaking the v like the way brittany were in it we are in compliance with the executive order but we have designated the wednesday as a teacher so it's like our crafty gvs well it's kind of a win-win because we need that time right now we need some time to do it and it gets us to the vaccination timeline yeah also my concern was the agreement with gea which is there's a two-week period for transitions okay so now i see how we get the two weeks yeah sorry i was just gonna say a second emotion okay now i get it i was just concerned about violating our agreement right
175with gea yeah okay okay so we do have a motion and a second on the table and we can have further discussion at this point so am i correct in understanding that we would still be in compliance with the gea agreement yes i mean we have to renegotiate but we would be in compliance for the transition time there would be a period of renegotiation after the after this vote okay but um the week of the 12th school vacation week right so the first wednesday that would be affected is the 28th and that gives two weeks even with the vacation week there's two weeks so i think we are in we would be in compliance with the agreement yeah yeah and i think we there's uh whether or not we're in compliance with it there there's
176some um renegotiation points that have to happen outside of that two-week thing okay the two week is not the sticking point brittany did you see brendo asked if you could restate them okay i did yeah okay so the motion that's on the table would be to move to a five-day in-person model starting monday april 19th with a professional development day on wednesday april 21st and this would be through the end of the 2020-2021 academic year and this would not withstand any adjustments necessary to respond to covet cases within the gbs community and we have a second from leslie on that and we can have further discussion at this point can i just ask a quick question on that yeah with the added professional development day do we does that affect your end last day of
177the school year right so that would put us um i counted today we would have um leeway without the pda day of 4.2 days because we were looking at hours at this point with the pd day we would have wiggle room of 3.2 days i've had people say like just use them you know use the days and everything except i feel comfortable having a little bit of a reserve because we really don't know if there is some kind of a case where we need to bug out and we can't provide remote instruction it's better to just have a little bit of a cushion but we would still be in compliance with the state requirements great okay i know that this is a very hard decision and i appreciate the conversation i am going to call
178the vote for the motion that's on the floor um if you are in favor of the motion please say aye if you are opposed to motion please say nay and so we will roll call leslie i am christine i denise hi ed i brittany aye okay and so the motion passes thank you guys i really appreciate this i know um there was a quote-unquote sort of easy way for a school board to make this decision um and i just really appreciate the thought and the attention that that this board continues to show to the entire grantham community in terms of being willing to have these conversations and um do this really hard work out loud so i just really appreciate you guys um being willing to do this um okay so our next agenda item
179is accepting the cares to funds yep um so i'll do another quick screen share last days students um so when we're looking at cares there are different multiple multiple rounds of federal funding coming out to help with coved so this is what everybody's referring to as the sr2 so we had sr1 and then we had the srsf funds that came after that and this is our biggest federal assistance to date this is the sr2 grant our allegation allocation for grantham is 67 510 um all of these funds must be used specifically to prepare prevent and respond to covet 19 in schools so it's a little bit more of an extensive grant application on our end everything has to relate directly to what we've needed to do for covid which would include things like hiring the
180additional employees the tents the extra ppe the supplies like you name it all those things that we've done so um i need since this is unanticipated revenue this year the board needs to vote to accept it all right okay so we have a motion to accept the um essr to or cares what am i calling this sr2 okay the sr2 um funds uh we have a motion from denise i can't and i have a second from leslie any discussion before we take the vote okay uh we will do a roll call vote to accept or if you would like to support the motion please say yay and if you are opposed to say nay denise hey christine i pressed the wrong button i leslie hi ed hi brittany i okay so we are moving to
181the nominations for professional staff sorry brittany can i interject yes i made i missed something when the auditor was going there's something that comes in your packet immediately after the um accepting the esser funds yeah and it was supposed to be part of the audit and um we need to take a vote on it so i'll pause it now yep um the way that the manifest is approved is that they the board has to give prior approval or a designee for the mailing of checks um this is how it's usually this it's how it's always happened but since there's a change in the board the auditor always recommends that every new board votes to make sure that this practice is still acceptable so this would be a reaffirmation of the motion to authorize the superintendent
182to review the bi-weekly manifest on our behalf and then the check registers will be presented to the board yeah basically it's just more efficient this way or else anybody that we need to pay would have to wait for a board meeting move to reaffirm nope gonna say so moved second perfect so we have a motion from ed in a second from leslie so um all those in favor please say aye and any opposed say nay and we'll take a roll call denise hi christine i leslie ed i brittany i all right thank you sydney so now we'll go to the nominations for professional staff thanks um this is the annual practice that i always find really exciting of bringing back our professional staff for next year so what you have is each professional certified employee
183their fte their full-time equivalent and the salary that they are going to be paid most of these just are directly from the cba but just to point out a couple of the changes because the board usually asks me for anything that's different is that we have the privilege now that we have mrs rita as principal to extend a more permanent position to mrs glidewell in first grade so i want to say how excited we are about that in addition this represents the change in the technology director contract that was approved earlier this year and it also reflects a change in my contract which technically means i'm going from three and a half days back to two and a half days which you know you can say whatever about that this year so those are those
184are the changes reflected in the nominations but as always just really excited to have the staff that we have and to be able to this is one of the one of the best parts is making these nominations every year and knowing these people are going to stay at gbs and do what they're doing i just want to underscore that sydney i especially after this conversation we just had and all the turmoil that we've all gone through this year um i might get a little teary i really appreciate surprising um i really appreciate seeing all those teachers in the morning who wave every morning and take care of our kids and open the doors and i'm just like pretty much every day reminded of the like amazing hearts that occupy gbs okay so we need a
185nomination to accept the argument uh motion to accept the nominations for professional staff happily so moved so we have a motion from we have a motion from christine and then i have a second from denise and so if you're in favor we'll do a roll call if you're in favor please say i and if you're opposed say nay denise hi christine i leslie hi ed hi brittany aye all right so our next agenda item is policies part of the recommendations that cindy gave us was to potentially rescind the jh addendum and then and we also have the review of that on our monthly um board agenda so i'd like to start with that one yeah and we've been waiting for the right time and i think with this other decision this is clearly the right
186time to rescind that so that is our recommendation i agree i don't i don't know if people want to talk about it but i'd like to move to rescind that policy do you want me to read it out loud brittany just the uh yeah we need a motion to rescind the um jh addendum so moved second okay so i have a motion from leslie and a second from ed so we'll roll colin if you're in favor of the motion please say aye and if you're opposed say nay denise hi christine hi this is just the addendum right yes yeah hi leslie hi ed hi brittany aye all right and so we are looking at policy jh tonight we have that next so that's a review of that um actual policy since we're in the business
187of looking at that stuff right now anyway right and um kristin and i had a lot of um a lot of not a lot i think chris and i are both in alignment that we're really concerned about that incentive to have great attendance you know which is something that we really um done a 180 on this year and is this something yes yes we want people to have great attendance um but we're not a school with huge truancy issues generally and i'm not really sure if we want to have some kind of reward system for kids and parents deciding to come to school sick so even though in there i uh i think we would both recommend that it's probably not a great idea that seems to be more um standard and like good practice
188now from what i've seen as well so we're looking to make a motion approve the new policy as amended right yeah yeah it would be a first reading of the jh policy yeah so are you suggesting we strike on under developing and coordinating strategies for truancy reduction that we strike um the appeal point three there attendance incentive programs yes okay i had a general question does this policy also applied a middle in high school no uh they have their own policies so this is really strictly for gvs students so when our kids go up to the middle in high school their their all of their policies apply not ours okay any other discussion of this policy all right so then we will need a motion to approve the first reading of uh policy jh second
189so i have a motion from leslie in a second from christine um any other questions on that one okay we're just we're just making this motion assuming we're striking that thing about the incentives yeah and then it'll come back for the second reading next month okay so uh we're voting on the motion to for a first reading of policy jh so if you are in favor please say i if you're opposed say nay and i will roll call so denise hi christine hi leslie hi ed hi and brittany i all right so our next one to look at is uh policy img that's the right one right img or ig a there's iga and then all right i was just looking at my two i have it in a i have a different in a
190couple places here that's because um the one that we're replacing used to be called iga and the school board changed their um coding so now the animals and schools policy is supposed to be img okay so actually um brendan i debated about that because technically we're putting forth to you policy iga it's just that one of the changes is that we call it img okay so one of the revisions to policy iga is that it will now be known as img yes got it okay so this is the animals and schools policy yeah and this is um this is uh current uh just updated and you know as you asked earlier there's a new section in there for um therapy dogs and reading and library programs i also um in your board packet put in
191uh feedback from the staff because i presented it to the staff as an idea of what they would think of it because we certainly don't want this to be part of somebody's life if they don't want it to be thank you for that i appreciate it and we have had just for clarity too we i know it has been sporadic but we have had a dog that's come in for reading programs in the library um previously correct yeah yeah our policies have allowed animals in schools it's just not something that we do very often okay any questions about the policy formerly known as iga now known as img okay so we would need a motion to approve the first reading of policy img i moved second okay so i have a motion from leslie and
192a second from denise and we will do a roll call vote on the motion and if you're in favor please say aye and if you're opposed say nay denise hi christine i ed hi leslie hi and brittany hi you guys all just moved around in my little boxes so i'm gonna have to say your name's in a different order now all right start calling you each other's names all right so our next policy to look at is policy um img a and this is the specific service animal policy right so this one is just basically updated with the new laws and regulations for service animals and ada compliance all right so this is one where it was just easier to cross out the old one and just give you a whole new policy yeah so
193we have to do rescind the old one and then accept the new one no you really just you don't have to rescind anything it was just um it was just too cumbersome and probably too cumbersome for you to read uh the multiple changes so basically i just gave you the old one and then put the new one in um in its entirety so it's more just a replacement rather than the replacement yeah you don't want to rescind it because then you're technically rescinding the whole policy getting rid of the policy right okay so we would need a motion for the first reading of the policy i mga sorry ed all right all right we'll say leslie was our motion and ed we have a second from end i'll second that yes perfect all right so
194we'll do a roll call vote if you're in favor please say i if you're opposed say nay denise hi ed hi christine i leslie i and brittany i all right then um our last item on our discussion and action items is i just want to open a brief a quick conversation about teacher appreciation week um normally normally there's no normally um we but we do try to do something um during that week we've done um different like breakfasts we've helped with grantham parent teacher group events um we're going to have to be a little more intentional this year about how we do that in a safe manner is there anyone who's interested in sort of spearheading pulling something like that together in the next month i know we're we all have tons of time on
195our hands and help out with that okay i can too excellent all right uh denise and christine you just made yourself a little ad hoc committee of teacher appreciation week um and i'm happy to to contribute and um if you guys want to put something together maybe just to brainstorm ideas or something like that or if anybody has seen any creative things that um you know other folks are doing um and it looks like maybe there's a connection we can make with the um grantham parent teacher group as well if they're looking to do something we can help support some of their efforts so that would be great if you guys want to start looking into that and we can all um find a way to to chip into that and we are we do
196have a meeting the tuesday of that week but if we can have some stuff in place before that just so that we can help them celebrate that week especially this year again to second what leslie said our our teachers um deserve a a month of appreciation weeks so um okay that would be great thank you denise and christine um just a quick question um does closed campus mean we can't even think about doing our usual breakfast so you can do something as long as people pick up individual things or you can have it where if it is buffet style you have to have it served by people who are designated to serve so you can't you just can't have somebody do any kind of self-serve so we could do some kind of bagged dropped something
197off yeah okay i don't have a calendar in front of me brittany please give me the dates of that week sure it's may 3rd through the 7th christine and denise i'll just mention um lose is owned by a tuck alum who i know really well so i'm just thinking of like cool lunch options if you're into if we're interested in something like that just let me know um the name of it again lose in hanover but it's owned by someone that i you know jared is a someone who i know really well it'd be yeah just popped into my head so let me know if i can coordinate thank you that's helpful they do lunch and breakfast and the most ridiculously good pastries like that you can possibly imagine in your life crawlers unbelievable okay
198so our next agenda item is the principles report and we have the principal's report submitted in the um board packet and kristen is there anything that you would like to add in addition to the report i think tonight because it's 9 38 i am going to say um i'm submitting it as it is i will say thank you for including all of the information from this andy um that was really good yeah to get that perspective of what they've what we've been able to still connect with at prescott farms that's great you're welcome i also love your pictures of the kids just having fun and being kids that just warms my heart it's the best part of being at school i do hear about um on fridays now when the third grade goes into the
199woods that the woods are full of kindergartners i'm like oh the gvs woods are full of kindergartners so that's a great image isn't it it is great great image and it's great to see like kindergarten and third graders and then to see the work with prescott farms getting out and doing stuff too it's like all those grade levels so any other questions i was gonna say it's fun to go out in the woods when the kinders are out there and then one of the older group grades and they obviously social distance but they play together and it's so much fun to watch any other comments or questions for kristin all right and thank you for what you've been able to do one of the things that i've watched all year is that enrollment number just
200like keep going and going and going and going so thank you for facing all of the staffing things and also welcoming new students it seems like every week month so what's the current number 250 do you have it right there i don't have my newsletter oh where is i have it open it's right at the top of the 40 and 13 remote yeah 240. so 250. we just had we just had one start yesterday so that was up from when i wrote the letter all right and our next agenda item is the superintendent's report i will echo kristin and it's late and i will submit my report as written unless you have any questions for me i did want to add just one thing you'll get a more thorough legislative review next month but um
201for those of you i know some of you really follow the conval lawsuit and i just wanted to tell you that you know since our last board meeting a verdict came down which was really an interesting verdict so instead of making a decision superior court sent it back to a full trial to local court um so they have to go through it go through the whole thing again but there was good news on the um health insurance yes very good news yeah so our gmr was nine and it came in at 6.2 and that's a wonderful thing and since it's been a long night but full of appreciation and gratitude i think this is a good moment to um i just want to give you a big moment of appreciation i mean your superintendent's report
202is longer than usual and i think that's just reflective of all that's on your plate and i appreciate you very very much for all the work that you've put into guiding us forward i i don't really have a lot of words to convey my appreciation and admiration for you so thank you it's uh as i said before it's labor of love this is my passion i also like to echo leslie sentiments and um you you make our school community what it is and and we're so proud and the best gift that we could give you is to have a non-coveted year but we still know you do ten times at the job no matter what's going on so thank you yeah but if you could work out that year i'll take it all right so
203our next agenda item is the consent agenda and are there any um comments questions or changes to the consent agenda okay so we will need a motion to um accept the consent agenda so we have a motion from leslie and we need a second second i have a second from denise and so if you're in favor please say i and if you're opposed say nay denise hi ed i christine i leslie hi and brittany i alright and the board does have a non-public session to have tonight um we have a couple we actually have a couple things to have in non-public just to extend our night out a little farther um and so um sydney how long do you anticipate what you need to go over a non-public to take probably i don't know how
204much time you need but i probably need 15 20 minutes okay we probably need about half an hour okay so life has adjourn at 10 30. or 10 30. yeah let's give ourselves 10 30 so that we can do both of those because we'll have one with um that sydney's going to lead and then we'll have one that um i will lead um and so just for folks that are still with us tonight thank you for sticking through to the end of this very long meeting i think we still have about 30 something people we really appreciate everybody sticking around and coming to the end if you would like to see the official adjournment of this meeting come back to this link at um 10 30 um and we will be adjourning the meeting we
205won't do anything else interesting during that time we will only be coming back here to publicly adjourn the meeting you can use the same link that you followed to get here tonight and we appreciate folks coming tonight the board is going to go into non-public until then we will take our vote to go into nonpublic in just a minute before we do that just a reminder for folks that our next meeting is may 4th um star wars day so we can all yeah may the fourth be with us um so we will see folks then for that meeting in may and um we'll need a motion to enter non-public under we are going under rsa uh 91 a 3 2 a and we will also be under um to do i think the same one
206yeah yep same one so okay so we need a motion to enter non-public under um the art that rsa so moved and we need a second second okay i have a motion from leslie in a second from ed and so we will roll call if you're in favor of entering non-public please say aye if you're opposed say nay denise hi ann hi christine hi my battery was just running out i had to scram me too computer me too leslie hi and brittany i so we will be back here to during the meeting at 10 30. and for the board you have the link to the non-public in your email so it's a separate non-public link yep brittany um we're always very transparent about this as a board we're also going to be having a non-meeting
207in the other session oh perfect thank you so we're going to have non-public and non-meeting yep okay okay we don't have the screen that says to leave meeting uh see i'm not sure if our i'm not sure if we're going to be able to come back into this one do you have the non-public one denise you