Pelham School Committee

001now you're all set okay so seeing the presence of a quorum i will call to order this meeting of the pelham school committee on wednesday november 17th at 6 30 p.m um i'm margaret stancer i'll be chairing the meeting tonight in the absence of our chair sarah hall i will take a roll call vote um so just respond present sarah bess brenda marlo present ron present and margaret present um our first order of business will be approval of the minutes and there are three sets of minutes to go through today um mike will you share them for us we'll start with one that's way back from the summer i think it um right so um would someone like to make a motion to approve the minutes and then we'll go into uh corrections and changes

002and i can't see anybody i can't and yeah oh that's good okay um so i move that we accept the minutes of thursday july 1st are there is there a second thank you ron um so any corrections or changes to the minutes wow great um see none we'll take a vote uh sarah bess kenny i ron menino i brenda barlow i and stan sir i the minutes are approved for eyes and zero nays all right so the second set of minutes okay i move that we accept the minutes of wednesday september 15th do i have a second second thank you uh are there comments um changes corrections uh seeing oh sarah bess i have um just two really quick ones they're just um spelling so in section b and the reports um it's listed as

003the bright program but it's bright but i believe it's bright b-r-y-t their initials and then um so i think that just needs a little updating and then in section g um there is under the gifs mr laurie's name is l-a-w-r-i-e thank you anyone else have um corrections no okay then we'll proceed to a vote um sarah bess kenny aye ron menino why brenda barlow i and stance or eye those minutes are approved and then we'll move on to the minutes from our last meeting which was wednesday october 20th um i moved to accept the meeting minutes of wednesday october 20th do i have a second a second thank you uh it's open for changes corrections editions dr morris just a spelling one and i think i've spelled it wrong so this is no knock on

004you may lean but uh esr is e-s-s-e-r so it's a five-letter acronym there there's an e before the r at the end of s but i've made that mistake many a time and i know you've copied my documents that had that mistake but uh just i think we should have the corrected language or corrected acronym on there okay anyone else see no other corrections or changes we'll take a vote miss kenny kenny aye mr menino menino i miss barlow barlow eye and stance or i all right uh we have no public comment tonight so we will move on to the superintendent's update sure um and i'll be brief um a couple things that have been going on we've had pool testing started across all the schools in all three districts and so that's gone uh

005smoothly and obviously took a long time to get going longer than we'd like but um that's been a good thing and so far all of our pools have come up negative at all of our schools i can't guarantee that'll continue i actually find it mathematically unlikely that that'll continue in all of our schools but so far so good with that and appreciate the vendor and the nurses and nurse kd and all the work that's gone into getting that off the ground so that's been a good thing i think what we've seen is you know since we have those two early cases in pelham things settle uh in pelham but you know as the cases go up across the state and in our region it's likely that we'll see more cases in our schools and we're

006already starting to see that in some of my other districts so you know i think we are reflective of the case counts in the larger community i think the important note is in all of our schools including pelham we have no evidence of school-based fred in other words when the contact tracing occurs the point of contact that where the covid is thought to have spread is is generally in the home or in social situations outside of school and that makes me feel really good about our the measures we're taking um to keep students safe it's not that we can prevent anyone from catching covet or we can guarantee that there will be never be school spread but at this point across our three districts we've you know we're over 20 cases we've fair number of

007close contacts and no one's tested positive so i think there's evidence that the strategies we're using around ventilation masking now we've added the testing piece and distancing have been effective complement the pelham staff they're doing a great job even in the chilly weather we're starting to have of getting kids outside and eating outside and taking a lot of measures to keep our school safe the third thing i want to mention um is i had um well try to go in order i'll stay on health and safety i know we'll talk about vaccine stuff later so i will get there um shortly but um i think i think we've really had a lot of support and i really do want to think i know i mentioned nurse katie before but she's uh there was a good

008article in the new york times the other day about this the nurses and schools have held on to a lot of people's anxiety throughout the school year um in all schools and i just want to publicly thank nurse katie uh and and you know there's a lot of people who uh had lots of current concerns and continue to have lots of concerns about what in-person schooling looks like uh mid pandemic and um you know that's a lot it's a lot to carry uh we tried to celebrate our nurses earlier in the year but i just i don't think i can say enough how important her support of pelham school has been and how critical it is that especially at a small school like pelham where everybody knows everyone that we have that ongoing support from

009the nursing staff at pelham so i want to really you know thank her for that um i think the last thing i want to mention before i turn it over to mickey is i was able to be up at pelham with mickey today and just got in a couple classrooms and and what i was kind of sharing with mickey is just just how engaged the kids are yes they're sitting further apart yes they're wearing masking wearing masks um but the learning that's happening and the instruction uh has maintained kind of the hallmark of pelham which is you know small school and high level of engagement in community and and that's become harder to do uh given the restrictions of understandable covert related restrictions we have so just compliments of the staff for for stepping up

010in that um in that regard because it's not easy i was on a superintendent conference call today of superintendents in western mass and you know one of the things we're talking about is it's not just the teaching it's that you know coming into work in any workplace now is a lot more isolating than it was pre-covered um there's not the casual conversations because we are being very careful and we do have protocols around sort of break room areas and and that's that's a real challenge and i think the staff has maintained that level of connection and community uh despite those um challenges and i think though actually the last thing i'll say and i said this last night at the amber school committee is i am starting to hear considerable uh feedback that come january

011um that i think a lot of the restrictions at least on the state level are likely to be relaxed and you know from what i understand there was a desire to wait till the five plus vaccine was available and accessible before some of the state restrictions would be removed because there's such a large group of students a large group of people in the commonwealth but when we get to january everyone over the age of everyone five and up uh we'll have had the opportunity if those shows to be uh vaccinated what that'll mean locally we don't know um you know we i do talk to the board of health regularly we are not going to be the first district around here to d-mask that i can guarantee you right now we're not in a rush

012but i do think at some point as we go through this academic year we are going to need to start talking about relaxing some of those restrictions um you know i'm not you know a lot of people have made up a lot of uh kind of myths about the dangers of masking for kids that i don't subscribe to or subscribe to and it's really hard to learn how to read you know when you can't see someone's mouth in the same way and you know being able to hear over an air purifier while students are wearing masks is a real challenge i think people are overcoming those uh but at the same time i think you know we get to january and february i'm not interested in going quickly in terms of reducing or removing the

013covert related restrictions but i am interested in start having those conversations with the committee and the community about a direction we want to go because we're not going to be wearing masks forever we're not going to be doing all of these kind of restrictions forever there is a real cost to them so you know all that to preview that you may hear things at the state level there will be no changes at pelham until we've had a public conversation about them so whatever happens at desi will will you know essentially just hunt to local control and we are the local control so uh we will come back to that so i don't want to get ahead of myself but the more and more indications of hearing uh we may be seeing some at the state

014level and at some municipal levels not necessarily the town of pelham but uh towns around here some relaxation of some of the covered restrictions that have been placed a very long time and so uh you know i'll talk about vaccines a bit later uh at the five to 11 year old group but i do think we're going to see some movement over the next few months at the state level and that is my update and certainly if there's questions i'm happy to take them before we go on to principal darling mr menino regarding the masks i'm just curious have teachers found it more difficult to read the emotions on the kids are going through when they just use their eyes or not i i'm not sure if i'm making myself clear but you know if

015a kid's unhappy or happy can they still detect it yeah i think and and i'd be curious principal darling can jump into a second um i think like a lot of things i think it is more challenging i don't think it's been impossible to detect emotion but when you can't read the body language from the nose down that affects how much you're able to pick up on non-verbal body language it also you know what i find is it just even for kids and adults it sort of flattens my face right if i know no one can see my mouth right i sort of when i'm wearing a mask i don't show as much you know and that probably shows for the rest of my face as well so um you know i i don't know

016if it's been you know i wouldn't say that we're not able to we educators are not able to read students body language and emotions but i think it has added an additional challenge and wrinkle i don't know if you would agree with that miss darling um i would agree i think it's harder for the kids to read each other especially since they have less experience and find it harder to read eyes you know they can i i tend to smile really big so they can see that my eyes are squinching up and i don't know if that's a real word but um you know it's harder for the kids to read other kids any other questions i actually do have a question about the pool testing do you know approximate percentage of students that are

017doing the pool testing yeah so uh you know i'd be curious if ms darling can conduce pelham specific across all three districts it keeps on rising like every week there's a couple more um i think we started it was about a third and and across the three districts i think we're up to you know the neighborhood of 50 maybe a little bit more um i don't know if that matches pelham's numbers because i get the sort of combined consolidated district multiple district numbers um mr do you have a sense of what you would estimate i don't actually know um if i had to guess i would say okay thank you thank you um so if there aren't any more questions um we'll move on to the principles update ms darling okay um so i would

018agree with a lot of what mike was saying about the students being engaged and walking around and seeing a lot of really wonderful stuff uh i can give you like a few updates in some of the classrooms the kindergartners are so adorable um they are learning some really hard lessons about uh we do weekly pause prizes and one little friend won a prize probably the first week and ever since then when am i gonna win another prize and the tears start flowing so some hard lessons along with some really you know great lessons uh the first grade was learning about diwali the religious the religious holiday a couple weeks ago third grade were real they were really engaged in writing spooky stories i've never seen like i walked in i was like what's happening everyone

019was really engaged in that um we walked into a fourth grade science unit on mudslides and uh miss gear was asking the students what could people do to prevent mudslides and one one student said i think we should get a giant fan to blow away the clouds so the rain wouldn't come so i mean they could come up with a real possibility so it's really exciting um there that we did the student council voting and grades four through six two representatives from each class got voted in and anyone who ran is kind of the next level down and i forget what they're calling them but everyone is included but we do have you know two from each class as the official representatives and it was fun to see them campaign and they did speeches outside

020um i i think in general the students appear to be adjusting more to being back in person and are figuring out how to be with each other socially and that's really great um that's not to say that you know everything is going smoothly there's the normal stuff that comes up uh the fourth grade is piloting a new social emotional curriculum and because they piloted that curriculum we were able to get it for free for the whole year for the whole school so that's exciting and um jess nardisi our counselor said it's one of the best that she's seen so we're excited about that um we've started a bunch of committees we've brought the committees back we have a school culture committee that's working on primarily the staff and helping the staff during this really challenging

021time i have seen that staff are really [Music] i will i will call it more stressed than normal and this committee is looking at ways to help and uh make sure they feel appreciated uh we have a social justice committee that some parents signed up to join and that's really exciting um and a silt committee which is basically an instructional leadership committee and so we're looking at the data from the mcas and also just the district beginning of year middle of year and end of year that we have done for as long as i've been in the district and looking at trends and trying to figure out how we can help to you know if we notice that i don't know fractions are something that the students are struggling with we will we're looking closely

022at those little moments not moments little sections and we're gonna do some research on how to help in those areas um [Music] as i've mentioned bright is continuing continuously working with us we had them for our one of our staff meetings last week and that was really great um we're having the turkey trot this friday very exciting bringing bringing it back i actually have never been at pelham for the turkey trout so i'm super excited uh it's a mile run walk skip dance whatever you want to do the staff are going to be out there all the students mostly you know we're not going to make anyone who doesn't want to participate participate but it's going to be outside and come around back to the school and there might be a teacher dressed up in

023like a turkey i don't know maybe it will happen um intervention is showing amazing amazing progress so our intervention teacher has been sharing with all the classroom teachers and with uh parents the unbelievable progress in such a short amount of time so that's really exciting for us uh the trunk or treat was a success the the haunted house was amazing it was i was spooked i i really was i was nervous walking through and the kids seemed to have just as much fun if if it were sunny and and not pouring rain um even the paris looked okay um and i would say that's really it i mean there's a lot going on and hopefully i i did get an email from a parent saying thank you for bringing the fun back to pelham so

024that's one thing i'm feeling pretty good about great thank you um are there any questions i just want to say the updates that you and mike give are inspiring i just wish you could film it and send us a video of what's going on in the school i missed the school terribly it's been almost two years and it looks like it's gonna be another semester or so before i can return i i miss the smiles on the kids faces that's all yeah they miss you too the third grade definitely is yeah um i actually have a question um can i don't really know what the intervention teacher does do you want me to give you like a briefing just a brief just a brief sure um so using the data that we've been collecting we've

025been collecting it for years we can see that certain students struggle either in reading or math and we can see where they're struggling uh with reading it's a little harder the intervention teacher had to do some digger deeping and give a few other assessments to see why that student is struggling with reading and then what we did was we looked at the class we pulled the two or three kiddos that need a little additional support she did those additional assessments and then during our wind block which is whatever you need block it's actually whatever i need but you know whatever they need um she will pull them into a separate classroom because it's it's hard during covid to do it in the classroom that would be more ideal but you know she'll find a separate

026space and she'll give them direct instruction in the areas where they have deficits we're really excited that for reading in the last i would say three years we've learned a lot about reading and how to provide instruction that really helps reading is called phonological awareness and it's all about the sounds that the the letters make and being able to in your i guess in your brain like play around with the sounds in different ways and take sounds out and add sounds and just doing exercises in phonological awareness has really increased not only uh decoding reading but also their fluency how quickly they read so um she is seeing just huge progress being able to give that kind of direct instruction to two or three kids three to five times a week and the plan is

027to only do it for six to eight weeks and see you know test them at the end of the 68 six to eight weeks and see how they are and then readjust and sorry and you know either yes what we're doing is working or know what we're doing is is not working and we need to reevaluate and the big goal is to prevent these students from being referred to special ed possibly unnecessarily okay thank you that's very helpful to understand um if there aren't any more questions we'll move on um the chair is not here she didn't send any uh thing to report vice chair doesn't have anything to report so um do any of the school committee members have any announcements to make all right then we're going to move right into our new

028and continuing business and the first item is the superintendent goals at our last meeting dr morris presented the goals and we talked about them a bit they've come back tonight and i think it will possibly be for a vote to accept the goals after discussion um and as you can see he's added the uh the categories from the superintendent's rubric the state has a way that you have to evaluate superintendents and he's put a link at the top of this i saw tonight which is great so that if you want to know more about the rubric you can look at that um so i guess we'll i'll just open it up to dr morris and any committee members who have questions or comments do you want to go first dr morris yeah i'll be very

029brief um i was able to integrate as you noted thank you some of the standards and as well as the rubric a couple minor changes like including more longitudinal comparisons um around staff of color so it's not year by year but the committees in the community we get a sense of kind of over the last five years and seeing how that's trending uh because it is you know it's a long-term goal for all of our districts and and i think looking at longitudinally made more sense so it was able to integrate that in um and i think that's really the the most significant um change i think it is you know a couple things in here about like math programming and some other things that we'll be uh updating the committee on over the next

030couple months but uh it's it's not a wildly different document than what you saw the last time okay thank you um so questions or comments from committee members i'm not seeing any so are people prepared to vote tonight to accept the all right would someone like to make a motion so moved thank you mr menino a second second thank you um uh we'll take a roll call vote miss kenny kenny aye mr menino menino i and miss barlow barlow eye and stance or eye the the motion passes for in favor um all right so we'll move on to the next item which is the sixth grade to middle school conversation um we touched on this just briefly at the last meeting and i think at this point i would turn it over to dr morris

031yeah so i think the summary my summary of the last meeting is you know i made a recommendation perhaps not to rush this conversation in pelham there's not the same urgency you don't have a building project you don't have a space crunch in the same way the amherst schools do you but i think the conversation was really helpful to me to hear the committee last time uh be able to talk through some of the you know implications about what is the model not at a necessarily just even at a broad level but not even at a specific level excuse me but at a broader level like you know if helm sixth graders went to the middle school uh if the pelham sixth grade teacher went to the middle school that seems like it doesn't make

032a whole lot of sense um so i thought we'd come back this time and uh see if people agreed with me first of all just because that makes sense to me doesn't mean it doesn't make sense to the committee um but but really trying to think about if the pelham community wanted to engage this question um you know that that really uh in it it's really a different different question than it is for my other community other elementary district and amherst because uh my recommendation if you wanted to pursue it would be pursuing it in conjunction with the amherst elementary district the benefits um the potential benefits anyway of thinking about a sixth grade move for pelham would have to be woven into having more than one teacher kind of some level of middle school

033model um you know there's no way that pelham could go without its counselor you know for instance you know just have you know the sixth grade teacher up there and no mental health supporter you know it would have to be a collaboration with the amherst public schools from my you know my opinion uh where we are on planning is um on curriculum day i met with some of the sixth grade staff regular ed special ed ell uh and some admin from the amherst public schools and we're meeting again after the after the holiday break and really what we're trying to do and i think i can bring this back to the palm committee because i think it's probably the thing that is the next thing to dig in on is sort of what are those

034critical buckets of work or questions that folks have for instance we know world language is going to be one there's multiple models for world language could be exploratory model where every sixth grade student um you know receive one quarter in each of the four languages makes a decision for seventh grade there's other sixth grade models where students make a decision on spanish latin chinese or french and then go right into the language there's a model question about you know should there be two core teachers for sixth grade team or four core teachers for a sixth grade team and so you know we had a really rich conversation on november 2nd we're going to come back after the break and really try to delineate what are some key questions to consider uh you know it's very

035amber centric at this point but i don't actually think that matters i think they're core questions anytime any districts transitioning from to a six six state middle school and i think that's perhaps the time by which you know at the next meeting i'll be able to share that both with the amherst school committee and the pelham school committee and i think that's probably where you're going to generate a lot of dialogue you know right at this point it's still in the so a little bit in the ether we got to a a pretty good place with a one-hour meeting we have an hour and a half uh scheduled the week after break with the explicit purpose of having deliverables not making decisions actually to be really clear but identifying what are areas that we would

036want to get feedback on and how we're going to get feedback from students families uh staff members in the community on these and i think that'll drive the conversation that i sensed the committee wanting to have last month uh because i think right now it's sort of this gelatinous uh item where you know there's too many you sort of have to structure some thoughts and some core questions uh we're not quite there yet we will be there in december um so you know i think that the two things i had for tonight is one to make sure that i'm reading the room right that that if pelham wanted to engage in it it would be an integrated model with the amherst elementary district and also to see if the committee would want me to come

037back in december or january with that list it is being generated by amherst folks but i do think it's uh i don't think that's relevant in this case i think it really is going to be what do we what educational models do we want um and again it's a process piece it's not a decision piece but i think it'll generate a much better set of much better dialogue than where we are today and i showed this at the amherst school committee last night as well so those are the two things i had for to generate a dialogue discussion or thoughts from the committee tonight thank you um uh comments questions mr menino point of clarification i think margaret was well quoted in the gazette article for the regional meeting with the position of pelham was

038but i'm not sure uh the pelham parents were were notified what has been done to let the pelham parents know that we haven't yet made a decision how do the parents know what's going on because they read the newspaper uh sixth grade moving to the middle school they some of them assume it includes uh the regional the the outlying towns yeah so i think that um we talked and we didn't get to resolution but maybe putting something in the pelham press um and i think it was um in the pelham press um so i think parents did get notified but not everyone reads i know from my newsletter not everybody reads it um so perhaps we can continue miss darling if that's okay putting it in one more time i find that repetition is not

039yes a terrible thing um but i know that it went in i just if you're still hearing questions that doesn't surprise me because i know you know lots of we all get too many emails in life and so um miss darling would that be okay to uh repeat putting that into the present palm press sure yeah and then i'm not sure this were you asking for our response right now to the movement of the sixth grade teacher to the middle school or i think can we comment on that now or should we i mean i would love to make sure i'm reading the room right that if pelham is going to consider it it's thinking about it some level of collaboration well yeah i have reservations about the whole thing but to move the sixth

040grade teacher to in the sixth grade class to the middle school and just have it taught the way it was taught hit the pelham school makes no sense the idea is integration i mean if we if we move to the middle school we should be part and parcel of the whole program there should be new next to an amherst student uh you know it shouldn't be isolated i mean it makes you miss all the benefit of the potential move that way that's all um i i just make one comment which is we did at the regional meeting when we passed the the um or approved moving the six am or sixth graders or sixth graders to the middle school we included as was requested in our last meeting to have something saying that pelham could

041join at a later date just to make sure that that was really clear you know that late if we decided not to go right away we would still have the option later well i think you your comments were well reported but not everybody reads that think about the last paragraph of the article in the gazette where your comments were right miss barlow yes i just wanted to say if we do entertain this certainly i think that integration is you know beneficial in how students can mostly benefit from the potential move um and another thing i wanted to raise just to consider as to consider this um i'd love maybe to have a conversation or to learn more about the potential financial ramifications of moving the sixth grade i think that because of our budget issues

042although this year we've been like pretty good um i just want to think about what the long-term budget issues um might be because i think that's going to be a part of the puzzle for us dr morris yeah i think that's spot on uh you know uh you know i have talked to dr slaughter about us this i mean candidly it's a really different situation than the amherst public schools and we have some concerns about how to do cost sharing of shared staff that we would be needed and it's already gonna be a little complicated between the emerson region but because amherst comprises 80 of the region it's a little bit easier to manage that but when you're talking about three percent of a regional district and you're talking about even like something as as

043simple as a nurse which is obviously gonna be shared staff it's not gonna be like one class of pelham kids with their own nurse at the middle school uh you're talking about three percent but that all adds up for the overhead whereas for the amherst piece it's just less relevant so uh dr schlotter and i do have financial concerns um that unless the regional agreement was shifted and all the towns participated uh which would would be a different thing we've got significant concerns about the financial impact on pelham as well so we could definitely come back to that because i think it's i'm so glad you raised it because i think it is a very real question mr menino uh just a clarification on the cost sixth grade students who are choice are not considered

044pelham students for the purposes of budgeting are they uh sixth grade pelham students cisco they're not our students if they choose to go to the middle school sixth grade students were they would be in this scenario because the sixth grade would still belong to and be governed by you all oh so that's that's different than now right not one of the sixth grade schools in middle school okay yeah because when you know if you think of seventh grade now they're not part of this district so okay right um but yeah no it's an awkward transition where we have a whole bunch of choice kids from all four of the elementary districts and then we the region inherits them as choice students and it looks like our choice numbers go way up in seventh grade but

045it's actually just an artifact of um the flow of students so um and we would be informed of all these financial considerations before we vote for the move or after we vote for the move i think um both because depending on how the move would be structured if it did happen it would affect the finances in other words you you could imagine multiple models would that have different financial implications uh for it but but it is a complicated set of variables for pelham to do not just the i think the education part frankly is easier i'm not saying it's good bad whatever but that's easier to figure out the financial part would be a real challenge for pelham anyone else have questions um miss kenny uh i have i have the same two questions what

046the program look like um i i think just moving our sixth grade as is to the middle school doesn't really offer much benefits i think having our sixth graders where they are they are huge benefit in our school and they're fantastic um so just to move them to a different place when we're not having space issues seems like a silly choice to me um so i would be interested in the program more if it were what the integration would look like and how that would work out and i you know same i would definitely want to know how the money piece would all come together and unfold um i think that would be a really important part because it would make um our decisions that would be a whole school decision not just about how

047things will affect the sixth grade so mr menino one of my comments i've been asking for three years before i i guess it makes sense to have some of these things decided before you seek the response of parents but what do the pelham parents think are they for this are they against this i don't know i can't my daughter's 37 years old i don't know my position on the movement of sixth grade is not not involved if i've got a kid what do i think about it so we will hear from the pelham parents before we make a decision won't we i would not advise you making a decision before you have broad input from not just the film families but film staff and pelham students as well i'll just keep making this comment every

048meeting though just in case great anyone else um the other thing dr oh ms barlow just i mean yes i think it's so important to get feedback from all the constituents of pelham but if it's not financially feasible i think i think it's important to look at the money because we are so vulnerable in a way and if it's not financially feasible i don't know that we wanna how far down the road we wanna get with it although you know i think again the educational opportunities are really exciting to me but you know and i know we won't 100 know what the financial ramifications are but to get a snapshot from dr slaughter sooner than later i think would be really helpful i think you're right and i do think uh i think that's spot

049on i fully agree with that because i i'm not sure i'm not going to use the word feasible because anything's feasible it's just what your priorities are right but um i'm not sure it'd be financially advisable from my perspective um to take this on if it added almost any additional cost um just given given a you know i know we're in better shape now but one two students going elsewhere could change that right and i've been through this cycle multiple times of feeling like we're okay and we're not okay feeling like we're not okay and we skate by um but it's it's we're not out of the woods it's just you know we're in a better place which is great um so i think that's a point really well taken and something i can talk

050to dr slaughter about thinking about i think it's sort of we have to get somewhere down on the line on model before we can do the cost but you know the per pupil cost in pelham is less than it is uh in amherst so you know there's all sorts of some complex um negotiations and um sometimes our towns do that well sometimes we'll see about four town meeting on saturday and how that goes um but for a different district but um i i think your point's well taken that i think if we're seeing financial roadblocks it may not be worth going too far forward um at the point at this point it may be that a couple years down the road we are but um you know i think i think i agree with your

051sentiment that if we get the sense that there's going to be a significant added cost i don't see pelham in the place where we want to add costs for anything other than directly related to the students at pelham school that's my my viewpoint anyway hey um so the other uh item you mentioned dr morris was coming back to our next meeting with information from your next meeting with the sixth grade teachers is that something the committee would like to have happen i yes okay great so that that'll uh miss kenny i think um as many updates as we can have on this well it's in the program you know figuring out phases i think um the better and i think it gives the whole pelham community more time to think and process and sit with

052how they feel or what's going to be important to them as as this whole thing progresses okay so that i guess that will go on to the agenda for next month again for our next meeting okay so the next item is preschool in fiscal year 23 and um are we going to dr morris or miss darling i think i'll start and and take this so ms darling can jump in um i know this is a little early to have the conversation it's before we start the budget process but that's not by accident um as you know we had a preschool program here for about six years six seven years and uh when the pandemic started it was unclear whether we were going to be able to maintain that program uh because we didn't know if

053we would have school open um and virtual preschools are not seen to be as beneficial as perhaps some of the older greats and so we stopped it uh we did not have it this year i want to thank mishlotti who's i think ms darling actually was referencing before in terms of taking on the intervention role this year and doing a fabulous job with that our former preschool teacher and so when we look forward to next year i have some real concerns about opening the preschool up and it's kind of three or four of them the first is that the significant amount of overhead to restart the program um that you know when you have a stable group of students some graduate up to kindergarten some stay with you that's a little bit easier when you're

054transitioning a whole group of 18 or however many students it would be to recruit that that's that comes with some challenges the first is just the overhead given all the things that we're managing and particularly principal darling's managing very well i might add at pelham school the second piece is is really about the cost um so um i'm happy that you know power educators and others got a pretty significant pay bump this year that's a really good thing uh what it would mean for our programming is that we would be to come even we'd be nearing ten dollars an hour uh for cost um because our salary increases are a bit more than uh in the private market that's not a knock on our salary increases i think you know our staff members work incredibly

055hard and they deserve um to have the salaries they have and probably then some and so um but you know i think we i am concerned given the cost increases that we're seeing um that we're going to price ourselves out of the market um because that'd be significantly more than than just about any other private preschool in our area with the exception of one or two uh the third concern i have about starting the program again uh really comes to space but we don't have the space issues that amherst has i mean i was at the school a couple hours ago and i was seeing intervention groups in the art room uh the music room music class is also using that art room which was the preschool room it's opened up the gym a long

056time ago before the preschool program started the gym was used all the time for indoor recess for movement breaks for kids all these things that we've you know we got accustomed to not having and so i do have some real concerns about that you know you could argue that once you lose the space you know once you gain the space it um you use it but i'm not seeing people just casually using the space i'm seeing people using it to have small group instruction i'm seeing it for students who are struggling to have a different space to do learning that ms darling mentioned some you know early literacy skills early math skills uh and the movement skills are really important and we want our kids up and moving because we know it helps them learn

057so you know i i think we got used to being really tight on space and now that we're less tight on space what i see is instruction happening in ways that are working better for children um so you know at this point i'm not looking for a decision tonight but at this point my recommendation or initial recommendation would be to maintain our current k-6 program through all of our put all of our resources in it there is nine thousand dollars left in the preschool revolving account uh and the pre-fools preschool revolving fund and so that doesn't need to go anywhere anytime soon um it's a little less than ideally we would have um you generally want to have about 20 000 about 20 of you know typical year um but but it's okay um and

058we would just hold on to that so in other words we're not you know i wouldn't be recommending a permanent decision but at this point given covet given what we're seeing about space and use of space in the building and some real creativity on the part of ms darling in terms of designing the you know and reformatting the special ed and intervention group uh differently than how it was formulated in the future or formulated in the past rather that's really working for kids i'd be inclined to uh maintain our level of programming and um and really focus our energy in and really like i mentioned before it is an exhausting experience running a school during covet and from for ms darling to jump into this kudos to you uh you know um i think i

059said this at the high school graduation about mr speak as well takes a a special person to jump into a school leadership role mid pandemic um not an easy thing to do um but you know the reality is i think there's enough to focus on at our k-6 environment and the last point is that you know originally this was designed to increase the choice numbers in the school what we experienced this year is that our choice numbers got back to where we needed them to be without having a preschool program that was a feeder program so you know for me you know that's the way i'm leaning you know when not asking for a decision tonight we come back maybe in december because it'd be helpful to have that decision before the budget process kicks

060off in earnest but that's sort of where i am at the moment miss darling you don't have to add anything i don't know if there's other wrinkles that i'm missing that you'd like to add um the only thing that i could add is i agree with a lot of the points you just made and i remember you know before the pandemic when the preschool was there and i was a teacher there was constantly an absence of a teacher in the preschool program which we had to fill legally we had to uh put another person in there so that meant pulling a teacher from the k to six staff which isn't always ideal and it was constant so that's the only thing that my experience any questions from committee members comments mr menino not commenting now

061does not in any way shape or form making us a comment later i mean if we're silent now we can speak up later dr morris yes yes absolutely yeah no i i just you know there was no memo attached i apologize for this one um but i just at least wanted to share my thoughts any any other comments or questions no other than my csa issue that he has not had in previous meetings [Laughter] excitable kids i probably should have done this meeting from the office but i chose not to and i'm regretting it but that's okay right so we'll move on to the next item which is vaccines for students 5 to 11 years old and dr morris again yeah so you know great news couple weeks ago that vaccines at this age level

062the elementary age level were approved we had some vaccine clinics the town of amherst uh ran uh they got 150 doses or they actually titrated it really well so we ended up getting 152 doses out of it and we ran school-based clinics last week at fort river wildwood and crocker farm and they really had an equity focus so the number of students who attended there was a tremendous amount of outreach that was that went on uh really looking at students and families who had access barriers to receiving the vaccine fortunately this vaccine is not like last march and april where there were no appointments and people were waking up at three in the morning to get their appointments frankly there's appointments readily available both pediatricians offices cvs walgreens big y you know there's been some

063state sites that have been set up umass i was at umass my own child last week um you know but also in springfield i know there were sites like right away that had had openings so uh we um we i did talk to principal darling who identified a few students who might benefit from having a school-based clinic you know fort river is not very far it's not very far down the road at that point those families indicated that they either already had appointments elsewhere were you know not interested in having the vaccine for their child at this time so we did not have helm students participate but i think it is worth noting that if there were students who had those access barriers we were we had an alternative for them uh we are running

064another clinic next tuesday night um uh tuesday afternoon it's three to five thirty um it's located at the high school um it's through the state run clinic so it's not the town of amherst clinic it's the state-run clinic and um the uh there are still pediatric pediatric vacancies as well as adult vacancies we had a lot of adults sign up for boosters first shot second shot you know it seems likely that boosters are gonna be available for everybody every adult over 18 probably within a couple days so that me get more interest in that as well and three weeks later there'll be a second shot same time same location so the uh the data that we get from the state uh puts emerson palm together because it's by zip code um but the data was

065promising in the first four days that they were available eighteen percent of children five to eleven in the town of amherst and pelham uh already had their first shot um and that number would be higher because our last clinic was the day after um in amherst and we there's 52 kids that got vaccinated that day so as well as umass had their clinic i know there was a pelham family i saw when i was literally there uh for my own child uh just someone i knew who was there so between the fort river clinic and the the umass clinic i know our numbers probably my guess would have doubled uh if they included that last day so i think there has been broad interest in pelham families we're trying to make it as accessible as

066possible at that high school clinic we emailed out that information the newsletter friday i put a reminder in by email to all families on monday and we'll keep on seeing what we can do to support families to access that that resource you know what we know is that we're safer vaccines are much more effective at the community level in the individual level so well it helps protect you or anyone who gets a vaccine the most important thing is that the community has wide vaccination coverage right now if you look at our numbers in emerson pelham at the 12 to 15 year old level for instance we're at 89 percent vaccinated which is fantastic um and so i think these are communities that i'm sorry i don't have home specific numbers because they don't they don't

067break it out that way it's by zip code um but i think we are seeing these are these are numbers that are favorable and i think there's been a lot of interest i know i talked to principal darling and and she's hearing just anecdotally you know parents picking up their children for vaccine shots you know if they got them but you know cvs or in a principal's office in the day um and bring their kids back you know so far what we've heard anecdotally is the and it's in the clinical data as well that the side effects have been much more mild than old folks like us uh on this call and that's a good thing so that we're not having kids miss school the same way sometimes adults need to miss work because of

068the side effects so uh so far so good uh we'll keep on figuring out what the needs of the community are but i think it is uh something that we're really excited about it's gonna make our school safer i mean i will tell you anecdotally as well it's a really different feeling at the middle school high school it's not that there aren't positive cases at the middle school high school there are um but because our vaccination coverage both of the staff and students is so high um i wouldn't say it's relaxed um but it is less intense when you have schools that are well above 80 percent vaccinated whereas at pelham formerly you know if you think of all the students maybe there's a couple sixth graders who stuck in there based on their birth

069date um but this will i think make our school safer at a pretty critical time because we we slowly we're seeing trends you know negative trending um in massachusetts in the northeast right now with the colder weather and the holiday season i think that's likely to continue uh you know the case counts are going up fortunately hospitalization and some other critical numbers are not going up at the same level but uh i mean today's number was the highest i've seen in months you know of new cases um 2600 new cases um so you know we're seeing what maybe our health care professionals were suggesting was likely to happen post halloween more inside time and so critical time for us all to take this vaccination opportunity really seriously in the school and we'll continue to provide

070resources and support for families to get vaccinated for their children to get vaccinated so that's my update there ms darling anything i'm missing on that one thank you okay uh questions or comments okay thank you thank you dr morris um [Music] that's the end of our new and continuing business um there are two warrants and um i will read them in sarah's place um [Music] sarah hall authorized by her signature to payables in the amount of 58 887.96 for payroll dated 8 25 21 and sarah hall authorized by her signature two payables and the amount of nine 62 seven dollars and forty five cents for payroll and that was dated eleven three twenty one um so uh we have no gifts so that leads us to adjourn but i need a motion would somebody like

071to make one solved oh thank you mr menino i'll second that uh we'll take a roll call vote miss kenny kenny aye ms barlow barlow eye mr miss darling now you don't have to say anything mr menino menino the meeting is adjourned thank you everyone see you next time good night thank you everyone