001okay you're all set all right same position before i'll call to order this meeting of the school committee at 6 30 and we'll start with roll call attendance ron menino present margaret stands for president sarah bess kenny president brenda barlow present and hall present first item on the agenda is to approve minutes but i looked back and we have approved some of these already i i think the only ones we need to approve are the um the february 11th um minutes that i blew right over is that square with others okay um all right i will take a motion on the february 11th minutes or oh wait yes any questions or comments first sorry um mine was just it's it's says in 5b that we're a ski town ski i think it was a reference
002to ski the former name for the let's talk um i love that people want to refer to pelham as a ski town we are not um so i think maybe we can just do uh i think maybe we can just take that out like that we have a well-rounded curriculum with let's talk and an innovative social justice curriculum that sound okay any other comments or edits okay um i move to approve the minutes of thursday february 11th is there a second second um i'll go with margaret on this one um all right any further discussion nope okay roll call vote ron yes margaret hi sarah bass uh kenny i brenda harlow i and hall aye all right thank you all right we just have one public comment tonight mike is going to pull that up
003for us all right [Music] all right thank you um next up is superintendent updates sure i'll be brief and uh principal wedding jones will give a little more detail uh we'll also talk about school choice i mean um school choice numbers which are very promising thanks to the good work of staff particularly principal wedding jones in a bit so i'm just going to share that it's been incredibly pleasant to be at pelham i think two or three times in the last since school started a week ago monday i've been able to be up in pelham um and just the number of happy faces and i'm not just talking about the kids uh has been just wonderful to see you know i saw art deep in the kind of back part behind the library uh you
004know with some creative work from the art teacher lots of kids doing outdoor learning but also kids inside and learning as well um kind of meal delivery and all seeing that has gone smooth and perhaps you know pelham always has this challenge of not having a kitchen and having meals delivered and you know maybe we should have thought of this system a while ago because it's uh it's kind of a nice system and working well for pelham but you know i think the thing i want to share is just how organized it is i want to really compliment lee on you know the structure she provided for staff members um you know i've always worried a arrival and dismissal that's always my fear you know and it's been incredibly smooth and yes palm's a smaller
005school but it also has less real estate in terms of where cars and buses can go so you know i i don't think it's any easier than it is at the larger schools um in amherst because they have you know multiple drop-off zones and places where we've been able to have dpws painted lanes for there so there's like two loops and that's not possible uh at palm school so it really complements the staff um but just just incredibly positive incredible positivity and just even my check-ins with staff when i've been there like oh how's it going and people are really happy to be back they're really happy to see children uh and one interesting comment which i don't think i shared i think you broke off from me lee that i want to share is
006one of the staff members said i've been with these kids all year and i'm seeing their personalities in such different ways now that they're in person you know that it's you know it's as as as a wonderful job as they did with the virtual they're they're seeing different kids um just because in person right we're not two-dimensional as we all are at the moment and that's both literal and figurative so i thought it was a really insightful comment uh that that this person was able to give and they were able to give details that it won't get into because it gets to individual levels the film's really small just about individual students who i don't know but they were able to cite uh how differently it was working with them in person than it was
007in the virtual environment and just appreciate the thoughtfulness of staff so those are really the big updates i mean there's a number of things in the other items that i'll be talking about but i think at this point oh uh before we get to lee it looks like ron has a question if that's okay yep go ahead that's a my question i read in the gazette that the town of pelham got over 350 thousand dollars in federal covered money did the school get any money we have gotten some funds it's actually an interesting question uh and i'm glad you raised it we're going to talk about it more when it gets a fall of 21. so right now we're unsure of the stimulus dollars we've gotten from the department of labor or excuse me the
008the budget department of the state not the school district department but the state budget department we've gotten numbers from congressman mcgovern numbers from senator comerford members from the state uh not jesse but the state uh for how much we're getting in stimulus it ranged from zero to like 190 thousand dollars next year for pelham so we have no idea how much money we're getting from that stimulus package i was on a desi conference call today uh the reason it would be zero is the federal was based on title one allotment and pelham's not a title one district uh the deci conference call seemed to indicate that they were going to make some measures to make sure title 1 districts received some stimulus funds in the same way they did with some of the other sr
009funds that came earlier in this pandemic but really doug and i were shaking our heads today saying how could we get and this is true from other districts as well there's no source that actually has numbers that line up all three of those sources from uh you know u.s congressman mcgovern uh state senator comerford and the state budget office none of those numbers line up so we really don't know uh but when i do get clarity particularly as it relates to pelham because that swing from zero to 190 would make a huge impact um i'll certainly let you know by email i won't wait till the next meeting uh that would be great the reason i ask is if it materializes could it um reverse the voted budget cut for the top for the school
010well i think we'd want to talk about that in an agenda meeting my own personal perspective i don't you know i think i can share my perspective and then i think it'd be a conversation for the full committee uh because i think it's a good one to go on everywhere um we have three fiscal years to spend those funds uh ron we've worked together a while i think you know what i'm gonna say is that i think we we ought to think about sustainability uh over time and the temptation to reverse budget cuts uh i think is tempting and you know we may may opt to be better served to use that money over time because we don't know what the future holds okay yeah but really good question i should have mentioned it so
011thank you but i was going to mention except doug and albert as i said quite literally not figure literally shaking our heads today sitting in a room just saying how do we make sense i mean the swing the swing of the other district's not as dramatic as the swing and pelham and and i talked to actually i think it is worth mentioning before i turn to lee i talked to two other superintendents today also who have small non-title one bullish districts um that one of which in particular has districts that mirror pelham pretty well they also saw the same swing in the numbers so something's going on with non-title one districts and what allotments are coming or not coming to those districts and we got a correct i should say there's a fourth one we
012got a correction from the state uh because yesterday they had pelham getting six hundred thousand dollars which was wonderful but seemed uh not to be consistent with my other districts which it would be more or less similar to what some of my other larger title one districts were getting so um i think right now we're waiting on clarity and when i get that i'll certainly share with the committee and then eventually the public but with that i'll turn it over to lee thank you um so you know some of you have heard have heard me say this feels a lot like september with the great weather we've been having and just getting back into the swing of school so everybody's tired at the end of the day all of the kids are exhausted and kind
013of dirty so it sort of looks like they've been at summer camp all day um which is just it's kind of a the staff for us this is like our dream come true it's what we've been waiting for for a year um and it's i'll just echo what mike said it's been so joyful to be at school and i i have been so pleasantly surprised at how well the kids are doing and how on the very first day kids were playing together as if they'd been in person and playing all along which some of them have because it's such a tight-knit community um but you know eight days into having students in the building it feels like remote learning was a really long time ago um so some of the things that are going really
014well as mike said the specials in the woods have been fantastic our art music and pe teachers have totally embraced outdoor learning and figured out really innovative ways to help kids build connections to our campus and then also maintain physical safety and teach their their subject area so it's been really fun so far and it's been great to see kids learning together outside in lots of different ways so um the the second graders did an activity where they made uh they used sidewalk chalk to make hopscotch boards and they were practicing skip counting so there was a hopscotch board that was counting by fours and one that was counting by 25s and one that was counting by threes that other students used during the day too so it's been really nice to just have all
015the kids back at school i'm sure you've heard all of the adults in the community saying that over and over but so true um and for our staff to be together it's felt really really wonderful as well march 12th i think 2020 was the last time they were all in the building together so it had been over a year um you know since since they were all together so the the feeling in the school is really collegial really excited um most of the staff are out at arrival and dismissal and it feels a little bit like a parade for folks coming in there's you know lots of people waving every kid that gets out you know five adults are shouting good morning and it just feels really celebratory um and and we have some exciting
016things going on in terms of our in terms of our school culture and then curriculum too so i'll share that this afternoon i was on a call for um a science grant that we received for sixth grade curriculum that's going to be rolled out over the next three years so all of the amherst schools and pelham are going to be working together on this to implement the um it's called the open site ed curriculum and um it's phenomena based instruction totally hands-on it's aligned with the next-gen science standards and the massachusetts curriculum frameworks our sixth grade teacher is super excited about it and so that launched today um and then we're continuing on with our anti-racist work too so our next parent-staff book discussion will be for the book this book is anti-racist um and
017we'll be meeting after the break to talk about that book and the author tiffany jewell is doing a workshop through the jones library this week so it's the book is really making the rounds in the community so hopefully it'll be a good conversation um and then i'll share some school choice updates when we get there in the agenda but um overall it's just great feels really energized to be back at school all right thankfully any questions for lee all right um okay next up is in-person learning update so we did some of that but i'll add a couple more details uh which is that um we don't have all students learning in person so we do have some students who have joined virtual classrooms in amherst so i think it is worth noting and i
018probably should have noted that earlier that it's not every single student who's from pelham has come back it's in the magnitude of 90 of students are back in person but we want to make sure that those students were not are being well served i checked them with some of the amherst principals who absorbed um some students and it wasn't just like you know it wasn't like each amber school had one virtual teacher it's two teachers per grade level pretty much across all of them but they've been welcomed with open arms into those virtual classrooms so i think that is important to note as well that we want to make sure we're taking care of 100 uh of our students at pelham and working with our amherst colleagues has been helpful um i think you know
019just a couple other things that that i would share is that we really focused uh a lot of attention attention and effort into the social emotional well-being aspect at the beginning of the school i think the break it's going to really work you know it wasn't really by design this way but having the first week with the young kids you know i think we said there was like i can't remember 44 kids or something like that the first week and now it's definitely more full um and then having a break to kind of reassess where we are i think it's really had a nice flow to it so i'm glad we we didn't push to have everyone back at once because i think it mattered for the younger kids to have that time um so
020i think that worked well and i think what we'll see is a gradual re-entry into um you know a little more of the academic focus work um but the i think our staff have done a fabulous job at pelham of kind of getting students reacclimated to school and acclimated to school in a very different way than they've ever experienced it before with the desks and the distancing and uh the level of outdoor time which is not not it's i think welcomed by most students but um you know it's still an adjustment and and for for students some students this was the first time they were in a group in 13 months and so i think i think the staff there and thanks to lee for her leadership on this right sides the approach of absolutely
021is there math happening yes is there reading happening yes but but at a core we want to get students uh and staff frankly reacclimated into a different schooling environment and then you know transition that way we the state uh is uh we are obligated to offer the mcas this spring um so i know some of the other schools are partnering with pelham and trying to get information out we do know uh that we've heard a number of families who told us they did not want their child taking mcas we're not promoting that um viewpoint but it's also with given covid and all our precautions that we're really going to be trying to know that ahead of time so that we're not in the moment trying to reshuffle just because of the challenges of kovids so
022but i did want to share that um i think the only place in the united states that got a waiver from doing standardized testing was washington dc um other states who um tried to get a waiver which we did not uh were unsuccessful so mcas they did extend the window and they did shorten the number of sessions a bit but that is going to be a reality for us this spring whether students choose to take it um or they opt out it is something that that just wanted to be shared that share with the committee that it's on the radar on our radar as as i have to see a question i'm ron go ahead you're on mute ron what are the consequences to the school if a number of students opt out so the
023one thing that we did get as a waiver is that the accountability structure is um absent this year so it's it's literally just about individual scores i think today i found out they're going to try to do a growth piece but um but there's not an accountability you know change that would happen so schools that were in an accountability profile probably won't leave that you know profile in pelham's case where they didn't have an accountability you know label they would not no matter if students you know take the test or opt out thank you yeah yeah so that's different than in the past though so it's a it's a good question thank you ron um and i think the only other thing i want to share um is just you know we do have about
024a quarter of the school year left thereabouts um and uh we do go pretty late this year we go to june 25th uh given some additional holidays and the later start uh that we had with the pd days at the beginning of the school year um so that that's sort of uh where we are i don't know if lee if you wanted to add anything that you didn't already share before just on the piece about students who are learning remotely and thank you for mentioning that our teachers have been fantastic about both connecting with the receiving remote teachers and also setting up regular times for the all of the class to connect to each other so some classes are doing weekly closing circles or special events together so that all the students can still stay
025connected so i just wanted to share that piece i'm sorry i didn't mention it before i got very excited about the the outdoor stuff but yeah that's happening too yeah but if the committee has any additional questions we're happy to answer them any questions i just have uh i mean i guess it's all one question but is there i know it has been just a brief time is there data on like have has anyone tested positive have you had to administer covid tests to people have any like is there any data on that so far yeah i can share that so um if there was a positive test of anyone who'd been in the school whether it's staff or student we would inform everyone in the community and since that communication has gone out hasn't
026gone out excuse me from pelham we have yet to have any confirmed positive tests one of the things that is a nice system is we do have binex testing which is symptomatic so if someone a student or a staff member is symptomatic and they're in the school then we have um binex which is not a pcr test but it is a quick test uh that can be administered on site i think it's important to note if someone goes home they're not like oh can i come in for that test tomorrow that's not what we're we're not looking for symptomatic individuals to come back in the building but if they happen to be there it allows us it comes back and we have done them throughout the year since we've had kids in some of the
027other districts it comes back in about 15 minutes and it's got a pretty high accuracy rate so that is available and and there was a uh permission uh kind of email that went out uh and you know it also is one that if we didn't get a permission back a parent can give an oral consent over the phone uh to be administered by the nurse so uh at this point we do not have a positive test uh we have not had a positive test in pelham um if we do then we will communicate that and and it's you know i wanna i appreciate you asking it because it's particularly tricky in pelham because of the size of the school you know i think when we're talking about one of the amber schools which has a
028couple other kids in it or the middle school high school at the regional level again where there's a couple hundred kids there so i think it is going to be a delicate balance around that you know our nurses have all been trained in contract tracing and you know the kind of head nurse for all three districts would be kind of facilitating and leading a nurse katie in that process and supporting her in that process you know thankfully at the pelham elementary school we have six feet of distancing so the close contact piece is a little bit easier uh then schools that are like most of the state are at significantly less than six feet of distancing but it's not to say that there wouldn't be close contacts in certain situations and that's that's the process
029we have so you know we we do have communication letters we have used them in some of the other schools um throughout the year and that's the way we would approach things here but to date there's been no positive cases in pelham we also are obligated to report them to the state to deci and if you follow the news i think on thursdays i believe thursdays and fridays every week they publish an excel document of all the positive cases whether staff or student by district and so it would also be publicly reported that way as well okay great thank you yeah brenda i'm just curious if there's been any issues with students or staff or anyone following like safety protocols in the classroom i'll defer to lee on that one she probably is a little
030closer to it to me so sure i can speak to that so far knock on wood it has not been an issue at all so we have some plans in place for um for what it might look like to respond if that becomes an issue but all of our classroom teachers are teaching students the safety protocols the same way we would teach any other classroom routines so really involving students in developmentally appropriate ways so our sixth grade teacher went through a slideshow with that was really similar to what the staff went through going into some more detail about uh the health and safety protocols our kindergarten class is developing you know they they have a little phrase just mask check for the kids to just you know pull their mask up or distance you know
031really using simple language that's developmentally appropriate um and so from what we've seen so far um it's it's what we had hoped and expected which is that kids are generally pretty good at following the rules compared to their grown-up counterparts out in the world um and really framing the health and safety as part of our community practices and our community agreements to take care of each other so so far so good all right anything else on in-person learning all right town meeting preparation may 8th mark your calendars yeah i mean i would just say that um you know as the chair of the committee you know uh if there's a question you know i think typically i'm just saying because not we haven't had this conversation with the current committee and last year town meeting
032was obviously a different model um but typically you know if there's questions the chair of that would be there you know for the regional piece i know this isn't a regional meeting but um you know i think offline i would encourage sarah bess and margaret to have a conversation about um if there's a question for the committee at the region just who responds to that um just so it's organized i will tell you that compared to all the other town meetings and and now town council um i say the least at pelham and that's fine by me um so uh i don't we don't often you know town is well run and we don't often come to town meeting with lack of clarity in terms of support of elected officials in the different areas of
033the town but just in case there was any questions i thought it was worth you know having on the agenda here and if not then you know we can move on an agenda tonight yes i mean i will certainly be there just on the pelham school committee end um so yeah margaret and sarah best maybe we can well i guess the three of us shouldn't talk together but if you guys could let me know what you decide just so i know margaret last year you crushed it no pressure but you fielded all of those questions really well um but i know it could be a long day so maybe if you guys could check in and then let me know just so i'm prepared ron i will be attending my 42nd town meeting for real
034i've been here in town for 46 years all right i'm glad to hear it okay all right that was quick school choice update so i will pass this to lee because she has some data to share with you that's very promising and i appreciate the high level of outreach that she has done you know we did some different things this year we got a very attractive ad in the newspaper and uh some very proactive work by lee and other pelham staff members so i think we have some good news to report we sure do and we have some wonderful videos up on our website um which some of you contributed to that rpto helped put together to help raise the visibility of the school so we had many school choice applications we had more applications
035than we had slots for this year so we had 29 applications um and we didn't have that many slots so we we started sending out acceptances um on april 1st so we sent out 19 offers for um kindergarten second grade third grade 4th grade and 6th grade we've heard back from about 10 of those folks and we're waiting to hear back from a few others there are waiting lists in kindergarten second third and fifth um and there's still a few a few open spots as well um so if all of those folks accepted looking at the graduating sixth graders and a family we know a school choice family we know is relocating um it would be a net addition of about a dozen school choice students to our school which would be wonderful we're going
036to continue rolling acceptances through the spring and the summer i just i got off the phone with a prospective um incoming first grade school choice family this afternoon and so we're continuing to do outreach word of mouth has been really really helpful when i asked the parent i spoke with today i said how did you hear about our school they said it was through friends um and so what i've been offering to school choice families whether they're applying or accepted is to meet them on campus on non-school hours to show them the playground and walk them around the campus even though they can't come in the school or tour the building to get a bit of a feel and to do an in-person meet and greet so i've offered that to a few folks and
037i'll continue to offer that through the spring and summer during non-school hours um just so folks can talk through questions um but so far the the it's been a really positive process so i'm happy to back up go through any of the numbers or answer any questions yep ron go ahead what is the total number of school choice students now with the recent additions including the prospective students for next year so i can pull that up for you um so we'd okay let me just do that math quickly sorry that's okay all right so we currently have 40 school choice students we are losing four of those students who are graduating sixth graders two more as a family who are moving so that brings us down to 36. we have one family who is transitioning
038from pelham to school choice because of moving residences so everything brings us up to 37 and then if we added in these 19 that would be 56. it is okay thank you okay sure i didn't want to give you a pop quiz or anything i don't know that's helpful it's that end of the day a little mental math is good for me um yeah so it would be increasing our percentage of students who are school choice so right now we're at about 35 it would be increasing that to closer to 40 or 45 percent any questions for lee all right i mean that is great news um that's and so i mean you said that anecdotally you're hearing that word of mouth is helping does it seem like other efforts are making a difference are
039there things we can learn about the efforts this year that we could apply in the future so one thing that was really helpful was our pto promoted on social media both our ad and also they held an open q a session for prospective school choice families um and it and that coincided with the weekend that we ran the ad in the newspaper um the pto kind of elevated that and then the following wednesday or thursday the pto met and had that open session and a handful of families came because they said they saw the ad and then they looked on facebook and they saw the pto group um so the pto has been an amazing partner in helping just elevate the the status of the school so i would really think you know moving forward
040to try and time things in the spring in the same way we did this year with the ad and with pto q a um it worked really well that's yeah that's really great well yeah i appreciate the pto's efforts and i think especially for that to be for information like that to be shared parent or family to family i think can be really helpful so that's great all right nice job any other questions comments margaret another i guess a little math problem so how many students total would we expect to have in the fall okay so let me let me just i'm sorry i should have had these numbers before for you so it's a little bit um the number's a little bit hard to predict because we have some students from our community who
041are in private school or home school this year who have told us that they are coming back but they are not officially re-registered so we sort of have our official number and then the number that we um that we have in the back of our minds that we think might happen but we'll probably want to go with the official number okay okay so currently we have 113 students um 14 of those are sixth graders so we would be going down to 99 we have accepted 12 kindergarteners plus we have three polymers so there's 15 15 kindergarteners coming in so that would bring us to 114 plus another 2 3 4 5 6. so that would bring us to 121 and then so we would be about 119 if none of the students who are in
042private school this year came back um so we would go be going up in our overall enrollment by six students um but we have heard from some families that they are coming back so we do anticipate to be our our soft number is more around 125. okay or 120. so that's sort of the number that we're working with when we're projecting for class sizes okay that was that was impressive math on the fly that was i mean if someone had asked me that question i just would have closed my video so good job all right anything else on school choice brenda just a quick question i'm just curious say you you give out all these wonderful school choice slots because we have all these fabulous families wanting to join and then we have you know
043a pelham resident who decides to come back to pelham i guess does that mean you know there might be some variation in class size because we have to educate the pelham residents so is that is that factored into your decision making it is and i actually heard from two folks who just bought houses in pelham this week which is great and they have school-aged children which is exactly what we think of we always think there could be someone who buys a house in august who has triplets and they want to move in right so the guidance that mike gave me was we fill to 20 and then we stop because we don't we one of the things that's attractive about our school and that we love is that we have small class sizes and so
044we wouldn't want to compromise that um to be taking on more school choice students than we would really be able to really be able to and still maintain the level of teaching and learning that we do um so none of our classes next year are projected to be larger than 20 students but we do have some grade levels with really low you know smaller enrollment our current first grade has 13 students and so for the viability of the school that's that's one grade level our rising second grade that we're really hoping to add a few students to to balance things out a bit and make make it a little more consistent across the grades yep and i think i was just going to add that this is always the conundrum of uncertainty enrollment and this
045year is obviously a much larger challenge with it and we know students could to to the point just made could move in so we try to balance the kind of financial sustainability we need with also maintaining trying to maintain small class size and that's 20 is about what we think there's at least enough wiggle if students move in that we have some room there um and some space for students without getting to where uh we'd feel uncomfortable with class and this is not a covet conversation this is a general long-term conversation there's always a balancing act i mean could we take if we took every there's been years and this year maybe one of them in certain grade levels where if we took every school choice student we'd have class size that that that you
046all and we all would be very uncomfortable with in this particular community in other parts of the state people are really comfortable at 25. that's not emerson pelham and so it's striking that balance that we're trying to do okay all right next up fall 2021 discussion yeah so uh there's really two parts of this conversation one is some updated guidances were shared with you from the department of education about virtual option for next year and then there's also just the more general conversation about the fall so the virtual option to make a very very uh long memo into the headlines that i think are relevant for pelham uh there's kind of two pieces one is that it has to be district specific in other words it couldn't be a combined virtual school experience like we're
047doing this year between amherst and pelham it would have to be pelham school specific the second part of that is it would have to be its own virtual school so applying for it wouldn't be like oh pelham schools virtual program it would need a distinct deci code it needed an application we'd have to have a staffing model we'd have to have number of students uh we'd have to have a principal it couldn't be the principal whiting jones it would have to be a separate and school choice students would not be eligible so in other words students who were from pelham who attending penn school who do not reside in pelham which as we just talked about is a pretty decent percentage of students would not be eligible based on state regulations so in short it's
048not something we can really pursue you know there's not a critical mass of students there's not the financial flexibility to add staffing uh to end the school choice piece i think just adds inequities um particularly in pelham that are we can't really you know look at so really that leaves us with the option for next year in pelham to to really only offer an in-person option uh we can't do any partnerships and um and i talked about this in another district that i work for and um you know even though it's a larger district it was the same conversation just not sustainable um if it was a district if we had districts that were you know together and 50 of kids wanted remote yeah then maybe you can make it work but but not at
049the degree to which you know our families have chosen in person learning um so i want to pause there and then see if there's questions about you know the desi memo uh it was emailed to you it was probably two weeks ago it was a little while ago um and see if there's any questions that you had questions on the virtual piece okay and so that brings us to the second part which is that you know we plan to be fully in person next year and some classes maybe larger you know this year we held to the six foot distancing you know i think that's you know i can't guarantee that for next year um you all already voted a resolution about you know going back uh fully in person next year so it's there's
050no news to this one um but i think in terms of some of the other aspects um you know i think as as we're filling the class and making the school sustainable you know it's going to push on some distancing luckily pelham has pretty good size classrooms i don't believe we'll have to be down to three feet of distancing you know we're not getting that much bigger uh in our sections um but you know maintaining six feet is not necessarily going to be uh what we can likely guarantee in every classroom uh in pelham school next year so we won't know exact distancing until we you know know exactly how many students are coming and this year worked out really neatly we've got one class where we are maxed out one student comes we're gonna
051have to have a different conversation uh at the school committee level which you know we had at the regional level we're not able to maintain six feet at the regional level so we can have that conversation uh but it would be different than the commitments made this year so i think as we get more concrete information for the fall we'll we'll come back and and maybe in our august meeting be able to share what degree are we able to maintain distancing next year certainly hopefully the world's in a better place it may not be in a fully better place but better than it is right now uh i think that's a reasonable expectation as vaccinations go up uh locally and nationally um but you know we are planning for an all-in-person um start and uh
052next fall we don't believe we'll be able to have a remote option and in terms of distancing some of the other pieces uh we'll be back in touch about exactly what that looks like you know late this spring or certainly you know before our august meeting before the school year starts so quick update but that's that's sort of the the key points for the fall actually i'm sorry i wanted to take one back one other thing that lee and i are talking about is we'll have to figure out what to do with furniture um so we have a lot of really nice furniture that we purchased from some of the cares act funds that did come into the earlier conversation we now have some nice furniture that we're not using that we'd want to hold
053on to and frankly we have some furniture that we'd be happy to get rid of but easier said than done given procurement law in massachusetts so that back classroom which was used for preschool the last couple years with the art classroom prior we are hoping to see what we're able to do to clear out as much as possible to be able to use for an overflow or you know different uses that we could imagine even if it's not a full class because we don't think we'll need that but it'd be nice i saw when i was there there's even like little nook that someone's using as a breakout corner uh so i think you know people are looking for it's like anything else right if you if you have a little bit of space people
054will find it and make good use of it because you know our teachers are industrious and they they want to find solutions so i think if we can seemingly open up that space as a multi-use space that'll be really beneficial for fall so that'll take some coordination and some work with facilities and and some procurement pieces that we'll need to uh work on but i just i did want to mention that because i know it came up in private conversation with one of you just about what are we going to do with that space next year and i think uh given that the so other breakout rooms are sort of awkwardly situated as it relates to ventilation and some other pieces uh it'd be really great to have that as a multi-use space next year
055so it's a summer project it's certainly not a going to happen anytime super soon but even seeing this little nook used that just opened the door you know it opened my eyes to how beneficial it would be to have a couple more multi-use spaces in the school all i had to share lee i don't know if there's anything else you wanted to add any questions on fall 2021. i guess can i just ask i mean i in terms of doing the the planning for that and all of the scheduling and everything we would still do that process with the other two districts right um it's an open question i think um you know i think we could i mean some of the things will be the same like health and safety protocols and contract tracing
056right those are all district-wide because our nurses work as a collaborative team our facilities department works as a collaborative team in terms of sanitizer but a lot of those things are sort of in place and i don't imagine uh you know contract tracing is an interesting one because who's a close contact i know some states have shifted that to be three feet um a number of states have shifted that given updated guidance um from the cdc that hasn't happened in massachusetts yet so but those types of things i think would be coordinated with the districts but i i think um it's i don't anticipate famous last words but i don't anticipate as much kind of reopening plan i think we have a reopening plan and we're implementing it and i think the only shifts uh
057that i foresee are really uh you know compared to last year just around the edges um not full sweeping all of a sudden we're back at tables and we're promoting students to be next to each other i mean students at the elementary level won't unlikely to be vaccinated uh by the beginning of the year at the region that's going to be at the secondary level everywhere that that's a different conversation um so i think a lot of the same i think we're going to see a lot of similar things we're still going to want to be outside and that's been i think had huge positive benefits not just academically but just i think i think it's a good thing for for our school we've talked about that for years those who've been on the committee
058uh this was a conversation when i first became superintendent about you know could we promote more outdoor learning um so this isn't sort of a new thing and you know pandemic forces you into maybe some decisions that we would have liked to have encountered you know throughout so uh it certainly could be done but i'm not imagining the same lift as we had last uh spring and summer and fall any other questions okay future agenda planning so we need to i should have done more homework on this we need to start talking about the evaluation timeline yeah i should have looked into that okay we typically when when do you usually have artifacts and yeah talk to me about that so yeah and the amherst group i think kerry spitzer is the head of that
059so whoever maybe wants to take the lead from pelham might want to connect with kerry because that is something that is when it can be coordinated between the districts i think it's worked well especially this year where the goals were very aligned so the short story is i think that's on an upcoming amherst school or emerson regional school committee sometime in the next couple weeks so my recommendation would just be putting it on the agenda for the next one in pelham and having one person reach out to terry and try to align that work okay margaret um i so i think i'm supposed to participate in that um at the region so if you want me to do sort of loop pelham in also i could do that okay yeah that would be great okay
060okay um all right what else would be for may don't yeah any other oh yeah it might go ahead i think you'll need to reorganize because there's an election before that i was thinking that we maybe the group would meet later in may so it gives time for the election and all that stuff to play out so i was tentatively thinking of may 26th perhaps um but uh after an election typically uh even if this the incumbents prevail and i know it's funny talking about this in pelham like it's i'm not saying there won't be multiple people running but it's not like this major election the same way it is for like you know being in blood will be shed this is it's gonna get ugly on that note yeah so so we definitely want
061to reorganize then um um but uh you know i think we can put superintendent evaluation um and then reorganize and we can definitely meet earlier you know i mean i'd be totally fine meeting like you know a week earlier if you people wanted to meet the 19th if they feel like it's getting late on the superintendent evaluation timeline because that might be the more i think about it that might be a little late and the election this year in pelham are on the 11th okay so if we met the 19th i would give enough time for the many many ballots to be said what are you expecting happens in a fellow election it's going to be like florida in 2000. um i think yeah i think the 19th gives us enough time um yeah so
062i think um yeah by then we'll know the election and people will be able to be sworn in if there are new members and all those things [Music] all right um committee members anyone have other agenda items you'd like to throw out there um if we want i mean i can do it during superintendent update or we can also uh you know if there's an update on the grant whether that's zero hundred ninety six hundred thousand or whatever in between um i think it is a relevant conversation because this one would impact some of the fall reopening plans in terms of how we pay for things that are not budgeted like right now we have you know cna and ppe and you know all these things so i wonder if we could put that on
063the grant as well um i mean the grant you know the stimulus funds on there just to update the committee in the community because it's it'll have an impact okay um yeah i think that's a good idea to just have it as an agenda item on its own unless something changes that it's really obvious and we don't need to but okay all right anything else on agenda okay i have a few warrants um okay i authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of ten thousand three hundred and eighty dollars and sixteen cents for the warrant dated march 24 and that included general fund expenses of those all general fund expenses um i authorized by my signature to payroll in the amount of fifty nine thousand thirty nine dollars and twelve cents that was
064for the warrant dated march 24th 2021 i signed that on march 25th um and i authorized by my signature uh i authorized payroll by my signature in the amount of 59 244 dollars and 65 cents that was for a warrant dated april 7th 2021 and i signed it on april 6th that is all i have for warrants no gifts that i know okay um all right i will take a motion to adjourn let's grab a grandpa from anyone a movie adjourned moved by kenny seconded by hall um all right roll call vote ron round i margaret stance or i sarah best kenny i brenda barlow hi we are adjourned thank you everyone hi everybody have a good night