001hi this is superintendent mike morris thank you so much for joining us tonight for this session the folks two focuses of the session are one about the four by four block schedule that is planned for the high school for the next academic year and then also the in-person return uh this spring uh for students at amherst regional high school so thank you for joining us maybe we'll go around the room just so that people can introduce themselves so uh sam you want to start us off sure hi i'm sam camera and i'm an interim assistant principal at the high school i'm tall to the interim principal here at high school good evening everyone i'm mickey gramacki assistant principal at the high school hi i'm robin supernut the interim nurse manager in the district and the
002nurse at amherst high school and again thank you for being here we ran a similar session this morning so thank you the way this will work is that uh we'll do some presentation about the 4x4 block schedule and then take some questions uh and feedback then and then we'll get into the spring uh in-person return and then again open it up for questions but sam and mickey will do most of the presenting of the content and i'll be helping with some of the questions in the chat and the other features there but you know thanks again for being here with that i'll turn it over to the team at the high school to start talking about the schedule hi everyone so we are here to talk about the 4x4 block schedule which will be our
003schedule for next year and the rationale for this schedule um we need a lot of time in order to plan any master schedule for the high school sam you can change the slide um there we go so we need a lot of time and a lot of planning that needs to go into this and so the goal was really around health and safety and because the four by four block schedule which in essence means four courses in the fall and four courses in the spring and we can talk a little more about those details in a couple minutes but the idea was that stu that we would reduce the number of cohorts and um and have students only have four classes at a time next year in the fall so i'm going to go ahead
004and talk about the timeline we convened a scheduling committee to evaluate past and present schedules and then updated tnl which stands for teaching and learning and those are our department heads um and other school leaders and then convened this particular group of um faculty and staff members and then in february we gathered input from the entire faculty and with that feedback we proposed um we got feedback from that schedule and then proposed another schedule which is this one we are then planning to build we are working right now actually on the program of studies um we'll do course registration shortly for all students we will also then finalize summer school formatting and offerings and then in april we're going to do course registration as well as a 8th grade or what we call rising 9th
005grade family curriculum night we actually do have the evening date scheduled for that which is april 8th it's not in this we just scheduled it today so i should have added that and then in may we'll do course verification and then throughout the rest of the summer we'll finalize the schedules so there's actually a lot of different block schedules and so we just considered a couple different ones and we just put this up here so that people have an understanding of how we ended up with the four by four so you know you could do a three by three block um the issue there is that you wouldn't it would be difficult to meet the 990 hours of instruction and students wouldn't have nearly as many elective choices um we could do the three by
006three plus one which is similar to what we're doing this year um the issue there is that you end up with a very awkward year-long course and that it's not necessarily one that would make sense for students um that's the one with seven blocks that's closer to what we have this year with the seven blocks um but we then looked at the four by four block that also gives students extra elective opportunities and we recognize that this year because so many high school students are in a three by three without a d block we wanted to give students additional elective opportunities for next year in essence to kind of make up for that a lot of very popular block schedule is an ab block where students have courses all year but they alternate every other
007day the reason we did not choose the a b block for next year is because with health and safety being the the primary purpose or the reason why we were directed to go with a block schedule we knew that putting students in eight different courses at a time would not really fulfill that goal and then some people even asked us to look at the trimester maybe some of you remember that or you have older children that were in the trimester and we felt that um to go to a trimester in a year that we're only doing you know it's a one-year kind of emergency schedule that um there would be a lot of redesign challenges in order to do that for one year okay so this is our proposed schedule for next year again the
008times or estimations given the travel and um transportation for all students so there's a little bit of um there may be a little bit of difference here but we'll the teacher day will be approximately 805 to 3 35 in the morning we'll use that time for collaboration iep 504 meetings as well as faculty meetings and department meetings we've got two options here one is a two lunch schedule and one is a three lunch schedule if you look on the left hand side they're just a tiny bit different and it really depends on how what our distance requirements are our physical distance requirements are for for the fall so as you can see on the left two lunch schedule would mean more students in the cafeteria whereas a three lunch schedule would mean fewer and so
009a period runs from 905 to 10 25 b period 10 30 to 11 50 and then c period is where it diverges a little bit and so the times are a tiny bit different and then we've got d and d plus and d plus is designed to offer students some executive functioning support opportunities to email teachers and communicate with folks about what they need to bring home for the evening we will have some sport teams that may need to miss some of the d block and so all students are going to have at least a half an hour in d block in order to plan for that absence the athletic director is going to be communicating with area athletic directors in order to see if there are options to start a little bit later so
010as we look at frequently asked questions on uh our proposed schedule for next year one of the questions that came up in light of this year is what about music ensembles so like most 4x4 blocks we will have a music block that will alternate every other day with an academic course that allows our musicians and um performing artists because we believe that dance will be in this as well um to study their um art every other day all year long and it actually will only take up one of their blocks because it will actually dovetail with one of their core most likely one of their core academic classes that they're asking for um we're also uh choosing to run electives in a quarter in quarters so that they will occur every 45 days we think
011that that allows students to really maximize the wonderful elective program that we have at the high school and give students opportunities to try lots of different electives sometimes people ask if they'll be directed studies in a 4x4 block we will not have directed studies next year we think that you know spending a quarter of your day in a directed study especially when you have fewer classes at a time is not a good use of time yet it's really important to that we embed extra help and support within those 80-minute blocks so that students feel like they have enough time to focus on their classes so what about academic skills for students in special ed programming um teams will work together to determine if this if those services um and students require if students require those
012services during the block um so if they do indeed require it then skills will be offered in an 80-minute block um but some students may only need a few days out of that service in a six-day cycle so we're going to have to be flexible and creative in this um [Music] in this so the second one is will some courses run year long in a four by four block um this is also known as double blocked and the answer is yes there will be a limited number of courses that we're gonna double block which will be will run all year long um a few examples of what we know for sure are algebra integrated math 1 topics in math ap bc calculus as well as ap physics we also do have some courses that are
013going to run three quarters of the year doubling up on math and world language so we we've heard you know people were certainly concerned about the continuity between classes with um both math and world language and our plan is to allow students to request additional blocks and double up in either math or world language and so we're going to do our best to accommodate those requests so the 4x4 block that we're going to have next year that's only a one-year schedule so the question comes up what about the following year so our plan is to take feedback in the fall and get input from students staff faculty families and determine whether or not we want to stick with a 4x4 schedule at amherst high school or if we want to return to the previous schedule
014which is the drop one that's actually the negotiated schedule with the apea but there is a memorandum of agreement um that suggests that the principal can change the schedule but there has to be a lot of community student and faculty input in order to do that so we are going to engage in that process in the fall and review you know the um the seven drop one which many of you know from last year as well as the four by four so if you're interested in learning more about the 4x4 block locally northampton high school is in the 4x4 block and one of the resources that our scheduling committee used was the work that cambridge ridge and latin had done on the 4x4 block so they've posted to their website a lot of resources that
015they used as they made the change to the 4x4 block okay so i think we're going to move now to the second um well i guess do we want to take some questions mr mackey okay so this is a good opportunity for folks to ask questions to put them into the chat if you have them about the 4x4 block before we move into our return to person part of the presentation and just if you haven't done that before towards the lower bottom right hand corner of your screen there should be sort of a blank line and you can type anything in there and it does take a little bit to get on the stream you know five ten seconds but any comments or questions that anyone has you can type them in and then um
016the team here will try to access them uh answer them excuse me as best we can i am not seeing any come through on on the youtube so perhaps maybe move forward and then we could as questions come up later we could answer them towards the end if that's okay with the team all right that sounds sounds good good evening everybody want to talk a little bit now about what to expect when we come back to school so first i'd like to thank everybody for filling out the survey and apologize for the confusion we have some little technical difficulties with the first survey that went out so we sent out another one today and we've been working out the issues so families should be able to fill out more than one survey on one device
017if you have more than one child in high school should be able to do multiple surveys on your one on one device and we have about 260 responses so far about two-thirds of the folks that we all want to come back to in person about a third right now we're saying they want to remain remote so sort of information want everybody to know right now uh so we do plan on having an orientation for the ninth graders and the new students to the district on friday april 30th so it'll be an asynchronous day for those students they'll be able to check whether teachers or teachers will know they'll be coming in to the school we have a lot of national honor society students who volunteered to take students on tour show them what their classes
018are i help them get familiar with the building there'll be some adults here that day maybe some guidance counselors some so the admin team will be here to also talk with students answer some questions they may have and then right now our proposed date is to start back five days a week starting may 3rd but as you can see next tuesday night we're going to be presenting the plan plan somewhere to what i'm gonna be speaking to you about now to the school committee and they vote to uh have may third the day we're gonna return that will be the day that everyone will all students and teachers who are returning will be back in person and most of the teachers will be returning and be in their classrooms if you want to and so
019right now i want to kind of walk you through what a typical day will look like for the students who come back and for the students remain remote so schedule is going to remain the same except if you see it goes till 2 30 so we've added 10 minutes at the end of the day in those 10 minutes we use mainly for organization making sure students have a little extra time or in person to talk to their teachers the adults in the room with them to get some extra help before they leave the day the class a period will still start at nine o'clock and then still go to 11 20 and then the period is still 11 uh 10 30 12 50. then during the lunch block that hour time period half hour of
020it will be spent students will have the opportunity to eat we're going to divide them up so they'll be kind of two lunches two lunch cohorts so while some folks are eating the other people who have d period will be in their d period with a deeper teacher and that will be remote for some folks and in person for others and then they'll switch back and then you can see see period is still the same now we are asking that at 2 30 when we're dismissing that all the students do go back to the buses or to the families that walk and they're going to be leaving the building now 2 30 to 3 time for the teachers who are in the building it'll be a time for them to give extra support to the
021students who are remote because the way it's going to look while student while the teachers and students are in the building they're going to be still teachers can still be using the google classroom that they've been using all year teaching their lessons from the classrooms the ones over here and so students who are remote will be accessing it the same way they have in the classroom will most likely be the google classroom projected onto a board and the whiteboard in the classroom teachers will be teaching interacting with students are there answering questions for the students for remote and again that extra 2 30 of the three time will be devoted strictly to the students who are remote who didn't get a chance to ask questions as many questions as they may have had during the
022school day for students who have special education services academic skills for the ones who are in person that will also happen during the half hour lunch break and for the ones who remote they'll still access it at the same time that they're accessing it currently i went through that quickly but we'll have a chance for you to ask questions right now i want to talk about some of the frequently asked questions that we've had excuse me so one of them has really been about lunch so again we'll have two lunch cohorts right now we plan by the time we get back hopefully but whether we warmer hopefully won't get in those knowing when may or april snowstorms and the students will be outside for the most part we'll also have spaces in the cafeteria where
023they can meet we'll be able to spread the tables out limited number of students at the tables and that may also be an opportunity for students in the classroom to work out those details of the cafeteria folks but they'll have a few different options and i'll know exactly where they can eat i know which days so that is the one time where we can pretty much guarantee that students will be spaced six feet apart now depending on how many students do end up showing up for each of the classes right now our average class can hold 16 people in it space six feet apart so we cannot guarantee that students in the classrooms will be six feet apart because if a class has 22 students and 20 of them show up they'll all be in
024that out of the class or whatever class it is together we'll do our best to space folks out we do have hand sanitizers in each of the rooms air purifiers windows will be open so we're taking a lot of measures to try to keep folks as safe as possible and you can see another question about the d block so i've explained before d block will happen when students aren't eating lunch during that hour-long lunch break for those students who do either get dropped off or take the school bus their first class will start at nine if they show up before 8 50. we're going to ask the students wait outside we'd much rather have folks kind of congregating outside then in the hallways when the weather if it's a rainy day like now we'll figure
025out they'll probably be in the gym and we'll have areas will spread students out as much as we can and start sending to their classes a little bit early but ideally we'll open the building at 8 50 so students will have plenty of time to get to their first class you know cut down again on the computing inside the hallways good i uh the next slide so they had 2 30 so all the students were in the building at 2 30 i think i mentioned this earlier will be expected to leave the building we don't want students again congregating in the hallways and actually that after school time it's really going to be helped time for the teachers who are in person help the folks who are remote hoping that during the school day if
026students need extra help that they'll be able to get that from their teachers during that 80-minute block period and yes enough so we will have the orientation for the folks who are for the ninth graders the new students of district on april 30 of this year and then at late summer we will also have an orientation for all the rising ninth graders current eighth graders and also the current ninth graders now because some of them won't be in the building until next year the ones remain remote and even for those folks who come back in april there'll be another opportunity for them to get more familiarized with the building to learn about the new schedule and how it's going to affect them and have a an additional chance to speak with their teachers and their
027guidance counselors and hear more information so we do plan on having another orientation session in the fall as well so that information kind of quickly if you do have questions now would be a great time to put them in the chat i'll do our best to answer them thanks so while we're waiting for the questions to flow in um i know one of the ones and i know you you know you sort of address it on the faq but um what how would you advise a family whose student wants to come in but but they're not quite sure right and they're worried about if they come in and they don't like it you know what are they going to do what advice would you give for families because i know we're hearing uh actually k
028to 12 some concerns about that my soviet advice would be to try it to on the survey indicate that you do want to return in person so we we do want people to be really thoughtful in making their choice to remain remote or to return in person but it's much much much less challenging for us to have students who come to school and we plan for them to take the bus and accommodation for them in the class for them to then go remote it's much more challenging to have students start remote and then decide after may 3rd if that's the day we're going to be back to then come in because with the transportation and then again trying to figure out classes and lunch and whole contact racing thing so we're asking that if students
029do choose to remote placement now that that's your final decision but if you do choose to come in person you can then decide that you don't want to be in person anymore perfect i think that addresses uh another question that was just came through so thank you for principal sadiq for that um here's another one uh please repeat are you inviting current ninth graders and next year's ninth graders um so in other words the orientation that i think you described on april 30th who's the target audience for that it's the current ninth graders is atari audience for that we'll have excuse me later on april 8th we'll have a curriculum night to talk to families about course registration preparing for next year and then in august we'll be having an orientation for the rising eighth
030graders who will then be ninth graders but on april 30th of this year it is for the current ninth graders only um another question on that uh orientation on april 30th um is it for those who wish to return in person or remote or everybody who's a ninth grader right so it'll be mainly for the people who want to return in person but if someone who is deciding they want to be remote and wants to join they're welcome to join it's open to any ninth grader and also folks who are new to the district who want a chance to see the building uh spring sports question one with spring sports start and what will students do who are in person before sports so spring sports start on april 26 the day we come back from
031spring break so we'll get folks will get dismissed and they are going to be outside waiting hopefully they can find a space outside to start doing their homework generally practices i know like with football and other sports there's like a lot of pre-practice stuff that happens um folks have to warm up get changed and also again start to do their homework a little bit outside though if it's raining then again we'll try to figure out how to keep folks as dry as possible if obviously it's thundering lightning that practically cancelling folks would just be going home right after school thank you um next one was uh how would teacher how would the teachers do online and in person learning at the same time tell do you want me to take that one sure okay so
032there there is a lot of variety in the ways in which people are doing distance learning in different departments um and so there's going to be a little bit of variety in how teachers will choose to do this um i think the most equitable way of doing this will be to have the teacher running a google meet in the front of the room but facing the students that are in the classroom and projecting the faces of the students that are in remote in the remote spaces and so but that's a little bit different than let's say you're an art teacher right who can actually move around the room um and and so we've got a lot of creative ideas it's not perfect but in order for us to maintain an equitable ultimately choice here we
033will be running to the best of our ability google meets for both remote folks and folks that are in person thank you sam uh this one's for robin with the benny covet testing and maybe you could talk a bit about binex and the program there if that's okay sure we do have a limited program running now for students who are meet a criteria that that they're having coveted symptoms and we're able to test it's an antigen test that we can do with parent consent we get results in 15 minutes it's something that we will be doing we will have a medical waiting room set up with a certified nursing assistant assistant who'll be working with the nurse for any student who's symptomatic in school um but we can do uh by necessity with parent consent
034thank you robin here's another question if student chooses remote does that preclude them from participating in after-school activities like club sports um etc absolutely not please come um it was a question i think was answered in the chat but in case someone else you know didn't see it in the chat uh while we're waiting for more questions to come in it was on the prior point would a senior be able to take both physics and ap bio i think this relates to the question about the 4x4 block earlier that's also a yes absolutely great thank you so one that's coming through but i see it a little sooner is will there be any breaks where students can remove masks like going outside or mass breaks um throughout the day yeah that will be worked out
035by the individual teachers in their classrooms and the plan is definitely to have mass breaks be part of their 80-minute classroom experience they'll be able to go outside we want to use our outside space as much as possible and then either for the entire class or part of the class or at least for students to be able to have breaks yep and and uh the other piece which i think you've referenced earlier is that meal times will be you know that's you know breakfast or the lunch certainly for lunch is also a place where um students will get a break from mask wearing as well give people another a couple minutes if they have additional questions that they'd like to ask you well while those are people are thinking of maybe some last questions are
036there other things that anyone on the team would like to share about the decision of returning in person um or uh remote any other you know tips or thoughts that you'd like to share because it is i know a difficult decision for many families um any any ways that you might uh offer uh not that they should or shouldn't do one or the other but just how to think about that and a process to approach that decision right it's really a you know a family individual decision so you think about what is going to be the best for your student and for your family again if you obviously folks who have some underlying medical concerns obviously i think it'll be best for your family to choose to keep your child remote for those who aren't
037sure you may want to try i would suggest trying the room in person and then switching normal because i said before it's much less challenging for us to have students start in person and then switch to remote we're asking that the people who choose remote that's their final decision and the folks who choose in person they will have the option to switch out so just keep that in mind when you're making your decision thank you very much so will students be able to change clothes in the school for after-school sports uh at the school so we're still trying to figure that out i believe the locker rooms i believe are on the list of the rooms that are being tested currently uh they were tested this week actually yeah so we'll get the results next
038week assuming that they pass those there will be a limited we want to again try to keep folks as safe as possible but there will be a limited opportunity for students to use the locker rooms to change assuming again that the air quality is sufficient thank you mike i just want to make one comment about health and safety um that the nurses in the district are working really closely with the amherst health department um and we're finally finding um strict guidance with local state and the cdc guidelines thank you robin so another question came through uh are students able allowed to use the gym and the equipment in the gym area so that the plan will be for um pe to happen in the gym we're gonna have make sure there's a lot of wipes
039and the part of the class process will be students also assisting in wiping things down of course the teacher and our maintenance staff will be helping with that as well but yeah we'll plan on using the gym as much as possible and also going outside a lot too i mean we want to have as many pe classes outside as possible along with as many other classes we can space folks out and have them out there great if student shoes in person needs to be out for a day or so could they join their class remotely yes definitely uh what's the plan if there's an outbreak so uh i'll let robin answer this question but uh i think one of the things that i want to say on the front end of that is that the
040reason we're taking so many mitigation measures in terms of mask wearing ventilation um you know the schedule we have that reduces the number of students who would be potentially close contacts with one another um are preventative measures and i think it's a fair question of what if those aren't successful in other words there is an outbreak but i think it is a lot of our work is on the front end of that uh but robin do you mind talking through you know what would happen if we had students test positive and what contract tracing looks like and what would be the implications sure and it's hard to describe what the plan would be because none of these situations are the same there's always a twist in them somewhere uh but we work really closely with
041the amherst health department all the nurses have been doing contact tracing um while while we've been away from school so that's something they're very familiar with um and we would uh be following the guidance of the local health departments and and what the department of public health has set forward make sure cleaning is done contact tracing will definitely be done anyone who's considered a close contact would be notified and would need to follow um depending if they're a case or a close contact either isolation or quarantined guidelines yeah i think thank you for that i think the other thing to note is that what we've seen in massachusetts anyway is that when there are outbreaks at the high school level they're often tied to non-school activities um so i think we're more likely to have
042um more likely it's probably the wrong phrasing but i think it's accurate um outbreaks tied to things that happen outside of school then things happen inside of school so that's a lot of our planning is what if there's um an outbreak within the school population um how do we manage the school end of that because that seems like our experience in massachusetts is where the risks are aren't often in the school building or in school activities it's what happens outside those hours so the question will in-person work be done on chromebooks is currently or will it be greater use of other materials that's an excellent question um so uh material sharing is pretty complex and so for many of our science classes the science teachers and some of the technology teachers as well as all
043of the art teachers have created kits that go home for remotes that have gone home for remote students and so we will continue to use though those kits and some will be in person there are a few departments that are talking about rotating carefully materials we're still working on that that's a really complicated question and so our hope is yes but at the same time we want to be equitable and so if we are using additional materials we want to also then make sure that students that are studying remotely will have access to those same materials and so let's say say we do a lab simulation and the simulation is happening in person we want the at-home students to be able to do that as well so we're working on it and and given the
044the challenge of um in person and at home we want it to be equitable so more to come on that one okay let's see so question is about what percent of the teachers will likely be coming in person at the high school so i'll start on this and then anyone can jump in um it's the significant majority of staff members will be coming in part of the reason it's hard to give an exact number is that we do have staff members who had medical exemptions uh for coming in but um we have people getting vaccinated pretty rapidly and some folks who uh were not planning to come in now are able to come in because of the because they're in a different place in terms of their health and safety so you know it's a
045significant majority um but we can't give a percent because it actually changes we've had even in the last week we've had k-12 um significant numbers of teachers who have indicated that uh given their vaccination status they would plan to be in the building um and they've got doctors notes clearing them so i don't know if there's anything that anyone on the team wants to add but i think that's why it's hard to pin it down but it's you know i've heard rumors that it's always only 20 of teachers coming back and that's not the case anything else that we should add mickey sam or talb okay so i think uh as we maybe give another minute or two for any last questions um this video uh this meeting is being recorded um so this youtube
046link that you're on right when we finish it'll be accessible so if anyone wasn't able to come or you want to you know catch something you might have missed at the beginning you don't need a new link or anything it's the same link that you're on from youtube it'll be accessible indefinitely if they're friends that you couldn't make it you know you could send them the link and they'll have full access to the the um the full presentation you sometimes take a couple hours for the comments to come up but we've been displaying them on the screen so that uh hopefully uh later viewers would be able to see them as well anything else that anyone on the team would like to share i think you're really thorough tonight i really appreciate uh all the
047work and uh what i want to share with the larger community is just appreciation for the work that this full team has done both at the school level and then you know robin not just at the high school level but across the district these are obviously complicated times we're finding ourselves in and we're trying to make the best to support every student and there's some forced choices that come with that and please know the complexity has been explored in all incredible detail by this leadership team here as well as faculty members at the regional high school and we're going to do the best with for our students whether they choose in person or remote and that's our job to make sure we're taking care of all students and we're not trying to leave anyone out
048of the learning and want to make sure everyone has full access so we appreciate everyone being on this call if there are follow-up questions uh you know uh please do get in touch with uh any of us i think you get enough emails from anyone all of us on this call where you know how to get in touch with us um but certainly can you easily get in touch with me even if i have to you know punt it to people at the school level i'm happy to do that because i know you get a lot from me um but that's sort of our plan and you know i think we were just yeah kind of chatting a little bit before the broadcast we'll try to see if we can get some more information out
049for people who weren't able to attend today so they have a sense of the start date they have a sense of that optional piece that if you start in person it's not going well that you can go remote not so much the other way around because i know there's a critical piece of information as they make their decisions but thank you all for being here we hope you have a good rest of your evening uh hopefully not much snow tomorrow forecast looks a little better uh and then spring starts on saturday um i think uh or this weekend both literally and figuratively so uh we have some good things to look forward to with warmer weather and kids back in school and that's you know both of those are great job great things for all
050of us but thanks again and i hope you have a good evening