001all right ready to go here excellent all right good evening everybody um so i'm jean fey i'm one of the apea jlmsc representatives and um ben and i are going to make a it's not really a statement but just we're going to talk a little bit about um something that we think is very important which is clear concise communication going to everyone in the educational community in amherst so the jlmsc will be working together because we are a joint committee on coming up with a way that we can provide the educational community with updated regular information that comes from one source to prevent any misinformation getting out into the community and it's just as someone who has worked on two school crisis guides a national one and a state one i know that clear concise
002language is really important to uh managing a crisis so ben what do you want to add to that hi emma yeah i kind of just wanted to add on like kind of stress the importance of you know emotions are high at these these times you know this is a this is a crazy time for all of us nobody has been through this if anyone says that they've been through a situation like this that's that's absolutely not true and i think because of that it's super important that we're clear concise and and kind of on on message and that we convey exactly what comes out of these meetings because uh yeah i i think we've all seen 50 shades of what it is that we say here and we kind of need to put that in
003black and white and declare emma we're just talking a little bit about how about the importance and i know you have have a background in disaster management which i love um the when you're managing a crisis how important clear concise language is when you're communicating with constituency so um and it won't just be the information that's coming out of the jlmsc it will be the information that's pertinent to anyone that is part of the educational community um that way there won't be different versions of something all right so go ahead ben i'm sorry all right and i was going to say per the other conversation we had the other thing that we're going to do at least from the facility side there were some there were some very strong opinions that i was uh apprised
004of this morning so so what we're going to do is in in addition to just having the the conversation about facilities we're going to give like an in-depth report that first the jlmsc members will receive and then we'll figure out how to disseminate that kind of distill the information down to easily digestible statements that that sort of thing but yeah and i don't want to give the impression that this is something that that we just came up with today this is actually something that i had suggested back in october so as with any committee there's a lot of work that goes on in many many hours outside of the actual committee meetings so with that um i think the facilities update was the first thing on the agenda so ben why don't you go ahead
005and do that yeah so so from our end the uh the nexus report has gone to the district now and i i think we're at i'm not sure if it's been disseminated yet have you guys received that yet on the apa side we we received the report um earlier today that was um what you and rupert have been putting together we have we haven't seen the the full nexus report um yet just the the raw data would be wonderful for us to see also um but thank you for giving us the distilled version as well we appreciate the information and then um we also shout out to erica in the facilities department for working around the clock and we we've also come up with the these maps that they kind of make it a lot
006easier to just quickly kind of see what each room is doing and to see which rooms that we're not using because i i think that's probably important for some folks out in the community to know that you know there are rooms that that will not be tested because they will not be used that that sort of thing i think that's a wonderful step in the the direction of having that clear concise information available it's going to make things um very user friendly thank you for that step right right cause i i realize that that not everybody is uh i i think you me gene are probably more enthralled by the the raw data in in these sorts of things and not everybody necessarily needs it that way but um we also for the uh we
007got we just today received these these super large i'm trying to say it in the simplest way these huge air purifiers that are that are hepa filtered for the uh for the larger spaces you know such as the gymnasium and that sort of thing seeing how uh sports passed the vote for sports past this week and we'll be proceeding with that so so that's going to help us do that in the safest manner possible and then you know we just keep rolling with the facilities stuff basically and then and also adding on to that the sports piece the pool has started to be filled which is a long and boring process more or a long and necessarily tedious process i'll say uh addition in addition to that there's been ongoing work to the uh the
008time out spaces there were a couple that that kind of needed there were a couple that we can just basically kind of plug and play put the the air purifiers we need in without much problem and then there were some others that need some more kind of uh rethinking in in order to to do so safely and then that work is ongoing i was just going to ask you that so the because i think um i remember from last week you said that there was you would know more today right and you did um so any kind of timeline that you could um give us as far as estimate around completion for those the target is to have them done over break because there are a couple that that we we kind of need no
009one in the area is is probably the best way to get here that makes sense yeah but we we've kind of gone ahead and done as much preliminary work in those spaces as possible how many of the larger um air purifiers did the district purchase two two so far and they're um if you can picture the ones we already have it's they're they're each well size wise they're each about four times as large as those and then like a duct system that attaches to them but they're they're huge then so one will be for the one for the high school gym and then where's where's the other one going to go so so currently the plan is to use both of them in the high school gym okay right it's just because of the the
010amount of uh space that you have in there and kind of there's a placement issue as far as where the returns are with the returns which that's the part that sucks the air out of the the space just for folks at home and so you don't want to clean air that's leaving the space you want to clean the air in between but yeah but we're using both there and then kind of i'm at least exploring the option of perhaps getting another one for the pool area but it's a personal comfort thing i think and as always thank you for your advocacy um around facilities and maintenance um do you have anything else to share about facilities yeah that's about it there's there's a bunch of minutiae that i won't gonna ball this down on that
011but yeah that's that's the important information for now yeah thank you all right emma there has been so much information that has come out in the last week around pretty much everything um cdc and i don't even know where to start uh with asking i have a ton of questions and i've been receiving information um and i still have questions so um i don't know krista where would you like to start i know i want to start with vaccines and any updates you can give on that but krista did you have something else that you wanted to ask first uh i want to know about vacci i want to talk about vaccines too um i'm but my the biologist in me is having field day with this new technology so i'm i'm all all over
012this vaccine and i want to know more about what you think i'm just going to ask a quick question first about testing the asymptomatic testing that has opened up at umass i'm curious about that because what i'm what i'm reading is that that is going to be an ongoing service that will be provided until about the end of january when students return um so i know they just started but i'm i'm hopeful to hear if there are plans to encourage any information that you might have about um hoping to get umass to continue this service longer yeah so i know i believe the agreement the is that they're gonna do about 3 000 tests a week so many many tests for the asymptomatic through january when the students come back and then what i have
013read um i don't have it right up in front of me right now is that they are going to continue that testing but on a more limited amount once the students come back but that the plan is to continue that at least through march at this time from what i remember reading so that's good so that'll have some increase there's going to be the testing in greenfield there's going to be more testing out in the berkshires now which wasn't there before um so it's where our community kind of needs us right now excellent okay thank you um all right let's talk vaccine so um we're we're curious what what you know um i guess there are two different things we're curious about education and outreach but we're also curious about um administration and getting the
014how is the vaccine distributed on a local level how how are we how we know what phase that educators are in in the general public but what is dissemination going to look like of that yeah i think you you are not alone and wondering i think all of us are just wondering um because we like plants i think a lot of us i know i do i love plans and structure um and we haven't had the opportunity to do this kind of really widespread immunization program in a long time so dph and the cdc is giving out lots of structure as it comes down to give us some more idea and and really it's we're going to have clear directives on how we're going to be administering this how they're advising it be executed and
015implemented and all of those things i do know i'm very excited to say that the town of amherst we are officially registered as of early this week to receive vaccines from the state uh as a registered site um we have a new fridge and we have a freezer not an ultra cold freezer but a another vaccine freezer for extra capacity on order that's coming so that would not qualify us to take the pfizer vaccine but other vaccines like the moderna and the other ones that are coming down the pike we would be able to take and part of when we get those directives and the clear plan from dph it's going to be how probably what is called push vaccine distribution meaning that we're going to be going to community areas where there's going to
016be lots of density i'm not sure if that's going to be schools but when i think about it tradition like historically i think about going to housing complexes where there's a lot of individuals that live there in a specific population whether it's elderly or people who have transportation issues sometimes historically they did do vaccines in schools i know that's a very individualized choice um and certainly though that would not be done without appropriate waivers from parents and consents so there's more to come with that i think we're all very excited about the information and i think for us on the community level there's still time to figure out how the all the pieces will come together uh the idea the time frame that we're being told for general community distribution is about late march or
017so is when they're anticipating being able to meet that need all right um emma can you let us know what kind of work is being done um for the vaccine distribution around getting translation services uh i know that dph has been working with the academic volunteer corps for that in terms of us on the local level we have not done that yet but i will make it an item so i don't forget once that happens i do know that i did reach out i had a great relationship with with the school department with helping train figuring out how you translate uh documents at the school system um and i i know if if we're able to continue to use that process and the great resources that you have i think that would be really seamless
018thank you i think it's really important we make sure that we are reaching as many community members as possible with as much translation services possible as well i know we have a lot of different languages that are spoken in our community and we we want to try to make this as easy as possible for everyone absolutely i agree with that um the other question that i have and again um i know that there was a ton of cdc information that came out this week do you have any other updates from cdc in because it the information is so widespread do you have a specific target or topic that you're referring to are you going to jump in on that um there was in particular um a page that seemed most useful was the page that
019was addressing or the status of um communities that are having very high widespread cases like ours and it had implications for um it had implications for schools and lots of other places um as well it was more of a broad you here's what to do once you've reached high high transmission status yeah i i didn't get to really review that specific page before this meeting so i can't recall what's on it but i do know that governor baker his new orders are going to be enacted i believe it's saturday at midnight is when they those go into place with reducing of gathering sizes and limits and us rolling back to that phase three step one as a community in massachusetts as a whole throughout the state and reducing capacity for general stores retail restaurants to
02040 percent uh of the size i'm probably misspeaking because i don't have it right in front of me and increased mask wearing when you're at restaurants um and even in office spaces if you have any shared office space that masks are expected to be worn all the time those are the things that immediately come to my my mind krista um but i i know that here in on the public health side of things with our contact racing we are we are definitely feeling the outcomes um of activity what of people spending time together and traveling during thanksgiving um we're starting to see that now so all right i um sorry i wanted to go back to the vaccine um just um for a minute because i think there's some confusion around the time frame in
021between doses i think can you clear that up it depends what vaccine you're gonna get uh and so when we get closer to the distribution of it we'll get more plans and that will be very clear for everyone to understand um the state is also implementing uh electronic software so we'll be able to help monitor patients that receive the vaccine people will be able to get notifications with and documentation with what vaccine you got and when your next your secondary dose is due some vaccines are two weeks some are 28 days with that second dose so it's really going to be vaccine specific in terms of the brand if you will the company that made it um excellent um i think see the vaccines on um and uh uh you know everybody wants things to
022feel like normal so i think it's important for people and all of us to hear that the time in between doses matters and the time after the second dose matters and it's it's not a magical you have it and now go ahead and resume regular life so that's good to hear um i have a question about contact tracing um as well we've been talking about um and this is this is probably something i know this is something you deal with all the time so this is um this should be not a hard question i don't think but i'm curious if you can talk a little bit about confidentiality when contact tracing and how that applies if we're dealing with kids in schools and teachers and classmates and these intimate settings where everybody knows everybody and
023if we have somebody who we're contact tracing and um we we have a suspected positive case how we how we deal with that as delicately as we can oh i think that's a hard question but definitely a necessary one no but it's a good one because we're when any i think any of us try to gather information out of out of concern right and and because we care about our community and the people around us and we want to make sure that everyone's being healthy safe and cared for in terms of contact tracing [Music] the privacy of that is something that we take very seriously um so we engage the individuals meaning if it was a child the parent or guardian of that child and we would communicate with them and then in terms of
024the school side with the contact tracing i know the school nurses are doing that on this on the school level uh and then they're relaying that back to i believe the brain my brain just lost it it's gone did you see that little flurry it's friday it's friday at 4 45 with the principal that's what i meant to say and robin supernaut as the head of nursing um in terms of how that information flow comes back down but also while being sensitive of who it's going to affect and the messaging that's going to go out because one like we said earlier in the meeting and jean said messaging is very important and consistency um in these times consistency in a very clear flow path can make people feel more comfortable um and and and acknowledged
025i agree last question uh i'm looking at the clock at 4 45 last week i had asked you about community education any community education around um testing and the vaccine that the town was going to be doing can you give us any updates on that yeah i know that i scheduled um today brianna from the communications side for amherst i'm going to be on the community chat next week for as an open forum for people to be able to ask questions for us and be able to receive that and kind of give a sense of where we're going um i know that brianna and i have also been working on communication packages to get that out to the community in multiple different forums um and yep i just lost it again no that's okay um
026are those going to be are they going to be translated as well yes she's going to do several languages yep excellent thank you okay uh 446 um i know emma we could talk to you for hours seriously um i know you don't want to talk to us for hours but um it's all good i'm happy that i'm here to be able to be in the room with with everyone who's here virtually as well um because it's meaningful work and work that we need to do together all right we yep we we agree completely this this work might feel on a friday afternoon to some to be not the most stimulating and engaging work but um we find this work to be incredibly important as we think about um kids schools and groups of people indoors
027i i can't imagine more important conversations to be having as we're thinking about those things in our brains so till next week thank you everyone all right thank you any comments here no comments i think no comments no is that was there anything you want to add steve i realized we have to uh we got to work on dedicating a little more time you know