001do you have any um idea on any more of the details i don't and i wish i did for you um so but i don't right now all right um i just know i didn't yeah i did know that they were having a meeting today to give more information on it and um and am i correct it's an antigen test and it's almost like a pretest where you would administer it with permission um to someone who is showing covet-like symptoms and if it comes back positive then the um recommendation would then to be to go get the test correct correct to go get that pcr test or that rapid pcr test even if individuals had a negative antigen test that binax now test if they were still displaying those symptoms that we were concerned about
002then i'm sure nurses are going to be using their clinical judgment their skills those protocols that are going to be put in place that even if someone's symptomatic and test negative then they should be out of the school environment the in-person school environment so yeah okay my next question is also related to testing more okay i think it's the feedback from ben's computer um it's more around any efforts that the town is making to try to get a testing site in hampshire county i know that representative dom has really spearheaded that and has been pushing for it since august so i'm wondering if the town is is reaching out to governor baker as well uh it's right now in hampshire county we well we holyoke community college is the closest really um unless you're affiliated
003with umass so yeah so that's a great question and one that i'm really encouraged by um i know that the western mass mayors and managers town managers officials had a meeting with secretary setters about how important of an issue it was regarding testing i do know that there's support with joe comerford and also representative dome in terms of this area and i know that i have been working really actively trying to problem solve this and strategize in terms of how can we get increased testing density in this area um partnering with other areas that are already doing testing in the area like umass or cooley but also what's our accessibility and possibilities of maybe getting mobile testing here in amherst and and what would that look like and certainly what are we what are the
004specially specialty popul populations that we might want to be focused on whether they're students and teachers but i think that there's opportunities for many different ways that we can go for that and and something that i know myself and other regional health department directors have been working on as well excellent um i also know that there was an update late yesterday afternoon from the cdc correct um this was on the vaccine which we're all very happy to hear yeah can you share any information about that so in terms of local boards of health change in the direction that we've been given our directives not so much really the cdc is releasing guidance and advising state departments of health to give further guidance to local boards of health so all the information is really kind of
005coming down the pipeline to our individual areas of specialty so that way it can be executed in a uniform fashion as well as we can and create equity right the health equity that i know we all is all important to us and um is the town looking to do any um community education around vaccines you know i think that is definitely an area that we can work on as more information comes out and i will take note of that gene krista do you have any questions around the contact racing yeah um last time we met um you you got me thinking a lot about this um clinically positive situation where if we have students who for whatever reason cannot get a covid test but we're assuming they're clinically positive i'm i'm curious about how that
006plays out in contact tracing um and i'm curious how how a school nurse would discover a student is clinically positive like what kind of a timeline would that look like so we have a i have a student in my class i think they're showing symptoms i send them to the nurse the nurse says go get a test we find out that for whatever reason the family is not going to go get a test how does that information come back to the classroom in order for us to know who has been a close contact if we are going to consider this person uh clinically positive i guess that that's a big bundle of a question but maybe we can untangle that for me well you know we'll do the best that we can krista right in
007terms of paying untangling that um so i think the primary question there and topic is really how do we sort this out how do we communicate valuable and necessary information back down the pathway but while also respecting confidentiality and and doing it in a professional manner that's respectful of everyone involved and how everyone might be affected by that um the school nurses are going to be doing the school student based contact racing in if they're in the learning area and then they will look at the protocols and policies that were put in place in terms of contact tracing for those rooms for those school rooms and then based off the school department will determine messaging with me in terms of what's the best way to get that message out um if a family wants to
008test or not the recommendations would be the same in terms of stay home um you know be at home um quarantining or isolating from others not going out into the community and then certainly if you start to feel ill seek medical treatment um where it changes is if that patient or that child or student is that positive case and how it if at that time contact tracing would have to occur um so i know that's not just a challenge in the school arena i know that's also a challenge in the other workforce places as well in terms of how do we really strategize to around those identified possible gaps to create a safe environment for everybody thank you for your thinking on that i appreciate it all right um emma this might not be um
009too interesting for you maybe it is we want to switch over to the ventilation the the the hvac portion of the show yes my dad would be proud [Laughter] so ben can you give us an update yeah so testing up through phase three has been completed and now we're kind of at the uh the most boring part of that process which is the putting the data into a consumable form and i believe a rough draft has actually was sent it was supposed to have been sent this afternoon to mike from is this from nexus no from from us we we got the uh yeah it went out this afternoon okay right so it should be disseminated sometime next week i believe okay so are you um if i'm hearing you right nexus sent you and
010rupert the report the um the in engineer speak and then you um translated it into something that was more digestible correct yep yep we put it into human thought yeah okay um so we had requested that a copy of the actual report be sent to us to apea is it possible to get that i believe so yeah it's i think that's in with my little packet yes yes we still have the raw data too all right that would be help really helpful if we could have that um can you give any updates on um um i don't want to put you on the spot but the there were upstairs rooms at crocker farm that there were concerns about is there any information you can share about those that's those were um ach issues correct yep
011yep and um so all but one of them were basically we brought them up to the above four without assistance but still put a purifier um by without assistance i mean without the additional air purifier and then there was another one a fourth room i believe up there that we put a second air purifier in because it was like we checked checked it once did a calculation checked it another time got did a calculation one was slightly above one was slightly below so we aired on the side of caution thank you um was there any indication in the report as to um the what the reason was for those particular rooms having low achs no that's they haven't figured out why no that's that's kind of like it was sort of left up to our
012specialist to sort of figure that part but it's basically uh it's basically a mechanical issue initially can you go into a little more detail yeah yes um you know i love this stuff so right right it's compelling it's very compelling i tell people that they don't believe you but uh yes so basically it was like the proper amperage wasn't getting to the motor it's a little more complicated than that right right way to explain it and it went um just to clarify this was the these were the large classrooms upstairs not the smaller rooms that are across the hall from them correct correct yeah okay and do you remember which classroom number it was that was still a little bit iffy no that i was just trying to remember the numbers if i'm looking at
013them it's to the left okay i don't know if that's helpful it is yeah thanks um let's see and any other updates on ongoing maintenance that you can report on yeah so we've been um we kind of ran into an engineering snag with doing the uh the smaller breakout rooms in the the ilc rooms they were the timeout rooms i believe we call those so we're kind of re-engineering a couple spots to try to make it like the most physically safe so that's about where we're at with that so that that work is kind of continuing daily when do you think that do you have a timeline for those not exactly i have a i have a wish date to be done okay so that's that's helpful what's the wish date prior to the break
014so by next by next friday we should at least have a a plan we can lay out by next friday but i'm trying to think you know the whole picture in a couple of we'll have the work completely done by then but right right um how many spaces are we talking about that would need to be reconfigured oh the so the ones where it worked there are two two key places that we have to kind of rework things and i believe there's one two three four six total that's what we needed to address so the two key spaces are those at crocker or fort river where are those one is crocker was actually a little better off there but um one wildwood one fort river and that's a lot to do with ceilings ceiling clearance
015and what we can and can't move up there can you go into a little more detail like i'm just trying to get a sense of exactly this the scope of the work that needs to be done so it actually might come down to getting an entirely new unit which so what we're doing to kind of like to be time expedient is we've pre-ordered we're just assuming that there's no way we can make the units we have work in those two spaces so we've pre-ordered those units and then aside from that we're kind of trying to figure out how like so you need more than just physical clearance you need air space clearance up top too just so that we're not overheating things those sorts of and then in one of them there's a access to
016power issue and so we have to actually get it powered up safely and so we're not interfering with anything so we're talking about multiple contractors subcontractors i should say coming in or no no this this can actually all be done in-house yeah okay i know um i'm being married to a contractor you never want to ask somebody for a definite end right right right and completion um we want to get an uh kind of an idea of about when we're talking um so you'll have a plan by next end of next week correct and starting of the projects well they're kind of underway at the moment so that it's it's more figuring out the contingency plan and whether or not we need to enact it everywhere we're not everywhere but more than just the two
017places is this is this kind of like the the book if you give a mouse a cookie so if you start doing one thing then you find out you have to do something else is that happening yep say no more same thing all right um i to follow up on um the nexus report um this was the first time the middle school and half of the high school or more have been tested i'm just curious for an executive summary of how those how those spaces are looking i know we want to see the full the full raw data because gene and i will geek out over that for a very long embarrassingly long amount of time um but we're curious um what what's the what's the feel of those spaces i mean i guess the
018best assessment that i could give is our impression which was better than anticipated and and more well i'd say both schools were better than anticipated but i was largely shocked by some of the numbers in the middle school so i guess we've done we we've kept up the middle school better than okay so um any remediation that needs to be done in your estimation nothing nothing major at the middle school there are possibly some some issues in areas i guess they'd be they're considered phase three areas in the high school side just are these uh tweaks i mean we're not uh without seeing the report it would be hard to determine um exactly what needs to be done but are we talking about just tweaking to so that we can get the air exchange rates
019up right or having to do major stuff no it's more tweaking to get the the optimal number rather than like like they would be in in other times they'd be great numbers right you know but that we're looking for perfect right now so right we're looking for between 4.5 and six correct yep um i guess so once we have the report we look at it we understand we digest um we'll need to get nexus back in do you already have a date scheduled for when nexus is going to come back in to look at any of the tweaks that are being done no not yet they no they they're not able to schedule anything right now okay you're having some issues on there and then so this is would not be work that could be
020in-house no no well so far what we've seen it can all be done right so what um what would you need nexus to do just as far as retesting okay what our final numbers are so there's no date that we can get are we talking like january february it's tough they're uh they're kind of like behind the curve for themselves fairly well in demand in this part of the state fairly well demand and demand everywhere yeah cool it's unfortunate um all right anything else you can share with us ben that's about it oh so we finally we also put all the uh hepa filters into all of our spaces that's the that's really about it as far as in terms of like air and all that kind of stuff excellent um i am continuing to
021work at the state level on um indoor air quality that's a long that's my long-term the long goal down the road but increasing funding for infrastructure for for buildings um because i don't know i i think i asked way back when what the per uh per pupil spending amount was um for under facilities and maintenance and my my guess is it's it's pretty low um it's usually pretty low for school districts and it's unfortunate because as you know um if you if you spend the time and the money on routine maintenance it saves a lot of money uh in the long term absolutely a lot of the a lot of the work we're doing now could have been done a while ago cheaper that's the nice way that i can yeah um is the electric
022is the subcontracted electrician still working in the buildings or is that work done no he's a it's another one of those working on an old house situation so we kind of every every corner we go around we find something you find something new he's been working in the kitchen just for anybody that's listening do you know um the dates of when each of the like the building dates of each of our school buildings i think it would be interesting to know that as well as if the blueprints have ever been um fully updated yeah i think so okay i can give you all of that for a second so i know we're geeks sorry emma we're geeks on this stuff the stuff i love so so the middle school in wildwood i did not realize
023that they broke ground in the same year which is 67 and then 71 is um fort river and then you have all the different phases of the high school like the 60 something odd the 60s were a great time for us here in amherst apparently a lot of growth and then you had the 92 update i believe to the high school and then crocker early 60s and then the 2002 update but yeah those are both of those things came up this week that's the only reason i'm a little geeked about that and then we also four years ago had all of the prints scanned and and uh myself and mr roy clark have been they were they were all scanned in one file so we've been kind of like itemizing every little section you look
024right right from the physical so that are they completely updated at this point because i know the high school had some um modifications done yeah so the the prints are for the high school i'd say 90 plus percent updated little tweaks here and there that's kind of the minutia we're delving into right now all right and do you know if the town has copies updated copies of the blueprints as well i'm not sure what the the most recent version they have just would be good it would be good to uh and helpful to find out that um i'm speaking more from a safety standpoint you know for um that it's just helpful to have um accurate blueprints of the buildings yeah yeah we've also been going through speaking of safety going through and redoing uh
025updating floor plans like we you know we had doors that were it's marked one way on a floor plan and marked another way on the door so if we were to call and if there were some emergency and we needed to tell someone where to go they would go to the wrong place so that's the that's where i was going with this making sure that um for our public safety uh officials that they have copies of updated so that they're looking at the same thing that you're looking at right and thank you for saying that publicly because i think half of my staff has thought that we were crazy for the last two three weeks no it's very important it's pretty uh vital to um the health and safety of the public school buildings absolutely
026all right um i see it's 46 emma again thank you so much for a friday um and for all that you do we're very uh we're very grateful for the work that you put in and then always grateful for all of the time and effort that you put in both as a school committee member and as our assistant facilities director you do an amazing job thank you very much so um have a good weekend everybody you too you too i suppose this is the part i'm supposed to stay on and look for questions to answer um i don't know i don't know what to tell you ben so thank you again all right no problem thank you there were no questions on the youtube side perfect so we can we can end this now then
027all right welcome thanks have a great weekend