001all right so this is this is going to be a brief ish meeting brief brief we're aiming for brief sorry about that i'll be definitive about that so um since we're all new to each other here this is and and i want to make this uh clear to folks that are watching this that the entire and i'll get into that a little bit more later that's the crux of what i came here to talk to about today's but so the the only part of the jlmsc that we're seeing here today is the district representation and then there's a very good reason for that and like i said we'll explain that in a bit but i i just since we don't all know each other i mean i know steven steven knows me but we don't
002know you if we could we could all introduce ourselves that degree whoever wants to go for it so we'll go emma we'll go sure i guess i see i need to be called on like a student i'm emma dragon i'm the new public health director for the town of amherst i'm a nurse by background um i live in hadley and i have my graduate degree in emergency disaster management i feel really passionate about public health community and also people in addition to not just only our students having a safe um environment but also all of our workforce i believe in that as well i think looking at data is a great thing and i think we're going to do good work together so i'm glad to be here i'm gonna go first stephen or i
003go oh sure i'll go steve sullivan and i'm the shootsbury representative to the regional school committee through the shootsbury school committee and i work for the shoots by highway department that's why i'm dressed like i was out in the rain all day and i just hopped in my truck and here i am sweet welcome welcome i'm ben harrington i'm a member of the amherst school committee as well as the amherst regional school committee and i'm also the assistant facilities director for the district so that's my day job and so what i'm going to do is kind of breeze through the um agenda items so we had a discussion of metrics on there kind of don't want to get into that without the other half of the the body being here the next one was a
004facilities update also can wait till we have a full compliment to have that conversation and then agenda planning we clearly can't do without the full committee here so we'll get into the the uh reason reasonably unforeseen topics which include the fact that our the apa reps for the jlmsc wanted to postpone this meeting and weren't comfortable with meeting and a lot of it had to do with procedure and format of the meeting and so we uh i've begun began having discussions with them and there's still some things that we need to kind of hash out and uh solidify before we go further but i just wanted to say that the safety of our staff and students and everyone involved is heavily on their minds as well too i don't want anyone in the public to
005think that there's you know this this lack of of caring that's that's not why they're not here it's it's that there is a great deal of caring here and uh so some of their concerns that they had were the the idea of the meeting being held publicly which because of the fact that you know i'll go i'll just explain this out as best i can because of the fact that we have two members of the school committee here the regional school committee we constitute a subcommittee no one else on jlmsc constitutes a subcommittee and nobody else is necessarily directly uh adhering to open meeting laws but mr sullivan and i are and we can't actually meet and discuss what we talk about what we're here to talk about in the the jlmsc without it being
006a public meeting so so that clearly is a a matter that we need to suss out there also one of one of their main concerns with it being public was it's not the idea of transparency we'll get into that later on as as well it was the idea that um they want staff to be able to come to us with concerns and at times they may need to do that in kind of an anonymous way and and a public meeting is probably the worst place to do something anonymously so we're gonna have to work that out also there was that there was um they took issue with the idea of having a non-district management member as a part of the committee of course i'm sorry someone who's not part of the district or management as
007part of the committee and will be more accepting of a public health official in an advisory role which is clearly something we need to uh i mean i guess just discuss more because as was explained to me the uh the district has the right to put forth the three members as as it states in the moa they can put forth we can put forth three members of our choosing and so we just kind of need to clear that up and they also wanted the superintendent to be president present sorry not president no we are we're good with that fight they want the superintendent to be present because of his ability to make decisions kind of on the spot and to provide the broadest swath of information to the committee i think there's some some things
008we can work out with that they also the reason they're not here is that they want these matters to be brought before the school committee as a whole first discussed and then we can come back and and talk things out again and they've been easy to talk to i'll say and so the major area of agreement was that the scope and purpose of the jlmsc needs to be relayed to the public specifically the fact that the jlmsc the joint labor management safety committee is an advisory committee and not a decision-making body and so i'm very much in an agreement that we should allow the public to know that so that that's really really the gist of what i had so if there's any questions concerns anything the two you wanted to talk about this is
009the only chance me and you get to talk about this mr so and then tell the next school to meet the meeting yeah i haven't oh where's mine there you go i haven't gotten a chance to read that email that you sent yet i read the first paragraph and then i jumped jumped back on to this yeah that's uh that's fair i think a lot of actually i'm going to kind of come up with a synopsis of that for the next school committee meeting and we'll probably be discussing it as a school committee that's that sounds good to me because it's it's funny that we can't that it's actually hard not to yeah the other day i wanted to respond to your email and i i knew enough not to very great and i got
010i got um i guess secondary advisement today that that's how it needs to work is that we have to have a so if i mean i suppose we could post meetings and have executive sessions prior to our meetings maybe we can handle things that way i guess but so do you have any questions emma well i'm i i've only read a little bit in the paper because i do live around nearby um but i just i'm i guess i'm looking for how i can be helpful to the advisory committee really what is the community and all of our labor force here looking for in terms of public health um because i really i want to be able to be a as best of a resource as i can be and come prepared and and able
011you know definitely perfect and i guess for me the the main thing is that we continue the work that we've done here and that uh we keep health and safety kind of in in our i don't want to say crosshairs that's too military for me this week but um at the forefront of our minds there you go see public health there we go but um yes my goal is to get things worked out prior to next friday and then next friday we can have a robust meeting and um in the meantime we'll be taking every step to make that happen that is it in all seriousness this is like the most important subject we can be talking about right now you know we do still i just want to remind folks that we do still
012have custodians in buildings we do have drivers driving students to tech school we have uh cafeteria workers that are making lunches for our students and we also have teachers who are teaching remotely from classrooms here and as some of you parents probably recognize the background that they are actually in the buildings so so i think this work needs to be done and i think it needs to be done in a fair equitable way so we're going to try to work towards coming to an amicable agreement and keep the ball rolling all right so so that's all i have for today unless anyone else has any uh objections should we do we adjourn how do we do we run away no sorry yeah um i mean i just really want to thank everyone for enjoy inviting
013me to this meeting i'm really excited to be in this capacity um i i know it's going to be really tireless work as public health is right now but i just i really know that we're gonna do good work together um and we have mutually shared goals of everyone being you know as we can be engaged in our community and doing all the work that we want to do um so i just want to thank you for that perfect and thank you for being here and taking time out of your day yeah of course this is the work great anything steve can we be can we be informal here yes absolutely i freak out when people talk about mr harrington i think like i'm in trouble or my dad's around or something yeah that i
014it's always i feel like it's my my dad i've never been a mr sullivan i can't do it even in the classroom i couldn't do it right so anything you want to say before we part ways here or no i'm just happy to be here too and we'll maybe we can't get this thing rolling for next week and i will talk to you on tuesday because i can't talk to you prior to that right right just seems so unfair but right so ben am i hearing that this time is kind of a weekly placeholder for this committee yes so so in the um in the first one or two meetings you know we actually the first meeting was like about 3 45 and that didn't seem to work but yeah we eventually at some point
015agreed that 4 to 4 45 is kind of the uh the sweet spot so hopefully that works for everyone else yeah i'll just make sure that i have that and my you know i have that as a placeholder because okay all right perfect all right so let me send this message all right so with that being said that's a perfect segue so we'll see you folks next well i'll see stephen tuesday tuesday and at a emma minimum see you friday there we go all right all right thank you take care see you