Elementary Town Hall

001hi i'm mike morris i'm the superintendent of the amherst and pelham public schools and thank you so much for joining this town hall this afternoon we really appreciate you spending time with us we know it's a beautiful day outside uh but what we'd like to do today is share a summary of a very long document that was emailed out last week we submitted based on a school committee vote a document that was over 100 pages describing our plans for fall and we want to be able to share about 10 slides or so so that people don't have to get lost in all those pages about academically our facilities our health and safety approach transportation all those types of things we're planning it's 401 right now we're aiming to finish our presentation by 4 30 at

002the latest and have at least half an hour for question and answer afterwards a couple other quick notes if you are looking for a live translation in spanish korean portuguese or some other languages that are listed on the chat there's a website listed on that chat and both you can access translation on there as well as ask questions in whatever your language you're most comfortable with in most comfortable in and it'll be translated back and we'll be able to access them uh on this if you are watching via this youtube channel again the lower right hand corner has question and answers we're going to go through our presentation and then get to the question and answers later but we're just appreciate appreciative of our community being so engaged in this question we know we've sent

003lots of surveys we've sent lots of information and we wanted to try to consolidate where we are on august 17th so with that i'll go around the the room and people can introduce themselves so i'll start with you faye good afternoon i'm faye brady and i'm the director of student services for the district thanks for joining hi good afternoon my name is lee whiting jones i'm the principal at pelham elementary school hi everyone i'm sarah hall and the chair of the pelham school committee hello my name is katie richardson i'm the coordinator of ell and dual language programs good afternoon everybody my name is jill consolino i'm the nurse manager for the school district good afternoon everyone my name is derek shea and i'm the principal at crocker farm school welcome welcome everybody i'm diane

004chamberlain the principal at fort river school hi everyone i'm nikki affy the principal of wildwood school good afternoon i'm joanne smith i'm a specialty administrator and i work primarily with pre-k through eight thanks everyone and so uh we have a large group and some of that's so that we can present and some of that is is really about answering questions that may be specific to a school or an area after uh the presentation so i'm gonna tell the group i'm going to try something a little new with how i'm sharing the screen hopefully this works well and there we go i'm going to make it hopefully a little larger for everyone there we go and so again this is a brief uh slide deck it's also on our website our fall 2020 website so if

005anyone's interested they can view it there as well and it's a summary of uh where we are today and what our plans are moving forward okay so just a couple quick facts uh the majority of our students and staff at the elementary level will begin the year remotely our in-person learning will be introduced on a phasing plan i'll get into in a little bit and a set of public health metrics which i'll share in in a couple moments will guide the opening of school as well as the movement between phases so while one of the challenging things in this time is we are making plans but our most important thing is following the public health metrics and making sure that we are able to implement our plans and another important point is that all families

006have the choice of full remote learning or in-person hybrid learning for their children if you are a parent of a child in kindergarten or first grade a preschooler with special needs or you have a child in one of the intensive special needs programs or special needs programs at the elementary level you should have received a survey last week and a reminder today that is asking for that choice for students who are going to be or families of children who are going to be in later phases that survey will be coming soon and this is uh the phase reopening plan so the groups i just mentioned as well as students who do not have a permanent residence there are priority groups and they're we're looking for them to start on actually all students would start on

007september 16th and september 16th students either would start in person or in a virtual environment and you can see the metrics we use are very conservative metrics they're more stringent than the center for disease control the world health organization other states like new york and other states around the country recommended but the harvard global health institute recommended them and with all of our safety measures we are trying to take the most conservative approach possible for students in grades two at pelham actually they are included in that first group of students who would be attending based on some unique characteristics of that school in october we'd be looking at students in grades two and three entering and um and in november that's after indigenous people's day so thinking about roughly a month after the first group

008starts and after veterans day in mid-november we'd be looking for grades four to six to start and the metrics for those are very similar it's just also we included a metric to make sure that we're not seeing a rapid increase in either percent positive of covet tests or in terms of the number of cova tests uh no number of of people with covet in our communities and so that's the phase reopening plan i think so many things we will have answers for and other ones we we were still working on but i think we wanted to show a chart of when students return would return and also the metrics that they would return by if we're not meeting those metrics we would slow down our piece we could even go back a phase depending how

009that goes right now our metrics locally in hampshire and franklin county are well below those the limits that are set but we don't know what the future will hold we have a different school calendar this year so the state has agreed that there'll be 170 school days instead of 180 school days the first 10 days are for professional development for our staff and that's why we're starting as late as september 16th another difference is we will not have snow days this year that we will just flip to a virtual days we extended the the school committee decided to extend the december break it's a little hard to see but you can kind of see these blue days and that was really the thinking was that as people visit people family members from out of state

010we want to have a long period to support that so last day of school would end up being what will be june 24th someone raised well what if there's an electrical outage and people can't access their wi-fi um i think like everything else that i said the other night is every time you peel an onion on this you just keep on going deeper and deeper and deeper but our plan now would be to end on june 24th so it's just a summary of facilities things we've done something not on this slide is at fort river and wildwood we'd have significant work done so what used to be known as quads are now uh halfsies i don't know if we've come up with a better turn if nick and diane have one they'll be able to

011share it but essentially they're 1900 square foot rooms each with their own ventilation system and venting system the work is coming to its conclusion the rooms look fantastic i was at boat schools and it was a fort river another time last week and that's something that we knew we had to do from a facilities perspective we've also updated cleaning and disinfecting protocols we're having a shortened school day we'll talk about that when we talk about the schedule but much of the thinking behind that is allow for enhanced cleaning and sanitizing both after students leave in the afternoon as well as back in the morning all of our classrooms are outfitted with hepa air fuel fires with uv disinfecting light there's one right next to me that's it's got a quiet hum but that's what was

012recommended to us and it really turns over the air much quicker than other solutions in terms of proving our hvac system bathrooms other high touch services door handles cleaned multiple times we've invested in other cleaning techniques and materials we've school committee agreed that we would have six foot distancing in spaces between students and staff that's the kind of outer edge of the state they said no no fewer than three feet and our school committee felt from a safety perspective was important to follow the cdc guidance on that we have tents they're going to be going up pretty soon at our schools to promote and allow for outdoor education and hvac we've hired an hvac company that's going to look at each of our rooms and particularly at the phase one rooms to make sure that

013we're getting recommendations as well as an accurate reading on ventilation um just quickly health and safety considerations ms consolino is here and she'll be able to answer questions on these uh at the end so all students are medically able to be expected to wear a mask that they will provide in the state has encouraged families to provide them we have backup pairs uh they're available we've purchased ppe we did that a long time ago so thanks to our team for ordering that well in advance we've also have special face coverings it's specifically for deaf and hard of hearing students and ell students but more and more we're thinking that even for primary grade elementary students these are ones with clear panels over the face and so being able to see an elementary teacher's mouth is

014really important for oral development so we are trying to figure out the right ppe to fit the right age level and student characteristic group transportation the buses will be much less full roughly about half compared to last year and that's one of our questions about whether families are able to provide transportation and uh are willing to we know we've gotten a lot of feedback that um that that's important uh and entry and exit will look different um to be much more control than it was in the past um i'm gonna turn to nick yaffi who's going to start talking a little bit about the draft elementary school schedules we'll start with the in-person schedule and then head over to the virtual schedule so nick i think you're unmuted so you're ready to go yeah so

015thank you mike so this is the in-person schedule and there's some similarities between the in-person and the virtual schedule based on what we see and what we believe in our heart of hearts is that during this time we're going to prioritize our what we would call student agency and engagement that after being away from school for so long in person the most important thing will be for us to connect with each student to build up strong student relationships to focus on their social emotional well-being and to go you know create joy in the classroom and so when we talk later about the draft of the virtual that's the same but in person we want to as well as virtual i'm realizing now the first time i've done both schedules at once that there are these

016similarities and so we'll be developing routines because we've all been away from each other routines that will help children feel safe in this reality of staying distance but at the same time as we're in person that we can still greet each other we can still connect with each other and we can still create our classroom community and what we're going to be doing is this is both of them are really it's a framework and we want our teachers and our staff to come together and enliven this framework in other words for figuring out ways to integrate the arts to have students really engaged in what we would call leading their own learning so if you look at this we focused on the main areas of english language arts math and then what we call unit

017study or science and social studies and we also put in social emotional learning as well just as a as a placeholder to say this is something that we're going to include in every day of our school so the one way to look at this is like the children come in there's a sense of connection and greeting with our classroom teachers and then at the end of the day we're checking in with students and we're reconnecting with each other so that's a brief overview of the in-person elementary schedule and then if you look at the virtual schedule like i said there is some similarities there except this is as we've been saying this is a new way of doing we want to go deeper into our knowledge and our understanding of doing online learning in other

018words how can we keep kids engaged how can we keep kids motivated how can students share with each other and i would say that in the virtual schedule what we try to prioritize is the connection with students in small groups so in other words the asynchronous or the recorded lessons are there to deliver instruction but then in small groups students and staff will connect with each other and that's when the personal learning will take place um mike i don't know if there's anything more for me to say or or whether we should just allow the questions to guide this let's look at your colleagues i don't know if any of your colleagues says anything you did a beautiful job but if your colleagues has anything they'd like to add then they're certainly welcome i see

019uh people just waiting for the comments afterwards and we'll we'll do it that way yeah just take it just to tie into that i know it's in the comments but clearly it can divert in the in-person learning um we're going to be prioritizing and having students go outside on a regular basis and having movement breaks but spending outside because we know that that's important in terms of the health factors as well and and we also believe it's good for kids i think this will this will highlight that for all of us it's like wow the children are doing better because they're going outside more often yeah yeah i agree with that and i'll just i see there's some comments in the chat about kindergarten and and uh for students who are in person we are

020planning for a again it's an adjusted day it's a shorter day um kindergarten but for students who are attending [Applause] sorry that's okay um uh for students who are attending kindergarten virtually uh we got very concerned about screen time like and so you will see that the this draft virtual federal for kindergarten which was on the prior page uh is a half day schedule um you want to be realistic about five-year-olds who have not been to elementary school before and we feel like we can provide them with short lessons that get at the curriculum we also know that elementary excuse me also elementary students but particularly kindergartens really need small groups uh to be successful on google meets and synchronous calls so by doing a half day that halves the class size which really will

021contribute to some important um i think differences and and enhancements of their experience um and so i think there's a question that i'm going to keep on going but i think it's it's related to something nick said that uh the the entire day is not asynchronous there's multiple times throughout the day where you see small group literacy small group independent math small group science those are all synchronous blocks for the core subjects so as nick was saying it starts with an asynchronous lesson but then moves into synchronous learning and i do want to note also we are still in negotiations with our association so these are draft schedules and we hope to come to resolution and be more clear with that in the future i'm going to keep going with the slides because i know

022there's questions that people have so i want to get through these i'm going to skip the secondary schedules because we did that this morning and this is actually our last slide so we're doing very well on time um ms consolido do you want to speak to at least a couple of these really important points about what families can do to prepare for school this fall sure thank you dr morris so this um pope this paper is posted on our website right now and it's a quick um ten things to do um this summer to get ready to get your kids ready for the school year um the first thing is to practice hand washing and hand hygiene every classroom that has a sink we will be utilizing those things for hand hygiene and trying to

023reinforce with the kids a 20-second rule practice with your kids you know singing a happy birthday or the abcs um in any classrooms that don't have running water or sinks we will have hand sanitizer available in those classrooms we'll also have hand sanitizing stations scattered throughout every building the second one which is going to be really important for our younger students is to have your kids practice putting on a mask and taking off a mask and this is going to help with our younger kids to build mass tolerance i know some of the principals are probably going to email out an article which helps describe this and so it's to get your kids used to wearing a mask or a facial covering for a longer period of time during the school day um social distancing

024we're we're aiming for a six foot distance between kids during the day and this helps to um keep kids you know i know we can't keep every kid apart but when it comes to a virus like kovid when we look at close contacts and we have to identify somebody within that six foot distance if we can keep kids apart it helps to make that job a little bit easier we number four we will be asking parents to screen students every day before sending them into school we're going to be using an online platform so parents can submit um a self-certification for their students and staff will have to do this as well every day and information will come out to you um before the school year starts so that we can track anybody that's symptomatic

025for the virus and then next steps from that what else do we have on here um immunizations are a big thing this year the state is not backing down um relaxing the requirements so just check with your providers to make sure that your kids are up to date on immunizations um recommendations from the local pediatricians are once the flu vaccine is available to have your kids get it um and it's because the flu mirrors covered very similar with a lot of the symptoms so if you can get your kids vaccinated for the flu hopefully that'll cut down on a lot of the visits that were that we're gonna see in the health rooms um number six um oh i'm sorry um extra masks so we're gonna ask every family to provide masks from home we

026will have some on hand um if the mask becomes unusable during the school day um and those will be a disposable mask like dr moore said we are looking potentially at an um an alternative mask for the younger students that would be about a better fit for learning and in-person learning so more information will come if we decide that we want to go that if we're going to proceed with that information for you guys and water bottles have been purchased for every student in the district the schools that do not have bottle fillers the fountains will stay operational for filling but the ones that have bottle fillers those fountains will be turned off for drinking purposes we want every student to use their own um bottle so that we don't have to do worry about

027cross-contamination and that kind of stuff um and the biggest thing is number nine is your emergency contacts if your student becomes symptomatic with any symptom of colvid19 they will be sent to what we have is called um a medical waiting room in every building and we will be contacting you to pick them up for further evaluation um so it's critical that all the building nurses have accurate contacts for an emergency person to pick their student up and we're going to ask for that to become in to happen in a timely manner um and then number 10 there's websites that we have linked on our planning website um as well as our own district replanning website that will update that we update on a regular basis with all of our planning documents and if any questions

028come in you can always reach me through dr morris or one of your building principles as well and i'm happy to answer to the best of my ability great thank you um there was a question um you mentioned in the other uh the secondary workshop about the program around thermometers and supplying the families so i am actually looking into a program that um provides free thermometers for families um i'm just waiting for information to come back from this company it's a um sponsored i believe by lysol and another company that when families opt in they will be provided with a free digital thermometer for home use um and so once i get this information um it'll be sent out to every family and then once you opt in you'll be provided with this this thermometer

029for home use great thank you um so let's see if i can stop the sharing um and um miss hall i know you were going to facilitate but i see a couple questions right away um that are about chromebooks so i think maybe i can address those ones um so we we do have chromebooks um first of all if you have chromebooks hopefully you got an email from jerry champagne we are collecting them for them to get updated there was a big question outside the office today i saw dozens of them so we thank you because they do need to be updated like a lot of technological devices these days if you don't update them they will eventually stop working we have ordered more chromebooks to be able to provide for families we know some

030families really rely on them other families chose not to accept one but we're trying we're building our library of chromebooks so that we can have one for one in the past in the yammer schools we had uh we had that at grades three to six we bought some last spring we have other ones coming in two and a half weeks so that we can support that at the kindergarten level we are looking at ipads that's based on a lot of parent feedback and also some of the programs are the touch screen is very works very well for that um program so i think miss hall um if you went mine um i know you were looking at the questions coming in there was a lot of them and uh if you could sort them and

031listen to us and we'll go from there yeah so i'll start to take them in order i'll also group them so if i skip over a question don't worry i'm trying to group them into obvious areas um so there are some questions on masks one is this restorative justice approach and what happens if a student does not and then just general there are some questions about protocols for the younger grades and keeping their masks on so can you talk sure so i'll start with the restorative practice and maybe miss consolino can talk a bit about or miss chamberlain i know was talking about it earlier about um strategies to support students so on that um so when it says we're sort of justice that doesn't mean we we ignore it or we don't um follow

032up when students aren't asked what we don't want to do is penalize students for needing a mass breaks more often or building up their stamina at the beginning of the school year we're talking about five and six-year-olds and seven-year-olds primarily at the beginning of the school year who probably haven't worn masks as much as they're going to need to and and that's miss consolido talked about and i think mr chamberlain can speak to uh working with families to try to build up that mass tolerance we know it's not going to be immediate and what we want to do is a collaborative approach between families students and staff so that we can get there and we can build up that mass tolerance you know we're that's not really about students who don't want to wear masks

033it is a requirement to be in school but what we know is with children it's going to be a process and we want to be supportive of that process as we move forward miss chamberlain do you mind sharing a little bit of something you mentioned earlier sorry uh i thought it was really uh an interesting one so if you wouldn't mind sharing that are you talking about training while um so i read an article recently in edutopia which is a fantastic educational resource if you're looking for quick articles that are evidence-based but they talked about really trying to encourage families to do a quasi-training program at home to lead up to more and more tolerance of mask wearing where you start for an hour at a time for a few weeks and then for a

034few days excuse me and then the next couple of days try for an hour and take a break and then another hour so it's two hours total so you can help condition your child to be more mass tolerant as well and then to piggyback on what everybody's saying the requirement will be for kids to wear masks in school and the thought process behind that is so that when you're wearing a mask it's going to protect the people that are around you from exposure to the virus and the ones that are around you wearing a mask protects you individually um what we're finding now is that a lot of carriers of the virus are actually asymptomatic or they don't actually have symptoms so by wearing a mask it actually it's going to help prevent the spread

035of this regardless if you have symptoms or not and we know that younger kids you know it's going to be difficult initially and so we're going to hopefully they're going to hopefully build up that challenge to it i did see a question about the bus and as part of the transportation all students will be required to wear a mask when they're riding any any of the school provided transportation um can i just interrupt for one second which is say our translators are requesting that we i think we see so many questions and want to get to them but that we really want to slow down our speech patterns for us presenters um because they are translating fast and furiously but uh we want to just make sure and as i joke before them it's not

036i'm not the best at that but uh we will uh if we're speaking slowly please uh for the audience know that we're trying to make sure that the the live translation can occur at that pace can i jump back in there mike just to think about the restorative justice approach that part of restorative justice and restorative practices is teaching the child what the expectations are so we'd want to make sure that as they come into school and as our teachers are reaching out to families to get them ready for school that there's clear expectations about how and what to do and how to request a break and how we can help facilitate them feeling comfortable in the classroom with both using the mask but getting their needs met when they need to as well so

037that's a direct thank you um we there are a bunch of questions about outdoor learning specifically what is happening in the tents how many students will be there at the same time um how much of phase one will occur intense and then just generally with windows open um and intense what we're thinking of in terms of inclement weather so can we talk about the outdoor learning element yeah i'll start with just the size and then i'll i'll let the principles jump in with some of the other uh thoughts so um in terms of the size they're 30 foot by 30 foot so 900 square feet so it's slightly larger than the average classroom that we have across the district um certainly larger than most of the rooms at pelham and definitely larger than the old

038quads by a considerable margin about the same size as some of the rims at crocker farm although they don't have the cubbies which block the way so full classes can fit in there safely and easily with six foot distancing especially because they don't have furniture within them and you know i think there was a comment i saw too before that it's not that that's the only place outdoor learning can happen it is the case that on drizzly days or days where the sun you know may be a barrier because it's so bright we've had a number of those that it really offering shade really helps with that um but it's not the only opportunity for tents and it is nice that we have a relatively small cohort of students starting at the beginning of the

039school year because they will be able to be outside both with the weather but also with the tents up more frequently um but i don't know if any anyone any of the principals or anyone else derek mr shea excuse me yeah this this is derrick shape crocker farm just a couple a couple of quick things i'll try and speak slowly sorry um uh so last week um i had a meeting uh this is just a good example i had a meeting with our crocker farm pgo members actually a couple of weeks ago and then we met again this week and one of the things we were talking about was this notion of um finding a way to make sure that every one of our students who come to school um have um and real support

040to make this happen just have the the the right gear i'll call it to be able to go outside um let's say even when it's raining a little bit right and so you know we're very lucky here in this part of the country where we get a lot of sunshine and good days and um i would say i come from a part of the world where it's raining a lot and you said i'll learn to go outside a little bit more um so we're going to work on and i know the other schools are working on this too is thinking about how do we make sure that we'll get the proper gear in school so that you can go outside on a regular basis because to answer a couple of questions i do think we're

041going to be able to get more than one group out in the playground that time because all of us will get fairly um pelham's a little bit different but we'll got fairly large um properties and and i think there's a way for us to to space out um students particularly in that first cohort that come in so um i anticipate we'll figure this out closely at the time like when teachers get back august 31st but anticipate it has been outside it doesn't have to be pelton then we rain but um we'll make the most of it um and we will certainly go outside a little bit more than we normally do okay something i put in the chat just it was a question about mass breaks and and if you look closer at this schedule

042i should have fast forwarded the slide when mr yaffi was talking sorry about that nick um you can see that at the elementary school there's schedule there's mass breaks roughly every hour um kind of like the finland model of you know that there's some concrete instructional time where that's inside or outside and then there's a break and and so we're trying to follow that model both educationally we think it has a lot of merit as well as um in terms of getting mass breaks and getting kids outside which is the safest place for the mass breaks to occur all right great um so there are a number of questions about either children who will be in person for phase one and opportunities especially for kindergarteners to meet a teacher in person or see the school

043and then also for children who will be all remote if there's any opportunities for initial in-person meetups outdoors and other ways essentially i mean i think what a lot of folks are asking is ways to establish connections before starting either in person or virtually yeah and i can start with that one so um the guidance we've received from public health folks is the only individuals allowed in the building are students and staff members so that's really hard for us we usually are doing the opposite encouraging families welcoming families and we want families in our building and this is a really different um a really different challenge that we have so we are exploring ways that we might be able to have for instance kindergarten orientations things like that whereas peace people can be near the

044school and and see the teacher in that way because we know how valuable that experience is but it's not necessarily something that we can scale um and so that's one of the challenges i think the other challenge uh that we face is again you know we want to be outside and we can plan something and then if it's torrential rain even under a tent there's some limitations to uh what's possible but we are trying to think of active ways you know in fact the elementary principles took um the course and one of the things was even for the virtual students students who won't be coming into school what are ways that we can creatively make connections with families even if it's not inside the school building so we want to we're looking at creative ways

045again to do that we learned our lesson last year where we were in emergency situation and we had some success stories and some real challenges about making those connections and we're in a much better place right now whether it's in person or in virtual to be connecting frequently with families having those check-ins in the ways that work for families we know that everyone's schedule is really different than it was a year ago or we imagined it is from for most people and we want to be able to be respectful and responsive to that okay there's also a whole group of questions about the remote learning some concerns about it's a lot of going on and off of um of meetings um that it could be a lot of screen time a long virtual day for

046students and what supports there are for caregivers who are overseeing that um and then um then also questions about with the virtual and in person is will will children who are learning virtually have the the same teachers and will there be consistency there yeah um so i can start with some of that i think um so we roughly think if the elementary schedule works out to roughly two and a half three hours of being online um we felt like once we maxed out more than that that was too much last year we heard the feedback loud and clear that it wasn't enough it wasn't sufficient last year the focus was on resource delivery at the elementary level so if you had an elementary child you you saw every week you got a distance learning plan

047which is a set of activities and resources that was the primary piece and this year the focus from the state of expectation is direct instruction so we've seen some districts do it different ways what we experienced last year is long synchronous sessions online for elementary age students weren't successful that students didn't have um after about half an hour 40 minutes the ability to stay attentive and to do work on a synchronous call was was not very high and so really what we're focused on is two things one is having small groups on those synchronous calls we found that to be much more effective than uh in general than the large group and the second is to have some opportunity some direct instruction asynchronously as nick talked about some follow-up that synchronous to support work some

048independent work that that may be on or off screen and then a break and so we are cognizant that it is something we're going to have to do a lot of work with caregivers and caregiver trainings as well as students to be able to manage those transitions but the alternative having long stretches of students online from a learning perspective we didn't feel like was effective when when folks tried it last year for the best of intentions students weren't able to maintain themselves elementary students but even including secondary students we can't simulate school just being online it really is a different pedagogy and i actually wanted to comment i saw a question of you know are virtual students being like synced in or is there a camera and um in our in our experience and our

049judgment that's not a very effective strategy because you use significantly different pedagogical um or instructional models or be really different online than they would be in person and from a teacher perspective it's just very distracting to be following the in-person plus looking at a computer for what online students so really what we're looking at is for emerson pelham to be collaborators on that i know some districts have um paid licenses for like the state system for curriculum we haven't done that we're going to work within our own staff to find out the best teachers to support our students but i probably forgot a bunch i'm trying to think of what else you ask ms hall and if there's anyone else who'd like to share anything um i will i did just miss there was one

050very specific one related to that were there resources to provide tutors or other support um for for families i mean i think it sounds like resourced by the school so i think that's probably a no but just didn't want to ignore the question yeah so i think what we're trying to do in terms of that is really work in small groups with our classroom teachers our special educators our ell teachers which i'm going to get to ms richardson in a second because i meant to do that 20 minutes ago and i forgot um and our title one and intervention teachers so that people are able to maintain that small close-knit group and make those strong relationships that really can't happen in a virtual environment with 20 even 15 students on a goal we find even

051administratively that when we have six or seven people we can have real discussions as administrators as adults and when we have our larger team together which is 20 students 20 people it ends up being very monotonous with one person talking for long stretches of time but i forgot to come back to dr brady miss smith and miss richardson which was my script that i made a mistake about just to do so if we could pause from the question and answer for uh just a couple minutes uh so i'll start with mrs richardson who can talk a little bit about english language learners in english language learning education and then dr brady and miss smith about special education my apologies so in general the plan that we are operating under now that was approved has us

052inviting our beginner english learners back for in-person learning should they choose to engage in that way and that's really based on our guidance from the department of education that we should be offering for our students with more complex needs to to have that opportunity we know that language learning is requires a lot of engagement and certainly our team is really well prepared to meet the needs as as best as we can in remote learning but we know that the opportunity to learn all day with peers and interact and use language is a really different experience when we're able to be in school so the the hope is that for those students who do choose to return we'll be able to provide their language instruction for a large part of their day in person with those

053teachers who are able to be there with them and that they'll also connect with some staff to access the same content that other students would be accessing in terms of their math their unit study that we call unit study for science and social studies to make sure they access the same learning and from there we'll be working really closely across our english learner teachers with our content teachers to co-plan and you know find all the ways that we can help make the content engaging and accessible for all of our english learners based on whatever it is that they need at that time so that's just a brief overview thank you and dr burger ms smith so um so thank you and um i saw a couple of questions in the chat that were related to

054special education as well so i'll try to touch on those but um in the models that were shared the schedules by the principals i think it's just it's really important to know on a um overview is that um all the special education instruction and services that are on a student's iep will be planned in the scope of whether it's the remote day or um the hybrid day or or whatever it may look like that will all be planned within the context of the student's schedule and communication and collaboration with families will be essential to um so that everyone knows what that daily schedule looks like for their child um the other thing and i think this goes along with what miss richardson just said was that in our phase one opening plan we have um

055planning underway for our students in our specialized programs um to be entering for in-person instruction as of the middle of september and um ms smith will be able to talk more about preschool if people would like to hear specifically about that but the intention is for some of those students who have higher needs from the very beginning we will be having our teachers and our related service providers working in person with students for their iep instruction and their goals to be able to get their education that way that being said we know that some students will have classes that they attend that aren't in person and we will be making arrangements so that they will be getting support while in school to access those classes remotely during that time so i don't know if ms

056smith wants to add anything about preschool though briefly i saw a question in the chat regarding the preschool schedule and the preschool schedule relative to the in person will be consistent with much of what preschool does around morning meetings exploratory times group lessons story time related services and and certainly outdoor activities so i would say it's consistent with additional time built in while preschoolers are not required to wear masks their students will be encouraged to and what we recognize is it'll be a significant transition for them into the public school for the first time or back so be anticipating spending time just engaging with them around um physical distancing and social circles and some of the good rich preschool curriculum they already do so um relative to the schedule and the opportunity um i think

057we're well positioned for that could i just add there i saw a question while smith was talking about iep meetings and although that doesn't apply to everybody who's watching right now um in a letter that was sent home that we do at this point intend to have our iep team meetings continue to be held virtually i think the health and safety guidelines and ms consolino speaks to this frequently is to have as few people in the buildings as possible so iep team meetings will be held virtually yet they will be held within the expected guideline timelines okay all right thank you um there are a couple questions about report cards and how assessments will work yeah so um this year the expectation of the state is clear in a couple things that were quite different

058than last year one is that report cards assessments will be offered and that feedback which is a critical part of students teaching and learning needs to be part of the educational program it's also clear whether students are in person or virtual that they have to have 170 school days and the time on learning requirements will be the same so that instruction is that it's is at the core no matter what method of education families choose for their children so that that is it's a really good question last year the state waived the time on learning requirements um and we weren't teaching new instruction at the elementary level for most of the spring and that is markedly different in terms of expectations we have for this this fall and this school year um a few more

059sort of protocol questions around this um one of them was on bathroom cleaning protocol and the frequency of that and then also if someone is needing to quarantine would they then just switch over to virtual during a quarantine time yep so in terms of bathroom it will be cleaned multiple times a day and we're developing working with our facilities team you may see a change in how many custodians are there during the school day versus after the school there before the school day because we know that that's a critical need for that to happen under multiple times throughout the day um and so that they are itemizing which rooms particularly at phase one because that's where we are now will be in use and which rooms they are so that's on their regular routine um

060and then the second part of your question i'm sorry i missed a miss hall um that was on if um if folks need to quarantine either because of exposure or potential exposure would they switch to virtual during that time yeah so there would be uh the opportunity you know for at least the asynchronous lessons if not more to be accessed by students who are you know out for any reason and that's one of the reasons we want to have asynchronous lessons throughout is that they're easily accessible for any student whether they're in school or not in school in general if families start in an in-school environment and for whatever reason they feel like that's not working for their child it's pretty easy to transition out to a virtual environment going the other way is more

061difficult that because it requires space and planning and so that we're trying to think of very deliberate moments in time which are generally around the quarters which is kind of november mid-november mid-january mid-march to the end of the year so that we can manage that we can make sure we have the space and staffing to support those transitions so going one way is a little easier than going the other way because of the health and safety requirements i do see one that maybe ms smith or dr brady would like to go in on would uh jump in on which is what is going to happen with 504 iep assessments that were started before school closed but weren't completed i thought that's a good question great great so i'm happy to jump in to answer that

062so um there were some assessments that were started and not finished and there are other ones that haven't even been started yet so um our special ed admin assistant staff are already compiling the list of who those people are and people will be in touch to be able to restart um assessments that were kind of halted midway through and what that might look like as well as to schedule um evaluations that hadn't been started that could have should have been started in the spring so expect to hear from people um as school is opening about those plans okay great um a couple of school specific questions one was on the fifth and sixth grade at crocker farm and some outstanding questions about that so can we just talk about the latest there sure you want

063me to go derek or you like to go well maybe maybe just for the sake of switching up a little bit i'll say something first and then maybe just jump in is that i read in the chat somewhere and i know um mike will make sure that we're supporting this is that there is absolutely no plan for no plan for um crocker farm students to in five and six to attend school any less than their peers across the district so hopefully i'm saying that properly in terms of everyone hearing it that um and certainly as a principal i would be advocating that the grades five and six students at crocker go to school the same amount of time as students at the other schools and i think we're gonna have to figure that out um

064as we get a little bit closer down the line here but i think i mean the one thing i also want to say is and i love every single one of these questions because it's really helping me think about it as we start the school year we perhaps don't have the answer and i'm just taking a risk by saying this to every single question that's posted and so i don't know the answer how we're gonna do that but we will make sure that our five and sixes across the district attend school the same time that's absolutely true and right now one of the things that's a variable is how many students return um so you know at our phase one level uh we know that uh right now that number i think i showed on

065thursday night is about 71 72 percent of families are choosing an in-school return uh one of the things i heard actually from principals this afternoon is we may send another survey out in the next week for students in grades you know the intermediate and upper grades that may not be binding but it is something that we can start planning for because that number is going to determine what's possible at the upper grade levels and so uh you know i think it's a question we're getting a lot we're getting it from families we're getting it from staff and certainly i'm getting it from principals so if you do have children in the middle or upper grades be on the lookout the next week it's going to be a nine-binding survey but it's going to give us

066data that we can use to see what's feasible and what's not feasible because i think it is a really critical question [Music] that we want to answer but at this point we don't have enough data to be able to do that okay great i just have one more school specific and then i'll move on to another cluster of questions um so at pelham the second graders are going to be in the first phase does that change the um the grades in phases two and three at all or will it just be the same except that second graders won't go in phase two i mean sorry yeah we'll go in face two so lee i don't know if you want to jump in but essentially no we're maintaining the same grade levels really the second grade

067at pelham the difference was that we have a number of folks like special educators and other uh teachers who work because it's a smaller school across that grade level band we have some of those in amherst but at pelham it was really hard to from a service delivery perspective to imagine how we could do that particularly as it relates to special education and students ieps and meeting their needs um so you know the question is um no sure okay um there are a number of questions about teachers uh teachers who don't return or those who do um obviously we've just begun negotiations with the teachers union and so there's a number of things that we can't that can't really be discussed in this form but can you just talk a little bit about options for

068teachers and how this will impact them sure so um you know i think you've said most of it that we are actively working in negotiations so it's not something that i can um talk about in public um you know because that's that's really the location for those conversations about that uh we certainly want to work as best we can for staff members i think the school committee voted in past document that talked about staff members who do have health concerns on how to support them but at this point that's where we are we're working hopefully towards a successful resolution with our association and so i appreciate and empathize with the concerns of our families on that issue but it's not something we can address in a town hall forum because the the forum for that

069is is through uh negotiation with our bargaining units okay thank you um dr brady i know a lot of these questions really do relate to um the mental health and social emotional learning element and what's missed in the remote environment so could you talk a little bit about that please sure so um i think one of the things i wanted to share is last spring the district organized some full planning group and um principal jaffe principal chamberlain and myself facilitated a group of our personnel for talking about social emotional learning planning for the fall and i think one of the things that i just want people to to know that in the planning of all these schedules that's done within the context of the social emotional learning and the mental health needs of our students

070as a primary focus so um nobody plans to go right back into a math class without kind of talking about just and checking in where are where is everybody at and making sure that our students are ready to engage in learning by supporting them in that process so there will be a really intentional plan that is integrated into the school day for all of our students and um to keep in mind that we'll also have services for students who may be struggling um people ask a lot about what if people students aren't complying with wearing masks i think one of the things we will do is intentional learning no one expects anybody to walk back in and say gee i know how to do this now we're going to have to teach everybody and people

071are going to learn at different times for that and we're going to need different ways of being taught so we're going to really structure that and provide all that for students and i guess the final thing i just want to say is to really um be aware i read all these chats the stress that everybody is feeling um during a time that there's a tremendous amount of uncertainty so there's more questions than there are answers and um that sits with our children as well as all of the adults and um that is going to be a piece of our process and if we can all work together as we're kind of embarking upon this journey of uncertainty we have the best chance of really good outcomes for our kids and i think that's the goal

072for all of us so yeah yeah but well said and that's kind of a good segue into another question that's come up a few times sort of the stress around students in in different phases and needing to drop off one child for in person but start virtual at home and so i guess the question of is there flexibility around that to make sure that families can get their various children where they need to be and get started yeah and so on the virtual schedule we sent a draft but there are drafts with multiple time periods of when instruction will happen for exactly that reason so you know that's a sample but there are other samples that have gaps in different places we do have a long gap that's between for lunch and a recess block

073in the middle and some of that's because we know that there are food deliveries uh you know we are having food in school but we're going to maintain our food delivery system and so we want to make sure that families aren't making the choice between going and getting food and working with their child on learning so we are trying to be as flexible as we can be i think the the conflict with that is that families and staff and students at the middle school and high school level all desired more structure last year uh they wanted to know when things were happening on a routine regular basis and they wanted more synchronous instructions so we're trying to balance that as best we can but there are some competing variables um there could i say a

074couple quick ones uh miss hall um and um there was a good one on orientation for families and that is something we're actively planning and that's true for families who are starting the year virtually as well as families whose children will be starting the year in person we want to make sure that we're doing outreach to support families on both of those there was a question a while back that i know some of our principals would like to jump in on about um anti-racist work and cultural proficiency and that's been something while this show is is more focused on some of the public health and safety pieces it's not something that there haven't been hasn't been tremendous amount of work this summer on i was wondering if mr shea wouldn't mind sharing a little bit

075about crocker farm and some of the the team and the work over there i know there's been work at all the schools but i've just got an email from from some crocker farm folks with some of the work and i think it is really critical because while we've been out of school lots of things have happened in the world and we want to make sure we're meeting students uh where they need to be as they return so sorry to put you on the spot mr shea but i think your team's done a fabulous job and i wanted to give you an opportunity and anyone can jump in certainly it's not the only school that's been working on this yeah i think uh just an example um today is monday so perhaps uh and i know

076some of our teachers are on this this call perhaps thursday or so of last week i had the opportunity to um to join in in a conversation albeit remotely with 15 teachers from our school um who were meeting together obviously during the summer time to work to plan on um professional staff training uh for the fall uh during our regular staff meeting time the idea is planning um curriculums that will seep into the classroom uh probably sometime as we get into the fall in the spring i also know that there's been a fairly decent number for example at crocker farm of of parents who are working on on our social justice committee who have been working together in unity over the summer um again working on ideas um to present um books materials thinkings plans

077um to actually bring larger numbers of the crocker farm community together um to to again discuss uh anti-racist uh social justice matters in a very strong way jen smith's been doing tremendous work in this um we're going to meet on wednesday with um dorian cunningham who's our assistant superintendent who's also leading much of this work um so i think there's a there's a huge commitment uh and and we fully intend to stay focused on this work so anyone else who wants to i mean there's a lot of similarities at the other schools i don't know if there's anything else anyone would like to add to mr shea's comment can i just add one piece so um we've been having lots of conversations this summer and many of the educators in all of the schools attended

078a workshop on dismantling white supremacist culture in schools so this additional layer is on a lot of our minds to really examine our schools as a system and look at our policies and our practices through the lens of really dismantling some of the long-standing practices that have contributed to marginalization or the oppression of students of color so we're really putting forth a holistic effort as we move into the year to really be working at all levels of the school and thinking about all of the stakeholders that we serve thank you we have time for a couple more questions i don't know if miss hall i lost track a little bit of uh the questions i don't know if there were other ones that you had queued up sure i mean there were there are a

079few just about um notifications if someone does get covered and then related questions about quarantining and if one person has to quarantine does a sibling in the school also have to quarantine so just maybe that kind of data point so i think we'll turn to miss consolino for those ones so when when we're dealt with a situation such as covid we're i'm currently in the process of developing protocols based on guidance from the department of education on handle how to handle these specific situations um and the information will come from the amherst health department if it's a resident of amherst that's identified as a positive coveted person and then we will make the determination of who needs to be notified um as identified as a close contact um and those will be the individuals who

080will need to quarantine from school for a 14 day time frame the current recommendation from department of ed is those identified as a contact should be tested after about four to five days um for covid and then we'll handle next steps based on how the results come back from that test if someone if the test comes back positive then they become a case and then we deal with the isolation and time frame there um if we have a sibling that sibling does not need to stay home they are welcome to come back in school because the best way i can describe it is you're exposed in layers to the virus and a sibling would be a secondary layer to the actual virus itself um where the people we identify as a close contact is a

081first layer exposure to the virus which is um the student and then their classmate and then the sibling of the classmate is not directly exposed to the virus itself so the sibling is welcome to be in school parents can choose to keep their siblings home but that would be the choice of the parents um and then and what was the last question i forgot no that you got you got the whole thing that if someone is exposed and then yep you got it okay yep and then we you know we will make the communications as we need to um and when we need to do that um and for the elementary levels we will keep classes together as a cohort um and so those students will probably all be identified as a close contact to

082a positive case um and that will be handled on a case-by-case basis um a couple more quick ones should we do a few quick okay the uh question that's come up a few times is about am and pm kindergarten for remote and how that's selected so that it is that family choice or does someone get assigned so we'll ask for preferences and try to make sure we can balance that as best we can but there will be um an email sent out to families who make that choice for kindergarten so that they can make the choice i also want to say it's worth noting that we've had some families inquire um about not coming for kindergarten uh well we think our teachers do a fabulous job it is not required as opposed to grades one

083through twelve in our in the commonwealth of massachusetts and certainly families have the option of not of choosing a different option uh we've had some families who um who've inquired because they don't want their children necessarily to be um they're concerned about screens or they had another option at the current daycare which may extend up through kindergarten and so we work collaboratively with those families we want them in our district and graduating high school 13 years from now and whatever choice they want to make for kindergarten we want to support them as best we can okay um and then i think maybe i'll do one one last one and then we can sort of talk about where folks should direct questions that didn't get answered um just about attendance and there's been some stuff in

084the press recently about you know people um being contacted pretty aggressively about their children not attending virtually so can we talk about that sure so the commonwealth has set expectations around attendance uh we like we do during the rest of the year try to work collaboratively you know i think ms chamberlain did a really nice job talking about restorative justice before um and we're sort of practices and our goal is to start to figure out what it what are some of the challenges that families are facing for their students whether it's coming to school in person or coming to school online and problem solving with that family we are not interested in quickly calling and i saw some horrific i think it was the boston globe had an article if i'm correct uh in the

085last couple days around that and we also think that we want our if a student's home school that's different but if a student's attending school in person or virtual we want them attending school because our teachers do fabulous work to that support students growth and they can't do that if students aren't there so our approach is really to try to work and problem solve with families work collaboratively and try to figure out is there if there is um some concern or some barrier to attending school again in any way shape or form how do we support families to do that and and dr gamarta guevara who's um runs the family center i mean principals do a great job staff counselors but we do have an additional layer of support with family center which dr gubar

086runs and her staff that can sometimes provide a little more wrap around resources and not a little they can provide wrap-around resources support and make connections for families with community agencies to help support with that as well so that is our approach and and that's how we um we approach things as it relates to attendance we want our students in school we want them learning we want them making strong relationships with their peers with their staff with their teachers and para educators and they need to be in school to do that virtually or live and if they're not we again really want to stress that we want to problem-solve with them and partner with them for the betterment of their children okay thank you um so there are obviously a number of questions we didn't

087get to um so in terms of especially phase one families who have not yet responded to the survey and have outstanding questions or really for any families um dr morris can you just talk about who should be the best point of contact where those questions should be directed sure so um can you say that one more time i'm sorry i was just about who um we have to wrap up now where should people direct questions that are outstanding after this yeah so i think if there are questions that are specific to you know the phasing and there's some feedback um you can certainly always direct it to my address which i think miss figaro will type in uh which is morris m arps.org i think most people know how to get in with touch with

088the principles but i know there are some also some ones about health and safety you can send them to me i'll send them over to ms consolino so she can respond on our website on the health and safety part there's a i think 17 or 19 page document from the state of a bunch of different scenarios in terms of if if a staff member suspected or is confirmed to have covet same with students and there's a little bit of a almost like a flow chart and so we are following the state guidance and certainly we can talk you through that but that is um that is probably the best resource if you want to read on your own otherwise certainly send an email to me and i can send to ms consolino i think also

089the school committee at arps.org website if there's broader policy questions like i saw some that were focused on well at pelham should you know maybe fourth grade should start earlier based on staffing certainly that can go to the principal it can also go to the school committee as well and i think this is one of the challenges of our current situation is that i'd love and those of you know me know me well i think we collected we would love to be able to answer every single question about exactly what's going to happen 30 days from now and the reality is we don't know what the public health data is we don't know exactly the student return we're getting pretty close but we don't know all of that information that deadlines tomorrow so as we

090continue to get more information we'll continue to update our website and to update the community as we get closer and um but you know i i thank everyone for the questions they're incredibly helpful uh for us to consider and we'll answer as many as we can and we'll continue to answer them as more information becomes available oh and i'm sorry dr brady wanted me to mention that for students who are in phase one who are special needs uh dr brady would want uh those emails directly to her or one mind i should say um and it's bradyf arps.org to email dr brady and she can share them with miss smith as well okay all right it is seven minutes past five um so i think we will end this but again the conversation is not

091over so thanks to all staff and principals and to everyone who ask questions