Secondary Town Hall

001good morning uh my name is michael morris i'm the superintendent of school here in the amherst pelham regional school district and we want to thank you for joining this town hall we've had some earlier this summer and as our plans develop we want to continue to update the community and our plans uh our goal today is to share an update on the plans that were submitted yes you know we either emailed them out and there was a very long document so we're trying to condemn to the key points but most of the time we want from this 9 to 10 today to be focused on questions and answers uh before we do introductions i just want to note in the um chat there uh we have put um interp there's a live interpreter live translation

002um and so if you go to that link you can pick the language and uh be uh able to participate uh both in terms of hearing this the live translation but also question and answer that someone will bear back with us um throughout that's also uh that comment box is when we get to question and answers where you can ask questions and a moderator will be helping us with that and trying to get um groups of questions answered so that we can be again communicating accurate information to our community with all that introduction i'm going to turn it over just to do introductions so we'll go in order so i'll start with to my right with principal sullivan hi i'm dave slovan the principal of summit academy welcome thank you dave miss mcdonald hi i'm

003alison mcdonald and i am the chair of the regional school committee in wisconsin hello good morning everybody my name is jill constellino i'm the nurse manager for the school district thank you and mr speak uh good morning tom sadie the interim principal of amherst high school and mr chairman good morning everyone my name is you ms richardson good morning my name is katie richardson i'm the coordinator of english language education and dr brady good morning i'm faye brady and i'm the director of student services for the district thank you so we took uh about 102 page document i think uh which was submitted to dassey we condensed it to about 10 slides more or less we're going to skip over the elementary because this is focused on the regional school the secondary k-12 uh seven

004through twelve schools this morning and uh we'll roll through some slides that again are the highlights and then spend most of our time in the question and answer today um so i'm gonna pull up those slides hopefully effectively um and okay so again this this plan was submitted a little over a week ago to deci as required about opening and reopening for fall 2020. so here are some of the important facts about the opening of school especially at the regional schools the secondary schools the majority of our students and staff will begin the year remotely with a much more robust distance learning program than what happened in the spring last year which was really an emergency distance learning program in-person learning or hybrid will be introduced based on a phasing plan we'll talk about in

005a minute and we'll use public health metrics to guide our decisions at all times and really importantly all families have the choice of full remote learning or in-person hybrid learning for their children last week we had a very what i found to be a very informative session with four medical professionals who work in western massachusetts and i think one of the statements that stayed with me is the choice that you make for your child is is going to be the right choice for your child and we know that it's a very unusual time with the pandemic and with other factors and we're trying to give the most accurate information so families have the best information to make that individual choice and that's really what we're focused on today so what you can see here on

006the phase reopening plan is our school year for all students whether in person or virtual will start on september 16th and based on state guidance and what we know about who has better access or less access to distance learning we would start with the priority groups to be in person at that time and those groups are in that secondary level students who are without a permanent residence under mckinney-vento law specialized special education programs and beginner ell students and so those would be the only students the middle school in high school who would be starting at the beginning of the school year under this phase reopening plan and the metrics we would use would be that fewer 70 fewer than 70 confirmed cases per 100 000 people in our area and a test positivity rate of

007uh for covid below three percent in our counties hampshire and franklin county and i think it's important to note that the school committee and the staff really worked on this the metrics and what we would use for metrics to make this work and importantly we use the most conservative metrics that were recommended by reputable places this is below uh the expectations are more stringent than the expectations of the cdc in the world health organization and other states and so we wanted to make sure that we were using again very conservative members and so the second phase wouldn't involve the region but after veterans day when we get to november we would be looking for 7th through 12th grade students to return one day a week so it would be a hybrid model where they'd be

008have one day in and four days of virtual instruction and then assuming things are continuing to go well we can revisit that after the first semester uh to go perhaps up to two days for our secondary students the school committee did revoke a calendar um last week i think on thursday night um the first day again for all students in terms of education would be september 16th a couple important notes is that we would not have snow days next year we would just flip to virtual education school committee did decide to have an extended december break december and january uh winter break and that was really for people to be able to visit family we knew that they needed an extending extended time period given the current situation and the last day of school would

009be scheduled for june 24th and so i'll go over some health and safety considerations again there's a long long document uh we just picked on a couple of the most important ones that we continue to follow the cdc the center for disease control recommendations uh in terms of custodial protocols one of the things that we learned in conversations with public health experts was having a shortened school day schedule would allow for enhanced cleaning and sanitizing so at this region that means school would start at nine o'clock in the morning instead of 7 45 uh and and at the typical time it allows for sanitizing and cleaning after students leave as well as before they come so we have two shifts where that can happen all classrooms will have hepa air purifiers with uv disinfecting light

010that's been recommended to us really turns over the air in the room with fine grained filters incredibly more often than if we didn't have those installed bathrooms other high touch services door handles will be cleaned multiple times throughout the day we've increased our supply of cleaning materials and supplies to make sure we're keeping up with things one of the things the school committee early on suggested was while the state recommended at least three feet of social distancing that we were choosing six feet and and that really had implications at the regional schools uh we can only fit about 15 ish desks in rooms at six feet and that really drives some of our decision making but we think it's in the best interest of the health and safety of our kids to have that the

011middle school has a lot of rooms without windows and we won't be using those for student instruction we want to have rooms that have the opportunity for natural air flow and natural ventilation as much as possible we have purchased tents for all of our buildings actually three tenths of the high school and summit academy combined and one tenth from the middle school because while the weather holds we want to have as much outdoor learning as is possible we've also contracted with hvac experts to test all of our rooms that will be used in this phase one and then eventually more of those rooms prior to the opening of school and they'll start the this work at the end of uh end of the week in terms of health and safety considerations again there's a long

012long list we picked on some that we were the selected some that were the most relevant uh all students and staff who are medically able will be expected to wear a mask we've purchased significant amounts of ppe in the thousands i think in mass in the hundred thousands for the district based on the guidance we received from the state for some students we know that special face coverings for their staff need to have um clear mouths we've purchased those as well we talked about the physical distancing transportation will also look different there'll be fewer students on buses and vans and and we're getting feedback now and how many families in phase one will transport their own child uh but it'll be essentially once child to a seat as opposed to our typical expectations for filling

013up school buses bans entry and exit protocols will be different we won't have lots of students huddled if you know the high school you can if you go early in the morning you'll see at the front entrance there's students and this way will be a much more controlled entrance and exit uh for students and staff we also have each building having a designated medical waiting room that's different from the nurse's office for anyone who is suspected uh to have symptoms or show symptoms of covid19 to make sure we're keeping our schools as safe as possible this week i'm going to skip the elementary schedules i think i'll turn it over to principal sharon who will talk about the in-person draft schedule at the middle school so principal fern whenever you're ready you can walk us

014through this of course thank you so so i i guess i want to start by differentiating that um the the schedule that we've created for online learning is a bit different than the than the schedule we're creating for in-person learning and and a lot of that just comes from the fact that we have since we're going to be spending about one day a week in the school in november beginning in november uh it's important to us that that day the not only developmentally appropriate for our students but also one that's nurturing it really focuses on social emotional learning and so um so the schedule that we have developed uh for the where in the process of developing for online learning uh has the opportunity for students to take um take more classes than than you

015currently see on the schedule uh here in in uh in [Music] in for in-person learning and and and so um this is something that's in development and it's something that will be fleshed out uh considerably more but one of the things that we're looking at is having these long blocks of time being shared by multiple teachers so you see in the schedule for in-person learning that there is a humanities period and so uh that would be that would be shared by two classes but it may also be it may also and would likely include uh input from um from our teachers who might push into the class it could be input from the culture and climate coordinator who might push into the class and and do a a socially distant circle or some sort of

016social emotional activity that would support students because we realize that there's going to be a there's going to be a lot of things that students are learning this year and and and there are there isn't any place in the state standards for the kinds of things they're going to be learning which include this new environment of learning and being with one another in a socially distant space and so we really want to create a lot of room and support for those things uh so as mike mentioned the day the school day will start later which will allow for students to be arriving later but also allows for their teachers to have some time in the morning to be planning and organizing and and getting things ready so so you see on this schedule on the

017slide you see that the the year the classes go through the year and so that's one difference from the high school and that's because we felt that it was important that students maintain uh and practicing the skill development over the course of the entire year and we didn't feel it was uh appropriate for middle school students to be learning math for one semester and then to be dropping math for the other semester because we're really cognizant of the fact that we're working on that skill development uh and and we don't want to be losing those opportunities to be reinforcing and building uh new skills um and so and so that's basically the organization of the in-person schedule which is still very much under development and again the thing to remember what's most important is that

018it's a it's a schedule that will be focused around giving students initially what is one day a week as an enriching environment that allows them to connect with their peers for many of them for the first time in many months and to do so in a way that is supportive that is enriching and and that is is generally something that's helping to motivate them in their further learning when they're not in person great thank you and i'll turn to principal sadiq to go over the high school draft schedule and i want to just remind viewers uh we're intentionally giving uh an overview of these schedules as we will for the virtual schedules because we really want to leave time for for the question and answer pieces so we know we're answering some of the questions

019but we're we want to make sure that we're opening things up uh in short order so that we can have more interactive dialogue but principal zadek uh good morning everybody um so quickly so the high school schedule is based on a traditional blog schedule where year-long classes are short and taught in one semester the time on learning that would happen over the course of a year is happening over the course of the semester so we have longer blocks but only for a half a year um some of the reasons why we chose to do this are because to have fewer classes for students to focus on because we learned from the spring that it was hard for them to juggle all seven classes that were in their schedule in the past so the beginning of

020the day as principal sharon mentioned as well we have the beginning the day for teacher planning time and then we have i'll have three classes during the school day this schedule is going to start on september 16th and that will be the same schedule throughout the whole year so students won't have to um quit schedules when we start in-person learning in november it's going to be the same schedule i'm in the d block you see the bottom that is the time we wanted to put the schedule for students to access classes that couldn't necessarily fit into their three by three block schedule a lot of that is going to be elected classes that they enjoy some support classes again this is still in the development phase we're trying to figure out exactly what is going

021to make them sense to put in that d block right now those are some of our main ideas um in the b period block is when lunch will happen so if you look at the timing there's time built in there for students to beat their lunch teachers as well and then also trying for students to work on either some of their other distance learning classes or their classes in person or also to access supports or get extra help from teachers i know this can be a question they're going to want to kind of go over quickly and leave time for questions at the end perfect thank you mr sadika i just the only thing i'll add is you see ensembles are up there and we the high school has been very deliberate of thinking about

022some of the courses that may have a harder time meeting in person uh just given some of the health and safety requirements as well and i appreciate the flexibility that our schools are taking on this um this very challenging moment of thinking about what what can work in school and what camp uh principal sloven do you want to walk us through summit academy uh with an overview sure um so so you know summit academy is a phase one school and uh this we originally put this together it seems like years ago already but um a lot of what uh talib uh principal sadiq just talked about we tried to uh put into our schedule so we're a block schedule too and uh but we also wanted to add some of the things that are unique

023to to summit academy and uh part of that is a well we we haven't really put it in there but d period or our therapeutic time which has advisories and clinical uh groups um was added so you'll see that there's another period um to to the schedule um one of our our our major plans is to try to continually uh support students in their social emotional efforts to to be in school in this new kind of way and so you see a student check-in you see a student check out again our our in-person schedule and our virtual schedule are not exactly the same and that's still being worked out because we want to be able to transition back uh from from in person to virtual and and back and forth as easy as possible for

024students um [Music] so what we're trying to do and just like uh in the other schedules staff will be meeting early um and students will be coming in at nine so so a lot of the things that the other principals have said we have included in our schedule you know we we agree that that having less classes is extremely important but most importantly we want to support students where they're at and do it in a way that um you can do it social distancing but also do it in a very individual manner so that's really important to us that we are meeting students needs individually and that's how the schedule was created thank you yeah i want to note explicitly that um you'll notice in all three schedules that students are taking fewer classes and

025that's based on public health guidance um that the idea of having fewer number of cohorts is something that's been recommended to us both nationally and statewide and locally and so each school has a somewhat unique approach of how to do that but the idea of mixing students you know typically the middle school and high school we had a seven drop one schedule so i mean there were six different cohorts of students meeting throughout the day and that's not consistent with the public health guidance we've received um we're very brief so i would add one thing for us please that we we as a group of are really going to try to create quarters so that we um it will add up to semesters and it will be different but all our all our classes add

026up to the credits that students needs but we're really going to break things down into quarters which we think gives us more flexibility for students and gives them opportunity to earn credit in a certain way and also meet what they need specifically even if mcas comes along that we'll be prepared for that as well great thank you thanks principal sloven so again we're very briefly going to touch on some virtual schedules which is again how the bulk of students um will start their school at their secondary level so i'll turn it back to principal sharon for just a brief overview of the distance or the remote learning schedule thank you um so so the the schedule that we're developing for the middle school which is very much still under um uh still under development is

027one that looks at the making sure the students have the opportunity to work on their four core subjects in a way that helps them to make strides and and gain skills at this critical time in their development but also gives them the opportunity to engage in um in in in supplemental exploratory courses that are enriching and um i'm sorry uh dr morris do you have the slide up for that oh it's not it's i thought it's on the right bottom right side of the screen is it not showing oh yes that's right i'm sorry i apologize yeah um and so and so uh the way the schedule is looking right now uh is is that we're we're looking again at the time in the morning uh when students have the opportunity to get up and

028uh and perhaps engage in in some catching up or some uh some planning at the same time that their teachers are together planning but then there's an advisory period one of the things we noticed in the spring was there were a number of students who we weren't able to account for in daily learning lessons and so uh our advisory period uh in the morning is a quick check-in uh with an advisor cohort that allows uh students and and in in the small setting to engage in some sort of activity some sort of sharing but also a check-in that allows us to know who is engaged and who isn't and that way we can communicate with families and do interventions that will support that um and then and then in the course of this student's schedule

029you see that there is a series of classes that are scheduled throughout the day and this is not intended to be an asynchronous type of schedule it's intended to be a schedule that the teachers will work with individually in order to ensure um that there are opportunities throughout the week for the classes to meet both in a synchronous setting and also in an asynchronous setting but these blocks of times are created so that students have the possibility of working within those time periods on those on those courses material on the course material and the projects and those kinds of things and and there's also time allotted for a break for lunch uh and even though you know one of the comments that that i've heard uh is that um there isn't really time for breaks

030it goes from 10 15 right to 10 15 to start up another class um and part of that is because these are um tended to be slots for students to be working on things some of which will be synchronous and others which won't uh but in the course of a day it's likely that a student wouldn't have synchronous class after another so there would be actually time for breaks between those these are just general frameworks for of time to help students organize their time because we feel it's really important for their executive functioning skills to be able to develop a rhythm that's supportive and keeps them in the habit of doing work on a daily basis um and and there's also the opportunity as i said for exploratory uh and and elective courses within that

031that will be focused once again on on providing enriching and social emotionally supportive um activities for students to do with one another in groups and individually yeah and if i could add to that briefly just to piggyback on what you said it applies to all of our schools is that we don't think it's in students best interest to be on the computer straight in live classes for five or six hours a day there's no research or evidence and if you look at virtual schools that's not how they're organized it is the case that we will be expecting students to be present for their synchronous courses attendance will be taken grades will be offered so it's very different from last spring but it may be that there's a short synchronous mini lesson and then time for

032students to work and the teacher may be checking in with them in small groups they may be writing something submitting and getting feedback during that time but it wouldn't be that english language arts would have a 45 minute synchronous lesson straight to math for 45 minutes straight to exploratory that there's no evidence or research that suggests that's a good path but i also want to suggest that last spring we didn't have as much synchronous and and we got that feedback from all from students from staff members and from families about the importance of making those personal connections and having direct instruction and so it's trying to marry wanting students to have that direct instruction maintain those strong relationships with peers and teachers and staff members but not going 45-minute uh google meet from to 45-minute

033google meet um that's not how virtual schools that have been doing this a long time set themselves up and it's not how we would either um so just because of time i'm gonna i'm gonna ask uh mr sadiq and and miss uh mr sloven to you know just run through their virtual schedules i think it's pretty smooth at the high school um because it's so similar but if you wouldn't mind doing that and then we'll open it up for some question and answer okay yeah the the virtual schedule is intentionally the same as the in-person schedule you know um students haven't been on a schedule for quite a while and so we wanted to try to make it smooth everybody my kids include included like the nine o'clock start time better than 7 45 start

034time in the past so we want to keep that and want it again to have the time for teachers to talk and to collaborate as well because they're getting used to this different form of teaching learning as well um but everything else is pretty much the same again the d block is something we're still trying to figure out when to fit in in during the day um so there'll be more information to come about that thank you and over to principal sloven yeah so um here you see and i'll just go very quickly that 745 to 845 we've put in a synchronous and asynchronous supported learning that's going to be students connecting with probably paraprofessionals that are directly connected with them working on individual skills and class and and homework which is kind of great

035but um and we tried to build in some screen breaks we tried to uh make sure that again we had our uh b block there is um which is for us is a uh where we have our community meeting and therapeutic groups and uh directed support um and so uh i i think it's pretty straightforward this is different though than the the in person and that's something that we'd like to work out because i i'd liked it to be closer related to the high school and uh have um so so it's really possible that our person is going to look more like our virtual but but we're not yet there so that's what i would say thank you um and i'll turn to miss consolino just for a quick update she put together this really

036nice flyer which is on our website uh about things to do to prepare your student to return to school it's uh certainly a lot of these things are um talked about a lot but i really appreciate miss consolido's uh work to try to narrow it down to ten so i don't know if you wanna just walk us through some of the highlights miss consolino sure so like dr morris said this is available on the district's website for anybody to access at any time and it just kind of goes over 10 quick pointers um there's a few that are important for the upcoming school year um for parents to note um a couple that um that i'll i'll just kind of highlight is um the immunizations and physicals um the state is not um lightening up

037the requirements for immunizations going into the fall so if you um now is the time to check with your primary care physician to see if your child's or up your child is up to date with any of their immunizations um there's also a strong push for kids to get their flu shot this fall um because the flu does mirror the coronavirus very similarly and that was that was stressed as an important uh factor on last wednesday is town hall with the physicians if you have a child who has an asthma action plan we're asking that if they have an aerosolized treatment to talk with your provider about changing that mode of medication administration um because we will not be doing nebulizer treatments or aerospace treatments in school um waterfronts are going to be turned off

038in the district and we will be using water fillers or or um water bubblers to fill water bottles um the district has purchased water bottles for every student in the district um and if you choose to send your child in with their own but we will not be using water fountains to drink from from uh right and i just look at that i think there are some schools um that don't have as many bottle fillers and so in those cases we will be leaving the waterfronts on but only permitting the use based on uh the bottles which i'll happy to share with you i've got one right next to me and after we're done with the slides um i'll show it off but enough for purchase for everyone uh in the district um and then

039a couple others um we will be asking families to screen their students um in the morning and we're going to be using an online platform to um to check in with the schools and to verify that your child is healthy so my recommendation is to to get a thermometer that's accurate um i am looking into a program that the district can a national program to provide families with a thermometer and you it was it's an opt-in program no cost to families i'm just waiting for some information on that and as soon as i get it that'll be sent out to families um and then the other one the biggie um number nine is to make sure that your emergency contact information is up to date if your child or your student is symptomatic with any

040covet-like symptoms they will be put in our medical waiting room and they will be required to go home for the rest of the day and we will require somebody to pick them up hope and my intent is to have them picked up within a half hour to an hour's time frame um and then they will need to be evaluated by a physician the guidance i have from the state right now is anybody with covet symptoms will need to be evaluated and tested for colgate before the potential to be returned to school um and then the other ones you know hand hygiene practicing masks which a lot of people are doing now anyways um this the physical distancing extra masks we are asking families to provide masks for or facial coverings for their students we will

041have extras on hand just in case those become unusable during the school day and then any extra information you need there's a you know links to our um different websites on the school's replanting website so any any questions you can you know send me an email or get it to dr morris and he can he can get a hold of me all right so let me go back to our screen um and we've got a lot of questions so i wasn't able to see it while i was um displaying those i'll show off our water bottles thanks to miss figueroa so nice arps logo water bottles that are they'll be in quite shortly but i think i will turn it over to this mcdonald's who's going to help hopefully sort some of the comments that

042have come through and um we'll go from there oh i think you're muted miss mcdonald i'm sorry classic classic mistake um there were a lot of questions early on about the heist the high school schedule um i believe some of them uh you uh tell mr sadiq and and dr morris you've already answered but um i'll ask them again the questions about what's happening with d block um and and what that looks like um what's happening in between b and c block which i believe is the lunch um and then also questions about what about quarter-long electives and will they be offered in the fall as well as the spring and how does that work oh before i'll give mr sadiq a chance to think about that before he answers i wanted to remind folks

043that if you are on lexicate in other words you are accessing this material in a language that is different than the one we're speaking you can put a question in the chat there in your in your whatever language is the most comfortable for you and it'll be translated and they will upload it into the comments so i just wanted to if you're watching and not sure if that will work there are translators available and they'll translate and put it on the the chat so i'm sorry mr sadiq but i just wanted to i was reminded to share that and i forgot earlier so all right so um the d block question i tried to answer before this is kind of a vague answer to the question because we haven't completely figured out how it's going

044to work we know we want to have an extra um block during the day where students can access you know electives or support classes ensembles so it's going to be flexible i believe we'll have a mixture like the regular classes of synchronous and asynchronous time maybe mostly asynchronous and then a scheduled synchronous time for feedback and check-ins from the teacher running the d-block class now we'll give provide more clarity about that once we get closer to finalizing our schedule with the electives so they are going to be run in quarter blocks so half of a semester long they will be offered in the fall and in the spring so let's say in a period if they have math a period there may be b period the first half of the semester they'll have say an

045art elective and then maybe a second for eight or nine weeks and then that second eight or nine weeks of the first semester they could have um you know a different elective maybe a music production or video production type class and then their c block they would have another english class that whole semester and it'd be the same thing in the spring of course different um poor classes maybe a world language science class no longer semester long blocks and two other electives during one of the three blocks um and the the time in between you saw a b period that hour long is an hour and ten minute period that's not accounted for in that schedule that is a time when we're in person transition period and also a half hour for lunch and then

046half hour for i'm built in like directed study of study hall type of period again for students to work either on their current um adrc period classes or the check-in with their d-period teacher or a time for them to take a break and do something that's not disturbing other folks similar to a regular study hall not sure if those were all the questions i believe i think so the the quarter long courses also applies to um sorry the 11th and 12th grade english um that are semester-long courses would would they follow the same approach as the semester-long electives that's a good question so there are along with the quarterly english classes they're also the 12th grade social studies electives that were also a semester long so what the english department had and also the social

047studies department have have been talking to the department in combining those to make them a full semester class a combination of you know different um english classes will make up the one semester will be journalistic journalistic writing and african-american lit will be combined in a way to give the students a full semester long worth of english but um but it's going to be a little obviously look a little different than it did in the past but it's going to be combined to be one semester long and similar with um social studies and when we finalize all this we're going to send out when we send out the schedules we'll send out also an explanation of how they were combined and sort of the process of converting students current elect uh elected choices into their schedule

048so it'll be a lot clearer once we send it all out and everything is finalized so there was a couple questions i'd like to address in terms of public health metrics um so uh something that i saw um uh last week is that the state came out with a different set of metrics and they're no longer reporting things via like that the new york times is easily picking up on a day-to-day basis particularly as it relates um to number of cases per hundred thousand which is one of the common metrics they're releasing it what we're planning to do is every wednesday now they're releasing town by town metrics and for hampshire and franklin county we're collecting all 46 cities and towns in in hampshire and franklin county and we'll calculate those numbers on wednesday nights

049so the new york times is no longer unfortunately it's not their fault but it's no longer the viable resource for tracking this it's really wednesday evening and it's on the mass.gov website they release town by town information it's a little cumbersome because you have to pull it off and make an excel file of those 46 towns we have a pretty good system for it now to be able to do it relatively quickly but i saw some comments around that and right now the health metrics in western massachusetts particularly in our area remain well under the metrics that we selected again those metrics were the harvard global health institute's metrics they're more stringent than the cdc in the world health organization in places like new york state but we want to be as conservative as we

050can be with metrics and that was the kind of the most conservative metrics we found from a reputable place working with epidemiologists and that's what we did um so i wanted to you know share that i think um you know i also want to thank our state representative has been very active in trying to get us countywide data more readily and she's continuing to work on that so i want to thank her she's been in touch with us really often and um you know i definitely appreciate that part um i think there's a couple questions about sports um you know at this point uh it's uh and this is you can definitely jump in if he wants but it's sort of uh complicated who makes which decision uh right now we don't have a decision

051from the miaa which is the massachusetts in scholastic i think athletics association something like that uh they're typically the governing body for sports nor for nor from deci which is where we would typically get them we did get some guidance for youth sports um that that may apply but we don't have a final answer yet on sports it was one of these things that was promised to us i think mr sadiq two weeks ago something like that and i think uh there's you know looking at other states they're starting to come out with it but as numbers change i think they're still being um so still waiting for that piece we are still using google in google classroom google meet has been upgraded this year and it's um it's already working much better in terms

052of sound quality and more features are coming soon and it's security for us the biggest thing is the security protocols uh continue to be dramatically better than the competitors in the marketplace um trying to scroll down questions i don't know if there were some that you were planning to ask miss mcdonald um there were a couple questions about what the one day in person would be used for at the middle school in the high school and then related to that what happens um for students who are choosing fully remote learning throughout the year what will happen for them on the one day that in person i think that was a question for both um mr sadiq and mr sharon well i could certainly speak to the plans for the middle school with regard to that

053so the one-day instruction um the one-day in-person instruction day as i mentioned earlier is really meant to be a day where students have the opportunity to begin to connect or reconnect with their school there's peers and and in-person learning and it's really meant to be a day that's social emotionally supportive it's meant to be a day that gives students the opportunity to uh to practice being in proximity with one another even social distance uh and it's also uh meant to be a support for online for the for the remote learning that's happening uh the rest of the week um and and so that's it's it's not meant to necessarily be a heavy instruction day it's meant to be a day uh where students have uh the opportunity to uh to learn and and to get

054support on some of their learning in person uh perhaps in a socially distanced classroom with you know with instructions being offered from the front of the room by a teacher and explanations on the whiteboard and those kinds of things but but a different kind of learning than what they're used to and so it's gonna it's gonna be changing for for families who have their children or choose to have their children uh remote uh for the entire week they will still be maintaining their weekly remote schedule and so there will be times that they're scheduled uh for for doing coursework in different classes and and for that one day they will just be uh kind of they will maintain their same class schedule they'll maintain the same learning mode but for that one day they will

055be uh not involved with the same kind of kinds of physical activities and in-person activities that their peers are but but it's it'll be a smooth and easy uh thing that will be seamless for them in terms of their actual engagement in the academic program the high school version of the one day week in person is very similar to the middle school realized our main focus was really trying to get the distance learning really solid as we learned from the spring that it was a challenge for a lot of folks so the in person you know as principal sharon alluded to it's going to be a lot of it's not going to be a heavy instructional day it'll be a lot of teacher check-ins students being able to be in a room together socializing and

056then a lot of feedback on the the distance learning activities that they had done for those students remaining distance learning those days will be majority asynchronous teaching but they'll still share a little too they'll have their same schedule it'll be an asynchronous day for them and they'll have times the other days of the week when everybody is remote will be when the synchronous remote learning will happen um this is probably a quick question and there's a few questions about um when and how and when textbooks would be handled i can take this one um so uh we are thank you for all the people bringing in chromebooks um today even so we're collecting them because they need to be updated much like your phone and any other device these days uh there needs to be

057updating of devices and then there also will be a pickup and as opposed to last spring where our schools were really off limits um given the situation uh this this fall we'll be able to have pickup of chromebooks and with that pickup of textbooks and other materials so we will be able to do a little more than what we were able to do last year as it relates to that and i think that'll really help the distance learning so that students have access to a greater set of materials it'll still be structured it'll still be organized and done in a way consistent with public health guidance but there will be an opportunity for students to have their textbooks and have their materials to support their distance learning there's a few different questions um regarding uh

058changes throughout the throughout the school year um whether students will be able to add or drop classes um whether they're in person or remote and whether they can switch between um a full remote decision for the fall and um and in person in the spring yeah and so i tried to answer that a little on the chat um but moving from virtual to in person we're looking at people making decisions that last at least a quarter because of the public health implications we may have 14 or 15 students in class that may not be a seat that is readily available and we can't flip sections very quickly but the other way around could happen anytime so for students who are taking in person they can flip to virtual for any reason any time and some

059of that's just going to happen when students are out sick we want them to have access to some of the courses and mini lessons so that they don't fall behind and this actually has some potential advantages around some flexibility with that we know that students if they even have symptoms and it may most of the time may end up being a cold or the flu they're going to need to stay out as ms consolino said until they get tested and well we're lucky in western massachusetts that our testing capacity is in very good shape and the turnaround time is much better than frankly horror stories that we hear from other parts of the country that's we still don't want students losing learning uh during that time so there's a lot of flexibility from the in-person

060to virtual much more rigid uh from the virtual tim person looking at the quarters as logical times for families to be able to reconsider that decision okay um forgive me if you've also already answered this i'm reading scrolling through all of the questions here but there are a few questions um regarding um special ed and and the um the priority groups um what what their in-person learning might look like versus virtual learning and they say it's joint miss brady has joined it so um thank you for those questions and um the personnel in the programs are developing the schedules for those students whose family choose for them to be in person for their learning as they are prioritized for phase one and the schedule will include their special education instruction and services as well as

061those students to access their if they're um they're scheduled to be in an academic class or a general education class that is still being offered remote they will be able to access those so we are um planning on um kind of a large amount of spaces available so that we can have students be able to access whatever class it is that they have in their schedule and in their iep um i think the most important thing for um that i'd like families to know is that the planning for a student's special education and instruction and services will all be guided by their iep so hopefully that answers all those questions there was an earlier question also about um students that are new to the district um uh this this school year um will they have

062opportunities to to meet um teachers and peers so i mean i don't know if one of the principals will take it i mean i can say that this is this is where it gets a little tricky with the public health so um they absolutely will but i think when we think about the ways by which we used to introduce new students um oftentimes those ways are less accessible now unfortunately given the public health guidance that is kind of the core of what we won't bend on so i do think there's opportunities for that to happen what we know is that so far even for our phase one families we have the majority of students suggesting or telling us that they'll return and some students won't so i do think for students who are new it

063is going to be a different environment and i think there will be more openness towards that because everything is going to be a little different it's not going to be exactly what we were doing on march 13th in the morning lots has changed in the world lots has changed locally and lots has changed for children so i think all students will feel like it's in their new students because they're gonna have to learn the new protocols and and ways they can connect so i do think in some ways oddly there will be an opportunity for all students to have a reset and if they're new they'll be part of that experience so i see there's a couple questions without if i could um about uh when people can expect to get schedules and that sort

064of thing um knowing that school is starting later virtual or in person not the 16th so i don't know if any of the principals are able to um talk a little bit about what they're thinking about in terms of timeline for for those types of things knowing that it's a new schedule and and i want to be really clear too before you answer that this is also part of negotiating we're meeting with our labor unions and and especially at the secondary level any schedule does need to be bargained and we're working on that with with our labor unions but just any sense uh on a timeline um so i can start so um as dr morris alluded to there are a lot of things that still need to be worked out so we're hoping to

065have them out the families in the first week of september because we have to make the schedules now we have to meet with guidance counselors and special ed folks to make sure that everybody is getting everything they need in terms of graduation credits we've been trying to fit as many of their requests into this um shortening block schedule or shooting for the first week of september i i would just echo that that's uh the timeline for the middle school board wanting to be able to push out schedules both families uh and to students uh by the end of that first week um so i think that's uh uh uh that would be uh september 4th uh which is hoping to make sure to have schedules on all right we're we're we're shooting for the you

066know that first week too but it's all all variable related obviously our seniors and juniors that you know that's critical that we make sure that the schedule fits in what exactly they need to graduate to move forward and so that's how we'll become developing of that but the variables around students are are going to be up in the air as well as as what you talked about negotiations [Music] dr morris i'm seeing a couple questions about um about the metrics and and timing of bringing students back into the schools um so i think that's getting at our phasing plan decision so yeah we're happy to talk if you aren't but if you want to start so there's a couple about the state system that started last week and why we aren't uh perhaps utilizing that

067one and um the um i think i'm glad the state is taking on a more proactive approach towards that i think the challenge is uh three of our communities for instance pelham and chutesbury will almost always be white on the map because they're so small they don't actually show up and about two-thirds of the state continues to be that way in amherst some of the metrics are also hard to compile because we don't actually know how many students are going to be living here uh it's a very different year uh the other thing we know is that when we look at town by town i know i grew up in a different state and counties where like the metric that you i mean the the bit that you would look at and i think there's

068some value there especially for some of these small communities there's a small community near us not in our re not in our district that went from zero percent percent positive uh they had no cases to seven percent because they had two cases in one week back to zero and so it's it's very very sensitive for small communities it's also the case that again in amherst you know when you're doing per hundred thousand we don't know what our student population is so uh we think that the metrics that are being recommended that places like cambridge although their numbers are higher they're less stringent than ours that are looking at multiple counties end up being a more reliable data source um many of us live um you know we have a school choice population um you know

069when many of us live right next to you know there's a three-town run that i go on between amherst belchertown and pelham and and you know our borders are porous right there's not gates up that separate us so thinking about the 95 percent of students who live in probably more than that even who live in hampshire and franklin county and and while not as high the bulk of staff who live in those places it felt like a regional approach like new york to state is using is is the best one and i think in terms of phasing it wasn't exclusively because of our metrics or our numbers it was really easing in to make sure our systems were in place that we were able to manage and actively support students when they return instead of

070moving quicker than we felt like we could accommodate uh we again tried to look at the students with the least amount of access to distance learning who often struggled the most in the spring i know it's really disappointing because right now i agree with some of the commenters our metrics are really low um you know which is great um that we don't have the same challenges and you know we want to make sure we get robust distance learning off to a great start at the secondary level it'll look a lot different than it did in the spring and then easing students in you know with the six foot distancing it means that we can't fit our students in the middle of school in high school so the idea of a full return to middle school

071in high school with six foot distancing isn't mathematically possible we've measured it out and and again about 15 desks or so depends on the room is as much as we can fit in and that that's quite a bit less than what um our typical class size is at the middle school in high school so you know we know there are other metrics um you know in the comment my personal opinion and conversation we had last week with the school committee we feel really comfortable that we're moving forward with metrics that has a regional approach that is inclusive of a larger quantity of people and the way we know community spread works we may not need to be worried as acutely as what happens in georgia or even in the boston area but in terms of

072hampshire and franklin county the towns are very small and looking at it in the aggregate gives us a better read on what's really happening in terms of community spread thank you um there is a question um from the middle school um about uh will there still be teaching teams will they still be on teams and and then also sort of related about uh math flex for seventh graders yes uh so actually the teaching teams are really critical part of the middle school and how we're organizing our instruction uh one of the things we're depending on is trying to create interdisciplinary models that allow teachers and certain disciplines to teach together so that there's less actual it appears to students that there would be less actual classes that they're working with and more uh more of

073an opportunity to to take a a stem class instead of a math and science class for example or taking a humanities class instead of having in separate english and separate social studies class so that that's still very much a part of how we're working and and yes students will be in teams um and teachers will be organizing the teams as well um in terms of in terms of the math flex model uh and how that's worked in the past it's actually something that we're looking at uh changing a little bit and we're currently having pretty intensive discussions with the math department uh in order to try and look at how we can better adapt to the needs of our students and our community with regard to that and that's something that that is still in

074process but the 8th grade the math program won't be changing for the 8th grade uh we're looking at the possibility of doing uh doing away with with uh the way it had been in the past and looking at a more heterogeneous math grouping in the seventh grade this year um and allowing other um math electives or math special courses like the geometry portfolio class to still exist for students who are seeking those opportunities as well great i believe um scrolling through the questions on the um the question about six feet versus three feet that is a that was a school committee decision and direction based on um all of the guidance that we've seen from um public health um professional organizations such as the cdc the w.h.o harvard's chan institute of public health and um

075and other sources um and that was oh yes that the answer is the school committee uh we are at just about 10 o'clock so i'm just scrolling up to see um i think there was you answered the team's question i think there's some questions if the metrics stay good would we be looking to accelerate the phasing at this point that's not in the plan but again that's feedback and i'll put in the comment or maybe sasha or debbie can that people can always email me at morrism.org or at arps.org excuse me or the school committee as school committee one word at arps.org that's not in the current plan but certainly if there's feedback or thoughts that you have around kind of policy level decisions that would be the best people to communicate and share your

076viewpoints um so there's a question mr sharon about i assume that this is eighth grade teams uh there was some work done to look at um how the seventh grade teams were working and perhaps make some modifications to those teams in eighth grade um so i don't know if you have specifics to share on that particular thing different than the larger question about teams yeah so uh there were some uh changes made to last year's seventh grade teams in preparation for this year uh and those teams were really we're trying to get better uh and more more pedagogically appropriate balancing in terms of those teams and so we felt it was important if we were going to be switching some students around because of course the value of teams is that students have the opportunity

077to see familiar faces uh in their in their instructional staff from from seventh grade to eighth grade and so we also did uh we also made a few changes uh and changed some teachers around um and and so so so students will be able to uh have some other teachers be the same teachers regardless of what team they ended up on um but so yeah there were some changes made uh in in trying to make uh uh groups that were uh better balanced uh and between the two teams and uh and we had we worked on that quite a bit this year with a number of teachers and and really trying to look at those groupings being equitable across the board and those are some changes that will be included in the schedules when they're

078received uh this year but but against not only students but also some teachers have moved around so that so that all students will be able to have some familiar faces uh in eighth grade trying to think if we missed any items 102 so i want to be conscious of that um while you're looking at that i'll just remind folks um the email uh the superintendent at morrism.arts.org or school committee at school committee at arps.org there's also a lot of information including a lot of past slides um this draft schedules um the flyer from miss consolino um as well as uh these slides will be posted there as well on the arps.org website if you go to the fall 2020 planning website that's where you'll find all of these materials yep and i saw a couple

079more that maybe we can we can close with a really good question and if i missed it i apologize i know you've everyone's touched on it about i'm going to get dr brady back over here about social emotional programming for students um you know it's timely because we're the administrative team is having a session on that tomorrow and i wondered certainly if you could start and then anyone certainly can jump in and add to that but i think it's a critical question i appreciate it because what we know is that this has been an incredibly difficult experience for all of us parents and children and families and caregivers and that we really do need to think a little differently about the social emotional supports that students will need upon return whether it's in a virtual

080and impersonal in-person environment sure so i'm glad that people are asking those questions because it's in the forefront of our minds and um i think we were grateful um towards the end of last year that we had a planning group with a variety of personnel who created some guidelines for us to utilize in this planning and as schools were developing their schedules and i think principal sharon spoke to this directly um that we wanted to make sure there was time in each schedule that specific explicit attention to meeting the needs and addressing the social emotional needs of our students as they transition back into school um one of the things that we are still actively talking about is what that will look like especially in the first several weeks of school that although there's academics

081in the schedule i think all the teachers are aware that um without acknowledging and addressing how to support the students and their social emotional needs just moving straight into academics will not be productive so i would say when kind of i think of things as kind of a concentric circle i think of the social emotional work and meeting the needs of all of our young people is has to be the large lens and then everything else that we do whether it's a math lesson an ela lesson will be within the context of that so um as dr maher said we are working gonna be working with our administrative team as to how to lead that in the most effective way so that we can be communicating that to all teachers so they we don't lose

082sight of that as a primary yeah i think that was a pretty comprehensive answer so i think the last question and again if it was answered and i missed uh it uh i apologize but mr sadiq this came up at some of the live town halls we did uh over the last couple weeks too about college counseling um and i don't know if you could share that information because i know it was it was it was really helpful for uh folks to hear uh when we were doing some of the live versions of this all right so um we have a great college and career counselor prosthetic grade so the plan is to have again some synchronous and asynchronous work that she'll be doing also try our best to open up the building to help

083to have time for students to come in and receive in person so getting through some of the application processes that they go through in order to move on to college or prepare for life after high school so again it's not completely upset yet but the plan is to have a combination of three synchronous asynchronous and in-person help in the beginning so early fall all the way through the first semester and trying to help students really prepare for life after high school yeah thank you and i think something i added to mr sadiq's comment at those events and i'll add here is last spring if you remember we all felt so uh incredible amount of empathy for our graduating seniors um and uh it we always there was so many comments of like this is the

084hardest thing to be a graduating senior during this time and have the last spring of your school experience uh be reduced in terms of the in person and all the events that students weren't able to do in the athletics the spring season and prom and even graduation well i think went well was very different and so we all want to say that you know we acknowledge that particularly for rising junior and really for rising seniors they've been in this for a while and it's incredibly difficult uh to think through uh what the implications are and that's why you know miss duffy gray which mr sadiq mentioned coffee excuse me coffee gray as mr sadiq mentioned we're all really dedicated to making this work as best as possible and with particular attention focused on that that

085population um the two other things i want to share is what's next um so uh people um uh we are as we mentioned in bargaining with our bargaining units our unions and and so when things get finalized we'll be able to share those out but we have to be a little cautious even in terms of how much is synchronous we can say very clearly the state is expecting us directly in all states all districts in massachusetts to have direct synchronous instruction on a routine regular basis and that's really different from what occurred in the spring so people will see a difference within that attendance will be taken those types of things and structures in power school will will exist much more similarly to they did in the past but we'll be able to share more

086clarity as that that process concludes i want to give ms richardson who's our ell coordinator there weren't specific questions that came uh but i do want to give her just a quick minute to talk about some of the services and supports uh that we're thinking about for some of our ell students hi so um i guess there's there's a lot to think about of course and um similar to special education but looking from a really different lens we'll be looking to support english learners in as always building their language acquisition as well as accessing core content of all the classes that they need to participate in so for our phase one students we're looking to invite them to schools so that we can do more intensive english language development because we know that to provide

087the services that we're really being asked to provide by the department of education at the level of engagement that we'd like to see for language development we do really feel that there's a strong benefit for that to be in person certainly families will have the option to choose that or not but there's a different kind of support level that's available with staff and translation and all of the pieces that we need to make sure that they're getting the instruction and then also to be able to access for example a math class and get the support so even if they are participating in a class remotely that they're with a cohort and a team that's really supportive of making sure that that content becomes accessible to them that's something that we do you know work really

088intensively with our our staff and collaborate across departments to do when we are in person and we need to find ways to replicate that so as much as possible we'll be doing that with our beginner students as we transition back and then certainly we'll be looking for what are the extra kinds of supports that we can provide in collaboration for remote learning between our english learner education teachers as well as our content teachers so that's just a brief overview thank you mr richardson i appreciate it um and and i know this is getting translated and actually recorded um so people if you are watching this and someone couldn't make it uh this same link you're watching on for the english version will will go on uh indefinitely at there will be available indefinitely and we're

089recording the ones in different languages so we can uh be proactively sharing that out with families uh who for whom english is not their primary language um so you know 10 11 so we did pretty well on time um i'm going to put dr brady back on um i think there's a specific question about 504 plans and this will be our last one and who would be the coordinator for 504 plans at the high school level either either actually dr brady or mr sadiq might be able to answer that question so i can start and then mr speak um you know jump in if um there's something different than what i say but um that will not change from during the school year so typically at the high school um the guidance counselor will be

090monitoring and developing any changes to 504 plans and that will continue and i think it is important to note that the plans um for 504 will continue to be shared with teachers and the modifications or interventions that are indicated on that plan will continue during this time of remote instruction so mr sadiq anything to add to that i think you did a good job dr brady very good well again thank you thank you for all the kind comments that have come through in the chat we really appreciate you coming in to watch this and we do really encourage you to for people who couldn't attend at this time that this link again will be accessible indefinitely and and um to be in touch with us as more questions emerge you know we're about a month

091out from the first day of school and that's uh we're in a really different place usually we'd be thinking about school starting much sooner and not having as many significant changes but the thing i want to say share publicly is just how strong our team is and that's been really critical um for all of our secondary schools um and central office and rupert roy clark's not on here but he's does our facilities work and he's been added as well as other people assistant principals and others who have been at it uh you know we really appreciated the feedback we know we've we've given so many surveys we've gotten some critique of survey fatigue but you know we're going to keep doing that because we want to continue to hear from the community about the best

092plan moving forward and how to best support their children and so thank you it's again 10 15 so we'll end it here more questions please do follow up with us email and thanks for tuning in bye