Pelham School Committee

001okay we're good all right good morning seeing the presence of a quorum i'll call the meeting of the pelham school committee to order at nine o'clock and we'll start with a roll call attendance so hall present uh ron menino present sarah best kenny present okay great um we do have on the agenda to approve the minutes um but i only realized just this morning that they weren't actually in the package so we can just approve those at the next meeting that was that really short meeting so that would be quick um so next item on the agenda is public comment and we got a number of comments so dr morris do you want to bring those up and scroll through them so we can read along yep and uh as always if i'm going too

002fast or too slow please just let me know um eventually i'm going to try to find some program that auto scrolls um because i don't like the pressure but i'll uh please just let me know i have every confidence in you thank you it's very straight it actually it's really hard to to do that because i've read these before all right so i'm just going to change the screen so it's more clear for viewers and okay and i'll just describe the blinds but it's too small for me to read thank you yeah it comes up bigger on the youtube than it does on your screen ron but i will i think your points will take in regardless does that look better yeah that's better yeah that's about as big as as i think i can

003reasonably make it and i'm looking at the youtube version and it's uh very clear on my computer like off the one that we're all looking at but the actual youtube uh it looks very clear so i will scroll okay uh ugh wow um uh you so wow uh um uh okay okay thank you um all right next up new and continuing business so connected to all of those comments um the fall preschool discussion so dr morris would you take it away yeah i've got four or five brief things to say to frame the conversation for the committee so the first thing is that um whatever decision you all make my commitment to you all is that all the current preschool staff would be employed in one of the districts that i currently work for so

004in other words if there's a perception that the decision you're making would be that people would be unemployed one way or the other at the end of it it's that's inaccurate um i think there's a number of ways we could think about vacancies current existing in one of my districts that people qualified for we're also looking perhaps at offering daycare or child care for staff members who return to work next year who don't have child care because they don't have that option based on the age of the kids and based on our survey we do have a need for staff members who return for early childhood care so i think there's a variety of scenarios where the benefits of working being a small district that is also connected to some larger districts is that so

005i want to be really clear no one is losing their job or losing their employment because of this it is possible to be either between districts or in a different district but that'd be my commitment to you because we would want to make that work for our employees no matter what the school company decides that that's not exactly the only thing i want to say but i want to start from that frame because i know it was looming large for lots of people in the community and i am committed to resolving that so that's that doesn't need to be a part of the calculus that you all have i think the second thing is you know it's an interesting discussion because this particular preschool fits somewhere in the middle of private preschools and integrated by

006integrated i'm talking about the crocker farm program where seven slots are reserved for students with uh special needs and there's a calculated calculator uh about what percentage have to have special needs and service delivery and there's speech language pathologists all those folks attached to the program you know this program does need to be approved right preschools and early childhood centers can't be can exist in an unapproved space but it's a completely fee-based program you know for instance at crocker farm we're obligated to provide services at least for the special ed students who are there because of a child find peace in pelham if there's a child find peace and a student has identified need that qualifies them for preschool you know we have a relationship with that preschool and that's where they would receive their

007special education support this is not one versus the other it's just different and there's funding that comes along with that from the state where for instance we're not allowed to charge students who qualify for crocker farm their special education programming that has to be covered by the member town and that's not true in this model this model is a fee based program and so i think for me i agree with a lot of the public comments about the value of the program i'm with them you know it's in another district i work for i spent a couple years talking about the value of early childhood education and we're doing preschool studies how do i expand access in the town of amherst so i'm in on preschool as a concept there's there's the research that was

008cited is very clear i think the challenge for you all is we're not in a typical climate and so as i look at eec guidance and deci guidance you know i certainly could imagine a scenario where there's 10 students 10 preschool students and 2 staff members who are attached to the program i think that's financially viable for the for pelham and i think it'd be great for students but i want to be really clear about one of the caveats is that assumes that we're able to be in person all year long last spring we allowed as many preschools did when they went to virtual that families could get refunded i understand some of that process is still playing out and we're gonna have to pull from appropriations probably to to finish off those payments and

009so you know for me as i see it you know the sort of two at least core options that you have one is to see if we can find 10 families or fam 10 students families because they might be siblings who are willing to commit by a contract to pay for their children to be in the preschool whether it's live or virtual for the whole year if we can find those i think that'd be you know great for students it would give the assurance you all need financially uh to be able to feel comfortable and confident and i don't know if those 10 families are out there that would make that commitment but you know i think there may be um i think there's a lot of value on the pelham preschool i think the

010staff do a fabulous job and i think there certainly could be those families and as long as there was the financial commitment in place i think that makes sense um i think once you go ahead above 10 kids who are preschoolers who aren't going to sit at desks right we wouldn't want them to sit at desks all day i think that's where it gets perhaps a little bit i get a little concerned from a health and safety perspective because we typically have had more than 10 students to be really clear on their program but um i think we want them to be preschoolers we want them to be three and four and five and that means they're not sitting in the same place and given you know uh lee and i looked at square footage

011of all the rooms in pelham and luckily that room's a little bigger than some of the you know especially the second grade room that's really small but we want to give there a full amount of space for students to be kids especially at that age level so i think the second option is to take a hiatus from the preschool for a year again i would commit that the staff who are part of the program continue to be employed and whether that ends up being that employed in different roles in another district that they're qualified for or whether that ends up again you know providing some service across the three districts um with a shared cost model uh across three districts i think you know those are both viable for pelham uh what i don't think

012is viable for pelham is the program costs over a hundred thousand dollars um if we froze the budget now completely froze it i don't think we could get a hundred thousand dollars i don't think we could save a hundred thousand dollars from the school uh because we don't have that level of discretionary spending in the pelham school budget so you know i guess if you're asking my opinion which i think you are at least in terms of options uh i think rolling the dice uh with that that size that cost uh would be a real challenge uh and a financial liability that i'd i think when you look at the pelham school budget the uncertainty in the state budget the uncertainty our local you know situation in terms of covet you know i think you've

013heard me say before our numbers continue to be really strong in the local area and pelham specifically but in massachusetts and western massachusetts i can't predict that won't change i can't predict that we won't be in november and our numbers grow to the point where we need to say we need to have a different solution for students that way so you know really the way i think about it is a just to summarize staff will be employed may or may not be in pelham but if this doesn't move forward no one won't be employed as a result of your decision uh for the next school year the second is you know i think roughly students two staff members we can work in the finances from a health and safety perspective that feels about right if

014the students were older i think we could get up to 13 14 in that space you know i would worry with preschool age students uh that that would really be pushing the envelope on health and safety and i'm not i don't that's not advisable from my perspective if you look at the the eec guidance for instance it's really capping at 10 10 students and two families and i think is consistent in all the districts i tend to go to the most conservative guidance that we receive and stick with that even if other guidance will allow for more and you know between the two guidance right now desi and ec ec is a little more restrictive on that um again we could see if there's families willing to fund the program and pay for slots whether

015they're in person or virtual um and that's something that certainly we could you know you know both lee and then you know working with the preschool staff we can reach out to families who are registered and see the response to that um and if we can't get those commitments try to think of other options certainly they're valuable staff members and again we we'd commit that i keep saying it but i think i wanted to be really clear to everyone that that no one is going to lose their job this for the next school year based on whatever decision this committee makes because we committed to them and their salary notices and things have changed since then since we were issuing those a bit and you know we will we will do our best to make

016that work um and so really that's what i wanted to say i know i said it a couple times but i want to make sure you know i'm being clear with with you all and the public about that so that you can deliberate and certainly i'm happy to answer any other questions and as is legally and i've talked about this a bunch this week and last week as well so she's uh quickly catching up to speed and her uh it's the beginning of her third week in the job or two and a half weeks in the job so all right thanks dr morris um so i mean i i do have some questions and i want obviously committee members to have a chance to ask um and i think i just also want to recognize

017because talking about the preschool and whether or not to keep it open has come up previously during my tenure and i just want to recognize that it is a really important resource and it's something that people whether it's the families who enroll in it or other teachers in the school people in the community really value and just want to put that out there that this this classroom in particular seems to really spark a lot of like loyalty and passionate feelings in a great great way so i just want to throw that out there because i think it's important to recognize that our job is to sort of talk in an almost cold way about the facts on the ground especially now that we have this public health emergency but i do want to recognize that

018this has a really real and immediate this conversation has a real and immediate impact on families and on the school um so i i have some questions but ron and sarah bess i'm happy to let you go first with you like to ask questions of either lee or mike sarah um i guess i have a couple of questions right so i and i i don't know how the preschools fall into this category i mean since the beginning of all this there have been some um like early childhood centers that have stayed open as emergency workers or whatever how does the pelham preschool fall into that category or not fall into that category and i guess i was thinking about this morning that if it is something that were i mean i guess you know i

019feel like i also like my kids went to the pelham preschool last year i had a fourth grader who was part of the reading buddies program who absolutely loved it like i also have feelings about the preschool on like a personal mom side of things um and i think it's fantastic and i think it would be really sad um if we were to lose that but so is there so i mean where the preschool is in the school can fairly be quarantined off pretty good right um so yeah i guess that's my question how does the preschool work into that like essential worker daycare center part of all of it do we know sorry a very long question no my sense and i'm not an expert in this is that preschools were able to apply

020and stay open if they were accepting families who were as you said emergency workers and so that's a different model i don't know what the pay structure is i don't know if families you know the state covered the cost of that my understanding is i think the state was a part of that it wouldn't be opening it for current families um that would be um marcus joining so i'm just gonna add her in um um so that that's my understanding so that would be a really different model we could see what's viable about that i think as at the current time my understanding is as preschools have been allowed to opens for the last three weeks um the emergency piece has died kind of slowed down because there are preschools that have opened up both

021locally and across the state um so you know i think that'd be a different conversation uh and not that one that i'm not worth having about you know could it be declared an emergency um site but i think as that's not at the current time um that's not how preschools are operating because other preschools are open it would be more preparing for if places had to close um it would also be uh something that we would need to bring up with the association that um that you know for it to become an emergency site involves a different level of dialogue with the teachers association that we would want to have so certainly i'm just had something i hadn't thought of uh explicitly so i i know i'm sort of just sort of putting a laundry

022list of items of how we could think about that but we'd have to explore that as a really different model um than what the current model is which is paying members of of the public who choose to send their children right i guess i have four issues one of the shape of the program the virtual aspect if it comes to that uh served parents then finally a financial issue um what if the shape of the program well there will there be reading bodies in the future can fourth graders uh enter the uh preschool room oh that kind of thing uh all the things we love about the program to what extent will they continue in the future sure so i think to answer your fourth grade question the answer that one's really uh a no

023uh at the current time i but i also to be fair uh many many of the wonderful things about the program happened in the room when there weren't fourth graders there i mean i want to acknowledge that the inner grade relationships are huge but i would not suggest that having the program in place means that it wouldn't still be magical and still be wonderful it would have to be different you know and it would have to be different in terms of other people coming in the room preschool is such a place and i think the staff have doing a fabulous job there of integrating parents into the space that would have to look very very different than it currently does but um you know some of the health and safety pieces right so preschoolers aren't

024you know we haven't had masks and things like that on adults when they're working in ppe working in preschool so that'll look different but uh what we did hear from there was a good newspaper reporting of this uh about it um you know that the early the emergency shake uh child care centers like sarah best talked about students acclimated pretty well to some of those changes and they were successful at both not having disease spread but also in terms of students having you know pretty good experiences to your point they're definitely different mr menino but um i would suggest in my personal opinion that the staff could figure out creative ways to to continue to be successful with students even in a different environment and then secondly um the willingness of parents to support a

025virtual program i happen to have my daughter living with me now from dc to escape all the riots and the disease down there and she's uh trying to debate whether to send her three-year-old back to the jewish community center uh and she is reluctant to send her back for an in-day program the program changing to a virtual program because in her opinion she can do what a three-year-old will get from a tv monitor uh so i don't know whether that's just one example uh that somebody a 35 year old woman is unwilling to put us a three-year-old in a program that may turn virtual she's reluctant and i think our staff from what i understand what was reported to me did a great job last spring trying to make that the best it can be

026um i think the one thing that you could say is we could give the staff an opportunity to ask that question and then come back to you with what they said i make no assumptions on what the responses will be i think that's why we would ask you know a question but since preschool isn't required in the same way that grades particularly one through six are in massachusetts um and these this isn't a integrated program where the special needs rise to the surface of needing an end in day special education program like at crocker farm we won't know until we'll ask till we ask um and you know i think we would we would need is a firm commitment um not uh i think so um we would you know financially i think you know

027and i agree with the chairs comments is an awkward conversation to have um but that's what we do you know i'm i'm right what i'm supposed to do is give you uh feedback so you can make the best decision i'm pretty clear that a hundred thousand dollars or 115 is is not something that i see in the pelham budget uh if there were no funding coming in at the same time i you know we don't know what families would commit to um if they knew that this was sort of needed for the preschool to stay open um and you know that's one option we could explore in in short order is uh having a meeting like this except not necessarily uh open meeting law right just have a meeting where um the staff could share

028here's their you know um here's a scenario um and if we want the program to be viable that's the commitment we'd be looking for we understand if that's not a commitment people are willing to make and seeing what the yield is again i don't want to predict the outcome because i don't i don't feel like i am in a place to to do that um and it's just one option i mean we could think of some of the others again i want to give all the i think viable options to you all to make whatever decision you think is the best one thirdly a question of unmet need this committee has considered closing the program down in previous years in previous years i was looking at the financials and said well close it down but

029then it came to my attention there are parents who count on this program without this program their life is upended [Music] how do we assess whether we're creating an unmet need that'll be disastrous for some families i mean well basically uh how do we prevent uh destroying some families or a copy down their kid attending the pelham preschool program next year yeah so i think that's a question pre-k to 12 to be honest with you right now um and the thing i'm i know is that we can't control the virus we locally can do our best to do things safely but whether the virus spikes or doesn't spike is relying on factors that are outside pelham outside amherst outside shoots very and outside leverage and so i feel confident or i feel strongly we can't

030make a commitment to any family right now that conditions might not change and it might have not have to go virtual at some point i think you've heard me at enough meetings mr meno and everybody else talk about the safety measures we're putting in place which i think are exceeding frankly any other district in massachusetts that i know of in terms of distance spacing all of those pieces not having students you know i know number of districts are having different students in the same seats in the same day or the day after we've said no to that you know pre-k to 12. and so i do feel like we're doing the things you know we're exploring uv light air purifier systems and i'll be sharing an update on that at the joint meeting next week

031and like new york put out a very clear metrics on community spread if community spread gets too high here we're not going to be in schools and we can do our part on that i can't control what other people do in our larger communities right we can do our best we can't so on that one i can't honestly make a commitment to families at any grade level that their children will be in school for 180s of school next year can't do it and so i think you're absolutely right that there's a dynamic tension in that statement but one thing i want to be is really transparent with families that we could put together a plan that we think makes sense and on on july 16th right now our community spread is incredibly low locally and

032across massachusetts and we can comfortably plan for students and teachers in my opinion right i'll just share my perspective being in school safely on august 16th the variables may be very different on september 16th the variables may be very different and you know for many many reasons i hope it continues to go down right as good as it is now compared to the rest of the the country and war and many parts of the world uh i can't predict the future and i think we have to be really transparent that situations may call for like it did in march where we need to make executive decisions that it's we don't feel like it's safe for students and staff to be congregating and so you're right on the dynamic tension everyone who's got kids uh is

033feeling that at this moment and um you know the thing i want to be again communicating is i can't commit to any families and preschool families included that the kids will be in school all year and and i know the impact it has and you know sorry i'm going to extend this point but i feel really strongly we know what impact it has on families and we know it's a differential impact for some families it's hard for some families that's intolerable some families it means i'm not sure how i'm going to work and put food on the table and so it's not the same for everyone and it's not the same based on the age of the kid as you noted but the public health is going to drive this it's not going to be

034something that i can accurately predict or control what happens in the larger communities oh i'm sorry can i just jump in really quickly i'm sorry i just learned that um there are now three public comments that uh ended up in my spam folder of my email and so they weren't shared could i could ron continue with his questions and then i'll add them to that document and can we go back to that i just because they did do it by the deadline i just didn't know until just now yep um okay it's still open so i'm happy to display them after answering this question yeah okay thank you sorry about that ron go ahead and dr morris i will get this to you shortly okay lastly a financial question and then later on i have

035a question which may not be relevant uh assuming we get 10 people that budget summary that we get every year that would be a a neutral spending budget what if we go ahead with the program and after one month we have to close it down do we avoid all the expenses do those teachers get reassigned to other positions well if we close the program down in one month what are our financial exposures that's why i'm suggesting we need a full year commitment from families to pay regardless of whether it was in person or virtual uh and we need it formally done and kind of a more formal contract than we've asked for before because your the scenario you talked about is exactly what uh would position this committee and and to run out of funds

036frankly from the appropriated budget um so you're spot on there'd be nowhere we sort of have to make a decision before the school year the cost would continue to the column oh absolutely right yeah at that point you know we have to have people slotted in rolls that we anticipate them filling for the full year if it's not in pelham again i'm committed for the staff to have roles in um in another district that we work that i work for um money i can't come out of the school the general school budget right and if it's someone if any staff members working for a different district or split between three districts we can commit to that it's where it's all the hundred some odd thousand dollars is all dedicated to the pelham school budget if

037there was no funds coming in that's the situation i would advise you that there's nowhere in our budget to to absorb a hundred thousand dollars thank you um sarah i'm ready if you would like yeah yeah if we could i would like to prioritize those so if you could go back and then we'll read the last three thank you yeah foreign oh you got it it's good to see you here um so you're on the card so did everyone catch all of those was that all right yeah okay sounds good okay thanks for doing that and my apologies to folks who submitted comments that i had missed um okay um margaret i know you you missed a portion of it but i wanted to make sure you had a chance to ask questions or make

038any comments that you had uh i have and i apologize for being late quite all right um okay so go ahead oh margaret did you have comments request okay sorry no i do not um okay and ron where are you i got some follow-ups okay uh let me just go to sarah best first and then i'll come back to you ron okay go ahead sarah i'm just wondering so if we're thinking about having it moved to being virtual right do we have i feel like we need to be able to give if we're asking families to make a commitment about being partaking for a whole year whether it's in person or it's virtual i feel like we need to be able to give them information about what a virtual plan will look like right so

039do we have any ideas what that will be or you know so so that's my question what will it look like i mean if we're going to ask people to make this it's a substantial financial commitment especially if you're not getting the actual physical child care piece right so what what will that look like so i think as noted in one of the public comments i think there was a really good framework to build from in terms of what was developed this spring and i think what i could do is talk to um lee about working with the staff to develop what that would look like explicitly i think you're spot on just saying in person or virtual with no content uh as no context for especially for new families who weren't part of the

040preschool in the spring and even those who were to understand that it may be done differently in the fall uh or next year would be really important and you know i feel comfortable that we could um that lee could could engage the staff to come up with uh more explicitly what that could look like that parents can make their decisions with that in mind but i think it's a really good point and i think you're spot on that asking people to make a commitment without knowing what they're committing to is uh never yields good results yeah yeah i i think um if you know all of the comments were very lovely about you know even the the transition piece right like what it was like in the spring um so i i feel like like

041you said there's lots of we had good bones and so being able to continue with that or to even if that we were able to somehow show perspective new families like either like some snippets of pieces that had happened or what it will look like moving forward i think will have much better um answers i guess so whether or not people feel like they can make that kind of commitment ron go ahead this question is sort of kicking the can down the road um if you can why do we have to make a decision today uh if you can get 10 families to commit go ahead with the program if you can't get 10 program 10 families to commit then cease the program for next year is that a possibility absolutely yeah so when i

042said options it was really we hadn't we haven't talked about this before right this is the first time this has been on an agenda for a pelham school committee meeting and so that's sort of what i'm proposing um ron is that uh you know we at least go down the road of seeing if there's collective buy-in and support um but i didn't feel like it was my place to do it without having some support from the elected officials in pelham to do that so i think when decision you know maybe i could have framed a little differently certainly you could say you the committee could do whatever it chooses on this but i was trying to make a pathway at least where we could see if there is enough support to commit to the program

043the timeliness of this is that it's as i said july 16th we need to have placements for folks and families are expecting to know what we're doing uh you know um soon so i think that's the sort of timeliness of it um not necessarily for you to make a decision tonight because one aspect of it would be gathering more data and and to miss kenny's point uh also collecting more information from staff about what it would look like but we would want to get on that asap because i do think in the next i would argue in the next two weeks we sort of need to have a commitment one way or the other both for family sake but also for staff because we would be doing some placement of staff members again with the

044commitment that i shared at the beginning so um that's i think the urgency to have the conversation i could imagine the committee not being comfortable moving forward that model and that's again your decision but we didn't want to go forward with engaging families without having a conversation with elected officials first in a public meeting and the point of clarification if we should vote not to continue the program this year this is a one-year decision not a permanent decision that that's up to the committee but um that's that yeah all i can say is that's up to the committee i framed it that way from my perspective but i don't i don't get i don't make those decisions and this question may be off topic but you talked about the conditions changing and perhaps having to

045close down all the schools have you considered what metrics you would consider uh to justify closing of the schools yeah so i really liked i think i emailed the school committee uh this maybe last week new york came out with their plan last week and they have very specific metrics on community spread i'm hoping next week when desi releases more information about sort of if there is a co-vacation or school they also include more explicit calculations of that uh what i'd i'm going to politicize it i guess but what i think would be foolhardy is for any state to allow local superintendents to be using their own metrics on community spread i'm not the department of public health i don't have access ready access to that data i check it every day because that's what

046a lot of people do every day um i'm not alone but i'm hoping that we have and i'm not making a statement on new york's metrics that's not my area of expertise but i like there to be statewide metrics that would guide decision making because it should be a calculation developed by epidemiologists and experts in the field not by local superintendents this is not a snow day right and i think you know that's like my theme of my next book is this is not a snow day right like these calculations should be made by folks in the public health community and so certainly we've a number of superintendents including myself have offered that feedback that we we hope there is statewide uh and not not that necessarily that we're looking at state widespread because the

047big state and what happens in the berkshires and the same thing that happens in boston but i think there are ways to break it down by not just individual community but by um communities and and regions uh much like new york did so i'm hopeful that we'll get to the place where um that decision uh has metrics again that public health folks have developed and and delivered to us where it's a calculation question it's not um a metaphysical question for superintendents to wade into yeah this spring was we don't want to re-enact what happened on march 13th and that week again moving forward next year i'll put it that way i think that's the end of my questions okay you're up sarah best i think i had the same question as ron in the last

048one that if we if for some reason we did make a decision to not have preschool this year is that just a one-year covid related decision or is that like a big future conversation that is that's i i was framing as next year but that that's up to the committee you could certainly frame it differently i'm uh for better or worse i'm very much in a um i've been saying this now for too long like you know one week three week six week mindset you know and so uh certainly i'm not unaware that fy22 may be an incredibly difficult year for a whole host of reasons and there's no telling i i tend to be pessim you all know me i'm pretty optimistic person in general i tend to be sort of pessimistic uh when

049i read things about vaccine being readily available uh in the calendar 2020. um i seriously hope uh and and that that happens i just i'm not convinced that that's in the cards um and and there's a scenario by which this goes on beyond this school year um so at this point i'm really just thinking about the next academic year okay um can i ask a question just a clarifying question about the the 10 magic number that was more for kind of space and developmental reasons not financial yes for me you know the eec guidance talks about um 10 students eec is the governing body for early childhood education again because it's in a public school we can this is sort of a unique program in massachusetts so frankly it's unclear whether deci or eec guidance

050would be the one to follow decia said for their integrated preschool programs they would they would follow the deci guidance this is not an integrated program but it's in a k-12 school so there's gray but i do believe when it looked at size that when we looked at size of the room having a more conservative viewpoint would be better it is reducing the number of staff members just to be really clear again we would guarantee employment for those staff that staff member in this model but uh i think we go above 10 students at one time and i should be clarified i mean 10 students at one time because it could be that students are coming on a monday wednesday friday and you could replace them on tuesday thursday but that really gets into this

051cohort model and we really would probably want to have students uh not come a couple days a week because of the cohorting structure that we're looking for in all of our schools so you know if we have 15 kids over the course of five days even if only 10 are there at a time we're now expanding our exposure so that's another piece you asked that i should have said that more explicitly earlier we are looking at full-time students from an exposure point of view as opposed to students who may be there intermittently um okay maybe other places intermittently and the same way for our public schools you know at the elementary level we're talking about a cohort that really stays together and and minimizes mixing uh between classrooms the preschool wouldn't be any different that's

052public health guidance that's there's nothing special about preschool that would guide that so you know we'd want to think through their decision-making matrix on that but it might it might be that we're not as flexible uh based on what other students are doing if they're home sorry this is really it gets into the weeds a little bit but i think it's a really great point yeah right so if students are coming monday wednesday friday but on tuesday thursday they're at home that doesn't concern me as much because they're going to be home in the evenings and the weekends anyway but if it's the case where students are coming to pelham on monday wednesday friday but tuesday thursday thursday they're in another public setting with other kids um right that would be more of a cause

053of concern around mixing so that's where the nuances play out and we'd have to really wade into that and try to get a lot more information from families who were not full-time families than we typically would ask okay all right yeah that was long-winded but yeah um okay and so it's possible then that there might even be students who wouldn't be able to come back if we couldn't fit them this way if we do the majority of preschool families who don't go full time uh are home the other days but i know in some some schools there are people who split days based on family work schedules custodial arrangements with you know living with different caregivers um so some monday wednesday friday they're with one caregiver where pelham works or a preschool not pal a

054preschool relates well on the other days they're with a different caregiver where they're living in a different community and pelham wouldn't be uh as as reasonable a site so it's not about pelham specifically but when you look at preschool um partial preschool attendance there's a whole range of why families be partial and we'd have to typically we're like great you want to come three days a week or four days a week that's fantastic we would have follow-up questions this time and i think the majority would be the home that's a more typical situation but we we'd really need to know what's happening on the other days okay um and this is i mean i might be getting ahead of myself a little bit but is is there any precedent for having some kind of commitment

055or contract that a family would sign committing them to make future payments it just either in pelham or other districts that just seems like a a fraught place for the district to be to kind of be enforcing future payments and i didn't know if that happened if there were other situations where that would happen there are less than a helmet more at other levels or other districts uh the challenge becomes when someone decides they don't want to um what options do you have right so um you know we can go down the road of bill collecting agencies uh we typically haven't gone down that road um because that's felt really awkward um so but in this instance with this quantity of the budget at stake um that's something that the committee would have to really

056think about uh what to do and and you know because we even if it's a binding contract if someone doesn't pay it you can't knock on doors right you would have to go down a legal road uh around that and you know i think it's a really important point because you know i think if we're going to commit to work on that you're sort of committing to come go down some roads perhaps on bill collection that we have not gone down before uh on the issue of precedence that jcc program in dc if you sign up for the program you're there for the full year right and that would be the expectation it's just that that's the commitment it's the back end of it that gets more complicated when there's a problem i think the

057commitment's clean it's what do you do when it's not being met right right okay all right the other thing that's the hard variable i'm sorry to stay with that theme i'm sorry this morning apologize is people don't know what's happening with their jobs right and that's not much just about well i don't want to pay because it's virtual because the people have committed to that but people's ability to pay isn't what it was for many people and locally and beyond that it was a year ago and so there's some real risk here um that we'd want to think through um about the commitment and you won't know till you get there and i think that's the hard thing but um you know more often it's the case that there's family hardships then there is people

058going back on so going back on a commitment it's that they're not able to meet the commitment anymore so there's risk in this one way or the other you know um and um you know that's it that's the hard part is even if families sign up there's no guarantees um so that's sort of where where we are but thank you for these are really helpful questions in my thinking so i appreciate it sure um any other questions for dr morris just on specifics okay so i think then we should just talk for a minute about what our next steps and the timing will be um sarah best i think your comment is very true like this is you know people are really really need to know a what it would look like if we are

059going to offer it and you know that this is i mean preschool is a i remember having preschoolers how stressful it was and if someone had told me you know a month and a half ahead of time that it suddenly wasn't going to be open that would have turned my life upside down and i certainly understand that um so i guess the things that we wanted to learn more about was is there anything having to do with like an essential worker designation or something like that that we could somehow benefit from um a better sense of what a virtual plan would would look like not necessarily like the whole model put together but you know what a family could expect from that um and then i guess just generally timing of like when when that

060would be presented when we could expect to vote on it and and communicate with um with families jeremy speaks out a little bit yeah i guess timing i mean obviously you know i i know you have like a couple other things going on in your professional life currently so i also want to be you know i i think there's a need to kind of balance that and not put too much on the district in terms of how quickly this is turned around but also have some urgency about it so yeah what how responding to that would i think be helpful yeah so and lee certainly feel like if you have something to add when i'm done you know uh and feel free to be offer a divergent opinion too that's fine we're very comfortable here

061in pelham um with with difference of opinions and so uh in my head we'd want to get something out in the next week um to families with you know we had this conversation if people actually want to watch you know we could send the link perhaps this meeting because i think it actually for people who really you know would be willing to sit through with that 59 minutes right now they might get a sense of the context uh i expect anyone everyone would but i think then at least there's transparency that this is being talked about publicly i think the second piece is that we'd be asking for a contract and a commitment to pay for the year regardless of virtual or in person and i think the third period would be uh some some

062right not everything drawn up perfect like exactly but some version of what does it look like in person and what does it look like in virtual right because even though the in-person people have a familiarity with in person won't look exactly the same as that the knowledge that you know adults would be wearing masks and that students will be more spread than they typically were and that you know we'll be following some of the eec guidelines which are not as limiting as they are at the k to 12 level um but that you know there will be ppe for for all the staff like the reassuring i think for families that we were taking safety in mind that there'll be regular cleaning and disinfecting you know i think families will will need to know that

063stuff for the in person as well as miss kenny's point about uh knowing at least some sense of what the virtual would look like um so you know it's the 16th today you know so if you think about that getting out on the 23rd or thereabouts if not sooner i also imagine a meeting similar to this format this using this tech model jewel or a zoom or google meet where people could ask have interactive questions um because i think you know it's good to put together a good document and give people the opportunity to do that so i'm looking at my calendar right now just mapping out um the weeks and so if we're talking about having a letter go out to 23rd you know perhaps a follow-up the beginning of that following week like

064the 2028 where people have been able to read a letter behavior questions uh and then coming back to a decision the week after um yeah that first week in august um that feels like an aggressive but not too aggressive schedule like an aggressive that meets the needs of families in the organization um without feeling rushed it's where people will feel pressure to make a decision because we're actively doing that for them um how you feel about that so um i think that all sounds really good i appreciate how much thought everyone is giving to this and the level of detail that folks are going into um so i just want to share two things so the first is that i've had multiple calls every day from families who are very eager to know what the

065plan is for the fall so my sense from speaking with them is that um child care options are very limited right now because spaces are opening with with less capacity um so i think the quicker we can give a concrete answer to folks the better the other piece is around around some concrete planning for what the digital learning remote learning distance learning will look like we're not quite there yet with our k-6 teachers in terms of the expectations for the number of synchronous versus asynchronous minutes the number of content areas covered the number of hours a day um it will be different from what it was in the spring where it was a little bit loose in terms of the guidance um you know our our plan and you know mike you may speak to

066this as well but our plan is to be much more structured in any kind of distance learning plan to be very clear what what the expectations are that is not developed yet or a hundred percent developed yet because we're we're in a different phase of our planning with the physical spaces and different models for reopening so um i i have some curiosity about doing that for preschool before doing it for k-6 and i would want to make sure that any anything that we put out to families for preschool expectations we would be able to mirror or align with our k-6 staff and that just hasn't it hasn't at least to my knowledge been discussed yet but with the teachers association or with the teachers or um building based leadership so um well i think it

067would be really helpful to get that concrete information out to families in the next week i i think there are other conversations that need to happen before we put out that concrete plan does that make sense it does i can add to that and we don't even have state guidance yet uh what all this would look like except for students with special needs which came out last friday and that's not as relevant for this for for integrated preschools or students with special needs in preschool that's very clear um now or it's a lot more clear anyways for this particular program it's harder to do i think i wonder if we can just develop some some general thoughts this is what happened in spring and here's ideas for the fall you know without being i think

068lee's concerned is accurate but i think hopefully we can find a middle ground of not having a daily schedule exactly what it would look like one of the huge variables at the k to six or particularly at one to six is that um we're required for 900 hours of time on learning instruction each year that doesn't apply to our preschool setting so it is subsequently different um model but i think even collecting some of the good work that happened this spring from the staff and and some ideas for the fall uh might probably satisfy uh might be the best we can do yeah and to clarify i was not i don't think that the intent was to kind of oh go ahead of what they're doing everywhere in the state including k-6 in this district

069i think in fact well and i can't speak for other committee members i would actually be fine picking direction from staff and from yuli on what is feasible to present now so certainly not like a day by day schedule but uh like maybe there would be this once a week and this would be the kind of activity that we could help with so i think i would be fine if it was like we're presenting what we think is feasible to present right now and not having that come from this body i'm sarah best i saw you had your hand up i was going to say the same thing i wasn't saying we i want to see at 9 15 what's happening and at 10 25 more of just of like uh these are some overall

070things we're thinking about and like here's how we think it can be implemented just so people you know like in in reading the public comments some of those letters like i didn't know what preschool looked like virtually i knew what fourth grade looked like virtually in sixth grade because i had those but you know outside of that i think that will just like you know rough outline of what it could maybe look like like what what are we thinking of just because i think if i were a preschool parent that would be really helpful for me if i was trying to make this decision which would feel hard i mean everything feels hard right now but yeah yeah and i think also pr hopefully not creating even more work i mean hopefully kind of based

071on some thoughts and planning that staff have already yeah through you know that there that's not going to be like some new science project that google is requiring so thank you and i just have one more clarifying question so for families um who would be signing on for this model would we be making a commitment to provide technology and devices to those families if we did shift to a distance learning and if so how are we factoring that into our planning yeah so last year we did you know and there weren't families who didn't have hot spots or things like that and we did have uh we did make um chromebooks available for families last spring and you know um when i did talk to ms desjarlais who says to say hi by the way

072she texted me the other day that you know the needs of pelham families were covered with the chromebooks we were able to provide last spring so i do think we're in you know if we had enough last spring um hopefully that will not create it means it's different students so i think you're right to say that there might be students who weren't with us last year who might need a device but based on our generous and pelham was a part of this contribution for our pgos that supports this infrastructure i feel like for the next school year we'll be in good shape yep good question though yeah thanks for asking that okay so oh go ahead margaret um i'm sorry i missed the beginning of this so did i understand that it would possibly be

073limited to 10 people 10 students yes 10 students and if so um because i assume we've had more students i know we've had more than that in the past how will decision be made about what can get accepted so it's a great question i haven't thought through that in my quick thinking would be well first of all attendant would fully commit to be able to fund the program for the for the full school year um but i think as it typically goes we'd go back into the order of registration um so the families who registered at the beginning of that process seems like they should be able like it would be in any other year that when we fail we fail and when we're going to make this adjustment i think we would respect that

074same part of the process but thank you i had not thought through that question it's really important one okay um all right and so we will we'll have another meeting we'll have a chance for people to ask questions and then ultimately a meeting to either i guess either vote or potentially not either way we'd have to vote um okay so do you i guess lee and mike want to have a chance to connect and figure out just details about next steps and then we can chat after this meeting that sounds good to me i just want to make sure midi is comfortable with the rough timeline that was totally back in the envelope not even because i was just doing it early that i uh suggested earlier i had thought about it before but um

075i just want to make sure if we're the next time we're talking about this as a pelham school committee meeting it's the this is what we found that everyone's comfortable with us moving forward with kind of what we've talked about over the last hour um because i think if people are concerned about and don't want us to do that and i'm not trying to push it but i just feel like i feel like there's consensus but i'd rather i don't need a vote but more actively be assured that the committee is comfortable with us moving forward in this way yes any any concerns from focus on that okay yes so yeah that that rough timeline sounds good and obviously as with everything these days if we need to be flexible then we'll we'll figure that

076out but that all sounds good yep so we'll follow i'll help lee and i will follow up together and follow up with staff too if they want to have input which i think is highly likely they're very engaged staff here in pelham which we love and uh we can we can go move forward with that plan and then we can report back to again you know in the next two weeks about what we found and where we are and we'll also communicate if we when we do have a public meeting like this whether it's again in this format or in a google meet format we'll let the committee know when that is so that if you'd like to just be cautious about the quorum piece but if you'd like to be an observer uh you'd

077have the ability to do that okay all sounds good i have a public health call that i need to get on that i'm uh so i know there's a couple other things in the warrant but is there any last-minute questions for me before i depart because that um it's an important one i don't want to miss this one nope i think you're good thanks very much thank you i'll take it oh uh so i probably will leave this broadcast i don't take myself off it because otherwise you'll all go away so um so at the end i'll just keep look looking at the screen and i'll end the broadcast when you're done miss hall or miss whiting jones wouldn't mind texting me so that i um don't just leave it on indefinitely for people to

078look at blank that'd be great we will let you know all right thanks so much okay um all right next up is warrant review so with jesse not on the committee anymore it's me this is my first time so bear with me i think this is what i'm supposed to do i have two of them so i authorized by my signature to payables and the amount of fifty two thousand four hundred and thirteen dollars and nine cents for a warrant dated july 8th 2020. um and that one was um a payroll warrant and the next one is uh i authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of thirty two 525 dollars and 22 cents um this is a warrant dated june 25th 2020. it's um general fund expenses of 28 and twenty 625

079cents and then a town article for three thousand nine hundred dollars any questions okay um and that was it i will say lee i know this is such a weird time to be a new principal in a new school and you're like five minutes on the job and drinking from a fire hose every single day so we will at some point have a normal pelham meeting and kind of introduce you properly but i know everybody is just sort of trying to get through the day so we really we're so happy to have you don't let this really terrible welcome make it seem like we are not thrilled um but when there's the appropriate meeting we will kind of welcome you and really look forward to kind of hearing from you about your thoughts about the

080school year and but just also want to give you some time to breathe and sleep and those things so that that's coming um all right with that said i will anything else all right i will take a motion to adjourn so moved is there a second second okay um oh and we still have to do a roll call vote okay um hall i ron monina why sarah best kenny i margaret dancer all right okay thanks so much everyone we will talk soon and i'll be in touch about the next meeting okay thank you take care thank you you