001[Music] good evening I'd like to call to order this uh meeting for November 6th of the Dartmouth school committee um like to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance if you're able IED algi to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic hands one nation God indivisible liy andice for all thank you everyone um roll call Kate here here here here yep thank you uh I just want to remind folks that um this meeting is uh rebroadcast on DCTV channels 9 UM on uh Wednesdays and Thursdays at 5: Friday at 6:00 a.m. Saturday 8 a.m. Sunday at 2 p.m. also rebroadcast on DCTV channel 18 um and of course you can find us on uh uh Darth High YouTube yeah YouTube Wow TV media anyway um we begin each meeting where we
002allot uh up to 10 minutes for uh public comment on any item that is on the evening's agenda so if anyone wants to come speak to anything on the agenda please feel free to stand up to the podium and just state your name good y hi this really comes from my daughter and son but he has too much homework tonight and she's feeling a little shy but she is very concerned about styrofoam tra oh I'm sorry thank you I'm Megan pogash do you want to say your name this is Juniper pogash and she goes to Dello and she's in fifth grade and she's been very concerned since at least second grade since the pandemic started at the end of first grade she's very concerned about the styrofoam trays right what did you used to have
003um I used to have the the hard reusable plastic ones they they were plastic and that's not really good but at least they weren't single use so that's way better than having styrofoam ones because what happens to those um when they break down it um all the chemicals from it goes into the air and affects our atmosphere and stuff and yeah our beautiful pristine Waters land and were you concerned about anything anything else plastic bags plastic packaging yeah thank you thank thank Youk thank you so much for coming and sharing your thoughts it was very brave of you way to go so do we hear back in some fashion or so public comment we don't usually respond back but I I want to thank you for your advocacy because we we are moving in that
004direction I think post pandemic you know things during the pandemic things have changed if you don't um so we're going to get back to that we've we we've had um some confirmation with that in the upcoming you know budgeting cycle so thank you for bringing it to our attention and we want to thank Juniper for coming up to the microphone so brave good job thank you thank you thank you thank you you'll let us know if agenda or something so typically during public comment we listen and then possibly at a later meeting uh we can take it up thank you thank you thank you anyone else great thank you very much um I'm G to ask the committee before we do the approval of minutes or should we do that for okay we'll do the
005approval of minutes we have regular session and executive session minutes for October 16th um they were in our packet um so we'll have to do them separately so I'll entertain a motion for the regular session minutes for the October 16th meeting so move second any all in favor I I will abstain thank you one exension um and now for the executive session minutes from that same evening of October so move Madam chair with the stipulation that they be held until the matter for which they were intended is completed second any discussion all in favor I I'll abstain one exstension thank you and our student rep is our student rep is busy getting ready for another performance um the band will be traveling again on Wednesday so I'm sure she's busy getting ready for that because
006they're leaving on Wednesday so exting and just got back Saturday night so they're on a whirlwind Tour Sunday morning great so what I am going to ask is that we shift the agenda a little bit we have um guests from uh gr and New Bedford voke school committee here we have um superintendent Mike Watson we have school committee represent atives from Dartmouth Dr Cindy Marland and Michael Shay um here so if it's okay with the committee i' like to move them up to so that we free up the rest of their evening um and I just want to preface it with a lot of times we will asked questions of you know to check in on greater New Bedford voke and uh Dr Marlon had reached out on behalf of the school committee a couple
007months ago um asking um if there were a was a time that they could come speak to us and she was asking um if we what we would want them to kind of present to us and so uh Kate uh graciously put it out to all of us and I and I questions I guess were forwarded to you and so um so are we going invite yes please Mr Watson did you want to come up or the three of you come up to the microphone I know you had given us a packet and had shared some great information with us and I want to say Mr Watson graciously hosted me at sire vot just a couple of weeks ago and I am incredibly impressed with the work that's happening here and uh saw so many
008things that were just uh so they were so impressive and I know that many of our Dartmouth students are benefiting from participating in those opportunities so thank you thank you Dr so I I know the committee probably wants to speak with our Dartmouth Representatives I'm kind of here just to help fill in and answer any questions we did want to provide you with a packet of information uh regarding Capital infrastructure projects I know what the committee's had concerns over the greater new Beford VTech school committee minute so we have made some adjustments to that we included our September minutes uh in your packet uh would have included October but they'll be voted on next week for us so I didn't want to do that ahead of where our committee was uh we also included some
009uh admissions data which as Dr Maguire mentioned when I hosted her a few weeks ago which is part of a regional effort with all the the new superintendents in our region uh we're sharing that information both both in totality for our 9th grade class but also individualized for each of our sending districts I wanted to include that uh in the packet for you as well and then I think one of the most important things that we can do is to Showcase some of the work that our kids are doing uh in our construction trades on behalf of member community so I wanted to share some of the projects uh that we've done just in the community of Dartmouth uh in in the last 5 to 10 years some more recent than others but just to
010make sure the committee was well briefed on that as well thank you again why don't I start again Mike Shay first of all I want to congratulate you know uh the committee here the superintendent and Community itself for as a former parent flag layer down or whatever you call that person uh I did that for my grand my daughter was in the color guard so I I that's a secret not many people knew I did but but congratulations outstanding as always um as as Mike stated we did pass out early because we wanted to talk about Capital infrastructure um I think as I don't know if I want to go over something that you've read if you have questions on it however you want to you know me us to present it I know Cindy's
011going to talk about the projects very shortly about what we're doing in doou to help out our community um but but I do want to express the concern that you know in the past it maybe hasn't been a working Rel ship but I think C and I are very very interested in making sure that we are you know working with this board because you have your the students up until you know 8th grade and some of them go to us in ninth grade and we just want to make sure that you know we're listening to you and we're also trying to react and we're two different school systems but I I think it's um it's about the kids and and I think you know as long as we keep that open and there's no egos
012here or there there's no we're not trying to do anything special but there's a problem we'll try to address it and I think the the minutes that I know John and I have talked a few times and you guys were correct in the sense of what we were not doing and we had some major you know plans you you prioritize things as you approach this year and of course some major building issues not issues but you know improvements were going on and so it took us a little longer to get to where we want but I I think the September minutes explains a lot more the October ones uh coming out next week so again we'll keep you informed but I think that's hopefully settled and and to the satisfaction of not just you but
013to more members out there who are looking at our minutes um I do talk about the capital instructure Mike Watson superintendent Watson has done a great job in The Vocational School using a team uh approach everybody's at the table that needs to be at the table you know in the past sometimes only certain people would represent an area um superintendent Watson has made it very interest that you know you got to have to technicians there you got to have the facility director there you have to have you know teachers represented um so it's been a great year working this past year in the sense of trying to move forward and like anything else I mean that building open opened in 1977 so it seems like a new school but it's it's tired at place places
014and I we had used the S2 and S3 grants this year that superintendent want decid not to put it towards any employment people because once the grant runs out then you have you own them and so we put it most of it if not 90% of it into a one-hot deal now let's put it into the air ducts that let me get the right air quality uh of the school which some of those ducks have are old uh we put into the construction of a new Health Center which we were out growing fast and with everything going on with the during the pandemic like that we just we were using the hallway we using like probably everybody else was you know you just so we had that money available and and we we're using it
015towards that time we also had a skills Capital grant that helped us with our conary Arts learning space and purchasing new equipment at that area as a HVAC area so uh I think it's a smart move of what how might handle it in a sense of you know as put into the building put into the one shot deal and now the grant ends but the project will be done so um I can answer some Cindy can answer come back to you um and I know she's not talk about the project shortly but again Mike deals with every day um he is keeps us informed very well matter of fact he showed us about six months ago A Five-Year Plan of of what is going to be needed over this time and so they're already working
016on where that money is coming from where they're going so uh to let the people in dmouth know that doou students that are attending there they are attending a safe school they're sending uh I hopefully as Hightech as we can I just read in a paper that diamond is building a brand new school for 300 million well we're going to keep our school going a lot less and uh and the other advantage that I think people don't realize is that we have people in our building that are in the trade so the project goes forward a lot of the stuff that we hire our students during Summertime with our instructors and so a lot of the welding po a lot of carpentry Plumbing is huge you know they can do all that and the students
017are getting their hours and everything towards you know their license so it's a very positive situation but again um a couple Pages there any questions from me right now would you like to hear Cindy first on the projects and then come at at us personally let Dr milin speak and then we pop everything that's just me sounds good so as you know service is one of my favorite things and um I'm very proud that uh greater New Bedford voke is out there in our community they're doing many projects but I really want to focus on what they're doing just in Dartmouth um really enhancing the lives of people from all different walks ages um it's quite impressive one of the uh projects that they've been working on is District 3 um owns a building within
018uh Hicksville area and it's uh a place where they keep equipment it's a place that is maintained but was getting a little bit tired so the students have been there and they've been working on the outside of the building um overseen by their teacher and an assistant teacher so um it's very impressive you can drive by and you can see it's it's right from the uh right from the road the other project that has been going on for a long time but got mixed up with um pandemic was the Lloyd Center and the Lloyd Center um they actually constructed a whole building right Mike yeah yeah the Welcome Center and all of it it was built to be sustainable um as you know it's quite close to the water so the the kids were working
019on that for a very long time but that's been completed at this point um the last piece is the Council on Aging or what we used to know is the Council on Aging has be been renamed as the Maria Connor Center for active living I don't know if people realize it but there's only one building that voltech has not built and that's the main building um in that facility there's a lot of different buildings smaller buildings little garages the the bullet Center um and most recently it was the garages to house some of the equipment and some of the the Vans because on the weekends unfortunately um some of those vans had been uh vandalized so um it's a place to keep all those kind of things safe um so I'm I'm very very proud
020you know as you know I'm really a comprehensive person comprehensive education person but I just have been very very impressed what with what voke has been doing and continues to do and in all of our communities not just Dartmouth thank you thank you turn it over to our my colleagues sure you want me so I'll just say you know I appreciate I think you know seeing the minutes um they are much better than they used to be we can actually uh tell what's uh going on in your meeting so I appreciate that um and I also appreciate the admissions data um from my read of it it looks like you have accepted more students with I PS more lowincome students and your student body has become more diverse it seems to me that's probably the
021result of the lottery and I think that's a positive outcome um I think it's a good compromise that there's you know some seats that are reward for hard work but that um I know you all offer a quality education and that it's it's accessible to to any student who wants to pursue a trade um so I appreciate that data and I appreciate the work you've done to revamp your admissions process just quickly on that because when I get the chance in every form I want to make sure that I'm transparent with folks we did make a significant shift collapsing criteria so that for example there's no difference between a 75 and a 95 for students grades um I as I I said I think this data points to some positive changes but it's incomplete there
022are still 300 kids on the waiting list that we do not know today what those kids student demographic profiles look like I've been assured by the department we will get that information in December which makes sense after you folks submit your Sims data and our sending districts they'll cross reference it with the weight lless data we've turned over to them um and then they'll be able to compile some of this information so while this is encouraging today I've told our team as well as the districts and superintendents that I've been with it it looks good but there's a key piece of information that's missing what do the 300 students uh who did not get in under either the the condensed criteria or the lottery actually look like so we see that data it'll give us
023another piece the committee's already approved the exact same policy for next year so it'll give us two years of a complete picture of that stuff and I think we'll be in a better position to discuss whether for further reforms are necessary thank you thank you thank you madam chair uh thank you for being here Mike Mike Dr Marin uh a couple of things I'll I'll agree because I have also uh chirped on the minutes and I appreciate them I really do uh Mr Shay and I have had numerous conversations on this type of deal I also and also though it's not here I also want to compliment you the sound is a lot better in in listening to the meetings and everything else you can hear everyone and I appreciate that it wasn't you know
024I mean as I get older it's a lot tougher to stand next to the you know have the volume way up next to the next to the television and that U maybe we'll have to turn on close captioning for you yeah probably yeah I think I'm going to have to do that you know I'll have to but the problem is I'll have to figure out how to use that on the television so that could be a a different story uh I'm one of the ones that asked about the you know the capital infrastructure what had been done and everything else and I was I was greatly I was impressed to see this and and what has happened you know and how you have funded it that was my main concern because I knew that there
025were some projects going what's next on the agenda if I may and I'm blindsiding you and I apologize you're not blindsiding me I appreciate I appreciate the question so yes as Mr Shay pointed out um the philosophy around the grants was primarily onetime money for onetime expenses we did create a few few positions uh family engagement we have an additional School adjustment counselor um we initially funded our Dei director through the Esser applications those funds have since been moved over to the general operating budget based upon retirements in the last two years and positions that we've backfilled it was a very small number so it was manageable to do uh primarily what's been accomplished is about half of the HVAC systems which some of which were nearly original to the school have been replaced um
026what we're looking to do this summer is the collision shop will be renovated through a private Grant um the plumbing house has been rebuilt uh we're continuing to look at skills Capital grants for programs that the department deems eligible uh that obviously one of our big areas is in legal and protective services it's not a big uh High need in the department of Ed standpoint but it is one of our top programs that kids select they're currently operating out of a few academic classrooms uh which is not ideal but our focus is to try to improve all 27 learning environments in our CTE programs to create modern modern uh state-of-the-art uh learning spaces for those programs we've made some internal moves where we can uh but as Mr Shay pointed out and I've also spoken
027about in these forums I I'm keenly aware of the building conditions in our sending communities um and so we're doing everything that we can to keep this building as viable and strong as it can through the use of of Grant activities um and these skills capital in these Federal relief dollar so that was the primary focus for us to E mark those funds in this direction okay and you know just a I'll put my band hat on for a second your uh Collision Department did a great job with our van when the our box truck when the the tree fell on it type of couple of years ago you know and that so but you know thank you for doing that and I know a lot of other projects that have been done in the
028area so you know thank you for that and thank you for this information much appreciated no questions but thank you very much great information yeah I want to thank you Mr Watson and Mr Shay Dr Marlin and it's certainly appreciative I appreciate I think the committee does as well uh coming out here having these conversations um you know being open and transparent I think is uh key to uh building up trust again or I don't want to say rebuilding it but improving the trust in uh relationship between uh the town of Dartmouth dmouth public schools and gr bord voke because those are our students I'm thrilled to see um you know some of these projects the health center just uh briefly is that for your for your nurses where or is that an actual shop
029okay that is for the nursing staff uh we now have four full-time nurses which brings us into compliance with a lot of the dph guidelines around one 550 or so students uh what's really cool about the health center is it's it's it's hopefully we don't need another pandemic ready room but there's isolation spaces there are lifts for students with disabilities uh exam rooms uh we even added a um a lactation space for some of our nursing moms Andor students uh oftentimes that's overlooked in public schools and so I I took the time to make sure Dr McGuire saw that when she was there I know our staff members appreciate that and I think it's just a step uh in the direction of getting that that area of the school set for the next 40 or
03050 years and so uh we're really proud of that that investment that space and using the ESS dollars no I I think the the Esser monies were put to good use and you know I think it'll benefit uh your send the sending districts uh for sure um one last thing I'll just complement um the school in general uh with uh the projects that you've done in Dartmouth this is phenomenal work and I know there's always been cooperation um and sending our sending your students uh over to Dartmouth and for Haven and new Beford as well um but but it's certainly a it's a asset uh to the community so thank all thank you all three of you appreciate your time thank you yeah I really don't have much to add that my colleagues haven't already
031stated but I really appreciate you bringing this to us and really focus using in on the projects that um the students are able to uh do within our own Community as well as your other sending communities um it it's um yeah I mean they've all sort of spoke to some things that were important to me um and and the how the lottery impacted the uh um student enrollment and that sort of thing so thank you for putting this together and informing us on the great work that you're doing and um and you know here's two you know a stronger partners ship as we you know it's all about the kids as you said as you began with Mr Shay so um thank you so much very welcome and as always if you're interested in touring
032the school just reach out and we're happy to make sure someone can take you around to show you all of the parts of things that we're offering students awesome thank you very much than you great night thank you have a good evening that was great um Dr saber Maguire I turn it over to you I think we have um a consent agenda we do we have um Dartmouth um is the the Unified sports fundraising I know that this was in your packet um this is something again that I'm learning quite a bit about as uh I'm going through my first year here as superintendent in Dartmouth and again I use the word impressed a lot because I mean it's the perfect word to use here I'm so impressed with the commitment of your faculty in
033providing our uh students who are our special needs students and our general education students with opportunities to come together um in a way that I think benefits the entire School community and Beyond and so the Dartmouth Middle School is participating in the Unified sports program as you know that's in conjunction with the Special Olympics and they're they're looking to uh raise money uh there are qu quite a few opportunities that they're investing themselves in in addition to grant money that they receive from speci Special Olympics and so they're they're uh they're looking to establish a halfday cafe uh with local restaurants as a matter of fact I think I just heard Mr Nunes talk about what a positive experience that was for him this evening where he had uh gone to the Texas Roadhouse and
034that was a fundraiser for the the the high school the different classes I've been holding one one a week type of deal and tonight was the freshman class and our grandson's a freshman so we went to support them so and so that seems to be something that's benefiting the entire School Community uh it seems like every night there's a restaurant hosting some sort of fundraising opportunity for the schools and for the children of Dartmouth so obviously they're really wonderful Partners to the Dartmouth community and so they're asking that you um approve their their uh fundraising plans here it looks like they have future expect expenses around busing uniforms stiens and equipment and and they're adding the bot which is a sport that I don't know a lot about but I'm looking forward to learning about
035great thank you um motion to approve second a motion a second Dr Jenkins so I think this is great and I have no objections but as with in future this is all new just I would ask that they would just provide us with the actuals right and start to I know this is a new year so we don't know how much these things are but and I won't be here um when they come back to ask for more but um just as a general practice um to include an accounting of of what they've raised and how they spent it would be great I think so you made that point at one of our prior meetings and I know that um yeah and I know this is all new so they don't have any of that
036yet so this is totally fine but Mr Rossy is aw in in all seriousness you know especially you know the restaurants you know I mean as a as I say if I don't have to shop cook or clean perfect would love to seriously support yes the the students in in and go to a restaurant and have dinner there and support them I am all in support of that as well Mr NS thank you great so we have a we have a motion we have a second we any more discussion ready to vote all in favor hi any abstentions no passes unanimously that's great um I'll also Turn to You Dr Saba Maguire for um your superintendent update well I'm going to start with Mr Mr Kylie is going to do an update on Old business
037with long-term capital Improvement planning that's okay so um but I I think it offers us a wonderful segue I think that that's my fault Mr zal because last meeting we moved the superintendent report up you're generous yes um so but what a great segue for us to have listened to and heard about some of of the wonderful facilities that our students who are attending um Socia roke have are afforded that opportunity and that is the conversation that we're having part of the conversation that we're having here this evening I mean what a great segue I think we just heard diamonds building a $300 million facility um you know we heard about Dei positions family engagement positions we heard about modern state-of-the-art facilities for certainly our Dart some of our Dartmouth students are benefiting from that
038but that provides us I think a wonderful segue into talking about what's an important issue here in Dartmouth and that is long-term planning for our schools and so Mr Kylie has a presentation uh that he's going to go over with you and I think from if you remember we at the last meeting we presented option a now we have a few more to present to you and I'm looking forward to sharing this with you thank you Dr sa Maguire so right that we we began this conversation and it was really just um really the first time that we had talked about um long-term facilities planning since 2017 so um at a school committee level so it was an important step to begin the discussion and like to continue that tonight um to refresh everyone in
039terms of where we've been with this um really sort of modern era long-term capital planning here has been uh be sort of began in 2016 when the msba visited all of our buildings and um took a look at uh all the schools they kind of ignored the high school because it was fairly new at the time um but they focused on the rest of the building so what they determined at that time was that um the middle school was in the worst condition rated the worst of our schools uh it was in the bottom 16% of schools Statewide rated at that time kind of so you can you can rationalize that they also had some things in their rating system that I wasn't in as much agreement about um they rated Potter and Dello schools
040differently um and they're virtually the same school they were built at the same time by the same designer and contractor um they've been maintained almost exactly the same um so it was kind of interesting that they that they rated them a little differently but um so that may have been just different folks looking at them and and evaluating them but but um but uh you know I I think at that time um it sort of began the process that we knew we needed to move forward and we and we sought money from the town for um for a facilities master plan which we got and The smma Architects worked with us in 2017 to develop that plan there there's some good parts of that plan I I think um their focus which was kind of
041low hanging fruit to be honest was we should close the kushman school and I agree that that is the most logical beginning to um and goal for any long-term capital Improvement plan it's not it just doesn't make sense it's not efficient um to operate a such a small school um that is not uh in a separate part of the community that would be hard to reach right next to another school really doesn't make sense to operate aund you know now 101 year old building in that fashion so I certainly agree with that in terms of smma um what they did recommend at that time as well was to work on elementary schools so that you could close the kushman school um it's certainly an option so we're going to talk about that in a minute
042um we've had two recent subcommittee meetings um in which we talked about um basically we began by talking about our position the likelihood that the msba might want to be involved with a project here in Dartmouth um the town's possible you know ability to be able to to operate um in a in a long-term fashion and think about it think about where we need to be down the road and um and then we started to consider some possibilities during our last school committee discussion we presented an option for discussion but I do I will say that in retrospect I think that that may have been a little Hasty in that we focused on one particular project and I I don't necessarily think that that um you know no one had made a decision it was
043to begin the discussion um so I we're going to talk a little more tonight about some other options um the the long the town's long-term Capital Planning Group I I've got to say it's been very encouraging so I've been a part of three meetings um in which the the focus has been looking at the town's capacity to borrow um and what it would mean to the town to undertake a series of projects um it's it's it hasn't happened I haven't been a part of anything like that in 13 years here so this is a great step to to realize that we need to tackle um these projects and and consider at least have a plan in place in which we could attempt to implement along the way um the town does have a great deal
044of capacity in terms of borrowing when you look at it and there'll be a lot more talk about that down the road um and they're looking at a 40-year window of of um projects so that's going to mean a lot for us since you know the ages of our buildings but um the other the other thing that I thought was very encouraging is that the msba is has um has announced that they are going to open up their accelerated repair program um which is great for us because the roof is really struggling here it's it's a major problem so um I'm going to be attending that on the 14th and in the meantime I've already contacted an an engineer who we've worked with before to help us with some of the information that we're going
045to need in order to be ready to apply when um you know when it rolls out for msba so we're um we're working on that and we'll keep you posted once I find out more on the 14th so we had we had drafted these goals sort of inhouse and in the subcommittee we discussed them and we brought them to the school committee last time and and I think they're good goals but um you know the school committee can really decide if these are the right goals for us to focus on for long-term capital planning we we focused on providing an effective and appropriate learning environment for all students pretty obvious one um we need to do that and we don't have that currently so it is a goal um replace our aging buildings in a
046strategic way that can be supported by the community so so working with the the town long-term capital Improvement planning committee the um Capital Improvement planning committee at the Town level the finance committee select board Town Administration um in order to be strategic and figure out a way to roll that out I think that's our that's our goal there impact a broad cross-section of the community obviously we want to you know like closing the kushman school okay that's maybe goal but that shouldn't be the goal um we need to try and impact as many kids as we can with our plan and um so that's where we included that goal and then increase opportunities for early childhood education I think it's well we added a classroom this year in the budget we had we had to
047um we we have too many kids and we're going to have more and the pandemic hasn't uh you know has certainly only increased the need of young kids um so that's not going away and we want to be able to focus on that and we want to be able to focus focus on that in a way that's Equitable across the town we understand we're not going to be able to operate full day prek for all all Dartmouth students it's not going to happen not any time soon but we we can do is offer opportunities that would be Equitable across the town for people to have access and have an ability to to send their student to to a preschool class where right now it can be kind of prohibitive we have a very big town
048and um we have most of our classes at one school in one end of town so um one of the goals would be to you know be able to increase opportunities in one way or another either by increasing classrooms or at least offering access and feel free to stop me at any time I don't need to talk the whole time but so can I ask about early childhood education because I know right it's it's a real crisis in the state right now um both in terms of access but in terms of cost um and I don't I agree we're not in any position to offer free early childhood education um but given how much we know about the how important sort of early childhood education is to getting students on track um is the barrier
049cost or is the barrier space because if it's space I think that's an important consideration and I also think it helps build support for this because so many parents are so concerned about I mean their private preschool is very expensive so is this more is it more a cost thing or is it more of a space thing I would say it's both it's both cost and space and right now we we have the kushman Early Childhood Center which is largely uh for our students that are identified through Ida so I mean the pairs are certainly welcomed in but we exist because we're supporting the needs of our our high need students right yeah I'm just curious as like again we're not going to offer it for free but if we offer it at a if
050we have the space and we offer it at a reasonable cost where it doesn't cost the district very much or any money right we basically cover the cost I don't I don't wonder whether um a lot of parents would take us up on that given sort of the crisis that's out there and in in finding qualified providers finding safe providers I know if my kids were that age and I had the option to pay to go to the public schools I probably would do it in part because I would have confidence in the ability of the Dartmouth public school's ability to deliver a safe and quality um EXP experience for my kids there are definitely some opportunities that we could look at Dr Jenkins having come from you know Brockton just this past year we
051were involved in a grant a cppi grant that partnered the public schools with our community providers so it wasn't one or the other was how could we work together uh so I thought that that was really important at that time in that community and I think that's would be similar here in Dartmouth where we do have Early Childhood providers who we'd want to partner with so that they don't see the Dartmouth Public Schools as competitors but instead as a way that we because I think that you're 100 I know you're 100% right that we have a real crisis not only in the state but across the country in terms of being able to provide high quality Early Childhood opportunities for students um and we get I think it's half the money for uh a prek
052or age student and so working within those conf finds this something that I think we could do as a community thank you and to to um sort of reinforce your your point of trust right you you might trust the public school system to be able to do that well even more so if we were able to figure out a way where the preschool classroom that you're going to be sending your student to is in the school that they're going to be going to kindergarten in and um and moving on so I I think there's a lot of opportunities there but so I think it's worthwhile including something relating to that as to what it actually how it turns out there are some different options to look at for sure I I put this in the
053presentation pretty much every time because I I do think you know it's important that we understand that our oldest building is more than 100 years old and that we have three buildings from The Middle 1950s and one from the 60s and our probably our most pressing need is in the one that's only 21 years old which is the roof so um they don't make them like they used to they don't they don't they don't but um you know I do I do think as a frame of reference this is always important for us to consider so I was thinking when Mr Watson mentioned or actually was Mr Shay when he mentioned 1977 I'm thinking I take 1977 would be be our second uh second newest building so um but anyway so there are lots of
054options to consider for sure and um we're going to talk about three tonight there's there's more things we could do there's different variations of these options um in s in subcommittee we focused on these three and um I think they're all worthwhile considering so option A is pretty similar to the one we talked about last time which was focus on replacing the middle school with a new school and we focused on a high school um the the reason that we focused on that uh was well we'll talk a little bit more about the pluses and minuses afterwards so I won't get into that too much but what I did do in this slide was I add the fact that um the next project after that building would have to be replacing either the pot or
055jelo school and then the one after that would be replacing the other one um you're not going to get multiple projects at one time from msba you're going to have to do it gradually so you know it's not like 1955 that's not going to happen again so um so we'd have to have a plan in place and then the Quinn school would also be towards the tail end of that remember we're looking at a 40 year window um we have to spread these projects out so that's what we would be looking at option A can I ask can I ask you a question about that when when after last meeting I heard people the question that they got can you explain how would the middle school project work people are like there's not a lot
056of space there like does the middle school close while you're building a new building on the site do you build it that was the most common question like people were just trying to figure out like yeah how do how does that work cuz that middle school is in use right now so maybe could you explain that yeah I think I think I think the way it would work would be um we're not going to hold you to this but sort the high school right right that the high school would be built immediately behind the middle school or actually option A or C would work the same way okay so there would be a building built immediately behind it is somewhat challenging yeah it causes problems but this is a messy situation that we need to
057rectify so we'll be prepared to to deal with that um there it would likely be built so that it would be somewhat lower than slokum Road in terms of the main entrance because there is a fair you know fair drop on hawthor Street between between the Middle School main entrance height let's say slm Road height to um to where the baseball field is in the back I don't think it would need to be built all the way down to where the baseball field is could be built up and then the land could be adjusted somewhat so that you'd have like a logical entrance into the building um so a middle school or High School option A or C would would likely be M would remain open during construction it would have to I mean we
058have no other option that's what I was just trying to wrap my bra around it a couple people asked me that definitely not without a some challenges I mean but on the other hand I mean I've personally Liv lived through you know major renovation while kids are in a building so it can be done I mean that's that's rough this is a separate building at least so um it's it there's not a lot of room to move around there but we would figure it out and and make that happen so thank you you're welcome Mr Oliver I had a question Mr Kylie and my apologies if this came up at the last meeting I didn't get a chance to rewatch the video what would msba be willing to commit to as far as do they
059have and I maybe um you'll talk about this after you attend the uh the meeting that you're going to but what would msba be willing to commit to do they have stipulations as far as what they would prioritize over what the school committee wants like can we can we go to them and say this is what the school committee in the town is looking for and you you know yeah I mean they so for instance if we went to them and said um we want to renovate the middle school they would say no we're not going to do it because it's buil it's from 1955 the cost to renovate versus versus build new doesn't make any sense it's you wouldn't get your bang for your buck in the end in the project certainly they will
060have they they will be driving the bus the bus because they are paying 50% right right and they will hold that over our heads until we comply with what their wishes however I do think that um communities that are are prepared to move forward and that they have confidence that will fund projects they'll listen um they want to do successful projects there's we in subcommittee we talked at our first meeting a lot lot about msba projects um and it's funny because following that 2016 msba survey you would think that all of the projects following that would be targeted at the worst rated schools they were not they were targeted at communities where um they were ready to do projects and some of them were not really rated very low the schools that they were getting
061projects for S quite surprising really when when I looked because I looked at every project that they've done since 2016 and um looked at the ratings of the buildings and how old they were and the the size of the buildings and was it related to um overcrowding or things like that there wasn't a lot of overcrowding because the Massachusetts population declined but but um so there wasn't a lot of a lot of direct correlation to the building rating for what what they approve so what I believe is that they will approve things that they think are going to be important to the community um so I'm sure that they might we could put in for something and they could say h we don't like that idea they could do that okay um our hope so
062um we had we I had had a discussion with uh Chris Marky um who had uh offered to set Dr Saba Maguire and I up with somebody from msba um to talk to about this I think what we're going to do is go to that you know go attend the meeting on the 14th find out okay what's the what's the groundwork that's going to need to be done for the high school roof and any other information we can find out about how they're going to open up their projects and then hopefully sit down with somebody from msba and say are we are we off base here thinking this this in the yeah yeah but so we have that msba obviously we need msba funding to do these projects but we also need to be um
063cognizant of of trying to be a part of what the town is putting together for the long-term capital plan which is moving pretty quick pretty quickly that they're working on that so I want to have you know we want to be going in both directions at the same time for sure I have some more questions but I'll hold off okay um so option b uh is to look at elementary schools first so basically you just take what we were talking about in terms of replacing the middle school and moving it down the list um so you'd move the Potter or Dello schools up and do those and then uh and then once those were done you'd be able to close the kushman school you'd be able to rework things and then um and then you'd
064focus on the middle school and the Quinn School following that so in this in step four the Middle School stays the middle school or the middle school probably the high school it probably stays the middle school because the problem you're going to have is it it's not quite as flexible because you know building a high school would then allow this to be a middle school yeah right um it may not be as likely that msba after building two brand new elementary schools that we have grade five in would then say Oh okay that's fine we're just now going to build you a middle school with an extra grade even though we just built the elementary schools 10 and 20 years ago with those grades it probably wouldn't work out that way so most likely it
065would just be a middle school I would think at that point um not just it would be a great middle school so something to think about for sure and then replace the Quinn school at the tail end I think that's the kind of common denominator most likely um option C would be you tackle the middle school and I think this has Merit too um you could have some flexibility and you could look at fifth grade at that point and I think you could come up with a pretty good justification of why that might make sense um the whole redistricting and closing the kushman school could kind of slide around depending on the approach you took with number to replacing the middle school so it gives you a little more flexibility that way um but then
066you'd be back to okay now we've got to choose which one Potter Dello obviously you know we've talked internally about how you might choose that and you you know you obviously have to think about um the situation in in the that particular area of town and what how what you need to focus on in terms of available property that could be built out the current enrollment and so forth and and you know try and figure out what direction to go in in terms of those but that's also a little while down the road so um things change of course and then uh and then replaced the Quinn school so those are kind of three options that we considered I mean I considered others but I couldn't come up with another way that made enough sense
067to put it on paper as a as an option D but I'm open to suggestions and you know if if anybody else has anything else they want to think about in terms of the order of operations um we absolutely can talk about that so these are more like our thoughts than they are your thoughts right you haven't had a chance to talk about this so I don't want to I don't want to dominate this part of the conversation because I think what we're going to what we're going to look at here and and hope for in the in the Fairly near future and it doesn't have to be at this school committee meeting but at some point in the near future we're going to really need some preliminary direction that we can go back to
068the long-term planning committee with and say hey we really thinking that this is the direction that we want to at least put on paper for the moment and see what it looks like in terms of town borrowing down the road and how it would fit into the next 40 years so um I mean I put some advantages and disadvantages but and I'll I'll go through them but um but again it's it's more up to how you folks perceive these projects than than how I do necessarily um option A it has the most impact immediately um um you know it impacts high school kids middle school kids Elementary SK kids preschool kids it impacts everybody um I I think that placing um our sort of center of our school community at the center of the community
069has a lot of benefit um I think that you know we just we just saw that uh in your packet tonight that you have 400 400 students Dartmouth students attending GR in the Bedford Regional Vocational Technical High School right so for us to be competitive we need you know this would make sense right this would be a competitive Advantage um can I hop in for a minute of course um in regards to what you were just saying Mr Kylie and maybe this is for Dr Sab Maguire as well does Dartmouth High School currently have any recognized Innovation Pathways that the state recognized right now and if not why why don't we and is it is space an issue I I know that we don't I we have the former principal here um Who Um can
070talk more about that uh I would say space is definitely an issue I mean right here we have a band that doesn't have enough space for practice uh within the building so we know that space is an issue in this physical building right now now right so I I guess I vaguely remember at some point sitting at this table with Dr gford talking to us about Innovation Pathways and I I don't know where that was left um but I'm just curious and because certainly this leads into why we would need more space or a different type of space um because at the end of the day we're all elected and we represent the the community um so it's important to have these I think have these uh questions answered in order so we can properly
071uh answer them from community members do you want to talk about where you are with this that's not the only reason why we don't have Innovation Pathways and we are um actually part um we've had some meetings already this school year to start building innovation Pathways um it's going to take Partnerships between you know our schools public universities uh in the area and so we're starting those conversations um we've met a couple of times with Partners uh from Brockton public schools to see it's about um a lot of these these programs are about bringing them to scale as well uh High School darou size doesn't always have the number of students to you know fill multiple Pathways you can't can't be all things to everyone right so partnering with you know Brockton public schools and
072you know public universities would allow us to offer more for our students but it would require that partnership so that we could fill out um programs but certainly space is part of that equation as well depending on what path what Innovation pathway you end up uh pursuing I think the other important thing though to bring up is we heard Mr Watson say that there is a 400 student wait list um to get into sh voke so obviously there are students that are interested in attending a school that has those kind of opportunities and we don't have them here in Dartmouth so that again speaking to the competitive Advantage if we're able to offer some of those opportunities we'd have't we'd be able to keep more students in District right exactly and is my understanding that
073the Innovation Pathways we can't in order to get the funding we can't offer a pathway like a shot pathway that new beit V has correct unless they can't unless they can't accommodate our students right right and if there's a weight list then there seems to be some opportunity okay thank you that sorry for for interrupting don't be sorry please feel free um and it it also in addition to that would uh would distribute preschool across the town the fastest right we'd be able to move fifth grade into a middle School setting and then adjust accordingly at the elementary level following that so there's some advantages there um I do think there's a significant disadvantage and it is that it would be the most expensive project um so building a new high school these days like
074we were just talking bu Diamond at 300 million um ours might not be that much but it would not be an inexpensive project by any means and it would clearly be more expensive expensive than the other projects that we're talking about the other options B andc so um you know the the elementary option is it's least expensive move up front um it actually would be more expensive than C overall because of the time value of money and and escalation costs over time um you know building an elementary school first would be the least investment that the community needed to make early on in the in the process um so that is you know obviously Money Matters um it would you know positively impact a portion of the town's youngest Learners right away um so those
075kids I would think would benefit from that project immediately and then hopefully their whole academic career would be set on a you know higher trajectory because of it so I I think that's a positive too um I do think that it's difficult to decide where you go first in that in that scenario um you have two schools that you know are equivalent um so you need to pick one U so it does take multiple projects to implement to you know be implemented in order to impact families townwide so um um it might it would also take multiple projects to close kushman I would think un there are ways around that but I don't think it would be the right way so I I think um I think it would take multiple projects to get to
076that point um and it's not quite as flexible like we talked about in terms of option C where you have the ability to then adjust possibly adjust the middle school size and sort of Implement some other changes like being able to uh close the kushman school and and provide pre prek throughout Town um with option A or C you wouldn't really be able to do that with B up front um so option C is actually the least expensive of all the options um because over time it would be cheaper to build a middle school than certainly cheaper to build a middle school than the high school and it would be cheap to build that first um and get it out of the way and then build the elementary schools after that so um that is
077kind of you know and a little more flexible obviously so um you know I think when we're looking at this well I won't I'll let you folks talk about it and see see what you think rather than me make conclusions yes um so in terms of most expensive least expensive eventually this gets paid in the form of repaying the loan which gets paid by the taxpayers so that loan will be paid over a great number of years I I as the taxpayer would say well how much would I be paying for plan C versus plan a because a does seem like it make a lot of people very happy if it had nothing to do with money and if there wasn't that much difference in my taxes between a and c I would go with
078a if there's a big difference see so I would want to know that yep yep and I we'll talk a little bit about next steps but I appreciate that feedback and we'll talk more about that Dr jins so for me I think B is not is my least preferred option I think the middle school is our worst school and that's not in terms of the people or the students or the education but the quality of the building that is in the greatest need and I can remember I think we were actually sitting in Quinn school doing an executive committee meeting and it took way longer than it should have because I couldn't build a bridge over the fact that the Architects recommended the elementary schools over the middle school and so I think I like
079puzzled that out loud with you all for like 45 minutes until everyone was ready for me to shut up so I don't I can't support a plan that that that puts that really last I think our students need that most um I agree with the with that's about the question about what is the cost I think we need to know and we know that this these are not going to be hard estimates but in order for us to make a an educated decision we need to know ballpark what that difference is going to be you know 100 million 10 million like those are two very different numbers um my other concern is we think about this is the politics of it right these are going to be overrides and what if we blow it all
080on the very first building and the town never says yes again right and so if we put the middle school last or right that I I deeply worry that that's it that's all we get um I've been involved in these campaigns long enough to to have that worry me um so yeah we're developing a 40y year plan plan but there's no guarantee that the town's going to say yes because unless I'm wrong it's going to require repeated ass going back to the town right so I think we need to think about that right like what if we're only going to get one which is a high probability in this community what's the one we want um so yeah I think those are my sort of initial thoughts but I definitely probably because of the political
081risk I'm not willing to put off um the Middle School um whether we build a new middle school or build a new high school I'd want to see costs associated with that but I me personally I don't want to wait Mr noons yeah thank you madam chair uh Mr Kali Dr sa Maguire um when you look at replacing uh the Potter in the Potter in the melow schools uh type of deal what are we looking at off the you know or do you have an idea as to what the size of the school would be for the number of students type of deal I mean I think right now they're like a 500 capacity give or take if my memory is any good and and we have some blips in enrollment in the last few
082years where we've seen a fair amount of decline at the at the Dello school um you know where we're under 350 students presently so I mean it's been a pretty dramatic um you know decline in that in that building um so obviously that plays in msba is not going to build a school that is thinking you know 30% bigger than what it the current enrollment is I'm sure they're not going to do that unless they have a good reason for it we do have some factors in the community that may play a role um obviously the closing of the kushman school can play a role in that we do house currently kindergarten at the at the kushman school in addition to preschool so those are factors that you know need to be spread out throughout
083the community so depending the order you were of operations that you were to do these in you'd be factoring that in and msba would too um also growth in the community I I don't know I mean the rail is just about here you know after you know Decades of not being of talk um so you know how that impacts our student population I'm not sure um so there are other things and we're actually working on uh getting some census uh Census Data um some help with that to get a a better look at it um more scientific look and and I and I guess is if if if you look at this is a 40-year plan uh you've got five schools you know that we're looking at uh two ele you know three elementaries middle
084and high school it's almost like one project every eight years if you spread it out that way so you know does it have a chance who knows but you know that's that's the way I look at it m type of deal so yeah okay I mean it's been done in other communities but obviously it's it it's uh a challenge and and just to clarify it's a debt exclusion right it's not an override little different it's for a defined period of time it's for however long the um you know the period is typically for for a school construction it would be a 20year period although that now you can extend that to a 30-year you used to not be able to do that but you can extend it to a 30-year so essentially you're taking a
08530-year mortgage uh versus a 20 year I that's not necessarily going to be up to us to decide um that but um but those are options that are out there for sure thank you madam chair you're welcome Mr Oliver thank you madam chair uh so for me to really wrap my head around this and make a recommendation at some point uh when we're ready down the road um I would love to see some kind of uh um survey go out to the community um to just get a taste of the appetite for for the citizens in this town as to you know and this committee or Administration can certainly work on um of the facility subcommittee work on some of the the types of probing questions um but to me I think we we represent
086the the community so it's important for us to really see at because at the end of the day right we're going to need to sell this we're going to need to sell this to the community um so I think it's important that we uh we Engage The stakeholders in town um and just to if not anything else just to hear what they have to say and what their thoughts are whether maybe we put out these options to them obviously at the end of the day it's the school committee that's going to vote on moving this forward um so you know I I think that's at least the start for me um in addition to that uh Mr Kylie I'd be curious as to what are we looking at like um Dr Jenkins said estimates rough
087rough rough whether it's you know ballpark of 200 million versus 150 million um and then I would be interested in seeing the actuals on the debt exclusion um for you know by for $100 million versus $150 million and what the taxpayer would pay we can provide that for sure yeah we um get you one building May oh right oh Absolut absolutely I'm I'm I'm just using examples um maybe we should use bigger examples so we know that 200 million 250 million yeah yeah but those are large numbers and certainly scares people so remember that the town's share would be approximately 50% right depending on depending on um if it were a model school um you know there's a little extra reimbursement from the state depending on the level of efficiency of the new building there
088might also be some some uh percentage points available to us for um like if for instance we were to try and like the new thing is um in in New School construction is trying to get to Net Zero um I don't know I don't know but that that could be something that would where the state would also uh invest a little more in our buildings but but yes we we can we can work on um that's kind of in my next steps is I I really want hopefully have some direction and I think I'm getting that in terms of where we need to head um and in terms of the long-term capital planning committee um I think the beauty of that is that uh this is basically they're waiting for us to to say like
089what are the scenarios that we might be considering so that um they can see what it would look like in terms of the impact on the average home value you know average taxpayer and so forth so I I think they're ready to do that work with us so that's that's encouraging Dr Jenkins well you know I think Chris is right we need to think about what the community you know is interested in at the same point in time I think we have to be flexible about this because we are thinking about the community as a whole and if the town has something like I don't know we need a new water plant or something I'm not saying that we do but that that's really expensive and that needs to come first because it affects the
090health of the community and maybe we do so it may be that we we don't end up recommending one but we rank the options because I think again we do want to work in partnership with a town we're not the only Capital needs in this community and if we have to move things around in order to come up with a plan I think we should be flexible and we should be prepared to be flexible in that way right yeah it's a it's a great point and I I've got to say like right from the start with that long-term capital planning committee the discussion was no one was entrenched so it was yeah there are other needs we know that like I I know that everybody everybody there understands that there are other things that are
091also important so it's not a fight this is about creating something that's meaningful for the community moving forward and understanding that there are going to be priorities and and you know let's face it a 40-year capital Improvement plan is not going to end up being exactly what you put down on paper and we all understand that one thing that you know might be of interest is if if the committee were interested in having one of its members come to the long-term capital planning committee um we have had some other members of appointed boards there and I've been been representing the the school committee but I'd be happy to have one of you and I don't know whether it's a member of the fields and Facilities uh subcommittee who'd be interested or any of you um
092I'd be happy to have you there uh at those meetings with me and you know assisting and and offering your input and the next one is next week on the 15th so can we also to follow by Mr Oliver's suggestion of a survey maybe we might want to work with the town like I could Envision something where we asked about schools on one page other needs on another page and then the third page is around and you rank them right um so because there's no sense in doing two separate surveys right could certainly bring that to the committee next week to that not it's not a committee the long-term capital planning whatever you want to call them group and uh and offer that up that that would be a great uh great suggestion I think
093so I'll just I'll just close with you I think obviously bringing the high school back to the the center of town would would be beneficial in a lot of ways but I also am very cognizant and recognize the difficulty of this building even being built um and how hard um people fought for this building um so um you know it's it's tough it's tough to make one one decision over another right now at this time so uh that's all I have thank you um I I mean I agree with everyone's contribution to this discussion um very thoughtful so thank you uh I just wondered um in my notes what others haven't really asked I guess um when you talk about like a difference in cost between building a middle school and building a high school
094I'm I'm thinking about the discussion earlier around you know not necessarily per pupil space but per activity space per 21st Century Learning space per um Innovation you know um Pathways and all of the you know things that we really want our students to have access to or strive to be a part of you know from look forward to being part of this community moving forward um you know talked about the band not having enough space and the competitive nature of everyone fighting for space in our you know between the track or indoor you know courts and that sort of thing um what is the difference um what are the things that make a building a middle school um less expensive than building a new high school it's a good question um I mean first of
095all typically a high school is a larger building than a middle school um just based on enrollment right you usually have three three grades versus four um although we may not be seeking that right so that would have some impact but it is also based on programming right the what we have in in this building um that we utilize versus of course our our Middle School was a high school so there's quite a quite a bit of space in there that you might not have in a normal uh in a normal middle school but um but it's based on the programming that we offer and the variety of programming that we offer and um you know I think it would be hopefully um significantly more advanced than this building um if it were a new
096high school but I you know I think what might be helpful I can see construction costs have been problematic and there's not a lot of new buildings because the msba can't afford a lot of new buildings right that these projects have been been so expensive that they had to shelf roof repairs right and say we can't do roof repairs anymore because the other projects are eating up the things they had already committed to were eating up all the money but what I can do is share some of the current projects throughout the state and begin to get an idea of they're not necessarily going to be exactly similar to this project but um of the magnitude and the ones that I've seen it's been fairly significant the difference between a high school and a middle
097school um but it's significant and then we pay half of it so that's a little less significant then but still still it's going to be it's going to be a decision to make you know for sure and I really appreciate Dr Jenkins thinking a little bit more about surveying um I I wrote public hearing and then Chris said survey uh and doing it together that was Chris's idea oh sorry Chris give credit to in conjunction with adding on you know making sure that we're being mindful of of having it be part of a larger surveying of all of the uh proposed projects for um this 40-year plan when I'll be 90 um so and actually if you could speak about the timeline of of any project we talk about me being 90 in 40 years
098but um we're talking about impacting hopefully impacting doing all of it right you know least amount of money largest impact bang for our buck all of that um but the reality is whatever we roll out uh what what is the time frame yeah I mean I think you know best case scenario like all this just falls into our lap in the state has no other projects and they really want to do something here um they I I would say that it would probably be four years before a building could be constructed um at Absolute minimum best case right and it likely would be more than that it's you know we got to be realistic it would likely be more than that so it's it's a way off um we're not even at you know we're
099not even we would need to be ahead of where we are we don't even know what the state is doing yet for msba so once we know that we'll have a little bit of better idea of timeline whether we could move a project forward this year I don't really even know um if that's realistic it might not be so that would push it out a year and then there's a feasibility if if we were to be lucky enough that msba wanted to work with Dartmouth which again I think that we have some favorable they haven't done first of all msba has not done a major renovation or construction project with darmouth this building was not part of the msba program this was part of the Department of EDS SBA program was one of the last
100buildings built under that program and they went out of business after that but um but but um you know I so I think that we might be a candidate um we have borrowing capacity we have very low debt in this town extremely low so compared to other communities so we are set to you know be a candidate for projects and maybe that would make us attractive but I do think that if we were lucky enough then there would be a feasibility study period that would take a while like maybe a year and then there would be a design hopefully that follows that that would then take a year to design um and then construction would take a few years couple years probably probably two years depending on the size of the building that's very helpful
101because that really tells the story of it's not just you know we could survey the students to see their best you know the dreams of what their school might look like but this really is going to impact our our really young new families in in the community to say you know if they're planning to you know they young family and their little infant might be utilizing uh one of our new buildings by the time they're of of age and in school so um it's really important that the community recognize that um that that's part of of the whole equation Mr no yeah thank you madam chair I mean just to follow along on that timeline uh you're you're looking at for discussion purposes students that are in second and third grade at this point in
102time maybe if you know the stars all align as they say being able to walk into a new high school type of deal you know and then you know students you know other students being able to you know move into a middle school and all you know that type of deal so there's a lot of you know that's a positive aspect of it type of deal but that's where you know it's those students there that are are the ones that you know we have to be looking at and is going to be you know on the front burner yeah and I mean just now the construction the public construction industry hasn't recovered from coid I mean we're getting some timeline shocks with looking at you know 80 to 100 weeks for certain types of products
103in public construction like so that's like if you order it you get it in two years and then you can start building it so even after we go through all that just the the backlog and ordering has been I mean I hope it comes down sometime soon because right you can't get anything done yeah for sure it's certainly a challenge but um certainly worthwhile considering so I'll I appreciate all your your input there that is very helpful um few other things that we just need to think about though depending on the approach you take um the dmouth Memorial Stadium some something that should be you know I was just there I was there Friday night with lots of other people and still needs some work by the way it was uh $6 million our bid
104came in and we don't obviously don't have that so um but something that should still stay on the radar um you know in terms of renovation of this building at some point way down the road yeah you have to think of that too and then depending on what you choose lots of other things need to be maintained right so the HVAC systems in the buildings the windows the roofs the athletic fields the security fire safety technology all of those things are are things that are going to have to going to have to be maintained um and depending on how this process looks and ends up being implemented we going to have to face those um for instance I I I was part of the Quinn roof project well that was right when I started and
105it's going to have to be replaced in like 18 years so it might have to be replaced even if it's on this list in the 40-year window it might have to be replaced telan kushman's about 19 years out most likely it'll need to be replaced Potter about 20 years from now and the darmouth middle school if we don't do if we don't Target that project we'll need to be replaced 20 to 25 years down the road so um lots of other things are more pressing need than the roofs but those are big projects the roofs are obviously in terms of like Windows and Doors HVAC and so forth those those things you know we're going to have to tackle some of those things um before then but things to think about um so we've had
106some discussion tonight I think some good discussion um we've talked a little bit about prioritization and things to look at but I I do think that we can bring back to that long-term capital planning Comm ite some ideas and get some more information from them and I can do some more work in terms of research and cost estimates and so forth and bring some more information maybe back to the subcommittee first and then back to you folks um and then to Chris's uh suggestion and Mr Oliver's suggestion and you know Community awareness we we need to First gauge you know what uh what the what the appetite is in the community but then also keep them aware of the process along the way and try and you know build support so but those I think
107the wonderful thing is is that you obviously all just named all of our next steps as part of the discussion that we just had so thank you Mr n thank you madam chair you know and just going excuse me just going back to other considerations with the renovation and the stadium and everything else is the fact that you know as I mentioned at the subcommittee is yeah you know the turf fields already you know has a life of about 15 years give or take depending on how much it's used Etc like anything else you know it's four years in already and you know in an 11 years that's going to have to we're going to have to look at getting that fixed yep replaced that's for sure yeah never ending battle mhm thank you thank
108you sir thank you thank you ma'am thank you and so now I will turn it over to Dr superintendent report thank you so much um so first M oh I Mr Nunes we are going to talk about M it's Sor my fault not that I'm looking to I thought I missed I missed one I apologize so um I and I know we had mentioned this at an earlier date that overall we're pleased with the mcast scores uh we certainly saw significant growth moving back toward what some consider to be Pand pre pandemic student achievement um and at the same time I think it's important that we recognize and I think you'll see in the presentation and Mr Tal's going to join us but I think what you're going to see in the presentation is that
109there's still work left right we still we always have the work in front of us we haven't fully recovered from the pandemic as people refer to it as the pandemic slide um and Mr Nunes with that in mind mcass is only one measure of student achievement um and so we'll talk about other things that we're truly celebrating here in the Dartmouth schools but mcast is one measure and it is an important measure for us as a school community and so with that I'm going to turn it over to Mr tbolt and he's going to give you an overview again this is a District overview of how the community of Dartmouth um uh faed this past year thank you Dr Sabre Maguire and thanks uh to members of the school committee I'd like to say you
110saved the last presentation for the the the last presentation for the best but it's m cassen so it is what it is um so as Dr Sabre McGuire said uh this is really a highlevel kind of District uh overview of how we fared on mcass uh in 2023 but I always like to start with reminding folks what mcass is um and why it's important and so mcass is a comprehensive assessment system that is uh used to measure how our students are doing on grade level standards uh and for ELA and Mathematics that occurs from grades three through eight and then again at grade 10 and for science Technology and Engineering that's at grade five grade eight and then at the high school um which for Dartmouth High School occurs after for most students uh after
111nth grade and that's um biology is is the exam that most of our High School uh students take um why does mcast matter um one reason is it's one measure as Dr s McGuire said it's one um data point that shows how our students are progressing in comparison to other students across the Commonwealth um but at the high school it ALS also takes on some added weight because it's in part used to determine whether or not students graduate with a high school diploma and so it takes on a little bit more weight at the high school um level I also this slide might look uh familiar to most folks who were on the committee last year when we presented we um purposely included again this year because I think it's important to frame our mcast
112results in the context of what occurred uh during Co 19 uh learning loss is definitely a very real thing thing uh the impact of coid is a very real thing um when the department of Ed held their uh conference call earlier this year they actually framed it around trying to get back to the pre-pandemic achievement levels and performance levels um and so that's 2019 so four years ago already um but it's just I think uh important to know uh to note rather that although coid is over we are not back to normal right um I know that folks would like to think we are we all wish we were but we really have a long road of recovery ahead of us um in terms of how disruptive the pandemic was to to Student Learning so
113some Trends across the state for Massachusetts um the department of Ed was cautiously optimistic that the pandemic slide or the um you know the pandemic slide was halted uh particularly for ELA and math um and they also noted that stte results you know science technology engineering results were fairly unchanged but that there were some slight declines um overall uh in in St as well but the biggest takeaway um I think from the state's um conference call earlier uh this year was that our youngest Learners who were probably most impacted by coid they're just starting to enter the testing the the mcast uh window so our our grade three results that you'll um that were included in this data those students were in kindergarten when the pandemic began and for our current third graders who are
114just going to take mcast for the first year now they entered kindergarten during that hybrid year that year that was also very disrupted so um we're going to see the impact of coid in our data for several years ahead um and it just again um I think is a cautionary Tale for us all to be mindful of even though the pandemic is in the rearview mirror its impact is not it's very much remains with us some trends for Dartmouth Public Schools um in terms of ela um well I guess I would just say overall Dartmouth as Dr Sabre mcgu said uh performed strong in comparison to the state um as we typically do so that's certainly something to celebrate and be proud of we have uh significantly um more students who are in the exceeding
115or meeting expectations performance level uh in ela and math in comparison to the state and we also have significantly lower percentage of students who are not meeting expectations on those exams as well and that's true for grades three through eight as well as grade 10 in ela and math um and in terms of St we slightly exceeded the percentage of students meeting or exceeding expectations in grades five and 8 and we were just below um where the state uh performed in terms of meeting and exceeding expectations uh at the high school level this chart here kind of gives a high level overview not just of our exceeding and meeting expectations students but of all the performance levels and again as a reminder um or for those of you who maybe aren't as familiar the um
116performance levels are exceeding expectations meeting expectations partially meeting expectations and then not meeting expect uh expectations and so obviously we want as many students as possible in the upper two categories of either meeting or exceeding um and that's really uh our Focus uh every year is to try and grow all students and kind of um help move all students to the to the next category uh performance level if you will another um measure on mcast that's often overlooked is student growth percentile and this is a measure to determine uh whether or not students are growing in comparison to peers who performed similarly on the previous mcast so um typically uh you know we'd like to see between 40 and 60 um that's considered typical growth um obviously we'd love to see high growth uh which
117is 61 to 100 um you can see from this slide that darmouth falls into that typical growth category across the board for grades 3 through eight as well as grade 10 um and if you're wondering why science doesn't have SGP listed it's because the state does not calculate SGP for science because it's not given as frequently as Ela and mcast which is given in every grade from three through eight and then again in 10 so here's a slide that's really important it shows the that long road to recovery that uh I've referenced already a few times and it's a a slide that's modeled after a similar one that the state shared with all of the district level leaders um but it really shows the difference between that 2019 that last uh normal school year if
118you will that pre-pandemic performance and where we were in 2023 so the bad news is there's clearly uh significant work to be done to get to the pre-pandemic um levels the good news is in a community like Dartmouth we were stuck starting from a high Baseline right we consistently outperform the state so those numbers in 2019 were higher than the state as well um so you know that That's the Silver Lining if you will um and you can you'll note that in grades three through eight in mathematics for example that difference is only one percentage Point um so you know great progress in that area grade 10 Ela mcast is you know uh at that four um minus four so we're in the ballpark there as well we're going to continue to um work hard
119to make sure that we're closing uh this slide and um reaching the or exceeding really the pre-pandemic levels because that's the ultimate goal one of the other areas that we really want to look at as well is we want to start to dive into our student subgroups um so this chart here uh and the next several charts all show you know this is Ela the next one will be math and the last one is science but it shows two student subgroups the first one is all students which is exactly what it sounds like right it's how every student uh in grade three through eight in performed um the high needs student subgroup is any student who is a multilingual learner so any student who ever received ESL Services any student um with a disability Andor
120any student who um call ifies for free or reduced uh lunch so is economically disadvantaged um and the reason um we highlight these subgroups is because we we our performance we don't want gaps right our our mission statement is a quality education for all Learners we want that to be the case in terms of outcomes as well and so it's a matter of equity and so we just want to make sure that we're doing everything we can to if there are gaps where there are gaps to understand why and to do our best to support all learners ERS and again these these um you know the breakdown here this is nothing um unique to Dartmouth this type of data is um you know found in every Community across our state and Country all right so
121I think it's important as well to kind of look at how Dartmouth compares to similar districts in terms of our demographics the department of Ed does this for us by identifying or cohorting us with 10 similar districts um the the tool that the state uses is called the dart tool um and so they just group they select these 10 districts these are not districts that we cherry-pick it's the state says okay based on enrollment based on the percentage of students who are high need students based on the percentage of low-income students that you have students with disabilities uh English language Learners these are the districts that are most similar to you um and that's a helpful comparison for for us to see how we perform uh compared to other districts that are like us and
122you can see um from the chart that we are more than Dartmouth more than holds its own against similar districts in fact we're above the the mean um for this group of districts across the board um for the most part but just to highlight some of the areas here in grades 3 through eight darmouth had the highest percentage of students meeting or exceeding expect expectations in our Dart districts so that's certainly something to be celebrated our SGP uh in ela for grades three through eight was also the highest uh in this Dart cohort and again that sup is so important it shows that all students are learning so um whether students exceeded expectations on the last mcast or were partially meeting what have you it Compares our our students to like performing students uh to
123show how they've grown uh for grades three through 3 through eight for math uh meeting or exceeding expectations again um highest percentage in our Dart District um so more to be proud of there with SGP for grades three through eight in math Dartmouth had the second highest uh in our Dart group for grades five and eight on the St in terms of percentage of students meeting exceeding standards we are um right in the mid-range of our of our do District just a little just slightly above um the mean there for grade 10 in terms of our Ela meeting and exceeding expectations we are um darmouth high school was the third highest in our D district and uh for SGP for grade 10 Dart students had the third highest SGP as well I want to just
124take a second to highlight um SGP at the high school level last year was an area that we identified when we presented as a room for for growth for us and I'm proud to share that the the teachers um you know and our students have really done a nice job in this area and it's reflected here in our data for math Dartmouth High School has the second highest percentage of students meeting or exceeding in our Dart District and then for SGP again at 49 um I know our our Math teachers were very um you know pleased when they looked at their data to see that we were right at that typical growth um you know which again was an area last year that we identified as um an area where we could see some improvement
125and then finally for St uh for the high school we were just um we're just below the mean uh in terms of our performance for students meeting or exceeding uh expectations uh on the St exam in high school we also recognize that you know for members of the community some of those districts Triton for example I had no idea where Triton was um so I I looked it up when I saw it as part of our DOT District Mr news but we wanted to um include Bristol County districts so that you know people are familiar with um Fair Haven and Westport and Somerset and seon and SW and communities that are are closer to us um the one um and we're holding we're more than holding our own in this grouping of of uh districts
126as well the one cautionary um tale I would say is probably better to use the median in this group because we do have Taunton New Bedford and Fall River which are large Urban centers which kind of skew that the the average skew the mean um so using the median as a comparison is probably a little more accurate um to get a sense of where we fall um but we wanted to include that data for you as well all right so I think if I was sitting there my question would be so what are we really doing to address the learning loss and to make sure we're on a strong road to recovery um from the co 19 pandemic and so efforts to accelerate learning include things like ensuring great appropriate instruction occurs at each level
127in each building every single day across our district uh we have a strong commitment to that um we also continue to leverage Grant um and District funds to provide additional learning enrichment and support opportunities and again um those show up in things like the the middle schools uh after school programming that we've had for a number of years uh at this point it shows up in things like the acceler atomies that we've run during vacation weeks as well as during the summer um just this past August we ran literacy accelerated Academy as well as a math accelerated Academy we were able to service about just under 200 um students um you know and that's intense um several hours of instruction uh in literacy or math so we are taking action and leveraging funds um strategically
128so that we can can address these um challenges in addition to that last year we spent the year the curriculum Council as well as the district leadership team updating our district curriculum accommodation plan to make sure that we have clear um and effective teaching strategies to support students so that they can access grade level appropriate material um and that's being implemented this year across the district um and again we continue to focus on high quality teaching and learning so our buildings have all dug into their mcast data at the building level conducted item analyses um really trying to understand you know where we outperform the state where we're maybe not as doing as well and then more importantly why and what can we do about it does it require you know curriculum um uh um
129tweaks does it you know what is it that we need to do in response to it and and those decisions are um examined during common planning time and implemented by teachers and building leaders across the district we're also um Mrs Pavo and the curriculum Council worked last year to um develop a curriculum review cycle that will be in the process of implementing um moving forward and again the idea behind that is to make sure that students have high quality instructional materials um you know across the board and with that we'll answer any questions thank you thank you thank you Mr tibo for the presentation um certainly I think it's fairly good news uh for the for the dmouth public schools um great presentation and I appreciate all the data um personally I like looking at
130the the D data as well as um I appreciate you throwing in the Bristol County data because I thought you know if I'm a family right because all this information gets reported out to the state it's publicly available and then you have real estate agents and you have other different USA Today I think uh World reports they they rank school districts on a lot of this data and it's good to see that especially for this area from a family um looking to move into a town in in Bristol County that we're not too shabby when you look at our um our grade 10 scores actually all of our scores including our our sgps um we're holding our own in Dartmouth for sure there's definitely some work that that could be done um of no I
131I'm I'm just curious uh looking at the Bristol County information that um I'd love to know what Mansfield is doing and for grade 10 to get those uh U those scores of 76 and 75 um so uh just throwing that out there I'm just curious on their curriculum or something that they're doing but overall uh this is great I'm I'm I'm proud of the work that we that everyone is doing here in in Dartmouth I so I appreciate you saying that about you know what is Mansfield doing because that is something we always want to do is learn from one another in the dis in um this profession and we certainly don't um show the comparison in terms of for comp competitive sake although we are all competitive I think but it's more to do
132exactly what you just said is to see how we stack up and and if there are lessons to be learned from other districts we should do that one of the other points I I just wanted to highlight because I forgot to mention it um is that I do think the return on investment for education in Dartmouth is um extremely strong Mr Kylie did uh look at the per pupil expenditure uh for both the dart and for Bristol County um and dart was you know about 3% um lower than than the average in those two groups so I think that speaks to the return on investment right um bang for your buck um definitely uh is a strong point for Domin public schools and we appreciate certainly all the support that we get from the community
133so thank you Mr TBA thank you um so I'm curious about the additional learning opportunities and um what we need what more we need to do um do we need more teachers tutors um I'm concerned with our Esser positions is that going to take away from our ability to keep our students moving forward and catching up um uh so what are what are the hurdles um is IT personnel is it losing those people in the future so I I think um you raised some good points I think that particularly given the budget discussion that the community is going to be having I would say now is not the time to to turn away because we know that the needs are going to be here for a number of years um to come and I think
134it is people and it is Personnel that are servicing our students on a daily basis and I think that's the bulk of our budget is Personnel so um you know I I I I I think you rais highlight a very important Point th those are ongoing conversations that we're having and I know Mr Kylie had um presented at the last meeting a preliminary preliminary preliminary yeah um budget presentation and you know we meet about this I would say just about every day and we're meeting with principles right now to have these conversations and these are the kind of things that that we're talking about but we have a little ways to go before we're really able or ready to come forward to the community to talk about um you know what the possible challenges of
135of the implications of the budget could have on the schools but as Mr tbot just said the majority of our budget is human capital and so if we're looking at any significant budget cut cuts it would be to Capital and we do need people and the folks different than and what we heard earlier um from from the votch school is I mean they they obviously made wise Investments with their funds and I think Dartmouth also made wise Investments with the funds and I've said this before that at the time the immediate need here in Dartmouth was for personnel um and you heard them talk about things like they have positions family engagement there isn't a family engagement specialist here in Dartmouth um so and other things the capital Improvement I saw the nurse's office by
136the way and it is it is truly state-ofthe-art um and that's for student use that that isn't part of their CTE program that is really part of how Stu what students are um what they have access to and it was quite different than what we have here and that's not a terrible terrible thing it's just something for us to look at but Personnel is critical for us yeah sure thank you Mr TBO I know we kid all the time my opinion of mcast and such but I do appreciate this and and uh the students effort and everything else I am assuming that you're able to drill down to you know the finer points of this with the students and everything else and you know and I don't mean to single out the students but know
137exactly you know did the student have a bad day does the student not test well things of that nature and make adjustments as they as you go forward with this yeah so there's a plethora of reports that the state puts out um you can see exactly individual student performance you can see subgroup performance you can see um based on individual questions and what standards those questions are meant to measure so um that work is typically done um at the building level because every you know School uh is different grade level is different um but yes absolutely okay and you know with and as uh Mr Oliver said you know looking at you know both the Bristol County and also the uh the uh the the dart that they gave us uh you know that they
138compare us to uh I agree I kind of like Bristol County better only because you know you're looking at a whole bunch of different you know and you happen to mention driton type well that's a if my memory is any good that's a regional school so you have a whole bunch of different communities that are in there versus you know ad Doats or a f Haven or you know that type of deal so that's my two cents thank you madam chair Dr Jenkins so I agree with my colleagues I think this is great I really do think Dartmouth gets um real bang for its buck and in terms of what we do and what our staff do um but I do want to ask some questions about the science Technology and Engineering scores um that
139seems to be an area where we're struggling and I also noticed in particular that the decline at the high school level was from 22 to 23 and it was quite large and I'm you know we have science departments my colleges you know goes from the humanities and the social sciences we give us a book and a computer and we're good um to The Sciences and Engineering which are they're not just human intensive they are capital intensive you need lab supplies you need lab equipment you need the most advanced technology um I know our science and engineering and Technology teachers are excellent um is any of this a reflection of our inability to keep up with other districts in terms of the Technology and Engineering and all of that stuff in a classroom that that that
140they need for 21st century uh education so I think there's a lot to the science results in particular um at the high school level in particular it's only the second time we've given the Next Generation science exam so last year was the first year uh and then this was the second year um I also think that when we look at and we had a very preliminary kind of conversation uh Mrs poo myself Dr s Maguire um when we look at the elementary level we're very focused on literacy and math and not as focused on as on science um curriculum materials need to really be looked at in those areas all of those things factor into that the other thing that I noticed um was that Bristol County in general didn't do great on the science
141technology engineering exam so um I think that's you know there's something to that piece of it as well I don't have an answer I wish I did um but I guess um you know I I I spoke with um Mrs lson our um science Lead Teacher um her the biology team at the high school was looking into their data and really doing an analysis I don't think it's a matter of funding to be completely honest I know that our biotech lab some of our Labs Dr bangs has done a very good job leading the science department um and making sure our labs are state of the art a few years back we had the Capital skills grant that kind of um some of those funds were used to strengthen the biolab so I think it's
142more a combination of different factors and not just um certainly not the funding piece I don't believe so can I follow up with that too in in your presentation you noted that our students and this is my experience with my kids they take the Bio exam um are there other options for the science Technology and Engineering and like how does does that work are we comparing Apples to Apples in other communities are there multiple versions of the science technology exam um have we considered allowing students to take other options if that is a possibility so that's a good question there are multiple versions of the science test at the high school level um many schools do take biology um some schools do take a physics first approach um we don't do that that um you
143know that's certainly something that could be discussed um but um you know we have typically our students if they do take another version of the science uh exam it's because they have to take a retest option and they're no longer in biology so then we would have them um perhaps take a different exam other times they retake the biology and we support them either they might enroll in a marine biology class assuming they've passed bio um you know our biology class in ninth grade so um in terms of what other districts are doing I can't tell you spec I would have to look that up but I would say most of the districts are bio yeah if they're taking different tests it might be a different sort of comparison and not that it's different than
144right Math versus math right correct just I just want to add to your question too because I and I agree we're looking at high school we're talking about high school one thing that Mrs paa we've all had conversations about that we have not in the in the district from to my knowledge and again four months in here um we have not made a significant investment in science resources at the elementary level so those if those resources aren't there I mean we can't fault our Educators for not um teaching science with the Fidelity that we would expect and we can't expect students in ninth grade to be able to uh learn everything there is about science in their freshman and sophomore years of high school and I know Mrs paa wants to talk about this because
145I just saw her jump up um so I will add a couple of things to this first I just want to thank Mr tibo for um really kind of taking the Reign on This MC I've had a lot of other things that I have been um had my hands in and so I was really appreciative of him taking this on I I have a couple things to say about the science the other thing we have to remember is that science by and large is a Hands-On activ ity and the science scores across the state took a decline and I I really do believe that a a large reason for that is we had a couple of years where we weren't allowed to put our hands on anything right so the other thing we have to
146remember is our kids were shifting their learning and the way that they were learning from doing Hands-On activities and experiments and getting in an understanding to really having to glean that information out of a textbook from videos from Mystery Doug if you know anything about elementary science he's a he's the man at the moment um and so the other other thing you know the kids are only tested in fifth and eth grade so the test in high school obviously the test is a compilation of the topics that they would have learned over those years so we have to remember the modality and the way that they were learning was very was shifted and to Dr s McGuire's point it was shifted away from something that we had already kind of created ourselves so we haven't
147really gone through our our uh science team is going to go through that curriculum revision process and be looking for some high quality research-based instructional materials in the area of science um because it is an area of the curriculum that you know post pandemic we were worried about our kids reading and their math and we did a lot of integration of social studies and science into those areas but science also needs to stand alone and be able to be a subject that we teach and talk about how to integrate the ELA and the math into science right it's it's sort of a reciprocal relationship and so we have to look at all of those things but also remember that our our kids are um learning and new in different ways and we have to make
148sure that we have the resources and the curriculum materials that reflect that um and and give them that solid building block because that test that they take in fifth grade in eth grade in high school is not just on that one year of information it's a compilation of information all the way across so I'll just close by saying I don't disagree but right it is the only area where we fall below the median as compared to Bristol County and to other districts and so I just think it's something that you know Mr TBO said we really focused on this and we really you know we really improved I can't remember what it was I think maybe 10th grade ELA and I hope that moving forward that this that the science um uh you know curriculum
149the integration and the testing because there is something going on there and that is nothing about our Educators I mean I know all of our Educators they are really great um in this area my kids took a ton of science classes they love their science classes they they were really good class classes but you know I'm hopeful um given too right how much how many students want to go into stem Fields um to make sure that our students are ready and adequately prepared to enter into top level universities in those fields that's it thank you thank you any else um I guess my only um I know that the in one of my previous roles um policy and advocacy I know that some legislation that is pending for the Department of Elementary and secondary education
150to take the data that we provide them and to um publish it in a way that allows for cross tabulation and really spe getting into the nitty-gritty around um different groups of students um so that at at any rate we provide that data to them and I'm just just curious in terms of lumping the high need students students with disabilities students with uh socioeconomic um are we able to I heard somebody there drill down to the nitty-gritty because I know we give that data to desie and I hopefully desie will then publish it for folks to really make some more Equitable decisions in their um planning so they do publish it okay it at some point it becomes like trying to take a drink of water out of a fire hose though right because there
151is so much data that you can get lost in it right so that's why you notice we group the grades three through eight I could have we could be here all night we can go grade three grade four grade five you know same for our student subgroups by the grade level like there is so much data and that the department of Ed does publish it um so I guess the answer to your question is absolutely there's no shortage of data um coming from the Department of it and we are as a district examining that data yeah by subgroup yeah so I think that's part of your question and that is happening at the school level thank you thank you very much this is great thank you I do have one question and I'm not sure
152one last one are we internally benchmarking students in science anywhere using any kind of benchmark assessments so we yes we do the the answer is yes we do you at least at the high school level um the um the biology Team all of the teams really have common benchmark assessments that they that they give that they compare results on um so yes and as I shared um each teacher was looking at their own uh data or were about to be looking at their own data a week or so ago when I met with Mrs Larsson um and looking at the major uh strands um you know ecology Evolution um there were two others um and and so really taking a focused look at how our students performed by standard uh if you will great thank
153you thank you very much thank you okay thank you thank you Mr tbol Nice really wonderful job um again we know we have work to do uh so this is really just a snapshot of how we did as a school district and there's a lot to be proud of in there um and at the same time we're having conversations all the time about how do we get better because uh it's always our goal to be better than the year before because when we say we were talking about our students and our students performance levels so we'll continue to focus on that you asked about uh uh benchmarks I love that question and you know at this point at the elementary level we aren't benchmarking students in science and that's something that we need to take
154a look at and again going back to Dr Jenkins question about resources we do need to to some instructional resources in the district and science is definitely a priority um so do you want me to just keep going so just a couple of things that I I know I'm a broken record but Kimberly redlon will be join will be joining us November 20th as our new assistant uh director of student support services and she's going to come and introduce herself so she's going to be like you know this person we've been talking about for a number of months now she is going to be here with us on the 20th and again the broken record is we continue to seek applicants for educational support professionals that is going to be ongoing throughout the year and
155we're encouraging our viewers our residents if you know somebody please encourage them to apply to those positions because they're truly needed and again the same thing for our substitute situation um as far as climate and culture I had mentioned at the last meeting that I'm still working toward meeting with each of the school districts PTO I've been able to do just about all of them meet with them on an ongoing basis uh the I have the Quinn coming up but remember the main goal there is not only to meet with folks and get and get to know people and what the individual schools areas of focus are but also out of this to create a superintendent pack that will be accessible for uh School folks I mean parents across the district and similarly similarly we're
156doing the same thing with with our Educators um today just today uh Katie Pavo and I were at the Quinn school meeting with the school's certified staff just to talk to them again about the superintendent entry planning and how that their voice is so important and will impact the results of that entry planning and how we're really going to need them to help us help to to help to inform us as to what our next steps are Katie Pao just mentioned that she's been busy and she's had her hands in lots of different things so I want to acknowledge that work that's been done not only by Mrs Pavo but also um it's our central office staff um Jen sh masad who has been out in the hotels working to register our newcomer children and
157we have I would say at this point 24 26 as of Wednesday right about 24 to 26 students that have uh joined the Dartmouth Public Schools I have to say I'm incredibly heartened to see the welcome that these children these students have received from each of the schools we've been in constant contact with our school leaders and hearing from them uh that the teachers have been thrilled to welcome new children into their into their school into their classroom communities the children have also been equally welcoming uh we've been able to purchase little pocket translators so that when our students enter school they have I think it's about this big um but they have and I think we've got lanyards on them now oh not yet but we're working on it so that our youngest stud
158oh was that Mr Oliver did you help us with that thank you okay uh so those are going to be really helpful uh but again many of these students not all of them but many of them are learning to speak English our principles our teachers our El teachers I want to tell you have gone above and beyond to welcome our students into school and you should be proud of the work that they're doing um I know that it's not only about our students who are living in you know the the hotels not the most ideal situation but we all know that homelessness is a huge issue in our country and and so that is impacting the Dartmouth public schools and what we've had to do is spend more time thinking about what the mckin vinto
159ACT is how it impacts our school district and how under that act we support our students and our families the way that not only the law dictates but beyond what the law dictates doing what's right for the families that are impacted and do fall under mckin vinto so at our next school committee meeting um we have we are planning to have a presentation about mckenny vinto so that we can not only educate the public but just give everybody an update uh as to what the mckin vento ACT um actually is about and how we are supporting our students in the Dartmouth schools and so I just want to say though like on an upbeat note and that is upbeat right so we have the darmouth we we care I don't this this little newspaper is
160the best advertisement for the D Dartmouth Public Schools so I want to thank them because in it I picked it up and I thought well this could say the Dartmouth Public Schools so we have so much to celebrate here in Dartmouth starting right with Dartmouth Junior nabs top prize in math competition and those are equally important things to we have you know the obvious public uh the public celebration of our football team we have our band I know Mr noones is definitely going to update you on where we are with that so I won't steal any of that Thunder I've learned that along the way um uh we also have two students who have won an miaaa essay and multimedia contest and that's a state way Statewide contest and there are only two Awards in
161the state Tabitha cabal Elliott and Molly Cunningham are receiving in this award Thursday night at Gillette Stadium and they're receiving that award in front of 1,500 people so we have our Dartmouth High School junior step way who really wasn't expecting to win the Invitational mathematics meet at Worcester poly Institute on October 20th but he did in fact win so that is really incredible news and something I think we should all be celebrating and then as I flip through I see you Mass Dartmouth in here as well Dr Jenkins so lots to celebrate there uh Dartmouth High School art hangs in the New Bedford Gallery X so our students artwork is being highlighted celebrated um in new bedford's Gallery X has anybody been there yet I was there this weekend was a great great show high
162school outwork that's that's exactly what this says we have the Potter Dello kushman and Quinn Elementary Schools I love this this um headline scare up a good time at annual Halloween events and so every one of our elementary schools celebrated with their students for Halloween and I never really knew much about trunker treating but I've learned that Dartmouth is absolutely committed to trunker treating and that there is quite a bit of participation in the community and then you have because we're not done right so then we have Dartmouth fall Sports qualifies for state tournaments we have football we know we were at the football game Friday night well some of us were and it was really exciting it was a little bit of a nailbiter um I wasn't too happy with that because I had
163just said something that my husband said I think you just jinx them um so now I've learned not to say award until the game is over we have field hockey uh we had our boys soccer team I think played tonight this afternoon L at 4: I I don't I don't know the result do we have any updates when I came by at 5:00 it was nothing nothing yes I don't know that's what I didn't get a chance to see what quad or what you know that type of deal but our girls soccer team we know made it into the tournament and I think they lost one to nothing um yes but still something to be celebrated and then of course we have the Dartmouth High School Marching Band which I love this sweeps the regional
164competition at Ruckers and I know Mr noones is going to talk about what that experience is about and the reason that I share all of this with you is because I I we talk about a lot of important and serious topics here not that these aren't important and serious but these are really the things that we celebrate and the Dartmouth schools and there's so much here to be grateful for uh wonderful student body wonderful Educators here supporting our students every day and so I mean I know I'm excited to be the superintendent here I know I'm out a lot because of it but this is great because I love football I love watching the band the cheerleaders by the way they also just won their compet They just won a regional competition as well and
165they're in another one this week and so many of your athletes and your musicians and your Scholars are being recognized for their work across the state across the country so um that's pretty exciting thank you thank you very much um and I just want to thank you for your leadership during this time and your the team um in welcoming these new students and um your letter that you sent out to the community really set the tone um for really talking about you know the humanity and all of this and so it really it was a a source of Pride to read that letter that you put out and I just wanted to acknowledge that I also want to acknowledge I really enjoy the little details and I'm en really enjoying the the uniformity of the
166PowerPoint presentations I don't know if it just uh it it's there's something to be said in that really setting the tone and being that one Dartmouth and so that detail wasn't lost on me um and um the only thing I have before I turn over to my colleagues and specifically Mr noon to update us on the band um is that this Thursday will be a special ed parent advisory council meeting at 6:30 at the kushman school um and so that's all I'll share and I'll move it on to my colleagues Dr Jenkins so I just want to follow up um earlier this evening we heard from juniper I believe her name was um asking us about the trays in our cafeteria and I've been thinking about that a lot this whole meeting um and about
167how we think about sustainability in our district and what the efforts we undertake to do that um many districts that are larger than us that have more money than us have a person to do those sort of thing right that might report to Mr Kylie um who is a oneman band over there um but we don't at the same point in time I think her comments point out how how kids young people in particular really care about this as we all should they're leading the way on this and I think we as a committee and as a school district should recognize that and sort of bring them into the fold and have conversations about this so I'm wondering if we could maybe put this on our agenda for a future meeting um and maybe Dello
168could reach out to we don't have Juniper or her mom's contact information but let them know that this is going to be on the agenda um and I just think it might behoove us to think about the ways that we are doing this whether I just did a quick Google and some um some schools have their own sustainability committee that looks at the operations within the schools um some other communities Do It townwide um and do it across the town in the schools but um I really you know just want to thank Juniper for her comments tonight it really got me thinking about this um and I hope it gets us all thinking about this and I also hope it leads to some action so I appreciate you adding that and I do want to
169say I want to thank Mr Kylie um Miss Juniper has been awesome she wrote a letter and um I do have her mom's contact information um and Mr Kylie had been responsive um I believe also one of anyway the elementary school um in in some plans around um and I should have been more detailed I just didn't want to take up time during public comment um responsive in recognizing the um the need that Juniper really spoke to but I really appreciate your adding on that I would like that on a future agenda but I just want to thank Mr Kylie for being responsive and talking about um the planning to kind of get back to and do better in that area in terms of the uh reusable specifically to the reusable the ways in which
170we provided lunch during Co and all that and so yeah I really appreciate her uh leadership I couldn't do that at her age for sure thank you Mr NES thank you thank you madam chair yeah uh Dr sa mcgu talked about the sports teams in the tournament and still ongoing and so good luck she talked about the cheerleaders they took second the week before they took first this past weekend in Norton it was funny uh the assistant coach is also a band parent and I saw her in New Jersey and I knew that they had you know performed that day I says how'd you do she says we got second I said is great she came over to me after the band was done while we were packing up and everything and she went the
171judges made a mistake we came in first so I said well that's a good mistake to make that's the best you know those are the best ones to make type of deal uh as far as the band and all seriousness as it was in the dth weekly uh the band of America Northeast Regional two weeks ago the the 28th of uh October uh they won the they won the uh their class in the preliminaries uh and then without any props as our truck was broke down on the George Washington Bridge oh my yeah just you know and that but uh this the the students being you know well taught and you know in the right mind and right frame and knew what they had to do went out and performed anyway without them and still
172did an excellent job we got the props and everything and they went out in finals and uh got an 86.6 and they took all the captions in both prelims and uh in finals uh went down to metti last week uh this past Saturday uh and they got a 9805 for the seventh year in a row they've you know uh we took visual music overall and uh overall performance and general effect so we took four out of the percussion I should say uh and uh so we took four out of five you know categories type of deal the colag guide came in second and uh this week uh we're headed to uh the Lucas Oil Field Stadium uh in Indianapolis for national champions for bands of America uh the prelims are Friday and then from there
173if you're fortunate enough you got the semi-finals uh during the day on Saturday and finals are on uh Saturday night with the Ws technically at the moment scheduled for 11:30 so uh it I can't it is anybody looking to uh to watch it online if you not you know that that's not going uh bands of America does have a website and you can subscribe subcribe to the online Ser you know the online that they have I can't for the life of me off the top of my head remember what it is but there is a a streaming service that you can uh subscribe to so that's all I have and we'll be back early Monday thank you just lost my thank you Mr NS does anybody else have anything that they want to add uh
174so our next meeting is November 20th go ahead November 20th at 6 pm thank you Mr Nunes um and so with that I will um entertain a motion to go into executive session for discussion on non-instructional conf contracted service provider Madam chair make a motion we adjourn to Executive s executive session for further discussion of non-instructional contracted services and not return to open session second any discussion all in favor roll call yes yes Elizabeth Coughlin yes John N yes Shannon Jenkins yes meeting's adjourned thank you oh my goodness I [Music] do