001[Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign I'd like to call the school committee meeting for Monday November 7th 2022 to order would you please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance thank you if you have any cell phones Pages beepers electronic devices if you could kindly silence them or shut them off I would greatly appreciate it excuse me would like to let you know that this meeting is uh being uh taped for future uh uh displayed by DCTV and our own Dartmouth uh High School TV media it's shown on Channel 9 and 18 throughout the week different times it's also being live stream on youtube.com backslash DHT STV meteor so okay at this point uh [Music] we'll call Dr Gifford please John Nunes yep Chris Oliver yeah Dr Jenkins here Kathleen Amaral here
002Mary wait here thank you all right illustrious wonderful secretaries a little under the weather I'm probably sure speedy recovery uh at this point in time uh We've allotted 10 minutes on the agenda for public comment uh I will ask that you uh come to the microphone and state your name or anyone who has any comments to make that uh are the results and on tonight's agenda thank you hi good evening my name is Lauren delavo I am the DEA vice president of teaching assistants I'm joined today by Rose Roseanne Amaral she's a teaching assistant in the pals three to five program at Quinn Elementary I'm going to talk about what a living wage is the fact that Dartmouth teaching assistants do not earn a living wage in our town and then Rose is going to
003take it over and talk about the day in the life of a special education teaching assistant a living wage the definition of a living wage is the minimum income necessary for an employee to meet their basic needs their basic needs a living wage in Bristol County according to the MIT calculator is twenty nine thousand eight hundred twenty seven dollars per year Dartmouth teaching assistants we will soon be known as education support professionals or esps their salary range is between nineteen thousand and twenty six thousand dollars roughly meaning the starting salary for a Dartmouth ta is ten thousand dollars a year below a living wage the top step after we've been working all these years you reach TOP Step we're still three thousand dollars below a living wage honestly the salary range is absurd we are
004Educators we are not babysitters we support our students and what could be more important to our district than the support and the success and the growth of our students now we're all in public education and we watch and we read the news there is a wave moving across the state districts are realizing how valuable the role we play in the education of our students they're opening their eyes and they're coming through with significant increases in salaries a few examples Somerville they just signed an agreement their Tas are starting at 35 000 a year Dartmouth as I mentioned is 19 000. Malden starting at thirty two thousand dollars a year Dartmouth nineteen thousand Martha's Vineyard Thirty one thousand dollars a year Northampton that's a small western Mass town they have a lower living wage than us
005they are making twenty three thousand dollars a year to start now you may say well that's Boston or that's not the same kind of demographics that we have so I crunch some numbers and I'll go through these towns again Somerville they pay 87 percent of their living wage in their County they pay 87 percent of the living wage to their teaching assistance Malden pays 82 percent of their living wage Martha's Vineyard 91 of their living wage and Northampton that small little western town 82 percent of the living wage I am embarrassed to say that Dartmouth is at 65 percent of our living wage now close to home New Bedford there's the esps or Tas or whatever you'd like to call them paraprofessionals are fighting for a starting salary of twenty six thousand dollars that would
006be 87 percent of the living wage in New Bedford Brockton fighting for a starting wage of 31 800 per year or 84 percent of a living wage higher salaries are necessary to attract and retain quality esps it has been so difficult in our schools to hire esps because no one wants to work for peanuts it was particularly evident during the summer where the district was forced to fill ESP positions with Outsiders through agencies or postings on indeed and actually some in some cases paying more than to our own Tas because our own Tas wouldn't work in our district because they weren't being paid enough they went out and got other jobs over the summer that made more money just in the last few months we've lost four Tas three of which were highly experienced one
007left to be a food server at a local restaurant one left to be a nanny one left to go to Fair Haven where she's making four dollars more an hour and one looked at the job stayed three weeks and went forget this this isn't enough money and she quit can I ask you to wrap up please yep thank you all done so what I'm saying is the time is now please please support a living wage for Dartmouth teaching assistance hi Roseanne Amaral here I'm here representing my special ed teacher assistant co-workers we do this job because we love the children we work with the rewards of watching the student grow and make progress is very heartwarming I've been working in this position for almost 10 years while it is rewarding at times it is equally
008emotionally and physically exhausting in order to work in special ed you have to be CPI certified so this certification requires a yearly refresher training with this comes significant responsibility we are required to settle many different crises that may arise with our students on a daily basis we could be getting hit bit kicked or verbally abused by students the training we received gives us the know-how to block physical aggression and to de-escalate situations but it doesn't always work in addition to the CPI certification many of us have to implement Behavior Support plans and take data which is very time consuming taking data is also one of the responsibilities of an ABA which is a an applied behavior analyst so we might be doing some of those responsibilities if a typical student in a regular regular Ed
009classroom would hit or verbally abuse a teacher he or she would be sent to the office and get a consequence in our position this happens to one of more of us daily we do understand this is delicate population we are working with but this responsibility should come with Fair compensation as it stands now we're not even close to a living wage as Lauren had stated um recently a staff member was sent to the hospital for a tetanus shot after getting bit many of us have gone home with bruises have had our hair pulled and disrespected Time After Time there should absolutely be a distinction between regular red and special ed um I mean no disrespect to the regular Tas and honestly feel most of them would agree with this I say this because whenever a
010regular red teacher resist assistant position becomes available usually a special ed ta will apply for that position um it's because as I said earlier it does take an emotional and physical toll on us so without us it would be nearly impossible for this population to be successful in a public school setting we are supporting these students emotionally academically and socially with this being said on behalf of all of us in special education please give us the respect that we deserve the respect that we give our students regardless of what happens on a daily basis please grant us the monetary increase that we need to live thank you hi I'm Lynn Turner I'm here to speak on a different topic on the agenda and it's about our superintendent search first of all I just want to
011thank Bonnie Gifford for her time serving our community in our schools I feel like you've done a wonderful job standing up for our children in so many instances that you've had to face in your time here I want to thank you for being as Fair as you possibly can with all of our community for being transparent as to what and why you're doing things and I feel like you've valued parent voices whenever I have written letters to you you've given such a respectful response and I very much appreciate your transparency and communication with the public I I uh so I also appreciate that you supported the will of the people so graciously with um the logo as well and the many requests to remove those masks off the kids I feel like as soon as
012you were able to jump on that you did and I really appreciate that um I know that the committee is looking at the new superintendent search so just some thoughts that I have on the Community Committee to search for a new superintendent I would love for you to try to have a good picture of Dartmouth and all of the kids that you we serve in that search I hope that it doesn't look like just like and like a a certain side of politics looking for a certain person to lay out curriculum that is promoting only one Doctrine and I would love for you to consider having a very balanced approach in the way that you replace our superintendent so I would ask that you consider that I appreciate your time and if there is politics
013in schools I actually don't like politics that much in our schools I think we need to let our kids be kids but when there is I hope that it is fair and balanced and All Views are looked at and that all sides are represented without bias thank you hi I'm Jeff Reed I'm the Lead Teacher of the high school social studies department and I was lucky enough to student teacher over 20 years ago and I was excited as a Westport kid Dartmouth was the place to be best sports the band all the electives um and after that I said I definitely want to teach here and for the past 20 years I've Loved teaching here the kids are great the people I work with fantastic the biggest drawback though is the compensation for the past
01410 years as a Lead Teacher my stipend has not increased as an athletic coach for about 10 years my stipend has not increased but the biggest thing is the health insurance right now I'm currently paying 130 a week for the individual basic HMO plan I was shocked to find out that some family plans 324 dollars a week despite this I'm not going anywhere I love this place I'm going to finish off my career here I'm not going anywhere but it's outrageous to see how out of whack our health insurance is compared to other local schools I looked up new bedford's better fall River's better Fair Haven Berkeley Swansea Somerset and if you look at the schools in our Dart every single one is better than Dartmouth the only local place I found ironically that was
015worse than us was Westport just this past September as teachers are bringing in their stuff I'm seeing a colleague taking all their stuff out I said why I got a better job at New Bedford Volk this was a Dartmouth graduate somebody who loved teaching here but they said I have a family and they're paying nearly 15 000 more to go down the street what's even more alarming is that when we had our search for a high school principal the pool was so small we couldn't find enough qualified candidates thank God Mr Shea applied for the job and we have a quality High School principal because the pools just aren't coming in and in my 20 years I've served on many committees to look for new people and be part of the interviewing committee we've said
016this would be a great person for social studies let's hire them when they come to sign the paperwork and they hear about the health insurance they say I'm sorry I need to go elsewhere as much as we have a lot of great things to offer for some people they need to have enough money to take care of their family and oftentimes they can't provide it when they make thousands and thousands of dollars more in another Community just based off of health insurance from what I've been told this problem has gone on for decades and I scratched my head because I really do think we have great leaders in this community I just can't figure out how every other local community can figure out a way to better compensate their teachers and we can't we're not
017asking to be on the same exact equal split that they are but at least just inching in that direction is all we ask so we hope that you can really really work on that for us thank you thank you to be the last one because we'll have exhausted our 10 minutes of public comment is that I'm standing with Rachel one of my Dartmouth Public School nurses at Demello I've had the pleasure of working with the most dedicated compassionate hard-working nurses I have ever worked with in my career School nursing has a unique role of Bridging the Gap between home and school so we can assure that our students are healthy to be educated we have enjoyed the most challenging two years of our careers navigating through a pandemic as the district's Frontline Heroes we continue
018to show up not only for our students but our staff as well with integrity and perseverance we care deeply about our students and would continue not only through the academic school year but also through the summer if we were compensated at our our hourly rate our worth time and commitment shouldn't be valued less just because it's the summer consistency of care is a big part of school nursing and it isn't achieved when an agency nurse comes in or someone from the outside the district comes in to care for our students not to mention that they're compensated at a much higher rate if it was the one of districts where I own nurses were to be at summer school this is a disservice to our students and their families and it is disheartening that we your
019District nurses are replaceable thank you [Applause] thank you everyone hey next on the agenda is the approval of the regular session minutes and executive session of October 17th we'll take the regular session minutes for us so moved moved by Mr Oliver second second Dr Jenkins on the motion to any discussion chair hearing none all in favor aye aye hoes motion carries unanimously on the executive session minutes of the same date I'll move with the usual stipulation that they be held until the matters for which they are intended are complete hey very good yeah you know I'm impressed second by dot moved by Miss wait second by Dr Jenkins on the motion any discussion hearing none all in favor aye opposed motion carries unanimously foreign okay so I guess we have our two directors that are
020going to introduce uh the school Improvement plans for this evening so as we as you know we have our elementary folks that are here um and Ross and Katie are going to start us off by talking about the overview of the district good evening and I just want to thank Dr Gifford and members of the committee for the opportunity to present the district's strategic plan for the 2022-2023 school year as well as some of our school Improvement plans maybe maybe not there we go so our journey actually uh dates back to 2016 when through a comprehensive process involving DPS staff parents and community members a three-year plan was developed using uh three pillars to Anchor our work strategic objectives and initiatives were developed in the areas of teaching and learning access and equity and Community
021engagement the district leadership team reviewed and revised this plan during the summer retreat in 2018 and continued our strategic work during years two and three of the plan foreign and so we had started um work together um back in 2020 in terms of thinking about the next iteration of our district strategic plan in fact we met it was March 11th 2020 and we remember it well because we met at Quinn community school and then two days later the pandemic kicked in and schools were shuttered and we have never been the same since so um we're really we we were meeting this summer and thinking about where do we go from here and we really thought it important to take this year to think deeply do some deep reflective work to engage stakeholders uh in the
022community as partners in developing a strategic vision and a strategic plan that will carry Dartmouth public schools for the next three to five years and so toward that end we asked that our schools follow kind of the same structure that we had used last year in terms of following three building a plan around three big pillars being sense of belonging great appropriate instruction with just-in-time scaffolds and monitoring for understanding uh you may remember these tenants as they were first introduced to us in the acceleration roadmap that was developed by the department of Ed coming out of the pandemic last year so we'll first talk a little bit about the sense of belonging our work this year has led us to form a district strategic planning team and that team will be looking at all three
023pillars of our district plan specific to the sense of belonging one of the things that we have done is join forces with learn launch I know it's a name that you've heard before they have created a sense of belonging Network and we are doing some work facilitated by them looking at our schools looking at how we can foster that sense of belonging we did have Tori Todd from learn launch who came down and did a walk through with us in all three in three of our six buildings and our team works with her Ross and I meet with her monthly to plan some strategic initiatives around fostering a sense of belonging for all kids in all staff of Dartmouth Public Schools Additionally the district strategic plan planning team rather that we've put together has representation
024from every school both teachers and administrators serving on the district strategic plan so that we can work collaboratively and one of the focuses is really around building district-wide understanding in district-wide Vision so that we have clear communication and we're all moving towards one common goal and one common Mission and again being informed by stakeholders in the community one area of focus under the sense of belonging is really taking the time this year to get back to making sure our schools are safe and healthy um you know and so we put in place some common measures that each each building has been asked to kind of update throughout the year with respect to what safety steps they're taking in their buildings what that looks like developmentally uh pre-k up through grade 12. as we move forward
025to Great appropriate instruction one of our goals is to enhance our Collective understanding of what high quality instruction looks like and come to a common you're going to hear a common theme in what we're talking about and that's that common understanding and making sure that we're communicating and having everyone sort of on the same page when we're moving forward so that everyone is rowing in that same direction to that end one of the things that we have done with our project time folks and we are currently doing with our district administrators is a book talk around teach Like A Champion if you know that book it's in its third iteration and it has techniques around um that classroom techniques that are really just grounded in good instruction the goal with that is when we're providing
026feedback we want to be able to provide consistent feedback so that our kids ultimately right well all we do is about our kids and we were saying how great would it be that if the techniques that we're using are in preschool when they're three years old and replicated in the elementary level and the Middle School in the high school so when we're giving feedback about core instructive material core instruction making sure that those instructional techniques are consistent throughout we're also looking to to leverage that as a way to strengthen feedback um that administrators are providing to our Educators and so in addition to our book study we also um are using a tool called optic which is a online database that has model lessons real lessons taught in Massachusetts schools aligned to the mass curriculum
027Frameworks and aligned to the educator evaluation instrument so that we can calibrate as an administrative team our look for is when we go into a classroom so that with the goal again being to provide consistent feedback from building to building from administrator to administrator you know with the idea of improving practice one of the other most important pieces of work that we're going to do this year and I'm so excited about is to develop the Dartmouth Public Schools vision of a learner we're partnering with Envision learning in fact we had a meeting today a planning meeting today with Dr Gifford and Mrs paveo and Mrs jodwin to just kind of set the dates and establish that with Envision learning but really that vision of a learner again will be developmentally appropriate so what what does
028a learner look like at pre-k in Dartmouth Public Schools what does it look like in grade five in grade 8 as a senior about to graduate and that vision of a learner ultimately will serve as a North star for all of the work we do in the next three to five years that's really the idea and the Cornerstone behind um you know our next strategy the next iteration of our strategic plan when we say every Learner in Dartmouth public school should be able to do X how do we make sure that comes alive and so um we're really excited to be doing that work this year as well and again that will involve a great amount of input from stakeholders in the community from parents from students from teachers administrators um you know our paraprofessionals
029everyone who has a hand in the success of Dartmouth Public Schools will have an opportunity to contribute input into the development of that vision of a learner and it will be publicized and feedback collected before it is um hopefully finalized by the end of this school year is the goal there and finally we're talking about murdering understanding and things that Ross and I are spearheading is reestablishing data teams to help develop common district-wide protocols our goal in pulling this team back together is to establish some consistency around this is the data we look at this is why we look at it and this is the protocols that we use when we're analyzing it we also want to assure that our assessment calendar is outlining essential assessments throughout the year to guide our instruction to track
030student growth analyze the efficacy of our our interventions and looking at our at-risk students to make sure that they are making the gains that they need to this includes assuring that we are meeting requirements from the state including the dyslexia guidelines that require us to screen all students in k23 and then the final piece is we just want to really um make sure that the data we're collecting the data the learning data that we're looking at really has a tight alignment with ultimately the vision of a learner that has created this this year and so that's enough from us yes the real kind of stars of the show tonight are going to be for elementary is our four littlest learner communities who are going to talk to you a little bit about what they're doing
031in their individual buildings and we'll start with Dr Dale [Music] oh okay great good evening thank you for having me here tonight look at us oh this is Middle School let's see here I got nothing is it just foreign no it's not that's not right actually no no it's like I don't know what happened to the Christmas tree and I don't see any elementary schools okay I want to say thank you to Katie and Ross for addressing Pre-K when they talk about District initiatives saying Pre-K to grade 12. often districts forget about their Pre-K so I was really happy to hear them consistently say Pre-K to grade 12. so I wanted to start with just giving you a brief highlight about the progress it was made on last year's plans and under sense of belonging
032still living under the covid guidelines we wanted to have our students feel like they belonged at Cushman and have our parents feel that they belonged so we had to continue to have that communication with them and the staff we did electronic communications we still had our community meetings but those were done virtually and it was important for me to make sure that the parents saw what was happening inside the school so I did that through our weekly communication are we there okay perfect okay and then under um great appropriate instruction we started with a shared reading um interactive writing process that was done in preschool with our literacy coach Lori O'Neill we started our bridges math implementation both Pre-K and kindergarten and our math coach Jen fitton helped us with that and we had to
033really address the unique needs of students with disabilities that were coming in as three-year-olds have a continual enrollment throughout the year and coming in after kovid presented itself with plenty of new challenges for us under monitoring understanding we had to really work closely with our EI Partners in Expediting the process because there was a need for Expediting things because of the reduction in personnel and EI Partners had oftentimes we would get referrals and the student was getting ready to turn three right then and there instead of the normal advance notice that we had we continued to use the screening data in pre-K in kindergarten to help us guide our instruction and we had to really work closely with our students and our Outreach social worker last year worked with executive functioning skills helping children learn
034how to play again learn how to play with others and learn how to follow routines and structures so that's some um of what was last year's progress and this year what some of our goals are is to maximize that Outreach to support families through that transition process in preschool it's called the transition planning conference the TPC conferences and now instead of meeting families and introducing them to Dartmouth Public Schools via Zoom I'm actually going back out into the homes and sitting with the families and playing with the children in their homes we're increasing opportunities for our in-person meetings and events and volunteer opportunities we now have our volunteers coming back in helping our children walk over to the library we use the community library because we do not have a library equipment we do have
035a big classroom play tomorrow and expecting a lot of parents to turn out that will be one of the first times we're having parents back in for classroom events and we're continuing to increase the Visual Communications from various stakeholders I think it's important for our families to hear from other people than just me in our weekly correspondent so we try to highlight from the nurse the new staff to join us such as our new Outreach social worker Elise Alicia frix Frick so I'm trying to increase Communications from other people under great appropriate instruction we continued with that shared reading and we received a lot of resources over the summer for preschool with regards to math not only do we continue our bridges implementation but we've really got back to looking at St Math and increasing
036the number of minutes that our students in kindergarten are working towards targets and we're improving our timelines of the enrollment of three-year-olds who do qualify for specialized Services I made it my my goal my own personal goal evaluation goal to meet a hundred percent of the students to make sure that they are starting on the third birthday under monitoring for understanding we're developing Pre-K team goals they've developed them themselves focused on the growth of our Pre-K students going on to kindergarten looking at the pals data making sure that they are ready for kindergarten we've designed prescriptive lessons to support the students in kindergarten who who were seeing need extra help and we're doing that through our reading Specialists and our special education teacher and our special education teams are working together to assist in clearly
037articulated transitions whether it be coming in from EI or it's just coming into the school and and transitioning into a classroom or preparing to transition to kindergarten next year or a special program so we've got a lot of work to do and we are still just getting back to normal thank you thank you any questions questions um I just you know I just want to say that you know again it's so like evident how you are really working to try to like Bridge those gaps for these students who came in I mean there certainly was a lot of loss with socialization I think we're all aware of that and I just love the fact as we're like talking about the sense of belonging I have been a participant in the learn launch workshops that I
038know um and I've you know took place took part in those um just the last past couple weeks and again like getting into the homes is certainly like a really important part of that so you know seeing those families and starting there it's a great it's great start for a families to feel that you know a sense of community so I really appreciate that I agree thank you okay thank you thank you thank you no I I think I'll just comment at the end that's fine okay yeah thank you thank you the Mellow his career hi Mr Hill and I would like to thank you all for having us here at school Temple committee tonight to talk about where we've been and where we're going at demella school uh starting with our progress and highlights
039from last year's sip we all know what last year was about much of it um across the district was spent contact tracing and dealing with student illnesses and mitigating you know staff issues um and as a team our school admin and our Outreach social worker and nurse were able to connect with and support families experiencing various hardships that impacted student attendance and learning last year so during this time we made an effort to be present in classrooms throughout the building it was a goal every week for Mrs paveo and I to get into every classroom and try to connect with the students and the teachers be it from three or six feet away with masks on that was a priority and we also worked really hard to find ways of upholding the Traditions that we
040held dear at Demello School such as a student of the month assemblies albeit they used to be in person person last year we made them all virtual we also continue to provide our students across the building with opportunities to see themselves and learn about others through our diversity lending library that we are still maintaining and through Multicultural learning materials across classrooms and grade levels moving on to grade appropriate instruction throughout last year our grade level teams continue to use common planning time and after school meetings to work on reviewing student work and data to inform instructions we had Bridges full steam ahead at Demello last year all of our students jumped on board and we had a really productive year with that program we're continuing on this year but that was a big Focus moving
041on to monitor under understanding as an admin team assistive and I devoted as much time as possible to observing our newest teachers supporting our newest teachers who are awfully Brave to jump into The Fray during a pandemic providing them with targeted specific feedback aimed at strengthening student engagement and academic rigor and we continue to do that now on a broader spectrum that is our progress from last year moving into this year I'm going to let Mr Hill start off with sense of belonging all right and again you know first year in Dartmouth and really enjoying my time at demillo and you know excited to where we're headed to so under sense of belonging some of the things that we're working on is reestablishing our monthly PBIS Community meetings focusing on development and inclusion and unity
042we have implemented vertical stem teams devoting to critical thinking skills while fostering skills such as teamwork creativity adaptability and dependability come back to me yeah and our focus is truly on back to normal we've had such a great start to this school year and I I attribute much of that to the fact that people feel like even though covet's still out there we've stepped kind of out of that um covet Hayes and we don't have masks on and we're not worrying about distancing and we're all eating at tables in the cafeteria and we can have all of our in-person uh celebrations together so we are back to normal and we are doing it all um we have in-person Gatherings we had two student of the month assemblies with families in the building today we've planned
043our first family uh literacy night for first grade coming up in a couple of weeks we have Fall Fest being hosted by the PTO for Cushman and demel the weekend and the 19th we're looking forward to authors visits cultural events during the school year you name it we are back to it we're also working hard on improving communication with our families at Demello so starting this fall the first week of school we send out a newsletter to kind of bring everyone up to speed on what's gone on in the building for the past week we send pictures of people's kids we attach to the newsletters and then anything else that we need to let the community know about and those have been really well received okay so for great appropriate instruction we're focusing on a
044strengthening our tier one instruction through providing regular opportunities for extensive grade level planning horizontal and vertical team learning walks identify and observed best practices and also embedded opportunities for academic discourse and critical thinking and in addition to strengthening our tier one it's also bridging what's happening within our tier two and tier three into the classroom so we're utilizing our Ela and math coaches to support and guide special education teachers effectively and also utilizing our reading and math Specialists to connect to that tier two and tier three instruction back into the classroom okay and finally under monitoring understanding uh this year big priority for us is to provide our grade level teams and interventionists with regular opportunities to dig deep into data and plan instruction with our individual students needs in mind our teachers are focused
045on using regular formative assessments to gauge their students understanding every day driving daily instruction and fully grouping their students accordingly we also will be providing teachers with some additional PD centered on integrating checks for understanding throughout their lessons as well as providing students with clear specific feedback so our plate is full we're ready to go and the energy is good so that's where we're at we're at right now does anyone have any questions for danella school hello thank you you're welcome aboard thank you Mr Porter this is McHenry good evening Mrs McHenry and I were going to talk about um Potter past and Potter present um as it relates to our student Improvement plan so if I can do this correctly there we go um so I'm going to look at back at um our
046highlights from last year so um under sense of belonging um if you're going to have students be included it's important that students be there and I think the challenge of the pandemic was having students in school so one of the things we decided to do last year because we were we were very concerned about our attendance the year before was to develop a team of Administrators social workers on the school nurse and the school psychologist to reach out to families who are struggling with the attendance and clearly there were times when kids had to stay home but there were other times where we really needed to let families know that it's important that they also be in school either be in school physically or virtually so we each took um families that were struggling with
047their attendance and worked with them to make the best plan possible and we were pleased to see that we did see a difference in our attendance last year under great appropriate instruction if you're going to have great appropriate instruction then you need to have the schedules and the structures in place to make sure that happens so previously before the pandemic scheduling at the elementary level can be a bit of a nightmare when you're trying to um schedule phys Ed art and music especially when you're sharing specialist teachers throughout the district but one of the things we noticed before is that sometimes for example in an Ela block the block may stop for 10 or 15 minutes and then the kids have to stop what they're doing and then go to phys Ed so one of
048the things Mrs mckendry and I worked on with teams of teachers is how can we reschedule things so that Ela block can be 45 60 90 minutes long without that Interruption daily it did require some creative scheduling it required us to go for example to do a recess then lunch schedule it required us to have the lunches maybe a little different time it required us for things that we can control like Second Step at the library to see when it makes more sense to do that because we felt for grade level appropriate instruction to happen you need to have those erupted blocks of time we also worked with teachers to designate when it would be um purposeful to have the tier two in tier 3 instructions and in terms of monitoring understanding if you're going
049to monitor the understanding as professionals it means you have a Common Language so we tried something different last year where a few times during the year we had the classroom teachers meet and plc's with the interventionists to look at student data but also to look at the language and vocabulary we're using so for example um if one teacher for most fragile Learners are going to call what's typically sight words popcorn words when they're then going to their intervention and they're hearing the word popcorn words but the interventions calls them sight words you're confusing our most fragile Learners so one of the things we decided to do is how do we make sure we have a Common Language and also looking at our student data it was through that work that we realized that we had
050some concerns in our phonemic awareness awareness instruction which led us to on purchasing with the support of the district the hegarty phonemic awareness program so we were pleased to where we were and Melissa will tell you where we're going starting with a sense of belonging so we've talked about and you've heard this evening all been impacted by covid-19 in a variety of ways both our students and staff from either their physical health or their social emotional health so since this school year is our first non-coveted school year since 2019 we are going to work on enhancing our culture of positivity across all settings with students and with staff to this end we purchased the book The energy energy bus by John Gordon for all staff and then The Energy Bus for kids for each classroom
051both books teach and review strategies that focus on the positive providing ways to spread positivity and how to persevere through challenging tasks or challenging times the original version of the book the chapter book for staff centers around as character by the name of George who's having a tough day his car is broken down he can't get to work works also struck he's struggling with work and with life so he's trying to balance all that so because he doesn't have a car he takes a bus to work and he meets the bus driver joy and she he has conversations with her over a series of weeks on different strategies that he can use to help remain positive both at work and at home so the student version of that book also has a character by the
052name of George how he however he's not struggling to drive to work however he stayed up late uh the night before playing video games he got up for school late he almost missed the bus barely got his breakfast in and now he's lost his math workbook so um his bus driver also teaches him strategies to remain positive and get through a school day so what are some of these strategies well for the adults and the adult version of the of the text it states that you're the driver of your bus invite people on your bus and share your vision for your road ahead don't Focus your energy on What's called the energy vampires so those are though those people who will spread negativity but rather get your positive people on your bus that will help
053you reach your goals some examples for the students we ask them to create a positive Vision if you can see it you can create it and not energy vampires but rather stating no bullies should be allowed on your bus so these strategies have been reviewed with with staff during staff meetings it's how we get started or we how we end the meeting it was also taught to the students who are read aloud that Mr Porter and I did through the magic of Technology on Google classroom and we try to remind them of those strategies during the day or during morning or afternoon announcements so given the challenges we have experienced over the last few years these books will help to shine a light on Potter and what we do well encourage us to persevere in
054those challenging times and enhance and refine the positive supportive and collaborative environment we have moving on to grade appropriate instruction we are part of the district pilot of the foundations program so one teacher across our building from grades K to three is piloting this program our literacy coach is working closely with these grade level teachers to plan the lessons teach the lessons and then collaborate to discuss the challenges and benefits of the program and its resources they're also reflecting on the insights they gain about the requirements to teach the program through our district we're collecting data to compare the classrooms that are piloting the program with a classroom that is not using it to determine if the program is successful in increasing student achievement in the following areas so phonemic awareness phonics word study handwriting
055and spelling under monitoring understanding we continue with our work of refining analyzing student data to provide targeted just-in-time support and intervention through the use of progress monitoring We are continuing to create intervention groups or supports for our students that are fluid but also will increase dialogue between the regular education teacher as well as the interventionists so that our instruction both inside and outside the classroom connect to each other to increase student learning to this end we have updated some of our RTI procedures to include paperwork that will highlight the who the what and how often an intervention or Tier 1 or tier 2 support happens in the classroom and the success is that the students are having and that is our work for this year thank you thank you thank you tonight yep for tonight
056good evening everybody thank you for having us here tonight to present um our update for the Quinn school so I will Begin by updating the 2122 progress and as you've heard from all the other Elementary colleagues we were impacted obviously the same exact way by covid and all the things you've heard tonight are applicable to the things that we've had to do as well um going to the sense of belonging if you recall last year when we did our presentation our entire point of emphasis at staff meetings School Improvement plan was really building relationships with families not knowing how they were being impacted at home and that was our message all throughout last year and it continues to be our message this year and compliments of the Quinn staff it doesn't matter what position you
057have in the building people are going above and beyond to build those relationships all throughout last year as we were transitioning back into more of a regular school model again and we did that multiple ways constantly consisting and monitoring of attendance towards the end of the year we were able to get back to some type of in-person um PBIS rallies we were able to have parents but we're able to get back into at least having the kids in the auditorium and we were able to live stream that so parents could see it as well as special ed meetings were able to have some of those meetings in person towards the end of last year so it started to bring back that feel of community and more personal relationships so again the all of the work
058that the staff has done and continues to do even this year is has been great so I just like to put that out there to everybody involved at Quinn as far as last year for the great appropriate instruction as Mrs paveo was talking about we we talked a lot about the accelerated roadmap and really it was trying to use data to find those entry points of what is the most appropriate place for whole group instruction and then from there obviously breaking it down to specific students or groups of students of where are the kids at what data are we using to make sure we're targeting instruction to close all sorts of gaps and be aware of where students are at um and again we'll you'll hear from Mrs Thomas a little bit more about that
059as that continues to be a point of emphasis of really understanding student deficits and what we need to do to close those gaps and that was obviously supported in multiple ways by literacy and math coach and as far as monitoring understanding the big piece that we've been working on for years now and we continue to Monitor and continue to update is our RTI process where we currently have we meet every six to eight weeks a team of people from related service to school psychologists to Administration to teachers special ed reading and math specialists all come to really analyze the data see what practices have been implemented and what we can do to constantly put supports into place to support student learning so those are things that we were doing last year aligned with the accelerated
060roadmap and um this is Thomas and Mrs jeremilovich will update you with plans for this year for us Ing we have established an opportunity for our special education program teachers to have common planning time this is something different than in the past typically they've met on their own so we really thought it was important for them to have that established time to meet together and in addition to our PBIS rallies we have we have a new mascot our lion and at Quinn school we wore so it's very exciting it's something new this year that we're all very excited about and with that thanks to our PTO and our PBIS committee when you go into Quinn there's no denying that we are the Lions and we have our expectations and our matrices everywhere around the building
061in all settings of the school even outside on the playground if you've been outside you've also probably noticed that we have the expectations out there as well for students so we're happy that and we're going to continue with that this year hi everyone in terms of grade appropriate instruction this year we worked really hard to create a PD plan that we do at the beginning of the year that is truly differentiated so we always talk about at Quinn how we have this diverse population of students well that comes with a diverse you know a diverse amount of teachers who have so much experience and knowledge so we're really using what we have in the building and listening to the teachers and trying to give them what they want and that means if it's different from
062what it looks like at the beginning of the year we're flexible and putting those things in place that also to that is providing different resources if things come up throughout the school year we try to figure out how to give them what they need to make sure that their instruction is exactly how they need it to be with the group of kids in front of them um just as everybody continues to say we're all monitoring for understanding we're using that PLC time we are able to do that with the schedule so that a grade level once a week can meet as a cohort and talk about their best practices the data what it looks like what they need and as Mr granfield highlighted every eight weeks we are coming back to the table and having
063those in-depth RTI meetings with everybody we needed at the table a special education teacher a school psychologist reading or math interventionist myself Mr granfield or Mrs Thomas so we are progress monitoring and using that data for good and that's what we're doing at Quinn does anyone have any questions quick question and just on yours do you have a name for the mascot yet I know watching the watching right I know watching the video which is excellent type of deal you know so that started this week so students and staff are able to vote okay um so by Thursday we'll have the votes in on what our name will be some really exciting names so we'll see okay I was just like Get Ready Get Ready Mr Nunes I'll let you know thank you that's fine
064that works thank you Mr Shia well thank you to all the uh School level administrators for putting together um your school Improvement plans and presenting them um I found them extremely detailed and you know there's certain certainly some overlapping themes here and overarching themes um I will say that I can fully understand how much work goes into these each year in the collaboration and just making sure that you're covering everything from your school what's important to your school but also looking at the overall District View with everything considered you know one of the things that I want to make sure that we don't forget as a district is that while you know I'm thrilled that we're having all these in person Gatherings and things are back to normal really fully at this point is that
065we can't forget that we did just go through two long years and I bring that up because one of the um one of the keynote sessions at the last week's joint convention superintendent school committee convention one of the Keynotes was the clinical clinical psychologist I think it was on um Thursday that just talked about how important it is to make sure that we continue to check on our students and check on each other check on our staff to make sure that you know we're getting through this together because it's certainly P the social emotional piece is real I know um that there are certainly those issues that still very much exist in our district um and and I hope that from the district standpoint from central office down to the schools that we're continuing to
066um do our do our due diligence to make sure that we're addressing our social emotional students that are clearly you know some of them reaching out and making sure that we're um because let's face it if a student doesn't come to class in a good place it doesn't come to school in a good place if that student is on the bus crying out or reaching out if that student is coming to the class to their desk with significant behavior issues we need to address those first before they're able to learn so I just hope that the district while I am thrilled at everything that's going on in all the work and effort that's put into here into these School Improvement plans I just uh I sincerely hope that the district is taking into consideration the
067full overarching needs of our Learners thank you and thank you to the administrators for presenting Dr Jenkins so thank you I want to also thank everyone who did a presentation today and I specifically want to focus and give you kudos for your focus on sense of belonging I teach at the University level and I know that a sense of belonging is one of the strongest predictors of academic success you need to feel like someone has your back and that you are engaged in the work that you are doing I also want to push back on the notion that this is political Dartmouth Public Schools should be a safe welcoming loving environment for every single child who comes to school there should be windows and mirrors for every child that's not political that's about loving our
068children and so I give you all kudos for the focus that you are having on that sense of belonging for every single child in our schools regardless of their abilities regardless of their identities they belong here and we welcome them so thank you thank you Dr Jenkins Ms Amaral yeah really put my points quite eloquently together uh I too am quite impressed with the focus on that sense of belonging a few weeks ago I participated on a panel for Department of Ed put together a family and Community engagement conference and they entitled it it was a Better Together Summit and and that really speaks to whether you're um whoever you are working within the public schools or the families that are sending their loved ones to our our schools the adults in their lives the
069caregivers the Guardians the parents um that sense of belonging is critical uh Rick and others spoke to this but you uh Mr Porter sorry Mr Porter to the families and I think back to that conference and some stories that were shared about student attendance and uh the implications of the pandemic and wreaking havoc within families and it was actually a topic on the overuse of filing you know filing on families or not sending their children and one particular story was uh was to help people in attendance of this Workshop kind of think differently around and you kind of like I'm gonna go and try to focus this I can go on tangent um but was to make us think about wow you don't know what's going on in someone's life and it was a particular
070story of a neighboring district and a wraparound specialist talked about this family a student hadn't attended school and well family was you know recovering from some significant issues themselves of the parents of this child and you know the first the first thought was we're going to file on this family and lo and behold with some engagement and visiting the school and getting to know the family and understanding what was really happening it was sort of not taking the past but looking at what they were dealing with it was a family who had gotten so used to you know the interdependence of having their child at home and letting go of that child after two and a half three and having them I keep looking at your wrist but you just spoke to this about how
071you're in the in the homes and getting to know those families and their stories and helping them trust and build that relationship um and it's a good story the student is back in school and all those things like you talked about and they increase it in attendance but it it really just stems from that relationship building that sense of belonging that understanding that you know bringing back the humanness and what you all do so well um it just is so heartening to hear that thread throughout everything that each of you had spoke about um and that goes to you know thinking about the social emotional well-being of our Educators as well um because we're all in this together and we're better together and um I'm just really glad to see that and to see the
072focus on the data to Target all of our Learners to catch up you know the learning loss that Desi knows that we all know has happened over the course of the pandemic and coming back to school but then you know just looking at each student individually based on some of those data points to see you know wherever they may lie you know um and and helping them get back to their full potential um because that will predict you know the success you know education is about preparing us for life and um which is also impacted by the relationships that we feel so we're all better together team so thank you guys are so elegant so no I I do want to you know Echo and and tag along but also say you know I am
073very impressed by the mechanisms we have in place to continue this work and again I know I referenced before but I did like jump into the learn launch workshops because I think it's you know that is an impressive group that's coming through and giving support to our Educators as we continue to make sure that you know they when the workshops is about fostering a sense of belonging how do we do that and how do we make sure you know again to continue to reinforce and Inspire Educators with those tools and we all you know we all need those um you know consistent reminders I thought it was a also very um you know just looking at ourselves you know and I thought back to uh you know Potter when we're talking about making sure our
074language is consistent just in terms of uh you know I was curious you know they were looking within you know in Mr we were looking within our school but again within the district because as we turn into Middle School you know we want to make sure so I'm I'm so glad that those consistencies remained and those languages remain consistent so I'm really grateful because I I know this group of Administrators and you know in my experiences you work so well together you have so many relationships and you have so many conversations and one that might not be like known by throughout you know everyone that's listening I think it is really important that we have such you know a strong collegiality among our administrators that they have those again they have those conversations and I
075think you know the the pivoting of um you know our curriculum coordinators as well just to be you know for you know to be in the elementary schools to be to have those conversations to share those conversations are so important to like sharing the best practices from all of our schools and staying on the same page that are so that our students are making that transition into the somewhat difficult years in the middle school so um so I'm you know again I'm very impressed and I feel like we are you know as the administrators in the school we very much have our eyes on on these students and making sure that you know we're going to be keeping their social emotional help and their health and their academic well-being in front of us so I'm
076impressed with that thank you Miss Wade I just echo my comment uh my colleagues it's obvious that the theme here from my perspective is the students and we're taking care of the students with what everything with whatever they need socially and emotionally and trying to make sure that they get back to we're getting back to a semblance of normalcy that we haven't had for the past couple of years and yes the pandemic thank God is done a few cases here and there and that's like the flu it's going to be there type of deal but we're back concentrating on students and everything that goes along with it so my thanks to all of you for a job well done I appreciate them I was just gonna say we need a motion to accept the four
077Elementary uh make a motion that we accept uh the school Improvement plans for our elementary schools second motion by Mr Oliver a second by Miss Amaral to accept the plans on a motion any discussion chair hearing none all in favor aye opposed motion carries unanimously all right good job thank you everybody no problem all right old business school Community policy JF school admissions second reading and vote we had this at our last meeting there were no adjustments or anything I don't know if anybody has any other time I make a motion to approve second motion by Dr Jenkins second by Miss weight on the motion any discussion I did one you minor revision um to remove gendered references and I and it just shows how easy it is to to do these sorts of things
078when we think about them and we keep our eyes on them so thank you for that yep no problem my my apologies like yeah no worries it wasn't it was just I wanted to make sure to thank the administration for making the committee for making those changes no that's fine all in favor aye aye opposed motion Gary's all right all right Jesse will be happy yes and keep them happy I won't go there no not at all no way you know how um next on the agenda is the superintendent's evaluation which we went through at our last meeting in unfortunately I forgot to follow this to Kate for her to fall with to the rest of the committee so we've got that done I'll make a motion to approve because I was the one who
079asked for the delay so that we could at least see it before we voted on it it's only on the agenda because of me so I will make it believe me thank you I'm fine it's not a you know I'll second that so we moved by Dr Jenkins and second by uh Mr Oliver on the motion any discussion and my again my thanks to uh Kathleen for uh doing all the computer work to put it together well thanks that was easy and then meeting with a meeting with Dr Gifford to put it together so that's fine okay done yeah it is I don't think we voted in favor [Laughter] wait till after you're retired yeah she said your last one too oh my goodness oh God okay anywho all right uh still catching up from
080the weekend lots of sleep I bet uh town meeting update Mr Kylie thank you Mr noon so on September 21st I presented to you folks um what we might expect at the October 18th town meeting we uh fortunately we're here in this building on the 18th and the town meeting approved all of our requests it was a mil one million ten thousand dollars worth of requests um security related improvements relating to doors and windows and telephones and intercom totaling 460 thousand dollars playground improvements 250 000 parking lot repaving 150 000 in furniture replacement a hundred and fifty thousand dollars so that was good news um and always happy to have the continued support of the town we appreciate that though the only bit of bad news relating to the capital Improvement plan that we got
081was that the mass School building authority decided to um decided to suspend their accelerated repair program so what they cited was the the recent bid results were coming in 43 percent higher than estimates um I'm not shocked by that but that's the reality and uh supply chain issues have made those projects prohibitive and and really can't get done in time when you're talking about most of these projects you're really focused on time when students aren't in in the buildings and if you can't complete them within that time I don't know how you can really really undertake them so they recognize that they don't have the money to do the program anyway so um they've suspended it but what that means for us we were sort of deferring our high school roof project until we had
082a better indication of of the economic environment relating to construction so now that's going to be delayed even further so we've already this week began to undertake some repair work that we hope will help string us along um there's there's significant issues with this roof and it does need to be addressed I think it would be prohibitive to have the town attempt to um address it without the msba at this point in time we probably couldn't accomplish the project anyway so um the reality of the situation is that our best course of action is to wait and hope that the msba you know hope that the economic environment improves and the msba is able to continue their program which I would expect at some point will occur so that's sort of our our uh our
083bad news we also in our Capital Improvement plan have some other projects that might be related to the msba um that are further out in our Capital Improvement plan so those projects would also be delayed um and pushed off a little further because really this roof is going to be our priority project relating to that so Mr Oliver thank you Mr noons quick question for you Mr Kiley so in the event well it's happened that they've suspended the program so what are our what's what are your thoughts and maybe what are the committee thoughts on is this something that do we look to the springtime meeting to maybe ask for a couple hundred thousand dollars in capital to keep our roof at least from leaking because let's face it with without a dry root without
084a uh you know a solid roof everything within this building is jeopardized yes including in in rooms right next to where we are um where they've there's been continued leaking problems that we're trying to address so uh so one thing we're doing with the capital Improvement plan so right now we're creating our new capital Improvement plan uh that will cover FY 24 through 28. we'll be bringing that forward to you folks uh very soon either the next school committee meeting or the one after that for your consideration and in that we will do just that as they include some monies to um you know we we don't want to spend we want to spend as little as possible to maintain uh appropriate learning environment right that's that's the goal um because all we will be
085doing is patching things and it will all get ripped up as soon as we actually do proceed with a project but the reality is that a Project's likely three years from being completed at the at the earliest um because it takes a year to design um and so it takes a year to approve from the mspa year to design year to construct three four years from now maybe uh I think real estate wise and pound foolish to not invest some money through Capital to fix our problematic areas because if not the alternative is you know leaky drywall that's ruined or electronics that are ruined or mold in the floors um so I would rather spend the money now then yeah we we have buckets as it stands right now um and what some of those
086things are what we were trying to address this week with some repairs um so we'll we'll stay on top of it and uh hopefully move forward and of course any monies we get for roofing repairs would be considered at the June town meeting so um you know it's it's not something that'll help us through the winter or anything um we if if we felt like we had such significant issues that you know we needed more immediate funds there are other options for us to think about and we could we could um you know talk to the town about some emergency transfer funds or something you know something else to to assist us but I'm hoping we can string things along on a small level just to get get to where we do have some money
087to to fix things but anything else Mr all over that's all I have okay anybody Mike only thought as you put the capital plan together those projects that have to be strung out type of deal if you could just notate them on the report so that everybody is aware CIP is aware fincon border selectment Etc now meeting is you know what we've had to string out because msba is not uh doing that anymore or at the moment they've suspended it I should say okay thank you sir okay we good with town meeting okay thank you okay new business superintendent search something near and dear here we go uh first and foremost I did have a uh conversation with uh Tom Scott at m-a-s-s uh last week the week before with regards to posting for an
088interim type of deal I asked doc to give it to kind of work on something to get up to him uh and put out there I personally I'm looking at if they come back for our December meeting which is excuse me December 12th type of deal and then we have some time to look at them and uh make some type of a decision in January you know take take what you know we look at them take our top three and interview them and see who we can who we can put in place how does that work for everybody thank you Mr chair so yeah you know that that's certainly an option um we're looking so I'm sorry we're looking for your last day Dr Gifford is March 1st okay so March April May June so
089so four months yeah my only concern about bringing in a retired Superintendent at this point with four I could fully I would 100 percent agree with if this was going to be a year position if this was going to be a year-long or a six-month position but to to bring in a retired superintendent for four months that doesn't know Dartmouth that is really gonna we're gonna our staff is gonna have to spend time bringing that person up to speed you know I would personally and this is just for for take it for what it's worth you know I I think that we have people that are very uh well versed in house um to to get us through the four months um you know personally and once again you know and I I hate to
090put them on the spot but we have our we have our own Mr Kylie um he's um I I've been very impressed with him since I've come on the committee I've known him for close to 10 years he was on the first superintendent search um you know I don't know if it's in his uh desire a wheelhouse um to uh to get the district through and help us out for four months but we do have a solid leadership team under Dr Gifford we brought into two curriculum directors um so you know my thought would be to you know asked Mr Kylie if he this is something that he'd be interested in in the Endeavor because one we're also going to have the opportunity to have a considerable amount of overlap here because the the two
091of you have worked together for eight years now um so there's a lot of shared institutional knowledge um so that's just my thought that we have a very viable candidate in-house to pay a superintendent of to pay a retired superintendent forty thousand fifty thousand dollars um and have them our own resources get them up to speed um you know to where we're at to bring in someone new you know I I would just uh be interested to hear the committee's thoughts that's that's kind of where I'm at um on the hiring a new superintendent I think we should look at immediately uh region all right we'll we'll go there thank you that's thanks Chris Dr Jenkins oh I have to go next um yeah that's fine um it's kind of awkward to like ask someone
092how they feel on the spot in an open meeting like do you want to do it I know but we have to have this conversation um in open meetings so I guess what I would say is uh I'm not a verse to Mr Oliver's idea I don't want to put Mr Kylie on the spot to have to make a decision now um so maybe it's something that can be explored between now and our next meeting and come back because I don't want Mr Kylie to feel like well maybe he's like no and he can tell us that right now but if the answer is maybe then maybe we should wait until our next meeting to see where we stand on that if the committee is okay with it I wasn't expecting a response tonight by
093any means foreign with maybe having that conversation internally about whether or not they think that could work I think again for four months um you know we had experience we had a vacancy in our office we brought someone in and it ended up being more time for me to train the person to do the work than to actually do the work and then they left after four months and then I had to train someone new again and so um I can see the value like sometimes it's just easier to get something done as opposed to having to train someone for a short period of time so I can see the advantages to that certainly thank you ma'am yes Emerald I I am agreeable to what Chris brought up um as I see Jim kind of
094going down in his seat but and I'm agreeable to what uh Dr um Jenkins mentioned obviously not you know to think it through you know um because of all the reasons mentioned you know unless you know alternative if we had a you know Mr Shea in our back pockets come back yeah different one but um you know um sorry that's kind of funny yeah I I I agree I mean I would be agreeable to something like that if it were a possibility based on um all of it was mentioned I agree yeah okay okay so I guess I'm the only fly in the ointment but that's okay so what else is new no uh and believe me one of the wonderful classes I took was on superintendent searches at the school committee which was excellent
095by the way but we'll get into that in a bit uh I've thought about that was kind of like the first thought out of my mouth my my head my mouth to me when Dr Gifford said to Kathleen and I that type of deal but I also wanted to stand the constraints that Mr Kiley is under it's budget season that type of deal and you know everything else that is going on so if you know he written and again I'm not putting him on the spot if he was to respectfully decline I would totally understand that if he was to accept I would totally understand that and appreciate it so that's where I stand on this okay I mean in talking with Tom Scott at Ms m-a-s-s there are a number of good candidates out
096there some from the area that are kind of familiar with Dartmouth so in you know with for argumentative sake it's not like we're getting somebody from you know North Adams Massachusetts who is Dartmouth you know that type of deal so that's a possibility of I mean we can rehash and I don't mean to that we can talk about this again at our next next meeting if we if we want I'm good with that that part of it so it's not like we need somebody tomorrow right exactly so I'm good with that plenty of time right okay plenty of time but yeah we have enough time it'll be here enough it'll be here in a hurry okay in addition that being said as I said at the masc uh conference last week there was uh a
097session on searching for a superintendent and I gave you one of these they had some handouts so I've get you know the you know that and this was an masc that they ran type of deal Dorothy ran it but she did a great job she wasn't higher us that type of deal here were the things you needed to look at and go through in that type of deal nestec was also there the Collins Center was also there so those those are the three because for the most part you've got to get three you've got to do your best to get three bids if you know when we hire Dr Gifford if those of you that were on we had two we only got two we tried for a third and there was we couldn't get
098a third to submit a bid well you snooze you lose okay that type of deal uh so we we have that type of deal we're going to need to bring them in and maybe we look at bringing them in in December okay December again at December 12th we'll just stack that meeting to the guilt type of deal will bring we'll put an RFP together for uh yeah we can sort of have one got one I'm getting sure yeah from the nine years ago yeah you know make it take and make the tweaks you know and just put it out there and you know I know talking with masc and and NASDAQ and even The Colony Center they want they were interested so again you put it out there whoever applies that type of deal I
099will say this is and it was drilled into our heads uh at this session type of deal is this is our baby we own this process okay I will and please allow me with my 32 years of experience to expound on this you are going to get we are going to get a lot of phone call once this thing becomes public you know the finalists become public because everything is done behind closed doors until the finalists are announced once the finalists are announced and I'll talk about this more but we will get a lot of phone calls a lot of emails you know Johnny Susie Jimmy Timmy whatever type of deal thank you very much looking at everything so I just want you to you know as as to to be aware of what is
100coming down the pike we do have time you know they were talking about you know Dorothy talked about you know December January putting things out she says at the moment there would there would probably be a good pool to to grab from so which is which is nice to hear type of deal so that's my spiel on this and I'm open to any and all suggestions so please let me know Chris So the plan is December whoever wants to come we'll put out the RF RFP whoever wants to come I think they that's like the the deadline we need to people have people in here by December to present to the committee because this needs to go public with it with a flyer and because if you remember we have to there's a lot of
101putting together we probably still have the brochure and a lot of the paraphernalia that goes along with the superintendent search um that this needs to go public on all the websites by sometime in January yes exactly to get that out there exactly everything it's going to start dropping in the meetings that whomever will need to schedule excuse me with community members faculty staff us right things of that nature anybody else with a question comments Dr Jenkins about the time the time I was here for the last one we heard Dr Gifford it was great it was great because I think you two did it and I didn't have to do it of the five of us oh Mr Garth okay but I think you know that's right Chris was on that committee that's right we
102have to we have to be mindful of the fact that there's also an election right in the middle of this and I you know I hope that my colleagues continue if they decide to run but I do think we should be mindful of that because we do want continuity I mean the last thing we want is for someone to be on the committee and then not be on the committee because that disrupts the continuity of the process if we're doing I mean we can do all of us being on the committee but if we do it like the last time yeah I think ultimately it's it might come down to two of the three of us because of to ensure continuity yeah you're gonna need you're gonna need I think we did two left yeah
103you're gonna have yeah you normally have two you know two ones you can do more but then you've got to do all it's a regular meeting and the postings and yeah it's a regular committee it's a regular committee but it ends up being an executive session because of the you've got all of that right open meeting lost stuff absolutely I'm seeing Mr Smith roll his eyes as he you know we talk about that but uh yeah it all it all has to be so yeah two and then you know somewhere down the line we're going to have to think of how big a committee do we want okay not yep and again out of the box my thought is nine to eleven I think we had 11 last night yeah someone tells me about 11.
104yeah and that's fine you know again nine to eleven so it doesn't become too uh overburdened that type of deal so again things that we can think about and kind of finalize up come you know our next meeting on December December December 12th we can kind of finalize this Kathleen um purview of special education which is really important um which I I would love to do again and I and and um no announcement but I do believe I might I if if I do if I run for school committee again which I I anyway I do plan to do that because I'm really passionate and feel like I've got some more work to do however um would it say say the committee when we decide would I be able to sit as a parent it
105would have to be as a company okay yeah all right so that's that's how that would unfortunately that's how that would flow okay that's it Miss White I don't think I have anything right okay that's right Chris anything else you could no I'm good so all right so we get the RFP yep ready to go ready to go yep Jim yeah technically it won't be an RFP the dollar threshold is going to be such that it's going to be below it's going to be a quote process that's right I'm assuming unless things have really changed in terms of the pricing I hope not um so that'll help because it'll expedite our ability to get quotes and evaluate them and bring them to you and you know so I can pull out what we have from
106the previous search and maybe share that with you Mr Nunes and you can take a look at it and see if it sort of fits the bill and what it is I don't think you know that much has changed that kind of things yeah yeah no problem thank you sir certain things like that I will defer very good okay that takes care of that next on our agenda is uh proposed meeting dates for January through June so it looks like everybody got back to anything yeah everybody's good January 9th and the 23rd February 13th because of the vacation week right March 6th March 20th April 10th April 24th May 15th June 6 and June 27th so we'll go with those so I think a motion I don't know about my availability in at the end
107of May and into June but if I'm not here for one of them it's not the end of the world yeah that's fine we can if something pops up Shannon we probably hopefully have got the flexibility to pop it up once pop it down one I'll let you know if anything yeah that's fine same way a little bit at the end of May and they might be the same way yeah no way yeah moving time moving day yes all right so take a motion to approve these it's all moved okay second by Dr Jenkins second by Ms wait on the motion any discussion share hearing that all in favor aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously yeah all right superintendent's update okay I was going to mention the Envision learning and uh portrait of valerna but
108they covered that so I think we're good with all of that I just wanted to mention we got continuing with the Bay State textile uh as you know the bins but I just wanted to bring this up because we every month we get a report of what the school so this month was 1280 in the school so it continues and I will I will also note that it is now illegal to throw away textiles in the state of Massachusetts so handily we have bins at all we'll get more to help you yeah can we get more bins I was just curious about that like because I knew at one point we're having a problem with capacity and then so and now if this is the you know if it is the law like with that
109because we've had stuff like that was an issue for us I'm wondering maybe we could like put them on other town properties all over the place but only if they come back to us right that's right you throw up on the farm why not it was a big discussion about select boards yeah yeah but it's been a good program and again this money goes in the principles funds and whether they use it Cushman is barely leading the way I think like anyway speaking of Cushman Justine Dr Dale called me and they she received another five thousand dollars from the Feinstein Institute and they get the golden ticket at the school so today she decided to go pick the checkup from Mr Feinstein because he's getting quite older but um she he wasn't available so she
110was kind of bummed usually she just has them send it so that's exciting um I want to bring up it's it's a little bit in the distance but we are having two presentations um I don't think you were there during our orientation days but we had one of the days we had a group called minding your mind present to the teachers and it it this group is um minding your mind and it's a it's it's kind of funny the first time we had them they said oh just give us some money like it's not a it's almost like a non-profit if you will um it's a it's a I'll just read kind of it's minding your mind is dedicated to ending stigma and destructive behaviors associated with mental health issues moving away from a crisis-based
111response to prevention through education they use storytelling all of their speakers have been through some kind of crisis in their lives um and the young man that we had we actually saw him oh it's probably two years ago already at a special education Summit and it was so powerful this young man that spoke about his life and how he always portrayed himself as the young kid that was happy and go lucky and involved but deep down inside he was struggling so much and um had the the signs of depression and and attempted suicide Etc et cetera but he speaks about how educators and people that come into the life to help so it was so powerful followed by one of the psychologists that works and and giving tips and resources and works in the group
112as well so we decided a number of teachers came up to us and and said how wonderful it was that we are bringing them to our middle and high school students to speak about you know this hope and there's there's people you can reach out to and that kind of thing so that's going to be on December 7th and 8th for the day programs the middle and high but also on December 7th we are offering a parent night same thing and that would be we'll have more advertisement but I just kind of want to put that out there it's really a wonderful wonderful group of people also I think you probably saw her on our Facebook page that Sarah Duke is over at the middle school attended the association for middle level education National Conference
113in Orlando and and she was she had texted me a couple of days before she went she was like gulp because she knew she was presenting with some other colleagues that are on the Committees it's called the constituent committee from that group but she didn't realize her presentation was a featured presentation on the brochure so she kind of had a heart attack over that but all went well so okay that's great yeah we're proud of that I did email you the comprehensive District review report and as I said I just received that matter of fact Mr Oliver asked me at the conference and I said we just had a draft we were correct and then lo and behold we got the final report so as I said I really haven't had a chance to really
114review it but a quick review is it it's okay and again there's no corrective action it's just something that's posted on Dusty so you can take a look at that and we can certainly discuss it at another meeting just bring up some of the highlights as I remember if you remember they visited all of our schools they were here for quite a few days so yeah um and just as we get that report we get I get another email and I know Miss townsends about this the tiered Focus monitoring visits that are coming up for the next next audit if you will or review so on March 28th and 29th they'll be coming and that focuses on special education and civil rights um You probably as high school parents uh Mr Shea put out a
115all-call they're having analyst drill tomorrow so again keeping up with our safety protocols so staff are aware of that and parents have been made aware as well um you all know about November 10th so I guess many of you will be here at the high school for the celebration of the unified as a unified Banner school again and being able to celebrate our students at halftime with that and then one last very important as you're speaking of replacing me um and I know Mr Nunes is going to read it also um Miss Townsend will be resigning at the end of the school year you might know she's been in law school and is now heading in a new direction to practice law so she'll be with us longer than me till the end but um
116that's kind of exciting for her and I take credit because I was the one that encouraged her to go to law school so there you go so congratulations so she's taking the bar this summer and we wish her all the best on that so yeah she's not gone yet but no she's not going you know you know you're in trouble when you know you're the chair and you get an email from the sped director that says do you have a few minutes next week or something so you know this day that day so yep how about Monday at 10 o'clock okay and I'm sitting at I'm sitting at home having breakfast and I look and it's a quarter of ten and I'm like I'm not going to get there at 10 o'clock send her a
117quick text I'm running late you know no problem but she was right into that because I'm done okay so she said you know that she was leaving and this is her letter that stated October 31st 2022 it's addressed to myself as chairman and to Dr Bonnie Gifford superintendent of diamond Public Schools Dear Mr Nunes and Dr Gifford according to the terms of my contract of employment with the Dartmouth Public Schools I hereby notify the school committee that my covering contract will expire on June 30th 2023 I write to inform you that I will not be seeking a successor contract to begin on July 1st 2023. over the past five years I have been pursuing my Juris doctorate degree from UMass law school what has emerged from my coursework is a love and a passion for
118the law beyond what I could have ever anticipated I truly feel that it is my calling to pursue a career as a lawyer after I graduate and subsequently sit for the Massachusetts bar exam in July of 2023. it has been a pleasure to serve the students and family of families of Dartmouth as the pupil support service administrator the special Educators and related service providers in Dartmouth are an inspiration to me and their work is amazing the students are incredible and the families are so nurturing and supportive over the past nine years I have learned so much and I am grateful for each and every one of my experiences while serving the district I am willing to assist in any way as you seek as you seek a candidate for the rule for the role of
119pupil support service administrator respectfully Elizabeth Cabral Townsend Beth all the best I know you and I taught had a long conversation type of deal but in public thank you very much for everything you will be missed wish you nothing but the best thank you sure you're putting everybody on the spot I know I know thank you so much I just want to you know I'm just emotional right now so um it's it's weird because obviously I wrote the letter but hearing it it's just um every word of it is true um I would not want to do this position or this work in any other place um this is truly just a shift in Gears and something that I've kind of come to learn is more of my calling um but this is the most
120incredible District I am so honored um to have been selected by you in 2014 I'm grateful for every minute um that I've spent here um thank you and um you know to all of the teachers who um and staff members who have just done the most amazing work for our students with disabilities um it truly has been an honor and a privilege and I want to thank you all very much for your support and for taking a chance on me because I know I had not been a special ed director when I got hired in 2014 so thank you for that and you know um I just look forward to continuing the work like I said through June 30th so thank you thank you thank you that's another one we're gonna have gonna have to
121post yeah come on now let's get into that a little later yeah that's that that's later that's you know that that's that's one of our responsibilities also so thank God for it reform okay uh yeah yeah okay my turn uh seriously uh tomorrow's election day uh polls open at seven o'clock till eight o'clock uh please do your god-given constitutional rights and go out and vote um congratulations to our sports teams and their tournament runs that they've had uh especially a volleyball who won again tonight so they move on I'm not sure when their next game is but good luck to them uh something that I was unaware of and I will do the mayor Koop is when I see uh Miss Braga their coach is that they're also incompetent they do competitions type of deal
122and uh found out that this past weekend they placed first in uh division two second in the SEC Conference and that's qualified him for a spot in the uh msaa Regional so congratulations to them realize that they did that so good for them we have a home football game last one of the Season uh Thursday night at seven o'clock at uh living Memorial Stadium and last but certainly not least uh congratulations to our high school band who uh scored another Trifecta type of deal they uh last weekend uh the 29th and 30th to the 29th we were in Rutgers for a band of Band of America's New Jersey Regional Championship for the first time and we ended up winning that competition with a score of a little over 86. good on the buses Sunday morning
123went to reading and uh dropped a 99-2 out of 100. uh for nesba championships division five and then this pass at the night down at MetLife Stadium and it must have been an omen because the Jets were playing so the stadium was all lit up in green so you know we were talking about that uh they scored a 99 I'm sorry my fault in 97-7 took all the captions and amazing brought home another first place for their sixth in a row so what's that okay five o'clock Friday night but we'll we'll get that you know take a look at the website under High School athletics team schedules and click on the volleyball that'll be good thank you okay other matters my committee members I guess we had time that I'm just going to mention um
124that on uh uh November 29th so it's the end of the month but I'm going to still put a plug out for our annual um required basic rights and special education it's sort of like a refresher for parents like myself it's always good to revisit the information and this Townsend will be presenting that um at Quinn Elementary School from 6 to 7 30. um so yeah the 29th of November um we we had our first meeting at Cushman which was great uh where we had some folks come and deliver some resources and answer questions and I think we had about 20 20 parents um and some staff as well some uh staff so it was really it was great to have folks back in person and hope to continue that to engage more families and
125growing and learning and be better together well actually I'll do some you know so it just came across my radar but the um the orchestra and the high school orchestra is having their performance as a z and it's not until December 20th but it's my understanding is tickets do sell out so and they're going quickly so anyone that is interested in that performance you know you might want to purchase your tickets I think they said there's something like 150 tickets left and you know they sold quite a few so just as something to keep in mind uh I need you to talk about that Charter thing but one more okay one thing for us I apologize one thing that I do want to mention and that's a congratulations to our own Kathleen amaralhon her degree
126from UNH so congratulations well deserved congratulations that almost free time now yeah there you go Chris uh one quick question actually maybe a little longer do we have anything uh planned around the books or in the works when would our next joint meeting with the uh select board be I'm just I bring that up because I'm going I'm going on 10 years now on the committee and it seems like year after year after year the problem is always coming back to health insurance the health insurance split in this town is a problem and that's one thing that I will say is that I will implore the select Board of Dartmouth to let's have a conversation about the health insurance because it's 10 years it's wearing on all of us and it really is in my
127opinion Dartmouth can we should certainly be looking at at options ever and I know I've had the opportunity probably six or seven years ago or right when Mr McGinnis came on board I think I I met with both Dr Gifford Mr Kiley um Sean and it might and me it was over in Bush Street that's right it was over that's right you were there so it's just frustrating that year after year this comes up so I I think that you know I'd love to see a little more engagement and just to answer your question Mr Oliver we'll have an update on that in the executive session thank you Dr Jenkins well I also want to note that you know for years you've been here longer than I have but in the almost equally lengthy tenure
128we have always waited for this Blackboard to invite us but there's no reason why we cannot convene a joint meeting I think we find when the select board sets the agenda that the agenda is I'll be charitable and say 60 not relevant to us Mr news might put a different number on that um but I don't see any reason why we can't convene a joint meeting um and invite the uh the select board and even the finance committee um to talk about some of the issues that we want to talk about with them um we're co-equal branches of government right um they can they can also you know we can extend the invitation to them as well and put the things on the agenda that we want to talk about so maybe you know we're
129going to have executive session tonight um maybe we revisit this topic at our next meeting and we pick a date and we pick some topics for the agenda and extend a meeting to those two boards it might mean that we have to meet an additional time um but I'm okay with that because I think this is important I agree yeah yep I'm cool with that oh Church yep that was I was trying to find it but I can't find it so just actually which ties into that conversation is I'm on the charter Review Committee and so as we're going back through interestingly this question of uh collaboration and what our role is vis-a-vis the select board has come up in terms of language and so I'm just going to read this and I think I
130probably need this I think it's probably best as if I share it with you because there's a comments about what does it absolutely mean we're revisiting in our next meeting which is that I sent it to John there's been a lot going on but I just uh I just wanted to like make sure that I was I thought we all needed to weigh on on this if we're talking about revisions before it comes to town meeting but I'll just read it quickly but I understand that it's easier to read it and then kind of digest it but right now the language says that let me see the town of notwithstanding their election by the voters for the purpose of coordinating the work of all Town agencies the town officials named in this section including school
131committee members and all elected members shall be subject to the call of the select border of the Town Administrator at all reasonable times for consultation conference and discussion on any matter relating to their respective offices or multiple member bodies that's the current language so I just want to like just say so I think like if because we're talking about that and there were and again in that board of course the representatives of all the Committees so I think it's just important for us to kind of consider are we okay with that continuing that language do we think that is representative of what we think of our role because I my reading of that is that we're subject to the select board and and again do we see ourselves is that is that the case and
132again that's how I've read it and there was again some discussion within like you know but I wanted to get your viewpoints inside your web I okay I just want to say that's fine I just want to warn the committee that we need to comply with open meeting law and so it's fine to circulate that language but discussion via email or serial discussion no no it's no I know so you can't circulate it to all of us and all of us individually responding well no I know that so we have to if we want to talk about this we have to talk about it in an open meeting when is your next Chata meeting so we have a meeting on Wednesday but this is something that is on hold so we're not necessarily like you
133know we're kind of cleaning up and going through you know various sections but this is one that we highlighted for a future discussion so there's no anyway I'm sure we will revisit it on Wednesday but again we do not have to make a final decision around it and I can say we're in discussion that's fine so why don't you fall with that to everybody we all take a look at it and we can at some point have a discussion about it type of deal okay okay yep all right thank you Mary thank you Mary much appreciated okay all right anything else that's enough I got it okay our next meeting is going to be uh two weeks from tonight Monday November 21st uh 2022 at 6 30 here in the media center that being said
134that chair will entertain a motion to adjourn to Executive session for the purposes of collective update on collective bargaining with uh Union personnel and not return to open session moved by Ms Amaral second by Miss Wade on the motion any discussion roll call vote sorry John noon yes Miss Oliver yes Shannon Jenkins yes Kathleen Amaral and Mary White yes thank you everyone and have a good evening enjoy Veterans Day to our veterans thank you [Music]