Dartmouth School Committee Meeting, August 22, 2022

001[Music] good evening everyone i'd like to call the meeting of the diamond school committee for monday august 22nd 2022 to water please stand for the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the united states of america to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice all right i'd like to ask if you have any cell phones pagers beepers any electronics if you put them on vibrate or shut them off completely i would appreciate it we would appreciate it also like to let you know that this mess this meeting is being uh televised uh through the dartmouth high school media youtube channel and it's being uh will also be shown on uh future broadcasts during the week on diamond cable tv channels 9 and 18 at a number of

002different times and we appreciate everything that they do all right roll call please wisconsin john nunes yeah mary waite yes kathleen amarillo yes shannon jenkins here chris oliver here thank you uh gee thanks they couldn't hear me okay um you take the approval of the regular session minutes of july 25th 2022. so moved moved second dr jenkins second by uh miss waite on the motion any discussion chair hearing none all in favor aye aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously uh next we're gonna move into public comment we've allocated 10 minutes for that and uh [Music] if anyone has any comments they'd like to offer on tonight's agenda items and agenda items only ask you to please step up give us your name you have three minutes please understand that we do not get into back

003and forth discussions it's your comments they're part of the record but we do not get into any back and forth discussion or anything of that nature i'm talking on the topic of allergy awareness okay on june 16th my son endured a medical emergency in the school he encountered an anaphylactic reaction that occurred in his classroom my son was diagnosed with eggs allergy and allergies that are life-threatening we remain vigilant and everybody in the class um knows about it the nurse the bus driver you know and that's something that we accepted the challenge to teach everyone educate and prepare my son for these events but i was shocked that day i got a call that 9-1-1 had arrived after the nurse administered his epinephrine my conversation with my son and the nurse was very direct they

004told me he had gotten ice cream and it contained eggs i don't really know how that happened because i didn't send him to school with ice cream he doesn't buy school lunch he doesn't buy school snacks i later would find out that the third grade did something fun for the school and went out and bought ice cream and toppings for the last day of school celebrations which i think is great but had i known about it i would have probably declined or been there to give him a safe option and make sure that he felt included i have to be thankful for the nurses who immediately administered his epinephrine and for my son who was very brave to know that he needed the nurse but we have policies and protocols and guidelines in place for

005events like this he 100 percent needs to avoid his allergen kids are different kids can present all different ways sometimes um school reactions happen and you don't know what they had but in this case he was given his allergen i just want to say for allergy awareness it means one thing to me than than just a few signs i think staff needs a little bit more training not just on professional development day not just sign here these are your kids with epi because although it's written down we need to be able to act on them my son clearly said his throat didn't feel right he's nine i think that's all he needs to say he said he needed the nurse he was sent to the nurse but he walked alone not with the staff member

006not with a peer and he immediately vomited at the nurse's door and again i'm so thankful that they moved in action and gave him his epi once they you know could figure out that it was a reaction the awareness part can't just be signs we have to kind of do everything as a community a district friends family anywhere and everywhere you go if we could educate on allergy awareness everyone's going to present differently and i don't even support food vans and food restrictions because i don't think that's the real world certainly in the elementary level you need to put a few accommodations in place to keep those kids safe but the real world they're not going to care about his allergies but if you were aware and you kind of had that mindset when you're

007at shaw's or at the school you kind of know you got to wash your hands before and after sanitizer doesn't kill food allergens and teach your children that teach them everybody can be a pal and save a life and i'm looking just for the awareness to be more of a big deal we can't just say we sign we hung up signs we do a professional development education you've got to act on these drills i mean nobody goes to a fire drill and doesn't bring the fire extinguisher you've got to act on them i think of the bus driver i know that they're trained that's what i'm told but to process it they need to pull the bus over give the epinephrine call 9-1-1 keep those other kids calm safe give epinephrine again in five minutes

008if 9-1-1 hasn't arrived it's a lot to do so i ask have we put this into play have we done drills but whatever we can do whatever i can do to help educate and talk about it more it shouldn't be something that's just on the first day of school the more people that are aware the more kids will be safe and i love dartmouth i love the school it's my school my kids and i just want to be part of the team to spread awareness thank you thank you ma'am thank you thank you very much hello lynne turner here um i'm commenting on uh i think two items on the agenda the first is um the cell phone um uh adjustments to our handbook and they're going to be restricting the cell phones during school

009time and having them in a hotel is my understanding per our new principal which i wanted to say after reading his reasoning for doing so and compromising with having them in the rooms with the kids but still having them available for safety reasons i think it was a good compromise that he's making i think that he has good reasoning for the benefit of the children's mental health that they are not just glued to their phones all day and that they're able to interact more with their peers so i just want to give my support for his thoughts on the cell phone policy changes and the second thing i would like to comment on is about the history committee for celebrating our culture and our history in dartmouth i think it's a wonderful thing and i

010would hope i would be interested even in being involved in that kind of a committee to help bring awareness to and celebrate our great culture and help all residents feel proud of living here thank you thank you anybody else hello my name is mike ludzik i have been in touch with rick porter over at potter elementary i also spoke with the dartmouth police department also at the superintendent's office i believe her name is kate awesome it's you nice to meet you finally she's great so myself as well as many other parents that i know have a a concern about the reality that bad things can happen at these schools due to some crazy people and especially after the ivaldi incident uh the concern is heightened even more so after the conversations that i've had with

011the individuals that i just mentioned i am very aware and impressed with the security measures these schools have taken since sandy hook and i also i am also aware of what needs to be in place for the most part after speaking with the police department about getting school resource officers at the elementary schools i know that the middle school has one i know that the high school has one which is awesome i can't speak for all parents but at least the ones that i know share my concern very passionately so we are hopeful that some steps will be taken to get school resource officers also at the elementary schools i know for myself i'm very interested in being as proactive as possible and working with whomever necessary to get these kinds of things put in

012place not just for my children but also for the generations to follow so this isn't something that we have to revisit again and we could just have ongoing security and a sense of safety on top of the security measures again that have already been taken to make this pretty much a full proof system so thank you all thank you kate thank you anybody else okay yeah okay all right it's upside down here okay uh old business update on school security and allergy awareness dr gifford yes we did yeah that's all right no no we bounced down right no i did that i took my nap 20 30 minutes that's it okay uh all right so i appreciate the comments from the audience tonight because we are talking about those issues so um during our admin

013retreat i guess last week august 4th actually two weeks ago these issues were on our agenda and we we spoke about them a lot and some of the things i'll talk about the allergy awareness first of all um as i let you know the last time we met there are a lot of things in place already and i did send you the policies that are in place so just so you could review them some of not to say that we can't do more and and would be open to ideas um which ms paveo and i have been talking about um what other things we can add to uh the year for pd etc but one of the things that we want to stress is that the things that are in place are listed in the

014policy and unfortunately probably people have become lacks over time it hasn't been as the speaker spoke about really brought to the attention so that's one of our principal intents of opening up school is we've we've worked with the leadership team to make sure that everyone is made re-aware if you will goes over the policy that's in place such things as if a party or something which we so often frown upon with food etc we're not advocating that all parties have to involve food of course um that the principal and the nurses are made aware so these kinds of things wouldn't happen unfortunately at this um particular incident there was there was a safe option provided for the child unfortunately the child then went to a place where there wasn't a safe it was an additional

015um so unfortunate should not have happened so we are re-emphasizing our policies that we have in place such as once again as i said letting the principal know the administration to know what's happening the nurses do meet with the teachers and we from the beginning of the year to talk about the students that are in their class that have any kind of allergies they do the epipen training etc and also the one thing that we wanted to mention was about we have had a practice in place i'm not going to say it's in every school at all but that there have been no food from home allowed that come in so we would we want to talk about that a little bit more as a district so that's just and and we are providing signage

016as an initial step as an additional step that we haven't done in the past so that's a little bit update on that so yeah dr giffords so before we go into the security since these are almost two separate topics yep um so i guess one of my my questions again listening to ms cohen and experiencing this is you know and as we talk about training you know i know some students are have a 504 who have um allergy you know i it seems to me important that you have team meetings akin to you know what we have with you know an iep that those folks can meet including the bus drivers and the custodial staff i think at what i say custodial staff and i'm also thinking cafeteria staff as well because those students are

017usually sitting in a seat and you know while we do have students who have peanuts i think it's you know we also have students who have a variety of wide variety of allergies and if you're sitting there you know we you know they do serve things that you know broccoli and other things and they may come to sit next to that child so it'd be good for those folks you know to all know for their own like peace of mind as well and i do think you know epipen training is i mean i've had to give them epipen numerous times it's unnerving you know and i think that miss cody to really you know talking about the bus and stopping so you know they do give you you know dummy epi pens that you can

018use as testers to try that out so i think that would be really you know having the team so they can hear from the parent so they understand um also you know again as ms co mentioned not all allergens you know and reactions present you know you can have the vomiting you can have the hives you know and again there were mistakes made here of course but i think you know having that meeting and and just creating that conversation you have some people who are more comfortable as parents to start those conversations than others so that would be like again from my parents you know some suggestions you know i always obviously encourage parents that have those concerns to meet the team their nurse et cetera et cetera and um they do have medical plans

019you know we do no i know that i know that in our aspen account so a lot of things are in place again not to say that more couldn't be done okay we're still working on that and we'll take those suggestions okay thank you um yep i have another allergen issue i would just also add playground staff to the list of staff to be trained because other people access playgrounds and off hours and so we need to make sure there may be nuts or something on the playground that a student can be contaminated with i know i have a friend whose son is severely out allergic to peanut butter there's all sorts of allergies but she decided not to send her kids to the school because she was not sort of satisfied with the recess

020protocols so i think we need to make sure we include that as well because we don't control access at all hours to those parts of the facilities so i just like to make sure that we add that staff and we also think about like if if someone's having a reaction out on the playground how are they escorted do we have enough staff because i do think we cannot have kids just being sent to the nurse's office unescorted and so just thinking about those the playground protocols as well i think is really important mr all of everything else thank you mr chair so i'm not going to sugarcoat anything here obviously i love this district i love the dartmouth public schools i think our educators our and our staff and faculty do a tremendous job but

021it's clear to me that mistakes we're making were made on this day and we need to we need to look at our policies we need to look at our procedures we need to look at retraining and we need to speak to the individuals of the of the students or the parents of the students that these things affect i see two two concerns here i see prevention how do we make our staff and faculty aware of the poli if the policies and procedures that are in place and what can we do to improve upon them because we can have all the policies and procedures in the world but if they're not being followed then there's no point in having them in the first place so i think we need to really take a look at this

022i a couple of things in addition one being i think we need to consider i've had several conversations with miss cowe she's more than willing to be part of the solution with this i think it's worthwhile and we just heard from dr my colleague dr jenkins about another parent that had concerns are we looking at the big picture here are we looking at not just only classroom staff are we looking at our teaching assistants are we looking at recess are we looking the recess monitors are we looking at our bus drivers so just training them on not just around being not nut-free classrooms or peanut-free classrooms but being allergy truly being allergy aware i can speak from someone that has experienced anaphylactic reaction and it's nothing it's one thing to have an allergy but it's

023a whole different thing to have to either administer an epipen or give yourself an epipen i don't wish that upon anyone so i would ask that this committee and this administration do our due diligence to make sure that we include the stakeholders in this community faculty staff parents medical personnel and let's revisit this because this one incident is too many in my opinion the second piece of this is the epipen administration i agree we need to be following up and making sure that for those students that need that have an epipen assigned to them that we're doing our due diligence with training of those staff that are around them and they're aware of everything around that and i know a lot of this is already in place most of it is already in place so

024all i'm asking is that we re revisit the policies and procedures and we look to see how we can improve upon them so this doesn't happen again thank you i just quickly would add i might go without saying but i don't want to leave it unsaid is that we rely heavily over the last you know forever but mostly the last couple years on substitutes and just i don't know how that um impacts the um you know their access to that information you know on the fly if they're notified in the morning that they'll be you know filling in for a class i think it's quite important to keep them in the loop and understanding that that's so important yeah good point yeah you know just i think field trips you know again it's worth thinking

025i mean that is a whole issue if you have the teacher who's carrying the epi pen you know depending on the age of the student some epipens were on the student um in other cases the teacher if the teacher ends up not being with that student and the group is a different part of the building that becomes problematic too so just again the whole you know to the whole picture because you know luckily this little guy was a quite a self-advocate and got himself down there so you know really you know kudos you know i don't know if this is down there but you know certainly him mr news can i just add one more thing yeah sure i do really want to amplify what mr oliver said here we need to take this seriously

026we're about to have a discussion about school safety and more kids go to emergency rooms and die every year from allergies than than our you know have then die from school shootings they're both horrible one we should be taking this as seriously as we are taking our school security and devoting as much resources to it and i know we're we are serious but if it means that we have to spend money to do training or whatever we should be investing those resources because it's it's just as important agreed okay thank you thank you no problem okay safety and security a lot of things are happening there so as you know uh i've said this over and over again and mr galashaw keeps reminding me that we've done continue to do work with the police department

027on camera access and pa access etc i know they've been working over the summer with the police department as well so it just show it just connects us and makes that partnership available one thing that we determined we're going to do also before i get into that we did update the cemp and we've produced a new copy of that so all of the staff during opening day will opening next couple of days we'll get that new emergency management plan and the principals have been asked to go over that the highlights of that that shifts not many changes but just to make sure once again people know plus we have a lot of new staff that know that that's in existence and to be able to review that and use that um we've also uh determined

028this year we've asked the principals once again to go back we want documentation of all of the drills whatever it might be and trainings that they are doing in their building because as you know we've always asked them to do the alice training whether we use the video with the staff and then we have had in the past say pre-covered the the evacuation drills with students um the the elementary we did it a little bit differently with the reading of the book uh explaining to them a stranger danger where to go those kinds of things we're going to ramp that up with the elementary schools this year we're running actual drills they will be exiting the building they will be sheltering in place because back in the past i think folks were saying let's not

029scare them etc well it's time to we need to move on beyond that because life happens and it's not so good sometimes so with that said we're asking our principals to make a template documentation of every drill every professional development including opening day when they go over the cemp etc of what it is so we know that we have done our due diligence whether it's drills or trainings or whatever it might be i've been in contact with the chief i've been in contact with officer pimento who has done our alice training in the past he's actually will be working here tomorrow with our new teaching staff at project time they'll do 9-11 they have their alice training and of course we'll continue that in the in the schools but this is just for the new

030people tomorrow he's also meeting with i've asked him to come on friday to meet with the leadership team to talk to hear from them how the presence of the police department during drills helped in the past what do we think we need going forward how we might set that up etc so he'll be here with the leadership team on friday also just so you know the police department was training at potter school with the fire department last last week i guess and also to this gentleman's point we um i have spoken with the chief and they did post for one additional sro which will be rotating around the elementary schools for the year so they determined to do that that's so we will have three sros in the district um i did ask him that

031once that person is chosen that we are meet with them all of the sros actually to determine expectations because it's new for this the elementary especially uh but also just we meet anyway at least once a year and talk about the sro so be able to um meet them talk about that and so that's kind of exciting news so that's kind of it on updates to safety and security but um just to know that you know the intent will be to bring back all of those really significant trainings and and that kind of thing so chris thank you mr chair so first of all thank you dr gifford for the safety and security update i would like to thank publicly thanking knowledge the dartmouth police department for their work with the school department yeah um

032i i had the opportunity to read the article and i know they were from different speaking with different people in town so i'm really i'm really pleased and impressed with the the level of training that this town in collaboration with the school district and the police department together um working collaboratively with the trainings that take place as well as all the interoperability um that goes on with our police departments and communications i think dartmouth is certainly um if not on par if not ahead of the curve with a lot of this so i'm really pleased i'm also really pleased to hear that we're going to have another sro and rotation at the elementary schools that's something that i've been i've been asking for and i'm glad to see that it's finally um we're finally able

033to budget for it and and make that happen i'd love to see at some point doesn't need to be during the new staff orientation of the new staff intros but it'd be great to just have the all of our three sros introduce themselves at some point just so the public can see them um parents that are watching and just to be aware that you know these are the faces that you know that are in our schools and um it's a good idea just just a thought uh so just a couple of updates i are a couple of thought other thoughts uh around the um the upgrades that mr gallashaw was making and i don't want to put him on the spot but i are they in regards to carrie's law and the ray bomb act

034around e911 telecommunications and all that okay yes yeah i put him on it i said i don't know what this means take care of it okay he just said he's knee deep into it okay okay i i know that was something that was passed during uh um and the fcc is finally you know trying to get around making sure that districts are updates so i'm happy to see that that's taking place as well um my my only other thing i would ask is um i i have been few people have reached out to me in regards to um the situation of potter school so i i i know i've had a conversation with mr kiley and and i know that we're looking into other steps to mitigate any issues in the future um however you

035know i just want to make sure that um that we continue that uh i'm aware i know my colleagues are aware of um for everyone watching at home of things and we're we're we hear you we're following up with with your concerns and we're making sure that they're they're taken care of at the building levels well to that point as you know just to clarify a parent did reach out to principal and then they reached out to us and mr kiley met with police also the board of health was involved in that particular situation in the back there and it's been resolved so at least for now yeah thank you anybody else i know that we're going to be speaking probably to this a bit when we get down to the cell phone issue because

036and i i know it's part of this and again i fully support that i think it's a great you know a great stride and alleviating a lot of our issues you know which i'm sure we'll talk at more but and one of those issues includes the bathrooms you know at the high school and that is a continuous i'm hoping to hear you know if that is one solution of their other solutions or ways that we're trying to deal with that and mitigate the bathroom issue because i just feel like we don't have enough coverage and you know with security because you can only have you know you have to have someone at the desk and then that other person you know can only go into those gender bathrooms that so it you know it's a

037challenge for those folks and i know that um you know mr chibo at one point we were talking about that e-hall pass and you know i'm curious to see if that's still something that you know is being you know thought about for this year as uh you know again we know that voc has had some success with that and just again just trying because i feel like you know we know the bathrooms are just a continual issue and um for you know some kids don't want to use them because they just don't feel comfortable and you know so um so again hopefully the cell phone piece will at least like start to address that but it is something that you know thanks we'll be getting there in a few minutes yeah okay all right okay

038anything else okay we're good mr kylie update on maintenance and custodial summer projects thank you mr noon so um you know i've said this before but it's been a very busy summer we have eight days left before kids arrive so we're going to need every minute of uh of those eight days to get done what we what we hope to accomplish i i really just um you know we've taken on a lot this summer we've had a lot of staffing issues this summer and i just really wanted to make sure that uh i thank john bernat uh and his maintenance staff for their hard work they've been working nights and weekends and really trying to do their best to get ready the custodians also have been working weekends trying to work around our uh all

039our activities our academic and and other activities and all our projects so it's it's been a challenging summer to say the least and obviously the heat that we had was a factor as well but um we'll be ready so in eight days we'll definitely be ready very good thank you any questions thank you good job tell them thank you we thank them very much for all their their effort especially with the heat thank you for the update thank you one quick one quick question that i have uh and i happen to notice it on the school website today was school lunch farms that type of deal i'm the free now do you want ever does is everybody filling that out because of what we're getting from the commonwealth and the federal government now thank you

040for bringing that up mr so um it's important that people fill out the forms now this year we're fortunate that with the state has uh you know the legislature has voted to provide free and reduced uh lunch uh free free lunch to all kids but we're not sure a how long that's going to last whether it's going to be any any time beyond this year and our federal funding is is uh often contingent on free and reduced lunch statistics so even though everybody's getting free lunch we still need to have statistics and some of those are determined by the state outside of our application process so folks who are receiving other benefits and their families are receiving other benefits will automatically qualify for free and reduced lunch but there's a lot of people who fall

041through the cracks in that system and if they're not filling out those forms we're not getting credit and other communities will get funds that really should have been for for our kids um so yes we'd encourage that that uh as many people as possible if you think that you might qualify please please fill out the forms thank you thank you thank you sir okay alrighty next discussion on the formation of a working group regarding the batman history that's you that's me all right well uh last week uh dr gifford uh dave tattlebaum who's the uh chairman of the atmos board of selectmen and ms waite uh the four of us met the superintendent's office to you know take a look at trying to put together some type of uh you know working group to uh

042start getting into the history and culture uh and such uh we kind of came up with this you know probably having like a uh a working committee type of deal and uh mr tattlebomb you know went back to uh mr mcginnis who's the town administrator and kind of appears as though that in the long run what this is going to actually have to be as a regular committee subject to open meeting laws and all those uh wonderful things that we have to happen the thing being is that they're going to be you know it and again it's going to be uh at the mo at the moment and mary please if i'm misquoting jump i'm not you know looking at probably seven members uh one member reached from the select board school committee an historical

043commission one member from the school department one person from the town administrator's office and additionally possibly two committing two community at large members to be appointed for one-year terms per the town charter at large members need to be citizens of the community and you know we talk about them possibly being members of the tribe and such so in the discussion i had with uh that we had i should say i apologize we had um they're looking and the select board is going to uh carry the uh do the heavy lifting on this as as he said they're going to meet after labor day to form this working group and get it going try and come up with a mission statement and again uh you know you know the the uh need to be residents of

044the town uh if they're tribal members and they're not you're kind of gonna be ex-officio and you know not having any quote unquote voting rights or things of this nature but giving them the opportunity to be involved so that's where uh this is going at this point like you want to see no i i think that's you know and we sent some stuff and it was excellent yeah i mean i i think at this point you know we were talking about the charges you know and certainly you know the big thrust of this is that we want to make sure that you know um we're doing right by this you know this logo that we have and by this name and that we're educating folks in dartmouth you know along with our students and you

045know certainly i think when it comes to curriculum the schools are doing that so it's a lot of it's what we are you know thinking you know more broadly in our physical buildings where are you talking about signage that's happening in the schools and then you know some and again and and mr tattlebaum i think correctly saw this as a very much of a talent issue i think the town like kind of took this on as a national a lot of ways um in the recent past and so as part of that you know they want to work collaboratively with the towns to create some displays you know possibly even like working between the schools and having the libraries and all sorts of things so this is like the starting the launch point i think

046there's also an understanding that you know we travel our school travels or students travel or graduates travel so we want to make sure that you know we're clearly representing ourselves and you know with honor to uh to the symbol and everything so again this is just a starting point i think we still have to look at you know what that charge would be and you know i don't want to you know and there was some you know i had offered myself up to be on this committee so you know again i would have to get approval from my colleagues and everything else but i'm happy to i've been doing a lot of work around this just on my own so um so that's about you know unless there's anything you can either be with dr

047gifford no but i just think mr tattlebaum is presenting this to the select board tonight as well and so our thinking was to just call a meeting of like we said we started thinking about someone from the historical commission miss way if that would be agreeable because she's so into this history and doing a great job already mr tattlebomb um i was going to put one of our directors on and just to start it and then that group would evolve into a formal committee with you know open meeting law et cetera et cetera so but just to kind of get the conversation started get it going yeah you have to start somewhere yeah yeah you know room you have to crawl before you can walk dr jenkins so this all sounds fine to me and

048i think my position on the use of the logo is well known i also well known that i lost that uh that debate so that's fine i'm not going to relitigate that but one of the issues that came up in that conversation was we in the schools have policies about the use of the logo about treating it respectfully and how we do that and one thing i definitely don't want to lose sight of because this is something we don't control but maybe a town-wide group does there are other organizations that use the logo that are not governed by the same policies and so i really do want to make sure as we think about this is what we decided as a committee not my decision the committee decision that that's what we stand for we

049need to make sure that everyone in the community stands for those same things and so i'd like to see i don't know if that can be worked into the charge of this group but i would like to see that we ensure that anyone who's using the logo in this community is using it in the same way that we in the schools have determined are appropriate ways because i think their rules not on the floor you know not doing i'd like to make sure that we sort of extend those policies and uses to those other organizations that we as the schools don't have control over but the towns do i think in part because of leasing space or using you know town facilities i want to make sure that we don't lose sight of that because

050i think it's an important you know sort of thing to carry through thank you mary yeah and and just i'll just respond to that i think that is a major thrust and i have to give it you know appreciate um mr cattlebomb for really like starting this commerce you know coming to us and starting this conversation acknowledging where we were in the spring but i think you know he very much believes and agrees with that i think you know philosophically and wants to make sure that we're fully educating folks and that's you know and if we don't i mean really hypocrites is the way he framed it because we really need to make sure that if we're doing this or doing it right and that is educating about the honor and everything and again so

051those specific points you know we but but those are well taken and i you know again it's good to keep going and like going back over this and you know connecting and thinking about all the nuances but i think the education piece is very much about educating the whole community and that's why you know for the select board to also you know be kind of taking the charge on this is really helpful i guess i would just follow up and say that it leads me to the title of the working group right because this is it's not just about history right it's also about the policies around it right um so i it's fine with me i'm not going to say let's change the name but i just want to point out that that there

052are some things that are going to fall under the scope of this committee that i think are a little bit broader than history so we might want to think about whether that's the appropriate name for that committee or not but even if we call it that i want to make sure that the scope is broad enough so that those sorts of things can be included in their work and and they are talking about uh you know getting you know reporting to us on a quarterly basis both us and the select board on a quarterly basis so you know we've got that kathleen at this point you you mentioned um mr tattlebaum is bringing it to his committee tonight yeah um is it appropriate then for us i mean i'm agreeable with all the work that

053mary's done and her yeah to sort of vote her myself make a motion that we vote mary way on to that committee if it's appropriate tonight yeah it's fine so i will make that motion that way full second second so moved by miss amaral second by mr oliver to appoint mary waite to uh that committee on the motion any discussion chair hearing and all in favor aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously thank you congratulations you know i'm actually really excited no i know you are excited yes you know and also and thank you for doing that seriously yeah i don't know and and also mr channel did come to us with he had the full supporter of his like so he actually came to that like not saying like i have the rep you know

054full support of the selector to do all right are we good all right new business you want that you want me to oh sure okay uh so tonight we have our athletic director mr christopher who is going to talk about the athletic handbook that um we would want to vote from the school committee as a handbook we haven't i don't know how long it's been since so he'll tell us about that but we felt it was especially since this conversation was and and also just just boundaries parameters et cetera et cetera with athletes etc so mr chris fulley thank you thank you for the opportunity um before i begin i'd like to echo what mr kiley uh said about our maintenance staff and everything that they've done for us in athletics it has truly been

055amazing the work that they've been able to complete over the summer time again during a lot of this heat so you have john burnett and you have shane swansea who is our new maintenance individual who works with athletics who has done a a phenomenal job of working not only um you know in our fields at quinn elementary in the middle school and obviously the high school and overseeing the stadium and he's done a fantastic job and we're looking forward to seeing you know what's next as we progress through the fall so this is certainly my my portion time it's certainly not as exciting as the cell hotels but i can i can assure you that it's just as important so um i'm going to talk about athletic handbook revision and um to dr gifford's point

056i don't believe the student athlete or student handbook i should say the athletic handbook has been approved and voted on by school committee ever to the best of my knowledge and for many of the workshops that i've attended over my um going into 11 years you know everyone that does present about about handbooks and the importance of establishing a handbook um does also comment the importance of making sure that um it is approved and supported by the school committee so hence the reason why i'm here today so when i was hired in the fall of 2019 um over a course of the first two months i was able to meet with all of our head coaches individually and and obviously talked about numerous topics and one of the topics that kept coming up in all

057of these conversations was our athletic handbook being outdated revisions needed to be made and they all wanted to be part of the process which i think is a fantastic thing when you're trying to build collaboration and ownership with um you know anything that you're trying to incorporate so hitting about the importance of handbooks and again hearing their feedback and the importance of wanting to be involved went through this exercise of you know the importance of the handbook we discussed this with some of our coaches it protects us legally it states our philosophy and standards our department's guiding principles it defines success it's the department's framework consistency and accountability and our school and state rules along with drives our decision making our common language amongst all of the stakeholders it builds trust it provides clarity and

058support and it's proactive rather than being reactive and and one of the things that um i pride ourselves on the athletic department is trying to stay a few steps ahead and be proactive instead of reacting to things so how did we start with this process so this is the 2019-20 school year this is right before covid began it seems like about 100 years ago but we did start this process and i'd called it phase one it was a comprehensive review exercise of what we had at that point some stakeholders that were involved were our coaches i involved parents and student athletes and mr tebow was our principal at the time mr tebow was involved in this exercise so the questions were what has worked what has not um where were the holes and what are

059our standards and expectations within athletics and the individuals that are participating in our program now during this same time i was i had the opportunity to present at the athletic directors the national conference for athletic directors and of course the topic that i presented and ended research on was a comprehensive handbook so throughout that process brainstormed everything that should be in a handbook for athletics and again i'm not going to boy boy with each one of these details but it's it's pretty extensive list and the goal was to take where we had our holes or what didn't work fix it and make sure that we covered as many of these topics as we could because there were so many missing in our existing handbook it goes from philosophy all the way down to stopping and

060eating which i know is a very uh fun and popular thing with some of our teams but there needed to be some guidelines over that all right so again took all that information for the last year and a half to two years rewrote it and took what we had added to it took some things out put some new things in made sure that we were aligned with everything that should be in a comprehensive athletic handbook um and the final product is is what uh you folks have been forwarded so moving forward which i'd like to say it's phase two is um one of my goals this year is to create an athletic advisory council which will be all stakeholders will be involved from you know coaches staff members administration student athletes parents parents guardians and

061community members now asking how many of each would be included i haven't gotten that far yet but it certainly will involve all stakeholders what i visualize this to be is a fluid document it's a is living and breathing so again there's so many things that change uh quickly whether it's a policy a procedure a new state law that's put in place maybe something that wasn't working that we're tweaking to make better maybe there was some language that you know some individual stakeholders got kind of hung up with that needed to be cleaned up so we're going to look to revisit annually with that group beginning that process in april and hopefully being able to share this with you folks consistently during your june meetings for any changes that we might make to it and again

062we're always open for suggestions feedback and most importantly constructive criticism now you would think that some common sense points um that you you you would think or not it shouldn't be issues that are pretty obvious i'll give you an example i had a parent uh this past year asked me if there could be alcoholic beverages served during a uh a team banquet an awards banquet that they had and again common sense is no but nowhere was that written we also have had you know issues with vacations and what the parameters are on vacations when our seasons are going on i'll give a case in point we do have a couple of kids that are on vacation still with the fall season just beginning friday for football and everything else started today that wasn't documented in

063our handbook so that has been added and those are just two really small examples of a bigger picture of of what we've been able to do again this was something that i was hoping to have in place last year but again with with covert it did take a back seat and uh as on the back burner and now hopefully we continue to move forward so with that thank you and i'll entertain any questions that you may have just wait no i just want to say like tremendous amount of work here it's fantastic and i can certainly see how it's updated and you know and i know because again we're going to circle back to this but i like the fact that you know there's a distinction between hazing which can certainly take place across social

064media as well as social media because social media is used in so many dangerous and hurtful ways i mean to the point that you crop out you know one of the biggest things with i'm hearing now is cropping out one person from a from a group picture and things like that and so understanding that you know the whole range of and speaking to it in the handbook i think really is uh timely and important so among the many other things this is something that i was really glad to see so thank you thank you dr jenkins so this is great i i would just have one i'd have a request for next year um it's super easy for us to see adjustments when you submit a document as a markup i'm sure you didn't do

065it this year because it changed so much but as you move forward with revisions to this that we've started doing that and it's really i think helpful to us as a committee that you can see exactly what changed um the only thing that i will add speaking from personal experience as a as an athlete and a child of divorce that i hope that we as an athletic um you know team are are lenient about vacations um my my stepfather taught in our local high school and the only time i've ever seen him intervene with my brother was when he got in trouble for missing a practice or some practices but he had to miss him because it was a scheduled custody visit so i know there's some rules here about being present on the first

066day but sometimes those things are out of control for our kids um so i just want to make sure that we're understanding about those sorts of things to your point and again you know we've had i mean there's there's other issues that do come up especially at the beginning of the season of a student athlete and parents not registering student athlete on time and having to wait after the first practice for us to reopen the portal and again they're able to start day two and get that try out uh for that team so it's certainly not held against them and and again as a parent myself of you know a college student and a middle school student i know how much you know i know the challenges that presents with the family piece of it

067uh and and you know knowing when when you can take vacations sometimes doesn't align with our school vacations but you know it's one of those points that from the athletic standpoint it's the importance of committing to that team being part of that team and making sure that you are a consistent contributor but we we have had situations where student athletes have gone away for a longer weekend or vacation and you know if that's communicated well in advance things can be put in place to make that work now having said that if that individual is is away and somebody takes their place and uh does very well you know on the way on the way back um that there could or could not be a penalty would leave it very gray with that but they do

068have to compete to get you know that spot back yep so mr allen uh this is great i i think this is the first time i had the opportunity to really look through this and especially all the all the new updates to it so i just thank you for for bringing this to us and all the time and effort you put into it thank you yeah we're good well i mean i just uh yeah very comprehensive i am just finishing reading through it to be honest but to miss wait's point and and really diving into those really important aspects like the hazing and that very very important um thank you thank you for all you do you are an incredible asset to this district thank you um and so coming in break of it and

069if you feel like you've been here 10 years i'm sure but we're lucky to have you thank you if i made just a quick update we started off all season on friday with football football numbers are in the low 90s which is the highest they've been in five years and we almost have all together with our 10 sport offerings almost 400 student athletes that are competing for spots on said teams so um you know we have rebounded pretty well from covet and i'm very happy that we've been able to um build yeah you know sustain those numbers and then continue to build on so very them all right all right thank you jenkins do you have a comment i was just going to make a i was just going to make a motion to approve

070the revisions to the student handbook for athletics so we have motion by miss dr jenkins second by ms amaral on the motion any discussion i'll just add my two cents and job well done i know it's a lot of work to read to revitalize and revisit everything so good job thank you on the motion any discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously thank you folks thank you thank you all right yep yep okay i'll next on our agenda mr shea is we request to vote and approve revision to the student handbook cell phone practices okay all right got nervous for a second i'm not gonna lie not the conversation getting this up and running um we've we've talked already last time about our cell phone policy it's not a surprise

071um i do want to um the main thing i really want to express is that we have a policy in place we're looking at the implementation of the policy and how we can implement it we think that cell phones have been a distraction to learning they've been a cause of issues with relating to bullying they've been a cause of issues relating to altercations in the school we this comes out of a lot of work by a lot of people that really wanted to put something in place um the major change is how we're going to implement the policy okay so we have the policy it's how we're going to implement it so the cell hotel which i did not think would take off as a sneaky term has been a term now um and um

072but really it's it's it's come from a lot of work with the teachers too that's um really saying that the first offense is a conversation with our teachers and it's that reflective practice it is why why is this such a need for you what is the distraction how is this impacting your learning every day that's a five-minute conversation and we talk the reason why we wanted to be a five-minute conversation is we don't want a kid to just miss a bus be late for a sport on that first offense you know they might have just got distracted grab their phone especially for breaking old bad habits um it's the second offense where there's a longer consequence and that's when it becomes a 30-minute teacher after session third offense is when it gets bumped to the

073ap for a referral and fourth offense is when we're gonna have um parent conversation with with the parents about the understanding of why this is such a important distraction in our concerns and um as we said in the past there's a lot of statistics that revolve around around cell phones and mental health and around on learning and the impact of learning one of the big things we know that there's not much of a difference of the old school if your cell phone is docked which we is turned upside down as opposed to if it's right in front of you it's still a distraction it's still the first thought on students minds so that's why we're looking for a more separate space but again inside the classroom for need if needed um once i know i

074don't want to be the cell phone principal i want to be the principal that cares about mental health and concerning about our students needs and this is where it comes from and this is the passion that i have is that it it is impacting our students learning and it is impacting their mental health and we know this so we should do something about it and this is where this is where it comes from and i know there are exceptions you're on a 504 plan you're on an iep you have access to it you're a student that might need to check your blood sugar we're going to be accommodating to that we're not a school that is not accommodating to student needs we understand there's exceptions to rules but what we also understand at the same

075time is there's a ton of statistics that we're looking at right now that are impacting our students and academically emotionally and across the board and even socially so i'll open to questions and then again i'll put up the policy so you guys have it chris go ahead i guess i'll start uh thank you mr shea i'm not gonna lie that since this uh the headlines broke of the uh of this uh update uh that i have have had many conversations with family members with uh friends with community members about this i think like you said there's we've always had a cell phone policy it's just the way we're we're implementing it and now we're post covered we're trying to go back to some normalcy we're constantly talking about mental health i certainly you can't dispute

076the the stats that you shared with us um i knew uh a lot of them already but it's interesting to see it actually on paper here all of them together so i think this is a very reasonable roll out of this i agree that with one of the audience members had said that i think this is a great compromise some of the concerns obviously when the media got hit by the media and people were just watching the taglines they weren't they weren't aware of the fact that they're going to be in the classrooms they're not going to be in there a lot the students don't have to keep them locked up in their lockers um they're going to be what if what if there's an emerge i've i've had this conversation about a half dozen

077times with people folks in this town what if there's an emergency well the phones are within walking distance um of the i have no doubt that you know if something if there's an actual emergency a threat how are they there's there's so many different layers to this this is like a big onion with layers but at the end of the day i think this is very reasonable um you're not asking that much for students and i think at the end of the day it's gonna help in a lot of ways i i really do especially around the fact of keeping students focused yeah and to jump on that like the conversation points i've had is that 95 have been positive in in response and even conversation with students as much as they know that they

078want they also understand and even one of the statistics is that 60 of teens admit that their smartphone addiction is a serious problem right so they know it they in and we've had good conversations about it and again we're just trying to help our students understand that just having it away from you while you learn is really important when our students go to college they're not going to have a cell phone hotel but they're going to understand that when my cell phone wasn't in front of me and it's off to the side it is when i am my best learner and that's that's what we're trying to teach our students that's sustainability of learning and how you can be that lifelong learner with the tools that we provide you so yeah you might not in

079your college class you can't do you have a cell phone telling your college class but you understand that if i zip away my backpack it's the same approach and we're teaching those skills and what tools we can put in our students back pocket is essential to us no i think i think that's great and just a couple of last things before i let you go just just for ever the viewing public at home and for those um meteor outlets that may write a story on on your presentation this evening this is not coming from a punitive spot right because that's one of the pieces of this you know this isn't fair we just went through covid this is coming from a spot in which you care about the students and and this isn't something that

080i and i said this before in conversations this isn't something that you you just came up with on your own you've had you said it you've had conversations with teachers you've had conversations with students so you've heard from everyone and this is kind of what you're hearing that it's kind of like that the student the your children right that don't want any rules they want you to just let them but you they really do want rules so i'm i'm all in favor of this and um just one last question does this also go to um ipads i was asked by a couple of students to ask you we're going to say no to right now because they're if they're being used as a learning tool some students use them for taking notes and some students

081use them now again if it's going to be an individual situation where it is a distraction to that student's learning we're going to do what's best for that student and and looking at it from an adult lens saying if this is a distraction to your learning and you still need it for notes and we're going to look at what other apps you have on and is that suitable for the learning environment those are going to be individual case basis right now we think right now the major thing right now is getting the cell phones out of in front of it and and honestly the conversation we're having too as educators is is that these are designed for engagement you know there's neuroscience behind apps and in the cell phone design we as educators now have

082to fight that engagement that we're taking away so there is a there is a step for us that we have a little bit more of a challenge right we're saying this thing that is designed neurologically to be engaging we're we're we're putting it away and we have to continue that engagement ourselves thank you thank you thank you for supporting dr jenkins so i'll just follow up on the note taking we have you know we have a lot of debate about devices and technology in higher ed as well and the research is really sort of abundantly clear um that you learn better when you take notes by hand so i would say that perhaps we should ban ipads if people don't have a legitimate sort of 504 or iep for using it you're going to learn

083more and better if you have to take notes because of the way your brain processes information one of the things i will say i'm totally in favor of this i think this is good but one of the things that we really debate in higher ed about device policies is when you have device policies and students having their 504 or their iep that they get to use devices it ends up outing people as having sort of learning disabilities um that sometimes they may not feel comfortable with and so it's just i don't think there's a right or wrong answer about this but i think i would just encourage us to be really thoughtful about how we do that for those kiddos that have that who now are essentially when you know their friends are gonna say

084well why do you get to have a phone and it's like well you know i have so i think i just would encourage us to be thoughtful about it i think it's a great policy i have no problems with it but how we sort of manage the comfort level of kids who may have an educational need for this in the classroom is something we need to think about and absolutely and my background is special education so i'm always trying to be cognizant of that and i think if you even asked me five years ago i'd be like every kid should have a cell phone on them and they should be doing their schedules on it and they should be and that was a special ed teacher in me and so it is a constant conversation

085of what is best and i don't want to out a student for a disability um and support them and i think there's different reasons different ways and hope that that we can manage that ourselves too and we have a really strong specialized staff that really works with confidentiality and privacy so we're lucky we have that foundation exact point shannon um yeah i i just uh you know thank you welcome to principal channel whatever you're watching um yeah just a pro you know the community is going to you know come up to speed and process this at their own you know i i've heard from parents as well and i've spoken to many and many most of the parents that i've spoken to had that concern related to the individual needs of their of their child

086and that you know i have a child that requires a device for communication but it certainly is like you know being cognizant of what that means for him i mean he's not here but uh but there are there are ways in which to sort of a guided access to restrict kind of leaping over to youtube or or other apps um when they're using it for but in in what uh to shannon's point i was gonna bring that out so just being aware of that is really important and just for the parents out there to know what you said that if there are exceptions to the rule um i always i always uh check in with my brother who just retired um for as from from education a history teacher in another state um and i

087just said well how do you feel about this because i was processing it too you know i talked last time about the app with the gps you know i'm gps saying where my son is and if he's calm and you know prior to to us utilizing that for for where where our children are um on the bus uh and he said well it that's just it's been you know a local community to us it's it's been it's been the reality it's been the rule so it wasn't something he said we've been doing that for years we haven't allowed you know i don't know if they coined it a cell hotel but um so i thought oh okay so that was my barometer in terms of this but yeah just knowing that those students who might

088need it for that reason a medical reason or um an educational reason that's different from what you're saying and it's coming from a place of this is going to become just part of what our incoming freshmen are going to get used to and it's just going to become part of the culture and the expectation within your school and so just you know thank you i'm in support of it and uh i look forward to you know seeing some good results that mary alluded to and she'll probably speak to um now in terms of um other things you know more global kind of concerns within within this school so thank you thank you yeah and again like you know thanks for the setup yeah you know what i would say again i look at this for

089my classroom teacher lens you know and having taught high school is you know i can't i mean i you know drives me crazy with my own because i'm like put your phone away oh just two more minutes two more minutes and i can't imagine doing that with an entire class of 20 kids every single block and that is a reality whereas you know if they come in and it's part of the habit and you know really it's one of the things that's one of the reasons that classroom teachers spend so much time in this first week going over rules because when you establish them in the beginning they're so much easier to maintain and then later you know maybe you can soften up but not not on this but you know it but again you

090need to establish those procedures and and it becomes unthinking and i know that you know as we read through again we had all sorts of different comments with parents who were you know how is my child going to find their individual phone and i kept thinking of like my day is visiting to mellow where every single kid was able to find their cubby without a problem and go back five times a day i guarantee these children will be able and the students will be able to find their their phone in their you know i'm thinking of a shoe bag or whatever the hotel looks like so i think we you know we also have to see that and this is something having just actually come back from dropping a child off at college the dean

091spoke to us about you know the negative aspects of cell phone use and one of the things that he pointed to was you know we use it as a social crutch and these kids are nervous and so they don't tend to talk to their neighbor as they used to before because again now they have this you know this something to escape which you say is very engaging so you know there's a whole other like piece to it and it's not just the students who want to use the phone it's the other students who are sitting there who want to maybe engage with their neighbor but that kid's on the phone so again a whole host of things so i'm i'm clearly very supportive i think it's going to alleviate a lot of tensions for the

092staff especially have this as a uniform policy it's you know it's because i know some teachers had this policy in place before so i think it's just going to be it's it's a really good thing and hopefully it helps a lot i appreciate it thank you i know and i'm going to agree with my colleagues here i think this is fantastic and you know put this basically puts a little bit of you know as you're looking at the ex build versus new and the expectations and such as puts you know like any policy put some some teeth into it uh it was funny over the weekend i had uh dinner with a couple of cousins who were retired teachers and the first words you know from them when i saw him was make sure you

093vote yes i said oh yeah don't just you know that's that's where i'm headed with this type of deal but in all seriousness this is this is a great tool to start with uh my thanks to you to the teachers who gave up you know their tuesdays they were coming in and working on all kinds of different situations and things of that nature as you and i talked about so you know my thanks to them to uh to get this off the ground so it will work we always gotta you know i got along without a cell phone when i was in high school so it's as simple as you know be home when the street lights come on et cetera et cetera so they'll they'll survive yeah i i think it's it's it's really

094nice that um we have a merge of worlds and in people that we have our gen our students generation are like tech bilingual they they're they've grown up with technology their whole life where you know for me i it came into my life so that i had to learn how to do it and so we have our tech natives we have the bilingual and then we have the the other generations of people that are still learning and adapting to it and um it's just really nice that i have the support and i appreciate it so thank you everyone um thank you okay dr jenkins i'll make a motion to approve revisions to the student handbook cell phone practices in a second motion by dr jenkins a second by miss waite to approve the diamond high

095school updated cell phone policy on the motion any discussion again thank you for everything thank you everyone all in favor aye opposed motion carries unanimously thank you everyone i just want to say two things i really appreciate all of your support um you guys have been really kind through all of this so i'm very grateful just two quick shout outs andy's handbook has put so much work into it it's really nice it's really nice to have that and i know we think the maintenance staff our custodial staff has been in here with summer school esy with um academy and they've worked really hard around that too so we have an amazing faculty and staff in this community we're lucky to have everyone so thank you thank you appreciate that okay mr chair can i ask

096a quick question to dr gifford in regards to the cell phone policy at the high school i do we have what's in place as far as protocols procedures at the middle school i'm just curious as to as our students are coming up through through the grade levels um i can speak to that because mike did the research um so mike if i'm wrong just quote me if i'm wrong but their policies it stays in the lockers and stays in the lineup perfect okay next on our agenda is a discussion to consider sending committee members to the national school board association and sba annual conference thank you mr chair i'll just be brief about this this has come up i know we all get those emails but one of the things that is really helpful to

097me over the past nine years of being on the committee is attending conferences um the masc conference with the mass every november and having these types of professional really professional development or for for school committees is very useful and just meeting with colleagues from across our state uh you know i learn a lot from what's going on in other districts in massachusetts and in speaking with the with with some of my uh school committee colleagues in other districts that they they have delegates that they they send every year to the national school board um meeting um and it's it's it's in a different location every year i was actually i got a couple of emails about submitting a proposal i actually thought about it's too late now but i i thought about submitting a proposal

098and so it's like you know what let let me bring this up for the board to consider whether or not we want to put a policy in place that basically the committee has to vote every year to to agree to send you know what the reason is so we're just not turning a blind eye to hey i just want to you know i just want to go on a conference so yeah i think there's a lot of value in it and i think it would be helpful for us to as a committee to grow and be able to you know continue to improve the dartmouth school school system by listening and sharing with colleagues across the country as to what's going on in other other districts so just i just wanted to bring it up

099for consideration no i mean i could i got the same email and it was like i don't know i'll get through it for a deadline to submit it's like we're not meeting until the 22nd so this this doesn't work and then i saw your i saw yours which was which was great uh i think what we would need to do and i agree is you know that this could very well be the policy subcommittee is the fact that we would need a policy for out of out of state travel type or you know or school committee travel however you wish to to put it together type of deal as to you know how many well you could only send maximum two anyway and such you know where they and what we would expect them to

100bring you know the commitment to bring back to us exactly that that type of deal that that's my two cents on it no i i report yeah i would agree dr jenkins so i think it's a great idea you know my stepfather used to be on school board in illinois and he would go to this every year they took they took the whole committee because they found it really valuable and i was always a little jealous i don't think i could maybe personally fit it in but i do think it's good to regularly send people there and to learn about some you know sort of national trends um and maybe we might consider you know there's a sort of a way to offer where maybe like the chairs the first the chair and the vice

101chair or the first offered because we traditionally rotate that would mean that who gets to go rotate and that would just make it easier that we say the the chair and the vice chair are like given first dibs and then it can go to the rest of the committee um but i think it's a great idea because i do think there's there's a lot to be said for professionals i think so i think there's a lot to learn out there yeah yeah kathleen mary yeah i'm just in agreement uh yeah yeah yeah so probably put that on the put on for the for the uh the policy subcommittee to uh to take a look at it you know yeah and don't forget in november is the mass mass conference which i'll be attending you could

102register anyone wants to go like no okay november 2nd through the 5th this year obviously it's always in hyannis but we can take care of the registrations and okay so you can go online and look at the agenda okay i find it really useful and dr giffen and i go go to a lot of classes together or a few anyway and help a lot of us have some great gotta learn a lot and you don't have to go every day you can choose whatever you want take a look at it i'll go take a look thank you all right okay so we're good with that all right uh next on the agenda is our we've gotten our proposed committee meeting dates for october through december we already have our two meetings in september scheduled september

10312th and the 26th and then we're looking at monday october uh 17th uh monday november 7th monday november 21st and then monday december 12th type of deal i just expect cupcakes or cake and i'm sorry i could just expect cupcakes or cake in october because that's my birthday so this will be my birthday party so to speak so okay no the dates are all fine with me i'm just kidding okay yeah i like that that's fine a little star there but i'm assuming we can bring them we can't eat them here because of still the covert rules and everything so yeah oh we can eat now okay that's fine all right is this are these good dates good with everybody good with me yeah okay beautiful all right so what is said so what is

104written all right that takes care of that superintendent's update dr gifford all right couple of a couple of updates um as a reminder that cook center i bring it up all of the time that we've partnered with the next zoom webinar if you will is august 23rd so there should be a flyer it's at six o'clock on our website our facebook page but we'll make sure that's bumped up to the top again that's tomorrow right yep tomorrow so um they do have only i think 11 folks have signed up for that so far and um we would certainly encourage more people to zoom in with that it's all free project time as i mentioned before is today and tomorrow and we had a full house all day and various folks presented and gave them all

105kinds of dartmouth ways of doing things and our two directors were here as well and talking about what's happening in dartmouth and what's the next steps we're taking relative to strategic planning high quality instruction etc and uh the the last thing i just want to mention is as mr shea mentioned we did have the acceleration academy last week and that was over i think over 120 students were here and i came one day as they were exiting the building and it was like people running around picking everyone up little kids running grandparents and i think you had come by and the band was here it's the last couple days has obviously been very busy so including today everyone was here so it was another successful successful acceleration academy so that's that's all okay anybody have

106any questions for the superintendent honest just a quick question dr gifford as far as is my understanding that just for everyone watching and those in the audience there's moving forward dusty in the state of massachusetts there really is no more covet guidance there's if you could just there is no guidance there is right there's there's pretty much no guidance we're back to normal pretty much the only thing that remains in place is masking in the nurse's office so we do encourage parents to always send we'll have them but a mask with their students and in a backpack just in case so that's required um by laws that's that's it i hate to say it but are we back to normal we're back to normal and um i think it's a good idea though they speak

107about because there is still some recommendations about isolation and those kinds of things but we will not be doing any testing nothing like that so um and i know our nurses are meeting with um miss jodwin who supervises the nurses along with the board of health i think it's this week just to touch base and move forward so all right anything else okay a couple of things uh i have dr gifford mentioned it a little bit but you can tell school is getting ready to start i was here this morning i went by the football stadium and the lights were on the students the students were practicing you can i was here at noon time and uh you would have thought school was in session between the morning the athletics finishing the band coming in

108the you know meetings going on with teachers the project time and everything else so it was just absolutely great great to see one of the things is the superintendent's evaluation but we want to put this as a discussion topic on the september agenda so that we can get it finished in by the end of september beginning of october does that work for everybody perfect either one would have to have it well no no no we want to talk about it on the 12th and then we'll go after that okay yeah okay thank you i just happened to wrote that down because i thought of it when we were talking and uh the last thing i i want to and this is a personal and i think we both got we all got them but got

109an email that was unsigned somebody sent us an email it was unsigned about something type of deal i just want everyone out there to know that if you send me personally a letter a text an email that's not signed i'm going to let you know i'm not going to read it okay very plain very simple you know please sign it so at least i know who i'm talking to or corresponding with or something of that nature so if you're going to send me an email or a letter or something of that nature please sign it other than that if it's a letter i'm just going to put on i'm going to just staple it back shut with a note on the cover of the envelope that says not signed not read the email will go

110into a folder but it's not going to get read be one of those unread type of deals so that's my only request anybody else have anything no all right as we just talked about our next meeting is uh september 12th we'll have our uh that's uh we'll have our new staff here so i'm assuming that will be like like it's sick at six o'clock when we normally have a little reception for them type of deal and at six o'clock and then the meeting will be it's signal there we go and our meeting will be at 6 30 here at the high school we'll go back to our regular times all right and with that the chair will entertain a motion to adjourn by mr oliver second by miss weight on the motion any discussion cheer

111hearing on all in favor aye opposed motion carries unanimously thank you very much everyone have a good uh week and good luck with school opening [Music] you