Dartmouth School Committee Meeting, April 25, 2022

001[Music] so [Music] good evening everyone i'd like to call the april 25th meeting of the dartmouth school committee to order please rise for the pledge of allegiance of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you might have a roll call please miss cantha shannon jenkins here mary wait here kathleen ameral here john nunes chris oliver here i'll remind everyone that this meeting is going is being live streamed via the dhs tv media youtube channel um please silence your cell phones for those members who are here with us in the audience this meeting will be rebroadcast on dc tv channels 9 on wednesday and thursday at five friday and six saturday at eight and sunday at two it

002will also be rebroadcast on dc tv channels 18 on monday and saturday at noon and thursday at three we're going to take a few things out of order this evening because we have some school kids here who need to get home and do some school work and study for class so we are going to skip the superintendent's certificate of academic excellence for our next meeting and we will start with presentations from the quinn elementary school of spotlight on kids dr gifford would you like to introduce introductions i know tonight mr granfield was not feeling well so we have miss yovolov chick i always say it wrong we'll call her miss y and miss thomas here assistant principals to uh and a lot of kids so it looks um like we're going to have a good

003presentation good evening everyone we wanted to start by thanking you for this opportunity to spotlight our amazing students at quinn my name is stephanie irmilovic and i'm audrey thomas and we're both the assistant principals unfortunately mr granfield like dr gifford said was unable to come but he is supporting us right now from home i'm sure so tonight some of our fifth graders are here to bring the process of writing to life for all of you because it's a spotlight on kids and what they do every day they've worked very hard throughout the school year researching drafting their ideas writing integrating technology publishing their final products and sharing them not only with their classmates and their teachers but also with their families at home for our spotlight on kids tonight our fifth grade students have created

004a presentation that will hopefully persuade you to take their side and if not it'll at least give you something to think about we have a few fifth graders here with us as you can see and they're representing the entire grade level a grade level who worked collectively to create this project so we are excited to see what you think here we go good evening we are fifth graders from quinn elementary and we are happy to be here to showcase some of our hard work in the following slides you will see the steps we took to complete the following project but first let's introduce ourselves my name is logan francisco my name is addison thomas my name is ella torres my name is laila faye my name is kedzie calabrese my name is pennsylvia my name

005is violet hill and my name is audrey ostegi the unit of writing we worked on during this time was a research-based argument essay we were required to read of sorry we were required to read a variety of articles that discussed whether or not snow day should be virtual after doing some research and identifying our strongest evidence we are required to develop a draft of an argument essay on this issue we had to build a powerful argument to support our claim in doing so we had to evaluate arguments in the perspective of authors with this new information we developed a stronger second draft should snow days be virtual this draft included three reasons to support our argument our goal was to write for real life purposes and audiences you our school committee please enjoy the following

006video hmm have you ever witnessed a snow day well if you have you can agree that it's an awesome day you are wide awake rushing out the door still putting your boots on just to play outside in the snow you probably stayed there for hours and hours on end all day now imagine instead of rushing out the door with excitement you probably walk over to your combat to begin the virtual work for the day while you watch the snow falling outside your window side picture right well this is the reality for some students who have virtual snow days snow day should not be virtual because some students may lose access to digital work students have already lost a lot due to the pandemic and most parents would prefer that their child will participate in a

007traditional snow day while virtual learning may have its advantages technology is not always the most reliable making traditional snow days a better option one main reason technology proves to be unreliable is power outages if a student's device sets down and gets kicked off of the google meet or zoom the student isn't learning and could fall behind on work another issue students face with technology is poor internet connection even if a student's home does not suffer a power outage the internet during a snowstorm could easily go out lastly technology could prove to be an issue because the student's device may not function a problem might occur with the audio or video on the device making it difficult for a student to learn another reason why studies should be kept traditional is because students have already lost

008a lot due to the cocoa 19 pandemic kids have lost friendships and from the members kids have also lost some of their social skills keeping traditional snow days allows for some normalcy and students lives some families with busy schedules actually get a little time to spend together during snow days and boost family relationships students should have the opportunity to disconnect and be kids students have already lost out on so much holding on to traditional snow days allows students to keep that element of surprise of no school lastly research shows that most parents would like their children to have the experience of a traditional snow day there's been a lot of focus on closing the educational gaps and some may feel that using a snow day as a virtual day can help to do so however

009others believe that students need a chance to just be a kid evidence suggests that many parents would simply rather have their children not long into a virtual day in the new york times article should there still be snow days it states sarah allen a parent in king's kensington neighborhood of brooklyn said the streets near her home are coded her four children will not be attending classes as usual miss allen is certainly not the only parent who feels this way if parents are going to declare their own snow day it can be argued that school districts should cancel as teachers would now have to catch those kids up who did not attend the magic and the excitement of snow day is something every student should experience virtual learning may be a great tool but it doesn't

010replace the learning experiences that take place within a physical classroom students should experience a fun-filled snow day and most parents would agree in conclusion snow days should not be virtual because students may lose access to digital work students have already lost a lot due to the pandemic and most parents are preferred that their children participate in a traditional snow day [Applause] [Laughter] so thank you very much as you can see see a lot of work went into this presentation um and this is what they do during a regular school year so this wasn't something that we put together just for the school committee the boys and girls in fifth grade and in a lot of our grades at quinn school and across the district work really hard to put presentations like this together and i

011think they did a pretty awesome job and i would be remiss if we didn't also mention their classroom teachers we have three of them here today mrs rosa miss saltmosh and mr bowman have come to support the kids does anyone have any questions any comments or questions mr oliver i'll just stop by saying what a wonderful job you all did so i have to ask were these a lot of these your ideas was this all student driven or did the did the teachers kind of give you some some ideas some hints you just come up to the microphone because it sounded like these are all your ideas i could be wrong um the teachers did help with a little bit but it was mostly student driven yeah that's awesome and you you folks made a

012great case to keep snow days the way they are so thank you all very much mr nunes yeah thank you madam you have a fantastic job i mean being a little bit older than you guys i can remember when i was in grade school we used to listen for the air raid siren to go off and that would that was the k that was the cancellation of school type of deal so uh but i totally loved you know the logic you put behind it and what you looked at and you know the different pros and cons of of being there and that's absolutely wonderful so um nice job thank you miss amarillo just as mr news says a real fantastic job i i loved uh how it was put together i love the drawings throughout

013as well and i'm am i correct to say are some of those drawings actual student drawings or oh no they were great but um yeah i know great job you made a great case and yeah if you're asking me uh my favorite thing about a snow day i i concur that we keep them traditional you made a great case but i was also of that thought as well um is not setting my alarm because i'm like a 4 30 family we're in light sleepers throughout the night so just not even if it just means an extra 20 minutes of sleep i really look forward to that so thank you great job just wait yes so i guess i just have a question because i it's you know hard decision here but how many of you

014actually this year during a snow day either build a snowman made a fort um did had a snowball fight or went sledding or did something fun outside on a snow day raise your hands well that's pretty good i think i think you i mean personal experiences you know you're showing you're really putting that time to good use and that's exactly what you should be doing so we'll keep those traditional snow days in my opinions so i just want to say that was really great and i want you to all keep keep it up because i'm going to tell you a story about my child who in elementary school got instruction in writing a persuasive essay and they had to write a letter to their principal and he was in fourth grade and he decided it

015was not fair that all of the fifth graders had all the fun all the end of the year events everything and so he argued that the fourth grader should have a talent show and now um demelo has a talent show every year for the fourth graders because of the persuasive writing of one of the students here there so your writing matters your opinion matters and i'm super impressed with what you have done i will also finish up by saying that i am also by training a political science professor so i'm going to teach you two things about government tonight one a school committee cannot make a decision about an issue unless it's on the agenda so while we all very much appreciate your arguments we will not be taking a vote tonight and two right

016that really isn't our purview it is in fact the purview of the superintendent luckily she happens to be sitting here and she heard all of your persuasive evidence so don't be disappointed if we don't take a vote this evening do know that your arguments and your opinions were heard by all of us and we very much appreciate it thank you thank you so much awesome [Applause] all right so next on our agenda we're going to have our student representative report and can you step up to the podium and join us hi everyone so with the return from april break we've had some very exciting and engaging events here at dhs to start off our indoor winds took home the scholastic winds a class silver medal for their outstanding performance at the wgi world championships in

017dayton ohio this past weekend our indoor percussion took home the bronze medal at the wgi world championships finals this weekend with their stella performance congratulations to the indoor color guard who had a strong performance prior to april vacation congratulations and best of luck to all our students and advisor mrs kane who are currently in atlanta for the deca international competitions the dhs theater company is celebrating its 10th year in existence with their production of shrek the musical on may 5th and may 6th at 7 p.m and may 7th at 1 pm and 7 p.m tickets are going fast so we encourage all members of the community to come out and support our theater company and get tickets while you can tickets are 15 for adults and 12 dollars for students and senior citizens best of

018luck to all our ap students who will begin ap exams next week our teachers and students have worked so hard all year and are very prepared for your success thank you to all the custodians who worked hard over april vacation to transform the dining hall back to normal there was a definite buzz in the cafeteria as students sat at lunch tables instead of individual desks for the first time since march of 2020. thank you does anybody have any questions or comments mr news i think so how do you feel to sit at the lunch tables today it was awesome this is not really something i've been expecting so i was really glad to see this kind of step towards normalcy and kids loved it so this is really something we've all been wanting and truly

019we were all so excited good fantastic any comments or questions no thank you for your presentation so much thank you again all right so um returning back to uh the order that we have on the agenda here um we've set aside um 10 minutes for public comment on any of the items that are on agenda this evening i know we have a number of people in the audience who might like to say some things i will ask everyone to please state your name when you come up to the podium i will also ask you to keep your comments brief we already did have a public comment session several weeks ago about the logo so we don't intend to spend another couple of hours here rehashing arguments that having been said please anyone who wants to

020make a comment on any of our agenda items is welcome to step up to the podium and and state their opinion hello everyone my name is george marcotte i am the chair of defend dartmouth and i want to actually thank everyone for this issue um i don't think i've ever seen the town so gelled and united over one issue 81 to 19 was what the final referendum question was and so we really like you guys to consider what the voters of dartmouth have said i think we are very well united on this issue i don't really think there's much to do discuss further like you said miss jenkins i don't think there is a lot we just hope that you know moving forward we can move past this we can unite the school board along

021with the town thank you uh mr nunes mr oliver we know that you're a yes vote miss amaral it's 81 to 19. i just don't know how much more we can give you other than the wampanoags want this the town wants this miss wait um i know that you're a no along with miss jenkins um i can tell you that lynn turner in the election was only a few hundred points few hundred votes behind these two you know if you want to give her an issue to run on next year i think that by going against the will of the people that would be certainly an issue that i'm sure she would embrace and lastly ms jenkins i know probably in your circle that you run with you probably wouldn't get much pushback they probably

022want you just keep your vote the same but you mentioned yourself you're a political science professor i am a student a political science of of umass dartmouth but it was smu at the time and i think democracy has spoken if i got 19 of the vote and i ran against you and you got 81 percent and i said i'm smarter i know better i know school kids better i should be the one it would be hard for you to say yeah let's just give it to george he's got 19 of the vote yeah you know maybe the voters were just wrong the voters aren't wrong so please you know we have an opportunity for you miss jenkins admit let's wait to to come around to the yes side thank you [Applause] my name is david

023ahrens i have lived at dartmouth since 1990 my kids attended dartmouth schools and i appreciate the opportunity to say a few words to you first the referendum is not the only thing you must consider but the group that sponsored the non-binding mascot referendum is now demanding that you regard it as a binding referendum placing the issue on a town ballot reflects their contempt for you and a majority of the native americans we've never heard from on the issue of the mascot it turns out that the six organizers of this group were all members of the dartmouth republican town committee from their eight-day financial filing with the town clerk the group's top donors were the wife of one of the members and a republican florida real estate tycoon running for florida senate the fact is this

024issue has always been about republican culture wars and you committee members do not have to enlist in that war as the only body actually responsible for the schools the committee and by that i mean the school committee not the town republican committee you should be the ones making the final decision on the mascot it's an issue of human dignity of how we show respect and care for children of color in our schools as well as a matter of how we want to project our image at away games finally there are tribes offended by mascots throughout the region that have never been consulted native americans with the strongest connections to dartmouth can't vote here and those who can vote here are formal members of a tribe 25 miles away on martha's vineyard these may both be

025realities of the navy native american diaspora but that is precisely why you need to listen to many more indigenous voices on this issue the other reality is that the referendum was specifically engineered to dismiss native american concerns by permitting a town of overwhelmingly white voters to decide a moral issue as if we were deciding upon a homecoming queen that was a shameful call by a town selectman who was thankfully voted out of office the referendum should never have been placed on the ballot thank goodness it was non-binding and thank goodness that the committee still has discretion to make the final call don't hand over that discretion and your mandate to the town republican committee tonight thank you thank you michael matos i have three daughters in the school system including one here at the high

026school to the best of my knowledge no local tribes petitioned the school committee to have the high school's logo removed stating after almost five decades that they were suddenly offended by the use of the image or the word indian instead it was my understanding that this effort to remove the indian logo and to change dartmouth high's identity came internally from members of the school committee in their personally selected subcommittee that did not sound right to me when i heard that so i volunteered to help the defend dartmouth ballot question committee not because of my political party affiliation as some have tried to portray and the dartmouth defend dartmouth ballot question committee is not some militia group as others have tried to insinuate the ballot question committee was formed to help make other parents and voters

027aware of this effort to remove the dartmouth high school logo and seek community support to defend the logo via the april 5th non-binding referendum vote this is not a political issue this is a community issue not red or white it's green and on april 5th the voters of all political parties united and told the school committee where they stand i was encouraged to hear that everyone seems to agree that we should utilize this opportunity to strengthen native american education for students but now the question is will the school committee stand with the voters i truly hope they will but if not i assume that there will be recall efforts and dartmouth voters will have opportunities in upcoming election cycles i'm sure there will be other candidates that will step forward as a result of this

028issue to offer their service to the town and run for school committee voters will then have the opportunity to vote for candidates that respect their opinions instead of those who think they know better than them thank you [Applause] hello i am lynn turner i recently ran for school board on my campaign trail the hot topic one of the biggest hot topics was what do i feel about the logo and that was asked of me as well as my fellow candidates running for school board chris oliver and john nunes and we all three said that we would support the logo and the name and the logo john and i signed a pledge and chris oliver wrote a letter that was read in place of debating at the candidate debate forum that he would keep vote to

029keep the logo that was while we were running then came the vote the rear record numbers that showed up for the election and there was an 81 percent uh vote by the town to keep it i urge you all to vote yes to keep the logo in lieu of how much the town is in support of it and i think that it would be best to put our energies into creating a curriculum that's rich and celebratory of our local history and if we do this we can honor our native american roots here and work together left right center and make great things happen for dartmouth thank you [Applause] i'm gretchen baker smith i'm going to simply remind the school committee respectfully that your charge is to ensure the safety and dignity and vitality of children

030and youth and it's not about what the adults think it's about what the research shows which is that mascots with a native connection have a negative impact on youth who are indigenous and also confirm stereotypes of non-indigenous youth you can't refute that i really feel deep frustration that it is at this point and i want to just appeal to your moral fiber to do the right thing on behalf of the youth and that it doesn't really matter what other people say you can't vote on racism but if enough children and teens say this is harmful to me we need to listen to that and that is your charge thank you respected school committee member my name is shelly zhang dartmouth town resident i'm here today tonight just to show that i have done studies regarding

031this argument just brought up that the agility psychological harm produced by the use of native american mascot the supportive articles by david stenan and others in 2020 is a comprehensive review of empirical research fundings the primary work is done by freiburg atl in 2008 titled of warrior chiefs and the indian princes the psychological consequence of american indian mascot the first study in this work is conducted with 48 american indian high school students divided in three group first grade group is being showing a image of chief or hall the second group is showing with the image of princess punk hunters and the third group group is showing with the text description of their top stereotype negative outcomes and then students were asked to write down the first five words that comes to their mind these words

032then being classified as positive and negative but the result is the american indian mascot representation has more positive association than the negative representation presented in the stereotype negative outcome conditions even the author has to admit this result suggests that american indian mascot representation are not always regarded as negative but they did not stop there in the second study they added control group where students were not showing any of these three primers and then the word association activity is replaced by a by year questionnaire then it is found all three representations significantly depressed stated self-esteem score but the surprising result is chief wuha and pog tonghos depress the self-esteem even more than the stereotypically negative outcomes why the study cannot address how this undermined effect occurs but the author of the comprehensive review articles quickly jumped

033into the conclusion native muscles regardless of the type and regardless of whether they are perceived positive or negative they are all harmful to the psychological well-being of the native use this conclusion is far too bored overgeneralized and we must question its validity and reliability gave the numerous limitations in this experimental setting including very small sample size very small number of variable values and an over simplifying the long term psychological well-being with just the one-time one-shot questionnaire score the most fatal flow in this study is the failure to recognize uniqueness of each artwork and the societal context where the image is being used how this logo is being created and what kind of meaning from the people who use it has associated with with it this is our that most indian logo and there is no

034study support this logo has any psychological harmful effect on native use please support use of this logo thank you good evening uh chris pereira um town meeting member and former school committee member um thank you for uh allowing the opportunity to have a final discussion on this topic um some quick facts for everybody to kind of uh remind themselves about number one you know we've been at this uh kind of issue now for going into a fourth calendar year um it's time for folks to have some finality on this issue the town deserves that the people spoke extremely loud direct and clear on april 5th in a very high turnout election and another reminder that every dartmouth wampanoag every dartmouth wampanoag is for this logo and wrote you all a letter no tribe despite rhetoric

035from some people no tribe has come out against the logo have they gone on record against mascots that's correct but we don't have a mascot we have a logo i urge you tonight to uphold the will of the voters and vote to reaffirm this logo the people of this town have spoken and they deserve finality no more delays no more discussion no more excuses and no politics thank you very much [Applause] good evening rene vieira dartmouth educators association um town resident and parent of school children i originally was coming this evening to speak to you about um something else that uh we will discuss in a moment um but um because i'm an educator in town and um i just want some records to be clear for folks that are listening um i was a

036i did vote this uh in this past election and to my son's dismay i chose to not vote for or against the indian logo we here in this high school and in this district we are all about trying to make all children feel inclusive it is not my decision and i am grateful it is not my decision it is yours it is a burden that i think is unfairly put on you folks but it's also a decision that is probably i will ask the audience to remain quiet while our speakers are sharing their thoughts show courtesy for all of our speakers please it is unfair that you're in this particular situation i would just like to recognize that what we say to our students is that we bleed green we have pride in dartmouth public

037schools whether that needs to be a logo or a mascot i am unsure it's not my decision to make it is yours but i would just like to say that i'm sorry it it is political and it is political when folks are threatened to be voted out of a particular position i want you to be here for the students in this town i want you to be here for my children okay that's what we need we need children to recognize that they are he she them they are just unified and we need to accept them okay um so i just want that on record and last thing i'd like to say is that yes it was the greatest turnout that we've had in a number of years still less than 20 percent of dartmouth spoke

038so you can say 80 percent sounds great 80 percent of less than 20 percent spoke all right that doesn't change your decision i'm not asking you i just want folks that are listening out there to just understand that we can sway our numbers and i don't envy the position and the decision you need to make that being said good evening ladies and gentlemen my name is renee veer and this is my wonderful colleague jody parisi and we are here this evening standing in front of you because we know that you have the lucky task this evening of selecting the subcommittee groups so you know you get names in a hat or the short straw you have to draw um we are the queens of negotiations and um though we've enjoyed uh mr nunes holding on

039to that particular sub chair what's what i'm looking for designation or assignment thank you we would welcome anyone else that might be interested in just sitting in on negotiations with us for our dea contracts and i just wanted to point out that there are some districts who actually will hold some meetings in the evening recognizing that folks do have daytime commitments so if that's something that anyone else would like to be interested in whether you end up being the sub chair or not you know that you are more than welcome to join that is your right we do welcome any and all and we'd be very willing to um change meeting dates if there was a meeting or two that you would like to sit in on and we're beginning negotiations um dr gibbon and

040i and jody we're hoping that they're positive smooth sailing and quick because there are a lot of really important things to do and we thank you for your time thank you thank you thank you um i think we've had over 10 minutes now for public comment so i think we're going to move on to the next item on our agenda i will entertain a motion to approve the regular session minutes for april 4th 2022. so move second all right a motion by mr news a second by mr oliver is there any discussion on the motion hearing none all in favor aye opposed abstentions that motion carries unanimously um next i'll entertain a motion uh to approve the executive executive session minutes for april 11 2022 so move madam chair with the stipulation that they be

041held until the matter for which they were intended is complete second i have a motion by mr nunes the second by my swag is there any further discussion on the issue hearing none all in favor opposed of sentence that motion carries unanimously the next item on our agenda is organization of the committee the first item is the election of officers so i will open the floor for nomination of the office of chair you turn it over according to policy the nominations for office of the chair is made from the floor so the floor is open and anyone on the committee may make a nomination for chair ms amber i would like to nominate my fellow colleague john nunes to chair i'll second that all right are there any other nominations from the floor hearing done

042the nominations are now closed given that there is only one nomination on the floor that means mr nunes is now the chair of the dartmouth school committee unless anyone else would like all right so mr news you want to switch spots sure all right give me a second here three hours a week yes yes yes you know you're trying to get rid of me that quick i like your job but [Laughter] you said you had the sniffles oh yeah [Laughter] all right give me a second here to get everything figured out all right so the next item uh is uh the appointment of uh a vice chair so i'll nominate uh kathleen ambrose to be a vice chair i was going to nominate you to stay another term quite honestly you can decline the domination

043council yeah i decline okay yeah for this year yeah okay mr nunes i would like to nominate miss waite for uh vice chair okay okay i want to see jenkins no mary wait no do we have a second second second by miss amaral any other discussion share here or none since we have none we will close nominations and as dr jenkins said about me it's obvious that you get to be vice chair congratulations congratulations you guys thank you so now you're like another year in this position [Laughter] there you go so now you and i get to you know rewrite graduation speeches just think about that okay so i promise won't be as long this time please okay anything over 30 seconds is too long personal opinion all right next on the uh mr new

044yes ma'am may i just make a comment i just wanted to thank dr jenkins for her service having had served 2020 and then my colleague chris the year after i know you had the difficult task and um you you um you served with grace and leadership and i appreciate your time thank you yep all right uh next on the agent next item next is a secretary to the school committee and that usually falls to our illustrious superintendent mr chair i'll nominate dr gifford to serve as our uh secretary for the school committee right so we have a motion by dr jenkins second by miss waite to appoint dr bonnie gifford as secretary to the school committee at the illustrious same rate of bank so we appreciate that thank you ma'am on that motion all in

045favor aye motion carries unanimously okay comments of the chairperson comments now i have really have done it's a privilege and an honor to be sitting here over my 31 years and uh such i've lost how many times i've sat here but i always take this position with uh the utmost responsibility and just on a personal note thank you to the citizens of this great town and voters who uh you know found it in their hearts to put me back in this position i appreciate it it's not something that i take for granted believe me so i thank you for all of that all right next item on the agenda school committee assignments we all got uh in our packets we all got uh the assignments that we have got at the moment uh we'll just

046kind of go down uh what they are there and such um dartmouth educational foundation ms waite yes you want to stay with that i can stay with that i'm taking a break for through the end of the year but i will be rejoining that in the fall okay that's fine okay uh southeastern mass educational collaborative mr oliver i am happy to stay on that and continue my service there thank you i think ms scooper would be happy too i agree i enjoy serving that board that's it uh i'll stay with the mass association of school committees unless someone else wants that i'm good with that thanks thank you negotiation representative um i'm in that position kathleen backs me up you heard what uh ms vieira and uh miss parisi uh said as i've said before

047it's not a popularity i'm more than willing to do it okay yeah yeah i'm getting all right i wouldn't mind learning more and you know and sitting in and you know even if it's like you know alternating with uh miss amaral i know certainly it's you know a lot of work but i just you know just to go through that process i think is instructive so yeah that's fine okay so we'll make you the back up to that well i don't want to like you know bump into no is all right uh policy committee uh is kathleen and mary yep still good yes thank you mr oliver i'd be happy to stay on i don't think we actually had any technology recent memories right now but yes i'd be happy thank you what's going to

048be happy to stay on yeah okay field in uh facilities committee i know we haven't we haven't met again with everything going on type of deal but i'll i can stay with that i'm happy to as well all right budget committee uh that works uh with uh mr kylie uh is miss amaral and dr jenkins and i'm the backup is that still good for everybody okay i would be happy to take that role on if anyone is uh wants a break but you wanna i i mean i feel like i don't i'm getting the easy way out this is like one of my only committee assignments so it's fine that's fine i could do something i'd be happy to share it with you but then i have like nothing and i feel like i'm not

049doing my work so miss amarillo you wanna yeah you can would you like to join it's up to you i would happily yeah have a lot on your plate yeah right pass that along excuse me okay that's fine uh committee representatives on the town charter committee uh miss waite and uh in haiti ms brooks do we need to uh find out if miss brooks can continue to serve as our rep i'll find out from her i'll reach out we haven't actually met because i think we've gone through the entire charter and now we're meeting with an outside you know group and kind of seeing our next steps so she's homing that group so we'll i'll i'll ask her yeah she's she's kind of sharing that something dr jackson there's a good argument being made for

050continuity there and membership because there's so much work that's been done on that committee just someone jumping in now would be too yeah i know absolutely i would rather keep her yeah she would i would too if she can stay i'm fine and she's homing it so i think that's you know having the knowledge of having going through the entire document there's there's a lot that's involved yeah correct me if i'm wrong she's cheering now she's no she is sharing that no absolutely so she's been fantastic and yeah i knew she'd be a good fit oh yeah she keeps it's a very diverse group so we've had some shifts over from other committees and it's been a little challenging and that so it's nice to see you keep this continuity for sure that's fine okay

051and then the diversity equity and inclusion dr jenkins and miss hammerl doc so i'd like to propose we just sort of leave that one for now because it's not we haven't made any decisions on the committee and picked the issue of who picked that issue of who's assigned to that committee back up when we have that full discussion of the dei committee um just full disclosure so everyone knows um that was originally on the agenda but i looked at our agenda our agenda for this evening was quite extensive so i just asked that we'd delay it till i think the 23rd meeting so i would just say we can i mean even if we leave that blank for now and we can pick that back up when we have that discussion yep that's fine i'm

052good with that and the one thing that i did i skipped over and i was i did that purposely too was the school assignments between high school middle demelo quinn potter cushman uh we made a decision a couple of committee meetings ago and we've kept up with the type of deal that not to have any one particular person assigned to uh one particular school and we just all kind of bounce in and out and see principles and and such we are we good with that does anybody we're good with that okay has anyone heard i'm sorry mr chair um heard from the schools how they feel about that in terms of no i haven't done much bouncing around well no i haven't no no nor did i believe me you know so i would see

053the principals outside walking that's exactly what i do too but that's you know but i think and i think they all understand whether if they have an issue where they can find us yeah type of thing you always just ask that if you're going to go by just let them know right now yeah oh yeah i've always done that mr chair um miss wake brought up the open space committee um that if you recall we had a conversation about this previously last year i guess um our co we were wondering if this is the open space committee which asks for our school committee rep as well yeah so it's not our subcommittee as the other one is the town charter commission would be the same so do we want to continue to add it you

054know probably have it there because i've been yeah no i mean yeah yeah i mean i'm happy to join i mean it's just not on the list that's all yeah did we did we vote someone in that i don't know we're both in that okay well we'll add it then because they're having some nights coming up or they're bringing in the community just small committees you know one night meetings yeah yeah why not no why not this yeah because there's a meeting actually there's a meeting tomorrow night at the uh there is one yeah and then there's one in may the town hall and the june one they haven't seen then there's the survey too so the survey is online so we'll add that to the list helpful for the next time okay so we

055are good with yup all right here we go all right anything else with organization of the committee no no we're good all right thank you okay uh discussion on the dartmouth indian logo so we have been at this for the better part of three or four years give or take and a number of other times before that in my tenure here i know personally because i've got them believe it or not all in a nice file in my computer i was able to figure out how to set them up into a folder and i've got probably close to fifteen hundred emails to pass between with the election coming up and now after the election this meeting tonight so i'm going to open it up to uh my colleagues for discussion mr oliver thank you mr

056nunes and thank you to everyone that spoke here this evening as mr nunes has said this has been a long road for all of us and on the committee as well as those of us the townspeople you know i came at this from an independent standpoint i'm not left i'm not right i'm an independent voter and i don't see this from my perspective as you know left or right issue i see this as from my point of view looking at the entire town what's been presented to us on both sides of the issue there's passion on both sides of the issue there's no doubt about that but at the end of the day i think we have a great opportunity in this town to do something special and i think it could potentially be a

057model at some point at least for the state at the state level you know i because one of the things i don't want to do though i don't want to reaffirm the indian icon and then just be done with it the voters have clearly spoken but the one common thing between the voters in between the public forum between the tribes we all agree on it was said this evening is that there has to be more done with the curriculum piece there has to be more done with the schools and the larger picture with the town the town in general so without doing that i you know it just we're no better than any other city or town that just says you know what we're just gonna keep this just because that's just the way it

058is we've got to do more i've heard it from multiple people um so for me you know i'm just gonna i'm starting i'm gonna open it up you can certainly have discussion i'd like to make a motion that the dartmouth public schools continue to use and honor the iconic dartmouth indian as drawn by clyde andrews a dartmouth high school alumni and member of the aquino wampanoag tribe in addition to tasking the school administration with engaging the tribe creating a formal partnership with them [Applause] please okay so we have a motion by mr oliver do we have a second the chair will second okay discussion um dr jenkins so mr marcotte is right i am a political scientist i think about the constitution i think about it a lot i teach it multiple times a year

059[Music] you know our founders established a constitution that does outline a provision for democracy um but the leading political theorists at the time edmund burke alexis de tocqueville were deeply concerned about the problem with the tyranny of the majority right and then the federalist madison wrote about tyranny of the majority and the anti-federalists working with the federalists outline the bill of rights because they believe right there are certain things that should not be subject to the will of the majority and history has shown us repeatedly that approval by the majority does not mean that something is right in world war ii large amer majorities of americans favored the internment of the japanese japanese-american citizens it's not right we know that now state majorities in massachusetts oppose gay marriage in 2004 when the supreme court legalized

060gay marriage i hope most of us know that that was right the right thing to do the state supreme court local majorities in the south favored segregation right so just because something is popular or supported does not make it right so the question for me is is there evidence that this is morally harmful and i think the answer is yes we have indirect and direct evidence of the harm created by logos and mascots all right i'm going to say this once and i'm only going to say it once okay if there is another outburst i am going to recess this meeting and i will ask everyone to leave okay am i clear thank you dr jenkins i apologize that's okay there are studies that have shown that there are indirect this indirect evidence that there

061are harmful effects of native mascots and logos that is part of those studies right leading to stereotyping prejudice attitude but we also have direct evidence in this community we have direct evidence from students in the high school who do not wish to wear that logo because they feel that it perpetuates harm in this community when they travel out of this community and while there are tribal members who live in dartmouth who support the logo we also have testimony from our indigenous neighbors including some members of the aquinawa pinochet the mashpee want benoit and the bokassa wampanoag who feel the mascot is harmful there is division in the indigenous community about that and so for me the fact that some members a good number of members of our indigenous neighbors find this mascot harmful it is

062that makes it deeply problematic to me right i agree 100 percent with my colleagues about the need for education i support that but i cannot agree with any motion to maintain the logo after hearing the evidence from those from our indigenous neighbors and our students samuel um so i somebody in the community shared a podcast with me earlier today and i'm so grateful that she did you know in the podcast it begins with talking about our town seal which i did not know in latin reads service through kindness and peaceful means and so my perspective and what i'm sharing and and my thoughts um i haven't spoken much publicly about this you know i'm at home my husband's like why don't you just come out and say what you're no that's my my deliberation my

063personal i take this like john this role very seriously and so here we are so my take i want to honor that message of service through kindness and peaceful means because here we are as a community seemingly swimming upstream from this us versus them mentality all the signs around town defend dartmouth you know what are we defending i've been asked often you know i want to be thoughtful and i want to be considerate and i wanted to decipher between what i believe to be the right thing to do and what i believe to be the most beneficial for this community um and i believe that there's always room for common ground at least for a beginning point you know after two years of covid school closures loss incredible mental health challenges i believe my role

064this difficult decision that we're here making all the time that we've taken discussing this my role i believe is to look for as much common ground as possible and so that we can begin to move forward towards some semblance of healing as a community so what would i like to see happen i don't completely disagree with your motion mr oliver but the only way that i would not vote to remove the logo or move forward is you know what would i like to see happen i would like us as mr oliver noted you know to add a robust history to include the real experience of native people in our area as a starting point because i think education is where this needs to begin this needs to begin with a deep education around what we're

065dealing with it's not about and i'm not gonna i'm not gonna anyway [Music] i would like us as a community to inventory where we currently use the symbol you know and set some parameters around its use in a comprehensive way more than just no bags on the gym floor that's not enough for example um this was brought to my attention by someone someone in the community we can't have indian heads on golf balls and hitting them across a green okay um we can't have that that's that's not right that's a non-negotiable um i'd like to allow us to allow i'd like to see us allow for student choice as to whether they want to have the lugo on their uniform or warm-up gear you know if they select to wear the logo fine in this

066interim during you know in this next phase if not fine maybe it's a patch an iron on maybe we have uniforms some with some without i would like us to consider no logo for away games no logo on away uniforms i would love for us to add native land attribution at the beginning of each meeting to um to complement the education that we will hopefully i would i would like to see happen within our school system more than just a third grade trip to plymouth plantation that's not enough we need to do better we can do better and um i i did plan to speak with to somebody about that my family got covered here we are never circled back and i would like to convene a town-wide subcommittee similar to the healthy dartmouth committee

067that we had where we had people from town government we had community members we had you know and we we did some great work on the health of the second iteration of the healthy document that i was on where we we were up against opioid pandemic and we did a lot of work in regards to that and it was something i was quite proud of and so i would like any future kind of conversations around how we could potentially what i would hope during this education phase is to have representation from from native people town government local boards community members students and so that's where i stand on this right now i think it means i don't disa agree with your emotion mr oliver but i i would like some some more detail in firming

068up what that education and what that looks like um because just to say education slap it vote agree disagree passes fails um i think we need to be more mindful and meaningful with this that's where i stand thank you ms white yes um so i think for all of us this has been quite a difficult and thoughtful journey i like to think i think that in bringing this topic um before the committee and on all the discussions that we had as a community i think we learned a lot i think the journey was valuable so that we could hear and be considered about you know what are the issues as we continue you know if we're going to keep the icon and the name what does it mean and to go through the process i

069think is you know it's clear that as a community we've decided that again to echo my colleagues we want more education we want more presence and we want this to be you know a rich piece of our collective identity if we're going to move forward you know i you know i did i do struggle with the concept of you know if we're as a town this is you know there's a lot of discussion this is you know mascots are dangerous and then you know we have another piece that says well it's not a mascot i think that's a difficult distinction if we don't have another placeholder because right now i think for the the middle school student and elementary student it's difficult for them to discern that it's not a mascot so i think that's

070you know i think we need to be careful around the language and the education but i also do think and again this has been a process and i i've talked to folks i've been you know all across the from the town i've i've talked to various members of the indigenous tribes and so i think that we do have and i agree with my colleague we do have an opportunity to be to make something better you know and and with that you know i i know that you know i'm talking to representatives from the select board that there is a very big interest in working with the town to kind of create this new identity and to you know really think about you know how are we going to if we again in part of keeping

071the logo if we do that or i'd like to say icon and name if we go in that direction and again i agree with my colleague that it has to be tied specifically to requirements but i would like to see the town as part of a standing committee representatives where as we're coming into town we would see signs that would say if we have the icon dartmouth honors and i think that concept of dartmouth honors should always if if the logo travels it should be on the back of the band bus that dartmouth honors and so again like taking it forward i would like to see those land agreements being formalized i would like to see the town and the school websites have you know on the school website and on the town website those

072relationships delineated again possibly under that tagline dartmouth honors um you know in thinking through i do believe that we do have a robust education that we're starting on um i know that i've worked with dr gifford a little bit going through the pre-k to fifth grade curriculum the social studies curriculum that the teachers are starting to work with now has been updated and they're looking at it and i think there are a lot of opportunities not to create a whole separate curriculum but to work within that curriculum there are natural segue ways to really do valuable education without we're not having to read them at the wheel because it's already right there for example and i've worked extensively within elementary schools in the fourth grade they're working around they do a whole project on different

073parts of the country they can easily as part of that include like work around the native americans and then bringing that education out to the community i would love to see those kids like having like a showcase night and that could be you know maybe even all the schools and i know that that's supported by mr mcginnistown at the town as well so i i think there are a lot of opportunities and again i do have to say we are doing i just want to acknowledge that we have some great teachers who are already doing a lot of this work certainly within the ninth grade that ela programming has has been working with uh with sherman alexis legworks and i think again there's just natural extensions and again it's just showcasing that and connecting that

074to the community but it is we were given the responsibility this is you know this is a school issue but it is i do understand it said in order to make this go forward we have to work together as a town and so and i think that we have opportunity with new people on the select board with a new and also bringing into the college a new chancellor and i think you know with our dedication we can make this something meaningful you know we can go to russell's mills garrison and see a kiosk and see those connections between you know what we're doing here in town um in this in the schools our history and connecting back to what teachers are doing so i i'd like to see this be again because i i'm this

075is a very difficult decision but if we're going to keep it we have to have it have meaning we have to go back and say okay we're doing this we're we are we are keeping the indians we're keeping the icon but it means something and we can show people that it means something we're gathering money for the through the dartmouth honors fund where we're donating to um colleges or providing resources for our teachers so we have to do this in a real way so i'm i'm again i would tie it to again the formation of a standing committee with equal representation between our indigenous peoples as well as the schools and the towns to kind of go through what are the standards for like conduct and all of that and we can talk about that

076later as well as the real robust education and you know asserting that there will be future relationships so that's kind of a little over the place but that's where i'm landing that was great thank you everyone um i need to i would like to just clarify one thing i mentioned something about the fact that i got 1500 emails on now i did also i did get some for and some you know some again so just you know i did not i hope to lead anybody's good type of deal i mean i do have them all in that folder i get that mr oliver thank you mr chair so i agree with with everything that you know um my colleague mrs waite and uh mrs amaral stated um i certainly respect dr jenkins perspective um i

077think that's one of the things that you know this committee is good good at is uh you know we can say what we want but at the end of the day we certainly do respect each other's positions and opinions the only question that i have in i can certainly withdraw my motion or modify the motion but i don't know how much into um the weeds we want to get with with some of the things that were presented because i'm in full agreement with both of you um it's just what's up i guess what's the purview of the committee of the school committee and what can we do to you know see can we say the formation of of a committee i i just don't want to get too far in the weeds that's why the

078motion was to some respect general with in addition to tasking the school administration with engaging the tribe creating a formal partnership so i can certainly withdraw the motion no i i i think the motion is is fine uh i agree with you personally i don't think we want to get dive into the weeds right now that type of deal uh we're going to have you know after the first of the fiscal year of january first some you know a couple of new curriculum people that can be tasked with kind of starting to put that together type of deal not along with everything else that they're they're going to have type of deal so i'm i'm good with that but no i don't think we want to get into the weeds dr jenkins i don't i

079don't disagree with either of that but i do also want to amplify you know what miss amarillo miss wade has said you know we do have a lot of rules in our handbook about the use of logo but we are not the only organizations in town that use that logo and it's been brought to my attention that they are not bound by the same rules as us um and that there has in recent years been some disrespectful behavior in some of those other organizations and so i don't disagree that we can't sort of we're the school committee we control the schools but at the same point in time i do think it's important for us to make some sort of statement as a committee maybe it's a separate resolution to give to the select board

080to indicate how important we think it is and maybe that's a separate motion from your emotion i don't know but that we can all say that we can then present to the select board at our joint meeting that we as a committee believe that the select board should do this so because otherwise we're not we're not fully getting there yeah i mean and that that may be something that could be a good topic for the discussion at the select the joint meet uh joint meeting with them on the night yeah and maybe again that's we have a motion on the floor and that's what we're discussing but maybe after that we could yeah do that good with that miss wayne and um and to that and you know when we talk about a standing community

081because i do think that's important because that standing committee if we have that representation can address you know and has you know would have the purview to address you know as part of their charge some of these questions about the use of the icon looking at the handbook so would we how would we go about that or is that something again to bring before at that point to bring before the joint and so it possibly be town committee or would that be something that we would want to consider you know from us like that's kind of my next i do think that's an important you know i've i've heard that you know there's certainly vested interest from um some of our local nations to you know really see that happen and have that representation you

082know in all these topics no i i i think that is something that probably should come from this committee yeah to to those groups that are you know using using the logo but not using it the right way type of deal and just you know kind of get to them and say here's what this logo is this is what it means and a little respect goes a long way type of deal i think it much to what kathleen said when we had the healthy dartmouth committee i mean that came from us it came you know right from the school department itself but we invited various groups to come in and people even from new bedford because we were we were battling the opioid thing we had great conversations great continued meetings with like chris mishu

083we formed that cope group so i think if we leave it to something like that and that we start to form and invite people to this kind of a committee without going through town as a formalized kind of thing because let's face it most of it's going to be coming the work from the school department so we can't we can't give it to somebody else just you know you guys do it all but we're going to be in charge you know what i mean if there's curriculum to work on if there's um i love your idea about the kiosk kind of thing where we can get folks involved but um even the golf ball thing i was totally unaware of that so those kinds of things i think if we just keep it but yeah

084put little you know statues with uh statues but like um um i'm trying to think of plaques kind of thing around to show how we're honoring etc but i would certainly take on you know for we've tried to have conversations with various folks already have like we'll we'll use healthy dartmouth as an example but i think we got a lot of work done with that so i would certainly want to i would suggest we do something like that and and take it from us yeah to doctor just to expand on that because it became you know light work right for each of us because we self-selected we had you know strategic planning session that that started us off you know out the gate and and i can see if you have people coming in passionate

085about this and having something to offer and they'll help um yeah they'll help give ideas and they give ideas and it was uh fantastic yeah i can see that okay one of the things i'll just interject also with the two new directors coming on every we already know it we have to restart the strategic planning process which we started just before covered and it got shut down um so that certainly especially under uh access and equity can be part of that as a big a big goal and a big objective and then action steps from there so that's great good you know it's i've listened there and i appreciate everybody we're all entitled to our opinion and i appreciate everybody's opinion it was interesting and that's what i was writing a note on earlier so

086i wouldn't forget but over the weekend i was watching cspan3 and there was a panel discussion going on and they had a history professor from the west coast and it was funny she was talking about social studies and such and you know professional development for social studies teachers which i think this is going to have to entail to go forward type of deal and she made the comment about the social studies teachers the professional development for them is down the bottom that's one of the first ones that gets cut type of deal that she's and i was thinking of that i said yep that's a good point for monday night that we make sure that there is money there for the professional for everybody there always is and you know i apprecia i appreciate that

087but uh i appreciate everybody's comment i think everybody knows where i come from where i stand so i don't have to get on my soapbox for that i will i will just say this uh and i've said it before but i it is worth repeating that uh dems that ignore history are doomed to repeat it and uh i don't want to do that so with that we have a motion on the floor and we have a second any other discussion cheer hearing none all in favor of mr oliver's motion did you have a question i did could you just re-read the motion i mean i just want to clarify okay can you re-read that sure that's fine i'm good i would like to make a motion that the dartmouth public schools continue to use and

088honor the iconic dartmouth indian as drawn by clyde andrews a dartmouth high school alumni and member of the aquino wampanoag tribe in addition to tasking the school administration with engaging the tribe creating a formal partnership with them okay so i'll just i'll just add one point of clarification for my other colleagues right the status quo is we have a we have an indian for our logo right so regardless of how this vote goes we still have an indian for a logo just to be clear right on on what happens the only way that that goes away is if there is an affirmative vote for it to go away so i just want to be clear sort of procedurally i think you would agree that's how this works right mary yes so i mean i i

089still think we need to add to that motion that you just had because you know i do feel that the standing committee to address and question all those things about its use you know where are we using a logo um how are we presenting ourselves on the websites you know do we see the you know dartmouth again i keep going with the dartmouth honors but all of that i think needs to be addressed by standing that would be that's my like so that's not we're going to get way over where we have to be my opinion cheers opinion okay so i would rather if you want to make a separate motion later that's fine but we'll leave chris's motion just where it is so we don't lose we don't lose the forest for the trees

090as they say type of deal so all right so we have the motion in a second any other discussion okay all in favor aye aye aye i can't until we see the education opposed i'm abstaining all right so it's three in favor one opposed and one abstaining [Applause] all right so john can i do a separate motion though okay if you want yes so i'd like to make a separate motion to organize to organize a standing committee to address the future use of the indian name and logo say that again i said i would like to make a motion for to form a standing committee or i don't know if it has to be a standing it would be a standing committee or what would healthy dartmouth be i guess if we were it was

091not an official committee it just came out of us we we made it work we invited people we had monthly meetings so we don't actually need to have a committee yet right it wasn't an official committee and okay well then i'll withdraw it i guess i just want to make sure that that happens i mean that was my whole like reason i abstain is that i just want to make sure that the education is a part of this so yeah yep okay and you'll be honest i think i think the education is part of it because that's part of mr oliver's motion was it i mean he wasn't so specific but i wasn't just no he wasn't i mean dr jenkins uh people okay mr mr chair i'd like to make a motion um that

092the school committee recommend to the select board that they also engage in an evaluation of town policies and use of the logo and education in the community um and that we request that they do that yeah it's a good idea good idea the dartmouth school committee requests that the dartmouth select board um engage in a process of evaluation of policies of use imagery and sort of education in the community beyond the purview of the school committee okay so we have that we have a motion and a second by mr oliver on the motion any discussion chair hearing none all in favor aye aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously so mr chair i'd just like to ask that perhaps we could deliver that to your point that since we have a joint meeting coming up that

093maybe we could send that to the select board i have no problem sending that to them i don't know if they'll listen to us but we can send it to them to just potential agenda items for next week put that on two weeks and we'll have somebody from them on our committee yes i'm going to shut the door mr chair yeah excuse me thank you [Music] okay no just public ben's in charge he's awesome we need a high school teacher to take care of us she knows exactly what she's doing i don't know no it's just just pull this should just be there you go there we go okay next all right new business revision to the handbook dr gifford um i'm hoping you had a chance to look at it because we most obviously

094it was just uh clean up a lot of it we did take the five dollars out transcript yes we made sure that um so it was a lot of cleanup and we really would like a vote because we do need to get it to printers and disseminate etc etc so hopefully you had a chance now this also correct me if i'm wrong this also has the school year calendar in the back for next year yes okay yes so okay all right comments on the student handbook dr jenkins i'll make a motion that we approve uh the student handbook as amended i second that good may i ask a question now after without motion no yes excuse me yes you may yes my question is you said we have to get this to the printer are

095are we required to print this yes like i think we got like a copy of it and never like it got shoved somewhere again and if i ever had a question i would just google dartmouth public schools handbook right so i'm just curious as to i mean there are there's a cost associated with printing a handbook forever i don't know what it's called do we have to do that i mean like how many people actually read it or use it well not so much not i think not so much that but i think the reason we have to print it is the fact that there are some families that do not have internet access and computers so they've got to be able to put their put their hands on it can we allow people to

096opt out right like because i will opt out and you know the other thing is too because it's a standardized handbook if you've got like three kids in in elementary school yeah do you need three copies of the demelo handbook or the pot or handbook they're all the same i'm just curiou i mean i know there's right there's gotta there's gotta be a way that we just you know it goes home digitally we have some paper copies available in the front offices that um because here's the thing let me ask you this yeah we can look at it are we sending home paper report cards oh yeah we do for them sometimes for the elementary school just elementary elementary though yeah i do yeah that's kind of yeah right if we're not sending home if

097we're not sending home report cards maybe i'm off a technology elementary yeah yeah i know we had the conversation about this before and for some reason kept printing it was a couple years back yeah we can look at it again okay we're always willing to save some money and yeah because we do the electronic sign-offs and all of that so yeah otherwise i'm good and i would just like to acknowledge i'd like to thank miss alivera for providing us with the document with the revisions that was super helpful i very much appreciate it so thankful thank you to her yeah it's been a while since we've got that but way back that was that was a helpful thing that that we got the way you we used to get so all right well sometimes we'd

098get it with italicized as to what it changed okay so we have a motion in a second to approve the handbook for school year 2223. all in favor aye opposed motion carries unanimously next item the 2022 summer sport camps is that doc that's uh mr kylie thank you mr newman so i apologize for the late delivery of this information but um i provided it to you in hard copy here so we propose to hold a similar summer sports camp to what we've done in the past baseball softball field hockey flag football tennis basketball lacrosse volleyball soccer track and field we had 475 participants last year which was great especially considering you know we had some concerns at the time regarding kobit and um how that would impact our enrollment so we were very pleased with

099that we uh are proposing that we charge the the same amount as we did last year which is 80 for the week there are two short weeks in this span so it would it would begin with a four day week on on june 21st and then obviously the july fourth week as well is also in that in the midst of the camp so it would go from june 21st through july 22nd so we the camp's been successful uh serving students grades two through nine um it is modestly financially successful um we have actually not used it to purchase athletic and pe equipment in the last well the camp didn't happen two years ago but um in the last few years we've we've sort of just built up the balance in that account a little bit

100but um our hope would be that we could utilize it to freshen up some some equipment for our students so i just ask for your consideration on that any questions just a quick question mr kylie does this go into a unrestricted revolving account or student activities account where does the money go yeah it's a it's a sub-account of the athletic revolving account and it um it is all accounted for entirely separately so all the expenses come out of that and all of the revenue is deposited into that account no great i'm happy to see that um you know we're offering again and the amount the amount of campers uh looks like for last year 475. that's great thank you dr jenkins so mr oliver's question and the mr kyle's response made me think of will

101you sometimes periodically get reports on the revolving accounts balances right i'm not going to ask you what the balance is on that but maybe as a future agenda item sometime this summer when things calm down maybe we can get a report on those again sure that would be great yeah it actually is also included in the annual town report uh information which you received but yeah i'd be happy to provide you an update with where it is thank you kathleen um i say this every year you know what i'm gonna say uh you know the the the weeks kind of um coincide or collide with uh those um esy you know the the summer school for for um you know our vulnerable learners and so i just hope as has been past practice that there

102is some meaningful kind of coordination and and um scheduling to account for you know during that time you you're not going to please you can never please everyone but clearly but uh anyway um but just to um you know make sure that there are some opportunities the most you know um the the the sports that seem to be most popular perhaps i don't know if that's a way to gauge it but don't happen during during the weeks of esy you know if basketball was during esy and liam was still you know he would be just upset to have to miss that because let's face it and i don't know if i don't know what any any compensatory services that might also be happening in the summer time i don't know how many students have you

103know i don't know any that detail but um i'm thinking that there might be more students partaking in extended school year than past years and so like past years i just ask that you keep that into consideration oh it's a good it's a good point thank you and we'll make sure that we try and coordinate as best we can like you said we can't you know solve everything we do have some issues with the camp this year in terms of the facilities we're attempting to attempt to um refinish the the gym floor here so um that is gonna sort of we're gonna be a little bit of a juggling act but we'll figure it out so we'll try and balance everything as best we can to serve as many you know as many students as

104we can didn't we just redo that gym floor yes not to that extent not just thinking right not not to the extent of what we did we replaced the floor correct when we were running we redid it we're not doing that it's just it's just the surface okay sorry attempting to like the lines it will include lines um as as you know um mr gaspar is going to um you know be honored uh with the new basketball season and uh we thought that that was a great time to actually try and fix up the floor a little bit which if you go out there is worn um and i will say that and so we'd like to incorporate the work that we need to do to to honor mr gaspar and his name on the

105floor and everything with uh actually fixing up the floor at the same time so so it's it's routine it's sort of maintenance that needs to occur maintenance sounds better yeah yeah yeah and i think it's great you know i want to see them go forward and you know any time we have kids coming together it's just right exactly what we need so yeah i was talking with the superintendent when she was coming in tonight and you know all the activity you know the fan truck being unloaded and everything and it's like it's a school that's what it's supposed to be full of kids and activities type of deals [Music] oh yeah no doubt all right next on the agenda do you need a motion to approve that any other discussion chair hearing none all in

106favor aye aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously thank you thank you sorry about that guys get used to being here again wow okay uh next on the agenda is uh new bedford regional vocational technical high school school committee member dr gibbons um mr shea did answer that he was still interested in continuing so if that's the will of the community i have no i have no i have no problem with that at all but i'll just know i i received the letters get there sent it to me as chair informing me that mr shea's term was up and i think that was like after the agenda for the last meeting or after our last meeting or something so i asked ms gunther prior to this meeting to ask mr shea if he was willing to

107serve with the understanding that we could have a discussion do we want to open it up or do we want to just keep mr shea so just for the background on that i didn't inform anyone because that would violate open meeting law so that's sort of where we are we have to appoint someone new mr shea is willing to continue if that's the pleasure of the committee or we can open it up for nominations or applications i guess it would yeah i'm i'm good with the with him i was pleased with the last presentation where he came and i'd like to see more of those yeah makes two of us so okay so i'll make a motion to reappoint mr shea is the uh dartmouth school committee representative to the vocational vocational school committee second

108time all right so we have a motion by dr jenkins the second by ms waite to reappoint michael shea as one of the dartmouth school committee representatives to the new bedford regional vocational technical high school on the motion any discussion chair hearing none all in favor aye opposed motion carries unanimously i'd just like to say thank you to mr shea thank you yeah absolutely yes and thank you to reappointing him because i've been on this side having to sit at town hall to figure out who's going on so i'll tell you that sometime okay next item a new business superintendent's update okay thank you i have quite a few things tonight so um as you know i was not at the last meeting and so i did listen and i know two two topics were

109brought up would i want to kind of provide an update on one was the ell department so i just wanted to give you some statistics on that the reason as you know we did not replace a retired person um our numbers have gone from 92 down to 54 students else students right now our schedules people have enough time in their schedules our one of the things i want to do for next year to really get a handle on it is some of the things that are taking place are some teachers are not exiting students along with the desi guidance that we want exited they're scoring way over what desi provides as guidance that they should be scoring um like it's a 3.9 to 4.2 on on the testing and and we're well above that we

110also have done some longitudinal studies on our students which we call flaps which are formerly english language learners and they're scoring as well if not better on mcas on encase over the last few years so there's really good data out there so i wanted to clarify that the department really is has enough right now i get as i said from 92 down to 54 students one of the things i want to address next year is more of like i said exiting students when they should be exited uh so that we can service kindergarten students which are not always it's again there's no regulations with desi but i think it's important that perhaps kindergarten students get service so we give them that good jump if they come in we want to look into a second phase

111on when we do the home language survey which simply asks is there another language spoken in the home sometimes people just say yes and there's no follow-up well it could be perfectly fine that they're bilingual so then they get coded as l students which really there's sometimes no rhyme no reason so i want to do some work with that also about more of pushing in servicing students in the classroom because some of those students that are not being exited are not receiving tier one instruction enough they're being pulled out so there were there's just some of the things like i said i heard the conversation go on i wanted to kind of address some of that also the speech language department i've met with them over time a number of times you might know i

112think we're in a good place now but over the last i would say three or four years we've had a real hard time getting speech people not for lack of trying we post we get people oh we'll get just slpa so unfortunately we've had late resignations throughout the number of years we've had some people get ill so the departments had a you know an up and down um we were just able so some of the times what we did was thinking we were doing a good service was hiring an slpa because that was all we had to try to help with the servicing of students so we're meeting again with the slp with the speech people on wednesday and um but right now we just were able to hire a new one which i think

113she's starting tomorrow as far as i'm remembered today so we have right now um sevens if well we have one that's on medical but if she returns we have seven speech we do have three slpas and we contract with two people and we're so our hours of time that are required we're meeting i know that um the supervision that the speech people have to do is is burdensome and a lot so we'll be working with them a little bit more on some of the scenarios that they've presented for next year so i just kind of wanted to touch base on those because i knew those two topics were brought up also as you know if you recall we do have the desi audit coming up and miss aloe vera and i spent a lot of

114last week on our vacation dealing with them because it was a real disappointment i have to say they were supposed to get back to us and touch base with us on organizing this audit visit which is a three-day visit and plus uploading tons of our documents into their system which port tracy never got access to we were back and forth with emails on that finally i given the little you know snarly email two weeks ago like we haven't heard from you guys it's vacation next week and you expect to be here may 3rd 4th and 5th and so we did zoom with them during the week and we've put together a schedule as i said they'll be here may third fourth and fifth and basically they're auditing us on leadership in governance hr pd assessment

115curriculum instruction student support financial and asset management uh miss wait and mr nunes are gonna be the school committee reps that meet with them we've got um mr mcginnis is meeting with them we've got a group about seven community and uh parent people that meet with them focus groups so they're doing some virtual and some on site so we think we have it under control the high school all the schools are working with us on providing time the students from middle and high school so it's a big pretty big deal but as of today we think we have the schedules pretty much but i just wasn't happy with the group again it was a research group hired by desse and when we zoomed with them of course they were home in their basement while we

116were at work but anyway so that's happening some elementary news there's moving up days happening for grade five and again a lot of in-person stuff so that's fun uh recognizing recognition nights are being scheduled we have summer reading kickoff scheduled for june 7th field days and fifth grade activities are being advertised from the schools kindergarten orientation is may 18th and that will be in person as well and we're happy to say that we brought junior achievement days back into the elementary school so they're scheduling some of those for all grades the district art show is coming up at the high school here for may 5th i believe i have that date right some of the elementaries have decided to kind of do their own in schools to get their parents into the schools because they

117haven't been in for so long so i said that was fine the middle school honest society junior honor society is this week april 27th at six and then um you might have seen uh i didn't send it out yet ross just sent it but a lot of senior the final days are being advertised yeah so lots going on with that the final day for seniors is may 27th we've got june uh june 1 is the awards night and the senior stroll which they started so that's really fun and the prom is the second at kirkbray country club and of course there'll be an after prom and um june 5th is graduation and the last thing i want to mention something we're very very happy which matter of fact i have a brochure for you guys

118if you can just pass those out i think i mentioned at a previous meeting that we've hooked up with a group called the cook center for human connections and again we've been meeting with them quite a bit they seem to be very much on task as far as helping us get started it's all about mental health so what we're doing is on may 4th as you see we're going to kick it off with a zoom we're advertising this people can register it it's a virtual meeting there are therapists available um they're going to explain all that there is ability to ask anonymous questions to these people but that's just part of it so that's the kickoff and it'll explain what's happening um on the other things we're doing is um there's a parent guidance it's

119called parentguides.org which again we'll put out parents can go online it's all free there's courses they can take free things like helping your child when they're bullied how digital media is changing our children's mental health there's a plethora of opportunities on that particular website that they can just go through along with this kickoff what happens next is we're going to continue uh with a series and we'll be advertising this but just so you have an idea june 7th and they're all going to be six to seven and they'll be virtual the session is going to be protecting our children and again parents are going to have the opportunity to anonymously ask questions which can be then answered you might have all been in sessions like that already i know i do with mass etc and

120the questions they say oh a question is and it might be questions that a lot of people have and they have therapists they can be help you know helping out august 23rd is going to be your child's anxiety we thought that'd be kind of good getting kids back to school and then october 18th once we get started it's going to be um one that's very very sad that we have to do but how parents can help prevent suicide giving people skills and ideas and and also the last thing i'll mention you can tell them we're very happy about this is um we are going to provide parents the opportunity to sign up for individual coaching sessions with therapist it's like a once a week 30 minute session and once they sign up they can just

121do it it's completely anonymous and um we we're just going to offer that opportunity so we we just thought this was a fantastic opportunity for parents with the mental health issues and things that are happening and our staff will get a little bit of pd on this as well matter of fact the i'm not sure if they met with our social workers already and our guidance but we were setting up a meeting i know lori joden was working on that so anyway this will be going out on our facebook page and home in the parent backpack the newsletter thing and that's it that's for you that's fantastic lots of stuff lots of stuff kathleen that's fantastic that was uh but i i have something to share uh i'm also very excited although it's the day

122after so on on may 5th uh i'm excited to share that the special education parent advisory council is hosting a topic entitled well i modified it but life post pandemic healing our hearts our minds and our relationships um you know it's about you know the past two years have been rough for everyone and just the mental health challenges physical health uh how we you know we're highly charged and emotional right as a community and we invited maria tricario she's a registered nurse she holds lots of lots of degrees and she's a nurse administrator educator and consultant in our areas of expertise our communication problem solving grief mitigation program development leadership and ethics and so she's going to come offer some tips and strategies and some good just stuff for those of us who are just

123reeling with exhaustion overwhelm worry fear to name a few things and um you know the reason we thought this was important is that you know we've we're all at that point right our students our educators our community uh it hopefully i'm excited for it to be a reset button so that we can see each other again and start having kind and thoughtful conversations and feeling good about how we are in our in our standing so i'm really excited uh you can find i've shared it on facebook today i'll tweet it i guess but the dartmouth cpac facebook page has like an event where you can get the link and it's via zoom six to seven um on may 5th so i'm so excited about that anybody else any questions comments for the superintendent doctor not

124for the superintendent whatever i was just going to note um for any of our educators who are watching that the grant the call for grants for the dartmouth education foundation is open um the deadline for grant applications is may 15 so we love to see great applications from all of our schools thank you for doing that mr oliver i just have two quick things for future meetings of gender items the next time we go into executive session i was wondering if we could just uh add the topic of school security i did have a couple questions um so we could have that to exec executive session in addition now that we're kind of open um and you know hopefully the pandemic is cl it's slowly winding down it would be nice to see um central

125office as well as maybe some building representation back at our school committee meetings kind of like prior to um covet just sometimes things come up i just want to say you need to knock on wood because the last time we said that i think mr michoad was here and we were like have some time off have a great vacation yeah i know don't jinx us it's it's so true but yeah just reset button when things come up it would be nice to have some representation yeah yeah that's fine yes i'm good with it that's all i have we can do that okay uh yeah a couple a couple of things that i have uh she talked about it uh and we got our invites tonight from the theater company for yes shrek the musical thursday

126friday and the two matinees on sunday saturday i should say that'll be good uh do we have a time that miss wait night now are they going to interview us individually or be together i'll send you tomorrow i don't yeah no no that's right no that's fine okay but did i tell you the school no nothing just just just like you know well hopefully yeah when can you be you know okay are you this day yeah because it was the fourth or the fifth i'll send it to you tomorrow i'll as soon as i look it up i'll get to it okay that's fine we have to be nice to them no no okay say good things about us oh that's not a problem that that's that's not a problem second one right the tracy

127send it look at i think okay that's fine forwarded for tomorrow that's right fourth don't the fourth at eight it says at least three members we told them we can't have three because we can't have three because that's a quorum so the four um eight o'clock on the fourth at the high school at the house okay damn okay yeah they've been fried in bacon and eggs yeah probably not they'll probably want us to buy yeah she just said the same thing eight o'clock on wednesday okay that's fine thank you and again uh just a congrats to uh the color guard for their outstanding performance out in dayton ohio and also our indoor percussion that took third place and uh wins that took second place uh last night their first year first year doing a wgi

128competition so congratulations to uh to the all those students for what they've done i know our false uh spring sports are going gangbusters they're doing well so very impressed so i wish them well so all right our next meeting is may 9th and i guess we're going to be town hall at town hall we're going to meet at 5 30 in the planning board room dr jenkins um i spoke with ms guenther who can speak to you about some and dr gifford can fill you in about we need to do an executive session after that so i wonder to mr oliver's request do we want to do is it pressing do we need to do that no it's not pressing because we're good i i just want to sort of maybe get that out because

129we are going to need to do an executive session after that one but we can put that for the next one yeah that's fine that's fine no problem all right anything else okay chair will entertain a motion to adjourn so moved second mr oliver second by dr jenkins on emotion any discussion chair hearing then all in favor say aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously thank you good evening and be safe [Music] you