Dartmouth School Committee Meeting, March 21, 2022

001we'll be able to see them yeah it's pretty neat thank you i can't see the intro on the glasses he's so cute come on welcome everybody i'd like to call the march 21st meeting of the dartmouth school committee to order please rise for the pledge of allegiance of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you ms ganther can we have a roll call please here mary wait here kathleen admiral john nunes yep chris oliver here thank you everyone um just a reminder that the dartmouth school committee meeting will be able it was being live streamed on youtube.com dhs tv media the meeting will be rebroadcast on dctv channels nine on wednesday and thursday at five p.m friday at six a.m saturday

002at 8 am and sunday at 2 p.m it will also be rebroadcast on channel on monday and saturday at 12 p.m and thursday at 3 p.m and just as a reminder i'd like to ask everyone to silence or turn off their cell phones before we get started please um so it is not yet 6 35 so we cannot um do the first item on our agenda so i will actually how about i entertain a motion to approve the regular session minutes from march 7 2021. so move second all right i have a motion uh by mr nunes a second by miss wait is there any further discussion on that motion hearing none all in favor aye aye opposed that motion carries unanimously next i'll entertain a motion to approve the joint session minutes for march

0038 2022. so move second all right i have a motion by mr nunes a second by mr oliver is there any further discussion on that motion all right hearing none all in favor aye all right so i managed to kill the full one minute with that you guys got to be not so quick on the uptake yeah why don't we move on to the student representative report we have nanyan bila who is uh here to give us an update so why don't you um i'm not to put you on the spot but maybe you could introduce yourself first before you give us your report and tell us a little bit about yourself since it's your first time here thank you dr jenkins hi everyone i am 9 bala i'm a junior here at dhs and

004i'm really excited to be your student representative for the third trimester a little bit about me i am on the robotics team i'm on the math team i'm a member of the science club and i really love anything stem kind of math and science and i hope to pursue that in the future so to start off this report ever since embarking on quarter three it has been a really busy but really successful time here at dhs spring athletics kicked off today with 10 programs having their first practice and their tryouts this afternoon all sports have been off to an exemplary start over the weekend we crowned dartmouth's finest which for the first time was awarded to a female contestant mia carter this show was truly so much fun to watch and we would like to

005congratulate all of our talented contestants and thank all of the faculty members who made dartmouth's finest possible especially mrs kearney and mrs grieve who are the amazing class of 2023 advisors the dhs theater company performed crafting a killer this weekend at the 2022 massachusetts educational theater guild festival the show was directed by gabriella riordan and gracie rose and several members of the dartmouth high theatre company received awards for their immense talent and hard work the dhs debate team also competed this weekend in state debate tournament at needham high school dhs competed in group discussion which focused on space exploration with sub-topics including militarization colonization and privatization senior dhs debater colin zoo came in second place overall in the competitive field of 42 students from across the state the dhs music program hosted a very successful

006home show on saturday our indoor percussion winds and color guard all had outstanding performances as they continue to prepare for the world competitions held in ohio during april vacation the dhs math team recently competed in their regional playoff meet and are currently ranked second in their conference of 16 southeast schools after recently coming first in their playoff meet they'll be competing in the state competition in two weeks lastly our grade 10 students will be taking the first of their ncas exams starting tomorrow all students completed an infrastructure test last week to iron out any bugs and get some more practice in for the actual exam our sophomores are ready to go and we wish them the best of luck thank you thank you so much i appreciate that any comments or questions mr nunes yeah

007just there was a there was a math event here last week how did we do we did awesome so um it it went really successful successfully fiend and all rochester were here and some other i happened to walk by so yeah many schools in the area were here including like taunton which is currently ranked first i think orr for haven were were able to visit and so it was basically like a giant kind of um playoff meet for our regional um what's the word i'm looking for kind of a contest so basically all these schools came together and we competed in these five rounds that we did and it went really well our school won the competition um competing against these nine other schools so it went really successfully i was cured i was curious

008how it went yeah i stopped in for a couple of minutes and that and you know it was talking with mr lauer about the you know the content and everything else and i was way out so but it was so much fun yeah congratulations thank you thank you thank you any other questions or comments no i'd just like to say great presentation welcome aboard we're happy to have you we had a nice conversation uh before the meeting started so yeah welcome aboard thank you i'm really excited to be here thank you and you know we'll always say to our student reps you are more than welcome to stay but we also know that you are very busy so you're also more than welcome to leave it's completely up to you and it depends on what

009you have going on in your schedule and what homework you have i would totally say but i have a ton of homework but thank you guys so much thank you so much good luck all right so it is now 6 37 so we can open our public hearing on the proposed fiscal year 23 school budget at this point in time if anyone would like to make any comments on the fiscal year 23 school budget please step up to the podium and state your name and remember that at this point we're just taking comments about the budget we'll do comments about other agenda items after this thank you go ahead [Laughter] please don't state your name for the record that's okay i'm christian silvera i used to be a student here at dhs i try to

010be as involved as possible while juggling my own life i did just want to speak briefly after speaking to mr kylie in regards to the proposed budget he made it known to me that the removal or reduction of the parking pass fee is included in the proposed budget so i just want to speak on this and maybe mention the three more um three biggest things that stood out to me the most in the conversations i've had with you all just to kind of reiterate them and i know some members were kind of on the fence about it all so um first things first i drove through the parking lot the other day and there was an immense amount of damage in that law from plows damage that's actually been there for years now and hasn't

011even been resolved but the thing is the majority of that damage was in the teacher lot but yet the students contributed twelve thousand dollars of the fifteen thousand dollars of expenses in that lot last year if you went to the plow company and you ask them to cut out the student law it really wouldn't change the amount that you're paying them all that much so that's that's number one number two is it's been brought up before that driving to school is a luxury for students and quite honestly i think it's more of a luxury for the school the school saves thousands of dollars a year actually allowing for the students to park here because it's it's money saved through tremblies and it's time saved i know dr jenkins dr jenkins you had brought up before

012that you know that extra half an hour of sleep 45 minutes of sleep when kids don't have to board a bus at 6 15 can be huge it can be huge for teachers in a classroom when they're trying to get students attention it can be huge for students mental health when they need that extra little bit of sleep a day just to help get through it the third thing is that this is just a simple maintenance need this is not comparable to many of the other fees sports band they're amazing things but those are actually luxuries those are things that the school specifically has put into place for the students they have to pay stipends to pay it to run those programs and that's where the the fees from those programs go towards the maintenance

013fees the the parking best fees they're just paying the maintenance of the entire law when the students occupy it not even a third of it so no other infrastructure in this town has parking pass fees the police department doesn't pay him teachers don't pay him you know the beach is the town hall like no one else is paying parking pass fees at this point this is not an issue of funding or not this is something i've been fighting for five years now and this is something that's been being fought since the day it was put into place it's not an issue of funding but it's an issue of right and wrong this is a general maintenance requirement that needs to be treated that way i understand that funds are lower this year than usual and

014the thing is is every single year i've fought this is always a reason why it shouldn't happen why it shouldn't happen but honestly at this time no more dispersing funds from students pockets to pay for lighting in the lots no more dispersing funds from students pockets to pay for areas in the parking lot that they're not even inhabiting and no more disbursing funds from students pockets to clearly pay for maintenance that should just be covered out of a general maintenance requirement there are no um i'm sorry discharge at this point it just seems predatory when you look at it in the grand scheme of things and buy each line item so i appreciate you all for listening to me all these years giving me the opportunity to come up here and speak hopefully this is

015the last time i'm here to speak but i want to work with you on the future on different you know issues i want to help you come up with the solutions maybe someday i can be sitting on this panel with you all but i appreciate you all taking the time to even consider what i have to say so thank you thank you other comments on the proposed fiscal year 23 school budget good evening my name is rene vieira i am this year co-president of the dartmouth educators association and i stand here with my co-president jody parisi so we have a few questions about the budget and a couple of comments um so our first uh question is in regards to the change in the director of teacher and learning in your budget proposal that position

016has been split from one direct position to an elementary and a secondary level and i did notice we did notice in the budget that there's also the school committee is maintaining a line item for the associate or the assistant principal uh superintendent position um however there is no monetary value there but but that place is being held um so our first question is uh that we recognize that because of the retirement of ms roy and the change in the job responsibilities of ms oliveira that there in the last year and a half or so there have been many stipended positions created and our question is do we have an understanding of which of those positions will now be eliminated at the end of this year and those responsibilities and returning back to those administrative positions

017examples are the project time coordinator the ell coordinator and relative to elementary whether there's still going to be a need for curriculum leaders if we now have an elementary director right now um our estimate is that there's over over 20 000 worth of stipended money going out um to pay for these what were once administrative responsibilities our second question regarding that is that in the budget there's a line that recognizes that the assistant superintendent secretary is going to be shuffled um due to the change in position it's now going to be a curriculum secretary of position so um i guess we just want to make sure that that is going to be accurately reflected in in the instructional piece because now that position is going to become a dea position so you know just to

018make sure that that gets reflected as such when you think about cost changes for dea salaries moving on a third question we have is relative to the ester monies so one of the questions we had is one is sr money funding the accelerated academy because the accelerated academy we recognize was new to this school year and there's been quite a bit of money spent on stipends and to run the program but it seems at this point that the impact on student involvement is less than expected so we were wondering if that was something that was going to be continued in the budget for next year or if that was directly linked to s or money another question that we had we noticed in the proposed budget there was a recommendation for forty nine thousand one

019hundred ninety three dollars for one fte rbt position this seems significantly higher than the salary of current rbt positions so we were wondering if that was an error and that that was for two positions or if it was to cover existing stipends or money for people who are already employed and if so who would then fulfill the duties and responsibilities of these people being pulled from their current positions to provide these services if we were going to be hiring additional people also there is a cushman special education teacher who's retiring at top step we were wondering if the school committee would consider hiring two sped teachers so that one would be able to support the preschool teachers as only two are currently holding a special education license and that this would solve some of the

020some of the you know issues that we have surrounding the um the model that we're using in dartmouth at this point in time um one other thing that has to do with cushman that we were noticing in the um in the line items is that we were wondering if the assistant principal cushman assistant principal it wasn't listed in the proposed budget so we were wondering if there was a title change or if it was like an oversight because we did see a listing for early childhood director but that only reflects like half of the salary so it wasn't listed in there that we could find anywhere and we just may have missed it but or we were wondering if the title had changed one other thing that we were um have been wondering about or

021concerned about is that there seems to be an increase in sped money spent like at the administrative level or in supportive administration previously we had a director of people support services and then over the last few years we added an assistant at that an assistant for that position other than the purchase of the sunday system which i know was very expensive it was a system that was for dyslexic students it was required by the state and we we purchased that prior to that there was over the years there was a significant loss in money that was for the sped budget and you know people are are requesting supplies and they're not able to get them you know one example is there's been a request that has not been purchased for essential tools like boardmaker for

022some of our program students and that's an essential piece that is needed and as far as i know up to this point they've still not received that so we were just wondering i did notice that in the in the budget this bed budget has is is retaining the money that was allotted for this year for the sande system where in previous years this bed budget had been like significantly cut so just wondering if some of those supplies then would then be purchased as people are asking for them thank you um so recognizing that there's been back and forth from deci relative to how essa monies can be spent um it has now been stated publicly that essa monies can be used for staffing purposes to apply to be able to directly allow for services for

023students so one of our questions was how much of the total budget that you have in front of you does include esser monies and of those essay monies do we know how much of the estimate is actually included under instruction and we asked that because uh we recognized that under budget request items that were not met um one of them was um there were two not funded positions for uh teaching assistant positions and um we continue to struggle um to meet the needs of some of our students and you know in the district without being able to offer teaching assistance services and having you know two staff members uh to be able to to meet the needs of students in certain classrooms and also there continues to be inequity across the district relative to um

024at different buildings having different amounts of teaching assistant support which then can really greatly either enhance or cause difficulty to be able to meet the needs of students and run certain programs so that it's equitable across the across the district and a couple of concerns we had relative to some percent increases in the budget we recognize that dartmouth has continued to increase not only some administrative positions but positions that don't necessarily relate to direct services to students these positions they will sometimes you know support other staff sometimes they support administrators but right now we're looking at in looking at this budget um there's it's recognized that for building administrative salaries there's a 14.6 increase versus only a 5.5 increase for staff and we also know that there are um some building administrative contracts that have

025years fours at years four and five added to their contract in which their percent increases have not yet been established or if they have they're not necessarily public yet so we we're questioning as to whether um if the superintendent has made a decision for years four and five for some of these administrators and how that might impact the budget and lastly to quote school committee member mr nunes at the last school committee meeting one of our ongoing concerns is that we're not marketable with the rest of um with a number of neighboring areas and mr noon said in recognition of an administrative salary or in considering administrative salaries that if you pay peanuts you get monkeys well right now our dartmouth is having an extremely hard time filling and keeping our tas we can't fill

026the positions and we get ta positions and they um many times leave they either leave to try to move to another building because there's a difference in the job description or in the expectation and many times they're they're leaving for other districts we're also struggling here to fill substitute positions and we do appreciate the fact that the school committee did increase the substitute pay and that's helped us some but i know across the buildings when staff is out it's an awful lot of work to get folks to be able to cover and um we do commend staff for stepping up and and being willing to um to fill in classes here and there to give up prep periods etc but we also know that we have specialized service positions that we struggle to fill and

027that causes us as a district to spend lots of money on contracted services because we can't fill those positions permanently and it also makes it hard too because in a sort of a revolving door dr give it tries to post them they can't get filled we get you know an outside contract in the meantime we still try to run the postings and and it doesn't um in some cases it just it it's a concern with keeping services consistent across the board and last but not least okay we're always waving this flag and we appreciate your time this evening add to this the cost of our health insurance and we're not offering competitive wages all right we get people across the district and also within the town this is not just a dartmouth public schools issue

028but we get really good people candidates that apply for positions and the position is great and then they look at the the salary package along with the the health care costs and there are a number of people who've had to decline because they're going to take a cut and pay when we take a look at the town's limited support of our our health insurance package and we do appreciate your time that's what we have for you this evening and we thank you thank you all right any further comments on the proposed fiscal year 23 school budget all right seeing no takers we can now close the motion we close the public hearing on this fy 23 school budget thank you mr nunes i have a motion by mr nunes in a second by mr oliver

029is there any discussion hearing none all in favor aye aye opposed that motion carries unanimously um thank you everyone um next we will we have a lot of 10 minutes for public comment on other items on our agenda but anyone would like to speak on any of the other items on our agenda we invite you now to come up to the podium share your name and share your thoughts all right seeing no takers we'll move on to the next item on our agenda which is a presentation our spotlight on kids for dartmouth high school dr gifford would you like to introduce thank you madam chair i know we have principal mr tebow here and i think associate principal ms chavier and i'm not sure who else they're going to bring up a number of other

030folks who are going to join all right as well so welcome mr mr bosworth and members of the e-sports team at dartmouth high school so if i remember correctly ben you'll help me out i think it was control right arrow is that right all right thank you thanks ben all right well first off thank you to the committee it's um my pleasure to be able to represent dartmouth high school for the spotlight on kids um certainly been a little bit uh i feel like since we've been here with covert and everything else but it's a pleasure to be back as principal it is always hard for me to pick um you know you heard from nyan earlier today a lot of what she talked about was just this weekend um so that's one week and

031so the point there being that we have a lot of clubs and activities athletic programs there's a lot going on at dartmouth high school that deserves a spotlight and so to just pick one group is very always very difficult for me but this year um i decided to pick the esports team here at dartmouth high school and um real quick i'm going to give a little a few introductory slides and i'm going to turn it over to to the folks behind me but actually before i do get into this if we could just kind of go around and introduce ourselves if you could just state your name and your year of graduation mr tebow i'm gonna have them come to them to come up and step up to the microphone or mr peratti will scold

032both of us and we don't want to get in trouble with him hi my name is orlando o'reilly and the year of graduation is 2024. thanks orlando lucas hello my name is lucas waite i am a sophomore graduating 2024. kyle hello i'm kyle silva i'm a junior and graduate the year of 2023. hi i'm jennica brawl i'm a junior and graduate 2023 thanks gia adriana hello my name is adriana neria i am a freshman here at dhs all right thank you so esports for folks who might not be familiar esports is competitive gaming and it is the fastest growing sport in the united states currently and um you know the the growth of esports is really reflected by the fact that the msaa which is the sister organization to the miaa has really taken the

033lead in governing competition amongst high schools and in any given season any given league you have anywhere from you know 45 to 60 different high schools or different high school teams i should say competing in esports also there's 150 colleges more than 150 colleges and universities that actually have varsity level esports teams now including you know i looked at the list uh in preparation for this and you know certainly there's a lot of small colleges and universities that have varsity level programs but there's a lot of universities as well that you you know it's much madness right now you see them competing march madness they also have esports teams like ohio state oklahoma oklahoma state new mexico state so there's a lot of you know big name colleges that also offer varsity esports program so

034it is a fast growing sport if you will so why play esports because i think this is important because i think sometimes video games get a bad rap right but i think that esports offers competition at the highest level for for gaming um you know there's a number of different games that our young people compete in uh specifically here at dartmouth high school it's rocket league league of legends and smash ultimate but beyond that it really does align the you know it's a this is a co-curricular activity that aligns with the teaching and learning that takes place during the day we talk a lot about the four c's of of 21st century learning specifically thinking about critical thinking you know communication collaboration um you know critical thinking all of those skills are employed in strategic

035uh ways to be successful in the games that that our esports team competes in also it's they compete as a team right so you have character development you have um you know there's there's a lot of research that shows that students who are connected to school beyond the traditional school day do better academically right and so it offers that benefit and again as i mentioned already the college scholarships i'm not sure what the most recent number is but four years ago um 16 million dollars was awarded nationally in terms of scholarships for esports um so that's obviously a tiny fraction when you you know recognize that billions of dollars are given out in scholarships for athletics but it's not an insignificant amount and it's growing every year so i just think having an esports team

036here at dartmouth high school is a tremendous opportunity and provides one more opportunity for our young people to get plugged in and so i thought we'd watch this brief video it's two minutes long of kind of an esports action and then we'll turn it over to our young people to kind of share in much more detail their experience as part of the esports team [Music] we ready let's go all right guys same team comp as yesterday matt i want to see you play more aggressive yep and we're running at carrie top again got it we got this zach are you good to support again yeah of course support is so easy dude i need support at the bottom i got only five [Music] on my way guys i'm coming in i can won't be one

037this jax i'll come help push mid i want to die by 20 seconds can you guys back me up that's what i'm talking about guys good stuff [Music] oh man that was so fun i wish we had this in school [Music] so [Music] so the last piece there i wish we had this in school i just want to um you know uh thank mr bosworth and mr guillot because they really took the lead two years ago our esports team was actually one of um i think six new clubs or activities that we created during that pandemic year the year when you know the pandemic was really raging um you know i think it speaks to the fact that we do have outstanding uh teachers and faculty members here at dartmouth high school who are willing

038to step up and provide opportunities for our students and in speaking um with giada today she actually spoke to me a lot about what is meant to her so giotta if you want to come up and kind of share that with the committee um so the esports community is really problematic not like among the club but as like a publicly whole community it's really discriminatory against not just sex but um like race stuff like that um and as a female um speaking in like just a game chat can like result in like lash back and stuff like that and so i think that the club here is super important because it creates this huge safe space for people um a lot of people don't have the opportunity to play at home and so creating this

039space at school is super great too because it gives kids the opportunity to make friends um and again creates that space safe space and it's super great because you make friends and i sound like a broken record my gosh um you make friends and um it just makes it better for people who tend to shy away from the community because of what they've heard from other people about different types of backlash and stuff like that so i really think mr giat and mr bosworth for creating this because um as we grow um we get to open new doors for more people and it's really great thanks jim thank you thanks giada all right so i don't know who wants to step up and just speak about the experience here in terms of creating the club

040and kind of providing a little synopsis so the club is the club itself is fairly new it was only started last year the 2020-21 year and it was sort of experimentation it began with just a sort of uh heavily casual locally school hosted uh smash brothers tournament but just for a few members of the club as again a trial run then we got into the uh play vs league and that's when we started getting into the seasons of competition the spring and fall seasons opening up opportunities for students to play different games like the aforementioned rocket league league of legends super smash brothers um and opening and opening up new games like apex legends valorant overwatch it sort of brought this wide demographic i guess of players into the club and kind of took the

041whole thing off so many people showed so much more interest there was a lot more people coming into pace thinking of ideas for the club like this symbol which actually lucas created with some help of mr bosworth um and even just building up the room we have right now which i believe is going to be presented later on um it's just it's been amazing to see it grow from three four five people to now a school renowned club of 20 maybe maybe more and we even have a discord server which is growing and growing and growing bringing more and more members into this community even uh graduates and alumni of dartmouth high uh i believe mr bosworth and mr guillot have stated they've made their own server for those so they can still be active

042and see the club blossom and flower more uh even going out of high school and it's it's just wonderful to see it's amazing that i get to be part of that growth so it was anyone here part of this so in their first season uh last spring they qualified for the state tournament um and did quite well as anyone want to speak lucas you want to share your experience with that [Music] okay um i'm not sure what to say um well last year like kyle said was very experimentational it was our first time around we made a lot of mistakes but as a team we like grew we became more strong and we worked together to overcome our opponents i would say you want to say anything yeah overall this community has really become like

043a family to me and i really want to see this community grow and blossom into something beautiful and i think that people should be really supportive of that and do everything they can to help that happen i would also like to say that um it feels like as every season goes by we're only becoming stronger and stronger with the more experience that we're gaining and it's a great experience and i feel like i'm connecting with a lot of new people i just want to say something real quick uh they missed on a big part of last season which was that their team made it to the state semifinals and i'll just say growing up i played baseball in high school and in college but i also grew up playing video games um so i i

044know what it takes to be a part of a team i know like the the communication the strategy um and you know having played in college but also playing video games you can see there is a massive gap between you know casual players good players and now there's a huge pro scene and we have some really talented kids here at the school and it's kind of cool to see them grow they again made it to the state semifinals last year and they're off to a hot start this spring so um i think that's one of the the coolest parts is you know we're playing teams like they just beat a team from uh old colony all right so we're starting to see these local teams pop up westport bishop staying but there's really schools from

045all over the state um and i think they're doing a good job of representing dartmouth so far thanks so the the qr codes will take you if you want to see the current standings i think one of our teams is in second place out of 42 currently and another team is fifth out of i'm not sure how many so they are doing very well for sure um so they wanted to we wanted to be able to talk a little bit about the future of esports here at dartmouth high school because they have taken ownership of this program um and they do have a vision for where they'd like to see it go so i don't know if any um here down at dartmouth high we have a room downstairs on the a floor that we're

046starting to sort of create a like giada said earlier a safe space for students to join this club although it is only some old computers that don't really run well and all this newish stuff that's coming into the club we are very grateful of any donations and all donations i think the club has started as you can see club raised money for the club we have a bunch of club funds with homemade masks that they sold the room we're trying to envision is something for students to come in from anywhere it also allow students to come in and be more included and i think or i believe and many members of the team believe that um more like make it more children friendly gaming friendly community friendly like giada said there is a lot of

047discrimination against many people and we just want this room this whole club even to be a huge place for everyone to come in i myself have been working on with my family donations for the school with school approval of course we are building computers for this school and um this will just allow people if it's okay with mr bosworth to have kids come down during pace coming after school to play on these computers um they we can run many games we can play with each other again this club is just we want to be able to have people create more friends be just a blooming club just for people because i know there's people who probably graduate like we said alumni come by but it's great to see this community grow i'm a freshman so

048i just started this club or just joined this club and i am very proud to see how many people i've met and it's a very good community um i am excited for these pcs excited for the club to bloom excited to see for next season um that's pretty much all i have to say i am so grateful for this um thank you so much i just wanted to say that um hopefully when we upgrade the room it's going to bring in a lot more kids a lot of people don't have the opportunity to play at home whether they don't have the money to have their own setup or they just don't have the opportunity because some parents just aren't really super into allowing their kids to having it at home and we really want to

049open up those doors to the kids that really do want to have the opportunity to do it and they just don't yet thank you hi mr bosworth i do want to point out a couple of things one is that we do have many members of the club the original members of the club were all students who competed at some level in playing the games and they competed against other schools but this year we've got an influx of students like giada who uh jenna doesn't isn't competing this year but she's still a very active club member and so there's opportunities for for leadership um she helped create a bulletin board she helped create posters for a tournament we wanted to have uh the student the students who made the masks were you know non-competing members um

050so it's really nice to see you don't necessarily have to want to compete to be part of the club there's still a space for everybody some kids are intimidated they're like they know they're casual gamers and they're not quite ready to step it up there we're working on them we're going to get them there oh the other thing i i need to mention sorry you can come up with me sure i'm sorry no no it's okay i was done um one of the things mr ghia and i have talked about is um you were a student athlete right your whole life i was a student athlete at one point all my coaches told me student comes first athlete comes second right [Music] and so as teachers we are checking in with our students making sure

051their grades are up to par we have allowed some students to come in during pace and the room is there if they want to you know two students want to practice or strategize or do some club things if they have taken care of all their school work we're fine with that it's a great use of of pace time to further those connections so again just another uh positive outcome of this whole thing thank you thank you thank you all right finally i just want to thank um the school committee for the opportunity to highlight these great young people i also again want to stress uh how appreciative we are of mr gia and mr bosworth um you know i don't think uh the the public always recognizes the fact that um you know in order

052to be a to become a stipended position as a club activities advisor you have to volunteer for three years first so this truly is a labor of love for mr ghia and mr bosworth and and giving of their their time to you know um support these young people and provide them that opportunity to get plugged into dartmouth high school so we really thank mr mr bosworth for that and then finally just wanted to thank the dartmouth education foundation who supported the club earlier this year through a grant award and with that being said and i think we're happy to answer any questions that the committee might have thank you mr tebow um mr oliver you want to start sure thank you dr jenkins thank you mr tebo and all the students and uh the teachers

053that presented i'm i'm blown away you know i i had heard that there was an esports program but i did not realize uh to what magnitude and the fact that all of you folks and the you know folks last year that have been competing in statewide tournaments i think it's great and you know one of the things that i think is really important to to mention is that a number a few of the students spoke about how it's a safe space for people to go down there and you know i'll all join in on this gaming i think that's great i would love to see the program continue to grow i'm sure mr galesha wherever he is we need to work on getting them some uh some better technology and uh making sure that happens

054uh but no you know i i think this is really cool this is something that you know when i was in high school i certainly would have been interested in so and it sounds like all of you have a great time looking forward to it so no thank you to the teachers as well as thank you to all the students for presenting this evening well job well done give us to oliver mr nunes yeah thank you madam chair uh i'm going to be the first one to admit i know nothing about this at all i will be perfectly frank and how you would score something of this who's a winner i have no idea it's something that with alder is you guys are and ladies and staff are into it's fantastic it's giving you a

055purpose and i'm all for it enjoy sir you know thank you miss waite well i have a tutor along the way to help me so thank you lucas to uh i really appreciate you know what this uh esports is bringing to uh to my family as well as this you know great group of kids so i have to say like it's it's you know just a testament i think that we do such a great job here at dartmouth high of really creating a space for every student you know you can come in and you can find your niche and to see that expand you know in this vein as well you know and again i you know touched on and i know i've talked with mr bosworth as well about you know how this is

056really a great welcoming space and how you know and as they alluded to you know a lot of kids come just to find that social outlet it's not just about playing games it's about finding your people and finding your people in high school i mean that that's a task so you know when you can do that and i think we you know we have so many settings and i have to give you your leadership you know and and the teachers so much credit for that because you know we keep expanding those settings from the band you know into our guard you just you know so many different places that i i think it's really exciting for these freshmen to come in and be like wow they have an esport you know again in this you

057know just to find these niches and again and these kids are on you know their own tennis they're doing a lot of other things as well you know and and band and everything else so it's it's just a you know it's it's great to see it i'm happy to see the excitement so keep it up guys i think you're doing a great job so and again thank you to mr bosworth thank you and i would just i just want to echo what you just said because when there's not a club i believe there is something for everyone here and when there's not we encourage our students to create one which is why we saw six or seven new clubs started last year when you know miss um mr chave used to oversee clubs and activision

058this year with mr shea really taking the lead on that they deserve a lot of credit for that as well but you know we just had our incoming ninth graders visit last week and that was part of the introduct you know introductory message we give them and then i know it will be echoed in the new student orientation over the summer and then they'll hear it again in the fall when they walk through because i do think it's it's very important that every student has an opportunity to plug in in some way here at dartmouth high school thanks everyone i mean yeah i'll just i go what my colleagues have said i think this is great you know i have two gamers at home not movie competition level gamers but um you know so i

059understand the draw of this for for today's kids and also just really how it's grown as a sport um but also as a pastime like sometimes i'll come into my kids and i'll be saying wait you're watching someone else play a video game like i don't understand that right so um maybe us old people don't understand it maybe i'm with mr nunes not quite understanding some aspects of this um but i do know how great and engaging it is for the kids so i'm super appreciative that we've created this space um for kids to to find their place um and uh you know to have fun so it's great thank you so much thank you thank you that's up to them may i yes so relevant to that we we did experiment last year we

060had a twitch channel where we were streaming some of our matches um we've got a couple of students who are really eager to get back there um we almost forgot to thank mr peratti who again is behind the scenes making sure everything runs smooth he's been supporting our club too in a lot of little ways he's he got some new tvs for his program so he just came in and gave us his old ones hey can you guys use these yes he's always got the right cords and things um but he's also helping us do some video production and maybe edit some things and we're attempting to get a youtube channel so i would have been remiss if i didn't mention it thank you thank you very much all right thank you everyone we appreciate

061it so much have a good night all right so um the next item on our agenda under old business is the fiscal year 23 budget and i know um we had a number of public comments with some questions um unfortunately mr kiley is unable to be with us this evening because he's not well however because of public advertising and public notice and our sort of deadlines we had to move forward with the with the public comment period or the public hearing for the budget but we likely will not be able to answer any of those questions this evening mr kiley has been watching and i believe he will speak to people or be prepared to answer questions at our next meeting but we don't really have any sort of discussion about the fiscal year budget

06223 budget unless my colleagues have a question or comment at this point in time this wrong this may be something that dr gifford may be able to answer was the questions around will the new curriculum positions be include the some of the stipends such as project time and the will that be absorbed by the those positions project time and some of the other stipends that we're currently paying our plan right now is to just keep the l coordinator and the project time coordinators the two teachers that you saw present and help run the meetings and the l coordinator the other ones the curriculum leaders at the elementary level no we won't have a need for that okay other questions or comments from my and like dr jenkins said um mr kylie and i will prepare

063answers to these questions so we have a nice thorough answer for next time that'd be great and i i think for my help um you know i see i have the esser uh grants up in front of me uh for fy22 then fy 23 and 24. um i i'd be curious to see like the offsets in the actual budget of where these fall um you know sr3 um which is good which is for fy 23 and 24 we're at 2.9 approximately 2.9 million um so i would just be uh curious to see is is that maxing out our esser budget do we have anything left we'll have all of that for you i know we sent you a general um and that's all i think to be clear along that line about us that's all

064supplemental to the budget right it's all supplemental that was one of the questions and so we can we can clarify that one right now and i i could also um clarify the rbt position that actually includes training for um in-house staff as well that's not a salary for one person that 49 000 so we were um training as well as three in-house folks that have applied or volunteered to be trained uh our existing tas that um we started this program service a while ago exactly so that clarifies that but we can have more information at the next meeting yes uh mr newsome has waited anything else okay no i think i just had the same you know look at that clarifications back i know mr kylie's watching yeah he'll be he'll be ready to go

065he'll be ready to go i've got to sit down with him i've got some questions but i've got to sit down yeah okay questions okay all right so next i want to talk about the next item on our agenda which is a discussion of the equality and diversity subcommittee so i want to sort of give the committee a heads up about where we are and then talk about how to proceed next one um i went back and forth and back and forth and back and forth with uh miss gemtler and dr gifford and they're probably ready to kill me but we're trying to figure out how to post the meeting to make sure that we could hold the meeting tomorrow right we all agreed that the worst outcome would be that we post the meeting

066incorrectly and therefore we are unable to continue with the meeting tomorrow so the concern was if we posted it as a joint meeting and this evening if the committee decided not to continue with the current members of the quality and diversity subcommittee that we wouldn't be able to hold that meeting because it was posted as a joint meeting we reached out to the attorney general's office we didn't get any information from them about you know how to post it properly so the meeting for tomorrow is posted as a meeting of the school committee okay solely all right so with that in mind ms amarill cannot be here this evening so i want to know if you would prefer to proceed with this discussion this evening or do we want to wait until miss amarill is

067available to participate we can go either way but i just wanted to talk with the community because it's somewhat moot about tomorrow night the diversity inequality subcommittee meeting is not meeting tomorrow those members are welcome to attend it's open to the public so they're welcome to attend like everyone else but the question of what to do about that committee is not pressing that we need to deal with it before tomorrow evening meeting so with that in mind we could wait or we could have that discussion right now and so i would like to put that before the committee first before we engage in anything thoughts on that mr nunes yeah thank you madam chair um i i think you know to uh to be fair to miss amaral i think that's one of those you're

068right it's not pressing and if we wait until we have a full committee and you know we bring it up at that point in time i'm good with i'm good with that is you know no need to jump into something you know because that you know no disrespect who knows who votes how but now you have corner you've got an odd number so if better to err on a side of caution and just wait for a full committee that would be you know my my take on it mr oliver thank you dr jenkins yeah i'm fine with waiting um with the extent to have a general discussion my only thought would be um are are we looking to i personally would like to see us reopen this up to you know not just the standing

069members that were in place for any new members so you know i don't know if we want to put that out there now that or is that something we need to vote on but just might i'm fine waiting i'd just like to see us at some point whether tonight's the night we wait till mrs amaral is back to to say you know please submit letters of interest so i guess my question back to you in response to that is do we want to keep the structure of the committee the same or do we want to change it right to call for volunteers it feels like we have to know whether or not where how many slots we have and what we're doing whether we're keeping the structure the same etc etc so my sense is

070i agree with mr nunes that maybe i don't know maybe you think we should have that discussion but i feel like we should punt it all until we're all here and we can have all of those questions together and if we do that on the fourth we can make that determination also make the determination if we want to appoint new members and then proceed with the call if that's a decision but that's just my sense miss waite yeah i think that that is a good call i think it's you know kathleen certainly also brings in expertise around special education so it's good to have her viewpoints on that as well and you know like i said an odd number i think we have to consider as a group are we going to go forth with

071the same charge too and i know i kind of dug up and shared that original charge that we agreed on so yeah we need to look at that and then i you know i guess i did have a question too and i do want to ask about the format you know this past time again when we're dealing with covid you know is it possible for us because to do working groups you know as well as so those are some of the questions i have just in terms because if i look at the charge there's a lot of real work that needs to be done and it's difficult to do some of that work in a you know 10 12 person committee so it may be helpful in some cases to have some working groups that

072then bring back some conclusions so again those are all questions i just don't know i'm just going to sort of laugh because i'm looking at my watch and in about three weeks i am no longer chair of the school committee so i'm just going to say that the diversity and equality subcommittee is a subcommittee of the school committee therefore it is subject to open meeting laws so if there are working groups of that subcommittee and there are more than two people on those working groups those working groups are subject to open meeting law that will be hashtag not my problem in three weeks but i just want to know that that all of this must be done in a fully open and transparent way because it is we are subject to women so working groups

073are somewhat difficult because we are limited to just two people and then you lose the idea of having a variety of viewpoints there we can discuss that and that's something maybe the subcommittee may decide whatever form it's in but it gets really complicated really fast and dr grifford i have a question too you know as i look at because again a lot of the charge and we can revisit this so i'm not you know having a full discussion now but we have this but it does seem as though it would be important for our curriculum folks at least to be you know on serving in some capacity these new curriculum folks because a lot of what we're talking about here is curriculum and practices and so you know that's a that's a question too those

074people haven't been hired they don't have the opportunity yet to you know put a letter in but again as we kind of consider for it i would imagine if they're talking about curriculum systematically and they're going to bring it back to the teachers that they would be important folks you know just by virtue of their position so unless we're talking about something separate coming from your office but i mean any curricula model units changes as you know over the last years and years it takes to develop desi puts out new standards etc etc so it is a huge huge project mr nixon yeah thank you i was just going you was going to kind of echo what the superintendent just said that if you're going to get into curriculum then somewhere down the line you're

075going to need some feedback right from those two new you know the people that are in that position only because it's not that subcommittee's position it's it's not our position right right we don't we don't as a school committee we don't dictate curriculum right and well i was going with the state i was going with this you know going back to what's in that subcommittee charge and that's where i'm yeah a little we're kind of getting into a a real gray stepping on toes areas plain and simple okay so we may have to look at that charge there's we're going to look at the charge with mary sent around so we can all look at that prior to the the next meeting the structure of the committee which right now we have two administrators three

076staff a couple of students two school committee members two students and two community members yeah so we should think about that about what the structure of that will be and then i think once we have those two things in place then we can have the get to that third issue which is do we reappoint or do we do another call right does that make sense so we'll do all that we'll put that on our agenda for our next meeting yep that's fine okay thanks all right so moving on to new business uh superintendents updates hey i don't have too much to this uh this week but i did want to mention that the middle school has started a unified some unified athletics programs as as the high school so i know they have a basketball

077game coming up this friday so it'll be fun to see how that evolves i do want to mention again about the high school what mr tebow said about um so many teachers come forth asking to start these clubs and whatnot and the work that's involved before they it's just you saw the middle school legos and elect the engineering and all of that last time and it was the same kind of thing a number of years ago so it's just great um we did interview for the excuse me we did uh post for the director positions and we've got a team of folks that will be interviewing next week for those positions and also i think you i might have mentioned at another meeting that our registrar in central office had resigned she gave her two

078weeks notice two weeks ago and we immediately posted that position so we have uh a number of candidates we'll be interviewing starting tomorrow for for that we wanted to fill it as fast as possible it's a really tough time we were in the same position last year right at this time so it's it's tough and then just we got this um so i brought this along i sent it to the the principals at the schools it was from one of our juniors hannah lima here at the high school and she's missed new bedford's outstanding teen of 2022. so she sent a letter asking that she we we share her project that she's going to be doing and it's about an act of kindness official day of kindness mayor mitchell has taken it on in new

079bedford as well so we sent it off to the um the schools and asked that on april 1 that on that official day of kindness that each school takes on some kind of a project which i know we always talk about like a cushman and pot all the schools now do the kindness challenges etc so this will just be an added incentive for them to uh do something special so if i could just like i noticed that the uh the middle school is actually doing a clothing run yes report but we do have one other item other matter that may not have been anticipated the time of the agenda posting and that as you all received it's normally under our consent agenda for deca we had four students qualify for nationals um and so we

080are seeking approval of the uh the trip for those students to uh i believe it is georgia atlanta georgia yes i will entertain a motion to approve with pleasure yes i'm biased though but yes second all right so i have a motion by mr nunes and a second by mr oliver is there any further discussion on the uh uh the motion good luck and yeah bring us back some trophies all right hearing no further discussion all in favor aye aye aye opposed right that motion carries unanimously um are there any other items that the committee would like to share i always look to mr nunes he has something but he's taking notes so i'll go to mr oliver next no thank you madam chair i know the committee i believe the committee had received a

081letter from the uh chappaquiddick tribe that asked to be placed into record it was sent in after uh last week's uh two weeks ago forum so if it was okay with you madam chair i'd just like to read it into the record thank you so attention superintendent uh miss bonnie gifford and secretary ms kathleen genther uh greetings to all into whom it may concern leave the chappaquiddick tribe of the poconocon nation stand in unified support with our brothers and sisters of the poconoco federation affiliated tribes the chappaquiddick tribe feels that the dartmouth mascot in question should remain while we recognize the controversy that surrounds this issue we the chappaquiddick peoples in no way feel that this mascot is derogatory or inflammatory in fact given the nature as to his uh inception in creation by an

082aquina tribal member we concur that the symbolism is an accurate depiction of our eastern peoples in an area of cancellation it is important to judge all matters concerning cultural appropriation with discernment wisdom and compassion we stand in support of the wampanoag tribe of gay hat equiner sincerely and i'm just going to say the chief of the chapman courtic tribe of the poconogen nation thank you very much thank you thank you and that actually reminds me mr oliver i just wanted to run by you just sort of protocols for tomorrow evening reconfirming what we agreed on so we will start we agreed sort of a little bit longer one person on each side i spoke with to start off the evening i spoke with mr carney when he was here at the last meeting and he

083agreed to sort of kick off that side his side with about as we said about 10 minutes i think dr hall for dartmouth resident from the naacp will do the other side and then we'll open up for general public comment um i spoke with mr galesha he's going to be able to run a timer i appreciate this that the people speaking will be able to see because sometimes when you're speaking you don't realize how long you're talking right it will be in their eyesight um it will have a two-minute timer but we're not gonna like um it will just be i think a visual indicator to everyone to sort of your time's about up and then after if after like another minute they haven't finished up then i think we'll you know sort of intervene

084to and the idea is by setting a sort of a two to three minute limit for public comments it will allow us to maximize sort of the number of people that we are that we are able to speak tomorrow evening because i know we're anticipating a large number of people there the intention was to sort of alternate between sides if the lines are different we can we can sort of vary from that mr nunes what i was thinking as i've been thinking about this is why don't we open the microphones on both sides to whomever okay we don't need you know you you know the first person can be on this side and say i'm in favor this one against and then the next person over here is well i'm against and then this one's

085whatever side they're on it'll make it a lot easier as they're trying to get out of their seats into the aisles and go from there number one number two are we only listening to dartmouth residents as this is a dartmouth issue i do not think so i'm not sure okay i mean this is a dartmouth question okay i don't i don't necessarily agree with that issue with all due respect we don't need somebody coming down here from boston or east overshoot to tell us how to or what we should be doing this is this is about this is a dartmouth issue it's no different than when i sat here and said we should have on aside from our faculty and administrators type of deal but whoever the uh at large people were they were going

086to be dartmouth residents because this is a dartmouth issue you're welcome to make a motion i respectfully disagree with that position because our teams do travel to other communities and they do wear that name on their their uniforms and we are announced as such in other communities that have been said i am one member of this committee right as it stands there are no restrictions on who can speak any member of this committee is welcome to make a motion and we can have a vote on that so i guess my question um is at the very least um i think it's important that whoever comes up to the microphone and maybe this goes without saying that they state their name and where they're from 100 absolutely agree on that i also um i also plan

087to ask everyone to be respectful yeah right i know people are very heated about this issue we are all in opposition on different sides but i still think that people who could disagree can speak respectfully about an issue and i expect members of our community to follow that that example we can all agree to disagree agree and i will also say that i'm gonna i will say this maybe i'll ask you about this that if things do get disrespectful that's it the meeting's over that's it simple as that right so people need to be respectful tomorrow they'll have their two to three minutes to say their comments to tell us what they what they think and everyone needs to be respectful of everyone else's opinions um so on the issue of i do agree everyone

088needs to state their name and where they reside mr news if you would like to make that motion i will we can we can vote on that motion that's fine now let's kind of sit and wait and see what happens tomorrow night okay we can make that motion as well since it is our meeting correct um but i think i think we're sort of all in agreement on sort of what the ground rules are for tomorrow night um and so that's fine like i said i mean again if you just instead of you know everybody said oh yeah there again just let them whatever side of the microphone they wish to go to let them and it's not you're not picking sides or anything of that nature that that's my fault that's that's the way

089to do it i think so uh probably make things flow easier my only other question for you all is that we spoke last time about sending sort of an end of end of meeting target yes right like i don't think we want to be here until 11 30 at night agreed are we in agreement i agree so my sense is that about 8 30 we say okay we're going to have x if there's still people we're going gonna say we have five more three more we shoot for eight o'clock and then we're done for 8 30. okay yeah i think we should have a hard stop time announced yeah okay i mean you know shoot for eight to be finished at 8 30 and 8 30 heart stopping 8 30 is the hot star ahead

090of time okay i just wanted to check in with you to make sure we're all on the same page about how to proceed tomorrow okay are there any other items anyone wishes to share mr news yeah i have two things number one we've got the spelling bee thursday night oh yes thank you i already paid my bill thank you oh yes i keep forgetting we we can go online i will be there def site all right so yeah so just google dartmouth education foundation and we can put in our check i believe dr gifford is going to be spelling on uh thursday and showing up there we go and also two and a half just again just thanks to everyone mr tebow and mrs xavier and dr gifford uh that helped helped us hand in

091our awards saturday at our home show we had a good crowd and a good time and good luck to our music department the indoor percussion winds are headed to new jersey on friday after school and the color guides headed to philadelphia pennsylvania so busy weekend with regionals they come in at five o'clock in the morning on a sunday morning so thank you mr nunes miss wait did you have something that you'd like to add yeah i was just going to to mention that the junior achievement program is coming into the schools in may which is you know rather exciting and they're you know canvassing community members to come in as well as it sounds like some students as well so i'm going to be teaching all five wait one day i think all the fifth

092grades teaching all the fifth grades so so i'm excited to do it i loved it i loved it so it's such a great program i'm glad to see i was at potter i'm glad to see it it was a hard stop with coven i'm glad to see it coming in and it's uh it's really exciting to know that you know they're gonna have those days i think there's a day designated for each school so that's exciting that's excellent good thank you anything else so our next meeting is our public comment meeting on the 22nd our next regular meeting is on the 4th of april all right with that i will entertain a motion to adjourn so moved second all right i have a motion by mr news the second one miss wade any further discussion

093hearing none all in favor aye aye opposed that motion carries unanimously good night everyone good night he's like