Dartmouth School Committee Meeting, February 14, 2022

001[Music] good evening everyone i'd like to call the february 14th meeting of the dartmouth school committee to order will you please rise for the pledge of allegiance thank you i'd like to ask everyone to just please check that their cell phones are turned into silent mode um this meeting will be re-broadcast on dc tv channels nine in the following days wednesday and thursday at five friday at six a.m saturday 8 a.m and sunday at 2 p.m the meeting will be rebroadcast on dc tv channel 18 on monday and saturday at 12 p.m and thursday at 3 p.m ms genther can we have a roll call please shannon jenkins yes mary wait yes kathleen emerald yes john nunes yep chris oliver yeah thank you everyone uh the first item on our agenda for the evening is

002public comment if anyone would like to make a comment and any of the items that are on our agenda i would ask you to please step up to the podium state your name and briefly share your comments so that everyone has a chance to share their thoughts hello my name is lynn turner and i am speaking to the item on the agenda that is listed under old business and it's called face coverings and it has the word vote next to it i first want to say i'm very grateful to governor baker after consulting public health officials and and considering that kids are very low risk for serious illness from cobia 19 and considering their mental health from being in masks for two years for six plus six or more hours or six hours a day

003for school school days for two years and the low covid count in massachusetts and uh for the number of our states we have a low covid count we're on a steep decline for covid and even in the hospital beds we're at pre-pandemic levels in many hospitals his decision to lift the mask mandate i think is a sound one i applaud our superintendent for quickly trying to react to the celebratory news for massachusetts and how well we are doing facing this pandemic it's time to give our kids a sense of normalcy they've earned it even jeff reilly the state education commissioner said it will make it easier for the students to learn and our own and let's see i i know that many will still be wearing masks which is great and it should be by

004choice the mandate should be lifted that is my very strong opinion and i think it is a sound one and i think many think it is sound so i urge our school board to please support this ruling by governor baker i hope that we can instead support uh that we focus on creating a supportive environment that respects everyone's choice of what is best for them thank you anyone else like to provide public comment please step up to the podium and state your name good evening my name is pedro castanera i am a member of the community here in dartmouth i have two school-age children in the school system here and i'm also a product of the dartmouth school system i'd like to strongly uh reinforce what was just said that i also agree that it's

005long been long enough two years of masking forced masking of our children is uh more than enough if they want to wear them by choice that's fine but if they shouldn't and if their parents and their families choose that that's not appropriate or necessary i don't think anybody else should have the right to tell them to do it i'd appreciate that the school committee today uh take the information that desi provided and move forward with the 28th of february as the date to unmask our children thank you thank you anyone else wishing to provide comment please step to the podium state your name and share your thoughts hi good evening thank you my name is jeannie tripp and i no longer have any children in dartmouth schools i am a product of dartmouth schools i've

006lived here since i was seven years old i have three children who graduated dartmouth schools i knew the dedication and the love that this community showed my children i only want to reiterate what lynn said and the previous speaker as well that i firmly believe that we as parents should be making those children the choices for our children and if the governor and dusty is going along with it then everybody should be thank you anyone else wishing to make comments please step up to the podium and state their name my name is dan turner and i am a parent of two children here at the dartmouth school systems and i want to thank you for the opportunity to have public opinion on this matter the children have been going on now for two years with

007the uh the lockdowns the mandates on the masks and uh there's plenty of evidence now that state that we are really getting to the point where we should be returning to normalcy there are countries around the world that are actually lifting all the mandates states in this country as well there's evidence that is uh now out that proves the fact that these mass do a lot more harm than good as far as cloth mass the virus can travel right through it it doesn't really prevent the spread if it does it's a very low percentage so i implore you today to make the right decision an educated decision to lift the mask mandate and return our children back to a state of normalcy within the dartmouth public school system thank you thank you there's other comment

008please step up to the podium state your name good evening my name is adam herrera i have three children in the dartmouth school system and just to piggyback on what the previous speakers said um i just want to reinforce and say that it is very harmful to kids as a gas detection specialist i detect harmful gases every day and i've measured the levels of co2 under they get under the masks and they reach over 30 000 ppm which is very hazardous and i just also wanted to ask if there's going to be support for kids that are having difficulty after the masks come off as far as mental health suicide rates are up for kids depression anxiety is skyrocketed and i just hope that there is programs and the nurses are looking out for these

009you know signs of suicide and depression that is all thank you thank you if anyone else would like to make a comment please step up to the podium state your name share your thoughts briefly hi my name is ken raposo i'll try to be beef so much to say so we moved here from brazil a few years ago my daughter is a school choice kid we are from westport she was very happy freshman and sophomore year here on top of her class in junior year with at home and then hybrid learning she crashed she has been rejected from every a-list college she has applied to so far we have all heard about the mental health toll this has taken on kids my daughter had the crisis center called in to help her last month and

010will now miss a day of school per week for inpatient group therapy why because the eight hours have covered this and covered that and vaccine this and vaccine that has driven her nuts she's not alone last week the governor and deci said schools in the state can go mask optional the school has always followed desi the superintendent has also agreed with that call for two years students like my daughter have done what the school board and the teachers unions have asked of them now it is time for the school board and the teachers turn to do what the students want and by the way have you ever polled to see what they wanted because i don't think you ever have the boston globe in the boston herald told local parents about masking and at least

01180 percent in boston said it was time to go boston if tessie's rules were fined before they should be fine now let's just call it a truce follow what bonnie gifford had said the students will be happy and anyone who is still worried can still wear a mask it's a win-win thank you anybody else would like to make comment please step up to the podium state your name share your thoughts briefly hello my name is nicholas pike i have uh two twin boys that are going to be entering the school system next september they follow the eec guidelines through their local daycare in dartmouth that they're attending now which states that when they turn five next month they'll be required to wear a mask eight hours a day i don't think it's right for my

012children to have spent the past four years unmasked and now be forced to wear a mask i also don't feel it's right that children of that age should be forced to wear a mask at all for eight hours a day this should be our choice as our parents of our children and i think it's time for the mass policy to go thank you we have a few more minutes for public comment if anyone would like to step to the podium and share their thoughts please do so now hi elizabeth neto a school teacher in the dartmouth system i see 398 students and i believe that masks are keeping us safe as a teacher who sees that many children every week please keep us safe thank you all right seeing no other takers on public comments

013all right please step up to the podium state your name hi good afternoon my name is name is stacy martin i have two boys in the school system i also work in the vocational school nearby greater nebraska volk i work hand in hand with them and the nurses work tirelessly through this the masks in my opinion they don't work we have a positive case maybe rate of one or two kids per week they're not transmitting it in school they're having sleepovers they're doing sporting events how can you prove that this is happening in schools and you're punishing them and letting them sit in masks for hours they don't have a normal life they have it depression anxiety this is wrong it's child abuse please end it thank you [Applause] all right so it's now 6

01445 so unless there's anyone who else who wants to make one last brief comment we're going to move on to the next item on our agenda seeing none next we're going to move on to the approval of the minutes i'll entertain a motion to approve the regular uh session minutes from january twenty-two move madam chair second all right so i have a motion by mr oliver a second by ms wade is there any discussion on the motion hearing none all in favor aye aye opposed abstentions so that passes unanimously uh next i'll entertain a motion to approve the executive session minutes of january 24 22. so move madam chair with the stipulation that they build until the matter for which they were intended is complete second all right so we have a motion by mr

015nunes a second by miss wait any further discussion on the motion hearing none all in favor aye aye opposed abstentions that motion carries unanimously thank you everyone next on our agenda we have our student representative report uh senior evan garcia is going to update on the committee on the goings on at dartmouth high good thank you dr jenkins and happy valentine's day everyone since our last meeting a lot has been happening here at dartmouth high school our winter track team competed in the sec conference championship last wednesday both the boys and the girls teams took second place while senior athlete james martin broke the school record for the 55 meter with a time of 6.78 seconds this is a great accomplishment so congratulations to james dartmouth high school is celebrating black history month all month

016long miss bontes callahan and student caison chavez have created an interactive bulletin board featuring prominent african-american actors activists civic leaders poets and musicians with qr codes that can be scanned to reveal biographical information the multicultural club will be holding a pace event showcasing the works of prominent african american poets writers and orators and it has also been working on producing weekly morning announcements focusing on the importance of black history month ap research is one of dartmouth high's newest and most unique courses and is part of the college board's capstone diploma program students in this course are currently collecting data for their research and their classmates are encouraged to help take surveys and even participate in some of their experiments dartmouth high school will be administering course selection for the 2022-2023 school year over the next

017few weeks students will meet with their advisors and attend assemblies facilitated by dhs's guidance department our program of studies was shared with all parents in principal tebow's weekly community update last friday thank you and that concludes my update for this meeting thanks evan does anyone on the committee have any questions or comments for evan going on yeah just thank you very much evan for your report as usual well thank you for having me of course thank you evan and you are welcome to go which that's good you're on your way out thank you have a good evening i know you're busy all right so the next item on our uh that's up is our consent agenda we have a number of items under here we have the deca state career development conference and competition the

018indoor percussion dance team wgi east power regional the varsity color guard wgigi east power regional indoor winds wgi east power regional indoor color guard wgi world championships indoor percussion dance team wgi world finals and indoor winds wgi world finals i read those all because i think we can probably consider them all together unless anyone wants to speak about any one of those so i will entertain a motion to approve all of those requests that i just read off there so moved second all right so i have a motion by mr nunes and a second by miss wait any discussion i would just uh wish all of them all best of luck so exciting it's good to see the the students for deca back in boston in person that's that's a great time my daughter's excited

019i was telling dr gifford a funny story that um the students were a little worried that the school committee had to vote and we wouldn't approve it and i said it's okay that's just how we do it every year it's a normal matter of business don't worry about it we're all very excited i'm pretty confident that we're good with that so good luck yeah they were they were nervous because i think they're excited to be going absolutely i don't blame them all right so any hearing no further discussion um all in favor oppose those carry unanimously all right next on our agenda is our spotlight on kids potter elementary school i'll hand it over to dr gifford for the introduction thank you dr jenkins we're very happy to have mr porter and miss mchenry here

020with i don't know how many people they have back there but leave it to mr porter to get a big old group on a frigid night to present um what's going on at potter so well it's valentine's day and of course they want to be with me right where else do they want to be happy thank you very much so good evening and we are pleased to bring you potter schools spotlight on kids as i believe many of you know potter school has three big beliefs that guide us every day they are paused to be kind pause to be safe and pause to be a learner in the past we have shared with you how our students are engaged in creating a kind culture at potter school tonight our presentation is going to focus on

021pause to be a learner with an integrated focus on how we learn to be safe we are firm believers that it takes a village to help educate a child so tonight we have brought some members of our village to demonstrate to you some of the learning that happens at potter school as we go through this presentation you will see that learning in school is not the learning of previous generations it involves technology differentiation teaching beyond the school day teaching kids to be safe and incorporating the arts by offering children an integrated experience we take the heart we take to heart the words that are found in this quote our job as educators is not to prepare kids for something our job is to help kids learn to prepare themselves for anything so tonight you will

022hear from our math coach dana giusette one of our special education teachers michelle dyess grade one teacher christian martino who is currently coordinating the district's after-school program at potter school social workers paul reynard and carrie gregoire and visual arts instructor beth nedo also we would like to extend a huge thank you to our instructional technology specialist sandy chika she really is the executive producer director of this event and she's bringing this presentation together through the power of video following our presentation we have one brief appreciation that we will highlight the work of a special group of adults who make a huge difference in the lives of our students now before we begin i do want to let you know that some of the pictures in the video were collected from before the pandemic began so

023you may see a few children who are indoors without a mask so we're ready to begin and first up mrs ducette thank you mr porter good evening and thank you for having us here this evening giving us the opportunity to share some of the learning that's happening up on crossroad a few weeks ago my colleagues over at dimelo school gave you a thorough look into our new math program bridges but i'm here to share an extension of our math learning known as st math and the st stands for spatial temporal because st math consists of highly engaging puzzles presented visually without the use of language numbers or symbols the founder of this program matthew peterson struggled with traditional language-based instruction due to dyslexia so he created a different approach to mathematics gigi the penguin is

024the mascot for st math and by answering a puzzle correctly gigi will happily cross from one side of the screen to the other if an error is made gigi will bump into an obstacle and retreat back and the student will have to try again so the first video clip you will see is a first grader working through a puzzle the second video clip will be a first grade class checking their progress and moving their little gigi's on a stick toward their 100 percent completion students feel empowered when they can track their own learning alina what do you have to do with this puzzle same amount of luck oh and what happens when you get the same amount can you show me [Music] wow [Music] what were you doing when you were touching all of them

025holding oh [Music] he made it across the bridge um [Music] don't [Music] all right seattle i found you you were in the 20 let's see where you are now 24 so you're between those two which one do you go to what is 24 that's your pocket nice job yep [Music] congratulations you move all right whoa what's your number oh my gosh here's gigi which pocket are you going to look at your numbers that's the one you jumped the whole pocket congratulations radar you looked excited in the room where are we going what are you on my man which pockets yours so look at the numbers that's the one nice job up top that will be starting after the february break it was inspired by one of our fifth grade teachers mr craig dutra it's set

026up as a basketball bracket and last year mr ducha did this and it was a huge success for the children thank you very much and next up is michelle dice one of our special ed teachers hello good evening um happy valentine's day um i've been using the sunday system level one this year with some of my fourth and fifth grade students this program is based on orton gillingham which is a well-respected reading intervention program many intervention programs are designed for use with individual students for several hour long sessions every week and this isn't practical for a public school setting i can't work one-on-one for a whole hour for very many kids at all so it's great the author of this program arlene sande designed the program to be used with small groups in just 30

027minutes for at least three to five times a week each part of the lesson is strictly timed and is designed to provide repetitive practice and reinforcement of skills the program uses a multi-sensory approach meaning students will see the word hear the word as they say it and feel the words as they trace it with their fingers a placement test is be given at the beginning of the year to ascertain the level at which the each student should start and every third level there is a mastery check to assess the student's proficiency in reading and spelling of the words the students need to pass both the reading and the spelling portions in order to progress to the next level though the program is regimented it also allows for fun they have a ball toss game and

028other board games too that the kids really enjoy so they like to have that you have your marker and your eraser ready we're going to do our spelling sounds we can cancel this put it back two minutes and you can start it when we're ready the first sound is in in the next song is um say it um what's the next next one is on say it wrong um and then it's four say it four seven minutes for the next section so the first word is sing say it sings and so we should be tapping it out or on ourself or uh fingerspelling it up here good i like to see alyssa tracing it on just to make sure it's in good next word paul say it like i'm going down the hall oh jacob

029um let's check how you how do we spelling hall how do you spell that all sound isabel a-l-l let's make say hall to right hall two more times to just get it right yes remember all it's just like the word all but it's the sound in other words as well [Music] how do you spell that sound after a short vowel alyssa ck awesome i'm going to read these words starting from the top [Music] black [Music] excellent you ready for the first sentence yeah yes and then we'll get scared yeah mango okay all right we're going to just do one sentence today i'm going to just cancel this so it doesn't make noise um what's our c for capital letters what's the capital letter jacob t and the um all the words the b may sting

030you one two three four five words make sure you have all five words the punctuation dylan what kind of punctuation goes at the end period and then with spelling the b how many e's at the end of this b when it's the little instinct insect two yes the b may how do you spell that long a sound at the end of a word jacob a a y a y maste in you check check check have some new sight words that we're going to be adding to our list you said once upon a time and this is what one looks like so i know you know one but so let's choose one and one let's trace it again because not everybody you don't have to write it you can just trace it good now we've got

031once as in like jacob said it's a part of town oh and now we'll hear from our school counselors good evening we are here tonight to give you a snapshot on how we teach a safety lesson to the students it's the alice drill also known as the sheep shepherd and wolf drill where the wolf is the dangerous intruder in the building and we must do things to ruin his day the book we use is i'm not scared i'm prepared by julia cook and it uses a kid-friendly message the sheep are the students and the shepherd is the adult in charge the number one lesson is always follow the adult in charge the slide that you're looking at here is an actual page from that book it goes through the steps of alice with a meaning

032alert that there may be an intruder in the building um l for lockdown i for in form c for counter and e for evacuate what you're about to see is some actual slides of us practicing with the children in the classroom doing a lockdown you'll see here that we have the kids moving some of the desks and furniture up around the doors it's intended to be proactive and to provide options in case of a real emergency such as this and here we have c for counter so they're holding their special something getting ready in case the intruder comes into the room and they will throw and run and the most important part of the lesson is the evacuate you'll see here that some of the kids are running out through the back door they're waving

033their hands they're trying to present in a chaotic way to cause confusion if there was a real intruder and to meet over at the rally points and we pass it over to kristin martino first grade teacher thank you carrie and paul members of the school committee dr gifford i'm kristen martino i'm a first grade teacher over at potter but tonight i'm here as the sale site coordinator sale which stands for student adventures in learning is a free after school program that's offered to elementary school students through a grant provided by deci its intention is to accelerate the learning after the school hours so a big thank you shout out goes out to desi as well as mrs tracy oliveira who applied for and received the grant for dartmouth it's been my pleasure organizing this and

034running it as well as overseeing it in action we just concluded session one which was ten sessions five weeks long we offered two crazy eights one for the younger kiddos and one for the upper grades which was math based we offered comic books um with children learning about superheroes actions speech bubbles and that one spread from kindergarten all the way to fifth grade endangered species and we did a kids who code we're on a little hiatus right now and then february 28th we'll be starting up session two where we'll see comic books again as well as crazy eights but we're also adding in shark attack sports and fitness and then for the younger kiddos we're gonna have a mad science class so here you see a couple of the classes doing different things the children

035always had smiling eyes lots of action going on thank you and now i hand it over to our visual arts educator mrs becknetto thank you kristen good evening school committee and thank you all for this opportunity to share with you the value of our visual arts program at potter school i get the privilege of being the art teacher to amazing and unique students don't tell anyone but i have the best job at potter i get to spark the creativity of these children and expand their knowledge of the visual arts all while getting to know them for six years each carefully crafted and thought out lesson consists of at least one of the elements of art what are the elements of art they are line form color value space shape and texture these elements make up

036the standards of art from which i teach many of the standards that are mapped out in our massachusetts frameworks are multifaceted and cross the curriculum our fifth graders get to discover one point perspective as they use rulers and lines to give the illusion that their art is three-dimensional a crowd favorite is our rubber stamp carving and printing using native american symbols art is an awesome way to bridge cultures fourth graders have a hands-on experience with informal balance just like math we can balance our art formally and informally third grade creates radial designs that dive into repetition symmetry and design in second grade we become color experts as we create tint and shade ice cream cones we also invent our very own colors and name them in first grade we explore texture as we paint like

037eric carl with combs rollers and sponges kindergarten is where it's at if you want to see the awe and wonder of art at its best discovering that yellow and blue make green is magical making rainbows using only our primary colors is quite exciting when you are five learning about famous artists is one of the ways that i engage students recently we studied piet mondrian a dutch artist whose fame came from creating abstract art broken down into its simplest form all the grade levels studied mondrian and created art inspired by him each lesson was age appropriate first and second graders painted a mural inspired by mondrian and our potter expectations studying famous artists is a great way to cover our standards while inspiring the next generation of art enthusiasts our engaging 40-minute lessons are filled with

038discovery weaving print making sewing sculpting clay painting oil pastels and soft pastels are some of the materials that we explore the benefits of a great arts program is invaluable students learn problem solving skills critical thinking skills as well as how to collaborate and cooperate they learn to share organize express themselves and clean up our preschool class in our preschool class i work closely with mrs weaver to choose art lessons that are engaging age-appropriate and aligned with her weekly themes our collaboration enhances her curriculum while building a strong foundation of arts education at any time of the year you will find the hallways at potter filled with art murals and bulletin boards made by our potter artists fill our school with color and excitement thank you for allowing me to share about some of the learning

039that takes place in art with you i think the best people to share why art is important at potter school are our students introducing madison and edward from mrs pamental second grade to share a little bit about why they what they have learned in art what i like about art is i like seeing miss nedo she um she does great art and she teaches us a bunch of cool things i love that everything about her it's awesome and i love art my favorite artist is pablo picasso because he draws what he feels and he had several art styles and periods thank you and next i would like to introduce to you our fabulous assistant principal melissa mchenry good evening thank you mrs ducette ms dyess mr schwinnard and mrs gregoire mrs martino and mrs nedo

040for providing the committee with some of the ways our students pause to be a learner at the potter school pausing to be a learner at potter particularly during a pandemic has been sustained and supported by our amazing teacher assistants our teacher assistants work closely with our classroom teachers and staff in a variety of ways well during a pandemic it might have also included covering multiple recesses covering multiple lunch duties arrival and dismissal duties it may have meant taking over for a classroom teacher during a period of quarantine while trying to learn their all about their google classroom in a matter of minutes it could also be acting as a building based substitute where they were teaching pe one minute and music the next it might also be supporting our school nurse paula lassie with our

041test and stay program in most cases our teacher assistants would be hearing about this the morning of or sometimes minutes before we needed their help potter school has always been fortunate to have such dedicated and professional teacher assistants who work hard each and every day but most importantly they create positive and caring relationships daily with our students so to this end we thought that tonight it was only right to give them a special shout out this evening and thank them using the words of the students whose lives they touch every day mrs warren helps us with our reading writing and some reading group some days mrs g is the best because she always helps us mrs g is the best because she makes our material mrs g is the best because she helps us learn

042mrs g is the best because she's helpful kind pretty and awesome thank you for all you do mrs goyal mrs braga was always really nice to us and whenever we had a share or a story to tell she would always have a very fun story to go with it thank you for helping us with the measurements and for the rotations and thank you for helping the teacher with the printer for getting stuff and thank you for helping me with my math when i sometimes don't really get it or i have a hard time mrs frankie helps me with my work mrs patnaud is very helpful she helps us with math when we're confused she also does a great job doing friday friendly letters mrs patnaud does a great job working with ms oliver we love

043when you read less we love when you do math with us we love when you teach us new things you make us mr jasmine helps us understand our math mistakes so that we can be smarter i like that mrs jasmine is kind and patient which benefits the students and helps them learn better [Music] mrs b is amazing because she's kind of nice also mrs b is amazing because she goes out of her way to help so as you just heard from some of our potter kids our tas are the heroes for the entire potter community and tonight we have with us mrs botello mrs morin and mrs bragger i think they deserve a round of applause rather than [Applause] [Music] so we thank them on behalf of all our students and with that we thank

044you for allowing us to present tonight thank you thank you thank you is anybody in the anybody in the committee have any comments questions want to start mr oliver sure i'll start madam chair thank you uh first of all thank you both for the i thought it was a very well-rounded uh presentation including uh many of the uh subject areas and much of your staff and students you know one thing that stood out for me and i i thank you for recognizing it is recognizing our teaching assistants and then not just here obviously you have some spectacular ones here at potter but across the entire district because as i know from being on school committee and being an educator myself that um teacher teacher assistants during the pandemic have played a huge role in a

045huge function um and we really couldn't have probably opened some days without their without their support um so and they're also provide that um you know that familiar face a lot of the times uh whether it's as soon as the students get off the bus um you know it goes a long way for what they do so um i'd i'd like to personally thank them as well um but overall wonderful presentation to all to all your staff so thank you very much and mr oliver i can just um second that as you said um we probably couldn't have opened on most days um last year um i had coveted and mrs mchenry and i share an office so she became a close contact amazingly the school continued running if any one of those teacher assistants

046were out we would have a problem so clearly that's a very it's a fair point mr porter [Laughter] thank you thank you mr nance yeah thank you mr porter miss mchenry thank you very much i was making some notes and it was just interesting to see the enthusiasm of the students which trickles down because the teachers are enthusiastic so it's trickling down to the students and and their enthusiasm you know with uh you know with the reading i'm excited i got a kick out of the march math-ness not madness mathness type of deal you know coming up and such and you know i think what was real interesting in the question that i have is i noticed uh when the reading specialist was working with the students and that it's almost like they were writing

047on a whiteboard table type of deal you know because then they could correct and you know so that was you know technology before it used to be pen and paper so exactly and actually those tables um we actually had purchased for our computer lab um with covid we had to kind of spread things out so we decided to give our special education teachers their own teaching space and those tables came in handy because as you could see the children were able to immediately engage with their work we also want to make sure you saw the sunday system up close because you folks in your budget last year were able to set aside a certain amount of money to be able to support that we wanted to let you know that we're very excited how it's

048really meeting the targeted concerns of a small group of students but an important group helping everyone it is thank you yeah well i just really i enjoy hearing from you know all the schools and hearing about what your teachers are doing and what you're sort of facilitating through your leadership of your buildings um you know my kiddos none of my kids went through potter but we were lucky at least for one of my um my children to experience your leadership at quinn and i just you know i've taken down notes and just really uh love always hearing about your your kind and your supportive school and the work that you do and i really appreciate this presentation but then you had me at the tas i mean having a child who uh relied heavily um

049uh individually for for for that um for all of his needs throughout the day and the relationships that you know have been built because of that and the you know above and beyond attitude um and just the that tas the teachers and teaching assistants sort of present every day and just their dedication to the students and they really are that thread that fabric that makes everything work so well and i just of course you did honor them in this way and i'm just so appreciative of that because you know nothing new you got me emotional so i just really really you know applaud everything that you do on crossroads and um how that kind of filters through as those students kind of become you know independent learners and really prideful around you know what they

050can contribute to their community moving on up to the middle and the high school um you know it starts it starts at that pre-k and and i just appreciate having you here so thank you thank you and i just also want to add as you mentioned that the tas are the thread um as you notice as the ta's names went up you see that they were in like in kindergarten or third grade especially for our more anxious kids when they start school every september it's not their new teacher that they're excited to see they don't know their new teacher yet it's seeing a mrs vitello a mrs moore or mrs braga who they remember from kindergarten so it eases that fear and that anxiety and we do go to them frequently and say someone that

051you worked with last year is having a really hard time and they're always up for that challenge so they're very important thank you i mean i i have to echo everything my colleagues have said you know clearly you have a wonderful team um you know and the fact that you're leading them and you know your leadership is always evident you know i think this uh cohesion is very clear and again we showcase for us you know a full day you know i think you know we saw and i and i loved you know hearing you know seeing the arts seeing it's such a vibrancy that you know i see within the school and i'm like anxious to walk through those hallways and see that but again we were able to see the curriculum as it

052emanated up from kindergarten the whole way through fifth grade and then you know while we're doing art we are also focusing on our students who are challenged with reading and dyslexia and i know again like that for me you know to zero in on that that attention and that and i think as a parent you know we see a lot of the the fast pace highlights the fun but you know that kind of skill you know repetition and everything is such a fundamental and you know um just such an important skill to learn and and takes you so many places but to go there and you know and see you know that work happening you know and even to see that the technology that's helping you know again i was very very impressed by you

053know by watching that because we don't always see that again so um so thank you thank you to your staff as always it's great so thank you thank you and we don't want to um minimize it has been a challenge the past two years and obviously in many school committee meetings you folks have asked us questions how we're handling the pandemic but i do want to reassure people and hopefully the videos and the amazing words that tonight have shown you that although it's been a challenge learning is not just going on we are succeeding right and children learning yeah thank you thanks i also enjoyed the presentation and i particularly appreciated how i think people sometimes still think that you know the modern school is just a teacher in a classroom but i think you

054showed the range of sort of what's needed to run a modern school a math coach special education teachers teaching assistants social workers after program um because you know we're about to go into the budget and sometimes i think people say well what do these people do everyone contributes to the education of our kids and it's that team that makes the education complete and i thought that that what you showcased here really showcased that sort of that whole range of teamwork that's required to provide that education to our kids so i very much appreciated that so thank you very much thank you thank you all very much appreciate it thanks have a good evening all right next on our agenda is a fiscal year 23 budget i'm going to turn it over to kiley thank mr

055thank you for relating that wonderful presentation to the budget patient perspective get the presentation up here okay testing so john while jonathan's getting that up i just want to thank you all for the opportunity to talk about the fy 23 budget so the budget was prepared starting with the schools and departments and expanding that to talk individually with those groups and then bring everybody together and talk about where we are with this budget process and then meet with the school committee subcommittee on budget to discuss the budget some more so this is sort of the next step uh in moving forward and the first time this budget is really you know going to be made public it's our process is to make needs-based proposals that were submitted back before the holidays in december and then

056discuss evaluate then discuss some more and re-evaluate and try and come up with a plan we do that in the framework if you could back up a little jonathan to the second uh the second slide thanks um so we do that in the framework of the overall strategic improvement plan um and where jonathan has us right there really looking at teaching and learning access and equity and community engagement which have been a part of our strategic plan now for for some years and continue to be our areas of focus and give us some guidance as to how to move forward with this budget proposal these guiding priorities i'm not going to read through them all but you'll note in our proposals and our recommendations in the budget that they're very closely tied to these guiding

057principles that's something we try and frame each proposal in terms of uh con consideration of of these principles and make sure that um our focus is is where it needs to be in terms of allocating funding so the overall budget uh for fy 23 proposal is 49 million 383 406 dollars so what does that mean how does that break down so uh instruction is 75 of the budget so instruction category includes teachers principals teaching assistants substitutes other instructional staff instructional technology professional development special education services materials books and other supplies so that's 75 percent of our budget that's the big green piece of the pie there other services which is the next largest area is about 11 of our budget so that's transportation attendance health services athletics student activities that's eleven percent maintenance and utilities

058which includes things like custodial services snow plowing um timely topic and maintenance of the buildings and grounds that's eight percent of our budget administration so that includes our district-wide administration our administrative technology like our student information system and other types of technology legal services that's two percent of our budget and then uh tuitions so this is for students who we can't serve in district and have to be served at out-of-district placements that's four percent of our budget so actually none of the percentages changed um from last year so i just found that interesting although you'll see that there's pretty big increases in some of the categories you'll see that on the next slide here so instruction increased 141 dollars so a 5.6 percent uh increase in that area so that um as you could imagine

059most of our budget is salaries um and so that is for contractual obligations provision for collective bargaining and some budget recommendations that we're going to talk about in a minute administration decreased relative to our restructuring of our director of teaching and learning position again we'll talk about that coming up maintenance and utilities that is for the increase there's three percent uh which was for projected contractual obligations and utility costs other services uh increase of 2.9 percent that is an increase for transportation costs and some contractual obligations and the increase in the minimum wage as well which impacts some positions in that category and then tuitions is again that's just services that were required to provide by iep for certain students and the state increases prices every year so that it's incorporated into that so the

060bottom line budget the change from last year is an increase of two million two hundred and two thousand eight hundred and fifty seven dollars or four point seven percent so specific recommendations that are incorporated and you'll you'll see some of the on on the next slide in a minute some of the things that you couldn't incorporate but some of the things that we could incorporate and there's not a lot on this list unfortunately this year were the quinn school teaching position so really we took a look at we always watch enrollment uh carefully and we found that we had an inequity in terms of particular grade levels at the quinn school and that we needed to address that so we were going to have 27 plus kids in a classroom not ideal for learning and

061we so we've attempted to address that in uh in this budget proposal restructuring the director of teaching and learning okay so um i think i think you all know that tracy oliveira is retiring in september so our proposal includes shifting things to have two positions one elementary school elementary level teaching and learning director and one secondary level teaching and learning director so in terms of budget wise what that means is the fy 22 budget included actually the assistant superintendent position which we never filled so we've removed the assistant superintendent position and we've split into two director of teaching and learning positions so then we've also removed grant funding that supports those positions so the net of all that is the 136 thousand 000 increase and that'll really allow us to target the needs more specifically

062and and not be spread so thin in terms of the curriculum work that needs to be done in the district so have much more focus and be able to provide a better transition from level to level um by by having these positions in place and then the third and last recommendation that we've included there is registered behavior technician teacher assistant position so it's actually a little more than just that but it is to hire one rbt who can meet the needs of specific students that are required in their ie in their ieps and services that they certainly need it's also identifying teacher assistance in our school now current employees who would like to be trained as rbts and putting them through training providing them with there's a contractual stipend that goes along with being a

063registered behavior technician um and so it would be providing them with that and having them in place so that we would have a more robust flexible system to provide the services that we need and make sure that everybody gets exact all the students get exactly what they need in that regard so those are the three proposals that we've incorporated into this budget proposal this is always the sad uh the sad slide so the budget request is not funded um there's there's quite a bit that's not funded there um the high school is postgraduate transition program there are um throughout the schools there are supply needs um the the middle school requested a sped interventionist there's behavior specialists social workers teacher assistants there's a fairly long list there including on the list eliminating the high school

064student parking fee which was the topic of the um school committee earlier in the year so what that would have represented was that 752 thousand dollar uh increase and one point almost one point six percent we would have been our overall budget request would have been six point three percent had we incorporated all these items i i think it's important to note that um from dr gifford and i in in preparing the proposal have um our thought is that we would commit some funding to support some of these things outside of the operating budget so our proposal would would um use school choice funding for approximately 62 thousand dollars of cost the the target with the school choice funding would be to combat the inflationary costs that we've seen most of our requests for supplies

065are not to buy things that we haven't bought before they're to pay for things that we already buy and need and the costs are increasing and the availability is difficult and um you know just like all of us at home the schools we you know we're we're fighting that um inflationary environment and um it's been it's been difficult so our thought is that we would use again approximately 62 000 of school choice to support those schools in that regard and then we'd also look at sr funding the esser the federal covid related grant funding to support approximately 75 000 of requests relating to after-school programs programs for kids um and staffing that we really feel is you know is critical so that is the good news i guess is that there are some things that

066aren't built into that operating budget request that we we feel we could support and be able to fit into the grant and be able to fit into the school choice funding for that and basically those are the those are the factors um that make up the fy 23 budget proposal so i know i have provided you with uh electronic version of the backup for the budget i am in an email last week um i'm be happy to provide you with a printed copy if you like um please let me know yeah we can save the trees yeah yeah that's fine thank you [Laughter] so the the budget timeline just you vote you voted that back in the fall but that's included in the in your packet we have a number of opportunities to talk about

067the budget between today and and moving forward we have a projected public hearing on march 21st for the budget and a vote some time after that by the school committee so we we have some time to talk about talk about where we are the town part of the process i think is probably a little behind where they normally are which i guess isn't surprising in these times i guess um so we don't have we haven't received a whole lot of information from them as they are part of the budget process yet there are factors that we do know we've we've got a a one percent increase on on the table from the governor uh in terms of chapter 70 funding so that's almost like a step backwards there's information included in your budget packet about

068about that so that was fairly disappointing look does look like grant funding is going to remain fairly stable there's also information in the packet about that so you know i'd be happy to field any questions you might have and obviously you know we have lots of several opportunities to talk more about it along the way i'm going to take the chairs prerogative to ask you one question then i'll open it up um do we get our health insurance numbers yet are we still waiting on those we don't so um just informationally i think i shared it with the budget subcommittee so the town uh the the range given to the maya members that's our health insurance group was somewhere between zero and seven point five percent increase now that's a pretty big range right but

069the good news is that somebody's going to get that zero percent increase so i i don't know that might be us um so last year we were below average so the average they've told us is 3.7 percent makes sense right in the middle of those two numbers and uh last year we were below average so i'm hopeful that we will be do you have any sense when we'll get those numbers uh i think that it should be in it should be it might be before the next school committee meeting but i'll i'll certainly it's unfortunately you know kind of out of our control um but that can have a big impact on where we are it does zero versus seven percent difference yeah it does make sure the funds available yeah exactly uh all right

070so we'll start down there mr oliver go ahead thank you manager thank you mr kylie uh for your presentation uh just a couple of questions i guess around the budget because it does it does matter how are our enrollment numbers been have they rebounded since my assumption is probably no but have they rebounded since pre-pandemic are we seeing more students still home schooled are we seeing students that you know are in private my assumption is that you know once the mask mandate is lifted that maybe we may see that turn around a little bit but how how are our enrollment numbers our our enrollment is down considerably yeah i mean it's it's it's down slightly since last year the enrollment numbers some of the enrollment numbers are in there and i can provide you with

071more uh detail but you know the enrollment is is an issue for sure it is down um we're fortunate from a chapter 70 perspective from from the state funding side that we're held harmless at this point with that so that there's no decrease in state chapters based on that but um it's it's over time we've we've seen a decrease in the last you know 15 years a gradual decrease in enrollment the covid issue um you know was a was a pretty big one and and still remains okay so yeah it um in regards to sr2 and sr3 funding where are we at with uh have we completely depleted sr2 um and i know sr3s can be carried through what 2024 2025 yeah yeah so so how are we looking with our esser funds sure so

072i can give you more information uh for that but what we've done so far we're currently using sr2 we will not exhaust sr2 this year we won't um so we'll be using esser 2 and 3 during fy during this proposed budget cycle and then the following budget cycle and it's going to be a challenge of course as you know dr gifford and i have talked about it a lot um as to the staffing that we've incorporated into esser is fairly significant and it's needed i mean the intent of the sr funds is to support student needs as a result of the pandemic so when in two years when that money's gone does that mean that there's going to be no more needs sure i don't think that's probably i don't think that's realistic so we're

073going to have to find a way to either incorporate it into our budget and increases in our budget or find some other method um because i don't think we can necessarily rely on the federal government to keep uh adding additional funding out further than this so it's it's a challenge for us but we have funds for fy 23 and 24. okay so just to confirm that we're still pulling from master two we haven't touched esther three yet have not spent any of us or okay and obviously we do have several positions that's funded through these grants as we know um which leads me to my next question overall i know we proposed one teaching position at quinn the in the behavior person rbt do we expect i guess at the end of the day are

074we looking at a um you know a net gain or a loss of fte across the district what are we looking at for ftes is it going to be constant or we know through attrition through retirements whatever it may be um where do we stand as far as um gaining or losing overall staff there's some information in your okay on your budget about that so um based on where we are with this proposal as it currently stands we would have an increase over the fy 22 budget of three and a half um staff members okay so thank you mr colley one last question in regards to which i i i agree with the um this restructuring of the curriculum position i would just ask before we you know at some point before we take a

075vote on our final budget that i'd like to see some type of job description as well as a salary range for these positions as well as long as you're speaking about that one thing uh as soon as the committee has discussion that i i expect those positions to be um i expect us to have a lot of internal very qualified people that would be applying for those positions sure so i've heard yeah and um which i'm hopeful for because obviously these are people that know what we're doing and have been doing for many years in the district with that said then i would expect a domino effect so it will be imperative for us to get those postings up sooner than later and as far as the budget pro so it's almost like it would

076have to be even an anticipated posting without even final approval with the town etcetera because that will be way too late to get those posts so what what are you thinking for a timeline doctor given as far as post as far as getting the postings up which i fully agree with yeah at least myself i would i would like to do them like after right after vacation to be honest so okay think about that yeah posting and then starting the process can still have time we'll still have time to take place and we'll be going through the budget process but to be able to get folks um interested and applying and then i i just would like to get that done sooner than later sure no i completely understand i'm just speaking for myself you

077know even if you can get us some type of draft description and what you're thinking of as a salary range for these positions as well thank you mr dance yeah thank you madam chair uh just to piggyback on what mr oliver was saying i agree i mean personally uh at this point uh you know get them posted you know with the with the caveated you know approval you know budget approval will be required so at least you know who's interested who's out there and what that domino effect is type of type of deal so that way you know every again i agree with chris get it get it get it started and get it going with regards to the budget uh you know it's always disappointing to sit there and see you know the wants

078and and the haves and the have-nots type of deal that that take place and then you know i've said i've said this before and i'll continue to be the broken record this is not you know people are not looking for the taj mahal here they're looking for the basics to to keep things running in in that so um it's it's disappointing i applaud the the use of uh you know the grants you know for the rvt and the uh the school choice monies for you know the after school activities and other things you know again one time you know the school choice being the one time that that they're being used for so i i have no issues with that i will go through this i will you know make an appointment with mr kylie

079with all my questions and come in and sit down and kill three hours of his afternoon but uh no seriously and thank you very much you know sorry i killed the tree but you know miss amarillo thank you yeah i i tend to like paper as well but um i'm trying i'm trying to be a little bit more technologically savvy um yeah um so let's see you know going in the middle at least there's some more questions that might be a little original when you collapse that everybody's pretty much asked a lot of them in terms of you know i um the rbt i think this uh but you know this position is is certainly uh necessary um it's a it brings a skill set to kind of nuance just a again bring it into

080my i have a child who benefits from this type of position where that redirection at the right time in the right way makes or breaks the day the week really and um you know seeing kiddos coming back to school um and having you know learning well and everything but still kind of uncovering those struggles and and and and difficulties that they have that are most vulnerable students um this position though is district-wide um and i can only imagine looking at although different types of positions the not funding you're not able to fund some interventionalists for special education middle level um i think in quinn would this position kind of hold like a high caseload or how are those trained ta building the credentials within rtas going to work in terms of district-wide are they going

081to be sitting in a certain school are they going to be floating um or do we not know yet yeah we have folks on staff now that are in schools assigned to schools but we're just seeing an increasing need yes as you know requirements on ieps so we're not quite sure um there could be a small caseload to start but the need is definitely there and rather than contracting out you know having our own people on staff is certainly a savings so we're not sure uh okay and each year actually sometimes these kind of folks might get moved just like an slp we arrange the schedules and stuff like that yep yep um thank you and let's see and i just had a question you know you talked about the sr2 the s3 money um

082how does sort of our obligation with uh soa kind of uh um you know what are the implications of pre-pandemic you know i'm all for the equity but those the monies from that didn't come to us we were kind of held harmless if i remember correctly um the student opportunities act i do know that i see online our proposal and our plan and all the the you know the deadlines of the start dates and all of the the requirements needed how has that implicated the resources needed for some of all of the all of the above we've gotten no funding from right at all but we do have the obligation to do all the reporting and paperwork and you know so it's um right statewide it's it's great that they're spending more money on education

083yeah i would have liked that they spent a little bit here but they didn't yeah so yeah were you able though to sort of put things that we're already doing you know we've got a great emphasis on social emotional health of our students even pre-pandemic and obviously we're you know still working through a lot of that it's very difficult when we developed the plan we basically used what we were already doing it's what you're saying knowing we weren't getting extra money for it but we had to continue to do the work that we're doing yeah okay thank you and thank you for that and and jim thank you i'm i know i'm going to have more questions um you know i'll be looking through this and studying this some more but um thank you for

084your continued sort of uh ability to just break things down for us um in terms of yeah all of the dollars i'm welcome thank you for your consideration just wait yeah no i just will echo again what my colleagues have said and you know say thank you very much it's hard to look at these numbers at times you know i'm not gonna lie especially those unfunded requests um certainly i've sat in school council meetings at demelo and every you know and i know that when they're asking you know it's not it's not to go to disneyland for the fourth time the year you know they're they want to buy fruit at the grocery store you know it's that kind of thing so i really feel like um you know it's hard to see um i'm

085really grateful for all the work that you've done and i think it's significant to look and see that you know we're dropping our administrative costs by 14.5 i mean that's that's a lot of work on your end it's a lot of restructuring i think it's you know i i'm again i'd like to see the breakdown of those positions i think it's going to help us you know i i have been concerned that we don't have enough connect you know relationships aren't as strong as they need to be between our schools you know from a vertical curriculum standpoint so i think it's really going to make a dramatic difference in that so um so i'm excited to see that um you know and ultimately you know so much of this what we can fund is not

086enough and we're so dependent on our parent teacher organizations and our music organization it's just a shame that they have to do as much as they do but you know i'm so thankful that they they do work so hard i'm seeing a lot of great work happening in each of those elementary schools i know over at the middle school um you know it's it's just a lot and so and certainly you know there's the music association i mean the amount of work that those parents put in but it's you know again it's unfortunate and i i look at things like text and library books you know just when i think of that broken out you know and even our um you know our online text and the same funding i know what our history books

087look like i mean it they are incredibly dated and it's uh and again that those resources don't stretch that far so again whatever funds we get from other groups you know i'm very grateful but it's it's a shame that we are in the lowest 16.5 percentile for per people spending in the state i think that's uh that's a that's unfortunate for and i think we get way more than that from our schools and our educators i think we are very very lucky for what we put in so that will be my thank you miss waite uh mr kylie i have a couple questions um can you remind me we talked about the the student parking fee did we eliminate or does this budget eliminate the transcript fee yes we're prepared to eliminate the transfer that

088one you know yeah okay yeah it's no money i already put the money out of my pocket to pay for my kids but going through that process it just made me realize what a barrier is to some kid so i would really like to see that fee right go away so this budget did not eliminate the parking fee though i i get that and i can live with that but i really do want us to get rid of that transfer because it is an active access and equity issue um the second one i want to go back to uh mr oliver's points about esser and you know i've mentioned this before that i have concerns about our um these are all needed positions but we're going to fall off a fiscal cliff and also it's

089it's we've got some recurring funding going on here so i would like to see at some point some sort of report about how we're spending and where we are um because i think you know down the road in a little bit whoever's in these chairs and this and this table are going to be have to go out and make the case for that funding those needs are not going to go away those positions we're going to have to do so i think we have to from the start be very careful about tracking what we're spending and the impact of that spending whether it be you know for hiring a social worker how many visits are they doing what are they doing if we're hiring you know a behavior how many students are they serving so

090that we can really make the case about the need when it when it comes that time i will also say i have some concerns about this is just my thing about the use of school choice and i think that perhaps it's time for us as a committee to have a discussion about school choice we have treated it as one time expense at the same point in time it's been i don't know five or six years now that we've had school choice um our budget is tight i mean this is using being used to combat inflationary costs but i don't think prices are going to roll back anytime soon so that's like there so if we're going to use school choice funding for recurring expenses i think we as a committee should develop some sort of

091policy so 62 000 i'm not particularly concerned i mean the balance in school choice now is considerable right but we i think at some point maybe we should have a discussion that if we're going to put school choice on recurring spending under school choice we need to have an x balance it can't be more than x percent of the balance that way if it if we do vote in one year right to get rid of school choice then we have several years of reserve fund to sort of back that out so i think it's worth us sort of developing some sort of potentially a policy around that and we don't obviously not tonight but i think i'd like for us to have some sort of discussion about that if we are going to use that

092money for recurring revenues well i think two things you did put in place a ten thousand dollar limit if you recall that right you did put that in place so if we would like you have to come to you have to come to us for more than ten thousand and then we did um something what i think you're talking about we talked about the ta position because that is a recurring um correct so we did bring that so those are the kinds of things yeah and other than that like a two thousand dollar stipend or something i can't imagine you know that's that's fine i just i mean my concern is if we start building up what we're we got hundred fifty thousand dollars in school choice in a recurring budget and then next year

093we it votes to go away we got to figure out how to make that up right we have some time balance that can help us get there right to ease us off right but i think we need to think about sort of what our fiscal policy is going to be around that if we're going to build that into the budget um so i don't have a problem with using the 62 000 but i want us to sort of think carefully about how we're going to do that yeah um and so those are those are i think my only sort of uh questions or concerns at this point in time anyone else mr nudes yeah thank you man i'm sure i wasn't going to mention this because town hall gets upset when i do but mrs

094wade brought it up you know with funding and everything else and did some quick math tonight and you know if we were at the the state average of uh 17-5 we'd have another 9.5 million in our budget so we wouldn't have to sit here and no disrespect have all these wonderful we could we would have the taj mahal and i'm being facetious here but understand what i'm saying you know we would have been able to fund the other you know seven hundred thousand dollars and things of that nature i mean no disrespect and thank you to our state fathers 100 they're not do it you know nobody's doing us any favors up up in boston right now with with our budget and the numbers they're getting if you look at the cherry sheet with what's

095going on with other communities and more so they've gone with the gateway communities you know the new benefits and you know their chapter 70 and other have gone through the roof type of deal and you know we're uh we're looking for for nickels and dimes and they're getting hundred dollar bills so it's tough yeah i'd also follow up and say though that it's not just on our state representation it's on us right i mean our tax rate is really low and so the state looks at us and says you can afford to do more i mean that's what it comes down to at the soa you can afford to do more and so we don't get more because we're not we're not giving effort um you know i would love to i agree mr runes

096i'd love to just be at the average right it would give us so much more room but we're not and you know maybe we'll get closer but that's going to have to be on us to if we want to make that progress oh yeah all right any other questions or comments all right so we'll come back to the budget at our next meeting and then the meeting after that is the public hearing on the budget thank you excellent thank you all right um so next we have old business we have a student representation to the school committee um miss waite sent a document to me ms genther passed that circulated too late it's just to start we're continuing this discussion but i thought i'd let uh miss wheat talk a little bit about sort of

097what she's been working on and we can come back to it sure so i met on tuesday with mr tebow at the high school and kind of went over like his thoughts um he had also looked at the documents that dr jenkinson shared as well just to kind of start lining this up we looked at milton has a pretty solid policy but again like making some adjustments so you know after that conversation i wrote out some of his thoughts um you know if you want to take it you know some time to read this you know think about it and we can you know certainly circle back to it um but one of his you know when i talked to ross he really felt strongly that we should while there are five members that are

098mandated by the state he definitely felt that we should include a freshman i think milton only does sophomores juniors and seniors he was of the opinion that when we look at freshmen they have certainly very unique needs concerns coming into the school so he wanted to see them represented so you know just you know trying as we sat down we talked about what that representation would look like again we were leaning towards having two seniors who would be elected as juniors so that election would take place within the current freshman sophomore and junior class prior to june so in theory when they're electing other officers is what he was thinking and then the freshmen when they came in they would be elected at the same time that they're also doing their other officers so he

099felt like that was a pretty seamless process he also um as we talked further you know it became clear as he kind of anticipated how it looked in the school he thought the initial plan i think milton might have had that group meeting by themselves every other week he said at some point it becomes just like needing to have meetings so he really thought a monthly meeting plus then they are meeting with our body and again adjusting the timing to trying to avoid you know large vacation months we thought september november coming back in january march and then finishing off in may um you know and again like other you know details you know i listed there some of the and this comes back i also reference the boston public schools as well and some

100of what they do because we don't have models everywhere but um you know in the boston public schools you know they pretty well articulated some of the responsibilities of course they're coming from multiple buildings in this case so i consolidated those ideas for what the students would be doing for us you know but really they're representing their classmates on policy issues when they they come here so you know in distinguishing that from those students who would be a student council he did think it would be helpful to possibly have i believe it's miss and the karen dealy who is the is that um who is the advisor for student council she or stu um student what am i trying to say student student council is that yeah student council so yeah so he actually thought

101it would be nice that it'd be helpful if she's willing to take it on and you know talking about a stipend if she would take on the role of advisor of this group as well so that she can you know she'll know what's discussed within the student council and again the kind of art you know articulate this is more policy which would be more appropriate for the student advisory committee so again so we kind of talked about some of those different you know um ideas and you know trying to convert them into a policy so but again we can certainly circle back to this i don't know if it's appropriate to send it over to the policy committee um again you know i would anticipate that this would need to take place in there at

102the same time as their normal elections and then we would get that group on board starting in the summer and part of that too is that we talked about the uh the regional committee which was something i'm actually haven't been that familiar with um that we actually have a regional representative to the school you know from our school um to the committee so i i believe josh moniz has that role so i thought that was interesting so perhaps our chairperson could be of this student advisory committee could then be the representative to that committee so that was and then could circle back and tell us some of the happenings within the regional committee as well and again extend that performance and they offer some training so i did put down at the bottom that you

103know we could consider training as being you know not compulsory in the summer but they could take advantage of that leadership training and i think it would be great for them and that could be part of the meetings as well so again just i know it's a lot to read it's pretty lengthy but just as an overview and then you know you can go from there thank you so i know this uh circulated late so people probably haven't had time to read it yet um you know i i skimmed it i think it looks good um i just want to miss wait to a chance to explain it to everyone um and we can we can bring it back up um dr gifford i do have a question for you though um does this need

104to go through the policy subcommittee or no it's it's up it depends on how you want to take it i mean this if you wanted to do a little policy that the committee would have this body and then this all becomes the practice behind it right or it depends if you really think you need a policy in place because it i guess when we talked about this this is like what is it j i i b or something actually i actually listed in the so the first page is actually a state law and i just lost my screen right but there is most of the school districts list that first part um or a small part as a small as an actual policy yeah and then the bulk of that stuff it's all procedure yes

105it's not a an official policy so i don't know do we have i think it's i want to say it's j-i-i-b j-i-b-v j-i-b-b thank you thank you do we have that already on the record i mean i guess if we have it on records already then it probably has to go through the policy subcommittee because we're talking about changing an official policy right um and then we as a committee will go through the regular process of voting on that right exactly and and i did have a question as i was kind of digging through this and me and uh maybe dr gifford you know you can answer this do we have i was under my impression on i was reading through this state literature that it seemed as though we're supposed to send two representatives

106to the regional school committee is that but when i spoke with ross it was you know he's mentioned that we have um joshua neese so do we have yeah and that's that's what i mean this was all kind of i mean i would love to hear from him and have him come in i just um i think you know honestly he should be thankful you know carrying out this position but i would like to hear more about it as well so um but i just was curious because again i was looking at the state policy and it does seem that we're required to have those too so you know hopefully we uh again held harmless with everything else that's going on i don't think it's too uh critical but i just uh it was something

107i picked up on as it was going through yeah i'm on the the doa site and it says the ssa the state student advisory council is composed of five regional councils according to state mandate every secondary school must elect must is in bold that's why i said it like that must elect two delegates to a regional sac well that's what i just caught up on too right before i sat down with ross and i was like so you know and again i wasn't even aware that josh was a uh a representative to that group so i think it's really it's important i think for us to order their work because actually they then those students meeting together elect a sitting and voting member to the state um you know board as well so i think

108that that's a you know you know it's not only is a great experience for those students who go there but i think we should hear from them so all right so can we do we want to refer this to the policy subcommittee is that the pleasure of the committee so where does this stand right now do we have a policy on the books we have a student involvement in decision making policies very small it might need a little adjustment but maybe not so we'll take a look at this and then if we yeah it doesn't include what we're doing we can certainly bring it so we'll have the policy subcommittee look at that policy and then we as a committee can discuss the procedures because it might be okay and i'm on that policy as

109well i believe yeah okay okay okay excellent um the next item on the agenda is um school school committee policy ebcfa the face coverings policy as you all know on this committee this board the policy when enacted the last line of the policies the policy will remain in place until we're sending by the school committee which is why this is on the agenda this evening for a vote so i will open it up for discussion motions anything from my committee members [Laughter] mr oliver so i guess i'll start madam chair thank you very much thank you to the uh audience members that are in here uh that shared their thoughts and views as well um so i i'm in agreement that it's time for us to um to drop the face face mass mandate as

110per the governor um you know i think it's it's time we're at a point which we can start to move forward and not look behind us um just just a couple of points uh one being as i don't know if any of you had the chance to look at the masc guidance that they emailed us today um just making sure that if we were to drop the van that stu according to this the policy would still state students and staff returning from five day quarantine following a positive covert test must follow strict mass use for the next five days other than eating drinking or outside so i'm not sure you know as far as what we should do with that just making sure that the district's following up with that on the other thing which

111i just i didn't know that i did not know this until i just read it was mass will be required in all school health offices how's the district handling that um and the other thing that i have and obviously it's a federal uh regulation with busing right right it's it's still that's at the federal level with transportation i guess my question is with the um i guess i have a few of them with the um the the classrooms and all that and with the buildings uh would we continue would what's the plan from the school district from the administration as far as right now we're in pods i believe we're plotting students will potting stay in place for for the at least for the next couple weeks so we going cafeterias so if you could

112just share a little bit about like the the procedures that have we we've put in place is it just going complete you know right back to normal sure um well i actually met with the elementary admin team today and um we decided you have to remember that some of these things that are put in place then we have the resulting contact tracing so the potting while we did the pods was to make it easier for contact tracing and prevent that so that's gone away right so there really is no sense in maintaining a pod to be honest there's no sense so what we discussed today was the only thing we wanted to keep just as is for now is just the structure of the lunchrooms with the desks the kids can talk before you know

113now we've been keeping them kind of quiet they've been showing movies etc but let him talk and function normally but just not get rid of that little bit of a distance right now i mean you've all seen it with just the desk and only because one of the things is it's kind of um almost impossible to hurry up and move everything between now and sure next week so just to kind of slowly get back into that the middle school i know is doing the same thing they're just slowly evolving back into the into the lunchroom you have to think too some of these kiddos haven't even been in there in two years right the way they've been separated but um they they really want to focus on creating as much normalcy as possible get rid

114of the pods all of that and to your point mr kiley's made sure that we have enough mass for the nurse's office that's because of the dph any medical area you have to have a mass just to make sure when kids go in or whatever that they have one and getting on the bus as well so we're hopefully uh be able to keep that in place for now i didn't know mr kylie just told me march 18th perhaps the bus uh restriction goes away yeah it's at the at the current time it's through march 18th now they could revisit it i don't know but it's the cdc and the tsa yeah so okay we'll see what happens with that thank you uh thank you for your comments so last but not least my i'll just

115leave the committee with uh with this that uh i'm fully in support of dropping the mandate um you know my only thing is we're doing it right after school vacation i've had several people several families reach out to me that i also had a family i think we all got that mother reach out to us about you know putting on a survey to solicit feedback from all the stakeholders the families she had some concern i guess i don't know if she works for all rochester regional but someone someone in her family was there and she thought that was very you know she welcomed that um to still get a gauge from the families um so you know it's neither here nor there that's something we we didn't do you know maybe we should have but

116at the end of the day um we didn't and i'll just say you know my only concern is dropping it the day after um returning from february break and do we do we leave it in place for another five days other than that i'm in support of dropping it mr nance yeah thank you madam chair um a couple of questions i have for the superintendent uh with this coming up on september 28th what does this do for like visitors coming to school spectators at you know athletic events music things coming up you know band competitions in we've got you know a band competition coming up the 19th of march nezba finals you know the beginning of april what does that do for spectators and and the light coming here it just allows them to commit

117even now with athletics like for example at the um the ice arena there's no mandate there it's not our property so we've we've strongly encouraged so with that said with the mandate being dropped we we won't require it one thing we did talk about this morning was we're just going to hold off on visitors per se to our elementary schools like we've really held off on that as far as presentations and things but we thought we'll just hold off a little bit as the warmer weather starts to come in and windows are open and we can be a little bit more outside so but to your point um really the mandate would be gone at that point the other one was the role of yes questioned on lunches so that'll take care of that yeah

118i i kind of agree with you know this policy you know going going away one of the things that i you know struggled with but i think that we need to do is you know put you know i know we're going to have to make a motion to uh amend this policy to make it go to rescind this policy but what i'd like to see happen is that uh to be a caveat on it uh that if you know unfor fun you know god forbid this blows up again with whatever whether it be the covet or another variant or something of that nature and between federal state and local authorities they come up with you know they come back with the mask mandate that the superintendent be allowed to implement at asap without coming back

119to this committee because it could happen tomorrow and we're not meeting for three weeks right type of deal so we end up between a rock and a hot they end up between a rock and a hot place so that would allow the you know the administration to to implement that policy back so other than that that's all if the state implements a mass mandate we have to comply with them well i understand that i'm not sure dr gifford wants to get out over skis without us on a mass mandate if the state doesn't implement it but we can talk about that we can right yeah fine that's all i have this amarillo yeah um yeah to me this is like a formality so um you know we talk about the numbers going down um i

120think of this body i think i was the last to be vaccinated because i was worried about implications and my son has medically complex and i was worried about you know reactions with him and uh you know and all has been well uh barring a couple of scares here and there um and you know you talk about social emotional well-being i know my daughter is very um you know is active in softball and in sports and she she's a black belt in taekwondo she's wearing a mask you know she's complying or not outside and basketball they didn't have whatever um and i know she has some worries so you know of of of her brother who goes to hockey games wears his mask down below his nose sometimes but he manages well because he knows

121it means it's access to you know over the last few years he knows he knew enough that it was meant access to fun stuff for him but um you know students like her are probably going to be a little bit more concerned about the well-being of you know some kiddos just might they're gonna have to get used to this and so i think if we're just gentle and kind and and um i i try not to but i read social media and it's like oh you're talking about me and i'm right here but that didn't happen but um you know there had been some comments that i was reassured to see some comments around parents who might have used the disparaging phrase around what this is now saying well we're going to teach our kids

122to go to school and be kind to those students my daughter i asked her she's in the middle school she can make some decisions some and she's very mature and i asked her she is going to be um she decided she wants to wear her mask the first few days or first week after february vacation good for her and and maybe she'll change her mind by that time but as long as i think we're concerned i did i think chris and i i don't know we received a few just to us emails i noticed and maybe others oh yeah i don't ever get them from the town side fyi i just get them to you know through the school department website but so i wonder if i miss some sometimes but um you know there

123are family you know parents that are concerned and there are parents who have a strong opinion on it one way or the other but all that to say i think as long as we're kind and compassionate and understanding and and make it not a big deal whether a student right you know and nip anything in the bud where you might hear a student kind of reiterating something they heard from somebody or a comment from a particular opinion one way or the other whether a student is or isn't wearing a mask it's go we have to give each other grace again and just kind of let that kind of play out but with um you know compassion and understanding that's how we're gonna get through this so i mean i again this is a formality to

124me i was like what what's the hubbub but you know uh but here we are and you know we made the policies so we have to get rid of it and you know if we so choose so that's it miss wait yeah so um yeah i i think it's time you know i'll just you know i i i do have this share mr oliver's concern then and it probably will happen we will have a bump when we come back from vacation i mean that's going i anticipate that will happen um i know that my daughter has already said she's gonna wear it through the hallways because she feels less comfortable in the classroom she may not you know so again but i i do appreciate the sense of you know we've come to this we're

125the kind of the last group still wearing masks which again which again i think we're at that moment if things change i think we you know from the state we need to reassess but um i think we do i do believe that you know certainly they've gotten us through the a lot of the worst effects of the pandemic it's why the students you know haven't gotten ill is because of the safeguards from schools because safeguards that we've had in place i think it's happened from sleepovers and things like that that have been happening outside of school so i am you know i have to say that i'm happy with our policy i think it was good i think it's time now for us to kind of move on you know and you know we want

126our little you know youngest learners to be able to see their teachers faces in each other's faces and you know with language i mean there are certain concerns so absolutely okay so that's so i i vote to every sentence so i'm i'm also inclined to to remove the mass mandate but i do have a few questions um you know i i talked to our our campus you know virologist about this question look to him for guidance because i mean he's been consulting for businesses movies schools every you name it he's been doing that and you know his his sense and in my sense too is is it's time to remove the mass but not because we're not in a pandemic anymore i mean i just looked up our 14-day positivity rate in dartmouth is 12.99

127our vaccination rate is 65.7 percent right so i'm not i'm not willing to make the argument that we're out of the pandemic yet we're still in it but we do know that kids are far less really likely to get sick right and so um there are benefits to removing mass but um so a couple of questions one of the things he suggested to me is that there is there are questions about sort of access to high quality mass one of our speakers noted right that the cloth mask they don't really work right for those people who might want high quality masks particularly children's mask and 95s but do not have access to them would we again this i'm not saying that everyone has to get a can 985 nas but if you feel uncomfortable from

128mass unmasking and you want a quality mask would there be some way for us for the children to provide access to them through our suppliers we don't have any youth size kn95s okay it's something i think i might like us to consider to see if we can do i'm not sure i'm not sure there'd be a huge run on them but for someone who um you know might be low income might have immuno-compromised people family at home this does represent an increased risk to them and coming to school when more people are unmasked and so i'd like for us for through for equity and access sort of you know thinking to be able to provide some of those students if they can't have them with the sorts of things that will keep themselves and their

129families safe um so i'd like to just potentially think about that um i also i understand the the um keeping the lunchroom sort of as they are now if there's anywhere that i'd like to see us kind of try to move back to normal it's in the high school you know i know my son is a senior he's gone through many of the similar challenges um that some one of our speakers talked about we have had some severe mental health crises in our house as well and so they only have the seniors right they only have three or four months left lunch is often the best part of the day you know for some of these kids let's just put it that way and so i'd like to see if we can prioritize if it's

130taking personnel that we try to figure that out here in the high school because those kids i think have the have the least amount of time left here in in these schools and then you're not taking comments from the audience at this point in time i'm simply saying that as we prioritize the personnel to make our lunchrooms back to normal i would like to start with the high school finally i will just reiterate what mr noon said that we are removing the mass now this is no guarantee that mass will not be needed again and the best way for us to make sure that we don't need them again is for all of us to be vaccinated that having been said i will entertain a motion from a member of my committee if anyone would

131like to rescind policy ebcfa or if there's any further discussion i will entertain questions or comments mr nunes you have your hand up madam chair i'll make a motion that we rescind policy eb cfa that we accepted on august of 2020 with the caveat that if the virus should start up again and between federal state and local authorities they put a mask mandate back in place that the superintendent is authorized to implement said mask mandate under this policy a second discussion on the motion i'm just gonna say i'd like to ask dr gifford i am in favor of rescinding policy ebcfa i think we ought to rescind the motion do you want the power to implement a mass mandate without the authorization of the school committee we as a committee are giving up our power

132to the superintendent um this is not about the recent rescinding of the mass mandate to me this is about us giving up our authority i'd like to ask doctor i mean i'd like your opinion either you would like that or not i just think mr nunes is getting at the point that if it was a real emergency like there was something trending you know we have meetings in between yeah so like a real emergency i would certainly want to do that if need be i hopefully doesn't happen but it's just we have the meeting so spread out sometimes that it's hard to yeah we have the ability to call an emergency meeting yeah mr news you have a comment no i was just going to say exactly what dr gifford said and that is you

133know we're not meeting for three weeks i mean and for discussion purposes you know maybe not march 1st but march 2nd is you know everything blows up and they put this back in place we're not meeting well we meet the following monday but understand what i'm saying in between times the superintendent has has the ability she's going to bring it back to us yeah right okay it's coming back towards the following meeting to reins to reinstate it but and we're just going to ratify what she's doing not what this says no i don't know she has no ready to do it so you know what's going to happen you know she's going to do that well if it's a state mandate isn't she compelled anyway right but this gives her the authority to do it

134on her own without a state mandate okay well fine i don't need it no i mean i'm just this is the motion on the table and here's what i would say i will vote for a clean motion to rescind the the old mandate if the governor implements a mass mandate we are compelled to follow it what's on the table before us now is a motion when the in the absence of a state mandate to authorize yes no i said and federal state and local authorities put the mask mandate back in so isn't it we don't need it isn't it a moot point if if the state local or federal authorities are putting a mass mandate in place isn't it a moot point that it you know about the school committee local intervening because the way

135i'm reading this dr jenkins is that it's only if there's a a mandate put in place by riley and we don't need that well that's what i mean exactly we do we don't need the language all right fine miss i think you're sort of responding to the fact that it was always very gray for many many many many months throughout all this sort of leaving the municipalities in the state in the commonwealth to sort of fend for themselves in a way to make the best decisions so i think that's what you're leaning toward like if we had something written just in case they were so vague as to say do it i didn't say do it you know i mean that's sort of what they've been doing this whole time let's be real is that

136sort of what you're you just wanted something clear so that we don't be stuck we're stuck sort of in a predicament where we have to call it there's a meeting and oh all i'm all i'm saying is is if it hits the fan okay let's put the cards on the table if it hits the fan okay the superintendent has the authority to put the masks back in okay you know for a fact we've all been around long enough no disrespect to mary at least i've been around long enough something pops up you know the superintendent makes a decision it comes back to us at the next meeting and says here's what i had here's what's had to have been done period you don't want i'll rescind my amendment okay i'll keep my motion to rescind

137the the policy and i'll rescind but i will rescind my motion so are you rescinding the entire emotion or just the amount the just the amendment okay the warfare i appreciate that very much thank you mr dan whoever said because we disagree but also work we also all work end up working together any other discussion on mr noon's motion did we have a second we did i did okay i just want to go back motion by mr nunes the second by miss wait this is ms gunther all set oh my gosh yeah i just went okay yeah i just wanted to make sure that we got the motion the second and we and i just want to make sure that she's all set so the motion is to repeal school committee policy ebc fa on

138face coverings any further discussion hearing done all in favor aye aye aye opposed abstentions the motion carries unanimously moving on to new business dr gifford appreciated its update a couple of things you already heard about the sale program we have the vacation math academy ready to go grades three through ten we already have 76 students signed up and we're desi is really strict on the attendance so we're trying to squish a couple of waiting list kids in i just want you to know that the naming of the basketball court is will be in process andy christophuli took over that for us so he's working with things like maybe painting the floor etc and it looks like probably early in the new season it will go forward to give us time to prepare the the gym

139so but that's improv i didn't want you to think we forgot about it uh we're beginning work to review and update our emergency management plan and once again it was kind of covered put everything on hold i'm like we have to make some adjustments to that so we're working on that as well and we're also planning for another phase of team chair training for the district for folks that facilitate the teams because we have some new folks on board plus we need to review for people that have been doing it for a while to make sure that we abide by all the legal restrictions etc um part of school you heard a lot about them the only other thing i wanted to mention for them that they collected soup for super bowl sunday last week

140to form to bring cans of soup to the council on aging so that was another nice thing that they did and they also also received i think i mentioned last time 5 000 but it seems a total of 6 500 from the feinstein group and the uh high school edmond teams attended the ed camp this past weekend and um that is let's see they've been doing it for three years now and each year it was nice that they gave up their time to do that and they focus on social emotional learning uh engaging new teachers etc and project-based learning and other things so that was nice and also the aesa conference starts wednesday so i'll be going to that and a couple of keynotes speak as speakers it's actually in person finally again michael cardona

141who's the u.s secretary of education and a couple of other folks that you may or may not know so other than that also on our covid numbers we only had six as of today from last week so it's going down and down so that's it they travel excellent i don't have anything so i'll see if anyone else on the committee has any other items you may not have considered miss amarillo only because it's in front of me that the hockey team won oh four to three that's exciting uh anywhere else mr nunes yeah thank you madam chair a couple of things good luck to our sports teams that are going into the winter tournaments coming up um i did manage to catch uh the tail end i mean literally probably the last five minutes or

142so of the last vocational school committee meeting that they had and you know mr watson they talked about being here and and such and it was i was able to hear better in all seriousness that's great and uh you know they did they did mention that they were going to be you know working on that and seeing what the problem was and that type of deal so they listened well listen they listened and they mentioned it so we'll see what happens but i did i did see that so i did want to say thank you to to vote for for doing that um with regards to the uh the the music department uh march 4th which is a friday night is going to be our annual uh pops concert uh finally going to be able

143to get back to that after a two-year hiatus and uh we're going to be honoring mr kingsland we're going to actually going to honor when the night before everything got shut down so almost two years ago that's right so we are going to finally be able to uh to on a bk so it should be a should be an interesting evening and uh our home indoor show that we normally have uh february vacation is not gonna happen it's happening on uh saturday march 19th uh starting somewhere around 12 o'clock and with both color guide and then percussion i don't have the times yet but there'll be two sets of awards for uh one for color guide one for uh percussion because the percussion will be you know 8 30 9 o'clock just for discussion purposes

144i don't know about the color guide yet i don't have those times but i will be looking i'll be sending out an email to uh look for uh trophy presenters what was that what was that date again the 19th i enjoy that the 19th which is a saturday of what saturday of march 19th oh if nobody else offers yeah no that's fine but i'll be the parent i'll be the parent so she can help it's fun yeah you got a chance to sit i mean we've got our uh jv color guy we've got our varsity color guide who took uh started out this past weekend they started up in salem after one of the wgi regionals were the second place so for the first time performing in front of an alive audience in two years

145right they did what they did quite well so i'm glad glad for them that's all i have madam chair thank you anything else and then mr oliver okay i just um just kind of circle back to what i had mentioned when i was going over the uh the student representative report and i put it in an original email to dr gifford is you know i because i didn't know that josh had this you know um position i think it'd be great i'd really like to invite him in if we can and hear from him um and hear if we can a little bit about like that role um and with that i think we have a number of students who and you know i imagine that you know dr gifford and mr tebow know a

146little bit more that are representing dartmouth and you know on regional and state committees you know and so i i'm kind of curious to hear like who they are i mean i don't know again if it's you know if we have a little build in time and a meeting i mean that's a little different but i just i'm curious i know this project i think it's 351-51 you know so there's a number of those students who are out there who we just don't you know again they are chosen to represent us and it'd be nice to hear a little bit about what they're doing in the you know extend extended community for uh dartmouth just a just a thought sure it's kind of a nice fun happy thing too mr oliver thank you i was

147just curious um dr jenkins if you had made any headway for the march 8th i had uh actually dr giffett had reached out to the aquina tribe and um we are waiting to hear back so i'm just not sure where we're at with that i have had confirmation i said names today ms ganther from the uh pocasset wampanoag and the uh p wampanoag are going to attend the national congress of american indians has not confirmed yet they don't know but we do have representatives from the book cassette and the mashed people up in oak for the eighth okay i'll have to re re-emphasize the invite because yeah we didn't hear back okay yeah right thank you okay thank you any other comments input all right hearing none the next regular meeting of the school committee

148is scheduled for monday march 7th uh at 6 30 at dartmouth high school i will entertain a motion to adjourn always in autumn all right emotion by noon mr nunes it's so late i haven't had any caffeine today in a second by miss amarillo um favor hi hi motion carries happy valentine's day everybody yes it's a late one [Music] so [Music] you