Dartmouth School Committee Meeting, January 24, 2022

001wait a minute a couple of high profiles i can see it i can see it in the window [Music] so [Music] so [Music] good evening i'd like to call the january 24th meeting of the dartmouth school committee to order if you could all please stand for the pledge of allegiance thank you uh this meeting of the dartmouth school committee is going to be held in person so public comment will also be held in person hold on we're having some technical difficulties here on set in addition the public will be able to access meeting via live stream at youtube.com dhs tv media we're working through some sound issues here so the meeting will be rebroadcast on dc tv channels 9 on the following days wednesday and thursday at 5 00 pm friday at 6 a.m saturday

002at 8 a.m sunday at 2 p.m the meeting will be recap rebroadcast on dctv channels 18 on monday and saturday at 12 p.m and thursday at 3 p.m ms gunther may we have a roll call please shannon jenkins here mary wait here kathleen admiral here john nunes yep chris oliver here all right so we may not open the public hearing on school choice for another minute so we will skip ahead and open public comment um we do not have an audience here so i suspect there will be no public comment unless someone runs down the hallway but if people do would like their uh you know opinions heard they're welcome to email the school committee secretary kate genther and she always forward your emails to us um all right so next i'm gonna skip down

003we still have a little time to uh and entertain a motion for the approval of the regular session minutes of january 10th so moved second all right so i have a motion by mr nunes and a second by miss weed is there any discussion of the minutes hearing done all in favor aye aye opposed are there any abstentions no oh you were here that's right you're okay she was online you just weren't here physically so that is five in favor none opposed according to my watch it is now um 6 35 so i believe i have to i always look to mr nunes you have to gavel i will open the public hearing yes um on school choice for school year 2022 2023. um dr gifford would you like to say a few words or

004do we have to wait for the public to comment here and then we'll come around to that sorry you can go that way and then if there's any public comment right well we can take that up into under new business dr gifford can tell us then we'll just yeah hold our public hearing open [Music] is there any rule mr dunes mr nunes is our school committee historian on how long we have to hold open a public hearing no i mean there's with all due respect there's no one here to so you know i'll make a motion that we close the public hearing on school choice for school year 2022 2023. i'll second that all right so i have a motion on the table by mr nunes a second by mr oliver is there any discussion

005on the motion to close the public hearing hearing none all in favor aye opposed all right that motion carries unanimously all right so i am going to take one thing in front of our student representative report evan and that is about the naming facility about the dhs basketball court and the vote on the naming decision dr gifford do you want to start and then yes thank you thank you for taking this out of order and as you received information about the committee that we had the naming committee come together we had about 15 or 16 folks apply to be on the committee from the community and staff mr oliver and i looked over the people and made a choice and we had nine people and that was including mr oliver on the committee so we

006met i thought we were going to meet for a few meetings and prepared a rubric for them to assess the folks went over the information that we had and lo and behold and i know mr oliver will speak to this as well when we arrived at the meeting we had folks alumni we had past and current coaches attend we had a community member and people that had been students well well mr gaspar was recommended um we had a former administrator yeah administrators as well so we we felt we had a good a good group of folks come coaches of course as i said and before we even got to they just overwhelmingly wanted to approve and recommend that mr stephen gaspar that we named the basketball court after him and um do you want to

007add a few things that he they spoke about him and yeah absolutely thank you thank you dr gifford i think it was a very productive meeting i think it was great to have such a cross-section of the community involved in in this process and you know especially from the i think there was two of them students that were there former students could not just say enough about coach gaspar especially with the fact that outside of your typical coaches role as far as following up with them at home over the weekends to make sure they're getting you know their homework done and they're really engaging we heard a lot of that dr gifford of just really engaging outside of the school day to just make sure that his players are not only performing the best on

008the court but also the best at home you know whether it be with their families whether it be with their students they just couldn't say enough as well as we had a couple of current and former staff members there and once again just that you know they spoke about him mr coach gaspar and his wife starting the dartmouth high school after prom and the commitment that was put into that um it they they went on it was a lot of just all around that we looked at it with the rubric you know we looked at the i looked at the rubric and at the end of the day from the big picture of hitting all the different spots um you know no one could think of anyone more deserving and even i forgot who it

009was it might have been mr hickey a former administrator that actually had some of the stats of the state stats from when he coached for how many wins um over the seasons versus like the current records and all that so it was very impressive to hear um so as dr gifford said overwhelmingly the recommendation and the vote was made for coach gaspar all right one of the things that stood out for me as well um was the idea of not only it was beyond the the coaching court it was beyond basketball it was as a teacher and a mentor and a role model for all of the students for 30 some odd years and one of the people said um he had had some troubles as a student and how much he helped him just

010in his personal life as well so anyway mr oliver and i looked at each other and said well i i guess we go no further because it was so overwhelming it's unanimous it was unanimous vote to recommend that the basketball court in the carlin lynch activity sent to be named after mr stephen gaspar and so if we can we'd love a vote for the committee and why we wanted to move it up is he happens to be here on his off time with the basketball team tonight and we wanted to then bring him in to at least let him know what because as far as i know he doesn't know this has been going on maybe he's been hiding it nicely but i don't know and then of course talk about uh an official recognition

011at one of the home upcoming home games so that's that's what we have to say that's our recommendation so i will entertain a motion to approve naming the dartmouth high basketball court after former dhs basketball coach steve gaspar i'll second that i want to start i'll make them i'll make the motions so we have a motion by mr oliver in a second by miss amaral is there any discussion well deserved yeah i'll just say i don't know him but he sounds he sounds great so i'm happy to you know follow the recommendation of the committee on this so if there's no further discussion all in favor aye aye aye opposed all right so that motion carries unanimously now we're going to go try to go ahead and we're going to evan we're going to have

012you go ahead and do your report it's our student representative report and then we'll come back around to that so thank you evan thank you dr jenkins since our last meeting a lot has been going on here at dartmouth high school the dhs theatre company is preparing for its spring show shrek the musical roles have been assigned and performances will take place later this spring in addition to shrek the theater company recently held auditions for their upcoming competition piece our unified bowling club has taken several bowling trips this winter with members having fun and exemplifying the power of teamwork and inclusion last week dhs welcomed landon callahan a speaker from the safe and supportive schools initiative landon met with administrators like mr tebo and mr shea members of the gsa and ms correa the gsa

013advisor additionally landon spoke with the faculty on ways to support lgbtq plus students at dhs as part of our school's efforts to create an environment that is welcoming and supportive to all students dartmouth high school was awarded college board's computer science female diverse diversity award last week in recognition of our high school's high female representation in ap computer science classes congratulations to our stem students computer science teachers and everyone else who made this award possible additionally i would like to congratulate dhs music students jonas chen ryan church william jordan and mohamed hijazi all of whom have been selected to be a part of the southeastern junior district music festival the four of them will represent dartmouth high school at this three-day music festival in march joining other talented student musicians from across the south coast

014thank you and that concludes my update for this meeting thank you does anybody have any questions for evan a lot going on yeah thank you very much thank you and as always we welcome you to stay if you want to get a taste of sort of what a regular school committee is like you're welcome to say i finished all my homework today [Laughter] oh yeah it looks like they're coming now so we'll just stall for a minute or so um yeah we did the minute so we're good so we'll just um wait and um welcome our distinguished guest he doesn't know i hope he's like what is going on everyone everyone anyone watching us is like what is going on that will hopefully soon be clear coach gaspard [Music] we're so happy you're here because

015we had something to um we want you to come back we're recruiting so we don't want to throw you a a curveball here but um we we um some time ago mr grandfield here recommended that um a special award be given to you um here comes the team let's wait for the team come on come on how are you good thank you [Applause] [Laughter] all right all right come on in all right all right they don't even know what's going on yet hold your hold to pause for just a second we haven't shared the share then we haven't shared the good news yes all right so as the team enters as i'll start again uh some time ago actually last year mr granfield sent me a letter asking that you receive a special award for

016everything that you've done for dartmouth that award is to name the basketball court after you in the carlin lynch activity center we then proceeded to have a naming committee come forth we had many members of the community meet with us with mr oliver and myself there's nine of us we met last week and we met and um before we had two we were able to say about two words this committee of um past coaches current coaches of all different sports past administrators administrators alumni uh community members came forward overwhelmingly and spoke praises about you and the work that you've done for dartmouth and the students and families of dartmouth so tonight this committee has just voted to name the basketball court in the carlin lynch activity center after you mr gaspar and i know your

017team is very proud of that [Applause] you'll be able to speak of course i'm sorry to throw this on you but um we will then um have a special ceremony at one of the upcoming home games and i'll be able to make that tribute to you with of course mr grandfield's um speaking at that night not going to get away without it so anyway if you'd like to say a couple of words well i just want to thank you i'm speechless i didn't i had no idea good i would like to thank everyone but that's not it wasn't me it was them all the players i don't know how many players have played after 35 years of coaching but hundreds of players it wasn't me i just guided them i didn't put any ball in

018the basket i didn't i didn't steal any pass they there's the players but i'm quite honored you know mr lynch was a great friend of mine um i've known john since high school 1966 i was like i didn't want to go that far i was only in eighth grade steve but again thank you very much and you know but again it's it was it's not me it's them uh but it's quite an honor and i'm very very i'm flattered i don't know i'm stuck i'm i'm i imagine one thing i want you to know i know they'll be more said at the night when we do the tribute is the folks that came were on the committee they spoke even more beyond what you do on the court with what you did with kiddos on

019the court it was about what you did for the students overall their families and just everything that you contributed and that after prom that was really my wife's idea and she too they mentioned her yeah we did that for 24 years and that was a great honor for us yeah we got that idea from durfee and we we took it for 24 years that was certainly something that was discussed at the uh naming committee's uh meeting uh all the everything that you've done for the year but again it wasn't my wife and i it was people like john who's there the whole night you know you know volunteering dr kelly dr dr russell you know they were there the whole night you know it was just it was a great honor for us to do

020that we were just guiding them they were the ones that don't like people like john and you know everyone of all the parents that volunteered who we just we just told them what to do and they did it and the kids enjoyed it so mr gaspar i want to say that you're showing the hallmarks of a great teacher and a great coach and that is modesty i know you like to say it wasn't me but i think it's clear from what the naming committee has said and what we've heard that it that it is you um and so i know that's probably you know you're very seem like a very humble person but we're extremely grateful for what you have done um and all the work you have put into this community so thank you

021thank you so we'll be in touch you'll be back all right thank you again thank you thank you you're it's worked welcome perfectly that's nice all right all right so as we allow our basketball team to clear out we'll move to the next item on our agenda yeah which is the spotlight on kids uh for joseph demello elementary school i'm carrying this out so they can talk over me but that's right here they come um so dr gifford you want to do introductions of course as you know ms paveo miss correa here speak about the wonderful things that continue to go on at the de mello elementary school that's a tough act to follow yeah good evening everyone and thank you for this opportunity to shine a spotlight on de mello school liz and i

022always seem to come right on the heels of a change in what's happening in the covered world and we're happy to answer any questions you might have about that a little later on but we really wanted to take this opportunity to not talk about covid for just a minute and instead focus on some of the amazing learning that's happening in our classrooms we've done spotlights before on our students as readers and writers and about them as citizens in pbis we thought tonight we would take this opportunity to talk a little bit about our new math program and give you a little peek into some of the really rich and rigorous work that our students are doing each and every day so i should have done that first so when we think about our students beyond

023our students as mathematicians we need to think about what our goals are for them what we want them to be able to do when they leave us at the elementary level and really what we want them to be able to do as adults in all realms of life there are six really kind of rich goals when we think about the skills that we want for our students as um successful humans who can get along in the world and those are those critical thinking skills those communication skills creativity problem solving perseverance and collaboration so what does that have to do with math uh when we're planning lessons often we root them in content standards right and we think about what do we want our students to know and that's a really great place to start what

024do we want our students to know but when we focus only on content what are we forgetting so when we focus on content one of the things that we're not really emphasizing is the practice standards and that's the part that circles back to those six skills that we just talked about it's the what do we want them to be able to do piece of planning a lesson focusing on the practice standards is how kids show us that they're accessing those content standards so when we talk about what we want them to know these practice standards are how they can show us they know it they're the skills that we want kids to possess to be successful in all areas of life so this is what we're talking about when we talk about practice standards are

025not just about math but liz is going to give you a little bit of how we develop our best practices for teaching thank you you're welcome sure so i just realized that when i put my glasses on with the mask everything steams up so i might squint a little bit i think it's actually better that i keep my glasses off if i want to stay with the presentation so research tells us that there are very explicit teaching practices that are critical components of infect effective math instruction across grade levels these practices include building procedural fluency on a strong foundation of conceptual understanding engaging students in tasks that promote mathematical reasoning and problem solving providing students with opportunities and supports to engage in productive struggle we love productive struggle as they grapple with mathematical ideas and

026relationships i think they've used some of our favorite words just in that line so important facilitating discourse among students to build shared understanding of mathematical ideas using evidence of student thinking to assess the progress and adjust instructions in ways that not only support our students but extend their learning and having teachers take a step back and become facilitators and we've talked a lot over the years in dartmouth about not being the sage on the stage i think we've got that and when it comes to math we really want to have teachers support students and guide them as the students do the heavy lifting and so we talk about all of that kind of rich stuff that we know needs to be present and then we talk about this introduction of our bridges map program and

027so we talk about how does bridges or does bridges incorporate these content standards and these practice standards while using their best practices so to know a little bit about that we gave you a little bit of background information on bridges so this is what really makes bridges different from so many of the other programs that you'll see bridges was designed by the math learning center and they're not a publishing house right so they're there in lies the big difference they're not trying to sell you something they're a non-profit organization that consists of teacher researchers dedicated to k-12 math education the organization grew out of a national science foundation grant and it was founded in 1976 by three math educators and their mission was to inspire and enable individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence

028and ability the curriculum is inquiry-based and it focuses on using visual models to develop mathematical thinking so it's really kind of different than some of what we've seen in traditional math programming in the past it really focuses as liz said on that grappling piece and on that inquiry piece and on that sort of productive struggle where rather than i'm going to show you it kind of takes away a little bit of step away from that i do we do you do that we've seen throughout the years and we're just really kind of posing a problem and letting the kids use those critical thinking skills to figure it out right and that we always kind of talk in really layman's terms about when do you remember something is it when i tell you how to do

029it or when you have figured it out for yourself through kind of trial and error and making those mistakes that you really own how something is done so liz is going to talk to you about the different components of the program and then we'll get into the stuff that we really want to show you which is kids doing it so if you were to walk through any classroom at de mello school during the math block you would see this year a rigorous blend of direct instruction followed by structured investigation and open exploration with bridges we have a program that consists of three main components there's the number corner problem and problems investigations and workplaces so as you'll see in a moment we have videos that kind of highlight each component of the program number corner

030focuses on skill building through a classroom calendar and provides students with rich daily practice and repetitive encounters with broad mathematical topics the problems and investigations portion of a bridge's lesson involves whole group activities and inquiries that also include opportunities for students to work individually as well as with partners and finally workplaces is where they get to play with what they've learned these are math stations that use fun and challenging games and activities that make the concepts that they've been working on and skills tangible to all students give you the next page your name that's me so we're going to take a look at number corner we're going to let our second grade students show you what a number corner looks like and what i love about number corner is the students tend to lead it

031so after a while of having uh it modeled for them the students then kind of step up and take over number corner and uh this number corner is about the 19th day of january i hope you can hear this because it's fantastic oh victoria can you tell us about what you're doing anybody remind you why we're taking 19 out of the bucket 19th day all right so let's look at the way victoria's going to organize these 19 squares that she's taken out for us so make sure i'm going to stop you for a second is that all the red ones that you picked out okay so let's take a look at how many red she picked out i'm going to ask you to have a chat with your partner about this question i haven't asked

032a question is it possible for victoria to have a line of blue that's going to be exactly equal to that line of reddit [Music] what do you think folks yes or no why play some love because there's only one line and they're going think that we can have exactly the same number of red and blue today nathan because i never picked holy grail um so nathan do you think yes or no yes yes you can have the same number of blue and red today actually no okay okay because you only need one plus 19 that's a number and you only need one more to get to so it's on an odd number today so it's impossible for us to have two even columns if we have an odd number all right victoria put up those

033let's take a look in the second video we have another student in the class explaining her thinking about number corner thank you [Music] [Laughter] if the blue had minus one more it would be even so so the red is the less than half because if you added one more red cube it would be easy you've really been listening lately great all right victoria thanks for your help i'm going to do some coloring in it's hard to hear you know i don't make this big again so i hope we can i don't know figure that out um we're gonna move on to some of the problems and investigations problems mr galashan's gonna help me um so we talked about how a lot of the emphasis is on the visual models and so in this first video

034this is a first grade classroom that's learning about using the number line to add and subtract multiples of 10 and they use the help of their friend polly the frog on the number line to help them with that and i'm going to say good morning paulie good morning all right so polly is going to be jumping across our number line today look really close at our number line we did this last week um but our numbers look a little different what's different alan they're counting by 10. my friend can we count by 10 to 100 yeah are you ready [Music] okay now we're going to count from 100 all the way back to zero by 10. you have to stay with mrs t are you ready [Music] you're staying with mrs t did i jump

035to 50 yet all over [Music] all right my friends mrs t is going to ask him a question and my question is what number if we're counting by multiples of 10 what multiple of 10 would come after 30 if we're counting by 10 what would come after 30. ryland ready to trick you know what would come before 80 dawson 70 welcome oh [Music] here we go i have a story for you are you ready one day oh [Music] suddenly she realized she was late to go swimming with her friends she made four hops up to the 40s but she didn't see her friends anywhere so she made two more hops where did she land i need someone to come up here and be nicer but i'm going to read the story again and i want

036you to move paulie to match the story [Music] all right isabel listen to my story you're going to move polly out like say are you ready one day suddenly she realized she was late to go swimming with her friends she made four hops up to the friends 40. so she made two more hops she lands on 60. okay but now mrs t needs to write an equation to match what just happened where did ollie first jump to what number and then where how many did she jump how many more did she jump oh that's a tricky question how many more did she jump rylan she jumped 20 times she jumped 20 more times she jumped two more times which if we're counting by 10 how many is that if you're jumping two times each topic

037by ten how many would that be twenty please jump and where did she land um but there's a problem that 40 plus 20 equals 60 but she couldn't find her friends she could hear them having fun in the water so she turned around and went back two hops or 20 back the other way where do you think she's going to land who's gonna come up here and move polly while i read the story again [Music] but she didn't find her friends she could hear them having fun in the water so she turned around and went two hops were turning back the other way where do you think she's going to land [Music] cooper nice job so my friends if someone is on 60 who can tell me an equation and that's what just happened there

038continuing to karina about we're talking about the use of equations we're talking about the use of multiples we're talking about flexible thinking going forward and backwards on a number line and these are our littlest learners these are our six-year-olds and we watch that grow through the grades when we have kids using that use of multiples of 10 to add on to big numbers and it translates right through the grade levels to using number lines to do fraction work and to do decimal work so the other quick video we're going to show you is our third graders who are exploring volume and capacity so um we talked a little bit about the structure of the lesson where there's a little bit of a whole group explanation and then the kids just sort of go off and

039explore and so this group of kids their objective in this lesson was they had a lot of different containers that were all different sizes and they had to estimate the capacity of the container and then they had to measure it to kind of see where their estimation came out i'm just going to show you these two munchkins on the left i think you all had it emailed it to you i think just for the sake of sound the second one's going to be hard to hear but you should listen to it if you have a minute because they come to this really great conclusion that that container that they were doing was 500 milliliters and it's a thousand milliliter measuring cup and they measured it and realized that they didn't actually have to measure the

040500 milliliters they could have just realized how much they took out of the container and to see how much was left so it was really kind of thinking but i am going to show you these two and hope that you can hear the sort of aha moment that she has okay [Music] okay so write it on your actual spot can you say that again emma what'd you just say you got it kiddo that's the whole point of trial and error and that's the that's the message that we want our kids to have is that there's going to be productive struggle that you're not going to get it you know they were 100 milliliters off and she her partner there was kind of just made it the 100 milliliter difference but she said you know that's

041how we're going to figure it out and these two kids went on to make much more accurate predictions so liz is going to keep moving forward and show you again i'm not sure on the sound um but this is an example of a number corner game um the objective of this game is kids are supposed to be creating two three-digit numbers that the sum is as close to a thousand as they can get just the first one um i think that one's probably clear are you talking about what you just did [Music] and nice and loud because it's muffled through the mask right all right so i'm going to turn to charlie and ask him what he did what did you do with your numbers i basically did the same thing we were full thinking

042try to get 10 in the back nine and then nine to get exactly 1 000. who got the closest all really just playing with numbers they had um eight cards dealt to them and they had to make two three-digit numbers it was just really kind of playing with numbers to get and if you listen to the the kiddos in that video they talk about how they figured out that they had to try to have um a group higher than 10 in their ones column so that they could sort of do that regrouping piece into the tens in the hundreds place and really i think one of the things that liz and i talk all the time about is just the discourse that kids are having around math that it's not um you know a traditional

043where we go and we learn an algorithm when we go and we do a worksheet with 50 problems of it right and then i see it in a real world problem and i don't really know how to apply it the other kind of theme that goes through all of this is that sort of real life application piece whether it's a frog on a number line hopping to see your friends or measuring water which you may need to do in one of the videos we didn't put in there was the discussion that the kids had at the beginning of that lesson and the teacher asked them you know where do you see all of these capacity measurements in your life and the kids were naming all these different um places in their homes that they that

044they use that they might see these measurements um it was hysterical one one little guy was like very anxious to tell us that in um his mom's wine fridge that they have wine and that's how they know they're recognizing also just that sort of application piece with that these are not just things that i do only in school in my math class but these are things that really do apply to our lives in some capacity way shape or form i really hope that these are the ones that come out more than ever though because um one of the you know it's one thing for liz and i talk about how we love hearing the kids talk about math and hearing seeing the kids explore math but we really wanted to hear from the kids what

045they love about math i think i've always said i wear multiple hats at the middle school and one of them is of that as a parent and my second grader tells me all the time that her best days are the days that they do double math because math is just so fun so we have some other kiddos here who i hope you can hear and tell you what they love about math melania what do you like about the math program this year and i like that you really get to express like different strategies because last year you couldn't really do that much strategies but this year fantastic and what do you like about games like the one you just played i like that it's really fun and you get a chance a good chance to

046win and it's really exciting because you never know what you're gonna get and there's different ways to win that she plays she talked about number corner she said so number corner replaced we used to have calendar math if you went to our classrooms and it was had a lot of really great components to it but i think what is the addition to this is that strategy-based piece where we're asking kids to really use different strategies you could kind of dial that get that when you were talking to the second graders like how did you know that they weren't going to be at the same number of red and yellow and blue columns and this is one of our fifth graders who i just i could talk to all day so i hope you can hear

047him so eloquent okay starting out math this year with bridges in upper corner i felt that i didn't understand it but usually i just wasn't using all my brain power so um i agree with sophia as reaching tables did help us and we were also learning how to add a subtract onto the number line and as maggie said um the the the number of seconds came alive it was as if um bob had 50 burgers and he had to divide them by 10. so it came alive almost so like maddie said like we didn't so we don't have to do 36 times 25 so i think i really understand math and i'm really going to fifth grader so i think right from the mouth of babes math comes alive and they are able to understand

048it and i love that he's talking about that sort of math on the number line that that thread that goes through right so we see these kids learning this in the first grade it goes all the way through to what they're doing in fifth grade and liz'll wrap up talking about our teachers and their love of mouth so this is from the same classroom that our friend in the last video was from and uh in in talking to teachers about the math program we know that whenever there's an implementation year there are struggles but many of our teachers are seeing the benefits already and what i love about what mrs aguiar has to say is that even though she's a fifth grade teacher teaching the first year of this program and there's a lot of

049backfilling involved she can still see the value the kids are really learning and kind of embracing it all which is just a thrill so i'm hoping you can hear her i don't think so just talk nice and loudly all right three two one so even in the five months that we've been working with the bridges program so far it's already really easy to see that the students are taking these hands-on inquiry-based lessons and they're learning math and they're learning self-confidence so they're really making strides with the program the structure of the program is such that there are certain elements that repeat such as workplaces problem strings investigations and that allows students to get comfortable with these certain formulas and these certain constructs and then they can really focus in on the math and see these

050same structures repeating throughout units it also enables them to improve their math work and to work on skills like creative problem solving collaboration communication and these are all things that are great for them in math and beyond i could already tell that with the alignment of the program as the years go on the students will become more and more familiar with the elements and again that will enable them to focus more on the math so for example this year workplaces are something that are new to everybody but next year when the fourth graders come up to fifth graders they'll already know the routines and the procedures surrounding workplaces and they'll be able to do it all that much better with the new content in math so based on the students engagement so far um and

051their their great participation i would say that this program is really being successful and helping them to become better young mathematicians thank you so i think the one last thing that liz and i need to say is we would be completely remiss if we didn't um give a huge shout out to jennifer fitton who is our math coach because i will say unequivocally that we would not be in the position to have these kinds of great conversations about how wonderful things are going without the support she's been able to give our staff so we've had a lot of after-school meetings um we've had a lot of common planning time that she has come in she has gone in she actually was teaching the number corner in that second grade lesson that you were listening to

052she's modeled lessons for teachers she's gone and supported them and really i think that sort of what do you need approach that she's taken with the teachers has helped them to find the success that they've needed so i would be uh like i would love to say that that's liz and i that has nothing to do with listening other than saying we hired a really great math coach um so we really are so grateful for that person um who has really really helped our staff so i'm gonna um end it there and go back to that screen because that was my one and only job at the end so i'll leave it there but uh turn it back over to you for any questions that you may have for us somebody have any questions or

053comments mr nunes yeah thank you thank you ladies very interesting and the only thing i i have to say in all citizens is i was absolutely thrilled watching the teachers get the student involvement and you know and i don't mean dragging it out of them but making it fun as if to say you know especially when they were doing the increments of 10 and she was going backwards and she stopped and they kept going type of deal and nope now we'll go back and start again type of deal and how they worked at it and you know the the student comment so my hat's off nice job oliver no i'll just you know say a lot of the same you know great job i love to see the you know there's nothing better especially in

054the year this year too of the pandemic seeing the students interact in the classrooms with each other with the teacher um you know for me that's that's just awesome in addition it seems as though you know we're a long overdue for a new math program and it looks like uh this program is uh looks like it's gonna be paying dividends and especially to see the um engagement there i think that's huge so it was a great presentation so i thank you both was amarillo yeah i just wonderful um i miss you um but um you know all of the things that this program seems to kind of touch upon in terms of just those good skills that can you can that that um you know can across all environments really that critical thinking that teamwork

055you know and it's um i can imagine how this pro bridges program is engaging even more students who might not have had you know that confidence to feel like they were a math person right um we didn't like numbers or didn't understand numbers that kind of approaching it in this way engaging and playing and working with and having that opportunity to you know under that so important to realize that we don't always all have to have the answer right away but you know there's so much value in doing and and and and uh learning how to figure things out on your on your own it's just wonderful so thank you this wonderful program i was uh bummed when you you know you stopped it we have i can listen to them now at home but

056again but uh yeah just hearing the little voices and and watching the that fun classroom um you know i want to i don't really want to be in first grade again but that did look like a lot of fun but i might want to volunteer if ever i had a day off but um great job thank you for bringing this to us ms wait um no i just love the videos they were so great thank you for that you know i know with some auditory issues but i you know just same thing like seeing their faces and i think you know the echovid they're not on computers you know and they're have manipulatives that are i love that that they're going back and they have you know just every it feels like that you know

057it's the merge of science and math and i just i love the physicality and again to see the teamwork and the excitement i just i feel like it's an infusion of what even just even culturally they needed you know from their social emotional needs like i just and then just um you know the real life applications i think these kids you know i felt like the other program again we saw kids coming through and um that really had improved numbers since you know and i think that was what we had been working on as a district and i was impressed but i think this even you know to echo what uh miss amaral said like takes it to that other level where you know you're really gonna have these kids who you know because it

058looks like they're feeling like they're playing games and i thought that was you know that's really exciting and you know and then taking the ownership and you know realizing that mistakes are part of the journey and all of those things i think we're uh it's it's really cute and i and i love demelo and i think you guys just do such a great job so totally biased but yeah thank you so evan you have anything you want to add i thought it was great i loved watching it yeah thank you you know and i'll just add i think you know it could be popular today to decry sort of the new math education and conceptual understanding but you know as someone who learned to love math and found my ways to conceptual understanding of math

059in spite of the instruction that i received it warms my heart to see kids starting right away because that conceptual understanding is so fundamental to future math and i know it can be unpopular because the homework comes home to us and we don't know how to do it because it doesn't resemble the way that we were taught math but i think we're going to have a generation of kids who have learned to enjoy math and who are engaged in it as opposed to seeing it as you know a subject to dread and so i'm really excited to see that focus on that conceptual math and developing that deep understanding as opposed to that rote memorization it's really great so thank you and i love when they do get to that algorithm piece right and they

060can unders they can explain it but they go oh my god this is so much more efficient and we can have those conversations about efficiency and why that works but they understand what they're doing right as opposed to like just carry the one or whatever you had no idea what you're doing right but they do in tamari to your point with the integration of science if you watch that other video with the kids doing water it's so sweet because at one point you hear one of the kids off camera say something about science and he goes well this kind of like is science it's so it's very sweet but they are definitely hands-on and enjoying it so thank you for this opportunity for us to kind of highlight i'm sorry that the sun was not

061great um but you are all welcome to come walk through any classroom you'd like at any time and see it in the flesh so thank you thank you very much have a good evening all right so the next item on our agenda correct me if i'm wrong is the proposed um calendar under old business uh does anybody have any comments or questions about the proposed school calendar i knew this last last meeting so yeah uh do we need to vote to so i will entertain a motion to approve the proposed school calendar okay so i have a motion by mr nunes a second by miss amaral is there any further discussion on the calendar all in favor aye aye aye opposed all right that motion oh evan i forgot to ask you if you had

062any comments about the calendar i'm sorry no i don't have to put you over there because i look this way i'll remember that next time or next time just stand up and wave if i forget you i'm sorry all right so the next item under uh old business is the masc resolution regarding the department of alligator elementary and secondary education school district audits um i'm gonna hand this over to mr oliver you want to speak speak about this since you took the lead on this one sure absolutely and i i hope everyone has a chance to look it over i can read it i have a copy if people don't have it but i think everyone has it i sent it to kate late late this afternoon so great so i think it was uh

063back in december several meetings back where dr gifford was discussing uh the concerns amongst the educational community that uh deci is seems like they're going full full in with uh program review audits and different types of audits in all the school districts and that's simply because you know for a long time there they weren't i think they weren't doing it or that you know they weren't um they're working remotely but nonetheless uh they may have the time right now to um to conduct these audits across the state and um where we see it as a problem where dr gifford was saying with her association is that these audits are extremely time um a huge time commitment as well as a from a human capital commitment um and it pulls it pulls staff away for interviews

064um it put you know there's an in there's a number of hours that are involved in these things so uh if everyone remembers that we had a discussion amongst us and i said you know what why don't we look at i'll i'll take the lead on trying to uh put together a resolution on that we can send to our our state reps department of education maybe the governor's office and anyone else that you seem would seem fit this is what i came up with it's obviously open to criticism or anything you want to add take away but i'll read it out publicly whereas the dartmouth school committee understands the need for state oversight and audits through the department of elementary and secondary education and the benefits of program review audits whereas these audits are significant

065time and human capital commitment to the dartmouth public schools and other public school districts across the state and whereas school districts are already being pushed to their limits to ensure students are educated and there are four and there are faculty not quarantined and in place to support our students in schools during the global covert 19 pandemic therefore be it resolved that the dartmouth school committee is asking for a moratorium in these programs review audits until such time that faculty and staffing are at normal levels and time won't be taken away from the education of our students in the dartmouth public schools comments questions i'll make a motion to approve a second so i just have one sort of comment concern question and second to the last line right we have the norm i don't want

066to imply that we have non-normal numbers of faculty in our buildings right because we have teachers in our buildings do you know what i'm saying um so i know our substitute levels are low and so that's and we have some people out with covid but that seems to imply that they're they're not like i don't want to cause concern among the community that we're like not appropriately covering our classes i guess is what i'm saying um and so i don't know if we want to say you know until next year for two years i don't know i'm just raising the question as a item for discussion mr nunes well um could you right there where it says at uh could we say like could you put three pandemic pre-pandemic normal pre pre-pandomic wow i know

067what you mean pre-pandemic uh levels yeah okay i mean it's i mean i get what i get what mr oliver's getting at right we're stretched thin but at the same point in time i don't want to create the impression that we are not adequately covering our classrooms because we are it's hard but we are right yeah i mean students students are learning but i mean yes and i i think if you look in the contents of it this is also relating to school all 351 school districts in the commonwealth in vocational schools and and such right so there may be some that may not be at normal levels right so this is the this this is a catch 22. yeah okay let's wait what if we said and again i'm just writing right now um

068until the current health crisis has passed and state adjustments to protect public health care are no longer in place in the public schools or something in that yeah i'm okay with that if you can you yes i did it quickly because i was just jotting down as we're talking so it says until the current health crisis has passed in state adjustments to protect public health um in the public school public health are no longer in place but we could adjust to say something about public schools or protect so where is that where are you putting so this is until such time that instead of and we would be getting rid of that faculty and staffing our normal levels and time will be taken away from the education of our students we would be replacing it

069with so you're going to get rid of faculty and staffing all the way i mean i basically think what we want to say is until the pandemic is over right correct right that's what we want to say in fancier words exactly miserable right well i just um again similarly but just a little bit more succinct until faculty and staffing are less vulnerable to the potential impact caused by and i didn't finish that sentence i just wanted to get that you know just that we're vulnerable to it every day at any moment although we are covered right i don't know i just thought that might be a little bit less i don't know um all right let's take a second to think about this nice job chris though yeah thank you right it's it's i mean

070it's excellent i think i guess what i would say is what we're really trying to say too is that we could be at normal staffing limits but dr gifford and mr kylie could be spending their whole day contract tracing right even though we're at norming we're at normal staffing levels right so what we want to say is until our faculty and staff are not wiped out by other pandemic duties right like or until we're back to normal and and so it's kind of there but i think we might want to say it until our superintendent and assistant superintendent and then the finance are doing the anomaly they're normal jobs right yeah um you know welcome back to this next week after edits it's up to you well i mean i think the other thing that

071we could do is we could just sort of approve it and empower mr oliver to make minor i mean it's not like this is like a bylaw that is going to bind future generations for 50 years um i might be comfortable to say if we mis if mr oliver which if you would mind making some minor edits to that and then we can just take your recommendations put them together and yeah i mean and basically i think we're all in agreement that what we want to say is until when like put these on hold until the pandemic's over yeah agree right right so i'm gonna get work and they show up back in the office right right all right so we have a motion on the table are you okay with us uh sort of

072adjusting or making an amendment to that motion how do you want to handle this mr knight if chris is going to bring it back how about if i would draw my motion okay until the next meeting okay that work but let me let let's withdraw you're going to withdraw your motion and let me suggest we do another motion i would like to entertain a motion to approve uh to approve to empower mr oliver to make amendments to the statement as presented and to send it along to uh our representatives and the governor and so on and so forth per our discussion would that work that'll that'll that's fine so i'll madam chair i will withdraw my uh motion okay i'll withdraw that for my first motion okay so mr nunes has withdrawn his motion so

073i will now entertain emotion as described mr miss gunther day that we empower mr oliver to make minor revisions per our discussion to the motion and send it off to our state reps the governor jesse all right so i have a motion by miss waite second by miss amarillo is there any further discussion karen none all in favor aye opposed all right so that carries unanimously all right so the next item under old businesses discussion of the dartmouth logo um both mr nunes and mr oliver requested that we put this on here and this is the point i will say that i fall on my sword we were sort of moving along as a committee the committee had plans to invite representatives from local tribes we had an email from mr ventura mr andrews and

074miss andrews i had spoken with some representatives of the american congress of i think the american indian i think it is called um and so we were going to have the committee was going to invite sort of native amer uh some native american representatives to come talk to the committee um then like work got crazy and then the pandemic kept happening and then we're in the holidays and so that hasn't happened because i haven't been able to connect with mr ventura he and i have been exchanging emails i asked for some dates he got back to me later and then those dates didn't work and then we so we went back and forth a few times um it is the intention of the of the diversity committee and i need to pick that up is

075to schedule that hearing with the sort of native american groups and then also to do a public comment and hearing so two separate sessions i think the semester has started i can get that moving along if the committee desires the other thing that we can talk about is whether or not we want to do those sessions jointly with the diversity committee those are open meetings that we have to post so we can post them that the school committee is going to be there as well if we wanted to do them together i think that was also the time when we were in transition from zoom meetings to in-person meetings and then also the transition from not being open to the public to being open to the public and so all that happening made it a

076little difficult to figure some things out kathleen you're going to add something yeah yeah i just wanted to add that while you're taking you know dying on that sword um i essentially was the vice chair of that committee and so i as well um just you know life and well you know a memorandum for please forgive us for dropping the ball here but um i was able to have some nice conversations with uh with uh mr ventura um although i think he was waiting for me to get back to him about something just you know covet quarantine and and all things considered um all of what you said is is accurate i think so i guess we kind of can ask mr oliver mr nunes both wanted to see on the agenda um interested to

077hear your thoughts but also um also the question i have would would we want to schedule it as a joint meeting or just as a meeting of the diversity committee if we're inviting some of our native american tribal neighbors to come so thoughts questions comments well what i would like to see madam chair to be perfectly honest with you is uh that this subject in in all seriousness uh just be put to bed tonight okay i mean i don't think there's uh in my personal opinion is uh to uh to to to drag this on this is something that's been going on for uh now on three years from the best part of my at least two and a half a lot closer to three years i mean i found some notes at home from

078uh october of 19. so i mean personally i i would just like to see this committee uh reaffirmed the uh the dartmouth indian as its as its logo and if we need to uh have discussions with the wampanoag tribe and their representatives i'm good with that but i think that's what we need we need to do it at this point in time thank you mr oliver thank you madam chair so what was the last time dr gifford that you had any kind of conversations with chairwoman um charlotte andrews it was only that one time i don't remember if it was the beginning of this year yeah school year yeah i don't know the date but it was a couple of months ago when the committee had been meeting quite regularly and we had that conversation

079yeah so so i guess i i share some of the same sentiment as mr nunes as th this is something that's been going on for quite a while now um back and forth and where the school department is in this limbo um in the sports teams and everything else and i think the bottom line here is that the tribe has asked the ask the town the select board the school committee the town as a whole to engage in conversations with them um and i think it's important that we do that so i guess from from my point of view is i i'd just like to see us reaffirm the dartmouth indian along with continuing to engage the tribe in meaningful discussions but we need at some point in time we need to move on um

080and i just feel as though it's getting to be that time so i just want to add i'm going to add my thoughts i'm going to take prerogative of the chair now right um dartmouth is not part of the territory of the gay head aquina wampanoag and there's another federally recognized tribe in massachusetts that has stated their opposition to the use of native mascots the mash puapanoag who are actually territorial closer to us than the gayhead wampanoag additionally the bokassa wampanoag claim dartmouth is part of their ancestral and territorial lands i have had communication with council members at the bocas at wampanoag and they are opposed to the use of the indian so i cannot in good faith affirm the use of the indian mascot when i've had members of recognized tribes that have just

081as much claim to the use of our mascot as the gay head wampanoag and have told me that they are opposed to it i will also not i cannot as as as a member of this committee vote to have this decision without hearing from the community miss wait and then miss amarill so i guess one of my my thoughts on this is that we had committed to this committee that they were going to we were going to use the committee and that's why we appointed the committee to study this in depth and to invite all of those opinions so we can hear those and this committee would be for us to become in essence an expert committee that we can lean on so i really like to see that process be expedited and honored so

082until you know whether or not we decide if we want to sit in as a group you know on that next set of meetings you know i think that is a separate you know article for discussion but i want to honor the process because i think that's what we had said that we would do um i agree that we need to expedite it i think it's difficult again covet has thrown a wrench into everything but um i do want to honor that process because that's how we agreed to proceed so and again and understanding that it wasn't just about the the name the mascot but also about a host of other topics and diversity inclusion issues so i again that's kind of my where i'm coming from so i'm not ready to make a decision

083because i don't want to devalue our commitment to that committee that we set up so that's miss amarillo mary just uh the last part of your statement was what i was going to lead with in terms of you know the diversity and equity committee and inclusion committee what is about many more things that happened to be i can't remember from the notes but i think it was just the what came to a head or voted upon as far as like taking first but it is bigger than this topic and back in in 2019 where i made the mistake i think i was overwhelmed with a different set of issues back then but or misunderstood whatever it was but i would love to engage in i think dialogue and conversation is so important um and folks

084no matter what if folks weren't we if i didn't lead from a place of welcoming because i remember we had difficulty communicating and and who's going to take us seriously if we were approaching it from one way or bias on one one side or the other but i think it's really important that we we invite and we we welcome the opportunity to talk to um folks and to just dialogue more and and hear from the community i mean i i hear from the community um and i hear hear what what this is and uh i just think i want to engage in conversation about this more myself i think it's important that we have you know in the disability community it's like nothing without it you know nothing about us without us and who am

085i to say right but i i i want to hear from from everyone i don't feel prepared to one way or the other say no or yes vote nor yes tonight but i do want it i do want to proceed from a place of welcoming all opinions and all conversation and hearing directly from um you know our our native american um friends so that's important to me i think this is an opportunity to sort of get it right and be a little bit more thorough and well-rounded so that's my thought tonight all right any other discussion comments mr oliver i would just like to ask that we there's some kind of timeline set and you know when this committee was first put together i think part of it was my idea was the fact that

086it was going to be more than just the dartmouth indian it was going to be diversity right it was going to be all those different pieces to it and in the paper and all that we're hearing about is the dartmouth indian so we we need to really get through this we need to make a decision on it and then we need to move forward and put this behind us because this does come up every three or four years so this committee at some point in time needs to take a vote either yay and nay on how we're going to handle this situation um in the committee the diversity committee needs to move on and start let's start looking at other issues um because it's just it's pa long past due i understand that but i'm

087just gonna say it's been a rough year for all of us and you know i volunteered to chair that committee because it has to comply with open meeting law and so really miss amarillo and i were the only ones who can do that and i just have too much on my plate i have a full-time job i have kids that have issues i'm chairing the school committee chairing the diversity committee was one straw too many i'm gonna do the best i can but if we want a timeline then i need help what i'm saying is if we need a timeline i need help i can't manage it all so if someone would like to help me move the process along they're welcome to come and talk to me about how they can help me manage

088it it's just i think i think miss ambrose in the same boat it's been hard on all of us and it's it's just one too many are you looking to step down or as chair i just need help moving the process forward because i exchanged i would say five or six emails with mr ventura giving him dates this and that and he would say i want to talk first i don't have time to talk right now can you tell me what dates work and by the time we get back to each other those dates would have passed and so i'd ask for and it just i i can't manage the scheduling the posting the all of that i've got to do that for this i've got to do it for that i've got to reach

089out to all of the people who who want to be involved it's a lot i don't need to step down i need support but at some point madam chair you i completely respect and i understand where you're coming from but maybe we we tamper it down a little bit because there's there's like you just named a dozen moving pieces to this and as a committee why can't we look at making a recommendation to all right just set up a couple of dates up it's i understand what you're trying to do shannon i certainly appreciate it bringing in trying to be thoughtful from from all the sides i i i respect that but it's all time it's it's it's all it's time consumption it's time that not a lot of us have so tell us what

090you need do you just need help yeah i need help doing the the scheduling and the arranging and there are about three or four groups that we need to find a collective date for them to come and speak to the committee right it's not just the gehad wampanoag it's the mash p wampanoag it's the pokhacet wampanoag the american congress of the american indian would like to speak because they represent tribes in massachusetts as well so i've got four groups that i'm trying to coordinate and get a hold of and nail down dates for and that's tough particularly when sometimes people take a week and a half to respond to your emails why aren't we just talking to the two federally recognized tribes because the terror the none of their territory overlaps with the town of

091dartmouth the pokaset wampanoag are recognized by the state for a variety of state programs and the pokaset wampanoag claim dartmouth as part of their territorial rights i understand that but they're not fed i will i will not exclude the tribe for whom dartmouth is their native land and if we want to move forward with excluding the tribe that claims dartmouth as their native territory i think there's a problem i think we're not being inclusive i'm not going to start having this conversation now that's all i have miss amarillo no i was just um because i i know there was a lot of back and forth and and i'm i've been of no help um but it could it be something that we you know we're thinking of of of convening with tribal folks from variety

092and then on a separate occasion or on this i can't remember with the community in terms of like events okay would it be um i know like we've i know exactly i'm living it but would it be helpful if we were to just set a date us here now enough in advance that maybe one representative from each of those groups could make it would that be helpful i i i can be very organized but my life is chaos too and um you know there's a workforce crisis and i don't have help from my son it's either my husband or i it's my husband's birthday tonight happy birthday um but so um i don't know if it's for me if i have a date in advance i can make arrangements in time so that either myself

093or somebody can speak for me with uh would that be helpful would that with that fortunately you know if you're going to make the last meeting and we had the privilege of seeing you right so if you can't make it in person you could right right you know that that type of but i agree with you you know sit down figure out some dates okay far enough away but not too far away too far you know to be honest with you i would say you know sometime the beginning of march okay give everybody a chance type of deal and that because you know the city and start to try to figure out how you get we're going to be getting into february school vacation that type of deal so we get into the beginning of

094march there's enough time to look at this and say on a tuesday night and i'm just gonna and i don't know much dates so please don't somebody you know march 2nd is a tuesday night now i have no idea it's a wednesday you were close mister okay but you know my that was so much for us is that and that's when we're going to have that meeting to have a discussion you know invite everybody here's the date if you can make it fine if you can't sorry but senate representative senator representative you want to send a written statement it can be read into the record per se and we just move on all right do we want to go with march first no i won't be here you won't be here second week in march

095would be better how about march 8th works for me i think that seems we have a meeting the night before so we can do that the eighth as well march 8th works for me my march 8th works for me same okay so we'll set up with march 8th um i will work miss ganther if you could help me sort of manage some of this our guests that are coming and we'll post the agenda if if we can do that i will get the people who need to be there if you want me to reach out to anyone shannon yeah i will yeah be more than health happy too all right it'll be good i think to have parameters set up prior because it could go on all night so what we're doing on the 18th

096we are just asking sort of tribal members we had a presentation from a group before and i think they did about 15 minutes and then 15 minutes for q a i think if we've got three or four groups coming in telling them i don't think we use 15 minutes for q a but telling them a 10 to 15 minute presentation is is fine if they want to circulate materials in advance that's fine too that but i think we can sort of set with the same parameters that we we use i mean mr newness thank you i'm sorry i should have lost my hand i apologize uh if they've got information that they're going to be talking about if they can provide it ahead of time so if we've got it that would be help that

097would be helpful sure miss wait so then should we set the next date because i know we've talked about a whole you know different set of folks that we want to have come in for a public comment do we want to set that date now or do we want to wait until you know we've heard from this first group before i'm just thinking in terms again getting this process moving forward do we want to you know because then we could if we wait too long then we could hit april vacation you know again and it just becomes like one so we had two volunteers on the committee miss chamberlain and miss murphy who are willing to help set up some parameters for a public comment we had been waiting i think what happened is we

098waited for the decision about when these were because it's i'm not going to try to do a public comment meeting on zoom like just no no so we were waiting for that decision but then the idea was that we would set up two podiums so that we could go back and forth right so that would allow if you're one side in favor of the mascot one side oppose we could go back and forth and that would allow us to so if we want to set a date for that we can i i think we could enlist miss chamberlain and miss murphy to help arrange that since they volunteered to do that we could do it two weeks after that meeting that would put it on 3 22. i'm sorry and what was the time for

099the 8th what are we saying for a time i cannot make it before 6 30. so 6 30 yeah um and i think we could do the same for if the 22nd works for people yep yep all right so i will work with ms genther and the the diversity committee and we'll move forward with making arrangements for that any further discussion on the issue who's amarillo i just want to say thank you to everyone that was really a great way to kind of wrap it in and and put a date to it and uh yeah it's actually our idea i do tend to come in you know in other capacities for like the let's just end this now and make that motion um but yeah i just want to thank everyone for for that see

100because it has been very difficult it's hard to sort of explain and and but everyone's living it and um you know i just we're just so much going on just like we're saying asking for grace during that moment your i can't even think of the word about us being audited two different ways that resolution um we just have to give each each one one another grace to just the understanding that we're all going through difficult stuff and we can only do our best so i appreciate the teamwork that just happened thanks ms ambrell all right moving on to new business school choice so dr gifford now you had some data i think to share with us about school choice yeah um between mr kylie and myself we just want to say that we support the

101going continuing with school choice as you see we have currently 123 students enrolled i did check with mr tebow again and he's in full support of continuing the program so the students have all done well and participate as active members of the community and um it's been a good program for us so i think mr kylie wanted to go over a little bit of the spending or what's been going on with that sure so so those students represent about six hundred thousand dollars in revenue um that is used for a variety of purposes i gave you some detail about that through the years it's it's supported the largest project that it supported is the one-to-one computing initiative we've been fortunate this year to have some other sources of funding for for one-to-one computing relating to

102the pandemic and everything so we haven't had to rely on on school choice monies for those uh as heavily but um but it's been there for that it's been there to support the stadium project which um i just i will mention in the superintendent's update later tonight um as well as a whole variety of initiatives uh k through k k through 12 that um you know have supported kids and activities that we think are valuable so we'd like to continue to do that any questions comments nice nest egg all right so i will entertain a motion to participate in school choice for the 2022-2023 school year second so i have a motion by miss wait a second by mr oliver is there any further discussion on the motion got to keep remembering sorry evan to

103look this way let's make sure yeah i have no comment on it okay good you guys have to let me know if you see evan over there going like this keep looking this way you just yell all right so hearing no further discussion uh all in favor aye aye aye opposed all right so that motion carries four two one thank you thank you uh next item on the agenda under new business is the annual report dr gifford i just want to say thank you to everyone in the leadership team all the directors etc principals admin that participated in getting the report to you and i do hope you have time to read it because it's very thorough and it does explain a lot of what has been going on which you know everything anyway but

104it just is a nice report so we'll take a vote on that uh would be much appreciated i'll entertain a motion to approve the 2021 annual report so moved all right so i have a motion by mr nunes a second if i miss wait any discussion just a nice dress i just i i am so i i was i read through this actually a couple times i felt like i needed to do my due diligence because i've been feeling like such a slacker but all of the effort that was put forth i've highlighted in different colors i had one question which um it's not really a it's not a critical question it's just a question that i should probably know but under like the special ed circuit breaker money it says like i think well

105this year i don't know if it's this year not last year with like 37 students um it said something about 106 941 like special indicator funding um does that ring a bell i was just wondering what that was um mrs amaral was that in the um in the special ed section yes in front and i looked at it from and maybe what you're going to tell you're probably going to tell me i'm looking at the wrong thing here but um well it's fiscal year 22 so yeah it may be it's under the page well it's under like desi's um spreadsheet um on well it's yeah where am i right here special oh special indicator and oh and oh okay never mind maybe i answered my own question indicate well special indicator instruction and tuition but

106it was just not every district has anything you know a number in that line so i just was wondering but i guess it's just a tuition and it's none of my business i wouldn't say that i can't i can get you some more information about that mr nunes did you have a question or uh just just just the comment yeah i didn't print it out i i read through it type of deal and i agree with the superintendent nice you know hats off to uh the administrators and and everybody for in to mr kylie for the financial information and all the the general information that's in there and go back and look at you know even though there was a pandemic it's you know everything that went on and you know you moved you know

107fall sport you know became fall too and you know how our athletes did and you know then you get into the to the music and all the other sports and the different schools and what was going on you know between phys ed and you know classroom teaching you know we had a nice presentation tonight you know with the the developer school so you know there's a lot of work that goes into it and you know i applaud everybody for doing that thank you any other comments questions just thank you thank you all right so hearing no further discussion all in favor aye aye aye opposed all right that motion carries unanimously uh dr gifford time for the superintendent okay just a couple of things um as we mentioned we're still continuing without audits until maybe

108jesse will say no but i don't think so i don't have much faith in that um so we've just been continuing to attend webinars on how to go about completing the audit and all of that the ell one was just last week um the tiered focus monitoring that so a number of folks have been attending those i told you last time that cushman school had been awarded another two thousand dollars from the feinstein group well now they have another five thousand their ticket was picked i guess they pick one from all the schools every week this foundation is incredible and also part of school receive five thousand dollars so we have a lot to be thankful for for the feinstein um organization uh we did start the well we've put out for the um i

109i told you that we got the fy 22 math acceleration academies grant i think i sent you that in an email for ninety two thousand five hundred dollars and we'll be running uh camps february and april vacations for four days and we've already posted for those folks that will be teaching and as well as supervising um and it will be uh six six elementary session uh people middle school would looking at two high school we don't think we'll get a lot of people kiddos that want to attend during vacation but we're trying and of course we'll have some special area teachers as well so those postings have gone out we've gotten a lot of interest from teachers so i was happy about that and as much as we were thinking we didn't want to do

110that because we didn't think we get enough people but we are so far and as evan mentioned tonight we were really happy with the ap computer science award i sent that to you with them and as you remember we started the work a couple years back with really enhancing the pathway for computer science and then we hired the teachers and really kind of honing in on what should be taught in that so we were happy about that and also um attendance has kind of been back to normal-ish i guess you know not as bad as it was a couple of weeks ago so we're happy about that and just an update on the covid at home testing program which you're aware of we i have to say at this time desi of course they probably

111have a lot of help unlike us that usually with implementing the new testing program we submitted it we were approved tests are supposed to be starting to be shipped this week we are we've received about a thousand people between students and faculty that have signed up that they would opt in they would want to participate and as we said the tests will go home it's a for two weeks at a time the schools i've met with them and they are working the logistics on how to be passed out to the students and staff and we're asking that folks commit to testing themselves on sundays to hopefully keep covered out of the schools and uh there's a jesse did a nice job with the spreadsheets that we're able to get the data from and also that

112folks would then um report in if they are positive that's the that's what we hope um so with that i know mr kylie wanted to give a few updates as well so i'll turn it over to him thank you dr gifford just quick update on the stadium storage project storage building project so that you had awarded that some time ago where we're in process definitely facing long lead times and which you know i think we would expect unfortunately but um it's going to be a long drawn out project where um in the process of trying to complete the design work for the rest of that project with the hope that we would bid it out this spring and see what happens i don't expect that it's going to be particularly favorable but it's important that

113we understand what the what the situation is and then try and determine okay can we move forward um with the rest of the project at this point in time or do we need to come up with some other strategy so um but that's all in the works but i have a meeting about that again tomorrow um the other thing i just wanted to mention was uh that at the next school committee meeting we'll be presenting um the budget for fy23 so uh we will we hope to um we definitely will prior to that time have a budget subcommittee meeting so i believe that dr jenkins and mrs amaral are the two members on the budget subcommittee so and i think mr nunes is the alternate yes so um so there's lots of support so uh

114so at some point prior to that february 14th meeting we'll we'll uh try and arrange for something and i'll just be in touch with you about that see if we can find a time that'll work and we'll invite a member of the finance committee to that meeting and you know have a little discussion about where we're heading for the 14th so miss wait yes i just had a question um and this goes back to when we had our presentation from the new bedford vocational folks we had talked about possibly doing a stabilization fund i think mr oliver had brought that up just to kind of give us some leeway when we're trying to deal with the fluctuations um from year to year i don't know if you weren't able to attend last that i listened

115to it yeah i think i watched it on youtube so i thought that was you know a good suggestion back on that yeah yeah i i can bring that up to um you know to the the folks at town hall that that stabilization fund it wouldn't be a it wouldn't have anything to do with dartmouth public schools it would be in relation to a town stabilization fund with a reserve for vocational you know education costs so that would be something that would have to be initiated really from the select board side of things or the finance committee i suppose but i will bring that up to them mr oliver thank you madam chair uh two things mr kylie one being help me help me remember here the uh we actually awarded the uh storage building

116yes we did so is that are we still moving forward with that or are we gonna with with that award yeah right now we are trying to procure the um the materials okay it's oh it takes a long time yeah i just thought there might have been some conversation about whether or not the um developer the contractor might have pulled was thinking about backing out nope nope they're they're on board met with them last wednesday been meeting with them weekly okay that's going to be with them this wednesday um they're they're on board that makes me feel just uh it's it's a test of uh patients yeah the supply chain is what it is but i just wasn't sure where we were at with the the contract metal buildings aren't the best thing to be

117ordering right now unfortunately and i i think metal itself is a is a problematic item sure agreed and just along those lines of facilities and construction and all that i had asked a couple before christmas and asking for the committee's uh pleasure on whether or not we could bring mr richard ferreira or rick ferreira at one of our next school committee meetings to recognize him for not only the work he's done for the diamond schools but you know for the police station and a lot of other buildings and facilities in town thank you for that reminder miss oliver i think we're all in agreement we'd like to do that other questions or comments mr nunes yeah thank you madam chair just just one mr kyle have you heard uh about a capital planning committee meeting

118i just mentioned to dr gifford today that we've yet to hear anything regarding that which is pretty far behind yeah schedule but um i know that on the town side of uh their operation they are attempting to give people more uh time to complete their different tasks be it the budget or the capital improvement submissions um but i i've yet to yet to hear about a meeting okay if you do i will keep you informed thank you sir appreciate that all right so the next item on the agenda is the report of the chair i just want to give you all an update i just sent right at the beginning of this meeting we're not going to discuss them tonight i just i don't like to give information via email because of open meeting law

119but i sent you three links to sample student advisory committee policies for your reference the policy is j-i-b-b if anyone wants to google it some school districts have it some don't i sent you examples from milton hull and north reading milton and hull are kind of generic restatements of the state law i also asked worcester she said well it's very clear that you have to elect by class and i was like it's not clear it's not in there so that's when i started googling um the one from north reading i would recommend that you read that has actual procedures like the i'm not i'm not entirely convinced that the procedures make sense because they say there's an election every year you elect one from the junior class one sophomore junior senior and then they have

120two year terms so i don't know why you would have an election every year if you had two year terms at the same point in time you've got a new sophomore class coming in every year and yeah yeah i guess that's how it works but so they have very detailed like these are the how the election works these are the members these are their functions and responsibilities so in terms of having detail that was the most detailed one that i i could find i shared those to you again it's policy j i b b and it's milton hall and north reading they're in your email the links to that if we can have a discussion of those when you've had the chance to read it but i just don't like to do communication between all

121of us via email so that's why i waited until now miss wait you have a question no i was just going to say that um i just want to make sure at our next meeting on the february 14th that we can talk about that like a little bit more detail and i'll try and touch base with mr tebow too and just see what his thoughts are and possibly like i can't sketch out a model just can you i think i've copied you on that email so that it's though so the links you won't have gotten it yet can you forward that email to mr tebow so he can look at those as well and also to evan i'll include evan on that can you forward it to me as well that would be great and

122yeah my intention was to just tell you i sent you that tell everyone what it was and then we can have them continue that discussion after everyone had a chance to look at them that's all i have for my report anyone else other matters may not have been anticipated mr nunes yeah just i just got two items uh madam chair uh of course the standard times is still talking about awards and we're you know our student athletes are still picking up awards will chase got defensive football player of the year which was uh great to see and also ongoing right at the moment through the 26th which is wednesday the students not only from dartmouth high school but all around uh being judged via zoom on decker so looking forward to seeing how that pans

123out i've got to get that done tomorrow excellent any other things to share all right so our next meeting is scheduled for uh february valentine's day at 6 30 very romantic at this point i will entertain a motion to adjourn into executive session to discuss strategy relative to collective bargaining not to return to open meeting so moved all right i have a motion by mr nunes a second by miss waite uh any discussion on the motion roll call please miss gentler shannon jenkins yes mary wait yes kathleen emerald yeah john nunes yes thank you everyone [Music] you