Dartmouth School Committee Meeting, January 10, 2022

001um oh all right [Music] good evening i'd like to call the january 10th meeting of the dartmouth school committee to order would you please rise for the pledge of and to the allegiance for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all um good evening everyone and welcome to the dartmouth school committee meeting for january 10th um for the record i would like to state that miss kathleen amarill will be participating remotely ms ganther can we have a roll call please shannon jenkins here mary waite here kathleen amaral here john nunes chris oliver here thank you i'd like to remind members of the audience um to please uh signal or turn down your cell phone turn off the sound so that we do not have any disturbances during this meeting

002um i'm sort of floundering because i know that this is going to be shown on dc tv but i forgot it's not written in my notes anymore and i can't remember but it's going to be shown it's usually it is usually shown mr nunes has it while you look for that i'm going to say you can also access this via live stream youtube dhs tv media the meeting is rebroadcast on dc tv channel 9 on wednesday and thursday at 5 p.m friday at 6 saturday at 8 and sunday at 2 and then on dc tv channel 18 on monday and saturday at 12 noon and thursday at 3 p.m and there are some other times that it pops in there and we thank them for doing that thank you mr newness i appreciate that um

003so we're going to start the evening we've allotted 10 minutes for public comment if anyone would like to comment on an item that is on our agenda this evening i would ask for you to come up to the microphone here please state your name and share your thoughts with us hello i am lynn turner i am a parent to two kids in the public school system one is in the middle school one in the high school i also have three step children that went through the school system they are young adults um i am this is my first time speaking at school board meeting i am very grateful and thankful to be here i did write a letter of concern um at the beginning of the school year asking for it to be read and

004it wasn't so i'm just very glad to have a voice and i'm grateful that you guys have opened it up thank you i hope we continue to have a voice i guess i want to i'm very grateful also to the wonderful teachers that touch my kids lives and other kids lives in dartmouth and also to the staff but i do have some concerns regarding one of them is that i want to speak on is discrimination and segregation i feel that the vaccine status push that is you know everybody should be vaccinated and by deci saying that you know when we reach 80 percent status i think it's just around the corner right that maybe we can open it up so that masks cannot have to be worn and maybe that's by the um the vaccinated

005but i i fear that that will create discrimination and segregation where there's a privilege afforded to one group of students and not to all of the students i think that you know mask choice could be implemented instead at that point if it comes down to that i know that both vaccinated and unvaccinated are carrying covid right now and sharing covid right now so i doubt that's going to happen but i think that it's important not to have one group over another group when you're dealing with kids in the same school and i do have a book that i love and i was an elementary school teacher and it is a dr seuss book called the snitches and i have two pages that i just wanted to share and it reminds me of the times and

006what's going on these days with the vaccinated and unvaccinated status and it is a a story about assigning more value and privileges to certain sneetches and not other sneeches and they are awarded stars on their bellies to say you are more special and you get better treatment and it says when the star-bellied sneetches had frankfurt or roasts or picnics or parties or marshmallow toasts they never invited the plain belly sneetches they left them out cold in the dark on the beaches they kept them away never let them come near and that's how they treated them year after year and at the end they decide after they've spent lots of money putting stars on and off of their bellies to try to be special at the end of the story but mr mcbean was quite wrong

007i'm quite happy to say that the snitches got quite uh really got really quite smart on that day that the day they decided that sneetches are sneetches and no kind of sneetch is the best on the beaches that day all the snitches forgot about stars and whether or not um they had one on bars so i just really want to make sure that all kids are treated equally and not discriminated against so that is my i'll yeah that is what i'll speak on today thank you thank you um i'll invite anyone else in the audience who'd like to speak and i will remind that our audience members that public comment is typically restricted to items that are under consider under consideration on the agenda i appreciate your comments we did read the letter that you

008sent to us all public comment that's been sent to ms ganther has been forwarded to all of us but we generally speaking reserve public comment for items that are on our agenda for the evening if anyone else would like to comment on something about some item on the agenda for the evening i would welcome you up and to share your name and to share your thoughts please come up to the microphone state your name and you may ask a question my name is jeannie tripp and i no longer have any students in any of the dartmouth schools my question is how would we go about getting something added to your agenda so that we could have open discussion about it and go through your process properly so generally speaking the school committee establishes the agenda

009there is actually under massachusetts law no right to public comment at public meetings it is at the discretion of the school committee about whether to allow public comment we do and we allow public comment on the items that are under consideration right now there is no discussion of the max mass mandate or the vaccine mandate because those are not in our power right the commissioner of education has extended the mass mandate through the end of february if at some point in time there is a discussion to be had about whether to continue or discontinue mass policies that will be on our agenda and that will be the appropriate time to have that conversation but right now that is not under our control therefore it's not on our agenda so in theory it would be something

010that when the state department of education or so on brings it up then you would take that matter up again in public at a meeting or yes correct and i would you know i don't we don't generally speaking do back and forth during public comment um but because some people have questions about how that worked i'm i'm okay with that generally speaking the way public comment works is that there's an item on the agenda and we hear all of the public comments we take that under consideration and then when we move into the agenda we discuss it then we don't normally have questions or back and forth but i do think it's important to sort of explain how that works to understand the format for those of us like i've just started attending and it's

011just out of respect for the board and for the system that you have in place that we obviously want to follow proper protocol and approach you professionally okay thank you i appreciate that thank you if there's any other public comment on any of the items on our agenda you're welcome to come to the meeting state your name and share your thoughts all right having no other takers i will entertain a motion for approval of the regular session minutes for december 13 2021. so move second so i have a motion by mr nunes a second by mr oliver is there any discussion on the motion hearing nominate we have a roll call please miss gunther shannon jenkins aye mary waite i have steve kathleen amaral john nunes yes chris oliver yes thank you everyone all right

012next on our agenda is our student representative report uh evan garcia is here with us he's gonna share with us the uh coming to what's going on at dartmouth high yeah thank you dr jenkins i hope that everyone had a wonderful winter break this is our first school committee meeting of the year and i am proud to report that dartmouth high school is working hard to make 2022 a success since our last meeting many things have happened here at dhs in december our band strings and chorus held the annual pops holiday concert as with everything put on by the music department it was a great event additionally nine students competed in the english department's poetry out loud event congratulations to lauren lima who won this competition and to everyone else who participated this event can

013be streamed on dhs tv media's youtube page our clubs here at the high school have hosted many events these include unified bowling which is now returned to wonderbol the esports club which recently created an esports room here at the high school the debate club which will be competing in its first competition this saturday indoor percussion which is preparing for competition set to occur later this month best buddies which held two karaoke events during pace in december providing students with and without disabilities the opportunity to hang out and sing together during the school day the dhs theatre company which is hosting auditions for the spring show shrek this week and of course dhs tv media which is broadcasting this meeting and has aired events ranging from poetry out loud to our school singing competition on the

014athletics front winter sports have been temporarily paused over the last week but they will resume in games and practices later this week um our hockey team actually has a really big game this friday at 3 45 facing aura at the dunkin donuts center in providence so you know good luck to them i really hope they win that will be fun to watch um and finally many of our fall athletes have also been highlighted on the standard times super team and all-stars list so uh thank you and that kind of concludes my update for this meeting thank you does anybody have any questions for evan just thank you evan you you articulate things extremely well you're very well spoken and i appreciate the uh the high level overview that you give what's happening at the high

015school so i told evan that i'm gonna have a question for him because the next item on our agenda is about student representation to the school committee and we've been having a discussion and i thought it might be good to hear evan's opinion on this issue so under mass general law the high school is supposed to elect a five-member student committee and then that committee is supposed to send one their chairperson as a student representative to the school committee and that person would sort of sit at the table for our entire meetings as opposed to just doing a report which would allow them to give some input on items our agenda so for instance later this evening we are talking about the school calendar for next year right and so if we had a representative

016serving in that capacity they'd be able to provide us our input on what they think about the school calendar and any sort of thing that we discussed so i just wanted to hear your thoughts on that it is going to be i think a big time commitment we meet every third monday about for an hour hour and a half two hours do you think that's a good idea would you do you think students would be interested in participating just any sort of thoughts you might have on that would be appreciated yeah so i think that's a really interesting opportunity i mean i'm graduating this year so it doesn't really apply to me as much but i know if i was younger i definitely want to do that i think that's such a cool opportunity for

017you know there's so many students interested in government and in education and it gives them a voice that you know they otherwise wouldn't have had it's very similar i think to to use the student advisory committee to the current process of electing the student representative because i was elected by um by the student council so i think you could also kind of factor in like you could probably say that the student advisory committee is made up of the top five you know like uh student council candidates with the highest votes okay does anybody have any other questions they might want to ask evan about that issue before we get into it i guess you know i will follow up evan you know do you feel that there's i want to think of a way to

018articulate this because like i think part of what we're hoping to get from our student representative is a voice that we may not be hearing and information that we might not be hearing and something coming to us as a board and maybe even the administrators aren't hearing do you feel that conversations happen within the student body that aren't being and that aren't being conveyed properly to an event i mean let me i'm trying to think about how to say this i guess do you feel like there's adequate communication between students and the the faculty and administration as to how the school is running and are we aware of student emotions and feelings i think so yes i know personally when i give my my little spiel before each meeting i always try to think not

019just of you know what's submitted to me based on you know what's in the calendar but also the events that i've done personally and what i know is going on around the school i think our administration does a great job of always trying to listen to students we have a student a council that's always listened to we have a couple of other outlets i know mr tebow and i have a question he's always there to help and don't respond to my emails or anything i might have i think um in this time especially with social media and with all of these different things happening in our society students are more involved than ever so i think it would be really great to have this more formalized student representative position thank you other questions so that

020having been said you're welcome to stay you're welcome to go whatever um meets your needs best evan but we definitely appreciate your report and hearing your thoughts yeah i do have quite a bit of homework maybe one time i'll take all right that would be great thanks evans to talk to your teachers and say listen i've got a commitment you know two weeks from tonight tonight i've got a school committee school committee meeting you know so no homework that is my homework thank you everyone thank you thanks evan have a good night you too all right so that gets us to our uh our one item under old business which is the student representation to the school committee um and i know that we had um put that off because i know miss waite had

021some ideas and wanted to be part of that conversation um but now that we're all here you know i'd like to hear your thoughts about sort of moving forward this and rolling this out in the spring and ultimately i think what we we could do is to just follow the timeline in that's established in law that they will be elected in the spring and then by june they elect the chairperson who would then start attending meetings that would seem to work best to me right or but we could move that forward earlier i'd be interested in hearing what you all think about this dr jenkins you know when they mentioned um when evan would just mention the student advisory council i'm wondering what their role is and would this you know replicate is that just

022you know focus solely on the high school and high school issues like it so to that point with that same group i mean it does seem that those would be i'll ask you know dr gifford what do those students discuss within their within that council well i also want to be clear though that the law states that there's only five members right so i don't think that would work because i think the student advisory council is larger than no i'm not saying like bring them over as a whole i'm just kind of curious about what issues they speak to and would they be replicated here would they be you know represented as well conveying it as well like so what is the student advisory council well i think you know they they speak with the

023principal they speak with the admin etc about could be like you said the parking fees for example things that affect them um personally or as a group but also i think if you were going to do this it might be nice to have folks not just elected from that group but from all of the classes because as we know the classes also have a body that meets together to discuss things about their class so right yeah mr oliver did you want to share your thoughts sure i you know personally i think we should be moving forward with this i think one way or the other it needs to happen i think you know i think it would be an asset to have a student body member on sitting with us at these meetings just um

024just to give us their the students perspective and their feedback you know looking i i have the lauren for the the section up in front of me right now and no i think you know let's my opinion is let's move forward with this is my looking at this um it sounds like one of the things that they bring up is um the consideration that the school committee may designate a student outreach coordinator um so that you know that that's something that i think we should consider just to make sure that they're that student is aware of what's going on but i'm okay with that time that time frame that was actually going to be my first question is what were we looking at for a time frame um but i think that's i think that's

025reasonable the only we got to at least try it and then you know let's see what happens as far as commitments from students and understanding what the time commitment is so that's all i have thanks you know and i was thinking along that lines of if we do do that that timeline where they would elect and it would be prior to the first day of june and that school year that we could name a student outreach coordinator now i'm going to look out of the corner of my mary miss wait um perhaps maybe um because i think one of the things we talked about was sort of setting up some expectations and so that might give us this time in the spring um to sort of maybe set something up like that right so that

026students then know what they're getting into what they're supposed to do yeah and then we can present that to them you know you know in may or whatever so that gives us some time to develop that and maybe we could work with the high school administration to to sort of set that up miss amarill did you have any thoughts and then i'll go to mr nunes thank you um can you hear me yeah no i i similar to what chris just mentioned i i think it's something that we definitely um i'm in support to move forward with i think that in less formal ways over the years we had some some changes made based on that student voice and uh positive changes and i think it's important that we engage them in this way um

027and i'm okay with the timeline i'm not invested in any of those sorts of details but i i do look forward to us moving forward this hopefully sooner than lately thank you mr nunes your thoughts yeah uh got a few i just want to make sure that this doesn't be this isn't uh a popularity contest okay that uh as as evan said yeah there are a lot of i would assume there are as he said a lot of students that are you know interested in you know government and how government works and and that type of deal so which is which is fine but i you know this is not going to be a job to take lightly okay i mean if you're going to make this commitment then you're going to have to be

028here you know you're almost going to have to have a chairman and a vice chair for discussion purposes that if one of the you know the chairman can't be here that type of deal then you know one of the other for one of the other four members you know has got to step up and and is going to have to be here type of deal uh you know are these one-year terms the law doesn't say that as i read this it doesn't say how long the terms are i did see that hold on first day of june in each year who shall serve for a term of one one year so that's what that's the champion the chair for us yes and again we can set that up but i think we would do elections

029every year okay that that type of deal okay are we going to have at least one we've got four classes are we going to have one from each class which means you end up with three or four in june and then you've got to get the freshman class and in september and get a member from that for that class to be on that board so that you have a well-rounded representation you're saying every year mr nunes you're saying throughout the course of one year what do you help me understand in other words if we have these elections the way we're talking right now we're going to have these elections in or the students are going to have some type of a discussion come march or april okay so they're going to pick five members okay

030yeah what happens if two of them are seniors then they're you know come june 6th you know 10th whenever graduation is they're no longer here so that means come september we've got to find two other represent at least then now we'll have the freshman class in and we could possibly get someone from the freshman class i think it would make sense though that we could it might make sense to not have representation from the freshman class because they're just starting out it's not they don't know the ropes but you could do one want somebody coming back and saying that we're not we're not we're excluding a class we could do you could do one from the in at the end of the year when we're having elections one from the freshman class two from the

031sophomore class two from the junior class you know um but i think those are parameters that we can establish and i think it might make sense for us to do that working with the school administration on some of that mr oliver you're going to share your thoughts yeah i just wanted to just um kind of just respond to mr nunes i think you know this is supposed to be happening across the 300 something school districts across the state so i don't think we're i don't think we need to reinvent the wheel there's got to be through m-a-s-s i'm sure some of dr gifford's colleagues have have this i know in the school district i'm currently in i had the opportunity to speak at a school committee meeting last week and they have a student rep

032um they did a very very well job of presenting to the school committee and and sharing their feedback to the committee um so i i think i think it's good and i i don't think we need to really go i can i understand what you're saying and i hear you know we don't want to be what about this how come the committee didn't do this but i think there's whether it's through masc or whether it's through just speaking um to other school committees that you know i don't think we need to reinvent the wheel on this no no and i'm not i'm not trying to reinvent the wheel i'm just you know again there's a number of years that i've been here we've had student representatives that have at the time would spend the whole

033meeting here okay and they would literally no disrespect would be bumps on a log you ask them a question and you get a deer and a headlight look so somebody to you know this is a this is a serious job absolutely to do it you you know you they got to jump in with both feet he or she is going to have to jump in with both feet right so that's that's what i'm saying no it's certainly a good point so i can follow up i know that um tracy novik from masc is who i found out about this from i can follow up with her to see um i think they're doing this in worcester and if you want to ask mess but i can do that follow-up to see if there's any sort

034of procedures or guidelines that we could copy because i had spoken about this wait i i spoke with glenn you know via masc too and i didn't there at that point it was a very loose framework when i was speaking with him i didn't have a lot of you know feedback there there are some parameters online within the mass handbook again but they're pretty broad and pretty in line with what we're doing so i don't think it's actually i don't see the documents and the guidance that's matching this kind of um heightened um council that we're thinking of so i'm hoping yeah i know i think it seems to be new and still forming so tracy's on the worcester school committee now i know and they they actually have a student representative who's a participant

035so i can ask that would be great for her for what their procedures are in in worcester for how that would be a helpful policy or um yep practice yeah so i'll look into that i think it seems to be i don't think we need to make a motion right now but it seems to me to be the sense of the committee that we want to move forward to this we're going to bring forward maybe a sort of policy guidance to figure out how to do this and and then we'll we'll do that the one question i have is it does give us the ability to name a student outreach coordinator do we want to do that would anybody be willing to do that miss wait would you be willing to do that can you

036define though what will because the school committee may designate a student outreach coordinator for the purpose of ensuring the establishment of a student advisory committee and regularly informing the advisory committee's school committee's agenda so i think to the first part you know we can get some of those sample policies and then you can maybe work with the with ross ross that would be great some of the administration um do we want to do a motion to appoint designate mary as a student outreach coordinator are we okay with her volunteering for that i'm fine all right so thank you miss wait i appreciate that and so we can talk but let's i'll do some outreach to masc and then we'll keep moving that and we'll bring it back to the committee once we have a more

037fully formed thank you policy all right excellent so moving on to the next item on our agenda is new business we have our dartmouth representatives to the greater new bedford regional vocational technical high school school committee um dr cindy marlin dr shea i'd like to invite you to come on up and sit up here and we can have a conversation and some questions thank you very much for inviting us thank you for coming you know i think one of the things we really just want to do is to ensure that the lines of communication are kept open so that we have you you know come in a couple times a year maybe just for us to just talk and stay up sort of on issues questions but just to have a conversation i think that's

038an excellent idea yeah so i think um i'm going to open it up i think some of our committees maybe you know just do a little bit of a question and answer have some conversation i know some of the committee members had some questions for for you all so does anybody want to start mr nunes can i start with you no problem okay thank you for being here mr watson nice to see you as always sir thank you for being here mr shay dr marlon uh a couple of a couple of things that i hadn't i had the good fortune of running into uh mr shea just before the holidays so he's a little familiar with what i'm about to about to talk about but one of the one of the things uh you know

039my wife hates it because i just channel surf type of deal and i'll pop across the uh bedford volk school committee meeting so i'll kind of listen in sometimes depending what's going on inside but in all seriousness the audio i can't hear there's there's a very it's very weak you know you almost you know i've got to put the volume up very loud on my television and then every once in a while it kicks in and you know i get my ears drums blasted so if you could you know kind of check on that only because you know it is in my at least on my tvs i don't know if anybody else has said anything to that to you and uh one of the other questions i had and you know you were kind

040enough to uh to get is the minutes and i just you know with all due respect found them to be a little thin type of deal and and by that i mean there were some things there you know it would say um you're going to approve policies well yeah we all have policies and everything else but it's like and i'm going to make an assumption that they probably all kind of run in the same format you know with masc and and such but it'll say you're going to approve policies or first readings or whatever of you know a a a b b a b c that that type of but no notation as to what they're for type of type of deal so now i've either got to just say okay the heck with it

041or go trying to find my policy book and say okay so what's aab that type of deal so i know that that you're approving can i i want to amplify mr nunes comments i think if you look at ms guenther's minutes mr shea you're probably familiar with them you can tell exactly who said what and when and what the context of the debate was um i think to sort of amplify both of mr nunes's comments it's difficult if you want to stay informed about what's going on on the school committee the new bedford school committee right yeah you can't hear and the minutes don't explain what you didn't hear and so i think it would be helpful to us particularly but also to the general public if there was more details in the minutes so

042that people could see like again like i know here that like i don't know mr oliver asked about i think playground no mr oliver asked about the cost of repairs to the high school roof right we're going over the budget kate has listed every single thing that we asked about and so you can see that that's very transparent and i think it's helpful just for the public to know what's going on and so i think we would appreciate that i don't sorry to interrupt you i really want to reinforce what you're saying there yeah no it's just you know sometimes you know sometimes less is not for no disrespect no no i i if i speak too softly let me know you say i don't have that problem the audio i will look into we've

043been working on that for the last few few uh months i guess um trying to get the right setting it's a big room but we thought we had it fixed but this is the first time i've hearing that's not so i i'll get this back and mr uh superintendent watson is here but i will make my notes on that and make sure that we try to adjust that audio now i don't let me just stop you there for a second sir is the fact that you know i if you met in december i haven't seen your december meeting so i haven't but i'm going back through at least through your november meeting yeah was the last time i saw a meeting yeah december we have a meeting tomorrow night so our december ones will be

044voted on tomorrow night yeah so but but but i'm talking about the audio right now that's what i'm talking about too is the audio okay meeting the you know i have if you had a meeting in december i haven't seen that one on tv yet okay so you know the november meetings the last one i caught when it was very weak okay but we'll definitely look into it i think the uh the minutes itself and i can explain to what our direction was and i remember a few years ago and it might have been even when i was a superintendent because it was been a number of years ago where i met with the masc and we met with the chair and i can't remember where the chair was at the time to talk about

045minutes and basically we were told that again the minutes are there for a record for a vote taken now you mentioned we have letters but we didn't have anything and i just checked that december one it is listed but i have not gone back but if we're not listing the name or what we're talking about that is absolutely wrong and i will just i'll address that but usually it's xyz talks about you know admissions and then so tell you what it is and the vote was told to me was that sometimes less is better because sometimes if you're talking about it will it may it should whatever what was the vote now the vote we have eight members on our school committee yeah you have to have five so it would be a was it

046four to six or four to five right four to four or five to three so we do have that recorded as a record so without minutes he was expressed to us that maybe go that route now this is probably the first time that it has been brought to me as a school community member or uh superintendent maybe we were thinking about considering more and i'll bring this back to the full board we have a meeting tomorrow night yeah and uh i'll mention that to them but it was kind of an intentional way of keeping a minute shot so people could see okay there was a vote last night on transfer students and they got defeated okay so that was the call and and sometimes we've had a few people call up to they couldn't attend

047a meeting they wanted more information we would talk to them about it but nobody's ever came in after minutes before and nobody's ever said you're not enough so i'm listening i will bring that back and let us know talk about it as ourselves but that's why it was done that way it was done because masc at that time said just make sure you go back four five years from now and what was the vote on this issue it has to be there with the name and the number and as you said now which i forgot because when i was on board it wasn't that way the everybody had different numbers and now so the state is narrowing down which is fantastic yeah but we still should clarify everything we're talking about on the vote that

048was taken and i'll make sure that happens thank you sir can i just i want to follow up on that real quick mr news if you want to follow up on that go but i want to stay on the minutes for a minute yeah do you have anything else on the minutes okay i i know i'm not i think maybe this is pre both of your appointment i know we've had this conversation before and we've asked for the minutes and we've asked for more detail on the minutes i think that was before either of you were appointed and so i'm not saying this i don't want to criticize either of you but i do think it's a recurring we have had a recurring preference for more detail in the minutes and we're hopeful that as

049your as our representatives dartmouth representatives to the school committee that you will convey that that is our preference um because we this is not the first time in my recollection that we have asked for this um and over the years we have not regularly if it weren't for mr nunes reminding me on this um i don't think we would have gotten the minutes um thank you for that mr nunes and we also don't get a lot of detail on that and so i think as part of our relationship it has to we have to be able to see what's going on in the meetings um and we can't right now unless we watch which you know people have family they have kids they have jobs that can be hard to do so the meeting minutes

050can be a way to figure out what's going on and so i hope i know again this is not you but i think i would hope that this time that maybe there'd be some taking that into consideration because it is something that has been stated previously sorry i just wanted to stay on the minutes now you had a well i think just to answer your question no statement if after we talk about this tomorrow night i'm not saying the next day but shortly i'll be getting back to you as chair of it to to say what we discussed last night we have a meeting which i set now with the time administrator because that's who all the our information of our attendance goes to and all that at the end of the year and you

051know if we try at least find out what he or she wants so that is something that we'll talk about too but i will get back to you and not just say it's gone into a cyberspace so yes we decide to lengthen it no we're not here's a reason but i'll get back to you on it thank you i appreciate that uh mr oliver before mr nunes picks up a different okay a different topic i was just something i'm thinking about with you know with uh mr shea and dr marlin uh dr marlon being fairly new and then having a new superintendent at vogue maybe it would be helpful since according to the cha right i believe is the town this is all through the town charter um that the school committee the select board

052and the town moderator appoints or is it just the school committee and the the school committee the moderator i was right and i was right committee the town moderator and chairman of the board of soldiers thank you mr nunes um and since i've been on it's typically the full committee that that takes it to a vote and then the the chairperson um votes on behalf of the of the dartmouth school committee but maybe it would be helpful if there was more just email correspondence between our our dartmouth reps and maybe just the chair and you know or the chair in the vice chair or just just more correspondence from committee to committee um i you know i i'm looking forward to um you know having a new administration on board you know i think we

053you know i think at the end of the day i i just think communication has been an ongoing and it goes right back to the note to the minutes it's communication just an ongoing concern amongst at least some of the this school committee as well as you know just hearing it out and about on social media and whatnot so just maybe increasing that dialogue between our reps and us and whether that's through better email communications or um you know just coming here quarterly or biannual or something annually i think that would just be a huge help because you know at the end of the day these are all our students um you know that we're all looking out for all right mr news we keep interrupting you fine but i think we have a lot

054of the same converse same questions so rather than do the same question four times we can stay on a subject no that's fine you have another question no the only other the only we would i was just going to ask for a for uh you know mr mr shea or dr marlin to uh and we can get to that after all the other members have court about the new uh vote admission policy that's all that's right so that's and i am absolutely fine with that manager thank you okay so we're going to wait to come around to the admissions policy mr oliver you have questions comments i really don't have any specific uh questions or or you know or comments um like i said i actually had the opportunity when uh mr watson sent out

055the invite over the i believe it was last spring or over the summer i i didn't have a sit down in person with mr watson we had a we had a very good conversation um you know i'm looking forward to some of the uh some of the initiatives that he's looking into um you know i have two daughters i've said this before one graduated from new mexico the other one is a sophomore at dartmouth high school right now and at the end of the day we're all you know i there's a path for every single student and i just think that focus and a very it's an exceptional school um it's known in the state um but certainly there's always room for improvement and from from my point of view i would really just love

056to see you know whether it's more invitations to to the committee to the dartmouth school committee to to stop by vote and tour it um hear about new initiatives um and then just sharing just the the quote whether it's quarterly or semi-annually um some high-level report from our from our appointees um i think that would go a long way um towards um my my you know my concern around communication so if i had to just sum it up just be better communications so one of the one of the things that mr shea and i and superintendent watson have spoken about is to have some kind of a dartmouth day we had that pre-covered and that got kind of sabotaged and um but mr shea and i have spoken about that again and we think that

057that would be a great time for the school committee select board members possibly some other you know the uh greg barnes people like that so that they really understand more about the school i think until you actually go into that environment which i know you have quite a bit chris um it's hard to believe what actually goes on there and the service that they give back to the community which i can talk about a little later but um yeah sort of a dartmouth day and we are going to revisit that that'd be wonderful i appreciate that i would just ask that perhaps you consider a dartmouth evening for those of us who work and may not be able to make it i know it's great to go in when the kids are there and whatnot

058but i know i like you all but i'm not going to take a vacation day to go do that so perhaps considering some options for those of us that are working that would allow us to go in an early evening or some sort of format like that would be great if i may chair that that's exactly what we did number of years ago we had a night event and we also had a saturday morning perfect so it would definitely be part of the package to get everybody in and the shops won't be open but at least you know we had some honest society students that would come in on that saturday morning to talk about their shops so so yes we will consider that very much so that'd be great all right miss wait no

059i was just gonna say i know we're gonna you know probably lead right into this but a lot of what we were talking about in the transparency and bringing folks into the school seems to be embedded in your admissions policy that you've updated you know and it seems to be you know as i go through there's a lot of that discussion about having you know certain nights going into different schools going to meetings and really you know emphasizing that outreach and again and i had that same kind of buzz that chris of what i saw and you know there were some folks saying you know how do i where's my representation with with the vocational school awares that they felt that gap so i think all those efforts increase communication for us to increase your

060representation or your voices coming into our committee but also engaging in the public i think are going to be uh you know really there's a desire for that need to be met within the community and i think it's going to be well received so you know again i'm as i read through this i know you're going to talk about this more um it looks like that's already you know a clear part of your agenda so um and plan moving forward so thank you miss amaral do you have any comments or questions uh just not just thank you for being there while i'm here and warranting and uh no i do have when we get into the admissions policy uh i i do have some questions but just to thank you for being here too all

061right so how do how do we want to handle the admissions policy do you have questions about it mr nunes or would you like to hear what our reps have to say i just would like to hear a little bit about what changed why the changes that type of deal so i was on the admissions committee with the other representatives from the other towns and cities and um i just want to ensure this committee that this was well researched there were over 53 meetings that either the administration attended a lot of those were through zoom um and then meetings that we were face to face for a good three four hours going through all this information we also worked with a former deci associate commissioner who was very very good and really kind of shined

062the light on what some of the highlights should be of this and what maybe some of the changes would be um we one of the things that we looked at was where possibly would there be some gaps and as miss waite was saying more outreach is definitely something that we've upped our game on not that we hadn't done it before but even more so outreach to the community and also the dartmouth middle school who has they've been cooperative they attended a breakfast over at our school and it was very well accepted the other thing is the gap with families that might not speak english as their first language that was definitely a priority making information more accessible on the website so events on the website the admissions policies on the website that kind of thing

063um so i know that you all have a packet that talks about this a bit and [Music] i know mr shea will help me with any kind of history questions because i don't have the prior history that he does at the school but um basically there's five we can accept because of space 565 students in the in the future we have adapted the admissions policy a bit and the point system so to let um young people in that maybe you know should just be given a chance so the scholarship scholastic achievement 24 points and basically this would be in the eighth grade and between a 7 a grade of 75 and 100 they could get a potential of 24 points 65 to potential of 15. he will see how much of the expand that we

064went because you know to get the full point you get 95 to 100. now you get seventy five two hundred you get more money so so we down in the low grade in for more opportunities for students that are bes students so then uh attendance is obviously important next page very important to us um but we realize that you know things do come up things do happen it's divided between the seventh grade and the eighth grade this the seventh grade is worth seven points and that could be um up to nine um uh absences zero to nine absences giving them a total of seven okay and then it falls down as expected 8th grade 18 points and they would they could have zero to four absences and get 18 the full 18 points oh based

065on a half a year thank you um school behavior we had the committee had a lot of discussion about the fact that you know some sometimes um students are a little bit mischievous and we don't want to hold kids back from not being able to gain opportunities simply because they've been silly in class and they've got a very strict teacher and you know things have kind of gone so that was something that we were really going to look at a little bit closely so number of suspensions if there were no suspensions it would be a total of five points one suspension 3.75 and that's in at the seventh grade at the eighth grade zero would be zero absence zero suspensions would be a worth 20 points and it would go debt one suspension is 15.

066um recommendation now one comment on these if you look at the old it is we use the word incidents so that could be you written up because you came in class late so you had five write-ups because five times you cl so we changed the word incidents to take away the minor offenses and they're using the word suspensions now so i think that was a huge change because there were a lot of kids that maybe never got suspended but would get rid of because of being still in class whatever so that was a big step that dr marlon was on that committee to say no that's going to happen with kids so it is suspensions now not instances so we've opened up the local school recommendation so basically a student could have a guidance counselor

067a teacher someone affiliated with their middle school uh do some sort of an evaluation with them and we've actually got the criteria here so that you know a lot of these guidance counselors towards the end of the year they're kind of overwhelmed but a pers a percentage here too um if a kid was excellent that would be worth two points average below average and so um and that would be based on study habits personal responsibility positive attitude so on and so forth so so that's um very very condensed but 500 students would come in during that process of of um this modified yeah um and then 65 students would go into the lottery and we feel that's something that we could track we could start to see what if there's any trends as far as

068um you know the the population that we're going to be working with are there any gaps that we didn't think about previously that we could have worked on a little bit more so the 65 would be within the lottery and as i said before all of this is in line with what the what deci is looking for we worked pretty diligently on coming up with the process um so what else just add a few things before questions um the recommendation the big thing that came out was guidance councils were the only ones doing that and the guidance council sometimes didn't know the whole kit right they saw the student in a different light now it could be one teacher that the kids did well in it might be you know the secretary it might be

069anybody within the school system that knows that child better and i think that the better rating system be very honest with you so we'll do that i think with the this has been submitted as a december 17th to the department of education and desi and some schools have received theirs back with red highlights in other words please work on this area we have not received ours back yet we've heard it is looking good but again if it comes back next week with some areas we'll go back to drawing board and that superintend superintendent watson has told us a number of times we don't really have data on the way we did things in the past so this is i think a big opening with grades big opening with attendance big opening with recommendations it's not

070perfect so we're going to start tracking kids on how it works and how how do you get in and if you don't get into 500 every child that wants to is going to get interviewed there may be things in there that we didn't know about that was not brought to our attention so that will then then they'll come to part of the lottery but we're we're learning this process but it definitely opens up more kids will be able to get into school but we also have more applications so i mean but more kids are going to get higher points so i think that's it i like what changes questions mr nunes yeah thank you thank you very much mr shay dr mylon marlon a couple of questions one just for curiosity how many students apply

071every year roughly i want to say a number then i'm going to look over my shoulder i say we have over a thousand okay okay thank you okay close to a thousand sometimes 900 or okay that's a lot wow okay now this admission policy is up at dessie right so all things being considered if you know dusty sprinkles holy water on it this will be go for next year if they kick it back because they don't like the way this tea is crossed or the eye is dotted does the old policy still come into play are you going to use a a hybrid this is for the class of 2026. okay so we expect that with the feedback now only in january this would be ready to go for the coming in coming from class

072okay it does not affect the sophomores juniors or stan it's the class of 2026. okay thank you that's all i have madam chair thank you thank you other questions comments mr oliver well first of all thank you both i i appreciate the um the slides as well as the explanation um on things just a couple of points um that i took away from this i think looking when you're looking at school behavior i think that's for some many students that may make a big difference based on the fact that like you said mr shea incidents versus suspensions because i you know if that was the case from i you know myself my after schools or those things that uh those write-ups uh you know you expound on that please no comment just to confirm though

073for suspensions are we referring to number of days are we referring to individual incidents for suspensions so the instance is right whether you get three days or five days does not affect that how many suspensions you have in the individual incidents of suspensions okay and that's great because when we're talking about transparency that that information is relayed to the department of education with the school safety discipline reports that the public can very can very simply just just look up online if there's any questions around that and then my my last piece is at the end of the day when we're looking at um i also the the um the recommendations i think is great too i i think the way that has done that has um been ex expanded on to not because i'll tell

074you that my you know my daughters have had guidance councils that they really don't know who they are but they've had wonderful relationships with teachers um so i think that's huge but as far as so there's a thought approximately give or take a thousand applications each year and then 565 students are allowed in now across the city and the two towns i guess i'm just trying to understand this is there any minimum of say new bedford students that have to be enrolled any minimum of dartmouth or for haven students or it's it's essentially this is what this is the admissions policy it's based off this you know weighted criteria and there there's no minimum like the new bedford should expect or dartmouth should expect um as far as just being equal everything equal yeah you

075cr there is no number they give you a little history lesson back in the 80s it was 70 percent new bedford 15 dartmouth 15 for haven that was in the bylaws then at one point jesse came out and said you can't do that anymore you're discriminating against other people so this is for applications you may have 200 kids from from donathapply and get in you might have a hundred kids because of the numbers so there is no number per district if whoever falls into the point system is where the cutoff is right now it's been very historically around 70 to 72 percent from the bedford year in the year out i think right now last year i think fame was at 12 point something for him was at 15.3 i think so it's been closed

076but it will vary on the point system okay no that that makes sense thank you can i follow up on that because i think you know from our perspective that can be a real challenge um the per pupil funding for voc is significantly higher than what we have to spend per pupil and when we have considerable fluctuations in the number of students from dartmouth who are accepted to vogue it it's a problem for our budget we we have issues in the in the school and in the town because of those fluctuations and i think that's been somewhat of a concern that you know when we have a bump of 20 students i think your budget is maybe i'm looking at mr nunes because he knows stuff like five ten thousand dollars more per student it's

077a significant amount of money for us um and so it can be a real challenge for our budget when we see the numbers going like this or in some years in particular when we have a bump right it's like how are we going to cut how are we going to come up with that money and we don't have a choice in that and so i don't want to say that we don't want dartmouth students there but that fluctuation is is very difficult for us in terms of budgeting and planning um when those fluctuations occur and that's i think something that we need to you know continue to have open conversations about because it is a challenge for us um with respect to our finances in managing those fluctuations and and i don't know what's possible

078if there's some way to smooth that or what but i'm looking at dr gifford on this it can be a challenge for our budgeting and our planning on the town side but then ultimately that comes back to us right i mean it doesn't just come out of some magic money on the town side we ultimately end up getting less and so i think that's something that we need to communicate with and wrestle now that we don't have those percentages how can we how can we plan and smooth this out to make sure it doesn't come as a shock to the town's budget well those percentages have been there for i mean they're gone for like i said in 80s or not early 90s but but i think it's been very very consistent except for a

079few years i remember you know dartmouth you know had less kids and they got more money less money to pay us and behaving went up drastically and now haven has gone down to 12 percent more so than around 15. you know so because the number is a lot right and more kids from a cushion it are going to for haven or they go to old colony vote so that that christian number helps for him but doesn't doesn't come to us so we understand that it is a the policy where we thought we originally had back when 15 you know 70 15 15 everybody kind of configured that number but the state said no you have to you have to do this and some people want a full lottery for us and i think that's even

080more disastrous because that could have every every kid that applied no matter what get in and that would be you won't know that until like april so i think beyonce it does fluctuate and i i understand john's concerned but very rarely we'll go like 15 to 18 percent or it'll go anywhere from like 16 to 13 around that area at least to my knowledge correct yeah okay i can speak to that if you want right i guess i guess my point is is that even one to two percent is that yes we understand is a big number for us right because we don't have the town's got low tax rates so we don't have a lot of extra money and so a small percentage fluctuation right two percent is is ten students right that's a

081big deal for us so it's just you know maybe having communication about about that and being aware of that would be helpful sorry i interrupted you no i was actually just i was done but now i've got two more questions that just got raised sorry that's all right so i know that on the municipal law you know mr colley's not here tonight uh but under municipal law there's a lot a special education stabilization fund is allowed is there any anything under municipal law that would allow for uh the town or municipality to have a vocational stabilization fund i don't know yeah i'm looking i'm looking at the only uh i think you i think you could because the town of dartmouth has had that you know they've put money when they haven't had contracts settled

082they've taken money and they've put it in a stabilization fund for future salary increases but that would that be that would that be escrow like an escrow like yeah because in other words if you know a contract isn't settled or they don't anticipate a contract being settled uh by june 30th okay right uh they'll put money aside in the budget this year at the town meeting and say we want to put sure so much money into a stabilization fund so that it's already probably already been budgeted for this year yeah but it's not going to be spent so what they want to do is they want to put it aside they don't want it to to fall out into free cash right no so they so they put that they put that into a stabilization

083fund and then they come back it when the contracts get settled they come back and tell me to appropriate out of that but my understanding of stabilization funds is that it's got a towel meeting has to approve the foundation of the stabilization and disperse materials but we have one of those we have a kindergarten stabilization fund that was great that's a revolving fund isn't that involved when we created kindergarten there was the stabilization fund that was going on for just that express purpose that when we created kindergarten if i think mr watson's not his head because i think he was on the slack but if by chance we weren't able to fund kindergarten for a year the idea was the stabilization fund would be used for that so that may be something that we can

084think about looking at the data as a way to sort of smooth things out just something to think about and one one last thing and this is just for my own knowledge is the vocational for um uh funding formula or financial the portion that and i know it's different between the city and haven and dartmouth and what each municipality pays but is it just with is it individual to the regional district or is it across the like across the state it's the same or every every vocational school district has a different formula i i'm not sure that question the answer no that's it's it's vocational funding is it's a formula that's for all vocational schools and it's based on right it's based on your mix of students so if you've got a more english learners

085or more people on iep so the formula is generic but the calculations are based on the student population that that enrolls yeah but yeah all right that makes sense so it actually it takes into consideration every regional vocational district takes into consideration those factors socioeconomic status special education status okay thank you all right miss wait do you have comments i just had it more of a kind of a question too and first thank you for this you know and i have to echo what uh mr oliver said i do think that you know just the way it's been broken down especially for the teacher recommendations including the teachers i think is is going to be a game changer so i appreciate that um i did i'm just curious you know because i'm not as familiar

086with the process when someone is applying to vogue are they choosing are they coming in with a specific shop and is there a preference for students who have a higher point accumulation to get into a specific shop so as part of the admissions process so i'm curious like so if i have the highest i'm you know i've gotten all the most amount of points why have a better chance of getting into this preferred shop it's all about no all by point system and so if the before the 99 95 to 100 had higher points usually so that's right on the application they pre they ask you for six shops that you are interested in we have an exploratory program the first half a year freshman year where they visit i believe all of them 15

087shops you know they have a six week six day they go three day and three then you go to class three days three days class and so we try to give everybody the top three choices you know most of the time that works sometimes it may not we'll try to give you four or five but at the end of the exploratory program the kids get much not on their talent right but on their effort and the attitude within those three days so even you don't like welding and you don't as long as you do your best you score well at the end of the half year everybody the point system goes from top to bottom and we what did that person want medical assistant next person automotive next person so we go down until shops

088are filled okay but those points just for clarification are accumulated at the half here they they don't have anything to do with these this this is completely separate so everyone comes in basically undeclared everybody that walks in is on the same playing field day one okay thank you right okay okay i appreciate that thank you thank you good miss amarill thank you oh i hear myself can you hear me sorry it's awkward um i'll just continue um so thank you for being here again uh i know this you know came down from dusty and uh but i want to you know thank you for your thoughtfulness and your um the way in which you've approached this really excited to see the weight the weighing of the different criterias um changing because you know historically i

089think of students who you know have you know an underlying sort of a social emotional need that may have during their middle school years developed into like a school refusal or a behavioral issue i'm really interested to see and hopeful to see how that transfers into um you know the students that you will uh starting class of 2026 if desi approves of your plan how that works out and um i'm a little far removed from the day-to-day with families but that was something that i would hear often is you know students who did have issue with school refusal who based on their um anxieties and mental health challenges that that translated into them having less of a chance to enter the trade school and such a shame because as we've witnessed in our own middle

090school when we engage students in a way that meets their um their level of excitement to in in their engage in a way that you know students who wouldn't be the ones to stand in front of the room to you know read or raise their hand to be the first one to answer a question uh when they're allowed to do a project that involves using their musical or their artistic talent it's incredible the things that we've seen as a school committee be brought in front of us so i see that as a a wonderful sort of uh hopeful hopefully you'll see that too that those you know those missing class or those unexplainable um unexplained absences if it's scoring lower it's less apt to kind of preclude them from being accepted and i'm excited to

091see hopefully that those students who then engage in the in the trade school a place where they are going to find some their niche and really excel how that's going to work out in in the fruit of that change i i look forward to seeing and that's all i just appreciate all the work and dedication that you put into this document and um um i'm grateful for it thank you miss amorel so you know i'll just say i'm very appreciative that you have made the move towards being more open to students right to lowering sort of academic performance because you know i teach at a university but i really firmly believe in vocational education that for so many students it's a real path to the middle class and um i see a lot in dartmouth

092sometimes i know mr newton says stay off facebook but i'm still going to say on social media right that people say oh i'm gonna send my kid to vote because it's a leg up in college now every kid who goes to vogue should have the opportunity to go to college period but at the same point in time i have been deeply worried that that mentality is crowding out students who are not engaged in a traditional educational setting and so they don't perform well in middle school and they're being shut out by kids who are doing this because they want to get you know a better chance to get into college um instead of you know going and pursuing a trade so i'm i'm very grateful that you've made these changes personally i would have preferred

093even more of those changes that's just sort of my mo i am exci happy to see that you are doing a lottery um it would be my hope that you are able to expand the lottery um ideally i would like to see a floor um that you have to meet these to get in and then once you meet that floor it is a lottery that would be my preferred system we're not there yet my preferences i don't get a vote on that but i want to say i'm super glad that you have put in that lottery and that you do plan to evaluate that i will also say this i hope that the evaluation is not well they don't do as well so we can't do the lauder anymore i hope that as teachers and

094educators our concern is these kids are getting in and we're not doing right by them so how do we do better right that that we don't do away with that lottery that we hopefully expand it and we figure out ways to give everyone access to a vocational education particularly for those students for whom college is not the right choice um and so i'm just i really i really believe in what you all do and i just want to make sure that we're serving the students really serving the students who would fully benefit from a vocational education and so you know i think one of the things that we've talked about tonight is partnership like we want to work in partnership with you and so i hope we continue to keep these lines of communication open

095um and we will invite you back on on other occasions to have conversations i think this has been good though so thank you and just to end it i want to thank you again and um again cindy was more involved with this admission policy than i was she was represented diamond on that so kudos to her for many many many long hours beyond what the meetings are and also any members committee you know can if there's something you have questions please call me or please call dr marilyn because a lot of times if we pick up something as school game members you know we can act on before it becomes an issue so you know we're glad to listen we may not always agree but that's okay we'll just we'll listen and move forward and

096again the last thing is that you know cindy and i were talking as cookie members it's been tough two years you know with all the teachers and everything and uh just both of us hats off to you guys for the job you do and keeping it going you know i've talked to dr gifford a number of times and again what she does and for all the teachers in dartmouth it's been a crazy crazy few years but i hear good things coming out of dartmouth uh i keep my ears to it i got a little connection here so so i just want to say thank you to you guys for what you do every day thank you thank you thanks all right so the next item on our agenda is the 22-23 calendar um dr griffin

097is there anything you want to say here i mean i think it's a pretty standard calendar yeah it's pretty standard so take a peek and um this will be the first read on that if you have any questions about the calendar no i'm just glad to see that i'd like to see that uh the second as that monday i'm glad that that monday is is off i think that's important for you know kids to recover everybody to recover and have a day to travel if you're seeing family and yeah so i'm glad to see that well new year's day is a sunday anyway so that makes it a monday holiday yeah yeah but even still i i would hope that's helpful we try to we try to maintain because that hasn't always been the case

098where in some cases they've gone back on the second yeah so yeah and we we changed that recently and i would like to i think we'd like to keep it i think we're all in agreement that to mary's point it does allow the students to recover and everyone come in for the first day of january well rested and ready to go right right other questions or comments we don't need a motion on this you know that's the first reason all right okay okay so um the next sign of the agenda is the masc resolution that we're going to skip um it's fine we haven't gotten the wording to that yet we're all very busy we get that we'll come back around to that one um so the next item on the agenda is the superintendent

099update sure so i have a couple of things obviously um so some fun things that are happening i just wanted to let you know that cushman has received another two thousand dollars from the feinstein foundation so they're keeping that that going um this is about their kindness tree which they have hanging and then the little uh suggestions that kiddos can put up how they uh help out how they're kind and one sample that was sent to me was you know helping mom and dad with their groceries and things like that so um as you know the feinstein foundation's basic premise is just to really instilling kids the power of kindness so our cushman school is is continuing that and is one of the top schools so they're working hard at it so that's good um

100our sale program kicked off and we have 16 unique sessions that are being offered by teachers across the elementary schools and our cushman students are bused to de mello to partake in that and um the sessions were self selected by the teachers were invited to propose something they would like to offer whatever it might be robotics or knitting i mean whatever it might be that the teacher had interest in so that just kicked off recently as well we're working right now on our pre-k and k registration details so we'll be getting information out on that soon it'll be time for folks to get their kiddos registered of course we always like our kindergarten to register as soon as possible so as we move into budget season and we're looking at staffing and sections at the

101schools it's important to know our incoming students uh you mentioned the audits etc so we're continuing to gather documents in preparation for that we haven't received any further details as far as dates or any of that yet but we're working on accumulating the documents needed for that um mr kylie and i have been scheduling budgeting meetings those um you know as you know he's been out ill so but we're looking forward to hopefully starting those this week with our principals and our department heads everybody has submitted their budgets their preliminary budget requests so now we'll be meeting with all of them individually to discuss their requests and this wednesday is an early release day and once again we're continuing the master teacher platform that we used last year that received a lot of good feedback

102from teachers it's self-selected so they have numerous numerous choices of professional development and then they can accumulate uh 10 pdp pdps to help with their recertifications and also this year our its teachers have developed a platform with technology um really aligning what our existing platforms are helping people hone their skills on things we're already using so they've offered that out as well and again people can self-select what pd they'll be attending and along the its teams uh its people we're also assembling teams that's going to continue to support you know as we had the one year position this year um helping integrate and and create units that um various content areas can integrate the technology digital technology standards into the curriculum so we have teams being assembled that we're going to be helping create create

103those units etc so we've been doing a lot of work with the elementary but we're expanding it to the secondary level a little bit more and then um as you pr as i told you last week we did pause our athletics for the week uh continuing to monitor that our intent is to restart that tomorrow with practices we really as you heard evan say uh hockey has a game this weekend so we're hoping that that works out well it's at gillette stadium but with the five-day day comeback with the new guidance that's helpful as well to get folks back in whether it's teachers coaches students athletes whatever it might be so i did talk to andy christopher today and matter of fact he just texted me something i haven't had a chance to see it

104probably a letter that he's sending to the parents about updates on various things the mia did take a vote to limit fans for two per student with the indoor um anything on our facility so he's working on deciding how to how to go about that and what we'll do to start off i'm sorry i just missed that could you just repeat what you just said i'm sorry to limit what two per student super athlete just to start off the mia okay yeah okay i think that's smart yeah so he'll be looking into that um no decision here of how that's working right now but as i said he's really on top of communicating with parents on what the changes are and and as we continue to let people know too if a student athlete is

105uh positive with cova this they are required to bring a medical clearance from their their doctor as well just to be able to re-participate so it's not just the coming back of kovid but it's their doctor clearance as well as you know there's issues with kiddos that are then coming back to play that we want to be extra careful about that so um we'll continue that's a monitoring every day we can't we said it again it's fluid and flexible if something happens that we can't then then we pause um let's see uh of course i've resent information to parents last week about reminding them do not send kids to school sick we did have an issue here at the high school it was becoming quite evident that people were coming off the bus to use

106the nurse's office as a testing program and it's i just keep saying it's not okay you know it overburdens our personnel our resources etc so um i can't stop giving kudos to the nursing department that's working way over time to um help out and of course our extra people are partners with the stat ambulance they've been here pretty much every day at the high school especially but but it's but it was better today so that's that's good news i guess and as you know the desi did update the guidance last week we we decided to hold off for a week to get everybody used to things bring our nurses back from the holiday break and get used to it and we are we have now implemented it as of today so people that have tested

107positive can return on day six seeing that they have 24 hours at least with no fever and symptoms improved symptoms we have had folks that luckily they said you know i'm still not feeling that great they don't come back so that's what we want to encourage that it's okay to come back when you're feeling well but by all means don't don't come back if you're not so um let me see i think that's about it on my and then absences you mentioned as i said um we had fewer today we've had we've had some in the past even without coping to tell you the truth but last week when i sent you that email it was one of our biggest obviously nervous times if you will a little bit anxious of can we can we

108manage the district but we were able to pull it off we've stopped into all the schools between all of us and um sent as i said secretaries around and helping out and it worked so we're okay for now we're okay for now but today's absences were much less than last week so we're happy to hear that but of course we've just come off another long weekend if you will so we'll see what happens are you is that both staff and students yes yes yes yes yes i'm trying to look for that data i just had today um and the one thing we are looking at i'm looking at the drive for um the positive cases as i think i told you last week for the week we've reported positive students and 44 staff members and

109since last thursday i hate to give the numbers out but it's all public oh goodness yeah um 695 100 probably up another 120 or so so um so we'll see what happens but we as you know we watch it every day so school's functioning um obviously it's difficult for everybody at this point but that's it questions mr oliver thank you madam chair um so i i just have a couple of questions on what you presented dr gifford um i guess i'll start with since we were just talking about covid right i guess i guess we'll start with that so are there any yeah and i know everything's fluid right are there any like even rough metrics in place as to covert numbers in specific whether it's classrooms whether it's after school programs or sports i

110guess that the district or your office will in consultation with desi would be like all right maybe we need to look into closing this classroom down because i i know that remote learning days has the dusty has made it clear that you know that's not counted towards time on learning right so but are there any and i know it's on a case by cave my understanding is that it's on a case-by-case scenario in which um the school districts have to have conversations i guess there's a point of contact at jesse right that um that you're able to speak to has there been any close encounters with that because i don't as a school i i know that you're always good with keeping us up to date that that there hasn't to date there hasn't been

111any closures of classrooms or anything but has there been any close calls how how is the district looking at those numbers like if it's a specific classroom like well there's there's five students out of say 19 out that's a concern we really need to we need to make that phone call to desi yeah i actually did call desi last week but it was really a concern more of um because i had spoken with the principals of staffing we were concerned of the next day whether we were going to be able to maintain one of the schools anyway but um their answer of course was you would have to call a snow day a no school day and no remote and to call them with any other they can't help but they pretend they can help

112right but i guess to your um to your question really it's the ongoing conversations with i can't say it mr misho again when we have those kinds of questions uh or we meet with our nurses and so we haven't really had that instance where we're fearful about the whole class and i think why really that's helpful is because of the exemptions with the vaccination status for testing but also that we do have the test and stay so that we're able to continue to monitor those kids even if it was say a five kids out of a 20 class or something 20 student class that we're able to to monitor that on a daily basis i think that's if we didn't have that in place i think then we'd be more fearful and make that decision

113to which we did last year if you recall especially when we had our smaller group program kiddos and um a couple of times we had to do that so with the test and stay as much as it's a lot of work um i think it's just very helpful that we're able to keep everybody that we can functioning and in school absolutely no i i certainly agree with you and then my other question my follow-up to that is with the test and stay program do you are we keeping track of i'd be really curious to know um how many tests and stay how many tests have been administered and then how many how many positives how you know is it obviously it's worthwhile right but how many positives it's found yep i i wouldn't be able

114to give that to you tonight no that's fine but we do have that data so we keep a big spreadsheet not only on the positives per completely the nurses put it in every single day and we have access to it it's a google drive of course and we also have a spreadsheet that by each school all the testing stays and they'll they'll map it out whatever the if it was a ten day five day whatever it might be and um then they put whether it was negative the kid was absent so they keeping really good records on that do we have some sometimes that pop positive yes matter of fact today at the high school we did so some that came down for it and came out positive so again thankfully we have that because

115right so often it's asymptomatic so we do have that data i it's just too complex to you know speak to and i i didn't ask ahead of time so no no problem but yeah as you were talking i was like i was just i'm just curious yeah yeah but it's there yeah absolutely and i just want to mention lori jodwin who's our assistant special education administrator because she when she was hired one of her duties was supervising the nursing department and i don't think she really knew was going to come to this but for the last two years she's just it's daily daily daily she and i obviously communicate daily we're in each other's office all the time because of this and um she's on the phones or texting with the nurses with mr misha

116with ryan from stat and does you know the inventory with the testing kits we just had to order more uh how many testing stays we have for the next day do we need ryan do we need somebody else to help out etc um so she's i just want to commend her for the work she's done not only with her out of district work and all the other things that she's working on but this is obviously as you know has taken a lot of time so i just wanted to commend her thank you for that and absolutely and you know i'll echo that yeah just being in education myself um it's just it's a monumental task what the what the districts are are being asked to do right now um and and we're pulling together and

117you know for the most part people are doing it with a smile on their face yeah it's constantly changing it's constantly being fluid uh so i i do have to send a huge shout out a huge thank you to you know starting with you dr gifford and everyone us especially our our educators our faculty our staff our our teaching assistants um everyone true it is um there's i'm you know there's certainly a lot of concern with with burnout right um and i won't get into it but i read a a a really good article in forbes uh over the weekend about there's a you know there's certainly some things to be concerned of in the future yeah i agree in the near future with what's happening yeah and i'll just leave with this uh in

118regards to the its position that was created uh tricia leary i believe being on assignment this year how is that because i know that was created i believe with astr funds right um how's that going uh are we going to be able to see something in the future as to what we're doing yeah i i i think it's going fantastic she's fit right in and doing a great job and she um i know for example one thing she came over here at the high school you know an elementary teacher kind of coming into the secondary level was like but i remember having a conversation with her that people were so happy she fit right in and is helpful and it's the great personality for that work um and really knows their stuff of course so

119absolutely we'll have you know we'll we'll have to check in later as the year goes on and see what the product about how that integration is going on and what what's in rubicon atlas and our curriculum and all of that so yeah we're happy to have it right yep thank you very much welcome ms wait do you have any questions um you know not not for say i guess well i would say the one thing i am curious about as you know we kind of saw that it was the boosters were opened up last week to a you know another population the 12 to 16 year olds um and as i think about the students who are coming in and they're having the test and stay how do the nurses know those students who are

120i mean is it you know are do they have access to those records and know that these students are vaccinated or they because i know in our case you know our students it's on their medical records but i'm not right everyone's like how do they are they taking parents words for it like how and are we seeing an increasing number of students who are vaccinated so less actually have to go through the test in the state program so there's a couple of different things there but i'm curious to know how that actually yeah works i think most of the time the parents are just very forthcoming with the nurses you know they have submitted the cards or whatever it might be for the vaccinations and um i i'm i'm actually surprised sometimes that the number

121that aren't that so don't you know or either they aren't so they um are in the test and stay or that they refuse the testing stay too sometimes i'm surprised at that so right there's no rhyme no reason i think there's no trend that i could say you know this so many is is our intestines day or vaccinated it's sometimes i'm just surprised right by what i hear each day yeah yeah and well there's students who are and then you know as we think about the vaccinations increasing then meeting the booster um well that then when we get to a point and this maybe isn't probably a question for chris which shows that well we need to have make sure that if you've been exposed well we get to a point where you also have

122had to have a booster or you have to go through test and stay because again right now we're saying if you're vaccinated but you know how much the vaccine you know how long are we going to count vaccination status without a booster like to support it so yeah yeah because the definition for the vax is still at first we thought they were going to include the booster right and we were like oh my goodness that's going to do a job on our website but they didn't i don't know i don't know you know according to data you know from the cbs the five to 11 year old in dartmouth it's 17 percent vaccinated um and 12 to 15 year olds is 56 our rates are really low yeah but that doesn't include the booster of

123those 12 to you know and again i know that was just available last week so yeah it is it is very low but i just uh yeah i was curious but i did want to echo what um mr oliver said that you know i just thought over this past week i mean my just you know whether i was at you know any doctor's office hawthorne i know they're overwrought you know and just overwhelmed and have and then have us your teachers too last week i just you know and yet we were receiving emails from the teachers saying what can i do to support your children who are in court i have to give them so much credit because they're doing it going above and beyond and really trying to keep this you know in a

124personalized way to reach out to students who are quarantining who are doing this and that and it's just in having different students coming in and out and the amount of work that that creates and you know to your point about burnout i just you know and staying positive and that that energy it's it's it's a lot on us so i i'm really appreciative of all the leadership and everything else but i'm aware you know again that there you know as dr jenkins said again and again that there's gonna be something right each day we just say another day you know i know going forward how's everybody doing and uh as long as we can cover the classes and yeah keep it going so samuel do you have any questions or comments no i don't thank

125you for that information dr gifford i will just echo my colleagues you know going moving under the report of the chair and saying thank you um it's been it's been rough and you know every time we think we're out of the woods something new comes along so i can remember that brief shining moment and what was it july yeah we had mr brown and we were like enjoy your vacation all right oh it's gonna be great well as you might know friday's snow call was the easiest snow call we ever made not even a quick there's a snowflake cancelled school yes and then it was so early that was another thing everyone was so grateful it was great we needed it i mean like i was out and i happened to have wbz radio on

126at noontime and they had our she had already the superintendent had already or the mayor i'm sorry my fault right the mayor had closed schools in boston noon time for friday it was like we were just fearful we were looking to have staff yeah no dartmouth was one of the earliest in the area to call done i'd say the middle schoolers ran out i was waiting in the middle school they were like yeah they just announced it as they were leaving so they were just like joyful and put a smile on her that was great it was good so thank you it was a good move the only thing that i'm going to add my report of the chair is that about the dartmouth education foundation spelling bee we're hopeful that we're going to be

127able to move forward with it it's not until march so we have some time hopefully for things to calm down it's thursday march 24th from seven to nine here at the high school um the flyer went out to all the principals about putting in teams and i'll remember um first in early flight for getting your teams in and you can go to dartmoutheducationfoundation.org for information about donating to the spelling bee and also for putting a team in the last thing on our agenda is the other matters that might not have been anticipated the time agenda posting does anybody have anything they'd like to share mr nunes i have yeah evan took one of mine which was fine about the fall sports teams you know in the standard times but also uh over the next couple

128of weeks our deca students are going to be competing uh again virtual this year that was supposed to be uh live in person tomorrow i was all set to go to hyannis and judge but uh got an email uh middle of last week that they decided to go virtual so they're just revamping everything and such so i know we're going to have a bunch of students in the different categories and you know it's always an honor and a privilege to to do not only see our students but students from everywhere other all the other area schools and it's something that i enjoy so i'm looking forward to it but i mean they're you know good luck to our students as they move forward with this thank you thank you mr newton's anyone else mr oliver

129i would just ask that uh i know we've done it in the past i don't think we've done it the past couple of years but um in regards to the spelling bee i know we've um we've sponsored teams before so i'll throw it out there that i would be more than happy to uh with my colleagues um sponsor a team yeah that'd be great i'm good with that yeah so just as long as we don't have to spell i think one year we spell yeah we don't let's not go that was the year that the final was the school committee versus the finance committee and the school committee won i was in the finance committee then and i was like oh you made to the finals and i was like yes because the woman at

130lisa i can't remember lisa's last name because she was an english teacher it's like it was all her listening it was all right it's not me spelling is not my forte so as long as we don't put together a team that we sponsored i agree perfectly okay i'm good with that perfect thank you anything else yeah just one last thing would be um you know i think it would be it's just important that whether it's the next school committee meeting or the following one i'd really like to see um it coming up on the agenda the dartmouth indian and in that you know where we're at with i think that was on me i haven't had a difficult um fall semester dealing with all of this sort of stuff and so um it's on me

131to move that forward and i can there hasn't been much to report so we'll see where we are um but yeah i've had a i've had a lot on my plate yeah as we all have and so that has fallen all by the way be fine thank you thank you thank you um yeah so our next meeting is uh i have january 24th at 6 30. um the good news is we do not need an executive session this evening so i will simply entertain a motion to adjourn so move madam champ second all right i have a motion by mr nunes the second time this way can i have a roll call please miss cantha shannon jenkins yes mary wait there we go yes yes absolutely amaral john nunes yes chris oliver yes thank you

132everyone the meeting is a journey [Music] she was sitting there