001[Music] good evening everyone i'd like to call the december 13th meeting of the dartmouth school committee to order if you could please stand for the pledge of allegiance to the flood of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you everyone miss ganther can we have a roll call please shannon jenkins here mary waite kathleen amaral here john nunes yep chris oliver here thank you i'd like to remind everyone that this meeting is open to the public but it is accessible via live stream on youtube.com dhs tv media i'd also like to remind everyone present to please silence any cell phones the first item on our agenda is public comment we will allow for public comment for anyone
002in the audience on any of the items that are on agenda for this evening uh thank you ms ganther two all right so um hearing none and we'll move on to the next item on our agenda i will entertain a motion to approve the minutes from our november 15th meeting so moved second all right i have a motion by mr nunes a second by mr oliver is there any discussion on that motion hearing none all in favor aye opposed that motion carries unanimously next up on our agenda we have should be one abstention okay i apologize i apologize that would be three yeses and one absentia miss ganther that was an abstention by miss amaral i apologize for saying that was not that was my my bad there i apologize all right um the next
003item on the agenda is our student representative report evan i you are giving our representative our report tonight yes i am yeah all right thank you go right ahead so my name is evan garcia and i am a senior here at dartmouth high school i will be serving as the high school student representative to the school committee for the next few months i had this honor last year and i really enjoyed it i think it's so great that our administrators and school committee really value the voices of students and i can't wait to update you at this meeting in our future meetings as well dartmouth high school's fall athletic season is now over i concluded on thanksgiving it was a very successful season across many different sports we were able to honor all of our
004fall athletes by holding our first pep rally in over two years it was very successful all of the covert policies were followed by and large and it was very nice to be back in that you know in the gym cheering on all of my classmates i think it was really great that that could happen again dartmouth's winter sports season is now underway with student athletes competing in indoor track in basketball in cheerleading ice hockey and unified bowling in addition dartmouth's arts programs are strong as always dartmouth high school's theater company had an extremely successful production of christmas in new england this was an original show and it found a really large audience proving to be very popular and all of those involved from the actors and actresses to the tech and stage crew did a
005great job on wednesday dartmouth high school will host its holiday pops concert at 7pm each performer can bring four guests and the poetry out loud competition will be live streamed on wednesday the 22nd during the school day and a link to that will be added to the description of this meeting so our arts program is going very well dartmouth high school's counseling department offered the asvab test recently to help students explore their college and career interests the test was optional and several students took advantage of the opportunity on december 9th dartmouth high school had two students in a dhs tv media program recognized for their outstanding video submissions to the massachusetts department of transportation safe streets smart trips high schools video contests natalie gonzalez and jj esterlin had their video selected as one of the
006top three submissions in the state so congratulations to natalie and jj there's so much happening at dhs i can personally attest to that and i think it's so great that there's a sense of normalcy the issue that has unfortunately been lacking as a result of the covert 19 pandemics thank you to any of my committee members have a question or a comment welcome back thank you thank you good to see you good to see you a lot going on yeah it is it's good to see you evan and i will i will obviously send an invitation for you to stay if you would like but of course if you would like to go we understand that you're busy but if you if you would like to stay we're we're welcome you're welcome to stay and
007and you know have input yeah i have a big test tomorrow so i think i have to study for that thank you so much dr john yeah go study thank you good luck okay so moving on our agenda we're on to old business and we talk about the superintendent evaluation and the smart goals i will admit you know there's some things that you just can't ever wrap your brain around this is one of them it is not the most straightforward thing definitely going to hand it over to dr gifford to direct this conversation [Laughter] well if you don't know then maybe that's a good thing right anyway mr nunes and i met unfortunately miss amarillo was not unable to attend our meeting that we had to prepare for this but um we did uh well
008we talked about four goals and let's start i don't know how you have it but the student learning goal and i'll back up a little bit because we'll be putting this all in the drive like we did like maybe last year with covert i forget what was what but be in the drive and if you take a peek at the student learning goal for example our process or our goal will be to continue to roll out the bridges in math that we've been working on starting this year with the elementary schools so the comprehensive pre-k through five curriculum there's a lot of professional development that's been going on and coaches are helping teachers implement this program as well and we put it'll be a two-year goal because obviously this is just the preparation year the
009professional development year and um teachers learning to use the manipulative manipulatives and the resources etc so we have some outcomes that we're hoping to be able to look forward to in the second year um which includes some of the basic test scores etc um and also we'd like to take a peek over not that probably i'll be doing it because it'll be with seeing high school kiddos over time how many um kids continue to enroll in the higher level math courses etc so this is um the goal we have if you look at these we haven't finished i haven't finished detailing all of the action steps that we'll be engaged in but um this is just some of the sample things that we'll be doing and on the right side all of these will be
010links like last year that you'll be able to look at those documents so that's the student learning goal the district we did develop and i say we because as we always say it takes a team to do all of this obviously district improvement goal one will be continuing to work on the accelerated learning that we talked about all the principals talked about that when they presented their school improvement plans and as you recall like if you look at this document the three core principles that we wanted everyone to create action steps and practices around of the foster the sense of belonging and partnership with families and students monitoring students understanding throughout the entire year and then ensuring the great appropriate instruction and as you might recall deci came up with this whole plan mostly in
011response to obviously the covid what they were looking at as learning gaps etc and how can we continue to meet kiddos where they are and not step back in time per se and and start all over again but meet them where they are and monitor their learning by provi and also providing a lot of scaffolding and resources so that's our goal to see how we do with that and again on the right side will be some of the things for example we have the self-assessment that we've asked the schools to do etc etc so that's district improvement goal one and then number two which i was going to talk a little bit about in my update as well unfortunately we've been chosen i guess fortunately i'll say fortunately we're so happy to be chosen by
012desi for a comprehensive district review this year we have already met with um as some of these things attended webinars with dussy to learn about the process deci has engaged with a research center the american institute for research and we'll be coming not only are we required to upload multiple documents having to deal with everything from instruction to human resources to finance for them to look at and analyze and also they'll be coming to do on-site meetings interviews you might all get called because they're talking about school committee staff etc so as i said they'll then give us a report on how well they think we're doing and fortunately i guess this report is not like the tfm the tiered focus monitoring one with the civil rights and special ed which were also having to
013undergo i'll get to that one as in my report later pandemic yeah and um this one the comprehensive one it doesn't require a corrective action plan for anything that they might deem is not acceptable or whatever it might be so anyway it will just be a report and we'll see i think we don't have a date of one start for um as far as them coming to the district we have already started collecting information we've met with the leadership team everybody has a task etc but i think we'll probably be around march or so that the actual them on site will will happen and then the third one the fourth goal is the professional practice goal and having discussions with our group we just thought that since we started the professional development site um going
014back now a year and a half two years ago to really try to gather everything that we do and offer and pd and and offer lots of different choices for teachers we would maintain and keep that site up and one of the major pieces that we're doing with that is the master teacher platform which we started last year and really received really great feedback from the teachers because it's self-driven we can they can go ahead and engage in it online but they also then get their pdps etc etc so we want to continue to update that resource for folks as part of the professional development plan so those are the four goals and as i said the action steps some of them are in draft form right now and and it will all be in
015the drive as we move along so the other thing we talked about during our meeting was the indicators which you might have this document similar from desi you've seen it before and it was under the four standards and um mr nunes and i had a discussion about it and i know in the past we've chosen a few from each we didn't mr news you can kind of speak to that but we didn't think it was necessary that perhaps we just look it as a holistic like we have in the past view of the work that goes on in the district so with that said i'll i'll stop and your your discussion and your um i would ask that you vote for the smart goals and then you can discuss whether you think it's a good
016idea to just avoid choosing from these indicators and going ahead and just looking at this whole evaluation process as more of a holistic approach all right thoughts mr nunes might i might start with you because i know you already sort of discussed on the um some of this so maybe you can share some of your thoughts and thinking with us yeah you know dr giffen and i did meet and uh we kind of went over everything including the uh the rubric evaluation and such i agree with my colleague here with everything that's going on the pandemic and that type of deal now you're going to have you know deci coming in to do all kinds of review work on things you know somebody's got way too much time up there i think but that's my
017opinion but i agree with what the superintendent said with regards to the goals to look at and you know the uh rubrics just uh just to have them as an indicator type of deal thoughts comments mr oliver so i'm i'm fine either way if if someone can refresh my memory when we met with dorothy presser from masc i i know that there was a reason originally that we looked at pulling out certain indicators to i don't know if maybe that was originally the original intention was to make it a little bit easier for the school committee to evaluate dr gifford however i'm okay either way you know i think doing the whole [Music] whole holistic approach as dr gifford has said i think that makes sense this year i'm fine with that one of the
018things i would like to ask is with some of these take for example i think it was the student goal the bridges program is is for evidence of uh implementation and i don't know if this would make sense with the rest of the committee is there any kind of feedback i'd like to hear what the whether it's the math coaches or staff in general just their take on the implementation of the program you know and that's just one piece of it because i know we invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in curriculum and i think it's important that we look at a big the big picture here in in solicit some feedback or through you dr gifford as to the implementation of it sure that would be my only um my only thought to follow
019up if i remember correctly about sort of these indicators i don't think it will be a problem here but i think one of the reasons why she suggested that you pick one or two was such that the superintendent didn't feel like she had to provide evidence for all of them right and if you have a contentious relationship on the school committee you might be like aha there is no evidence for this one thing here therefore bad right so i can see how that that balance but you know that we don't want you to again to mr nunes point in a pandemic doing all of these other things to feel like you have to upload evidence for every single one so i think if we're going to do a holistic review i think that we as
020a committee ought to agree that we don't engage in that sort of behavior that we don't say oh there's not you know something on number five subsection six therefore that it will be holistic and that we can't do you know what i mean there has to be an agreement that we're all gonna approach it the same way yeah that that's i mean and just to follow your point i know it's this is amarillo and i that get to do this again uh lucky guys but uh very seriously i mean if there's something you know when dr gifford puts everything out there if there's something that's missing or you think you'd like to see let us know and we can approach the superintendent and say listen can you upload xyz yes because you know members are
021looking for something on this right yeah you know i don't think that would be an issue but to put a whole kitten caboodle of stuff out there i just don't want her to feel like she has to up right for every single thing right exactly a lot of work that's that's what i'm thinking yeah like standard one is the one a one b one all the way to f so you yeah yeah right so i'm fine with making it holistic so long as we all can sort of agree that we're not going to look for evidence for for necessarily for every single indicator or if we think something's missing that we should ask right that's i'm fine yeah go ahead chris i think you know the past history with the committee when this administration i
022think speaks for it speaks for itself in which you know since we have doc since we've had dr gifford as well as many of us on the committee um there hasn't been a climate or a gotcha um climate and i think it starts right at the top of the school committee and you know we set the example so right yeah uh miss amaral yeah no i mean i don't disagree with anyone i uh you know in in having gone through this in the preliminary stages in the past you know i i like that the thought of having a holistic approach because in looking at it oftentimes it's you know one leads into the other so and we're really fortunate that you know the evidence that you provide us whatever it may be aligned with this
023approach are things that we're familiar with so to shannon's point of wow this is like okay something that just isn't clicking in terms of well it's we get to see all that and i i've appreciated that in my tenure having you know see what we need to see during these meetings but then also um having you do that work i feel like your rubric is sort of like oh gosh i feel like it's a cheat sheet right and easy access to what we need to see which is extremely helpful um the the review and monitoring is that just something new that they or is this something that's been i'm just not familiar with it as a separate entity from the regulator reporting i remember years ago i was on another school district and was on
024the team that actually like a that implemented it but i hadn't heard about it in a number of years whether just covert got in the way and yeah they're trying to catch up yeah um so yeah it's pretty comprehensive and again on top of it we have which i might as well just i was going to do it on my report but i might as well just talk about the audits themselves um so the tiered focus monitoring you've you've seen that report in the past the civil rights and the special education so we're on for that one as well we haven't the self-assessment needs to be um submitted sometime very soon i can't remember the exact date i think was the spring and then we just got word and just got word this week another
025email that we have a tiered focus monitoring in english language learner development wow so i'm assuming that deci has a million departments that aren't talking to each other so that's three audits and each one of these monitoring systems when you have to do either your self-assessment or beginning of submitting materials is a lot yeah you have to submit it all up into a um so we have that a lot in regular time yeah and i did bring it up to our executive board recently and you know tom scott the executive director did bring it up to the commissioner and because they said what are some of the topics right the overabundance of data and and audits so um it is what it is they must be looking for things to do i know right i
026mean this is this has been my frustration with with destiny throughout the pandemic right is that the lack of recognition for the added burden of work that comes with the pandemic and then putting stuff like no release from paperwork or reporting and i know this data is important but at the same point in time like something's got to give right i also think you know one of the things that we can do as a school committee is advocate for things like you've suggested through our state representatives and our state senators to communicate to them that perhaps there should be some sort of policy that you only do one audit per year or two audits per year the luck of the random draw maybe that you end up but there we can put rules to prohibit
027the bad luck of the random draw so i i will communicate with our state rep and our state senator on that but if anyone else would like to also reach out to them and mention that i think that might be helpful and they've been they've always been i will say responsive when we send emails and talk to them about that so that's good and that's part of that relationship mr oliver i think the other piece too that maybe we should consider is um passing a resolution that we can forward to masc through advocacy as well um as far as being opposed to all these things at once coming down yeah just something else to think about and i can certainly look and draw it up and for the next meeting if you'd like that would
028be great sure would you do i would like to like that as well yep okay if you could do that that would be fabulous mr oliver um and so we just need to make sure ms catherine can you make a note to put that on the agenda for our next meeting so that we can we can talk about that other comments about the evaluation and smart goals all right so i will entertain a motion to approve these smart goals as they were presented by dr gifford this evening make that motion that we approve those smart goals for second all right so i have a motion by miss a second by mr nunes any further discussion on the issue hearing none all in favor aye opposed abstentions thank you all right i remember thank you those
029past unanimously all right the next item on the old business is the student representation to the school committee um i am going to suggest miss uh wait was unable to be with us this evening she had some personal matters to attend to um she has some definite sort of thoughts and opinions about how we might structure this role and it's not like we're going to get a student representative in the next two weeks of december the first week of january so i don't feel like it's we must make this decision this evening so i'd like to ask the committee if you're okay with sort of punting on that one until the next meeting i'm seeing had nothing by me okay all right so the next item on our agenda moving on to new business is
030a capital improvement plan i will turn it over to mr kiley thank you dr jenkins so last week we forwarded over the fy 23 through 27 capital improvement plan draft to you there's 40 projects on that list totaling about 15 million and that includes one that has kind of a question mark that would be a lot more than that so we've done a lot in this district over the last you know 11 years that i've been here but there's still things that need attention the things that we've included in the current year's request at this point are things that we recognize may or may not be able to be supported depending on things like free cash and the town's ability to borrow and i'll talk a little bit more about some other factors that may
031play a role in whether or not we move forward with some of these but i think i'd like to start by looking at what we've prioritized in fy 23 and the first project is door and window replacement and security related improvements so this is something that we've spent money on in the past we continue to you know our buildings are they're they're old they're aging and we need to continue to maintain them um there are constantly things that break down deteriorate that we need to address internal external doors windows and and obviously security is is a high priority item for us so we need to be sure that we have funding to to complete that project as we as needed high school tennis court reconstruction so this one's moved up on the list and it's
032it's basically because there's some pretty big gaps on the tennis court out there and they've they've only gotten bigger uh you know through through the last uh year or two um it's at the point now where it's becoming uh an issue as to whether it'll be playable or not so we really need to address that technology hardware so this is sort of our keeping up with improvements replacements really not so much improvements more replacements so we need to continue that process um you know we've i think we were positioned very well uh going into the pandemic compared to i think some of our some of our peers because the town has supported funding and our one-to-one initiative and we also used school choice funding to support the one-to-one initiative in the past so that put
033us in a in a really good place uh you know to start at the beginning of the pandemic and we have received some federal grant funding that supported um continued one-to-one sort of district-wide which was not where we were at the start of the pandemic so that's great but we we need to keep up with that so the town has con has supported us in the past with 200 000 a year that is actually um not coming out of the other pool of of free cash and capital improvement funds it's really coming out of the operating budget so we hope that they'll continue to do that the big one on the list is the high school roof replacement so i've estimated that at four million four hundred and fifty thousand dollars so complicated project for
034sure so um the the building the roof uh i believe was installed in 2001. so it's a full 20 years old it's a black rubber roof uh in new england that roof would last about 20 years that's about the expected useful life so it's been a problem for a number of years for us we've had part of the roof overlaid with another piece of rubber in order to string it along but it's at the point where we do need to address it we would propose that this project would be an msba accelerated repair program project um that would provide us with about half the funding for the project if it were approved by msba so obviously a big project like this that would certainly be worthwhile going through that process it does lengthen the process
035you know that approval with msba they just um they just approved all of their grants for this upcoming cycle in october so we'd be looking at like next october before if this were presented at junetown meeting and approved next october before the msba would would uh you know get on board with us with the hopes that the following summer would be construction so it takes a while to get this done basically and we can't wait forever we probably could string it along for a year if we didn't get funding through msba and or if the town decided that they they couldn't fund the project so we'll have to address that we don't want to get to the point where we have buckets in the in the building telephone and intercom system upgrades um some of
036this relates to security as well mr galashaw has been has identified the need to replace servers with the intercom systems we also need to replace phones with ip phones so we hope to accomplish that the police department actually has access to our intercom system which is great it's just not a great intercom system right now we're working on troubleshooting some things but we so we need some improvements there for sure playground improvements at schools we have done some playground improvements although not major in terms of replacing large playground equipment that needs to start happening if you if the playground equipment is is nice it's all aging and we're having a hard time getting parts it's breaking down it gets a ton of use and we really need to start focusing on those playground units at
037the schools gradually and replacing them one by one so we hope to do that parking lot repaving this is really an ongoing thing we've been doing it um but we you know need more money to continue that process and furniture replacement we we do have some funding for furniture replacement it's probably not going to be enough when we hopefully go back to normal soon and you know we're having all tables and collaborative learning in classrooms and opportunities for kids to interact in a normal the old way we used to do things hopefully we're not going to have the furniture we need unfortunately so we need to invest in that a little bit so the total of all those is five million seven hundred and sixty thousand obviously the high school roof being the majority of
038that um and that's that's what we hope to tackle uh right away in year one so as i think you know these items um are here for your consideration after you have approved these items we'll then move to the town capital improvement planning committee the top of the finance committee the select board the junetown meeting and then some things probably likely won't be on the list for the junetown meeting they'll be available for reconsideration at the october town meeting and then whatever doesn't make the cut at that point we can you know revisit in next year's plan for sure so that's sort of the process and uh i'd be happy to answer any questions you might have or any feedback that you have on the list mr oliver thank you madam chair i have a
039lot of questions okay i have a lot of questions so let's start with the uh the big one the roof yes so how much are we spending on repairs right now do you have you could you ballpark it are we small repairs it's not a lot here and there yeah yeah small repairs but there will be a point where the small repair is not the answer sure one of the things one of the reasons that we overlaid a major portion of the roof is we identified that there were some um some faulty materials when uh in the initial roofing system that really were suspect that were cracking and this was oh i guess about six seven years ago now anyway was it still on the warranty at that time it was still under warranty we
040um we hired an engineer in the independent engineer to do some work on the roof some testing of the roof materials we identified some things that we weren't comfortable with they agreed to overlay a large section of the roof at the time which is great but basically that's like putting just putting a big rubber carpet on top of the roof and gluing it down um that it was only on a portion of the roof first of all and it's not a long-term solution to fixing the roof so what we would propose is a pvc roof similar to what we've done at the other school buildings has about a 30-year at least 30-year life expectancy and it's a million times better roof that's the white roof that's the white roof it reflects it reflects heat it's
041much more energy efficient um and it's just a far superior product this this is the cheapest roof you could you could find the lowest bill yeah um so i just one of the other questions i have a few more but um in your opinion you think that we would meet the criteria for mas uh mass school building authority funding i have one small worry about it so depending on the number of submissions that they get they have changed the criteria as to how many years old a roof has to be they've done it twice in the history of the accelerator repair program and msba has not been around forever so it's um a few years ago they made a decision that they would only fund roofs that are 25 years old or more now that
042was based on the fact that they had so many applications that they couldn't fund all the roofs so it remains to be seen how we would fit into that and whether or not they'd consider it i mean it is possible that it might not get done in the first year that we apply that doesn't mean it's not worth applying or you know gaining support from the town for um and it doesn't prevent you from reapplying sure obviously i just have concerns of if we don't receive the funding going you know asking the town for 4.4 million i wouldn't advise it at this point okay uh if we get to the point where we have buckets all over the building and we're damaging you know the building because we're you know at that point obviously then
043we have to make some hard decisions i think that msba will support us with a project we've had very successful projects with msba sure you have a good track all the roofs that we've done on you know the last 10 years you know all the other buildings are are taken care of through msba projects um so so i really feel like they will work with us and support them so if everything were to go as planned when if you were to get approval from town meeting in the fall um then mas uh mass school building authority when's the earliest that the project could be spit out in the if everything went as planned yeah it's um it's possible that it could be installed in in the summer of 23. um that would be the best
044case scenario in regards to uh the telephone and pa systems are we looking at the whole district we looking at specific schools for that that money yeah so some of both so we've done some work already with some telephone replacements so we'd continue that process um throughout the district and the same thing with the intercom systems we would target the intercom systems that are you know the oldest in in the schools that aren't working the best and and basically do as much as we possibly can some of the estimating for this is somewhat challenging right sure because it's very hard to get equipment right now um so we don't you know it's it's in finding the vendors to do it finding the vendors to do it who who have the equipment but we'd like to
045do we'd like to make bring the whole district up to a high standard that's our goal makes complete sense to me i got one last question um i thought a couple of years back we had approved funds maybe we did and it was spent on for an upgrades to the dartmouth high school auditorium sound and lighting last year last year and is that still just is that project where are we at with that project because i only asked because i was in the auditorium watching the uh the winter concert and the holiday not the holiday concert the uh holiday um theater show and i noticed that the the sound and um it looks like it hasn't been touched yet yeah june of june of 21 it was voted at town meeting um we've done some
046work at getting estimates getting uh making sure that we have the right design for what we're looking for and that's about where it is right now we've not bid it out we've not um you know decided exactly on the specification at this point so it was i thought it was approved in june i thought we had approved it how much you know how much money that yeah it was uh let's see two hundred and forty thousand dollars okay so significant amount of money should fund the project i hope i mean i i would i would want to think so but yeah i was it was a great show and you know it's sitting there and i was like well we still have a sound person there and i'm like everything looks the same so i
047was just wondering where we're at with that so thank you very much you're welcome mr nunes yeah thank you madam chair uh a lot of a lot of good projects uh joints and everything that i had notes on from uh that mr oliver asked i'd like to kind of jump ahead a little bit and we maybe we've talked about these a little bit before but in 24 you've got high school track and then in 25 you've got uh athletic fields and i'm thinking that's the athletic feels mainly the baseball diamond you because of all the water that's down there so for the most part yes so that's kind of an exciting one for us obviously the the track needs to be maintained and we need to take care of that that's a that's clearly a
048priority that you know it was sort of we thought the track would be before the tennis courts but unfortunately the tennis courts are worse and have to go before the track so that's just the way it is um the athletic feels a little different our thought process is to consider a artificial turf field for the baseball field add a softball field and likely be able to have another field in the outfield for other sports for field sports not not baseball and softball so our thought is to to consider that down the road and obviously that's a big project and it needs a lot of we need a lot of support to get that done and um you know it's a couple years out in the capital improvement plan so we'd hope to sort of uh
049work through that a little bit and get and get a better idea of exactly what sports we would accommodate and how that would work you know one of our as we've had um my entire time here we've had several different committees looking at uh athletic fields in the town and one deficiency that besides the fact that there aren't enough fields and that the condition of the fields isn't great because there aren't enough fields and you can't maintain them because you have to use them all the time the other thing is that we we have to move kids all the time from this area to other fields in town and we'd love for the opportunity to limit that a little bit and there are some good examples of schools doing projects like that that really makes
050a difference in terms of you know being able to have multiple levels practicing on fields you know and obviously if it was right here it would be it would be fantastic that's a really exciting one for us but i think more to come on that okay yep all right thank you sir i'm good man would you miss amarillo so many great questions it's like the difficulty going uh somewhat last um yeah i would love just the yeah our deficiency in good fields is is is i want to say well it's a little embarrassing but anyway um i'll always try to do better right um i see here um like the plate playground improvement you know kind of separated that sort of like tackling one prioritizing perhaps i don't know what the equipment looks like at
051different schools but i know it's aging and i know it's an important project um it is and it's on the capital you i think what you're alluding to is the fact that it's on the capital improvement plan um a couple of times over the next few years and yeah it's some big projects that that really need to happen the the playground equipment isn't is not inexpensive um but we really have to look at the large playground installations at the schools and replace them it has to be done we can't let it go we can't have kids getting hurt on these things and the maintenance of them is becoming more difficult so we are maintaining them but it's becoming problematic and and we don't want it to you can't let it go so you need to
052plan for these projects and hopefully it'll be supported and we'll be able to take care of it and what we would do is prioritize the schools with the most difficult conditions first and and move around the district but take care of the entire district yeah thank you very schools really important project so it is appreciate you presenting this to us that's all i am thanks so much again the difficulty of going this is all the questions are taken but you know i'm going to be a broken record and draw draw attention to the question mark the big question mark at the end of this plan because we tend to be short-sighted and put 500 here a million there two million there and there are things like replacing windows and demelo and potter and we never
053ask the big picture question what are we going to do about demelo and potter what are we going to do you know the locker replacement at quinn i suspect some of these hvacs and floorings and all this are are significant chunks of change that we put in here and there to these buildings without ever looking at the fundamental question of what are we going to do about our aging schools right i mean this school is it's great right it's got a bad roof hopefully we're going to fix that right um it's 2002 right it's almost 20 years old now right um our elementary schools are are not very conducive we heard from that report to the sorts of of learning we want our children to be doing given the size of the classrooms and you
054know we all said we didn't want that facility master plan to sit on the shelf but it's sitting on the shelf and i just i don't know how to move this conversation forward with the i mean because we've got to involve the town side and there's got to be some plan in this community for how we replace not just our aging schools but other aging buildings and this community because at a certain point you're starting to hold them together with band-aids there's only so much you can do so i appreciate all of your planning that has gone into the long-term capital you know plan but i do want to point out that a lot of these things are perhaps investments we should not be making right and i was always hesitant about the middle school
055roof that always makes me nervous because when we get msba funding we say we are committing to using these buildings and right and now we're we're stuck with the middle school for 20 more years now that plan will probably still be gathering dust by them but i hope but you know we're ready to start talking about what to do about the middle school but that means we've got to tackle the elementary schools before that and i don't know if as a committee we want to try to arrange something with the town i don't know if anybody has any thoughts about what to do with this but it's just a little frustrating to me at times mr oliver maybe what we look at is the next time we're asked uh to attend a joint meeting that's
056our number one bullet yeah yeah i like that all right so we'll we'll talk to them about that mr kiley have some thoughts on this i do i i think that um before we move to the town side i i think that we need to revisit we haven't spent a lot of time with the plan in quite a while because i had a heart attack the first yeah yeah and those numbers are all stale right those numbers are probably 20 on why do you think i wasn't here for that meeting but uh you know i think it would behoove us to spend a little time with the plan either in a subcommittee format we do have a facilities subcommittee we could take a look at it that way and sort of make sure that we
057understand where we might want to go with it because there are recommendations in that plan that i think you know they're we need to consider them their recommendations they're not a this has to be the way the direction we had with it so um so maybe we could we could schedule the um the facility subcommittee i think that might be a good start yeah be happy to meet sometime in the new year and then you all can report out to the full committee about sort of your thoughts does that make sense with everyone i think that's fine okay i don't even know who's on the facility subcommittee i'll find out all right who's up right right all right so is any are there any other comments on the capital improvement plan no we don't need
058to approve this correct mr kylie we're good well you don't need to approve it but if you want to move this forward as it currently exists um then i would i would appreciate your okay um because you need proof because this is really a draft you're going to take it to cip anyway so yeah madam chair i'll make a motion that we approved the fy 23 to 27 uh cip plan as presented by the assistant superintendent of finance and operation i'll second it all right so we have a motion by mr newton's uh second by mr oliver is any further discussion on the motion hearing none all in favor opposed abstentions all right so that passes unanimously thank you thank you mr kylie all right uh dr gifford next we're on to the uh superintendent
059a couple of things all right just as i said i already talked about the audits that we have going on and a couple other things that is happening you all know mr ferrara retired semi retired he is working a little bit of part-time for us but mr kylie was able to um secure uh his replacement so he won't be starting till right after the holidays right yeah we're just finalizing paperwork so i haven't made any announcements that's right but um also as you know with the esser money we've been adding nurse help as well and then had one resign so we're back to we have another rn starting that again after the holidays and that leads into of course our covert discussion which um ms jodwin laurie jodwin in our office has been really working
060it's amazing how many as you remember back in when we first started the covert discussions and then the test and stay program how much time and energy it went into getting that going and now she just works it's non-stop every day contacting the nurses communicating with the schools of the number of cases we might have the contact tracing and how much we need for the next day for test and stay but again thanks to as we know mr misho as well as um our ambulance company that has been sending folks in the morning to help and then being able to move our nurses around it's going very well i mean it's work but it's going well so we're happy to be able to bring another nurse in after the holidays you know all the concerts
061we were a little hesitant some a little bit on the elementary concerts but they went went off so far and i know we have the middle school tonight and then uh off to the uh high school coming up there's also one tomorrow night yeah it's too much too much so all of it's going well um and parent conferences virtual parent conferences went well mr oliver and i just met on we had a number of applicants people that showed interest in being on our naming committee so we just met and went through those and we'll be alerting folks that you know we had so many but we need to keep it small we can't have 100 people on a committee so we'll be letting folks know um on that and trying to get that going right
062after the holidays and then the last thing is we had information from mass insights you recall that we partnered with them a couple years back all about stem and advanced placement etc and happy to note that two of our high school teachers arlen botcher ap bio and and fei field ap english and language comp have been chosen as recipients for the partners in excellence teaching award for exemplary work in ap stem and english and um that was uh there are two of 17 massachusetts educators that were chosen as for their like i said their exemplary work and that so they'll have a recognition ceremony and sometime in april at holy cross so that's exciting and and for all their hard work that they've done to be awarded like that so that's all i have for
063tonight thank you does anybody have any questions or comments we're dr gifford mr allen good to see our staff being work at night exactly yeah it's always nice right yes i'm sorry i feel like i'm doing a lot of talking tonight a couple of things one of the things um i thought it would be nice i had emailed dr gifford and dr jenkins earlier that at some point in the future if we could ask mr ferrara to come to one of our meetings for his 29 years of service to the school district he's been a tremendous asset to this town as well as to the to the school department i think it would be nice if uh you know he was recognized by the by this committee yeah i agree in addition um just a
064couple of things just one being well the number one thing um in your conversations with the health department and mr mishad has there been any any concern any thoughts about um doing more um remote meetings or anything with i'm just looking at the positivity of the recent the most recent numbers are 8.58 um are we still doing okay in the schools um and with the i know the testing test and stay program has been a tremendous asset but the potting has been going okay at the elementary level um but mr mishad still um still support it we just met with him might be wednesday or thursday i had all the principals join in just so kind of an update on just what the situation is but i'm still very pleased with what we're doing and
065he says all the time that we've done a really good job on keeping cases down and you know when we continue to emphasize the importance of not only people getting vaccinated but also mask wearing to keep people safe so um on another note i know the commissioner is having a zoom meeting this week i was actually in a meeting with the exec board last week where she attended and it did crack us up because he's going to have a zoo meeting this week just talking about as you know he had the january 15th mask mandate um letting us know i think this week that he hasn't made a decision about that yet so you know a meeting to let you know we don't know right so we'll just keep keep doing what we're doing and
066yeah see um i imagine as we all know that after christmas we're probably going to see another right spike in cases so but as far as in school transmission is extremely extremely low or not at all okay thank you any other questions yeah i mean i just i just want to follow up right with to to mr oliver with a couple questions related to kova one i mean i want a statement just yeah we need people to do their best over break right yeah because there was a it was a large surge of positive cases after thanksgiving and we'd like to avoid that yes um my second question is and i've this has been i'm telling lots of people about this so the state the state mandate is how are they calculating vaccination rates is
067it in the school or is it in the community with respect to the mass mandate oh you mean that 80 percent that he threw out in the beginning it would be within a school so they would actually count because yeah i've been saying this for months now the state data and vaccination rates in dartmouth is wrong you mentioned that the the denominator counts umass dartmouth students but the numerator does not so i just i really want them to use good data and making this decision if they ever make that if they have a change down right right right um so if you can keep us updated on that i mean i'll pay attention to what i see too but i just have concerns about how they're calculating that for this community um all right so
068moving on to my report i just have i don't i have one thing and this is more of a question for you all um ms genther has extended an invitation to the evoke um school committee members to join us at our next meeting and we're just going to have the two school committee members come because i think we want to have a conversation about right sort of dartmouth and dartmouth's interests in the vote i mean right there's a large overlap invoke and dartmouth interest but sometimes there can be some conflicts there so i think we want to have that conversation one of the things they want to know are the things that we want to talk to them about when they come so they can just kind of be prepared i know that i would
069like to talk to them about the new admissions policy i have concerns about how that may impact us because if we see a sudden surge and the number of students going to vote that's good for students but also can be very financially um difficult for us so i think we need to have that sort of conversation what other issues would you like to talk to them about mr nunes i've got well i had three you took care of one thank you uh when i watch you know sometimes watch their meetings on channel nine type of deal their audio is very tough to understand so i don't know if it's they don't have microphones or what they don't like we have here but i don't see them and and you can't get anything from the minutes
070either so i was just gonna say and that's my next question that's my next thing because the the you know thank you very much we got the minutes thank you very much okay there's nothing in them with all due respect agreed so i mean i agree i think when you read our minutes you can tell what happened at our meeting what the conversation was there's nothing in those minutes i kidded our secretary before the meeting that she you know she's working too hard on the minutes because there's too much information in there type of deal i 100 i agree with you mr news i appreciate believe me okay but i think those those are those are my three those were my three things okay and i think that the last two we can even bundle
071around sort of the issue of you know more open communication between you know our representatives the towns representative to the school committee and and the town us and the town there are representatives and so we need to have that regular communication and and one other thing too and they did it a lot a number of years ago i think mr shea was the uh the superintendent at the time and uh and uh they had town days the city days that they had the elected officials right you know in diamond there would be selectmen and school committee members take a tour of the school and walk through the school see what's going on the different shops the different you know things of that just so that we got a little bit of a hands-on you know
072you know the 50 cent tour i don't mean that you know in all honesty it was a great tour i enjoyed today i was under the impression that that was going to be extended again under mr watson um yeah so you talked with him i haven't yeah i had spoken to him over the i think in the spring or summer before he took the helm um and that was one of the things that he brought up so it would be nice yeah it would be nice to see that i mean in the spring that doesn't you know that that's fine type of deal but you know it was like one day and then a couple of weeks later dartmouth would be in and then and the benefit was right you know that that type of
073deal right mr oliver miss emerald do you have anything that you'd like to add to those items that we'd like to talk to the voc reps about no no no just just listening just as an overview you know um i would i would personally just like to hear from their perspective you know what they're doing to represent you know dartmouth and dartmouth's interests at our regional uh vocational high school yeah why is our assessment so high wow all right so um did you get that ms ganther okay so that's all i have um for my report any other matters that the committee might want to bring up yeah evan took care of all of mine so okay fabulous so um our next meeting is scheduled for um january 10th 2022. i will entertain a motion
074to adjourn so moved second i have a motion by mr nunes a second by miss amro any discussion hearing none all in favor hi aye suppose that motion carries unanimously merry christmas everybody have a good break and be safe please happy new year [Music] you know