001foreign um shots [Music] so [Music] good evening everyone i'd like to call the november 1st 2021 meeting of the dartmouth school committee to order per governor baker's order suspending certain provisions of the opening meeting law glc 30a section 20 and the legislature's extension of that order the public will not be allowed to physically access the school committee meeting members of the public can access the meeting via live stream at www.youtube.com dhstv media in addition the event will be rebroadcast on dctv channels 9 and 18 on the following days wednesday and thursday at 5 pm friday at 6 00 a.m saturday at 8 a.m and sunday at 2 p.m the school committee reserves the right to implement additional remote participation procedures and will notify the public of these procedures as soon as possible comments our public
002comments are welcome during the public comment segment please forward all comments to the recording secretary at kathleen gempther dartmouthschools.org miss guenther have we had any um comments come in yet we have not okay thank you and we'll circle back to you yeah thank you all right um okay i'd like to call to order and if we could please start by standing for the pledge of allegiance shannon jenkins wait here kathleen ameral here john nunes chris oliver here okay all right our first item of business is to our approval of the regular and executive session minutes of october 18 2021. um would anybody like to entertain a motion to approve the regular session minutes of october 18 2021. so moved okay do i have a second second okay motion by mr nunes is second by ms
003amaral do we have any discussion on that motion hearing none all in favor opposed extensions all right okay now i will entertain a motion to approve the executive session minutes of october 18 2021. do i have a motion so move madam chair with the stipulation that they be held until the matter for which they were intended is completed okay thank you mr news do i have a second second okay i have a motion by mr nunes a second by mr oliver um do we have any discussion on that motion hearing none all in favor aye aye opposed abstentions okay at this time um we are ready for our student representative report um josh mr muniz it's really nice to see you um congratulations on this past weekend um and i hope you fill us in
004in your report tonight about the beyond and the color guard thank you thank you miss way good evening everyone i'm joshua moniz i'm a senior at dartmouth high school i'd like to give you an update on what's going on at dartmouth high student athletes wrapped up regular season play over the past couple of weeks every team had a successful fall season with many qualifying for post-season play congratulations to girls soccer and earning a southeastern conference co-championship and congratulations to the field hockey and volleyball teams who both earned the sec championship seating for the tournament was set to be released today and so far we know that the football team earned the 11th seed in the division iii tournament they will travel to milton high school to play at 6 30 p.m on friday night other
005seatings will be announced by the athletic department shortly our marching band and color guard are having exceptional seasons and had another strong performance this weekend earning a score of 99.2 at a nesbot division 5 championship the marching band and color guard will travel to connecticut to compete this wednesday before heading to metlife stadium in new jersey for the national competition this weekend members of the orchestra have participated in the love of music program where select students arrive at school early on a friday morning to perform as students and staff arrive for the day this past month the orchestra performed spooky classics in celebration of halloween the orchestra and chorus performed in their halloween concert last friday night october 29th it was a great way to get into the halloween spirit with student musicians decked out
006in costume even the music music stands were decorated the key club just wrapped up socktober when they collected new socks throughout the month of october we raised 451 pairs of new socks to be donated to the women's center in new bedford we appreciate all the students faculty and staff who supported the key club in october key club is also planning a campus cleanup on november 15th after school all dhs students are welcome to attend due to the cancellation of school last week the end of term one was moved to november 5th at 2 15 pm the senior class officers class advisors and the dhs administrative team have been meeting to collaborate around a safe outdoors homecoming dance as well as spirit week activities and themes more information is expected this week the dartmouth school music
007association or dsma is holding a mattress fundraiser in the dartmouth high dining hall on saturday november 13 from 9 a.m to 6 p.m store quality mattresses and sleeping accessories will be for sale at a cheaper price than retail that concludes my update on dartmouth high school thank you okay thank you mr moniz to my colleagues anybody else like to comment yes mr news adam chair if i can and josh mentioned that i was going to mention it too and i'll let him do that which is fine but josh talked about the the score of uh 99 2 type of deal and uh just to give you uh there's four categories we get judged in and it's uh uh you know two music categories uh visual which is color guard and percussion type of deal and
008the most you can get in any category is a 20 out of you know and such and in general what they call general effect music we got a 39.8 and in uh ensemble music performance music uh they got a 19.6 for a 39.4 and then when they got into uh the visual with color guard and percussion they both both groups got 20s and the visual got it overall 20 so when you put it all together that's where the 99 2 comes in outstanding that's awesome comment to to those little students dave thank you mr dude they were on fire as i said i'd like to know who the young man is that twirls the rifle up in the air uh jesse walker we went to one of the performances my husband can't get over to
009keep saying he's college material like he never missed a beat he was crazy yeah yeah oh he loves his fears yeah yeah it's unbelievable to see yeah all of you together it's just you know just seeing the the show develop you know it's you know again it's our first year with an eighth grader and i also have discredit and i i think this speaks volumes about the organization but also the school because i find this true of all the students the the sheer role modeling and kindness that you show to the younger students i think that's something that really is conveyed in the band and it's um it speaks to volumes about the leadership um young men and women you know that we're having leave our school in our program and uh you know i'm
010just really honored that you're a student here and then i can't wait to see what all you guys are going to do so and that goes across again to our you know our field hockey teams our soccer teams you know seeing the senior nights that were happening and parents coming out and it's uh you know i i feel for the parents last year and the students last year who missed some of these moments and i'm so glad that you get to go down to um connecticut and uh you know to new jersey so you know i hope you have a fabulous week thank you agreed all right okay and you are um you can certainly stay but i know you have a busy busy week so feel free to to leave us tonight and uh
011good luck thank you very much have a great night see you tomorrow night i don't think there's anything on the consent isn't it no no okay all right so we're um going back into old business and i'm going to turn it over to dr thank you thank you so uh as we discussed after our training and whatnot we would have a timelines for you so we can all have a sense of how the evaluation process will proceed so i did submit that to you i am meeting with miss amarillo and mr nunes on the 10th to discuss the smart goals which we would then bring forward for your approval on the 15th i i think the other thing which we should do on that date which i didn't record here if you recall with our
012training with dorothy presley she mentioned about the indicators or the um that we could determine some focus areas that we think are the stronger ones that we want to focus on so we'll have that i think we could open up this discussion on that day we don't have to make a decision on that day but we can at least open that discussion and i'll talk with um mr nunes and miss amaral on the the 10th as well and some ideas about what they might think you know aligning with the smart goals as well will be a good thing so so other than that as you can see i'm looking at again this is draft if folks have another idea but i thought on our april 4th meeting which we also have i think we have
013it on the agenda dates that for the rest of the meeting so i tried to align it with that and that we i would then present a summary of things that you've seen throughout the year etc like we did at the end of last year and then that gives all of you time to think about your evaluation your individual i'll have forms for you like we've done before do the same process where it's on online so you can click on things it's easier than a whole bunch of paper write up your reports and then i thought giving as i said last day to submit to the subcommittee which is miss amarillo mr nunes again lucky you drew the short straws i guess thank you both yes thank you i don't remember volunteering i think yes
014you did yes you did and as we say you you all would then by the 27th of may and we would meet so we could discuss it prior to open public meeting where then the rest of the committee could as you miss wait wasn't on the committee before but you all get to make some general comments and and and wrap it up for the year so i think that would be a good time june 27th my only thinking is with dorothy preza saying uh we do have elections prior to that so where the folks are coming and going hopefully they're all coming not going um but anyway we can talk about that as the year proceeds a little more so if that's okay we'll again anytime we have problems we can just you know switch
015it and um that should be about it it's a fluid document okay any questions i'm very comfortable with this this timeline that's fine yeah i think it all works perfect perfect all right very good well moving on to new business our first item on our agenda our proposed meeting dates um for the next i guess you could say semester six months um i guess one question since um dr jenkins had a work conflict and could not be here should we hold this just to make sure that these dates don't conflict are they pretty you know i mean i know we're kind of working as i look through in most cases we're working around holidays right you know i'll defer to what you know again i'll step back and say these work for me you know
016i don't know if any of my colleagues have conflicts but i have no concerns or reservations about these dates um we can certainly if something comes up dr jenkins is back um you know we can certainly have that conversation i think on around a specific date but i think as a whole unless someone else and the committee has an issue okay mr names yeah thank you man i'm good the only question i have and i go back unfortunately is you have monday february 14th which is valentine's day right okay now i remember sitting in dr jenkins chair and a number of years ago when valentine's day was coming up as a meeting date and it was not pretty so we moved it so i'm just saying i don't i'm good however it stands but i
017just okay i would like you young ladies to understand what i'm saying well very respectful very respectful i i think i'd i'm not sure how mrs nunes and mrs oliver feel but i would say i'm perfectly comfortable on my own so it's raining valentine's day on a different day but i again i don't want to speak for or for dr jenkins so i mean if you want to wait till the next meeting i'm good with that but i'm just okay throwing that out there okay putting my experience i'm fine with all the dates yeah all the all the dates were fine again okay so do we want to say that you know we're just run this by her and then the next meeting will take a final vote if that works sure excellent okay all
018right the uh so we're putting that one on hold and then um our next item is discussion on the formation of a committee in order to address a public request to name a subsection of a facility pursuant to school committee policy ff the naming of facilities and subsections of facilities which we had spoken about before um and i guess again i'll turn that over to you dr griffin okay so thank you as i sent you a little memo just a draft of kind of what i was proposing i do have a folder on a last way back when the quinn school was named so just using that guidance nothing really has to change my my thinking though is that what i would like from the committee tonight is to determine how we would choose members
019to be on that naming committee as in case folks at home are not aware we did have a request from our basketball coach to name a basketball court in the carlin lynch activity center so since that was brought up as we recall we've decided let's move forward with that we've shifted our policy so let's have a a process to then determine um what that might be so in the past they did have it was about six or seven members um one of the school committee members was on it superintendent uh various people representatives of the community so that was what i was thinking that school committee school administration someone from the teaching group athletic director students and community so i don't know if your thoughts on that i'm just putting this subcommittee together this naming
020committee if you will any thoughts mr oliver thank you madam chair so i guess my question would be are we thinking about two from each of these groups or just one um you know whatever i guess what would be an ideal number because we all know the the larger the committee grows you know less that's going to be accomplished um so i'm just curious as to whether or not um what the what my colleagues think about whether or not we should do one of each or two of each that would be my only question or concern all right miss amarillo i mean i don't really have yes i think that a concern would be too many on i don't know what the number magic number would be um i defer to the group i think
021that the listing that you mentioned was a pretty comprehensive sort of well-rounded you know listing um so i'm i'm good with and you know i i'm athletics is not my forte so i would uh defer to others in the group who might be you know more knowledgeable or have more to kind of contribute in that in that realm um so that's all i have mr nunes yeah thank you madam chair uh i think it's good you've got you know you have six groups here uh i don't think it's you know you when you have an even number you think all of a sudden my god you can have a tie or something of that nature i don't think that would pop up here possibly but you know especially if someone came up with so with
022something else uh but you have uh you know i i think you know one from each and you know maybe a couple of students a couple of community members so you move it up so you went you end up with eight or nine type of deal you know a couple okay a couple of community members uh type of deal maybe a couple of students i'm not you know and again i don't know if the students would would know who you know mr gaspar was because someone else might recommend that that type of deal i mean you may have a couple of alumni i was just going to say a couple alumni students alumni yeah for him type of type of deal you know or you know as dumb as you know those of us that
023went to high school with steve right you know that type of thing or whatever so maybe we just come up like we said i think an odd number is best so like nine know it sounds like yeah that sounds like a good number yeah we put it out there uh as looking for folks that like you did with the equity committee folks that are interested and then if we hit an overwhelming response we can just pull from each group and kind of even it out you know if they yeah if they sent i don't want to throw more work at ms but right if they just you know send them interested and interested in what they could contribute to the to this committee right type the type of i like that i guess i do
024have something to add um we do have like an alumni i remember the bricks outside of the yeah so perhaps like we hold one specific seat for a representative from the alumni i like that to be involved i like that because they probably have a lot of good ideas yeah that would be fine so we'll do that and um like i said just a basic process here once that's named we'll have to start scheduling the meetings again we have some nice guidance in here and have the committee then look at the information we do have on a rubric and the criteria to be used that folks would need to submit their recommendation and why they were recommending this person and and all of that and go from there i noticed that the previous year of
025year whatever they did it was done pretty quickly in about two months or so mr nunes i think you were either on something like that yeah it didn't you know it wasn't a long drawn-out process but and it was publicized and also i i think it's kind of exciting definitely a nice time so absolutely they did it was a nice ceremony too yeah the quinn school so so all right so we'll get out um a broadcast if you will or something about folks that might be interested in being on the naming committee and okay bring that forward madam chair since we um we're going to start organizing this committee and we're meeting tonight there's having a school committee representative on it i was just wondering if we should have that conversation as well yeah with
026the four of us um i i would be certainly happy to be the uh the rep to sit on this however if anyone else um mr nunes or um either mrs wade i'll take a backseat on this one just uh again i kind of feel like um you know that you know certainly mr nunes has you know a longer history much longer history and now what institutional knowledge will say um and you know and i feel the same about you you know not quite as long a history not quite as well nowhere near don't even think i'll defer in both cases so yeah yeah that's fine enough you know what you'd and if you can't make a meeting of something let me know i'll gladly step in i'm good okay good so i'll be the
027rep and all right mr news will be the alternate yeah does that require a vote or are we yeah okay all right and so i think we're continuing with dr gifford and the discussion on stuff what am i doing next okay i lost my agenda staffing okay so um we just wanted to bring this up i had a conversation with mr oliver last weekend and we've had these conversations at uh in our office as well of course just to make folks aware that substitution is a real problem you know we have folks out on maternity leave various health issues whatever it might be daily issues out and um our principals are doing a real juggling job every day to provide coverage for the classrooms and and we only have i think as of the other
028day it was 33 substitutes on the list where we usually function with around a hundred oh wow um we've advertised uh i know the high school even put it on there you know you know their newsletter mr tebow did so it is an issue um we don't know quite what to do we we can have the discussion mr carly we're talking about um um minimum wage and if you want to talk about that we pay and i don't know sure uh you know in looking at this one thing i think we do need to address is the minimum wage is going up again and in january and it'll be up to 14.25 an hour our subs make well over that but it does impact like teacher assistant subs so we have to adjust that rate
029and usually over this this gradual increase in in the minimum wage when we have adjusted that rate we need to adjust the other rates and it sort of trickles up so we're right now for a certified teacher sub at 120 a day i i think effective january 1st it would make a great deal of sense to go up to 130 a day to give you a little bit of perspective i i took a look at a dozen surrounding communities and we are just above average okay in terms of what we're currently um what we're currently paying at 120. so the lowest was 85 a day and the highest was uh 145 okay so um it's it's a bit of a mix um our neighbors in new bedford are 133 a day so i i think
030you know increasing that effect of january 1st i don't know whether that will you know result in more subs though because when i looked at the statistics it looked like we're employing about 20 subs a day so of the 33 that dr gifford mentioned about 20 are accepting jobs on any given day uh and we have about 13 slots unfilled on any given day for you know jobs where we definitely need someone so that's what we're juggling now and those are typically uh supported by teacher assistants when we can't get a sub in and of course that leaves a a whole dynamic throughout the schools where we've got to sort of juggle and shift uh to to do that so um there will be some cost implication obviously if we if we are able to
031get subs and we pay them more there's you know a little bit of a consideration that we need to factor in uh and you know i'll certainly think about that in next year's budget as we bring it forward too we do have one more jump up in the final jump to 15 an hour uh next january so mr oliver thank you madam chair so yeah i i had actually had a reached out to dr gifford and we had a long conversation because i know that um and just speaking with um parents and staff um in the district that it certainly is seems like it has become an issue in which it's not unique as we know to dartmouth every single district is struggling with this but my concern like i said is at the end
032of the day when we continue to have positions that go unfilled it's certainly putting a strain or a burden on an additional burden on our already exhausted whether it's teaching staff our our teaching assistants and then also this having our administrators right juggle positions around so i had reached out to dr gifford to see if there's anything that we could do as a committee to support our our full-time staff and trying to get the resources or substitutes that are needed you know i don't think there's any right answer i think there's only one right now with the way the uh society is there's only one big pot of substitute teachers and i think what we'd be simply be doing is probably take it if we can increase our wages maybe take them from another district
033at the end of the day so i had also brought up um and just to make everyone aware i also brought up about the the possibility of whether or not we should look at whether it's hiring building based subs we spoke about that or bringing in more teaching assistance to assist uh you know i don't have the writing i don't think any one of us has the right answer it's just concerning when um when positions important positions go unfilled in the district and i'm just hoping that you know we could at least show that we're trying to do something and whether that's just bumping up the uh the substitute wages come january 1st or if there's anything else is it is the absenteeism pretty consistent with uh the positions that are going unfilled is it
034approximately what i'm sorry did you say 12 or 13 we i i looked at a snapshot i didn't look at every day so far this year but i looked at about about 10 days and um yeah it ranges a little bit depending on the day of the week uh 20 is the high and eight is the low but about an average of 13 that are unknown but there's a little bit of variation sure right so it's certainly as a parent and as a school committee member it's concerning um i don't know if there's anything you know collaboratively we can do but i think at the very least of increasing wages would be a start okay mr miss emerald um on another note i don't know if it's was on my mind i haven't reached out
035yet but it just in terms of teaching and thinking about related service providers and it you know i know that there are some some positions um or you know yeah we have some folks out and um i mean and that's not you know again even pre pandemic it's not um unusual unfortunately that a lot of those positions are under filled due to just not enough folks kind of coming through the pipeline or applying yeah and uh certainly not um not an exception here in dartmouth it's happening everywhere um is there uh is there a plan or uh are things kind of okay or in terms of meeting the students for example our speech department we have a couple of illnesses and what not um we've been able to hire um contracting services that are able
036to do some of a lot of the assessment so we're we're that's a lot of what we do um but you're right some of these related services folks like observation therapy yeah yeah going into the profession non-existent right it's tough but contracted services is something we've tried um sometimes successful sometimes again that's probably not um one thing mr kylie and i talked about just as a you know you talk about hiring tas whether it's for a year two years i mean as we move forward is to even look into using some of our school choice money to pay for those positions at this time because we're in such a bind so that would be something for the you know committee to we haven't really used a lot of that lately right right um and i
037think for what we have in the account we just talked about this briefly but if we use some of that to hire a few more tas i know for example quinn elementary you know we we do do analysis of the various um not so much the program tas because they're designated as programs but our general ed tas and then they're covering other classes and and and being pulled out for team meetings etc etc um the percentage of tas at the quinn elementary school is for general at tas is kind of low compared to the other schools with fewer students so that was another thought that we had that if we did use some we we always say we don't like to use those kinds of funds for positions but given the amount of money that
038is in the school choice fund and if we you know and and we know that sometimes we worry about layoffs in the in the future we worry about any of that but knowing that anything happens and every year people leave and retirements and kind of make up for it so that's just something we were thinking about as well so we certainly would look to the committee to if that was something you recommend um we could certainly look into that has all of sr3 being committed at this point pretty much right well kind of issue it's a little early to say right because we've planned on sr3 for three years so yes but obviously it has to be fluid you know and i mean we've already since we've planned and submitted we've had some changes sure
039um and we're going to continue to have changes in staffing and things that we need to adjust for along the way so yeah um we need i think we need to plan for a little bit of buffer in sr3 too to make sure that we navigate it um appropriately it's a navigation yeah that's it i would certainly be willing um to look at you know and maybe we wait till uh dr jenkins is back to formally approve it um but looking at um school choice funds for the shot certainly could help us get over this 33 subs in the district kind of get over the hump right now exactly that's the deal i think that's what it's there for yeah thank you madam chair the question that i have is i would think and maybe
040i'm all wet here but we normally have per se the same stubs year after year i mean unless somebody gets hired oh yeah there's a full-time position someplace or maybe you have a retired teacher or such that you know says yeah you know what filling in a couple of days here a couple of days there is is fine i mean they just didn't come back after the pandemic type of deal i mean when you've reached out to them any special reason or they're just i i i believe it's just the pandemic because people were afraid to come in because i know i mean um we've always we always have around 100 i know we've always scrambled sometimes for for subs type of deal but you would you know okay right that's sort of okay right
041okay i guess i have a question i know it's tough because you know when you're but if you think about our um and i'm guessing you've already reached out but to our local teaching colleges you know bridgewater with strong education programs rick providence college yes that's been done that's been done even for uh folks like what you were mentioning before about related services people that are in the profession or whatever it's just it's tough that's what i thought but um you know i'd agree about using the school choice yeah that's what we would think we just mentioned it we put that on the agenda just for yeah we can keep the staffing uh on the agenda yeah i just want to go back to uh you know we had um as you recall we with
042the esser money we decided we hired an additional lpn and an rn yeah for the the rest of this year and so and then we just had one of our rn's resign so we always seem to take a step forward and step back um just doing another business etc so but luckily we had the other two folks start so we're okay and and actually just the covid we did have a couple of cases this weekend but and just a little branching off on a little discussion but we had testing stay this morning at a few of the schools but quinn had i think 16 but our local ambulance staff people came in and helped again so it's have a nice routine going but that's the most we've had in a long time it's been two
043three or none so it's been very manageable right now so anyway but again you talk staffing and then one of our nurses just put in her resignation so anyway anyway so we'll put that on the agenda for next time madam chair if i may yes um and if you could for the next agenda if maybe you could just come to us with a proposal as to what you're thinking for numbers sure just took kylie all right and now we're continuing to keep going okay just a couple of things we are planning on we let the principals know that after the holidays in january we want to start on the spotlight on kids again trying to get something about kiddos again right we've actually been happy we said on last few meetings we'll be able to
044talk about teaching and learning we feel a little calmness coming right um we did decide at our next meeting mr nunes will be celebrated for the award that he's been given so i believe mr oliver will have something to say for that um the mask mass conferences this week and just happy that being able to be in person after the last couple of years so that's good and as i said i did get to go to the orchestra uh halloween spectacular this week on friday and the only problem i had i told mr flint that eight o'clock is too late for me to go out please have it earlier in the evening um element in the first week or so in december you'll see the virtual parent teacher conferences we decided to keep that virtual
045this year as well it really worked out well people had a nice one-to-one with their uh teacher so we'll be doing that and the last thing that i want to say is that i did have a nice conversation with chairwoman cheryl andrew maltese from the wampanoag tribe they reached out and asked for a meeting so she and i had a great conversation on the phone about um the interest in being involved in this whole discussion of the indian and that um from my from my understanding from her she's they're very in support of maintaining something of that nature for the respect that it's giving to the tribe and the peoples the indigenous people they do not want to go out and down in history that no one remembers them so um very supportive of maintaining
046something and and how we go about so i said to her this sounds like a reset for us all to have a reset so we left it that she is going back to her counsel to kind of get some advice on how to proceed but that probably more voices in the conversation is what they're looking for and that we have another group if you will or um and that she will come back and say she had a lot of suggestions of various people that would want to have a voice on this not only their tribe but others as well so um i was really happy about that because i felt like gave me some direction too because i feel like we've been you know we didn't really have the right people at the table i
047guess and you know other folks in town have voiced their opinion they want to be be able to speak et cetera so anyway um i'm waiting to hear back from her and then i'll bring that forth to the committee and and perhaps we can then have a another framework of how to proceed and and and do this right i guess is really what but we had a great conversation so that's excellent yeah it was good it was good and that's all i have so you know um just can i ask a question so do we have an update from the current diversity and equality where where are where is that committee uh i mean that's what i'm kind of wondering where yeah i think what the last we um uh i think there was an
048invitation sent back but this sounds like you know that if you don't manage i'm sorry to take over but like just uh it sounds like you said a reset and yeah open open good communication because like you said you've got voices on all sides and then you've got the newspaper making an article and then right right you know i had a wonderful conversation with jacob ventura uh we talked i think previous to exactly my the last meeting where his views weren't lined with what he had been quoted you know so it's sort of like you know it creates this unnecessary drama and you know that streamlined communication and the cook we have is very open i think that and adding more folks you know but at any rate i i answer your question no i
049was just kidding you know because i haven't heard anything you know i was curious about the status and you know yeah okay yeah right well and if i i i would suggest that you know especially now with um a lot of events happening in the schools the orchestra the whatever it might be that future meetings become in person that those folks were able to meet because to me right now i mean we're all at all these events so to have a committee or group if you will come together and have this discussion i think it's important so that actually i guess it leads into our next discussion which is a nice little segue to the port of the chair um obviously dr jenkins is not here last at our last meeting we'd agree to defer
050this discussion about in-person meetings i don't think we can defer it again that's my personal opinion but i wanted to get um each of your views again i i it would be nice to have dr jenkins here but i feel like in all fairness we had said that we would you know make some decisions you know and again tying back into what dr gifford just had said about you know trying to have some of these other meetings in person um you know so i'll defer to the committees so mr oliver what are your thoughts on this we're opening up i should say thank you madam chair um so i personally think we're out we're at a point now um i think the numbers are pretty you know where they're going to be um there'll probably
051be a little bit of an increase around the holidays maybe um but i think for the most part people are are going about living their lives in general um where we're trying to get back to as much normalcy as we can um and i'm at this point in time i'm i'm comfortable saying and this is just my opinion i would like to see our meetings whether it's the next meeting or the following meeting return and have the public welcomed into um into the school i will say that you know if we were to do that i think it's important for the public to recognize that at the end of the day we are in the school there is a mass mandate in place we're not going to be policing people right is the expectation that
052if you're coming into the school you'll that you will be masked if you're not then very simply you'll be asked to leave and it becomes an issue then we shut it down again that's that's um that's where i'm at with that so i would i would be in support of moving forward with having um having an audience okay miss amarillo yeah i i am in full support of us having folks in person um again not policing folks but but just that expectation of come on you know i think it's really important well or it will all still be masked but being in a room and they're usually not well attended um and even during this tumultuous time i personally only receive seven emails from disgruntled folks so um i counted them so um but seven
053different people i mean yeah um i think it's important i think you know hearing us seeing our body language kind of demystifying sort of the uh the presumption that folks have when they're watching us online and the comments that i see and i read i think it'll kind of break down a barrier and just get back to a little bit of normalcy like you said you know we're all living our lives you know yes i wear a mask all the time but that's because i have some vulnerable people in my family um but at least to be in this building inside as long as they're inside i would be in support of of people coming and if they choose to provide public comment or just listen into what we're discussing in person okay mr nunes
054yeah i i kind of agree with my colleagues that yeah to open it up the only concern i have is um like you know my colleagues have talked about you know nobody showing up which is true they normally don't unless there's something tumultuous on the uh agenda i'm just afraid of getting uh all of a sudden for a discussion per you know a whole bunch of people show up you know and and do we want to you know set a limit as to how many we want to have in here only because we don't want to you know it's a close con con close confinement in here it's not like we're meeting in the audit for we're meeting in the auditorium and we could you know every other seat every other row type of deal
055we could kind of put a three to six foot if we had to type a type of deal so i mean you know and again you talk about i mean i've you know i mean and again with the award and i'm still very humbled about it believe me i mean i'm i'm looking and i was just adding it up i'm looking at like 15 of my family members that want to be here and i'm you know thrilled that they're going to be here type of deal you know so you know yeah they're going to come and they're going to leave i understand that but you know again that's just just what i'm thinking about is is how many people you know how many chairs are we going to set up and how many are we
056going to put in here and that type of deal that that's my only concern other than that i you know yeah i agree it's you know been a long time coming yeah type of type of deal from uh you know march of 19. so mr oliver miss emerald give any thoughts about um spacing or how do we approach that you know just kind of keep it open and and if we approach that time frame we have a list i mean yeah so i guess my first question i don't know if anyone can answer this is do we have the ability to to limit the public from an open meeting law standpoint that would be my first question whether or not we could do that or do we say there's um you know there's an overflow
057room um that we can broadcast this too um so that that's something like i think like everyone has said it's very unlikely that we're gonna have a very large turnout right unless there's a contentious yes there's something hot yeah unless there's a hot topic i'm just looking just looking at this space you could probably comfortably socially distant 25 people maybe i'm thinking um so you know i don't know do we just see how uh see how it rolls yeah it flows and i'm good i'm good with that again i'm just you know looking good you always put them over there yeah that's right go back there okay so they can make faces at us yeah back there instead of inside the little glass you know over there yeah yeah we can put some in there
058yeah you could we had talked about that before so does this require a vote because we are is this a reversal can i it is a reversal of policy reversal of a policy we play all right so uh mr nunes you can help me here so i guess what i first need is a motion to um reopen the um our next meeting which would be our november 15th 15th meeting to the public the general public thank you that's fine all right so can i have a motion can i just make sort of one sort of anecdotal comment is what a meeting to start because they may all come to celebrate you mr nunes so we may find that we are you know what i wasn't even thinking of that i honestly i think how many
059years worth of people that you've touched and impacted you know yeah through your support that uh you might need to make i don't know we might need an overview yeah i don't know i've got something to look at the auditorium or i don't think about the football stadium [Laughter] we go to foxborough oh my god i did kathleen i did not even think it i i honestly didn't believe me okay i thought of my family and i wasn't thinking anybody else's embarrassment i know i think it's the perfect meeting to reopen so that is okay all right so do we have a motion to reopen i'll make that motion okay every second so i have a motion by mr nunes a second by miss emerald do i have um any discussion and the motion is
060to reopen uh meetings on november 15th to the general public yes i will just add uh that um like we spoke about earlier if it becomes an issue with people not following regulations that we will move swiftly to to close them back up i mean just so that everyone understands too is you know the you know the commissioner of education has left the mask mandate in place until january so right that goes without saying okay all in favor aye opposed abstentions okay so the motion passes four to zero yep and again with um dr jenkins on here okay um our next topic and i and again i i feel remiss on this one because the student representation excuse me to the school committee i know we had talked a bit about this i think dr
061jenkins is really leading the investigation on this and you know some of the discussion so you know i don't know if we can pick up a little bit further on this if we want to you know put this on hold until our next meeting yeah i actually had a conversation with mr tebow about the student advisory committee and he has some thoughts on that okay so um all kinds of things let's just see he he was we were questioning whether the entire committee it i believe i thought the committee of five were to be voted on by the whole student body and then a chair picked from that this way i'm reading it um he also says he'll the school committee would like he's happy to put an announcement out when he was thinking that
062perhaps he does one per grade rather than sometimes you get all seniors for example that are interested in being on such a committee for a school-wide and then maybe one at-large member just chosen he's just got these different ideas and then he thought and i don't know how you all think about this should the committee have the policy subcommittee come up with a process or a policy on this student advisory committee to establish the composition and election process for the advisory council just his thinking so i said well i don't think we're going to make a decision tonight right with dr jenkins out but we can plot those ideas for folks to think about okay okay mr news yeah thank you man you know when you you think about you know the the the group
063of students and you know what is their role going to be i mean it's a great point no disrespect and but there are certain things that they you know there are certain things that they would like that just can't be done you know and and such so you know they would have to be kind of versed or or know some of those guidelines going in type type of deal uh yeah one from i think one from each grade and one at large again an odd number type of deal and go from there because the way i'm reading it too it says so this whole committee would meet with them at least every other now you gotta have a post that opened me up that's the way i read it right i mean i would that
064now you're in now you're into a posted open meeting which means look up we're coming back another night exactly so this is a discussion to have calling these students bringing these students out at night exactly juniors and seniors per se okay because they can drive now you're putting you know how long are the meetings going to last now you're pulling uh you know a freshman sophomore that needs a parent guardian a big an older brother sister to to bring him to the meeting you know right needs transportation i'd like to invest mr oliver i'd like to hear from maybe glenn coocher from masc about how other uh school committees because i know it's kind of split across the state as to how committees operate with those rights so i think it would be important if
065we could maybe um reach out to him and just see how you know what their recommendation is and and how it really supposed to take place right that's really that's a great idea that's a great idea yeah and i also because i'm because i'm a little confounded too you know when i think about you know again there's certainly things when we're speaking about the high school and you know and again you know student um attitudes and general sentiments and you know that kind of thing that we've you know found very enriching when we hear from our student representative report in addition to the activities like how they're feeling the sense and the tone but i you know i when we're talking about some other issues i i just don't underst you know know what the
066students um in this gets back to what mr nunes was suggesting to how well informed they're going to be on these topics are they going to be able to weigh in on our budgetary discussion you know those are the things i just really don't exactly i need to understand i think i agree so i agree okay all right so yes mr newman i just i had a thought i just lost it i'm sorry i was income all right and then i guess the uh another um question and this is because i it's just the um christian i can't i apologize i cannot remember his last name that our student represented from last year who was spoken um very assertively about the parking lot um issue has asked that we again addressed that i know we
067had promised that we would address it last year we put it off for this year so um can we please put this on the agenda for next next time and um ms gunther said we can you know do that because i know he's you know he's a member of the community and very active now and you know and then again i and i think he does have concerns some of the students were getting tickets and you know that came back so i think we need to have a discussion about that are they doing something they're not supposed to be doing and that's why they're getting the tickets no they got tickets because they didn't pay for their like parking so that was the ais so so again i it was the the fees so i
068think at least at this guy if we could please have that discussion that would be very good okay and that's yes i just wrote it down because oh yes you were talking about the student rep boom but going back to the the representation with the school committee and everything that's what in all services i've always said is we've got a student rep for is for the students to take their ideas to that student rep for him or her to bring to us to to mention you know when they're given their report we'd like you know is it possible for you to to look at this or talk about this and that type of deal we've done that that has happened in previous okay yeah and i don't think that he's you know again that that's
069been typical for the ones that i've heard except for maybe chris you know a little bit again talking about the parking lot so it'd be nice to you know add that point you know kind of emphasize that as well so that's a good point mr news all right i don't think i don't believe i have anything else um mr oliver i do not okay miss amaral mr news no i uh one thing that you happen to mention about senior night and my thanks to uh mr christopholi for allowing me to announce the seniors for football and band and boys and girls soccer in the field hockey was just wonderful to see all those student athletes and musicians uh get their due with everybody in attendance it was just nice to be able to do that
070and and see that and also you know on the athletic side uh you know the we also recognized the seniors from the other schools that were there which was you know which was really a a nice touch and and i think they appreciated it too so and you know josh talked about how well the sports teams have done this year and it is very true so wish them well as they get into the tournament season yeah that's great all right um i think uh i guess the last thing is we need to circle back uh miss gunther have we had any additional emails come through we have not okay all right thank you all right in that case i think we are just going about to adjourn um our next meeting will be held on
071november 15th on monday it will be and as we've decided this evening an open public meeting so we welcome you to come your mask with your mask thank you yes and then at this this time we are going to journey into an executive session to provide an update with respect to collective bargaining and a pending legal matter um so can i have a motion to adjourn yeah madam chair make a motion we adjourn to executive session for uh update on collective bargaining and pending legal matter and not return to open session okay thank you mr nunes do i have a second second okay so i have a motion made by mr nunes the second by mr oliver all in favor oh roll call oh roll call i'm sorry miss gentler can i have a roll
072call please mary wait yes kathleen amaral yes john nunes yes chris oliver yes all right can i say someone thank you and good night thank you and good night thank you mr news there we go all right [Music]