001that's our next school committee meeting too right meeting [Music] do [Music] come in good evening everyone i'd like to call uh the september 13th meeting of the dartmouth school committee to order per governor baker's order suspending certain provisions of the open 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 dehs tv media in addition the event will be rebroadcast on dc tv channels 9 and on the following days wednesday and thursday at 5 pm friday at 6 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
002practices soon as practical i'd like to have invite everyone to stand for the pledge of allegiance please one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all i'd like to ask everyone to remain sandy i'd like to have a moment of silence for the victims of 9 11 and also for dartmouth's own the oliver leah oliver i'm sorry thank you you may be seated all right so um i just want to remind the public that comments are welcome during our meeting please forward comments to the recording secretary kathleen genthner at dartmouthschools.org ms gentler forwards all emails that she receives everyone on the school committee so if you want to comment on something that is on our agenda this evening please email her with those comments miss gentler have you received any comments so far
003this evening i have not okay i will return to you at the end of the meeting and see if you have received anything during our meeting um with that i will entertain a motion to approve the oh i'm sorry thank you mr nunes i'm out of it today ms ganther can we have a roll call please shannon jenkins here mary wait here kathleen amarillo here john nunes yep chris oliver thank you mr nunes now i will entertain a motion to approve the minutes of the regular session of august 23rd 2021 so move second i have a motion by mr nunes and a second by mr oliver is there any discussion on that motion hearing none all in favor aye aye opposed sentience and one abscession all right so that motion carries with four in favor
004and one absention from mr oliver um all right next up we have our student representative report and we're joined tonight by josh moniz i'm super excited i coached josh in soccer many years ago so i'm excited to see him here all grown up sorry josh we're embarrassing you um please uh just maybe introduce yourself tell us a little bit about you and then go ahead and give your report sure thank you dr jenkins um good evening everyone my name is joshua moniz i'm a senior at dartmouth high school i'm honored to serve as a representative to the student body on the school committee i would like to give you an update on what is going on at dartmouth high the school year kicked off on september 1st with an extended advisory and class assemblies administration
005reviewed some points of emphasis for this school year and our class focused on building relationships and getting to know one another our athletic teams are in full swing with several items off the strong starts including our football team which had a 35-0 opening win over bishop staying last friday night the game featured a back-to-school bash with inflatables lawn games a dj and more it was a fun night for the dhs community this past friday september 10th at 8 46 a.m dartmouth high school observed a moment of silence to remember those who lost their lives during the september 9 11 attacks in addition to honoring first responders who served and sacrificed their lives in response to the attacks mr tevo shared the story of leah oliver a dartmouth high graduate who lost her life while working
006on the 96th floor of the world trade center during the 9 11 attacks her memory lives on in the dartmouth community with a memorial in front of the front steps leading to the student parking lot and the leah oliver scholarship awarded yearly summer reading book talks will take place during the pace period on the early release day this wednesday september 15th students will meet with their book sponsors for a discussion about their book for the first time ever students were able to sponsor books for summer reading and they will be hosting this discussions as well i look forward to the opportunity to lead a discussion with my peers about suli by john grisham this coming wednesday coming up there will be a clubs and activities expo i encourage all students to find a club or
007activity to join there's a clever activity for everyone and if there isn't then students can create one we had we added six new clubs and activities last year students with questions about clubs and activities can either speak with the club advisor or contact mr shea on wednesday october 13th all sophomores and juniors will take the psat nms qt exam this is not only good practice for upcoming sats but it also provides juniors an opportunity to qualify for a national merit scholarship that concludes my update on dartmouth high school thank you for your time thank you josh thank you so much josh does anybody have any comments questions mr oliver yeah i'll just very quickly say great to meet you josh welcome aboard looking forward to hearing your reports thank you thank you nice to meet
008you all right as as you dr jenkins i have the privilege of having josh in a high school band for the past five years so you're right you see him grow up and when i saw her on the agenda that he was the new student rep i was thrilled so we're very fortunate to have him i look forward to his reports throughout the upcoming times year yeah thank you nice to see you um it's been a few years but nice to see you and have you here reporting on the all the goings-on of the high school yes thank you josh it's amazing that you guys are all seniors so uh it's gonna be an exciting year for you and we're happy to have you thank you thank you yeah and i'll just say thank you
009again like my colleagues it's great to have you on board um as i said earlier you're welcome to say if you want if you would like to see how it all works but you're also welcome to go because i know you're probably very busy and have a lot of homework so um either way is fine thank you so much all right thank you very much thank you pleasure to meet you all night safe travels all right next on our agenda i'm going to turn it over to dr gifford for the welcome and introduction of new teachers such a fun time of the year yes you're right we always look forward to this time of year i'll just mention that as you know in the past um mrs oliveira has done all of the yeoman's work
010for the project time work um this year we made the decision to ask or at least you know see if a couple of our teachers wanted to take some of the lead on that and run the meetings and and form those relationships so um we're very happy to have miss jeanine tavares as well as miss kelly duarte miss kelly duartz doing the secondary level coordinator and janine is uh working as the elementary coordinator so they're great assistants and i'm sure they've done a great job i know they have i've observed a little bit of it but done a great job planning meetings for the teachers and making sure that they're all feel welcome and have good mentors for the year so i'll turn it over to you thank you for having us we're going to
011start by introducing our elementary level new teachers and our first teacher is jennifer fitton she is the demelo math coach and her mentor is jen cloon and then we have deborah mcgillick she is the math specialist at demelo and her mentor her mentor is liz vosey hi and then our last teacher at demelo is danielle karen she's teaching grade three and her mentor is leslie gamache and so now we'll move to potter we have rachel farmer teaching fourth grade and her mentor is lori murphy [Laughter] thanks ladies mr calista i was like pat yeah yeah yeah he's doing a great job mark and then we have a special education teacher kaylee stevenson at potter and her mentor is michelle dyas also caitlin durand is a fifth grade teacher at potter and also michelle is her
012mentor as well so we'll move on to quinn elementary and we have bethany dumont who is teaching grade 4 and veronica smith who is teaching grade five and their mentor a little closer and their mentor is paul paveo next at quinn we have taylor salt marsh and keisha julian both teaching fifth grade and their mentor is wendy candace then we have brian wildeman he is a sped teacher in fifth grade his mentor is shannon salvador she could not be with us tonight but here's brian and we have ashley raposo who is the pals teacher at quinn and her mentor is lindsay vaffides moving to district and or cushman we have carrie walsh and hannah renker who are both speech language pathologists and their mentor is lori dionisio and then we have kristin green who is
013a team facilitator and elizabeth de barros who is an occupational therapist and their mentor is lori o'neill coaster come on don't fight and then our last new teacher at the elementary level is megan phillips she is a physical education and wellness teacher at cushman and her mentor is paul paveo [Laughter] and that's all of our new elementary elementary people okay moving on to dartmouth middle school we have matthew doan and his mentor is joseph silvio matthew dolan be teaching grade six next up is william garcia he's the dartmouth middle school social worker with his mentor daniel lafaye then we have francis goffier who was our grade six special ed teacher and linda de silva medeiros who is our grade seven special ed teacher their mentor lisa lisa katz turjan could not be here today at
014the high school we have laura long who is the high school school psychologist and her mentor is caitlin kolbeck you're on candid camera next up we have amy glacier with her mentor catherine thomas and she is the dartmouth high school social worker next up we have samuel bianco and nicole seamus samuel is our chorus teacher at the high school and nicole siemens is a physical education teacher their mentor is deborah august [Laughter] next up we have nathan cavallo and jason borges they're both our high school world of language teachers and their mentor is hilary souza [Laughter] that's great next up is jared brown he is the dartmouth high school physics teacher and he is the mentor is douglas smith next up is michael jaggers he is our dartmouth high school guidance counselor and his mentor
015is nicole heath next up and i think it's our last one yep it's our last one amy career she is the dartmouth high school special ed step up teacher and her mentor is lily chamberlain [Applause] thank you for that thank you any of my committee members like to make a comment you want me to start or go ahead mr oliver thank you madam chad thank you first of all to both of you for organizing this and um you know pitching in and doing the program uh i always enjoy and this is for everyone who has since uh left but i always enjoy reading the biography of the spotlight and all the spotlights exactly it's just it's amazing to see the type of talent that we're able to to get in dartmouth so you know it
016i always enjoy these nights it's unfortunate that we couldn't have the reception that we typically do but it certainly it's great to be in person and be able to see them um you know at least come through and walk through and get to put a name with a face so yeah no it's just exciting it's exciting time always having new fresh educators come in so yeah that's all i have thank you to everyone and welcome aboard to the top of public schools yeah no i kind of echo mr oliver's comments welcome aboard it's great to you know see all these new teachers and it's always thrilling that you know they they want to come work for us type of deal and glad to see it and thank you to uh uh jamie and and uh
017kelly for uh sorry for uh for doing this and taking the lead in that this year so it's appreciated it's a lot of work and but you know the teachers they learn a lot from it and the mentors help them out so that's always great so thank you you're welcome yeah it's it's it is always great to see the uh new faces and and who they're paired up with and uh for mentoring and great matches and some folks doing some double duty there i noticed mr paveo uh yeah i love it i my my sixth grader has one of the new educators um that she uh thinks he's wonderful so far so good right so that's all we can ask for and uh good luck to all of them and thank you for organizing this
018yes thank you so much for putting this together i know having you know as a teacher it certainly is so important to have mentors you know that are there to support you someone that you know when you're coming to a new environment that you can lean to and to have you know it's critical so i we really appreciate to see this program you know um coming to fruition and again that support network continuing and it's just so great to see so much excitement this year and these new faces coming in and that energy so thank you you're welcome i'll just talk about what my colleagues have said thank you so much and please you know at your next meeting um tell all the new teachers and the mentors how grateful we are we didn't have
019a chance to you know thank him because they were they were running through but we're super excited to have them on board and so please um convey our appreciation for both the new teachers and for the for the mentors thank you so much thank you thank you for having me thank you thank you ladies good job all right so the next item on our agenda is a resolution about the dartmouth memorial stadium renovation phase two mr kiley i'll hand that over to you thank you dr jenkins so this is exciting um you know it's been a while since we've talked about the stadium project obviously for those who are lucky enough to be at the game friday night you know we get to enjoy our field but it also puts the microscope on the rest
020of the project every time we're in that facility it's obvious that you know we still need to address some other issues besides the field itself so we uh are excited to move the project forward the first part of our plan to do that is to consider this resolution before you so i'll i will read that and then answer any questions you may have so it's resolution number 22-1 it's a resolution awarding a contract for the construction of the dartmouth memorial stadium storage building whereas bids for the dartmouth memorial stadium storage building project were duly advertised and bids received were opened at 2 p.m thursday august 12th and whereas the bid from jj cardozi inc 150 emerald street riverside rhode island was reviewed and deemed to have met the public specifications therefore be it resolved that
021a contract for the dartmouth memorial stadium storage building be awarded to j.j cardozianc riverside rhode island based on dartmouth public schools specifications dated june 23 for the amount of 1 million 675 thousand dollars so move thank you mr news can i get a second second you got you beat me to it kathleen so i have a motion by mr nunes this uh second by ms amaral do you guys have comments questions discussion uh mr nunes yeah thank you thank you madam chair i just you know threw you to uh to mr kylie when you know forgetting the two high bidders type of deal it's you know it was nice to see that per se everybody was kind of in the ballpark i mean when you've got 119 000 you know on a project that size
022from one to four you know at least you know that everybody's in you know those those four were and everybody saw the same thing right and the blueprints so mr oliver or mr nunes i'm sorry did you have another oh i'm good okay mr oliver thank you dr jenkins yeah i'll just say that i had a great opportunity to speak with mr kylie as well as mr tattlebomb and mr mickelson who's also part of the um the turf field committee and um you know we had we had some good conversations while this was certainly a little bit higher number than what we're anticipating it's still like mr noon said uh especially in this day and age right now with everything going on in just materials elevated across the board that i'm very comfortable and confident
023with this number and i i got to give credit to mr kiley for the work that he's done to get this project rolling again as you know the town meeting awarded us the money um several a couple of years seems like a couple of years now right right around two years um so it's exciting to to start continue get the project back on track and uh let's finish it up so um no and i'll i'll just add a couple of other thoughts afterwards thank you samurai no can i let me i can i just ask you uh before we go back to mr nunes can you remind viewers what the scope of is is the project in phase two and then also we know what the cost was remind everyone what town meeting allocated for
024us sure i'd be happy to so um tommy allocated 3.6 million dollars for the next phase of the project and the next phase encompasses the repairs to the um to the structures themselves the concrete stands the bathrooms the concessions the storage component the concourses are in and around the stadium so really everything else that needs to get done this is a piece of that to be followed by another bid in which we would then proceed to concrete work the the renovations are significant that need to take place the bathroom component of the facility needs to be expanded greatly which necessitated us eliminating the storage component in the existing structure because we need the space for the bathrooms so this is sort of a step in that in that process but i just want to assure
025everybody that we are moving forward with the design of the remainder of the the facility we haven't forgotten about the need for those bathrooms um which is really great need so um so that's part of this process uh this this next step this storage component is sort of a standalone little piece of that that was easily you know bid out uh as a separate component it would have been regardless of the timing but but yeah so we're anxious to move forward with this and continue that process with the other you know the next bid uh to hopefully finalize the project um the construction climate is an interesting one right now so we'll and i also want to remind i can hear the questions at town meeting why does the storage building cost so much as
026a you know state a local government organization we have certain rules that we have to follow that make construction of buildings for us different than the storage shed that you put up in your backyard and so that's why it's going to cost more because we have to follow those those those rules um other questions comments one last question i wrote it down and i forgot to ask do we have a start date on this mr kyle uh well so after the fall season lead time right after the fall season and lead time on steel is a is a major factor in this so our hope is you know to be starting um the the groundwork to lay the foundation for this um fairly soon we probably need about a month to finish all the submittals
027that are required to get this project actually to break ground uh but at that point we very well might be able to do the concrete work it is set off this the actual you know stadium it's a little ways from the field and it could be fairly easily contained with construction fencing so i don't anticipate that we'd have to wait um to start construction now materials in this climate are a problem so we'll adjust accordingly absolutely thank you i'm good madam champ other comments questions all right go ahead someone going to say something no i'm just saying thank you yeah it's great to be moving forward on this all right so here are no further questions or discussion [Music] so that motion carries unanimously thank you again thank you for your sir kylie so madam
028chair yes may just add something in regards to the stadium so outside of uh what we just approved in conversations with uh mr mickelson and mr talibaum and the select board they just wanted me to remind everyone and i think they'll be doing it as well in their meeting that they're the fundraising committee uh that is that they was established pre pandemic they're going to try to get that um up they're going to make some phone calls and try to get that up and running and they're going to be looking to you know cooperations and other other businesses in town as well as any individuals to maybe try to raise some money to help us supplement uh the cost of you know whether it's this phase or next phase but supplement some of the cost
029of um well the one phase this bid or the next bit um but yeah no they're really excited about that even if even if it's a little bit every little bit helps and there'll be you know some certain things we can look for for naming rights and all that but they did want me to mention that they're really going to try to work on getting that fundraising committee off the ground to go along with the stadium so that's all i wanted to add thank you awesome thank you so much mr oliver all right so the next item on our agenda is the consent agenda for fundraising activities for the dartmouth school music association entertain a motion to approve all right so i have a motion by mr nunes a second by miss waite is there
030any discussion on the motion i actually thank you madam chair uh just really quickly um i i'm just learning about it and all that i i got to say that it's amazing to me what the uh the dartmouth band parents do um to help with uh this committee and just the piece of uh hearing about like what you do it what they do at gillette and all the other pieces so um it's just amazing and i get to give props to everyone that's part of the dsma so that's all i have thank you yeah and i think i'll just add to that i'd just like to point that out every time this comes up how much funding we get from what is essentially private sources this is not public taxpayer generated revenue it is revenue
031that is provided basically by volunteers who um who put in time for our for our schools and i know that the dartmouth band is a big pride of our community and i think it's important for us to acknowledge that they likely wouldn't be so successful with so without so much sort of what is essentially private fundraising and it's great that they do it sometimes though i just wish they didn't have to um that we could fund them at the the levels that they that they really need but as we know i have a broken record on this funding is short um but i think i'd like to i always like to highlight these things so that people are really aware of that um any other comments all right so hearing none all in favor aye
032opposed good madam attention i will abstain okay so that that is approved with uh four in favor and one ascension from mr nunes all right so the next item on our agenda moving on to new business is school committee policies i'm gonna turn it over to dr gifford to walk us through some of these thank you so the subcommittee the policy subcommittee met i guess it was september 8th if i recall correctly and we reviewed these policies and as we said there the sexual harassment harassment one can be a little confusing but really it's not so i'll walk you through that so on the advice of uh one of our attorneys kat lyons uh lions um her office they created these policies for us based on some of the changes that have taken place over
033time with the harassment and sexual harassment um legal issues so what we're proposing is to add aca which is a small policy non-discrimination on the basis of sex and and some of these you will see they kind of intertwine this various line which that overlaps but they said these are the ones we should have in our policy booklet so we're proposing to add ac a that would be a brand new policy then the more a little bit more confusing i suppose is we do have right now a c a b on the books and that's called sexual harassment policy upon their advice we are proposing to eliminate or actually should say replace that with the one that you've received the proposed it's simply titled harassment it would still be a c a b and with
034along that we gave you what would then become the proposed procedures processes to implement that policy and this was all as i said on the advice of our attorneys and the process the due process protections etc and how folks would go about reporting harassment of any kind is all laid out there and that would be in our posted so folks could see that in our handbooks etc etc for this year right now and um the teachers were alerted to this during our opening day they received cat lions actually came down and did training on this for them along with the 504 training it's you know the yearly training we do but we did ask her to focus in on this to give folks an idea of how to report any kind of issues and what
035it really meant and the differences in the old policy and the new and uh the administrative team the leadership team for the district received actually a probably a two-hour training with her this summer on of this so a very thorough training so this year uh mr kiley would be one of our title nine coordinators along with beth townsend we have kind of told folks that they could report to anyone but um mr kylie would more handle the uh kind of an adult staff issues and and miss townsend would uh handle more of anything you know with students so as i said we're just proposing to replace add aca as a new policy replacing our current ac ab with the proposed harassment policy and we would separate into having these process or policy procedures that folks
036would be made aware of so that's that one probably want to take them separately i imagine yeah let's let's start with any questions comments or concerns about these two policies before we move on to the next ones so this is the first reading tonight you'll get any feedback and then we'll come back for a second reading does anybody have any comments mr oliver thank you madam chair so i'm just reviewing it when i looked over it earlier the proposed acab harassment policy i see employee to student student to student but what could does this policy also cover staff on staff or is that something different so it would be same it's just not specifically outlined here uh bolded out um but it does this policy is all-encompassing all-encompassing okay perfect thank you very much welcome
037it's quite thorough other comments questions no i have a question about policy aca which is new and that's the policy based on nondiscrimination on the basis of sex acab has a broader sort of list of categories covered do we have another existing policy that says we don't i mean right because it says aca sex but it's missing race gender identity creed all those other things that are listed there so i just want to make sure that all of those things are covered elsewhere we do we i didn't i don't i'm not sure if we followed it to you but i have it here uh we also have ac already we're not changing that but that is addressing exactly what you're saying that's our non-discrimination policy okay so i'm a bit confused if we have ac
038why we need aca if sex is covered already in ac it just seems weird to me that we would separate out that one and not any of the other so i'm sure there's a reason i'm just trying to understand and i think probably just because of as time went on and more and more cases came up in those kinds of with that kind of issue that the legal people decided that was a good thing to kind of add that as a separate separate one so to really make emphasis on it i'm just gonna say probably make an emphasis and just pushing it out there to bring it more yeah it's just my understanding the title nine covers more than sex it covers sexual orientation and gender identity covers a number of and that is a
039number of things right it just seems odd to decide it out on its own yeah exactly and with specific reference to title ix which also covers non-discrimination in other areas um i'm probably going to read this a little bit more carefully again um it's a really complicated issue there's been a number particularly when the harassment occurs between particularly between students but but it's not on school grounds and that's the really complicated issue in today's day of social snapchat and instagram i'm an old person i just use facebook so i don't even know what the kids use these days but um i'm sure the the lawyer knows more about this but i think i just wanted to take some time to read it carefully so if i have any questions i will email those to you
040yeah that would be good because i could get answers from her um specifically because obviously she's the expert and i'm not okay exactly other questions or comments all right so i think we're good on the first reading on those two we want to move on to i guess ff now okay so ff as you recall last year we had a request from a community member also coach to name one of our areas of our schools after someone and we decided we would need to revisit our policies before we did that if we were entire um inclined to do that so our old policy really was about and and not to say that um this committee at some point in time and i know mr nunes forwarded some information to us have addressed some of these
041things before but we never had it kind of in a policy as this were subsections of a building so our old policy as you can see ff was just naming a new facility so we've enhanced that and are proposing the new one was naming facilities or subsections of facilities so again you could name it a library or a gymnasium etc so um that's that's all that's what we would propose that it would include that and how the committee would go about you know we would probably do a subcommittee again like like in the past i know that has been done um when they've named some of the schools etc so that's what we're proposing uh for that one and again any questions or i know folks will have a chance to read it mr nunes
042yeah thank you madam chair yeah i went back and dug out some old uh information that i had on this and forwarded it to dr gifford one of the questions i have is as i'm kind of in maybe this is going to come up later on as as this comes up is uh one of the things was like you know what was the wow factor right type of deal and i'm not seeing that here or well anything of that or is this just to get it going and then yeah develop the policies after yeah and so what we would do exactly so if it you know it says that we have the authority to do that but um that we would then similar to the past you'd have a committee or whatever what and you
043would have those um procedures identified that someone would have to submit and like you said i looked through the the wording and stuff that you gave us and they submit the why yeah and and actually if i recall looking at the documents we have it actually kind of almost detailed certain questions that the committee was asking for these people yeah to to identify why that they were submitting that i remember one week yep you know exactly so we can put this way back probably you know and you would uh authorize uh us to create the committee and and entertain the requests and and go forward yeah okay all right questions comments i'm good other than that right at the moment i guess i just have one question about this and if i'm reading this right
044the old policy says whenever possible the wishes of the community including parents and students should be considered in naming new facilities i don't see that in the new facility and while i don't think that public input has to be the be-all end-all i do think um some engagement when possible as the old policy said um is is good and youthful um so i'm wondering if there's a reason why we dropped that or whether we want to maybe add that back mr nunes you have some thoughts on that i do and i think i go right back to what the question i just asked the superintendent about the wow factor and her comment about if we as a committee deem something viable than forming a subcommittee and getting the letters and that's going to generate the
045community involvement and things of that nature unless i'm misreading right but i guess i would rather it was in the policy and it's been dropped i'd rather just see it stay in there so it's known i trust all of you right but we want to create policies that survive beyond the people sitting in the seats and that institutionalize things so i'd like to see some sentence like that remain in the policy and how the wishes of the community are taken is you know up to the committee but i think it's important to say to the subcommittee and the committee we should be listening to the public yeah okay mr oliver i i would agree with that i don't i don't see any i don't see any issue with that i know mr news is shaking
046his head but um i can see but i can certainly see both sides but i do agree that you know it should it should be some kind of language in the policy i guess my other question is have we reviewed have we are we able to look at like what the masc model language is to policy do they have model language for this through masc i was just curious um this is all i found okay i could be wrong certainly you know if someone has something for sure but the old one was all i saw to tell you the truth but yeah i would agree with adding some kind of language like that because that's really what happens when we go forward with the process so you can put it in writing for sure right
047any other comments or questions all right so that one will come back to us up two and then we're on to um k f okay new use of facilities and this kylie will be uh reviewing that one thank you dr gifford so kf um itself is the sort of broad community use of school facilities policy that that policy is actually not up for revision uh kfr which is uh really kf was presented to you for context just so you understand what we are trying to address in kfr so kfr addresses the terms and fees associated with use of facilities requests so the primary changes to kfr most most of them are just sort of housekeeping changes in who does what and some changes in process where to look for things who to get things from
048uh for people who are prospective users of the facilities but i think you know there was a couple of important changes that we did make to kfr one we highlighted the fact that users need to be need to familiarize themselves and follow dartmouth public schools policy and procedures they also we also added in some safeguards um and added in regarding the use of the stadium obviously you know this policy long predates um you know use the the the turf field at the stadium we really think it's important that we have someone on site to to assist users of the of the field um throughout their you know rental or period of use so that was not addressed in the previous policy and we we uh have received numerous requests and some comments from other elected
049board members throughout the town regarding um use of the facilities by recreation groups we have had use since the since the turf field opened by some recreation groups of the facility um time to on the field is somewhat limited because we have unfortunately a very robust uh program between athletics and music use of the field but we are sensitive to the fact that um you know community use of the is important and we hope to be able to um you know to to expand that as much as possible after our own school activities are scheduled so uh in thinking about that again we just we you know when when we're using it we have someone on site who is responsible for the facility um and we need to make sure that that's happening whenever someone
050is using it so that that was really the primary reason for making the changes that we did kind of subtle changes to the policy i just want to say i appreciate it's super helpful to me personally to see a markup version of policies it's really useful to be able to see what's being added and what isn't um if we can continue to do that that would be fabulous just because sometimes it's hard to know what's changed where this is all marked up and so it makes it really easy to see so i appreciate that actually with the money right yeah exactly are there any um comments questions mr nunes yeah thank you madam chair and you know been around when you when you look at this and you go yeah i remember when this was
051put in or that type of deal but uh and somewhere down the line i don't know why i didn't bring it up way back when but uh and i already had this discussion with mr kylie um wherever we see like uh the assistant superintendent of finance or operation can we put or designee i mean if you know just like you know if mr kylie's not there somebody can you know somebody could come in you know and give authorization type of deal just thinking along those lines too right i mean mr kylie if that's a title that he has and maybe if someone replaced him we wouldn't we might even want to make it like generic so that because some we have this problem with our contract right it references positions that haven't been on campus
052for 20 years right and nobody has gone through and line item edited to take out those dated references yeah so where we might want to just think about making it whatever we insert where you say that right um generic enough so that we don't have to change the policy when personnel change yeah again you know how about something like office of finance and operations so whatever the title of the person becomes yeah right still a designee from the office yeah exactly maybe that would work oh go ahead go ahead you could put superintendent or designee i mean you're always going to have a superintendent so you could put that i mean it just doesn't it's not as specific as for someone who's looking at the policy who they should call right but but yeah i
053don't i don't feel strongly about it i'm just more sort of spitballing about it yeah uh mr news do you have other comments helpful i'm good man i'm jail okay other comments questions concerns i guess my one question would be about sort of the rates right [Music] how do we set these when did we set these i mean we're making proposing many changes to them presumably they were set at some time based on something and presumably our costs have gone up since that time so i'm just sort of curious about um i don't want to charge people more money but i do want to make sure you know that we are covering sort of the cost of doing business yeah and i think if we in in that regard if we look at um kf
054which describes who's going to be using the facility the school activities aren't going to be paying any fees obviously um the town meeting and other town board activities aren't going to be paying any fees the parks department at this point the parks department sanctioned leagues they do not pay a fee they pay for custodial coverage or you know obviously maintenance coverage if we're talking about the stadium but um but but they actually don't pay a fee so really there's not very many people who are paying fees for use of our facilities because there's not after after we exhaust all this the time that those groups uh you know take up the spaces there's not much more time to be had um generally speaking we have some dance recitals and things like that i've taken a
055look at the fees based on that i i think um you know the the surrounding communities that i've taken a quick look at we're not you know we're we're not really far off even though that these have been in place now for i think the last time we looked at them was 2013 so yeah they're a reasonable fee if if we do have enough time to offer okay great though madam cheer mr news thank you i do have one as i just flipping through i came across one i forgot the note 8 at my fault uh 4.3 which is just before the fee schedules uh talks about food and beverage stair sales and the stadium are permitted that type of deal somewhere can we put in there that these organizations have to have a certificate
056from the board of health okay or you know some license you know a license type of deal and you know somebody that's served safe we can do so thank you all right any other comments or questions all right so i think we're done with the school committee policies yeah and we'll bring those back to us for a second reading um and the next item on our agenda ties in a little bit with what we've been talking about and that's the use of school of space by outside groups um miss amarillo asked me about this and i actually sort of wanted to to bring this up with you all um there was a window i think last late last spring when we all thought it would be a nice sort of normal school year we wouldn't
057have any of this and i know the def um put in to host an in-person event in the schools in november there have been some other organizations that are approved and i wanted us to have a conversation about that about whether or not we are comfortable with large outside groups hosting events in our schools right now i don't know the answer to that question i'm not even sure myself um you know i'm just concerned right our policy is you wear masks right when you're in school buildings um you know mr kyle you said you know when we have our events we have people that we are you know making sure that those policies are followed i'm just not sure how that's going to work for outside groups and so i'm just a little bit concerned
058about that i don't know if dr gifford or mr kiley you have any thoughts on this or anyone else and the committee has any thoughts about this go ahead mr kiley i i do and you know after you brought it up dr jenkins um you know giving it some thought and you should shared some uh some points with us um i i think that given that there is at this point not a gathering restriction in the commonwealth i i think there's a few things that we can do and still not be contrary to the current guidance so i think if we include in our in our approval letters for use of facilities requests that um organizations are subject to the change to the current guidelines and any changes that may be put in place by
059the mass department of public health or the governor's office [Music] and that we always have the right to cancel we always include that anyway but that you know we have the right to cancel or alter their approval based on you know conditions and basic based on any conditions and that there's a mask advisory in place and that we would encourage folks to self-monitor for covet-like symptoms and encourage their guests to self-monitor basically mirror the language that's in place in the commonwealth at this point the the mask mandate is is for students and staff in school that's that's what the let me just push back on that because some of the events like the spelling bee are held on a week night when there are in fact students and staff in the building right and i
060just don't feel comfortable i mean in my book if you're in the school and there are students and staff in this building you got to wear a mask right that's there's no exception to that all right and so if that's the case how do we ensure that these groups are are masking right it's we are different than other organ places in the commonwealth and that we're school and there is a mass mandate and so i would feel if we're going to allow and i'm not sure i believe that people should be required to be masked at these events i don't know what my fellow school committee members think but i there are times when we're having events and there are children and staff and our custodial staff are here right i mean they're here right
061on those times mr oliver thank you dr jenkins but excuse me my personal opinion on this is that i i do think that we should be allowing outside groups to participate in using the buildings however i am strongly in agreement that any outside group should be masked obviously athletic groups you know the players i'm not sure where under you know right now what the guidance is on athletics in in players however in general i think we any group outside group using the schools any of the schools need to be need to be masked inside the building once again though we go back to the question of you know enforcement of that um and i i don't have i don't have a simple answer to that i mean i think maybe we could have the organizers
062sign sort of like a covid agreement that acknowledges that they are in fact responsible for it um you know given how social media is in the community i'm sure we'll see and hear about it right if uh if things go wrong and i think you know that may affect future ability to use the facilities if people aren't following the guidelines miss wait you know i was just going to say that you know as you know my husband's a coach for dysa is they had a in the spring a cove coordinator that every team had to have um and that person was responsible for you know coordinating with the team keeping everyone accountable following covert guidelines so i think it's reasonable for us to hold you know groups that are coming in to and say that
063they should have a coveted coordinator as well someone that you know is responsive to us you know or to you know um mr kiley and and setting up the protocols for any expectations for their group and holding that group accountable so i think that's a pretty you know moderate way of accomplishing our goals because i also think that we should you know we're trying to make life as normal as possible bringing the kids in i'd love to see you know doia playing basketball and all of that back again i think it's exciting and you know but again we have to protect our staff and our students and our larger goal of keeping kids in school so that's that still remains our priority yeah miss amarillo yeah i would i would agree with the my colleagues
064here um you know just thinking about uh what you're saying uh dr jenkins and that you know i think about events that i've held like with the cpac um over the years and while our event is happening we'll often have students coming in playing a basketball game or the theater students in in the other room music students are always here working really hard um at their craft um you know and so i would think it'd be reasonable to act to ask that folks coming in if that is decided upon to to have someone responsible to uh to us for that um you know and and honestly though i think about you know i don't well i would like to see us you know we open house was canceled and i don't know the reason we
065can talk about that after but i hate to see us not having you know the things that we have in a district we don't have folks coming into our our um our school committee meetings we don't have um we had to cancel open house potentially for a different reason but then allowing the community to just use it in numbers coming up and not monitoring how many people are coming in and whether or not they're really you know abiding by those kind of precautions worries me um and also concerns me because i think you know students and families should come first yeah thank you madam chair there's a bunch of things that that come into play here type of deal yes we want to see our buildings used i mean they're for the community and one
066of the things you know years ago we talked about was you know these are community buildings and we want to see them use for the community the thing that concerns me and i totally get the mask wearing i no no issues with that type of deal but how do you enforce it okay i mean you have 50 people here for xyz activity and two people come in without a mask now who's the person that says you know hey put a mask on no you gotta no i'm not leaving you know that type now you get into a whole hullabaloo type of type of deal so that there's i think a lot more here than what meets the eye with what you know we've got to we've got to come up with i mean you know
067we need to get i think we need to get these buildings back operational type of deal but we've got to do it sensibly we've got to do it fair and in all seriousness we've got to have the onus has to be on the people coming into the building okay it's as simple as that i mean you know again we've talked about it to a blue in the face with covert and everything else if you know if you don't feel good stay home type of type of deal but we've got to just be able to control things and and use it in in that sense and do you you know i i think if we're going to do it then you we're going to have to put that onus on whoever signs the paperwork to use
068the building and that's how it's going to be i mean because other than that you know are you leaving it again going back are you leaving on a person that signs the paperwork or there are going to be custodian or custodians here you put it on a custodian you know that time and i this is 100 my my dilemma here mr nunes i agree with you that right now on the one hand i don't want to say don't come in without a mouse but if we say who comes in with the mask who enforces it um but i don't think i'm not comfortable saying no mess to because there are there are students here yeah there are staff here so i don't want to say oh you know just just we'll follow the commonwealth guidelines
069because all the students were saying you got to wear your masks they have to wear their mask regardless right after school weekends if they're here they're wearing a mask yes so now we have situations where there's a group of people who have to be masked and there's a group of people who don't have to be masked i dr jenkins i can give you a perfect exam when i came in tonight the drum line was coming up from practicing okay they stopped where they always stop and they started to come in and the section leader said don't forget to put your masks on so i mean the kids the students are well versed in that type of deal but but i think we've got to tell outside groups that if you want to use our facilities
070you have to mask up yeah there may be problems with enforcement you are right but i think that like it's like any crime we're not going to solve all of it but we've got still got to take a stand to say what we need to do yep there's wait and then mr oliver and i would just say again if they have a covert coordinator or whatever whatever the designee is they're responsible and if they violate the rules they don't come back i mean it's you know it's a bummer but i you know i kind of want to you know echo what um mrs amaral is saying is that you know we do want to prioritize using our buildings for ourselves and i think mr news was saying this as well that you know if we
071are considering and this does kind of bring into question if we're allowing outside groups what does that mean about our what we're holding ourselves here in other words why are we canceling these events why are we not going on field trips if we're allowing other groups to come in i think it does you know bring up a whole other layer of issues and questions because everything should be centered first and foremost on our students and their experiences and their quality experiences and on our families as mrs amaran was saying so you know thinking through that if you know if we're not allowing our students to go out into the community are we allowing inside groups you know in field trips and those things and we're allowing i think we have a little bit of an
072issue there and we have to think about it i'll get back to what mr nunes was saying is that it does deepen our um questions and concerns it's a it's not a simple issue mr oliver you had a comment yeah a couple of things now right now you got me thinking a little more and this this way thank you for that um but no i agree i think um you know we just i don't know um if we're already those groups that are already coming into the buildings um if they've already been um you know some kind of notice to them but i think it's as simple right now um that we we give them notice that this is the expectation using the building uh everyone needs to be masked i think with the whether
073it's a covert coordinator event organizer whoever it may be that the notices on them and i have no doubt that we will hear about it um but as far as putting that responsive i can't see putting that responsibility on a building custodian or someone else so it's really it's really going to come back to them in which it's only it's going to hurt them in the future if they if they choose to to not you know uh enforce and help us help us enforce and help the administration and the school community enforce the the policy that's been set in place um but yet and then going back to what my colleagues have spoken about it certainly brings up some interesting points in which you know ways and the optics of that to see how we
074can um do more for our own um for our own students and in some kind of normalcy if we're going to be allowing if we continue to allow outside groups in but no it's certainly certainly an interesting discussion thank you so it seems to me it seems to be the consensus of the committee that we do want to allow outside groups to continue to use the facilities that we'd like to have maybe some form or acknowledgement saying that under you know current jesse guidelines or whatever mask wearing is mandated maybe there's a name that they have to sign and contact information about whose responsible and acknowledging that on the behalf of the organization so again it may not be perfect and we're not going to ask our custodians to but the organization is aware and
075know that they have to try to do this and then also we might acknowledge in that form that non-compliance may have a negative effect on future use of facilities that seems to be where we're at and then i think there's a separate sort of bucket of issues that probably not tonight because it's not on the agenda and i don't like to discuss things when they're not on the agenda um but you know things that are school-related about sort of going out and things like field trips and stuff like that that we might continue that discussion at a future meeting does that seem about right yeah okay so um it would did you i'm sure miss gentler got that and relay that to mr kylie and and i would just it would be great if we
076could you know reach out to groups that already have you know like the def i'm not even sure we're going to do the spelling bee to be honest but groups like us that last spring signed an agreement to say okay this has been updated and just so you know this is what you have to do that would be great all right so moving on the next item on our agenda miss wait and miss amarill asked me to add to the agenda discussion regarding nut products and school buildings would one of you like to maybe miss wait since you brought it up first would you like to go ahead and sort of explain here sure so um i know last year in a conversation considering kovid and everything was going on and students were eating primarily
077across all schools in their classroom in a conversation with dr gifford we as a district went nut free um had parents who would ask me you know as of the week before school started are we continuing to be nut free um i had asked some administrators too and up to the few days before school started i was under the assumption and it seemed that some administrators had told some other parents as well that we were going to continue to be a nut-free system you know it it was only you know really the friday before school started that i learned that that change had happened um i don't know that parents were aware and certainly parents of allergic children were aware of that change i didn't see any you know i was you know i'm in
078that situation myself i didn't have any you know heads up or anything any literature come home to say that there was an official change and i guess i would say you know i know that if i've looked at the language i've looked at you know fair and certainly another quite a number of other advisory councils on this and i understand that there's kind of a changing thought on nut-free schools um you know there's i think it's what they call the good and the bad and the ugly and that you know we want to have schools where students feel safe and you know enable to participate fully in activities we don't want to create stigma for those children you know and so there is some thought on that but you have the complications of covid and
079with students you know in safer schools students would be eating in the cafeteria they would have designated tables in the middle school certainly that's not something we can do right now students are eating in their classroom seats um it's my understanding that the students themselves are wiping down those seats but that they're then moving from one desk to another throughout the day um you know wipes or you know um what am i looking for um like clorox uh well um you know hand sanitizer doesn't deal with any kind of one of these issues hand sanitizer doesn't deal with any food particles so they have to wash with soap and water i don't get the impression that every student in every middle school classroom is going and washing their hands with soap and water after so
080i feel like the fact that we're dealing with masking and my concern is dealing with masking and also students eating in their seats and rotating different seats creates a continuous dangerous atmosphere for these kids and also mass it's difficult for the younger students to see what's happening behind those masks in terms of hives and other early warning signs of allergic reactions and so that's another concern so i would just say like i would hope that while we're continuing with masking and we're continuing to eat in our classrooms just to keep these children safe that we would continue to stay nut-free and then once you know we remove mass and return to a more traditional setting with eating the cafeteria we can reevaluate that would be my hope so brother you have a comment or question
081yeah i i brought it up i think i forwarded you one email that i received but i had not known and very fortunate that my family is not affected by any you know um nut allergies however i just hearing a little bit of buzz on social media and getting some facebook you know messages and and emails into my account i thought oh i really didn't really know the answer because i did think that i guess similarly that we were still not free um having said that when school did start my daughter came home and i guess there was some attention to it that i wasn't aware of after i had emailed that um but it's still a little bit of a concern i thought and so i didn't say don't put it on the agenda
082i think it's a good conversation to have and an important topic to talk about um that my my daughter came home and said oh because nobody in my block has an allergy we can bring in nuts and i thought oh i mean or have nut products we're like a sun butter family but um anyway my son's school has is not free but um i just thought that okay that sounded good but then you know they are intermingling um you know they're not the blocks are intermingling in gym in other places so at any rate i just thought it would be good to just revisit it officially at a meeting um and not knowing that miss waite had also brought it up but i know she's personally affected by this so dr kevin can you talk
083to us a little bit about what the policies are and it and where kids are eating in the diff i mean i think this is the big concern right when they were in cafeterias the nuts were contained there there was usually a table or whatnot right and so that way kids could know that they weren't in other places but because we can't keep all of the kids in cafeterias because of the distancing that makes it harder particularly to clean right now so you talk about what our protocols are for cleaning and where the buildings are that kids are not eating in the is it just the middle school or is it also here in the high school um well and you can correct me if i'm wrong but i did um reach out to all
084of the administrators and got an answer to and they just resorted pretty much back to their traditional practices which we've been using forever other than last year the high school has signage in the area of dining hall this is what i was told as well as the auditorium that's not free so they have specific areas and the monitors and administrators obviously there's a lot of administrators around to know where those areas are and obviously then educate the kids as well of course high school is a little bit different and they're pretty much responsible for themselves um at demelo same thing kids are at their desk in the cafeteria and there's a red dot on the desk of any student who have allergies so they can do a deep clean between lunch shifts of those desks
085that's demelo and there are um katie says there are certain rags that are only used for those deaths so they separate those middle school students while eating in their classrooms are situated as as we always say approximately three feet apart um and teachers have been wait always as usual made aware of the students in their class that have the allergies that's always one of the things the nurses work with um and as you said they have the wipes etc to make sure the areas are cleaned and he says well they're creating a column and this was last week so we had just started school on the menu ordering google document which enables teachers and caf to effectively cap staff monitor the lunch orders relating to food allergies and of course if a student if a
086parent asked i'm not sure they have they would make even another accommodation for those parents of safer seating cushman cushman has done a little bit different that they have said out that they will they would look that it when they're giving a snack they don't have the nut products and if the children are bringing nut products for lunch the teachers are made aware and they're they're in the cafeteria but that's separated out um potter same thing resorting back to the previous practices the nurse actually calls each family to work out any individual plans they may have the general practice of course is that the families of students in the class they're all made aware and it's classes that have just like we used to not free not de no not free desk areas or a
087nut free classroom completely in the cafeteria there's an allergy aware table for students who um sit there because of their allergies other students are allowed to sit at the table but they must be eating a lunch that obviously didn't have the nuts in it and the same thing pretty much at quinn they have an assigned desk for nut-free students and each of the deaths are cleaned separately from the rest and classrooms that have students with no allergies are peanut free well not free the whole classroom so that's what the um administration forwarded to to me just to be certain that everybody was back can i follow up on the middle school yep um so uh miss amber all noted that in her daughter's block you know yep are they are they not free are they
088our blocks are blocks with kids who have allergies this is my first question are they nut free or no i was not told whether a whole block was not free i wouldn't i wouldn't that that is concerning to me that particularly we've got three feet of distance and say i'm not free and mary's sitting next to me with her peanut butter and jelly sandwich right that can be a problem i think the other if i can just interject and you know and i will say like my son's going through desensitization so i'm you know but i'm aware having gone through this that i you know i certainly empathize with these families it isn't even just so much that because if you're in the cafeteria you have a adult who's going to be cleaning that table
089i didn't get to that the cleaning part sorry so this is really a concern is that if i'm sitting next to dr jenkins and then we all of a sudden switch the next block for math or another class comes in and i unknowingly sit in dr jenkins seat which has been you know cleaned by a fellow sixth grader you know it's concerning if she just ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and then another child comes back and sits in that same seat because they are moving it's my understanding that now without social distancing this is the difference i actually thought last year was safer because they were sitting in their same seats they weren't moving from room to room now they're going to be sitting in each other's seats so it's not just during
090the lunch period itself it's the fact that they're they're switching seats they're going in sharpening pencils and you know i if this protocol is going to consider it's going to those kids are going to after lunch not only have to sanitize their their desks but because we don't want these kids to you know i mean we don't want these kids to go in anaphylactic shock so those kids every student in that block wear peanut butter and jelly if they've eaten peanut butter and jelly they're gonna have to go and wash their hands with soap and water too so there's you know there's multiple the cleaning issue if again it's just much harder to control if you're eating peanut butter in the classroom or peanut products or not product or any you know these major allergens
091and then you're moving from seed to seed and asking the kids to clean the seeds themselves who who does the cleaning the kid who's eating the peanut butter and jelly i haven't been in the class when i watched this is my other thing my son's best friend is allergic to peanut butter and if you ask him to clean the table that table is going to be clean if you ask my son to clean the table i'm not entirely confident that that table is going to be clean right a sixth grade boy is not no offense to sixth grade boys but i've never had that they do not have attention to detail that's necessary in a life-threatening situation so you know at first i i didn't realize that they were eating at their desks if they
092were reading at the cafeteria i think we have those protocols we've had them for many years right and i think that's fine but we're not entirely normal right now and so i i do think at least in my personal opinion maybe hear from mr oliver mr nunes too that i think particularly at the middle school we really need to evaluate this um because i don't know the risk the risks are high and you know the the i'm just not sure the losses are that much if we say if we clamp down on this a little bit you know mr oliver do you have any thoughts on this yeah i can add a few things so what what i'm hearing here is that really the the concerns and the issues are around the middle school for
093the simple reason that they're eating at their desks in their classrooms as um you know someone who is very familiar with someone who has the tree nut allergy um not a peanut analogy but a treating analogy that you know just just the dust alone can cause anaphylaxis that it is concerning and i would be certainly be in favor of um you know not allowing um nut products at the middle school you know writing in the classrooms because i you certainly bring up some good points i'm not going to believe be labor or anything but uh the points that you made uh this is wait and mrs amaral are certainly justified um in my opinion and you know i i would certainly support um don't be staying that free until a time in which um we're
094back in the back in the um cafeterias mr news yeah no i i hear what everybody is saying my concern becomes how far down do we take this okay what do you do about if someone's got a gluten problem if somebody's got bread that's not gluten free are they going to have a problem you have someone cause anaphylactic let me finish please if okay so that's fine but you know there are situations where people have allergies to other foods you know celery carrots strawberries how far down the line do we have to draw this that's my that's my only concern i think the easiest way to do this my opinion is just go back and just say to the parents please until we get back into cafeterias make everything not free okay i mean i
095wasn't going that way but i got a hunch that's going to be the easiest way to solve this problem i think we're all in agreement i think that it's an unusual time right now and unusual circumstances i i would agree with you 100 mr nunes thank you for that thank you all right so can we you will follow up with the middle school about this middle school well i think the middle the middle school is where people are rotating desks and not eating in the cafeteria right in an elementary school you're not rotating dust i don't know mr news you're you want to just do the whole nine yards you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna no you're gonna you're gonna you know pick on no distance you're gonna pick on the middle school students i
096mean again it's the oldest building that's why we're stuck with that right yeah that it is i mean i i think if you're going to do something of this nature so as to not you know segregate or quote unquote pick on one group type of deal you do it system wide other thoughts and you know that's my opinion i'll just i'll just say like you know i also think it's fair that we you know we also say that you know once we're back to normal we re-evaluate because you know again there's been a change in thinking you know certainly about this you know and so i think we want to address that as well once we get back to normal and we're not wearing masks and we're not eating in the classroom so i do
097want to be you know fair on that as well mr oliver i don't know um it goes back to if it's just the middle school if the middle school's the concern with the rotating i can certainly appreciate and understand it would be easier to just go right across the board um either way i'm okay with it honestly either way it's just a matter of protecting the students at the end of the day that we're protecting the students can you say that i'm sorry i didn't hear that at the i'm sorry at the end of the day it just comes down to protecting the students whether i'm okay with it either way whether we just do the middle school or if we want to do a blanket right across the district um you know it's the
098committee's pleasure uh i will go along um with the committee however it to me we need to just protect the students so how about how about this is a compromise i think it's clear that we're all um in agreement that the very least we'd like to look at this at the middle school i trust in the judgment of our superintendent and our administrators about other buildings and whether those are safe so it doesn't ultimately have to be up to us i think i would like to we could say if you think it's easier to do the whole school and you don't have to sit in the whole district you don't have to say this tonight right if if your team thinks it's easier to have a consistent policy across the district that's fine with me
099if your other schools that are eating in the cafeteria they're not switching dust feel they're confident about that that's also okay with me would that be acceptable to you all that's fine i'm fine with that so we'll we'll leave it to the administration sort of discretion but we do at the very least want that addressed at the middle school okay so next on our agenda is our superintendent's update all righty let's see what shall i do in order here um i know what a couple of uh really big things we want to talk about but i'm just seeing if there's a couple little things along the way all right so um just i know a couple of folks asked about where we are kind of with positive cases and close contacting right now so as
100of today what i see on the drive and i'm only going since school started nine one because of course we had reports previous to that but nobody the kids weren't in school so um we had 42 cases of positive across the district since that was staff and students and as of today we have 89 students across the district in some kind of as a close contact whether they're coming back this week or monday etc so 89 that i was given today we have put in place some protocols for supporting students that i have to quarantine and will continue to try to enhance that one of the things we did at the elementary level is and we've actually already got three folks on board to do that is we're providing some stipends for what we call
101student support liaison and these are just grade level teachers that are obviously first of all back up we've we've asked all teachers to maintain their google classroom throughout the district so that would be continuing to put up resources lesson plans assignments etc with students are all knowledgeable on how to access of course and with that said these student support liaisons would be working collaboratively with their we did two for each school and we always say demelo and cushman go together because it's the case students in there a literacy in math who will be collaborating with the grade level teachers to enhance any kind of lessons or if it's on the fly kind of thing to keep working at maintaining that google classroom but also to offer a before school check-in meeting with those students as
102well as giving them direction for the day how to access what they should be doing setting them off on their way and then also a check in or an hour after school as it could be a tutorial they could say i didn't know how to do that math problem or whatever it might be and obviously we're hoping that these are few small small groups across the grade levels that are having to do this so that's kind of the elementary what we've got in place right now we also worked today on how the related services beth was going to put out email for them that just give them some direction because if related services are normally already that's their block anyway so they can do a virtual speech or whatever it might be um middle school
103is similar where we have a couple of folks that are already in what they call like the acceleration um i've i can't remember if no they weren't here last time speaking about that um i'm thinking i'm already ahead of myself that they're preparing the school improvement plans um but they're obviously they're all maintaining the google classroom and they they're working with the secretaries as well that every day they will remind them who's having to quarantine so that the academic support time is available for those students uh darren asked that all of the teachers submit plans in writing and how they will look similar to last year they provided a schedule to kiddos um and the guidance is deeply involved we do have the extra guidance person this year so that's helpful to connect with students
104and families if they're just you know gone and they don't pay attention they don't come forward and meet with these things but don't forget also this is a shorter term usually shorter term quarantine that we have to do so and then we have the student support center person that we put someone in there we were able to man that center with um a person because of the ester money as well so that's the added support for that person as well actually uh when i talked to sarah about it they said they had a student already working really well with the teacher maintaining grace so hopefully it's a good um start to help kids continue to access their learning and the high school would be doing the similar work i did speak with renee last week
105as well as ross again today about the use of the pace period but scheduling in remember we have that pace period that the students will be able to access and come in for extra help should they have to quarantine so that's kind of what we're doing right now those plans are in already going and uh at least the google classroom we want to make sure that students when they are out to continue to access that and make sure that they you know stay involved the we are meeting again with dea tomorrow to talk a little bit more about this and how teachers can continue to support kids the test and stay as we've been i emailed you all about as well it's been a bear to to really get into it i was at superintendent's
106executive board meeting this weekend and about 20 districts are in the same boat so it's not us the commission is well aware that cic health hasn't come through like they which we all said in the beginning when those these promises were made it was going to be a little bit more difficult than i think they thought uh the cic is aware of it as well and as promised that within the next two weeks they would be up and running i've i've literally spent more hours than i can count working with this trying to get this up and running between webinar sessions meeting with the nurses meeting with chris mishru emailing not ad nauseum every email address and contact that they give to get support for simply to get logins and passwords that don't then expire
107the next day i'll have access to the system and then the next day not we have had three program coordinators assigned to us that's supposed to be our big helper and um finally the third one met with us last week and unfortunately i think just got the job and really didn't know anything more than we did if not less so but to her credit she was trying and she you know it doesn't help us much she i did email her again today all of the nurses contacts my contact that we needed logins and passwords there's two systems one of them is the consent form system which we had all the parents fill out and then the other system is what they call the crush the curve it's a software package which you maintain all your
108data in so finally today i i did get another email and i'm not sure if it was her or another part because i keep emailing everyone and i was able to access both systems this afternoon i've i've emailed the nurses so i have to they have an email me back it to see if they could as well but i think even if i had it i could just get my password out and they can use it so with all that said um i was able to see everything so i can see all the consent forms i can i'm working my way through the software package itself it was not very user friendly and how to what do you do with it kind of thing so you know you test just a little kiddo and then
109put the data in so we'll get there we we have thought a little more thoroughly on the logistics of testing it depending on the number of students that you have to do um laurie jodwan and chris mishu and a couple other folks visited actually vogue this today's i don't know what day it is friday thank you um to watch the process now it's a very large school as you know 22 and they had 100 students they were testing it took over two hours so the k it's people have to understand there's personnel involved in doing this it's not only and depends on how many students you have each day so they show up at school or somewhere we're thinking possibly a central location for some things because of the personnel needed if you had a
110large number of students you might have your nurses already manning the nurse station which is very busy anybody that's been in a nurse's office even in the morning many students are coming in might be diabetic students etc they need attention so we kind of wanted to hope to keep our nurses in let's just use the high school for example the two nurses could we use one in a station where kiddos were coming in and testing we have to log them in you have to um the the test itself is a the test itself once you've administered it and prepa prepared and administered it is now a 15-minute wait to get the results but you've also had to prior to that now think about even if it's 10 or 12 kids one at a time you
111drop your droplets in the little hole they swab that goes back in another hole you swirl it around a few times close it and then you wait so you know the student 15 minutes now this one so it backs up so you need people that's what i'm saying you need people to help with the process and vote they had five people so we're working on that we think we can use some of our own staff um perhaps some might be paid extra overtime if they come in before their own school like if it's in elementary let's just say an elementary nurse happens to come to the middle in high school earlier to help with that um so there's been a lot of logistics and planning and frustration about it but um we have a couple
112of meetings planned for tomorrow and we're gonna really reach out and try to coordinate um how we could start at least with the middle and high school because the numbers are much lower and the kids being older thinking they could come in do it you know move along and and that we could probably access some elementary folks that would want to work a little bit extra and and help out with that so um we're still positive that we're going to be able to get this up and running very shortly now that i can access the system unless my password goes away again tomorrow um so that's kind of where we are with that and uh like i said we're hopeful comments about any of that all right chris thank you dr gibbon for your report
113um it's a mammoth undertaking and of course the state has not delivered on what they've what they promised no surprise there with that though is there any specific requirement you say staff as far as maybe using our own staff is there any specific training requirements i think i'm i think this i'm familiar with the test that's being used um i know that there was some some school spring postings i believe for lpns as well can you talk a little bit about that and are we you know that where you how did that come about and obviously i know how that come about that came about but um just to share with the committee as well as the view of the public yeah i'm glad you reminded me of that um so we have right now
11410 nurses in the district obviously anybody can be out at any time we had two so that's why we're trying to expand that one of them was the nurse that we hired last year with the grant money and um luckily with grant money we were able to keep her on so that added that additional staff but we decided with this um bear of a program that we're trying to not only assist our nurses in day-to-day because they're very it's very stressful and they've really really worked very hard on trying and of course just this added piece that unsure and they just want to do a good job um so we decided again with the yes or money that we would post for um the ta lpns which we have a few in the district now
115one works in our nurse's office here and then a couple others they assist medically fragile students in the schools so we just posted that hoping that these two folks along with another one of our nurses that we use as kind of a floating nurse would be able to fill in those gaps and and really help us get the program running but to your question also about training there are some videos that's very easy training and but we have to attest to the fact that people that are doing natural testing have have um looked at those which all of our nurses have um but even it doesn't have to be a nurse per se but the kiddos from k up can administer their own so if a nurse prepared it for again i'll say someone prepares
116it they can swab themselves and we put it back in so um then we're thinking even to move it along quickly again depending on the numbers we'll we could just maintain a spreadsheet and then worry about inputting the data into the particular system later on through the use of somebody else so but just to kind of get this going and and then you have to think about protocols of where where you're having it because you know we think like the high school we haven't we've just discussed it today would be a good spot where we like we did the um clinics themselves if you if anybody that went to them they came in through that side door into the gymnasium so if that was before school and other kids were coming here that that could
117work well too so we're thinking of that um the elementary is a cause causing a little bit of more of a problem because once again there's many buildings so the point of trying to have enough help at each one or using a central location so we're we're tossing those ideas around but we're hoping to get that solved this week a couple more questions in regards to uh the software that generated the parent consent forms did we have a large percentage what was the percentage of parents wanting to participate in i can't tell you the percentage we do have a lot there's a lot in there um i only can't tell you because i kind of just got into it today but i do see a lot of names sure yeah so that seemed to be
118successful and then the the other question that i had was um based on you know because there was some confu i think there's been some confusion in not you know not just with the district with the state with the protocols with the contact tracing and you know i as as a parent i still have more questions than answers yeah um around just all the different requirements like and i won't i won't go down the political road um but i i just i certainly have more questions than answers but just so everyone at home can understand the test and i know you've sent out some communication but just so if we can just reiterate again that the test and stay program is really about trying to keep those students who are close contacts um in school
119instead of having to go home and quarantine right right um so that that's really and if i'm missing anything but that's really the gist of the program that's what we're doing yeah and that's what that's what we're trying to do um and i know it's a monumental task um but i think we you know anything we can do to keep our students in school um instead of being at home and quarantined because that's a whole other thing and i know you're working yeah with the pieces exactly with um the chair of the dartmouth educators association as well right i'm trying to try to come up with some agreements there for those students that may have to go home there's so much to think about um so you know that's that's all i have taken up
120enough time thank you and you know we really do as much as we have the rules and the protocols we still depend on our nurses judgment calls sometimes students are symptomatic there are major symptomatic pieces and there are minors which would have to be in combination with others to automatically even if we tested and they would the test was negative they would go home because of what those particular yeah so we really depend on the nurses judgment as well and they're very well versed in all of this so important that that we have yeah you know the nursing staff that we do yeah thank you other comments questions mr news yeah thank you madam chair i just i'm curious you know when the superintendent is actually doing superintendent school work for the last two big
121deal i mean i'm looking you know i'm kind of going through this and looking and it's like you know what else you you know that that type of deal i guess the only thing the only comment i have to man thank you for the update in all seriousness but uh and i don't have the reports from last week uh our last meeting with us but you talk about using the the grant funds to cover the ta nurses llp that type of deal i guess i kind of made the comment at the last meeting that this was going to be very fluid and it looks like this is one of the fluids that wasn't in it that's going to get plugged in so you know hopefully we get candidates yeah exactly but i mean i appreciate
122the update and you know i know everybody's working hard and yeah i appreciate it you're welcome yeah yeah that goes without saying but i'll say it thank you it's it cannot be easy glad it's not me i'm glad i'm not the only one that has more questions than answers and just so appreciative of all the work and the constant kind of navigating this who thought we would still be here i know um one thing though in terms of that test and stay program um and thinking about my own family um's needs and hearing from some folks in the community who had unfortunately needed to quarantine i think the first day of school they told me and you know all kids matter and all kids need to stay in school but particularly our youngest kind of
123vulnerable kiddos who we're not going virtual here but who really can't attend to virtual virtual sessions um very concerned about if this were to continue on a rolling basis throughout this year hopefully it does not um that perhaps and you you may already have talked about this with your team when you mentioned starting it with like the older kids who can kind of come in quickly and move on um if if you haven't already and i trust your judgment and your your administration as to why things are the way they are or protocols are what they are but um me not knowing much but knowing that it really stinks to have a child who can't attend virtually and and missing class and the routine and that you know anticipated routine and all of the havoc
124that can ensue when not when you're not in your normal routine um if we revisit or visit the idea of maybe those younger kiddos who were prioritized in the return back may be also added to the try it out first with them if there is a consent if there you know is a case where that is uh the only reason we we said we would focus on middle and high school first right now like immediate is um because we have the one building it's diff more difficult to think about spreading it out through the elementary so our real thinking right now is do we do a centralized location where they all descend on to go back to their school because once again about that personnel that we can share but that's the only reason and
125i just want to make one other note that because of what happened in the very beginning first two days of school um as you know social distancing is out the door however and and we're trying to maintain as much as we can some classrooms the deaths are less than three feet etcetera um teachers were still already trying to do collaborative learning etc so unfortunately they really couldn't determine with accuracy who were the close contacts so we've we've shifted that immediately when we knew that because i i worked with once again mr mishu kelly stole our lead nurse and they're in full agreement um so we we had teachers obviously they have to have seating charts we've also had them do now what we call pods so if you're going to do collaborative learning it's like
126we three are assigned to that pod that's it you're not going to know work with him and her so those pods would so it'd be much more accurate to say no those are the three kids that were in that so we're trying to um enhance protocols because social distancing was out the door but but not really when you do a close contact so um so we're hoping that that will help us really decrease on the the number of close contacts and need for quarantining thank you just wait thank you for that and i think that you know first of all again thank you for all of your work and you know it's exciting to hear and it's so important to hear about you know how many support networks are being put out in each of
127the schools to help these kids that you know especially who you know we talked about that as being so critical and we know google classroom but everybody you know having personnel to who are going to speak and work with the kids assigned i think that's critical yeah um you know i did was going to ask because i know there's you know we've all heard through emails and communications that are questions about quarantining and um i think the pods are you know might should be going through that it's gonna be really helpful and you know another question i you know i saw from a parent when you are determining close contact if those children and this is i'm a little bit confused if they're fully invested right so this i mean we all are but if
128they're fully mass and they're you know i'm talking to shannon but we're both wearing a mask shannon or dr jenkins excuse me it ends up being positive does that mean if we've been fully masked that she's my close contact yeah that's fully masked at least three feet apart in a classroom so we still have to be you know three feet apart but the problem became when they were in groups maybe sitting on the floor because that was a little confusing as you look through the chart like where that is if you're fully masked and so those were some of the questions the parents were saying you know if my children are still wearing then what's the point of mass you know and that's where we kind of you know went through and i can go
129through that whole i mean there's a lot of purposes of mass and certainly but but we still have to adhere to that so okay does that change right in the high school if the students are vaccinated and our school is exactly you're not distance but you're vaccinated you do not have to quarantine that's right so just throw that in there that's right if your child is in the high school and vaccinated they will not middle school middle school yes please get them vaccinated asymptomatic vaccinated um mass do you have to do test and stay if you're vaccinated in your clothes okay yeah and how will you record you know so will students then bring in there to say that you know you know i can say like my child is vaccinated are they bringing in
130cars how is that information being conveyed to you and are we putting that on a file now that's a really good question um we the nurses were under the impression and i don't know i haven't followed back up with kelly uh that they had access to um it's some m something a rather database state database yes yeah yeah as the health they should we have access to it yeah i think that's and also um kelly actually was going to do a volunteer voluntary survey she asked if she could do that i said as long as it's voluntary if people want to come forth and say just so she might have that but we're hoping that they have that access to that database and just i know because they could fib and i know we're running
131a little long but i think some parents were confused what exactly what services cic health provide and then what do we in turn provide like that's the i mean that seems to also be the question as you know why were we delayed why were they you know what yep and that was mine well in the beginning when we were attended all this informational sessions etc was that they were going to have a program coordinator and we could also have on-site help like let's say we had 20 kids to test they were supposedly sending a team and down to to help us so we didn't have to use all our personnel so we weren't really waiting for that our big hiccup was we couldn't get access to the whole system the consent forms nothing so and
132it just became a big hullabaloo but we're going to move forward and even if i can't get in anymore to the database for the crush the curve software we'll keep a spreadsheet okay thank you i'll just like with my colleagues and saying thanks yeah well um it's it's been rough and um appreciate all the work that you've put in here um did you have anything else to add in your report i don't know we wanted to talk about that uh just that um and another thing that dussy changed we were told we weren't going to have to report the positives and that changed last week so as of today we today's numbers will start to go into a portal at least this year i don't have to make phone calls every day so you know
133i think it will still come out on the thursday um like last year but that changed again that every they just as we always say they change every week for something new right um i don't know if you have anything about facilities or anything or we're all set well i think no okay i think that's it all right that's it um so the next item on the agenda if everyone's okay to move on yeah um is the report of the chair um i have a few things one we said we returned to discussion of physical access to school committee meetings every meeting i think we're all in agreement we're not there yet is that right okay we'll move on quickly on that one um number two the select board contacted us about having a joint
134meeting on the 27th which is when our next school committee meeting is scheduled um as is evidenced by the fact we're going on two hours right we're back to that part of the year where we have a lot on our agenda and i know mr nunes has thoughts on this i share some of those thoughts um i'm i might be willing to go for maybe a half hour but i just feel like we've got a lot on our plate and i'm just not really sure what we're getting out of this miss amron the mr news i guess my maybe my sorry to ask a question that might be obvious right but what would be the purpose of us meeting with them i mean i think it's really go ahead mr kiley it was relayed to
135me to request your presence to discuss the town's financial policies the upcoming budget cycle and the town meeting that um you know is nearly upon us in october and so i'll let mr nunes go first and then i'll take up where wherever he may leave off uh uh on that yeah thank you madam chair uh no okay in all seriousness uh number one they're not meeting in person so we'd have to have a zoom meeting so we basically would probably have to start our meeting flip over to their meeting finish there go back to army you know it's and again i don't have a problem being here in meeting this link that's that's not the point but the last time we had a joint meeting with them we were an hour and a half if
136my memory is any good and we did not get to say two words except for i am john nunes i'm shannon jenkins right down the line that was it so i i have no idea why they even want us they want to talk about financial policies even if we object to them or we have questions about them you've got the finance committee and if income have been working on them we're not going to have any you know two cents into it anyway the budget cycle you know yeah i know it's up it's going to be the end of september beginning of october and you know yeah they're already starting to think about you know fye uh fy23 i understand that but i mean they can relay those to uh to mr kylie and he can
137relay him to us i'm good i'm good with that and and for town meeting i mean we'll all get the warrant we probably won't be able to ask any questions because i had some questions at the last one and never got a chance to ask him i had to wait till town meeting to ask my question so uh i mean don't get me wrong i appreciate everything the finance committee and border selectmen do for us you know with the capital items and things of in in that type of deal thank you very much but to go there via zoom for an hour and a half or however long it is doesn't just you know the ends don't justify the means in my opinion personally however this committee votes i or agrees to do i will
138be there yeah i will i will have to say i'm i'm inclined to agree with you mr nance i i didn't feel like in our last meeting the policies we discussed our presence was necessary to that discussion um and so if there's an item that they want to discuss that's necessary to us that hasn't already been conveyed to us through mr kiley i might be sort of inclined to do that but i trust that mr kiley does a good job of conveying you know the town's schedule the town's priorities and all of that and so i mean i would agree with mr nunes i'm inclined to go ahead with our regularly scheduled meeting um but we've got three other people aside from me at mr noon so i'll hear your thoughts mr kiley do you
139want to add something sure just just so you're aware dr gifford and i attended the town department head meeting this morning which is a monthly meeting in which they had a brief discussion regarding the town meeting agenda one of the items included on that agenda is expanding the reserve fund uh and and creating a larger reserve fund as a percentage of of um you know the overall town budget so just just so you know i know i'm sure that was one of the things that they were going to discuss so if you have an opinion about that certainly i could relay it but did they say why uh i think it is in an effort to um get positive traction on bond rating that's my understanding um okay and listen something but that's okay thank
140you mr oliver you madam chair yeah i'm in agreement as well um i don't think i got very much out of the last joint meeting obviously thank the select board as well as defence for their time and always supporting the school department but once again if there's something specific that we want to collaboratively jointly discuss i'm i'm all ears um but i agree we you know there's just way too much going on right now and then to switch back and forth between zoom but once again if it's specific if they if you find out mr kiley or dr gifford that there's something more specific around besides these general topics um um certainly all the ears i mean i think part of the problem i do appreciate them inviting us but you know just the quick
141math there's 20 people it's just not when you have a meeting that size it's not particularly productive um because to mr nunes point right i mean if everybody takes five minutes it's two hours later and right you haven't you haven't gotten anywhere um so i will if it's okay it seems to be the sense of the committee i will miss gentler can we respond to the select board and respectfully declined their invitation um this is a pressing issue yeah and unless there's a pressing issue and i would also say you know again to getting at the size maybe they want to do a meeting that's you know just a couple people or something like that may be more productive it just feels like when there's so many people on a meeting you're all just kind
142of sitting there and a few people talk yeah all right so um the joint meeting will cross that off um the next item i had for my report um public comment ms genther i know you've forwarded one email we received we've all received that you haven't received anything else okay so we've all received a comment um the only other thing i'd like to say is i'd like to thanks but thank mr peratti and mr galisha the microphone setup is really great now that we have to we're back wearing masks and it's very helpful to be able to hear each other so i'm appreciative of that with the air purifier yeah last in the summer it was hard to hear but now with the microphones it's much better so i very much appreciate it i just
143want to say thanks for all the hard work they do here um that is it for my report um any other matters that anyone might like to add mr nunes just just one quick one madam chair and i'll bring it up at our next meeting also but uh people are interested you can put uh october 2nd and october 23rd on your calendars uh we're going to be having a u.s banned competition at the stadium on october 2nd right now we've got eight bands signed up for that and uh on the 23rd we've got a 23rd of october we have a nesba competition right now we've got 16 bands wow so i'll be getting a letter out to you dr shannon dr gifford and mr tebo for uh trophy presentations i don't have times yet but
144i'll get there i i will not be available on the 23rd but i should be able to make this second well we can otherwise mary will be in the concession we can swipe her let's wait did you want to add something yes can we just on our next agenda make sure i know we touched on tonight um talking about students you know and field trips and also with the travel that we're looking at with um the band and other groups if we can you know think about a discussion sure on those topics yep that's important for those groups mrs did you get that thank you any other um items that anyone would like to bring up all right so our next meeting will be here on the 27th at 6 30 at the high school
145i'm hearing no other discussion or items i will entertain a motion to adjourn so moved second all right i have a motion by mr nunes a second by miss amaral any discussion hearing none all in favor aye opposed that motion carries unanimously thank you everyone [Music] thank you everyone [Music] what did i do