001that was like is very happy that's great [Music] good evening everyone i'd like to call this meeting of the dartmouth school committee to order for monday april 5th 2021. would you please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic of which it stands well good evening everyone i hope everyone had a nice long uh weekend for those of you who had friday off uh at this time could we have a roll call please uh scanther chris oliver here shannon jenkins here kathleen admiral here john nunes mary waite here thank you very much for those of us in attendance this evening just a reminder to silence your cell phones um keep those on low vibrate and at this time this is where
002we typically allow a few minutes um to uh for public comment and just a reminder as well that per governor baker's audit suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law chapter 38 section 20 the public will not be allowed to physically access this school committee meeting members of the public can access the meeting via live stream at youtube.com forward slash dhs tv media in addition the event will be rebroadcast on dc tv channels 9 and 18 on the following days wednesday and thursday at 5 p.m 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 we'll notify the public of these procedures as soon as it's practicable and as always a big shout out to dartmouth community television and
003the folks over there as well as mr peratti and his crew here um that's always uh so diligent and are we always coming up with new creative ways to broadcast our school committee meetings so uh thank you very much mr peratti at this time this will be typically a lot a few minutes for anyone wishing to comment on any of tonight's agenda items um as always you can also email those comments and i know we've received a few of them already uh to our recording secretary kathleen genther dartmouthschools.org uh besides the ones that you've afforded us ms guenther have you received any others i have not okay thank you very much uh mrs dr jenkins so i just have a question for you mr chair i uh we received a um a letter from the
004dartmouth high school public parking committee and i know you said we aren't talking about parking that's not an agenda item so public comments have to be out of agenda items but i don't wonder if that might not be considered under budget because the parking fee does have budgetary implications and if we were to make changes to the parking fee i'm not saying that we are or are not the budget will be voted most likely and closed this evening so any sort of changes that happen happen so i don't know if we want to at least read that now because it has budgetary implications it's up to you it's your rule sure thank you very much dr jenkins and i appreciate that and um i had annoyed ccu cc'd you on the email i think that
005is something i appreciate the students letter and i think that deserves a little bit of attention a little more discussion on an agenda item um i don't want to since we typically do not read public comments allowed during our meetings i don't want to set a precedence while we're away on zoo meetings right now or on youtube meetings so i would like to see that come up on one of the next agendas i do feel though that it's worthwhile and worth giving an attention i understand your role in what you're saying with uh under the budget but i think it's such a um my new portion of the budget that um you know i certainly if there could be some wiggle room if you know we choose to just vote on the budget the way
006it is that's fair enough and i think it's good that we've had this discussion in open meeting about that we're not going to read it tonight because we're going to put it on the agenda later so that's fine yeah no i i appreciate that and i thought the letter was very well written uh by that student so thank you mr chair if i might yes um i did receive information from mr kylie on that if i i could provide a little bit of information about that fee of what it goes through when we get to the budget discussion okay we don't have to read the letter but i can just give a quick overview and then you can lead in on more discussion at the future meeting sure and for everyone watching at home we
007were talking about student parking fees here at dartmouth high school um you know we can certainly um just give you a quick synopsis yeah thank you but i do think that it's worth bringing um bringing that student back for another meeting at this time uh the chair will entertain a motion to approve the regular session minutes of march 22 2021. second motion by mr nunes a second by mrs way on the motion any further discussion cheer hearing none all in favor aye opposed motion carries unanimously uh next up we're gonna i'm gonna turn it over to the our student representative to the uh school committee uh evan garcia mello is here this evening and i'd like to turn it over to you for an update of what's happening at dartmouth high school good evening evan
008good evening so my name is evan garcia and i'm a junior at dartmouth high school and i am one of the high school student representatives to the school committee so i'm here to update you all on the high school's recent activities so the robotics team held a virtual competition on march 18th the team competed in the qualifying round for the first tech challenge and you can view this at twitch.tv dhs robotics club ap students are preparing for upcoming exams the math department has been conducting mock exams in ap computer science students will complete mock exams later this week many other ap teachers are also holding study and review sessions for students as we enter testing season unified basketball kicked off their season thursday with a game against middleborough and they will continue tomorrow with a
009home game against durfee our fall to sports season continues to be a success and sign up for sign ups for spring sports have begun dhs is offering cheerleading baseball softball tennis lacrosse outdoor track and field unified track and sailing sign ups close on april 14th the psat 10 exam is scheduled for april 15th and april 16th for students who sign up to take that exam lastly dartmouth high's 21-21 campaign kicks off this friday with dartmouth's variety show dartmouth's finest this show features eight of dartmouth seniors but only one will be crowned dartmouth's finest and you can stream the show live on dhs tv media's youtube page so that concludes my update and thank you all for your time thank you very much thank you anyone have any questions comments thank you thank you if you
010don't mind i'd like to put you on the spot if that's okay with you i guess that's not true how do you think things are going so far uh today uh at dartmouth high school i think they're going very good i know that it's a very strange time with covert and all but i feel like i'm definitely still very busy and i'm still very involved in school activities i know for example i'm here tonight i will have a debate competition saturday i have track practice after school every day except for tomorrow when i have unified bowling instead okay i have a track meet thursday actually so i definitely feel like you know it is a very difficult time but i think everyone from the teachers to the administrators to of course you all i think
011everyone's just trying very hard to make it all work and i think it has been pretty successful so far so overall you feel like it's some kind of is the most normalcy you that you can get out of it in a not normal year i would say so yeah okay great and one of the things i'm going to be bringing back during the report of the chair is i think it would be great um dr gifford if maybe in one of our next school committee meetings may may not be the next one but maybe the following one of bringing the senior class officers here for to kind of share with us um what they've done for you know the 21 for 21. yes mr newsome we talked about this a while back when uh mr
012tebow was here and we talked about the like the 21 for 21 coming up and we talked about having the class offices here in person uh and mr tebow to number one so we could see them and say hello right number two more importantly they could kind of give us a synopsis as to what is going on that's right for year end and everything else so i mean if we're looking at like may 17th or something that that'd be fine that'd be great yeah you know not next meeting but you know in the next finding out they'll be winding down at that point but it would still be still be nice to have an idea what's going on yeah we just i think from the at least from my perspective i can only speak for
013myself but i think it would be great to have you folks have the senior class offices in here and you know along with the student rep to the committee just to share everything that's been going on and how the how much has been going on with planning especially yeah so and i'm glad you asked about the how things were going because that was something i wanted to know also and also after evan spoke the first meeting i obviously conversed with mr tebow and we were both so pleased he said he was so proud of you because he always gives the kids some tidbits of what's happening but he took it upon himself to add a little flair and extra things so he was exceptionally proud of the the work you did on our first meeting
014i'm really glad to hear that thank you well thank you so much for for presenting this evening evan you're welcome to stay but we know uh i'm busy we know you're very busy you're a busy man thank you have a good night have a good night you too and next up i'm going to turn it over to dr gifford for her introduction for our spotlight on joseph demello elementary school so we're happy to welcome the demelo school tonight we have of course principal katie pavello along with assistant principal is correa good evening ladies good evening okay i want that to happen again girl yeah yep sorry all right okay we won't touch it i promise okay well good evening um we'd like to thank you for the opportunity tonight to highlight to mello school given
015that today was the first day we welcomed back all our students we had a sneaking suspicion that you might want to hear a little bit about how that went therefore we've promised you just talk a little louder we've got the that's right and we can't hear sorry yes i will use my teacher teach your voice yes yeah thank you so we split our presentation into two parts we are going to talk a little bit about the work that went into getting us to the point where we were at today and then we will um highlight some specific things that we've been working at de melo throughout the year um with our traditions and just kind of uniquely to mellow so that's okay so as has been discussed back in august we had to submit three
016plans to the state including one for all in learning i would love to sit here and tell you that thanks to that work when the decision was made to transition to hybrid all we had to do was open our doors and welcome our students however that was just really not the case once we knew that all in learning was not a realistic option for us in the fall we shifted our emphasis to creating the safest and most robust hybrid and remote plans possible for our students and while some of the things we planned for in the fall were applicable to this transition a lot has changed in the six months from when we theoretically planned for having students in our building to actually having them with us guidance was updated functioning within the confines of
017the building became a reality and we learned and adjusted to situations that we just simply have never had to encounter before so tonight we'll give you a peek into some of the work that went into this latest transition and what the day-to-day operations of elementary school look like with all of our students back in school and while it's mrs corey and i speaking to you tonight we also know that our colleagues at quinn potter and cushman have all done similar work to what we're about to talk to talk about and that the middle school and high schools are deeply entrenched in this work as they look forward to welcoming more kids back to school so one of the biggest changes that needed to be made as we transitioned from hybrid to all in learning was
018the use of the spaces within our building since september our students have been eating lunch in their classrooms with updated guidance and the increased number of students in school student desks went from a minimum of six feet apart to a minimum of three feet apart and while we know that this is safe for our students while masked throughout the day students need to maintain that six foot minimum when their masks are off in their eating so to make this happen desks from the high school were brought down to our cafeteria and schedules were adjusted the domino effect of that or at least at potter and mellow was that our teacher's room which had been in our cafeteria needed to be moved to the gym which meant that all pe classes are now held outside or
019in our classrooms as someone who goes home to a pe teacher every night the impact of this decision was certainly not one that was lost on me we are extremely grateful to mrs schmick our pe teacher for her flexibility and we would appreciate any and all help from the committee and the community in doing the sun dance at least from monday to friday from now until june 17th our classrooms also went through a shift as more desks were brought in and measured at a minimum of three feet i know a lot has been said across various platforms about desk acquisition and we would just like to publicly thank both mr kylie's office and the maintenance staff for assuring that all kids who came to school today had a desk so there's been a lot of
020questions as to why we needed to order so many desks to get to this point and i'll just reiterate kind of what's been talked about at past meetings about how over the past several years we've had a big push towards creating inclusive and cooperative classrooms and lots of furniture has been purchased to get us to that but it's furniture that unfortunately in a pandemic is unusable so it's been a district effort to get all the schools what they need shifting desks between buildings ordering additional desks for students and while there were suggestions that desks should have been purchased earlier um i would just kind of bring attention back to that last slide when we talked about how every possible space in our buildings is being used for teaching and being used for learning and being
021used period um and we really there really was no place to um that was a foolproof or i guess more accurately waterproof place to store all these additional desks that might be used um you can just skip right over that this well actually i guess that's our custodians who have been moving and moving and moving uh desks throughout the last few weeks in our hallways um our our hallways are busy travel routes and they've been marked throughout the year to assist students with appropriate spacing as they walk in line up one of my favorite quotes that came out of this year came out of a first grade when we were talking to the kids at that point about six foot spacing and one of the kids raised their hand and they asked but is it
022an adult six feet or a kid's six feet well six feet of six feet and we um we actually had a monitor at the at the time who was subbing for us who happened to be about six foot two so we had him lay on the floor and we said it's a mr mccabe six feet so um so we have we do have visuals throughout the building to try to assist the kids on what that looks like and help them line up in a way that is safe and we've also our hallways have also become extended learning spaces as we'll talk about in a few minutes so the day-to-day logistics of what happens at an elementary school we thought you might want to get a little peek at how really every every part of our
023day gets touched and affected by by this transition getting our kids to and from school is obviously of the utmost importance and needed to be thought through in a way that's both safe and efficient if you've ever driven down dartmouth street a little before nine in the morning or around three in the afternoon you might have noticed that we have a lot of students who are picked up and dropped off we have staff that are sure our kids are masked and sanitized before coming into the building in the morning and we get our kids home safely and quickly as possible in the afternoon we continue to try to make tweaks to these procedures and make them more timely in nature but as mrs amaral can probably attest to the reality that is that the most
024important quality in a parent who's picking up their children from school these days remains patience i heard we set a new record today and our pickup line made it to the library so and as you probably know transportation guidance was updated and as a result of that update and the increased number of students in school we have an increased number of students on our buses students are still expected to wear a mask for the duration of the ride and to sanitize their hands as they enter or exit the bus procedures have been altered in loaning and unloading students to try to minimize the number of kids in the hallway at once so typically where the buses would pull up in the morning they would all sort of open their doors and the kids would flood
025through one bus at a time opens the kids come in we kind of hold that so there's a little bit of a holding pattern to sort of decrease the number of kids you see a picture of mrs schmick there with the sanitizers all our kids sanitized before they head into the building as we spoke about earlier the logistics of serving and eating lunch was an area that had to change as we transitioned at the elementary level though students also have a snack and a mask break every day that needed to be addressed again because students take off their masks when they eat there needs to be a minimum of six foot distance between students at snack time when the weather is nice we encourage our teachers to bring students outside to have their snack in
026mask break as most of our teachers are using this time as a read aloud time so it's kind of a two for one in that although we have an inclement weather plan because we do know that some days it's raining and that involves half of our kids when we talk about our hallways becoming sort of extended learning spaces half of our kids kind of go out to the hallway either with a book or an independent work activity um half the kids have their snack and then they switch keep going see there we go so recess um despite our best sunshine dances we have days when the weather makes it impossible for for us to go outside and on those days our recess is still considered a mass break and therefore we follow a format that's
027similar to our snack time when half the students take an activity and do it in the hall half of our students stay inside take off their mask have a mask break and then we switch go so outdoor recess is an area that we need to look at with student safety in the forefront of our minds we attempt to keep our kids potted as much as possible which means that despite being outside the traditional days of letting them the kids from all different classes at a grade level play together is just still not a reality for our students recess as we said is also considered a mask break so we need to ensure that students have an opportunity to spread apart take their masks down so we've worked with our monitors throughout the year to make
028sure that this is a process is there's a process in place and you see we kind of follow that five five ten five five format where there's a few minutes for all the things we need to do but we also um have worked with them on designing structured games because it is still recess this is still elementary school and our goal is to still have kids have fun get movement and get ready to learn for the rest of the day the only additional thing i'll add to what i've said about mask breaks is what can't be overlooked is teacher creativity as i walked our building last week looking over the progress to getting ready for today i saw lots of different ways that teachers have tried to accommodate their students by getting creative with their
029spaces in one of our bigger classrooms the teacher had x's marked on the floor away from the desks that she had measured at six feet apart that were designated places for kids to go if they were working independently that they could pull down their mask work on their on their stuff and still get a mass break a lot of the classrooms that potter and demelo have an alcove between the two joined classrooms teachers have designed math break spaces in there where students can still be listening to the instruction in the lesson but have a moment to be able to pull down their masks and for as strict and sort of sterile as all that might sound our teachers continue to think outside the box and come up with amazing ways to not only keep our
030kiddos safe but keep their learning spaces feeling welcoming and inviting so bathrooms when i said no space could be overlooked i meant every space including our bathrooms so we had to think of a way to decrease the amount of students in bathrooms to be able to maintain appropriate spacing so all of our bathrooms have hooks outside the door our kids have cards they hang their card on the hook kids have learned that if they have to use the bathroom they need to make sure that there's a space to hang their hook if there are two children in the bathroom they need to wait their turn and away they go we discussed classroom design but i'll just add that in addition to all the things that we've talked about we continue to run our universe and
031our air purifiers and all of our spaces throughout the day windows are open where they can be and we maintain that minimum of three foot distance and i put that emphasis on the word minimum because in the majority of our spaces our kids are maintaining a distance of greater than three feet so um we have our you know our trusty measuring sticks you saw the custodians with and they go through and they measure but by and large our kids you can see in that classroom that classroom is set and ready to go and those desks are far more than three feet apart the other thing i'll just say is that with and i will say this loud and proud with our custodian's blessings uh we have a lot of the classrooms that have marked the
032floors because the inevitable movement of six to eleven-year-olds is that desks are not going to stay put where you put them to start the day so it's a way for the kids to know kind of how to get back into their appropriate space and most of what we've talked about tonight really boils down to creating new rituals and routines that needed to be thought about through a new lens and so much of that work was done in conjunction with our superhero school nurses including creating a routine for actually seeing the nurse so we have traditionally sent our older kids independently or our younger kids with an adult or a buddy to see the nurse if they don't feel well or they need a little triage but this year our nurse makes house calls so she
033goes to classrooms to assess students and kind of make a decision about next steps all of our buildings have had to transition a space to an isolation room where students who display coveted like symptoms can be separate from healthy or injured kids who are not and as you can see when the nurse is already with a student and another student is sick liz or in this particular case i get to suit up in some good old ppe and go fetch our sick kiddos um i would just i would be completely remiss if i didn't take a minute to acknowledge that the only way this whole operation is able to function every day is because of the dedication flexibility and sheer awesomeness of the people that liz and i have the privilege of working with every
034day because we have our kids plotted throughout the day we needed a much larger number of individuals who were able to able to oversee a larger number of smaller groups if that makes sense so we are extremely appreciative to central office as they were able to extend our recess monitor and custodian hours to help with this but the reality is that absences happen substitutes are at a minimum and without the commitment of the members of our staff to literally do whatever it takes to get through the day i'm sometimes not sure we would uh this is most often accomplished by our secretary katie gobiel whose official title we've petitioned to change to chaos coordinator as she uh pieces together coverage every morning as you can see um up there is one of our daily updates
035and i think on this day i was a health teacher liz was a librarian and katie herself was a lunch and recess monitor but the names that you'll see on this list most often are those of our teaching assistants i just cannot overstate what a critical role these people have played in us being able to function on a day-to-day basis they act as our substitutes our lunch and recess monitors coverage for meetings truly they do it all and most times with little or no forewarning we are so grateful to them and to our entire staff for their flexibility and their willingness to do whatever it takes to be able to give the kids the positive experience and that's what i'll say that again the positive experience that we know that they are getting every day
036so i've talked a lot about the work that went into getting us to this point today and yes it was a lot of work but we would do it again a hundred times over because that's what's led to our kids being in school and that is why we do what we do and it makes every single thing that we've done worth it um all the teachers that i talked to last week while justifiably anxious about what they called their fourth first day of school or even more excited to welcome their kids back to school and our first grade teachers who have had their little munchkins back for two weeks now we'll tell you that life is in what we call little land is just as it should be now that the kiddos are back and
037while it's wonderful that the adults are excited about having their kids back it's even better to hear from our kiddos who are going to tell you a little bit about what they like in our look forward to about being back go ahead can you tell me what your favorite thing is about everyone being back in first grade my favorite thing is art and gym seeing your friends every day alrighty thanks hi jack can you tell me what your favorite part is about everyone being back at school together um having laughed with everyone have an art with everyone that's fantastic thank you hi lily hi can you tell me what the best part is about having everyone come to school every day um you can see your friends if you have trouble with something you can
038get help with that comes here every day yay thank you you're welcome hi landon can you tell me what your favorite part is about everyone being back at school i like to do art and gym and you get to do those all the time right when you're back every day awesome so emma tell us what you're most excited about when it comes to everyone coming back to school on april 5th seeing my friends again because over the past year or a few months i haven't got to see as many because they're in cohort bag and the fact that i'll be in school every day is kind of exciting because our teachers don't have to do as much work and like they won't freak out because if they got something on our checklist wrong even though
039we do have we'll probably have a little bit of homework but it won't be that hard and just like after the fact that i'll be in school and i'll get to see all my friends in the same classroom is pretty exciting i agree thank you very much sequoia tell us what you're most excited about when it comes to all students coming back to school in a couple of weeks i'm most excited about that like we're going to be able to socialize more and that we're going to be able to see more people and if we're struggling with something maybe other kids in our classroom could help and also maybe even the fact that like we could help with another kid in the classroom and look it'll be much more funner because there will be more
040kids and we can meet more people fantastic thank you so anna tell me what you're looking forward to when all students have returned to school in a couple of weeks i think i'm looking forward to how the schedule and how it used to be to kind of get more comfortable with an old schedule again and i'm also looking forward to seeing more possible friends in my classroom fantastic i'm excited for you too so maddie tell us why you're excited about everyone coming back to school on april 5th i'm excited for everybody to come back to school because i don't have to worry about using my computer as much and logging onto me doing all my work on life fantastic thank you so i'm not sure if you could hear some of our little guys up
041the top but across the board one of the things that they talked about was being obviously excited about seeing their friends and kind of having things that they get to do all the time but i was really i was kind of struck by the kids insightfulness that if they are stuck on something or if they need help that their teacher will be there to kind of help them and it's it's wonderful that they still know and view their teachers as that person that they know they can kind of go to if they need help with something so i'm going to hand it off to liz we'll talk you to a little bit about some of the dimelo initiatives that we've been working on throughout the year oh i just well i didn't need that overshot
042the runway so i'm going to be talking to you about keeping and growing our demelo traditions and in order to do that i need to dial back a little bit to last year so since last march mrs pebble and i have pretty much been spending many hours making plans for how to run a school in a pandemic and we knew early on that one of the most important things that we could do for our students and our staff was to keep as many of our demelo traditions alive as well as we could while maybe cultivating some new ones so from the onset of the stay-at-home order we understood the importance of being visibly present in our students daily lives that became crystal clear right out the gate when we were home and we needed to
043connect with our kids so one of the first things we did at this time was we started to record our daily morning announcements and closing messages that students and families could access through our facebook page or develop facebook page and we immediately started to receive messages from families just to let us know how much they appreciated this simple connection that they had with us um students look forward to hearing mrs paveo's daily birthday wishes and words of encouragement and i received quite a few knock-knock jokes from families to share in each uh of our days each day's closing message in a very simple way these videos kept our demelo community connected in a time when we were physically disconnected and as we launched this school year remotely and then moved to hybrid learning we decided
044to continue to record and send out morning announcements each day really for a logistical reason we knew it was kind of slow getting kids in um that teachers needed a little bit more time in previous years we used to just have morning announcements at 905 exactly every morning we thought that a big benefit of recording these words is just to have teachers have the ability to sit down with the whole class and press play and enjoy these wonderful morning announcements which they have so you're welcome so um as we launched this year we moved and moved to hybrid learning we we started to record them daily and i should say mrs did and during the first weeks of the school year um when we were remote actually students were watching them at home remotely so
045flash forward to hybrid learning in october classes watch these videos take videos together on their um in school days and the kids who are learning at home on those days could also join in and watch these videos which we think just kept everyone connected and now that we are all in together we will continue to post morning announcements and as you will see from our video we have a little clip that we brought along with us today mrs faber's daily videos are filled with important information what's for lunch what's going on warmth and a little bit of inspiration to start each day they've become a new demelo tradition and they continue to connect us all uh first thing every single day so here we go i also pause you at the greatest moment where you
046look like you're half asleep or sometimes your mouth opens there it is good mornings middle school and happy tuesday today is tuesday march 23rd we don't have any birthdays today at the middle school but a happy birthday to anyone that you might know having a birthday today as we continue with women's history month our quote today comes from famed scientist marie curie marie curie was a physicist and chemist she was the first woman to win the nobel prize and the only woman to ever win it twice and she says the first principle never let one's self be beaten down by persons or by events so i love that message like i love all our quotes of the day but this one friends think about what that's saying to you don't let your spirit be broken
047by other people or by events and sometimes that can be really hard to do so sometimes crummy things happen sometimes we have bad days sometimes events out of our control are happening in what she's saying is we can't let ourselves we can't let our spirit our positivity our gratitude be broken by that so even when you have a tough day even when you encounter someone that maybe you haven't gotten along with or maybe they were having a bad day and they did they tried to dip in your bucket we can't let ourselves our spirit be broken by those things and that takes perseverance that takes grit but remember friends we can do hard things at the middle of school so if you're having a tough day if the events are happening or if someone's maybe
048not being so kind to you remember marie curie's first principle never let yourself never let your spirit be broken by people or by events let's end our announcements today with a spring joke which hopefully i will deliver correctly what is a tree's favorite drink root beer of course i hope that you all have a terrific tuesday of teaching learning and we will see you right back here tomorrow morning such a simple video and the staff love them and the more importantly i think the kids really love them and they think that mrs pavel was somewhat as a celebrity because they watched her on the smart board in the morning and wave and go out of their way to say hello to her in the hallways she's the lady from the tv [Laughter] so moving right
049along as you may already know demelo's pbis framework is centered on recognizing our students for their positive choices on a regular basis again as we plan for a school year filled with uncertainties the dental staff fully understood that keeping pbis alive and strong this year was more important than ever and with a little creative thinking and tweaking this is what we've done each day teachers continue as we have in years past to recognize students who have exemplified our core values of being respectful responsible and safe with copying good coins and copying good slips and i think i can speak for mrs paveo when i say that fridays are our favorite days at de melo school not because it's necessarily the end of the week but because it's the one day of the week that we
050visit every single classroom we select our leaders of the pack who are pictured here some of them we celebrate those children and encourage invite their classmates to talk about what makes them such a wonderful leader of the pack for their classroom and it never gets old the kids truly light up when their names are selected and at that point we just dip our hands into a bowl of copy and good slips that students have earned in the class and just pick a name randomly and it is truly the most fulfilling wonderful or one of the most wonderful parts of our week because as you can see the kids are just jazzed by the whole experience and it really um when they get their brag tags um you can see the pride in their face and
051uh like i said never gets old and we get to reinforce that that's what you know that's part of what making these good choices is about is being recognized for the good little humans that you are let's keep it going at the melo we also recognize students who consistently demonstrate our core values with a tri-mesterly fun zone which typically in the past has been thank you a 30-minute celebration where students get to engage in various activities and by all accounts they enjoy themselves thoroughly so in the past we were always able to combine two classes at a time in the cafeteria for the celebration this year we had to reimagine our fun zones a little bit given the pandemic all of our fun has to be socially distanced now and so for our first fun
052zone which was back in december instead of holding 10 celebrations in the cafeteria we held 40 individual fun zones in the classroom we played a lot of bingo we did a lot of dance party kids loved pictionary we had a blast and again it's all prefaced with you have earned this this is a recognition for all of your good choices for making the school the safe happy place that it is and um for 40 fun zones flew by we um really they did we had a blast she was laughing but there were a lot of them they but they were wonderful and we were happy to report that the kids even though it looked different it felt different from fun zones of the past um they really enjoyed it in this uh these pictures you
053can see we had a socially distanced dance party for these classes and we're looking forward to our next celebration later on this month and it'll be a little bit easier because we're all in so i'll on to one of our most cherished uh demelo traditions and recognitions our student of the month um celebration so we've been doing um in-person student of the month assemblies at de melo school for about four years now and they're fantastic events that we have in the cafeteria we don't tell the students that they've been selected as a student of the month we call families and invite them to sneak in and then we surprise students of the month when we announce their names and read narratives that their teachers have written about them at the assembly so again we had
054to kind of reimagine this and this year we've put together student of the month videos and we've done one every month since we got back just to in-person learning um in october so with the help of our instructional tech coach mrs vosey as well as mr peratti and his wonderful interns at dartmouth high school we've been able to put these videos together and they are a true labor of love they take a bit of organizing um but we've been able to celebrate our students if not all together in the cafeteria through a video that teachers show on a drop day that we designate throughout the building and i would like to show you special questions [Music] hi and welcome to another virtual student of the month assembly friends i've heard that we've come to love
055watching these assemblies so we can see all of the kids from all the grade levels so i'm not going to talk very long because i want to get into the real important stuff which is recognizing some of our friends who are doing amazing things across the day friends i want to acknowledge how difficult this year could be for some of us remote learning isn't easy hybrid learning isn't easy virtual learning isn't easy but boys and girls we can still make great choices and we can still put best effort into what we're doing and so many of you are doing that every single day not just our students of the month but as we go around and see our copying good slips we know that so many of you are trying your very best and for
056that we are so unbelievably appreciative we are so proud of the kiddos that we're about to hear about we're so proud of so many of you here at middle school but it's our time right now to celebrate 20 amazing kids who are doing great things every day so let's get ready to roll mrs colbeck has this to say about her student it is with great pleasure that i nominate may amarillo as our december student of the month may is a wonderful young lady who is a joy to have in class her laugh is contagious and filled with happiness she exhibits our core values and can be counted on always to be respectful responsible and safe she is kind and is an extremely hard worker her work is always done to the very best of her
057ability and she can always be found applying all that she has learned she perseveres and then is it is an incredible role model she is humble and kind her ability to understand the situation and move to the greater good is awe-inspiring she is very insightful and thoughtful in addition to all of her accomplishments she is very safe mae understands what is needed to be safe in our classroom and puts her part into play in addition she cares for her things and her technology we are so very lucky to have mei as part of our classroom family this year this nomination is so well deserved congratulations on being our december student of the month bravo congratulations may hello kiss [Music] romeo kiss hi may congratulations to you i'm really not surprised because you are really a
058great kid but i'm so proud of you have a great day i'm a congratulations on your student of the month you really deserve it i'm proud of all your accomplishments keep up the great work love you congratulations sweetheart you always make me proud good job we truly truly enjoy those videos and i think when we were thinking of reimagining student of the month for this year we were thinking let's have families submit videos it is our favorite favorite part the videos the grandparents the siblings um i watch them all and put them into google folders as they come in and i will literally call mrs paveo and say i've just seen the most heartfelt proud parents like like warm congratulatory messages from families it's it really is something so i feel like we haven't lost
059anything by moving it to a video this year and i would look forward to the day when we get back to doing it in person but these videos are a huge hit with the students and the families and i just feel like it's such a positive thing to look forward to every month and everyone does yeah so as you can see we've worked really hard on keeping our community positive happy and strong at the mellow school this year despite all the challenges the de mello school continues to be a place of joy um and a place where we all come together it's a home away from home for everyone every day so i'm going to turn this back to mrs paveo who'll talk about the work we've done this year around literacy so one of
060our favorite things to do at the mellow school is to celebrate reading and with the hard work of mrs correa and dr lisa macioni we were able to modify but keep some of our favorite reading celebrations one such celebration is breakfast blankets and books which is a mouthful but also where students bring break a breakfast snack a blanket and they spread out around the room and we spend some quality time with a book we just drop everything and read for a little bit these are some pictures of our kids typically we would get a whole grade level together in a shared space but again we sort of thought outside the box the kids built tents and forts around their desks so they just had a great time reading another tradition that we kept this year
061was our bookmark contest students in all grade levels submit a reading theme design which is voted on and then the winning bookmark is distributed to all the students at that grade level we have a quick little video of from our winners this year every story has like a new story in it like it has like characters and there's all like new adventures it's perfect that's why i love reading thank you go hi my name is max beatty and i love reading because it's challenging go hi my name is emma and i'm in third grade i love reading because you learn interesting things and you have adventures in books hi my name is bobby i'm from mrs baker's fourth grade and um i like and this is my bookmark i really like reading because it can
062it can be really inspiring some sometimes and some of the stories can actually help you solve real life problems and also i can i can incorporate some words i can learn some new words from reading and i really love reading for that reason i'm sean king and i love reading books because it teaches lots of stuff so bingo for books is another beloved family event that we've held at demelo for the past several years and obviously this year we couldn't do that as an in-person event so with the help of our ics liz voce and our bingo caller extraordinaire melissa pickering if you've never heard melissa run a bingo you've missed out uh we were able to turn this into a google meet virtual family night um and it this just kind of encapsulates what
063we're talking about we had to take these things that we know our families and our kids love and just amend them and tweak them so that we could still do them they could still be done they just not quite done the way that we that we've done them before but i think we've found new and really wonderful ways to connect with our families um this was this event was just a couple weeks ago it was hysterical actually to see the kids also in their home environments playing bingo it was great and in celebration of read across america in the month of march we have traditionally looked forward to inviting guest readers into demelo to read to our students again not wanting to let that go we worked with our readers that mrs corey was able
064to corral into reading and most of you in this room tonight happen to make helped us make that happen uh guest readers were all able to read books from our diversity library which liz is going to talk about more in just a couple of minutes and finally one of the coolest things i think that we've done over the past couple of years is invite authors to de mello school to talk to the students about their process of writing editing and publishing their writing this year was no exception and we were thrilled to welcome scott magoon sadia faruqi julie berry josh funk and jarrett lerner virtually into our classrooms to discuss their books and careers as authors i think it's so empowering to our kids to be able to see people who have made a career
065out of writing i think a lot of them view writing as this thing that we make them do and they don't really see the purpose of it and they don't think that they could see themselves as someone who could take that into something that they could do as a career and as a living so you know pulling these authors in and they we've purchased the books for our classrooms so the kids can have those books um and then we're actually working with one of our authors to hopefully do a book walk he's going to give us some copyright uh rights to be able to blow his book up and post it outside and do kind of a gallery walk through so working with these authors has been amazing and just a really really wonderful and
066enriching and empowering event for our students i'm going to turn it back to liz who's going to wrap it up by talking about some of our diversity and inclusion initiatives so again winding the clock back to last spring as we looked ahead to planning for the 2021 school year mrs pavan and i set a goal around something of critical importance to the both of us increasing an awareness and nurturing and appreciation of diversity and inclusion throughout de melo school in keeping with radine sim bishop's work on transforming schools into places where children have access to mirrors and windows we can committed to making demelo a place where students could see themselves their cultures and identities reflected in the stories they read mirrors while at the same time have access to resources that offered them a
067clear view into others experiences windows while covert has prevented us from hosting the in-person cultural events we'd hope to offer this year we've been able to bring virtual cultural experiences to our students last december author sadie sadia farooqi visited virtually our first and second graders in class and at home to discuss her work and her meet yasmine book series about a pakistani american second grader and her family oh wait a minute i don't know i don't know i might need some technical assistance here mr galesha no oh we had a clip of sadia farooqi good morning first and second graders thank you for those of you who are tuning in from the classroom and thank you to those of you who are tuning in at home we are so lucky to have saria farooqi here
068with us today as you know she is the author of meet yasmin and um some other wonderful books so i am not going to talk too long because i want her to have as much time to talk as possible but the classroom teachers those of you here in school um when sadia is finished talking and it's time for questions i can go around and mute different classroom teachers and you can have the opportunity to ask her a question so um i will turn and of course you can use the chat um too so i will turn it over to sonia hello good morning i'm sadia farooqi i am the author like um like uh elisa said of the yasmine series but also other books for kids i wanted to introduce myself and then i'll take
069lots of questions um so i live in houston texas which is kind of far and probably less cold way less cold than you guys where you are but you know i wasn't um born here i was actually born in another country i'm an immigrant which means i was born somewhere else and now i live here i was born in pakistan which is if you don't know you can look it up ask your parents or teachers to help you it is a small country in asia it's neighbors with more popular well-known countries like china and india and that's where i was born i grew up there i went to school there and i went to college there and then when i was a grown-up i was 22 years old not very grown up but you know
070adult um that's when i got on a plane and i i flew all the way to the united states we wanted to know if you have a favorite book uh you mean in my book yes from your book series that we've been reading did you have a favorite one that's hard am i allowed to have favorites i feel like i shouldn't have favorites because i wrote all of them that's like asking your mom who's their favorite kid ah don't do that okay and this past february we received a grant through the mass cultural council sta's residency program to fund an artist residency at de mello school this year this has allowed us to bring japanese storyteller musician and visual artist motoko to our entire third grade to work virtually with our third graders on learning
071grade level math and science concept through the art of origami and there she was uh launching last the program last week and finally through a generous grant from the dartmouth education foundation last spring we've been able to create a de mello school diversity and inclusion library for our staff and students this library currently houses more than 70 student-friendly picture books devoted to a range of topics including race poverty religion family diversity and lgbtq issues our guest readers all month um parents and dartmouth staff alike all read books selected from this library and we have enjoyed it immensely we hope to add to it more and more as we move on so we'd like to thank you all for this opportunity tonight to take a look at our road to getting to students back in and
072a chance to shine a light on some of the things that we've been working on at mellow when we knew we were presenting today instead of on the 26th we sort of added that piece in so i appreciate your patience as this was way longer than we would have ever spoken otherwise um but we wanted to kind of give you that view and we'll happily kind of take any questions that you have for us now thank you so much ladies what a wonderful presentation it was very uh encompassing of everything um and i i have a couple of my own thoughts but i'm going to turn it over we can start down there with mrs waite hi so you know i just love demelo and i think you have such a fabulous amazing staff and
073you know certainly seeing all this is testimony to that so um it's very comprehensive you know it's everything i expected and know that would be happening um you know i love seeing that these traditions that i know were so beautiful for our family to go through are still being you know recast this year but and it's such a great lesson for the kids too to say you know we have to do something differently but we can still do it that's such awesome modeling and it's so i think it's empowering for them just to see how this year can play out in a positive way we can make the best out of what's a really tough you know reality for for everyone you know and just again and i think like i love seeing um you
074know mrs paveo just talking about that like honestly in these like conversations that you know we can it's hard sometimes as we you know interpret this quote you know there is like marie curie that is hard and really bringing that to their level and explaining that and then launching the day with you know we understand and but we're going to move forward and be inspired so again these are real you know so many things that are happening and are so meaningful and i you know i look at the video and i think wow you know i want to go back and watch it i want to watch you every day and i want to watch in the family story i can forward them to you but the family stories too i thought that was i
075mean you know may but that was a beautiful you know so important for those kids and that's families like i want to sit that down and watch all the students of the month because again and i i'm sure that's a great treasure for you know everyone who especially people that you know even in normal situations couldn't be there to be part of that ceremony so there are some you know again some i think positive legacies that will you know continue to come from this for sure tough time but um and again and i really appreciate the mirrors and windows program and i was i felt you know i love the book that i read and you know i felt that you know again just for these kids to be able to walk in and see
076like wait that's a book about me and something that i can identify with and you know i that is um you know it's it's all about that that self-image and that positivity and you know again it's just another everything that you guys do right and your staff does and so thank you and thanks especially to you your you know tas and your nurses you know your nurse and just everything that uh you know i know sharon's been i just everybody coming together it's uh it's a phenomenal job so thank you thank you good luck for the rest of the year thank you mr news thank you mr chairman ladies thank you very much for being here uh i know i took a i was fortunate enough mrs prevail gave me the tour uh before school
077open and uh got a chance to see what was going on when they were moving things in august to get to six feet and you know the uh the gym down in the back had all the excess furniture at the time and you know what are you going to do for john i don't know haven't gotten there yet you know you know pray for warm weather type of deal but uh thank you you know you you mary just misses wait just talked about you know sayings and everything else and i was sitting there going yep life gives you lemons you make lemonade so you've done a fantastic job and uh just a personal thank you for allowing me to pop into mr finclack's room that wednesday to uh to read the book it was a
078great book uh on you know 20 different americans with cultural diversities and such and some of them you know being a child of the 60s i can remember a lot of those that were going on so it was really to put my own little spin on some of them and you know i hope the students enjoyed it i did and i thank you and don't hesitate to send me a text or an email again i'd love to do it again we appreciate you coming thank you thank you mr nunes this is america thank you for being here um i uh just this weekend actually came across a pile of paperwork like you know it was actually a small pile proud to say that i just i guess i haven't gone through and it was a
079folder and i don't know maybe i knew it was coming i just was avoiding it but it was actually the friday afternoon reading log from mrs baker's fourth grade class and a in a you know a flyer dated march 13th and mae and i looked at it like ooh and there was a ymca catalog for a spring event and she she's she's a little bit of a comedian and not to make light of a serious situation she said well that camp didn't happen um and yeah so she just kind of rolled with it but that was something to see just to say oh my goodness this is this has been in this little pile here for for a very long time and we've been at this for a very long time um yup um i'm
080also one of the parent pickup parents i i i don't know i've been fortunate to be able to drop off and pick up all three of my kids even when they were in three different schools for three different reasons three different ages and uh it's been notable the the the change because you'll also probably see us there early because my daughter likes to be there early it's part of her starting her day and she wants to be prepared even with assigned seating so we engage her she's earlier when papa brings her but she's she's still early-ish when mom brings her i don't know jerry's out on dad no i'm just kidding but um we arrive you know early and wow even last week we talked about the the first the youngest kiddos coming in and
081we were like two minutes be it past our schedule and we were out to the street already dropping off i thought oh my goodness this is going to be really tough when when you know she starts on the 5th full time and but we were we were very early this morning embarrassed to say how early we were this morning but uh i will say i think we were there about quarter past eight uh and we were the third car we weren't the first car we were the third car in line which is so that's striking i'm sure it got quite chaotic but you always handle it everyone that is very organized and handle it with just patience and positive attitudes all the time sometimes have to wake people up to have them move along but
082the process that you put in place is very simple and you know we have a name tag so nobody has to go social distancing where they can call the name and everybody's prepared to come out in line and then it's just like a seamless process so really kudos to you and i don't miss all of your staff uh we personally the last couple years were able to experience like miss baker and this year we have miss colbeck and um just both scenarios and i'll just reference like this year knowing just just knowing what what amazed you know the teachers must have been feeling and just like the sense of repeating yourself every other day and double time and extra work and just not you know stuck in the mud unable to kind of really take
083time to straighten yourself out and and you know the the positivity the grace the excitement the energy the the obvious love to be there to do what she can to make those kids at home feel welcome and supported and to start their day with energy like you said those on and off days and starting back when the pandemic um started we would all tune in to to listen to you and to do the pledge of allegiance and at the end of the day and then to listen to the jokes um and then what you did you just made me choke up a little with that with the student of the month but the ways in which you constantly you know were trying to make things as normal as possible um that's so it was so
084special and then to be able to uh to be able to have like my dad you know record papa record that's that's her her favorite person in the world and then to have liam there and he normally would have been at school we wouldn't have wanted him to take the day off to come to something to celebrate like that or he he might not have wanted to stay there you know what wouldn't have been the best situation let's just say um especially knowing that the cafeteria will usually hold it is where his oldest sister used to play basketball so all bets are off with that but he was able to be part of that video i i don't know what she looked like when she watched it in person because she was totally surprised but
085i i'm sure she was she was uh quite overwhelmed with emotion because it's really her family is really important to her so just i want to thank you for everything you've done happy to be back may admittedly announced today that she in a happy she was thrilled to see her friends she told me who she saw they didn't say hi to each other but they waved she was happy there was music classical music at that lunch in the cafeteria and you played it there was a game i think had i forget we played a little would you rather yeah there's some games that you know so she had a blast but she was she was nervous she said she was a little bit nervous um but she was okay like she but i'm really glad
086that she is able to articulate that to me and she trusts that she she says what she wants to say when she feels she needs to say it and so um you know i'm sure kiddos were nervous i'm sure teachers were nervous um i was a little nervous she came home she put more hand sanitizer on right away she's really diligent but the work that you've done in making kids feel as safe as possible and has been tremendous so i just appreciate it i'm really thrilled i love all of our schools and and but i'm grateful that she gets to um be with you and uh experience this through the lent you know through the umbrella of of your little family school so thank you thank you mrs amaril dr jenkins i just want to
087echo my colleagues and saying thank you for the presentation um i think it was particularly useful because i think we see a lot of times in social media well why didn't they already have a plan and i don't think people understand that and i think it's really important to reiterate right the first plan you developed was for six feet right and then we waited and then we waited and then we waited and then the state was like oh and then you know less than a week you got it i'm exaggerating but now it's three feet and so part of the thing is is that it was impossible to plan for all possible scenarios that might have been coming from the state about how we were going to have to do that so showing all the
088work that went into figuring out once we got the guidance is really helpful i think for people to understand how much work so many people did to make this happen on such a short time i'm super appreciative of both you showing us that work because i think it illustrates to our community what was done it's not like people were you know sitting at home like my friend used to joke i'm gonna work from home i'm gonna eat cheetos and watch soap operas all day that's not what's happening people are working around the clock to make this happen and so i appreciate you showing that to us but also the work that that really went into bringing our kids um back to school so thank you and i'm sorry i forgot your book i promise i
089will bring it back i had a great time reading go ahead thank you dr jenkins yeah there's not a lot more that i can say um you know just a few things really ladies phenomenal presentation i thought it was really well done really well put together there was a lot of thought and effort and the fact that you were able to take away take some snippets out of you know the day and share with us some of the students comments um i thought that was huge so to me this video really highlights kind of like what dr jenkins was saying the culmination of hundreds and hundreds of hours of planning of you know to get kids fully back get students fully back in school and that's really what this video did it was the call
090it highlighted the culmination it was the culmination of how and why you did what you did in order to get our our students back in school so you know just a couple of little notes that i i jotted down that i thought were important you know keeping the traditions alive i thought that was huge how you used to do bingo now you turned into it i thought that was awesome i i'd love to be a virtual bingo caller sounds like a fun gig [Laughter] what did you ask for i know right continuing to um you know go after those grants to the mass cultural council through the dartmouth um education foundation um huge and then bringing the authors in um i love the morning pep talk pep talks um you know i was i was
091actually getting a little uh a few of my a few of my teachers said they're going to get me a little red cardigan and they joke that i'm like mr rogers of demillo school no um and just i think you said it you know the nurse is making the house calls the you know to the rooms there's just so many moving parts and um so you know hats off to you and your staff for a job well done thank you they really i have to say thank you but they you know listen listen i always say that our job is to sort of lift the barriers so that the teachers can do the important work so like yes this is as i said like this is a lot of work and this is what we
092do but we do it so that the teachers can get in there and teach the kids and they really are the superstars of this whole operation because we can we can move all the barriers we can do whatever we want but we need the people to get in there and do the important work of working with our kids every day and we're just eternally eternally grateful and it can't be said enough how amazing our staff has been through this whole thing so thank you for that but i'm just going to trickle it right down to the people who are who are doing that hard work every single day no i agreed i i couldn't agree with you more and that goes back to what you had showed us on the uh the morning i don't
093know if it was called the morning call sheet or whatever with all the different substitutions that need to be made yes actually and what i failed to point out in that picture is at one point you saw our custodian um we have a virtual class uh where our teacher from quinn comes in we have an extra fourth grade so our custodian at one point i got called out into a meeting and i literally saw him in the hallway and i said i need you for five minutes and he said what do i have to do i said nothing the teacher is on the smart board i just need you here in case anything happens so it is a literal all hands on deck because tonight we are just eternally appreciative of everyone's hard work teamwork
094yes yes thank you thank you thank you thank you all right next up under old business continuation of the fy 22 budget discussion and i'm looking to be to be taking a vote this evening um we'll start off i'm going to turn it over to dr gifford for any updates or anything that you want to share with the committee before we continue yep sure thank you so once again i'll just share with you some information mr kylie provided relative to the letter that we received about the parking just just so you have it in the back of your head so we've had that come forth before a number of years ago and just for your information the committee did reduce the fee one from 100 to 60 dollars and he said that was about eight
095years ago so the parking fee right now is sixty dollars and it pays for plowing the painting of lines lighting repairs maintenance of lots and any little paving that has to happen um and as we know or don't know but i'll make make you know that the maintenance staff our maintenance staff plows a lot ourselves so in most of the snowstorms and we have contracted out in the past if need be so obviously you all set the fee and again for future discussion if that was i know it's pretty slim pickings in that um little pot of money and it is used every year and if that were to be eliminated um that would be something that we would have to add to the operating budget so just a quick update from mr kylie on
096that and that's all the updates nothing else has changed can you do you know what the total amount of revenue is generated from the part i don't no i don't i don't have that yep it's not a whole lot but okay but it's sixty dollars we're doing 60 yeah just as an fyi 300 ballpark and other than that nothing else has changed right yeah because not yeah 18 000 max max yeah luckily we do have the maintenance crew doing most of the snowstorms so you know if we had to contract that out all the time it would be the town terrible yeah too thank you dr gifford and you do have the um yeah uh the motions that mr kylie provided yeah so does anyone have any other comments or questions about tonight dr jenkins
097so mr chair prior to approval of the budget i would like to make a motion to amend the budget to adjust the administrative budget to leave the current administrative structure that we have in place for the next fiscal year leaving the assistant superintendent position vacant and keeping their director of teaching and learning i'll second that yeah so i have a motion by dr jenkins a second by this is wait to and could you repeat the what to retain the current and administrative structure and the administrative the district office to not fill the vacant assistant superintendent position and to retain the current director of teaching and learning position thank you very much so i have a motion by dr jenkins a second by mrs waite on the motion and discussion mr nunes yeah thank you mr
098chairman uh i'm sorry i can't support that i think we need the assistant superintendent's position okay with everything that goes on everything that is needed in this system not only our system but every system type of deal i think you need an assistant superintendent an assistant superintendent that's going to handle you know the other things that the superintendent and the assistant superintendent of business and finance you know the in-between things type of deal uh to take that position out of the budget uh i think is wrong and uh i think we need to you know leave it there uh as a fail-safe so i mean i'm i am fortunate i will not support this motion okay this is amarillo i i would support this because i've been kind of mulling around in my head about
099this um because i know everyone's taking on so much extra but i was under the impression prior to like the budget proposal that we had sort of voted i don't remember what that vote was but to like revisit this kind of post kind of where when we're back in um and i just i just feel that you know tracy you know the curriculum piece is so important uh i just would i just feel like although i know people are taking on more than they typically would to make this happen i just am back to where we were that time we voted that we would revisit this like next year or something so i mean i would support this not to say that this is a forever thing but i i um so anyway that i
100i do feel that that it's been not sitting well with me in in in that just not now kind of thing i just i don't know i don't know so i know that sounds like very convoluted but that's my my thoughts around it um i don't know what else yeah i just say that i kind of echo what um miss amaral said that i had thought that we had voted on this and then you know it would come to an agreement and it was you know certainly it seemed that we were going to hold on this you know whether or not that was an official vote but it seemed like we were you know that seemed to be what wasn't unanimous like a consensus that we were gonna hold um and so i was just
101i've been struggling a little bit with it as well on that on that note so dr jenkins are you saying uh to leave the just leave the position vacant at this time to retain the current administrative structure which is to have that position vacant and to have a current director of teaching and learning so just to clarify you you said at the last time that you would take it up during budget not to vote for next year that's what you discussed so this budget process and as you know that by leaving it vacant it is 100 about 140 000 that we've reduced so we were asking for a simple about an eight thousand dollar increase to the current director of teaching learning salary to take on all those additional responsibilities that i gave you in
102that updated job description so with that said then i would have to cut that job description about in half um so i'm not quite sure what all the rest of what you would propose all of those other responsibilities because my my my day is pretty much on mr kylie's right now and you know as you know he's out right now so sure miss olivera took on a lot over the next few days including dea negotiations um unfair labor practice uh discussion that we have to have all day wednesday those are things that an assistant superintendent the title has to go with those responsibilities to be able to make decisions be on certain committees etc so those are kind of the things that we are um asking for yeah i guess my question dr gifford would
103be how how has the functionality been this to date through this year right now how are you operating with everybody picking picking all of that up but i think with the hope for the person that's been picking up the most of it with that this would take place so i can't guarantee that that that takes place continuing you know dr jenkins so i understand that there's a desire to make this happen you know i look at my own institution i'm currently doing the job of two people right we have not been able to replace budget times are uncertain and lean i'm not convinced at this point in time that this is the time to make this change right we still have to have all hands on deck second i'm not entirely convinced i would like
104to see an analysis of the administrative structures in other districts that i feel like over the past few you know time that i've been on the committee and that i've been watching this committee from the finance we have limited funds and we have lots of other needs and i know we're eliminating a position but i don't want i want us to do an analysis of what our needs are and i want a clear sort of com comparison to other districts before i feel comfortable approving this this is not a never for me this is a not now you know the third thing that i will say is that the assistant superintendent is a very important role in our district um i think that we should be posting such a position i really do this is
105nothing against the current occupant of the position of the director of teaching and learning but for a position of sort of that scope i believe we should search that's that's my position um you know not everyone has to agree with me but i just don't feel comfortable approving this because once we move forward it's hard to move back i don't know of many districts that don't have an assistant superintendent for teaching and learning if that's our our primary goal teaching and learning we don't have one now and also from my perspective having worked in this you know leading the district for the last six years there is no one better than tracy oliveira who has done the curriculum work the professional development work and leading all the committees so again we don't agree with that
106but that's my my opinion my perspective right now thank you dr gifford anyone else yeah mr news yeah just to go to uh dr jenkins about posting in that type of deal in my tenure here there have been a couple of times that we have posted for assistant superintendents because we had no one qualified in-house type of deal but there have also been other times that we've either done it strictly in-house or we've just you know the position has been available and we've moved someone in so i mean it's not it's a superintendent it's the superintendent's call it's not as to who she he or she would like to have in that position type of deal so i don't see a reason to you know spend money you're talking about trying to save some money
107with budgets and everything else to spend money and do a search it doesn't make sense i would just i i'm kind of torn mr nunes i can understand where you're coming from i certainly understand where dr jenkins is coming from but i am somewhat concerned at the the optics when positions aren't posted um and i don't want to go backwards in time but you know with other positions but when other positions were not posted and just appointments were made you know i i don't really want to go there but you know i think you know what i'm talking about i i think we need to really take a hard look like dr jenkins said at the administrative structure i think that's the right thing to do leave the position vacant and go from there any
108other discussion now how so we have a motion we have a second we had discussion how do we move forward then do we in terms of after we move on the motion we have that discussion okay so right now we're talking we're debating the motion on the table right so mr nunes let me let me no not mike because we'll just vote this and then it'll just be vacant um okay i was just trying to figure out the money portion of it but we'll we'll vote this and okay fix it later so on the motion on on dr jenkins motion to retain the current administrative structure all in favor aye aye opposed me one no abstentions motion passes with four or one against no abstentions and next up is the discussion or the vote for
109the fy 22 budget yeah mr chairman make a motion to approve the fy 22 budget appropriation for part of school classroom teachers in the amount of 1 million 784 314 dollars a second i have a motion by mr nunes a second by dr jenkins to approve the fy 22 budget appropriation potter cl potter school classroom teachers on the motion any further discussion cheer hearing none all in favor opposed abstentions i will abstain motion passes four to zero with one abstention so the question now becomes now the issue is at hand that kathleen was bringing up to how do we move forward we could make a motion i believe correct me if i'm wrong mr nunes to approve the budget as is yeah right with the total and then that would just any the savings would
110be left over if dr gifford needs to pay stipends to or whatever do some duties that money would be available correct yeah so i'll make a motion to approve the fiscal year 22 budget appropriation as amended no for the total budget excluding those items voted individually in the previous motion in the amount of 45 billion 396 234 dollars and 44 cents by dr jenkins a second by mrs amaral to approve the fy 22 budget appropriation for the total budget as amended as amended discussion mr nunes did you have something or no no i won't be voting for this okay so all in favor aye opposed me one no abstentions motion passes four in favor one against no abstentions thank you everyone next up is the superintendent's update i really don't have too much tonight one
111thing i want to mention is the summer reading program that will continue on and one thing that parents will be able to look for is um i think the letter went out not quite sure yet but there'll be a summer reading website that people will be able to have resources and also that we'll be sending books home as usual we did i think i mentioned it before we had received a grant to have a stem vacation camp uh excuse me stem vacation camp we have not been able to really get any teachers we've posted it twice um so i think everyone wants a summer i think so too so we've been trying to give the money back to deci and they won't take it at this point so we found out today that we can
112probably use it for any of our summer programs so hopefully we can attribute that to some of the esy program that we have planned but i i kind of get it that people don't really want to work anymore and for that dr gifford are you posting that can we post externally or are you posting externally is it just for internal it was internal it was a quick week and it was just um you know vacation stem camp but i understand that people are tired and probably just want a good break right so but at least we can use the money because they said they can't take it back which was kind of funny but we'll put it towards the esy programs and other than that just once again i want to thank rick ferreira and
113all the folks that helped him out over the good friday saturday the principles as well to get the dust put together assembled in the classrooms ready to go from my understanding i was over the middle school today and also had a discussion with rick ferrer again more like i don't know like 600 deaths came in today so they'll be getting those ready so that we'll have the middle school ready um just so you know also that involves moving things that were brought to the elementary schools back to some of the other schools as we're starting to use tables with plexiglas etc so they're making it work but we will be ready to go with the middle school and high school whenever we don't know the date on the high school but we're working towards i
114mean it doesn't mean we have to wait for that exact date but we're working towards having things ready so other than that we checked in with the schools today and things went well for the opening and except for the you know the traffic as you heard that's inevitable yeah but anyway that's about it so as far as just just so everyone's clear at home i'm sorry i didn't see you again just so everyone's clear at home dr gifford we're we're continuing even though we may not be publicly having full-out conversations about the high school there are talks absolutely at the high school level with your office with you with mr tebow about you know anything ready to go you know when guidance does come out and so everyone's aware guidance has not come out right
115dusty has not released any guidance in the height on high school students right yeah right okay i was just going to follow up on that we had a question from a parent asking about capacity issues and we know that that was an issue at the middle school and she you know had asked what is the are there capacity issues it's the high a newer building what were the concerns i know that in some cases from my experience of touring looks like the science labs would be an area of concern do you have the same you know i just want to kind of respond to her issues with capacity and fitting students at the high school or how absolutely but just as the middle school we're making it work they'll be moving kids around and yeah
116we were at a meeting well it was before last week was the week before as i reported on and i plan on stopping at the high school tomorrow um to get a sense of where exactly uh disregarding furniture right now what you need are your rooms are you ready do you have a sense of where everyone's going and i know they i'm sure they're just about ready at this point right so awesome excellent thank you yeah i mean it's not ideal but who was telling me today your your imperfections are perfect oh yeah i'm bringing kate into the conversation we were talking today about a book or a saying and it's just that's where we are right our imperfections are perfect like for the time being or i'm saying it backwards but you you get
117what i'm saying yeah yeah let me get what i'm saying making it work we're making it work making it work it seems as though the at least the students that demelo are having right next up report of the chair so um i just have actually one of the things was already addressed they just had guidance on dartmouth high school i'd also just had about bringing in just reminding a reminder to see if we can get the class senior class officers in here at some point um as well as i think it's important you know we had there was an article in dartmouth weekly recently regarding the our diversity committee um so i had reached out to masc um you know for some guidance on getting that off the ground and um i believe it was
118uh mr mr hardy over at jim jim hardy uh masc that said that as the chair i can go ahead and i can at least get a date on the books that works for um the two uh i believe it's dr jenkins and um this is the amarillo that's the two school committee members um that were elected to the diversity committee so obviously would be some dates that would work for the two of you but i'd love to see it then we can go for the we can go from there and you know i i would ask that the the first meeting um the objective would be to you know nominate a chair of the committee and um set some timelines and some some goals so do you have any uh preference dr jenkins uh
119so mr chair i emailed the committee to ask just sort of generally if there were evenings during the week that someone was not available like maybe they have another commitment they have to watch their kids on a tuesday night or something and generally speaking most of the committee members indicated that they were flexible one of the committee members just asked had a preference at the meetings not be on monday nights um so did they i i didn't yeah i didn't sorry sorry about that um i emailed the committee and i asked if when they were available if they had like a general night that they weren't available no dates we didn't talk dates i just want to know our monday's bad for you or tuesdays not everyone's going to be able to make every meeting
120one member said they would prefer not mondays yeah okay so if we can avoid mondays that would be fine i'm pretty flexible so i'll defer to miss amaral um so it is the beginning of the month is it possible that we can get a month on the books in april do tuesdays work for you um i've been apologetic on a one-to-one basis responding to some of the anxious other community members and and those that i've spoken to have been very gracious admittedly it's like all bets are off for me i mean once my son gets off the bus the side effect as we all know is i i've not kind of opted to have some personal care assistance with him and my husband works so i will i will attempt to be flexible i've had
121to step down from the rotary club and some other town councils to kind of um adhere to like what i can actually handle um i don't want to say that i'm not available but i will say that i will try to be flexible so i would not go with my availability in terms of if i find that if i find that i cannot commit i will bring that back to the committee and and potentially have somebody else take my place but i don't want you to go by my schedule because i'm kind of full all over the place and and stuck in the mud and kind of sure understood this is a cartoon i don't know caffeine thank you for your honesty yeah you know bring it back if you if you feel like you
122you know it's going to be tough you can certainly look to select an alternate so can i recommend maybe tuesday the 20th of april i would say the 27th but we have a meeting i think on the 26th of the school committee i would prefer not to do it vacation week okay so i i don't think the 13th i'm not that's just not going to work for me um [Music] i'm just worried about next week i'm i'm off most of this week so i'm not going to be ready for and i'd like to be ready get some stuff ready because i know that you're busy so next week doesn't work and it's april vacation so maybe wednesday the 28th either wednesday the 28th or may 4th would be my two recommendations you're going to have
123to post that with the town clerk we do i confirm with masc because it is a subcommittee appointed by the school committee we need to post an agenda we need to post meetings we need to do all that okay um yeah i will add uh may 4th tuesdays would be i think be better for me if i were to all right actually can we set may 4th as our first meeting this may work may 4th work all right there's nothing on the calendar as far as any other school events big school events i'm not seeing anything so we will set a date uh you prefer a time you want to wait until you just say 6 30 right now and i mean we don't have to post it yet but why don't we put it
124may 4th tentatively at 6 30. um and uh uh we'll we'll see do you need it to be a little later than that no 6 30 has been we're going to do zoom to start too anyway so um i think hopefully that should work we'll get that worked out and i can work um with kate to post the agenda and we can get that all set up perfect so just to confirm and for everyone watching at home it's going to be tuesday may 4th at 6 30 uh tentatively 6 30 and you can look for the posting in the town clerk's office um you know the week before um for our first meeting of the diversity and inclusion committee thank you everyone for that thank you thank you shannon no problem does anyone else have
125anything for so i'll stop down at that end of the day just a circle back you know for a future agenda we'll bring in the parking conversation about the parking fees is that yes we can yes i'd like to see that um i believe the next meeting is our reorganization um we argue the committee um but i assume i'll be setting the agenda for that meeting um so if we can make that work um you know i think it would be great if we could invite that um that student in um i don't know if it's possible or at least zoom in that that's going to be the joint meeting with the selection oh that's right that's right that's the yeah that's the joint maybe the one after that so that's going to be the
126finger which is going to be amazing may 17th to be blunt right they've already paid the parking fee for the year we've approved the budget so if we have it april 26 or may 17th it's six of one half dozen the other i think it's a phrase mr nunes likes to use and i believe that the gentleman who's head of who's been like leading this committee is also the senior class president so we'll kind of if we bring him both you know at the same time we want to hear from those representatives can you know or we can separate it out but you know yeah no yeah that's right the next meeting is representation right and it's before so no thank you anything else not for me mr nunes yeah on a very serious matter
127uh only because as we heard tonight and i heard with the student rep and that type of deal is it possible during our meetings to shut these air purifiers off trouble too because i know i know i'm not vaccinated yet i don't feel comfortable with that i'm sorry are they only over here like i was gonna say could they be moved maybe one because we can't maybe move them a little bit we'll have to defer to there's one there's one there one over there one over there i hope i'm vaccinated by our next meeting but i don't feel comfortable being indoors with with people unvaccinated um without air circulation let's move them because not only do you have that but you have the yes yeah above you yeah yeah i don't see why we couldn't
128at least move this one out of the way that's right in earshot of you get it out of your ears that was i mean seriously yeah and then move that one to that side yeah that was pretty loud i mean because i agree i i couldn't hear a lot of what he was saying with all due respect what he said tonight i could not yeah i couldn't i caught a couple of pieces about like what was used to be mr dartmouth i'm not sure what they're calling it now but i heard that but damn it's fine but other than that i heard nothing and no disrespect to the gentleman okay you know just in this will be coming back to the high school is there any conversation around i know we've been talking about the
129senior events but is there an offer is there any conversation around the junior banquet or is that something that's no that's not that's not things and matter of fact we just had guidance that we really shouldn't even have a prom okay i was just curious as we were yeah i haven't you can't you can't you can put you can you can put 100 people indoors right right so that's what i figured but i just yeah yeah it's just it's tough it's it's tough yes one quick thing really excited for those kiddos in fifth grade who who want to take up band um thrilled to say that that's happening this week i'm going to have a new trumpet player she's not taking up trombone like her sister and that starts this week after school really excited
130that they pulled it together and then the other only other thing that i have to to remind anybody who is interested is that next monday night via zoom is our it's a requirement of the state that we provide a parent's rights in special education once a year and so that will be happening next monday night the 12th and that and folks can we'll have an all call or a text go out with the link to register but and it's a webinar format so there'll be attendees and panelists so that'll be the you know to to lessen the noise of a meeting but um that will be uh next week and that people can email dartmouth cpac at gmail.com or our facebook page list the event and folks can get the link to register but like
131i said there'll be an announcement coming out for that how we'll have the link right in the text so i just wanted to remind folks of that that's all thank you mrs amaral dr jenkins so i just want to just ask for not now i don't want to put anything on your plate now or even until school but i think sometime in june i have to say i think the work that everyone is doing is great but what i see here is not a reflection of what my family's experience has been and i get emails from families all the time about how much their kids are struggling and so it's great to bring in a lot of our kiddos who are doing fabulous i don't want to bring in kiddos to have them but i
132would like to have some recap maybe in june um for us to talk about what our biggest struggles were and because i really want to be laser focused next year on how we try to bring these kids back and how we try to make them whole i know my family it has been and this is no disservice to anything in the schools this is about a pandemic my kids have really struggled and i've gotten a ton of emails i know we all have from families that are really struggling and so i think sometimes like they don't see themselves in what we talk about sometimes in our in our meetings and so i think it would be useful to have a little bit of maybe a debrief session sometime in in june right um maybe in
133the summer yeah but i'd like to ask maybe your staff to start thinking about that like what are the challenges that we saw we gave our everything but we weren't quite able to do this and so now we need to think of that i want our community to know that we are i know you probably are already thinking about that but i do want them to know that we're going to be laser focused on that for the for the next year and i really want us to have some discussions about that moving forward about what we're going to do to sort of help these kids who are struggling out that would be great so i just want to start thinking about it yeah and maybe it's worthwhile to have a working session you know at
134some point over the summer with the committee after dr giffords had the opportunity to share this you know with with her i mean i just think that i i and again this is this is about the pandemic and not the schools or the staff or anything they've done it's been a struggle for a lot of and and i would also say we can also talk about this related to our staff and our and our in our district i think all of you who work here are burnt out um how do we fix that next year what do we need to do for our staff to um to get them back to a better place i think we need to have some serious conversations around that i think having the kids back kind of rejuvenated people
135though yeah i think it does and not only seeing the kids but i think people don't understand they just think oh yeah you just kids zoom in that's not how it works it's so much more work to have kids on zoom kids at home it's a lot of work um and so it's good to have them all in in part because you can focus on that what's in front of you you're not constantly thinking about what's out there so it's good but i think we've got we're going to have a lot of work to do next year right and just you know to piggyback off of dr jenkins is there talk about some pro summer programs additional summer programs or just the esy comments but as you saw we tried to do next to what
136nobody wants anything to do but this is going to be another one we're sure the state is going to say in like mid-june or at the end of may you got to do this this and this and this this summer and good luck figuring it out i'm sure that's what's going to happen go back go back to last summer where somewhere around august 1st they said by august 10th we want three say in dissertations 1st we're going to say june 10th we want three plans for different types of summer schooling and there's nothing we can do but i suspect that's coming down the pipe oh yeah i do too they have nothing better to do up there yeah we'll get me started on that we'll say virtual or we're out i don't want to hear
137that word again it's so tough for these kids anything else just election day tomorrow mr chairman please yes get out and get out and vote in our town election they're open for everybody so excellent that's right and with that the next regular session meeting of the dartmouth school committee is scheduled for monday april 26 2021 this will be a joint session uh the joint session with the select board and finance committee was also moved to april 26th therefore the committee's regular session will be scheduled for 5 30 pm via zoom followed by the joint meeting and that will also be the annual reorg of the school committee does the chairman make a motion we adjourn a motion by mr nunes a second by mrs way on the motion any other discussion hearing none all in
138favor aye aye aye aye opposed chris gavin so my next-door neighbor she's actually from scotland but she [Music] elementary