001yes as soon seriously [Music] uh well good evening everyone i'd like to call this meeting of the dartmouth school committee to order for monday march 22nd 2021. could you please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and see the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all please be seated well good evening everyone once again welcome happy monday uh just a reminder for governor baker's auto suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law chapter 30 a section 20 the public will not be allowed to physically access this school committee meeting members of the public can access this meeting via live stream at youtube.com forward slash dhs tv media in addition the event will be re-rebroadcast on
002dc tv channels 9 and 18 on the following days wednesday and thursday at 5 p.m friday at 6 a.m saturday at 8 am and sunday at 2 p.m the school committee reserves the right to implement additional or remote participation procedures and will notify the public of these procedures as soon as practice at poll miss guenther could we have a roll call please chris oliver here shannon jenkins here kathleen amaral here john nunes yep mary wait thank you very much as a reminder for those of us in attendance this evening if you could please silence your cell phones or anything else any other devices that you may have typically at this time we a lot 10 minutes for anyone wishing to comment on any of tonight's agenda items uh we got a few minutes before our
003public hearing of 6 35 for the fy 22 school budget so uh at this point in time ms genter do we have any um any public comment for tonight's meeting nothing okay thank you and as a reminder anyone wishing to comment on any of tonight's agenda items can do so uh they can email our recording sector secretary kathleen genther dartmouthschools.org i mean we'll uh circulate at the back of the tail end of the meeting and we'll see if anyone uh would like to respond to anything that we have on tonight's agenda uh with that i'll take the approval of the regular session minutes of march 8th 2021 so move mr chairman second and a motion by mr nunes is second by dr jenkins on the motion any further discussion cheer hearing none all in favor
004aye aye stephen i proposed motion passes four to zero with one abstention thank you time is 6 34. um we'll we'll turn it over to our student uh rep who's with us this uh this evening and i believe i know your last name is uh miss mel morgan thank you so welcome morgan hi good uh good to have you with us here this afternoon or this evening um if you want to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about yourself and uh what's going on at dartmouth high school hi my name is morgan mello i'm a sophomore here at dartmouth high i participate in a lot of extracurriculars and a sport every single season here i'm very involved i like to be active in my school committee school community so i'm happy to report
005with the improving weather over the past few days in spring just passed and it's starting up right now students physical and mental health has been slowly improving over time which i'm sure you're all very concerned about especially with the start of the 2021 campaign for the high school seniors this year so unfortunately these seniors have been unable to get a lot of their activities which i know we've been struggling to get and plan for them just to start and so to celebrate the start and the end of their last year their senior year dartmouth's finest which is actually a rehearsal going on right now we'll kick off the start for the 21 for 21 campaign on friday april 9th at 7 30 which you can stream on dc tv our football team record still stands
006out one to one as the team prepares to travel to durfee on saturday all right despite these challenging times our team perseveres and continues to demonstrate our dartmouth pride along with our school sports dartmouth winter trap which i'm happily a member of we start with a virtual meet coming up on one on thursday actually so because meats are unable to be held in person we all will be competing virtually and posting our own times the coaches look forward to that it'll be an interesting change going into more competition we also had our state deca competition which i'm also thankfully to be a part of 16 students and i also competed at states this year it was online involved written tests and two role plays taking three hours for each video and an hour and a
007half for the test so after a lot of hard work and time put into these competitions i'm happy to report that four or five of us are going on to nationals internationals so along with other subcommittees and committees and just clubs at our school our student council has started a subcommittee focusing on abolishing parking passage passes which looks forward to working with the school board committee along with our political science club which is hoping to pass a coveted relief bill at federal legislation level to help low income families and our debate team also just participated in a spring fling tournament which evan garcia my other student council rep and i are a part of both of us will be advancing to states this year so we are also proud to announce that our esports team
008is newly created this year but now has four official competition squads the five-team member league of legends has risen to 13th place place out of 14 teams in our division with many more matches left in the season the three-member state rocket league squad is now ranked sixth over all out of 31 teams we have also just added a three-person local rocket league team and a three-person super smash bros teams both of which will be competing this week a nice start to an interesting and a new team so yeah that's what's going on well it sure sounds like there's a lot happening at dartmouth high and it sounds great all the wonderful things that you're doing um do any of my fellow uh colleagues have any comments or questions thank you for the update thank you
009for the update thank you it's great to see you here yeah this is youtube yeah well we welcome you and i hope to see you again soon thank you thank you thanks morgan thank you morgan okay the time is now 6 39 i'd like to call the public hearing to order do we need a motion make a motion that we open a public hearing for the fy 22 school budget second motion by mr nunes a second by mrs amaral to open uh the fy 22 a public hearing on our school budget any other discussion chair hearing none all in favor opposed motion carries unanimous unanimously uh the public hearing is open and once again i'll turn it over to uh typically this is when we'd have uh some audience members here and uh they would
010be uh sharing their thoughts or concerns or questions regarding the fy 22 budget i know that correct me if i'm wrong but the it was published notice was given in the standard times on the march 15 2021 edition and it was also asked in that article or that posting that anyone wishing to [Music] ask any questions or anything in regards to the fy fy22 uh budget hearing that they could send that to kathleen uh miss genter um and do we have anything in regards to a public comment on the budget hearing i have not received any comments you have not received any comments today thank you very much um i don't know what the committee's pleasure is at this point do we uh open and close it or is there anything else at this point
011no because we're going to talk about it later under old business so correct well that's fine so so jim i'm going to make a motion uh since there is no public comment um i'll tell you what how about if i make them if if we not close but if we adjourn it to the end of the meeting in case somebody after we have a budget discussion somebody happens to send something i'm fine with that doesn't anyone else have any issues so i make a motion that we adjourn our public hearing on the fy 22 budget until the end of our meeting a second okay a motion by mr nunes a second by mrs wade to adjourn our public budget hearing uh coming back to it at the um the end of our regular meeting any
012other comments questions jay hearing none all in favor opposed motion carries unanimous uh next up uh we have a resolution 21-04 i assume regular regular and late transportation contract uh mr kylie i would assume yes thank you very much thank you mr oliver so we had our bid opening for our regular and late transportation contract and i will read for the record resolution number 21-04 which is a resolution awarding a contract for regular and late transportation services whereas bid invitations for regular and late transportation services k-12 were duly advertised and the bid proposals received were opened at 11 a.m on march 10 2021 and whereas the bid for the only responding bidder trembleys bus company llc was reviewed and deemed to have met the published specifications therefore be it resolved that a contract for regular
013and late transportation services k through 12 be awarded to tremblay's bus company llc 284 myrtle street new bedford mass based on dartmouth public schools specifications dated february 22nd 2021 for the period of july 1st 2021 and ending june 30th 2022 the contract offered us for an initial period of one year beginning july 1st 2021 through june 30th 2022 with two additional one-year options to be exercised at the sole discretion of the school committee for a maximum end date of june 30th 2024 and the amount of 378.96 per roof per day motion to approve second motion by mr nunes the second by was that uh are you mrs amaral or mrs white mrs wait on the motion i do have some discussion uh just a couple of quick questions for you mr kiley where you say
014our responding better was that the only bit or the only responsible better it was the only bid the only bit the only bit okay and typically i know we are for those people watching at home and for some of our new school committee members that typically we enter into in the past and past practice to typically go with three-year transportation contact contracts could you just explain a little bit what was the reasoning behind looking at just the one year this year yeah so this is a one year with two one year options and the options are at our discretion so the flexibility is really all on our side um to be honest i think it's highly highly likely that we would use utilize all three years but given there's so much change in the world
015it's nice to have the option available to us in case something presents itself that we're not anticipating at the moment i have other i can talk a little bit about the price if well i was just curious as what the percentage is over the previous contract so our previous contract was for three years and it um was level priced for those three years similar to this would be if we if we exercise the options so we always expect that in that first year of the new contract we will sort of have to get closer to a current market value it for for the regular bus portion of this it's eight and a half percent increase over the previous contract um and that's the bulk of the cost some of the the other areas of the
016cost in terms of how much it costs for us to have a monitor on the bus and how much it costs to have late buses we're a bit of an issue in this in that there's a there's a quite a driver shortage and staff shortage in that business and i think that cost us some money the good news is overall this is um within the parameters of what i budgeted in the fy 22 budget so uh you know i think that it would be a good idea for us to exercise this there's a lot of uncertainty in the transportation market right now and uh you know i feel this is a favorable option for us okay thank you very much mr kyle dr jenkins uh so thank you mr chair mr kyle i remember last
017time we did this told us that it was increasingly common that school districts are are only getting one bid and that concerns me in a sort of historical sense you know past history and dartmouth i think there were some you know ideas that bids were written so that only one company would be qualified to actually bid is sort of an insider backroom deals and i'm not suggesting that's what's happening here i know that it's not i want to be clear about that but it creates sometimes bad appearances and it's good that it's i mean it's good in the sense of appearances that it's happening to everyone but i also don't wonder if this is something that i don't know is the state looking into this it's problematic for districts right when no district there's no
018competition for bus contracts i mean i'm a pretty lefty person but you know capitalism and market-based competition is good for uh consumers so i'm just sort of wondering whether you know budget officers superintendents the state anyone is sort of looking into what's going on here to see if schools can have some remedies around in districts around this i can say that the state is very well aware that this is an issue um it's a hard one to remedy the there have been several summits of school business officials talking about this there were in the in the last decade there's been several bankruptcies in these companies it's it's a difficult business and um when that has occurred it has been disastrous um in one case there was a bankruptcy where the school district didn't know until
019the kids weren't picked up that morning and the doors were locked and the phones were off and it was over and never you know so um we do you know we protect against that type of thing we have a performance bond and and you know not to say there wouldn't be issues if that occurred it would be but those businesses have really taken a hit in this economic crisis um you know they've not transported kids and as a result not been paid a portion of their you know of their contracts and um i i i don't know i don't see it going getting any better anytime soon i really don't and i don't this is in no ways to say we're dissatisfied with tremblays or not it just sometimes it can create bad appearances when
020it's there's like the fix is in and i know that's not the case here and so i just want to sort of talk about you know this is a fairly written bid and this is just sort of what's going on right now all right thank you anyone else i i'm yeah i'm not not specific to this resolution but just uh in terms of i'm i'm not like my children haven't you know been regular bus users i've been the driver the parent parent pickup person um until recently when you know my son does utilize transportation for non-district placement um in in awarding contracts historically like when we've gone with other when we've had other bids that have that we've secured contract with has the special ed transportation also sort of aligned with that bus company do
021they all sort of fulfill that or have you consistently like utilize like because i know that there aren't as there are other vendors as well for that but right we've we've kept those bids separate they're really you know two separate fleets and i think it makes sense to to do that um we've not when we have had during my tenure other vendor uh one other vendor uh provide transportation services we did not they did not also provide the special ed transportation service for that but yeah that's it anything else any other comments questions just the news yeah thank you mr chairman just to kind of piggyback on what dr jenkins said type of deal i mean there's four bus companies in this area that are you know doing business with all the different communities you
022know he had a swansea you know rehoboth that type of deal you know out uh probably into a rochester mata poison marion type of type of deal and to you know for somebody else to go out and to do to to take to try to bid on this contract i think would require them to go out find the drivers you know find the buses you know it's a big capital you know in this day and age is a big capital thing we have had in in my tenure uh you know the time when we had we'd get we would get three bids type of deal and you know you give it to the lowest response of a responsible bidder and you don't go out at that year in one year we did that and the
023committee had to pull the bid at the end of the first year because the company just couldn't handle the bid couldn't handle what we needed type of deal we had issues almost from day one so you know trembly's you know we've got tremblies and they do a good job as far as i can see and understand and i'm happy with with the way this is going okay no thank you if i could just add just for as a frame of reference the competition i agree it would be nice to have competition and make be sure we're getting a good price um i looked at about 25 other contracts right now for next year that are currently in existence or have just just come up and are in a similar situation where they're close to awarding
024a contract we're about two percent under the average of those contracts so almost dead on with the average of those contracts so you know it's um it's about what the market seems to seems to bear at the moment right yeah it's just a competition piece all right well thank you mr kylie thank you um so the original motion was by mr nunes right second by mrs white any other further discussion cheer hearing none all in favor aye opposed motion carries the passing resolution number 21-04 thank you thank you for your work mr kylie on that thank you next up presentations i'm going to turn it over to our superintendent of schools dr bonnie gifford introduce a spotlight on the dartmouth middle school thank you very much and once again we're delighted to have mr doan
025here um nope nobody with him tonight but uh i'm sure he's lying solo that's right he's flying so i like that and to present to what's going on at the middle school this year thank you for having me here this evening so just to share a few highlights with you uh throughout the course of this very interesting uh year as you probably are all well aware of is um we are one to one grade six through eight which has been um extremely beneficial specifically due to initially the remote and then transitioning into the hybrid um and then uh starting today we are live streaming with the co-op students that are home um we were fortunate enough to um acquire and i think um uh mr galashaw mr kylian and dr gifford for just um providing
026some additional funding so that we could acquire some additional technology as you're aware of our teachers move our students remain in their room so when teachers are moving some of our classrooms at the time the technology platform um was different so being able to acquire additional technology has enabled our teachers when they move from class to class to fully support [Music] the students and specifically from a live streaming perspective in which we uh we began today um but again um it's been essential it's been very beneficial uh the students have adapted very well and again it's been very fluid and our teachers i feel um with the variety of workshops that they've been involved in over the past few years has enabled them to transition as well with that being said the technology itself we've
027have adapted and we have um been able to utilize a variety of different platforms to support our instructional practices goguardian happens to be one of those again it's a homeschool connection uh software teachers are able to communicate with students students can communicate as well um it's been very effective whereas teachers really can monitor the students progress provide feedback um immediate feedback and so it's been extremely uh essential for that and we all know that students work at a different pace so um again teachers have been able to kind of support their needs and um it's something we've been utilizing we introduced it last year but this year especially we found how important um this platform has been for us next as you all know a google meet google me breakout room some breakout rooms is
028something that we've really utilized this year so we talk about small group instruction collaborative learning teachers can work with their entire classroom uh either whether it's virtual or within the classroom but if their specific students that may have specific needs um if there's some collaborative activities that they've introduced the teachers can create breakout rooms uh even some of our students we've been learning to do that as well where students can work together and utilize you know this means of instruction so it's been very beneficial and again i think our teachers were fairly prepared for it prior to this year they've been familiar with it and for those who had a little bit of learning curve and maybe the comfort level wasn't quite there they came to the realization that this was something that they needed
029to include in their instructional practices and it really has paid off and next up uh another example is our google jamboard and again that's just um it's kind of like a whiteboard and it's been uh we assigned we gave all our students a package when they joined us during the early fall and one of the things i wanted all the students to have were those white boards so when teachers were teaching remotely or we became kind of uh our cohorts were arriving and back and forth it was important that the students could raise their whiteboard and teachers could visually see whether they got the correct answer or not and then the google jamboard has just allowed us the students not to have that i mean they can utilize jamboard in which they can show their
030work and teachers as well uh can provide their students with visuals and so that's that's another tool that we've been using we can add to our toolbox and uh teachers really have adapted well and teachers have worked really well together and collaborating as we know some have more of a comfort level than others with technology i'd be lying to you if i said i put this all together this evening i did not but um again our teachers have really worked together and those who do have the strengths have have been more than willing to share with other staff members and right now i can say that everybody's on board with a variety of different instructional practices that we're utilizing to further support instruction next uh something that the middle school is dear to our heart
031is pbs and rare um rare is something initiative that we had in place prior to pbis and that's respect accountability responsibility of steam and we all know that this year has been very challenging um and we've all been really worried about the students and their social emotional well-being etc but we felt it was important to best our ability to continue with pbis and rare and just kind of be mindful of the importance of of the structured framework so we look at respect where our students created this bulletin board and everybody was given a letter r and on that they were able to identify how they perceive respect how they can convey that share that what they what they feel that represents our next bulletin board is accountability and again same thing each child was given
032an a and on that piece of paper they identified how they viewed accountability and some of the things that they could do to um you know further support that and we have responsibility and we have esteem so again it's a nice reminder for the students as well as staff we continue with our pbs students as well as staff of the month and uh that's extremely important we have our rare postcards and we also have different a little bit of celebrations when students are in a particular war they can come down to guidance and we have some treats for them etc so again through the course of the year just really trying to encourage i just want i just want to say we we also have a bulletin with flora delts there for staff members and
033i just wanted to just share like mrs tulson we had a staff member that had taken a lengthy period of time covered related and you know she she more than willing stepped up to the plate and went from the ela lab to eighth grade ela and no questions asked and so that's been kind of the mentality of our staff as well as students but a lot of the staff members here just really stepped it up and filled in positions to just support the colleagues that were out and that's um and that's been really positive and significant i think center set set a great example for our overall staff at large this is you're well aware of is our online academic learning center um i wish this was around when i was a student because this
034is uh we have 24 staff members are representing each grade level and each course subject for an hour and a half on tuesdays and an hour and a half on thursdays um you know i keep continually reminding students via the morning announcements as well as parents that please take advantage of this i mean it's a wonderful opportunity if you're a sixth grade student and you need a little bit of support in ela you can you know connect with an ela teacher in sixth grade um we have 24 teachers that i've indicated and we have approximately 338 students who have take have taken advantage of this um would i like that we have more sure but um 3 38 is a significant amount and again those are students who have taken advantage of this support and
035uh it's been very extremely beneficial as you're well aware of when we had our traditional after-school program we would have the homework club and that was supported by six staff members um but again this right now is is 24 staff members and grade levels and and content areas so it's been very beneficial just to add some of the community service it's been kind of a little bit challenging but i take a lot of pride in what our staff members and students have done over the years so again um and i'm hitting the button there we go and again the neatest family program this was a little bit challenging this year usually we have parents coming or families in need coming and we provide them with baskets and a gift card we had to adapt this
036year so we just provided all those families with 75 gift cards we did some activities some fundraising activities internally to be able to support that financially we collaborate with the town hall again we've done that over the past few years where they've identified families and so we've worked with them to support families throughout the holiday season we've uh we collected over 200 items we talked about clothing gloves hat and socks drives and so again a lot of a lot of students as well as staff contributed and we provided that to our local shelters this year again initiative toilet donation initiative so again the harbor house of new bedford we provided them with toothbrushes toothpaste etc so items and it's it's it's uh it's amazing how the students really you know take the leadership role and
037want to participate and and want to give back it becomes very contagious they're well aware of the needs and you know it's important i feel that uh you know we continue to promote that that service type piece and with that being said every year our guidance counselors stay with their students sixth seventh and eighth and then they rotate back through again so every year i ask the our eighth grade guidance counselor to identify a particular student that they we could identify as project 351 ambassador that was a project that was started in 2011 by uh then governor deval patrick as a way to uh commemorate dr martin luther king and by focusing on youth leadership uh state say by unity and community services so each year our eighth grade teacher having been with the student
038for two and a half years or this that that class um has a pretty good understanding and so they identify so this year there was an article i don't know if anybody had seen it in the dartmouth weekly but we had um audrey kircher and again this is allison cato galligan had nominated her and even with the pandemic uh she has been actively connecting visually with the ambassadors from the other schools within the state and so they talk a lot about um you know the type of things that dr dr martin luther king stood for and ways in which they could do collectively and individually to support those traits and so audrey has uh has always done a terrific job connecting with students students that maybe are struggling a little bit students who may be
039sitting alone in the calf she'll connect with them reach out and she's in the process now of kind of developing four specific activities that would support um these particular traits and so um you know just figured i'd share that with you that she is the ambassador from the middle school this year and that's a wonderful uh program that has been in place for some time and really not only recognizes students from different districts but also just uh keeps in mind the importance of of these particular characteristics and traits so um with that being said just in conclusion i i just i can't say enough for my staff um i'll speak on behalf of my staff because they're my staff i can't really speak on behalf of other schools but their ability this year just to
040really adapt um you know to go from remote to transition to the hybrid and then from the hybrid on the off days to even take it a step further and connect with those students maybe an hour and a half to two hours a day and now my starting today to really connect with them live streaming um they're just they're willing to support each other identify different ways that they can best connect and support students and then with that being said i just can't say enough great things about our students i mean it's been extremely challenging for them and they um they have adopted adapted they've been very respectful um you know we have a lot of structure in place um you know travel patents and just the way you approach things and you know using
041you know having materials in the classroom with students who would just get up and be able to get colored pencils and this and that i mean the systems that have been placed and they have really they've done a terrific job and even the utilization of technology how they've been able to you know take advantage of that so it's been a real plus and the community at lodge the community lodge has been extremely supportive as well so it's it's been a team effort all around and as a building principle i i really can't say enough things about um all that they've done and and what they've tried to accomplish and again just conti our mantra this year um the only expectation that i've really asked of staff and is just be kind be kind to each
042other and be kind to students be kind to parents and if you can just be kind we're going to get we're going to make it through the year and um that's that that's been our number one um you know objective expectation yes the teaching's going on but just be mindful of the needs of staff students and parents and so um you know that's where we are so i told that i'd keep it within a certain time frame do you have any questions um be more than welcome to you know right on time there uh thank you mr doan for your presentation i can start over here um dr jenkins uh thank you uh mr john i appreciate your presentation and i also want to just sort of echo your thanks to all your teachers and
043staff um i think it's been a hard year for teachers it's been a hard year for everyone but i think sometimes um people don't really know how much work that they've put in to to make these changes and so they have our gratitude i just have a couple questions for you um one could you maybe talk about the eighth graders usually do like a moving on moving up day where they go to the high school which i assume we're not going to be able to do um i haven't had a conversation with tebow the high school principal but i will say this um we was talking about our orientation for the incoming sixth graders and again um we can't invite the elementary students in the building and so we felt that the virtual program that
044we put in place last year was to the best of our ability it's not like the real thing being in person but we had all of the teachers introduce themselves um kind of a real welcoming message we gave a virtual tour of the building et cetera et cetera so that's the direction we'll go um i am planning with the support of the superintendent and uh and the assist superintendent is taking a look at graduation this year and maybe holding it two evenings where we have cohort a hopefully weather permitting in the stadium if not we utilize the high school and then you know tickets for family members and then we have it the next night for cohort b that way we kind of provide them at least with an opportunity to kind of experience that
045i know last year we had a virtual ceremony but uh that's my goal and plan for this year so that's kind of but the great eight party i feel terrible but it's a wonderful evening but that's dancing and food and it's just very unfortunate but um you know that's i can't foresee that taking place but the graduation um i feel it's important and we're going to do what we can to make sure that hopefully we can make that happen great and then my second question is um i know people are ready to kill me looking forward to next year but we got a plan for next year um i know um you know i'm just i'm really concerned about you know social emotional needs learning loss making all that up and i know the middle
046school has always done a great job with the i think you have like two after-school homework days that you've done are you gonna maybe try to expand that and keep some more virtual after-school hours or might we look at again some more in-person after school i just want to make sure that we're giving kids and we have the supports in place um to do some of i mean everyone's doing their best but it's it's not the same as being you know in person five days a week um so what are our plans for sort of maybe some after school supplementation next year how are we going to sort of beef that up from what we normally offer well one thing we've learned is i think i don't think i know the online learning center is
047has been really important and i think even as we move forward to maintain a certain component of that because we do have children that need to go home sometimes they have to wait for the younger brother and sister to get off from the elementary school there's a variety of things where they just can't remain at school so my hope and intent is to maintain this again not with 24 teachers because there is a course with that but that will be included in part of our after-school programming so that along with the homework club when we talk about after school really we have a variety of a wide variety of activities but again at the end of the day it's about students having the ability to interact outside of the academic setting uh developing relationship skills
048interactive skills so my hope is we get off get it off and running but if we have to adapt adapt to make some adjustments more from a virtual perspective we'll do that but the online piece that's something i think is extremely important if we can maintain that um we will great thanks that's all i have thank you this is amarillo yeah really i appreciate um the the presentation as well and and all that you've all of the highlights as to how everyone is just kind of working together doing their best with kindness and and compassion all the way and you know you noted this in your presentation but having all of that work that you had done with the highlander institute and how your staff had really um owned those uh different ways of of
049students kind of interacting in a um in an online way prior to the pandemic really lent itself to some you know some uh a little bit of ease for some of your staff but again we had no idea at the time but it did pay off yeah i don't know it might be uh there might have been some evening out as to everyone in the district with the learning curve all the levels but i'm sure that really was um you know something that was beneficial the online learning center that's wonderful at 24 staff doing that two times a week that is like fantastic um is that support after school available to any of the students that are in teca do they participate are they uh welcome to or have they have they um actually taken
050anybody up on any yeah what we've done for the tucker students is our guidance counselors from a grade level perspective they're in constant communication with them tech is a little bit different from a curriculum perspective so it's not kind of fully aligned to what we're doing so it's a little bit challenging in essence of connecting with the online learning so teachers have to adapt as well but um we have book clubs that we're running with some of our techa students um kind of socialization groups where they can visually connect with other students so that's something that's been ongoing and again it's it's been a bit of a challenge but initially when we got as you all know but i think as as the year progressed i think techer itself realized that they had to make
051some changes because um they were inundated with a lot of students who wanted to take advantage of that or parents who felt that was best at the time due to the pandemic and um so i think um you know a second semester kind of began january 25th so again that constant communication of just kind of monitoring students you know what they're are they having success are they completing work and discussing with parents and seeing what we can do like i said ie socialization groups um things of that nature so yeah thank you thank you i appreciate my my guidance staff has done a terrific job approximately 15 student 50 students maybe um but they did a nice job just kind of monitoring and checking in yeah i echo that to your staff your guidance counselors
052for really taking it upon themselves to help them that way and for the district for you know it was all about sort of shifting and and you know balancing on our feet and trying to trying to figure things out as as we went we didn't really probably you know and expect those challenges at the beginning but it's i mean for some students i mean you're not with a teacher every day online it's a little bit every other so it's yeah it's not yes it's not perfect but um right you know at least we needed to provide something and that's that's my best so thank you that's all i have thank you thank you mrs mr nunes yeah thank you mr chairman thank you mr doan for a fantastic presentation and i'm glad the slides went
053different because i didn't mind didn't print out too well but thank you for that uh just a couple of quick questions that on that uh after school academic support center you know tuesdays and thursdays you know if somebody's in the cohort that's like monday wednesday friday are they still able to jump in on tuesdays and thursdays yes do they have to wait till the following one it's their week in school no it's open to anyone open anyone yes okay and again just to echo my colleagues uh my thanks to everyone for what they've done this year you know much appreciated you know difficult times and you know they've everyone stepped up to the plate so thank you very much for that thank you and administration down we appreciate your support as well thank you mr
054news mrs way yes um again i'll just second what my colleagues have said as well i mean i just you know i have i'm the only one here who has a middle schooler this time around and uh he comes off you know every day that he's there he's really comes home happy and thrilled and loves being in school and you know he's we've had great feedback from his teachers and communication with his teachers you know it's been really given the circumstances a good year for him you know i wouldn't even say like grape i hate to say that when they're walking around a mask and you know and everything um you know i am also like um miss amaral i am driving my son to school and and we're doing pickups so i don't want
055to get too you know break too much into uh dr gifford's you know a conversation that she's going to have about expanding learning but i am kind of curious to see when we have so many more parents coming and doing drop-offs and pickups how that's going to i mean there are a lot of there are a lot of cars in there now and you guys are doing a wonderful job coming out and greeting you know parents and and everything i'm just curious how when we have the full all the students back and and again in addition to transportation you know i know you're still in the planning stages um but i'm i'm curious to hear how everything's going to play out you know with room size and lunches and everything else so i don't know
056again if dr griffin if you're planning to talk about that or mr donald speak to that i talked to mr doan today and we we're going to open it up to those questions after his presentation because we knew you'd have them so okay he's here so okay we have been doing a lot of planning so okay he can talk a little bit about that's the drop off and pick up i'll be my office with my door closed down i will be thinking about the parents i'll still be waving [Laughter] so i guess right i'll just kind of share initially when we planned on connecting with students on their off day the commission of education and governor did not advise us at the time that april 28th was going to be full reopening so with that
057being said when we found out we thought well do we remain kind of as is where teachers are connecting with students on their off day maybe just an hour or two and not do the fully live streaming but the more i thought about this and we kind of collectively as a group kind of looked at everything we came to the understanding especially looking at room sizes et cetera et cetera so i'll deal with the academic piece and then we'll get into the logistics of parking so we took a look and we said okay we're talking about three feet a p a pot the maximum amount of kids in the majority of our classroom is going to be 15. so therefore many of the classes have 20 21 students so in seventh grade for example i
058have 71 students currently right now that i have to find another place for and that's just reality of it so that will be cafeteria a we have over we have approximately 300 some eighth graders that leaves me with a hundred and some students that i have to find a home for because our rooms of square footage are pretty much the same so that would be the gymnasium so that's where that live streaming comes into play that we're currently doing now where teachers is kind of going to be like a pilot program so i looked at the sixth grade myself and a few other staff members and the enrollment's a little bit low of the seventh and eighth and boy did i really i really want the sixth graders just because of their ages just to
059just just to be in their academic class so years ago as you know we had purchased many tables with the support of the district because we wanted to create kind of just an environment of collaboration and the ability to kind of situate tables and students will work together because the jungle gyms in the destin necessarily uh help with that so to speak so now i'm looking at these tables and say well what do i do how do i deal with this three six feet piece that we had initially right so we had to kind of put desks in there so now the sixth grade has predominantly you know we're situating them with desks many have them and then what we've done is we've taken plexiglass we've met with a vendor and we gonna place that
060in the sixth grade so that our students can remain in their academics now with that being said then i thought well if i'm a parent do i want my child let's say in the gym every day for live streaming the answer that would probably be no i would not so then we said well we've got to create some type of rotation so in eighth grade it'll be in the gym one day and return the academics the next day this is the reality of it and then i thought not only i but others we thought well listen we have students that have specific learning needs and physical needs and emotional needs so then we determine those students will remain in their academic classes and that's not in any way to segregate or to identify but to
061do it we need to do that take care of them yeah but we are still going to create a rotation so so i have yet i've shared this with staff members but not as a whole with the faculty because we're still kind of in those infinite stages but the the the teams themselves specifically in seventh eighth grade they'll identify a rotation that is equitable and again when they're in the classroom they will live stream so now from march 22nd up to april 28th all the students when they're home on their off day are going to have they have a live streaming schedule that schedule will remain as is so they'll get there for academics but they're going to get them in an alternative space but it will be with their teacher it will be with
062their teacher then i looked at special areas i have almost 80 gym students in a class i need the gym for the overflow so i met with mr kylie and said we got to get a tent on rain days and then the band same situation 50 to 60 plus students chorus if i keep the if i create i don't have space within the building to support them so the weather hopefully will be sunny every day until the end of the year but if not um you know we'll have some shelter outside i've tried to speak with the superintendent mr colley about maybe renting those as wedding venues on the weekends making a little extra money but that is that is the game plan strings itself and i met with heather and michael this morning and
063we're able to utilize the auditorium as their facility because they're there in the morning and they're there uh in the afternoon so that's kind of where we are academically but then i get into special areas and then i'm looking at art you know one class is 21. and the only space is 15 if we go three feet without plexiglass and so i said boy make our life a lot easier because i need staff to supervise the overflow how do i do that so and i don't have additional space for the overflow and stretch so we have right now in the process of plexiglasing on tables and areas to provide an environment in which the special area students can remain which is really important too because when you're a student in an academic class the same
064class all day the opportunity to get out and get into another classroom and interact with other students is extremely important so to maintain special areas the way they are um was beneficial in a variety of different ways and you know moving forward you know we're in the process of doing that there's a lot of logistical stuff going on right now even from a physical plant perspective um and then it leads us to lunch because as you know three feet but then we get this lunch it's six feet so i have 15 in a room well all 15 cannot eat in the room now i was going to do a half and half half eat and then the other put the mask on half eat but that is not part of the guidelines so you know
065this it's been busy the past few weeks so what we're doing there is um the teachers are going to create another rotation and currently right now we have a time frame within our day which is lunch and academic support so we'll make we'll that will maintain that that time frame but then we're going to utilize the auditorium some students will be going to the auditorium to have their lunch the sixth graders who are able we're able to maintain keep them in their academic classes they're gonna have to some of them are gonna have to go elsewhere for lunch so moving body shifting looking at places where we can support students and then the challenge of where do i find the supervision so i took a look at the schedule and we have curriculum planning time
066common planning time wonderful wonderful things that enable teachers to really get together and support one another and and just kind of do a lot of great work i've removed those april 28th the only thing that we've kept um was um block meetings which really is about just the opportunity for teachers to speak with guidance parents interacting as well those time frames in which teachers were working together in a variety of capacities now i've created a whole nother schedule where they're going to be in the gym three or four adults while those students in the gym will be live streaming cafetera a although students are live streaming we've created uh supervision for our lunches because it's not only going to be cafeteria a cafeteria b the gym it's also going to be the auditorium so i
067mean we're a school of almost a thousand i have colleagues in the state that have class sizes of maybe 14 and 15. other schools we know have class sizes of 28. we're kind of in the mid-range but we're just above that number piece where we cannot fully support lunch academics things of that nature in a particular classroom i was out in the parking lot today as we always are and i was late i was having the same thoughts because cohort a is a very busy day after school i don't know why it's just more parents that are thinking dropping of picking up um core b is a little light and then i'm thinking wow when we combine the both um and i know for a fact it's been a difficult year for parents challenging a
068lot of concerns and worries so a lot of them chose to bring their children and pick them up you know for concern about being on the bus will those parents start to utilize the bus i don't think so i don't know if i had to guess that probably not so i don't think so i'm reaching out to the police department because we know slocum is very very busy um we're utilizing part of slocum now just to park cars some parents are wrapped around the corner on hawthorne street and so um just to try to get some assistance specifically the first three days april 28th 29th and the 30th just so that they can help kind of move that traffic on slocum road and then we haven't we have an opportunity just to kind of really
069visualize stuff i mean i may find that i have to make some adjustments where i may say okay let's even though we're all back in school let's visualize that we're still in cohorts so maybe chord a parents are coming at a particular time and cohort b parents come well i hate to do that but um it's something maybe we'll have to think about so um that's something that is a concern of mine i don't have um it's almost like all right let's let's kind of have some plans in place but yet when it does happen then we'll have to just evaluate and reevaluate and just hope everybody's really patient as i've advised parents over the years it's always good to come a little bit later because if you come a little bit later nobody's there
070i always aim to be the last car through right that way we will have parents there we will have parents here a half an hour before you do and um i'm very strategic too yeah and i respect that they want to get a good place and and some of them especially grandparents they're so worried about their grandchildren and and it's it's really nice to see but they feel the need where wherever the location they need to be their car needs to be in that spot so when i kindly ask them to move up a little bit um we have a nice conversation for a little while and i try to rationalize as to why we should move but my granddaughter knows that i'm always here so yeah and that's why we have the staff we
071do out front because it's just extremely important just to kind of communicate and you know just kind of help people kind of navigate that process etc but that's kind of where we are again we're just we're in the i you know we've kind of put a plan in place that i'm comfortable with it's now a matter of just kind of taking a look at logistics making sure that structurally we're from a physical plant perspective we're doing what we need to do to make sure that there's three feet but but um i won't lie to you it's it's it's been a challenge it's it's uh and we're and so we have a meeting with staff this coming monday and then on the release time day the seventh is totally going to be dedicated to staff working
072with their teams to develop really a rotation and a kind of a comfort level to um you know to prepare for when the students come right now we have staggered times of in which we'll say okay sixth graders can now report the special areas and then seventh graders can report here i have to tell you and i think you're aware of it that by our students remaining in their rooms when we had a huge uptick with covid myself and mr rossi were the close contact tracers we were the ones that were running out and what we looked at each other and we said you know what we've really by having the students remain in that same setting for four classes and we felt bad about it if we didn't i mean the contact tracing would
073have just been enormous and the amount of students that would had to of quarantined and not be able to report to school would have been huge so that has paid off really well um but again logistically speaking having both also when we get to april 28th it won't be a a b b it's going to be a b c d e and f you know that initial original rotation and um the cohort a chord that you know that will change except then when we have graduation or if i have to do something logistically with parking i can send that message out that hey if cohort a group initially corey would do that so that's where some of the adjustments have as you know passing pals have been with us from day one they've adapted really
074well the two teachers have done a nice job and the students have done a nice job maintaining kind of traffic patents but we'll still do that staggered um in between classes not everybody's going to move as once because that's almost a thousand kids out and about so um you know we'll make an announcement sixth grade role seventh and eighth but that's kind of where we are we'll make maybe make some adjustments but um what i convey to you right now is pretty much what we need to do um moving forward can i thank you mr dome anything else uh mr nunes or mrs white but you know that's a lot to unpack you know you've been busy there's been a lot on your plate so i mean i guess my questions are um a few
075you know thinking about it when you go back to students that are going to be in the auditorium who are live streaming do you at this point consider that that will be an entire cohort that's live streaming while the others are in the class or will just be a select number of students from a class so you you know say like you think that you can accommodate 15 so you just have six that will be live streaming it will actually be split into the second co the other cohort we won't use the uh auditorium i'm sorry let's look at jim for example okay i mean i know the number sounds huge and it is but we'll have approximately 100 students in that gym right they'll all be on their desks we'll keep them six feet
076apart because that way they we can just utilize those areas for lunch right those students are going to follow the current right now live streaming synchronized schedule that they have okay and then we create this rotation today was in the gym one day the next day they'll go back to the classroom that they're with their homeroom teacher and that's where they would remain that day but all hundred students are going to follow if they're in the mcdonald block eighth grade team of four those that are in the gym have a schedule and that schedule they will follow four academics via their computer chromebook right they'll be able to leave to go to their special areas correct you know follow me so let's say after period one eighth grade as an academic those students will live
077stream wherever they're located outside the classroom and then perry do with the special areas they'll leave the gym area head to their special area and then when it's academics again they will report back so the teachers have a specific schedule that they'll follow and the students will know when when they access so they're following the same schedule as the students following within the class and when they're in for the academics hopefully i answered your question i think i was asking like how were those students so will the one cohort be in uh say cafeteria and the other cohort be i mean they're both with this teacher but will they be split according to their cohorts can i follow up on this what you're saying is if you have 20 students and you can fit 15
078you're not going to do 15 it's going to be a different five students starting april 28th okay what's going to happen the teachers themselves within their teams will identify some type of internal rotation so that students you know we don't find one student that's in the gym every day right right so yeah i'm sorry i'm sorry no no no no no no no i got a lot of a lot of things moving in my head right now i didn't know yeah until she asked that question i didn't even think to ask it but that once you ask it it became clearly one student yeah thank you thank you dr what students enter april 28th it's not we have one cohort it's the middle school cohort right right the only time i'll utilize cohorts is let's
079say ie graduation where i need to divide or if we have some logistical issues regarding um pickup things of that nature and i guess my only other question this might you know relate more to uh to mr kiley as well is the tents have you been able to secure the tents at this point yes okay great good good well there's either a tent or a lot of umbrellas that's right well thank you very very much and i mean i have to give a lot of credit again just hearing that your staff are losing their common planning time that's uh that's huge so it's again another testament to all the sacrifices your staff and everyone's putting in to this year so thank you thank you thank you very much appreciate that thank you mrs white um
080there's not much left to say i mean it's i'm tired right now you've been in the hot seat for a while thank you um no i'll just say a great presentation i appreciate some of the information that you shared with the committee um i love the um you know the academic support after hours for 338 students i was unaware of that i think that's wonderful um and and i liked i just jotted down you know you it's very very simple um answers but um or statements when you said just i asked my my staff to be kind be kind to students be kind to the parents um we'll all get through this so i thought that was just a very thoughtful i will say that i appreciate you taking the time and my fellow committee
081members taking the time to ask a lot of the questions about uh what's go what's dartmouth middle school going to look like on april 28th um and people don't realize i know i know for a fact a lot of town members and parents really don't realize what goes into trying to make the logistics around all of this possible just the uh you said your mind's been spinning i you know just to figure this out figure out the logistics of moving kids around moving students around getting them utilizing the gym putting in tents for pe the auditorium there's so many moving parts to this um and you know it's just it's really impressive to see the amount of the dedication of your staff and your fellow you know administrators at dartmouth middle school trying to trying
082to make all this work for our kids it's no easy task i think what we had was working really well um but i understand that you know we're trying to do the best we can and of course and just just so everyone's aware especially everyone at home the very simple reason why we're looking at putting students in the gymnasium is because based on the current recommendations from the cdc we have to our classrooms a lot of our classrooms at dartmouth middle school just yeah three foot distancing we can't accommodate a full classroom so uh that is why we're having to look to alternative spaces uh that's the number the only reason why we're having to look for alternative spacing is because of the three-foot distancing requirements that are in our classrooms so i'll just say
083thank you thank you to you mr doan and i you know please uh pass along to your team as well as all your your entire team at dartmouth middle school uh the school committee's thanks and uh for their hard work and dedication to keep keep the education alive and uh well thank you mr oliver thank you uh dr jenkins i will also take this opportunity to be the broken record about my favorite favorite thing which is the fact that we don't have 20 21st century buildings to educate our students um you know mr doan mentioned class hours as being a key variable when we got the report from the architects one of the key things they noted in that report was that our class sizes are simply not up to 21st century learning standards for
084the amount of space we need in classrooms and i remember we can blame this all on me because i remember sitting in that meeting and thinking like why do we need more space all we need are some desks and whatever and lo and behold the fact that our classroom their classrooms themselves are undersized um against sort of what best practices are for physical spaces in classroom these days means that we're in this position um so we've been a little pennywise and pound fool this year in dartmouth right i mean it's great that we're reusing a very very very old mr news could probably tell us how old that building is i don't even know that it was a high school yeah is what 1958 1950 it's old and that's that's another reason why i mean
085the architects highlighted that in the report talking about our buildings our older building classroom sizes are not big enough according to best practices i'm grateful for what you're doing with what you have but i suspect in other communities they might have more flexibility because they have newer and better buildings that are better equipped to deal with our needs for for um for learning and again this is something that this community has to address we have to address it our buildings are no longer adequate to meet the needs of our students that's not on you that's just my soap box my broken record soap box just on a side note dr jenkins and uh dr gifford and mr kyle i really hope that once covid's over and we're back to some kind of novelty next year
086that we can take up facilities um i think that's an important topic mr nunes yeah thank you mr chairman again darren great job it's almost like you've thought just about everything but i'm i'm just sitting here and i'm kind of kind of get a little bit on not shannon's soapbox but my own soapbox and to the to the parents and the community out there you know as we move forward with this and you know april 28th comes along i think three key words are going to have to be patience changes and fluidly you know i mean patience as we go into this you know be aware that there could be some changes just because of everything that happens and the key thing is everyone i think has to be very fluid because something is going
087to probably pop up that somewhere down as much as you've thought of everything something's going to not be thought of and you're going to have to change it on the fly and all of a sudden everybody's going to get up in arms type of deal and it's like patience is going to be the virtue word here to everybody to just let this work out and get it fixed get it up and running which i know is going to be fantastic yeah and i you know my plan is and i spoke to dr gifford i i will send an informational letter out to parents breaking all of this down um we're still a little bit in the infa stage but i must be honest with the plan i've shared with you is pretty much i mean
088i feel pretty comfortable meaning not comfortable but i mean i don't see any alternatives with that being said but parents will be uh they'll receive an informational out i know we're discussing it this evening but when you know within a few weeks they'll get an information letter and pretty much outlining what steps we're going to take and et cetera et cetera so yeah super job yeah so my goal is really at the end of the day safe equitable manner that's been my mantra as we've progressed specifically over the past few weeks in preparing for the fruit for reopening is what can we do that's going to be safe for students and safe meaning only physically but mentally well-being and what is equitable um and so that's whatever we do whatever decisions we're making those are
089the two things that we look at good luck yeah thank you very much thank you thank you thank you thank you and thank you for your support greatly appreciate it very much so no problem have a good night have a great night travel thank you next up on uh this evening's agenda and the presentations are district technology update uh dr gifford mr galashaw is here oh right here mr gallacher wow with everything that's been going on with technology this year another department that's been extremely busy yes good evening mr galashaw thank you for joining us this evening yes pull this down i can't get um i can't have the direction in my ear for mr peratti i miss it it's like having jiminy cricket here doing double duty as the uh person and the floor
090director yes thank you for having me um i just want to give you a a brief uh update on technology it's been a little while uh so for the next two hours we'll talk about technological things and uh we'll talk about some of things we're doing so it's been a busy year i haven't seen you people in this capacity since before the pandemic and uh that hit hard and then we got busy with all the technological advances that we had to do for the district some of the things i want to talk about tonight is hardware some of the updates we've done in hardware i've done a lot of upgrades on presentation and smart boards as well as software online services online learning as mr doan mentioned some from the middle schools doing also wanted
091to say that it was nice having him here for that purpose to go a little more in depth of how technology is used in a school on more of an aerial view right now security and safety as well as servers and infrastructure the internet and the technology planning and evaluation i promise these topics they seem boring they seem a little dry but i make them really riveting so we'll go through that so hardware upgrades we did a lot of hardware upgrades we added about 250 new computers for the teachers one of the upgrades we did for the teachers was giving them laptops that were substantial to be able to perform other districts i know were using chromebooks for the teachers just doesn't perform at the level of a of a pc one with a processor
092so they were given computers we also added many many chromebooks some are behind you i was noticing they're behind you in the shot mr nunes during the production those just came in we'll be updating those we're up to nearly 5 000 chromebooks and we do have a lot of repairs we've had a lot of a lot of activity a lot of the kids taking them back and forth getting their use out of them a lot of times uh a cable might jar loose or a microphone might go bad we're able to either replace that cable or just reseed that cable so we can do the repairs and the technicians have been you know taking them home and on the weekends we've been doing them everywhere we can also uh through a grant that we are
093hired thank you mr carly we've added a lot of these boards some most larger than this one to all the classrooms and it's really something special to watch when you go to the elementary schools in particular um when the board came in i was there when the class uh sorry for the first time and this little class of fifth graders they they cheered they actually cheered because it's very very clear and i also enjoyed watching it because the teachers have their command center at the front of the room and it's really neat they have multiple monitors document cameras all kinds of devices and the the children at home are on the screen the children in the classroom are there and i've been able to witness some great things in the in the seeing the future
094of technology i saw one example of a teacher that was quarantined who was on the the meat or zoom is the meat we used with the class and the monitor was in the classroom and she was saying mr nunes are you paying attention so she was talking to her children from home during the quarantine and i thought it was really neat how they there was a whole dynamic going on even from home that was a great experience we've also repurposed some of the old smart boards the ones less than 10 years and putting them in less critical areas like a math specialist room or some small room like that and we're in the process of doing that now and we still have some more upgrades to happen throughout the district software we're constantly evaluating our
095software it's a very expensive item in our budget you know there's a lot of a lot of the content we do for various software packages so the instructional technology specialists are always looking at that to see if we utilize it to the best of its ability and also we have many apps that go down from from google and apple and again that's content that the the students are using through the through their ipads or through the chromebooks as they use we have online services a lot of the future of software is to place software online so kids go log into a service and use that product like we do with st math or other products that they do it allows for assessment also practicing and support for the kids and of course the online learning
096that mr doan had mentioned we had done it at three levels this year the high school doing edge annuity middle school doing techa and the elementary schools doing a home-grown system of teachers within our district that were hired for the purpose of doing virtual uh virtual learning it was really great to see an array of those models because as we move into the future it's given us the opportunity to assess which one will work for us in the future because i believe that online learning there'll be an element of that always now for for the future we will be discussing that on those online programs and see what we can pull from the best of those programs security and safety we joined the massachusetts student the data student alliance what they do is they sign
097data alliance agreements data privacy agreements with companies and they make sure that our data is properly used and properly held so it's a really nice way to have a clearinghouse of of a company that goes through all this software and signs agreements with these with these companies that sell software we're protecting our data we're doing backups and also um through a neighboring district who suggested we sign up for a grant for cyber security and we also were awarded that where the teachers there's an assessment involved of how how we we're doing our cyber security as well as training for the teachers which we are going to provide some pdp out hour for it's one hour so we've done upgrades on security cameras uh high definition cameras really really keen they see in so many places
098we've done training for our security both middle school and the high school we've done we've added uh security monitors at the elementary schools so they can watch that uh we've also updated the the recording devices that keep track of that for longer use and also quality uh film so it takes up more space on a server we've also given police access to these cameras so hopefully never have to use this but they can go into the schools in the case of emergency and see around they've also they've done it when we had a break in one of the schools the teacher the police were able to quickly assess the situation and this was over the summer and it was a really good thing and also in communication uh we've upgraded the phone servers that was
099kind of a gift we had a phones we had one of our phone servers go just die and the warranty had expired on it and then a month later another one died and here we are then the third one died so i went after the company saying no no no no this is this is not me so they replaced all of our servers so chi-ching we're good for that it's good stuff cool um we have a server infrastructure we've consolidated all of our servers putting them in one place here at the high school in a climate control room in the high school it also has a backup battery backup and incremental backups of data both on-site and in the cloud it's the best protection against ransomware because you need data backed up incrementally in different
100places so in the event if something happens you can retrieve it we'll be increasing our bandwidth this summer we uh increased it earlier this year to accommodate what we were doing but now that all these services are going in line the kids are so um use so many resources online the need for bandwidth expansion is there and we've done the upgrades that allow for even further expansion when we if we want to go that level and get it e-rated at a 50 discount um in the future i'm going to take a look at redesigning the wide area network we're connected through an old fiber network that connects all the buildings but in the future we're going to look at possibly putting out bandwidth connections from multiple buildings and split up our traffic in multiple directions
101and of course with technology planning and evaluation an update needs to be done to the technology plan which had no idea what just happened and i've got to really get caught up and explain to the technology plan that we've jumped years beyond what we thought was happening and also hopefully to reconvene the technology committee if we once we were able to get together and start doing that for next year some of the people behind the magic of the staff that we have on the instructional side we have a instructional technology specialist invaluable at the school levels sandy chica doing potter trish leary doing quinn temple mitchell doing the middle school jan thomas at the high school liz vossi at de melo that's in alphabetical order in case you're wondering that's not in favoritism or anything
102like that that's alphabetical order for them also we have some we have a small stipend position for school-based tech supporters that are able to do the little stuff of getting cables and doing little fix-it things mr peratti is one of those at the high school mr hellcampus also at the high school on the technical side we have people like chris branco who does integration who who works with the technology integration specialist on special projects if they're ever doing something chris is a good liaison to them being the technical side of that also deals with the servers and all the active directory and all the accounts uh tom is amazing tom fraz who he's a fix-it guy that uh just is non-stop he's got so many we're trying to fix so many things you'll see broken
103chromebooks everywhere he's fast he's thorough he's he's out of control he's really amazing and jesse does all the security the phones the network hallie lorac does our data and website and tracy watches the office of all the processing we're doing there so where do we go from here um what does the future hold uh we've had a glimpse of educational technology and it's exciting i must say it's it's kind of selfish i never thought i'd see in my career the jump the leap that we've had to do in technology so i've been appreciative of that i know there's a lot been a lot of you people have made the hard decisions about covid and bringing kids in and keeping them safe um i have to admit this has been uh a moment that is uh
104had a glimpse of the future i think what's important is we we look at things like online learning or the lessons we've learned from this process i'm hoping when we come back that we return some humanity to the process from the technological i know from a technologist you think that's surprising but i think there is that part of we made a massive leap forward and kids are plugged in and i think if we look at the lessons we've learned from that we can pull from that some of those lessons are that google chrome is here to stay google has supported that and they'll be doing that they have great um tech features and services like mr doane had mentioned goguardian they use also google classroom google meet things like that it's very inexpensive vehicle to
105deliver content for our information and what's great is i've had the opportunity to visit teachers that have embraced these new methods and tried different ways of annotating and projecting we have a math teacher stephanie church she showed me how she is able to take notes on a ipad and immediately take that annotation of those notes and the kids get it right into their their folder so they're able to take the notes with them so they spend a class time paying attention to the instruction rather than trying to write everything down so it's a great thing that they focus on the the content and not on trying to to annotate um but i've watched that and she said it's changed the way she's she's been teaching and she'll never go back and it's interesting so these
106are the things we're pulling from this this glimpse of the future the its are constantly evaluating the instructional tools the methods the resources so we extract what we can and we and they're able to train on some of the great programs that i know that mr doan had mentioned about jamboard and other products and we're constantly looking evaluating software and services one example of that is that we have a antivirus program on our computers i was talking to a district recently who is looking at a new antivirus program and the possibility that there could be a better product out there so we're constantly looking at that and also increased communication not only in the technology plan but also in a revamp of the website this summer it's been the current website so it's time to
107to inject it with some exciting new stuff and everyone it grabs everyone's attention so those people out there that are watching this broadcast if you have suggestions or if anyone else does it's always good to hear from it in fact we also involve the some test groups because we want people to be able to look at a website and appreciate it and understand it a lot of times in websites you can't find what you're looking for you don't know it doesn't follow a logical process we're looking for that so in closing in a span of a work week as i said it's been a busy busy year um i feel like this on monday like i can conquer the world and by friday i feel like the world has conquered me but it's good to
108have the weekend and we're right back at it on monday but you know in technology we're very tired but it's a good tired as i mentioned uh this is our renaissance this was something that i was so happy to see in my career time uh to see what technology would be like in the future and it's great to have that glimpse of the future and as we come back we we pull some of those great things that happen like online learning i some kids there's a lot of possibilities for online learning uh instruction methods of instruction uh as i mentioned the teachers and what they're doing flexibility where if someone can't be in class for whatever reason they can still be in class and same thing with teachers so it's opened up possibilities for technology
109and instructional technology because like i said this is a good time because i've been charged with the with using the vehicle to deliver the proper content that dartmouth wants to deliver to the students and that vehicle is technology and we've done what we can to do that we have so much more to do and and that's what we'll do and with that i would like to wrap it up i i had a those are my references uh that i just went by there but uh with that i know that the the evening is late so i'd say any questions thank you mr gallashaw i i appreciate your humor that you inject into uh sometimes a very uh interesting subject um just a couple of things first of all i'm thrilled that you were able to
110work with mr kylie and i don't know if it was us for funds or some of the other different grants that we were able to upgrade all a number of our our smart boards to the touch panels and i know that the the staff throughout the different schools that have received them are thrilled with the with the product so i think that's wonderful i also got to say um you know this goes back to really a year ago last spring in which it was a complete madhouse in the district and districts across the commonwealth as well as across the uh the country in which you know we had to scramble to to get devices out and you did it um and you accomplished that and um you know now we're a one-to-one district completely um
111once again i know through some probably some grant money as well as through um you know the the town's capital improvement um monies so i think that's wonderful that we're able to uh we're able to be a one-to-one district and um it just caught as you know and i don't need to tell you but with technology is constant constantly evolving and we're coming we're coming to rely more and more on it on a daily basis and on a daily um really on a class a class by class basis for remote learning for in-person instruction with document cameras with um remote learning with teca um with all these different pieces so um no i thank you and i think your staff uh mr galisha and especially you know i can remember when i first got on
112the committee uh you know we were really pushing for instructional coaches or the instructional technology coaches or the integration specialist i'm not sure what the term is here um but you know i'm really happy i think they play a key role in you know the the curriculum integration piece of the technology i'm infusing or infusing technology into the curriculum so i think that's great you know i brought this up last year i'm going to bring it up again and i'll bring it up next year the expansion of technology across dartmouth across the dartmouth public schools and over 5 000 chromebooks in addition to everything touching the network whether it be the telephone system the hvac system the cameras the security camera systems wi-fi printers copiers and so on um you know i really do believe
113that i think at the very least you could uh you're understaffed by at least one or two two technicians i think um the district owes it to you and owes it to the the instructional staff to make sure that we can we have the the capacity to continue to support and service all these all these technology devices so i i just hope i know we originally talked about putting in the budget last year pre-covered that it was cut because of because of covet and we're just it's just not feasible this year but i really hope we're able to do something in the near future because i think that the reality is that you know if the internet's down for you know 10 minutes we're we're in a big you know it's a big problem with
114how we're relying on it and not just the internet but um the touch panels whatever it may be so i i really hope that we can have a conversation uh next year about at least getting you another person because i i think you know bait and you know i'm not i'm preaching to the choir mr galashar but um as you know you know if you look at the private sector you look at the health care sector it's certainly um the the ratios are are completely different than where they're here in education and i think that um i think that we need to really look at this to continue to sport the reality is is that we need a lot you know we rely heavily on technology so with that um uh just to do but
115one of the things i want to mention is that the instructional technology specialist this doesn't happen the the technic the technical staff absolutely they're going above and beyond the instructional technology specialists i've watched district neighboring districts just so watering at the mouth because they did not have such a thing it was a remarkable insight by this district two or three years ago to expand that uh if you you should have told me to out by apple stock then too if you had that kind of insight but but uh it was a remarkable uh foresight that we could not have imagined this year happening the way it did but they've been invaluable instructional people teaching teachers how to do how to use thing being right there on the spot in the building uh one for every
116building so they've been the liaison to me for uh the the uh the technology which you remember no i agree that should you know it's a very good point that we're very lucky to to have the instructional technology specialists though so thank you mr gallashop um i'll sat down and uh with mrs waite yeah again i just very impressive presentation thank you you know i just i think it speaks volumes about you know what your team is doing but also again the staff you know and in addition to the instructional specialists i know that there are also teachers who got certified in google classroom themselves and you know and took on you know kind of informal roles within their departments and um i think you mentioned one i know like you know stephanie church for
117example math you know i know she's done she's certified so i i think um again the teamwork and you know someone who's you know coming into it i would see myself as being you know a little nervous it's so great to have you know a uh a colleague there that's you know patient and you know someone in the building you can access and you know the tremendous learning curve that these you know we think about how flexible and our staff have been i mean again for people who are coming into this in the beginning not feeling as as literate the the leaps and bounds they they must have made you know just you know professionally now that they're so comfortable i think it's uh again speaks volumes to everyone's efforts this year um i guess
118you know one of the things i'd say and you spoke to this as we kind of talk about the future um you know certainly this year we've been dealing with extended absences and quarantining everything else i do think that this you know the one-to-one and synchronous learning everything that we've learned as a district can really make a difference for the students who do have to stay home again i'd love to see you know in the past we've had an issue with absences and it's so difficult as a classroom teacher when you have students coming in after a week to catch them up you know and there are students who are for surgery and sometimes you're just sick and you you can't be on but i think it'd be great for those kids who for whatever
119reason you know have to be out for an extended amount of time that they can you know hopefully we can somehow bring back that you know keep maintaining that synchronous learning for them within you know not having to send them off into a different platform but maybe within their you know staying within their own teachers i think it you know eases some burden for the teachers themselves you know not to have to you know have different students that they're trying to catch up but i think it has a lot of opportunities for the future so i think that's important so yeah so i so again i just i'm really grateful for you know i'm grateful for everything that's been done you know you know handing out the computers and even lending the computers you know
120at one point the for town meeting i mean they we even some of these you know our computers were procured for those members so it's really been a community-wide effort um so thank you okay thank you mrs white thank you thank you and mr chairman thank you mr galashar as always interesting and very informative it's interesting uh you were kind enough to get me a chromebook because i don't own a laptop and that and uh which i don't know before i got all hooked up with cameras at home and everything else but you know got that to have one of those to be able to do the zoom meetings and it worked out perfectly and thank you for that even though every once in a while it would freeze but nothing to do there but
121you know a little follow up on what uh the chairman said talked about you know with the internet going down and the the other big problem too is the fact that every once in a while you'll see that comcast in an area goes down and everybody is dead you know the the students are trying to work and there's there's there's nothing they can do but uh it is what it is you know we have a grandson who's in the sixth grade at the middle school and i've seen him when he's had to be at our house type of deal with his book and he you know this chromebook and he's doing his work and even participating in phys ed online you know type of deal yeah you know doing it so it's really been a
122a good year and follow up a little bit with what uh miss wait said but do you see like online continuing in a sense that if you have a student that's home for an extended period of time because of you know sickness that you know maybe gets us and gets us away from in the most part needing like home tutors for these students because now they'll have the chromebook that they can you know log in from home and continue with their their classwork as long as they're able to type of deal yeah well it's funny because i had this conversation with the superintendent a week ago and i think what when i was building the presentation and what part of it is that what this year has done for us is give us a glimpse
123of the possibilities so now we have to redefine how we educate because there are more possibilities and desi has to to also come to the table because they still sometimes try to report student data in ones and zeros it's either on or off it's binary but it's such a gray area this year we have to have we had virtually absent virtually present uh you know it's unbelievable the codes we had to do and they're having to to to to adjust because life isn't like that it's such a a gray area but to to the to your point afternoons it's just that i think what's exciting is we've got a flavor a taste of what could happen and now the experts in education have to say okay with this possibility maybe we can't accommodate that child
124who needs one class that's so unique the the building that they they could take that class i mean we do things like dual enrollment we do other things so i think it's the it's a taste of the future of educat education complements of technology thank you mr chairman thank you mr nunes mrs amarillo thank you mr news my colleagues have said a lot one thing i will say that is so refreshing um just in the world not in our district necessarily because we've got a lot of these sort of people that kind of come to the table with this attitude is that it is wonderful to see how excited you are about the work that you do within our district um and and it sort of goes hand-in-hand with the obvious sort of successes that
125we've had in in this area i know my my fifth grader um her laptop her her chromebook didn't turn on and i said to her um we'll bring your because we're fortunate she has one as well and i said we'll bring that one in for the station i can't do that it has to be the district it's a rule follower man that one but um and in it right away boom boom boom you know it's been worked on and and so um so responsive to uh i don't really have any any technical questions i can anticipate what my colleagues are going to ask and and um but i i just really appreciate what you kind of bring to the table and how you've helped us get through this just wonderful wonderful job i tried to
126move fast and be because uh at a director's meeting a few weeks ago i was trying to explain ip addresses to the crew and i saw them gloss over and the superintendent says at school committee don't do that do the other thing so i got to move fast and just to the highlights and there's so much more to talk about it's so exciting but i only can give you the quick ones yeah go ahead [Laughter] so i just also want to say thank you for all your hard work and all your staff's hard work um i do want to say and this is particularly more for our you know our audience at home right that i think a lot of people think that you know moving from teaching face to face and online is just
127okay i move from standing in front of a classroom and talking to people and now i move and i talk to a camera and it's just so much more than that um as a teacher who's taught online who you know has taught face-to-face teaching online has really actually made me a much better teacher in a face-to-face because to your point we learn things and it makes us think really deeply about our teaching and what we're trying to accomplish that having been said i am a little bit more skeptical about the future about this because it's not just someone zooming in it's not just someone going into the google meet right using technology in an integrated way in your teaching is really carefully planned and deeply integrated that makes it difficult that when you it's when
128you have five people or ten people in another room you're thinking about how am i gonna gauge them and what are you gonna do when you have one it really makes it a lot more difficult to do that to to gauge that person and so i'm somewhat skeptical i do think there's possibilities for a class right when we have a class that we need um but i do think when we have long term absences it's not just going to be oh you can just zoom in and it's going to be exactly the same because it's not because that's not really what using technology to teach is it's not simply a camera it's a lot more than that and so i deeply appreciated your presentation but i also thought it might make sense for us sometime
129to have maybe some of the instructional technologists to come in and do a presentation and to talk about all the different you know softwares and tools they work with and how they work with teachers i think they they did that maybe a few years ago but maybe it might be another time to do it again probably not until the fall till we're you know beyond this baby you know um but i think it would really help our um our the general public and our viewing audience to understand like what do we mean when we mean teaching but with technology because again i think a lot of people based on their own experience think of it as you know talk and talk but it's not talk and talk anymore um and so i think they really
130need to be taught what it means to teach with technology so i'd love to see um people come to have people come in to share that with us because i think it would be really enlightening for us i would probably learn some things as a teacher yeah for our teachers i'm super excited i share with you that i think that everyone coming out of this pandemic you know preschool all the way up through higher ed we're all going to be different teachers as a result of this because this has made us think very deeply about how we teach not that we don't all the time but it really gets it to the nuts and bolts i think um but i i think it would be good for our viewers to really sort of open that
131up to see to see how much hard work this has been for everyone so i thank you for all the help that you've done in supporting us to make that transition um and i'm excited too about you know what we'll see moving forward thank you dr jenkins once again thank you mr gallashop for your thoughtful presentation uh mr nunes one quick one quick question just curious and that when the pandemic hit and covert and everything how many chromebooks have we purchased in the past year roughly yeah the that thousand pretty much i would say um yeah i went since the pandemic yeah yeah probably about oh about 1500. okay so we have five thousand not not quite five thousand i like to brag about five thousand we're below that and we're going to get to
132that number yeah but um been a lot of them yeah and we've we were fortunate enough mr kylie helped us we bought 700 of them when the pandemic hit and everybody else in all my counterparts were waiting and we were i think we'd seen a picture we put on the website because we got them and we put them all together in the summer and handed them out and the yeah yeah we've had a lot so um and we're getting quite skilled at fixing them uh some of them simple some interesting you know what happened it's a banana i was going to say you had a banana banana squished in the middle of it so but anyway yes about 1500 of the 5 000 almost 5 000. i was curious thank you sir please uh please
133share our uh congratulations and our thank yous to the rest of your team yes oh thank you yeah yeah thank you thank you john thank you thank you thank you now you can take on your other role back yeah get back to florida get back there so i'm running that teleprompter [Music] next up under old business fy 22 budget discussion will continue on the fy 22 budget and i'll i don't know if i'll turn it over to uh dr gifford first or i know there's a couple of little uh little tweaks that you um discussion right yes so i know obviously mr kylie knows all the numbers and the grants and what's coming in and out and all of that and he did send you a memo with our based on with our discussion how
134we're planning on moving um the position of the social worker into some of the grant money coming in and helping the town with their budget but we decided with that that we were getting all of this additional money and again we'll speak to that based on what we see as the need we would want to increase that to a two and a half social workers so one more social worker as you remember the middle school and high school both asked for one and we were planning on sharing um and and and our reading specialist as well that was in our quinn it was a replacement from a position that we did not replace yet we were putting it back in the operational budget but if we can use it use that money because for closing
135gaps etc uh to move that out and into that knowing that um we would want to put those and how things go over the next couple years put those back in the operational budget but again those are just really uh the big things that we wanted to um mention to you along with that we supplied you with the assistant what we created as assistant superintendent job description based on our just previous discussion trying to put together all of the all of the tasks that for the two positions that we're combining um with that so you have that and um i do want to turn it over to mr kiley to speak to the money and the grants and all of that because that's his that's his forte thank you dr gifford so um you know
136as dr gifford explained the 1.5 social worker positions that we increased and included in our fy 22 budget proposal you know were important and i think it showed our commitment to social and emotional well-being of students and um you know we we always wanted to do more than that i know there was some comments at previous school committee meeting about trying to do more than that and we've we've uh fortunately i think have the ability to um so we with the action of congress and the federal government will have additional funding heading our way we don't know no one knows a lot about it yet um there's been no official guidance yet um but it's going to be significant and it is going to be available to us through fiscal year 24. so when you
137hear that it starts you know i would hate to fund a salaried position for a year and then not have the funding the following year but when you start thinking about three years of potential funding source being available it starts to be more a reasonable line of discussion for for to fund these positions so um those what we do know about those funds um is that they are going to be tied to learning loss and to other impacts of the pandemic so very clearly when we were where the positions that we were talking about were reading specialists and uh you know social outreach workers absolutely they will be able to be funded through that um and you know the fact that we have that additional money it really made sense for us to try and
138support the high school students and middle school students with a full fte at both of those so this proposal tonight actually increases the support to the schools it also decreases the the request for the operating budget by a hundred and fifty eight thousand one hundred and seventeen dollars or point three four percent which gets our budget request that about a three and a half percent increase for next year from fy 21. um so you know with your support we'll we'll begin to move forward with that and that's what you know we're asking for uh certainly it's up for discussion and we'd love to know what you think about that but but we think that that is a way we can support kids and also try and be good partners with the town side of government
139and you know hopefully present a budget that has a pretty good shot of being approved that sound meeting thank you for your uh your presentation for your update uh mr kaiolin i'm all opening up to questions on the floor um to my colleagues dr jenkins so this sort of relates to my uh question to mr doan earlier and i'd love to see particularly in terms of after-school support enrichment you know even a week before but us being creative about how we ramp kids up and provide them the support they need um you know mr jones said oh you know there's a cost to doing that well you know that seems to me that that sort of federal funding would be good for those sorts of things any sort of extra support we can give to
140kids outside of school time because we are going to have to to make stuff up i think would be really great um you know i am hesitant to say okay you've had a really traumatic year and now let's pour like additional school time on you like after school i don't think that's what kids need um so i would love to see the feds be a little creative in thinking and how we think about this you know um even particularly for our younger kids doing some more social things after school that we pay for i think would be good for them developmentally um and might you know they if even if we can just get them together you know in a gym to to do fun physical things that can help with some of those social
141things that they're missing out on this year developmentally but not add sort of school and academic fatigue so i'd love to see us be really creative about creating some after-school activities around this and then i would say my other concern is you know just looking out um i think the town has you know has been a good partner to us and they've done i think a good job in sort of building room in their budget to build towards things right whether it be saving for the library you're saving up a little capacity every year to add a position it doesn't seem to me that we've been able to do that in a similar sort of way and i'm thinking about the technologist right that every year it's like right below the line but if we
142could say all right you know we're gonna request this much less this year and this much less next year and this much that they add up over you know the three years that we've rejected that thing that's right below the line um it would be nice to be able to see us to get there to have sort of a multi-year budget process whereby we say like look ideally we'd like to build up some reserve it's probably not going to be in our budget maybe it's in their budget but where we build to some of these positions that are super important but when you put you know a technologist up against a social worker like the social worker works every time you know it's hard kind of wins every time and so the technologist often just
143falls right under that line every single year so i'd love to see us get to a a place where we can do multi-year planning again i know that we're going to have to go through the process of looking at the needs and buildings but also to build up to some of those positions that might not that are actually a high priority but don't seem like it if that makes sense um because i think that's how we're going to have to get there with a technologist right is to set aside a little every year until we build up to you know what i mean towards that salary yep no i agree thank you dr gifford uh dr gifford talk to jenkins it's getting late i know you go by we'll answer danny mr nunes yeah thank
144you mr chairman uh i said i i think this is great that you know we've got some federal funds and as you know mr kylie said it's you know not a one year if you think about it's a three year process it's it's a three-year grant so which is good what i and i totally understand uh and i appreciate everything that the town has done for us every year and continues to do for us whether it's in the operating budget or it's the capital improvement budget and capital items and and things of that nature that we need i mean we've been able to tap into all that covert money that has done uh tremendous with air filters and chromebooks and the like you know ppe equipment and such what i'm just wondering is in instead
145of taking you know we're being good sports and we're reducing it 158 000 or somewhat 158 000 type of deal uh i'm just wondering if we took a little bit of that savings and in all seriousness to answer mr oliver's you know and and help mr galish are out and go get that technician you know see if we can get that that technician to to help us out i mean again i you know if with if so if the budget is re and i don't know what the cost would be okay and i won't put it no i'll put a number on it but you know we're still gonna you know per se submit a little bit smaller budget increase than we originally have been talking about in that but it takes one of the
146items that we need and we know we've got that person you know for for three years anyway because we've got the grant for three years that's taking care of everything else and possibly if there's an issue maybe we've got the grant money that takes care of that person if god forbid the budget falls apart so i'm just my thoughts i throw that out there well i think to your point um again once we kind of really have a good handle on what that number is if it's as significant as and and the parameters that they're setting where we need to spend it there might be other spots i'll just as a suggestion for example some of the schools ask for a special education extra special education teacher if we determine down the line that we
147have significant funds coming in and we can use it for those kinds of things if we have the budget number uh set but yet can make those adjustments in and out of that you know operational budget it it's kind of to your point mr nunes that can we get something else in the operations that when we can cover other things in the ground under the ground i think that's just i don't know kind of thinking out of the box a little bit right you know federal funds you know we can i i and listening to the conversation about it being you know educational related right i think we can sit here and say detect you know with all the with five thousand chromebooks i agree you know and all the infrastructure that we have in
148place for computers and i'm the last one to talk about computers but i think we can they can we can justify the technician educationally wise to right and i mean the other problem in that position yeah sorry the other thing we're concerned about too which we'll be watching very closely is um the class size numbers as far as you know we're watching that k in one because we're not sure how many parents held students back from k will our k classes explode or will they just move them to one so i i'm very pleased that we have hopefully this kind of money that will help us in the unknown that might be coming up that's my two cents mr chairman thank you thank you mr nunes this is wait yeah so if i could just
149you know piggyback on you know what dr jenkins was saying as well you know when i think about the students who are coming in and you know again looking at the lens of my own family too i think that we're going to have some students who really you know coming in as they've lost that freshman year they're going to come in as sophomores i mean when they didn't lose it but they lost the ability to mature in the normal fashion especially you know i i'm reading in it and again from middle school parents and you know some high school's parents where their children are having difficulty with their executive functioning so it's not necessarily that they're having difficulty with a particular subject it's just managing it all especially in this context and they're getting further
150and further behind and so i think you know i don't know that's not you know a place for an outreach social worker you know that's they're not on a you know necessarily in a special education plan but i think that they're from what i've read there a number of parents are feeling like again their children are have gotten behind they're frustrated they don't fully know how to navigate through all what google classroom has to offer which is quite a lot you know it does but you know that is i think you know those students are coming in with a lower self self-esteem and confidence and again it's not necessarily they've lost out on social it's just that they felt so frustrated and it isn't isn't reflective of their abilities so again i don't know you
151know this is a gap and this is going to be an issue that you know we could target and again i don't know if they're you know again special coaches or something but i think you're going to find that there's going to be quite a few say like you know less mature sophomores and again now they're coming into the building and they're trying to navigate everything you know really with with the full complement of students you know and and it's you know seventh graders and you know those transition years so it's just something that you know i've seen come up in conversations with you know friends and you know in my own world so just you know that's a two cents anyone else uh yeah you know i i will just kind of echo that
152too uh that um that's something that's of a huge concern is you know the students that that are we don't know what they're going to come in we know you know we don't know and in perhaps taking you know a stance as a district we're sort of like the benefit of doubt for those students who have made had significant loss then i also think about those students who are in special education and the significant loss and you know all of the nuances that go into legality of the education plans i would hate to see that loss translate into say a reason to take a child out of an inclusive classroom and put them in a substance substantial separate you know placement i would hate to see that happen and but all of our kids are
153going to come in at some loss and so hopefully there's some more definition around how those funds can be utilized and i have all the faith that we as a district will be creative uh and and really hit that head on and uh come up with some sort of plan that like to shannon's point not throwing a lot of like learning at them but making it fun and making it creative perhaps a little bit of i mentioned this last meeting building capacity within our summer programming but with the education but the socialization bringing humanity back into it i don't know if it was jonathan that said that um yeah and so we're gonna need that because as much as you know it's so confusing and we've we've kept we've told kids that social media wasn't
154good and engaging in computers isn't good all these hours online and now they're online all this time and my own my own um instructional practice and the work that i do has changed because i'm utilizing a lot of this technology in the ways that i teach families and um and so it's our whole society but i i have i have faith that uh we're gonna do it we're gonna do it to the best of our ability and we're gonna you know um uh examine our practices and and reframe what we do we're gonna kind of shuffle and slide and be flexible and getting back in the classroom and having your kiddo with with equity in mind going into the gym to learn instead of being home and learning you know that's not the end of
155the story we all know that and there's going to be a lot of things that are come our way and we don't know what that's going to look like yet so um we just got to buckle up be kind to one another and and and have a little grace in the way that we kind of interact with one another so i thank everyone i applaud everything that you've been doing um is it perfect no uh but it's it's pretty darn that's good with what we can work with so that's all i have thank you i just want to follow up a little bit to tie into what mr newn said in my my thought about longer term budget planning um this is three years of revenue but it is non-recurring revenue right and so i
156have deep concerns um particularly given this town's fiscal capacity of us um building anything more recurring into this this federal grant and that's why i was talking about like maybe a summer school or after school because it's not a hired person it's maybe a stipend to do something after that we can say all right we're not going to be able to do that in three years um i know you agree with this and i i you know talking out of both sides of my mouth you're saying like oh we need to hire these people but right we do but i don't want to pile too many things on this particularly hiring on to this money um and if we do start to hire we need to do the long-term budget cycle or three years from
157now we're going to find ourselves in a bad place um so we we've gotta i think tread lightly we need to take advantage of this funding but we cannot cannot um put ourselves and maybe maybe it'll just be mr nunes who's still here in three years i don't know mr news is always here right we'll let him deal with that uh in a good way mr ninja in a good way um but i i do worry about setting us up for a fiscal cliff if we if we either don't work with the town to get to where we need to be in three years or um if if we build anything more than this that is that is beyond that three-year plan yeah yeah yeah excellent points to all my colleagues um if i could
158we could just just touch base a little bit dr gifford in in regards to the um the new assistant superintendent of director of teaching and learning restructuring can you can we just talk a little bit about is because obviously a position is being caught if the assistant superintendent position is being created so what do you see as far as what pieces or what parts of the job description are missing or um because ultimately you know at the end of the day would be one that we know we can't in this budget cycle but at the end of the day you know what do you see being dropped well to be honest it's not a matter of things actually being dropped it's right now it's just a ton more i mean you you create you're putting
159together two really critical roles as you know right so it's just um the extra that we've all shared but the bulk of it is on this position the bulk of all of those things have been picked up by our current director tracy of course split amongst other administrators yeah i mean as kylie and i have taken on a few things but um you know the workload has just and we're all there we've all increased our workload but i just think that to think that we can have two very very critical positions combined into one with no no kind of movement at all is is one thing not fair to anyone um and the number of hours and that i think it needs to have some kind of recognition if you will and and the compensation
160that we suggested which was i can't remember ten thousand or something yeah no it's less we've talked to so much about this at all um because like yeah obviously ideally down the road it you know would be wonderful to have both positions but that's um that's neither here nor there right now all right okay that's really all i have right now my head's spinning oh no i know with just everything so anyone else was i couldn't really hear you was your quest because i i was wondering too and and i don't wanna if it is your question then i apologize as i heard you say something will be lost and it would be unfair to say that combining two positions that not everything is getting in there i i'm wondering specifically around that teaching and
161learning piece what is being sort of um i don't want to say lost but sacrificed if you will to combine it is there any is that what you ask them if it is i don't want you to ask you again kind of one thing i'll i'll say and i i didn't bring that remember that that list we brought we had all the colors and i had a pile for you to just remind you of those things so we could talk about a little bit more specific because it's hard to capture in obviously any job description of what's going on but one thing i will say we this encompasses pretty much what michelle did and what tracy does and has added to her plate the things that maybe you're saying i'm missing i can say we've
162picked up so um like the policy you know how michelle always ran the policy discussion which isn't a huge role we don't meet that often and there aren't thank goodness that many policy um jim's going to be doing that um i'm doing a lot of the residency now with the residency officer with the consults with that i actually have a hearing tomorrow to do those were in michelle's corner too um so so nothing's not being done it's just the few other few things that on in here and we've picked up and like sick bank we made mr galashara go to the stick bank we gave him and we gave you know the special education department a couple of things um a couple of different things like the pre-k overseeing the pre-k registration of course it's
163an integrated program so we gave miss townsend that but michelle always did that so that's but there but there is also the point that miss roy did have a a secretary or an administrative assistant that now is working she's still working underneath you right now yes right yep yep correct yeah so all that work is just being still being done that's great so it sounds like more of say the assistant superintendent tasks are so the curriculum and the instruction piece is is really the meat of and then the other additional i mean i read i have it in front of me but right um okay okay yeah so i just have a a question so when you have when we have a role that's created like this and again i'm just kind of going back
164through like history because i you know clearly knew um is this something that traditionally we need because we are creating a new position you know and i know we have you know tracy's doing an excellent job you know in in her role um and it seems to me like the thought is to like you know elevate her yeah but is that something because it is specifically an assistant superintendent that we have a responsibility to post publicly can it be an internal appointment i guess that's what i'm kind of because it seems you know i just went through i was you know my children respect i wasn't at that last meeting but i you know i'm going back through the minutes and you know mr oliver our probably chair had said that you know again it
165is our role to you know to with your advice to um post that you know approve that person or appoint that person so i guess so i guess i'm wondering like what is our like due diligence do we need to have that you know as a public you know out of district posting or an internal posting and then go through an interview process like what is the you know what is our like you know what is the process for that historically it there's no requirement to post a job at all if we choose to choose someone from internal that no there's no requirement or anything except obviously union position so we would post a union position okay anyone else all right thank you everyone for that thank you uh public comment update did you have
166a question no i didn't know if we're gonna oh no we want to reopen yeah yeah i'm coming back i'm just going back to my agenda yeah uh so yeah we'll um i don't remember the last time so essentially we uh made a motion to adjourn do we need to make a motion to reconvene reconvene and make a motion we reconvene the public uh school budget public hearing for fy 22 a second ocean membership news second by dr jenkins on the motion any of the discussion all in favor aye aye the public budget hearing is uh back in full effect uh ms skenter have you received any other or any comments in regards to the public budget hearing okay so that is good mr chair i'll make a motion to uh close the public budget
167hearing second motion by dr jenkins second by mr nunes on the motion any other discussion hearing none all in favor aye opposed motion carriage unanimously the public budget hearing is officially closed for the fy 22 budget next up superintendent's update dr gifford all right just a couple of quick things obviously i'm so happy we have a high school person coming to report on some of the things i had listed here but um we've had uh great news from the quinn pto that this was sent out that they're going to be providing the each classroom with some funds to do some virtual field trips so you know we've done some of those before so it's it's nice that they're paying for some of the things the cultural field trips cultural programs and some resources so that
168was good news from quinn i'm sure the other ptos are doing the same but at least we had that um they'll the fifth grade band and strings um instructions are starting they'll be starting up so mr flint let me know about that it'll be fifth grade instrumental programmable starting in april and it's planning on six weeks of instruction for the band and orchestra on wednesday and thursday nights at the middle school so i'm sure they're in contact with the kiddos that are going to be um working with that joining that of course all social distancing is in place i know i just want to reemphasize the uh 21 for 21 at the high school all the events that are happening right starting as you heard with mr he's not mr dartmouth anymore it's dartmouth's finest
169now so starting on that and we are yeah that it's really really great the work that they're putting in to make some fun things happen for the kiddos um we had the two football games with some spectators so that those went that went well and also just a shout out to dctv um and i know mr peratti helps out when all with the recordings i checked into one of the football games and it was really really great and you know everybody's just been fantastic for that speaking of mr peratti's class they he had some students create some podcasts for npr has a contest going and students if they win will be able to appear on some of their shows the morning edition and the all things considered so we'll see he's he what was that
170on i'm sorry he he the kids have created some podcasts and they submitting them for a competition into npr oh npr so we'll see of course nice but it gave them some inspiration to nice make their podcast even better so you know it's always always good um let's see if there's anything else um jim is going to talk about the um cip and uh just uh before we move over to him just to let you know we stopped by the schools today because of course we had the pre-k one come in everybody was happy things went well we had no major problems so um we put some pictures up on our facebook page just showing you know the classroom is pretty full but all the kids well behaved doing their thing and that's awesome so
171that was a good day it was a good day but you want to talk about the um sure thank you dr gifford so yeah we had a capital improvement planning committee meeting normally we meet in like january so we're uh this is our first meeting um and i i would say that it would they were very supportive and very open to our requests we have we have you might remember we have ten items on our list um none individually of you know huge dollar amount but 1.8 million dollars worth of requests cumulatively and um i feel confident that that they're going to be supportive uh of of a good number of those so i'm encouraged definitely by the discussion there and obviously the finance committee needs to also you know take a look at that
172but um after you know after cip endorses it but uh it was a good discussion so very positive and the only other thing i have is that the the fine speaking of the finance committee they have asked dr gifford and i to attend thursday night to discuss our budget so um we're we're prepared to do that i think zoom what time is that up uh i don't know don't have the invite yet i'm somewhere between six and seven ish range but uh i'll have more specifics we'll share we can share with you assuming that'll be a zoom meeting yes and well just get the link yeah yeah we can we can send the uh the link around once we get it excellent it just feels like we don't have as much i don't know i
173always always say at budget time i always get kind of excited to think about the ways we can reuse our money and reallocate things into better programs and we've had a lot to talk about at the different fincon meetings in the previous years but this year it's just kind of like yeah you know it just feels it well it is it's so different so different right not being able to say oh we need this we need let's try to manipulate that and anyway just trying to hold the fort now absolutely anything else right now no no no thank you both uh for that update uh i uh proposed meeting dates so yeah did we is that in the pack yet yeah yeah yeah yeah one of the emails it came uh just after it came
174with the main one so you might see it we're looking at well the first one april 5th would be our short meeting followed by the joint meeting which uh we we have so we would want to start at 5 30. um hopefully i guess have a vote on the budget as and i believe that will be reorg time if i'm not mistaken no not that early the um the election is the tuesday yeah okay so we'll reorganize 26. all right and then we did we planned a meeting if you don't have it for any of the 26. and i'm assuming those will be zoom because they're not meeting the fifth well yeah yeah and um then moving on we're suggesting may 17th because we have memorial day in there and june 7th and then june
17521st um noting that june 17th is the last day of school so we we have no more snow days my only concern about that is the one meeting date in may particularly as we're rolling everyone into school in in april if any i mean i'm confident that you guys have it handled but i think the we roll we have a meeting before the middle school rolls in if i have my dates right right there the 28th and then we don't meet until yep two and a half weeks after that um i'm not sure that we need a meeting but maybe we could all just like leave the third open in case anything comes up and that we need to i'm talking about us yeah i don't think we need to schedule a meeting but it
176might be good if we all left that monday night open the third okay yeah just in case yeah i think we didn't schedule it obviously just because it was the week right after right yeah that's fine and then had the holiday in there so it's kind of that's yeah i don't think we need it i just want to yeah i'm not a bill i'm not available to 10. okay so maybe we could all just put a marker on the third just in case we need something if anything comes up with the roll in or any of that sort of stuff i don't expect dr gifford have you have you heard anything around or the high school and whether desi has any indications about the high school nothing the only thing we were told which actually
177we have a commission meeting tomorrow was um we would find out in april and we'd have a two-week notice but we're planning i mean either way you know we're planning we're not waiting for that moment in time but it'll be interesting to see what the deadline is my goodness i'll be back for three weeks yeah i know right right there day final day is the 28th so yeah and there's a lot of testing coming up we were talking about that in our central office meeting today between the different mcas i say the bad word um ap tests we have the bi-literacy tests which num quite a large number of students are taking that which is good but it's just a lot of strategy a lot of manipulating schedules and so another thing that mr gala
178show has been doing is working with the high school on all of that so that they have the technology available etc so anyway excellent yesterday yes two quick questions uh on the schedule dates monday june 21st do we want to look at possibly starting that meeting at 4 30 since school is out uh it'd be fine with uh june 21st you said yeah the june 21st meeting sure should get unless you can't start till five o'clock okay and i have work i'm on the clock now i don't i don't get out until 4 30. yeah okay sorry i can't start oh i mean yeah but it's i mean instead of starting at 6 30 that's fine if we start at five o'clock that would work for me 5 5 30. i i don't get out
179of work until 4 30 so i can't be here at 4 30. yeah so 5 on the 21st yeah that's fine okay that's it all right and one other question i have uh just in regards to all the students coming back to school the uh fearless leader in deci made mention of the fact that uh students have to be in class there's no more hybrid there's no more remote what do we do with parents with students that the parents are saying i want my student they've been on remote all year and i want them on remote are they going to be able to stay remote and still get credit for the year yes okay that's that's yes okay as a follow-up to mr nunes question i know that survey was sent out a couple weeks
180ago regarding um you know what parents would want to do yeah um could you share with us maybe at the next i can't cure us about the data yeah and we're not sure about that data it seems it just didn't seem like it makes sense to us but we'll yeah so that's why at least at the high school one of the things we are doing is reaching out personally to the ingenuity kids offering them to come into the building you know they really can't switch curriculum that's it it'd be impossible sure yeah you have access to the building so that's one yeah one strategy and um mr doane has already you know fielded a couple of questions about what they can do that are people but most and i think we had a couple at
181the elementary level a couple of families that asked to come back they've been which is easier because they've been been on our curriculum they're being taught and their reason really was they had to worry about child care issues the co it was inconsistent with the um if they came in hybrid so now that we're coming in full time they can swing that so it hasn't been a huge outcry of people reaching out to the principals about who they want to switch i don't foresee it so that's why the data doesn't look right so we were trying to figure it out say did we not ask the right question but we think we did you know so so we'll see yeah but yeah well thank you doctor you're welcome uh as for the uh report of
182the chair just really quickly i just want to take this opportunity um you know i know um out there sometimes in the public some people choose uh choose to share their thoughts and their opinions and they really don't have the opportunity or they don't take the time to watch the school committee meetings and really educate themselves as to what's going on but let's make no mistake about it there's been planning from day one in the dartmouth public schools and dr gifford and mr kylie and the rest of the central office team and all the administration um has done their due diligence and you know we're we're constantly talking on a daily on a weekly basis and let's remember that at the very least dartmouth schools um we've been in every other day uh for in-person
183learning and there's other districts that uh they go a week at a time without direct instruction that are that are local so um i think dartmouth is doing a tremendous job um i think we are in front of some of the other local districts and i'm not going to name any but it's just it's frustrating sometimes as we all know um to hear in different different media reports or or different um different uh stories uh that uh people are saying otherwise but um you know people really take the time to listen to us and listen to what goes on at these school committee meetings and um what dr gifford and her office is putting out for correspondence uh to uh to families that i think at the end of the day you know i think
184we number first and foremost this district and the school committee is number one is safety for our students and for our faculty followed by the best education that we can deliver them i agree um so you know i i think thank you dr gifford and um i just want to set the record straight that you know right right from day one we we've been we've been this district has been very diligent um with planning and doing the best we can um with what we're given and let's remember that at the back in august that the state that the state department of education and the governor's office left this to local control to our own devices to every single community uh in the state to to do what they wanted to do what was deemed what
185they felt uh best for their district um and now they chose to go in the opposite direction um enforce our hands and um that's really for for those hundreds of thousands of students that have not stepped foot into a classroom um to date um so no i i just uh i'm pleased with the what we've done in the public schools and i just i thought that was important to you to just put that they sat here and they said that you know back in august they wanted you know three different ways of bringing students back type of deal they didn't even look at them and then you know at the 11th hour they said now you well we're going to change from 180 to 170 and those 10 days the teachers are going to be
186inside you can learn how to do the hybrid and remote and everything it's you know been a total disaster but our administration and faculty have stepped up to the plate and done yeoman work and much appreciated yeah one 100 percent complex so with that uh yes dr jenkins so i just have one thing we didn't have a spelling bee this year because of it but that's right covent has not ruined the grant application cycle for the dartmouth education foundation if any of our teachers are watching the grant application is open it's dartmoutheducationfoundation.org grants are due april 30th and so we encourage people miss waite is also on the the def board and uh we encourage our teachers to apply um hopefully we'll be in person to use some of the things that we have been
187uh purchasing in our grand cycles excellent thank you dr jenkins uh just a reminder on on april 5th the joint uh session with the select board and finance committee will be held via zoom at 6 30 um and also our next meeting of the regularly scheduled meeting the datmon school committee is scheduled also for monday april 5th and that's at 5 30 also via zoom um and we're hoping to take the vote on the proposed fy 22 budget at that time we're missing anything else jr will entertain a motion to adjourn most remember mr noon second by mrs amaral on the motion any further discussion chia hearing none all in favor aye aye opposed motion carriage unanimously meeting is adjourned yes [Music] do [Music] is so i expect everyone to be like fully informed