Dartmouth School Committee Meeting, March 8, 2021

001oh looks like a nice algebra problem administration doing better today [Music] good evening everyone i'd like to call this meeting of the dartmouth school committee 2 order for monday march 8 2021. could you please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all please be seated well once again good evening everyone i'd like to welcome you to the march 8th school committee meeting just a reminder for those of us in the room to please silence your cell phones if you have not done so yet and as a reminder per governor baker's otters suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law chapter 38 section 20 the public will not be allowed to physically access this

002school committee meeting members of the public can access the meeting via live stream at youtube.com forward slash dhs tv media in addition the event will be reboot re-broadcast in dc tv channels 9 and 18 on the following days wednesday and thursday at 5 p.m friday at 6 a.m saturday at 8 a.m and sunday at 2 p.m the school committee reserves the right to implement additional remote participation procedures will notify the public of these procedures as soon as practicable could i have a roll call please miss guenther chris oliver here shannon jenkins here kathleen emerald here mary waite john nunes yep thank you very much and uh from my colleagues and those of you watching at home our my fellow colleague mrs wake could not be with us this evening for personal reasons hope to see

003you back here at the next meeting as a reminder anyone wishing to comment on any of tonight's agenda items can do so by emailing our recording secretary kathleen genther at dartmouthschools.org at this time this will be typically a lot a few minutes for anyone wishing to comment on tonight's uh agenda do we have any comments at this time we do not thank you miss gentler as always please feel free to do so we will do our best to circle back and see if there's any that have come in since the beginning of the meeting and as always those minutes are made part of those uh comments are made part of tonight's uh minutes at this time chair will entertain a motion to approve the regular session minutes of march 1st 2021. so moved second motion

004by mr noon second by mrs amaral on the motion any further discussion chair hearing none all in favor aye aye opposed i'm going to abstain since i was not present motion passes three to zero with one abstention next up on our agenda is our for the first time i think this year our student representative report i'd like to take this opportunity to welcome dartmouth high school student our 11th grader evan garcia evan good evening welcome thank you for being here thank you for having me if you want to start off uh be just telling us a little bit about yourself i think that would be a great start and then we'd love to hear what's going on over at dartmouth high school thank you so my name is evan garcia and i'm a junior here

005i'm a member of the student council and i was elected to be one of the um the student council representatives to this school committee along with morgan mello who will be at the next meeting i'm active in winter track and unified athletics including unified bowling and unified track and i am also involved in debate here at dartmouth high school despite the difficulties of this year dartmouth high school remains active and engaged we recently had our senior superlative awards night in which the class of 2021 had to be creative and think outside the box to present the senior superlatives virtually and you can view this on dc dhs tv media in dc tv we have also started our fall two sports season with 207 athletes across four different sports football track cheer and unified basketball our

006coaches and student athletes are working very hard to conduct a safe and productive athletic season we also have many clubs and activities underway including unified bowling which thanks to the engineering department's help now has retractable bowling alleys in dartmouth high school right now which is very cool i'm a member of that and it's really impressive what they have done with that we also have a new e-sports team which competed for the first time last week against the monty tech bulldogs and shanahin valley tech and which was very successful in both and people can watch that on twitch.tv dartmouth hs our indoor percussion is working very hard right now with weekly virtual performances and recordings including uh making it to semifinals at the winter guard international competition sophomore hannah lima made it to the massachusetts state

007finals for poetry out loud which was also very impressive i think that's the furthest a dartmouth high student has ever made it in that competition we had a debate competition a few weeks ago i'm a member of debate and i actually got first place overall in group discussions um sophia way and ali hijazi got second and third place in the novice extemporaneous speaking category so dartmouth is very successful at that last week we had our tedx presentations as i'm sure many of you are aware and as always that was a huge success the topic was very timely it was sociology moving forward one step at a time and the participants did a great job with their presentations i'd recommend everyone watched if they haven't already and it was on a wide variety of very interesting

008topics which the public can see on dhs tv media's youtube channel and on dc tv we're also working very hard with guidance at the high school we're picking our classes for next year and meeting with our guidance counselors about future plans and class requests are end by march 12th we're working for the ap exams which have been more fluid this year than in years prior so we are having ap assemblies during taste this week this week is also national foreign language week at our school with spanish day on tuesday chinese day on wednesday portuguese day on thursday and multicultural day on friday and last but not least our school as many of you know has a new therapy dog augie which brings a smile to everyone's face and has become a beloved member of the

009high school community so thank you and that's kind of my update on the high school which as always is very active this year excellent well thank you for once again for being here evan that was a great overview i love love to hear all the time about the happenings here at dartmouth high school heard a lot of positive things about augie as well uh so i'll turn it over to any of my colleagues for any uh comments uh questions forever i'm aboard nice glad to have glad to have a student rep back thank you i'm glad to be here great yeah that's all i have for you just uh welcome you're more than welcome to stick around if you'd like or you're more if you have some homework that needs to get done please feel

010free yeah this is going live so i do actually have a little bit of homework but completely understand thank you thank you for coming out yeah thank you thank you and next up on tonight's agenda we have a couple of presentations a good resolution mister oh i'm sorry yeah i skipped i crossed out the consent item but we skipped over the resolution uh turn it over to dr gifford for resolution 21-03 employee request for unpaid leave okay seems the year of the the year of the request i guess with craziness but we have another request for one of our tas as you have that in front of you and um fortunately she will probably be not have to use much of this because her students is a grade five student so with our with being

011set to bring students back she is only requesting obviously those days when her child is home right now cohort a she's working so once again we support the requests for this leave it's unpaid leave okay thank you very much my colleagues any comments or questions on resolution 21-03 make a motion we approve resolution 21-03 as uh explained by the superintendent second motion by mr nunes the second by dr jenkins on the motion any further discussion yes dr jenkins so this seems to me i know we were doing this because this is how the contract is written it also seems like perhaps this is something we don't need to be involved in because we're completely deferring to really your judgment about staffing budget and those sorts of issues is this sort of on the agenda for

012i know we can't but at least taking up the issue to sort of resolve this because i think some of our other contracts the leaves do not have to come before us certain categories exactly and the ta only have so many categories and i think um like the teachers have a section where they it's kind of like they are i guess guaranteed their position when they return and i think you know some of the tas are worried because they don't have that language so um not that we guarantee anything these days right but um but i i guess i would say i would feel more comfortable with the decision-making authority resting in your hands yeah because that's essentially what we're doing we're deferring right right the fair point yeah and maybe with us coming to

013the end of hopefully all of it we won't have too many more correct yes i mean i don't think it ever really came up because it was not a common thing probably yeah yeah not since i've been here as far as i recall right so yep that's it sorry that's all right anything else you're hearing none all in favor aye aye opposed motion pass is four to zero all right now we can move over to presentations i'm just so excited to see what quinn has in store for us uh turn it over to dr gifford to introduce uh sure so i will introduce our principal obviously mr granfield and i'm sure he is going to introduce his his associates here his colleagues and bring us a fabulous presentation from quinn sure thank you very much

014and thank you for this opportunity to present our spotlight on quinn i'm here with mrs yamilovich and mrs thomas the two assistant principals so in previous years we've been very fortunate we've been able to have students here present to perform different things if you recall a couple years ago we had students come to talk about various movement breaks and they actually did a dance to our go noodle presentation other years we've had our fifth grade peer leaders come and talk about the various work that they're doing throughout the community other years we've been able to have students come and talk about pbis and our pbis rallies and what they like about pbis how it makes students feel good unfortunately this year we're not able to have students present to to present to you but we

015have been able to put together a video the video really [Laughter] thank you pay no attention [Laughter] the video that we've put together hopefully captures the day in the the life of a quinn student so like many districts obviously all districts we're adhering to social distancing requirements students are wearing masks but so many things about the school day are very similar we've made adjustments to many different things but they're still happening so for example i mentioned the peer leader program this year we have close to 40 peer leaders and they're still doing great work throughout our community um our pbis we're still doing pbis we're still having rallies it just looks different and we're hoping that that's captured in tonight's video that we have for you and as mr granfield mentions the best part of

016this night and i know that we all look forward to it is hearing from the students directly so when you watch the video you'll see the students responding to different prompts that we gave them their responses are very funny and they're truly authentic they'll make you laugh and smile before we get to the video we just wanted to say how very proud we are of the quinn of all quinn students we have asked them to do something over this year that has absolutely not been easy but every day those kiddos make it look easy they really truly do they're dedicated they're flexible and as everybody always says they're resilient as you know children are but they show it when we ask them to do these different things so it is absolutely remarkable and we're just

017so very proud of everybody at quinn right now we'd also be remiss if we didn't mention our amazing quinn staff of course all of the adults that come into quinn every day through our doors are there for kids and they as well just as the kids are they're flexible they don't know when they come in what we might ask them to do they don't know what roles they might have for that day could be very different than their regular role but they come in they give us a smile when we ask them if they don't mind changing their day up a little bit they're flexible and without our quinn staff we wouldn't be where we are today so we want to make sure we mention them as well before we start our video on welcome

018to quinn thank you for years we have been working on character traits such as flexibility perseverance kindness and empathy now more than ever in the middle of a pandemic these effective traits are the backbone of our building pushing us forward despite the unknown although it may look a bit different this year the foundation remains the same the staff at quinn's school has modeled flexibility and perseverance meeting their students needs in various ways as you all know every day is different and brings new challenges students are making progress and moving forward in the middle of a global pandemic the only way we have been able to do this is through the collaboration and unity our staff provides daily balancing all the demands and education and life throws at us we would like to take this opportunity

019to give you a snapshot of moments at the quinn school although the pandemic has had its challenges positivity and perseverance have made their mark [Music] now that you've taken a sneak peek into the building let's hear from our students one thing i love at quinn's school is my classroom my teacher and also my class is doubles and i think that's really good to learn about because it's like there's so many facts about him six plus six is twelve which is actually a little harsh i linked that like in first grade kindergarten i was like learning about how two books and one thing i loved about i love about coin is teachers and like there's so many things i love about coin and i like nurses are like my friends like principals and i love coins

020i'm isaac vr i'm in second grade in dr leandro and misty's second grade class one of the activities i like at school is recess because i'm able to play with my friends one of the games we play is dragons hi my name is judy thomas i'm in mrs vieira's second grade class my favorite thing about clean school is having mrs vieira as a teacher she she's silly and she makes school fun hi my name second grade is my favorite part of print is that i get to see my friends in person hi my name is gracious from mrs vieira's second grade class one of the things i love about clint school is that when we do art with mrs racine we get to be creative and we get to use pain another thing i like

021about queen's school is that no matter what miss beer makes learning fun hi my name is lauren rose wells from mrs eruda's third grade class i really liked feathery focus because i got to learn about birds and about their habitat what they eat because of the shape of their beak and their body parts i liked when the presenter showed the models of the penguins and other birds i really liked feathery focus my name is olivia swanson and i'm in mrs borane's third grade class i love clinton's school because i love being able to learn in person with my friends hi my name is amber pollock i'm a miss boyani third grade class at quinn's school i love learning about the lloyd's center's feathery focus my name is addison thomas from miss movie googly's fourth grade

022class i have mastered the line tool the line tool is a tool where you can split your slides into parts i i use this tool to split it into two different parts because i compare things with it one of my favorite things about school is music mr silva always makes music fun and entertaining hi i'm cameron stoll from mrs fortin's fourth grade class one technology i've learned from this year is you could change your background for your computer and upload pictures from websites to change that to your background my favorite thing about this shoe was actually having my best friend in class and seeing her in person hi i'm ava vera i'm in miss bolton and miss mattis fifth grade class one technology tool i learned this year is how to change color and font

023in google slides one memory i have in fifth grade is the egg drop the egg drop is where we we made something we put the egg in it and we dropped it off the ladder mine didn't break hi my name is miranda francis from miss bolton miss madden's fifth grade class a tech tool that i learned this year is how to split my screen this is helpful because if i'm reading an article i can read the article and answer the questions at the same time one thing i'll remember about fifth grade is that i went to school during a pandemic hi my name is ella sorensen and i'm from miss meta and miss bolton's fifth grade class one tech tool that i've learned this year is how to bookmark it's helpful so that way i

024can press on it it'll bring me right where i need to go one of my favorite memories from this year is we got to make exponentials it was fun because we got to decorate them and work in groups [Music] that's it so that's what we're trying to get sorry that's the conclusion of the presentation um i hope you like it and would be happy to answer any questions promise they might have no i'll just say um you know i think as usual as usual it's just great to see the kids you know like you like the three of you said of course would be much better if they were right here in front of us and in the building with us but you know this is the next best thing right and it just goes

025to show you the resiliency that some of these kids have some of these students have and just some of the things that they pick up on it's nice to see that you're you're running you're running a school day as normal as possible given the circumstances and that's that seems to be the trend and um kudos to you and your staff for a job well done you know i i it goes without saying that everyone is doing their best um in my opinion just you can see it on these students faces so um thank you great thank you my colleagues i mean i'll just agree i mean i think it's great it's great to see the kids and to see them you know enjoying enjoying school which is which is really a blessing for them in

026these times so thank you yeah i like my colleagues and you know just watching their enthusiasm and you know everybody knows my wonderful computer skills and uh you know the fifth grader talking about learning how to bookmark you know and that type of fantastic and their enthusiasm and you know i wish it was better and i like chris has missed the kids being here and seeing their enthusiasm but this is just as good nice job thank you i second everything that they said i love mrs vieira too [Laughter] we had her in second grade uh no just you know i think uh it deserves to be mentioned that this is a wonderful video showcasing uh the reactions of these students and how you are just doing such a great job during this time all while

027sort of having within your school community the a myriad of student needs that you are really doing doing your best doing a great job at making sure that their needs are met and i mean from the beginning reentering initially with the high needs students i mean you were there on the front lines you your staff and and those students and so i commend you for how effortless you make it look and we all know it's it takes a lot of effort but you do it with grace and with a smile on your face and you've got a lot of a lot of great things happening within your school community so thank you kudos to you thank you very much thank you all for being here thank you be safe and have a nice night thank

028you have a good night it's always the best part of the night getting to school thanks have a good night our next presentation turn it over to dr gifford we have an update on our district yes district pupil support yes thank you very much so tonight we have um miss townsend here to give us that presentation and um one of the things she'll be talking about is we recently had an audit of our pre-k program so that kind of brought it to light that it was time to have a presentation for a sped program so we'll look forward to that thank you so much i want to thank the committee for giving me the opportunity to share a little bit about what's happening in special education in this very unique year so i wanted to

029begin while you know it's never ideal to start with the challenges i do have a lot more celebrations that i want to share with you so i thought i'd open with a couple of slides on just some of the things that we've been facing in regards to the 20 20 21 school year i i don't want to spend too much time obviously we have the global night the cover 19 global pandemic which has had a major impact on the landscape of education um and it certainly has included changes in the way that special education services are provided so i just want to commend just over and over again our teachers and staff the most amazing individuals who have shown grace and flexibility um i know you just heard mr granfield and mrs thomas and mr

030irmilovic say the same i just want to echo that grace and flexibility as we navigate how to provide special education in the face of a global pandemic and so i highlighted some of our greatest challenges while it's certainly not an exhaustive list this school year we really needed to first and foremost provide robust services that are in alignment with students ieps which includes the use of both in-person and remote instruction second we needed to navigate challenges that are related to providing services for students that might have been quarantined so students might be out of school for a period of two weeks at a time and we need to make sure that while the quarantine was in accordance with state guidelines related to pandemic we also had to keep special education in mind we did struggle

031with staffing our related services throughout the year there was a natural spillover that was caused by social distancing many of our related service providers do not have full-size classrooms and so certainly the number of students they could take in a group with six feet apart was far less than you know a classroom those that have full-size classrooms groups needed to be smaller which means that blocks of time were increased and fourth we needed to provide students with support related to the hybrid learning model which is one that they had not had they had a little bit in the spring but really it was their first full year with this hybrid learning and there were some unique challenges that came from learning remotely every other day so i want to transition over to our celebrations and

032some of the things that i am certainly most proud of in our district and some of the wonderful things that are happening so first and foremost around the topic of service delivery which is certainly the core of special education students this year received specialized instruction that was consistent with their ieps whether it be in person or remotely google me continues to be the primary modality for specialized instruction that is provided remotely and in-person specialized instruction of course does uh incorporate those health and safety requirements due to the pandemic students in our specialized programs that's our pals past and paths have received in-person instruction five days a week since september and in addition there are several students in the district it's uh currently 38 uh district-wide who are not program students so in addition to those

033that are in programs an additional 38 who have been identified as high needs by their iep teams and those students have also been attending uh school in person five days a week shortly after the iep meeting where the team determined that that was required so that wasn't always in september that was throughout the year over the past few months there's been some really robust work around accommodations and modifications so teachers and related service providers continue to provide the accommodations and the modifications that are consistent with ieps whether students are in person or remote so first in a hybrid model on those days that they are learning remotely they can get synchronous accommodations and modifications during google meets throughout the day and again depending on the building or the grade level of the student there are

034also extra support opportunities while they're learning at home things like virtual check-ins or office hours that the teachers hold are available as a way to have that synchronous connection throughout the day even though they are learning um from home or from a remote location so this is something that you know i have to say it has was when we first rolled out virtual teams which was in the spring of 2020 last school year i think that it was something that was seemed like probably our biggest challenge how to take the team meeting which by nature is is beautifully authentic to be an in-person around a table and discussing students progress and really transitioning that into a virtual platform seems to be almost impossible and i must say that now that we have been doing this

035for almost a year with virtual team meetings i am so so impressed and continue to be impressed with the way that we've utilized zoom as a platform that really has created some robust conversations and in many ways we've replicated the in-person team process even though we are on zoom so it really was a seamless transition because teachers were used to doing it in the spring of 2020 kicking the school year off right in september with meetings using zoom and again the feedback in general has been really positive um i think parents have have made comments that it's nice to be able if they do have a job that allows for maybe a lunch hour or a break where they can step away to somewhere private and maybe not take a day out of work because

036they weren't traveling that was something that you know was really kind of highlighted by some parents virtual team meetings continue to run very smoothly and i just want to highlight and i i think um you know this is important that team meetings are virtual but we continue to use traditional mail for mailing out all of our special education paperwork so i wrote here ieps and evaluation consent forms but really all special education paperwork that gets mailed we are using the traditional mail so that's coming to the homes as it always has prior to the pandemic so there's been continued collaboration with families and again pre-pandemic families have always played such an integral role in the success of students with disabilities that has not changed but during this year their roles really have been enhanced and

037really have been that much more key to student success service providers that are on students ieps they're communicating with families using phone email google meet zoom whatever works best for the parents to increase student success at home and the input from families at team meetings has been really robust this year as they sit in the virtual teams and they are able to describe really in great detail the highs and lows of remote learning of the hybrid model of how special education has been provided in this very unique and unprecedented year so again there's also been continued collaboration among staff members not this was always a strength in dartmouth from well before the pandemic but even more so what we're finding special educators general educators related service providers are finding even new ways to collaborate i

038just wrote as an example an impromptu google me to brainstorm strategies for a student is not uncommon um that's something that has happened quite a bit this year and maybe never happened before before you know the pandemic was upon us what i find is that service providers are sharing techniques um and strategies for how to maximize student success on remote days it truly is just a commitment and a dedication to making every student succeed and do their best team meeting team members rather are sharing data to ensure that students are continuing to meet their iep goals and objectives and so that's been a really positive and wonderful celebration and there is a third section but before i get to the third section i do want to pause at this time and just really um again

039i know i started in the beginning but send a very special thank you we have just over 120 staff members in special education and this certainly you know not to get choked up but this has been a very very challenging year for each and every one of them for the students for the families so what i just want to say while i'm here on school committee is a very special thank you to each and every one of them they've given a hundred and fifty percent to make sure that our students with disabilities are supported i see it i see you your passion your dedication your tireless work i thank you and as a further extension a special thank you to our parents and families again i am a parent of three two are in school

040and a hybrid model in another district so i certainly have been able to very accurately wear the different hats that are involved with the clover 19 pandemic and i thank you thank you thank you to all the parents and families who have supported their children at home during this unpre unprecedented time we are so very grateful for your collaboration so i just wanted to to put that in because the next section is more administrative information um for the committee related to probably the biggest um i guess initiative this year which is our preschool program evaluation so i wanted to share a few slides with you a little bit about that and some of the information from that so first and foremost our preschool program evaluation was born from our most recent tiered focus monitoring which

041was conducted last school year so the state was on site in person in december of obviously three months later the world shut down as it may but we were able to get our report um actually before march or right around march so um one of the things that was identified in tiered focus monitoring is that we were required to conduct a program evaluation this year so um yes it is a pandemic yes we were battling some of those challenges but we absolutely were able to get it done and actually we did get it done ironically although it was not intentional right around the same week that this a year later from when the state had visited so our preschool program evaluation occurred on december 9th 10th and 11th it included staff survey staff interviews classroom

042visits to both the cushman school and the potter school because we have a preschool classroom there and the program was the program evaluation was conducted by dr carolyn mckerney and linda cullen who are both from south coast educational collaborative who have done this work and really have a lot of knowledge around preschool special education i respect them both a great deal so i just wanted to share um two slides and there is kind of a lot of information but i really wanted to highlight as many of the identified strengths and some of the recommendations that came out of the process so first and foremost the most important thing that they highlighted and spent a lot of time talking about was the overwhelming awareness and support for the inclusion model as it relates to preschool special

043education and to take it one step further they also very much notice through staff interview through observations through visits that the vision is shared it's modeled and it's embedded into the practices of the dartmouth preschool staff members so again kudos to them for for really um you know embodying that vision and showing um just in everything that they do on a daily basis they made mention because i think it's hard not to of the outstanding coven 19 protocols and not just that we have outstanding protocols that are adhering to self health and safety guidelines that are doing what it is they need to do in terms of health and safety but even to go so far as to say that these protocols are still within the within the scope of a warm and welcoming environment

044and i thought that was really powerful because i think in and of itself we obviously want outstanding protocols but to recognize that it was also done uh within the scope of this warm and welcoming feeling because they are preschool students and they are our youngest learners so i thought that was really excellent um the evaluators applauded the dartmouth public schools for conducting their own evaluations during the intake process and what that means is as students are transitioning from early intervention into the public school setting in preschool there are certain evaluations that are conducted by early intervention which a particular team could choose to you know base their ieps off of and we don't do that in dartmouth we conduct our own evaluations with our own highly qualified staff and develop an iep from there and

045the evaluators really applauded that they recognize that professional development of educators appears to be a priority in the district um and as a secondary to that professional development the commitment to the second step curriculum and social emotional learning for all was something that they really wanted to make note of they spoke about the very strong related services team at the preschool level which i agree it's an amazing related services team and just in general not just related to copper 19 protocols but overall really really highlighting that it was a warm and welcoming environment not just for students but for staff and again they were here for those three days which you know seems like a decent amount of time to spend but when you consider the fact that they were able to in just those

046three short days take all of this away really shows that it's just part of just the core of what our preschool special education program is like so moving on um there there this is a summary of the recommendations like i said um you know there there were a couple but i tried to combine some of them so the first they talked about consider the creation of a preschool professional learning community or a plc and so one of the things they they you know wondered and asked as a possibility is do we create that plc to look at academic curriculum around preschool specifically whether it's academic you know pre-readiness skills around ela around math as well as social emotional and really determine whether or not some of that curriculum could be tightened up even further not

047that it wasn't evident but that it could maybe through a plc model could be strengthened the second was to develop a plan a district-wide plan for staffing that would address the needs of students who are new to preschool or students who might have more intensive needs that might require intermittent support with a plan for decreasing um that support over time and um you know truly it is the case that as a student is entering into our preschool program many times they've just turned three it's either their third birthday or a week right after their third birthday and they really are you know for all intents and purposes the youngest student at the school at that moment um and so they they ask the question you know whether or not we might consider a plan that

048staffing-wise that somebody be there to support not necessarily that the student would need it throughout their cushman or a potter career but just as they start to get used to school what is it this you know what is school all about so i thought that was really interesting and really powerful there was also recommendation to consider a service delivery model that includes a portion of students scheduled to be in a specialized pull-out setting right now all of our students who have ieps in preschool have a hundred percent of their services in the general ed setting it's a it's a beautiful inclusive model which we very much support and endorse and the what the consideration was is not to say to eliminate that model but rather if there is a need for a particular student or

049a small group of students to get some of their services in what we call the secret or the pull-out specialized setting maybe we could look at that again all considerations as something to look at there was also a comment about the considering the addition of some more professional development that have a really targeted focus on preschool that really are super specific to the needs of preschool and the recommendation was to use things like staff survey to find that out you know to really dig deep in terms of the preschool staff what that professional development might be from their opinion and then building off of that they did both recommend a written referral process in or a flow chart for special ed students transitioning out of preschool so obviously um when their time at either potter

050or cushman is done and they're no longer a preschool student they rise up and become kindergarten students and that's a really critical transition from pre-k to k regardless of which building you're transitioning to and uh so again also maybe tied into that plc something that that plc could do in in collaboration with our department you know the people support services department is find that written process a flowchart something that everyone could look to see how that transition happens would be super helpful and then finally one of the things they talked about was seeking alternative ways to share information related to transition so there's not an exhaustive list necessarily but some examples might be virtual site visits ways for a student to watch videos that they could repetitively watch to get used to the transition to

051kindergarten because it is such an important transition and that that's all and at this time i'll take any of your questions thank you so much for the thank you very much you're welcome questions comments from my colleagues i'll go ahead and start you know i just want to say thank you for the presentation you know i'm really proud that in particular we've been able to provide services for our highest needs kids five days a week through this pandemic i know that has not been the case for all parents in the state or this country and i think it's been really important and so i'm very proud that we've been able to do that i will say i participated in a virtual meeting and you know i had a friend the other day asked what have

052we learned in the pandemic what might be keep and i know there's something special when you people are in person around the table but i hope that we might consider keeping those virtual meetings for the way it allows working parents to be included more easily into these meetings because you don't then you don't have to take a whole day off it only takes maybe an hour out of your day and and that i think will hopefully bring more parental engagement um and even if you know the the staff doesn't have to be virtual when i did it we were all virtual right but when the staff may be around a table but maybe the parents who aren't able to come should can be able to do that and i'd like to see us figure out

053ways to continue this i agree i 100 agree and i i would like to see the same i think i think i think it was i think it was great we did one of the early ones i think we may have won one of the first test you know guinea pigs we were in march of last year and so there's a little fits and starts um but it but it worked quite well and so i i think that does bring a lot to the table um the only other thing that i will that i will say and people are going to start to kill me because i'm going to be a broken record about this um you know i know we're still in this year and we're still focused on getting through this year but

054we cannot lose sight of what's going to happen next year and i'm particularly concerned about kids with special education needs one just all kids socially emotionally but also two kids with special needs we have done the best that we can in doing this but it's just not the same as being in person some kids are getting five days a week not all kids are and so i really want us to not lose sight of in the next year um it's going to be a tough budget year but what are we going to do because you know i've heard parents say well why don't we just take a year off right and let every kid start over kids brains don't stop developing they have been developing this entire pandemic and we're missing some windows we are

055doing the best we can i know that but i want us to not lose sight of we may need to do extra next year to to get some of these kids back to where they need to be and i really do want to see like what kind of one-time funding maybe we can use next year to provide some of the services that that i think kids are going to need to get them them up to speed and i i am particularly concerned with the kids with ieps and special needs i i just don't want to lose sight of that um because i think there's going to be a lot of tendency for for all of us to say oh thank god like you know a normal year and whatever but these kids we've all been

056through a lot but these kids in particular and so next year is going to be another difficult year because we need to figure out how to make this up in particular for these kids and so i'm strongly in support of using any sort of one-time revenues free cash working to figure out ways to beef up support next year to help get these kids back on track thank you i so appreciate that thank you dr jenkins thank you dr jenkins mr news dr jenkins stole my thunder which is fine because the question i had was were we going to continue with the meetings via zoom because that almost and again dr jenkins said if you know versus losing a whole date you know somebody can go into a closed room for an hour or 20 minutes

057or whatever it takes type of deal it just makes it makes it i think it would make scheduling a lot easier absolutely for everybody also and that and i'm going to interrupt you there for one second and piggyback off of that instead of me bringing it back around is that something that the state has to weigh in on because it involves ieps or is that that's a district level decision yeah no actually both state and federal law say that um parental participation should and could occur in any way shape or form so it's always been it's just always been okay just not as prevalent pre-pandemic sorry about that no please yeah i'm good and and i do i i agree with again i agree with uh shannon about looking at you know funding and the

058budget to take care of some of these these students as they come back next year type of deal but uh thank you thank you for a wonderful presentation you know it was nice nice again nice to see you know an outside group that comes in and comments and compliments us on what we're doing yet also offer some i would assume excellent suggestions excellent absolutely they were wonderful different set of eyes yep thank you thank you um i jot down some notes and now i can't read my writing it's like a little scratch i do that all the time uh i'm glad that shannon kind of brought brought that up and john concurred uh i've kind of i've been the broken record about that you know there are kids that are obvious they're kids that have

059significant high needs but then there are those kids that that just don't meet that criteria to the level and but i do thank you in the district for expanding upon and kind of finding some students who really are maybe falling through the cracks and to shannon's point there are going to be more students regular ed not just you mean all of our students to some degree when they come back there's we don't yet know what's really going to unfold and um but i really appreciate you know working in the field and sort of seeing like the landscape on a statewide level and recognizing to to shannon's point that some high needs kids have not seen a classroom since last march in the state of massachusetts um yet we've begun five days a week for those

060highest needs kids starting in september i mean kudos to us and i know as a parent and hearing from parents it doesn't feel that way when we're in our own little bubble here in dartmouth like you know but we've then been going every other day and so we've done a lot of learning um it's not perfect but we we are um i'm proud of what we're doing here so thank you for that um thank you in terms of you know we hear from parents i kind of wear another hat so i'll hear from parents and dip with different hats on and and i work in the fields i'll hear from just a gl i get like a sense of what's going on in the community and i know like outpatient services for our local settings

061even in sandwich with uh just those outpatient you know things are happening virtually there's not enough staff there's there's a hardship in every corner in this kind of realm um what has been the what has been the biggest struggle in terms of um i can only imagine i'm thinking i'm just just there's only so many people you can pull from like are we able to contract out for supports that we don't necessarily have the staff for is that a struggle because i do know it is a problem it is i would say probably yeah i would definitely say that's probably the biggest struggle in terms of whether it's related services or additional supports that you know whether on an iep or for you know for students just in general the contracted agencies while there are

062many and there are many hundreds at your disposal it seems like when they are contacted and an actual need arises and a specific request is put out they have never actually had someone right um you know to the point where you know i've you know had to be so upfront to actually reply back yes i need this do you actually have one you know because last time and there they said you know no we actually don't there's no speech pathologist there's no occupational therapist there are there are none of those things um absolutely no aba therapists or um rbts bcbas those are there um the shortage is great um i actually had a conversation with a contracted agency that i have a pretty good relationship with and we have used quite a bit a bit

063of times in the past uh where she said you know we as a contractor we're losing um some of these therapists because they're going into hospitals and nursing homes and so we had a pool let's say 100 that we could always count on our pool is down to 80 or 75. so you who's always calling me to get that we don't have the number so it's truly been a trickle effect and that's absolutely been a huge challenge yeah yeah just another one of those incredibly fast moving parts that absolutely yeah better you than me [Laughter] um oh uh you mentioned you know dartmouth does their own evaluations in that transition early intervention have there been times and i haven't really i'm just it's just a question it's not like it's not lea it's not coming

064from any place in particular but just my own for my own knowledge have there been times that you've had to in this time rely on some of those early intervention reports just to not you know um take too much time have too much of a wait for that child so what i would say is yes but it was spring of 2020. so yes but march through june 2020 once we hit the ground running in september you know evaluation started almost immediately we were able to to get back into the swing of things but there were certainly in that small two and a half month pocket yes that did have to okay yeah and there was some amazing stuff that happened back then i mean they moved mountains to absolutely extend some timelines around where a

065child could kind of keep their kind of look at different ways for eligibility remarkable yeah for sure um i love the i the suggestion for that flow chart for from um preschool to kindergarten suggestions one of my favorites i know when when my my son is 17 now uh and he's watching i liam that when he was young and he was transitioning we we had the staff from quinn and his previous school put together a photo album but i can only imagine having visuals in sort of social stories videos that like we've produced for you know our updates on our schools will be a remarkable way to get students used to a new space or familiar with a new space so that's wonderful technology is really wonderful um i think my own oh two more

066things have so i don't know if it's been incredible if parents have come to you or this has happened at team meetings i know we had our our team meeting and it was brought up um and i had my thoughts on my uh in our own situation about about clothing compensatory services has that been an overwhelming burden are there incredible asks for that or is it just i think the conversations have been great um obviously cover competitory services itself has evolved a little bit originally when the state rolled it out you know in the fall it was related to march through june of 2020 it was really looking at that period of time where schools were shut down and not open at all and so we really have done a wonderful job our teams are

067working you know at every team meeting if it hasn't been brought up already bringing up that piece but very recently as as recent as february the state has reconfigured their look at cover competitory to include this school year um and in a lot of ways again like you said earlier dartmouth hasn't had to face you know a complete shutdown where nobody's been in school at all since september but some districts have so right off the bat there's always that consideration of while school is shut down and then also in dartmouth for example um due to health and safety regulations the district shut down january 4th through the 15th i think it was the 15th i'm not sure but in those two weeks following christmas uh the holiday break that that's now something that can be

068considered and if a team feels that there has been you know a need for compensatory because of something like that or because of a quarantine whatever the case may be um you know teams i i just had a staff meeting where we went over some of those changes to say that it's now opened up but as far as i know you know in reading the n1s that come through um it's just a robust conversation where parents and team members are really you know collaborating together communicating and coming to agreements about what might be needed that's wonderful and that's really the the magic because it's so important uh and i've it's always been my experience that it's a two-way street and for us personally there are only so many hours in a day and you're not

069gonna you know you can't get blood from a stone and you're only gonna get what you can get and and not get upset comic relief but but you know listening to parents and and and taking into consideration those needs like you said in those conversations in those settings um and again that's always been my experience uh you know in dartmouth public school so that's really wonderful um have there been any discussions district-wide around offering anything more comprehensive in the summer than we have in the past or are we going to stick to i know you've all you've since you've been here you've there have been um building blocks and and things added and then we have we've pre-covered we've had our other summer programming that has been comprehensive and wonderful and has evolved uh but

070are there are you is that a thought in anyone's head or so as of right now our esy so extended school year that is on students ieps um that program is going to be the the um the four week five days a week for the students and programs and four weeks four days a week it'll be 8 30 to 12 30 at quinn um we have i've already put out the feelers to staff that it will be in person for all it's it will be in person every day of those days it's not a hybrid or anything so if you're a four day week you're in person those four days which will be a slightly different from what we currently have um and that will be at the quinn school but in terms of just

071even other than that i think we're still kind of discussing what other things might be out there but the esy piece has been set yes just that one piece my last question i promise in in terms of our programs i you know a few years back now i guess maybe my first year on the school committee with the paths program and um as the year now here we are in 2021 um do we have a full continuum of programs so kids that are leaving the elementary school to go into the middle school into the high school type budgets like how is that looking and what what is that what's that um so what are some hopes and dreams and and yeah paths is probably the one that does not have that continuum um the past

072continuum is a k to a as more of the secret time the past students who are at the high school it's more through a co-taught model to get that you know content from the the general ed certified teacher and you know um uh to to attain their diplomas and an mcas situation um pals is a k to 12. paths is still at this point the elementary level um there is support at the middle in the high school they're they're not they don't go by path they're not necessarily built as a continuum of our recently adopted therapeutic classroom but um you know i i know the step-up program the middle schools had wonderful successes and great things happening and bridget taylor here at the high school and the work she's doing um kind of in through

073the step-up model um really meeting some some great needs and students are finding great success and um they are building wonderful rapport um but to say that that's path that that part has not been brought up through that at this time yep that's yeah we do what we can do and we keep pushing forward that's all that i have i know that you might have at the top of our head we will be having a um parents rights training the special advisory council our middle of april it will be april 12th um six to seven it'll be a zoom yeah um and so we will do our basic rights our annual basic rights workshop through the cpac thank you thank you that's it i know that was a lot but no not at all absolutely

074well thank you first of all for your thoughtful presentation as always it was very informative and very helpful to kind of get the big picture of what's happening in student services this year um pretty much all of my questions that i had have kind of been answered and by or actually asked by one of my colleagues i'll just say i'll just ask you this kind of echoing a little bit of what they've been speaking a few of them have spoken about is with the with covet going on this year do you do you anticipate or a need for or have those conversations taken place already at the district level about some more staffing more services for to help those students that have maybe regressed our high needs students that maybe have regressed a little bit

075because i know that while we have the you know the staff wish list of the items the positions that are not being included in next year's budget um there's only uh i i as i look at the slide here i see you know some social workers um that'll be added but besides that do you do you feel there would be a need for any other positions or anything else that's really that's not being targeted right now so what i would say is one of the key ways that we're able to get a sense of that all the way through this year and not have to wait till june is through those team meetings where we talk about clover compensatory because what cover compensatory is about is about during either a shutdown or a school-based you

076know time where you're kind of separated from your learning for one way or another have you regressed so there are conversations that are really authentic and so at this point um the amount that has been needed we've been able to you know it's not been to the point where we've had to extensively overstaff but if those you know again where i don't i can't predict what the next few months would be so it would be really an analysis of the information that's coming down so right now if you know particular student had a co-op of compensatory uh for example through you know um an ela or a math goal that they had regressed on you know those are those are being those gaps are being filled through our existing staff and again outside of the

077school day it's typically not during the day because they have their other services but um so we're able to do that we've been able to kind of keep up with that budgetarily um if that were to if those discussions were really to be found that there were some significant large numbers that we are not predicting or expecting then yes we would have to staff that and we'd have to find staffing for that so um as of right now we've not needed it and students are making progress towards their goals um even students you know in the hybrid model just it's really rewarding to see some of the the n1s which is the summaries of the meetings that i get i read all of them and to just see you know what the team is is

078discussing is that the student has met their goals and almost all their benchmarks even in a remote setting half the time and so that's you know really uh inspiring and exciting but yes if the kova compensatory were to require significantly larger than it's been all right then we would have to staff that accordingly definitely yeah and to your point one of the things you spoke about earlier i believe was contractual services and trying to find contractual service providers to offer actually have a a person you know a professional that can actually help us out so do you find that becoming it sounds like you do more and more difficult uh as time goes by that we're trying to you're having a more difficult time trying to find whether it's an slp or an aba therapist

079so at what point in your mind do you say you know looking at the your caseload that you have here in the district and saying you know what it may be beneficial and you know this this isn't my special layer this is my colleague special area but um you know at what point do you find it beneficial to say all right maybe we instead of looking to the contractual pool for maybe just one or two students do we try to bring it in-house well like tell me i'm just trying to help help me understand when when when you um make that decision yeah so um as so again i think this is a difficult year because like i said a lot of the reason i've been calling contractual is because the group sizes have been

080so much smaller than they ever have been before because of coped right so the copa 19 as it relates to that i think you know if some of those restrictions were lightened if it was not six feet if if things you know somewhat went back to a new normal of sorts some of that might be mitigated right off the bat sure um as far as actual staffing i know our speech language department did we did post for an slpa that is a hired position so that's a nut so we're at 9.0 um up from 5.0 when i started seven years ago so that was a 5.0 department up to nine so um we're certainly you know adjusting and so we meet um and at the end of the year we typically do that at the

081end of the year where everyone kind of gets their caseloads and numbers together in june and we just kind of reallocate i think some of it also is looking at kind of what grades everyone is doing what numbers everybody looks like what buildings make the most sense and doing a lot of shuffling which we didn't do a lot of this year because there was so much other shuffling for other so many other reasons so i think really taking um a hard look at where we are like i said kind of taking the bricks down to the ground and rebuilding um i would have a much better handle i think in june for sure yeah yeah well that's all i have thank you for your time thank you thank you so much thank you have a

082good night thank you take care all right next up on the agenda under old business uh continuing discussion on the fy 22 budget uh dr gifford or mr kiley do you have any updates for us first or sure just um you know obviously want to thank you for the opportunity to present last meeting i know it was at the end of the meeting and it was a lengthy meeting you know we didn't really have a chance to get into it at all but um you know tonight is certainly a good opportunity to discuss any questions you might have on the budget we our intent according to our budget timeline would be to continue this discussion at our next meeting have the budget hearing also at our next meeting on the 22nd um with a vote

083in april hopefully so there's there's still a lot we don't know i'm i'm meeting tomorrow with uh actually on wednesday with mr barnes at town hall talk a little bit about this he and i have not actually sat down in person together we've talked on the phone um about it but you know i'm looking forward to that so there's there's a lot still going on with this so obviously our timeline it can be flexible and if you need more time to discuss this along the way we can adjust accordingly so but tonight's a great opportunity to talk about it and um you know if there's any questions that you folks might have dr gifford and i are here to to help you with those awesome thank you mr kylee welcome does anyone like to start

084or i can certainly ask a couple of questions go ahead we started down here last time [Laughter] yeah thank you i actually i had the opportunity i reached out to mr kylie earlier today to answer a couple of questions that i had just looking so i guess from my point of view let's look at staffing let's start with staffing right um it's just i do have some concerns and i mentioned these to mr kylie on the phone when i was discussing about the fact that we have been down a um you know one maintenance position for for well over a year now or about a year now um and i know um you know mr kylie was comfortable waiting waiting this out um but i do think that our buildings are in you know the

085fact that we are filming that is a concern not just from the you know specifically a plumber but just the maintenance having another body in the maintenance department to to do those types of things so so that is certainly a concern from a uh from a um facility point of view and i think it's great that we're able to bring in some more outreach social workers one of the things i do want to talk about just briefly is we've been hearing a lot some of us have gotten emails regarding teaching assistants at quinn elementary school and i know that right now we have looks like we have one tentatively um right uh if i'm looking at here uh just one uh ft we're scheduled for uh for quinn for an additional one for next year

086is that the way i'm reading this correctly um so that's right yeah yeah right okay so with that should should we be looking for more teaching assistants help me understand or help the committee understand where we're at because i know that's that's always been a struggle it's a big it's a big school but it's also has all the specialized programs in it so uh are you comfortable with that number right now well well a couple of them are people that have been on a full year leave that we expect to come back okay so those positions are in the budget the those are are still in there if those particular folks you know they've been on sick leave all year because of kovid okay um if those couple of folks come back we would be

087able to add back to our um staff that we have so that those numbers are have nothing to do with the budget here because they're already built into the box right they're built in the ones that just like i said you know one in particular took the whole year off but fully intends on coming back but we have a couple of those so would you do you know is it two or three i'm just out of curiosity this year see i don't know hold you to it i'm let's see i'm thinking of one and uh two there's two i see i think there's two there's two so i think there's two and also we just had a couple of retirements which okay so with that said those would be refilled but we've also been posting

088here and there for some even a sub for the rest of the year for some of these that are out okay and we haven't been able to find any um except just now we just recently got another one a sub for the rest of the year um which mr gramfield told um kate he was going to be sending up that recommendation today but it's been a real struggle um part of it yeah i'm happy that you're sharing that with us because it's really important that the public knows that it's not that these positions are not just we're not doing anything about them it's like you said there's there was two that were on sick leave or without for the year exactly yeah we just have had a hard time filling i can't imagine that for

089some of these positions for the subpay that people are jumping through hoops wanting to come in exactly and work for the dartmouth public schools for ta subpad right so our intent is to fill in the positions the retirements etc and again hoping those folks that are on leave come back okay so that would increase the number of folks and um if i recall correctly even we had had one uh months ago and then actually it was one we got at demela when we were doing for the library they were going to supervise the library and then our intent was because of everything that happened at quinn to transfer that person to quinn instead she had just been hired and then she quit so we've it's it's been a struggle it really has so from so

090everyone that's watching everyone that's here so from your perspective you have every intention the district has every intention of filling those either retirements or those people that are on leave coming back coming back they choose not to come back the position is not going away right it's in the budget it's in the budget all right yep well that may that certainly makes me and i also have to say we like this is a list of tas in all the various schools who goes out on leave who we fill it with etc we sit with the administration in the buildings quite frequently on this issue especially at quinn because of the number of programs they have and the shifting of students and you know wanting to make sure um some of those students are really high

091needs as well in the program so we want to make sure we have enough adults in that in that class so we do sit with beth um and and the administration as well as i said pretty frequently going over this list to the point i've sometimes seen polka dots i don't even know what we're looking at after josh well because there's so much movement there's yeah especially this year exactly exactly no that that makes sense yeah my other concern would be i i had pushed for it last year then because of covet yet and with the uncertainty i think you know i'm i will i'm going to take a phrase from dr jenkins i'm going to sound like a broken record um that i really believe that mr galashaw could use another technician the reliance

092on technology in the district especially this year this year more than any other i think it's important that we make an investment and you know i know it can't be this year but i hope when we come around next year at this time that all the time we can have a positive discussion with that uh the couple of other questions that i have is on the under the fy slide 9 of the or page of the 68 page budget uh that uh pdf that mr kylie sent us graciously just under the administration just so um i can understand i had a brief conversation with mr kylie earlier but so everyone that's that may be looking at this can understand so we're looking at the administration line there's a a change a savings of 4.3 percent

093because you're looking at reducing the um curricular director of curriculum instruction and assessment and moving uh and bringing back the assistant superintendent position can you talk a little bit about why i only see or why we only see a forty two thousand dollar savings versus the full salary there i think it's important for everyone right here to understand the optics behind it yeah i'd be happy to speak to that mr oliver so that um restructuring involves two positions according to the department of ed classification of those positions the assistant superintendent position clearly is a administrative position it is a not to be technical but it is a 1000 account which means it's grouped with other administrative district expenses the director of teaching and learning is um classified as a 2000 account which means it's in

094the category of instruction kind of makes sense it's you know but even the title itself is you know shows that um you know it clearly is more instruction intensive than um the assistant superintendent position so what happens is the the savings is actually in that 2000 category so the savings is over on the instruction side of the budget because the proposal as it currently stands is that we would eliminate the director of teaching and learning position and we would fill the assistant superintendent position so um so there's not a lot of savings on the administration side because the savings is over on instruction and because of that the instruction line just gets absorbed like that because of well because it's instructions you're dealing with a 35 million dollar budget right i mean all of our

095most of our money isn't is right in instruction obviously so yes it doesn't stick out as much and the other thing one of the other things that i brought up to and i should and i do know this from previous budget years is that when you're looking at the line item budget and you see some of these um these percentage changes we have to remember and maybe some of you already know this um i did i i was pretty sure on it but just to confirm that does have to do with the fact that we had it was last year's was a a negotiation year and all the and the salaries were put into the um the holding line so that's why i was like wait a minute jim why why am i seeing these

096types of increases but um right yeah at the time last year we had not settled negotiations we had a amount of money reserved in those contract holding accounts which you'll see are now zero in that budget so and those monies are now allocated to the individual budget lines i hate it from a numbers guy because it looks very messy and the percentages don't don't stick out as as being obvious you also have step schedule changes longevity increases other things in those salary lines that make the percentage a little different than the you know the average salary increase which was two and a half percent for most in um in in 22. so okay thank you i have two more things i have one um request and one i think recommendation here so my feeling with

097the fact that the assistant superintendent is such or a an assistant superintendent is such a high level administrative position are you redoing is there going to be any changes to the job description from miss roy to the current recommendation are you changing the job description because it would have to include if you recall that list we brought right right a few months ago um all those additional um duties because if we're absorbing that position and we've been doing them now between we've split them up between kind of the three of us really um so can i just ask that you share with us the um yeah well the job what the actual job description would be uh moving forward for that position yeah i guess we must have an old one i hope if you

098could do that that would be great and my only other recommendation would be is i i'd like to consider i'd like you to consider um in more alignment with mr kylie having you know not just assistant superintendent but assistant superintendent of like uh like uh yeah jim's is of what finance and operations right of assistant superintendent of so it's clearly what their what their responsibility that's that would be the intent because of course with with eliminating the position itself the director of teaching and learning so we would like either to be assistant superintendent for teaching and learning or curriculum instrument but i like the teaching and learning because it absorbs so much more for that puts that title it you know it really it really speaks to everything that that role is doing which is

099pretty big right and the last thing i'll just say is and correct me if i'm wrong any any of my colleagues is that i just want to make sure is that before we go it if we're going to move forward with this budget and your recommendations i think it's important that because if correct me if i'm wrong if we hire we we appoint the assistant superintendents based on your recommendation doctor giffords is that correct that's correct so wouldn't it i believe that i believe i don't think i don't think we know that i thought that the assistant superintendent was the superintendent's hire uh you may want to revisit mass general law because i've been i'm pretty sure that it's based it specifically states which which would be the case i think yeah but what i'm

100going to what i was saying was i think that i apologize i think that should be done in conjunction with the budget the budget because if we're going to be eliminating positions that's exactly right yeah i think that should be done at the same time that's exactly right right because if we didn't do that then we would not propose eliminating the position correct so correct so that's why whenever we when it's time to do that i think we need to do make that make that appointment out of it part of it that sounds good okay thank you that's all i have yep yeah i really i don't want to be a uh um i really don't have anything else to add because you kind of summed up a couple of you had more points than

101i did but um yeah i was just concerned about the the ta uh you know the equity among the tas positions but um from what you described it sound reasonable yeah you know that those folks had sort of you know not in a couple positions at least um so that makes a little bit more sense um because i was thinking if you're counting in those one-to-ones right like my son needs they're not doing much else no no being a one to one so um so that answered my question and then i did also have some questions around the the absorbing the position into the uh the recommended assistant super position so yeah i concur with you so i will move it along to my company thank you yeah one of the things i had a

102question on was you know again hiring the uh the plumber slash maintenance person type of deal i'm just wondering at some point in time of having to use an outside plumber is that going to you know uh are we spending more with an outside plumbing company you know than if we had our own plumber on on staff or maintenance person able to do that type of deal but that's that one of the things and chris usually talks about this but he didn't so i will and you talk about a a 40 plus million dollar budget and let's not lose sight of the fact that there's 597 000 in items that that weren't funded i mean you know it's another 1.3 percent in the budget okay i mean we've had discussions tonight about social workers and

103special needs and you know some of those were uh you know are in are out you know that that type of deal sped teachers you know behavioral specialists you know you know athletic and music is looking for additional supply money and you know things of that nature your technology technician you know is in there i mean and again i realize that there isn't enough money to go around one of the things i always talk about is where we are in per pupil spending versus you know the state and everything else well this year would be you know eight point almost 8.6 million dollars and i know that gets the finance committee and the board of selectmen upset when i mention it but so be it this our job is to advocate for students and administration

104and teaching and that's what i'm doing here and i know we're not going to get it don't get me wrong i totally understand that but a lot of these discussions that we have if we had that eight and a half million or if we even had half of it we wouldn't have to have because we'd be golden we'd be able to do a lot of these things okay but it's the sign of the times and i know where it is but i just want people to know that in my opinion our administration you know central office and the uh building administrators and you know athletics and music directors and everybody else i mean you know they they get blood out of a rock because of what they're able to do and stretch you know they

105can they can you know they can get they can get a dollar 10 out of a dollar so i i appreciate that i've got some other things that i've got to go over i've started going over it but i'll make an appointment with mr kylie and come down and bug him someday he's got nothing else to do i know he's back with his feet i'm good mr chairman at the moment thank you thank you mr news oh i do have one more thing i have want to nope go ahead i'll let shanna go so thank you um i i don't know if we pointed this out last time but i know we talked about it in the subcommittee meeting um that this assumes that we have a normal year and i know we're all having

106our fingers crossed here but i think it's really important to point that out that this year we had to fund five teachers for their virtual learning classes we had to fund techa we had to fund a genuity i hope we don't have to do that but you know it depends on how say the vaccine is approved for small children we do have some kids who are medically fragile who if the vaccine is you know not an option for them we're going to have to figure some things out for them him and so we i just want to make that aware sort of to the viewing public that there there may be some cost in the fall that that we have not planned for um because we just don't know um how that's going um i

107also said this in our subcommittee meeting and i'll say it again i think the social workers are of the utmost priority um i can see it all around me how these kids are struggling mentally and socially and i generally speaking since my time on the finance committee have been opposed to using one-time revenues for for ongoing expenses but i feel so strongly about these social workers that we have to find a way to fund them even if it's only for a year to bridge through and to reach these kids they're just i mean we're all hitting a pandemic wall and but these are kids they don't have the coping abilities that we do and they are going to need extra support this year our social workers do really important work and we need to make

108sure we have enough of them to meet all the needs of these kids so if the town can't do it through the regular budget i know mr kiley i agree with you we're going to get a different group of people if we say this is only we only guarantee funding for one year but we've got we've got to find figure out a way to fund those um the last thing i want to say just sort of um and this is sort of in conjunction with mr oliver's questions about the change right now we have we don't have an assistant superintendent we're talking about like we're saving right that salary but of course if we continued with the current status quo we would have an empty superintendent and a director right instead if we didn't make

109that change so the move from a director to a superintendent has costs right because one position is a higher position and pays more and so it's not entirely clear to me even though we're saving money overall what the difference in the cost of those two positions are and so what the actual cost is of making that change within this larger budget number if that makes sense and if you don't have it right now that's okay i know mr mr oliver has asked to you know bring the job description in we could talk about it next time but i do think we have to evaluate that right that if we continue on the path that we're on this will be the cost if we make that change that's the cost because that difference can fund other

110things um and and the question that we have to ask is the committee is is that the priority for that amount of money okay so i i understand what you're saying so um you're talking about approximately twelve thousand dollars okay that's all i wanted it's just not that number is not available because we that we don't have that detail and that's not directly the difference between the two salaries but we also have some stipends that we there is work that needs there's work that needs to be done so if you know we have a plan in place in the proposal to get the work done based on what you know what this proposal asks for um so if that were to change we'd have to think about how we would address the work i just

111want to understand what the cost the ultimate cost is overall of making that change that's it thank you anything else um i just have one more thing i want to circle back to for the social workers actually dr jenkins kind of made me think about it because when i look here it looks like we're looking at 1.0 district ftes for the for a social worker and then a 0.5 of cushman correct now if i look down here budget requests not funded outreach social worker partially built at the high school partially built into this budget so you're referring to the district that will kind of cover the high school right as well as the middle school right because they both asked for one so we said well if we could get one okay and split it

112so i think to my call to dr jenkins point is you know if there's a strong need amongst administration central office as well as building administration that you know based on what we're seeing towards the the end the end of this year and what we've seen in the past if if you feel the arctic giver there's a case that needs to be made to to increasing that number to really fulfill their their social worker needs that i think that conversation should happen um and i think the committee would i think the committee would certainly add things yeah yeah that specifically that's specifically the social worker piece up i think that the committee you know i think the case could be made that it should it's absolutely worth looking at the one-time revenue for that okay

113and that is all i have right now yeah listen just one other thing uh and i'm just wondering if we go the conversation that we can have if we go forward with the budget hearing and additional budget discussions on the 22nd usually you know there's people here that can ask comments and everything else we're going to need their comments ahead of time or something while we've got the hearing ongoing it's going to be it's going to be a little different yeah right you know what you actually bring up a good point and i do know and i'm not sure if mr peratti behind the scenes or mr galish are over there i can can answer my question but i do know that there have been some other districts that have done either public comment or

114especially for a public budget hearing in which people are able to come in live to ask the question i know um that it's kind of a toss up and it makes me nervous as a tech director myself but i'm just wondering if there's anything that maybe mr parotti knows the way of just the dial-in number or i don't know what about pre-recorded pretty well you know i mean that would i think that would be speaking of as a tech director i can imagine what you're thinking that we could have somebody coming in on video we witnessed it let me just say um at our faculty senate meeting we witnessed it and it was it was it was pretty horrible so i'm i'm really reluctant to have um any live ungated i it's important to have

115the public comment um but the things that happened in some of our campus meetings are horrifying so would it be because good point you know i agree with you and i wasn't talking and i wasn't talking about per se having the public you know come on television or you know come here six feet apart say this and leave the next one i wasn't talking about that i was mainly making sure that they understood that if they've got a comment about the budget because we don't comment on things of that nature but they get it to to kate before five before five o'clock next monday so that way we have a chance at least to look at it and see what's going on if you know what i'm saying that's that's mainly what i was talking

116about okay and was my concern father and i'm just throwing this out there for the public budget hearing though is it worthwhile having if we asked to keep statements to so many words is it worthwhile having them read aloud i mean i think there might be something if they're in no disrespect if they're half a dozen dozen sentences that's fine but i mean with all due respect if somebody sends you a dissertation send it to us we'll read it but not you know it'll be part of the minutes but not part of you know the budget hearing type of deal we can take it into consideration that's my thoughts yeah i mean i'm following along what mr nunes is saying we've normally said you know we're taking public comment when the meeting's on but we

117might make an exception in these times for the budget and to just say now you know if you're going to send it send a message to kate have it say budget you know and that way we know we can collect all those they should be under a certain number of words to your point um and and we can read those budget comments again so long as they're concise right yeah um i just think it's important for this for the budget but the year that we're in that it would give people that opportunity to be heard heard aloud yeah yeah good mr kyle and as you know we have an advertising requirement for the budget hearing so we can make that clear in the you know in the ad that um yeah you know they can

118need to be forwarded by a certain time and the length um you know in order to be read at the meeting the length uh you know we could figure out yeah what whatever works for you folks but i agree you know if it's keep it under so many words they'll be read aloud if it's over that you can you can send us a book right a chapterized book but it won't be read aloud in the air mm-hmm okay is everyone in agreement that's fine i'm good with that i just yeah i had that and i wanted to no thank you mr names appreciate that next up on the agenda uh turn it over to dr gifford for the superintendent's update sure i'm i'm glad we had a student rep tonight because i had a number

119of the items for the high school but um he was able to go over some of those so a few things that are going on you may have seen mcas is still on but uh there was an updated calendar that was sent out so right now we have um grades three four and five the window of may 10th through june 11th which might almost be out of school by then and middle school has been um a tbd right now so maybe there's still hope that they're just gonna get rid of it at all i don't know so we got that um just a nice little note that a parent sent over to cushman and justine shared it that they had joined up with the feinstein junior scholar club and it was about this particular theme

120they were using whole class in kindness week but she just received a nice note from one of the parents that a student is in one of the virtual classes and how they had been um included and you know i guess not virtual but um home and then made sure that she was included and that kind of thing so it was just nice to have one of the comments with you spread a lot of joy so it was really nice kindergarten registration is open so people should be looking on the district website for that information and may 19th they're looking at possibly uh orientation uh for those students well i know it's a little ways off but just to having people in the back of their minds and preschool registration for new students has been ongoing

121and it's open only through um 311 march 11. so that's coming to a close new students there's different arrangements with students that are already peer partners in the school and how they move forward and much to what evan was speaking about schools are continuing to implement as many events as possible there's a couple of samples i know potter was having a virtual parent night is coming up soon they're going to do a virtual bingo game i think the schools are just trying really hard to make things as normal as possible at least continue to create relationships and involvement there's been sports and sparkle days and wear dartmouth logo days and mismatch days so the elementaries have been continuing that a little bit more on the music program i know um kathleen you had sent some

122information a while back and ian did provide some updates that i'll just go over this quickly with some of the space limitations at the elementary they weren't able to provide and you know there's new updates now the new guidance with the singing and whatever can't provide the 10-foot distancing for wind and recorders so that was one thing um the guidelines in singing were just changed so they're moving to transition the person the choral groups the rehearsals at the middle in high school and vocalizing at the elementary general music classes so and of course weather's getting nicer hopefully they'll be getting outside where they can really let loose if you will he mentioned that they're planning on rolling out the fifth grade band and string programs in early april and lessons will be once a week

123at night and there'll be six sessions preparing students for the sixth grade program he feels that they'll be able to do that safely especially with the vaccines coming up and evan mentioned the indoor ensemble so i won't mention anything about that but one thing that is important that he is trying to think about getting some fans in if you will or spectators coming up soon following the protocol that the athletic departments have used so we'll be listening in for that he's hopeful that that will be able to happen at some of the indoor percussion and preliminary planning has begun for high school concerts in the month of may not sure if they they will be virtual or in person with small groups being able to attend so they're working on that and they've done a

124phenomenal job as we all know just a very important announcement and i know it went out with the high school s'mores that ross puts out but year-end activities are being planned the discussions have been going on for a long time now with the class pres officers and the school student um advisors have met many times with the administration and also he mentions that during advisory all the seniors were able to jot down some ideas that they had for end of year so they've been collecting those ideas matter of fact as i said i was in one of the meetings with mr tebow last week and he happened to be consuming with the kids and we kind of chatted through that and they were coming up with a lot of good year-end ideas they're really trying

125to plan for as many in-person things that they can with the hope that with the guidance the public health guidance that we'll still be able to do some things of course they the the real plan is to have an in-person graduation ceremony we're not sure what it might look like but obviously we have to continue to follow health and safety so i talked to dr bromage this weekend and he volunteered to help with that planning he's he's planning our own graduation at umass um and he said he would love to help the dartmouth schools help plan he's also planning the academy awards right now so i think he's he knows what he's doing um and he offered his services to help the district out with planning that i think you have his contact information i

126i do i have an email feel free to contact him and he will help the district with awesome i'll let you i'll let ross know to your comments dr gifford where are we at right now and you know i apologize for not knowing this but where are we at with the um with the guidance from the state as far as large gatherings has any of that change in regards to logic like i don't know i honestly i haven't i i can say what aaron has told me um and this is all this is not official but um you know we are moving and playing moving ahead we're probably not going to do one graduation at ums dartmouth we're looking at doing groups or pods of graduation which is a little easier for us but um

127he because we do ours in may right the usually around the beginning to mid-may a couple weeks after that in the beginning of june um he thinks that we will be in a better place i'm not sure really able to be able to do one graduation but i do think that he suspects that we will be able to do an in-person graduation most likely outdoors so we have to do some contingency planning it may require sort of multiple groups right across the day but he believes he told me that we can do in-person graduation where we they are projecting we will be at that time based on right what we know right right so fingers crossed but i'll let ross know that um he's willing to help out so anyway i think that's important that

128people know that it is in the works and things are being planned and um a calendar events would come out a menu of events will come out as soon as they kind of have things firmed up i guess knowing anything could change if health guidelines shift in the wrong direction but it doesn't look likely we're hopeful another thing for the second year in a row we're going to be offering students a chance to earn the seal of bi-literacy so um if case you don't know the mast deci looks at that as an official designation from massachusetts so it recognizes graduates who are proficient obviously in english in another language and they get to take an exam and we started last year with we get a seal and it goes on their diploma so deadlines and

129i know the high school students obviously have this information but the registration deadline is wednesday march 31st if that exam isn't is here in our language lab and the district we do pay for the students exams i think it's like 20 each so would they say they might have 150 this year or something yeah kids taking the taking the exam so it's a nice designation and that they have and then finally uh one of the two things um just to piggyback on what uh miss townsend said before and and to kathleen i know you mentioned every week and so we did we do continue to circle back with the schools and they are through the team process they have identified and i think it's around 39 at each of the schools those students that are

130not what we really determine as high needs according to the real definition but struggling kids that for academic needs or else we also have some ell students that come every day so it is happening you know maybe not everyone but i think it's a good effort and they do um consider every whatever is brought up through the team process and i think finally just um you know we're continuing to plan for our opening well opening expanded learning and we expect well you probably all saw the board of education they did vote in favor of commissioner riley's plan or proposal so that it's an emergency um approval right now he's i'm laughing though he's and then he's going to go out for public comment but come back for a real approval in may but by that

131point we're moving along you know but i he we're expecting i just saw an email tonight come through from desi that expecting the new guidance um sometime tomorrow with the commissioner meeting on wednesday so we'll look forward to that but as you know we're continuing our work mr kiley's been busy with the schools working desks have been purchased to get us going and what we need to get all the elementary students in and still working on how to best serve lunch make sure the distancing for the six feet is maintained etc so um we're moving right along are there any major hiccups right now with other than lunch yeah just lunch is and it's a challenge but yeah we're working we'll get it done yeah we'll get it done especially if we can get some

132warmer weather yeah just the yeah the fact that it kids need to be six feet apart right obviously that can't happen in the classroom where everybody's three feet apart under this you know reopening yeah so it's um it's it's challenging we're gonna make it work how about transportation's in pretty good shape now that said it's going to look very different than what it looked like with our right coveted protocols in place i mean we'll still have the sanitizing protocols in place but the distancing the physical distancing is going away you know that went away in the guidance i find it a little i disagree with it but that's my opinion yeah uh you know that you can sit two kids together yeah not from the same household um but and that's gonna happen i mean

133that's we have to do that in order to get the kids to school so that's that's part of our plan and uh yeah we're in the bus company is expecting that yep yep we're in we're in good shape transportation wise considering you know in terms of the plan yes and then along that lines i am we are concerned obviously what's going to happen next with middle and high school that's a bigger bigger bigger challenge for us if we don't know but one thing i will say at the middle school i've asked them to come up with more synchronous learning for students so i even when we're in the hybrid method right now what they're going to be doing and mr doane's been meeting with his staff they're planning to unveil this soon as soon as

134he has the details to the parents that are in the hybrid model but um teachers will be offering for the four academics every day one live lesson so so students will be able to just similar to the high school but no specials we just you know it's just timing and scheduling and we can't but um they've done a nice job even up until this point to offer scheduled times that teachers have been available for students to pop in ask questions get extra help even um the virtual students have had that opportunity but this is going to be more of a scheduled kind of you know so i think every day we just try to expand learning more and more and get kids more involved but we'll see what the commission ends up saying you know

135he hasn't put any restrictions in on the middle in high school yet and as we said that's that'll be a big problem for us space-wise a big problem so we'll see okay we'll see mr news thank you mr chairman uh dr gifford mr kylie two questions uh number one how's the and i apologize i should have given you the heads up i didn't get a chance the numbers the applications for school choice how did those go oh i would say around 50ish okay probably has the exact number but around there okay around there okay okay good come in uh lastly just going piggybacking on what you were talking about middle and high school i mean is there any chance that those students we're going to have you know everybody in the middle and high school

136in in the not too near distant future or is that who knows are we still hoping for against hope well i think it'd have to be a big conversation the middle school has worked really hard on assessing it and it i never want to use the word impossible but um whether it's feasible in the disruption to the schedule that we have now in order to make it work the spacing we can't fit or we cannot fit all the kids in in the classroom we just cannot do it even at three feet we just can't okay so if they were to use you know the cafeteria the auditorium some kids let's just say they'd be half a class in the auditorium streaming into the live class that's down the hall then you have to disrupt staffing

137to monitor them it's you know it's just it's a it's a big challenge it would really be a big challenge um nothing's impossible i suppose but difficult and to what end you know the proposal is almost like it'd be a half day of live so then kids would go home so that just to accommodate all the scheduling the prep times the supervising of classes um i think what did he say one of the class 100 eighth grade students pretty much wouldn't fit in classrooms given the parameters that we have to abide by right yeah so thank you we continue to look at it we continue to plan sure yeah i know understood thank you ma'am welcome to the channel dr jenkins so i just want to go back to um you know the end of

138the year events and i know some of my colleagues saw this on facebook you know some well-meaning parents are starting to say understand i mean i'm a parent of a high school senior too i'm super sad for all they've missed but they're starting to plan their own events and you know we all sort of stepped in and said you know please just hold on so i think it's really important for all of us to say here that we are committed to trying to figure out ways to do this and i think we need to be better about communicating on this because rumors are starting to go out and so the message needs to keep going out that we are committed to figuring this out it may not look the same but like one very well-meaning

139parent right was you know had like a a place and a dj and this lined up and my my worst nightmare is that what ends up happening is some kids get a prom and some kids don't or some kids get multiple problems and some kids don't so i really just want to state that we are committed to trying to make it happen for these kids and i really want people to just be patient with us because these guidelines are continually changing i would hope that even if we had to figure out putting on again four small that the school would do it so that we ensure that every child has an opportunity to experience these things i do not want us to end up in a situation where we say we can't do it and

140then they all go private and the cool kids are getting something and some kids are not that's my worst fear both as a parent and a school committee member and so i really want to say how committed we are um to making it may not be the same problem right let's be clear it's not going to look like a normal prom but we are committed to figuring out ways to make these things happen and for them to be special to these kids and i would just ask people to be patient with us and i would also ask the administration to you know particularly at the high school and the middle school where these events can really do take out size importance to be very frequently communicating with parents they haven't been canceled yet we're still

141working on it because people are understandably nervous about you know what this is going to look like for their kids so we have to reiterate to them our commitment to this and let them know that we are trying to figure this out and we will we will figure something out thank you right that's something i think that's important that you know i mean it's all going to depend on all seriousness what on the guidance on the guidance that we get from yeah the governor and the people up there is that you know right but i would also very strongly right i mean understand if they sit there and they say you're gonna have 50 people at an outdoor event i mean we're in trouble right but here's what i would here's what i would say

142so now we've got to sit here and say okay we're going to have and i'm just off the top of my head so please don't take this as gospel but so now we've got to sit here and say okay we're going to the prom is going to be on this date and it's going to be at six different venues because that's how we can get 300 students into a prompt if you know what i'm saying no i like it i i understand what you're saying mr news i certainly understand what dr jenkins is saying um my daughter was a senior last year you know while she didn't live through the whole pandemic of her senior year she did lose out in her last three three months of her senior year and it was it sorry

143it's it's tough it's especially as a parent seeing seeing your child lose out on all that so that being said i agree that i think that there should be some kind of middle ground that the school department can come to that we we've got to do some try to do something to the best of our abilities right for our high school seniors yeah and and to be honest the seniors that are working on this are really what i was listening in they're even looking at little small events too something special um like an ice cream truck day just for the seniors just little things as well so do you throughout the month beneficial worthwhile maybe not next meeting but you know in the near future um that we could get a report on on the

144senior class the senior activities as we have some ideas this way it'll get it out there because shannon's right that a lot of parents are getting concerned and um this we're we talk about this all the time for those of you at home watching dr giffords always briefing us but um yeah we are committed to this take yours one step further maybe right after april vacation as things really wind start to wind up we could have the four senior class officers here at a meeting socially distanced to explain what's going on and and talk to us that would be nice time with me yeah i would love i think that would be great yeah i would agree i would just say as a parent of a teenage boy information doesn't always come home to me

145through my child which is why i think it's really important that that we communicate via email via newsletters with parents i know like i've seen pictures i hear what what ross is doing and the students are very involved right but sometimes i think students are not communicating that to their parents or i mean those student planning only involved maybe 20 or 30 students and so not everyone knows what's going on um and so parents don't hear things and they hear rumors right and that that just goes off like wildfire so i think we need to be very you know in a normal year you don't need to have a communication plan about end a year because things happen like normal but this year we have to be very conscious about communicating to the parents what's

146happening in the planning where we are and all of that because lots of misinformation is out there and and again i understand your point mr nunes my concern is and and i've i saw it um not here thankfully but like pro homecomings and proms and other communities where parents were putting on private events and then kids are posting pictures like in their prom or their homecoming clothes and other kids aren't invited to that and that i don't want to happen right if if we have to do like three events or four events in different places i would rather that than not do it because then some kids aren't going to have access to that and to me that's the worst possible outcome i want every kid to it's not going to be the same but

147to have something um that they can go to so it's all the same that's my my most uh sort of important thing that i really want for these kids thank you that's all i have thank you dr gifford uh report of the chair so i really don't have anything other than just to let everyone know watching and you know that uh we we get your emails we we read them we listen to them after our last meeting everyone has their own opinions lots of opinions and lots of ideas lots of suggestions um at the end of the day the committee you know we get briefed all the time from dr gifford the administration as to where we're at as we you know we're well informed with the public health side of it and you know

148chris and mr miesha our public health director joined the meeting last week it was very helpful and all i can say at the end of the day is we we understand you know not everyone's going to be happy but we got a job to do and we're going to do it to the best of our ability with with students the number one priority and safety the number one priority um so thank you for your emails um and you know just know that we do the best job we can with the information we have at the time dr jenkins i'd also like to say something along that line um you know i will be honest i've actually quit many of the local facebook groups people are entitled to their opinion but this year has been really

149hard on everyone here um but i would say particularly our our administrators and our teachers um and some of the things that have been said have been very unkind and i would hope that people would stop before they say those things um i know we see it how hard everyone is working our teachers are have reinvented their entire jobs they're teaching multiple classes a day basically not just the kids in front of them but the kids at home you know people will say well why don't we have these plans because we didn't get anything from the state right we can't make plans what if the state says a b and c or d e and f or h j k like we don't know we can't plan until we have the parameters we also know

150for those of us sitting here that our administrators are working tirelessly they're doing their normal job they're preparing for a pandemic their contact tracing there's literally not enough time in the day to do all this and so people are entitled to say their own to have their own opinions and to say what they want but i would just ask people to show a little kindness right a little bit of kindness goes the wrong way we can disagree a lot of us up here disagree but i respect my fellow committee members for the time that they give and i would hope that people would respect our staff our teachers and all of the people who are working to put on school this year and make it safe well said well well said dr jenkins thank you

151and with that i would actually like to just thank the baker polito administration following our meeting uh to to finally vaccinate educators let's be honest it was only a pres after president biden made the move first so i said here thank you thank you to our federal government um yeah but you can't register till tomorrow right you can you can through the pharmacy you can't through the pharmacy no you know what i know but thank you that was i just couldn't believe it took as much lobbying months and months of the most logical thing that could have happened right exactly with that the next meeting of the dartmouth school committee is march 22nd at 6 30. mr chairman any more public comments uh miss gentler anything nothing no no public comment thank you very much

152thank you mr nunes for the reminder no problem my pleasure with that chair we'll entertain a motion to adjourn so move second motion by mr noon second by mrs amaral on the motion any other discussion you're hearing now all in favor aye opposed motion carries unanimously this meeting is jumped go big green friday night [Music] things