001thank you well good evening everyone i'd like to call this meeting of the dartmouth school committee to order for monday february 8th 2021. could i have a roll call please miss ganther chris oliver here shannon jenkins here kathleen ameral here mary waite here john nunes yep you very much everyone well good evening i hope everyone uh enjoyed the game last night as well as the snow that fell i know i'm sure our maintenance and custodial crews did not enjoy the snow that fell uh but we do thank them for all their work uh we are coming to you remote this evening uh due to the uh the full remote day the school committee opted to go fully remote as well just a reminder per governor baker's order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting log
002chapter 38 section 20 the public will not be allowed to physically access this school committee meeting members of the public can access the meeting via live stream at youtube.com forward slash dhs tv media in addition the event will be rebroadcast 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 and will notify the public of these procedures as soon as practicable with that being said at this time this is where we usually allow anyone wishing to comment on any of tonight's agenda items um miss ganther do we have any um any comments that have been submitted to date i have not received any
003at this point perfect thank you thank you very much kate as a reminder if you're watching this now just sitting down tuning in you are welcome to comment uh and send those comments to kathleen genther at dartmouthschools.org um and we will circle around uh at the end of the night to see if anyone uh had commented at this time chair will entertain a motion for the approval of the regular session minutes of january 25th 2020. so second second the motion by mr nunes the second by was it mary uh was it mrs wade both of us all right so motion by mr noon second by mrs wait on the motion any other discussion cheer herring nun roll call chris oliver yes shannon jenkins i'm gonna abstain kathleen amarill yes mary waite yes john nunes yes
004thank you very much everyone at this time chair will entertain a motion to approve the executive session minutes of january 25th 2020. mr chairman with the stipulation that they be held until the matter for which they were intended as complete second motion by mr nunes a second buy and i missed that one too because my dogs were barking who was the second thank you mrs amaral on the motion any further discussion roll call please chris oliver yes shannon jenkins again i'm going to have seen since i wasn't present kathleen amer yes mary waite yes john nunes yes and thank you very much everyone at this time i'm going to turn it over to dr gifford for resolution 21-02 employer request for unpaid leave okay thank you so as you can see we've had a request
005from one of our teacher assistants nicole bishop um who works at the quinn school and we have had one of these leave requests before this is for a child care issue you know the folks are having some struggles with the pandemic as we all know um so she is asking for the committee to approve this leave from her work for the rest of the school year as the contract does not stipulate this specific reason but it does allow for the school committee to approve that lead so we would be in favor of approving that lead for her thank you dr gefford uh to my fellow colleagues you should have received the letter in your packets does anyone have any questions regarding this resolution any concerns okay motion to approve uh resolution 2102 21-02 second motion
006by mr mr nunes the second mate dr jenkins on the motion any further discussion do we need to read the full uh resolution or is that okay mr nance yeah no they're normally all read mr oliver okay so i can certainly read it if you'd like or if you want to read it since you made the motion sure that's fine whereas nicole bishop teacher assistant at the james m quinn elementary school followed a request for unpaid leave for a portion of the 2020 2021 school year as explained in said request dated january 27 2021 pursuant to article 9 section 8 of the dea assistant contract be it resolved at nicole bishop teacher assistant at the james m quinn elementary school he granted an unpaid leave of absence for the remainder of the 2020-2021 school year
007as requested and in accordance with article 9 section section 8 of the dea assistance contract thank you and that was that question was made by mr nunes and the second was by dr jenkins any further discussion okay hearing none roll call please mr oliver hi shannon jenkins yes kathleen ameral yes mary waite yes john nunes yes thank you that that vote was unanimous so thank you everyone for that next up we have spotlight on the andrew b cushman school turn it over to dr gifford okay we're really pleased tonight to have dr dale who is the director of early childhood over at cushman and as we mentioned last time it's a little tough these days with kids in and out and remote not remote and but um all our principals are doing the best job
008they can to try to showcase what's going on in their school so if mr galashaw can bring her on we'll welcome dr dale to tonight's meeting she's coming [Laughter] no problem yep have all night hello hello hello dr dale how are you good how are you all good thank you for joining us this evening thank you for having me i'm excited excellent the floor is yours okay great thank you everybody can hear me okay great okay so tonight i was thinking um i'd like to share with you kind of what it looks like inside the walls of the andrew b cushman school i wanted to share with you through my very amateur video technology skills um an imovie that i created um put together uh very spontaneously it's an eight-minute peek into our integrated preschool
009and our kindergarten classrooms having the spotlight on cushman uh you'll notice many of the guidances that we've been hearing about and you'll see them in the works with three four and five-year-olds such as the social distancing and the mask wearing and hand washing the reduced classroom density even though we have all of these changes in our environment and it's different from what we're used to we've maintained a world of full of wonder and opportunity the video is going to give you a nice little glimpse into various things from morning arrival to different learning times it'll give you a little piece of looking at a kindergarten classroom with a hybrid model where you see students um from home zooming into their their classroom or google meeting through their classroom you'll see a physical education class and
010nap time how many times have we not got to see nap time at the cushman school you get to see it tonight um you'll get to see some of the expert experiential learning that goes on in preschool um and in kindergarten and how the teachers provide uh fun opportunities in the in the moment and are able to bring it into the classroom and tie it into the curriculum you'll see that with some snow tonight i've always said that if you're proud of your school you're happy to invite the school community in at any time so i thank you for the opportunity sharing this through this video kind of a day in the life of a cushman student from the early morning arrival to the dismissal here's just a few of the wonderful things that are
011happening in a normal school day our new normal school day we experience we create we play we learn we play some more and through all that we do we thank the support of our school community the cushman staff is a dynamic one with patience and creativity and our staff is dedicated to meeting the individual needs and to making learning fun i hope you enjoy it again it's very amateur this is our new little motto with our new school sign continuing with the bucket filling [Music] all right say good morning good morning [Music] can anybody tell me why you're standing on these x's does anybody know why [Music] why good job six feet apart thank you [Music] walking why perfect does anyone else need it up close thursday [Music] all right everyone at home wrote the
012word thursday as we select and now we're all going to look at the numbers and cooper is going to point to the numbers and we're all going to count so ready cooper here we go one two one can hit my counters three four five six seven eight nine now it's time for a circle and we're going to go to recess when we come inside we have letter stations it's a review week a o m n and we're going to have a second set with who there's molasses we're going to read a story how centers bathroom lunch recess rest we're going to practice writing our names today my friends recess bathroom snack and [Music] do [Music] and what letter is at the beginning of owl oh good job willow good job carter you're counting cars i
013just didn't go all the way up to the top [Music] now i yeah how much more you went all the way up to ten for the yellow one wow noah tell me what you're doing oh what did you make noah show me dick what is that is that a duck yep good good [Music] keep going put your head back oh you gotta get one [Music] are you ready one two three put your water in here snow water honey get your water put it all in the water goes into the snow watch it dump it in maverick yeah keep going [Applause] whoa [Music] wow you can put your finger in and stir it a little bit and mrs borowitz and i will give you a paper piece you can dump it on that paper please what
014did you make what did you make you could stop it did you make some snow yeah there you go and then you can let your animals play in it look at that [Music] oh my goodness that was [Music] here's another way to make snow with baking soda and conditioner and our favorite time of the day nap time [Music] it looks like a tail maybe it's a kitty's tail i think so yeah i think it's time to clean up toys we have toys away now get it get it [Applause] [Music] so i wanted to share that with you to give you an idea of kind of what it looks like like i said inside the um school so you can see how we're distancing the students and how we're trying to teach them about staying in
015their space when we have the duct tape perimeters um and you see that the many other children were able to wear their masks as the teachers do as well it's still you know it's it's become a natural thing now for students to wear their masks and um i think that they're they're doing a fabulous job and i think it's almost become almost a normal thing now and uh the kids are just enjoying enjoying coming to school and um today i was able to get into many classes that were remote and i was really pleasantly surprised at the number of students even at the preschool level that were remote today so i'm enjoying this very much the new position is in early intervention and working with early ed is it's been a challenge and it's a
016dynamic i truly mean it it's been a dynamic team uh these teachers are very skilled and very very talented and deal with many many challenges you know every day but um do so with grace and professionalism so thank you well thank you dr dale for taking the time uh to come on this evening as well as putting together that video i think it gives me a really great uh overall look uh peek into cushman school and everything that goes on there i cannot imagine um the logistics and just the routine building that had to take place uh throughout this year uh so no that was that was wonderful and i'll turn it over to my colleagues for any comments or questions from any of them uh yes mrs waite yes uh dr dale i just
017want to say that that video is fabulous i thought it was just such a sweet glimpse you know and it's been such a hard year you know and to see how resilient you know these kids are it's just you know in the hands-on projects that they were doing i mean i love the snow you know and you know i you know and learning about the conditioner baking soda i didn't know that so i mean just you know you could tell that they were excited to be there um you know and you know i think as adults we have you know we have almost more difficulty adjusting than you know than the kids do i mean they just you know they're they're clearly you know they're there and they're in school and you know and they're
018in their spaces and doing their thing and they're taking their naps and you know some of them are snapping and some are you know pushing their feet back and forth but it was you know my son went to cushman and it was just it was a beautiful experience a beautiful team there like you said um you know i makes me want you're looking at this i'm like i want to have another one to go back through so i really appreciate the hard work that you and your your team i know it's been a difficult year to come into and um you know it's it's it's fabulous to see so thank you for everything and to your staff you have a great staff there thank you thank you i do i it was very important for
019me for you to just as a group to see the the still the the wonder and the happiness and the um you know the the heartbeat of a preschool in kindergarten early ed environment even though we have all these regulations and guidances and things that we're doing i think that's that's the end result that we all wanted is to what can we create even though we have all these uh parameters to live within and i'm just very very happy of what's been created yeah you did a great job thank you thank you mrs waite anyone else mr nunes yeah thank you mr chairman yeah dr dale thank you very much that was that was excellent you know my i went to sixth grade at cushman school so you know seeing the school brings back a
020lot of good memories but you know and it was interesting and exciting to see you know everybody you know the students were engaged the teachers were engaged what color uh i was impressed with the letter o making owls how they were making the owls you know i mean i know you know here we go these are the students that are going to be you know junior and senior year at the dartmouth high school you know with all their awards from the act class and such but just how everyone was uh engaged you know really really makes it nice so uh congrats you know job well done and hats off to the teachers that are making this work absolutely absolutely thank you mr nunes this is amarillo yeah uh thank you dr dale a very sweet
021video um and i had to reach over to my this isn't mine it's my sons but shout out to the individual meeting the individual needs of your students with their oral motor sensory you know stimulation there in the video i captured that my question is have you noticed any glitches or has it been kind of seamless now that we're kind of been into this for a while um uh like you mentioned the early intervention so the transition has has early intervention been working with you and and um has it been seamless or are there still kind of issues around families whose children may qualify for services in the preschool setting but hesitant due to the regulations or has it been pretty decent yeah it has been very very smooth i want to say that um
022you know i wasn't here before to have something to compare it to but i can just say that um with the need to do virtual meetings that's really provided me with more time to be more hands-on with families so i might be meeting them in a meeting and they might be at their workplace and then i'm calling them later on at a time this mutually convenient for us you know at home and things like that um we've been qualifying students and students have been coming into the program and you know now the pace is really really picking up because this is the time of the year when that happens so um yeah i'm pretty um pleased there's a lot of questions that need to be answered before somebody wants to drop off their students to
023come into the building you know but now i have this i have this cute little video that i can show them and i was fortunate enough to have the uh preschool information nights coming up february 23rd and so we have a professional uh the local tv here is helping us with a video for that so it won't be my little imovie but it'll be more professional and that will give families a nice look too in in the building so i'm looking forward to having that as a resource for our families to see great and for those students coming in with special education needs let them know we have a special education parent advisory council um that is really open to hearing from new families so um you can send them our way i will thank
024you thank you mrs emeril dr jenkins yeah i mean after the video just like what my colleague said the video is great and i'm and i'm super you know grateful for everything that your staff is doing that you are doing and to meet the needs of our littlest learners um i'll follow up a little bit you know on what miss hammer all has said and i think the other the we're we've all been so focused on getting through this year and we're doing i think a great job the best that we can i mean it's become increasingly clear to me you know over the past dealing with my kids just reading looking around that how many challenges we're going to continue to have right because some of some of our little listeners like my husband
025read a story about how kids learn from people's facial expressions that's how they learn right social and emotional skills and many of these kids are not have not seen faces outside of their families um and so it's so important what you're doing now because if we weren't doing this right um there's there's there would be so many more challenges we still have a lot to face moving forward but i'm grateful that after hearing from so many other districts where kids are not in school and they're not able to have these interactions that we're able to do this for these kids because it's just seeing that video really you know brings home how important this is um so please do share thanks with all your staff from all of us about this important work i absolutely
026will i will thank you thank you dr jenkins yeah i will just sum it up echoing everyone's comments but wonderful job wonderful presentation dr dale um one question that i have is you had said you were able because it was a full remote day you were able to pop into some classrooms today to check in do you find that overall that you have a lot of students participating remotely on their off and when they're on their remote days yes we're having we're having really good success with students coming into kindergarten in the morning meetings and extended into the ela block and then the closing meetings but today on a remote day like today we really are challenging our preschool families to be just as involved and so today i was trying to pop into those
027classes and and the children were just so tickled i think to see me pop in because that's what i would do in the in the building right i'm in the classrooms all the time so um they were just happy to to see me pop in and we're following up with the families that um are having difficulty and the families that are having difficulty are the ones who um have uh child care issues um and um we did find one family today with technology and we'll take care of that this week it wasn't unknown to us until today so um we are doing everything we can to reach out to to our families and every every time i think we're getting more and more um involvement well that's that's wonderful i'm happy to hear that uh
028so please uh pass along our our thanks to all of your staff for uh you know a job well done i will thank you thank you for for coming over tonight great thank you everybody have a good night bye-bye uh next up on the agenda was originally the uh actually you can see under the presentations for anyone watching or had the agenda we were supposed to uh present the south coast educational collaborative we did skip over that we decided uh dr gifford and i are going to push that back to the next meeting so that'll be in person so next up under old business we have an update on the athletics program dr gifford thank you yes we have mr chris fully here tonight um just as a quick intro as you know we ran
029what we think was a very successful fall program um this uh sees we only had one little issue and we handled that well due to the real vigilance by the coaches and and the entire staff that works with our students so we were one of the few schools in the area that did decide to run that program and we were happy with that um i know we have some sports hockey and basketball kind of finishing up now but we do have some thoughts about moving forward for us athletic programs so we asked mr chris ifully to come on and uh update you on that and get the sense of the committee as we move into this next next season mr chris fulley thank you dr gifford and thank you to the comedians for having me
030tonight um as dr gifford said uh you know we've run off all in winter athletic seasons and in my opinion have been very successful with the implementation of our uh plan in our safety measures and modifications you know which we're finishing up the winter season as we speak we actually had two of our teams participating tonight in a conference tournament our girls basketball team defeated brockton high school here at home earlier this evening and our boys are playing in the first round at new bedford as we speak um so we also have our boys ice hockey team who is still competing they have about a week and a half left of their season they will not be playing a conference tournament because our our conference um only has three hockey teams uh competing and we
031also have the co-op with with uh bishop stang um you know it has been very challenging during the winter time in comparison to the fall because you know you've had those two holidays and christmas and new year's um and i'm sure that i i know there's a lot of um there was there was a lot of uh challenges that came along with those two holidays and we've seemed to work through that at this point now we're about to enter the fall two season uh which is scheduled to begin on monday february 22nd and that season would have unified basketball football fault cheerleading and boys and girls winter track again with the winter track the winter track would most likely be taking place outside for competitions because none of the indoor tracks that we would traditionally
032compete at whether it be the reggie lewis center in roxbury or um wheaton college is is allowing outside um groups to come in we've had plenty of dialogue with our coaches and we've begun to plan and um with with a lot of details that we have to cover we're going to host the individual program meetings uh like we've traditionally done the first two uh seasons that has been um you know very transparent as far as our expectations and uh things that we all need to follow now i know that's one of the hot topics uh per se since september has been um what we have our fan policy our spectator policy as you know at this point we have not allowed spectators or fans into our home athletic events that has stretched from both the
033fall and winter season now nothing can replace in-person fan and spectators but we've done our best job to come as close as we could um you know in lieu of in-person attendance we've streamed our varsity games uh through dc tv and that great relationship that we've built with them our varsity games in the winter time was streamed through mr peratti in his media program and they've done a great job and not only uh him but the kids who have produced the broadcast has been a great educational and learning experience now i do think we need to uh start looking forward um because as the the winter season is wrapping up and we're about to uh embark on the fall two season we currently in town uh are positive cases of covert 19 are back down
034to our pre-thanksgiving level our town has hosted multiple covet 19 vaccine clinics and today the eea released updated guidelines concerning the number of spectators allowed at an event it was more of a focus on outdoors but it's starting to trend in a positive direction which i think everyone is excited about um throughout the state of massachusetts now as far as fans go uh why i don't you know while i don't feel comfortable expanding on what the current eea guidelines permit at this moment i would like the opportunity to pilot a program which would allow two parents and guardians per participating student athlete uh kind of modeling the approach that we've taken for senior nights to be implemented moving forward now i believe that number movie uh would be an appropriate starting point and one that
035i feel is safe and manageable and it's something that we could definitely revisit before the start of our fall two season you know we did not have any fans within the first two seasons and i know that a lot of other schools have but we've never had that ability to put together our protocols and procedures outside of senior nights you know welcoming fans going through our screening process and allowing them to come to our events and i feel as though as we're moving and trending to outdoor events it's a great opportunity to possibly entertain starting that process now so that we can put our protocols in place um kind of comb through some of the challenges that we are going to um to battle in order to do this safe and appropriately mr christopher yes
036could just a quick question i hate to interrupt you but can you go over what your protocols are for your senior night like what are you doing for when you have your senior nights so so our senior nights have uh as i mentioned have been very successful we have um invited the uh parents and guardians of our seniors um to one event uh during the season so in the fall uh most of them were the very last game uh and then we happened to host playoff game um beyond the senior day uh for for the winter season uh we did we did do senior night for hockey a little bit earlier because um you know as far as the the timing of it and the rink availability and and i know that one of our
037home games is going to be during february vacation and and there's some difficulties that come with that we did our senior day a few games earlier but for for boys basketball we did it to the second to last game girls basketball we did it um the last game before the playoffs and it has been um parents of the seniors so on average they've been two um per individual uh they have come in we've checked them in um we get the listing from the coaches um beforehand i follow up with an email that basically explains soup to nuts what the expectations are and what the night's going to look like uh they do check in we go through our our cove protocol tracking questions um and then we have our ceremony and then there are the
038the parents are allowed to stay in our facility um social distance um throughout the competition and then when the competition is over they're asked to exit um right away thank you as far as personnel do does that require additional personnel in the um in the facilities and making sure that people are following uh proper social distancing yes um and again when we talk about um having the ability to do it now uh in preparation for the future i think it's very important that we see you know we're going to go in with a solid game plan that i feel very comfortable with but to answer your question they would be an additional one to two staff members that would um police per se the the individual fans the spectators that are at the event but
039again you know we we've been able to run senior days and senior nights uh very successfully uh parents have been very cooperative um and again they're just very happy that they have the ability to come see um their student athlete participate in person sure well thank you i i apologize for interrupting you i just came off the top of my head and wanted to make sure i asked those questions you have anything else for us or do you want to hear from any of our comm committee members no i i think that the two ter the two words of safe and manageable are are what should be at the forefront um but like i said uh with with the numbers uh trending in the good direction i do think there is a unique opportunity here
040to start that conversation and begin that process as we roll into the fall too which is an outdoor season mrs waite yes um so thank you first of all mr chris apolly and you know i know that you know we've been hearing you know as individual members quite a bit from um some parents who definitely want to see this you know happening for their to come and see their students um you know and it's good to see that our numbers are down and that you know like you know i agree with your judgment i think it's um it's a time to try it out i guess one question i have is maybe in this maybe goes back to uh mr kylie or dr gifford is well this you know when we're talking about hetlan it's
041a different issue because it's not within our schools um what kind of stress would this put on to our janitorial staff i guess that's something i had in mind is we have more parents and you know who are in our facilities as opposed to outside facilities um you know we know that we have more personnel that we are going to need to check in parents and kind of handle that but as far as cleaning protocols you know since we're still uncovered what are your i guess you know what are the thoughts around um that like i could just say that they're already cleaning these areas every day so um you know they're already spraying with the electrostatic sprayers in those areas every day um you know would there be some additional use and there thereby
042creating some more work yeah there would be but um you know i mean they the bathrooms that they're cleaning and the uh and the gym area would already have to be cleaned so it's not i i don't think it's prohibitive okay okay that's good to know thank you so that's all for me thank you very much uh mr christopoli i really appreciate it thank you mrs white anyone else dr jenkins i'll start off by full disclosure here that i am the parent of a senior who will probably start competing um in you know in the fall two season um but i i mean i i appreciate these efforts i know we've been hearing from a lot of parents but i still have concerns right our numbers are still quite high even though our numbers are
043down before thanksgiving right in the fall our numbers were 10 20 you know community members with covid um now we still have 150 a week so our numbers are pretty high um i'm not i wouldn't oppose what you're saying but but i am still sort of deeply reluctant and you know and also say this i hear what parents are saying you know i was an athlete all through college right my parents were often not able to come to my games i've been taken away in ambulances right people say this i'm okay right like i'm okay i have a high degree of confidence that even if we didn't right allow parents that our athletic staff our coaches and our trainers will give our student athletes the best of care and so i'm a little bit reluctant
044to allow this but i wouldn't say vote i guess against it if this is what the administration wants to do but i i would voice my concern because i do think we do have pretty high community spread and i know that all of our staff and teachers and coaches are taxed this year it's a hard year and to ask people to work more i just have a little hard time with that i think you know people could use some time off and particularly the not fun job of being masked and distancing police in an era where those sorts of things are very polarized right now um so i hope the community knows that if we do go forward with this this is right conditioned on their good behavior right if people come and they don't
045social distance and they don't mask then i think that we need to not do this and so people are going to be allowed in so long as they follow the rules and if they don't follow the rules then i don't think we should do this because i don't want to put that on our staff thank you dr jenkins uh mr nunes you have muted sorry as soon as i went to speak i noticed it thank you mr chairman yeah i totally in agreement with uh dr jenkins i had written the same thing as mr crystal fully and thank you very much for that presentation but you know i mean it's incumbent upon the parents you know i go back to talking about earlier if the student you know your child is not feeling well to
046keep them home it's the same thing here if you're not feeling good or something no disrespect you need to stay home because all it's going to take is one person and everything's going to be shut down and you know there will be no more i'll make i'll that'll be part of my motion if i may if we need a motion that if we have to shut it down once because apparent there's an issue it's done for the year it's as it's as simple as that you know everybody's got to police themselves and take care of themselves so but mr crystal foley great uh great job looking forward to the fall too uh hopefully uh the snow will be off the stadium field and uh you know they won't need uh pink uh footballs so that
047they can see them thank you john anyone else uh mrs amaral um i really don't have much to add i think my colleagues kind of said all of what i've been you know thinking um i want well i want to trust your judgment um mr christopher lee i mean i do i want to support that decision to pilot um you know i've been hearing from parents as well and i appreciate their advocacy i certainly can understand it um you know we have to make some hard decisions and not everyone is going to be happy and this might not need clarification um but when you say to are you meeting like two custodial adults or i'm just thinking of family like mine where we we divide and conquer often because we can't always be at the
048same place for the different needs of our family um and say a grandparent wants to go with a mom and they want you know would it be contingent upon that sort of a decision and obviously we can't really presume that each family member has a two parent household and that sort of thing um will those will those decisions be made on an individual basis or do are is it cut and dry so there were parents guardians so there was um there were a couple situations that there were individual basis in the fall where you know student athletes did have parents and step parents which which again for a senior day a senior night event is extremely important to to honor and respect what my recommendation would be in this situation would be your parent parents
049or guardian make it very clear thank you so i i was just wondering how many games are left that are home games of any of the sports the seasons right now as we as we sit right now there are two two games so i i would i would propose that we we do a pilot very very very um strict parameters like you were speaking about um we've obviously been talking about this a while and we understand i mean we've been pretty adamant about no no fans and as you all have taken the emails and the questions etc um for the betterment of the program and trying to keep our kids playing and safe but to dr jenkins point if we if we were able to try a game or the last one or two games
050as a pilot and and continue on and if it goes well and then prepare ourselves for the next season um but as mr noon said if something happens and we have pushed back or anything then we can always push pull it back again [Music] that would be my my thinking that's the nudes yeah thank you mr jim it just came to mind um are we going to have like a sign up mr crystal fully so you know how many are coming or i mean i'm not trying to get into the weeds here but you know i know the reading the uh mia rules and regulations i guess it's 45 students so the most you're going to have is 90 parents type of deal but are you going to have some type of a checklist that
051says you know mr and mrs smith you know are here for for johnny and that type of i don't know so um when you're referring to the 45 that that would be for the fall too for outdoor for say uh before the number 45 would be the maximum uh participants uh allowed to suit up during the football game um and again being outdoors and there but if you're talking about so to answer your question there's multiple directions to go with that there there is the the simple uh soliciting names and creating your lists there are schools that have created um different types of google forms that they have sent to families and families have filled out and it kind of dumps into a spreadsheet that you could print out and be ready for the check-in
052um so again i mean what i would what i would do and what i feel is most likely the best situation um is to do it electronically now having said that we could do it one day and it doesn't work out well and then you go back to the paper form so these are the types of situations that i'm talking about that i much like to iron out well before we transition to outdoor activity where now you have a situation where there's even more individuals that are attending and eligible to attend an event and you really haven't gone through those i certainly don't want to call them growing pains but um you haven't gone through that process yet you know the senior days went great they again you know the most we had was individuals
053um that attended you know you do that in in the rest of our fall our winter season and fall too that number is is going to go up pretty high um in comparison to the senior days so those are those are that's a great question um that's how i would go and approach it to begin with um i'm pretty confident that it would work efficiently but again if it doesn't uh it's a very easy adjustment this is weight you're muted okay mary uh mr christopher have you checked in with some of our like neighboring districts who have allowed um spectators and how it's going there i mean i i guess i kind of get you know revert back to you know the idea of the senior night so we just have the senior parents and
054i think i was i stepped back a little bit as i'm you know listening thinking football and the number of parents that we're talking about you know bringing in all those parents i almost feel i mean first of all i'll get back to what you know mr newton said earlier and i think you know look tonight let's move on the pilot and then revisit completely from what we've seen for and not make a decision for fall too that's the first thing i would think but i also am wondering maybe you know if we take a baby step and say we allow seniors i am worried about you know when we start thinking about such a huge squad and that many parents congregate together that really does you know i understand the seniors i i just
055i have you know i i yeah i just i'd say that that those numbers really concern me so i guess i'm curious what other schools are you know what they're thinking how that what kind of success what kind of issues have come up as you've been talking to other deities so so so that's that's the loaded question so remember in the fall we made our decision of no fans and yeah all the other schools in the conference jumped on board with us and then they jumped off board and created a very unfavorable situation for us but to our credit in my opinion we have been the most consistent school and school department in this area when it comes to this topic and subject right um for the winter time the league did decide that as
056far as with basketball that we were not allowing uh home or away fans uh with the exception of senior nights um and we're just about again to complete those seasons and it's something that none of us in our schools have done uh hockey is a little bit different we're again we we have three schools um within our conference that we play we play a lot of non-league games um you know in our conference we have bridgewater raynham who who does allow fans uh we have we have durfee that when we played them did not um a lot of the opponents that we do play do allow spectators and fans um again albeit controlled uh so there and again if you're looking at a lot of the different schools in the area and to your question
057i will compare just for this purpose but i certainly we we make decisions that's in you know the best interests of our student athletes and programs and schools but um in the surrounding schools and conferences many of many of the schools have moved forward with some type of fan experience outside of senior nights so thank you everyone for sharing your thoughts and concerns or just uh general discussions uh myself uh you know i'm reluctant as well um my suggestion would be that we proceed cautiously um because part of me is i really part of me is not for all this but i can certainly understand i'm not sure maybe we just expanded a little bit and not to every game i don't need to put a wrench in the wheel here but maybe we look
058at expanding it somewhat by allowing another day or another night besides senior night but not fully opening it up to every game and i know that we're talking about a very small amount of games is that right mr christophuli correct it would it would be two nights or two two games i should say in addition to senior night no senior night has already taken place okay so i don't know what the committee's pleasure is um if you want to take a vote or um mr nunes yeah uh i'll make a motion in a second mr crystal fully dumb is it are we playing how many home football games are we going to have uh we have two scheduled with a possibility of a third i think and i'm going to make an assumption they're going
059to be like saturday afternoon versus friday night friday nights they're going to be friday nights okay i figure with with with not having to worry about triple e for the first time in a number of years um we might as well take advantage of that because there's no guarantees in the fall that we won't be under those restrictions again okay i agree uh dr jenkins i just want to point out i don't i don't think we voted on this um for the for winter sports um so i don't know if we need a notion i know mr nunes is is proposing that um i i i'm not sure what we would be voting on at this point in time because i'm not are we voting on all parents like to mrs wait's point i'm i'm
060i'm concerned about having that many parents um you know maybe for football we want to pursue if it's just two games that's you know just the parents of seniors it just doesn't feel quite i guess i would say ripe yet like i don't know that i feel ready to vote i know mr chris fully is proposing to sort of go out and look at this and develop this further um i'm just not certain that i'm ready to vote on anything now certainly mr nunes is that's his prerogative to make a motion but it feels like there's a lot of unknowns right now about how this is actually going to work so what do you what are you proposing doctor jenkins so we just allowed mr christian to fully to we didn't we didn't vote for
061winter last time and we the administration moved forward on the policy that that they recommended okay thank you uh mr oliver can i make one quick comment uh yeah that's the news brought up uh football and and again i mean that's something that's something that's going to be discussed within our league to try to get some common ground um for football because again you know they're it's it's a sport that has the most participants um on both sides and again we'll have some certain restrictions that we're going to need to follow there's a lot of variables not as far as game play itself but the actual running of the event and the responsibilities that come with it so uh the conference is looking to get together um and to kind of carve out a path
062that we feel is um you know safe and manageable moving into that season thank you mr christopher uh mrs jamerrill um yeah and just to clarify this isn't just a football thing this is unified this is all fall two this is unified basketball however that's indoors this is cheerleading competit i guess competitions or something um and then a cheerleading competition can't happen be a game game day and again in addition to your 45 roster players you have your cheerleaders also that are added to that and then winter boys and girls track which yes doesn't okay numbers on track may be even bigger than the numbers on football right i mean if you think about what the track team looks like yes but the the track the track team um what we've talked about in the
063conference is doing virtual meets so that you don't have two large groups at one site kind of we don't have swimming but that's what this the many schools in the state who host swimming have done mr christopholi um yes what are your what are your thoughts about just doing seniors is that you know senior parents and kind of keeping that rather than opening i mean what do you what do you see as the advantage of opening maybe advantage is not the right word but what are your thoughts around just inviting our senior parents in for the fall to season well i mean it's it's it's difficult to go from zero to whatever is next and i agree with you when you when it's more of a kind of slow drip per se that you're looking
064for um the advantages of uh you know allowing each participant to have two uh parents there you know your maximum is probably between 38 and 40 percent maybe a little bit lower depending on if two parents are gonna go or one um when you're talking about seniors you're looking at the number of uh you know 12 to 14 per se so i mean when you're looking at the size of the area in which we have um there is there is room to allow two per okay and when you're looking at what this could evolve into in the fall too that's why um we wanted to take not that huge leap of faith but the halfway point um because you're talking about half rosters so you talked about a larger area of the rink um you
065know like i said we had our senior day the other day and and it went smooth um so again i mean in both cases uh like i said i i went right for the um each individual player because i think in the facility we can we can manage that situation um and it would give us you know a little bit more than what we just came to the table with which we just allowed senior parents only in the last event and are you i'm sorry to jump in again but are you and what about your coaches how are they feeling are they in support of this that's one thing you know um are they do they feel confident moving forward are they hesitant and not you know you don't speak about you know individual coaches
066but just in general coaching staff what are their thoughts no i mean it's it's a very different environment when there are no fans and spectators um there is as many positives you can bring up and there's many negatives that you can bring up uh i'd be i'd be lying to you if you go into an event with no spectators and you have the same kind of i hate to use the term juice coming into the game as you would with fans um you know again um that's been you know very different um you know it wasn't as different in the fall because there were a lot of fans that stood at the fence so that many of the individuals sports outdoors parrots still got to see every single game that was home that their student
067athlete participated in volleyball obviously didn't have that um experience uh basketball has not to this point had that experience um you know so so again i mean i think from a coaching standpoint i've gotten um kind of a mixed bag of reviews of some of them really like that excitement that fans do bring in um some have commented saying that you know in some ways especially in the high intense parts of the game the kids are a little bit more manageable so again or anything in between so so unless someone else feels differently you know why don't we allow the administration to proceed cautiously um my my other question that i had mr christophuli was the we're allowing with this proposal we're not looking at visiting teams bringing in parents correct just just just home
068dartmouth parents i guess my personal feeling would be is to let's see how this goes and i'd love for you to come back to the committee after after a couple of games yeah i'd see you dr jenkins give me a minute please um and come back to us and see you know present let us know what your thoughts are you know because if you're looking at this at the big picture i do think that at some point we need to start looking at some type of expansion because let's face it we don't know where we're going to be at come next fall i i honestly don't think we're going to be normal next fall when it comes to sports and when it comes to school that's that's just my opinion and my reality um so
069i think we need to you know t slowly tease this out and let's see where it goes but also in the meantime also work towards coming up with some type of workable scenario for what will happen next fall um so that's just my just my thoughts on it dr jenkins you know i just want to acknowledge that we're getting a lot of emails that kate is forwarding to us from people who are following along that it does feel unfair to the to the fall into the winter sports families um and and i see that and to be honest i'm not you know particularly comfortable with having spectators at all i've said that um but i do think right you know dr gifford had asked would it be possible for some of the the the winter
070sports that we have on going now that i don't know i guess hockey has another game or two um it feels grossly unfair because their numbers in the fall were much lower than they are now right and parents were told you can't go to games and now our numbers are much higher and we're saying well i guess it's okay and so i understand that and i acknowledge that this is a really difficult situation um you know again i'll say this i'm i'm the parent of a senior this sucks all around right excuse my language for these seniors it really really really does um and you know i don't want to say well you know everybody else got a bad deal so we should continue to give a bad deal but if we're gonna try to
071make it right for some students going forward then maybe we should try to do that as soon as possible to dr gifford's point um even if we do say i think we have some hockey games left even if we do it for parents or seniors i don't know i mean i i feel these parents frustrations i really do uh mr nunes yeah thank you mr chairman i know i won't make any motions but my suggestion would be to let you know mr you know the administration of mr fully figure out what they want to do for the you know last two last couple of hockey games and see how that works out again going back to what we've all talked about is you know the parents having to police themselves and such because if there's
072an issue then you know the past half hour with all due respect that we've spent discussing this great conversations is going to be famous because we just won't let any parents in you know for fall too so i mean if you know they're able to let some parents in for the seat for the last couple of hockey games on a trial basis to see how it works and that way mr christofoli and his staff can you know have you know quote unquote any bugs in the program you know that they're trying to do they can get worked out and be ready to go when fall two starts i'm fine with that and and fast forwarding to the spring it in the spring it's very it becomes an unmanageable situation when you have three baseball games
073going on two softball game possibly going on obviously the stadium is is very much easier to manage because it does have um you know a surrounding defense per se that you can control the facility uh a gymnasium has that capability a hockey rink has that capability yeah if i might if we could um i absolutely would shannon just mentioned about the fairness or not fairness we feel it this is why it's been such a difficult decision um i think in the beginning you know we were once again trying to be as extremely cautious not knowing where we were going with anything what was happening etc um seeing how well run the athletics program and i'll even mention the music program at this point because those are you know big programs have been going um i'd
074like to have more conversation with mr chris fully uh in the next few days and mr kiley and and if you will um if once we make a decision if we can just notify you that we've decided that we're going to try one game or not one game and then come back with those results but i'm still i'm still leery i'm listening to what you're saying that the fairness are people feeling slighted we certainly don't but again it's an unnatural year it's an unusual year we're trying to every decision you know is is difficult whether it's even the things about going remote not remote a virtual not virtual everybody is feeling inequitable inequity or unfairness along the way but so if we can have a couple of days and really talk about it more i
075i really trust the program and what they've been doing but i don't know if we can move forward and and start to make it better i would feel comfortable with that but thank you dr gifford now i i agree let's you know let's allow you folks to to tease this out and see where it goes um no matter what this has been the year of no matter what our decision is the school committee and his administration is going to be 50 of the of the people are not going to agree with our decision my daughter played fall volleyball i didn't get to see one game of hers so i'm one of those parents folks i get it i completely get it but one way or the other we're gonna get emails whether they're good bad
076or otherwise this is just that's what i'm talking this year up to we make the best decisions we can with the information given to us at the present time um so i think we've spent enough time on this issue i want to thank mr christofoli for his preferred wonderful presentation for putting this together i i'll all i will say is that uh you know take your time do your due diligence um you know and if we can get this in on a trial basis with a few hockey games that are left with maybe more seniors uh parents uh i'll leave it up to to the professionals but i would just like at some point dr gifford if you could come back uh with mr christophule to report on um how this went thank you very
077much have a good night andy thank you you talks too thanks andy good luck not easy no unfortunately it's not it's just been the year yep next up under new business superintendent's update dr gifford all right i have a few things to talk about and uh mr kylie is going to update us as well um miss way asked last time about the vogue numbers so we do have that um just at present time which was just updated by miss genthner um we have 322 students at vogue and 67 of those are ninth graders just to kind of give you a sense of the number that and that's been about the pattern 75 or so a year that moved from the eighth grade into the ninth and we have only 18 at bristol aggie um as
078of in january just just recently thank you oh you're quite welcome um just a few things going on the normal stuff we still have project time for our new teachers running and um they just met recently and had a great meeting mr gill um met with them also and so miss uh oliveira is still running that program and doing a nice job bringing folks in to talk to them and help them and keep them connected to the district we are waiting to hear on the if we're in the second round of the engineering grant from the project lead the way as you recall we've we're involved with project lead the way for our computer science we're continuing with that and adding more resources more professional development for those teachers the two computer science teachers that
079we have but we're still waiting now to hear on the engineering uh grant if we can move forward with that our 7th and 8th grade teachers have been working with umass dartmouth and wpi it's some researchers from that we're working to integrate computer science into our curriculum they're hoping to get a grant from the national science foundation i know dr jenkins knows about that and hooked us up with that and um this aloe vera has been meeting with those teachers and those researchers and we'll see what happens i do want to do a shout out to mr peratti once again in the dhs media i think i sent you a link for one of the upcoming shows they have the superlative show coming up but he has a new new group of kids a new
080crop of kiddos that are working with him but once again he he just he's here tonight of course he's not failed us on anything we ever ask him to do um and he grabs his sidekick mr galashaw and grabs him along so i just want to give them a shout out once again um gene sharon our director of nutrition has let us know that another grant was given um to us for food services mr kylie might have more to say about that ten thousand dollars over at the quinn so we'll keep getting those funds to help us prepare food and give meals out to our families you received the today i sent you uh from patty keen the deca students and how well they did there's too many to list so i'm not going to
081say anything but congratulations to all of those students that placed and we'll be moving on and did such an outstanding job and i do want to commend those teachers for continuing the program our students always do so well with the deca students the i think uh last week i sent you the an edition of the elementary curriculum chronicle that mrs oliveira has been working with with the cia team and i thought it was awesome so i hope you had a chance to look at that but the second edition is going out uh this week and it just really provides a lot of resources and updates on what's happening with the elementary curriculum and uh the last thing before i'll turn it over to mr kylie is once again we met with of course mr micho
082this morning and as you know we had the saturday clinic and we it just went phenomenally he first of all he he um couldn't say enough about the help that the dartmouth public schools is offering secretarial help nurse help uh technology people were there um they did almost thousand a thousand vaccines this weekend and um up from about 300 he said no clinics really have attempted that number i've received emails from folks tell just out of the blue telling me what a wonderful experience it was professionally run organized and i think the most important thing is a couple of testimonies if you will from one of our nurses and and actually ms genthner as well um what a wonderful feeling it is to be working with the community and when you like miss uh nurse
083said you know when she walked in it was like this sense of i don't know just camaraderie and collaboration and all the departments are there the police department and um obviously the board of health and us and just all kinds of folks that are just doing the best they can to help the community so obviously there'll be many more clinics coming but um we once again really appreciate the work that we've been doing with the board of health and mr micho he's been fabulous so that's it for me and as i said i know mister um kylie has a couple updates for us as well thanks dr i um just wanted to let you know that i haven't forgotten about the budget um i appreciate your flexibility and and uh we originally were going to
084do our presentation tonight as you'd imagine there's uh an awful lot of uncertainty in this budget process and a whole lot of other things for us to focus on on a daily basis besides this but it is you know one of our most important tasks obviously and it helps support kids um you know so we we are ready to to move forward at the next school committee meeting with a presentation and our our proposal you will all have that this week because next week is school vacation so i will get it to you this week so you have it in advance of the next school committee meeting and we'll move forward you know with that there's there's certainly some holes we don't have a lot of information we have you know the governor's initial budget
085proposal um but we have no more information from the state side we really don't know where um you know where we're going to have to go in terms of restrictions and and you know what sort of um what sort of precautions we're going to have in place the in the next school year obviously so there's a there's a lot to think about with this budget but we've given it our best shot we're in a pretty good place with it we have a budget subcommittee meeting on wednesday um and that will be the first public discussion of uh of this and then we'll we'll bring it forward on the 22nd to all of you anything else uh mr kylie oh i just saw mr nunes go ahead go ahead mr nunes yeah thank you mr chairman
086uh i apologize i should have got talked to mr kylie about this earlier today but we were just talking i know we had the furnace issue uh at part of school uh i'm just wondering what we've got for a funding source and you know everything and i'm just wondering if we should put uh town hall on notice that we may be coming for a reserve fund transfer to cover the cars so what mr nunes is referring to and for the benefit of of those who don't know we we had a heating issue at the potter school two boilers went down and uh had to be replaced so it was a big task i really can't thank rick ferreira enough he he led the whole effort had somebody on site immediately to help with it he
087dismantled the boilers himself and it really it was a pretty seamless operation considering we went from uh not having either of those boilers functioning to having in basically a day um two new boilers in place hooked up ready to go uh pumping heat back into the building so it was an awesome effort in terms of money uh you know we as i had mentioned in my my update to you folks we're looking at a couple of uh a couple of alternatives in terms of um you know how what we might pursue one is insurance one is uh although they are not under warranty this is highly unlikely it was highly unlikely that this would happen to boilers of these of this age so um these are excellent boilers very high efficiency we've we replaced them
088less than 10 years ago they should have lasted another 15 years um you know without any major problems so you know we are going to pursue that with the manufacturer we'll see you know how that goes um and then beyond that yeah we have uh you know a couple of a couple of viable options we do have some money built into the budget for maintenance of you know our equipment um this is fairly expensive um and you know it would deplete a lot of those funds so i we definitely could pursue a you know a line item a uh reserve fund transfer if we need to uh but i'd like to have an idea really of how much the net cost of this is going to be before i you know before i move in
089that direction thank you mr chairman thank you mr kylie you're welcome mr nunes uh thank you for your presentation mr kiley on another note too i think it's important that um we just recognize mr kylie the um we had some issues with staffing in our food service program at the high school and we looked to some community uh to some community vendors to step up but i think it's important that maybe we recognize them so i'll let you uh just talk a little bit about that yeah we we you know everything is most everything is coveted related these days and we had some staffing issues that were covered related that uh got to the point where we weren't quite sure if we were going to be able to serve lunch at two schools we we
090managed staffing was been uh really amazingly flexible in the food service department they've uh gene sheridan is uh you know working with those folks and they've really stepped up and the quinn school was impacted and the staff there did an amazing job getting everything ready for for kids and the high school was the other building in which we ended up bringing in jersey mike's and uh and domino's pizza and our staff was not it was not staffed by our normal cafeteria workers it was volunteer staff anybody who could help um and uh and it worked out it's worked out pretty well it's it's uh it's still going um you know through this week but uh but we made it happen and we've got food for kids and uh and it's good food so it's not
091cheap food that's for sure um so there's a cost there is a cost factor to that and it's uh so that's a that's an issue but but yeah we made we've made it happen and uh gene really really stepped up right away with uh you know working with me and just trying to figure out okay what can we do we've got to provide something to eat and we have no one i think it's fabulous jim or mr kylie just the the community effort the you know people you said volunteers coming together there's a lot of collaboration that takes place not just with food service but day-to-day operations uh to make keep schools open and keep the dartmouth public schools open so uh thank you for your report mr kylie thank you um i for the
092uh report of the chair i will just add a couple of things i thought it was great um i know at our last meeting uh we uh mr tebow talked about our our new our service dog and i can i i love seeing how wpri has picked him up uh all he's got a lot of media attention uh the uh the service dog so it's been uh it's been a pleasure to read some of the articles and hearing what the kids have to had to say about the about them so um no i think it's a wonderful program and i'd love to love to see it maybe um you know get somehow bring that down to some of the other levels on another note i would just like to take this opportunity to express our
093condolences to uh deidra tavares she was a former dartmouth high school and smex student she passed away unexpectedly and there's been a lot of um a lot of information on facebook as well as the local media about what a wonderful person she was and how she enjoyed her time at dartmouth high school so i just asked if we just as a committee and administration here just to have a moment of silence for deidre thank you she will certainly be missed from everything that i read sounded like a wonderful lady uh that is all i have uh anyone else have anything for the uh committee okay our next regularly scheduled meeting of the dartmouth school committee is uh monday february 22nd this time chair will entertain a motion to adjourn into executive session for the purpose
094to provide an update with respect to collective bargaining with union personnel not to reconvene no moved second motion by mr noon second by dr jenkins on the motion any further discussion roll call please mr oliver yes shannon jenkins yes kathleen emerald yes mary wait yes john nunes yes this meeting has ended uh we'll see you on the flip side everyone thank you