001good evening everyone i'd like to call this meeting of the dartmouth school committee to order for monday december 21st 2020. you please stand uh with the pledge of allegiance the united states well happy holidays everyone i hope everyone is doing well i'd like to take this opportunity to remind the committee members to please silence your cell phones anyone up here anyone else in the room even though there's only a few of us please put them on vibrate thank you and as a reminder for governor baker's audit suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law chapter 38 section 20. the public will not be allowed to physically access this school committee meeting members of the public can access the meeting via live stream at youtube.com forward slash dhs tv media in addition the event will be
002rebroadcast 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 and as always a big shout out to mr parotti and his students uh helping to film this meeting and our friends also at dartmouth community television uh could i have a roll call please mrs spencer here shannon jenkins here kathleen admiral here mary wait here john newman yep thank you very much at this time we typically a lot uh 10 minutes for anyone wishing to speak on any of tonight's agenda items i know that uh miss gentler has received two so
003far is that correct so and everyone has had those forwarded in to your inboxes your email inboxes for review and anyone else wishing to comment on any of tonight's agenda items can do so by emailing uh ms genther at kathleen kathleen genther at dartmouthschools.org if you wish to comment any of the agenda items we will certainly circle back at the end of the meeting that being said could i have a motion for to approve the regular session minutes of december 7 2020 so moved second i have a motion by mr nunes a second by mrs amaral on the motion any discussion cheer hearing none all in favor aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously entertain chair we'll entertain a motion to approve the emergency open session minutes of december 15 2020. so moved second motioned by
004mr newton seconded by mrs waite on the motion any further discussion chia hearing none all in favor opposed motion carries unanimously thank you very much at this time we're going to take if it's okay with the committee i'm going to take an item out of order so we don't have our friends over at quinn waiting through some of the older business so at this time i'd like to um i guess i'll turn it over to dr given to welcome whoever will be joining us to discuss the quinn pto financial report sure thank you i believe we have mr granfield from the principal of quinn elementary as well as i think it's the pto president to talk about some of the fundraising and the financial report since we're not really doing the typical this year they
005thought they'd come on board and let us know what's going on so great thank you dr gifford well good evening everyone thank you for joining us can you hear us okay yeah i can hear you hi how are you good so we have mr granfield and who else is with us hi i'm linda hamilton i'm the pga president great well welcome and thank you for joining us linda thank you mr granfield maybe you should start and let us know why you are all here tonight yeah thank you for having us tonight we sent over the financial report from last year as linda had highlighted in a cover sheet um the color run was a huge success for us last year um we had a lot um that we're planning to do with the money that
006was raised by the pto and our entire school organization and then the pandemic kit and then all the field trips and everything we had slated obviously got put to the side um this year we're not planning at this point on doing any field trip any fundraisers and that was all highlighted linda if you want to add to that what you put in the cover sheet um so we have 35 000 that we're actually carrying over from last year so thankfully we don't have to do any fundraising this year we can just completely fund everything that we normally would do for the school for students and staff without any fundraising so we're still able to support the school the way we normally do and not have to put any burden on families this year so no
007that is great um thank you both that's you folks are really lucky that you're able to that the fun run uh was such a success or the color run i'm sorry it was such a success last year and you're able to carry that money forward to assist with different projects or for different um services this year so i'll turn it over to any of my colleagues if any of them have any questions for either of you i have nothing mr chairman no i have nothing just a comment uh as a as a quinn parent alum uh i just want to comment on what an ama of course all the ptos are very active and amazing in district but i i follow you as an alum and it is so wonderful to see all of the
008ways in which you you do things for the staff you know even the beginning of the year with the ice cream truck during their pd day you know their days of uh in person for the first time and all of the special food that you provide and just the ways in which you make them feel valued and special is incredible and uh earlier before the meeting we were joking with jonathan how his voice is is uh is well known and he's somewhat of a celebrity when your face popped up i thought well you're a celebrity to me because whenever i see your i don't even know you i don't think we've even met but ever met but you are you know a local local celebrity so you and your team are just so wonderful and
009i hope that you feel appreciated as well for the work that you put in is is much appreciated thank you yeah and i'll just um end with you thank you again for everything that you do for for the quinn students and for the dartmouth public schools uh 35 000 dollars is it's a lot of money to supplement um programs and as i look through here your list of expenses and all the different activities and staff appreciations and incentives there's a lot that goes on and obviously none of this would be possible without the support of the of the quinn school pto and really all the ptos across the district so um do you have anything for us anything else for us no nothing out if i could just add to that i wanted to close
010with that of um we're all so grateful at the quinn's school um and miss amarillo touched upon a couple of the things that our pto has already done to support our staff even during these times but one thing i wanted to highlight was the first day of school this year pto came and decorated each entrance way with creative messages and drawings that completely surprised every everybody walking in on that first day of school and they're constantly going above and beyond not only our board members but all of the parents um that spend countless hours behind the scenes you know the color run in itself takes months of planning and meetings on a weekly basis and just everything that they do for the school is absolutely unbelievable and i know i'm speaking on behalf of the
011entire quinn staff administration and all the parents rpgo is absolutely fantastic so um thank you again to linda and to the entire pto and board thank you mr grandfield hats off to you and the pto over there happy holidays to you both thank you you too thank you thank you mr chairman make a motion we approve the financial report for the uh quinn pto and the budget for school year a second motion by mr nunes a second by mrs amaral on the motion any further discussion chair hearing none all in favor opposed motion carries unanimously mr chair can i just ask that we all speak up a little i think miss gunther is maybe having a hard time hearing us because there's like some fans running i could see her they're going i was wondering
012what you were looking at i think we just all need to speak up a little bit okay do my best to project my voice thank you thank you sorry kate uh next up on the agenda we will continue with uh under old business continue discussion of the equality and diversity committee so if i go back to minutes from the last meeting we decided uh to hold off to this meeting to continue with some discussion about uh the appointment of two faculty and staff members and two community members um am i missing anything from any any of my colleagues is that correct does that sound right i know that um ms guenther uh put out some emails asking for some um more information from those people uh looking to uh be on the committee so i'll
013just like to turn it over to my colleagues and what's your pleasure with this well you know we i think i apologize i left my list at home nice smart move on my pot sorry about that but i think we've got a list of uh those people that you know were interested the first time around and you know who actually responded to mrs gunter's uh request for information and if they did not reply then it's my belief that they're not interested so no disrespect they go to the wayside and then we just work on whomever was interested in in being on the committee that's mike so did everyone else bring their lists with them tonight appointments i have it somewhere i'm looking for yeah but i do have it okay um i will say that
014i did not with everything going on with my in my personal life and uh at my job and with covid here in the emergency meeting i did not have a chance to give this the time that it needed to look through um i have a couple of a couple of thoughts uh as far as who i would go with but it's up to you i i don't want to i don't want to delay the committee any longer um but dr jenkins so i had some time to um to take a look um at the community members and some of the staff members um and so i'll go ahead and get us moving i'd like to make a motion on the community side um that we appoint uh miss shelley scott and miss elizabeth murphy um
015so i'll leave that out there um do you want me to explain my right my reasoning first or do you want me to get do you want to get a second on that uh yeah i'll get i'll second that discussion so my reasoning is is miss scott i think we had four community members respond if i'm not mistaken uh gretchen baker smith miss murphy miss scott and i think mr pereira yeah i think we're the four that we had to respond um i know miss scott personally she works over at umass dartmouth she's worked in student services for many many years so she has quite extensive experience dealing with a student body and dealing with issues around diversity she does our campus housing so she really knows students she has children in the dartmouth public
016schools and her children are multiracial and so i think she brings a really good experience both as a parent of a mixed race family but also someone who has an extensive background in working with students miss murphy has also been involved with the schools for quite some time serving on the dartmouth dimelo pto for many years she has children so she had children in demelo dms and now also the high school and then in her professional life she now works with community organization doing outreach to immigrants and immigrant students particularly latinx families south american families and so i think she has another sort of background working with underrepresented groups in our community i will also say prior to that she worked as a college counselor so she also has experience in working with uh with
017uh high school students so um from the pool of community members that we had those two to me seem to have very relevant experience and very interesting perspectives to bring to the table as we talk about these issues any other comments or questions about that uh mr nunes yeah thank you mr chairman uh one thing i do remember is some of the names and you know one of the you know i haven't i have no problem with uh miss scott uh i was actually looking at chris pereira who was you know was an alumni of this high school uh was a member of this committee and also was a veteran so can encompass a a whole circle of uh you know ideas and uh ideologies and things of that nature and brings again a different
018you know possibly different perspective on equity and diversity you know to the to the table so that was you know my you know my thought on that did mr prayer return um i do believe so yes he was one of the end yes that's right okay so we have uh anything any other discussion first of all are we sticking with you know community members in this i'm sorry my motion was about community members so i think for i mean i i'll just say like i was leaning towards the um the same two that um dr jenkins had brought up as well i know elizabeth murphy she's also in a pastoral services program right now she's uh pursuing a postmaster's i don't know exactly what the degree is but i think at least a master's in
019pastoral services at the university of chicago so she's working on that online as well so i think she again like has a broad range i don't know um miss scott as well but again i you know again her background certainly is fitting she wrote a passionate you know letter she certainly seems to have some um deep interest in you know education and personal vested interest in diversity so you know i was leaning that direction as well i thought that it was having children in the schools was important in this discussion as well like in the so that was another thought that i had um and both of those um ladies do have uh children in this current school yeah do you want to add anything i mean i don't really have anything to add it
020i think that the folks that reached out that were interested all of them are qualified i was um and then a few folks were no longer interested who had who had um previously submitted interest which which is understandable and then some people didn't respond i had i was leaning toward miss ka and miss murphy i was thinking around their background in their professional you know what they do professionally i have nothing again you know i think chris prayer would also bring value to the committee so i quite honestly um yeah i don't think we could go wrong with it so i don't know if that doesn't really narrow it down but um no i do agree i do have a lot of respect for chris pereira and him being an alumni as well as our
021our veterans agent and he spent a lot of time working on the stadium the rededication of the stadium um and i don't know ms scott but just reading her letter in terms of of of all of her roles in her family and having children i think that would mean bring great value obviously when speaking about you know culturally and linguistically diverse i think that's really important but yeah i i sort of dozen of one whatever yeah what do you think chris we have a motion and we have a second um on can you uh elizabeth murphy and miss shelly scott shelly scott i know elizabeth murphy well i you know her and i have corresponded a number of times not i did read the other letter well i guess we can put it to a
022vote and i want to say one last thing and i'm going to talk about principles of affirmative action argues that right when we are faced with a decision between candidates that are equally qualified that we should take into consideration questions of demographics and i would argue that in this situation when we are sort of having a debate about candidates who are all equally qualified i think the fact that ms scott is a part of a multi-racial family her children have multi-racial backgrounds are in our schools and so she brings that perspective to the table and that is in strong part why why i nominated her no thank you very very good point dr jenkins mr nunes yeah i mean unfortunately i'm going to disagree with uh with my colleague here for a second only because
023of the fact until she brought it up i did not know that you know she was multi you know we were talking about the multi-racial she put it in her letter okay i don't remember exactly what she had in her letter i mean i remember reading it but i don't remember what was in the letter contents type of deal so that wasn't playing into my my decision at all and it you know things of that nature never play into my decision whether it's hiring somebody or trying to put somebody on a committee that's that's not part of my makeup i don't look at that at all i'm looking to put the best people into a position so you know i just wanted to to know that anything else so i just want to listen to
024writing down some names here i i just want to thank kate for um reaching out to everyone yeah it was a big job yeah thank you very much for sending that out and the second time so we have elizabeth murphy and one more time trying to look at the big picture here of everything so i would i would like to see chris pereira as part of this group so i'll go ahead i'm going to strongly oppose and i try not to speak against miss pereira because i think he has done a lot of good for the school district um but i am going to talk about um that when we served on the dartmouth education foundation board he was strongly opposed to efforts at de melo to diversify their curriculum their proposal to put forward
025books about race ethnicity gender identity sexual orientation and he strongly opposed that um and so i will be frank that i oppose him sitting on this committee um because he has said in numerous places that he is opposed to the diversity efforts that have come forward in other areas and i don't really want a person who is opposed to efforts to diversify our curriculum to be part of our diversity committee so he said that publicly he did yeah i'm sorry can i go ahead yeah so i mean i'll act with that because i also sat in that same meeting and it was um just disappointing to you know he said he didn't want to politicize the curriculum he felt that that was more too that what de mello was doing was you know entering into
026a a political debate by you know pursuing this path of inclusion and that we should not fund that as the dartmouth education foundation so that was you know to me i will say that was a red flag for me when i considered his his letter like having you know i can't divorce with that history and i also thought that he was one who had spoken the previously about not having any discussions um around diversity and not pursuing this topic um as a you know as a committee you know so at the the start of this you know last year so that was that was another red flag for me so i would say that on those two for those two reasons i mean he's a you know nice guy and all of my you know
027and everything and um he's done a lot for this town and i appreciate his you know efforts with veterans and everything certainly but i just you know if we're talking about the purpose of this is to be inclusive um and try to expand that i have grave concerns as well so okay thank you for that yep to put it to a vote so we have a motion on the floor in a second to elect our community members of elizabeth murphy and cheryl stott charles scott kelly scott shelby shelley scott on the motion any further discussion chair hearing none all in favor aye opposed me so we have in favor one against uh with mr nunes uh mr mr nunes was against that i did not hear who second the motion the second who seconded it
028you did you said i'm sorry i seconded it get an amplification system in here yeah it's yeah who put all these air purifiers in this i know trying to like you know project over these kids in class trying to also speak up those little voices in some cases oh my goodness more things oh my goodness is that good kate i'm gonna try to yell um mr chair can i start the uh the conversation about our faculty and i think i do think that we have a number of really you know strong faculty applicants who came back um you know i really don't have i think this is an opportunity because we do have strong people to start thinking about who do we have as representatives in terms of like from the schools so we know
029at this point we have um a member from the you know high school administration member of the middle school administration so i do think we should have someone on here that is representative of the elementary schools and that's why i thought miss bloom kind of came to me to my mind she's written some very passionate letters um you know i just you know talking about i guess she's been in four different schools she served in four different elementary schools across the district she seems to have a pretty um you know again deep immersion with the pals pass program she said you know she was urging us to make sure that we do have a social worker or school psychologist or someone of that nature and i think that is something that we are it would
030be helpful for us to bring into the committee and to have that voice and again to have someone who's coming from the elementary because i noticed when we always join the list and you know in deference to john the first time we did have some other elementary teachers who were part of that initial list those did not come back on the second round she did and i thought again in both cases i thought her letter you know it was testimony to a lot of thought and care um as far as the other person again there is um there are several other you know i there's a history teacher at the high school i believe mccarran keeley i don't have it in my notes i thought she was also very strong as well um yeah you
031know i so i don't but i do think we do need to have one at least one elementary person on our so i'll say that i just what was the name again um kelly bloom kelly yep she's an outreach social worker and again i just think she brings in that you know that piece and what school uh she's a queen i just thought again she was she was strong in that okay so any other thoughts for committee members for faculty members i would um i'd like to ask for consideration to nominate diane missari she's a guidance counselor at the dartmouth middle school i had the opportunity to um to meet with her on several occasions with one of my stu one of my own children she's very she's dedicated she's very caring and she talks
032about in her response here i have limited cell service i was able to pull up some of this talks about how she deals with the daily challenges of the social emotional health of all these students um and i just think that she's uh she's someone who would look at the the big picture the broad picture um and not just be kind of a narrow mindset i have i have a lot of faith in the integrity of diane um so that's that's just my two cents i think she's yeah like i think she's you know certainly i had a conversation with her just you know again about my own child just a couple weeks ago and same thing you know with covet i think she's you know she's thoughtful you know she and again you know
033and she wants to do everything she can to you know really reach the students and keep them in school and you know i think she's impressive you know certainly and just nice person but also i do think you know again this uh miss caitlyn mccarran dealy also is another you know person that brings a lot to the table and her personal studies around this subject so again i i could go you know i don't have strong feelings across because i think they're all very qualified thank you so i think all three of them would be strong i don't have a strong preference one way or the other but i do believe strongly we should have a teacher we should have someone who's teaching um so um well you got a little chamberlain too right right
034that could go in the mix too i i would say if we're gonna have a slot for staff and a slot for staff and teachers we should have at least one person who is in the classroom i mean not that social workers and outreach aren't in the classroom but like that's their job is to be teaching and with curriculum so um i think you have two on your list to our staff and then john you had just added a name thank you i just i just said little chamberlain oh lily chamberlain yeah okay so she's also a language teacher here at the high school yeah she's the advisor of the multicultural club sorry so those are sort of maybe we might think of two different slots for those last two remaining ones i mean if
035you wonder this is this is just really difficult i mean well i mean sorry my fault i know we i'm gonna violate my own rule here but in all seriousness i mean i agree with what everyone has said about uh kelly bloom your comment about the the young lady from the middle school and i agree with shannon maybe we need a tea and again so maybe you know this is one time that we sit here and we go how about if we have three faculty members i know we talked about two but i don't have a problem if we've got three because we've got a complete different segment here in the in the system we've got an outreach worker we've got a guidance counselor and we've got a a teacher it takes it all into
036it all into play you know again you've got elementary middle and high school represented right i think that's a great idea yeah that's i i agree i just i also i think it's important that we you know i would think that moving forward that any folks that you know mr pereira or um mr uh i can't think who weren't who decided they didn't want to be part of the committee perhaps it wasn't fitting into their you know schedule or ability to kind of you know to do that but um mr helgeson who who had a graduate who had said he was interested that we wouldn't take in feedback you know on the committee certainly it would welcome anyone's feedback ideas or thoughts and then you know put it to an agenda and then discuss others
037and you know and then the committee can kind of make decisions but um i do agree i i i with what everyone else is saying as well thank you so mr chair following up on mr news i'll make a motion to revise the makeup of the committee by expanding the number of staffs less teacher slots from two to three second on the motion any further discussion no so we got a motion by dr jenkins a second by mr nunes and there's no other discussion all in favor aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously all right so i did that part so you all someone's got to decide the next part who the three are gonna be who was the the teacher so it looks like we have two teachers three three teachers in the running this
038chamberlain and miss mccarran is it just these two yeah yeah yeah and they're both yeah they're both excellent yeah i'm reading yeah you know what yeah and then either diane or kelly well we have three so we could do one from the middle one from the elementary was the decision right so that would be the both of them we got the yeah we could and then the third slot would be between miss mccarran dealy and miss chamberlain yes yep yeah yes but someone else has to make that motion any thoughts on any preferences on the um the high school no i mean yeah again either either little or diane um you know caitlin candle is going to be caitlin is going to be good he's going to be a good fit so i'm happy with
039either one of those personal opinions you know so if i'm just you know looking at this you know so hard but you know miss chamberlain is like you know again she you know she has you know in addition being a you know teacher she also has as you said the multicultural club which you know changed the name to make it more inclusive um she has had i think two children she said that has that have graduated from the dartmouth high she's been a teacher here for seven years um you know ms dealey i believe is also the women's track coach you know so she reaches you know student athletes so that might be a considerate consideration it's you know and she again in her resume was equally powerful and strong can we make four i'm
040gonna do it i'm gonna i'm gonna make a motion that we um appoint lily chamberlain to the diversity uh committee as a representative you wanna do did you hear us okay i'm surprised because i'm really tired and a little unbelievable so we have a motion by mrs amaral anyone want to second that second you're very brave we have a second by mr nunes so on the motion to appoint uh kelly bloom diane missouri and lily chamberlain to the equality and diversity committee any further discussion all in favor aye opposed motion carries unanimously thank you everyone thank you uh thank you thoughtful conversation thank you to uh dr janet i mean dr jenkins miss amarov also for homing that committee from the school committee so we uh i certainly appreciate that and uh we and we
041had spoken before just to kind of follow up that you know there would be a possibility of including more people in the course of that you know once that meeting got up you know that got underway too because it sounds like if we have some excellent people it'd be a shame to and they want to be part of it and contribute so i think it would be a shame to you know exclude them yeah participating in something you had some time thank you well done thank you thank you everyone so next up under old business uh we have a continuing conversation on the return to school after the holiday break i'm going to turn it over to our superintendent of schools dr bonnie gifford all right thank you mr chair so after all the discussion
042um obviously last week and through the week now of course and over the weekend the first thing i want to talk about is having had students stay home from for quinn today i just want people to be aware even though we put in our letter just to be clear that it was still you know as as though we continue to have numbers of students or staff testing positive in our schools there's still no evidence that we have uh even in consultation with mr micho of the transmission in school and all of these cases seem to be again um fortunately a number of them have been students have already been staying home because a parent has been positive so they've been either already symptomatic or just out of abundance of caution stayed home so that's been
043good so but over the weekend when we had a number of um issues with close contacts that's why we had to decide to keep kids home it was just becoming unmanageable for staffing at that point as you as you know we had the entire cafeteria staff out on once again just because they were deemed close contact so being the one day left we decided that was the best course of action including we didn't have a chance to look at the bus videos at that time so i just wanted folks to be aware and clear on that and also that leads into the discussion about what we plan on doing for after the holidays once again in consultation with with chris mishu and his his staff um the ability although he says now the ability to
044get into a test or have a test done seems a little bit better than the last couple of weeks whether they caught up with themselves or with the thanksgiving break whatever it was so that's been pretty quick there had been a snag but also that um the there's not such a lapse in the test results so but with that said we know that with the holiday coming we will probably experience a number of difficult close contact situations right after the holiday so with and it can overwhelm our nursing staff uh to come back from a vacation especially one as this you know this big if you will and people getting together and to have to then hit monday on the ground running uh having to close contact and decide making decisions on who to keep
045home and not so with that said what our plan would be at this point in time is to remain remote for one week after the holiday plan on returning to school hybrid method on january 11th now there are some details in that one of them being that our special education we would like to return to what we looked like in the fall when we started school so our special education students who are in programs would come every day again just like we did that's those few students those few programs that's our plan all teachers would report to the building to teach just like we did now as you remember that means they can go right to their classrooms they have nobody around they can keep to themselves that has worked very well in in our
046cases so far where they have their resources they have their colleagues they have all their materials and they can remain alone we would then the week after vacation being remote we would go right back as i said to what we did in september where all cohorts would be remoting in every day so we wouldn't do a cohort a cohort b scenario if we are able to come back january 11 things are going well we always want people to be prepared for anything as we keep saying all year it's fluid and flexible and everybody is doing the best job they can dealing with the situations as they come up every single day but be prepared if we have to then say things are crazy things are hot whatever it is we're going to extend it we
047want kids in school we all can agree on that but we want to be able to manage the staffing manage the contact tracing and just take the advice from again our board of health etc so if we were to come back on january 11th which is our plan full hybrid again we would just resort back to the hybrid schedule which is on the calendar and on another note of course we have one day extra right now on the calendar which we'll be adjusting and putting up because of the snow day the real snow day the other thing i want to mention is that we are going to have a covert hotline if you will for the vacation time we'll be posting that so folks will be able to if they need to report a case
048a positive case or a close contact identification we'll have one number that folks will be calling into mr kylie and i will be monitoring that daily so that we can stay ahead of any contact tracing that we have to do in preparation for school reopening i don't know if i left anything out or questions that um folks would have i'm trying to look at my notes but that would be our plan at this point so right off the top before i turn it over to any of my colleagues right off the top of my head the covet hotline number that'll be made available on the website yeah yeah we'll put that out will parents i assume it'll be a voicemail box where parents will be able to leave a message can parents expect a a
049return call follow-up call or to acknowledge that someone received it and yep yes i'm just curious just so just for our parents out there right we'll we'll both be attending to that um we'll be able to then relay the information to whoever needs to hear mr you know chris mishu etc will be taking our an appropriate principle etc um like i said even this weekend you know mr granfield that quinn had so much contact tracing to do so he was the one with his staff calling people back et cetera so yeah people could expect some kind of communication no that's that's really good to know so with that after obviously after our last meeting our remote meeting last tuesday you know i took some time to reflect on everything that was discussed um a number
050of emails that have continued to come in even as of today to the committee um and i'll just share a couple of my thoughts um in you know what i think of dr gifford's plan um so i'll just start off with while i can certainly appreciate the thoughtful comments and passionate concerns she had with myself and fellow committee members i once again myself i have to look at what's best for an entire district of students and staff when i'm looking to support dr gifford's decision i have educated myself in the research and science but in the end i know there's no magic answer and there's no right or wrong at the end of the day i know that we're going to get emails as a committee from both sides whether we make one decision and
051whether you make one decision it's going to be we're going to have emails from the other side there are pros and cons to both sides of the argument of staying hybrid and switching to remote here's what we know and this is where it took some time i i really appreciate chris miesha presentation uh tuesday night's meeting i knew that was that to me that was very helpful um we know families are going to congregate over the holiday that's a fact we know that more than likely they're going to be unmasked right it appears that right now what we're seeing is what he was presenting is that transmissions are occurring in the household and this is just me thinking out loud right now and i kind of put some thoughts together as i was going through
052you know what i would say uh this evening while tess while he did say testing was coming more difficult i do to dr gifford's point i do know that south coast hospital group finally opened up an online portal to be able to schedule testing i can also say though that test results are still taking a little bit longer than normal um you know before like i said originally it was 24 36 hours when i would get mine and now it's beyond 48 hours lately it seems going going for at least the first week remote in january will give us an opportunity to see trends and for individuals to start experiencing symptoms from holiday contact as well as those that are having experiencing systems experiencing symptoms they'll have the opportunity to seek out testing determining close
053contact is time consuming and ultimately results sometimes like we saw today in staffing shortages requiring buildings to close with that being said i am in favor of at least a one week pause of in-person learning and this is just my personal opinion with a maximum of two weeks if needed i can't see us going going beyond two weeks um you know i i think one week let's see how it goes right and then depending on the metrics and the numbers and consultation with the board of health if we need to do an additional week but i do uh i do like the fact that our special education and our high i need students will be coming back um but like i said i i personally cannot because i know there were some i received a
054couple of emails from parents that were saying i don't i think some of my colleagues probably did too that uh you know i can't see us going back to last springtime and having uh unlimited closure with months at a time no that's not what that's not what at least i'm saying i don't think this is what this administration is saying um yeah dr jenkins um i 100 agree with you but i want to reiterate this is on us right i mean this is on us in our community we are in a surge right now and we are going to have a surge on top of a surge if people don't stay home right i don't think people truly understand how hard everyone in this school administration is working doing contact tracing it is not sustainable
055for them to keep working and like this and if this surge continues for us to be able to staff our schools people tell me they'll email me oh you know schools are not spreaders no they're not that's not what we're saying what we're saying is we have to have teachers in the classroom and if community spread continues at the rate it does we do not we will not like we did today at quinn we will not have the staff to keep our schools open i want our kids in school more than anything but we have to be safe and we have to staff our schools and if we aren't safe over christmas this is not going to change it's going to get worse so i support this plan i hope that we can come back
056on the 11th but whether or not we can come back on the 11th depends on all of us doing the right thing and we got to do the right thing it stinks but you know don't send me an email saying i want my kids in school and then go to a christmas party with 20 people right don't do it if you want your kids at school stay home with just your family i'm having christmas with my husband and my kids and that's it because it's the right thing to do and we all need to do that sorry i'm a little angry about these things but i'm just frustrated that we need to stick to it and do the right thing or we're not going to be able to hold it together and to your point
057jo i'll just share there was there was an incident not an incident but it was someone shared with me today that there was someone who's supposed to be in quarantine um and they're on posting on social media in groups in a group of people so it's just it's just extremely frustrating this is white you know i do you know i'll just you know echo what you know both you know mr oliver and dr jenkins you know spoke to and i would have you know i was leaning towards two weeks you know to be honest because i am i was very like struck by what mr michonne said you know and i would love you know like to have had him here again tonight if possible i know he's a busy guy but i just i
058was really struck by you know the difficulties of you know contact tracing you know his account of you know tests with that said a little bit of my anxiety had eased a bit to your point to mr oliver's point about testing seeming more accessible i did go on to the whale's tooth appointment i was able to get an appointment just to see you know just to see if there was availability um i also just put out for my own you know i've been doing of course we all have been doing a bit of research um just you know just anecdotal just to find out are people getting their tests back you know in a timely fashion and it did seem like people in most cases are able to get a test you know and they're
059getting back their test results generally sounds like 48 hours even though in some cases i know in my case i went the wednesday after things thursday after thanksgiving and my test results were back by saturday morning so i felt that was earlier but it still seems like that's the trend which makes me feel better than when i did hear from mr michaud but i am i'm also concerned i saw a post also on a social media site where people were mocking wearing masks i mean and there were people saying i will high-five the person who's not wearing a mask and i thought you know how we are not living in a vacuum i mean we see that and we want to keep our schools open and you know and those people who are commenting saying
060well high five i know their parents you know some i know those names and it's it's deeply disturbing and frustrating and you know and i feel for the staff and you know and i want the staff to know i mean we want them to be safe we want our students to be safe we care about the staff i mean there are you know in fact if our state staff are not inspired not feeling safe they're not going to be motivated to help our students achieve at their best you know we care about them as individuals too i mean whether our colleagues or friends you know in the past so i just the whole thing is very um it's very frustrating but i think you know to all the credits of the school what we are
061doing is excellent within the schools the kids even you know the high school was the biggest concern just because we know it's more difficult to pod and maybe that's something we need to look at as we kind of think of maybe if we need to push them back i know that was in stagger it and we can kind of come to that decision but we do not see transmission happening within the schools and for everything that i've read you know there's a new article that came out i kind of passed along with national geographic that i came out i believe in the 10th and it spoke to a lot of this icelandic study that came out and said and they had this you know iceland's done a great job you know just really with their
062you know studying with contact tracing and really looking at a core 40 000 people and what they found is that in most cases when children children can transmit it but they were 50 percent less to get it than adults and 50 percent less to transmit it and in most cases it was the adults that transmitted to children and it was not children transmitting it the other way and they did talk about how there seems to be a line with puberty um and that was i think again important for us like to think about that you know our little ones you know are not going to be as risk much risk to the adults and again they came back in the the conversation where the risk was was parents dropping them off congregating hanging out the
063gate at a you know game i mean that's that's where the concern is it doesn't seem to be that the concern is you know the children if they're well managed but this same article spoke to you know when you see kovid exploding and uncontrolled in a community then it is going to seep into the schools and we're on the we're certainly seeing the ramifications in our staffing we're not seeing our cases but it is if it's uncontrolled we're gonna we're gonna be in some trouble so i guess my only request would be when we're looking at january 11th before that if we can meet as a group you know remotely with christmas showd and just hear from him and have him kind of explain where he sees things so we can look at the 11th
064and have a few at least a few days even if it's that monday we have a school committee meeting that first monday that we come back no no i feel like we should somehow have some sort of communication as you know just even to you know reassure like each other and the community that and to hear from dr crippen and she says look it's been you know we're hearing all these reports just so so we know we can make a decision that we're comfortable with that we know is not going to overly strain our staff we're going to keep our staff and our students safe so that's where i would sorry for the long thing but no that's okay agonizing about your point mrs wayne to dr gifford is there just for and i agree
065for for communication to parents to let parents know um i don't want to be throwing this at them on a friday right right are we thinking like like you you yeah maybe mid week or so that you could brief the committee even if it's through yeah through an email would be okay yeah yeah i mean whatever yeah i mean it's without due respect it's gonna be the superintendent's call right as as to what's going on i mean she's going to have to be in consultation with mr misho dr clock the school physician you know things of that nature and what's going on to make that call and when she makes it just send us an email and let us know what's up yeah i would agree i would appreciate some kind of communication yeah ahead
066of time i don't want to be blindsided oh yeah no i mean again i go back to you know what was going on in march when we were talking in march before the governor took care of everything for us yeah type of deal but you know an email communication is is fine or if we need a 10 minute zoom meeting type of deal you can post it as emergency right you don't need the 48 hours because it's an emergency and away we go right i think i think the bottom line i well let's hear from mrs amaral did you have anything else mr nunes no i'm good so just uh for clarification i mean i i agree i'm concerned worried about our students about our staff about everyone about our community but going back to
067the students who had been identified previously as complex or high needs those students would not have a pause they would return your proposal potentially would be that they return on the on the fourth yes okay as they had done just like september 15th okay that's that's really great i mean again i want to stress the idea that it's not that we've had this giant explosion of cases in the school but to be able to manage what might become a contact tracing issue as soon as we get back to school to have that slow little bit of role in with fewer students in to be able to manage that and staffing to give our staff a breather and and be able to like i said our nurses not be under that giant amount of stress because
068even on the weekends i have to say this weekend the hours that were spent by a number of our staff members including mr granfield's group mr kylie myself it was countless hours so to think about coming back from a vacation and then bang either the weekend just right then and that monday so let's give folks a little bit of time so that's what i want to stress it's not that i'm saying there's a bazillion cases and we have to close down sure so with that fewer students in like we did before and then move right in back into our hybrid okay and before i i have other other questions but before i do that could could you or mr kylie go into just go into detail about what that really entails like what you have
069to look for when you have a case so yeah you know in saying it it you i hear it i get it but in some sense it's kind of it can be kind of breezed over like oh they have to look into yeah could you kind of go a little bit into details about the community there's two pieces yeah there's two pieces i mean there's the first piece one of us gets a phone call from somebody yeah uh between the nurses the principals mr misho ourselves and then um usually the principals then will contact trace within the school and that usually entails a number of cases they call the teachers that would have had the student students may have had siblings in the school which would then involve a number of grade levels uh students
070may have seen various interventionists uh speech people etc so we're looking and the the principles are their administration will have a conversation with those teachers to say to really get a good sense of what that classroom looks like now we're we're priding ourselves on the six foot distance the mask wearing all of that but yet sometimes you have the littlest guys you know it's hard to to say a hundred percent that they were not close contacts 15 minutes etc etc so and there's the anxiety level as well so sometimes uh the abundance of caution we deem someone a close contact that might have been then mr kiley can talk about what he does with the buses that's another issue sure and in addition it's not just teachers it's it's playground monitors there's a whole there's
071a questionnaire that we go through with each staff member it's teacher assistants it's different staff throughout the buildings and if it's a student or a staff member it varies as to how we go through that contact tracing protocol so it's it's a lot of work and that's just to get to the point where you identify close contacts then there's a whole another issue about where we go from there in terms of communicating with families and staff members and uh giving them information that that they have been identified as a close contact and that they'll be contacted by the board of health so it's it's it takes i mean these quinn cases took us all weekend but also the bus comes on a little so on sunday i went over to tremblays to pick up these
072little drives for with bus videos on them and basically what that involves is seeing who is near students within six feet of students who have tested positive and for how long and if it's more than 15 minutes and they're within six feet and then we identify them as close contacts if behavior on the bus isn't great so if students aren't for some reason take off their mask first or eat or drink something or are not sitting where they're supposed to or there's just uh it's a process so um go through that and the same thing from there we identify the close contacts and the schools the principals have just really worked so hard uh to to try and communicate with families and and uh worked with dr gifford and i on this it's it's been
073a lot on a lot of people i can only imagine to do this yeah thank you dr jenkins so i very much appreciate all the work that you all are doing but one i'm concerned that you all are going to burn out and two it's not a particularly efficient use of our resources to have our superintendent and our assistant superintendent and our principals who are the most highly paid people in our district to be doing this so i know mr kylie you hate to go to the town to ask for additional resources but i don't wonder over the next several months we are probably still going to be in surge and have a lot of cases can we hire someone to help do this work it might be a temporary hire for just a few
074months to do that we need help and whether we have accounts in our own sort of line items where we've been saving money where we could do that or where we could ask the town for some money from the stabilization fund this would be a one-time use of revenues it wouldn't be someone that we would hire permanently maybe for a couple months just to help you do this work because again it's just not good use of our resources um and i don't want you all to keel over right from exhaustion from doing this but i don't wonder whether we can't um do some temporary hires to help deal with this well that's a that's an excellent that's an excellent point mister i mean i appreciate that and um you know obviously we could talk about
075how that might work i mean the town's um monies in terms of the cares act are expiring december 30th so they won't have any direct money from from that we do have a stabilization fund but the town has um on their end on the board of health side brought in some additional staff when you've got to go to the reserve fund the reserve fund a reserve you know so they are paying for additional staff on the board of health side to assist with this i mean it's a lot on us but it it it's also important that we have people who understand what we do and how we do it um to do this work because i mean this isn't this you can't take this lightly i mean this is so you really need to
076understand um our system i i think in order to be able to do this correctly but i do want to mention also we didn't even say about the nurses the work that they help out with of course it's a lot and a lot too no it's a lot on everyone in addition to your normal everyday routines yearly the the timelines that you have to meet with desi with reporting with reports and everything else that goes along with being the district administration so i i think if if that's something you could at least maybe look into it you know i i think i think we this committee would support i can't speak for for everyone but i think it's at least worthwhile because you're dr jenkins is right it is time-consuming and it's a huge burden
077um trying to contact trace and figure this out like you said that's just the first step so but thank you thank you welcome um but she's still finishing go ahead yeah i know i just had some other um questions i'm sorry no no that's okay i'll try to be quick i know i go on tangents sometimes but so our high needs population that would be coming in i'm guesstimating that's around and i'm not thinking of preschool i really don't have an idea i'm thinking we've got about 40 50 students actually about 100 counting preschool with the programs okay okay so 100 total um i i don't know if this could be done but something uh you know you mentioned the beginning fluid and flexible i have that right on the top of my of my
078paper and one other thing that the uh deci has been clear about and we are doing a great job i don't know how we fall into with the with the um the new the new regulation a little short slightly short but i mean i'm sure not much compared to a third of of the commonwealth you are vastly at a um i just you know not doing as well as us so we're doing great and i applaud everyone for that okay obviously we can always do better um that's the mantra right but one thing that um desi has been saying is that the guidance is the floor it's not the ceiling and so i wonder now that here we are proposing a pause not for our high needs and our complex kiddos um but proposing and
079it's just a week right or potentially you haven't voted hopefully and i would i would like a week and obviously if it needs to be expanded but i would like to go back to something else that was in the guidance where the special ed guidance where it did say and maybe we do this on a case-by-case basis i'm sure we probably do i'm thinking of one case where we might actually do this where we have somebody who might not be in a program per se but needed the extra and is in person so which is wonderful so thank you for those people that made those decisions but one thing that um is uh listed as well that i'm wondering if we had a way to include a more comprehensive rather than a pause um it
080says um we encourage districts to prioritize the following groups of students even if everyone else is remote or hybrid i won't leave the list we know it we know that we know high needs but it does also talk about students who are significantly behind academically and students who were at who are disengaged and are struggling significantly during previous remote learning periods i wonder i would like us i would like to see us if we could i'm sure teacher teachers can identify who those students are and it might not be a lot and i'm and i'm not i'm not saying we can bring all of them in but if there were a number that we couldn't couldn't go past and maybe it's an additional 20 students that are that are that are struggling the most but
081don't fit that complex high knee category if there was a way that we could do something more for them i would love to see that happen now that we know who those students are right right yeah i know there are a few a handful that are doing that but um what exactly the number is i'm not sure okay i'd have to check on that thank you yeah that's all yeah thank you kathleen barry i just had a i just want to follow up um question as we work back talking about contact tracing um mr rashow seemed pretty concerned that those results at our last meeting that there was a significant delay with you know reporting and everything else did he in more recent conversations seem to suggest that that issue has been mitigated he just
082seemed to say it was so far out in some cases that it was no not useful which again to me was really concerning so when he was saying that he didn't really say much about the testing coming in but one thing um that he mentioned was the idea like for example if we know a case or so that the students were at a party we've been trying really hard to identify who those folks were and that's been helping as we get tests because it might be so delayed that we already have folks that we know might be involved um i didn't hear them say anything about the test results coming back that much more quickly but no they're very yeah so yeah that's it's an issue and then the other thing i wanted to point
083out is you know to your point again getting back to like you know reason why you know we support or i support the extra week is that you know quite a few of the testing centers are actually closed so i mean that is something that we didn't come up but you know just looking i know whales tooth has a half day on the 23rd is closed 24th 25th um and i believe it also is closed it's closed on the first the 31st and i believe part-time maybe on the 30th so again it'll be saturday and sunday you can get in and get an appointment but it's going to be backed up with appointments too um and then he mentioned about batching so again like even more reason is that it's gonna be more difficult for
084people to get appointments during that time frame so yeah you know i certainly again the week at minimum right so i just think we want people to know once again none of the decisions are ever taken you know lightly and we understand folks day care issues and all of that but we just think this is the best course of action for everybody involved at this point we'll keep them updated right so we're looking at right now we're looking at mid-week of that yeah that first week and so be prepared exactly and i think that's relevant um ms gunther just sent out an email someone asking why why not why said at the 11th why not sent to the 13th the date would be the 11th but we'd get that information and have that discussion midweek
085of the fourth right right right perfect uh let's see right to the update yeah so next up we have the superintendent's update dr gift yep i'll run through a bunch of things so as you know tomorrow is a professional development day and teachers um the schools are going to be doing kind of a half day of department meetings school meetings etc but also what we've done this year is we have this master teacher online professional development that we've engaged in so people are going to be able to independently work on these courses and they have to then turn in their certificates to have the credit given for example the teacher e-learning bundle is it's 189 self-paced workshops and people have already started to engage in them and they're a lot of good feedback we have
086some for the tas as well so we're pretty pleased with that self-paced courses and general education instruction behavior environment social emotional all kinds of things uh we let's see the stat south coast ems had emailed miss genther this week and actually last week it's monday and we engaged with ali kato galligan at the middle school they donated 30 stockings for needy family so they're giving 10 per school christmas stocking so that was really nice of them to reach out to us for that i don't think i mentioned uh back a month or so the grange dartmouth grange once again donated dictionaries to our grade three those were brought to the schools i don't think i mentioned that so i wanted to make sure we have just making sure i have all of this a lot
087with um athletics right now one thing which we need to congratulate um andy christophuli he now has been awarded the massachusetts athletic director of the year he let me know that today so he was yeah it is so he got a nice email that it's a reflection of his dedication and commitment to interscholastic athletics in the state of mass and i'm sure he's listening so congratulations congratulations mr christophule let's see um i just wanted to mention that with best as a reminder basketball and ice hockey we will be engaging in that and dc we will continue to have no fans and i could never advocate for fans at this point in time we will look into the senior night like we did before with the other team other seasons of course but i talked to
088mr chris fulley today and he did tell me that he's really had a lot of conversation with dc tv so they'll be filming and it would be look real good for the basketball games that they can do some if not all the jv because this equipment is there already games uh ice hockey they're still working on that to have the right equipment at the at the rink and be able to film some of those games so that's let's see that's for that i have all of that and then i was going to um have mr kylie talk a little bit about some of the things going on in the schools with the air purifiers the food service and and other things thank you dr gifford so in food service it's important to note that with
089the decision now to regarding the week of january 4th that we will offer a food distribution for families so similar to what we were doing uh you know previous to this school year we will more details to follow exactly when we're thinking early that week but we will have a food distribution we had one today and we also offered families from the quinn school since we had this issue today where we couldn't uh you know we couldn't come to school we we served 3500 meals today wow from the middle school so i just wanted to thank gene sheridan and the cafeteria staff they're just they've been doing an amazing job that's amazing keeping everyone fed so in terms of air purifiers i've been working for a couple of months on a on a deal with
090the state originally it was to collectively buy air purifiers and you know i've been looking at this now for six months but the state sort of jumped on board a couple of months ago and said if we can help districts we'd like to and i immediately sent an email yes [Music] as it turns out uh they came through this past week with 200 air purifiers for the dartmouth public schools so they're a nice unit they're powerful we they are also free to us um and they're being paid for by we didn't know that at the time so uh but they're being paid for through cares act money through the state's share um so i just like to thank rick ferreira and the maintenance crew ricky mello joe medeiros and mr doan who also grabbed a
091box cutter and helped with some air purifiers and we got 200 air purifiers out into classrooms which is takes a while to do that we now have about 500 hepa air purifiers in the district so helping keep people safe and providing additional healthy air flow into the classroom so that's great that's wonderful news that we were able to get 200 200 through the state um to your point mr kylie you were able to get that many out are there still how where are we at with is does every classroom have one now yes every classroom has one most other spaces have an air purifier so for instance the library office over there has an air purifier um there there's an air purifier right behind the tv over there in the library there are several others
092over there right there there's probably one somewhere there's a couple more in this room in this room uh so we are there's some spaces like the auditorium that we can't really purify um it's just too too you know too much volume in that space but we are um we've spread them out throughout the district we're continuing to redistribute so we had the original ones that i could get were so it were about half as powerful as that unit over there but we could get them so i did and we're in the process now of moving those to smaller spaces so for instance that office will have a smaller one guidance counselors offices and main offices and so we're we're in that process and i was lugging some more around today but we're getting there and
093uh the ones that i bought the last set that i bought which are a large unit the largest ones that we have uh we just got awarded an eversource grant for eight that paid eighteen thousand dollars of the cost for those so um which was about um about half of the cost of those units so the town will get that money ultimately make no mistake about it this is hundreds of thousands of dollars oh yeah oh it's it's a lot of we're dealing with that's a lot of people fell down it is but um but it's been it's been good the town has supported that through their cares act funding so um as they are continuing to support hvac uh improvements in the buildings and we had crews up on the roof here for now
094two weeks we've had them up there what's good mr nunes yeah just just real quick mr kylie if we had had to buy those 200 what would that have cost the town forget without the grant or anything of that nature yeah so so these units are about 400 apiece so you know i mean they're they're relatively inexpensive in the world of air purifier you know um so you know i i think when we look at what we've been able to accomplish um with the eversource grant and with the state stepping in and i mean we've really done a lot with a fairly small amount of money yeah we have spent about seven hundred thousand of the town's three million um three million dollar cares act funding that the schools have and i can't say enough
095about greg barnes and and that team they're helping us uh with that and they have not hesitated to help in any way uh when we've when i've asked so that's a combination of air purifiers hvac repairs [Music] not very much ppe most of that is on on our side through our grant but quite a bit of technology funding to assist in in what we've been trying to accomplish and jonathan uh has had his work cut out for him we've we've gotten quite a bit of influx of technology that's helping with this whole hybrid situation the remote situation so it's been great it really has no i think it's safe to say that we've come a long ways in the past couple of months yeah we have yep i mean if you if you think about
096it in all seriousness go back to when we started with hybrid and we were you know rummaging our way through it and tonight lately we've had meetings with you know the presenters being remote and being able to hear what we're saying and we can talk to them right the deal you know our hats off to you know mr galashar and mr peratti and his high school students for what they're doing it's fantastic yeah no i think it goes without saying that we have a lot of talented and dedicated individuals um working in the dartmouth school system and also a thank you to dc tv for everything they've done too absolutely yeah we have a phenomenal community television program here oh sure anything else that's about it no i really don't have anything other than you
097know just a big thank you um just a big thank you to everyone um countless hours extra hours that everyone has i know that everyone from the classroom teachers all the way up to central office building principles i know dr gifford brought it up but i think it really is important that we do acknowledge our nurses um this is a whole new um new age that we're in and that they're dealing with and there was actually a nice article i think in the in one of the recent papers of uh discussing and highlighting the important role that school nurses play play right now so hats off to them but yeah no just um you know please everyone this goes to everyone over here at this side of the table please take some time to yourself
098to enjoy your families whether you're uh social distancing and zooming with your extended family exactly so um on behalf of myself i wish everyone a happy holiday into all of our yep one second our faculty and staff at home um and to all our community members um just uh wish you a a safe happy healthy holiday and please please do the right thing in social distance i just wanted to remind everyone that people our viewers may not have seen this but i know a lot of the school community watches miss amarillo might know the town hired a new youth advocate yeah so uh this week we i'm super excited i've worked with her in the past dolores joseph was hired as our youth advocate and i um i would like to see i had spoken
099to chris have you come to a meeting to sort of talk about what her plans are i know she hit the ground running um and i also i mean for community members too she is a resource families are struggling no that's actually a really good point and then to um kathleen actually reached out to me i dr gifford and i discussed it we didn't put it on tonight's agenda but right now yeah exactly so she will we would love to have her come out to one of our school committee meetings introduce herself and and i think a lot like you said a lot of a lot of community members probably don't know that we have a youth advocate so what an excellent resource and a great resource for anyone while the schools are closed and
100maybe there's less access to some of those things that she might even though she's new she's a veteran of these things so she's she's this resource for families who are struggling yeah i saw that post yeah yeah nice today that was great anyone else mr news yeah thank you mr chairman just real quick just want to congratulate the uh diamond high school theater company for uh their great production that they did over the past couple of weeks uh they show a wonderful life uh you know even with the pandemic you know as theo saying goes the show must go on and they did a great job you never knew again almost on the lake high school graduation how they just cut and spliced it all together it just really flowed very nicely so my congratulations
101to uh dennis lawrence and shirley baez the co-advisers and all the students for a job well done so thank you anything else merry christmas yes happy new year that's right our next uh scheduled regularly scheduled meeting of the dartmouth school committee is january 11th yes yes yep at this time chair will entertain a motion to adjourn second motion by mr noon second by mrs waite on the motion any other discussion all in favor post motion passes unanimously merry christmas happy merry christmas happy new year be safe social distance