001well good evening everyone i'd like to call this meeting of the dartmouth school committee to water for tuesday december 15 2020. could i have a roll call please miss gunther chris oliver here shannon jenkins here mary waite here kathleen admiral here john nunes yep uh thank you very much everyone uh just as a reminder per governor baker's orders suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law chapter 38 section 20. the public will not be allowed to physically access this school committee meeting members of the public can access the meeting via live stream at youtube.com forward slash dhs tv media in addition the event will be rebroadcast in dc tv channels 9 and 18 on the following days wednesday and thursday at 5 pm friday at 6 a.m saturday at 8 am and sunday at 2
002p.m the school committee reserves the right to implement additional remote participation procedures and we'll notify the public of these procedures as soon as it's practicable once again thank you everyone for attending tonight's meeting since this was a really an emergency session of the school datmon school committee uh there is no public comment uh taking place tonight i'm in the sole agenda item on tonight's agenda it is a cobit update um at this time i also take a like to take a moment to welcome uh dartmouth director of public health uh chris miesha thank you for joining us this evening uh we appreciate you taking the time out of your day to uh be with us um at this time i would like to uh just turn the meeting over to dr gifford we have asked
003or i have asked dr gifford to brief the committee with up-to-date information on where we're at with uh covet 19 and some of just some of the numbers that are going on in the district and as well as the town so i'll like to start with you dr gifford sure thank you mr chair and um also i know uh mr misha will be speaking and updating the committee on some of the goings-on in the town etc and some of the processes and protocols that are in place regarding covet and how we collaborate together and um i'll i'll just acknowledge him as uh before i get started on his great collaboration his entire um department that has been uh completely supportive of the dartmouth school district as we maneuver through this challenging time so um just
004a quick update we we are still holding fast with our staffing issues if you will um i asked the principals for the latest staffing update this week um regarding number of staff that might be quarantined for various reasons whether they've been in contact with folks at home or had close contacts in the school etc and um i'm i'm happy to report if you will that we're have a really good week going right now where um they're able to support the the students to support the classrooms so we haven't had unlike some of my colleagues in in neighboring districts some of the major staffing issues uh thus far um so if you recall we continued to update the covet dashboard on our website every week about friday or so and last friday we had 63 students
005that since the beginning that we've been keeping track had been tested positive in the district and nine staff members i think if i have all the information as of today because this was not updated yet as i said it's on fridays we've had as of 12 12 another high school staff member and 12 13 a potter student and a dms staff member and then on 12 15 a dms student but once again one of the things we've been thankful for is that the last week or so we have not had a lot of close contact to deal with with those people because they've either had a family member that was already ill so stayed home which was good because we keep advising people if there's anybody in the families that are ill to stay home
006or they had symptoms and themselves and stayed home prior etc so luckily for us we've had um little or a few um close contact issues to deal with so that's kind of where we are right now with um cases in the school district and um i would certainly like to you know i've talked to mr micho about the issue of um clustering and in in school transmission etc what's going on in town and i know he'll be able to update uh update us to that uh mr oliver you also asked me to update the committee on the possibility of remote or a snow day if you will on thursday we know the snow is coming so yeah we did send out an email to the staff today i met with the elementary principals as well
007and the principals have resent updated information to their staff to be prepared for whatever might be we've sent a email to the parents as well but the basic message is that um we'll be monitoring tomorrow our intent will be to have a remote learning day we've given directions and instruction on what that will mean cohorts that were meant to be in school on thursday would log in to the google classroom as normal participate in a and a scheduled in school like they would in school the students that were meant to be remote would engage in their assignments etc or as in the middle school they um log in for scheduled meetings at the elementary they might log in for morning meeting and closing circle etc the high school as we know has been full logging
008into the google classroom already we have we have put in our emails that people need to be um alert to any other um announcements that might come because as we monitor the situation tomorrow if it becomes apparent that it's going to be a larger storm then you know again when new england who knows rain snow who knows um but if there's a potential which there always is for large outages throughout town uh we might make the announcement even thursday morning that it's actually a traditional snow day so it is flexible and fluid it's unfortunate but it has to be that way because we're trying to monitor the situation and make the best call possible so um with that said i will um turn it back to you mr chair thank you dr gifford and thank
009you for uh bringing us up to date on that information uh before i turn it over i'd like to and hearing from mr mishad uh just just two things really quickly one being where are we at i know that the um we had heard a couple weeks back that there was a block of grade 8 students that was quarantining are they still out or are they back in in session at this point i'm trying to remember the dates already but uh let me think a minute i i really don't have that date in my mind to tell you the honest truth um okay yeah i'd have to uh re-look at some of my information i don't really have that date because dates are just flying through my mind yes it is it seems like the
010days are just flying by right now but yeah i was just curious that was just one of my personal questions right right um and before i turn it over to mr misha i do know that you know a lot of municipalities a lot of towns and cities are still experiencing what they're calling from what i'm hearing the the post thanksgiving surge when we're numbers going up and i know that there was a lot of there has been a lot of testing going on um you you hear about it i know the whales tooth parking lot down in your bed for it i know they swapped or they switched over to a an appointment schedule because of the amount of um testing they were doing and i do know that testing's been taking a while we've
011been taking a while to get back results so i'm just curious as to how that uh how that affects um the numbers in town as well as the numbers across the state and i'm just curious um if um you know where we're at as a municipality for the town of dartmouth so i i'd like to turn it over now to um and welcome chris michael our director of public health for the town of dartmouth um to the meeting thank you mr oliver uh can everyone hear me okay yes okay thank you so i'm glad you mentioned testing i'll get into the testing first um we heard last week that the whale's tooth which is to stop the spread uh campaign by the commonwealth of massachusetts would be transitioning from um you know drive up to
012by appointment and today was the first day so early this morning around 6 30ish i decided to test the system and it said that i was able to get an appointment for saturday at 2 20 p.m a short while later in the day sometime around noon time i went back onto the site and attempted to get another appointment i'd never log in for a full disclaimer um to get the appointment earlier in the day when i went back in around noontime the site said that no available appointments check back often i checked back twice before the end of today at 4 30 and the message was still the same so this is a concern um and testing is something that is circulated um through the department discussions um at the time of dartmouth health department
013because we know that there was a tremendous interest in testing leading up to thanksgiving we believe that that testing was to accompany uh people's intent to travel even though the governor had advised not to travel in the governor baker's press conference today he noted how there was a nearly ninety five percent doubling or nearly doubling um or 95 percent increase in the number of daily cases that massachusetts experienced between 1 and 12 eight we were averaging around 2 400 cases per day back in december first on december 8th the state of massachusetts was averaging 4 800 cases per day this was attributed to the post thanksgiving surge that we were warned about and i now know that we are seeing the results of um you know staying on the subject matter of testing um i
014believe that we're going to continue to see an interest in testing leading up to christmas however with the whales tooth parking lot um testing site now going to buy appointment that's going to certainly curtail the public's ability to test and that it's going to frustrate the matter further because you know some people that were seeking testing and later learning that they were positive because they're asymptomatic may not have that opportunity we're being told that they're going to um only schedule a small number of tests until they can um get things transitioned and then they'll be back up to full numbers but again that's hearsay and um you know all i can speak to at this time is that um people don't have the access that they once did we also know that weather is going
015to start to play an influence in testing so you're talking about how um you know the district is looking at thursday uh with its operations this snow event that's coming in on thursday i believe will impact testing um similarly uh people are not going to want to drive um and that's going to drive down participation at these testing sites it's troubling because it's going to you know prevent some people from seeking testing that need testing they might be concerned because they are close contact or in some cases they are experiencing very mild symptoms this is something we've heard a lot about from people in our conversations that you know they just had a runny nose and they learned that they were a close contact so they sought out testing you know it is apparent that
016in our younger community um population that you know many of them experience mild symptoms uh this is a concern because i worry that this is dismissive of the seriousness of the disease with the population enlarges they frustrate from the inability to experience conventional thanksgivings and christmases as well as you know interruptions to the last nine months of their life with you know not being able to vacation and so on and we forget about the real aspect of covet 19 which unfortunately i have not seen any good media campaigns on you know with the state without stigma campaign and a lot of the awareness about opiates we were great as a um as government to unveil how substance abuse you know hides behind every door and to break down those stigmas so that we realize that
017it could happen to anyone um while covert can have consequences to anyone because of unknown conditions that lead them to be high risk we know that it's our elderly and those with dual morbidity that have the highest risk and we're not hearing those horror stories by as the public hipaa unfortunately will hurt more than it helps in situations like this the public is shielded from the knowledge that we have at the health department those one-on-one conversations that we're having with people that are fearful because they gave covid or to a household member and that household member is hospitalized we know that hospital um beds are filling to capacity in certain parts of the state they're full to capacity um as i saw on a information sheet last week we also know that you know in
018the south coast our hospital beds are as full as they were and in some days even fuller than they were back in the spring surge um so unfortunately the public is not getting an opportunity to really see the real cytokin those that we really need to be protecting um it's you know the young to stop them from being dismissive to see the horrors that are occurring in our hospitals and within those families that are impacted by coven um so i worry now with the decreasing testing ability that seems to be descending on us with the buy appointment with the weather influencing access and in essence probably a lower case count you know this is forecasting so i can't speak with certainty but it certainly seems like everything is aligning to come into place so it
019concerns me that this is going to be reason to relax when we look at our case count in dartmouth um we've experienced numbers that are much higher than they were the spring surge when the state was shut down when we saw our highest numbers in late may of 78 cases we know that about half of those cases were in congregate living facilities um since october um we were fairly low still below the may um eighth or maybe excuse me the may first number but november the first week we hit 61 cases since then it's been double it's been triple digits of 115 133 129 then december 156 and 177 on i'm beginning to be a little bit concerned about the numbers this week are going to show a sharp decline i really um i hope
020i'm wrong because i don't think that those numbers are going to be representative of transmission in dartmouth last week i started a new file businesses are required to call us at the health department when they have a covered positive employee the number of calls coming in over the last seven to nine business seven to nine business days has been unprecedented we have not seen these numbers and i know that this is a barometer of what is truly going on out in the community we know that there have been delays in reporting and that those delays frustrate public health measures those delays can provide opportunity for further transmission and what i point to is is that um last week unfortunately we said a disappointing record i saw results come in that were over 10 days old
021somewhere in the approximate of about 12 days at that point if that was a younger person they may have already been able to remove from isolation but we've lost the opportunity to learn who their close contacts are and those close contacts as well as those household members that are most likely to be um infected are now infecting another generation that could have been prevented we're still seeing those delays uh yesterday i saw delays that were in this i believe around the six day range in worst case still much too long when we require uh people's memory of eight days ago because a lot of cases were looking back 48 hours um you know people just don't have that memory of eight days ago um i get it i have a hard time remembering the dates
022it's still february 2020 for me um everything is blending together so it's i don't have a lot of faith in what we're going to see for weekly case counts um now through i think even early january because the holidays are going to come in we've got dual holidays which are going to come in and impact the ability of some of the providers to report and that's going to cause data to delay and then to batch so what will happen is is you know you may see spikes if you look at the state daily data you can see these spikes that occur i forget what day it is um it might be a it might be a monday um it reoccurs each week i'm just looking at my calendar real quick so i can um it's
023a monday um where the numbers sharply drop and then they return back up to normal um this is just one day in the week that you see a trend over more recently um but we know that batching has been a problem as a result of surges of increase in testing and then as well as more recently holidays so these are all going to affect the ability of us to control um transmission or reduce the risk of transmission um in the community and unfortunately i think what's going on in the community will carry into businesses and public um operations whether it be a town or a city hall or a school um what i would like to say is is that i believe that schools are our schools are our safest place right now you've done
024an amazing job you know when we do see activity with the dartmouth public school community that activity that train that disease is coming into uh the schools and it's not as a result of cluster outbreaks um we know that that is coming into the schools um because of it's in that younger families um component of the population where you have you know several adults in the household siblings over multiple generations in some cases siblings over multiple districts it might be elementary it might be umass dartmouth bcc so on so that's just the opportunity that this disease needs to continue um you know transmission at the rate that it is unless we all start to take some significant efforts to reduce it i'm not seeing that unfortunately at this time in the public and you know
025with the restrictions that were put in place last week what i can say is is that it takes many many weeks for government restrictions to realize a decline in transmission or cases each week we saw our lowest case cow in dartmouth as we were well advancing through the reopening in massachusetts our lowest case count was in july and august with single digits well we know in july that we were fairly well reopened with indoor dining and we know that in april and even early may when we were six seven eight weeks into full closure we were still seeing our highest case count so that just examples how long it can take to really slow this down and send it in the opposite direction one thing that so i think i've kind of touched on the
026three major topics that the chair was asking about with testing how delays affect cases and transmission and um you know what i'm expecting for dartmouth i think that um you know what i've noted earlier and throughout um my discussion here is that i have the expectation that you know we'll we'll continue to see high case counts in the trip in the triple digits um for the remainder of the month um we may see a decline this week and next week because of the holidays but i don't necessarily um trust that that is going to be indicative of what's really going on out in the community again i hope i'm wrong um time will tell we also you know i also base that on the amount of close contacts associated with each case so you know
027back in the spring when everything was shut down the potential of the disease to jump to many people was reduced because the closed contacts were limited we weren't going anywhere schools were remote retail businesses were largely shut down unless it was essential everything is fully open now and it's it's getting into the businesses it's running through businesses and once it gets into that right right household it runs through the household so unfortunately i don't have good news on where i believe we're going for the next few weeks and i think january is going to be tough as well one thing i do want to note um that's going to be tough for our school systems whether it's bishop stang dartmouth high school any of our schools is that next week we're going to be breaking
028for a lot of our schools um that may be a break academically for the winter break but those professionals within those schools public or private are going to be still having to field phone calls from my office so apologies for having to disrupt you during your winter break your christmas um time when you may enjoy a short reprieve in the year um you know we're going to be calling saying um you know it's christmas eve and we just got noticed that you know we've got a case and this case is in your community and we could identify you know possibly close contacts that's going to continue through the week um certainly it may reduce as we look to that 48-hour window back from symptoms or testing but we also have to remember that there's going
029to be transmission in households um through the break and that people within your community the dartmouth public school system community are going to test positive or become close contacts and that we'll have to manage them as the school intends to reopen um after the first of the year so this is going to be a unfortunately a a new workload through the winter break for the administration and the clinical professionals in the dartmouth public school system and private schools alike so i want to apologize for that now um i don't know where you know we look at when the december 1st december 8th hit with our dartmouth public schools i mean sorry about it we look at the december 1st of the december 8th rise in cases statewide for the 94 95 um and we think
030about how we've got christmas on the 25th then we've got the first um and then a couple days later the school's going back so if we even see anywhere near a 50 trend it's going to be very very active um in early january um unfortunately with phone calls between my department and all of our school systems so again apologies again why i want to mention that is that this is going to be it has been an extraordinarily stressful run for your staff um they've done an amazing job unfortunately i've had to call your administration um at all hours on all days holidays weekends and i always cringe when i do it um it's i try to alternate between people because i know how disruptive it is and how stressed they are um this is a
031tough time it's something that you know none of us are used to um i know that you know none of us signed up to undergo this intense workload but we're all doing it and you know my uh highest accolades for all of the staff at the dartmouth public schools uh administration on all levels from the principals to their assistance within the schools administration of bush street the nurses the nurses are on the front lines of this they're having to deal with the students the parents the staff they're they're all under extraordinary stress so um i worry about them all um as we face this break which is not unfortunately i'm not for seeing as a break for them um and then that they'll face in my opinion i think that you know irrespective of whatever
032it's a public or private school as their families expect them to take some down time and hopefully spend some time with them that they'll be facing this considerable stress as well i have to mention all this because mental well-being is a public health concern and you know i've seen it within the public i've seen it within public businesses as well and it's it's real it's devastating um it's important for us to recognize that and um i wish i had a magic answer for you or some sort of silver bullet except i don't um we're in it you know through the thick of it and um it's tough so that's all i have if anyone has any questions for me you're pretty sure perfect well thank you so much uh mr michard for for being here
033uh this evening and for some of the um the facts that you've put out before i turn it over to my colleagues just a couple of things that i that's i just want to bounce off while they're fresh in my head is that i think you hit the nail right on the head when you said you know unfortunately the your your administrators are you know the foreseeably they're gonna get those calls on christmas eve or christmas day of having to contact trace people and contact trace students and i think that's one of the reasons why we as a committee felt this was important to come together this evening to have this discussion around covet 19 and about whether or not we should look to um go to a remote uh schedule sooner rather than later
034with that is do you foresee any um possibility of dartmouth participating in some kind of community testing i know i saw a kiosk or a key today for the city of new bedford and they're going to be offering covet testing for city residents at the airport uh this weekend i believe i know for haven has been doing it as well as a cushion it has been offering uh community covert testing do you foresee because i know like you said that has been you anticipate that being a concern and rightfully so that and good good for you i gotta say for trying to see if you can get an appointment at the whale's tooth parking lot and look what happened um that they all filled up extremely quickly so do you just just out of curiosity
035and for everyone watching do you foresee anything like that happening in dartmouth i'm glad you mentioned that i know that you know fair haven is um doing testing i know that a cushion has been doing the testing longest testing comes at a considerable expense and um there was a webinar yesterday i believe some of the um personnel at the dartmouth administration within dartmouth public schools may have attended um unfortunately i was interrupted too much through it to get anything out of it but what i've heard is that a lot of the communities that are undertaking some sort of testing program they're funding it through cares cares expires december 30th um i asked a question what do you plan to do when cares runs out in you know two weeks or so um they're gonna go
036seek local funding and then i think long-term hope for fema reimbursements um testing comes at an enormous expense uh samples can run you know all the way on up to about seventy dollars per sample and when you start processing hundreds and thousands of samples um you quickly um i believe probably within hundreds of samples you're gonna run into procurement and you're going to have to undertake procurement uh procedures and that's going to slow down that um service as well or that offering i know that the kiosk or i bel i should say i believe because i haven't seen actually paperwork to accompany it but i believe that that kiosk or that airport testing may have something to do with the stop the spread um i've heard about one of the stop spread programs moving so
037um okay you know i know that seven hills is offering and um also at the greater community health center in new bedford as well um so there are some obstacles while it does seem easy to offer testing right up front there are a number of things that you got to consider first and foremost front and center is going to be the dollar signs in the community as large as dartmouth um if you know i look at just the you know gross numbers and you know multiply that by by the unexpected cost per sample um we're talking hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars potentially not including personnel time and other expenses and then when you start running that out across the surge and um across still many many more months there's going to be a
038high demand for testing i believe because the vaccine while it's rolling out we i think there's a headline in today's south coast about the first nurse receiving i think was what i saw receiving the first dose of covid uh vaccine um we're going to be in the thick of this because phase two and phase three the latter part of phase two and then phase three is really where we're gonna need to be um when we really start seeing more and more people vaccinate or the potential to vaccinate more and more people depending upon the buy-in of the public's trust so um you know there is you know for a community like dartmouth i don't know what i would estimate for a budget i wouldn't feel comfortable but you know you could be looking at millions
039of dollars um actually um and with cares running out you know where is that money to come from i'm not going to speak on behalf of the finance director but i know we don't have that sort of um resource of cash to tap into moreover um knowing how long it took us to receive fema reimbursement from superstorm sandy and irene um we waited i don't want to say i don't know was it five or six years in one of those instances so that can be a long time to tie up you know fiscal resources especially as we're entering a probably a significant economic downturn for government agencies in the commonwealth and likely beyond um so that's the first part second part is is that you know we have to have you have to have personnel
040assigned so if you contract out then that's going to bump up the cost per the service you contract out you know do you want to make sure that this is exclusive to dartmouth residents um it just keeps getting more and more convoluted um and then the other problem is if if you're gonna put financial resources into this then you want to make sure that these financial resources are supporting something that are providing a benefit in other words if you're spending that sort of money we better be getting results back in you know one to two days to get results back to the six to seven days and spending possibly tens of thousands of dollars over over a weekend uh leading up to a holiday and those results don't come back for seven days would be
041infuriating to me because that's money that was wasted on stale data when it came back that doesn't provide us with the public health tools to um try to prevent the next generation of the disease so um so we are continuing to monitor i've talked to um one health care provider today to find out you know how available is testing within your provider group i've got a call into another um we know that there's still access to cvs and again it goes back to the whales tooth parking that you know it's been purported that you know they're going once they get through this new system of buy appointments they'll be back up you know to conducting significant tests per day and possibly without the weight in that long line so i think it's a situation that
042we really have to watch and monitor right now and as we know that there's a lot of talk about you know uh governor baker dispersing some test kits to some of the schools in the commonwealth um you know seems like some of those it seems like those would be an earmark for um more um densely populated communities but was certainly you know as we've seen throughout this uh pandemic since the onset everything is fluid and thank you mr michonne and what i've noted is is that um my new statement is at this time so everything i'm saying is at this time fair enough doctor jenkins thanks for all this mystery show um you know i want to make one point and then also ask you a couple questions um one you know it's great that
043i think i'm on our campus emergency response team and from what i understand south coast has signed a partnership with the broad institute which should speed their testing results which is great except we took my son to south coast health and we got a bill after we did a covent test which for many families right we're in an economic crisis right it's just not tenable right so um there's some frustration here that the free testing site run by the state is not able to put through more people because that's really what we need my questions for you are related to the campus testing project which has gone pretty well it's been asymptomatic testing um so it's two polled one um what impact will the fact that campus is closing testing essentially for a month um
044have on the one hand i think are there it may add to that case drop we aren't we don't have a ton of case out of campus but because we're not testing we're not identifying cases and that i think will also put pressure on testing um i know there are students faculty staff who were going there for testing who no longer can go there so what impact will that have on the town and then second we've had a pretty well oiled machine on campus i get tested there regularly once a week i am in and out of the door in five minutes there is i think one time i waited for one person in front of me um has has is there any capacity for us to pursue a partnership um with the university related
045to testing for town residents um we are going to be contracting out which is a cost for our campus so i don't know if there's any potential for us to cost share and there has always seemed to been appointments when i go look for appointments to do my testing so what impact will the stop have and is there any potential for partnership there so the decline in testing that we're going to experience at the university or expected to experience at the university as the semester ends is going to most certainly increase our percent positivity in dartmouth because we're going to lose you know a projected i think there's what about six to hundred students that are residents on campus and those students that have to be on campus for in-person learning such as labs um
046were being tested our positivity rate was 1.9 which i think was bringing down town numbers yes right but it's also going to remove you know probably a you know a fair number of tests over that 14-day reporting period that the state uses each week so you know i believe that will um it's going to drive down the number of tests um and you know also increase our percent positivity um but time will tell um you know because massed within the total number of tests conducted in the last 14 days is other surveillance programs outside of the university we know that there are surveillance programs in a lot of congregate living facilities um that are um you know getting quite aggressive with their uh testing um to try to you know either keep it out or
047to try to head off a uh outbreak um as far as partnering with the university on their program um you know i haven't heard of any capacity we certainly can't talk to the university about that um i'm not you know again it goes back to you know first and foremost the resources while it does provide a great opportunity in terms of the location um especially with the the uh the really low activity at the university but you know we have heard some um discussions that the university may be um they they started out slow um which is something i've always said you know it's better to do to start out a little bit slower with all of this and let out slack than it is to undo damage so you know i've i've heard all
048sorts of things i haven't heard anything final um certainly if the um on campus resident population doubles um you know that may impact their ability to you know collaborate with the town but you know i can certainly reach out and ask but the big thing is going to be um i i think the finances first front thank you mr miesha anything else dr jenkins uh anyone else okay not for mr michonne but i have i have other thoughts after he's we're done i'm good chris with uh i'm good with mr misho great thank you mr nunes appreciate it i i think i think i'm good i'm kind of processing it i just i i apologize my son just popped in um yeah i just really appreciate your your thorough sort of explanation and detail into
049all of this i i wasn't i wasn't um yeah i wasn't sure what to expect and i've done some research and i just think that you were very thorough and i appreciate your um i appreciate that so um i don't really have a question i just want to thank you for for your time uh coming here you know to our meeting and also all that your all the time you're putting in um for the the safety and wellness of of uh public health of our community so um just always grateful for for you so that's all i have chris at this point thank you mrs emerald this is wait yeah you know i think i'm um also you know processing and i want to echo what um my colleagues have said thank you so much
050for you know coming in and i really appreciate you know expounding upon the uh the stress that our admin you know across each of our schools are experiencing and and talking about mental health because that's such a key point of all this you know as well as just you know the amount of the huge amount of work and the added stress you know and then you know we see an end but it's certainly not you know the back seam but certainly not you know happening in the next couple weeks so we have to you know kind of heed that and make adjustments so um i appreciate everything that you filled us in on thank you very much yeah so uh i will echo my colleagues chris uh thank you i actually learned a lot from
051your presentation this evening um a lot about the state of where we're at with public health in the uh town of dartmouth it's just as well as just looking to the future and what the fut the immediate future in the next couple of weeks holds off for us which is a lot of uncertainty um so you're more than welcome uh to stick around um but i understand that uh you know you probably get very little time to yourself these days so i feel free to um you know drop off the meeting but i did want to take this opportunity on behalf of the the school committee to really thank you and also just for not only for tonight but for everything that you're doing for this town and for you know keeping the uh our
052town members and our students and faculty safe uh thank you mr oliver and you know you know i appreciate the uh you know the good words from everyone from yourself um and i just do want to note that um you know unfortunately i'm the figurehead for it or the uh the person in front of the others the computer camera but it's not possible without you know all the contributions um of everyone the nurses at the health department um you know maura interacts with you know so many of the nurses at the school system uh the administration within school systems um all the nurses behind mora that you know nobody even gets to hear about but the wonderful things they're doing um all the things that are happening within our town within our fire district chiefs
053helping out on this uh ems dc tv kyle costa with the police department um you know the support staff at the health department um you know melissa medeiros the personnel director all of the school nurses throughout all of the public and private schools in dartmouth and um umass dartmouth do an extraordinary job bringing their students back which is part of our community um and i'm sure i'm leaving out someone um and you know as well as all the administration here uh tonight and i know i mentioned the school nurses but again the school nurses at dartmouth public schools so thank you for that but um on behalf of all them thank you yeah thank you very much i appreciate your time thank you so much sir take care and happy holidays thank you youtube so
054with uh mr mishad's presentation with dr gifford's information that she presented this evening i'd like to turn it over to any of my fellow committee members for their thoughts i know one of the one of the pieces uh that we were talking about or that has been brought up with some concerns about whether or not we should um switch to a remote learning model sooner rather than later um as well as thoughts on um you know after january 1st about you know starting the year remotely with the staggered start i know that's something that the new bedford public schools recently voted on and approved yesterday um so but we're dartmouth and i i'd love to hear from what any of you have to say and your thoughts on all of this mr nunes thank you
055mr chairman i think at this point in time we should just steal the course that we have okay uh you know i think you heard mr mitchell say that you know this thing's coming into it's not coming into the school per se because you know of students it's just you know what's going on out there so i don't think us you know our schools are not a spreader as i heard from him uh i think we steer the course at this point in time if something happens and we have to shut down later then we do that and again as happened in march you know the governor took it out of our hands and so be it but i think at this point in time we wait and see what happens you know if we
056end you know if there's a surge when we come back in january and we have to shut down for a week in january because of the holiday search then we do it then but at this point in time i think we keep our students in school more than you know the more that they can be you know in school face to face you know the better off they are the better off the teachers are you know everybody's learning everybody's teaching so that that's my two cents on the matter thank you very much mr nunes dr jenkins oh i am i you know as with last time i don't i don't know what to do here you know i know the huge costs that are on both sides of this equation um i am deeply concerned
057about kids being home particularly younger kids but i'm also deeply concerned about the rate of community spread i know that a lot of people i've heard from a lot of people i know we're in this boat we signed up for hybrid learning when the rate of community spread was maybe about five cases ten cases a week one thing to send your kids to school to send your partner to school when there's five cases a week in a town of 35 000 people it's another thing to send right um your kids who may have medical issues your staff to school when we're seeing community spread like we do um personally i am not particularly inclined to go remote before the winter break um i think we only have a few days left of in person because
058i believe we have professional development on the 22nd so that leaves us with wednesday maybe a snow day a fully remote day on thursday friday and monday right but i am also inclined to tell everyone in this community that they should leave for winter break prepared that they may not be coming back in january because if the rate of community spread does not decrease i don't think i can in good conscience continue to send people and kids to school um and i expect um we saw a surge at thanksgiving um you know the coronavirus is now rampaging through our community and people are going to get together again for christmas right and so it's going to be throwing fuel on a fire so i strongly suspect this is my hunch that we're going to see
059some more roll backs post christmas in the states um as has happened in other states our hospitals are at capacity um and as much as we don't want to do anything right we can't continue to send sick people to hospitals that have no space so i'm inclined my inclination personally right now is to continue where we are right now but to have everyone plan for being fully remote after the january break and with that when when do you think a decision would be made to let families know dr jenkins regarding the uh the winter break i don't know right i do i do want to see some more numbers um which is why i don't i don't know i could be convinced differently i don't know how i would vote this evening um but if
060i don't see numbers you know serious indicators getting better in this community in this state um i would i would i'd be willing i mean everyone's gonna have to work over christmas bake doing contact racing and i mean i'm not going anywhere over over winter break i'm staying home with my family i'm going to do the right thing so if we have to have an emergency zoo meeting we do and that's when we call it um i'm fine with that but i'm just not i don't think that we're going to be able to come back in january thank you uh mrs waite yeah so i've been struggling with us you know i think ever since the last meeting we had it's been you know it's been tough and my initial inclination was to say you
061know friday you know monday why would we bring them in for that one day but now you know in retrospect you know i think of the elementary students who really do need that i mean everyone i think having closure again it's i doesn't seem to get worse right before christmas and i you know i don't want to pull the sheet underneath you know rug out from under our teachers who've planned out the remainder of this semester if we can you know or this time frame before the holidays if we can avoid it and i want our students to go in and you know give their presence to their teachers and you know have that finished like i think that's really important because mental health is so important with that said part of the advantage would
062have been to uh allowing students to stay home and this is where i struggle on that friday and monday and i say just so we could balance the cohorts and you know they'd be out if thursday's a snow day is that what would ease the contact tracing pressure for people right up against the holidays so i'm acknowledging that so it is a tough thing but i can say that you know especially after listening to mr mission i i think we have to be prepared you know for that full remote after even if you know even if it's two weeks um and i i think we're gonna have we're gonna have to have a meeting you know through that in some time during our break if we don't decide next monday when we have a schedule
063a scheduled meeting but i'd like to see that we give staff time you know i don't want to be saying you know you know on a monday that you know you're going to start on a wednesday or you know remote i just i would like to see our staff have advanced notice and again anything we can do to avoid stress for our families let them be prepared and for our staff is just critical that's how i so but it's it's tough it's tough thank you mrs white uh mrs amaral yeah i uh i i'm really not going to say much um different to what my colleagues have said i was on a call earlier today um while i was listening to the board of ed you know and they were talking about some some uh
064changes they voted on and some other stuff related to time and learning um but there was a lot of discussion from some of my colleagues um in the field around just what shannon mentioned just the mental health of of our students and how um you know we haven't even you know we had ross on and he certainly looked a little bit um through the ringer you know sharing up with us his uh school improvement plan and uh he he mentioned that you know that we complimented them and all of that and uh rightfully so all the work that everyone's putting in um but he noted and i'm sure all of our principals can note that the um you know the students needs are ever present you know i've over the course of the last several
065you know months since the beginning of this um unfortunately the um uh child protective agencies have have you know the the calls in about about abuse and and and the galactic are significantly down um and that is is is just really scary that on top of what they described uh today on the call is the the the um tsunami effect of of what we're you know we haven't even seen you know we hearing it from ross we know what happened kids are coming in every day we see it within our own families um but isolation and loneliness is just doing a toll on everyone in our community um and it was described as a tsunami like with the way that the nature of ptsd and the trauma that we're all experiencing is going to come
066out eventually and it hasn't happened yet to the level that we're going to see it [Music] i have my own son who has significant special education needs and i have seen him um when he was home you know i i don't want to say regress but just frustrated and just so confused and so unable to access any supports and services and he has a supportive family i'm lucky enough to be able to work from home um we were lucky to have lawn mowers that work in the backyard to occupy his time a lot of the time and and just you know but i i feel like i don't know what i would vote on either i mean i would couldn't say that i would support closing the schools currently because on the other hand i
067pray every day that i can send my son to school so i don't think i could have approached it and voted a certain way i'm concerned about the numbers i'm concerned about our students i'm concerned that we we need to have a plan um and so i say all of that sort of in line with my colleagues and that i i'm inclined to be agreeable dependent upon whether or not our numbers go up or if they don't go down uh to be agreeable to starting the year remote you know in sort of that quarantine after our i'm scared concerned i'm just concerned about our teachers i'm concerned about our students so anyway i just throw that all out there blah yeah i i would be inclined to have that discussion and and make sure that
068people have um adequate time to prepare to go back to remote if if we did vote on that uh but i don't know right now that i would sit here and and support a vote to vote now on that i would i would want to wait to see a little bit um to see about our numbers uh because i to john's point to shannon's point you know we're i as much learning as we can get in person um is what i'm in support of as long as it sort of aligns with the safety of our community um i don't see it getting better but at this point i would i would like to sort of see what we say maybe monday or if we have to meet in between as well so thank you mr
069zamarrall um to that point um you know i think our numbers let's face it if i'm a realist i don't see our numbers getting any better after christmas or after the after the holiday season um i would like this committee to come back next monday prepared to take a vote on whether or not we should look to close school or not school close school early but keep school closed on that first week that we would typically be returning to do a full remote session i'd like the committee to be prepared for next monday to have that discussion and whether or not we move forward with that because to tie and i'll come back to you in a second dr jenkins to um to push that vote off any longer i don't think it's fair for
070families in town uh something else with i'm also torn i'm torn right now with um because i can i can honestly see some the thought process behind looking to you know make friday the last day of school for in-person learning and we gained three days um you know as far as keeping the kids keeping students home and then having that monday and remote but i can also understand the equity issue so i'm struggling with that because i know i'm gaining three days of um you know remote learning and quarantining or staying away from each other in the schools because quite honestly i firmly i firmly believe there are asymptomatic students walking around the schools right now as well as staff members i i can almost say that you know it's just my opinion but without
071a doubt that there's a symptomatic students and staff walking around the schools so gaining those those three days there may be something there especially when you hear mr misha talk about uh contact tracing and social emotional well-being with students faculty and staff and i i hear from i hear from families i hear from teachers and even students that the the concern and burden that um that goes on and plays out in their mind especially with everything that's going on right now i know this is taking a huge toll on our students our faculty and our staff so right now i'm honestly not sure i guess i will um i'll go along if that's the committee's pleasure to keep the schools open through uh through tuesday um but dr jenkins so i just want to bring
072up a point that ms waite made at our last meeting that um i think we need to give families more advanced notice than pulling the plug right now because if we pull the program now families are going to be scrambling for child care and i think that it is 100 percent going to lead to families sending their kids to other families homes and the intermingling of school of kids um i don't think i think is going to make the community spread worse if we pull the plug on schools right now than if we if we if we wait if we say now on i i agree that on monday it would be great for us to make a decision on monday because we need to we we roll into winter break and that gives families
073some time to plan for what they will do for that week if we pull the plug right now families are going to scramble and it's not going to help i would also like to ask i i hesitate to ask this because i know how hard our administrators are working but my concern is that our numbers partially our population is the highest but our numbers are highest at the high school right in part because we cannot pod our high schoolers our high schoolers are also most able to handle fully remote they are more autonomous learners than any of our other kids um and so i would like to hear i don't want to put her on the spot tonight but maybe on monday night and perhaps hear dr gifford's thoughts about um doing some sort of
074staggered comeback after the break where we get our littlest learners in more quickly because i think that's the biggest burden on family we're able to pod those students the easiest and they are you know per medical research least likely to um there's some debate about this but maybe um less likely to spread so i don't know that i would support that i just i i would like to hear and again you know give dr gifford some time to think about that whether that might be possible thank you dr jenkins mrs waite yeah i have a question that's uh you know a little on a sidebar as you know i've heard some feedback from families who have students in virtual particularly the elementary school um and you know and i think we all received an email
075you know to that to the question of students who are being added to that you know to the virtual school that's being offered but you know by dartmouth teachers and i guess that's kind of gets to be a question are we going to cap that like how do because that that becomes a little you know again to you know dr chen's point earlier is you know certainly we've seen when people first made those choices the rates were a lot you know less you know concerning you know then certainly we're seeing that increase so are we capping as those classes especially you know again tech is a different entity you know the high school is a different entity but we're looking at our elementary are we capping those dr gifford are we so we're keeping and
076is so is there a point where because it are those numbers continuously increasing like or are they kind of staying with just a few kids coming in from quarantine no they've been about steady we haven't capped we're not excluding anyone sometimes people ask for specific reasons such as significant health reasons or something like that so um it's it's helped kind of study in and out a few here and there but not too bad okay well that's that's you know that's good to know that there isn't like a huge surge of parents who are trying to you know which i might you might expect to try to shift into that program so i appreciate it and then you know to uh what dr jenkins you know had said i you know again i i the stagger
077start certainly does make you know to me a lot of sense as well if we can kind of consider as we look at the dates um you know for january as part of our thinking next you know next week um mr oliver i think that would be you know could be again part of our discussion it's i i agree with her you know rationale they're bringing in our littlest learners and almost you know again like replicating to some degree what we did in the fall i think would be helpful thank you mrs white mr mishra did you have your hand raised yes sir um i would just like to add one more complexity uh to the weeks ahead and i promise i will be brief so thank you for taking me after the conclusion of
078my discussion earlier um winter sports have now started um you know i know that there are some safety protocols but that is certainly going to add a layer of complexity um to the delivery of you know your ultimate goal which is education um you know we did see with small sports that there was um a lot of contact tracing uh so i fully expect that with basketball and hockey we will see the same again um and likely more because in the fall sports we were still you know experiencing lower numbers so the potential is much greater now so um i just wanted to add that because i did not note that earlier thank you no thank you uh anyone else missed the news yeah thank you mr chairman um for you real quick to mr
079kylie since he's been kind enough to to sit through all of this uh with the school clothes you know for you know a week and a half type of deal are we going to be quoting unquote deep cleaning all the schools over christmas vacation well so mr nunes we have um some scheduled activities that we'll be we'll be undertaking over christmas vacation including changing filters for hvac units where we wouldn't normally do that at this time of year so we'll be doing that we'll be doing a clean uh that that we normally would do during the holidays there really isn't a necessity to do a deep cleaning um beyond what we would normally do we're we're pretty much deep cleaning nightly you know we're we're using those electrostatic sprayers every day in the classrooms and
080cleaning everything um so i mean we we take every vacation week opportunity to sort of do a more thorough cleaning to a school building than we would have a chance to on a nightly basis so we'll continue to do that plus some you know additional measures like like the changing of filters uh also the second question either the doctor give it or get back to mr kylie if we just start changing some of these some of these things around have we got a in kind of a basic yes or no and i know we're an open session but have we got some union issues that we're going to have to iron out yeah okay that's what i thought let's say it's not as easy as people think there are many complexities to remote learning there
081are people that do not work there are people that may not receive paychecks there are bus um contracts that people are not working this is much more complex than people think yeah okay thank you and i guess my last my last concern because it comes even if we go remote and even over the you know the holiday break type of deal you know and more so with the high school i mean i think we heard from mr tebow and somebody correct me if i'm wrong but his comment to us was that the high school students had really stepped up and were doing the best that they could with the wearing of the masks and in the social distancing you know come out you got to go left you can't go right you got to go
082left even though maybe you're just going next you know taking the you know following all the uh the the ways you know the travel ways through the school type of deal but my concern a couple of my my concerns becomes if these students aren't in school you know they could very well be hanging out with their friends that you know again some of them maybe have come back from college so you know you've got you know that type of that type of a situation and you know let's be honest i go by the high school on a saturday or sunday and you're seeing 50 60 kids out there playing soccer no masks playing football no masks no social distancing nobody social distances uh we got some you know they're not for argumentators like nobody's following
083rules outside of school so that becomes you know my big concern and that's why i'm saying you know sit here and as much as we can keep these students in school thank you mr chairman thank you mr nunes so yeah i appreciate everyone's time everyone's efforts and comments here just a couple of takeaways from this is um you know i i was kind of torn um going into this as far as closing early but i'll go along unless someone has a motion i will go along with keeping the you know keeping the schedule as is and moving forward uh through the regular holiday break but as far as after the holiday break um let's plan on having that discussion next week um to to mr newton's point as far as things being you know a
084little more complicated than what they appear on the surface um i will say this to that uh i will say that to me safety is paramount i could care less about union issues about other people you know getting involved with this safety is the number one priority when it comes to students in this district including my own student so as far as anything else goes i'm looking at data i'm looking at statistics and i'm going to do what i think is right and is in the best interest for students not for anyone else other than students um unless someone else has any other comments uh we will uh we'll see you all right um comments questions concerns for the committee miss paul um i i just want to thank you for calling this meeting i
085think it was really important i think that there was great value i learned so much from uh chris misho and um hearing from all of you like i said i was i've been struggling with this um on some level i feel that inevitably we're going to vote and it is what it is but um i just want to thank you for calling this meeting because i think it was important that we had this discussion thank you mrs emerald i just want to mention another thing um mr noone's point i still um recommend that the the structure the schedule that the students are engaging in um really supports that social emotional i was on the board of education's meeting as well today and the social emotional issue is humongous they are promoting as we know more
086and more in school as much as we can um and i think about the students that are in school every day now our special needs students if we went remote what would happen with that um and the services that they're getting with the ot the special speech etc has been extremely difficult in any remote situation so um just those things to think about as we move forward sure thank you very much dr gifford chair willing to maintain a motion to adjourn jinx john emotion by dr jenkins second by mr nunes on the motion any further discussion share hearing none all in favor hi that's right roll call because we're remote oliver yes shannon jenkins yes kathleen emerald yes mary wait yes john nunes yes meeting is adjourned have a wonderful night everyone we'll see you
087next week good morning thanks everybody thank you um you