Dartmouth School Committee Meeting November 9, 2020

001well good evening everyone i'd like to call this meeting of the dartmouth school committee to water for monday november 9th 2020 and as a reminder i i guess i'm getting a little tired of reading this but i think it's important that we do uh just let the public and the viewing public know that per governor baker's audit suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law chapter 38 section 20 that 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 on dc tv channels 9 and 18 on the following days wednesday and thursday at 5 pm friday at 6 a.m saturday at 8 a.m and sunday at 2

002p.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 that being said could i have a roll call vote please miss gentler chris oliver here shannon jenkins kathleen amarill here john nunes yep mary wait here uh thank you very much and i know we don't have a viewing audience here but just a reminder to my fellow colleagues to silence your cell phones and i'll do that right now um perfect at this time um we typically allow an opportunity pledge of allegiance um thank you it's been so so long that if everyone can please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and can always count on mr nunes to uh

003keep you in line yeah exactly to keep us in line he is uh always there for us um typically at this time we allow uh public comment for anyone wishing to comment on any of tonight's agenda items are for those of you who may have viewed our gender that's posted on the town clerk's website you can see that you have an opportunity to comment on any of tonight's agenda items by emailing our recording secretary kathleen genther at dartmouthschools.org and also throughout this evening tonight we will review this at this before we close and go into executive session so if you have any comments that you'd wish to like to share uh this evening you can do so by emailing uh kathleen genther uh once again and we'll revisit this at this time ms genter do

004we have any uh public comments relating to tonight's agenda i have not received any comments great thank you very much this time chair will entertain a motion to approve the regular session minutes of um october 19th 2020. a second i have a motion by mr nunes a second by uh mrs way on the motion any further discussion gee herring none all in favor aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously uh next up chair we'll entertain a motion to approve the executive session minutes of october 19 2020. so mr chair with the stipulation that they be held until the matter for which they're intended is completed second i have a motion on the floor by mr nunes a second by mrs waite to approve the executive session minutes of october 19th any further discussion dear hearing not

005all in favor opposed motion carries unanimously thank you very much everyone at this time i'd like to turn turn it over to dr gifford we have a presentation this evening our school improvement plan for dartmouth middle school dr giffords yeah thank you mr chair um so tonight we have the middle school as you said presenting their school improvement plan and i believe the entire administrative team ms deakis mr doan mr rossi and mr hayes will be here to discuss some of the things that the middle school will be thinking about as the year progresses as well as they provide a little bit of an update on how things have been going at the middle school since we've started school excellent he was there a little while ago no problem and i know that with mr

006peratti and uh mr galesha here we're continuing to get more technologically advanced with our school committee meetings so i have no doubt that um the voice is kind of unclear it's very difficult to pick up the audio all right can you hear us now mr doan we can see mr rossi and i we can hear you mr doan pete's like nope get here are you muted oh i need to unmute right i'm sorry i think that's okay this is tricky [Music] right now on your end i don't know how i'm coming across are you coming in okay so we don't touch the mute then you don't want us okay perfect okay okay um may we uh mr galesha is it okay to uh begin our presentation at this time yeah we can't um okay the

007audio was unclear at the beginning thank you all right thumbs up thank you chairman oliver i appreciate it um this evening mr rossi our assistant principal uh mr hayes our assistant principal and this is our associate principal um again just going to share with you our school improvement plan um mr rossi at first we'll also we know the school committee would like to hear as to how our hybrid uh model is going thus far um and mr robert who retired last year his last words to me when he walked out the door was delegate so this evening we'll have mr rossi share about a hybrid plan uh mrs diekes will discuss teaching and learning as well as access and equity and how that ties into our school improvement plan and mr hayes will follow up

008with the community engagement so with all that being said we uh thank you for providing us with the opportunity to present this evening and i'll turn it over to mr rossi thank you mr doan and good evening i just kind of wanted to walk you through what our hybrid looks like at the middle school um first and foremost i can't say enough about staff students parents how they've stepped up to meet this challenge um presently right now our doors open at 7 30 as opposed to 7 710 and what we do is as as students enter our building and we've we've added entry points we used to have one now we have three report right to their home room and once in their home room that's kind of their pod and that can be anywhere

009from eight to twelve students and within that pod within their home room that's where they're receiving their four academics and their lunch um our cafeterias actually right now are pretty large teaching spaces and we deliver the lunch to them one of the real challenges and teachers have been great is they actually teach in four different spaces so the kids are staying in one location and the teachers are moving um our students are moving when they go to their specials and when we're moving students we stagger that by grade level so we only have one grade level moving at a time and we kind of our bells have kind of become obsolete and we uh we just kind of come over the intercom and tell kids when it's safe to move i know some of you

010have had an opportunity to visit our building but we've got traffic patterns our stairwells our runways hallways that are only six feet or one ways um and then in the rest of the building we're able to go two way but it almost kind of resembles a bike path if you will where kids kind of stay within their lane kids are not assigned lockers this year or they're not changing for gym um we've kind of taken it upon ourselves mr doan had a great idea to kind of give kids their own bathroom pass that they have on them and we kind of have hooks outside of the bathroom and we only allowed two kids in at a time and i have to say that the compliance with the kids with their masks and the rules that

011we've put in place they've been outstanding um as far as uh what we've done with our custodians we've kind of switched their schedules around a little bit and we have two on during the day and they're consistently cleaning high surface areas um at the end of the day mr kiley was able to purchase that backpack to disinfect classrooms at a pretty fast pace um that's kind of what our day looks like um as i said kids have been great just outstanding i don't know if you have any specific questions you'd like to ask maybe to get in a little more detail i'd be happy to do that anyway committee members not really uh jonathan would you like to save the question mr rossi i do have my fellow committee member mr news here that has

012a question for you sure great thank you mr chairman mr rossi or anyone mr dome liz nicus mr hayes uh with regards to oh okay okay [Laughter] we'll get this right yet hope i get you pretty clearly right now mr nunes okay okay mr you know this is missing anyone on the administration middle school or unfortunately unfortunately because of everyone the concern with you know students being sick whether it's you know head colds or ex you know potentially exposed to covet and having a quarantine how are we handling you know the education for these students when they're out of school for 14 days which would you know could be you know 10 to 12 you know school days you know even you know with the two months you know the three into out vice versa

013you know how are those students you know being educated you may answer well mr nunes um currently what we have in place is our teachers um and over the past few years have become well-versed with uh a variety of uh technology platforms and mr hayes later in this presentation we'll kind of share further but um our guidance staff we identify who those students have we've uh we create kind of a google form so we keep that updated it's a whole lot here it's a bit of a challenge because we not only identify when the students are out but also we have to identify when that return date is so guidance staff gets that information they connect with those students on a daily basis we advise ours our teachers our teams of those students that will

014be out they connect with those students via academic support common planning time etc and also we've utilized our math coach as well as our ela coach so they're provided those students names as well so they periodically reach out with those students so there is that connectiveness through the course of their time being out and also with that um each day we're kind of reflecting on our current practices and trying to identify and develop ways in which we can kind of further not only connect with those students but also connect with our students that may not physically in the school at that time so number one our goal is to make sure that we we manage and identify and have a clear understanding of those students that are out and also uh make sure that we're

015connecting and advising our teachers and guidance staff as well as to when those students um will be returning and what supports we can place place for them while they are out hopefully that answered your question mr nunes yes it did thank you sir any of my other fellow colleagues have questions for mr doan or any of his team um i have a quick question yeah i'll turn it over to uh mrs waite okay okay go ahead okay um hi one quick question i have is you know when it comes to content um do the teachers feel that i know they lost a few weeks and then we're on the schedule do they feel like they're kind of staying on track i know that you know there's been some moving around and kind of re-prioritizing certain

016standards um i'm just kind of curious what the feedback is on content coverage with teachers and students thank you also a point person for curriculum yeah and i'll be kind of touching base um touching on that when i get into the presentation but um they're actually pleasantly surprised um they were able to get a lot done they are very appreciative of the 10 days that we had at the beginning of the year to make sure that we had good solid remote lessons and they're actually you know as you said we're kind of refocusing a little bit on the power standards and so forth but we're within less than a week off where we would normally be so um we're doing okay that's great thank you thank you and i will uh i'm sure looks like

017i'm unmuted right now so uh i do have one last question before we move on in regards to uh community engagement and i'm not sure which one of the uh admin wants to take it there but and this is more uh general i think than just specifically to the middle school i think i love your last bullet here mr rossi where you say continue to seek ways to proactively communicate and define appropriate communication i think it's so important that we continue to educate our community and our students at how important it is to practice good social distancing and good social practices when we're not in school because i i'm saying this now and you're going to hear me say it again later on tonight in which if we can do as much as we can

018within the boundaries and within the walls of our school buildings in the dark for the dartmouth public schools however if students go home and they decide or their families decide to make poor decisions and have uh large social gatherings that's not only going to jeopardize themselves but that's going to jeopardize the entire student body in whatever school we're going back to you know whether it's the darwin middle school the dartmouth high school or any of the elementary schools so i think it's imperative that we continue not only as a as a school district at the central office level but also at the building level that we continue to do our best to really educate and uh you know and i want to believe that we we've educated people as much as we can but um

019i i think it's so important that we continue to reiterate um that in order to keep schools open and we made and commissioner riley and governor maker baker did make that clear earlier this week and that's a whole other topic but in order to keep schools open we're going to need to keep students safe not only in school but they got to be making safe appropriate decisions outside and i think the most that we can do as a school system is just continue to remind families and remind students to practice uh you know just have good prac practices so uh i just want to make sure that we're continuing to communicate proactively and effectively uh with our school community at dom at dartmouth middle school as well as um across the district well follow up

020on that uh mr oliver i mean i i do believe i know that at the district level um even on the uh tunnel level i think and school committee as well i think all parties have been very proactive in just conveying that message i i will i know uh um it's been kind of bi-weekly that i submit a message from the principal kind of an informative letter um initially uh early in the school year uh we sent a very um letter that consisted of uh a variety of areas in which we wanted to keep parents informed and specifically the kind of the safety in the building and steps we have taken to kind of support students in this uh pandemic so whether in and outside of school um you know we continue to convey that

021message and i have to say i only speak on behalf of the middle school but um you know i found parents overall have been very very supportive um in the steps that we've taken to keep children safe uh they've been very patient um as mr rossi alluded to and i know um this doesn't take care of things outside of school as well but parents have reached out mr rossi and i kind of become the point person and with our nurses and so we've had parents reach out we've reached out to them as well just um communicating keep the lines of communication open to assist them to address any questions that they may have in regards to the steps we've taken and even concerns they may have outside of school uh we've kind of directed them

022um to the appropriate people so again just striving to keep those lines of communication open i think that's been beneficial and as i previously just stated um you know the parents as a whole have been uh you know very supportive um in the steps that that we have taken and um you know we greatly appreciate that thank you very much mr doan uh that's all we have here um if you whenever you're ready to move on you do this turn over and this is like this toronto a little bit to it well but just to uh um let you know i mean our students remain in their academic classes and our and our teachers move so um you know when it comes to uh the technology and and supports for the and pertains to uh

023curriculum etc i know mrs deakis has worked awful hard in helping teachers kind of facilitate the process and it's been i think um not so much a challenge but um having teachers move from room to room and being in an area that maybe they're not particularly familiar with so uh mrs deakis with her support they've all worked extremely hard to kind of create a learning environment that um supports them and it helps enable them to kind of uh enrich their instructional delivery so with that being said we'll turn this over to mrs deakis thank you mr doan um i did put up a slide for you just those are kind of the key points we're going to pull from the sip i believe you all have a an updated copy of this year's plan which

024was a little more challenging than usual given the circumstances um but you know we did try to really look at what we can do so just to give you an idea you know trying to support the district's initiative of uh relating to the coherence and effectiveness of the curriculum we really can need to continue to monitor and update our scope and sequence in all areas we use it uh we have the scope and sequence up every single time we meet in our curriculum planning time as a guide and as i had mentioned earlier at this point we're pretty much on target we know where we're going to be you know at thanksgiving we know where we're going to be at christmas and we're pretty confident that we'll be able to hit all of the standards

025by the end of the school year we have to review it on a regular basis we add hyperlinks to it we make sure they're in alignment with the deci we share information on a regular basis the sixth grades completely adopted the new geography standards and we the eighth grade are right at the end last spring or actually last early winter they went through some pd for the new civics projects that deci is requiring and they're ready to go this year we'll be completing that in the spring that at our most recent after-school curriculum meeting we made a lot of different updates to the scope and sequences with um really a primary focus on the power standards we did make some adjustments for example in the eighth grade they had developed some real strong units in

026plate tectonics that were primarily remote units because we were working at it in the spring so we flipped that to the beginning of the year we also decided that we really want to have an interdisciplinary approach to some of the units this year so for example in sixth grade when we get to the unit on africa in social studies and they'll be working on the geography the ela classes will simultaneously be reading the long walk to water that looks at it from another lens and we've moved that to earlier in the year so which that's usually kind of the end of the year project this year it'll be in january we're feeling that we have a pretty strong foundation of technology that's really helped us every single day we're looking at virtual platforms what we

027can use to make sure that we're meeting the needs of all the kids mr hayes will be addressing that more in more detail in a little bit another area i wanted to touch on is is how we use data to ensure that the students academic and social emotional needs are met and with targeted interventions and enrichments this is uh supporting the district initiative of using um student growth data and assessments to make sure we're providing those interventions this was very very challenging last spring particularly when it came to the social emotional needs as you can imagine there was a lot of anxiety out there increase in depression and so forth we had used our guidance counselors special ed teachers support staff we're all doing a lot of regular check-ins lunch bunches one-to-one meetings social groups

028to really make sure that we kept those connections as much as possible prior to the closing um we had had some pd on the use of technology of which is ironic but the use of technology and its connection to depression anxiety and addiction we had also done some through deci on the lgbtq community in ways that we could promote a safe and supportive culture we have a data rti team that meets on a regular basis to review student project excuse me progress we try to look as many data points as possible up until this year we use demcas star grades nurses referrals kids going to how many times they were going to the guidance office attendance behavioral swiss data and so forth excuse me and we would meet as a team and kind of look

029at what type of programs or interventions a kid may need it may be intervention plans with specific strategies it may need targeted math or reading specialists possibly the after school small tutorial tutorial program we had up until the spring or our in-school school student support center checking check out mental health referrals etc we already have had meetings this year we have another one again this week and you know we continue to use that data to look at the kids and what they might need um one of the benefits we discovered with the hybrid was we're actually able to increase the number of kids that can get services through the reading specialists the the they're successful because they're small groups we nev we try not to have more than five or six kids in those classes

030and we're half the kids aren't here um we were actually able to increase that and we were able to provide that to a much higher number of kids so there's a little silver lining there we've also changed the way that we're doing the um check-in checkout mentoring program this year historically it's its primary focus is to look at kids that may need support they're having a number of discipline referrals and so forth but our pbis team felt strongly that we really wanted to make sure those kids at home that might be struggling a little bit really we wanted to keep that connection with school and really keeping a close eye on them we've already have i think four or five kids that we've connected with mentors they check in with them when they're in school

031but they also do a google meet with what them when they're at home and just check in on them this is an adult in our building that is not a direct necessarily a direct academic teacher for that kid it's just to help make a connection of an adult that cares about them and and wants to make sure they're doing well both in school and out of school the response from the parents of the kids that we have connected has been very positive as well and very appreciative um one actually said i think that's the thing that's helping them the most right now is is just keeping that positive connection with school moving on to access and equity one of the things that has been something i'm actually really proud of is the partial inclusion classes

032that we kicked off last year in both ela and math it took a lot of work a lot of collaboration with the special ed department and within our building to make it work we didn't hire any new staff but we had people that really saw a need and we worked to make sure that it happened before it kicked off we did provide with the help from the special ed director professional development for the we had three different teachers at one at each level that was teaching the class and we provided training in programs such as cloud nine sunday and the lli reading levels we again we used our data team and special ed staff to identify kids using multiple data points over at least two years worth of school and we tried to keep the

033classes small between five and eight the progress that we saw in in the short amount of time that we had you know again with the the closing was pretty significant we saw kids increasing one to two grade levels so we were really proud of how well that worked we were able to create a master schedule so that those teachers also continue to teach full inclusion um so that as the kids are improving they can go back into an inclusion class and we can keep with our goal that we have the least restrictive environment this year we actually um only needed ela in in seventh grade we found we had enough growth that we didn't need that partial inclusion class and seventh our eighth grade we still have one uh partial inclusion for math and dla

034and sixth we actually didn't need it in either we just have our programs for with a pass and power program so so far we're really on target and we're really pleased with how well that's been going [Music] we have been working on this for a number of years and uh it's a good thing that we had um providing more technology to increase the learning for uh blended learning and and now remote learning the previous training and the work that um our teachers had done with highlander really allowed for a smooth transition to remote learning with the google classrooms we had a number you know the live and pre-recorded lessons last spring and again at the beginning of this year and now in the remote days the goguardian and the google classrooms have really been essential

035parts of our teaching and maintaining contact with the students our eighth graders are now in their third year with the one-to-one technology and because of this it has allowed us the capacity to provide students in need of chromebooks for remote learning at all grade levels in this past spring through the coordinated effort of both the district and the school of administrators multiple days were set up for parents to come and pick up chromebooks i think uh pretty much every day mr rossi was out there handing out chromebooks to kids right up in you know right up until june some of the things that we were doing um and are continuing to do with the technology are some of the literary literary analysis discussions the kids will create online blogs and they talk to each other

036about books and they and it's across the whole grade level they're not like limited to their classrooms they're interacting with kids and it's really given kids that maybe don't necessarily want to speak all the time a real strong voice an opinion when they're talking about their their books and it's been very impressive we also had projects including like podcasting green cat screen video projects genius hour kids are creating websites short movies makers mark all kinds of things so we were blessed to have started this and really helped us out a lot this year um jonathan was great we were able to get one to one for our seventh grade as well so now the carts were given to the sixth grade student homeroom so each of those kids have them as well so it's really

037been a tremendous help keeping up with the curriculum and giving the kids the technology they need to make all of the remote learning and the hybrid days working our message this year has been to be fluid and be flexible things are changing on a daily basis this afternoon our teachers were working in groups on sharing all the different creative ways they are me reaching the kids at home and how they're going to continue to add to that in the future days and with that i'm going to turn it over to mr hayes are there uh any questions though for mrs deakis before mr hayes speaks uh first of all thank you for that presentation uh any of my colleagues have any questions specific to um well i mean i can wait till the end you're

038gonna wait until then yeah well uh we'll wait till the end uh mr doan thank you big thank you this is rova do shoes but she's done a great job and i know mr overdue is very proud so we're uh having a happy to have her on board in that role uh mr hayes all right um so as we uh adjusted to this in real time and and making connections uh to our students and families outside of school uh last spring teachers really began to got comfortable with and continue to use google meet um as well as other virtual meeting platforms to connect with students and their families um teachers are also using communication platforms including email on google classroom with which mrs deakins mentioned goguardian dojo reminds and other apps and technology resources in

039order to keep the the lines of communication open with students and their families administratively we've consistently communicated with families using email and using the robocall system that we have in place to to reach everyone our dartmouth public school app as well in order to reach out to students in particular our incoming students this year staff were able to create a virtual open house presentation um which highlighted our academic expectations our standard based grading system um and use of social media along with personalized videos for the incoming fifth graders who hadn't had a chance to come into our building as we missed our normal fifth grade step-up day um at the end of last year and we were also able to hold a virtual graduation ceremony with personalized messages from teachers for our 8th grade students

040along with a designated day for the 8th grade students to come to school to pick up their belongings to say a final goodbye to the dms teachers and staff as well as to receive the awards that they earned throughout their time at the middle school really celebrating all the successes that they had as well as holding similar days to that for the sixth and seventh grade students to come and pick up their belongings um in in working through connections with the community our students have been involved in a number of community service activities we've established connections throughout with our national junior honors society the council on aging on gifts to give the dartmouth natural resources trust they've been involved in beach cleanups our green update and a number of other school activities that go to

041benefit community sock drives and glove drives um and things of that nature do in thanksgiving baskets so on and so forth um and academically as well you know connection connecting to the community and even to a larger base our students have been able to connect on a national level through participation in the national scholastic math challenge last year and that continues to go on this year as well as national sun dog math challenges um and our students we were able to get student authors published in the mission contamination by the young writers usa.org and have students participate in things and receive feedback from outside of our school community on a really large scale and we're really proud of all of the things that we've been able to do in those regards and all the things

042that our students have been able to accomplish in those regards i'd like to uh i'll just wrap up a little bit i want to convey my appreciation to mr hayes as uh i'm sure the school committee members are well aware he was a math teacher for a number of years uh an outstanding teacher and uh he was selected to be uh one of our assistant principals and uh he's done a great job stepping in uh specifically with this pandemic and uh so i definitely appreciate his his um his work ethic dedication as well um the challenge that we've had at the middle school i think we've always strived as mrs deakis alluded to is to meet the social and emotional needs of all of our students but as well as the academic piece and um

043i won't to be very honest with you it's been a bit of a challenge a lot of moving parts but with all that being said um i've been very pleased with staff and the collaboration etc one of the things that we're currently working on is uh implementing kind of a a homework support platform excuse me platform where we have teachers um you know in particular subject areas and um we're looking at december 1st through the 18th two days a week in which students can access from 2 30 to 4 so via the google meet they can um reach out to a teacher or support staff if they're in sixth grade we'll have hopefully some we will have sixth grade teachers um seventh and eighth as well so um hopefully uh that will be received well

044by the community and parents to know that we have some additional support for them that they can access and again our goal is to start that off to in december and then something will continue uh january through the remainder of the year but uh again teach students will have an opportunity if they do if they have questions uh they need some particular support direction um you know they can reach out via the uh the homework um support platform as mr hayes alluded to um you know staff over the years and with the national junior outside and guidance have worked hard to support um needy families within our community um last year there were approximately um 40 some families in thanksgiving as well as the holiday season we had a winter wonderland project so um we'll

045have to adjust that a little bit this year but again where our plan is to continue to uh support those families also as mrs deakis had leader two uh alluded to earlier um we had a a great opportunity today where staff was able to get breakout sessions were able to get together with their colleagues and really begin to share specific things that they've been doing to further connect with students outside of school so we're going to gather that information they're going to submit that um and then we once we've gathered all that intel then we'll uh share it out to staff so uh you know there'll be specific ideas um and ways in which they've been able to connect and a nice way to share that with staff and to further build upon what um

046we're currently doing um and with that being said just uh trying striving uh to just kind of maintain our partnerships um and uh we we've done so i know uh our tech teachers um have developed and uh partnered with uh naval um underseas kind of stem projects so uh we were currently uh been awarded um a wide range of materials and equipment from 3d printers to a lego spike robotics um maker space etc so uh even the mids of these difficult financial times um these are some materials that are coming our way so we're very excited about that and i do appreciate the um the efforts our tech education teachers have done not only maintaining that partnership but further developing um their programs um lastly on my note i just want to again um i

047want to convey my appreciation for the support of the district and school committee and the community at lodge uh during these difficult times uh our students who really have kind of rose to the occasion as mr rossi alluded to our staff who really has had to adapt um and they've done so um working very collaboratively together and cooperatively which is extremely important uh guidance staff which is working tirelessly to connect with kids um to make sure that their social emotion needs to be in support especially those kids are not with us on their off days and i just want to also convey my appreciation to uh my administrative team um they really went above and beyond uh mr rossi in regards to the physical plant and um you know he's uh we've we've become uh

048he's delivering lunches with the rest of the administrative team he's become well-versed in that but just meaning the overall day-to-day functions and mr hayes and mrs diekes just uh supporting staff with technology and effort so it's been an extremely team effort so i just want to convey uh my appreciation to um all those parties so that concludes our presentation and again we're open to uh any questions or feedback that you may have uh thank you mr doan mrs deakis mr rossi mr hayes first of all just uh congratulations and uh welcome mr hayes to the uh the administration side of teaching i believe i believe it was my oldest daughter that had the opportunity to have you as a math teacher so i think you're a great great addition to the uh the administrator the

049administration over at dartmouth middle school um that being said i do have several questions if you don't mind if the committee doesn't mind i'll start off first uh this round and then i'll turn it over to you uh a couple of things so what do what are the teachers finding at darbuth middle school mr doan or for any of your other colleagues that are also on the call um i m my personal opinion is that students are are thrilled they're happy to be in school uh they want to be there and they're they're really trying to do their best at least that's what i'm hearing and what i'm seeing in my own district really trying to follow the rules and and really be uh cognizant of uh their actions in school so you seeing the

050same thing um with with the cohorts that are at davinci middle school that the students are being extremely respectful and and really they they're there then and they're really engaged that's kind of what i'm hearing is is that the case i would agree i'll take this one if you guys don't mind um i i would agree with you for the most part i think the the behavior has been great and the respect and we haven't had i don't think we've had any issues with compliance with masks one thing that is in some ways a little sad um is how quiet the building is it's you almost want a little more noise um it's like the masks sometimes mute kids and and that that is a little frustrating i i did an observation this afternoon and

051i was so happy to see um a student was actually presenting to their class and and it was it was good to see the kids are starting to feel a little more comfortable but the the first few times weeks you know given that they hadn't been in school for a while and the masks um they're very very quiet and and uh i never thought i'd say this but i'd like to hear a little more you know usually sixth grade is is uh very loud and and like to see a little bit of that spunk come back just kidding no that's uh that's a fair uh it's a fair assessment uh mrs deakis uh and i i hope that you know i'm not sure i don't have any students anymore at dartmouth middle school but i

052do hope that any opportunities that the the students get that we're able to at least provide them some kind of outdoor outdoor social distancing and be able to get outside and especially while it's nice out enjoy some fresh air uh some just some of the other things i just want to touch base on i'm i'm thrilled because i know that um last week the week before there's a notifications and there were some some publications that went out that the high school was looking to start and is starting the synchronous learning uh i believe today at the high school and then some you know on social media because of course um a lot of times instead of um reaching out directly to the source whether it's the whether it's the school departments or or um you

053know the central office people tend tend to sometimes stick to social media i know that was some of the questions that was brought up that well is this going to be filtered down to uh to the middle school and uh to the elementary level um you know this is just my point of view i haven't really heard from any of my colleagues or from uh really haven't had entertainment conversation with central office but i think the fact that um just like we did with the um voting to stop the year remotely and i'm only speaking for myself here but i think just the just how we started the year remotely and it was a slow roll um i think this is a really important first step at the high school i think we we need

054to take it one day at a time and i'm thrilled to hear that the dartmouth middle school is working on the homework on some type of a virtual homework club i think that's at least a step in the right direction for those learners that may be struggling or maybe um you know just having having a a little bit of a hard time at home and being able to log in remotely through google me so um you know i'm really happy to hear that we're we're pushing that way and let's face it no matter what we do i know on our on school committee as well as administration as well as i'm sure the administration at dartmouth middle school is that we're not going to make everyone happy i can i can assure that the i

055can show the citizens of dartmouth and for those of you watching at home that i have no doubt there's no doubt in my mind that everyone's sitting at that t at this table around us as well as remotely at darwin middle school and across the district the other administrators and especially especially our teaching staff we we are we are going above and beyond we are doing the best we can to support our dartmouth students and i wouldn't want anything i wouldn't want it any other way that being that being said i do have one last question before i turn it over to my colleagues is that dartmouth middle school is one of the is the only school in the district that opted to use techa for our remote learning platform you know the high school

056is using ingenuity and our elementary school has our virtual in-house virtual learning remote learning program the techa program as we all know i i've been highly involved with it in my other position um you know unfortunately uh the district has gotten a lot of flack um from tecker and um i'm happy to hear i think it was at one of our last school committee meetings how the dartmouth guy the darwith middle school guidance department and some of the other staff are reaching out um to our techa students so can you can you just provide us with an update mr doane or if you want to turn it over to one of your um other administrators there as to how you think tech is going for our remote learners at the at dartmouth middle school and

057come january i know originally we spoke about coming come january the second semester how would we look and are we continuing to look at the possible giving parents the option to return to hybrid learning in the dartmouth middle school yes you can sarah's a nice job she's kind of worked collaboratively with guidance and been that point person so yes i had missed so um i think we can all agree it was a rough start for sure um i think some of it was um we you know it was it was late we were laid out of the gate and and parents were hopeful that it was gonna you know the kids were gonna sit down in front of a computer and and have a full day of school and it wasn't what they envisioned um

058but once we got into it for a couple of weeks things have settled down um and and things are going well parents are overall i mean i is it 100 no but certainly it it's it's improved significantly um parents overall are happy with the content and and the rigor of what is being taught again the communication at first wasn't great but we soon once we discovered that they have online tutoring all day long they do have some live lessons it has much improved we've had 504 meetings we've had iep meetings and techa has been very involved and supportive of that process so that's those are some pluses we've also made some [Music] enhancements i'll call them as you said you had mentioned the guidance counselors reach out to those kids on a regular basis so

059we maintain that contact with us and we are working with teca our special ed teacher we have a special ed teacher and a ta a teaching assistant that work with all of the iep kids they do google meets with them we look at the assessments that techa and where they are with their curriculum and we look and we provide some additional support and provide some assessments so that we can do our own grading and modifications that's one of the tricky things is we can't go in and modify their assessments but we can um provide some of our own for for our assessments and and keep in mind again keep that connection with dartmouth we've had um a fairly fluid process um we kind of recognize these are dartmouth kids whether they're in teca now or

060um and they you know we had i think a couple kids one at potter and one with us that returned i want to say today uh you know that so we've had kids join late we've had kids come back already we've had kids that have changed their mind so um it's been a little more fluid than we anticipated but that's fine um i think the bottom line is they're our kids so what whatever works for them um i think we'll probably see some come back in january um and we may have some stay but overall nothing's perfect but it certainly has come a very long way since the beginning of the year thank you mrs diegus uh just a couple more quick questions in regards to tekker you know i i agree with you i

061i've heard of the spectrum um of parents i've heard some parents say that the the curriculum for those students that can handle it is extremely rigorous especially if they're they're self they're self-starters and they're comfortable on their own and i've also heard the opposite in which that they're being it's very difficult it's very challenging in addition to and and let's make no mistake about it and i you know i can't speak for you mrs deakis or for uh anyone at dartmouth middle school but i can i i can i can say that at least from my point of view is that i think um not so much dartmouth was out of the gate late i think it was techa that was out of the gate late i i honest i honestly think that you know

062what when parents made the decision and this is across the state from what i'm hearing when parents made the decision to go to techa i i think there was this um you know this um what's the word i'm looking for actuality in their minds that they were going to be their students were going to be sitting in front of a teacher all for most of the day listening to live lessons in reality we're they're listening to 30-minute live lessons per course subject each week two of those and one of those are are recorded so um you know i i think that dartmouth middle school is doing a tremendous job keeping up um with with these our techa students because let's face it they are still our students we are responsible for them um and i'm

063i'm actually really thrilled and um to your point as far as following up on ieps and 504s although those are our teachers there are dartmouth public schools teachers that are following up with techa to make sure that techa is taking care and not letting our students that are on on on ieps and 504s flip through the cracks is that correct or is that on techa's side um so for example if we have an iep meeting they have their staff there as well as our staff so it's a it's like a meeting like this with staff from both places but we've we've taken it a step further because they um we're not utilizing their their um part of their program that has you know direct specialized teachers so our special ed staff is modifying assessments and

064we'll use our assessments for final grading that mirror what they're doing but but we'll use our own assessments for grading and so forth does that make sense here um in can the same be said for 504s for any of our students i don't know if we have any in tech or on 504s but can the same be said for those students uh uh they're receiving the accommodations and support needed i actually went to one of those meetings didn't you yes in a very similar platform to what you described before our staff the tech staff and then we continued to provide supports for any of our students who needed additional support so mr oliver we've utilized our coaches as well to help support some further uh provide some additional support i'm sorry mr dome we missed

065that we took a good look at what we have internally so for example our coaches specific special education teachers etc we've um been meeting with those parents we have 504's provide some additional support within as well can i'm sorry mr doan um we're we're doing our best over here uh but we did miss that last 30 seconds that you uh you just spoke i just wanted to point out that while we arrive having those meetings um we do have supports in place and i think we've reached out to those techa parents and again if they've felt their child has been struggling whether it's via our academic coaches or additional special education teachers within the buildings you know we do have um specific layers of tears in which we're able to provide that additional support and

066just one last thing i am uh thank you kudos to all four of you that i'm i'm seeing up here on the screen i appreciate your time i appreciate the effort and the your willingness to put into this i know that listening to what you're telling me dartmouth middle school is going above and beyond to support our techa students uh the the district will remain nameless but i can share with you of a k-12 district in this area that is doing none of this not supporting some of my niece and nephew and it's very disappointing and i'm thrilled to hear that we're going above and beyond to support dartmouth students so we're very lucky to have you as administrators at dartmouth middle school and i want to thank you all for your presentation i'll turn

067it over to my colleagues at this time and i miss all of that because i was i was muted [Laughter] okay okay so i'm unmuted okay uh i i'll start with uh just kind of following up with the techa piece um you have to unmute yourself i think can you hear me now uh i've got a bunch of scribbly notes like usual over here that's how i process so um i'm just going to start off though with a follow-up to what chris was asking about in the techa where we all know that at the beginning it was not what parents you know weren't necessarily getting what they you know thought and good old dessie last minute by the seat of our pants pulling this all together some trusted sources that i've kind of checked in

068on who probably hopefully have let you know how appreciative they are of all that you've done above and beyond as chris spoke to um that it's like night and day and uh specific families that i've reached out to who are benefiting from the necessary you know extra supports that you're providing through the virtual platform are working and much appreciated and so um i just want to thank you for that as to chris's point it's not happening everywhere and so i'm really proud to say that it's happening here in dartmouth with that said i just want to you know something that i've in my little personal world we've been talking about and everyone talks about social distancing social distancing social distancing we all need to we need to kind of adhere to what chris's point but

069i just want to differentiate between social distancing and what we really mean is physical distancing and i just implore you to continue the good work that you're doing to make sure that we are socially engaged while physically distanced because there's a real big difference in that you know kids have the maths on as you said they're very quiet in school i'm sure there's some loneliness and some isolation that we as a district do our part at the middle school and everywhere to try to enhance at every turn the ways in which we socially engage students within their own pods amongst other students you mentioned the uh lunch bunches and the um the mentoring and the social groups that's wonderful and the homework club but at any turn if anyone has an idea i just would

070love to see us to continue as a district to socially engage and not focus on the social distancing physical distance social engagement so i just wanted to make that point um let me see i had one more now i think you i mean chris really kind of spoke to some of the other stuff that i had great great work great job welcome mr hayes you're doing a great job with us it's nice to see all your efforts kind of come to fruition and just just keep going that's all i really have if i can get my all right am i good to go okay um just you know again like you know my colleagues covered you so much um i think i'm the only one here who currently has a i do have a middle

071schooler um so i i have to say you know one of the things that hasn't come up is that you know i drop him off every morning and you all are out there like every morning when i'm dropping him off i'm picking him up in some cases you know i'm getting there 15 minutes before school ends and you're all there as well like aiding the you know the parents and you know making sure the students are coming out of the room maybe out of the school you know they're happy and smiling and you know engaging behind the masks and so um you know i think you know just you know from from the second those kids get out of the cars you know or out of the buses i think they they really feel you

072know that they are being like brought in and it's orderly um that you know it's a safe and welcoming environment and i think that speaks volumes um you know i was happy to be in the school a week or two ago everything was it was amazing you know kids were lined up you know at the bathrooms you know everything just felt like it was seamless and but i agree it was quiet you know for you know and you know i was thinking as you know kathleen was speaking about you know really we want to be socially engaged i think you've done so much for that and that's always to me i go back to the first time i sat in a sixth grade classroom or sixth grade orientation session with mr doan and you know

073he said if you're you know our goal is to really make kids feel good about themselves when they leave here when they graduate from dms and you know with two other kids who have graduated that's really spoken to me um and i know you're really working hard during this you know weird time to kind of again connect with those kids um but again to echo what you know kathleen has said um i would love to see you know again like more of that you know i the pink days were you know those those things i know it's a little different now of course but if any of those things can be brought back and i'm you know i know that thanksgiving you know i don't know how that drive will happen um but those little

074pieces i think of getting kids you know feeling part of a community so you know really feeling that they have um something beyond themselves that they can be a part of and making a difference and all those little pieces of forming school community if we can you know continue to kind of get those out in some way i think that i'd really like to see that so as a parent but otherwise again you know my son's coming home he's thrilled um you know i and i appreciate everything you guys are doing and you know mr hayes i can speak to my son had you last year for eighth grade um you know lost to the math department over there but it's great to see you in this role and mistika so thank you very much

075thank you kind of turning the corner a little bit where they're there one second did they hear us go ahead he can go i'm good can i go i don't know who's going all right yeah no i i'll just wrap it up just to say because unless anyone else has anything everybody else no i'm sorry we skipped over mr news and that's fine i i let her go before me but i'm sorry my colleagues have talked about everything and i'm thrilled with the job what's going on there so thank you very much it is much appreciated believe me and i appreciate the answer to the question i asked earlier anything else i'll just i'll just yeah dr giffords can i say something jonathan am i on are you on i can't speak you can speak

076radio go ahead okay oh gosh that's news no i just want to say um you know across the district we have so many wonderful educators and and admin but this team they're very reflective and collaborative whenever we've needed something especially you know we'll go right back to the techer again but just so reflective on how what can we do better and and what changes can we make and not just say we've done our best etc so i really enjoy working with them and um you won't find a better uh better team throughout the district so just say thank you that's all thank you everyone for your time have a uh up mr nunes he's got something do we do we need to approve this dr gifford oh yes yes school improvement plan yes perfect so

077if you're still with us there we're going to take a motion uh to approve your school improvement time uh plan i'll entertain a motion at this time to improve the dartmouth middle school improvement plan yeah i'll make that motion mr chairman that we approve the dartmouth middle school uh school improvement plan for 2021 as presented so i have a motion on the floor by mr nunes a second by mrs amaral on the motion any further discussion jay hearing none all in favor aye aye opposed motion carries unanimously happy thanksgiving to all of you thank you for your time have a good night thank you thank you you did a good job that was amazing that was pretty good i gotta say for our first time yes worked out quite well yeah i just didn't know

078who was talking [Laughter] uh next next up under new business superintendent's update dr giffords all right i have i have a quite a bit to talk about so i'll try to go quickly but probably one of the first things just a quick couple of highlights from the schools i just asked them if they wanted me to mention anything that was going on and you may have noticed over at cushman we have the new sign out front that was donated by the pto finally that was up and they also wanted me to know that they've kicked off their bucket filling theme with pbis etc so we've done that many years before but you know it's all about taking care of yourself taking care of others etc along with the cushman expectations such as wearing your mask

079care for your things keep your space etc so they also have had some fire safety virtual presentations ongoing with the firefighters for classroom work with them students receiving firefighter hats that's what it is so that's some of the little things going on at cushman quinn had what i think was the best election ever because they got to choose between chocolate or chewy candy their mock collection and they all chose chocolate so i'm i think that was a good choice potter they've had a lot of fun going on there as well um some halloween celebrations some parties in a bag and socially distanced halloween dance party i think mr porter and mrs mchenry did the dancing for them as far as i know oh i did see something on facebook yeah i uh they've had some

080outdoor uh grade level level assemblies luckily we've had some nice weather and to go over once again the positive potter's positive plan in how to be positively positively potter school so they've been working on that and how to be a learner and demelo same thing one of the mellow initiatives is in katie's words is trying to keep as normal as possible in the covid world so the pbis initiatives i guess mr rob peratti has been helping do a video version of the student of the month assemblies so he's been working with them i guess with some students former demelo students as well working with him and they're still working on their leader of the pack choices they visit the classrooms liz and katie visit classrooms on fridays to choose kids and the literacy committee has

081launched a bookmark contest so that's some of the things at the elementary level that i wanted to mention instead of just covered culinary back to real school perfect yes exactly you talk about keeping kids socially engaged and i just want to applaud athletic and our music programs for i am just once again as i we're wrapping up our season um really saying i'm very very thankful that we were able to have our kids participate in those various activities as you know we we did a great job with both programs and we had the one student that was positive as we all know that but it didn't transmit to anyone else throughout the program so to get kids out in the field and kids out on the music field if you will was outstanding i've actually

082reached out to dartmouth week to do a story on that and they thought they would thought it was a nice idea seeing so many districts didn't participate and to just say how how successful it was so we had over 400 participants in the athletic program and we're entering playoffs next week as you might know volleyball came in undefeated again and field hockey and soccer will be later on um with that we should be finishing up that soon um mr nunes are you speaking about the marching band i don't i was gonna i've got a little bit to say but i don't have the scores or anything i don't have scores i i just know that uh three ensembles placed first in their division so i'll i'll leave the marching all the bands to you ian

083gave me a nice update but i'll leave that part to you um as you know the high school did shift to start kids that were home on their at home day able to google meet into their classrooms i checked with mr tebow halfway through the day and he said he had not heard any terrible things he had walked through it looked great so hopefully i wanted to kind of give them the day to get going and be able to get that get over here tomorrow and and check in with some folks and see how that went um as we all know also we heard um paiser and the governor and commissioner riley speak last week once again speak of things that you know are more theory if you well in reality so i just want

084folks to know because people did email me about when we were going back to school and full 100 percent so you just saw that it's just crazy um they say everyone should be in school but yet as people must know we still have to follow the guidance which is uh exactly what we're doing so unless they found a way for us to have a ton more buildings to house kids in and transport kids and it's staying the way it is right now um once we also have the staffing has been pretty good it's not abnormal with absences right now but i just want to say i'm very pleased with the principles we look at the absentee list every day and the folks that are out whether it's on an ffcra leave or not just regular

085sick because they're sent home to wait for a test etc the the principals have done an outstanding job on patching people in and using our tas etc everyone else that's in the school so that's we really haven't had a big problem um up to this point another thing just as a reminder and i did put it in the update this weekend that went out we will plan on using if we do have snow days we will plan on resorting to a remote day so folks should be ready for that obviously if there's a big power outage in town we would it would be like a regular snow day things like that but along that lines just to have folks always be prepared for the you know as we said it's flexible and fluid we never

086know what might happen at any time uh let's see um edgenuity i do want to go over some things um what edgenuity because i know mr oliver asked about it so i just want to let folks know in addition to what the middle school is doing with the techa to support kids ingenuity as you might know that program does not even supply any teachers at all so kids are completely self-directed but i want you to know what the high school is doing uh to support those kids so we have school cup again it's a little lengthy but i think it's important to to speak about school counselors and social workers they reach out every week to check in with those students if they've instituted an advisory program specific for those students on the remote setting

087similar to just what we do with the in-person kids um assistant principal mr gill he's he signed up i think for about 50 kids and we're up to about 115 some of those are one classrooms but we didn't have enough room in the school they're in school but they took a an elective on edge annuity so they can be separate and that's working out very well obviously they had informational meetings at the beginning of the year for the parents to talk about ingenuity and they do get reports they're automatically shared on a weekly basis with the parents that can they can observe their students progress and i like this one making sure it's speaking once again about social engagement they have planned a picture day for all those students as well they'll be coming in

088on saturday november 14th and a virtual learning what he called it academy like the elementary testing center has been expanded that's to allow tests to be taken three days per week um i guess they initially set up two days and i'm not quite sure exactly how they do it but it's just giving the kids extra chance to participate and he also includes the that academy or the virtual students what's happening in their weekly community update so that students and parents can have get information so and as you know the lead teachers are involved as well uh supporting kids through the curriculum so i just think it's just worthwhile to state that the as we talked about with techa the extra work that the staff is doing to support the kids that are choosing to stay

089remote we've also put up on our website ms roy put it up today a new dashboard which is underneath the superintendent's updates and it will just just put in if we have new cases etc and just show the percentage with the students um positive cases uh within the district right now once again we still have no staff knock on wood no knock on wood and not to interrupt you but how often will that be updated every friday and we told her which i might as well go into we are also announcing that she will be retiring as of december but i told her she still has to do the dashboard fair enough so i know we'll probably have another but um i guess we can stop there for a minute because michelle will be retiring

090so she'll be a great loss uh we have a ton of things we've gone over what um the tasks that she does and um we'll have to be talking about that for sure yeah so and will we have another meeting before we have another meeting so we can have cake and ice cream or something uh let me just look over my list because sometimes i write things everywhere and then i forget them the governor's announcement high school shift oh and the last thing i just want to mention also is we had as i've mentioned to you every monday morning we meet with the board of health uh chris mishu and the town nurses our nurses uh one or two are involved as well as we usually uh a principal or two depending on what's happening

091in the district mr kylie miss jodwin who supervises the nurses and um we're we're working together with mr galicia's help on a um i guess it's a um what would you call it like a shared drive a shared drive just uh specific to us the the people that are talking about covid and maintaining um an updated list the collaboration between the district and the town as well as our nurses the work that they're doing has been fabulous since we've put our flow charts out and really emphasized our process for reporting cases it's gone very well the principals are either notified usually it's usually by a nurse or the board of health but usually the parents are calling the nurses and letting them know what's going on if there's a positive case the principals immediately call

092our office we report it to desi and then the nurses and the board of health are in contact about contact tracing as a couple of weeks we've had buses that we've had to look at and see what was that so it's actually once the first week or so went by things are working well as far as us trying to maintain some semblance of water as far as the contact tracing and that so i think that's it like i said i had quite a bit to kind of update folks on but that's it that's it yeah nope thank you dr gifford that was a yeah no that was a lot and it was a lot of actually helpful information i think for uh for the committee and for those of you those at home watching i

093also do have a number of things that i i'd like to share and just uh kind of kind of bring up uh with the committee here uh first thing when we go back to the uh the amanda the google meets at the uh high school that started today is is that a man so just so we can clarify for everyone at home parents is it mandatory that the students are are there they're supposed to be uh not zooming in but meeting the google google meeting into it and that's where attendance will be taken is that correct absolutely so it's not it's not optional it is something that the high school is expecting that students will be doing on their their their remote days or their days that they're at home that they will be logging

094in teachers will be moving along with the lessons and yes and the attendance is taken okay can i interject yeah go ahead just a quick question like you know from a parent point of view if your child is going to miss you know for example i one of our children has a dentist appointment tomorrow so do they but they're virtual do they still go through and call the school is that an email so if you're going to miss a portion of time because you're going to put your child at home but you know they're going to an appointment or something like that should the parents still call the school to report that as like my child is going to a dentist appointment next time even though they're it's their at home day so like an

095excuse that exactly like i would i would i would just abso absolutely have them reach out to the teacher you know email the teacher or whatever calling into the absentee line when they're home right because you because you'll be mocked present from the other classes but then they'll let the other teacher know okay yeah that's what i would yeah so i'm just trying to you know yeah that's a good point for those yeah for those people at home that yeah the student may start the day and they have to be dismissed exactly the one thing i would mention along that lines is um it's it's a good setup also for if students because we're we're encouraging people not to come to school if they're sick exactly so if you're sick you get to you can

096log in of course and attend school but that's not an option that's not a volunteer like you're still expected to come to school on your in-person days it's not like okay now i never have to come oh yeah yeah that's for if you're sick etc so so don't these kids can't pull anything over us because we'll be looking all of a sudden they're not there every day exactly no that's that's actually a really good point really good question um just my second piece i have is uh just to echo what um you i believe you said dr gifford is that uh yeah even though we've uh we all heard uh earlier this week from governor baker and commissioner riley uh that you know all of a sudden which i love the metrics map has now

097changed and we have new metrics are going by and we are expected if you're not in this zone that some people are and i've gotten it and i know some of my colleagues have probably seen it that we're you know they're we're expecting to go 100 percent back i i can i can assure the the dartmouth community um you know i can only speak for myself as the chair um and i feel free to ju to chime in anyone else but i do not anticipate at least from my perspective and from the safety that and we're all char every all of us sitting up here as ch are charged with the safety and well-being of our students faculty and staff of the dartmouth public schools he has a way the governor of giving us school

098stretches and bus stretches so that he can hit everybody exactly it's not happening there is absolutely no way that i will that none of us and um maybe i'm speaking out of turn here that will safely we can safely return to 100 in person not with our numbers going up absolutely i made the comment back in september or october and also to mr kiley about how much time is by the grace of god in january what would we need but i never expected the governor and the commissioner you know in the middle of this thing as it blows up even more to sit there and say yeah go ahead back to school right no not happening well well i'm i'll just throw this out there really quickly um let's let's face it here's the bottom

099line they have the opportunity the state had the opportunity to make a mandate for the locals for the local school districts they left it up to the local school districts some local school districts didn't like you know they didn't like what they had to say and now they're trying to change it but they're still they're leaving it to the local school districts and as far as i'm concerned we're responsible and we're going to keep kids and students safe it's going well keep everyone um moving forward um piggybacking off of that i just want to uh let my fellow committee members know that i had the opportunity i asked dr gifford um to sit in on their monday standing meeting with chris michaud from the board of health um after uh receiving several uh concerns from

100uh actually phone calls and emails from parents in town that this goes back to unfortunately some bad decisions being made um i'll leave it at that uh with um you know gathering yeah social gatherings on halloween and over the weekend um of you know i've heard stories of 30 plus students dartmouth high school students eighth graders um and that that's just un unfortunate and very unacceptable and there's a lot there's a lot of time and effort that the the faculty the administration has to go into as well as the board of health for contact racing purposes and i am i'm quite honestly and um sharing my concerns with um chris miesha from the board of health very very concerned with the thanksgiving holiday and the thanksgiving break and while i know that from governor baker

101and commissioner o'reilly's press conference that they expect schools to stay open unless there's a proof of community spread within the schools um you know i i want to believe that that won't be us here in dartmouth but i i will say it again now and i'll say that we have a meeting before thanksgiving uh yes or after i i don't have the numbers in front of me but i'll say it again if we do we are meeting before thanksgiving all right so i i'll say it now and i'll say it again afterwards that i would ask those members of the community in dartmouth uh that you know you we we just make smart decisions um not only for your family and for your own kids but for mike my daughter you know all of our

102kids here um john's grandchildren um everyone um let's just make smart decisions so we can keep our keep our schools open i think that that's paramount to me that is paramount that even though we're only 50 and we're hybrid right now it's better than completely going remote because these kids need the social emotional aspect of being in school so i would just ask people to please make smart decisions please be responsible please be respectful and and just set the tone you know for your own kids um so i i would just ask everyone to be cognizant of that because the uh chris michaud was quite concerned um moving forward through the holidays and after thanksgiving of the potential uh the the potential that's out there um do you want to add anything to that or

103anyone else said it well um a couple just a couple of other things i do want to echo dr gifford's comments that i am thrilled that we were able to have a sports season um uh i you know not every district was allowed to do that i know some of us and i actually had a nice long conversation with mr christophule our athletic director you know some of us we weren't able to dartmouth public schools made the decision uh way back i believe in august or the beginning of september that we were not going to allow fans into our games a lot of parents were disappointed understandably i wish i had the opportunity to see my daughter play some volleyball um but it is what it is and uh just your full transparency is that

104you know understanding it there were some other uh we were the first ones to join in on the pod and what andy was saying our athletic director and um some other districts joined and then political some political uh forces got involved and that opened up the door to allow fans into other districts but um i i will in as much as you know it hurt to some extent to not allow and i i would drive by and i'm sure we all did drive by the middle school and see all the parents at the fence um you know i i i i stick by uh in uh mr christophule's decision i think it was the right decision um you know we'll see um at the end of the day we had a good season and we're

105we're moving forward so uh that being said i always loved listening to i had the uh from my house i can clearly hear the band i'll turn it over to mr news now but i i enjoyed listening to the band practice or i don't know if it was maybe a remote home a remote home show this weekend but i did uh they sounded good from uh a mile and a half away because they didn't they did thank you mr chairman yeah it's uh just a couple of things before i get into that uh just a thank you to town meeting for passing the 75 000 for the you know the univax type of deal much appreciated and again you know uh mrs diekes was talking about it mr hayes and mr rossi mr doan were

106talking about the one-to-one initiatives and the chromebooks and everything else but it's that funding from the town you know and in our budget that has allowed us to do that and has really helped out in this situation so just uh just so thank you for that yeah but uh i had the privilege in my thanks in all seriousness you talked about the parents you know not yet being able to get in and watch them and it also included the music parents and my thanks to to those parents for totally understanding what we were trying to do i mean you know it is mr christopher and i again like you i had numerous conversations with with him and you know we we own them type of deal and we could have you know and that way

107there were no issues i mean i had the privilege of uh you know introducing the seniors and their parents for the you know the boys and girls soccer and also girls field hockey and uh you know the parents having the senior parents having a chance to sit in the stands and watch their you know sons and daughters you know for their last home game uh in the regular season type of deal and i know they were very much appreciative of it and uh we kind of did the same thing with the music on saturday with the with those students thursday night with the color guard and then uh friday aft uh i'm sorry saturday afternoon with the the winds and then the percussion so it worked out worked out quite well but yeah it was

108a little bit of a different type of season for or the music department um instead of putting 120 students plus a minus all together on a field you know they broke them down into three groups there was wins percussion and color guide and all three of them you know instead of doing one you know roughly 10 11 minute performance they were all doing you know four or five minutes of their own thing and that whether it was through uh us bands or bands of america you know that in my thanks to uh to dc tv who you know did the taping to send the tapes to us bands and uh you know bands of america through flow marching to to get the students scored and everything else it was just really great you know to

109see the kids interacting and like anything else you know the sports teams and and such see the progress that make that you know they make you know through the course of uh the year i mean it ended it ended saturday and we were all kidding and laughing because we would have been a giant stadium this past weekend and met life for uh us bands finals well usually we're there and it's you know maybe 20 degrees and wind chill about 40 below it's just that you know and we have a 70 degree 70 degree day on saturday you know i mean we would have been in shots and a t-shirt type of deal but that's that's just the way it is but you know they picked up three first places over the over the weekend and

110they've had you know their scores have been consistent in the 90s all year so i'm very very proud of what they had to do and you know nobody knew how this was going to work out but you know my hat's off to mr flint you know his his first year in and you know they started working in july to how they were going to do this and when it finally came to fruition you know put it out there and it's you know they had a fantastic season and the students worked real hard and it was good to see them i mean i was up here the other night and just enjoyed turning around and watching the football team practice you know even though they're not playing till february and march it was great to see

111them out there working so you know the old adage the students are engaged they're busy and they're doing you know what is good for them and that so i'm just thrilled so no good good stuff really is absolutely this is wait this is amarillo anything um well i don't well this is what you go for us well i've actually i have uh just one or two i guess questions um quickly i guess um one as we get into the semester turn for the high school which is the semester ends next friday is that right this upcoming friday for the high school or the term excuse me when does the term end for for the high school is that okay i'm not sure the date okay but is that at that point can students jump onto

112the ingenuity it wasn't that was our plan if they want to go into the ingenuity platform if they decide they want to jump on can they i guess you know i'm thinking of parents and this gets back to like the mandate you still have to go there in the opposite you know you have to go into school on your school day is there are we going to allow an option for students who want to be all virtual to to stay virtual or were you just going to say like no you have to go on the ingenuity i don't know if i'm like expressing this very clearly but you know now that kids on their home day if you follow me can be on the video oh i see it yes i mean i'm wondering that

113question is going to come up with parents to say like i'd like them to stay with their teachers and now they're being offered the video option i understand and we're progressing so i just see that as like something we haven't talked about that and i i yeah i don't want to go there right now and i think you know but just as that's that'd be like um a fourth form of education we've already got three models going but even if we say like no you know just to have that out there i think yeah just to make it clear that one way or the other no it's not an option because i can see like that coming up exactly yes exactly so that was one question and then i guess my other question is just

114um in talking through like it's a great fall season do we need to then open up at our next like do we need to discuss the winner see will we discuss that in our next meeting like anything um about the winter season when it comes to you know what we're looking and even just thinking of our band and our choral concerts that are typically our holiday concerts um you know i'm just kind of curious like you know if that's a discussion that we have you know playing into that like and yeah no that's and how that left mr news yeah no i i think uh in conversations i was having with uh with mr flint uh last week i don't think you're going to see any holiday concerts at the moment right now it appears

115as though just because of the distance that every the you know if you're in chorus you know the distance you have to have and also the distance you have to have with the winds you know the the wind instruments and that type of deer that kind of at the moment is not you know viable he is looking at trying to do something come later on after the first of the year if nap but as far as any holiday concerts and that type i don't think you're going to see that at this point in time i think he might do virtual yeah yeah but some kind of virtual something yeah yeah what about what about i actually um had a conversation with andy today because um i'm hearing some of my same thing the south coast

116conference talking about meeting and discussing it but um they're in process right now as far as actually i have it here um did i put it here um you know the miaa meeting his group meeting and then they'll put their recommendations forth as a covid committee just like the same as the spring so there's no been no determination at this point um but he did you know we'll be in touch with that for sure because i i called him on the same thing today what are we thinking for for the next season he's just happy to get this season over like next week and breathe a minute but yeah yeah i had it right here too of the not that you really need oh here it is right here um there's a timeline the executive

117office of energy and environmental affairs publishes the baseline guidance for youth sports uh that happened on the november sixth m i a sport committees as we just said will present modifications uh to a sports medicine committee it's quite a process the sports medicine committee then goes to the covid task force and the final recommendation will be forwarded to the mia board for discussion around november 20th so we still have a ways to go on what they're going to be suggesting for sports and it looks like basketball and hockey but of course they'll be modified just as soccer with the different rules and whatnot so right we'll see i'm hopeful awesome great well yeah thank you emerald i just had um this this past week i had uh the pleasure of uh speaking to uh one

118of our seniors who's um working towards this eagle project so he had some questions that i um that i you know answered for him and uh it reminded me of something that we haven't done and i'm hoping that maybe we could in um not that he brought it up but i just thought of it and speaking to him is having a student rep here like not here maybe but but in possibly a student rep from the high school and and and maybe one from edgenuity to kind of offer us sort of some feedback around around how they're feeling and that student voice um so that was number one if that's okay for me to it just came to me this week and i would have you know um and also though too in our again

119we're all kind of just doing our best but making sure that we schedule in some virtual updates with students from home about how we always usually do um would be nice and uh when you were talking about the high school i thought that was wonderful the that ross um i think i sort of had some assumptions so it's wonderful to hear that ross is including those students in ingenuity in his community updates and and and i might be assuming that's also happening so i just want to if it's not happening i'm hoping it's happening but if it's not it's okay we do better tomorrow than we did today right this is how we're working we're working together it's not about gotcha i hate that right i see that a lot online it's like gotcha we

120made a mistake and no we're just trying to do our best but if if the elementary we have our own you know virtual academy but if the elementary and if the middle school is not including in you know maybe darren's right monthly or bi-weekly updates that he mentioned might we sort of send a little idea you know suggestion that they also include those updates to the virtual learners that just came to me yeah it was a good idea it didn't just come to me i think that's great yeah that's that kathleen thank you and as uh the three of you were talking i actually had a couple more things just there's just so much to talk about i know i know um just really quickly i'd just like to uh turn over mr kylie for

121a minute um how we i knock on knock on wood i guess i'll use my gavel um transportation i i haven't heard a lot i really haven't heard much i mean are we how we doing with transportation it's doing pretty well it really is um you know for the most part we've uh students are students are you know behaving on the bus in the way that we're asking them to so um for the most part students have uh had good mass compliance we have we've had a few issues that we've had to address along the way and but so far so good um you know we have uh we don't have a capacity issue right now we still have a lot of folks transporting their kids to school definitely more than we've ever had so

122there's some traffic issues that are that are happening at the schools but um but from a transportation perspective we're doing pretty well uh they're doing a good job cleaning the buses in between kids and uh so they are being cleaned in between kids yeah in between runs yeah so they're cleaned in between runs they're sprayed twice a day so i mean they're they're a good environment fortunately the weather's not been horrible so windows open on the bus are a good thing the longer that we can keep them wide open the better and i guess i just encourage families to to you know make sure that there's their students have layers with them so that they can remain comfortable because we are going to try and keep as much fresh air as possible it's an important

123part of the process so to keep everyone safe now that lee actually leads me into my next question as far as temperatures in classrooms um i know that uh some of us probably have gotten some emails um or seen on social media about uh complaints um about temperatures in classrooms and i know obviously to to some extent um at some point it's going to be cold it's going to get cold out right and we're going to have to start closing our windows like you said we're doing the best we can trying to keep windows open as long as possible but in full transparency um those um those rooms uh some of our older buildings that have the universe they're blowing in fresh they're bringing in fresh air for for buildings like the high school we

124have a air handler systems on the roof that are exhausting the air as well so i and you know i i and i'm sure we hear it from we hear from parents we hear on social media you know we hear from teachers about what's the right way they're looking some people are looking for this is the protocol when it hits and when it hits a certain temperature we're shutting windows but that's to really correct me if i'm wrong that that's really not the case and it's more of a comfort level and it's more along the lines of what is you can't you can't have your students freezing in the classroom but the same respect and just so we we can all be clear is that you are you you've done we've done our due diligence

125in the dominant public schools to bring in um hepa filtration filters to the high school to the middle school and correct me if i'm wrong but we we are working on ordering them of course it's a national shortage just like there are chromebooks and technology devices to the other buildings is that correct mr kyle that's right we we've distributed 202 so far to classrooms so that's not enough and we know that and we're doing our best to try and outfit every classroom uh but at this point we've completed um most classroom spaces in the high school middle school and cushman schools and potter demello and quinn are still next on our list as soon as we can get them we'll get them to them and that does provide clean air to a classroom does it

126provide the optimal classroom environment no and fresh air is important in that mix so as long as we can continue to do that we should sure um and yeah it's it is it's we understand i mean it's new england it's going to be cold and um but i think it's important and as i've listened to a lot of scientists talk about this process um this is not business as you do as usual you know i mean we have to recognize that we may have to be a little less comfortable than we normally would be and i think we have to accept that i mean where first of all we're wearing this thing we're already you know not as comfortable as we normally are but temperature wise we're going to have to accept that as well

127that it's not going to be the perfect temperature in classrooms if we're trying to optimize the health environment right nice right so you know it's it's something that we're working on we've um our maintenance guys are working as hard as they possibly can to maintain our equipment which we have noticed already that we're having more problems than we normally would with our equipment mr nunes mentioned that the town was uh was generous uh in in their funding of our uh capital improvement plan which um we had an hvac capital improvement request for next year not even something that we had previously asked and the town stepped up and and gave us a portion of that to help us with that process and the town's coronavirus relief fund is also available to us to help with

128to help with costs relating to maintaining our systems sure we are taking advantage of that already and we've also brought in a vendor to assist the hvac vendor uh to assist our maintenance team with uh with um certain areas of the of the district uh to help us get things resolved as quickly as possible so i i think that's great and and personally i i think and my colleagues can sure surely comment i think that that that obviously that's paramount we talk about i know dr bromage i believe was with dr bromager came in with uh his recommendations on air flow and i i personally think from from a school committee standpoint as well as a parent standpoint that whatever we can do to continue to provide fresh air circulation and or filtered air through

129hepa filters um that i think it would just re i think it's just it'll reassure not only our students and and families but as but as well as our faculty our faculty and staff because let's face it uh we have we have a variety of levels of anxiety um i i see it i see it in my own job i i see it out there and i know we've we've all everyone all every single one of us has experienced ourselves our what is everyone's comfort level is different and if what we can do as a school school committee in a school department to try try to do our best we're not going to please everyone but we can at least say that we're doing our best to to provide a safe learning environment and where

130they are that we're either circulating the airflow or filter in that air flow um to the the best of our abilities um i i i can i can at least say that i would feel comfortable with that and you know just knowing that and i have no doubt that you and your team mr kylie um are doing the best you can to um to keep up with this is our newest building but i know as we know and as we went for tours uh back in i don't know if i could felt like last year some of those buildings um that they're they're hurting and this goes back to i'll bring up my colleague dr jenkins who's not here that this really really puts a spotlight on how this town needs to start coming up

131with and we started this conversation a few years ago a long range facilities master plan to get these some of these buildings renovated of whether it's renovated whether it's rebuilt we have to have this conversation this spotlights what is going on in this pandemic right now is spotlighting the inadequacies of some of our older buildings um mrs waite well said um mr oliver so um i just had a parent who would ask me and i and i thought it was an interesting suggestion but you know i don't know how feasible is she was wondering if teachers are allowed to bring in you know individual space heaters you know and for their rooms and you know she pointed out that i guess her son is right by the window in the middle school and so will

132be you know is there all day you know so it was kind of curious like if that's something that you're allowing i mean i know some of those personal things are not a lot you know typical but this is a typical year so i didn't know if that was something to raise the ambient temperature a little yeah we've not allowed those because of electrical issues that we have in the facilities so uh and we're plugging in more than ever i mean we now have the air purifiers and uh you know more and our hvac systems themselves are running uh you know longer and more extensively than they ever have so we've not gone down that road not to say that we couldn't consider it if we thought that was necessary but um but at this

133point we're not uh we're not going that route are you just going yeah anyone else no i'll ju i'll just send with um thank you to the three of you thank you mr galesha i i i honestly this is just my perspective i honestly can't say enough about what your your team is going through he stresses the constant changing environments and changing rules and policies that the state is putting on us i know we're no different than any other district um however i think that um that we we do a tremendous job here in dartmouth um with the team that with the with the with the faculty with the teachers with our teaching staff they have been extremely flexible willing to work with us um and and get things off the ground so um you

134know kudos to to every not every and not not just everyone in the room but all of our out what is it for 500 plus staff members that we have in this district um i i can't i i personally can't thank everyone enough for everything that they've done um so that being said at this time i'll entertain a motion to adjourn into executive session for the purposes to update the committee uh with respect to collective bargaining with union personnel not to reconvene into open session mr chairman two quick questions number one are we still meeting next monday for our training session yes okay that's here yes in person in person okay thank you and does she have any question any oh i'm thank you once again always looking to mr nunes uh miss ganther how

135do you have anything uh relating to public comment i have not received anything great thank you very much thank you mr nunes for keeping me on track no problem mr chairman with regard to your motion so moved second i have a motion on the floor by mr nunes a second by uh mrs zamarrall to adjourn into executive session on the motion any further discussion do we have a roll call please miss ganther chris oliver yes kathleen ameral yes john nunes yes mary wait yes thank you everyone this meeting is adjourned have a wonderful night