001sunday october 19 2020 would you please stand for the pledge of allegiance if we could have a roll call please miss guenther here here yep thank you very much and as a reminder uh per governor baker's otter suspending certain provisions of the open meeting launch up to 30a section 20. the public will not be allowed to physically access this school committee meeting members of the public can access this 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 00 a.m saturday at 8 a.m sunday at 2 p.m the school committee reserves the right to implement additional remote participation procedures and will notify the public of these procedures
002as soon as practicable as always we like to send a shout out to dctv as well as mr rob peratti and dartmouth high school television uh and of course mr gallashaw wherever he is hiding our floor director here this evening we thanks big big thanks to all of you at this time we usually reserve a certain amount of time for public comment for anyone wishing to comment on any of tonight's agenda items um if you have not done so and you do wish to comment you can do so by emailing kathleen genther at dartmouthschools.org and what we'll do is at the end of the meeting we will revisit this and we'll see if miss guenther has received any public comments at this time have you received anything relating to tonight's agenda you have not okay
003thank you very much that being said um i will entertain a motion to approve the irregular session minutes of october 5th 2020. so moved second motion by mr nunes a second by uh mrs amaral on the motion any further discussion g hearing none all in favor all right post motion carries unanimously thank you everyone uh next up under old business we have a superintendent's update on the hybrid phase of the return to school plan this is chapter uh chapter 4 yeah and we're coming to the conclusion for transition that's for sure so as you all know today was the first day we had a grade 8 in the high school inn so as of now errol all grades are in school from all accounts it went well you can see some of the items that
004this high school has put in place to make sure that kids are traversing in the right place and i just went in the ladies room and it was you know every other stall and those kinds of things so from all accounts things have been going well and a couple of things i know mr carly's continued to equip the school with some some of the things that we needed for this air filtering and all of that and if he wants to add anything that's perfectly fine a couple of things about this particular subject is that also that the commissioner has just put out that we are able to use um if we have to go remote at any time um or snow day can be used as a remote day is what i mean to say
005so that was good news one good thing um and i guess also along this line the capital improvement plan for october 27th uh that will be recommending 75 000 for hvac repairs so that's again part of the facility that's important for what we're undergoing right now and let's see um the virtual schooling for the all three levels we did we were able to finally hire a grade five teacher in the elementary virtual school she'll start next week that was a long long haul trying to find someone as you know we've been using some of our coaches to teach that grade level so that transition will be made next week and we did make some adjustments the middle school has been very great very very good about trying to help us with the tech program and
006support more kids those kids that were really struggling that handful of students so special education teacher at the middle school is offering more time they'll be using our curriculum and assessments to supplement what the kids are learning on techa so anybody that's struggling has the opportunity daily to do tutorial lessons through techa live lessons and our own teacher and aide are also offering that time so we were happy to hear that and edge annuity's been fine and that's pretty much it i have things for the other update but it was it was good we finally have everybody in oh that's yeah yeah so it's a positive sign yeah yeah we'll see what happens but day by day every day is a new day and um situations arise we we make adjustments and and deal with
007those particular situations whatever they are and that's what we'll do sure no that sounds wonderful thank you dr gifford mr kali any updates on transportation uh running smoothly you know today today was our first day of transporting 13 grade levels in one day so um obviously only half the kids but but it went very well today we were pleased with that it's it's an ongoing sort of developing process and you know parents i think um have different levels of comfort with sending their kids on the bus and not and that is continuing to change which is challenging for us because we have very limited capacity and for us to change it creates issues with how we're actually filling buses and um so it's it's a constant it's going to be a constant thing for at
008least a few weeks i think until people settle in and you know really decide whether they're comfortable or not um you know being on the bus obviously you know windows are open on the buses and and that's fine for now that's going to become more and more challenging for you know as as time goes by so um not unlike in school you know i would definitely encourage people to dress in layers um you know for the bus and in school because we are trying to still use outside air uh as much as we can so the temperature control of uh of classrooms in that case is is difficult obviously so so that's not to say that the heat is not on it's just that we're put we're pulling in more outside air right right and
009obviously the outside air at this time of year is getting cooler and cooler every day and although we have some nice days this week it's not going to last so you know it would definitely benefit students to be prepared for whatever temperature conditions there are in the classroom and obviously we'll have to adjust as we go and use less outside air and and um you know as we proceed through the year all right thank you very much mr kiley questions from my colleagues dr jenkins so i know this this isn't unique to us and it's not unique to this year but and it happens at the beginning of every school year and that's the issue of early school buses it's not a problem when school buses are late but when they're sometimes 10 15 minutes
010early is there any way we can communicate with the bus company at least in the first few weeks to if you're there 10 15 minutes before the published bus stop time to please wait because i mean i've had that happen to us like the first week of school the bus was 15 minutes early and we got up there 10 minutes early and so i would just hope that we i mean it's not any unique this year but since there's so much newness going on it's just hard sometimes yeah if i could just respond to that i think it is a bit unique this year in that we're only transporting half the kids so we're trying to cover the whole town again you know but we only have half the kids so there's not as many
011stops on the routes it does go quicker and until today we were not transporting even half of the kids so in the last few weeks we've been transporting just a small number of kids on each bus and although the drivers were driving their complete routes it's hard for them traffic wise to pull over and stop i mean they have a big yellow bus it causes problems with traffic when they do that but they are aware of it and we we are working through that and that was definitely bumpy the first couple of weeks especially but i saw this morning i think a [Music] a change in that now we have you know five more grade levels today so um i think that will sort of slow down things and there'll be some adjustments as i
012said you know there's there'll be adjustments for the next week or two until we uh you know get a get a true picture of who is actually riding and on a daily basis so then my other question is for dr gifford um i've had a few parents ask me like what is the protocol that we have in place um when someone tests positive because it is going to happen and i was just hoping that you could maybe review that a little um because people you know what do i do with my kid i mean how long do they have to stay home what's going to happen if they're home for two weeks so um i mean i do think we want to encourage people right if your kid's not well keep them home and if
013they're quarantining please keep them home so if we could just sort of explain what's going to happen when that situation arises um i think it would be good for parents to hear that well one thing they're going to be receiving and i'm not sure if the schools have sent them out yet but it's a handy dandy little chart which is um i think it took us three weeks and about 20 people right to review it so but if you know whether it's very similar with a close contact and i want to i'll make clear what a close contact is that is a person that's been in contact for more than 15 minutes and within six feet a person that has tested positive so i'm calling the next level of that i'm calling them second cousins
014because because they're not a close contact so people have to be aware of that definition but also um to your point um when we receive a notification of either someone that's been um with someone that was positive or someone that's like we have some potential um tests right now we're waiting for results that people have been with someone we've no positives yet as of this minute but um they'll be home they quarantine for 14 days and there are certain times which if you were it was two days before if you were with a person with so those kinds of things but what we do is as soon as we receive notification we've on our flow chart um obviously the board of health is notified um we either tell the student obviously the parent would say
015my child's sick i'm not sending them in or are they having a test they know to stay home for the two weeks um the new guidance also says that if you were even if you were um tested negative and you were close contact there now you have to still stay out for the quarantine so those are the two weak things um you might know there's one that we hope we don't see is if it's in someone in the same household it can be up to 25 days and it's like those kinds of things but the board of health with our assistants will do the contact tracing so we we don't have to do that piece we help with the schools you know who what a team the kid might have been on or a bus
016or a classroom etc so i think this because there are some specific scenarios also in the guidance of what if they were symptomatic at home or what if they were symptomatic and became ill at school kinds of things but our nurses are siding on the side of caution and sending kids home you've seen the list of symptoms and um parents have been very good about calling in and sending kids in for tests so um as far as what we're doing when students have to be home we've discussed with the dlt and right now the schools are working that out within the school itself with the teachers for example the teachers like the middle school for example gave me their plan it's maintaining their google classroom they'll have access to during advisory periods those kinds of
017things and they can log in and out but even if it was the two weeks it's really five days of actual instruction so each school is working that out within the school itself um the coaches would be for example at the middle school said they would then reach out to the students as well and make sure that they're kept on track for those two weeks if if it happens to be that so that's it but i think um if parents haven't received this they will receive this i think it's very helpful it's better than that 25 page guidance that people have to sift through and and as we've said before each situation matter of fact we um we started what we're going to try to maintain a weekly check-in call with the board of health
018and we did our first one this morning whether we need it or not kind of thing so we'll be on mondays and whether it's a five minute or half an hour and our lead nurse obviously is there usually it will be mr kylie myself laurie jodwin who supervises the nurses and then we thought each week we would invite a different nurse from one of the other buildings so that if there's issues or just so everybody's on the same um so we started that today other than the other three calls i also had with mr mishu so um but that's what i want people to know that you know it's the guidance we're following we're in close contact with the other folks and um they certainly can get specific answers about their child from their health
019care provider or the school nurse um so i hope that that's helpful thank you mr nunes yeah thank you mr chairman uh for you to mr kylie quick question uh with the transportation ad how full are the buses right now i mean you can put 20 or 25 uh we getting close to that or some are some aren't the most that we have scheduled on any bus right now is 22. we actually attempted to hold it to 21 um and on a couple of runs we really it just didn't make sense to do anything but because of the locations to do anything different but 22 which is well within we can actually fit 25 but we wanted to have space on the bus available in the case of a student not feeling well we want
020to be able to take that student and make sure that they are more than six feet away from anyone else so in limiting that capacity we're able to do that uh i it's it's hard to judge today was the first day that we had our full complement of of kids um so it'll be interesting to see so far i've not seen 22 21 or even 20 on any bus um so though we designed our routes taking into account our survey results and then our back-to-school gateway information that we got from parents we had about 800 students who we got we did not receive any information for so parents didn't respond so we included them on the bus because you know we we need to plan ahead this is not a situation where we can throw
021an extra few kids on a bus like in years past so those students are assigned to a bus they may or may not be taking the bus and then we found some students like today a young lady came up to me at the high school and said i wasn't on the i wasn't on the bus list and sure enough we checked it later and the parents said she wasn't going to ride the bus so so you know there's a lot of adjustments at this time of year and we were happy to see her riding the bus so that's great and we have room on the bus so not a problem but we'll uh we'll continue to do that but to answer your question i think we have room if parents want to send their kids
022on the bus i think we can accommodate thank you thank you this is wait um sorry just a couple just a piggyback on what shannon said um dr gifford just as you kind of were thinking ahead to thanksgiving and to the holiday what are your you know i already saw on social media parents were talking about going to disney and you know out of state how are you going to address that i guess with parents coming you know coming back from those holidays i mean are we going to have the students quarantine like what are i mean some people might you know what if little johnny says i saw mickey mouse you know but you haven't heard from the family so how will we address that very good point yeah well as you know well
023i would hope families know massachusetts has regulations that they're supposed to follow there's actually a form on there and they can be have 500 fine if they don't follow the governor's regulations obviously we can't police that so we did include that piece on our chart though to bring notification to that because they would have to um we did we have had some people go out for the weekend and we happened to hear the child talk about it so the parent was contacted and said you can't come back to school unless you have a positive negative covet test which they can they can get so we've had had a few of those but yeah so folks out there listening it's it's an important thing that they follow the governor's regulations you know the piece being so
024far so good we know as shannon said there will be positive cases and so everything that all of us can do to keep that away from us is important um yeah yeah and then spread the word and then um just i did have um some parents who asked i guess they have you know children the virtual elementary but it kind of brings up the late like the larger issue of substitutes you know so i guess they were concerned like and i kind of thought it's very it would be very difficult i would think for someone to come in and you know take over that virtual classroom so you know i but they were asking i guess one of the teachers wasn't able to be there you know had informed the parents ahead but they were
025wondering like what is going to be the plan for you know virtual classrooms in other classrooms and the teacher can't be there so that's another well the substitute is a is a huge issue staffing itself is a huge issue and even today with one of the schools i noticed on the absentee list so i emailed the school and asked how did you guys do with your subs today and it's piecemeal it was rubrik's cue but in general we um our elementary especially have because they have um more tas usually than the middle and high school right now they have trained right along with the teachers to be that first line of defense so if a teacher is out they can take that class over so that's our first line of defense um we have around
02624 subs i think that we've brought in that's all we usually we're substitutes we usually have around 90 to 100. oh wow yeah so and mr roy's office did a good job they brought people in they reached out to them are you going to plan on sub because then we did some training with them as well so they wouldn't come in cold turkey with what's going on um the middle school has a fantastic plan in place i just talked to darren today again uh they're really really partnering up each with each other to try to handle each other's classrooms when they have to um and then as far as the virtual class goes i know specifically that i know one teacher first example specifically was out on bereavement but she did some videotape lessons ahead
027of time so the kids could access those and other than that we haven't really had any issue other issues with the virtual classroom not to say that we won't going forward so whether one of our coaches that has already taught in there is able to sub for that day or not but um if we know ahead of time i think i think the plan will be to continue to have um plans ahead of time recordings ahead of time and and that so that the kids can have it because it is hard you can't it's such a new world to have a teacher just jump in you know even if it's the technology issue they're not sure of what the google meets and whatnot oh yeah but i i'm very pleased with the schools themselves of
028really working out the substitute issue within each school so we'll see we'll see we even just um put on our facebook page substitutes needed sub monitors and i don't know if that paid off i don't know but that's good there's five people that sign up no it's everywhere it's everywhere it's everywhere yeah yeah yeah and i think the only thing i i had one other parent who asked me and this you know may go more to mr kylie is about the balancing of the cohorts in the high school like you know she was observing that you know there in her child's particular half of the class it seemed that there were you know 20 kids and so i guess there was she was asking i always and i knew that was going to be a
029difficult endeavor for the high school but i was wondering like you know how did it end up panning out like in terms like the numbers on each side were you able to kind of like you know in the scale balance how you know what did you find it wasn't it wasn't in relation to transportation right no no no no no no i mean it was basically strictly an alphabet right yeah right and as a result you end up with classes within that that are you know not balanced and i know they do have some issues with that we did and and as you um remember as saying we went over at the middle the high school and met with them yeah we tried to start with the high school but because of the size of
030the classes and trying to do that split we finally abandoned that and they were working on it but we went with the other levels first to to help with the transportation but we came over and worked with bridget and da silva the guidance director and ross and the team really trying to give ideas of how to split those classes because i guess we're very fortunate that we did start with the high school later to come in because we just couldn't find the rooms and it was a lot of manipulation of moving teachers out of their regular rooms and all of that so yeah i guess some are uneven and then they also have to look at the special education cohorts and how they the ratio in the classes fit or what the kids chose so
031there's a lot i think it's easier at the elementary level but the high school was tough yeah i'm sure it was tough yeah but the rotation of classes yeah it was very tough yeah well thank you you're welcome anyone else yeah i i think my uh my colleagues sort of spoke to a lot of the questions i had but uh just to reiterate um well you had mentioned the middle school really working to make a plan for some of those virtual learners that were right struggling significantly and i just want to you know thank everyone that was involved with that because it sounds like there's a good plan in place too yeah and not only the teachers themselves that have stepped up and they came for one one teacher in particular came forth with a
032good idea to offer those extra advisory periods and using our assessments for the kids but also on the guidance counselors there i think from the the beginning and you've heard us all talk about it already mr gallacher talk about it we we didn't know you know and we just didn't know and and um it took a little bit of time to get really figure out what the heck was going on with this program and um with a huge thanks to mr galashaw for taking that over i think i was going to give him a nervous breakdown after a while but then same thing working with the middle school and saying coaxing them in you know the guidance counts and helping them to understand what was involved so um anyway yeah it's better right now yeah
033yeah right now thank you i don't really have anything additional tonight yeah no thank you to all those involved it's great to see the high school starting back up along with grade eight my daughter's a cohort starts tomorrow she can't wait to get into can't wait to get into the building looking very much forward to it um to uh mrs wade's point yeah i would advise that the the public you know keep up to date on the guidance put out by the governor's office for traveling especially with the thanksgiving holiday and other holidays coming up that be cognizant of the choices you make and do you know and do that not only for yourself but for all of all of us and all the students here in dartmouth public schools because it does matter we
034i really do i hope that we try to work together to keep each other safe yep um ultimately so thank you everyone for your comments thank you everyone up here for your hard work and dedication um and to your team and all the teachers out there and staff as well because this is a monumental task next up turn it over to uh this roy proposed revision of school committee policy eb cfa face coverage so we just have a slight edit to what we approved back in mid-september to include the additional face coverings that have not shown sufficient protection so the ones with the vented valves or uh exhalation piece so the droplets come out and the shield when worn solo without any other protection so and i also added a statement afterwards that said we
035would adhere to any updates from the cdc on any future mass so we wouldn't have to keep coming and adding to that and i put the link to there to their site so if we could have vote for this tonight that'll cover us moving forward good any questions from miss roy emotional approve second motion by mr nunes the second by mrs amarill on the motion any other discussion all in favor opposed motion carries unanimously thank you miss roy next up under new business superintendent's update dr gifford all right so you know i i put out um dates for a little bit a session it's about a two hour session with mask we've done this a couple years back is no i think i heard from everybody and i think november 16th would work me if
036i'm wrong thank you um i'm looking um i'm not available until five o'clock yeah i was going to go a little ask him to do 5 30 or 6. i know he was fine i think he wanted to get out early but i'm like that's fine all right so i will ask um glenn coocher if november 16th after five o'clock i would would work as you know uh we were involved in the s something non-covered the st math program last year with our elementary remember gigi you heard a lot about gigi and all so that's picked up we have some professional development for the teachers coming up with the new changes for that program that was always a good success teachers have been meeting and will continue to meet to adjust our scope and sequence
037now with the change in our how we're attending school etc so that's again with miss aloe vera and we recently um we have purchased that last year we had a subscription it was a sample not a sample but a trial subscription to this mayan digital reading materials through renaissance and so we've uh they offered we kept pressuring them to offer a good deal so we got that and we it's for our k to five it's digital reading materials and it really helps get books leveled readers into kids hands that we can't maybe give them the book but it's a digital library and um so we are happy to be able to offer that to the k to five and then we continue to use the new zela up to grade eight which is again another
038fantastic reading materials for kids and um i'm trying to look i think that's about it we talked about everything just a couple of new things as i said non-covet going on because we do do other things we do we seems we don't but we do and that's it for tonight thank you dr gifford i really don't have anything other than um i know i don't know if everyone else got the uh masc annual meeting i think some of it's going to be uh remote so it's always a good meeting if you haven't had the opportunity to go um i don't know this is the keynote event but i believe that there are there is a whole day of virtual sessions uh dr gifford yeah i think so i believe yeah i haven't really had a
039chance to really look at it but that's coming up in november so if you haven't had the opportunity it's always a a great event and we can you always have an opportunity to find at least one or two really good speakers there um that you i every year that i've gone and i've gone probably four or five now i always walk away with something i like it yeah so it's definitely worthwhile and that's really all i have this is america i do have one thing that i would like for folks to be aware of um putting on my cpap cat we the special ed parent advisory council organized a few meetings but specific to the timeliness of this meeting on wednesday october 28th at 6 pm we are hosting some guest speakers via zoom about
040specific to and i know this is an issue for all students but the our our focus is the typically under normal circumstances the difficulty of students with and without disabilities to kind of come together and form friendships and with covid global pandemic and being remote we have some an interesting presentation around building friendships at school during challenging times um and so if people are interested in that the zoom link will only come once you're registered for some you know extra security precautions around the online platform so if folks are interested they can go on our social media page the dartmouth special education advisory council page and it's listed as an event online so it it should be quite informative even just just a little example of you know how do we how do we make
041friends we we we have things in common and so some ideas around um maybe having you know for my son he might have a bruins poster in the background so that if he's in a in a virtual setting somebody else might say oh he likes the bruins and that might foster a dialogue and so just tips and tricks like that especially when we're sort of forced to be socially distanced or or um in a virtual platform so just wanted to share that thank you it's october 28th did i say that okay that's all i have today thank you very much it's a wednesday night yep 6 p.m anyone else all right and our next meeting of the dartmouth school committee is i don't have it in front of me november 9th thank you mr nunes
042monday november 9th same time same place that being said cher will entertain a motion to adjourn into executive session for the purpose to provide an update with respect to collective bargaining with union personnel not to reconvene second motion by mr noon second by mrs wait on the motion any further discussion roll call please ms gunther i'm sorry before we adjourn can i just go back to you are there any public comments that came through since the beginning of the meeting thank you very much so on the motion any further discussion hearing none roll call chris oliver yes shannon jenkins yes kathleen amral yes john nunes yes mary wait yes this meeting has been adjourned have a wonderful night everyone