001one i'd like to call this meeting of the dartmouth school committee to order for monday october 5th 2020. would you please stand for the pledge of united allegiance of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all well good evening everyone it's uh nice to be back i guess in person uh seeing everyone's smiling faces uh mr tebow on on the big wide screen over there uh roll call please miss gentler here here here here here thank you very much as a reminder for governor baker's otter suspending certain provisions of the open meeting launch up to 38 section 20 the public will not be allowed to physically access this school committee meeting members of the public can access this meeting via our live stream
002at youtube.com forward slash dhs tv media in addition the event will be rebroadcast in dc tv channels 9 and 18 on the following days wednesday and thursday at 5 pm friday at 6 a.m saturday at 8 00 am sunday at 2 p.m the school committee reserves the right to implement additional remote participation procedures and will notify the public of these procedures as soon as practicable uh once again thank everyone thank mr galisha mr parotti in the background there for uh putting this together i feel like i'm i feel like i'm in a regular tv studio here absolutely so typically at this time we allow 10 minutes for public comment for anyone wishing to speak on tonight of any on any of tonight's agenda items um if you do not if you have not already i
003had the opportunity to review our agenda and submit an email to uh kate genther or kathleen genther at dartmouthschools.org we ask you to do so now at this point in time kate do we have any comments on any of tonight's gender items no thank you very much at this time i will entertain a motion to approve uh the regular session minutes of september 14 2020. so move second i have a motion on the floor by mr nunes a second by dr jenkins on the motion any further discussion chia hearing none all in favor opposed motion carries unanimously this time all entertainment chair will entertain a motion to approve the executive session minutes of september 14 2020. so mr chairman with the stipulation that they be held until the matter for which they were intended is
004complete second i have a motion on the floor by mr nunes a second by dr jenkins on the motion any further discussion j hearing none all in favor hi hi opposed motion carries unanimously uh in addition i'll entertain a motion uh i guess we'll have to take these separately because we do have regular and executive session so uh our regular session minutes of the joint meeting with the uh select board of for september 21st 2020 so moved second i'll give so we had a motion on the floor by mr nunes a second by mrs amaral on the motion any discussion all in favor post motion carries unanimously and last but not least chair will entertain a motion for the executive session minutes of september 21st 2020 so move mr chairman with the stipulation that they
005be held until the matter for which they were intended is complete second i have a motion on the floor by mr nunes a second by mrs waite on the motion any discussion uh chair hearing none all in favor posed motion carries unanimously thank you very much uh my fellow colleagues for that at this time i'll turn it over to dr gifford for a presentation this evening on tonight tonight for the dartmouth high school ap report right thank you mr chair i'm very happy to have mr tebow the principal here tonight to present that report as you recall we invested some time and energy and money into having mass insight help us with the advanced placement program last year and we have some positive results to report and i will turn it over to mr tebow
006to do that good evening mr tebow hi good evening you hear me yes yes yes all right perfect so i'm going to go ahead and share my screen okay um so tonight i'm here to present on the advanced placement um results from this past school year i just wanted to start off by saying you know thank you to the school committee thank you to dr gifford for allowing me to present this evening i have to admit that i'm extremely excited to be talking about something that's not related to covet 19 for the first time in many many months so um thank you for having me and i really appreciate the opportunity to uh present this evening so tonight i want to start by just saying that it really uh truly takes a community um so
007i'd like to offer special thanks to um you know a number of different people or groups of people within the dartmouth high school community but i want to start with our students our students have really risen to the occasion over the past a couple of years um we've challenged them to take the most rigorous coursework available to them and we've um we've you know really pushed them to uh to stretch themselves and reach beyond their comfort zone and i think you'll see in a few slides here that that they've truly risen to the occasion that they've done just that i also want to thank obviously the dharma school committee as well as dr gifford in central office because um last year or two years ago at this time now we came to you looking for
008your support in order to partner with mass insight and i think that they have made a huge um having them as a partner has been a huge benefit at dartmouth high school so i certainly um you know appreciate the support from the school committee as well as from central office and dr gifford in addition to that i wanted to recognize the ap coordinator at dartmouth high school which is our associate principal rachel chavier she has done a fantastic job in terms of providing leadership to our lead teachers and to our ap teachers and and um just our students as well particularly this past year uh through the uh pandemic and then um again i don't wanna miss anyone so you can certainly see the slide here it really does take a village in each one
009of these groups even if i didn't uh you know go into detail each one of them has played a critical role in what you're about to um hear tonight in terms of our results and the status of our ap program so just to begin a little bit with why advanced placement coursework matters um because it does matter um and again this is not in order of importance but first off it provides our students the opportunity to earn valuable credit and or placement in college um students who earn a qualifying score which is you know it can vary from institution to institution but generally speaking a three or above um earns um you know some college credit and so that's one reason why right another reason that ap is important is because it supports students in
010mastering rigorous college-level content and skills our mission at dartmouth high school is to ensure all students are college and career ready uh at the end of their four years at dartmouth high school and there's no better way for us to demonstrate that uh than by seeing a number of our students participate successfully in our in our advanced placement coursework obviously from a student perspective there's a benefit in that it strengthens their transcript in the college admission process i'll speak to that in just a second but in my opinion this perhaps this last bullet is perhaps the most important reason why we um really promote advanced placement coursework and that is that it can potentially unlock student interest and passion in a particular college major or a particular career field and so that's really um you
011know what high school is all about is providing students an opportunity to find themselves find the the areas that they're most passionate about and we're really confident that advanced placement coursework is an opportunity to do that um so in terms of the collagen uh admissions perspective this is a recent survey that was done by the national association of college admissions counselors and they rank a number of different um factors that go into the consideration to admit or deny a student entrance into their to their college and the first the top three all are strengthened by advanced placement coursework if a student engages in them first one being grades in all courses the second being grades in college prep courses of course college prep meaning you know ap is exactly that college prep and then finally
012the strength of curriculum and the thing about advanced placement coursework is it's nationally normed right so while honors level coursework is great there's a high degree of variability from high school to high school even within a high school there's variability advanced placement coursework offers a standard and a norm that really sets um potentially a student's transcript apart from from their peers the other thing although it's not tied directly to advanced placement coursework i want to point out and just because you know in the hope that some parents might be watching tonight um and some students certainly we get hung up a lot of time on class rank and i would just point out that in the top 10 factors ranked by college admissions officers you can see class rank is down near the bottom of
013the of the top 10 list here and significantly so so i just point that out because i know that students stress about class rank and i can't stress enough that while important it's not even up in the in the top a few factors here that are considered by college admissions officers when admitting a student so let's take a look a little bit at um i thought i'd give just an overview about the dartmouth high school advanced placement program and starting with this we offer 18 or last year i should say we offered 18 different advanced placement courses across virtually every department with the only exception being our world language department and i'm happy to report that this year we've added ap spanish um as a course offering once again so so this year every department
014is um you know has some advanced placement coursework that they offer i think it's important uh that's an important point to to emphasize because it shows that there really is something for everyone at dartmouth high school you know we have a number of art advanced placement courses as well as you know um you know across all of the other areas as well and and certainly when folks think of ap a lot of times we forget some of those elective areas like art or or world language for that matter where our students you know some of our students really find themselves and their passion in those areas as well and at dartmouth high school i'm proud to be able to say we offer a tremendous variety of ap courses across all departments last year we were
015able to offer three new advanced placement courses at dartmouth high school they included ap calculus bc so we had always offered ap calculus a b um at dartmouth high school but last year we opened up a section of bc for students or a couple of sections actually and again we continue to offer ap calculus pc this year and i think that that speaks to some of the work we've done to kind of expand our coursework so that students can in their senior year get to that point and be successful we offered we also offered ap physics uh for the first time at dartmouth high school an ap seminar we were able to offer last year as well and all i'm happy to report all three of those courses continue to to run this year as
016well so as we've expanded here you'll see the enrollment in a second and how dramatically it's increased over the last couple of years as we've expanded enrollment to our most rigorous courses to our ap courses we've also had to expand um and build capacity within our teaching ranks and so i'm really proud of this as well that last year for the first time um eight new teachers were teaching advanced placement courses and um it should be noted that it takes a couple of years for a teacher to really uh get their legs under them in terms of teaching ap coursework which is why i kind of i thought it was important to point out this fact that we had a number of teachers teaching ap for the first time um and again something that speaks
017to the concerted effort we've put in to kind of really you know build and expand our ap coursework that's a good segue into the next uh part of our report here which is our participation trends at dartmouth high school it's been a a major focus at dartmouth high school to really expand our enrollment specifically though looking to expand our enrollment to students who might have been underrepresented in years past so we were specifically looking to encourage students who would not have taken an ap course without that added push and i'm happy to to show or to share this slide here um which shows kind of that's that flat you know for a few years there is very flat and then over the next over the last two years you can see that we've made a
018steady increase um and a little bit later on in the presentation i'll share with you this current year's uh projected um and i say projected because until i sit for the exam i don't really you know um like to to count them in this number because that is the end goal of the advanced placement program is to is to take that exam so i wanna while the numbers have been increased across the board i did want to take a second to give a shout out and highlight a few departments that have really taken to this message and really taken to helping us um you know push the message that with effective effort every student can be successful in an ap course um because we're really pushing back hard against the mindset of some kids can
019and some kids can't we really believe that if you know 90 percent of our students or or around there somewhere there abouts are going off to a two or a four-year college when they leave us then what better way to demonstrate they're prepared for success at that next level than to have successfully completed an ap course while they're with us the english department is an outstanding example of a department that's really taken that message to heart and has really been the tip of the spear in terms of our efforts to expand our ap enrollment you can see all the way to the left it says english language arts on this uh graph here on this chart here rather um and that that's just a combination of both english language and composition as well as english
020literature and composition those are the two ap courses within the english department so that all the way to the left is the total there and you can see that in the school year 1718 we had 71 students enrolled in english ap coursework and this past year we were able to get up to 183 and this comings the current school year we're in where over 300 students in ap english classes so that um you know enrollment increase has been dramatic um and it's it's been profound and it's really a tribute to the effort of our teachers in the english department led by um our english league teacher will higgins so we're extremely proud of the english department for for taken to this effort to make sure that we're democratizing access to our most rigorous coursework our
021mathematics and computer science ap participation is another area i wanted to highlight again you can see a similar kind of trend there in terms of the increase from 65 students in our math and computer science courses um three years ago to 111 this most recent this past year and again there's another significant increase that um is currently underway at dartmouth high school specifically in our ap stats program where up to 70 students in three different sects three or four different sections of ap stats we continue to offer calculus bc as i mentioned our computer science principles ap is also uh dramatically increased at around 60 students enrolled this year so again we continue to look to grow our ap program but our math and computer science department has certainly done a nice job of helping
022us uh to increase our enrollment and then finally and this one is near and dear to my heart being a former history teacher myself our history and social science department has done a nice job as well in terms of increasing their enrollment um 84 three years ago up to 149 this past year and um you know you can see that there's still areas there's some areas actually that kind of were in decline government politics uh is one example but i'm happy to report that this year because of our efforts in the spring we're actually up to about 60 students um this year in government and politics um and we have an eye miss javier and i already met with all of our lead teachers to review this data and kind of formulate a plan for
023where we need to continue to grow our programs and for this coming year we're really looking to target ap human geography and ap psychology those are two areas that we know um we can grow and we use different data points to kind of determine that one of them being the ap potential report that is put out um through the psat that we take every spring or every fall rather and so we know from those numbers that we have students who are still on the sideline who could be very successful in human geo as well as ap psych so those are areas that we're looking to expand for next year so with increased enrollment we will we should always express expect increased um performance as well right we should expect that you know we're not just
024dumping kids in and then they have a lousy experience and don't perform well we're consider we're very concerned about the results as well but i want to caution everyone that when you increase enrollment you know the enrollment increases first and then there is some lag before you start to see the results and the reason for that is because where teachers are getting used to teaching a more diverse student population in front of them right if you just make ap about the elite students who are high performing um you know those students tend to learn in spite of us but as we're pushing students who otherwise wouldn't have been an ap to take on that challenge it's a little bit more challenging for for teachers as well and so that's you know a couple of years
025in our teachers um you know the performance catches up to to the enrollment but i'm happy to report as i move on through here and show you the performance our performance was very strong again last year as well so here are our qualifying scores over the last three years you can see the steady increase um looks kind of like a nice staircase there um again 277 qualifying scores three years ago and we were up to around 370. for actually i i when i originally created this presentation it was in the summer um in july when the scores first came out i'm actually happy to report that the 374 is up to 378 because one of the things that our ap teachers can do or could do this past year during the pandemic they got a
026copy of the student sample they could review it and if they thought there was a discrepancy if they thought that the ap exam needed to have another look taken they could request that and so some of our ap teachers did that and i'm happy to report that four students whose um exams we asked to be readjudicated were and they actually bumped up to qualifying scores so that that number is currently around 378. so again you can see that as enrollment has increased our qualifying scores have also increased which speaks to that belief that we had students who were more than capable of doing well on an ap or in an ap course who were sitting on the sidelines so it really just validates the efforts that our teachers and our our counselors and also quite
027frankly our families have put in to really push uh students to challenge themselves and take the most rigorous coursework so we're proud of that again i wanted to highlight just a couple of departments you know while we are proud of all of the departments again the english department um leading the way here in terms of the qualifying scores um three or above you can see uh just a few years ago was 54. we were up to 118 this most recent year again you can see english language and composition has had a dramatic increase as enrollment has increased and then english lit slid back a little bit last year i'm not overly concerned because as i mentioned we had a number of teachers teaching the course for the first time um as well as you know
028increased enrollment and so a much more diverse um student enrollment student population so um overall very satisfied and um very proud of the job that the english language arts department has done again um history and social science uh another example of some some strong results here just three years ago qualifying scores and this past year up to 119 again that 119 actually is a little bit higher because two of those scores i mentioned that got re-adjudicated were actually in in history and social science so that's up around 121 currently so again it speaks to the strong performance of our students and our teachers and could not be prouder um of them i do want to um give mr reed our ap uh our social studies lead teacher rather last year he um he's actually becoming
029kind of a uh uh a utility player for us last year we had our teacher who usually teaches world history was out on um uh parental leave last year so he he jumped in and taught world history for the first time and you can see did a fantastic job at just by looking at the qualifying scores there this year with the retirement of miss vicente who was a long time ap psych teacher mr reed jumped in and is teaching ap psych for the first time this year so i told them no pressure but based on those world history numbers we're expecting big things out of our psych program as well so um i thought i would give a little shout out to mr reed because we certainly appreciate his efforts um last year so that
030was kind of a general overview i wanted to talk to you specifically for a few seconds here about for a few minutes here about the mass insight partnership because as you know a couple of years back when we asked to be able to partner you supported that and i think at the time you asked that i come back and report out on how the partnership has gone so um last year in addition to having a pep rally for our ap students at the start of the year in the spring we did our or just before um the pandemic actually we had we did a recruitment fair and we talked to the students about the fact that our partnership with mass insight along with the outstanding teachers and opportunities at dartmouth high school really lead to
031ap success we really believe that and i think that you'll you'll agree um with some of the numbers we have to share tonight first being 430. now 430 were the number of students who took advantage of either an ap saturday study session that mass insight offered or took the mock exam um that mass insight offered to our students and so that was 430 uh students who would not have otherwise had those experiences and one of the nice things about their saturday sessions is our students get to learn not just with other dartmouth high ap students but they're exposed to ap students from across southeastern massachusetts um and so i i think that that's a tremendous opportunity for our for our students at dartmouth high school to be able to have that experience they also get
032experience to other ap teachers from across the commonwealth as well um and it it's on topics that ap teachers from across southeastern mass say hey i could use some additional support on this topic or that topic or i might not get to that topic um and that's how mass insight identifies what the saturday study sessions will be so again that was the benefit of being partnered with mass insight as well i do we do have we reviewed the data in terms of attendance data and this is an area that we're focused on improving this year uh those saturday sessions they started out high the second session was not where we'd like it to be in terms of attendance so that's an area that we're focused on this year the nice well i guess um i
033think it will be easier for students to attend um obviously it's not going to be in person the saturday sessions anymore they're going to be virtual um for this school year and they're going to be spread out over a week as opposed to just one day so i'm confident that our attendance will improve and that our students will continue to benefit from from those sessions and certainly from the mock exams which provided our students good feedback that they could then use to prepare uh in the in the closing stretch towards the ap exams in addition to our partnership with mass insight for our students our teachers benefit as well and we had 16 teachers who took advantage of the summer long institute in july of 2019 now so those teachers were able to attend the
034week-long institute at bridgewater state um with no out-of-pocket cost you know at dartmouth um one of the nice benefits is that our teachers do get a thousand dollars for professional development um each year but this partnership is nice because it doesn't require any out of pocket cost not even upfront so our teachers were able to enroll for the summer institute um at no cost no no additional cost to the district other than our partnership fee um that we pay um but again our our teachers get to take advantage of that week-long experience they hear from the best ap teachers you know across the the nation they oftentimes have sessions that are led by the authors of the ap textbooks um so it's really a phenomenal experience for our teacher teachers in addition we had teachers
035who were able to enroll in the pre-ap institute which is um you know training geared toward making sure that the pipeline is strong so students in honors and college prep level courses have real rigorous coursework that prepares them so that it's um they're ready to be successful when they get to the ap coursework this past summer uh so the summer of 2020 obviously had to be virtual um but we had 10 stu 10 teachers rather who took advantage of the week-long summer institute this year as well so over the course of our uh you know we're just starting our second year with mass insight here we've had about 26 teachers who have taken advantage of the ap um summer institute uh professional development opportunities so again that's to a benefit to the benefit of our
036students in addition to the week-long institutes mass insight also offers us the two-day workshops in october and this is you know traditionally has been two days where teachers can get out of the building get away from the hectic pace of the day and really focus on their own professional learning it at the high school level it's extremely difficult to find good high quality content specific professional development and that's exactly what these two day workshops offer for our teachers it's content specific ap professional development and i have never you know i've worked now this is being my third school that i've worked at and all three i've been fortunate to partner with mass insight i have not met a single teacher who does not come back and rave about the experience that they've had at these
037two-day workshops the networking opportunities in addition to the professional development uh is world-class and so we had 12 teachers who took advantage of that last year again this year will have to be virtual and it will be two sessions for each night for a week so our teachers will have an opportunity to still get the professional development it will just be split out over a week and it will be virtual part of the the fee um that we pay to mass insight it's a fifteen thousand dollar fee um each year but a portion of that comes directly back to us so five thousand dollars comes came directly back to us in the first year and those funds are used to support ap coursework so in year one with that five thousand dollars it went for
038smart tvs for our english language uh arts department and again it wasn't to watch tv but it was um a cheaper alternative than projectors and so it allowed them to uh chromecast and share students could share their screen so that they could present so that they could co-construct essays and and things of that nature um and so that was how english language arts spent their portion of the five thousand dollars um in science we identified ap physics as a priority since it was the first year that that course was offered got some lab equipment um specific to ap physics and then math opted to um bolster their supply of graphing calculators in year two we don't get five thousand each year it's a little bit less that you get back but you get three thousand
039dollars back this year that we're now and again math opted for additional graphing calculators in science we're targeting ap chemistry uh for some additional lab uh resources and equipment and then english supplemented um some some text resources uh for the ap courses in terms of uh our stem related ap courses at dartmouth high school and that's how mass insight defines their partnership with us they they support our stem related including english courses obviously but we had a 25.6 percent increase in exams taken at dartmouth high school this past year in math english and science um courses and just to put that in context for you nationally ap courses ap exams in this these areas were down 14 so we saw a dramatic increase um in our ap exams taken and to put into a national
040context there was a significant decrease because of the pandemic so i think this really speaks to the commitment that our students have the support we got from families as well as from our ap teachers that when we went remote in the spring without any advanced knowledge our students really dug in and stuck with it um and i think that speaks to the test uh that speaks as a testament to that it takes a community um approach that i talked about at the outset of our of our presentation here in these same areas we saw 21.6 increasing qualifying scores so again that's something to be proud of and that 21.6 percent just to put it in context again nationally there was a decline of 7 in qualifying scores so our students really um outperformed the nation
041um and obviously built upon an already strong ap program that we had at dartmouth high school and and they did it in the face of the pandemic which i think just is something we should all really be proud of real quick just the future of advanced placement at dartmouth high school one of the key messages that i hope folks will take away uh from tonight um and from our you know our students as well as our um you know families at home is we're continuing our push to democratize access to ap there's a lot of reasons why you know from a more moral ethical standpoint i think we owe it um to our students to make sure that the demographics in ap closely mirror the demographics of the school as a whole right in other
042words we're not we're trying to make it so that it's an inclusive ap program it's not reserved for for the few but we want to do it strategically and we want students to really be thinking about a four-year plan um too often we still see students waiting until their junior and senior year and trying to cram as many advanced placement courses as they can and that's a recipe for for failure or you know to struggle certainly we want students right in ninth grade we have ap computer science principles that is a very accessible advanced placement course and we encourage students to really consider dipping their toe in in the ap water their freshman year and that's a course that's available to to our freshmen from there we expand as you can see 10th grade there's
043quite a few additional offerings obviously 11th and 12th grade have the most but really we push students to be thinking about over the course of your four years you know um start slow and kind of build and and you know everyone's able to handle a little bit different right um we want people to push themselves but we don't want it to be so much that you you have four or five aps in a year and then you're over stressed and it's not manageable for you so we encourage students to really be thoughtful and this ap at a glance sheet that you see here is in our program of studies it's hopefully a helpful tool that parents and students can use um when they're planning their course of study we're also we've worked hard to minimize
044or eliminate prerequisites whenever possible um a lot of times and it's not uncommon um to see at the high school level where we put in place barriers to our advanced coursework and we we really have worked hard to remove those barriers um we have a supportive school a supportive environment we have the pace period available really what we need to recognize is that students who are willing to put in the effort can be successful in an ap course it's the effort that leads to the achievement not some innate ability not you know um not anything else and then finally we've really um push and continue to push this can do mindset can do over can't do um so often you know we we talk all the time at the high school about the fact that
045your mindset uh ultimately leads to your success or to your failure and that can do mindset will always triumph over they can't do so um or really continue to focus on expanding our ap program and then finally this is uh these are this is the projection for this current school year it's just over 800 though that could have dipped in the first month we always do you know we we try and push kids to stick with it stick with it stick with it but you know we always lose a few at the very beginning um typically so i can update this number but we're right around 800 in terms of um student enrollment in ap courses at this for this school year so we're extremely proud of that and again it shows that concerted effort
046to really push our students to take the most rigorous coursework that's available to them one other thing i should have mentioned was at dartmouth high school we were very proud to find when we talked with a representative from the college board that dartmouth high school actually had the second largest increase in ap exams taken this past school year in the entire commonwealth of massachusetts so while we're extremely proud of that we shoot for first place at dartmouth high school so we're hoping that this coming year we might just hit that target but we're extremely proud of our students for sticking it out this this year again we continue to build capacity with six new teachers this current school year uh teaching ap for the first time we have two new additional ap courses that we
047offer this year i alluded to already ap spanish language had a great meeting with ms chavier and miss um mrs souza our ap uh spanish teacher our lead teacher in the world language department and that's a that's a goal of the world language department to really strengthen and expand our ap spanish program in the coming years we look forward to supporting her work to do that and we also added ap research uh this school year as well and then finally before i answer any questions there might be we're looking forward to offering the ap capstone diploma uh program at dartmouth high school and um for folks who might not be familiar with what that is it's just an opportunity again for a student to earn a credential upon their graduation that shows they are really
048an ap scholar they've taken ap seminar and got a three or higher they took ap research uh and earned a three or higher and in addition to that throughout the course of their high school studies they earned three qualifying um sorry four qualifying scores on additional ap coursework this really speaks to what i said just a few slides ago though that you really have to plan if this is a goal of yours we support you um but you have to plan for that over the course of four years no one's going to achieve the this uh in one or two years so um really pushing students to be thoughtful and to plan that over a four year period finally i think you know share some conclusions with the committee i think it's safe to say
049that the advanced placement program at dartmouth high school is stronger than it has ever been um our team our ap team has already identified a number of areas for growth and we have plans to make sure that we continue to grow grow our ap enrollment and to continue to um improve our the number of qualifying scores that we have we're excited to be offering the ap research and diploma program and feel that it really aligns the district has focused uh over the past several years on future ready students and i think that the ap research program really is so tightly aligned to that there's no more authentic work than having a student be able to take ownership of a topic they're really passionate and interested about and doing high level research while they're in high
050school i you know i don't i don't know of any other program that would better align with the district's initiative around future ready students and then finally i hope that this point resonates the success of the dartmouth high school ap program is truly a reflection on the efforts of every teacher at dartmouth high school as well as every teacher within the dartmouth public schools ap is the end of the line but when students get there they've experienced a number of teachers from pre-k all the way up through their ap experience that have prepared them for the rigors of ap coursework and so we couldn't do it without every single teacher of dartmouth public schools and we hope that they take as much pride in the the data that we shared tonight as our ap teachers
051do at dartmouth high school with that being said i'm happy to answer any questions that there might be well first of all thank you uh mr tebow for a well thought out and a well informative presentation um i know i just learned a lot and clearly our our partnership with mass insight uh has paid dividends over the years uh so i thank you for that so at this time i'm gonna turn it over to any of my colleagues that have any comments or questions i'm not sure if anyone would like to start or mr nunes said thank you mr chairman thank you uh mr tebow and i agree with you it was nice hearing about something besides covert uh and being a sounding board for that so thank you very much for that a couple
052of basic questions uh with the students taking these classes and you know getting the threes the fours the fives that they get they get a chance to get college credits i.e they don't have to take certain classes when they get to college is that how this is going to work and how many classes you know can how many credits can they get towards their college education or does it vary oh okay yes so so i apologize because i'm on a little bit of a delay here um i'm listening um through the youtube feed but um so to answer your question mr nunes it does vary from college to college um and so you know in some college in in many state um college and universities that three is an acceptable or qualifying score three four
053or five but it does vary from college to college and um what the amount of credit that they get you know it would depend from one institution to the to the next would be would be the answer but it certainly does save money um for students who earn qualifying scores because they can go right into more advanced courses i mean i guess does somebody have an opportunity to almost take care of you know one semester of college in overall in the long run or pretty close to a whole semester 30 credits this is priceless this is i had a student who took care of a year a student who took care of a year my brother got a year so for a student who was extremely motivated who planned out their ap courses you know
054um like i suggested starting in their freshman year yeah they could certainly earn um a number of college credits and um you know when they enter be pretty pretty far along okay thank you and the last thing just to complement the teachers on everything they do i know a number of years ago i was here on a weekend there was something going on and you know i was here and went to leave and there was a one of your teachers had signed in and that and this was like nine o'clock on a saturday or a sunday night and that teacher had a full classroom of students you know going over things for an ap exam so not only were the students dedicated but on you know giving up a a saturday night or a sunday
055night but you know the teacher was here too so you know again my compliments and my thanks to all the teachers that you know work at this and the students because it's not easy i mean when you look at what you know it's always amazes me when you see the students you know when they're graduating what they've done you know with co-curricular activities and clubs and still taking however many uh ap classes so my congrats to everyone and thank you dr jenkins so i'm sure mr tebow's probably waiting he's hearing from from mr nunes so should i should i go ahead or should i wait i think i'll i'll go ahead because while he say thank you my question will then come through i think so that's reasonable all right so i i also want
056to say thank you i think um you guys have been doing a great job i am particularly impressed by your outreach to um get students who might not normally uh consider enrolling in ap um to do that and and i like that um i thought the report was great um one thing i might like to see if we ever do this again is the number of students participating because like you said we do have a number of high achievers who take multiple ap classes and so the real sort of measure expansion should be the number of students taking aps um and and that's i'm really particularly concerned about that democratization so i'm glad to see you focusing on that um and i'd love to see that um i have two questions um the first question
057is i was glad to see that computer science has moved down to first year i'm wondering if you've considered moving any of the other ap courses for first year students like gopo you know i teach intro to american politics ap geography or ap psych many of the history social sciences could potentially be available to year students and i'm wondering if you guys have considered that and then i'll wait jonathan can you just repeat the question again i do so the comment was i'd like to see the numbers broken up a number of students participating which would be great no the question is whether they've considered expanding some of the history social science classes to first-year students it was gopo geography and psych so if if the question was have we considered expanding it um so
058american government and politics did expand this current year that we're currently in that we just started um and i don't have the slide in front of me but i want to say it was like 20 students last year we're up to 60 um this year um you know and and certainly so what we do when we look at the expansion of ap programs is we take that ap potential report um which identifies students that are likely to be successful and it lists every course that a student is likely to be successful in and we look at those numbers and let's just say if the number is a hundred that means there's a hundred dartmouth high students who have demonstrated that they are likely to be successful on that particular ap course or in that particular
059ap course we use that as kind of our benchmark and and we kind of say how do we get there um and we we we identify we share with the students those ap potential um letters and so the students know hey you know i demonstrated that i could be successful in these four courses and then we pushed the students to enroll in at least one of them if they if they weren't going to enroll in any of them um you know and obviously some of them do enroll in multiple courses i mean i'm happy to uh i don't have it off the top of my head um but i'm happy to provide the number of uh unique students who participate in advanced placement coursework i can certainly share that that number with you um because
060i think that that's the foundation of of one of the questions that dr jenkins was asking that was one the other it was the other was a little bit of a misunderstanding like the the way we do it now relies on psat scores and the psat happens sophomore year what about opening up eight more ap courses to first-year students because they can only take one right now so it's the first opening to freshman students is that yes right so so right now we have the um computer science principles that's open to freshmen and that's a conversation that we do constantly have um with our lead teachers every every you know annually we review and revise the program of studies um and so if you went back to look at an old program of studies from
061just three years ago there were virtually no 18 in 9th or 10th grade i think there was you know it it might have been just us history um as a 10th grade option very very few um and you can see from the at a glance sheet that was included in the presentation we now have a number of them in 10th grade i know we still only have one in freshmen um we're working on it there's you know um in a previous school i was at we convinced the ap stats teacher for example to allow stats for freshmen because it's a very different type of math and it's it's accessible for students and reluctantly we we got them to be able to to agree to that and then when we followed up you know um some
062of the most motivated students were those freshmen because they felt like they were you know uh they were special that that was a special opportunity for them so they were very motivated and eager to demonstrate that they were up to the challenge so we're always looking at how we can expand um ap and by expanding i don't mean just the enrollment but how we can make more courses accessible in the earlier years um so it's not all backlogged into the or shoehorned into the 11th and 12th grade years i'm good thank you dr jenkins this is wait yes so i have some comments as well as a question or two um first i also want to uh congratulate you and the high school staff for expanding the ap program i have two students who are
063at dartmouth high both are doing really well one is a freshman taking the freshman program um i think it's a lot of credit to the staff who say i don't just want the students who may get a five but i'm like i really want to bring in all these students who are excited about the subject and i want to you know stimulate that excitement so i think that's fantastic um also another comment having been a i taught ap us history i think having that kind of training that the student the teachers are getting over the summer and in that october workshop is it's game-changing so that is fantastic that you're committed to that through mass insight i think that's you know great i also want to compliment the staff in the spring um i don't
064know how many i assume everybody saw but the video that the ap teachers did for the students who are about to take the ap exam was adorable it was so great it was you know so cute and positive and you know we got teachers you know it was again it really translated well and kids got to see their teachers who they missed at home and i thought that was a great send-off in this kind of wacky time we had now the questions i have are two one you had mentioned that you're trying to minimize the prerequisites for some of the ap classes i look at ap calculus and i think about how to get there um so i'm wondering i know there's been some combinations um so i guess so one of my questions is
065when you say you're limiting the prerequisites how are you especially for those a b now we have bc for the calculus how has how has that kind of changed the formula for getting there and the second comment is i'd just like to say i'd love to see macro economics come back i think it's a unique course that's there isn't anything like it in the offerings and you did offer at one point i taught it so i'd love to see it come back so that would be my second so i'll tackle the second question first um i too would love to see ap economics come back um we had the one thing you can't do though is you can't um i'm very hesitant to put someone who's not comfortable teaching it in a position they have
066to teach it right because we want the kids to have a good experience and to absolutely be prepared for the exam and um in my experience if you force uh uh you know i just wouldn't want to force a teacher who's not up to it uh we did have some conversation because again when we look at the ap potential report economics is one of those that we absolutely need to get back in so so we'll continue to work on that um because i agree ap economics really um you know is an area that uh our students would benefit from in terms of um the prerequisites i should clarify that when i arrived at dartmouth high school three years ago that in the program of studies there were a lot of prerequisites like a student must
067have an 85 or above in an honors level you know core so you know it was a lot of those types of prerequisites in our in our courses um and you know i don't think i'm sharing state secrets when i say that grading is somewhat arbitrary at times and so it's those kinds of prerequisites that you know were um or teacher recommendation was another prerequisite that existed quite often those are the prerequisites that we've worked hard to eliminate so we haven't changed you know course pipelines we haven't changed um what courses or what course progression students should still move through so much especially for for things like ap calculus right or eight you know um things of that nature the prerequisites that we rarely work to eliminate are the more subjective ones like you know
068teacher recommendation or a certain grade in a certain course um as a prerequisite those are the types of prerequisites that we've worked hard to to eliminate because as we know there's a number of reasons why a student could do poorly you know they could have something happen in their life you know in their sophomore year and maybe they didn't that grade they earned didn't really demonstrate what they were really capable of you know those kinds of things so um those are the prerequisites that i was referencing that we we've worked hard to to reduce or actually to eliminate really anything else mrs white no i think i i think that you know really concludes i guess i would just again looking at the i am curious about the progression to those again that math because
069i i find that the way that we've had math structured and you know with students i know we're doubling up now um as for allowing some students to double up in the algebra geometry as they get into freshman year but again i'm i am kind of curious about the pathway to get to that you know bc senior year and where that actually happens with the math i mean the other ones seem like you know you could take a uh you know uss3 course or you know other ones but those need a progression so that's what i was kind of curious about how a student gets there i guess so it so in the math in the math pathway specifically we have um an advanced algebra geometry uh course that's available for for students in their
070uh freshman year we also have um an advanced uh course you know if there are juniors who need to kind of progress a little bit quicker and then recently we actually just i just met with mr lauer and mr gill and ms chavier recently to talk about offering and i know um if mrs oliveira is watching she'll be excited about this because her and i have had conversations for a couple of years at this point now but offering a uh summer math course that's not remedial and not um to recover credits but but a course in the summer that helps students advance um you know so that they can get to the to the top of that uh math um you know pathway as well so um that that's currently where where we're at awesome
071thank you thank you i i mean i don't really have any other questions my colleagues uh asked some pretty comprehensive well-rounded questions i just want to thank you for this presentation it is encouraging to see the program grow and and the value of the partnership that we have so that's it thank you mrs amaral yeah i will just echo my colleagues comments and statements mr tebow you know looking back from 2016 through currently 2020 i think the numbers speak for themselves with the increase of student participation in ap exams um i'm thrilled um i have a freshman here at dartmouth high she was a little reluctant to take the computer ap course but i'm i'm hopeful that uh she will get on board with uh at least one of the other ones come sophomore year
072but that being said you know one of the things that really echoed to me in uh your presentation is um and and i think it's i think it's extremely true and you hit the nail on the head and i think that's what makes dartmouth public schools such a uh a great experience for our you know for our students as well as our staff is you said the success of the dhs ap program is truly a reflection on the efforts of every teacher at dartmouth high school as well as all within the dartmouth public schools so i think that i i couldn't have said that better myself that just goes to show you you know it's a it's a team effort and you know everyone helps our students get there so uh kudos to you mr
073tebow as well as um to your team and to all the teachers here in the dartmouth public schools thank you for a great presentation thank you all very much i really appreciate the opportunity thank you thank you thank you sir thank you all right uh next up we have a resolution 21-01 request for unpaid leave i'll turn it over to dr gifford thank you mr chair so as you know you received a request from um one of our tas in the building um requesting an unpaid leave um the original request she is she is out on leave right now the original request was not able to be granted by me because it is not something that's in their contract so they do have um she does have so to be consistent with the contract i
074was not able to grant that um because they do have certain items that they're able to request and be granted an unpaid leave for but that was not one of them and she did take advantage of the item h under article 9 which says other leaves of absence may be granted by the committee i believe you have her letter um so if you were to grant the leave it's been suggested by mr smith that that leave is granted through the end of the school year not like from this day going forward for a year but through the end of the school year and we have no problem with that miss mill has been a wonderful employee it's just if i was to stay by the contract it wasn't something that i was able to do
075sure understood any of my committee members have any questions in regards to this uh resolution dr jenkins we are provided with a resolution do we need to read the full text to the resolution is that why we were given it or can we just make a motion sometimes you have to read the right we don't i'm just sort of asking how we proceed i don't really have a question about it yeah no that's actually a very good point i i don't know if it's necessary i don't think it's necessary i know when um i know when we do msba resolutions and all they're very explicit and we have to read them but we can certainly just have a motion to approve it okay so then mr chair i will make a motion that uh the
076committee approved resolution 21-01 which is granting a temporary unpaid leave of absence miller um for the remainder of the 2021 school year as requested and in accordance with the dea assistance contract i second that so i have a motion on the floor by dr jenkins the second by mrs amaral on the motion any other discussion mr nunes yeah thank you mr chairman quick question uh she does state in her letter that you know if uh we either have to go fully remote or if we're able to come back fully in person uh she'd like to request revoking this request is that something that's out there for her yes okay thank you yes i'm good thank you dr gifford any other further discussion jay hearing none all in favor aye aye opposed ocean carry thank you
077thank you next up under old business superintendent's update on the start of the hybrid phase of school dr giffen okay thank you yes um as you probably know we had a successful start i say every day is a new day so um last week when we brought our students in our pre-k peer partners k12 and grade six i know a number of us were at all of the schools to see them come in and um it was really first of all it was really joyful to drive through the coming to work and seeing kids standing at bus stops it was almost like wow you know it was very very very good so um we had a good start um teachers were extremely happy everywhere i went uh the i just have to give shout out
078to every building the um as well as transportation the nutrition department everyone that worked so hard in the planning that went into this i mean if you saw some of the pictures on our facebook page of kids getting their lunches and all of that but just to see the number of staff members that were out to greet students as they got off the bus and or appearance drop them off etc so we had a we had a good start and um we'll see you know every day's a new day so i think with um with that said i just have to once again give shout out to mr kiley and and his assistant lauren because the transportation as you might know is a bear to plan for they're not only planning for what's happening right
079now but thinking ahead of when students continue to come in and um even though you you ask people to provide their information in a timely manner the day before when we still get 50 emails of changes is pretty much crazy i guess as you know but they've done a fantastic job of trying to accommodate all of the families so that went pretty well we know we'll have bumps as we go along but we're here to try to solve those um so what i will say one of the things i want to say also is that as we move forward i want folks to understand that we we will have people that are sick and we already have had folks sick with normal flus or whatever it might be or stomach aches etc our process is
080that the nurses will if it's someone in school the nurses look at the symptoms that people might come up with take caution abundance of caution perhaps send students or staff home always the recommendation is to have a test if it's certain symptoms they they let us know what's going on um if a test were to come back positive which as we know we had one that we thought was we're still waiting the negatives and all of that we are in complete and always frequent contact with the board of health with chris mishu we let them know what's going on they advise us constantly we cannot give out information about staff the only thing or students so what we do is we provide a general comment to the staff that might say if it's a particular
081school a member of our school community has tested positive and then we are in contact which i confirmed tonight mr kylie with chris micho with the board of health we assist in any contact tracing that might go on we might say uh that staff member was in a room with so many so many students etc or a bus etc and then they will do the contact tracing alert with families so i just want to make that clear because we've had questions about why don't we giving more information we cannot give personal information we will give again general information that there's a positive case we follow all protocols and we give out what we can so i just want to make that clear for people we don't even say if it's a staff member or a
082student it's a community member a member of our school community and let the process um be followed through so i just want to make that clear but we're on it so i think speaking about that now going forward i think our plans are very uh well thought out and being implemented as far as being in school and um we're well prepared day by day for these things that will come up because we know they'll come up people are sick every day you know and and we just take those precautions that are necessary um we also wanted to address we had some questions about when kids are absent so um that's a that's a tricky one because we thought for example the elementary students we would be able to put um into our virtual academy but
083we're really going to analyze that because we don't want those we don't want that to be a shuffling ground either for kids if it's let's say they're sick and they're out two or three days but then they're back again so um i talked to mr tebow today about the high school plan and i've actually i'm waiting for um some comments with mr dome but we think that pretty much we'll treat a lot of it as a normal illness students are out ill and with other things that teachers will continue to maintain their google classrooms assignments will be able to be accessed especially at the high school for example they'll be able to bop into if they were on quarantine i'm speaking of something like that uh be able to bop into the pace period to
084get some help etc and of course when they do come back um have plenty of time to make up assignments and and reach out to their teachers so we're looking at it like that and and a lot of our situations as you might know are are case by case we analyze what's happening we speak with the parents etc so not only with that but even with students now being maybe having a fever etc do they come back do they not come back so it's it's a lot of it's case by case but i just want people to know that we're prepared we understand the scenarios we understand the process we're in constant con constant contact with the board of health all right so the other thing i wanted to address was i guess our biggest
085challenge right now of course is um again the techa issue so i've asked mr galicio to speak about that because fortunately or unfortunately he's had to take a huge he's playing a huge role in in tech coordinator if you will um beyond any role he should be taking as we know he's he's extremely busy it's it's beyond but um because of his real positive attitude um he's really but he's been able to really get a good handle on teca itself and analyzing and trying to support the middle school guidance counselors as they support our teachers so it's not all bad but there are some bumps and grinds and so i'm going to let mr galasha kind of speak about that just to give everyone a brief history just you know in august in july the
086department of education uh realized that the state was going to need an online alternative to those students they're staying home they compiled a committee and they came up with some recommendations in early august the models they came up with were independent self-paced learning like ingenuity and certified teachers that would teach kids with uh an online program like teca there were two other companies that were sharing that so the mad rush went to to do that we went on on august 4th a few days later it was decided we would go in a certain direction and on the 11th at our school committee meeting dr gifford presented the relationship with ingenuity after looking at ingenuity from a middle school standpoint we felt that it was not um independent self-paced learning was would may not be advantageous
087for middle school level students they might need a little more attention and we switch gears to techa which is a certified teacher one of the difficulties at the same time we created our own program thank you tracy oliveira for creating a program of our own virtual teachers for our elementary school students with our own curriculum that we're very proud of the it was cost prohibitive to do that at the elementary middle school level because you need multiple grades and multiple subject matters to to do that so techa was a good option we came in fast and furious with teca i think part of that is i've learned a lot and i think when we do techa in january it'll be a lot smoother there's a bumpy road trying to get the find the contacts at
088teca who does what and in fairness to them we came in very late there but also there were a lot of technical issues in the sense that they mentioned that the chromebooks would be sufficient for those students to use but some of the technical issues didn't play very nicely with the chromebooks so we resurrected the pcs around around the buildings um boosting ram redid their software and got getting them to those families i've been visiting the families at their homes it's been very nice i don't go inside social distance on the front lawn but able to provide other chromebooks that might be because the products that they use have a lot of flash and java which don't play as nicely on chromebooks as they do on a pc that has a processor etc so we've
089we've played through that we have 54 students at the middle school that are currently working in that and with access to the console now i'm able to monitor as the guidance people are able to monitor these students as they progress we're noticing that they've got to play some catch up with with lessons the the clock began when they began the program i still have technical issues i deal with these families unable to print the machine is not working properly i'm still having access issues trying to either remote access or also bring them another machine we don't use the old pcs as much anymore since all the kids have chromebooks in the district so the pcs are available we just we kind of frankenstein them as we call it we take parts from many pcs to
090build a good pc and we provide those to the students i mean to the to these students so i'm still working through the technical issues um i've learned a lot in the process the kids are working the program is quite um quite intuitive it shows where the children are in regards to their progress um i think we've learned a lot about techa too that may not have been completely in the literature that we really have to be an active role in the process of techa in regards to monitoring these students and checking on their work it wasn't as much to push them off to some other teacher there is a teacher out there and some of the feedback i've gotten from parents in the in the program are changes to the the techa program in
091regards to the number of times that they meet the number of live lessons and such like this the structure of it which i'm going to provide to techa for updates in their program but this was their program for those students that are currently doing it this is what their program does perhaps a re-evaluation for next semester may be in order we've had some teacher some students some families that have reversed and gone back to the hybrid model they've reconsidered the structure of what we're doing in the schools the cleanliness of the schools and they've opted to get out of the remote version and go back to the hybrid model when it becomes available but with that any questions i'm a wealth of knowledge when it comes to techa and virtual learning you and me both
092mr galicia yeah that's right that being said first question that i have is where the dartmouth public schools is allowing families to revert from from tecker if they've made that decision and i know that's kind of based on desi guidance and recommendations that um there are we are allowing families back into the hybrid program um initially those those like past couple weeks but it's getting to a point now that the continuity of your education is going to be disrupted if you have if you jump over from this point forward so i understand that to make that uh mention here but i really feel the middle school and the guidance department should examine the the students in um situation to make sure there's not you haven't done half of a year at texas you should be
093on it right on an in strictly individual basis right with that said i'm gonna you know i'm gonna speak up a little bit here i am disgusted at the way that the department of education sold um or investigated some of these remote programs i have family members in another school district that opted to go for tekker one of the middle school and one at the elementary school and i don't know how clear it was that teca made this or whether it was techer or was it was pearson or whether it was the department of education but to have i think a lot of families and i can see a lot of families frustration in dartmouth that there are only two 30-minute live lessons a week per subject and out of those two 30-minute live lessons
094one of them is recorded wow so there's only one 30-minute live lesson i have got a huge fundamental problem with that when we are selling this we're trying to like offer this as a solution to dartmouth families that don't feel comfortable for one reason or another to send their students into the hybrid program at the dartmouth public schools in shame in the department of education for not making this clear up front there has been poor communication coming from them in addition to techa in in um pearson the conversations that we had with them after school started with techa should have taken place weeks before weeks before this baloney that we're dealing with right now that every district in the commonwealth of massachusetts is dealing with because of their lack of guidance and lack of communication
095is outrageous i really hope that come the spring semester that the department of education and commissioner riley in the department the board is much clearer with their alternatives to remote education because i'm telling you right now this is completely unacceptable for the students and families of dartmouth and the students and families of techa students across the commonwealth of massachusetts it may be a very good program as a alternative you know for those students that may not want a traditional education for whatever reason but they were inadequately prepared for covid19 and for all these districts signing on board so i want to thank you mr galashaw and the central office team and for the guidance staff at the middle school for making house calls for you know getting involved as much you as you have because
096i am as a parent as an educator and as a school committee member i am extremely disappointed with this decision um i feel as though um we've had better success the high school had experience with with edge annuity so they hit the ground running mr gill knows it he knows his kids and the students at the high school are familiar with self-paced programs and the guys department does they knew to check in teca gives you the impression that they take it from here and it truly is edgenuity 1.2 it's it's just a step up from ingenuity it is an independent program such as the ieps mr oliver um one thing i developed realized in the process they they say they do iep services they don't they do they'll do accommodations in regards to a large
097print or something but that's not really accommodating an iep so we we learned we've we've talked to um special education teachers within the middle school to make sure the ieps are addressed within those students that have them in our 53 54 student i think the biggest problem i'm sorry in one second dr jenkins i think the biggest problem is that i don't think the dartmouth public schools nor many other schools realize the time consumption and the burden that this program because looking at it now and i can't speak for dr gifford or anyone else is that it may have been worth a while to try to figure out something else because this is extremely time consuming um i i've heard from my niece and nephew who are in another district who's in teca their teacher
098one of their teachers has 48 students and they can't meet the 504 obligations right we're sorry we can't meet him so i'm extremely frustrated from a number a number of levels dr jenkins so i just want to reiterate that because i think on social media a lot of people were saying that these issues were the result of oh we just we decided too late um i have a colleague who's in plymouth they decided like the week after the guidance came out and their students were added into tech after ours right so this is not an us issue it has very much been a techa issue they are they were overwhelmed i think and completely unprepared for the volume of students and they had major difficulties handling and processing it and and shame on them too
099because then they simply started the classes rather than adjusting and saying hey maybe we'll delay we'll do some other stuff i do also though as a teacher want to i think push back a little people are saying oh well people who are you know in the online learning at the middle school and the high school are doing so much more work than the students at the middle school of the high school and i think that's because they forget that when you're in a class right and you're that's like work that's time on task and so yes you are going to have more reading or things to do because you're not sitting in the classroom you're doing more reading because that is your time on task so there's this misperception i think that it's too hard
100but i think parents are forgetting that if you spend x hours a day in a class and you're not having that live instruction all the time students have to be doing something and commonly that is reading something or doing assignments or things like that so i mean i 100 agree with you that i think this was this is not an internal problem this is an external problem and i think it's it's really important for people to understand and it goes up the food chain between the late guidance with deci and the the tucker being completely overwhelmed it's it's not been a good situation but there hasn't been much we can do about it yeah no i just wanted to say um we had considered doing techa for the elementary schools because we needed someone to
101take the students from there and i just want to give credit to the professionals within our ranks here in dartmouth the elementary school principals that got together to talk about it and tracy oliveira who got together with them and and dr gifford of course and mrs roy uh miss roy and uh to talk about it um because the the program we created here we should sell to other people it was a proper program we missed ms oliveira was able to find five teachers that would take over the virtual program we set them up in an area of quinn elementary school um we equip with all their information their equipment and such um and they are hit the ground running and they've gotten great reviews it's our own program so we're gonna bottle it we're gonna
102sell it to someone else but you know i'm so happy that they got together to examine this rather than just jumping into techa and it is that blind faith and and as you said mr oliver just in in desi to say they suggested this program but it really wasn't tested it wasn't proven and it wasn't explained in great detail of what it was so um but uh i just wanted to mention that i'm so happy of the program that was designed that was designed at the elementary level i've heard mentioned that one to you i have heard i don't know if my colleagues have but i have heard no complaints about the elementary school different compliments yeah nothing but positivity nothing but positive feedback in high school it's just yeah and at the high school
103the high can i follow up one thing i also want to give kudos to mr gill um he has been doing a ton a ton a ton of work and we have one child an ingenuity he has really done a bunch of work i'm sure you've seen some of it to really get that all going um he's super responsive and he's doing a really a really great job so kudos to him on that what's the news yeah thank you mr chairman uh just to follow up on what you're saying with with destiny and everything else i mean i think to say that they dropped the ball would be a complete understatement i mean when the in all seriousness when the governor shut everything down the end of april you know for the for the school
104year type of deal i think at that point in time it kind of became obvious to everybody that what was going to happen in september was not going to be pretty as far as you know we're going to be able to get students back into the classroom and that and all the different guidances that they came out with and you know we'll have something next week we'll have something next week we'll have so you know next week next week next week became the middle of august when they finally came out or just beforehand when they came out you know the end of july and they said well by august 11th we need your three plans type of deal and how you gonna do it and everybody at literally at the 11th hour is scrambling to
105find you know what you're going to do and who's going to operate it if we're not if if somebody can't be in school then who's going to operate and how we're going to do operate it i think it goes back to a little bit to what mr tebow was saying and he's his presentation on ap is the work of the teachers and the administrators in this system from pre-k to 12 that have done the best that they can to get this program up and to get everything up and running whether it's students and hybrid and i've talked to you know parents you know that are students in the hybrid in elementary and middle school you know sixth grade i mean that's the only one that's bad everybody is thrilled the way the hybrid has worked
106so far they're thrilled to have their kids back type of deal and you know and again shame on desi because they personally they dropped the ball from day one personal opinion i agreed thank you mr lynch do you have anything else on the re-opening no i think we're good so i i do have a couple of things if the committee would just entertain me for a few minutes here um first of all i i think we've all said it many of times but i i honestly don't think it can be said enough the monumental tasks that the [Music] the staff and faculty here at the schools at dalton public schools have done i'm still proud of the decision that we made as a committee um to do a slow roll um i think it was
107i truly think it was the smart idea um i think we're we're we're slowly rolling things out and things are coming together i am extremely i'm i'm really pleased i'm happy to be a datmon school committee member i'm happy to be a dartmouth parent um and i'm thrilled to have these professionals working for us that being said i know that there's been some some uh scuttlebutt on social media there's all let's face it there's always scuttlebutt on social media right um we got and not social media but just general comments from a year from as we all know parents staff members students talk to us about just the safety the general safety of you know making sure that our kids are our students my daughter included uh will be safe in the doctor public schools
108when they um when they're back in in-person learning um i think i think it's important to note that you know first and foremost um i think we all agree is that it's student safety is the number one the number one priority i know that i had a i had an email yesterday that um after uh it was notified that there was a potential or there was a positive case here there was a uh a list i don't know if it was in the standard times or mass live one of those and it had the list of communities and it said dartmouth zero and someone said well they're not being transparent well it was because it was because of the cut off the deadline i i think it's safe to say that this committee and this
109administration is extremely uh you know we're nothing but transparent and we're going to continue to be transparent um with this community one of the things i'd just like to just touch base on with mr kylie is that um there's been some back and forth about um and of course a lot of this comes from our staff stopping uh concerns being in the rooms about heating ventilation air conditioning and air exchange i had a camera i had the opportunity to have a conversation this afternoon with mr kylie and obviously the perfect solution right now is that all it's warm enough all our windows are open we're able to circulate the air in addition to our our unit events that are in our air circulators they're in most of the classrooms but i think it's important to
110note that we're diamond schools are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on hepa air filtration i know we spoke about this a little bit but i think it's really important for the people at home to know and the parents to know that come the time in which we can't have windows wide open and it's 30 20 degrees outside that you know we're going to have hepa filtration in all our classrooms uh we have the electrostatic sprayers um can you can you just talk a little bit about what we're doing proactively mr kylie to to keep our our students and faculty and staff safe sure so as you said mr oliver i mean we're committed to providing air purification in the rooms at this point i would say that it's very challenging to acquire air purifiers
111especially ones that will work effectively in a classroom environment smaller units are more readily available but i ordered some air purifiers in i think early july [Music] and they were supposed to be in in september and now we found out they're going to be in in march so that gives you an idea of the type of you know backlog that these companies are facing and obviously those may be of no use to us and we might end up canceling those but we at this point have acquired 60 air purifiers and distributed them on a priority basis to the nurses the isolation spaces the staff members who have physicians notes indicating that they should they should have an air purifier and then classrooms and other spaces that don't have windows so we're prioritizing those areas and
112at the same time making efforts to acquire more uh air purifiers so that we can outfit all our rooms with with uh air purifiers that do have hepa that multi-stage filtration including hepa so that is sort of an ongoing process and our hope is that by the time it is we're into heating season in which it's no longer feasible to keep the windows open that we'll have those in place how are you doing certainly as soon as we can get them so that's what we're working on there and you know we've we've worked on the ventilation in terms of tricking the uh i think i may have discussed this at a prior school committee meeting but um essentially tricking the universe to take more outside air again good measure for now but not a measure
113that's going to last forever um because when it gets too cold out if we do that first of all it's going to be too cold in the rooms second of all we're going to freeze the pipes and we're going to just break the whole system so so there is a point where that you know that can't be done um and it's it's a ways off still so um but but good filtration is certainly something that we're you know efforting to to accomplish in all the rooms at this point you mentioned uh you mentioned sprayers but really it's about disinfectant so it's about um well it's about good hygiene first of all right so the hand sanitizer available in all the rooms and around the buildings that's an important step because that helps keep us from
114spreading our whatever germs we have all over things um but then disinfectants can be applied in different ways wipes um we've delivered 600 and i don't know i just looked now i can't remember i have so many different things here you know 621 tubs of wipes around the district for folks in classrooms we've got disinfectant spray in every classroom so handheld disinfectant it's not lysol but it's basically like a lysol disinfectant um kills sars it's epa less than kills sars cove too which is this um we also have the electrostatic sprayers which we recently we got in last week and we're setting up we had a little glitch with the chemicals that we ordered and the right quantity not coming in so we've had to sort of reinvent that process and go with a different
115uh product so so we're working on that but we do have the product yeah we do have that product we we have it in concentrate form so we now have to set up a little differently the way we're going to be the way we're going to be addressing that in each of the buildings but we're in the process of doing that so that we can spray or classrooms nightly so we've worked with um i've spoken with afscme the custodial union regarding the opportunity if it becomes necessary for them to work overtime in order to uh be able to support cleaning of the classrooms with the sprayers i built monies into the uh the c the coronavirus relief fund uh grant that we received to support that so to support those staff members working overtime to
116make sure the classrooms are clean and then obviously during the day uh we've shifted staffing so that there is more custodial coverage during the day that they can keep keep track of the high touch areas and try and maintain clean you know cleanliness throughout the buildings during the day so it is awesome to have kids back i mean it's it's been so long you know six months in these buildings empty is too long but um but it does it does present all these additional challenges and i think we have a good plan in place and what we're finding is that like like our kids we're learning every day you know and we're learning about okay did we think about that plan correctly and we'll adjust and then and uh as we go and you know
117make sure we provide the safest environment possible so well thank you for the thank you for the update this is welcome so i just want to say this is great i think it's fabulous but i'll say it to our home audience the single most effective thing that you can do is follow guidelines for preventing community spread right when the disease is not spreading in our community it's going to be less likely to spread in our schools i'm a little nervous there's been some uptake in community spread and i'll tell you i may have lost my temper a few times i've seen people socializing and it takes everything right there's an article in the new york times that play date that you know just one friend that's what creates community spread if we want our kids
118in school then we've got to be responsible for that as a community we need to wear masks we need to stay away from each other it's hard it stinks but if we don't do that then our kids are not going to be able to be in school so it's on us and we have to do all those things but those things are way more effective if covet is not getting in the front door and that's on us to do and i think people are letting their guard down and now is not the time because i don't think i know my kids would be crushed to go to school and to have to stop going to school again so i think we as a community need to pick it up and we need to do better
119to make sure that our kids and our staff can be safe and be in school excellent point mr news yeah thank you mr chairman i think and to piggyback on what dr jenkins says and i know we've talked about it before but the the onus is is on the parents is on the students if you're not feeling good don't come to school and you know as as dumb as it sounds i mean if you know the student if your son or daughter gets up in the morning and they've got a little bit of a temperature type of deal don't pump them full of advil or tylenol and say well now they're down to normal because as soon as it wears off in a couple of hours they're in trouble and we're in trouble for 24
120hours if it's a 24-hour bug keep them home please you know help us help you help everyone and we'll all be better off how i like to help us can all right um actually i'm going to shift away all the you know from the safety because i have another kind of point that parents have brought up you know and again i want to get back to what um mr oliver said earlier is i am really proud of what dartmouth has done and is doing and i'm really proud of the model um the every other day hybrid i think you know i've talked to families and friends who you know they're in schools a week on two weeks off you know in their joint remote um and i and again i think with teaching and learning
121to get back to what dr gifford had said you know back when we talked about the plan at its onset you know this is this model this plan is you know best serving our students to really keep them connected to their teachers um and to their classmates into the content but with that said um i do have a number of parents and i'm just just so we can answer this because i'm sure some of you are getting the same like email over and over again why can't we on that opposite day that the kids are at home why can't they zoom into their classrooms i i for me you know when i look at this as an educator i want educators to be focusing on the students that are in front of them because i
122think that you know they're going to do the highest quality live instruction that you know method but i think if you can you know speak to that a little bit more just because again i keep finding that same question why aren't we zooming in why aren't we why can't we do that and i think you know i think the way that we've you know we're going forward is you know all i'll say is we we investigated it with the middle school it would have been a different model because um the technology wise it was it was going to be a big undertaking to do that but also if the teachers are teaching the same lesson so to zoom in on the hybrid day i guess they could change their entire thing but it's just something
123we decided not to do um they're also not condensing if you will the standards and teaching almost double that's that's what we've asked them to try to address things because kids are going home to be able to work on um the projects and all of that and the reading assignments etc so you know it's just i don't know if you have anything else to say it's just kind of the model we chose can i add to that i know so i have a lot of my colleagues in higher ed who are doing the high flex we call it in higher ed which we say is the worst model of education there could be it has been really really really difficult it's not you just zoom in that's not how it works you have to completely
124redesign the entire curriculum to integrate there's technological issues so like you know they've got five different things up trying to figure out and then they're not really instructing to the kids so at least from a higher ed perspective when we don't have to do like you know we're doing three hours a week high flex has been a real really sort of disastrous on very many levels so people think it's like oh you just zoom in that's just not how it works pedagogically i think if i could follow up on that too the other thing that i'm saying is people saying well are they only getting half the instruction and i that's also not true because people assume that the teacher is just up there lecturing all day but so much of teaching is about providing
125instruction and then working independently to learn and reinforce and practice what you've learned and so what we're just doing is separating that right you're getting the the live instruction in class and then you're doing the independent reinforcement and practice of those lessons so we're not giving them half of the instruction it's just half of the instruction is happening in a different place i think that's really important because that's the other thing i say oh they're only getting half the school year that's that's what's happening that's not happening it's a little difficult yeah and just you know just to piggyback on you know that i've had you know again you know i've been trying to kind of explain like you know model lessons to to parents that you know again and there's there's time that's lost
126by kids coming into the classroom you know and there are certain things that you know you're going to want to use your manipulatives in class with your students who are right in front of you if you're doing a lab or so you know something else whereas you know there's going to be so much loss for the the kids that are i mean they can't do the lab so they can you know and they've gained skills during remote learning where they can potentially you know do breakout sessions or work in a project at home with someone else in their class so again i'm really proud of what the model that we came up with i really you know again as i go back to you know other people are saying well you know my kids are
127going to zoom in i just think oh that's not going to be that great you know so again i just feel like you know congratulations one of the things we did um do i know when i went around the schools the elementary level um have the kids come in on the morning meeting so they just touch base um say hello to their friends so uh that was when i talked to a lot of teachers last week that was very successful so that was one i mean it's not the all day but at least it's a touch base i think that's good yeah the mornings yeah yeah and i just want to mention what you talked about with the uh data or whatever a data point i don't know if you said it was in the
128standard times or something about the number of cases so just to make it clear for folks um deci requires us if we have a confirmed covert case to call in that information they just ask um whether it's a staff or a student who we are and what school so we did that of cour you know last week we had um one i'll just say once again a member of our school community that was positive but that member of our school community had not been in our schools at all up to this point so there was no close contact et cetera but that was reported to deci then we had the second member of our school community that was positive we've reported that we brought it to the board of health they did any contact tracing
129which was as far as i understand very very very minimal um since then we've been told that was a false positive we're waiting for those results so desi with that data it's every thursday that's updated from my understanding so that was not reported until october one and so it's every thursday that was september yeah there's 30 at the date exactly yeah which was zero so we corrected the false positive so from what our reporting is we should have one community member now being positive for the next round because i talked to them today about the yeah that's so thank you for clarifying yeah we we don't hide it we do what we're supposed to do i have no doubt any of my fellow committee members have any other questions yeah well i mean i'll go
130i um i wrote a bunch of scattered notes here typical of me um one cute thing i saw her on social media a positive thing on social well media was a shout out we had done uh for um a member i think she is a uh grade two virtual teacher and her her goal and i i'll paraphrase summarize uh i'm not going to verbatim but her her goal so what is your goal her goal was to um get a job you know obtain a job in education during a pandemic which i thought was was funny so and there were some comments on there from presumably uh parents of students that were just you know accolades of we love her so clearly that's going well i've heard from a lot of families about that my own
131experience remote you know i have a fifth grader at de melo and um shout out to mrs colbeck it is she i'm very fortunate that my little fifth grader my baby sorry fifth grader is an independent learner she's really motivated so i'm i understand i i i recognize that i'm i'm lucky in that respect but she is having the most amazing time and you know she i'm lucky again to work from home as well so i'm fortunate to be able to do that and she'll come out and she'll hug me on her break you know so it's been just such a great experience she though she loves it but she's excited to go back and uh but i have been hearing from families who are like it's next week you know put on the brakes
132and we mentioned this earlier um is there any sort of case by case i think you alluded to it or have we cut off any if maybe their family member is sick or if they've had reservations based on a new diagnosis and one of you know they're having reservations about sending their kid back is there any chance that they could go full virtual or is that just a no um moving forward i don't know if there are many we haven't had a no yet i mean okay so it's a case by case yeah we've had a handful of folks but it's been kind of back and forth so it's kind of evened out the numbers with the virtual um you know we're trying very hard folks might have to be on a waiting list of
133some sort if it comes time because logistically we might not be able to fit people let's for example and this is another big complaint against desi they're racking up but a number of my colleagues as well you know they had us create this model of education according to certain guidance only so many kids in a classroom six feet so many kids on a bus etc etc so you work and you plan all of that and then for those folks that didn't based on also how many folks were not coming back so okay those kids are in hybrid um excuse me remote etc so and all the districts set some kind of guidelines like we tried to do um at a at a grading period you could come back or and the elementary really was stay
134in it all year because unless there's some certain circumstances really no need because they're on the same curriculum we hired the teachers etc but now desi a number of um from what i understand colleagues have had parents then complain to desi when the district said i can't fit you in my cohort we've already done and dusty's has said we cannot legally hold them out of coming to school um and i know it's back and forth either way to virtual or here so all i'll say is once again we haven't said no to anyone about a switch but sometimes it's pretty difficult to make yeah yeah we just work with everybody to the best it's great no i think that everyone's done a great job monumental task um in terms of the techo with um the
135special education i i have heard parents and i've read some comments and i've heard from some parents of course they all you know um that they there there are some generic sort of modifications uh obviously it's not anything comprehensive or personalized individual um how are we specifically handling that because i can just imagine that is um really stretching the limits of of of who we have to help in those areas for those students so how how has that been going right i from my middle school conversations pretty well they have one specific special education teacher assigned to grade six and it's mostly the agreement grid b grid services that they're working on so i know check in with those kids etc making sure that's happening um and i do understand that the other grade levels
136have special education teachers working with those kids and especially with the related services so we don't have that many um so my conversations with the middle school uh that it's being accounted for and dealt with excellent i'm not saying it's perfect no no i wouldn't i wouldn't expect that um you know this is certainly just crazy um let me see have there uh have there been any sort of concerns or complaints around i don't know have we we've had a couple of cool days have there been any concerns with kids being too cold in the classroom with the windows open or anything like that no i well i haven't heard anything no good not not yet we're preparing for it in my head yeah we're a lot better lucky yeah yeah we wear layers for
137now um and then in terms of and i'm sorry if i should know this already but um a picture a picture came across my facebook timeline of my son on i forget what you call them my son with uh disabilities uh during probably an ot or pt session with some classmates an old photo gosh you must have been in second or third grade on um oh i can't think of what you call those little things on wheels that you just the scooter boards scooter or something um are those is that equipment sensory rooms is that equipment able to be used for the students that are in there and how are we accounting for keeping all that stuff clean i'm thinking of some items we've purchased like the smaller items we've purchased extra but also the
138bigger ones we've told and actually it was in our mou about cleaning equipment that we have cleaning product there so let's say let's say a swing for example a larger swing that it can be used but we've made it clear there's no way that we can be on a schedule with a custodian coming running around every single time a student uses it so right there's cleaning product available for the teacher to wipe it down if they um i know um one of the at the pre-k k at cushman she's got the monitors assigned to cleaning some things so i guess it's all hands on deck really but but the equipment is usable good yeah that's and as you know with the regular classrooms especially the elementary we bought like shoe box full of various items
139for their kids so they have their own boxes of their own items yeah if you will yeah um no i think i think that's all i have i i just yeah i commend everyone um the the i'm thinking of littlest learners i saw a picture as well on social media with the desks and the mat next to the desk to show the space and those children don't know any different and and the colors are so bright and i'm sure that the the um the feeling and the of the emotion of the the cheer and the welcome you know from the teacher is probably wonderful so it looks it looks good so thank you thanks thank you thank everyone that's it thank you mrs amarillo you're welcome all right it's next up under new business uh
140request a vote to approve utilization of school choice funds and uh mr kylie will handle this or what would you do yeah uh first before he does this i just want to provide a little update on our enrollment right now um so we have 109 school choice students right now 32 in grade 9 30 in grade 10 23 and 11 and 24 in grade 12. 32 in grade 9 yeah you said 32 32 and grade 9 and 20 yeah i know i figured we were their best bet i don't know so 109. we'll take it thank you so in um in the spirit of your conversation that we had uh i think last year regarding school choice and the desire to um bring at least large school choice expenditures to the committee i wanted to
141make sure that you are aware that for the last this is the third year that we've been funding the lease cost of our one-to-one initiative chromebooks uh from school choice so it's just under eighty thousand dollars seventy nine thousand seven hundred and twenty nine dollars and thirty two cents that we um had planned on funding from school choice funds and hope that you'll support continuing to fund from there so we bring that forward tonight right now there's uh 550 300 and 87 cents in the fund so obviously we can you know can we can support that through this at this point and so it's for your consideration and discussion and we'd be happy to answer any questions you might have about that it's the final year of the lease page i was just going to
142say are these dollar buyout leases or fair market value um jonathan are they dollar buyout leases off i think so dollar buyout a fair market just out of curiosity yeah we own them once this is done excellent thank you i'm not i think it's important i know that uh several of us had that conversation last year regarding school choice funds um uh anything anything i think you know over ten fifteen thousand dollars we ask you to bring in front of us so i appreciate that you did that um so uh chair will stay in a motion mr chairman make a motion that we authorize the uh expenditure of school choice funds in the amount of 79 hundred twenty nine dollars and thirty two cents uh for uh mr kylie's memo second motion by mr noon
143second by dr jenkins on the motion any other discussion john so if we've got 109 students that's another 545 000 coming in this year on top of this so be good yeah okay thank goodness thank god for small favors yeah actually that's a good question on on the discussion just out of curiosity um actually i'll ask after the vote all in favor opposed motion carries unanimously when do we receive because i know it's a reimbursement program mr kylie so it's based on october 1 numbers yeah we receive it gradually throughout the year so it's it's paid in gradual increments thank you used to be used to be december in march when i was in when i was working i used to be like december and march but who knows what they've changed okay but the
144money we're receiving this year is based on last year's numbers right okay dr jenkins so i would like to we don't have to have this discussion tonight but at some point in time sort of have some discussion about what our plans are for that money i mean i personally i don't necessarily see it as a rainy day fund i mean it's raining right now right and so if we've got you know 500 000 in there when it's like pouring right like this would be the time that we use it or i would like to see us use it more regularly and aggressively to do things i mean that's part of i think why we have it is to do some of the nice things like mass insight and chromebooks and stuff like that um in
145our lab across the yeah i mean this is this is great stuff and so for me that's part of the reason why i voted for school choice so so we can have funds to do the sorts of things we don't normally have so i'd love to have potentially some conversation about what our plans are for that money maybe down the road because i don't necessarily want it to be savings to backstop stuff i want it to be i mean we should ask the town when we need that stuff this should be stuff that doesn't mean good good stuff for our for our schools you know and maybe the the springtime as we look to um you know what the spring is going to bring us after the january 1st we might need it how do
146we how do we support you know how can we do above and go above and beyond what we were doing to support students mr kiley i think that we would expect this upcoming budget cycle to be particularly challenging and a good opportunity to utilize some of those funds in a way that we haven't in the past but just so you it you may recall that in january we brought to you um i mean january seems so long ago with all that we've been through at this point but um we brought to you a list of expenses that we had either already expended or planned for school choice so i agree it should be used for those things that really can you know supplement what we can do otherwise and things like funding the istem program
147which i'm not sure you know how much of that we'll be able to do this year but hopefully we'll be able to do it in some form the lots of professional development that comes out of there instructional technology support again funding one-to-one computing strength and conditioning programs um renovations in the buildings that we wouldn't otherwise be able to do lots of stipends for staff to do things that are you know really extra uh special for for kids so i mean those are some of the things that we had planned on using it for and had used it for in the past and i think will you know certainly continue and hopefully uh funding is such in the fy 22 budget cycle that we can still just you know use it for those extras that's my
148hope i wouldn't i would agree thank you mr chairman personally what i'd like to see if we're going to you know use this is kind of use it not in an operating budget type of deal but all you know one-time things or certain initiatives because i mean if this money of it dries up i don't want it to be a but a budget plug so that if it dries up now we're scrambling to to plug that hole so personally it's something that i would like to you know like one time thing you know we're making payments on the chromebooks well that's fine because we got them type of deal and things of that nature and the list of mystic kylie just went through i'm good with those but that's just my my two cents on
149the matter sure i have no problem with the committee's uh you know input look we can maybe put this on the agenda in the next month or so and we can have a further a little bit more of a discussion on it yeah i mean it may make sense to wait until we know what the state budget picture looks like to have that discussion but sometime yeah yeah for the end of this month yeah yeah i'm going to hold my breath no no no no no can at least stop you know start a conversation about it and then wait to see what the numbers look like yeah thank you next up everyone should have received in their packets a proposed school committee date through december 2020 any comments questions concerns about the dates that were
150provided to you i'm good with them good i'm good we're all good that's fine we're good easy enough i think i just lost my agenda thank you uh in the next up superintendent's uh update okay a couple of things once again non-covert related which is nice um the middle school honor society had an induction last week i think you may have received the poster perhaps in your pocket of the number of students i think it was 37 students so i was able to attend that virtual um ceremony and of course laura gardner did a nice job as usual with those students and preparing that ceremony so that was nice the high school honor society virtual induction um will happen october 15th at seven o'clock so i'm sure you'll get some information on that if you
151want to check into that one as well uh we also have an announcement from gene sheridan our director of food neutra of nutrition that we were awarded a grant in the amount of 65 307 dollars it was from the massachusetts executive office of energy and environmental affairs and this is um really to keep fo folks eating so her plan is to purchase machinery to be used at quinn in the high school it's about sealing packages and food transport and increased refrigeration at de melo and carts and other materials like that so it was funny because she sent us the baker polito announcement and she hadn't even been told she got the grant yet so now she has been so that's good um also just wanted to provide a quick update of our sports program i'm
152really happy that we were able to let kids play and and you know again we every day is a new day so we've completed two weeks of practices and advancing to game competition this week for field hockey soccer and volleyball golf has played three matches and we are what one of the things i like that um we're doing is we're kind of keeping all the kids because we don't know what might happen especially with with covid cases you never know about quarantine etc etc so um in a couple of the programs where we'll have a velocity level as well as two jv that will split the season and each play some games volleyball included three levels two competitive and one developmental so keeping kids there um and cross country will be competing in meets with
153all the team members football starts tomorrow believe it or not with cheerleading and unified basketball as you know that's in the planning stages for whatever they call it the wedge season the fall season the floating season and everybody has a name and as far as music updates and i mentioned these because of course um these were programs we started even before we started hybrid and getting kids together and you probably saw some as you came in remote learning instruc instrumental and vocal classes are going well and of course ian says the teachers have done a great job which we know and elementary and middle school general music classes have adjusted to the remote format he's been working with teachers to produce some nice online resources for students for remote and of course they were very
154happy to get their k2 students back marching band has been divided into three smaller ensembles for the fall season to meet the state guidelines and percussion and wins groups just completed their first two weeks of virtual evaluation which you probably again i always step on mr news's toes i think i'm good our color guard program just did the first video performance and um we've been invited to participate in something mr nunes a live streaming event in october uh with some of the top marching band programs from across the country so those are just some of the fun highlights other than like i said excellent what happened thank you dr gilford welcome quick question uh around sports are we uh are we allowing fans in the building for any kind of games okay that's been our
155our decision that we and i hope you support that because i know a couple of communities are now starting to do that and it was a little pressure but yeah to have to be responsible for masks and then contract tracing i think our our goal should be to provide a program for the kids and not have to worry about those i 100 agree with you i ask you that because my daughter's uh playing uh you wanted to come no no no volleyball and and i guess there's a scrimmage against new bedford um next week and she's telling me that new bedford is allowing fans yes um which you know i i'm that's kind of it's kind of disappointing yes we're not from what i understand from andy christophuli we when we said no fans all
156the other districts followed suit and now with a little pressure from powers that be they've switched it and he let me know that last week and i said no our focus is on keeping our kids safe we do not have the personnel to maintain you know to watch everything and i just have serious concerns that our teams are going to be playing if the you know in new bedford in a red zone right now where where they're where their cases are so you know i would ask you to you know have a conversation with him and put a little pressure on your badge because i i disagree with that and i'm surprised that meyer um you know i agree allowing that i agree i have nothing else uh anyone else for the good of the
157community go to the committee uh next meeting uh next meeting what's up october 19th yeah monday october 19th 6 30 in the dartmouth high school media center right tonight here yeah and there's no executive session tonight so a chair will entertain a motion to adjourn so moved second motion by mr noon second by dr jenkins on the motion any further discussion go past it's been so long you