001good afternoon everyone i'm dr gifford the superintendent of the dartmouth public schools and i'm very happy to welcome you today to our question and answer session we have our central office staff here to answer some of the questions many questions that we've received so i'll just ask them to wave as i introduce our chief technology officer jonathan galashaw hi everyone our pupil support service administrator miss townsend ms beth townsend our assistant pupil support service administrator laurie jodwin our assistant superintendent michelle roy our other assistant superintendent for finance and facilities mr kylie and our director for teaching and learning tracy oliveira so today we just want to provide you with some answers to the many questions we received we are not going to go to go through them all one by one because we had so
002many questions and obviously some of them were duplicates and very theme related so we'll be asking each person in their area of expertise to provide some information on those sections i first wanted to let the staff the community know that we understand that this has been a very difficult and trying time this is a pandemic and we acknowledge your worry and concern you are giving us your most precious asset your children and we recognize that and we have done our darndest over the last few months to provide you with the best service we can there are many complexities to a school district and it seems like i always hear about a tissue box syndrome you pull one issue out and the next one pops up so i just wanted to let you know that we
003do recognize how difficult this is and that not every decision will please everyone but we continue to try to do the best we can to service all of our students so to start off i know that most of you know that we had to come up with three plans and i'll just talk about two very briefly we had a remote plan that we've developed and that is to provide students with services remotely our second plan is hybrid plan which as you probably know we had to break our school population into two cohorts that is so we can have enough space in the buildings abide by all of the guidelines which i know you've been hearing about maintain six foot distances mask wearing cleaning our buildings etc while we made the decision to go remote to
004begin with we we looked at many many factors including our building capacity our staffing issues how we were getting our buildings ready as far as um the cleaning the um cleaning out of the the classrooms etc and also i just want you to know that while the governor came out with a metric that was after the day after we made our decision with that said any future decisions and i will talk about the plan to move to hybrid in in a second any future decisions we will continue to consider all of those metrics and no decision will be made without at least a two-week trend looking at the virus and the metrics and what's happening in our community we're in great contact with our local director of public health who will assist us in making
005those decisions as well as our staffing concerns as well as what's happening in our buildings themselves and the compute community will always be kept up to date on those decisions right now and i'm just going to give a brief a quick overview we did present this at school committee the other night and it will be posted if it's not already on our website the transition into hybrid right now which the school committee approved it's starting on october 1. and as i said we have two cohorts of students split we've split the district in half those cohorts were established with transportation in mind and building capacity and special situations where we had to maintain specific ratios for our special education students in our classrooms so actually i'm going to back up a minute because i'm going
006to say about on the initial starting of the of the season so our teachers are coming in on august 31st and they will have 10 days of professional development and where they will learn about our health and safety protocols work together collaborative collaboratively to prepare for the students arrival remotely on september 15th i say remotely that is for all students except for our pre-k students whose ieps mandate that they be enrolled in our integrated pre-k program as well as our special education programs paths pals and past our specific programs and if you need more information on that you can please contact your building principal so on september 15th our students will arrive remotely obviously you are going to receive information from your buildings prior to that day we're asking that teachers will reach out to
007folks during their 10 days of professional development so that your child will be all set to go beginning on october 1 is the day we begin to bring in transition into our hybrid model that day we will bring in and october 1 and 2 our pre-k through two students and our grade six moving on to october 13th through 16th will be our grade three through five and our grade seven and then finally by the week of october 19th through the 23rd all of our students will be entering into our school system in a hybrid model and again that is our plan anything can change depending on what's happening with the virus and other issues so with that said i know we have tons of questions so i just want to give that brief overview but
008get started on some of the um specific areas that you asked about and i think it's probably important that you hear about how we prepared our buildings and the kind of cleaning we have in place etc so i'm going to ask mr kylie who's been working very hard with our custodial and maintenance department to get ready for the school year mr kylie thank you dr gifford so it's been a um a lengthy process to get ready we've we've been utilizing various department of education guidance throughout over the summer to shape what we do and how we do it in the buildings we began this back in march by cleaning and disinfecting buildings in the hopes that we would return to school in the spring and obviously that did not occur but um since then we've
009been preparing for our hopes that uh we'll have students back in the building soon so in doing so um dr gifford mentioned some of the some of the things that are very important that we needed to um to address such as physical distancing in the classrooms looking at the feasibility of how many students we could place in each classroom and still maintain proper physical distancing the guidelines uh has sort of evolved a little bit and are a little uh a little bit um i don't know unclear i guess in that they talked about aim for six feet of physical distancing but three feet was um could be appropriate we've made every effort to use six feet as our standard in all of our classrooms so that severely limits the capacity in each and every classroom
010so we've figured out that you know approximately we can we can fit about 12 to 13 students in in most of our classrooms although they do vary in size so we've been setting up those classrooms accordingly we have uh developed traffic patterns throughout the buildings so that we can ensure that students maintain can maintain that six foot distance when they're not in the classroom so we have um in cases where folks may be closer in office spaces added plexiglas shields throughout buildings we've added hand sanitizer stations throughout the buildings in all the classrooms um in other areas high traffic areas so that people can practice good hand hygiene and we have purchased purchased signage we have also purchased a great deal of ppe personal protective equipment for staff and students in order for them to
011be safe when they when they do you know return to the buildings so we've also um prepared to clean and disinfect the buildings as we move forward so to do that we are looking at we've purchased um epa list and sars cove 2 approved disinfectants which kill covert we have purchased equipment to spray classrooms we have a focus on high touch areas through the day so we've shifted custodial staff hours during the day shift in order to be able to touch more high clean more high touch areas during the day such as doorknobs stair rails bottle filling stations bathroom fixtures during the day and then sanitize classrooms at night we in terms of our heating and ventilating systems we have adjusted those so that they will run their hours of operation will be longer promoting
012more fresh air exchange we've cleaned those we have new filters in those and we are also committed to installing filters more often than we would otherwise to you know ensure cleanliness in those uh in those units we um consistent with the department of education guidance have committed and made sure that the windows and classrooms are operational so that we can open windows and promote additional ventilation so that's been a project and for preparation for this summer as well so those are some of the things that we've done to uh to prepare for a return of staff and kids thanks mr kylie you're welcome i also know uh obviously that we've had a lot of questions about what we're doing we mentioned our virtual platform very often and what we were trying to do to provide
013students with an opportunity to engage in education if parents decide that they do not want their child to return to the school for medical or other reasons so um we have chosen something for the middle and high school and obviously the elementary is a different situation so i'm going to ask mr galashaw to discuss the middle and high school platform um now thank you dr gifford um just to give you an idea of what how where this has come from uh the state realized the need for an online program for those that might not return back to their districts so they in early summer they went to work with looking at various products and going out to bid for those products and coming up with two options they have two companies for two options one
014option is a curriculum online curriculum that could be taught by our own teachers or the own teachers within a school district and they picked two companies for that one of those companies was edgenuity who have you worked before with credit recovery at the high school and we're familiar with the second option which we'll talk about later was where you would send your child out to be instructed by a teacher from another place massachusetts certified teacher from another place we'll talk about that next with uh mrs albera but the ingenuity platform uh that has been used at the high school will now be used high school and middle school is an online platform that has a full curriculum and courses and electives that a student can enroll in and be self-paced through this program our teachers
015will oversee that process checking in with the student and receiving those grades at the end to put back into the system uh our aspen system um they've used that for credit recovery in the past successfully so those teach those parents and families who opted to do that remote learning will be in con the schools will be in contact with them to discuss that platform and the process of enrolling in that system to do the online course we can provide the computer the chromebook for them to do their work as we do for all the students at the high school in middle school and the chrome issue is something we'll talk about in a second about the middle school as it expands talk more about the elementary level and how that that option came to pass
016and how we went in that direction mrs oliveira was going to address that because it dealing mostly with its most important piece both high school and middle school i mean middle school and elementary curriculum this is oliveira thank you mr galasha so as we investigated our online platforms for our full remote learning for families that chose not to come back into the buildings we uncovered that we couldn't really find the best match for dartmouth public schools we were really looking for a high quality teaching and learning instruction and we to be quite honest could not find that so what we've decided to do at batman public schools is kind of create our own virtual academy so parents that have opted to do this will be getting an email sometime tonight to see if you are
017still interested in with all the details of what we're going so we will be hiring six teachers kindergarten first second third fourth and fifth grade teacher that will be running our virtual platform uh myself will be overseeing uh the teachers but they will be doing exactly what is done in our classrooms so that way when our kids come back and we're all joined back together we have no gaps in knowledge we've all been exposed to the same standards and with the same rigorous um understandings that we all want so tip parents that kind of chose that um they will be receiving that email we'll be following the same scope and sequence parents are going to have to um commit to staying there the entire year at the other levels we were looking at semesters but
018because we're hiring teachers we're looking at parents committing for the entire year instruction will be through google meet um and it'll be using like i said all of our dps curriculum um we're not sure about inclusion of special areas in this platform it will be dependent upon staffing um and we're really excited to get this up and going we think it will be the best match for our students and i imagine um we've talked about the idea once again the middle school high school is reaching out the elementary will be reaching out by email but if people still have questions because now they think i know we had a number of folks in the initial survey that were quite unsure even in these questions uh please reach out to bush street and we'll be able
019to answer those questions if you think you might still want to enroll your child in the virtual platform so now of course we need to answer some of our questions for us from a special area special ed area and um i'd like for us to talk about some of those questions that came in about the logistical aspects for our special education folks and all those special 504s it's not a special ed initiative we do i know you two ladies um address those issues as well so i'm not sure if miss townsend or ms jodwin wants to start there yeah so i'll begin um speaking a little bit about the logistical questions that are related to special education so first and foremost if a student is enrolled as dr gifford mentioned in one of our specialized
020programs so for us that's pals pass and paths those are located the elementary versions of the those classrooms are all at the quinn elementary school um and then the middle school and the high school also have those classrooms so um if they are students are enrolled in one of those programs they will start in person on full days five days per week in accordance with the full school day that the building had in the past and that will begin on september 15th students who are enrolled in preschool where their iep for special ed services uh requires that the student get the full preschool program they will also begin on september 15th they will also begin in person but they will attend um from nine to 12 three hours each day of the five days so
021there's a little bit of a difference there um so i know that's a question that came in quite a bit so i wanted to clarify that we did have questions about whether or not students would get their special ed services if parents elect to keep them remote and the answer is yes students on ieps who are electing whose parents have decided to that they stay remote will receive their iep services remotely and through various service providers again based on what the individual plan dictates they are absolutely able to get those services remotely students who are in the specialized programs who have ieps that they that portion their ieps would be inclusion with general ed students they will be able to join the the general education peers for some inclusion minutes in some ways once the
022peers are in school for hybrid so as the general ed peers are joining us throughout the month of october we will certainly be looking for ways in which those students in specialized programs can have some of those inclusion minutes with their general ed peers um also uh you know there was questions related to the hybrid model of preschool once the hybrid model begins we know that peer partners from the preschool program will be starting to phase in just as the other students will phase in for hybrid so at that point the preschool special education students will have access um for a full day of learning um during the hybrid model so just want to those are some of the logistical most common questions we also got a lot of questions related to 504 plans um
023and as dr gifford said it is not a special education initiative um but we you know we wanted to speak with that as well um 504 plans you know are in effect um and they will be implemented in in the fall um continue to be implemented but they will also be implemented in accordance with the safety requirements um so for example if an accommodation is for close proximity to a teacher um then the student seat would would be a seat that is six feet away from the teacher um and obviously you know if a student is in a remote environment um you know some accommodations would not be in effect just because of the nature of the accommodation also for students with 504 plans that have allergy related accommodations the 504 team should collaborate to
024ensure that the classes with students who have allergies will remain an allergen free environment and that lunches in the classrooms adhere to allergy requirements as well okay i know we have a lot more questions on we'll get back to that in a little bit so i wanted to talk a little bit about um structure of the day the scheduling of students uh in the hybrid met what what exactly does my remote child what is my child doing in a remote setting what is my child doing in a hybrid setting what kind of lessons are they getting what does the day look like so once again i'm going to turn it over to director of teaching and learning miss aloe vera to talk about that thank you again dr gifford so we had a lot of
025questions that go with just that what does the structure look like and will my child be on a computer for six hours a day so if we unpack this little by little we we first have the remote setting all of our students with the exception of what we've talked about in our special programs will be starting remotely on september 15th during that time students will be receiving their education on a computer but our goal is not to have a student on a computer looking at a screen like we're doing right now for six hours a day prior the reason why the school system and the department of ed pushed back our start time of schools was so that teachers could prepare for the shift of instruction so our 10 days of pd are going to
026be focused on how do we deliver our instruction in a remote fashion where it's still as rigorous as what we want it to be so our teachers will be working on how do we for i'm going to give one elementary example so we teach phonics um we do a lot of little cards and sounds and unpacking that sound and what we're going to do instead of doing that is one example is the teacher might just say go around your house and find something that starts with m mm and kids will come back and have those conversations with what has m and then they will go off to do something else so during the remote time which is either two weeks for our younger kids up to about four weeks for our high school students students
027will be receiving direct instruction and then time off the computer to do their work to pro to finish assignments to work on projects and then come back to the next class so if you have a high school student they will be following the schedule just like brick and mortar where they'll have their first period class the teacher will give some instruction and then the student will go off to do some work but the teacher will still be available on zoom if the child should have any questions or need some some work the same thing will be at our middle school and at elementary school teachers will give give a lesson um we have a schedule and i'm going to get back to the schedule at the elementary school in a little bit because we had
028a lot of questions about that but they have a schedule so there'll be a ela time and it's a two-hour block when you look at it and that's a long time but the the goal was and what teachers are going to be structuring the lessons to be is they will have a little bit of a reading lesson they'll go into what their mini lesson is what the goal of what they want the student to work on the student will gonna go off and do some reading the teacher will then work with small groups maybe a couple of kids be available for questions for kids and then bring everyone back and maybe say 25 minutes i'm making that time up but 20 25 minutes depending on the age level and they will do a little share
029session what did you read just like we do in a brick and mortar classroom and then they'll do the same thing for writing they'll give a little mini lesson kids will go off and do their writing and then come back for us share session so that'll be the work that's done in the first 10 days of school it's kind of unpacking some of that work and just if i can keep going some of the work questions that we had was about the elementary schedule so when we build a schedule it's probably one of the like building a 3d jigsaw puzzle because we have a lot of uh moving parts we have a lot of special areas uh interventionists children who receive special services and we try to fit that all in so we heard some
030of the talk about lunch times being off we understand that part of it was just we gave um snack time earlier for our little kids we understand families will be having lunch time at different times we just ask make a sandwich put it on the counter have kids come come together for lunch time we get the socialization we did try to go back we revamped the schedules we kind of had the schools look at them again to bring lunch times a little bit closer together the other goal we were trying to get at was that as we start transitioning into hybrid we need to keep the same schedule because we really didn't want our little learners to be going through all these different schedules just like at middle school and high school they'll be keeping
031the same schedule we kind of wanted that for for our elementary students too so we built a schedule that will work in remote and it'll also work in hybrid so that students still get all the special areas they're interventionists so we're tweaking that a little bit we're going to put that back out but i just wanted folks to understand the the gravity of building that of putting everything together and just trying to make it work for you know a thousand different students across the district so hopefully that answers some questions if i may transition from from i'm sorry dr gifford if i may um from mrs oliveira the delivery of that instruction is complemented with the software and the main software management the teachers will be using um in goguardian and um other platforms like
032google classroom and google meet so all of that amazing curriculum will be organized so that children can follow it through google classroom through meat when a conversation just to uh also talk to mrs oliveira we use the room the word zoom a lot uh it's synonymous with it's like a tissue or a magic marker it's become some because it's a great name they got that name uh we we're trying to transition to google me because it's fully integrated into google classroom and to go guardian and such so sometimes we use that word zoom we'll still do zooms like we're doing now because zoom has a large capacity in the streaming that we're doing now but in the instructional area it's that meat they just didn't get a grab a good clever name like zoom so
033well that's one of the things i wanted to mention but some of the tools they're using in goguardian teacher gogarni is the software that filters the content that your child is using on that chromebook at home it's a filter that follows them home usually we filter out inappropriate material here but goguardian reaches out but it also has a program called teacher which is a great way for a teacher to see the whole classroom and project their screen to the child and also the the video that they make they can start the video start starting up automatically from their classroom uh the teachers are going to love it the middle school was using it last year but all the schools are using it this year and they really we're doing training on it next in the
034upcoming weeks with the the the tech teachers and the teachers i think they're going to find it a really cool management tool and a communication tool for the kids so i just wanted to throw that in there it's a compliment to the curriculum that we do it's just the vehicle so i'll talk more about vehicles like chromebooks because i know everyone's only tuned in to hear about when they're getting their chromebook and that's why i'm here so um when you when when it's my time dr different language i was just gonna i was just gonna continue i i forgot all about the hybrid schedule which we had tons of questions about also uh people are very con confused i guess and and we get that as to what does a child do with their when
035they're at home so as we know our hybrid schedule is an alternating day schedule we have cohort a and cohort b we have a color-coded school calendar that will be coming out soon to help parents with those days but your student will be attending monday wednesday friday of one week tuesday thursday of the next week and that will continue uh throughout our hybrid phase when your child is in school the teachers will be doing direct instruction just like a regular class now they'll only be half the amount of kids in that class so our goal is we will be able to maybe get through a little bit of things quicker we know not as not not at not the same pace but a little bit of a adjusted pace but our teachers during those 10
036days will also be working on adjusting our curriculum so that when they're in person they're teaching more direct teaching when the students go home they will do be doing the reinforcement and the practice when students are at home they will not be on a computer meeting google meet with their classroom they will be completing their work their assignments their reading their writing solving math problems doing projects that their teachers sent them home with the day before the reason we chose the alternating day was so that there could be a lot of contact with teachers we wouldn't lose a kid for five days at home when they get stuck on a problem or anything we're going to be coming right back and forth so that teachers can give feedback and send the kids back home to
037do work um that was just a lot of our questions was about what does that hybrid day look like so i just wanted to reinforce that when we're on hybrid kids will still be working on a computer through the google classroom because that's where all our assignments will be but they won't be meeting or live face to face with their teachers because the teachers will be teaching the other half of the class um i think that will kind of clear up the schedule since dr gifford can't speak for some reason technical difficulties i'll jump in with uh communication oh ironically you're back so okay uh you can go for it okay communication i just want to say that we're doing the best we can to maintain this our website there there's a main website for
038the district and there's one for every school we try to put as much information as we can up there it's a wealth of knowledge it's great to have a central point a central repository for information explore the website always there's a there's something on there to whether to hit to send to the webmaster if there's a suggestion i can't find boy it's just it's it's confusing you take make an attempt to trying to be in the mind of a resident or teacher student or parent to find out how would you find something so you try to keep it as simple as possible we're trying to do that here and we're trying to post things i know the the um the learning sites that that doc i mean that mrs oliveira has been putting up there
039amazing information one of the questions i received and dr gifford i did man those questions there were 208 i want you to know that so our community is extremely active and most of them most of the questions were multi-level so that's awesome that shows uh care and involvement one of the questions was can you make videos about how you're coming back i know the tech teachers and myself we are going to create those videos and find some way to get them organized so you can do a how-to how do i get there's on there now is how do i get my access to my aspen account or how do i how do i log on to my gmail and things like that so we're trying to build those we have programs that build uh production
040of you know quick video of how to and your mouse follows the screen so you can follow along you can pause if next necessary and we'll provide those links up here to all the software that we have so the parents can understand what kind of software that's been extremely vetted through curriculum through the instructional technology people uh before being subscribed to for by our district we have really quality software like i excel and um and naviance for the the kids in high school and we have a lot of those programs so um i just wanted to mention that so communication and as always if there's something extremely urgent we will contact you through our all-call system and for those viewers who don't know who's the voice it is for the all call i'll give you
041a little preview here this is a message from the dartmouth public schools so you didn't you didn't you needed to not see me to know if the voice was there so i just wanted to say that's me it's it's a it's a guilty pleasure of being here in dartmouth uh but i just wanted to say that if there's something important we will do the all-call to you the text the the the app but for the for most information right here the website sorry dr gifford i i get rambling too much coffee today no thanks thanks mr galashar i know we're here to help each other remember all of these fine points from these um questions i do want to address one thing also some folks asked about how we're building relationships with our students especially
042during the remote so i just wanted to reiterate that during the 10 days that the teachers are here and as ms oliveira mentioned involved in a lot of professional development we've left a lot of time um for them to reach out to our appearance in via a virtual method uh to get to know them i know i'm told you know the elementary folks will be reaching out as well we want to find out about our kids and and just to start that relationship um so we're trying our best as again remotes a little bit difficult but at least to start it then and i also know that the schools are working on some kind of virtual tour or orientation i know the middle school's been working i just talked to mr peratti who's wonderful in
043helping us out tonight behind the scenes uh that the high school is doing a transition you know ninth grade transition video so there are going to be there is more information coming from your schools that will help your student transition into what the expectations are um so now i kind of wanted to turn it over to mr kylie again because we have transportation to talk about um some of the things you mentioned in the schools about some of the transitions we've made but particularly like the isolation area and maybe how lunch is being facilitated some of those logistical pieces for the day thank you dr gifford so yeah i think i'll start with um how you get to school so um in terms of transportation we had several questions transportation was one of the last
044guidances that we received um from the from jesse and and uh they sort of kept us in suspense as to how we were expected to accomplish this so what um one of the questions was will there be a signed seats on a bus so did i thought it would be best to describe a little bit what transportation is going to look like so first of all i think it's important to note that parents are are being asked to screen their students in the morning before they send them out to the bus stop so if they have and we'll have more information coming to parents about specific symptoms but if they have any covert 19 possible symptoms we should not put them on the bus in the morning that said for our kids who are feeling
045good and are ready to get on the bus um there will be assigned seats we'll have one student per seat on the bus no more than 25 students on a bus they will be directed by the bus driver or a bus monitor as necessary to their assigned seat and they will sit in a zigzag pattern so one student will sit next to the window one will sit next to the aisle and so on and it'll be the opposite on the opposite side of the bus students will be required to wear a mask there is hand sanitizer on each and every bus they will uh be able when they board the bus to be able to use hand sanitizer and when they disembark the bus be able to use hand sanitizer uh we got a question
046about will we be able to change our transportation arrangements during the school year so as you can imagine um with such limited seating capacity on the bus it's going to be a challenge to make changes we'll try our best to accommodate any change request from a family we have asked that families submit one pickup am pickup location and 1 pm drop-off location those two do not need to be the same but each day the am location and the pm location need to be need to be um consistent and uh we but again we will make to our best effort to um you know to accommodate changes because we understand uh that family situations will be uh will be changing throughout this process um we got a question about is reimbursement available to parents who transport
047their child to and from school so interestingly enough there is a case where um reimbursement would be available so if if a student has in their iep specialized transportation provided parents could be could transport their own child to and from school and would receive reimbursement for that so um if you if your child has specialized transportation included in their iep i'd encourage you to contact the special ed office here in the administration building and they can help you with that um those were the primary transportation questions we we got some questions about lunch um everybody's gonna be hungry of course so i guess i to to summarize all the questions lunch will be served primarily eaten in the classrooms although at the high school there will be lunch served in some large spaces where physical
048distancing can be achieved so in the classrooms our classroom set up again six feet apart students will be able to uh eat lunch in in at their desk lunch will be pre-ordered depending on the age group that we're talking about lunch will either be delivered to the classroom for the students or it'll be a grab-and-go system upon entering the building in the morning um i got a question and it was a good one about trash um we don't want you know smelly lunch trash sitting around in the classroom uh all day so what we have done is working with our great custodial staff um we are planning on adjusting their hours once we get in-person learning in place and providing more support during the school day and some of what they will be doing in
049addition to cleaning and disinfecting high-touch areas will be removing lunch trash so it will not sit around all day in the classrooms um i got a health question regarding um mandatory covet testing so just wanted to say that covet testing will not be mandatory what depending on the situation of each individual if they have covid related symptoms a covid test would mean potentially that there could be an earlier return to school um than if you decided not to get a covet test so there's some advantages obviously to have a covert test that comes back negative and be able to get back to school sooner so but there will not be mandatory covent testing um those were the primary questions i think i touched on most of the hvac questions in my initial discussion i think
050that all right if you think of anything else mr kylie just pop up i just thought of it the isolation you mentioned the isolation spaces so in each building there's an isolation space that is used if a nurse um if if a student is sent down or or potentially even a staff member has covert related symptoms they will not go into the nurse's office with um with students who do not uh have coveted related symptoms so there is an isolation space that the nurses will be supervising and utilizing in each of the buildings and that space is going to have minimal furnishings that can be cleaned there is physical distancing in those spaces and as a when a student does is placed in the covert isolation space uh they will then be their parents will
051be contacted and asked to come pick up the student and hopefully get a covered test and hopefully be negative and be able to return to uh to school after a time frame um without symptoms so that that is the plan for the isolation space each building has one um it's not a little cubicle uh closet it's a larger space and so you know a student won't feel isolated even though it's called an isolation space and the nurses will be there to assist with those students okay that's a good uh transition to miss jodwin who's been supervising the nurses and working really heavily with them and um you know let's hear a little bit i know we had a nice meeting with the nurses and dr clock our our district physician the other day and maybe
052you can give us some highlights about what's going on with the nurses and protocols and some of the some of the practices the ppe that we're putting in place so the nurses have been hard at work for a good part of the summer just just trying to wrap their heads around the best protocols to put in place and by protocols you know we're also talking about how students just come to the nurse's office um they want to be able to be ready for for students who might be coming in with potential covert symptoms so um you know they are putting protocols in place in which uh students will not be just able to come themselves they'll the teacher will have to call first and make sure that um you know the nurse knows what what
053the situation is so that way the nurse is prepared and included in that preparation is um you know being able to put on additional ppe if needed um and that has all been provided to them um other protocols just you know really trying to work with staff to uh you know teach students the importance of hand washing teach students the importance of face wearing uh mask wearing i i think that um the nurses really feel that that wearing masks is is really an opportunity for education for students um about the importance of keeping themselves safe as well as everyone else and so the nurses you know are really working hard to to ensure that their areas are safe as well as there are protocols in place to maximize student safety as well and i know
054our last meeting with them we would be in touch because they did mention creating a video for families i believe we're going to be doing um just for that purpose to really help families prepare especially our little guys um about the masks as well as hand washing but also our older students of how to even be personally responsible for their areas and keeping them clean in school sanitizing etc so that'll be forthcoming um since we're on some health reasons i know there are a ton of questions about our coveted scenarios as we say how do we respond to various scenarios things that might happen in our classrooms someone with temperature or someone getting sick whatever it might be so ms roy is going to address some of those samples and i will also mention that
055that information the the guidance document is embedded in our our our comprehensive return to school plan which is on our website so we'll give some samples today of how we address that in consultation with our local board of health director all the time so miss roy thank you dr gifford um these scenarios fall into two main categories the individual that's symphonic and the individual exposed to a cloven 19 positive individual so in the first case if the individual is symptomatic and if they are at home they need to stay at home and get tested if the individual is symptomatic whether it be on the bus or at school they will remain masked and adhered to the strict physical distancing the students will be met by the nurse and they will stay in the medical isolation
056room that mr kylie talked about until they can go home they will not be sent home on a bus if the individual is a staff member they will also be sent home and asked to get tested in the case where the individual is exposed to the covid19 positive individual if the individual is at home when they learn about this close contact with the individual who's tested positive they need to stay at home and be tested within four to five days of their last exposure if they're at school when they learn they were in close contact with the individual tested they should go home they will not take the bus home we will have families pick them up and again they should stay home and be tested within four to five days of their last exposure
057in both of these scenarios if the test is negative mr kylie indicated they can return to school once they're asem a systematic for 24 hours if they are tested and they're positive they need to remain home monitor their symptoms notify the school any of their close personal contacts should be notified they can assist the schools in the contact tracing answer calls from the board of and health in many of these cases it's relatively mild illness and they need to self-isolate for 10 days or at least three days um has passed with no fever or symptoms if for some reason the individual is not tested they will need to remain home in self-isolation for 14 days from the onset of the symptoms um so again the there's a 20-page document that we have linked at the
058end of our plan that has um you know further further detail within these two scenarios um that you're welcome to explore and i think obviously that's the concern a lot of questions came so i imagine many folks will be reading that but i want to assure folks that in like i said in consultation with our director of board of health we will always adhere to the guidance we will sanitize rooms that uh folks have been in there are to be closed for 12 hours at least according to the guidance and folks will be alerted i think that was one of the questions as well will parents be alerted and and the answer is yes so it continues to be a fluid situation but we will adhere to that guidance and make sure that the communication
059uh continues to our families so i'd like to go back to special education we had again a lot of questions obviously there's a lot of concern and i know you're going to talk a little bit about health related but no we actually covered a lot of that if you have anything else to add when you start that's fine but also the implementation of special education so if we can do some of that thank you so much dr gifford so um i want to begin just by um letting everyone watching know that the focus of special education um this fall is going to look different than it did in the spring primarily in many cases special education was seen under what was called the resources and support model in the spring and this fall the movement
060and the focus is really on instruction and services model and what that means you know in practicality is that the minutes of students ieps will be met uh even if it is remotely so the iep service delivery grid is the driving force of how special education will come to students and again you know in a hybrid model there will be minutes that will be able to be met in person as well as remotely during the remote period for some students for many students they will start remotely but those minutes will be held so special education teachers related service providers will provide specially designed instruction um using some video conference platform um primarily google meet that aligns with the students goals and objectives and you know and as uh ms oliver already said because the design
061of the remote learning model is such that students are not going to be sitting in front of a screen for six hours a day that's not our intent um you know there will be periods of time where students may complete some projects or independent work as part of their service delivery minutes so in a brick and mortar situation a special educator may ask them to independently tackle a particular project so those minutes will also be embedded by which the student just like the general ed peers that student will have time at home not in front of the computer per se to work on some of those projects related to the specially designed instruction um and you know we just want to reiterate uh to continue that communication with your child's teacher or school um if
062you're having any sort of difficulties in terms of logging on or or accessing that instruction but we also wanted to kind of acknowledge the fact that you know we've heard from so many parents how challenging this has been time has been on so many levels um but particularly for for students in their learning process um and that you know we did get some questions um from people that you know their child is a general education uh student and they are struggling um and you know we wanted you know all of you to know that um we do have um supports available within um the general education setting um to meet academic and and social um needs of students so you know if you know once things get up and running and you know you still
063feel that your child is struggling reach out to your schools reach out to administration to teachers um to have conversations about um you know what what can be done in order to um you know enhance their supports okay thank you um i know mr gallashore you're probably dying to speak again you have more to say because there's a lot of technology questions yeah there were a lot of technology questions but they threw they went down the the same line uh the first one was chromebooks when do i get my chromebook to my child get a chromebook as you know we were one-to-one chromebooks last year and the year before um grades eight through 12. uh so we pretty much mastered that skill if the child if the student has a chromebook problem we have swap
064um chromebooks they take on loaners as we're repairing those um and we cycle those through pretty pretty well um we want to expand that of course through for all students um so fortunately in the spring we got ahead of a rush that happened worldwide uh there's a computer shortage worldwide and so many districts are waiting possibly till october november for chromebooks to come in which must be difficult for them we fortunately were able to get 700 before the rush actually literally before the rush they said they were the uh an order came in for seven thousand right after i replaced mine um so we got those in we we enrolled them and got them all uh inventoried and such and they're ready to go so we're going to be rolling out chromebook distribution to complement
065the existing chromebooks we have i think in the survey i had mentioned that if your child needs a chromebook part of the reason for that is we have exactly as many chromebooks as we have students almost that close so i think i looked for a little bit of buffer but we really want students to have their chromebook so there's no interruption at home about borrowing us a computer or being on an incompatible platform what have you so i begin the process next tuesday uh with the sixth graders i sent out a message to the families of the sixth graders uh from ten to two uh the beginning alphabet at 10 to 12 and 12 to two and then the message went out and we're doing that same drive through model and we'll do that at
066each of the schools we don't have to do it for the high school because the kids have theirs the freshmen are getting theirs but in a more advisory way showing up on smaller smaller situations a drive-through as well but the middle school we're going sixth graders drive through coming in now obviously if if you're if you have a child that's seventh or eighth grader let me know we'll hand you theirs too because you don't want to come back to do that so it's the the i'll be there with staff in the middle school who know the families and then we can identify which serial number we'd like to assign them to people so we know where they are and we have a good handle on them um so we'll do the sixth grade distribution on
067tuesday we'll start there the other distributions will come the following week it seems to see a barrage of distributions happening all around the district around the 7th 8th the 8th 9th and 10th a little bit so it's good that you get the students get those chromebooks in try them out make sure they're working i will set up hours and post on our website if anyone's having a problem there'll be links to go to to go to your school to get a replacement or if the the camera doesn't work or something like that would like to swap them out so they there's not a whole lot of contact we'll take those and we'll we'll clean them up and straighten them out for the next loaner so it does like that fortunately we did place in another
068order for chromebooks that are due in october first for the that it'll make my buffer a little bit bigger dr gifford i'll feel a lot better about swapping them out so it's one of those situations that if you absolutely don't need a chromebook uh you can probably you could wait but eventually we'll find you and get you a chromebook one of the newer ones that come because we want everyone to have one we want everyone to be using the same chromebook i mean using a chromebook um but uh we'll be okay as we do the six seven and eights uh coming up uh those kids the students will be very excited to to see those uh one thing i might mention about the sixth graders in the spring we were looking for them to return
069chromebooks not everybody returned them but they are using them all summer dr gifford which i thought was a was a great testament to these young young people they're on them they're using them we would like those back so we could clean them up and make sure they go to elementary school students so you can get the middle school students so that's one of the things i have i brought in uh one of the assistant uh principals from the middle school to enforce that because he knows these kids and he knows just to make sure that they're returning those just because we like to keep order to them to know where the numbers are we're a little bit like that when in technology we want to keep that order but everyone will get a chromebook and
070we'll do it as as much as you know as easily as possible with that drive through a model handing it to them they go through um and i think we'll be okay if i had two other items that i think are rather important i'll try not to ramble on because i know the time is getting up there um the second item had to do with um transmission uh internet very important you do need a reliable internet connection at home a lot of people were saying that they have um sometimes spotty internet because one thing that happens with with internet connections if everyone on your street is is watching movies on movie services and or zooming or such sometimes it can bring the signal down the speed down comcast will allow you to pay for more
071services it does the bump up in service is possible for those people who can do that um comcast also offers and it's on our website for those who who uh want a more economical version that they can do if you work with comcast as an application there for getting that connection uh you can and i think for about 120 dollars a year they'll provide an internet connection and wireless hub you have to qualify for their program but it is on there and additionally if there's people with uh more uh more need beyond that please contact your school because we we have a grant that may provide access points there are cellular access points for those people in great need because this is a strange time wherein and you may have that need please be advised
072that these little uh hot spots as they're called they're not for the family's wi-fi so you're going to be disappointed if you think everyone's going to get on there to go on netflix it's not going to work it's a sign for that one student going to all the educational sites that are dictated so it's a very specific they these hot spots the company that we're looking at knows exactly what they're doing this is get to work hot spots no uh no extended family wi-fi so there's other options for that but um the need is there because i think it's so important that the kids have to have this connection to the internet they have to have that um access to do their work and i think the chromebooks will add to that dr gifford to
073to make sure they can do their work um and i think that was the the the only the other ones i had so if i could turn it back to you for so i just check my notes okay thank you um i do want to mention i know there were a number of questions of revolving around mask wearing so we are going to require all staff and students to wear a mask we are um working with the school committee for a policy on that but we do we are not going to allow at this point the gators or bandanas as those have not been recommended according to the guidance to offer the proper protection that folks need so if if there's a question about that we'll have more information coming out with our school committee
074meeting but but with the masks we know there will be some children will have medical exemptions um those kinds of things and those will be addressed of course i also wanted to mention that about mask breaks so right now we again with the guidance and consult with area physician the mass breaks will occur in the classroom six feet apart the students will remain at their desks and we are going to ask the teachers if they're obviously if they're not eating they'll get to eat lunch obviously um if there's a snack break and the extra mask breaks when needed it will be teachers will be asking students to be silent that's in the guidance about um you know again if we all start talking and 12 students we know how they are we do the same
075thing get all excited and so will be a silent we've talked to the elementary principals today that perhaps teachers can do a mindfulness moment um just relax and and think about things or the teacher can do a read aloud at that time just times for those students to have a mass break we're also using the outside of course with recess and um they'll be structured activities not just run around all over the playground um might lead students in whatever it might be a stretching break or something but they'll be obviously there we're very cognizant of the need for that we've all we're all wearing them as well obviously in our offices and um maintaining our distance and our mask wearing and we need breaks as well i also we also had some questions about our
076kindergarten screening so i'm going to ask miss roy to talk about that so kindergarten screenings so normally we would have completed them at this point but because of the situation we've decided to screen our kindergarten students when they return so we're looking at beginning their return that october 1st and 2nd so we'll take a few days to complete that but we will be doing that when they return on their in-person days you should have received a kindergarten welcome video that was completed by the schools and also a parent questionnaire at this point so we're asking you to complete that and uh return it we also did get a single question i'm trying to look through these regarding substitutes whether they'll be trained on the new platform and we are looking for um clusters of uh
077substitutes in each of our buildings that are um that we will be training um to help with that as well along with staff that are already in the building and i warned everybody i said don't be muted so we have to say you're muted you're muted um do you have anything miss aloe vera about um i know there are a lot of questions and again we have our hybrid and remote plans in place the learning opportunities for students but we do acknowledge right now that there are some questions from parents who are not going to have the opportunity to work with their child during the day the child might be in a daycare situation we recognize that so just maybe give some thoughts about what we're trying to do to help those folks right now
078so we we certainly do understand that it's difficult for parents that will be working that need to support their kids and and you know we we get it we understand it so if you're in that situation please call your building principal we can work with you and try to figure things out um once we go hybrid we're hoping that this will be a lot easier for parents because students will be coming home with the work that they could do our goal is to really make students self-sufficient on that day when they're at home doing work we understand their kids and that that's impossible but one story that i can really tell when we learned our lessons learned from the spring was that we have a program at elementary schools called st math and any of
079our elementary parents know about ggi penguin uh the kids just love him or her we haven't decided and they have to work to get gigi across the screen this is a program that has no language so it's all understanding and movement and spatial movement of gigi and if you look at it it's very intimidating even for adults and kids went home they use a qr code which they scan on their their chromebooks and they can do it and we get responses from parents saying i don't understand one thing but my kid is doing this and they're very happy and it looks like they're right because at the end gigi the penguin's very happy so our goal is to have that is to really train our kids that they can go home and and do the
080work that's required of them i always say to our teachers that you know expectations are high and we hold them high for our kids our kids always surprise us and and can do it so that is our goal during remote if you're having some trouble you know we can work with you show your kids how to log on but we understand we understand those difficult situations and and we're here to try to work with you and troubleshoot them the best we can uh our hope is to see all our kids we want to see our kids back we all want to go back to normal we're all parents ourself and so together when we work together during this we can always do what's best for our kids and that's our hope okay so i'm just
081going to wrap up i don't um think our folks have any more specific questions i think we've covered pretty much pretty much everything as best as we could in the in the questionnaire here um but i just want to remind folks once again that the starting date for students for remote is september 15th you will be receiving information from your schools whether it's through a virtual orientation newsletter's home you also are receiving information about signing up for the virtual platforms if you are choosing that your child not returned to school we are i'm not sure we mentioned that if you enter the virtual platform at the middle in high school you will have to stay in it for at least a marking period we don't want that disruption not only for the student's sake but
082also for the cohorting it's as mr kylie mentioned with the setup of the classrooms we have to be very careful about the distancing and the number of students in the classrooms about that i also had a question about folks asked about the high school transitioning in why we didn't transition in ninth grade first and we understand that that's a transition year but it's very different than like a middle school sixth grade whole class coming in they're multi-age classrooms so they they don't necessarily come in and all the ninth graders are together they're in 10th grade classes perhaps or 10th graders with it just um it wasn't a good fit if you will if you um once again if you are interested in the remote excuse me the virtual platform now that you've heard the information
083you can reach out to your school your building principal and i also want to acknowledge not only this team of folks like i said all of us have lost about a thousand hours of sleep um we have i do have deeper wrinkles and long hair um but we still like each other even though we've worked really hard together lotsum we are in the office now we all came back full time but i also want to acknowledge our building level administrators as well um their heads are spinning like all of ours and i have to say that we are in a dilemma together and together we can we're trying to row in the same direction and once again um patience is what we've been trying i know we've all you know we're all frustrated and anxious
084but together we can but i wanted to acknowledge the building admin team again because they're and our directors they're all working very very hard to make this fit for all of us and with the hope that we will soon return 100 percent that we can all breathe easy and that this becomes something in our past and a bad memory a bad memory so with that i want to thank everybody for joining us tonight and again if you have further questions please reach out to your building principals there i'm moving now to get folks back in school so they will have more specific answers for you for your child so once again have a great rest of the evening and we thank you so much for joining us tonight