Dartmouth School Committee Meeting August 10, 2020

001well good afternoon everyone i would like to call this meeting of the dartmouth school committee on to water for monday august 10th 2020. roll call please miss gunther chris oliver here shannon jenkins here kathleen amaral yeah mary wait here john nunes yeah uh thank you very much it looks like we are all here um good afternoon everyone as the agenda states are we going to be i'm going to be entertaining a motion to adjourn into an executive session to provide an update with reset to collective bargaining with union personnel to recon to reconvene do i have a motion so moved second so i have a motion on the floor by mr nunes a second by dr jenkins on the motion any discussion roll call please miss gunther chris oliver yes shannon jenkins yes kathleen amarill

002mary waite you're muted mary yes sir john nunes yes so we are adjourning into executive session and we will return to open session shortly everybody on the flip side hey rob so okay that kind of bonnie uh oh where am i yes all right we see you everyone back bob are you there yep we're here rob's there is he listening hope he's listening yes looks like we are we are back alive everyone yes well we are just returning from except session um mr news do we need a uh motion to open back up or can we just go right back into the meeting no we should open back up mr chairman thank you mr nunes um i'd like to entertain a motion to uh open the public session uh return back to the public section

003of tonight's meeting so moved second i have a motion by mr nunes the second by dr jenkins on the motion any further discussion roll call ms ganther chris oliver yes shannon jenkins kathleen amaral yeah mary wait yes yes john nunes yes all right thank you very much everyone just a reminder as per governor baker's audit suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law chapter 38 section 20 the public will not be allowed to physically access this school committee meeting the meeting will be conducted remotely members of the public assist the meeting via live stream at youtube.com forward slash dhs tv media in a day 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 a.m and sunday

004at 2 p.m the school committee reserves the right to implement additional participation procedures and will notify the public of these procedures as soon as practicable that being said any um anyone wishing to comment on tonight's agenda can do so by uh sending an email to kathleengenther at dartmouthschools.org i also should note that um the school committee has received dozens of emails um today on public comment correspondence related nice agenda please know that all committee members have reviewed your comments and we will not be reading them publicly this afternoon in the interest of time the public comment emails will become part of tonight's meeting minutes uh once once the minutes are approved and of course as with all meetings we also do do not respond to public comment uh to begin with but we want to

005thank everyone for and i'm not sure if everyone's bikes are muted i'm hearing some background uh noise but i want to thank evan for that has sent in uh public comment uh we we do take all of those very seriously a lot of them were very uh thoughtful they were thought out um concerns among you know everything from what what to do if we reopen school if we if there's a hybrid um regarding procedures um and there's lots of good thoughtful questions and like i said all of tonight's public comments will be made part of tonight's minutes once approved that being said in moving forward any further comments that miss gentler receives will also become part of the official record next up on the agenda on the old business we have superintendent's recommendation to for

006return to school i'll turn it over to dr giffords and you're muted dr gifford thank you um once again i'm looking for my powerpoint presentation let me give me one second please i had it up but who knows what happens give me one second there would be something i would do though i think if it's yeah it's time it's coming one minute there you go remote learning reopening it's just okay there we are i have it there now i will try to share my screen oh sorry sorry folks share screen oh where is it sorry honestly i had it it's here share get that out of the way ah [Music] okay are we good can everyone see all right beautiful thank you so thank you mr chair um obviously this is a moment i know

007that the community has been waiting for um i just want to start by saying once again the amount of work that actually continues to go into planning who are safe and healthy returned to school in whatever um model that looks like we certainly understand families concerns students concerns the community at large and our staff and i just want to thank once again the team that has worked countless hours receiving guidance and trying to put together the best plan of action that we can so i first wanted to do a couple of updates because i know from our last discussion some folks had some questions once again you just mentioned that we do look at the feedback that we get and while we may not respond to all of the emails we want the folks to

008know that we do read them we take them to our meetings and we consider the various ideas so i know that folks had a um a question on why we looked at the hybrid plan we did which we had a cohort a and a cohort b attending on alternate days while this may not be the most perfect plan it's different than other folks other folks choose what's good for them from our discussions we found that the plan was most pedagogically sound that it we really discussed the idea of like a week on week off where we felt that students would be so disconnected to learning for an entire week it was almost like they would go on vacation every other week um we felt that that plan maintained better connections to learning more consistently and

009of course we would be grouping our intent would be to group siblings together in cohorts to make we would hope that easier as well as the transportation easier to coordinate people asked about the deep cleaning that folks were speaking about in various districts and in our minds and you know we spent a lot of time on this that we felt that i mean we certainly could look at hiring additional help for the weekends because if you cleaned on a wednesday you still had that second cohort coming in and in theory the cleaning would then begin on monday again in theory certainly any um other plans could be made so we our intention was to hire or add staffing for additional cleaning throughout every single day so in our minds that would be more frequent cleaning

010consistently continuing to make rounds throughout the schools into the evening hours with our custodial staff and we felt that that was a better plan once again no plan is perfect but we felt we made the best decision we could at the time i also wanted to update folks on something i reported on last week and it was the idea that we were waiting for dessie to provide us information on what they call the learning management system this system was presented to us a number of superintendents um also agreed that we heard it the way we heard it that it was presented to us as something we could um put students on that chose remote learning that they would be with a teacher on the other end of the remote learning platform and that we would

011not have to engage our teachers i think i reported on that last week in that system that knowing that in our plan every one of our teachers is assigned if we were to choose the hybrid plan to their class so they would be teaching full-time in their classroom so to not have to then worry about students that chose remote learning but that we would maintain connections with them through a stipended position perhaps we've spoken about this someone that maintains supervision and ensuring that our students at least stayed up to date and in contact so what we found out last week after we reported on the school committee was it really wasn't the case in a sense as i look here we have um desi basically presented two options they call them option four and five

012and i can certainly provide the details of this um but it's not something to go into tonight but basically it was as you can see it was two commonwealth schools that we would put students in and they would obviously remain in our district that's another thing i just want to make folks aware the distinctness the difference between home schooling if parents choose to say they want to home school the students are not counted in our district that the parents are completely responsible for that education where this kind of virtual school they remain with us as i said and we would continue to supervise etc you notice it does say a math certified teacher is provided and there's various modes of instruction but we also must assign our own educators to continue to monitor those students

013the second option they gave was something we've already used actually we've already been involved in the use of edgenuity for example in various cases such as the high school for credit recovery etc that model would require us to appoint our own teachers to teach support and coach so what would happen was if we needed physics teachers etc we have to have someone that's content specific it's not just a supervision or monitoring progress what i will say that when we saw this that with the minimum student required number of student requirements and the cost it was pretty much becoming not cost effective and really i have to say a number of superintendents the moment we heard the deci meeting kind of said you just blew up my remote plans so it wasn't what we expected um

014so this will be something that we were going to have to continue to work on to come up with something that students that choose remote will be able to engage in and receive their education so i just wanted to kind of give an update on that and clarify the hybrid plan so as we looked at our plans and again this has been weeks and weeks and weeks with many many stakeholders we kind of came up with a as people know the full in person is off the table there is just no way with the feasibility study that we did with our buildings our transportation our health guidance that we would be able to implement a full return to school so we're down to the hybrid and remote models as you can see we have a

015number of cons and pros pros and cons for each model i i i guess i don't really want to read them all but actually i think it's kind of important um to go over some of them so with the hybrid model as we know students would be in and out of school cohorts of students small numbers they would attend in person we feel obviously we want kids in school that's our goal that's all of our goal we know how vitally important it is some of the things we talk about is um that we in most cases i will say in most cases throughout our building we would be able to meet the six foot spacing and mass requirements mask protocols requirements um those and and most most again of the safety requirements that have been

016given to us in the guidance obviously students would intend in person we could meet the transportation guidance as of now and we know that relationship building is very very important obviously there are many cons or challenges uh child care we know all of this poses child care issues for parents the chance that we lose some students even in the spring we we worked very hard on some of those kids that disengaged um potential staffing and substitute implications if we tell go to the hybrid and we have staff with medical issues and they cannot attend because of medical documentation that's a problem we would love to be able to offer some kind of extracurricular no matter what happens with our sports etcetera continue with clubs etc in some way but once again scheduling for parents if

017we have cohorts of how did they get kids there we understand that that's an issue um i just talked about the lms system it's not optimal at this time and our ventilation and mask wearing and windows and heating is definitely an issue in our buildings they're old buildings and i think all of you that did the building tours the other day experienced that in some of our schools the building capacity is not optimal we have looked at rooms about nine ten twelve students um in a room and we're clearing rooms out as i said it's not a hundred percent optimal my district team has worked very hard on trying to make it optimal knowing that this is a certainly an option for us and we want students back in school as far as the remote

018plan goes i guess we can say that it's the safest model of education right now relative to the covid virus and the trends and the upticks we're seeing we felt parents even though it's very difficult in our remote plan obviously they would know what's happening and they could plan for that for daycare we do we can accommodate all of the technology we right now are increasing our bandwidth in the case that we have to be prepared for this and we felt one of the important things is that we have been doing a lot of work focusing on the logistics and the safety and the protocols and the what-ifs in our buildings management if you will and again my staff has worked very hard the remote plan would allow a more robust focus on the teaching

019and learning piece which of course our plan would be much different than it was in the spring and we felt that a phased-in approach if we chose remote would support the staff's preparedness to provide optimum learning experiences as i mentioned a minute ago we would try to continue extracurricular kind of sports music clubs and small cohorts which we are doing right now with our music group and we would have some time to monitor these trends especially looking at other districts that are choosing hybrid if we were to choose this or anywhere in the state and of course there are cons with this the potential as we know for decreased student engagement the difficulty that parents might have to be able to engage their student uh they might have their child in daycare who's watching the

020learning we understand that and of course relationship building maintaining those uh strong relationships so i wanted to go over some of the decision-making considerations i think you just heard a whole lot of them we we have been looking at all of this but you know we've been meeting with the local um union of course the dea and they raise a lot of questions and one of them is the safety guarantee can we guarantee as many protocols as we have in place as much as we do for cleaning and and all of that can we guarantee that anyone will be safe reality versus theory um we talk a lot about the mask wearing um i and then we visit the buildings we do have the heat of the early months um distancing can we maintain that

021social distance and mass with little our little learners especially and to continue to maintain the most effective cleaning processes that we can we talked a lot about teaching and learning and i i reached out to all of my leadership team and asked for their honest opinions as we ended started to end this conversation and really got close to making decisions or recommending this a decision for the committee committee to vote on and they were worried about how much time they've been spending with the logistics in each building as opposed to strengthening those educational experiences that they could offer the students ventilation air quality or just air movement in the schools is obviously a concern for all of us um our staffing that have perhaps significant health issues and what happens when a staff member might

022catch something etc etc how do we maintain student coverage substitute coverage excuse me which obviously we have good ideas for but i'm just listing things we continue to consider as we come to our recommendation many of you took the building tours with us last week and i think and i'm sure you'll speak about that but we do have some building capacity issues to think about and the conditions as i talked about with air quality um ventilation the window situation in all of the rooms we've had lots of meetings i just had one last week with our nurses again and as much as we have worked very hard to try to find spaces to align with the guidance that includes they have to have an isolation station or area for students that might have symptoms a

023separate bathroom but also they're still they're still engaging in the daily routines in their offices they're giving out medication they're they're they're fixing the scratches that happen on the playground how are we continuing to clean their spaces especially if we have students that do have exhibit symptoms which as any of you that have read there are many um and of course the ppe which again we've bought much a lot of the equipment that they'll be wearing the full the full um outfits if you will and how do we continue to change those as nurses deal with the students coming in and out of the office i already talked about the learning management system uncertainty which i'm sure we would have a good solution for but it's another consideration and then the what happens what happens

024when scenarios people come down with symptoms people come down with a positive covert diagnosis what happens if a school or a classroom or whatever it might be has to be quarantined those distractions that might occur if students are in and out of school if a staff member becomes ill do we have to close a building we met again mr kylie and miss jodwin and i today again with the health agent chris mishu to talk about some of these things and we will remain in constant contact as we proceed and open schools to try to make sure that we keep folks safe and of course we looked at the staff has been sending us we did take that initial survey i want to make sure that the community understands that that was a quick temperature check

025of the community we did not expect folks to be able to to then live by the answers they gave that was a quick initial check but we looked at that survey we looked at our staff survey we've listened to our administrative team who was in the building working on making their buildings safe and of course the community feedback which i said in the beginning i do not answer all those i'm sure the committee does not also but we do read them and we consider all of their feedback and of course you may have seen last week the latest information from the governor so with that said um i i want to repeat again our intent is to get kids back to school but at this point in time i believe and my team believes and

026everything that we have that we should adopt a remote to hybrid to full return approach and this is kind of it laid out that phase one would begin on august 31 which is the date that the teachers are scheduled to come back as right now i'll be talking about the 10 days that the commissioner has granted in a moment i am recommending with a verbal agreement um from the union right now that that would go those 10 days through september 14th during that time our staff will participate in all kinds of professional development we want to talk about the trauma that students have experienced throughout this episode this whole event we want to talk about how to continue to build and strengthen relationships during a remote learning plan we want to talk about more technology

027capabilities and how do our teachers engage students in various platforms that keep them excited and inspired to learn we also will be talking with the union about during this 10 days role specific assignments we want folks to have time to do their special education evaluations we'd like to do our kindergarten and else screening we'd like our special ed department and related services to have time to develop their learning plans and figure out how they're going to meet the needs of all of our students and as i already talked about the relationship building what we'd like to propose to the union is that students and teachers are able to gather in small cohorts such as four or five students let's say a grade three class has 20 students to make appointments with four or five students

028at a time socially distanced with mass just like an open house to explain to those kids here i am i'm your teacher this is what's going to happen these are the platforms we're using to provide students with the connections and the information to get started and at that time we would look to be disseminating the technology devices which we will have enough for everyone that needs them um during that time we're also and again i'll talk a little bit i think i talk later i'm not sure right now but one of the other things during this time we are creating right now um kits for students whether we're in hybrid or we're in remote for manipulatives materials and things that they would need at home um to be able to uh learn and also we've

029recommended which i was going to put in my superintendent's update to parents items that they should look to purchase now to have at home for their little classroom no matter what uh plan we choose what we'll be recommending is then that students start date would be september 15th which i'll be asking the committee for a vote on tonight it would be remote learning for all for the exception we are going to make every effort with the special education department and we will have conversations with our teachers but the the guidance is pushing and and i know our core belief is that students with our high needs population and our programs and our pre-k our special education pre-k students receive as much in-person education as possible we've been talking a lot about what that might look

030like and again we will continue that conversation what i want folks to know is that if we choose remote well whichever model because we will continue to teachers will have their regular daily schedule for students and teachers we will have grading and we will have attendance it will not be like the spring when we got thrust into a remote learning situation that a lot of folks were not prepared for um and our intent is that teachers will report to their buildings to conduct their lessons use their materials they would be their only ones in their classrooms etc then in phase three watching the covid virus trends um monitoring the situation constantly we would hope and our intent would be to then move back into our hybrid model we've been thinking that perhaps we do a

031small cohort let's just say grade one for an example just an example that we split it and continue to see how that goes with students reporting back to the classroom this would also give us time although we're as i said working very hard on the logistics and protocols and cleaning processes etc this would continue to give us more time to make sure that's even strengthened strengthened even more we are currently splitting we're having the schools work on splitting students into two cohorts that would give us more time for that and that we would ensure that no matter what it is that that remote learning plan in place for students who choose remote if we were to get back to hybrid which is our goal would have access to uh quality education remotely and of course

032the ultimate goal for all of us is full in-person return so with that said our next steps will be for um and i just want to say obviously this is a very hard decision this does not come lightly by any means but once again as a team we feel this is the best recommendation we can make so what we would ask for tonight is a vote from the school committee that students no matter what model you choose students will start on september 15th giving the teachers the 10 days preparation um getting ready to go for whatever model we have in place um the school committee obviously tonight will discuss and vote whether they want to choose a remote plan a hybrid plan i say full return but i don't think i say that with tongue-in-cheek

033right now um we will then continue whichever plan is chosen to negotiate those details with our dea and i also want to mention to parents that we will be sending a second survey a more specific survey about the hybrid model we understand that folks had questions about that initial survey and as i said we were just measuring taking the temperature a quick temp it was not um holding people to to anything but it just gave us a sense of what people were thinking we understand that as more details come out and folks hear more about the hybrid model and maybe we adjust that now that it excuse me as we go along we always have time to tweak that model but we want to send out specific get specific information we've already prepared the survey

034people will give us their names their students who's what school they're in and and answer specific questions about whether they would be sending their child back to school should we be in a hybrid or and or use the transportation those numbers will help us determine such things as some of the classroom numbers at the high school which right now even split into cohorts we're having a hard time because of the large numbers in some of our classes splitting them into those two cohorts and fitting in the classroom aligned with the specific six foot guidance uh we will continue no matter what uh model is chosen to monitor as we call them the metrics the covent metrics deci will continue to put out guidance and of course we're always looking at what the governor is saying

035relative to slow downs and opening things etc and if we were to choose a remote plan we would continue to monitor school districts implementing hybrid model to see what is happening around the community and in the meantime no matter what once again we would continue to strengthen we're always working on those schedules we're tweaking them the procedures the equipment the capacity whatever it might be to get ready to return to our buildings and i think one of the more important ones as well is to ensure that those nursing stations the proper ppe and all protocols are in place our nurses have lots of questions and concerns and we certainly understand that so with that said i do want to read this by henry ford because we have felt this all along that we all came

036together so coming together is a beginning staying together is progress and working together as success we understand this is difficult for everyone but as i said before i thank the team for their hard work and also believe that we've made the best recommendation that we can so with that i'll stop sharing my screen and turn it over to the committee thank you dr gifford for that very thoughtful well thought out presentation um at this time i'm going to open it up for comments and deliberation amongst my committee members so i'm not sure if anyone would like to go first or mr nunes went over to you thank you thank you mr chairman uh dr gifford to you and your staff and everyone that's been involved my heartfelt thanks uh it's a heck of a job

037and uh you know there's there's no right or wrong answer at this point in time mr chairman i think i can do the easy one first and if you'd like i can make a motion that we start school september 15th 2020 and we have 170 days of school this year that's the second thought that's the easy one to do thank you so i have a motion on the explore from mr nunes a second from mrs amaral to uh the start date studying the start date of school on the motion any further discussion roll call roll call please miss gemther miss oliver yeah shannon jenkins yes kathleen amaral yeah mary waite yes john nunes yes thank you miss guenther would you like to continue mr nunes or i can i can take it here as well

038i don't have a problem starting off yeah that's i'm whatever's whatever you wish to do mr chairman is good with me oh yeah the floor is yours mr nunes okay thank you thank you uh i for one and i and again like everyone else i've seen all the emails you know read them all and uh was able to figure out how to put them in a folder so you know look at my open email so you know i am improving uh but seriously i have seen them and such i have been and still am leaning towards having a hybrid uh opening that being students in in school um it's been you know it was three and a half months that these students uh didn't get to see their teachers and the the teachers didn't get

039to see their students i believe you know both need to happen teachers need to see the students and students need to see the teachers they learn better you know face to face uh that's just my my thought uh i did i took care of touring uh demelo and cushman uh last thursday along with the rest of us you know popping into the middle school in high school uh with regards to the melo and uh cushman i mean yeah they can they have you know they've made the necessary changes uh to the classrooms they can put you know the 10 or 12 in a class depending you know how many students and you know everything's been clean they have the ppe they have uh the uh you know they put the containers for the you know

040hand sanitizers in the classroom and i again appreciate everything that you know custodians and maintenance workers have done to get these schools going i mean there's still a lot of work to do uh the one thing that does concern me and i will be honest is the uh you know a little bit of the heat in the classrooms and such i know mr kylie's talked about you know the hvacs and you know running those and keeping the windows open so i uh i understand and i hear everybody uh i know this time of the year and even you know right now but when you get into you know the middle of september through you know probably the middle of october with indian summer it can be warm in those buildings i know that so uh

041i i hear you but if i had to vote right now to be perfectly honest with you i'm voting for a hybrid so that's where i'm leaning at this point in time thank you mr chair thank you mr nunes dr jenkins so i'll say that i'm normally kind of a speak from the heart fly by the seat of my pants but i think this is probably oh god i do not want to see myself really big sorry i'm well i'm talking um this is the biggest decision i've probably made in my whole life so i have written down a lot of thoughts here um i do want to before i talk about where i'm coming from address a couple concerns that i've seen in those emails like mr nunes and everyone else i've read all

042of them um some people have advocated for a full in-person return we cannot do that the state has given us safety guidelines we cannot meet those metrics right now so it's it's not on the table that's not that's why we're not discussing it um two i've seen a lot of people question why we're meeting remotely and i want to be clear about this right the schools are the most important thing so everything else we are doing all of us it's on us to get our kids back in school we need to be minimizing our contact with other people as much as we can so we can safely get kids back in school so i will continue to advocate for remote meetings because working remotely staying away from bars and whatever right it helps stop the

043spread that's why we're doing it um three i've seen some people on social media asking well why didn't this happen sooner or this is you know why didn't you visit the school sooner i said last time this is like landing a fire fight a fighter jet on an aircraft carrier and a hurricane right we i want to reiterate the timeline that dr gifford shared with us we got the initial guidance from deci the rules about how to do this at the end of june we didn't get transportation guidance until mid-july we got information from jesse on remote learning on wednesday right so why are we talking about this now because we have not been able to get information from the state i'll be blunt in a timely manner to tell us what we need to

044do in order to reopen so i just want to say to reiterate with mr what mr noon says everyone in this administration and the staff in these schools have been working their butts off i know they've been up late at night worrying about this we visited the schools last week and i can't even tell you how impressed i was with a thought and the consideration that everyone had put into these reopening plans right so i want to thank you for all that work there's been a lot of work here for all of us i think this is a really tough decision we've been talking and listening to a lot of people and a lot of people are really sure about this right there's teachers who are concerned about their health and their students there's administrators

045who have to implement these plans there's parents i understand who are desperate about how they're going to make this work with their own work we've heard from parents of kids with ieps we've talked to nurses and doctors a lot of people have recommended we talked to my colleague aaron bromash who does consulting on this we are working with him i've made it a point in all of my conversations to ask people frankly how would you vote if you're in my seat because i like even this morning i didn't know what i was going to do and people are nearly split down the middle the answers are about 50 50 between remote and hybrid which i think it tells us that there's no easy decisions here and there are no there's there's just bad choices on

046every side we're being asked to pick between a choice that has short and long-term health and safety consequences for our students and staff and another choice that has short and long-term health and safety consequences for our students and our staff right this is hard so where did i come down on this well in my heart i want to pick hybrid learning right our numbers are really low right now right the new york times published some data that recommended recommended levels that the state of new york is using um for hybrid learning right and they want your test rates to be less than 75 per hundred thousand and your test positivity rate to be under five percent here in dartmouth we have 35 000 people we have about six cases per week over the last six

047weeks that puts us at about 35 to 36 cases for every two weeks per hundred thousand we're well under that mark our test positivity rate is under 2 in bristol county we're about 60 per 100 000 and our test positivity rate in the state is under 3 if it's not safe now when will it be safe right our numbers are just about as low as they are going to get some people say well we'll have a vaccine right i have about zero percent confidence that we're going to have a vaccine in january even april i think is is overly optimistic and even with the vaccine there will be risk this is not like a polio vaccine that eradicates your exposure to a disease it's like a flu vaccine maybe 50 60 effective some people won't

048get the vaccine we're going to be living with covid for a long time so for me and the argument and support of the hybrid plan is if not now when when will we be able to do it i can't wrap our brain my brain around our kids not being in school all year i don't think it's going to get safer than it is now i have a senior right i'm like it crushes me as a parent that his senior year may be set and higher entirely remote right so that's where my heart is but where my head is is that i think there's two still too many obstacles to pull off hybrid learning right the dusty op the options that they have given us for remote learning put a considerable burden in our way and

049they're hurdles that are really high right we know some kids need to be at home i'm not going to tell a kid with serious illness that they have to come to school all right our synchronous learning is expensive dr gifford did not put the cost in there but to pay for a licensed teacher it's about ballpark maybe three thousand dollars per kid per semester that's a lot of money some districts are saying oh well we'll just have the teacher of record you know supervise these remote kids as part of their work as a teacher that's not possible it is not possible to educate kids in class and kids online asynchronous i had experience with that it's not good right it is not good for kids so we got this information on wednesday i don't think

050we can map and figure out what we're going to need to do with the kids who need to stay home the second thing is that i don't know if we can staff our classes this isn't about collective bargaining even though i know we have to bargain things but we can't force someone to come to work right people with legitimate health concerns may retire they may resign they may take fmla right how are we going to staff classes if people aren't able to come to work we're competing with every district in the state for replacements so i understand that people are concerned about remote learning and i would 100 agree with the comments that say remote learning cannot be like what it was in the spring didn't work for my family it didn't work for a

051lot of families and i will also say that we have to work to bring kids back to school as soon as possible right if it's clear that our case rates are not going to go up we need to move to hybrid sooner than later and we i don't think we can rate for a vaccine that may not come to save us um with that having been said right i think i'm going to have to vote for a remote plan it breaks my heart to do so um and i hope that we can make a commitment to come back at every single meeting and re-evaluate where we are so we can get our kids back in school as soon as possible thank you very much dr jenkins all right i guess i'll i guess i'll go

052next if no one else is uh chomping at the bit here um let me just pull up my notepad so yeah just just like mike just like uh dr jenkins um this is by far at least for my school committee tenure the single most important that i think i'll make and one of the most decisions i'll make in my lifetime this is a decision that i'm constantly looking over the data constantly talking to colleagues dr gifford principals other administrators teachers and all the work and i it should go without saying thank you dr gifford and your team right down to the teachers that have volunteered for all these meetings over the summer to the parents that have been involved to the community members this has been a collective team effort to come to the point

053that we're at right now um i have a i have a daughter that's going into her freshman year at dartmouth high school she's been begging me i don't i want to go into school i don't don't do a complete remote plan or she wants just like a lot of other students they want to go full time and i don't blame them that being said um you know right off the bat we know that a full return 100 it's not possible not transportation wise or logistical a hybrid plan versus a remote plan doing the walkthroughs for me last week and i'm so happy that we had the opportunity to do that it was very eye-opening for me a couple of things about them ultimately my ultimate goal is i want to see i want to see

054people i want to see students in the classrooms this year that that is the number one goal uh for for me and i hope for for this committee and for um the dotnet public school staff is that we want to see students back in the buildings but seeing what the classrooms look like the social distancing that's in place in six feet six feet between desks the a lot of materials a lot of furniture removed from the rooms having students wear masks in september heat to me i don't think that an in-person or a hybrid model right now would make a lick of difference between a remote model because there these students are going to have a hard time learning this is just my opinion they're going to have a hard time learning in that environment

055and teachers are going to have a hard time teaching in that environment that being said there's also a fact that you know i personally believe that a lot of the data that amongst students and children have been skewed it's been skewed because students have been quarantined across the country since march and i honestly believe that as soon as schools open and it's already happening it's already happening in some parts of the country that students schools have been open for a day for a week and students have already tested positive 250 students have been quarantined in one georgia school i know massachusetts is not georgia but until we have a better understanding as to how and we know this virus definitely spreads easier than we did amongst children and it affects them in ways that we

056didn't realize at first until i can see that see what that looks like in school districts that have opened and like dr jenkins said we need some more time i think the administration and i think the staff need some more time because there's so many what-if scenarios i can't even begin to tell you the as you as you start to think about this and put this into perspective a hybrid and having students return to the buildings that there's so many what-if scenarios that we've gotta we've got to do better with with trying to come up with answers for these parents like i said earlier the comments and concerns and questions that parents have had about what if this happens what if that happens what are you disinfecting with you know it goes it runs the

057gamut on parent concerns trust me when i say i want to see students back in school in person as much as every other parent because i'm a parent myself however i cannot in good conscience s support a hybrid plan at this time i want to be clear that i fully expect dr gifford in her team to make sure provide the professional development needed so we're not keeping the learning alive like we did in the uh between march and um in june what the commissioner was saying i expect as the as the chair of the committee and as a parent of a freshman in high school going into dartmouth high school i expect a full robust remote learning plan in place for the dartmouth public schools i will not accept anything less however that being said

058the goal the end goal here the end game is to get students slowly back into the buildings that needs to happen i agree i'm not optimistic that we'll have a vaccine this year that's where i'm coming from thank everyone uh mrs amaral can you hear me now i can't hear you we can hear you okay good i don't know what just happened there um i i don't really have prepared remarks as eloquent as um chris and dr jenkins however um you know i have been quite emotional so i'm going to keep it brief i think um this is tough um sorry um you know as a parent i have a fifth grader um incoming fifth grader who whenever i you know talk about school she you know same with she she really wants to go

059back um i work full-time i want to sorry oh my goodness want to come back to you want to come back to you please sure take a take a minute mary mrs wait yeah this is just a terrible decision you know i i don't know what else to say like i've been going back and forth same thing you know and i also have you know my incoming seventh grader was really depressed you know in the spring like i'm not gonna lie you know i have a sophomore who's you know well junior now who's so excited to come in she's like i feel so much more confident i really hope we can start the school year and you know incoming freshmen so excited to explore the clubs and everything else and you know and i'm hearing

060them talk and like plan their schedules and i'm like i just i i can't like i just i look at the hybrid and again like everyone else you know i want to say first you know mr kylie dr gifford your entire team i mean i went to the buildings you know the work in there has been extraordinary the work on the plans has been extraordinary i mean it's just you know every contingency that you can think of that's in front of you you thought of but yet there's things that we cannot prepare for so as i'm walking through you know i'm walking through the high school and i'm thinking how do we deal with cohorts in the high school we have so many different students and so many different schedules like i can't answer that

061question it's a calculator so we're going to have a cohort that's essentially half of those students on that day then you know what if a student shows signs you know at all these constituencies we're not nurses our teachers aren't nurses like it worries me like what if we have a student who comes in who shows signs which could be a whole number of things they're sent home do we force those parents to take you know take their child to get tested what is the what's happening at home during that time and more students are coming in i just i know our infection rates are low right now but you know we're not in a bubble massachusetts is in a bubble our community is not in bubble we know that there are people going on vacation

062you know right now who are going out of state you know their college students are moving around right now what is it going to look like in a month it's hard for us to know and i'd hate to think too you know i i really believe that you know having been you know i was a teacher is you know some of the community may know what some don't but you know i believe that again this spring was a different animal and that our teachers have had that time to you know really think about you know because they want to do what's best for their kids and they want to be in the classroom i heard that over and over and over from teachers that if i could i want to be in that classroom and

063they've thought of really exciting things to do with their students and again to chris to your point like i believe that they'll take those 10 days and they you know again they'll have more you know professional development time i'd like to give them the honor of that time instead of you know if we my concern i should say again is also staffing if we vote right now for hybrid then we're taking away that time that they could plan potentially because it looks to me i mean again i know this collective bargaining i don't want to go there but you know it looks like we may have an issue with even people who just have genuine health issues who are not able to come back into our schools and then we're also missing our you know

064part of our students who have health issues and i we're not abandoning them but they're not part of our community in the same way so i don't know i just my student my own children want to be back in the class and if i was if i could and i could send them back and they could have in the junior year that i'm you know and i want to get them back and i want to say you know sophie doesn't look like you'll get back but i just don't think i think we need to give the teachers time and i think we need to proceed slowly i think we need to you know say you'll come in and those small groups i liked what dr gifford was saying in the beginning you know we'll proceed

065slowly give them their technology they do meet their teachers and then we just keep revisiting and and again to dr jenkins point we'll you know we end to you know everyone's point like i want to get those kids back in the school but i just um we've got to prioritize there's i i know it's child care for many we got to prioritize their health their safety and really their education which i think is better served in the remote right now so thank you thank you mrs white listen i'm ready if i may mr nunes do i win the award over the years the crying award uh i didn't expect to cry but i am very emotional with this um i think uh you've all made go ahead oh um you know you've all made such

066great points um every you know we all want to see the kids back in school we all wish we weren't where we are and having to pick um as dr jenkins said and and others you know the in person full in person is just not feasible it's off the table um you know and i live it we all we all live it we all know in planning or in caring for our families um juggling um you know between my husband and i and and you know the arguments are around whose work gets prioritized when you have a fifth grader thank god we have an 18 year old who has been extremely helpful but also a 16 year old who requires um one to one 24 7 care um so this has been difficult so the

067weight of this and hearing from families who who want to see their kids go back um and thinking about those kids with high needs again i said last meeting i think of all of our kids as having um you know higher needs than than pre-covered um and i'm i'm completely aware of of of the the the weight of all that however um you know it's important for those families like mine who you know worrying about the special education did mention that you know students who have ieps they that are documented in their iep at all of those services they must receive a free and appropriate public education so every effort has to be put forth to make sure that those students with disabilities are prioritized and then the the guidance goes on to sort of

068explain who those kiddos are those kids with complex needs and i what i would like to see and i've heard um watching some of the recordings from desi is knowing that those students and like my son who i don't i'm not planning to send him back um anytime soon either but those families that that feel confident or that really you know they they like us need something more robust need in person their their children are struggling um jesse has mentioned that not to let this guidance preclude you from doing better and i wonder i would like to see some way you know our teachers know their children families know the struggle that they've gone through with their children with remote learning and while we want this to be extremely robust and just different and out

069of the park from where it was in the spring um i would like to see us be able to expand upon this high need guidance and thinking about those kiddos who who are really struggling who may not be on an iep um but are just not relating and our teachers know who those kids are we know who those families are and perhaps expanding upon our own listing of high needs students i'm sure that there are many families like mine who children are struggling and regressing and all of that but are worried about their health and safety and won't send their kids back so i don't know what that number will be district-wide of families willing to send their children back right now despite the the district as a whole going remote if we if we

070vote on that for that but i would like to see us enhance our listing of students that we're prioritizing like in the high school we have the flip program for students and we saw a different way about supporting them pre-covet obviously but perhaps we could add sort of a level for social emotional meaning some really uh meeting some some of those students who we've just dropped off because of of the disconnect if possible if we could look into creating our own enhanced version of a list with that said uh as much of a struggle as it is i've heard as all of you we've heard from both sides 50 either way i i just can't i i wasn't sure this morning how i would vote um although i i kept saying you know it to

071myself in my head and i'm sure it came out more eloquent in my head than it is right now um but i am uh i would i'm but i can only right now vote for remote but again visiting each time we meet and talking about how we can move to that next phase with that goal of hybrid to fold in person so that's all sorry i tripped over my words and i'm a little bit of an emotional mess you did find mrs amaral and i think to your point uh mrs amro i think it would benefit the district and i think that i have heard dr gifford and her team discussing this in the past or it's just so many so many things that are coming at us right now but i i think that

072it's really important that the district does consider doing a lot of outreach and i know we have the counselors and we have the support in the district to conduct the outreach for those families that may need additional support and services um during this time like you said maybe not a documented a disability iep and maybe not a 504 uh documented definitely those students that are that are having a difficult time with this and our counselors our staff are our people our faculty know who those students are and i think it's really important that we we do what we can as a district to support all families and really try to do that outreach um so i want to thank everyone i want to thank all my colleagues for their for their responses for taking the

073time to listen to whether to listen to uh dr gifford to conduct the walkthroughs of the schools um i think it was very beneficial and just just just listen to all stakeholders because this was really this is really about listening to all our all our stakeholders our community members our faculty staff parents um students um like some of you said you know if if it was up to my heart i would be sending i would be opening one voting to open school and sending my daughter and who so desperately wants to start high school in person however that's not the case so at this time does anyone have a motion chair i'd like to i'd like to make a motion that um the dartmouth school committee recommend that uh start off this year with a

074remote learning plan so just to confirm because you were cut off a little bit there you're making a motion to death to adopt a remote plan to a doctor remote plan do i have a second okay second i second by mrs waite so on the motion i have a motion by dr jenkins a second by mrs way on the motion any further discussion she hearing none oh yes mister yeah can we i've got a couple of here we got i know where this is headed can we have a discussion once this vote is done i've got a few questions on some general odds and ends can we have that discussion after you want to have it now we can have it after as long as you're okay with that it's fine with that i'm good

075with that okay thank you um chair uh all in favor we're gonna do a roll call please miss gentler mrs oliver yes shannon jenkins yes kathleen ameral yeah mary waite yes john nunes oh motion passes four to one for a remote plan thank you everyone mr nunes i'll turn over to you briefly uh for any comments or questions you have just a couple of quick things all right now that we're going to be remote dr given mr kyle and ms roy uh what does this do to our co-curricular and clubs type of deal i'm going to um we've already been discussing that but i think we're going to look at it as an on an individual basis like we talked uh a bit ago for example i'll just give an example as you know we've

076had the strength and conditioning um cohorts meeting in the morning we i was in touch with the aed this morning evidently we had a few little issues with that but as a reminder to kids to follow the rules we will do the same with the uh other programs that we have the music program is still running once again the social distancing they're they are abiding by all of the rules clubs same kind of thing we want to obviously give our kids as many experiences as we can um whether it's a virtual i just use debate club because in my mind i think debate can be anyway right or um small tiny little groups of kids come in for whatever club that is so we will be discussing with the principals of course how to get

077those up and running okay probably this one may be better for mr kylie but uh what are we going to do about school lunches for the students that qualify for free and reduced lunch are we going back to what we did earlier in the year or is that a work process also you know what mr nunes if if i just may uh i'm just thinking i'm just kind of thinking out loud here would it make more sense now that we now that we voted on this if maybe we set up another meeting next week where some of these i think at this point i i'd like to see at least a few more meetings in august briefing the committee on what the status is of a remote plan and some of these other questions um

078because i know like right off the top i i already have questions uh mr kylie if you want i don't know if you have an answer for mr nunes or and i'm good chris i'm good with that and if you want to just sit by till next week i'm good with that too seriously but i have i'd have more specific information that i could share next week obviously you know your vote tonight informs a lot of what we have to do in the near term we will you know we've been preparing for all eventualities as you know by touring the facilities and seeing what we've been doing so um we'll continue to to do that and make decisions for things like food service moving forward and we'd certainly hope to get approval from the usda

079to provide some food service uh moving forward chris i'm good we i can wait the rest of mine can wait no biggie okay yeah let's we'll discuss in a few minutes under uh reported the chair um some other things dr jenkins yeah i like mr means i have a number of questions and i'm thinking that maybe it might make sense for all of us to send those questions on to the administration beforehand but rather than it being sort of like we asked then and then it takes another week like they can be prepared for them for the sort of questions that we have because i think we probably all have a lot of questions um and i'm sure parents do as well so i think another meeting next week or as soon as we can

080um would be good and we can sort of prepare the administration for the sorts of things we'd like for them to talk about i love the idea we'll circle back to that under business once again thank you everyone under new business i'll turn it over to dr gifford title one ed flex waiver request thank you mr chair so we just wanted to give you a quick update as you know some of the funding shifts and changes over time so i've asked mrs oliveira who runs the title one program to just pop in and give us a quick update on what's been going on with our title one monies and how that has shifted tracy are you muted i can't see her so yes she is muted okay let me text [Music] there she goes got

081it can you hear us all right sorry about that yes i guess i was muted and trying to share my screen at the same time so thank you very much uh we're ready to go now i kind of have to joke a little bit i usually follow jonathan galisha when we do district events and i always say i get the short end of the stick because we all know jonathan can work a crowd and then i have to come up with my material and i think that now i'm following a very emotional and uh time-consuming conversation but i'm going to go through with that title 1 overview the reason it's just funny that we have along with getting kids back to school safely and not back to school safely and figuring out remote learning we

082also need to do all the other things to start school in september summertime is usually a busy time with curriculum teaching and learning and um we need to get all that done so we have a non-covered topic right now of the title one overview so as dr gifford said this went on the agenda has a we needed a uh waiver um i applied for the waiver and then actually jesse came back and said we don't really need it but we didn't want to take this off the agenda so we're going to go through with an overview of title 1 and what does it look like at dartmouth public schools the title 1 is the oldest and largest federal program uh in the country and about 93 percent of districts in massachusetts receive title 1 services

083along with the rest of the country the funds come from districts based on the number of low-income families that are served however once the school qualifies for those toyota wine funds its academic need not an economic standard that determines which students receive the services so it's something that always gets a little bit confused with title one we have low income families why we qualify for the money and how much we get but students that receive the services it's based on academic need so just because you're a title one student does not mean that you are of a low income family it's all based on academic need and the title one funds that the district gets are really meant to supplement and add to not to replace what the state funding gets so when we have

084title 1 schools everything that title 1 money gives should be on top of an extra and that schools that do not have title 1 should not be receiving those services so what are the priorities of title one it really is three main priorities and it's about strengthening our core program so our low-achieving students can access and achieve state standards title 1 thinks this should be done through professional development of teachers strengthening tier 1 our classroom instruction and they also look to involve parents and guardians so they want parents to be part of the program they feel parents are a strong point and there should be a very tight homeschool connection those were the priorities of title 1 set forth by the federal government here in dartmouth our low income percentages uh somewhat low but in

085the last few years as you can see here they've had an uptick now there was a big change as you can see in 2018 and the funding um equation of how we came with how money was passed out was changed that's where you saw that's why we have that change but as you can still see the percentages go up so district-wide low-income percentages really come from census data free and reduced lunch prices um data i mean and economically disadvantaged numbers so students who receive medicaid medicare um services that's all how it comes into a formula where they come up with our numbers one thing to keep in mind with these numbers is even though it's still one piece of pie or one pot of money from the federal government so even though the numbers go

086up it doesn't really mean our funding go up i think it's a great example of how we have to do more with less so even though more and more of our students might qualify for low income the pot of money is the same and so our piece of the pie doesn't get bigger as our numbers get bigger i've had to wrap my head around that personally as i've dealt with desi and we get the funding for our title one and they kind of explain it to me even though you're you're kind of getting poorer in a way people are getting poorer faster in other parts of the state so it was just interesting to help me wrap my my mind around the fact that the percentages and our funding don't always go up in a

087linear fashion so what does title 1 look like in dartmouth public schools so we at our title 1 schools here in dartmouth are part of school and quinn school they've been that way for some time so that means those are the schools that have the highest percentage of students who qualify for that low income percentage um a few years past dartmouth middle school was was somewhat high but the numbers and the schools keep changing uh back and forth so for the last few years it's been those schools but the mellow school in elementary school has crept up in free and in the low income prices i'm sorry in low income numbers so that's why this year new for 2000 new for this year we are qualifying the mellow school has a title 1 school so

088all of our elementary schools will qualify for title 1 services now once again circling back our pot of money doesn't get bigger just because our numbers getting bigger so we need to just kind of disseminate that money across the schools so to start out with for demelo school we're going to be giving them some supplies professional development and family math night as you can see the other schools we have uh personnel full-time employees working there servicing students and we're not that's not going to happen right now at demelo but in the past when we've done things like we've bought really cool supplies or really cool math um manipulatives we haven't been able to purchase them for the mellow because remember this is something above and beyond what the town does for the students so i

089just felt as the numbers crept up that it we had to do our due diligence to get some service into de mello school so if we go back to one of the math coaches and specialists that were at dimelo and i'm sorry potter and quinn school do the math coaches do that pd part that's part of title one so they work with teachers and classrooms to assist strengthening classroom instruction and they really work to provide strategies and interventions to for all students so all students can grow and then they really monitor all students but they look very closely at our title 1 students at our low performing students what do they need to get some what do they need to to get the state standards in the pd that they've given has been all about

090the math workshop guided math uh project based learning and that's where i come in with the supplies we've bought numerous things so that instead kids can have a chance to grapple with math can see math in a concrete fashion and to really grow a deeper level of understanding the math specialists take small groups of students and what's great about title one since we are a school-wide program which we've applied for a couple years ago is they can be fluid groups we really take kids who are struggling and we work with them until we get them up and then we can move kids in and out and when we take our kids for our small group instruction we really focus on what the needs of that student is we're not helping them with their class work

091but we're finding gaps in their knowledge and they're filling in the gaps so if i can just show some pictures which it doesn't look like they're all showing up and i don't know why but the student all the way on the little boy with the little pieces he's working with an osmo kit so this was purchased with title one funds and it's you set an ipad in it and kids can manipulate numbers and can look at numbers and go along with the computer program so that's some things that we've done with our title one supplies this is what we'll now be able to support at de melo school the picture all the way over on the left that i don't think you can see was just a big connect 4 thing but our teachers did

092percentages they did a raise they did a lot of fun activities with that and then the one in the middle was a candyland game where we were doing counting skills with our littlest learners and that happened at a family math night some other examples of materials that we have bought with our title 1 mining were called digi blocks if you're not really um i was going to show a video of them but they really show concretely kids can take apart and put together place value so they have a thousand block and inside a thousand block 100 blocks you open up the 100 block and there's 10 blocks in there and it really shows students what they can do with place value that's real super quick overview of title one i didn't know if anyone had

093any questions i wasn't ending with questions but i'm going to stop my screen now and come back so if anyone had questions about title 1 or thank you mrs oliveira a great presentation and actually very informative around because i know some people wonder sometimes how our title one funds are used uh so any of my colleagues have any comments questions uh from mrs oliveira i will just say uh thank you uh no it was it was actually very informative i know it's a that's tough to follow after uh after the vote we just took i'm gonna go back to it my same thing with jonathan i'm i'm used to it it's fine no but lots of great information no it was very helpful and i know that um it was informative and a lot of

094people will find it very useful just because it helps it helps us understand what the money is used for and how we qualify so no thank you very much for your time just to give a push we need uh we need our families to fill up free and reduce lunch applications because that's how we kind of draw in the money so especially during the times and what's coming up in our country so just reminded of families to feel free to fill those out and send them in great thank you thank you very much thank you thank you take care thank you gracie also under new business we have superintendents update dr gifford yes thank you so i do have other things going on leave it or not uh so speaking of mrs oliveira we do

095have new staff members we and i will have a real update but i was back and forth with ms genthner today and it's 11 new staff member teachers and two new admin that will be adding to the district uh again replacing retired retirements etc so we'll provide more information on that soon but the project time meeting the intro meeting will be starting in august august 18th and 19th and we're hoping to get a live meeting once again outside we're hoping for a socially distanced um we just felt that if we can that it helps them develop um relationships and really get to do some of the activities that are usually involved with the project time with the new teachers so we'll see what happens we had our two computer science teachers one we've already had

096in the district brian gia and our new eric bosworth hire that just completed the project leap way training for computer science and if you recall we entered project lead the way partnership as a way to um just add more experiences more opportunities for kids the advanced placement and it also exposes students to more opportunities such as scholarships and the and the like so we just had two teachers complete that training we are looking to do our pre-k screening week of august 24th and we have posted for some help on that so we'll see how that goes a letter was sent to elementary parents on behalf of all the elementary schools we are again no matter what happens whether we're in remote or we then move to hybrid which i hope we do soon uh we're

097putting together some we call them kid kits even though we hated that but just coming up with like a shoe box kind of uh with manipulatives etc crayons markers whatever white boards that students would have in their classroom that would be their go-to materials as well as advising parents on what to purchase for a remote learning situation at home rather than by things that they bring into school on a normal basis so we wanted to get that out because we know that sales happen etc so all of the elementary sent that out they'll also be developing videos especially for our k students but we'll be doing some videos throughout the district and as i state to welcome students explain what's happening but also we are we'll be working with the teachers to see if part

098of that 10 day is we can get those kiddos in to meet their teachers and find out what will be expected of them in as we move into the new year uh let's see from technology as we noted last time they are working very hard knowing that if remote learning was to take place we need that internet service so to increase the bandwidth in the district and they also have been collating and collecting excuse me and readying the chromebooks for dissemination we do have enough for anyone we have ordered extras but we have about forty three hundred chromebooks in the district right now and as you know around thirty over thirty six hundred thirty seven hundred students obviously some already have them but we will be ensuring that everyone that needs one will have a

099chromebook and i also want to state that we are planning i didn't talk with all the all the leadership team just a couple right now we are going to be planning on doing hosting something similar to this for the community um where our admin team would be available we won't be doing we'll do a live stream just like this but we will be asking folks to send in questions regarding the remote learning plan to questions at dartmouthschools.org and we'll be collecting them and collating them whether it's questions about technology transportation um special education and we will be able to we're going to try to put those together and have our team do something like this just go through them and say you know we had a question about this so it wouldn't be that folks

100would be live sending us questions but if they send into questions at dartmouthschools.org um we're going to put that together hopefully very soon maybe next week or so as fast as we can get them in and coordinate that because we know that people are going to have a lot of questions about what we just talked about and i will plan on putting out at least a quick update tomorrow um with some of the details that we talked about and again i just want to thank the committee i know obviously everybody's hearts are in this the emotion that is running deep for our entire team uh is um you know i don't think we need to speak about it we all understand that our our core responsibility and responsibilities to get kids in school and we

101we get that so we will continue to work very hard to get them back and that's what i have tonight thank you dr gifford for that update i'm thrilled to hear that you're already working on putting together kind of a q a a live q a i'm looking forward to that um that being said everyone um it's important that we have a follow-up meeting next week if we can make that possible i think i i love shannon's idea let's get the questions if you have questions let's get them to the administration let's get them to dr gifford ahead of time so they have some time her team have some time to um to research what we're looking for because i know already i have about a half dozen questions i'm spinning around my head so

102i i am not available next monday i'm not sure what the committee's pleasure is and trying to get something scheduled um i'm not sure if any other dates where really monday's the only day it doesn't work for me chris we've got wednesday with smack at five uh that's uh next i thought that was this wednesday well that's next wednesday i put it on the wrong date on my calendar thank you just i mean other than other than and other than that one on the 19th i'm available i'm also available next week how about tuesday this tuesday the 18th work sorry yes tuesday the 18th good for me what time are you thinking uh i would say the same time but if if you can't do four we can pick another time it was good for

103me just for baseball games four is good for you mm-hmm okay yeah four should i get it so why don't we schedule a meeting for next tuesday the 18th at four o'clock and uh mr peratti i know he's already in touch with me if you could get that uh that link posted out and uh shout out that'd be great did you have a question mrs amaral i just had um something to share too that through the cpap information sure i i guess i could mention it next week as well because um although we could have we haven't met the you know those most people know that i also chair the special advisory council in town until somebody wants to step up and help um other than those that are already helping um so we've invited

104um beth townsend to come and sort of like an open house we ask we'll certainly share the district's questions email but we thought we would have her on to just talk about what we know at that point knowing that students who receive special education or are considered that high priority will hopefully be looking at some in-person school so it's august 26 at four o'clock and if people are on facebook they can just look on the dartmouth cpac facebook page or email dartmouth cpac gmail.com and we'll get that link um to register and or to submit a question as like i said as well as sharing the questions at dartmouthschools.org email for families but that's great just wanted to share thank you mrs amaral any other comments or questions from the board i'd just like to

105take this opportunity to uh thank miss gunther for all her help uh this past week with uh rounding up all these emails uh and getting them to the committee and keeping track of everything for us so it's been uh much appreciated kate just thank you that being said that being said as we just said our regularly scheduled uh our next regularly scheduled meeting of the dotmos school committee is tuesday august 18th at 4 00 pm at time i'll entertain a motion to adjourn into executive session uh we respec with respect to collective bargaining with union personnel and not to reconvene second got a motion by mr news second by dr jenkins on the motion any further discussion roll call please miss gentler chris oliver yes shannon jenkins yes kathleen amer yes mary waite yes john

106nunes yes meeting has been adjourned thanks everyone we'll see you in a minute stay cool