001well good afternoon everyone i would like to call this meeting of the darkest school committee to order for monday august 3rd 2020 roll call please miss gentler chris oliver here shannon jenkins here kathleen admiral here mary wait neutered mary thank you here he is here john nunes yeah thank you miss cancer uh once again i'd like to welcome you all to the august 3rd meeting of the dartmouth school committee i would like to remind everyone that per governor baker's order 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 can access this meeting via live stream at www.youtube.com forward slash dhs tv media in addition the event will be re-broadcast
002on dc tv channels 9 and 18 on the following days wednesday and thursday at 5 pm friday at 6 a.m saturday at 8 a.m and sunday at 2 p.m school committee reserves right to implement additional remote participation procedures and will notify the public of these procedures as soon as practicable that being said uh we have allotted a few minutes on tonight's agenda uh for public comment uh just a reminder that anything uh that you wish to comment on must be related to tonight's agenda and for those of you uh who do not know who do not know the routine i simply uh if there's any that were sent ahead of time we can uh miss gentler can read those now or i'm going to give you our email address and you're more than welcome to
003send them over to her and we'll revisit this following the meeting so any public comments can be uh emailed to our recording secretary kathleen guenther at dartmouthschools.org once again kathleen genther that's k-a-t-h at garlic schools dot org so i'll turn it over to you ms ganther do you have any uh public comments as of uh no i do i have four perfect and they're all and they're all relating to agenda items correct uh correct so uh we have one here from kathleen baldwin um she writes to us the following questions out of the three million dollars from the care out of the three million dollars from the cares act how much was awarded to the schools how is it being distributed among school costs transportation ppe sanitizing efforts cleaning supplies materials for students and homes
004her second question is have any staff been cut teachers or teachers assistants her third have any school buildings been tested or fitted for ventilation systems i know that quinn in the high school has had mold issues in the past with some air conditioners provided in specific locations this however doesn't provide a collective view of the air quality within all of the schools number four please outline all specifics of the hybrid plan rotation of days am and pm sessions number five specifics on considerations for other than classroom teachers related services many related service providers ots pts speech therapists apes go to more than one building what options are available to address this reality related service providers also work with students in different classroom and grade levels at the same time specific specifics on how to address
005this question mark how do related service providers provide inclusion services question mark mark specifics question mark excuse me number six what resources money and supplies are being provided to students with the necessary materials needed to complete purposeful effective therapy number seven what is the timeline for the final plan to be shared with all stakeholders number eight during the ten day delay of school starting what is the plan for educators and all staff to do will teachers be given time to plan their lessons therapy and set up the electronic needs number nine how will we handle substitutes and sick days if a teacher therapist is out sick or for a personal professional day how will parents be informed therapists are not provided substitutes but will need someone to notify parents etc especially if it is remote
006respectfully submitted kathleen baldwin our second public comment uh inquiry comes from joanne avila and she writes will co will public comments be allowed at this meeting uh with to which i did respond that yes it would be and has been since meetings were held remotely uh number two were other buildings outside the school departments controlled considered i.e vacant buildings the new library southworth library question mark number three what happens to the children who see specialists for reading and math number four have you considered the financial impact on two-income families by doing the hybrid model and number five with sixty percent of parents wanting their kids back to ins in person learning why are you not planning for that amount of kids and getting an accurate number to work with for your planning uh the third
007public comment that has been received so far today who is i'm sorry who was that from kate the the last one i read was from joanne avila thank you this comes from maria souza and she writes please stop discussing and rehashing our name and logo the community strongly supports it this is well known please focus on reopening schools and educating our children there is a pandemic going on and kids haven't been in school in months less divisive politics and more education please the last one that i had received so far this afternoon comes from jose fernandez please ensure your focus is solely on children returning to school and not political agendas of individual members the community supports our school name and logo any committee established that may discuss the name and logo should be around
008its education and history and no attempts of changing it and erasing native american history we cherish native american history and want to preserve and continue to honor their contributions to our town's history that is what i have received so far great thank you so much miss gunther we appreciate that and i'm sure that some of those questions especially around mrs baldwin's uh concerns will be brought up uh during the uh dr gifford's reopening presentation as well as maybe some of the other ones we'll be discussing however as uh just as a reminder during public comment uh we do uh allow public comment we listen to the public comment uh we do not respond directly to um this has been past practice for as long as i can remember now we do not respond directly to
009public comment however if it does come up um during the time of the meeting at certain point that's one thing um so that being said i will uh is it possible for uh miss granto to uh forward those emails i'm doing that right now so we have them for our records i am doing that right now thank you kate much appreciated i apologize mr chairman thank you uh miss gentler thank you mr nunes no worries at all at this time the chair will entertain a motion to approve the right mr oliver excuse me i've had my hand up for a while i you know what the problem is i i can only see myself i'm not seeing anyone else right so if i may we received several emails earlier late last week where the people
010writing the emails explicitly asked that those emails be entered into public comment um specifically brooke worley sent an email i know david aaron sent an email and those emails said i would like these entered as public comment for the meeting so we're gonna accept emails that come today but not friday we need to clearly communicate that to people you can only send public comment on monday um or if they want it to be public comment it has to be noted but we can't sort of set up an arbitrary deadline and say we'll take things today but not things from friday that's fine uh kate do you happen to have those specifically um i do in front of you and i i'm more than happy to listen to those um overwhelming though overwhelmingly though we've gotten
011150 plus emails at least my selfish chair so i don't often get the opportunity to see the details in all of them so you're more than welcome to read those i have no problem with that okay i also have a another one i just received from rene vieira to just give me a moment and i believe this question is from mr rotty if you could stop spotlighting me so i keep so i don't keep losing my gallery view um i would appreciate that i know i'm sure it makes for better tv um but i'm continuously having to go back to my gallery view when i'm only seeing myself so that would be appreciated if you could just leave it on gallery view for me uh mr aaron's rights at the july 6 meeting committee member
012jenkins asked if the second mas c resolution regarding anti-racism could be postponed until the next meeting so all members including ms waite would be able to vote dr jenkins also suggested the administration provide a presentation highlighting some of the ways the district is teaching about race and diversity superintendent gifford stated the administration would prepare something i'm sorry i think that was already read at a different is that the email that you were referring to um shannon yes but i believe he also asked if the resolution will be taken up and the reason why i highlight that is because i that does relate to the question of the diversity um committee that we're discussing one moment please yes i see it uh mr aaron's rights um no i'm sorry i don't know that i actually have
013that one shannon or i i haven't found it yet um forgive me i'll read i'll read ms um vieira's comment and if you could just come back to this maybe and i can find these other ones for you sure i have no problem with you revis coming back at the end of this thank you um so the discussion at the last meeting and i'm looking at the minutes now said that uh we were in support with sending that resolution uh to be sent to the policy subcommittee on uh anti-racism that's right that was that was what i remembered as well dr jenkins i'm not suggesting that we should respond we don't respond to public comments but mr aaron specifically asked for that to be read into the record says for public comment and at the
014end of his email it says the august 3rd agenda does not take up this resolution will the school committee be scheduling a vote on the masc anti-racism resolution on august 3rd if not when we don't have to respond but he did ask for that to be read into the public record in public period so that so that being said i'm going to i'm going to clarify this moving forward we're only accepting um public comment the day of the school committee meeting so if anyone wants to once the agenda is posted typically unless there's a legality problem with that comments will be taken on the monday of the the day of the school committee meeting starting that day because the genders are usually posted 48 hours in advance so i think it's only fair to kate
015who's going to be responding to these and the amount of emails that she gets that we ask moving forward as of today that any agendas that have posted the political opponents are sent to ms genther on the day of the school committee meeting okay would you like me to read ms vieira's comments sure this is one that you just got correct sure dear dr gifford and members of the school committee my name is rene vieira president of the dartmouth educators association and i address you remotely this afternoon regarding the reopening of dartmouth public schools the dartmouth educators association recognizes that the best way for students to learn is in person in the classroom the dea also recognizes that the superintendent and administration have been working hard to address the health and safety issues associated with
016a re-entry into the school buildings the dea recognizes that guidance from the state has been slow and limited the commissioner's recommendations do not align with the practices presently being followed by the massachusetts state government local governments and many businesses nor do these recommendations come with the financial support necessary to be able to effectively put these guidelines into place the members of the dea want to return to our buildings to do what we do well where we do it our best but we value the health of all of our lives students and staff above all else and thank you for your time respectfully renee vieira uh to shannon's um question about the other email i received i can also read that concerning i believe the um the dartmouth logo uh like just give me from ms
017worley would you yes please ms worley writes i would like to submit this comment for the school committee meeting i urge the committee to take up the issue of the dartmouth indian mascot i live in dartmouth with my husband and two young children when our kids are old enough they will go to dartmouth public schools i strongly support the removal of the indian mascot and logo and i'd like to address a few of the common arguments of those who feel differently notion one you don't know the history the tribe approved the logo there are a few things problematic with this statement the first is the distinction between the logo and the mascot the logo was updated to correct historical inaccuracies in the 70s cheryl angel's maltese chairwoman of the aquina tribe gay head helped with
018this redesign when she was a student at dartmouth high school this is not an approval to use the likeness as a mascot and andrew's maltese supports the district engaging in a dialogue to investigate the use of the indian as mascot she also said in an interview last year that the term indian refers to more than just the wampanoag tribe and that it is important to consider the effect on other schools who interact with dartmouth students if historical maps are accurate the majority of the town of dartmouth lies within the territory of the akushnip wampanoag tribe one of the original 69 wampanoag tribes only three of which still exist the mashpee wampanoag one of these three also wrote a letter last year to oppose the use of the native american mascots notion two as committee member
019noon said at the july 20th meeting i'm happy being an indian i've always been an indian and will continue to be an indian we do it respectfully we do it with pride we don't talk in a negative or derogatory way about them and we act very kind to them aside from the obvious contradiction that he is in indian yet he is kind to them i think it's important to address the respectful and prideful aspects of the statement a large number of healthy male wampanoag warriors who were sold were sold into slavery during king philip's war the very nature of the mascot especially one with a logo depicting a brave aggressive young warrior is to create a stereotype this alone should be enough to dissuade us from using their likeness as a mascot but further the
020mascot does not honor the full experience of a wampanoag village excluding women elders and children if we truly wanted to be respectful and yoke pride we could start by teaching and honoring the spectrum of experience of the people of the first light the truth is unless one is truly native american they will never be a dartmouth indian and to be proud of representing a stereotype only serves the person making the claim not the native person represented if you are confident that the town of dartmouth and native americans and surrounding communities as a whole support this there is no harm in opening up the comment to the public to address the idea that the school committee has better things to do i do understand the weight of the work you do both of my parents were
021public school teachers and so is my sister and i know that you have your own battles to fight the question of the mascot though does not belong does rather belong on this list if you haven't already please read the american psychological association's statement on the harm of the use of native americans as mascots i also i also know systemic racism is a centuries-old problem and feels overwhelming that is why these little actions are so important we can make a difference in our small ways this is only one respectfully brooke worley thank you brooke thank you miss gentler anything else that have come through since i don't see anything else at the moment okay so so like i said earlier uh we will revisit uh any public comments that have been entered um or emailed to
022kate kay towards the end of this meeting uh that being said at this point in time the chair will entertain a motion to approve the regular session minutes of july 20 2020. so moved second and the motion on the floor by dr jenkins a second by mr news on the motion any further discussion roll call please mrs gunter chris oliver yes shannon jenkins yes mary waite yes john nunes yes definitely thank you kate we appreciate that uh next up on the agenda under old business superintendents update on return to school plans i'll turn it over to our fearless doctor bonnie gifford i don't think i've been called that yet ms dollar thank you so i'm going to share my screen and hopefully i work it okay present and before i start i just want to
023say and um we did receive a number of comments my latest superintendent update i invited folks to send their thoughts so i i did receive a number of those um for consideration as we develop or continue to tweak our plan i also want to say that um to remind folks that this is an extremely complex situation our team has been working for weeks uh continuing to get the guidance from deci and trying to make the best plans that we think would best serve our students and keep our staff and students healthy and safe i don't have all the answers yet i don't have all the answers even what miss baldwin presented tonight but we are continuing to work on all of those we're aware of all of those in as i said between the central
024office the teams of teachers who have helped and the building admin um we're working very hard to try to create the best plans we can and know that they don't please everyone so to begin with i just want to go over quickly deci and the timelines that we've been given and as everyone knows desi has required each district we've said this before to develop three plans to support our return to school we did present our submit our preliminary plan on july 31st as required this was simply a template asking for a summary of the three different plans which one is the hundred percent in person aligned with safety precautions the second one was the hybrid model same thing aligned with safety precautions and a full remote model i'll talk a little bit about next steps
025about the august 10th date as we um get to the end of this presentation but as i said um as it says there we will be making a selection and it will be due to dusty by august 10th at the bottom you see that each district was also asked to do what they could call a pressure test or a feasibility study looking at the operational system the instructional areas how many students we could fit according to the six foot distancing um what how we might walk students through hallways etc etc so we asked each building and mr kylie helped a lot with that to try to get a sense of what might be possible in our schools just a quick uh timeline you can see that deci continued to provide guidance along the way um
026some of it came later than we would have liked such as the transportation guidance we've had special ed guidance summer school guidance and each one of them is about 20 pages long so we continue to try to um sort through that and use as much information as we can as we develop our plans we've also had continual meetings with the commissioner our roundtables meet across the state the executive board and of course we're in weekly if not bi-weekly um contact with the special ed uh department from desi continuing to provide guidance so some of the general safety requirements that we're um looking at as we look at a hybrid model i have to say up front that a full return is is impossible um and i can talk a little bit more about that but
027that will be pretty much impossible so we're thinking of looking at these um general safety requirements as we think more towards a hybrid model at this point so we're using a six foot feet of social distancing with our desks i was actually in a couple of the schools with mr kylie today uh looking through various rooms as we continue to support the building principles on all of their logistics and thinking through what they're going to be doing for everything um we're having excessive furnishings removed and will be increased signage about cleaning etc one way in the hallway for um group movement lunches will be served in classrooms restroom and hallway supervision and increased cleaning and sanitizing one of the things we're looking at for the restroom and hallway supervision is with some of the grant
028money that's been allocated for covid response is to try to hire extra support monitors that would continue to support recess time bathroom visits etcetera increase cleaning and sanitizing mr kylie has been working with our union afscme union to try to think about can we increase time that folks are devoting to the buildings to be able to continually clean those areas such as the bathrooms and classrooms after lunch etc so to continue to add time um so right now we're in conversation about that as we've said students would remain as much as possible with their cohorts and we'll talk about that in a minute and a grade level for example a grade three classroom with about depending on the class size 10 or 12 students would be in their classroom for most of the day uh
029we've worked hard with our nurses as well and again with the building visits looking at really pinpointing what an isolation area would look like what are the protocols for visits and treatment how do students flow through that area and um with bathroom access etc so we've been working on that and have some very good ideas moving folks around in the buildings and re reusing something a room that wasn't a nurse's station might become a nurse station so the buildings have pretty good idea of what that will look like the transportation guidance when it finally came out said one student per seat seated diagonally we're looking at approximately 20 students because we want to be able to maintain a section on the bus where if a student does happen to get on the bus and exhibit
030some kind of symptoms they they can be put aside or separate from the other students um one of the things a couple of things we would want to make sure folks knew that with this um really significant issue that we have students would be assigned to seat they would be assigned a one drop off and one pickup area only we've accommodated tons and tons of them in the past that will not be possible students will be assigned to seat they'll be lying they go from for example the way the roots will run uh even when they get picked up from school the person in the back seat will go on first etc etc so that the person in the front seat then gets off first mr kiley is pretty confident that um very confident that
031given this guidance we we have the capacity to transport students in a hybrid method and he has obviously gone ahead um and purchased lots and lots of ppe equipment and it answers some of those funds we're using for that some of the funds might be used for the additional monitors etc here is some of the items that have been excuse me have been purchased already and of course excuse me one minute depending on the person's role such as a nurse such as a therapist the additional they would have um access to more intense ppe equipment um as necessary we do not have a shortage at this time of any of this hand sanitizer dispensers are being put in all of the classrooms so as we said we did conduct a feasibility study starting with jesse's
032minimum three foot requirement uh as you know it the dust that came out said three to six feet and obviously with that there's just no way we could get all of our students even using as it says here non-traditional teaching areas the gymnasiums the auditoriums um there had to be redeployment of staff there was as i said the potential for layoffs because we would need let's just say we needed more math teachers to split math um classrooms and we don't have the properly licensed personnel so does that mean hiring different personnel and some personnel don't have the position so it was just becoming a nightmare to make that happen plus with the transportation guidelines it would just be either additional buses required did i spell buses right yeah um and double routes etc so um
033they're not i would say very few districts across the commonwealth that even are going to be capable of doing this and good luck to them so our hybrid model for folks what we've decided on for continuity of learning uh trying to maintain small class sizes is that we were looking at an alternating day with two cohorts of students cohort a and cohort b we are in the process now of trying to identify and split students into those cohorts it's it's it's difficult everything's difficult but what we want to do is put siblings together so that parents have their children you know would be we know this is difficult for parents no matter what happens so that's our intent at this point um so students that let's say in cohort a would come in they'll follow
034their daily schedule teachers are teaching every day in their classroom they would go home with their assignments independent readings projects to complete whatever it might be it could be a flipped classroom kind of a scenario where the teacher says okay in preparation for tomorrow's the next day's class watch this video come back and we'll have questions or read this book we'll have a discussion whatever it might be as an almost like a college class where you go home do your assignments and come back on the second day cohort b would come in and have the same lesson so the teacher is teaching the same lesson two days in a row students once again on the remote day are working on completing their videos their projects etc the middle school is is experimenting with and um
035jonathan's been working with technology uh bandwidth wise etc that students on the remote day would be tuning in via a zoom connection to listen in onto what the teacher was speaking as a reinforcement um and additional learning we're just looking at that right now at the middle school and according to the guidance and we're going to try um our intent would be to get high needs students what's qualified as high needs students in every day those are students in our smaller classrooms our past pals programs um they talk about ell students right now we have only um on we would be looking at level one and two students and getting them in and we only have ten across the district elementary wise and four at middle and high school so it wouldn't change the numbers
036in the classrooms really to speak of students will be graded and attendance will be taken right now as it says a student who chooses to not return to school our plan is and we're still waiting for the guidance from dussy i'm i've been told that tomorrow was supposed to hear what the two vendors that they're they're partnering with will be we're supposed to hear that tomorrow for a learning management system so once we know that we will be able to let folks know um i mean there's many options you can you can have people in charge of it you can just turn it over like almost like that's up teachers at the other end you buy into that and students then access a remote learning platform put out by one of these vendors i understand
037one of them that they've been talking about is located in florida and is very successful and then we have the remote learning um right now and oh there is a spelling error there d missing um as of today with the conference with deci and the commissioner they're continuing to say this is not recommended through their medical experts that they've been consulting with given the virus trends in the state and they're continuing to once again push for as much in-person learning as possible but if we do have to go remote our plan would be that the schedule their regular daily schedule students would be following that with real-time face-to-face lessons teachers would be teaching not taped lessons like enrichment things like we did in the spring so that's why we say on daily basis students will
038they will be visually connected with their teachers for their content we will want teachers to report to their buildings and work from their classrooms and attendance will be recorded etc grades earned and at this point um i put this in we have not made a district decision of course we don't know about sports but according to the commissioner he was recommending if students chose remote they why would they then be allowed to come in for other things again no decision has been made special education as you know has had enough a grade as far as guidance goes so these are some of the things we're looking at again with the special ed students the significantly challenged students coming in every day um beth and laurie are working hard working on evaluations and how to get
039those conducted now um remote as we can see we did have some folks attend some online classes this year to help with them learning about teletherapy our speech pathologists team meetings will be held primarily off as a remote and but the important thing to note is that students to the best of our ability have to receive instruction and services as opposed to the model we used in the spring which was more just resource and support so the guidance has really been upgraded and we are required through with fape to offer instruction and services and of course as we say to the maximum extent possible we're looking to bring in those kiddos with significant needs and our pre-skates preschool students because as you know we have an integrated preschool some of the technology issues we've been
040um mr galesha and his team have been working all summer to make sure that we're ready to go as you know in the spring it was catch us catch can people were satisfied but it was um kind of quick and dirty if you will so some of the things we've done is um we want to upgrade our teachers devices so we've had some additional laptops being ordered and processed um whiteboards the normal whiteboards being installed throughout the district but again preparing for the extra bandwidth the expanded bandwidth because if you think about it if the teachers now all come in for remote and working from their classrooms that's going to have a huge huge impact on the bandwidth that we have been using so far so that's in the process and um obviously we're renewing
041some of these licenses for these important software packages that we've been using all along so the chromebook chromebooks we've purchased more chromebooks right now we have as you can see pretty much um it's going to be pretty much let me think a second eight through twelve we have enough for we're going to have enough if we have to do it for a six through twelve one to one and enough carts in the elementary to disseminate as a one to one so basically we have enough for everyone we have enough devices for everyone and um the team like i said is cleaning them repairing them inventorying getting everything ready for deployment whether it's we show up in school on day one or and then we leave or we don't show up at all we'll be ready
042for either one some of the financial support we are receiving um i asked mr kiley to put this in to let folks know that there is there is quite a bit of money that's available and but you know we have to apply for the grants but we have the um corona relief fund the user money of course and um we're waiting to hear on a remote learning tech grant that we did apply for so we hope to hear on that any day now and that would help us buy additional hardware and then of course the cares um as you can see we're not sure that's that's for some school but it's basically non-school specific okay so next steps um so jesse dussy said that they are supposed to tell us give us any feedback on
043the the template that we sent in and again it was just a summary of basically what i just told you on the three plans we have to continue negotiations with the the union we have a meeting on wednesday the last negotiation session we had we talked a lot about safety and health and we want to continue those negotiations to talk about these plans that we have um suggested i am also going to now that especially once next week which i'm hoping that we then can make a decision and we have enough data to make a decision of what we're going to try to start school with send uh information or actually i need to gather data from from the community from the parents explicit data household data students in school are they planning to come
044back are they not planning do they choose remote and are they planning to ride the bus if they do come back this kind of data will be very very helpful for not only from the district's perspective but also from the building's perspective as they're continuing to ensure that they can fit all of their students in classrooms etc we have had conversations with our local health agent um and other stakeholders by meaning like nurses etc and we will continue to do that especially as we get closer to deciding the what plan we will implement and ensuring that we have followed all recommended guidance as far as health and safety go um obviously the buildings will continue as i said i was at buildings today with mr kiley and we'll continue to work with folks in the
045buildings to work out problems in logistics and help them prepare for what their cohorts look like so the final implementation plan i was mistaken and i found i clarified that today as the commissioner's meeting we will not have to vote on the entire plan itself as as we've drafted so far and continue to tweak i know there's errors etc but um but what will have to be voted on and submitted by august 10th is what we are choosing to implement whether it's the hybrid the remote etc there is the possibility if um the chair signs a letter to desi he said today he would offer districts a couple of days extension which i think we might do only because if we have our meeting on the 10th i really want to then be prepared to
046be able to submit that um the next day or the 12th or so so we'll we'll probably do that as far as the 170 student day go again that was clarified again today that is not bankable um that has to be up front days the one thing we did suggest to the union was that we hold off a couple of days not knowing what might happen a few weeks in do we need a couple of days to rethink retrain re we look at what we're doing do we transition to another plan so we will continue to have that conversation whether we hold our own pd days out and then use the i'll call it the commissioner's days um up front those days are meant to be for training for health and safety logistics in the
047buildings setting up the classroom well the classrooms will pretty much be set um ensuring that folks know about their um the various plans the hybrid and the remote and how it will work in their school and any other logistical things that have to do with this transition to a different learning atmosphere and as i said the vote on our implementation plan okay and that's all i have i know we had some questions i hope i was hoping some of them was answered in the in the presentation um one i will i will talk a little bit about arrival and dismissal because this news has a specific question but um again we're going over that we went over that with buildings today working out a plan for that how students are um walkers go we'll call
048them walkers that meet their parents etc so we are working on those dismissal and arrivals one thing for example at the high school if it was a hybrid model um parents instead of driving up front would drive all the way around the back of the building students would go in through the um like the music area the um cafeteria area um students that are parking would park their normal way and then go into the athletic room athletic area and um other students obviously would get off the bus and proceed through the front foyer um so all of that is being looked into and worked on uh lunches we said that that would be in the so anyway why don't we stop there and if folks have specific questions as i said i'm sure i don't
049have all the answers um but i'm not sure there's much we haven't thought about just don't have the answers thank you dr gifford i know that was it took a lot of time and a lot of effort to put that together and we still don't have all the answers that we're looking for so i know i have some but i will uh open it up and turn it over to my colleague first so um uh i'll start with uh this is wait yes hi um dr gifford one question is you know my two high school kiddos are getting excited about clubs what are your thoughts i know we've talked about sports being delayed what about clubs that run in the evening with kids coming back into the school are we going to try to move
050those to debate deca completely on have those be virtual and will um the stipends still the same with the same staff like what are your thoughts on that yeah i actually had a conversation with mr tebow today about that and we are going to play it a little bit by ear right now we'd love to consider having them we would if it was possible and we were in a hybrid model we would certainly want to try to do the cohort a cohort b kind of thing and um so is and if i guess there are certain clubs like a debate club for example that could certainly be virtual so either way we would try to keep as many as we could functioning and in that case yeah stipends would just remain the same right okay
051thank you and also i just did want to mention also we've decided because someone asked about food allergies and because students would be close we're gonna we're gonna tell folks it's a non-peanut district and i know other districts have done that so thank you it'll just be off limits i mean i can't monitor if a student brings a peanut butter but and also don't forget they'll be six feet apart at their own stations not running around the room and the room will be cleaned after so we've made that decision as a district thank you mr wake start your drinking so i'll just start by saying thank you to everyone working on this um some time back i had an opportunity to visit an aircraft carrier and i was talking to a fighter jet pilot and
052he said in order to land their fighter jet on an aircraft carrier he had to get his head in a window that was like about one foot and i'm sure that's kind of what it feels like to you you're flying a fighter and you're trying to fly through this little window um it's really hard work and i think we all very much appreciate how much time and effort you all have put into this um mine is think i think i have a couple questions but i also want to make a comment because i'm seeing a lot of emails to us and comments about social media well all the parents say they want fully face to face right why aren't we doing that and i think it's really important to to emphasize right the safety of
053everyone involved here has to be paramount right i understand as a parent how tremendously difficult this all is for parents marketing parents but the safety of the people who work for us and the children who come into our buildings has to be our number one concern and then the second thing is you know what's sort of best for their education because then we also get the flip side why aren't you going fully remote and this is a very difficult decision but we know how important it is for our kids to be in school with their teachers so this is a really hard one and i really appreciate all the work that you've done on that i think one comment i would have is i talked to a friend who is a pediatrician and she was
054very eager to figure out what the local district is doing health-wise and i said i think they're probably working on it but i would recommend not just the health department but the schools directly reach out to like particularly local pediatricians just to share your protocols with them finalized and then the other question i have is for mr kylie um do we have any indication when we'll know from the town what's gonna happen with that three million dollars um is there a timeline are they gonna hold on to it and wait and see what are what are we hearing from them well uh so the three million dollars is an entitlement uh that the town has been allocated um so the good news is that that money is available to the town the there is some
055question as to um if there will be a change as to what that money could be used for so it is possible there's initially there was a great deal of discussion from local municipalities over whether those funds would be able to be used as revenue replacement so because of lost revenue there is a substantial financial impact of this pandemic to the town so tax revenue the thought was that at some point those monies may become eligible to be used as revenue replacement and then it may make sense for the town to utilize them as such the town has been um great talking to me about asking me about what we need to do what we're trying to accomplish um the reality is that depending on what option we choose um it's a great difference as
056to what the financial impact would be so as dr gifford said it became apparent pretty early on that the that the full return um utilizing proper social distancing wasn't wasn't going to be uh feasible for us but if we had besides that there were a whole set of circumstances that we had to um overcome including financial ones that that made it prohibitive we we would have had funds though to address those between those funds that the town has allocated and the other funds on that on that slide that i listed there the cvr is a significant amount of money um and the and the esser money is also uh you know a significant amount so between the two we have more than a million dollars that um we the school department will be directly allocated
057i would anticipate that depending depending on the modes that we we use of these three plans throughout the year we may just use that million dollars so we may not we may not need to go beyond that and um but there's the full reopening plan if that ever happens this year depending on what the guidance is at that time there's so many different financial possibilities that um you know us uh relating to that but in terms of the hybrid plan or if you have to go remote at some point um you know we we could address those with those other grants thank you you're welcome mr news i think you had your hands up go ahead i do thank you uh mr chairman uh uh echo my my colleagues uh my thanks to the administration
058uh for this report i mean it's 55 pages long it's a fluid document so we know it's gonna you know like new england weather wait five minutes it'll change type of deal but at the moment uh dr gifford under the uh the hybrid model uh you talk about a student or students that are not returning to school uh educated through a learning management platform uh are we are we sending that to the students or are we going to send that to the agency that is running it so that our students are getting our curriculum well again i'm waiting for tomorrow's details for the two vendors however our the only way we could see this working and not put an extra burden on our teachers to expect them to provide remote learning as well as in
059school learning is to put them on the they're calling it the desi learning academy so it's it would be a separate academy or learning platform that students would enroll in um i don't know the cost yet obviously desi is you know the state will be picking up some but there will be a a per student cost for the district as well so will new we'll know more um that we can then once we know the details of what these vendors are offering us we can make those uh decisions one of the things we did think about was similar to we use the flip program this past two years with us one of our guidance counselors uh receiving a stipend to oversee it we thought that that could be a possibility where um at each level
060we have people at least overseeing making sure students are staying engaged with that platform uh reaching out to them if something's going on so but i think you know the number of people that have expressed interest about what a remote learning plan might look like i think would obviously want to keep their do what they can as well at home to keep their students engaged okay can i mr news can i interject real quick here because last year we actually had experience with this so i can i actually know what these things look like and most of these big online providers we worked with the high school to make sure they're aligned they're mostly sort of common core aligned which is a little bit how ours is so the overlap like we went through class
061by class the overlap with the dartmouth high school is not 100 for instance or any level um but it's pretty darn close they're getting all of many of the same major things from these online providers and i suspect that jesse is looking at the same things that we looked at um and they align really quite pretty well with with uh with the curriculum that we give in our and it's not specific to dartmouth but it's pretty close thank you shannon i appreciate that yeah you would have had that last year being the weight thanks for the thanks for the input uh dr gibbon is like and again as i'm thinking here with this alternating schedule uh how are we going to be with students per se almost getting they're going to they're going every other
062day and yes they're going home with information to take care of the second day but you know i get a little bit concerned that you know per se they're not going to get a full year's worth of a curriculum and after what we went through you know the last three months last year some of our students are probably you know no fault of theirs or anyone's you know behind the eight ball coming into the this school year and how is that going to go forward this year right no we we are obviously concerned about that as well but um miss oliveira with the team of teachers is working very hard to try to condense some of that and really focus on those essential standards um we weren't so far off last year we were happy
063to see when we did analyze our curriculum what had been addressed already and if you recall desi put out um what did they call them the power standards or whatever it might be the learnings that students should have under their belt to progress to the next level we were very close to almost have have addressed pretty much all of it so at this point we're not so far off with that what we're more concerned about i would guess is students that obviously have very significant needs and have obviously regressed over time and how are we going to get them back especially if it is a remote you know it's it's very worrisome yes okay uh a couple of questions for mr kiley uh it's obvious in some instances the uh you know with the classrooms
064happen to be modified as a lot of extra equipment i mean do we have storage space are we renting storage containers to put them in so that good luck willing this blows over and we're able to go back full time the equipment is handy to get back set up in the classrooms right mr news it's a big issue of course because uh the classrooms uh you know in order to maximize the space certainly can't be set up in the way they were before so we have rented storage containers uh we'll have some at all of the schools and some are already here um they'll be watertight but their primary use will be for furniture so um as dr gifford mentioned you know we're really working on uh eliminating um as much of the extras in
065the classroom as we can to buys that space for students so it's it's challenging because especially at the uh in the elementary schools where you have an awful lot in in each classroom a lot of materials and a lot of opportunities for kids to engage with things in the classroom that we're not going to be able to have um you know under this model but yes storage containers are our current uh solution to that yeah and hopefully it's short term exactly yeah and the last question i have regards regarding bussing uh and i'm looking at my notes here is the discussion with hell we're going to put for discussion purposes we're going to put 20 students on a bus starting out lying and coming back type of deal what happens when that bus gets full
066and there's still students to be picked up well and that's why what dr gifford mentioned is really important that we have a clear understanding as to are you are you asking for us to transport your child or not and we're going to need to know that answer so that i can design the roots i mean our transportation system was already pretty complex i've got to say and now what we're going to be doing is essentially doing it twice two separate sets of students so um we're going to have to have this is the only place you're going to be picked up this is the only place you're going to be driving it's it's very different because we have provided a extremely high level of service in the past but for this for the safety of
067the kids we we need to have assigned seats we need to know who is going to be getting on and off each of each and every one of these buses so um it's it's going to be a different system for sure we're prepared we're working on it okay thank you mr guideline dr gibbon i'm all set at the moment mr chairman thank you mr nunes we'll turn it over to uh this is amaral thank you i'm gonna try to get this night like you i i don't like seeing my face get big it's really distracting um i i mean i have a lot of questions i uh i mean commend everyone you know planning this is just you know it's on paper it's very comprehensive it's it's 50 something pages long um but my mind
068keeps going to the you know what's going to happen at day one uh how are we gonna keep all these things in order and how are we gonna support all of our students the way they need to be supported in our staff um i wanna i guess start by going back to um a couple of the questions that i that i had that um ms baldwin actually addressed um maybe regarding like the ventilation like i i believe the the guidance suggested it's not in front of me now opening windows except for in inclement weather and then i noticed on our planning it mentioned um it wasn't very specific i think it said something to the effect of as needed or if possible um but if you could speak a little bit to to that as
069to what you um are thinking of those schools that are really old where we have had issues with the mold and that sort of thing um in order to keep the air as healthy and clear as possible so i don't know dr gifford or lord mr kiley mr kylie has been working with that so i'll let him take that sure so i mean as as you sort of suspect and alluded to there um mrs emerald the the schools are are old um so we're dealing with equipment that's mostly original to those buildings um we what we are focusing on um is in conjunction and supported by the guidance as you as you stated um opening windows to promoting extra ventilation into the classrooms we are currently and we do this normally with preventative maintenance during
070the summer making sure that all of the ventilation equipment is operating fully we are committed to changing filters more often um we have also committed to we will run the ventilation equipment all night which is something that doesn't hasn't always happened in the past for obvious reasons you you actually want to try and save some money and not run equipment when no one's in the buildings but it can make a difference in terms of air quality certainly at the beginning of the year temperature in the classrooms which as we all know who have been wearing masks now for months is an issue um and will be an issue for for the kids and and the staff in those classrooms so if we um you know operate that equipment basically 24 hours a day it will
071make a difference in the classroom so those are the and we're obviously committed to maintaining that equipment making sure that uh if there are if as we do this when issues arise we're responsive and quick to to make any needed errors thank you for that um switch it back to gallery view again um my my next question i think was something that um ms baldwin also mentioned uh but i'll just summarize it is in in my mind you know i'm certainly looking at things through uh the special ed lens or the high need lens but i also consider all of our kids high needs at this point they haven't been in school since march i know there are going to be so many kids who who just have we don't even know what that's going
072to look like when they return but in regards to those students that require um you know related services by staff who traditionally go from school to school throughout the day say like capello's or the you know the different folks that just move around how is that how it could you talk a little bit more about the planning um for for that dr gifford sorry yeah no yeah i had to mute um it's still a little bit of a work in progress i think um i know miss townsend and miss jodwin have been working with the related service providers uh pretty extensively but um as far as people going from school to school at this point i mean we would treat it i mean my thinking is right now treat it as any staff member entering
073where you we will have the hand sanitizer available the mass the distancing etc um and adhere to the safety protocols as we can oh something just slipped out of my head the other thing we're looking at is that if folks are providing let's say reading specialists that those same kind of thing that students the two three four whatever they meet with those small groups at a time would be spaced accordingly um in a certain area so yeah i mean miss baldwin certainly had some very good questions and um as i said before we don't have all the answers but we're continuing to do the best we can to make to have the safest place we can something along the lines too that i've been worrying about kiddos who aren't so those students who have who
074are prioritized has having high needs most specifically those students who are whose ieps indicate a sub-separate placement um but look forward to and obviously benefit greatly from uh inclusion you know uh within that how how how is that going to be changed in any way students going in for a certain point in time of day [Music] with support needed is that going to be impacted at all we're working very hard to maintain those iep minutes on each part of the grid so we would expect that those students would be able to go into and don't forget the classrooms themselves will be 9 or 10 11 students at the most anyway so we would expect to be able to do that it's it's it's not easy to think about especially you know all of those grids
075that the minutes have to be and and the special ed teachers that might be on one day working in the inclusion classes how do they provide the minutes um on the other day so we're working to try to help and figure that out and of course jesse hasn't been very explicit on that either except to say do it right right um and how about the this might be from mr kylie you know i can't even comprehend how you're figuring out how much ppe you're gonna you need you've got these high needs kids who um for personal care reasons require the staff let's be real they're going to be they're going to have gowns on in these classrooms which is going to be quite intimidating and then there are kids who no fault of their own
076are going to kids with or without special needs are are going to be playing with their masks and things are going to be happening and um you know they may be coming from home with masks or but um do you know so have you acquired access to however you're doing that math to account for all of the changes that need to happen five times a day three times a day all of that multiple times in it in an hour um i mean i'm living it so i'm just i can i can just tell you it's it's probably triple what you're thinking or more um have you secured and or could you give like a ballpark of what you anticipate being ready like we have enough for two months of classes we have realistically we can
077go through the holidays or we might run out uh in the end of october do you have any kind of numbers regarding that i guess what i could say is that um we have we have already procured all types of ppe not to say that we're not going to be buying more um including you know well before school starts receiving more i've not found a particular ppe products that i can't obtain so i don't want to tell you who my vendors are because i don't want everybody else to call them right now but um but i have found it available uh to acquire gowns gloves masks face shields um all of the safety goggles all of the ppe that we would uh that were recommended by the department of ed for um sort of the
078situations in which um a a staff member might be in a position to be you know close to close to students and be interacting with students in a way other than just um you know wearing a mask um so we've been able to acquire um what i would say i would estimate to be already more than a month of of school in some cases in terms of masks we've got months of supply [Music] anticipating that those are going to be a popular item for sure um because everybody's going to be wearing those we will be acquiring more gowns more gloves we actually have months worth of gloves already um gowns probably and face shields are the things that are high on my list of procurement but again i haven't had i haven't had a problem
079i have some that i'm expecting in a couple of days i'm not a problem acquiring those but i agree it's hard to estimate the the department of ed issued a document that had some estimates some formula that they came up with i'm pretty sure that they just had a best guess with that um so i agree that it's going to be challenging well that's good though that you so far haven't um you know come across difficulty accessing it um but uh i think i have i have a lot of questions i don't want to take up too much time but i had one more that my printer is not working so i had to screenshot my notes oh gosh um oh and i think dr gifford you sort of answered this already um but just
080in case once we come forth with uh the plan that we will be going with right most likely hybrid but we don't know what's to come will there be an opportunity at that point for for you know you don't want to sign a contract until you couldn't know the details and um even for myself i um my son full disclosure is out of district but you know i don't know how i feel about him returning no matter how difficult it is working um uh i lost my train of thought sorry um yeah will families then have the opportunity to sort of sign back up or get back into the other lane of remote at that point or will they sort of be stuck wherever they decide once we uh survey them again i guess is
081your question that if we say rem um hybrid and then people opt for the remote uh deci plan but then we go to remote can they come back to us is that what you're asking i think so i think that's a good that yeah that would satisfy um yeah i think that's the most um not concerning but something to really think about because i'm thinking yes because we would want them back to what we're doing um especially given shannon's experience where the they're probably similar pathways um and yet then part of me says i would hate to see us flip-flop a number of times and the kids go back and forth it's it's a hard thing but i think um once we have once the parents have like next week a better understanding and they
082get to digest all of this and they get the we ask them for the information i mean we certainly would entertain people having second thoughts you know it's just for planning purposes and making sure we have enough space etc that it's pretty important that people try to make the best decision they can for their family and thank you and i i i won't ask any more questions right now i have a lot of them but my my head's exploding but um i just want to thank everyone you know we're we're this is just you know we would talk about the emails we've gotten recently and i've been a little bit disappointed in the tone of a few of them insinuating that people are not up late at night or are not sleeping at all um
083and and not focused on getting kids back to school um so anyway i had to say that because it's been bothering me but um i thank you you know classes would have already been set teachers would have known we would have been getting letters out this week to families who their classroom teacher is so we're all in this together we can just do the best we can um but i appreciate the effort of the administration but just trying to get it together appreciate it that's all you're welcome they've been working hard i will say again ask me any questions call me in the office because i want you all to feel comfortable you are going to have to make a vote so we need to make sure you have your questions answered thank you dr
084gifford thank you um this is amarill i share um all my colleagues comments and concerns um first off foremost thank you dr gifford thank you mr kylie the rest of the school district administration and staff that are you know going on zooms volunteers that are volunteering hours going on zooms to meet with um you know different group faculty groups uh there is no ease make no mistake about this this is no there's no easy decision um you know first and uh you know first things first is there was a comment about uh returning to full reopening i've gotten some of those questions as well the bottom line is this district cannot we've determined dr gifford and her staff has determined that we cannot safely reopen the downtown public school at 100 capacity it's just it's
085not feasible it's not safe and that's why that was taken off the table uh that being said the two plans that we're looking at here we're looking at the remote plan as well as a hybrid plan um in full transparency i am not convinced on a hybrid plan um i i've had questions come up of can you guarantee that my child is going to be safe in school can you guarantee the staff are going to be safe in school um no we can't let's just make that clear we cannot guarantee that anyone will be 100 safe from from covet 19. uh we are that is what we're doing right now what uh mr kylie what dr gifford are doing with the meeting with the board of david board of health meeting with other stakeholders that
086we are reducing the risk i think is the best way to look at it is we're reducing the risk to students and staff in the district to as low of a threshold as possible um i i actually asked dr gifford last week and she said well why don't we wait till this meeting i'm going to offer it up to any one of my colleagues i would like to um go in and visit the schools um i would love to do so i'd love to do a walkthrough of these of each school i want to see what classrooms look like i know in my own district what a classroom with a six feet of distance looks like um with everything off the walls extra furniture removed it's a very sterile environment um i i want to
087make sure that before this decision is made this committee makes this decision i want to know that i've done my due diligence as a school committee member um to vote uh for the best outcome i i understand both sides i have a freshman going to dartmouth high school this year there is nothing more than i would want for her and i know she is she has had her days which she you know she wanted to try her she wants to try out the fall volleyball uh she wants to do sports she wants to get back into the classroom i want to see her in school but i want to know that we're doing 110 to keep our students safe um i know there's no guarantees um and i honestly i don't know you know it's
088all about uh risk does the cost outweigh the rest and i i personally don't know what the answer to that is um you know i do thank everyone um but i i would like to offer it up if any one of my colleagues if anyone else would like to do a walk through if there's more if there's more than two of us that want to do it if you can break up uh to visit different schools um that's a possibility we can talk about we can set something up but i i want to know that what we're doing because the data is changing every day and there's there's i'll i'll recognize a couple of you in a second uh data is changing every day in regards to coping 19. i know districts have already announced
089their plans a lot of different a lot of districts and doing different things uh you know we're responsible for the five of us these five committee members are responsible for ensuring that the safety and the well-being and the education of students at the donald public school um so i think that's important to know and i'll stop talking for a minute because i know some of my colleagues have some other things that they may want to share so i think dr jenkins you had your hands up first yeah so chris mr oliver i definitely support the idea of us going out and taking a look i'll also note that ms mckinley who's on the board of health had messaged me recently saying that in ashland they had done it sort of more broadly they invited they
090had the whole school committee they invited the select board they invited the board up they invited some town officials um there was an article i can send it to dr gifford they rode the bus right they had officials they took a bus and socially distanced people on the bus so people could understand like this is what that's going to be so i would definitely love to do it but it might be something that if we could post i know this is going to be tight to post it now for a friday or whatever in advance of monday's meeting but it would be nice to invite other people along to whatever we set that time for i would like to ask a question later but that i'll let everyone else comment about i i would be
091on board if if we can get the timeline met and if uh mr kylie or dr gifford's available uh maybe put something together for thursday or friday um with the uh the posting time to just post it and do it officially and then there's no issue with the amount of uh school community members i'm fine opening it up to some other town officials i wouldn't say let's go crazy with it but you know maybe a couple from each ward um border selectment of the board of health but i'll hear hear you some other thoughts mr news yeah thank you mr chairman uh i think that's a great idea uh if we post a meeting for thursday or friday personally i would prefer it just because all together as opposed to meeting i mean we don't
092have to discuss anything or we can just see everything there but we're there there's five of us or four of us however many any more than two uh it's our responsibility to open these schools and make sure that they're safe in our opinion we're the ones that are uh elected and chosen and given the responsibility to make sure i think we should all do it to reap my reasoning for thinking of doing it all together is that we hear all ourselves our comments and we hear the comments you know at the same time you know from the administration and mr kylie whoever he has that mr ferrera the custodians etc type of deal so but to uh to post a meeting for there is the friday i'm available and works for me thank you mr
093newman's uh mrs amarillo and mrs white anything else i would just uh i'm in support of that i would like to um to john's point we don't have to discuss anything we can you know all of us going i think it's really important you know you think about the changes i think about put my special ed hat on again those little kids who don't have any of the fun stuff in that classroom who have desks now and good luck to them so i would like to sort of experience it and see it for myself as well yes yes oh i'm sorry i uh completely agree i mean i think that everything that the school leadership team has laid out is fantastic you know but i you know they are saying you know we're going to
094do our best but here are certain realities and i think the five of us owe it to all their hard work just to see it in practice you know to even see the isolation rooms you know what is that actually again we're picturing our brains but what is that going to look like what is it going to look like for students coming in you know they're excited about their first day they have a certain vision you know what what's the reality going to be and then i think that we can bring that back to the table to you know weigh the remote plan versus the hybrid which i actually you know i am in support of the hybrid and i'd like to see that come to fruition for all the reasons that um dr jenkins
095and everyone else has said you know just there's so many pieces but it's tough it's a you know it's stuff all around that i respect our staff and our you know families needs so but um again thank you dr gifford for everything that you and your team have done so that being dr jenkins i i just thought of one other question as we were working through this and i mean it's everything is really hard but one of the things i'm having as a parent of a high school student i'm i'm just having a hard time wrapping my brain around high school and middle school um i know that there's often the guidance counselors don't come back until a week before school starts and then there's often some churn around schedules right i know for instance
096we were planning on that that we need to talk to a guidance counselor how is that going to work are we going to bring the guidance counselors back earlier or what are we going to do are students stuck with the schedule they have because before you just move people around but now that has sort of really significant ramifications for everything we're doing lots of good questions yeah we're we're actually in the process right now the high school's been the first one trying to break up those cohorts and look at the numbers in classrooms and we do have some issues at this point so we're going to be doing some more intense work but i'll have a conversation with them about what might be a good way especially since this is crazy times um the extra
097effort to try to uh reach out to families and get the i'll give them the opportunity to reach back out to the school so i'll i'll have that conversation with the high school and see what we can do about that and um as far as the visiting school so mr kylie and i will coordinate that um i don't know if it would be i'm looking at my schedule and i know i don't have to be there per se but um we'll see what mr kylie says whether friday morning or whatever is best for him um and to get the couple of the schools anyway to set up a couple of classrooms and do kind of what we did today we looked through what the dismissal might look like what the nursing area is and what
098a couple of classrooms look like thursday at 1 p.m work for everyone just out of curiosity sometimes sometimes thursday early thursday afternoon that works for me i can do that i don't have enough time to put do we have enough time to post also you post an emergency meeting emergency okay chris quickly go ahead mr news megan just you know just following up on somebody that just made the comment but how about for discussion purposes you know instead of one more so in the elementaries i would think that they're kind of all going to be the same but how about if we made plans to visit you know the high school of middle school and an elementary school just instead of trying to schlep through the whole town just to you know i don't think
099we would have enough time in the aft in that type of time frame but if we just you know visit at the high school the middle school in an elementary school just to get kind of a lay of the land i think that's reasonable what might be helpful though i'm not sure if this is possible dr giffin or mr kylie if the two elementary schools that we do not visit maybe they're at least one of their administrators could be at the yellow elementary school so we can at least talk to them because i want to listen to i want to listen to all the building administrators i think it's important from the school committee perspective that that we listen to challenges we listen to everything uh mrs amaral uh ma uh of course once again
100i think it's really important that we keep quinn on the list because uh i also you know obviously preschool you know but i do want want to make sure that we get to see you know the place where most of the programs kind of exist and the higher needs i think it's important that we we get in there as one of our elementary schools i think i think that's reasonable i think that's very reasonable and essentially located and it has all of our programs this is wait um yes thank you chris um another question i had this these questions are going to keep coming up i'm afraid but um the band and course since we know that we have limitations there with the ability of the course to actually practice inside and actually from what
101i understand i think the course space doesn't even have windows you know that's at the middle school um so what would be their is there are your thoughts to have practices continue for those outside i mean you know what are your thoughts i know that the band is doing some practicing and they have some virtual competitions what are your what are your thoughts there dr giffrey can we kind of talk about that too when we go on our visit maybe that's something we can talk about yeah yeah and i actually um mr kylie and i are actually meeting with ian our new director of music tomorrow morning he said he had a plan uh he was developing um so we'll be talking with him about that as well as what the practices are looking like
102um so far how that's going and as you know i believe mr news is probably much more in tune to the cancellation of the fall competitions already and the idea of different kinds of performances if you will so anyway we'll meeting with him tomorrow morning we'll have more to say about that yeah the uh the mesmer circuit has canceled for the year they were just going to be doing the month of october instead of starting you know the middle of september nesma's cancelled for uh for the year the u.s bands you know when we're going down to connecticut and giant stadium that nothing has happened there yet but they're part of everything being virtual how they're going to handle a ritual we don't know yet but that's what we're hearing at this point in time
103so what our virtual competition is going to look like i have no idea okay thank you very much and then um i hear i see a little chat here from mr parody that they can work with dc tv to uh stream all the performances live gotta love mr ferrari and always trying to think out of the box um so yeah that right that sounds good um so why don't we plan on uh one o'clock on thursday um i don't know if we want to meet at the side of the middle school or a quince that's somewhere in there we can um whatever works if you want to talk to the administrators mr kylie or dr gifford just let us know what you guys prefer um i'm sure we'll be fine with whatever you decide we
104can set a schedule for you great thank you very much so that that being said um just some other things and i know that um it's you know i've read about it it's been the long 55 page plan but let's just be clear that if we do go to a hybrid if we were open open to a hybrid uh what are the scenarios and i think the public it's important for everyone to know about uh the what happens if someone tests positive um or is symptomatic and does that automatically mean we shut down the schools i think these are all things that are important that the vm public should be aware of depending on the place if we do go with a hybrid plan right and as you know the document that came out offered
105many many scenarios the what-ifs um to give us some kind of a threshold we're also waiting to see if any more information comes out over the next week about specifics a little bit more help on what to do but i think at that point and we did have this conversation with chris mishu at the board of health um the minute something like that happens we're obviously in contact with each other and determining the best course of action at that point so unfortunately there's no one right answer one size fits all right yeah but we will be uh as i said working with the board of health and if we need to shut a classroom down or whatever their guidance is with contact tracing etc etc um that will help guide our decision sure no thank
106you thank you uh dr gifford i just know that this is just a real real tough thing to wrap for us to wrap our heads around in addition for the administrators the teachers the faculty the staff to wrap their heads around too so thank you again for all the work that your folks are doing and um we'll look forward to meeting up on thursday to do some walkthroughs of the building and have an opportunity to speak to some of the building administrators good okay any other questions on the reopening plan for my colleagues perfect well thank you everyone uh next up under new business we have the formation of the equality and diversity committee so as you remember last week we had a conversation around um some of the issues uh that are you know
107not unique to dartmouth but it's more of a national scale with um you know equality and diversity and we know that we can always look to do better for our students and our faculty and staff in the community as a whole in dartmouth that being said let's re we had talked about thinking about what we're looking for for the makeup of the committee and uh we've asked to come back um tonight at tonight's meeting and kind of talk a little bit more about it and what our thoughts are keep in mind that i know that a lot of the banter a lot of the meteor attention has been centered around our dartmouth indian logo but keep in mind that that is not the sole task of this committee as dr giffen and i have spoken
108a number of times and at great length is that we have uh there have been concerns over the you know over the years of equality and diversity issues uh in the darkness schools specifically back with high school um and i think it's time that we look to um improve and address uh what we can as a as a school district and as a school committee and one of those things uh which i thought was a good idea i hope that my colleagues continue to agree is that we're going to look at from my point of view i look at this as an opportunity to educate myself um and learn a little bit more about what goes on in the schools as well as the history of the garden of indian because there's clearly strong strong
109feelings and strong passion on each side and i welcome that i can appreciate that but just keep in mind that this committee is not solely about the dartmouth indian it's about equality and diversity uh as a whole in the government public schools i am uh more than happy to take some questions uh i'll start with i think uh mrs amaral had your hands up first um i just wanna uh i agree with everything you said there but i i just wanna say that what i would like included um in this committee is a voice it doesn't have to be myself but i certainly would be happy to sit on it um in terms of uh representing uh uh students with disabilities in our thinking and in in interweaving that within um what will come of
110this i mean uh i think back to the healthy dartmouth committee that when dr gifford came uh started as our superintendent sort of uh brought back to life for some time uh and honestly i i i don't we had a lot of voices at the table but i don't know that we had um much to do about diversity um which is unfortunate but you know we we did what we did and and and now we can do better obviously forming this it's it's it's really i think crucial uh that we do this for our community for our students of color and for all of our students and our families to enrich our us as a community so i just would like to make sure that there's representation for students who are often marginalized to be
111on this committee it doesn't have to be me but if it has to be it shall be thank you uh mr zamworld dr jenkins i was just trying to save poor miss townsend to say we might flip the order of the agenda but since we're into it i see the pictures over three cute little children here and feel so bad that she's been patiently waiting but we're into it now so i guess she's just gonna have to wait some more sorry i tried beth i really tried to flip that um i would i think maybe what might be a good idea is to sort of decide what the composition of the committee could be and maybe give them a few items right we we do we have asked them i think we agreed last time
112to look at the issue of the mascot uh miss amber all has brought up you know needs around special education um we can look at sort of ours the climate in our schools and maybe give them a rough idea of just generally what they might look want to look at but then also to to to give them sort of the leeway to make their own charge a little right at one of their first meetings so we can give them some things but they can change that um i would say that that you know maybe there should be a couple of us on the committee i don't think we want more than two because and we've got to post meetings and that sort of stuff right um i think we'd want maybe a few people from
113the school right um so two from the school committee two to three from the schools because they know what's going on right and so they would need to to be there to provide information um you know i we've had a number of high school students indicate that they would want to be on that i'd like to see some high school students on there but i also think that we should strongly encourage the high school to maybe form a subcommittee of just high school students that could report back to that larger committee um and then i also think that maybe we should invite some community members to be a part of it right so those to me seem to be the sort of like the four stakeholders the school committee students the administration and teachers and
114staff and community members i would say maybe i might be missing buckets i'm open to that maybe two to three people in each of those buckets two in the school committee bucket um and two to three in those other buckets was what i was thinking uh mrs wade thank you dr johnson yes um thank you chris um just to add on to that i just think there's been some conversations around psychologists as a possibility so i don't know if we can find some school psychologist one of our staff members who may be able to sit and you know speak to the host of issues that you know might tie into the resolutions or you know issues of diversity and you know self-identity and self-esteem so i think you know if we can find someone you
115know again from our staff i think that would be a great contribution to the committee thank you thank you mr news thank you mr chairman um just like a a couple of things number one i think we've got to be careful that we don't get this committee so that it becomes unmanageable and i say that in all seriousness i mean i'm not sure if you want to you know keep at the 12 you know john we lost you i think john we can't hear you okay am i back you're back okay sorry about that uh i'm not sure where i left off my one of i just as you said that chris my computer gave me an uh an update uh seriously i think we need you know 10 12 people 14 at the most
116because they're going to have to meet by zoom and it's going to be very difficult to do that type of deal i mean i think this is almost like a regular committee so somebody may have to you know i know we don't have a we've got an acting town clerk but you know is this one of those that there are going to have to be uh you know agendas posted in that type of deal well if we have two school committee members on it could theoretically be a subcommittee of the school committee so you you know so does but those you know would have to be posted in that type of deal so i just don't even get concerned with that and and personally uh you know i think it you got to make it
117sure it's fair and equal and i for one would just like doesn't batman's residence on this community okay so that's my that's my two cents we might make an exception for for school employees right it might be someone working with well i 100 agree with you without exception i'm i'm good i'm good with i'm good with a school employee that lives out of town i'm good with that but you know joe smith that lives in buzzards bay that wants to be honest no if you understand what i'm saying or lives in new bedford no this is a diamond issue i'm a dartmouth resident of personnel that's my two cents i respect that john thank you all right so so that that being said what i'm hearing is two school committee members uh i'm calling it
118two faculty staff from the batman public schools um two high school students i don't know if we want to you know and this is a question for maybe you dr gifford a middle school student i don't know or we just keep it at the high school but i have two high school students two dartmouth community members and then i'm also thinking about um either someone from your off like uh administration administrators and someone that can um take on like a moderator role or a chairperson of the committee role and i don't know if that's maybe one of the school committee members um but i'm just trying to keep this as diverse and as um you know respectable as possible um so i'm thinking if around 10 people is that reasonable to everyone shannon my only
119concern is that right particularly this is why i suggested that perhaps we asked that um group to create a subcommittee of students that the two students on the left can because you know you think camera was talking about we want to have i'd like to have a student a special education student you know we'd like to have you know students of color right we can talk about gender race sexuality right all of this which we're not going to be able to do to mr nunes point because then we'd end up with a committee of 30 and that's a train wreck so perhaps we might create a structure where there's a couple of students on this committee full committee that they then go back to the high school probably and maybe the middle school and create
120some subcommittees in each of those schools that give the students and the teachers in those schools a seat at the table because i do think we really want to have a diverse set of viewpoints from the students in particular um on this issue and i want to make sure that they all feel that they have a seat at the table and a voice in this process because it is their school so i agree that we need to keep the bigger committee sort of tight and smaller but i would like to see us create some possibilities um particularly the high school level maybe the middle school level depends on what they think but um particularly at the high school level um sure gotten some applicants from the high school these students are very passionate about a
121lot of these issues um and so i don't want them to say only we only get one or two of you like let's be inclusive with those students is everyone i i'm perfectly i'm on board with that i think that's a great idea um we have we have two student reps to the full committee but there they'll be tasked with with reaching out to different members of the doc of dartmouth high school with their students and really trying to develop a a diversified group amongst the student body um and then they they can come back and report to this committee um just just to keep in mind i know you know hearing this and that this is something that's not gonna you know happen overnight this is gonna take to do this right and i
122think we owe it to the community and owe it to the students and uh and faculty to do this right um this is going to take some time and some effort to make happen and really have good conversations around this especially during a pandemic um you know that's not to say that we can't do it it's just going to take some time and it's going to take a little extra effort is the news yeah mr jammin just kind of following up on on shannon's comment and idea about having high school students and and and such uh through you to dr gifford are we going to have we normally have a school commitment excuse me go ahead we know about that we normally have a uh you know school committee rep at our meeting that gives
123us an update as to what is going on and i'm just wondering if you know the high school does is able to get this you know small core cohort together and such if you know that student rep can always report back to us as to what's going on just a thought yep sure yeah that would be a good idea you're welcome so that being said um how are we with um we have two faculty but do we want to include i think those should really be like in the classroom teachers um people that work directly with the students do we want to have an additional administrator or two which would bring the total up to ten um is everyone okay with that yep okay so if it's if the committee's okay with this and if
124we can move forward let's plan on you know we i don't know if we want to take a formal vote to establish this committee and let's ask for anyone interested um in serving on this committee that they sent a letter an email letter of interest to um kate uh is that all right with you uh dr gifford if we send everything over as we have yeah she keeps good records that's perfect i'll make that i'll make that motion mr chairman thank you so we have a motion by mr nunes a second by dr jenkins so on the motion just to clarify this is to establish a equality in the diversity committee that will be tasked with looking at these issues within the public schools to include the dartmouth indian this this committee will be made
125up of two school committee members two faculty teaching staff two high school students two members of the community and uh two administrators uh building administrators central office administrators um and that's it any other further discussion yes dr jenkins you add to the sort of as a friendly amendment your point you did say the mascot but they're also going to be looking at other issues it's not just that i just want to make the official motion reflect that it's among that is one of the things yes absolutely thank you uh for clarifying that yes um if i didn't make that clear that yes there's just like i think we stated earlier there's uh you know dartmouth is not unique uh we have our our own set of issues and we're always looking to improve uh how
126can we do better as a school district as a school community and as a town and that's to look at all types of issues across the board um you know effect whether it's uh special education whether it's race whether it's um just equality um i think it's important to know so any other discussion on the motion this is wait um and uh mr chair if i could also because we had um community members who emailed us specifically upset that we weren't taking on the mass resolution this is where we are taking on that resolution that this is going to be discussed and addressed too so if that just just to kind of reassure those community members that that is going to be addressed we've set this up um and that's part of the plan yes
127as far as the mass resolution um yes that's i think that was discussed at the last meeting and that's going to be brought down to policy subcommittee where if he was going to continue talking about i think the piece of that was a lot of the uh curriculum piece and making sure that we're gonna put that we can follow through uh with the curriculum and all that on the uh resolution yeah more just is this specific to the motion mr newton well this is just a follow-up on uh mary's comment but that masc is going to policy not this committee am i correct or am i missing something at the last meeting it was i don't think it was an official vote uh maybe it was but the last meeting we decided that we would
128have uh push it down the policy subcommittee so they could review it uh before you know before tweak it if necessary yeah yeah okay and i totally expect i fully expect that to happen and be brought to the committee back to the committee that's fine okay that's okay and before we finally vote you know um we'll plan on everyone sending any letters of interest um and we'll see we'll keep this on the agenda for the next meeting see if uh miss gentler gets any applications or any letters of interest i would fully expect the committee to kind of get off the ground once school gets off the ground um because we want to make sure that uh our students are back in school in some way shape or form and then at that point you
129know once school is officially reopened we can then uh get this committee off the ground because i think it's important that we do so if there is no other discussion uh all in favor we have to roll college i'm sorry roll call please kate chris oliver yes shannon jenkins yes kathleen amarill yes mary waite yes john nunes yes thank you very much miss gentler uh next up on under new business report on parent surveys specific to special education uh dr gifford here we go miss townsend is now on hi hello how are you it's so nice thank you so much for inviting me this afternoon it's nice to see everyone on the screen um i'm gonna share my screen and hopefully this works hold on one second i'm just gonna go slideshow i just wanna
130make sure this the slideshow is up and running and then i can start okay uh all right is everyone seeing it from their end got it okay wonderful um so i have a short powerpoint here just to highlight some of the pieces related to our special education parent survey we did send out uh via email it was a google form that the survey was created on where we asked a few questions to uh parents who have students with ieps the survey was conducted the same week that our district-wide parent survey was done and i think for that reason we were able to get quite a few responses we were you know pleased with the number of responses we received in the week that it was open so i'm gonna see we can just talk a
131little bit about the survey details we sent the survey out to all parents who have children with individual education plans um if a parent had more than one child that had an iep we did ask that one survey be completed for each child because the needs are unique even if you have more than one child with an iep we wanted to get that individual information in total we received 221 surveys and that is a return rate of 39.7 just shy of 40 return and we really had a great distribution of responses across buildings and across grade levels and asking what school does your child attend as well as what grade will your child be entering we really had a pretty even distribution across the six buildings and all of the grade levels so these are
132just a couple of slides that i just pulled right out of the survey in terms of the data analysis one of the questions we asked parents was with safety precautions in place how do you anticipate your child will be transported to school this fall um and so you can see here it's a you know 67.4 said that they would use district provided transportation and 32.6 percent said that they themselves would transport their child to school so we had um just under um you know three quarters of parents saying that they would use the district transportation we also asked parents to to thinking about those three plans for reopening we did keep it open parents were not asked to just pick one we asked to check all of those that they would be willing to access
133so giving parents in-person instruction with precautions a hybrid of both remote and in person and a remote only instruction you can see here um both the total number of responses and then in parentheses the percentage um 81.4 percent of parents um said that they would be willing to access the in-person instruction with precautions 58.4 percent saying um a hybrid of remote and in person and just under 30 percent said they'd be willing to access a remote only instructional model again obviously these numbers do total well above 100 because we ask parents to really weigh in on and check as many that would apply so some parents to choose all three or one or two of those we also ask parents about team meetings um as uh i think some of you or all of you
134know we did hold our team meetings virtually um in school closure in the spring um due to obviously the governor's order and so we gave parents again options you know asked what would they be comfortable participating in so first the remote zoom meeting which is what we used in the spring the second was in-person meeting with social distancing measures applied and the third was calling in for a phone conference and participating via phone and so again parents were able to click all three if they felt they would be comfortable in any one of the three so you see here almost 80 percent felt quite comfortable with the remote zoom meeting for me i felt really great about that that return of 80 because we did hold so many of them in the spring um which
135was new for everyone new for staff new for parents new for all team members um but overall you know in general they went really well and we were really pleased with the way in which we kind of conducted protocols that worked and um you know i think parents that were able to participate um in the spring in the process you know had really great feedback um again slightly more 84.6 percent um said they'd be willing to do an in-person meeting and the third was calling in for a phone conference just over 50 percent um we asked parents during their distance learning how often they interacted with his or her special ed liaison and or related service providers so as you can see um you know quite a bit um were either almost every day or
136frequently over 50 percent um and then when you consider sometimes it actually um is over seventy five percent so kind of three quarters that were um either sometimes frequently or almost every day communicating with their special liaison and or related services um with the once in a while or never combined representing about 22 percent of those that responded so we asked parents to just weigh in a little bit on if you did answer that it was not uh that you did not have as much communication what were some of the barriers and so i've kind of articulated here some of the common themes um every parent had their own this was an open-ended question so parents each parent was able to type um something specific to them but when you really pull out the common
137themes the first was the challenges with zoom or google me if if that was the platform being used either way video conferencing is a platform there were difficulties understanding how to use it both parents and students students had difficulty focusing on their activities or they had a lack of interest in the zoom meetings um parents did speak about their work schedules making remote learning difficult um with uh you know essential workers or two parents who are out of the home on their work schedules that that made it difficult to participate in remote um there were some parents that reported their child had some anxiety about being on camera of course it's you're not typically you know in a traditional school environment you're not expected to kind of be on a screen in this little box
138and that did bring on some anxiety um again difficulties navigating and accessing google classroom there were some reported technology issues either through lack of devices and or poor connectivity although that was not that was not a high number of responses there was a very small pool that represented that some parents spoke about the completion of physical or hands-on activities being difficult on on of course a computer screen or zoom and we can all see how that that's um that can be seen and you know parents speaking that their students needed more direct support daily so um so i wanted just to as i think about all of these things that you know i feel re-energized although the challenges are great and we are still um very much trying to navigate the details of this um
139we know that when the special ed guidance from the state was issued related to the fall a lot of these pieces um are addressed you know through what does he's recommended for our schedule in our learning again really focusing on a more robust special ed service delivery model even in times when it's remote really making sure that those services even if they are on a screen that they're happening um a little more within a services model as opposed to kind of a support model um so we're really excited about that i think that will definitely assist with some of that um that direct support or lack of direct support that parents were feeling also we're working really hard to kind of put together some professional development or cheat sheets or tasks um guides to help
140parents and students with google classroom with zoom that i think will make things um a little more manageable so we're kind of excited about that and think that that would have some some positive impact and also um in terms of the student anxiety we definitely as a department are looking at all of the social emotional learning supports that are going to need to be in place both for students with ieps and those without around some of the anxieties related to the school closure so we are absolutely addressing that concern through our professional development service um kind of meeting with others articulation with a providers and between teachers so um then there was kind of the last question was more of an open-ended other consideration so parents could really share um and so some of this
141is similar to the slide before um but you know some really good questions about how to complete remote learning in child care parents who their student if there are remote days as part of their day in the fall they would be maybe cared for by someone who doesn't have the technology access who might not understand how to engage a student in remote learning um there was a request around students who are deaf or hard of hearing needing clear face masks um which i do want to say that that is a consideration that has been ordered i know mr kiley mentioned the masks um but he as part of those masks i do want the committee to know that we have ordered those that have that clear face mask so students can read lips if they
142need to again students having great anxiety about returning we're really focused on that social emotional learning piece both in our department and in the general education department to provide whatever supports that might be necessary because we know that's going to happen there was a request for more structured live lessons we hear you and we are doing that so we hear you parents and yes there will be a lot more of a structured day as it relates to special ed services in the fall so um so again students needing direct in-person instruction we obviously know um that that is you know the ideal model and so we are balancing that against all of the different things that um the committee shared earlier during this meeting in terms of safety for all and making sure that everyone
143is kept safe there were kind of a couple of comments around students having difficulty in wearing masks in our social distancing we have accounted certainly for medical disability related needs students would be exempt if they you know due to that um had uh a need to not be able to to wear a mask we also recognize that even if it's not the mask that's the issue um it would be difficult to social distance sometimes if a student um if their particular need is to you know be close to others or seek out others we certainly understand that that would be difficult so again we're we'll have to consider that in our protocols and really have to think long and hard about how to mitigate to the extent that we can um again there was another
144comment about more structured remote learning and just a comment about ensuring uh thorough cleaning um with the use of thorough cleaning protocols which i know mr kylie spoke a little bit about already and i know that's a consideration that is ongoing when we consider how to um how to ensure proper cleaning throughout so i leave you with this quote uh early in the quarantine i as you know i was on a maternity leave um i had a baby in january of this year so um right before i got ready to come back in april from my leave i made a video with my children um which you know was kind of their own foray into technology and so this is this is the quote that i had my oldest who's eight who has her own
145anxieties about um you know returning to school and mask wearing um you know she read at the end of the movie life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass it's about learning how to dance in the rain and i just really love that quote um it it's something i say to myself every night before bed because obviously i just like all of the administrators central office directors and all the teachers kind of losing sleep over how difficult this all is but um just if we can try to learn how to dance in the rain so i'm going to stop share which i think will put the screen oh boy i don't know if i want to be this big on my screen oh okay um but if anybody has any questions i'd be happy
146to answer them thank you very much and we appreciate that presentation anyone have any questions for elizabeth townsend uh yes this is amarillo hi um i asked a lot of questions before so i promise i'm not gonna really uh but i do have um let's see we surveyed the parents and um i'm sure if we survey them in for in two weeks there may or may not be some different answers but we've got a general kind of idea um were you able to meet with staff uh and talk about some of the the the challenges and the successes that they've experienced during this time specific to you know all students who learn differently um to see to see what what the were there any themes around similar to what the parents expressed or absolutely as
147a matter of fact so again there's there are so many different subgroups there's layers of subgroups within our department um but i was uh fortunate to co-chair committee that was a sub-group just related to special education as part of our remote learning task force and um as a matter of fact we're meeting again tomorrow but we had met a couple of times as we were developing our plan for the state and that was our number one question which is what worked well and what what needed and i have to say that yes i think overall we're all struggling because you know we certainly know um even from a staff perspective that in-person instruction is the best and we know that that's what we want for students and um to kind of balance that out with
148the safety needs of all the students you know always keeping that in mind students and staff um but yes i would say there were definitely some similar things like the clear mask came up even with staff um things like um you know making sure that you know the remote learning maybe had a little more of a you know robust uh feel to it that was all it was very similar and i want to repeat something i said early on just in my own experience you know uh with remote you know not working much at all but but those those staff that did what they could do to to to to the best of their capacity really made a difference in that you know those students you may feel that you're not they weren't they didn't
149feel they were reaching potentially were getting something even if it was just um the reminder of the expectation or the familiar face and so that really goes a long way one other thing that's not necessarily uh directed to you but it kind of is in a way because i might have meant to say this earlier but we're talking about kids with the medical exemptions and um not having to wear the masks and so those small subsets of high needs kids and those sub separate programs the staff are going to be protected in in a higher level way but in in the return to school guidance and i'm just so worried about kids coming back to school in general who you know you've got those kids all kids with the medical exemptions you've got those kids
150in special ed with the medical exemptions um and then you've got those kids who might take three four six weeks to kind of get used to the to the being able to use it i i could speak again my own story never did i think my son would put a mask on except when we met mike his papa at dick's parking lot i mean so he knew that he needed to wear a mask if he wanted to go in that store so it's amazing kids are very resilient but my worry is those students who you know aren't aren't able to wear it and in the documentation it said something about those students would be put into like online remote learning so those students say who special ed aren't and they're going to be different students
151there'll be kids who are doing it to be defiant or there are going to be kids that don't want to wear it because they're not used to it and they're going to be kids that don't want to wear it for a variety of reasons i i worry that we jump to sort of uh you're not welcome here scenario if if if by chance we could so is there any kind of loophole around or expectation around thinking of those students that come back who just might need elect extra cueing to keep a mask on or or um the routine of it on versus those who are exempt because of the medical medical need yeah i don't know i just worry about kids again so you unmute did you want to address it did you want to
152be yeah the the line about the remote learning plan was really directed to those that are just absolutely refusing like any other discipline issue um not the student you're talking about we actually even had a conversation with kyle over at quinn today exactly what you're saying that they would work with those students and do what they bet do best at like especially the elementary level okay so that was my response kathleen was that it's my understanding that is not who that that line was intended for at all we would not be no okay i think that's all i have though let everybody else thank you uh mrs amaral dr jenkins so i'll just add and this isn't necessarily towards the our students with you know different needs and the medical exemptions but to miss amarillo's
153point our children are remarkably resilient but they also take their cues from us um and so one of the things right we really need parents i mean this is going around social media but it's important to say how your students approach this is going to be largely based on how you're reacting to this so we need it's like a really a partnership for our parents to be i know we're not going to make everyone happy i know we're going to make lots of people angry but please try not to share that with your kids try to make them enthusiastic about what's happening and then also write practice right to kathleen's point like you might be surprised with what your kids do but practice helps right and so if you ask them to not wear a
154mask at all at home all of august and then all of a sudden they're having to wear a mask right if you know there's going to be an issue right that's a real partnership where i think parents can help out and you know in order to do this safely everyone's got to do their part and help out and so i think that's really super important for us to to emphasize to the community that may be watching us that we all have to do our part to make this work thank you excellent point yeah great point anyone else well thank you very much for your presentation and for sticking around uh for all this time thank you for having me i appreciate it no it was very it was very thoughtful there was a lot of
155good information uh that you were able to share out with not only us but the uh the young public as well and for those those people to go back and watch this so it was definitely uh very much appreciated thank you thank you i appreciate the opportunity thank you so have a much night have a great night thank you enjoy thank you next up we have a superintendent's update i have nothing i have nothing else mr mr oliver i think um the entire focus has been on the plan so that's about it right now we're sticking with the plan perfect uh for the report of the chair is every i know uh email went out about next monday the 10th to have a meeting um is everyone on board with that any concerns issues time
156restraint good with me perfect so uh the next meeting of the uh batman school community will be uh monday august 10th at four o'clock chris yes mr news uh mrs kathleen has her hand up oh yes kathleen there are more uh public comments all right perfect we'll uh get to that in just a second yeah yeah i just wanted to open it up to everyone i just really want to say thank you to the um the athletic department has been doing it mr chris fully has been running this they've been doing the strength and conditioning outside um it's been great they've been doing a great job of you know keeping everyone informed keeping our kids active and so i just want to send kudos to them because it's been really well done great thank you
157very much i agree uh mr news yeah just one quick question uh mr chairman we all got or at least i had in my email likes from masc a whole bunch of new uh or updated policies or something is that something related to us that the policy subcommittee is going to be having to take up and look into i'll have uh miss roy will be looking at those mr nunes seeing something we need to address yeah yeah okay thank you that's all i have mr chairman okay i appreciate that uh at this time all right let's go ahead and um what do you have for additional comments or public comments eileen pereira writes if dartmouth high school opts to have students go back full time or to do the hybrid can parents still opt for
158online working with desi um learning management platform for their children we have one of three students with underlying health issues thank you very much um the the next uh individual jessica kudo writes good evening i wanted to thank you all for the hard work and dedication that you exhibit each and every day one concern that is at the forefront of our minds is the mental health of our students how are the cohorts cohorts going to be formed many of our students anxiety is who will i be stuck with how are cohorts being decided is it the location of the home academic performance ability thank you for all that you do next we have oh mr fernandez a backup um or an additional comment can you please make clear that the establishment of the equality and
159diversity committee does not mean that the school name and logo will be changed i also had a follow-up comment from kathleen baldwin regarding cares act monies dr gifford said it was not school specific can she elaborate what that means also how many months of supplies do we have in stockpile and um we received an email from heather noyes and she writes can you have dr gifford clarify the alternating days does that carry over to the next week so it isn't the same days each week for each cohort and she gives an example of a b a b a week one b a b a b week two and so forth thank you okay well thank you very much for miss gentler um some of those are are good questions and maybe uh at our next
160school committee meeting on the 10th um you know some of those will probably be uh discussed in further detail um and also give dr giff and her team some time to um to respond and also come up with maybe some answers uh so that being said uh let me go back to yeah there's nothing else so with that being said our next meeting regularly scheduled meeting of the dartmouth school committee is a monday august 10th at 4pm in addition uh we're going to have miss gentler post a meeting for us for thursday at one o'clock a place to be determined where we're going to conduct uh walkthroughs of the school buildings to see how ready uh we are for the re-opening yeah this is mr jim a quick question yeah you who through you to
161either talk to gibbon or mr connelly there's going to be no public involved in this walk-through because of the situations in the school am i correct you are correct with all due respect to the public they're not going to be able to be part of this walkthrough thank you no no uh would this be an emergency executive session no no okay anything else yeah mr germany will you turn into executive session for the purpose of collective bargaining with union personnel i second that not to return to open session i second that i have a motion and report by mr noon second by ms samuel on the motion any further discussion roll paul please mr oliver yeah shannon jenkins yes kathleen admiral yes mary wait yes john nunes yes this meeting is adjourned thank you everyone
162have a wonderful night you