District Committee Meeting (Nov 23, 2021)

001hmm good evening everyone and welcome to the greater lawrence technical district committee meeting november 23rd 6 p.m so can i get a roll call misfits j miss fitzgerald yes mrs disler mr lamontagne and school committee member ross cn and maretta are absent today okay everybody please rise from a the pledge of allegiance and stay remain standing for a moment of silence pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you first of all first order approval of the minutes of november 9th 21. can i any discussions oops sorry i never shut that up miss fitzgerald yes mrs tesla mr lamontagne yes miss mamo and mr cirillo chairwood chess motion passes cash badness report

002on jerry sure cash balance report as of november 16 2021 count balance on november 4th 2021 was spot 9-1 we had deposits from november 5th to the 16th for 352 403 spot 22. less payroll on november 10th of 1 million 32 000 307 spot 74. and warrant number eight on november 9th at 5 11 772 leaves us with a book balance on november 16 2021 of 1 501 514 66 with the corresponding bank balance on the same day of 2781 584 spot 04 mmdt account on november 4th 2021 6308 528 spot 61 the same balance on november 16th total operating cash balance of 7 million 810 0.43 spot 27. make a motion to approve any discussions discussion close uh miss fitzgerald yes yes [Music] communications none articles superintendent mike i wasn't sure if we were

003through with the finance report but i had two questions on the revolving account and um if it can't be answered tonight i certainly understand without our business manager in place but the first one and i don't remember seeing this name before student activity agency it's fund number 210 so i guess the word agency is what threw me off a little bit and i was wondering what that was and the second one is that i don't remember seeing is account number 214 reggie's locker and it looks like the only activity was during the past 30 days with five thousand dollars coming in without any expenditures against it so if um we could get an answer that would be great superintendent on the student activity agency i believe that is a student activity account [Music] and which

004other one was it susan [Music] oh right oh you talk on 210 240 214 oh 214 reggie's locker yes oh that's the new food bank uh reggie locker is the new food bank one isn't it susan yeah so the reggie um food bank we have that was a donation that was given to us and went into that account i just hadn't remembered seeing that name before and has the student activity account always been called agency i think that's what threw me off um i'm not sure to be honest with you i can check with uh carol i mean joanne on tomorrow yeah can you send your response to um other members john yes i'll email everybody was those lonely to um maryland anybody else articles john we have one article that was in the paper

005it was uh where we had refurbished a car for a veteran for this is the second car that we've done and there was a news release on it which we have a copy of the veteran the students who worked on it got recognized and veterans the veteran was really kind to the students he asked them each of the students to show them exactly what they did on the card so it was a great opportunity for the students to be recognized for supporting the veterans and for the school to support veterans as we always try to do this just shows at what level uh we're willing to go and the students were really excited to meet the veteran and to they felt really good about the fact that they were able to support a veteran in

006our community with this car award thank you john publications superintend public participation nope student report good evening before maureen gives us our student report i'd like to introduce to the committee our second school committee student representative her name is olivia baggett she's also from methuen she's a grade 10 uh student in hvac she's an only child from methuen that is into music mostly listening and collecting she also enjoys writing and hiking she's currently trying to learn spanish and when i asked her what she liked about glts she responded that glts gives you a lot of opportunities to start a career right outside of school and so far here she's made some of her best friends and her teachings her teachers here are amazing so olivia will be joining maureen and they'll be splitting the duties

007but i wanted to formally introduce to you our new member olivia and now i will turn it over to maureen for our student report for november welcome i love you all right hi everyone um so we're gonna start off with interact club they volunteered at the 11th annual pancake breakfast it honors veterans and it's in it's in memory of the former city of lawrence counselor art club has been creating some chalk art in the parking lot there are some photos of their great work you can see it on your packets kaleidoscope club has been volunteering at the mspca on mondays student council and peer mediators have teamed up to host a friendly competition with a thanksgiving food drive we have collected over 1 000 items and still have more to count lazarus house has stopped

008by the school to pick up two full boxes of food around six days ago automotive and auto body students recently worked on a worked on and repaired a car that they that they donated to a veteran so that he has transportation to work we have two gift baskets full of reggie gear by the main entrance you can donate for a chance to win one of them it's one dollar for one chance three dollars for three chances and five dollars for ten chances all proceeds go to towards prom tickets or yearbooks for students we have until december third because they would like to reach their goal of two thousand dollars and they're just missing five hundred dollars to reach it for sports girls volleyball qualified for state for the state tournament in the tournament um glts

009beat charlestown um at home but lost to midway for football they're playing their rival whittier tech on wednesday right before thanksgiving at 6 pm cheer qualified for regionals based on a 7 73.1 score at the cac championship then regionals qualified for states which was on sunday the 21st right for lacrosse it's going really well especially with the girls they love it for the winter season it starts on monday november 29th which is the monday after thanksgiving all information about registration and winter sports including including schedules can be found on the athletic page on the glts website so for skillsusa they had their fall leader they had their fall leadership sorry skills usa had their fall leadership and skills conference so yesterday eight of our students competed against 540 other students from across massachusetts so one

010student from medical assistant received two medals um two silver medals one student from another student from medical medical assistant received two gold medals and in addition students from shops like medical culinary automotive and auto body have received their leadership leadership awards congrats to everyone and then there's um a photo as well up there and then that concludes everything for the student rep presentation thank you any questions anyone um yeah i i had one question i should know the answer the football game where is it here or there there okay now counselor from lawrence says roger told me correctly oh yes yeah yes it is yup counsel it to me and there was one more oh the raffle where could i buy tickets well thank you uh the raffle tickets are be sold being sold out

011of our discipline office um miss martha carrasco has them at the front desk or you can see me after but that's where they're coming out of and they've been doing a great job there it was really thought about like even though last year we were out but even this year's seniors they weren't able to do a lot of their typical fundraising from freshman year on and so we're really trying to to to kind of be proactive and do some things like we did last year for the seniors so and when you walk out you can see the baskets and they're jam-packed with reggie gear seen the baskets in love with the baskets any other questions okay thank you very much and great job update on the budget process superintendent so at this time on the

012budget the each of the departments have pretty much completed putting their budget together and have started to submit their budgets to their core coordinators the coordinators are now we will start the principal myself will start to meet with the coordinators to review each of the shop and academic programming budget to see to finalize and make sure that the budget meets all the expectations regarding their advisory committee and are in line with the school's policy in terms of ensuring that it addresses the priorities of our school improvement plan and the needs of our students any questions okay and update on the mtel grant so uh recently we received a forty thousand dollar grant uh through the work of our chairman uh uh frank who contacted our legislators and uh in hopes of trying to support many

013teachers not only in our own school but particularly in the merrimack valley who are looking to taking their mtel tests which is a test they need to pass in order to become a whether it be an academic or vocational teacher so in order to support those teachers um he applied for a grant uh the legislators voted last week i believe it was last week and awarded the school forty thousand dollars for us to deliver preparation courses and programs to prepare future teachers in the area to get licensed so a big shout out to frank for his efforts on this um it was the other way around each other has contacted me of trying to put the program together but it's a highly needed um course so for especially our teachers is good so it's going

014to be for both academics and vocational uh until preparation um any questions field rfp john so last spring started putting an rfp together finally completed the rfp to put out for phase four which is a soccer field for somebody to pick it up from where it is we the field was filled in with about 10 cubic yards of of gravel and and is now ready for a to complete the field with some kind of finished proposal whether it be artificial turf or natural turf but we want to put it out for an rfp and at least to an organization that may want to do the finish on the field it's in order to do this we need to put this rfp out i have sent the rfp out to our attorneys to review to make

015sure it meets all legal requirements with regards to the state's policies and regulations and i hope to receive it back next week so i can forward the finished product to the school committee for a final vote to put it out there the goal is to really to help support youth programs in the district the school itself doesn't necessarily need the field in order to support our own programs but it will add a little more support in terms of our particularly our soccer program but it's mainly purpose is to try to support youth programming in our communities since we had the space and the opportunity of where we had 10 000 cubic yards donated by the contractor who did all our field project we thought it was a great opportunity to try to to help our

016community so that should be ready for your final vote at the next school committee meeting any questions marilyn no okay um update on the essa grant john so on the essa grant uh i serve two and three we put an amendment in sr2 and we completed the esser uh three grant probably at least four to six weeks ago i think we finally heard back from them we received a document with about i think there's about 15 questions they wanted to answer answered with some substantial response on some of the mostly our capital improvement projects so for the last three days i've been working on a very uh specific outline of each of the projects and the process uh necessary in order to complete the products uh product the intent of the projects and how it

017will offer opportunities for providing more access to the school and for providing a safer environment within our school i believe i should have it done tomorrow send it back and in the uh office that i spoke to of grants at the dsc uh said that it would probably be a two-day uh turnaround uh getting it back to us once uh they get the final answers back to them so i think we're very close to having final approval on that and be able to move forward on many of our projects any questions hearing none uh merrimack valley art event john so you should have a document uh you should have a few documents in your packet that explain uh i was approached by the um andover coral andover car group who wants who would like to

018do a an event in the spring which has a two-fold uh purpose one is to provide um an opportunity for a choral event here at the school which is basically designed in a way to address equity racism in our districts and an opportunity for the community to come together for the event they will do the actual event on stage and then they will have a group discussion uh with leaders from the community uh anyone who obtains uh or purchase a ticket to come to the event uh it's in in order to try to bring together people from all our communities to talk about racism and equity within our four communities it will be taped and once the project is completed the event is completed we will have access that we can utilize it to work

019with our students and and offer more discussions within our own youth programs here at the school in our social study classes and in some of our music programs so it's quite an event that will be happening in the middle of may so we are there are right now the partners in this particular program are the merrimack valley naacp courageous conversations community inroads town of andover massachusetts commission on diversity equity and inclusion merrimack college andover choral society and now greater lawrence technical school will also be considered a partner in in this venture with the opportunity for them to utilize our our space in order to make this happen john is it diversity equity and inclusion yes okay marilyn yes i i see that it's signed by mary does mary have a last name that would be

020question one um question two is are they renting the space from us and if not which is our prerogative to say no charge but at a minimum it would require custodial care on that day if it's a weekend not during the day so i would hope that at as they said as a minimum that we would have to charge a fee for custodials unless it can come out of some special fund but i think the idea is wonderful i guess i'm wondering why they're not using the collins center for instance but um i i i think i don't need more details because it's pretty self-explanatory and in my heart i know it's the right thing to do but you know we need to treat it as a facility rental with insurance um coverage and all

021the rest that we do with any other outside organization so a little homework between now and then to get the paperwork done i think it's more of not done renting it's more of a partnership including glts um and that's why probably the thing i wouldn't charge them for something that's going to be educational towards our students but that's one thing marina did say that i do agree with is more information needs to be given in a little bit more homework although i love the idea that there's still more information that we need so so they will uh have to meet all our criterias for renting up the of the facility in terms of insurance and uh signing all documents and taking having the proper liability in order to perform on at the school here in

022terms of whether we charge them or not that would be i would ask the committee to if they would like to offer it at no cost i would just need a vote from the committee in order to do that which i would recommend given the opportunity that this offers um the school to support such a program we don't always get the opportunity to show who we really are and what matters to us and this is one of those opportunities i think if we support this kind of a program it speaks to who we are and shows the students to what we think is important and what we believe in so i think it would be a good gesture to just become partners of theirs but we would expect to have the proper paperwork and insurance

023and liabilities all in place in order to proceed forward which they said they have uh have in place if uh if in fact we were willing to support them in that way yes maryland what's that yeah just if we could find out who actually in invited us to do this mary whoever if i have that with me but you bring i'm guessing email the committee with the information sure i can bring you uh mary i believe is the uh chair of the coral andover carl group um i just don't have her last name here with me yeah just bring i'll bring it to you i can bring it to you at the next meeting okay marilyn hello site zoella then vivian no work okay it's working now i you said that they're going to be

024charging it would it would be up to the school committee if they wanted to no no you said that they selling tickets so i suppose they selling tickets to for people to um to go to the event yes to support their cause and their organizations uh to continue the work uh that this program is particularly um all about in terms of diversity and offering equity inclusions so their their charge is to to support that kind of effort across across the merrimack valley so that's what the uh funds would go towards is my understanding i can i'll be meeting with them again and i can get uh some and they're willing to come in and present to the committee i prefer that they come and give us a presentation of what the purpose of the obviously

025it says here what the purpose of the program is but we need more information we need to know what they're targeting specifically who are going to be the partners because they mentioned here the the the lawrence center potential partnership but they don't they're not mentioning more of the um different areas like the the four communities that we serve so i need to i would like to hear more from them sure before we move forward with any of this absolutely i'll ask them if they would like to come and speak to the committee after the holidays i'm sure they they had said they would be glad to do that so i can put them on our schedule for j for one of our january meetings pretty much covered um some questions that i had um [Music]

026chairman you said you you confirmed that this is a partnership with glts and uh the coral andover corals um so i wanted at least a little bit more information um regarding to what extent is our partnership um do we like if if we have a say regarding the partnerships as to who we invite uh to come on board how are we um how are we introducing and inviting um for our students to partake in this event as well so that i'm trying to understand to what extent our partnership with them entails just the leasing of the art so our partnership is just the leasing of the is correct of having them in maryland of more information needs to become from them i mean it's easier to get the information from them then i'm giving the

027information to john and then john giving us the information have them come in and do a presentation that covers whatever we need to ask because we might and i'm not sure and john you could correct me if i'm wrong then our students are going to be involved yeah they didn't talk about our students being involved they were talking uh it was an adult event uh from the ex uh what i've uh understood but um they said they would be uh more they wanted to first see if if we had an interest in supporting their their efforts and utilizing our space i think one of the reasons for our space is that it's a more conducive to uh conversation within the space in a huge space like you would find in andover because part of the

028event uh includes uh conversations uh at the event after the uh chorus event choral event thank you marilyn yeah just one more thing i i did read the whole thing in our packet and um i am very familiar with the um courageous conversations group and certainly the intent of what they're trying to do is outstanding and i did notice in the earlier material going back a few pages that the it looked like there would be kind of breakout sessions in classrooms for some of those conversations so i guess the only thing i have no problem with not charging them a rental fee but the bottom line is if a cl if classrooms are being used um and then obviously the uh performing arts center that there would be cleanup to be done and we would

029have to make sure that um we had custodian one or two whatever however many they were looking at but um so just a little bit more information but i the the intent is certainly above board and worthy thank you i was just about to ask you are you familiar with the group i was just about to ask if you were familiar with the group yes the courageous conversations um started within a church group i believe and it uh it basically is just what it says the um the ability to have that conversation with the thing that's oftentimes referred to as the elephant in the room addressing um prejudices in every shapeway or farm we're not just talking racial prejudices thank you marilyn um yeah junkie you set him up to come in before the committee

030before we could get those questions answered absolutely and get um this the name of mary last name and her job and her title sure can do that thank you any further questions on this thank you um out of state travel we have one out of state travel for one of our administrators uh who oversees the construction cluster to participate on the abc at the abc annual planning conference which he we typically we have two members who from the school who are part of the abc organization uh john hartiger and myself serve on that committee john john hartiger would be going to participate in their conference on december 2nd and december 3rd so he would be staying one night in travel and meals for one day can i get a motion so moved okay any discussion

031roll closer miss fitzgerald yes ms disla mr lamontagne miss mammal and mr cirillo good evening again i wanted to share some information with you on our quarter one a quarter one report and just our student how our students fair and student want in a quarter one and also then provide some information on how what we plan to do to support them also a quick update on our mcas re-test in november and our faculty november professional development and so um we have looked at the performance of our students after quarter one and it this table shows the number of students that are failing with one or more failing grades at the end of quarter one by grade level you can see that we have a total here of 162 students again this data is tentative because

032we still had some great changes but overall you can see the the number of students who failed in each grade i want to let you know that i wanted to show like a four-year comparison as well which i think is important to provide some context so instead of just looking at a comparison from last year which we know last year was a very different year there is a comparison that shows our results from this year last year you'll i noted that it's semester grade so it's the it's not really a comparison of quarter one we have data from school year 1920 and back to 1819 and overall considering that our students are coming out of a pandemic and returning to in-person learning and we're all adjusting i would say that overall with 10 percent of

033our students having a a failing grade um 110 of them with just one failing grade um you know i think is uh we don't want to see any students not succeeding academically or in any other way but i think that um you know overall we're very pleased with the results looking compared to last year we can also say that in-person learning is definitely you know benefiting of our students we had a school council meeting tonight and a few of the students had mentioned how much more not only just not being on zoom but how much more now that they're in class they're able to kind of take in and they feel fully present and so even looking back to school year 1920 and 1819 our failure rate is reduced from those years so i want

034to share that and also just share right now what we're doing as an administrative team we did an overall review we're digging in into the data just to see if we can look for some system you know systemic things that we can change and identify those students that really are truly at risk it's different if one student has a 59 as opposed to if we have some students that really really need some additional support you know we're sending out reminder letters for all of those students for those um that did receive a failing grade reminding them of uh homework hub in the afternoon of tuesday and thursdays where we have teachers on staff until 4 30 we're adding mondays after the holiday or in december for any at-risk support so we'll have a homework hub

035or some type of support monday tuesday and thursdays we're also working with our teachers and asking them to identify those interventions that they're working that they are using for their students or will use for any student who failed quarter one once we get those results back from our teachers the admin team is going to look at it to see again what we need to do to support everyone so we're really trying to take a proactive report at the uh approach at the end of quarter one in hopes that we can dramatically reduce any type of failing grades we did as i mentioned last meeting we did have a full mcas retest we tested 51 students for math 16 for ela and one thing that's really i don't can't remember has ever happened we had perfect

036attendance for our mcas retest we also tested uh 24 seniors that was voluntary for the seniors they did not have to test but if they wanted to qualify for the scott the abigail adams scholarship they had to so shout out to those seniors that stepped up and took the test in order to qualify we had professional development this month it was the second month where we focused on data and assessment with all of our teachers data and assessment is aligned to our school improvement plan goal four what we wanted to do is have teachers review and revise assessment measures used to support their practice and in our planning nancy love who works for research for better teaching we've worked with her before she really developed and worked with superintendent lavoy and i and lauren jones

037who's the cte director to really get these sessions going we listened to feedback from some of our teachers from our first session and we developed and offered five different sessions so they could kind of enter where they needed to for their own practice they we had a great session which many of our newer staff members attended on the importance of student feedback and how to give feedback we had teachers working on developing criteria for success in rubrics how to regroup students re-teach and then criteria analysis so once you have that criteria success and once you have your results how can you kind of look at that and analyze so overall we got some feedback from the teachers where they felt like it was more targeted and so we're looking to continue to get feedback from

038teachers as we move forward with our pd plan for this year mrs linsky um i wanted to make sure because i know you you guys have strategies in place along with the sessions that you guys created uh to better support the students um to become more successful in part of those strategies that you have in place do we have anything including the parents of these students who are failing to be part of the process to engage and could we could get feedback from them as well that is more specific as to what could potentially help in supporting the students that's a great question we know partnering with families is important and one of the things that we have in place for our teachers is we want to make sure that any student who's failing a

039grade there's been two-way communication with that parent or guardian so there's been a conversation or some communication between the families and as i mentioned the second part of that is there's going to be a written communication sent from our guidance department that actually gives the guidance team member name and extension and email so families could reach out and for those students that are at risk or in danger of failing you know say three or more we start to call those parents in to have meetings i can also tell you that our guidance team as well as our discipline team has been very busy partnering with families and having families in and really trying to to work on things proactively so right now that's what we do we do it on an individual basis starting with

040the teacher at the teacher level and engaging in that two-way communication to see you know because a lot of times there might be something that the parent can share with the teacher and also we know that as teachers getting parents on board can also help the process yes if are you concerned with the fact that the seniors are the highest percentage with the failing grades in terms of we'd hate to see 52 of our present class class of 22 not graduating um do we have different strategies for the seniors i think that's a great point um looking at that we have some of the seniors that were hoping that um you know having this wake-up call early in the year you know 32 seniors filled one course if you all recall last year it was

041very challenging for the seniors where we had to kind of have an all call and we did some really outside of the box to support the seniors but we weren't able to start that work or we didn't start that work until almost april and so now i feel like having this these conversations with the seniors much earlier um is is going to be a good thing because we don't want to um you know get at the end of the year and have the same issues that we had last year i'll also be sharing where also we have some things in place where we're going to try to start with the seniors and just kind of provide some additional supports with them as well but yeah the numbers with the seniors but i would say and

042i don't have it in front of me typically the senior numbers are always hot the highest at this time miss this look do you know why that is why the failing it's higher at this time okay yeah i don't think i have anything specific to point out sometimes i also think about it you know the seniors coming back they could have actually had a little bit more of a struggle to get back in we have had a report from our seniors which i think i shared that many of them um the last time they were in school full-time they were sophomores they did not have double block schedules they had a different academic experience um so we we wonder if some of that is just transitioning back into and getting that academic stamina and rigor

043because they didn't have that experience last year i never like to use the word senioritis before at least january thank you um and a lot of the stuff i mean looking at this data we didn't look into this data until very late last year and then that's when we sat down and started implementing um strategies i'm commending you for um looking at it a lot earlier and hopefully we can put those strategies in place um and looking at the numbers compared to where they were this time last year and the fact that it's lower than they've been since joining me actually the lowest one we had 29 um 210 between the 2 18 and 19 school year i think that that's great i mean yeah it's a lot more work to be done um and

044as a parent of a glts student i'm aware when my kid is um was finally integrated the teachers did reach out they reached out to the mother sent emails out and it was a great thing to um come together and change that around so that strategy is i believe is working um but we could do better uh we always do better and i want to thank you and your team for everything you guys are doing thank you i'd also like to commend the teachers and the administrative staff the teachers really have been working really really hard to just make sure that that whole transition back into in-person learning and you know taking into account the social emotional piece for our students balancing that with the academics and getting them back on board it's been a

045tremendous lift for everyone but they continue to do it and we continue to to expect a lot of them like now we're turning around and we're asking them to like you know help us out with those students that aren't succeeding but um i know that you know that's what they're they're we're all here to do and i agree i think that partnering with families we always want to look for different ways to do that um and improve thank you no further questions thank you mr leske and thank you for the report and thank your team and the teachers and everybody else on behalf of the school committee old business there's none policy section ada and ada will be combined into one document it will now be ada school district goals and objectives uh can i

046get a motion don't move can i get a second second discussion any questions no miss fitzgerald yes miss disler mr lamontagne yes miss mama and mr cyrillo careful chess new business scene none table matters and is there any thing on the table that members would like to take out yes there's two table matters is there any one particular that you would like to remove from the table to have discussion on or get information on um so move on discussion regarding contact tracing badges and the it was part of the reopening plan and the current protocols and guidelines up for discussion thank you is that a motion can i get a second second discussion uh motion to remove the contact tracing badges from the um opening plan for discussion can i get rokosu miss fitzgerald yes

047ms destler mr lamontagne no miss marmal and mr cirillo yes john do you have any information on the contact so first of all i would make a recommendation that we removed contact tracing badges from the opening plan uh the rationale for that is number one um the students are no longer social distancing and as a result the badges to identify close contacts would virtually be impossible and ineffective and second of all and second of all it would be very difficult to manage sixteen hundred sixteen hundred students and another uh close to three hundred staff members wearing badges uh and to identify close contacts would be virtually impossible given uh the fact that uh how close they are are in particularly in lunch during lunches in the classrooms they're pretty much maintaining three foot distance but

048uh outside of that it's very challenging we do have approximately between 65 and 70 of our students now vaccinated and 98 of our staff is vaccinated which is really an amazing number pretty proud of our staff uh for for that so we're doing very well on that and given those particular issues i would say makes makes no sense to continue the pursuit of the badges also in terms of contact tracing you have a document that articulates the procedures and policies we use now which is under jlts school nurse covert protocol procedures which outlines our protocols procedures that we're using at this time for uh contact tracing uh close contacts uh within the school um i didn't know if you want me to read through all nine of the highlighted issues but for the most part

049it's the fact that students if somebody is determined to have the virus and we do the close contact work if a student has been vaccinated um then um and they're showing no symptoms they're able to stay in the school we test and stay individuals who are who may not have been vaccinated um would have the option to be tested every morning provided they are showing no symptoms other than that they would be required to stay home in quarantine but that kind of highlights basically what our policy has been but uh there are clear details and how that all works in the nine uh procedures and protocols that are that i i gave to you everything yes [Music] okay i have to agree with john our intent and our hope back when we passed having the

050mass and i mean the devices was before any of the things had come out if you look at the dates 8 27 when the guidance for districts in school came out we had passed all this previous to that and i i two things i agree with it is virtually impossible once we eliminated the social distancing within the school classrooms cafeteria everything it kind of made the purpose of the badges no longer useful or relevant so we probably should have thought like oh we've got something in here that we can't really do even though we put it in as a protocol so i would definitely suggest removing that portion from our opening plan and do with what is outlined here especially with the nurse's covert procedure i would make that in the form of a motion

051second vivian okay um so i never really had an issue in regards to um removing these badges from the reopening plan but since that's how we voted um in going forward in adding them um i thought it was important and a necessity for the superintendent to uh bring this to the school committee if he was going to proceed in um basically going forward and not using these badges and getting more detailed information as it was provided today to the reasonings as to why that that was the case uh superintendent um so so far how is this protocol working for you with the students and i'm not sure to what extent are you able to share information regarding the data on whether we have received a certain number of positives considering that we're no longer using

052the badges so just wanted to know how is it working yeah so it's we've been very successful uh so far we've since the opening of school we've had 27 students that have had the virus and 10 staff members who have had the virus which is a very low number considering we're looking at 1600 and well almost just under 2 000 people in the building those are really super low numbers so it's worked out very well to this point of course we have going into the holidays a little more concerns so we're we're going to reinforce all our procedures and protocols with the staff and the students right after thanksgiving reinforcing the fact that they have to keep their mask on properly because it gets after a long period of time you know after two and

053a half months you can get a little relaxed and so we have seen a little bit of that so we're going to reinforce we have a few uh activities we're going to be doing both with students and staff to reinforce our procedures and protocols just to remind everybody how important it is to continue to wear their masks and keep them up and we're also looking at some of the trying to keep more social distancing within the cafeteria we have we are at this point using uh we are uh um finding that it's very difficult within the cafeteria to maintain that social distancing with the students so we're planning uh strategies in in which to try to reinforce the fact that we want to try to keep the students as far apart as at least three

054feet apart if possible biggest challenge when you have that many students it's really hard when you have limited space to keep them that distance but given all that we've still been very fortunate in the amount of cases we've had to this point so we'll keep working at it marian are you able to provide us an update regarding the vaccination rates of students has it is there an improvement since school started so it continues to go up slowly we're proud we're at about 67 percent we were hoping to get to 70 percent by thanksgiving so we're close to that and um and slowly we get a few more each week take getting the vaccination so that's still you know uh progressing slowly but still and i think that does make it is making a difference in

055making it easier uh to allow students to test and stay and not have to you know return home if they were close contact you know most of your close contact work is really dependent on interviewing a person that might have con contracted the virus to determine the close contacts given the situation today so and we find that the biggest number of close contacts turns out to be students that are close together within the cafeteria so but we're still we feel good about the fact that that as many students as we've had uh get the vaccination we're very you know not um we're pleased with that number but we definitely would like to see the number closer to 80 85 percent so we'll continue to work and try to encourage that we're also looking at should

056we have some other kind of event to try to get over the hump and get that up to 80 percent but we'll continue to work at that but 98 of our staff i think is probably as good as you'll see at any school it's been very that's very good considering we have about 260 staff members in the building so overall as long as we're following the cdc guidelines i'm i don't have an issue in regards to like the the u not using the badges however um i am curious if you have any plan in place if there was a spike like what what plan do you have in place or strategies um to to mitigate um those factors yeah so we'll be we'll be following the dsc's policies we are looking at pull testing uh

057we can we talked about it today the covert team met to get today and we try to uh we're trying to anticipate uh possible challenges we we may have after the holidays and so one of the things we talked about was pull testing so we could get a better handle on the asymptomatic uh students that or staff that may have it that we don't know about that could cause some spread typically if unless we were to get you know large numbers within one classroom space we would probably continue to follow the procedures and protocols we use if we were to get a larger uh percentage of students within one air one classroom come down with the virus and we may have to look at you know quarantine that particular classroom space for those students for

058so that might be one strategy we would go to but right now we're not seeing that kind of an issue and i think what's helping that really is trying to keep the classroom students three feet apart which is what we're really trying to do particularly in the classroom so even if the student gets the virus and we haven't even found a lot of transmission within a student that gets it from the in the cafeteria spreading to other students that that has not become an issue either for those students who are close contacts i'm not aware of anyone that has gotten the virus from another student after being a closed contact so we're still doing well with that but if it starts to shift the other way then we'll take more drastic measures in in requiring

059students to to stay home vivian yourself i think um the problem the thing was more of um it should have came back to the school committee for to re um to change the um plan um with that did i get a motion to remove the badges maryland seconded by um leo any other questions enrolled causal miss fitzgerald yes miss disla mr lamontagne yes miss marvel and mr cirillo sure yes um can i get a motion to remove retention actually do you have a plan yes sorry the retention rate and additional information of off the table [Music] can i get a um raw course yes miss fitzgerald yes miss dislock mr lamontagne miss marmo and mr cirillo terrible chess and john can you give us the update you should have in your packet um the retention

060rate over the last i believe it's five years uh based on each individual year and based on um positions whether they're vocational teachers academic teachers clerical custodians uh listed on there the hire date the date that the the separation date and whether it was voluntary resignation or retirement or dismissal are listed there for each year and it shows that on each year what the percentage of turnover was for that particular year and it ranges every anywhere from 0.05 to [Music] 0.1 being the highest over the i can give you some examples i can't share individual results of the exit interviews but i can give you some examples of some of the percentages from our last year's exit interview we did i can share a little bit of that with you just to give you a

061sense of uh why people may be leaving or not leaving so we ask certain questions and i'll share the questions and out of this is out of nine staff members who responded to our exit interview they don't a lot of times we invite people to do the exit interview they don't always do it but in this particular year there was nine staff that responded to most of the questions but not all the questions are so let me let me reboot this some reason it's um so on a nine his uh do you feel the job matched your interest abilities in education nine said yes do you like your job seven said yes two didn't respond do you feel you receive adequate support through the mentoring program uh six out of the nine said yes three

062said no um do you feel the workload was reasonable three said yes six said no do you believe you received a fair salary nine said yes zero said no do you feel the working conditions were good five said yes four said no do you feel your colleagues were cooperative six said yes do you feel you receive effective and fair supervision eight said yes one said no do you feel you were properly informed about policies and procedures seven said yes two said no do you feel you receive adequate communication about school issues seven said yes two said no were you satisfied with employee benefits such as sick and personal leave vacation retirement medical nine said yes do you feel glts is a welcoming cultural and racial uh differences eight said yes nobody said no if you

063were if a friend were interested in a position here would you recommend he or she to apply six said yes one said no and those were the questions we asked and there were a few responses [Music] why that some people left [Music] wanted to work in an adult in an adult setting moved and commute was too long like to be working with a different and more varied speech language population alumni for the school i will be working for a school closer to home that i graduated from retirement uh i feel like glts goes above and beyond really with new employee orientation i have felt nothing but welcomed it felt like a better uh clinical fit for me i truly did not anticipate the workload involved in teaching thanks for mr lavoy and mrs zielinski for

064this opportunity to be part of jlts community i have two i have two people that i would like uh they are two people that i liked very much they were helpful going to miss going to miss this place my negative comments do not include staff in the shop they are great dedicated and fun to work with great the only real leader i encountered here knowledgeable flexible listened care in our pathways and our jobs our supports i also support superintendent he was blamed for a lot of stuff that our former principal was responsible for those were the comments from last year um i also provided you with uh in the packet um well one of the things i want to just kind of highlight with the responses here it seems as though the things that are

065important to people which i think we which are actually in the strategies i had uh highlighted for you a list of about 14 to 15 strategies that are important to provide in order to maintain strong retention in your school they're all bulleted there i can go through them if you want but a lot of those are listed here salary which is so important everybody feels as overtreated fairly with salary with benefits i think for the most part [Music] people did not leave because of being unhappy with the school albeit not perfect i think what's interesting that people felt the workload was not reasonable so which tells me that it was really hard and so they decided to move on but three six i didn't think we had a reasonable workload three felt like we did

066so that kind of speaks a little bit to some of the rationale why people leave but that's kind of a kind of a synopsis synopsis of of why people have gone but if you look at teacher retention strategies these are some strategies that i listed that for the most part we provide here at glts that i think are very important to people and some that we will pursue to continue to pursue to improve on so that we can be even a place where where staff can feel supported feel as though they have a culture that is collaborative and they they're happy to come to work to every day and because we know if that's the way they feel they're going to be that much better a teacher and i think for the most part i

067feel that we have a staff that feels that way and performs that way given given just looking at our first quarter failure rates and our mcas scores last year really points to a staff that's doing an outstanding job and is happy to be here and coming to work every day that's just particularly this year this year has been really an exceptional year this is my 49th year in education and i think the environment is as good as i've ever ever felt in a school in my career i think so many people are happy to be back and and i think we're doing a really good job outlining our school school improvement plan and our professional development and the support we've given the teachers coming into this year has been really well and the students have

068been exceptional as well this year couldn't be i personally couldn't be happier with our students performance and behavior so far this year it's been remarkable given uh what they're going through and struggles that they've been going through thank you john anybody got questions i'm viviane then um superintendent um thank you for this presentation it was definitely informative um and hopefully the strategies that you have listed here uh we're putting it to use and into practice in order to be more effective when it comes to the retention rates i remember when when the data was first provided to us the steam department really jumped out at me regarding um how high the numbers were and then looking at this data i could see that uh there's a good portion to which it was an involuntary separation

069do you mind providing details as to what does that particularly mean well i think in steam there was a lot of challenges it was an innovation school because it was an innovation school we had more flexibility in the hiring i think there was a lot of challenges for the staff who came into this into the steam innovation program there was a lot of uh adjusting and adaptations for those staff members there was a lot of i think pressure and stress being in an environment that was different than the rest of the school and having to uh try to and i think at the very particularly the first few couple of years uh the struggle to get students into those programs into the pristine program was difficult the numbers were low and i think that put

070a lot of pressure on people they didn't feel safe in their jobs and so they looked elsewhere in some cases in a lot of cases in the hiring practices may not have been as good as it could have been because i think as a as a hiring staff that was doing a lot of the hiring we had a lot to learn in terms of what what the program really needed in terms of of highly skilled and professional instructors for an innovation school in the nature and the way we were trying to deliver instruction was so different and i think because of that we were seeking constantly trying to find the right fit and so that would result in us either letting staff go or staff not feeling comfortable being here or feeling safe and secure

071with the job so they looked elsewhere so it was a real challenge continued to be throughout the whole time the program has been in in place and so it's taken it take it took a long time to to iron things out and as a result of that we've made a lot of changes and continue to make changes okay thank you superintendent i appreciate uh you mention a key word which is the hiring practices which is why to me was so important that we looked into this because this basically um promotes the fact that we we should be doing a better job within the hiring practices and um when we're looking at job postings that's why i think it's so important that we're looking at what the minimum requirements are that way we're not compromising the

072excellence of our schools by hiring candidates that are not properly qualified and we're doing a disservice to the students by hiring staff that we will end up letting go within the year yeah and you know i think if you look at our typical hiring practices for most of our programming academic vocational i think we have done very well over the last 10 or 12 years in hiring really outstanding caller quality staff members which the results of our students our students results in the work that our students are if you look at our mcas performance 11 years ago when you look at it today it's substantially improved you know we were one of the we were in the third percentile in terms of student performance uh 11 years ago when i first started and when now

073we're almost at the 40 percent uh tile which tells me that and we've had an enormous amount of new teachers come in a lot of retirees and so that says that generally speaking for most of our programs we've done a good job replacing those teachers that have retired with really competent uh motivated high performing instructors who are clearly dedicated and are really caring with arts one of the big successes of our school i think is the fact that students feel that people that the staff cares about them that they matter and that they're here for them and that's so important in terms of getting buy-in from you from your students and and uh not only do they feel that way that's actually how how our staff is they are those people that want to make

074a difference in kids lives and they really do so and i think that you know really speaks to the the hiring practices generally for most of our staff but i will again say steam was a very difficult and different kind of a program that was a challenge for us to figure out the right kind of hiring practices we should use in that particular area oh i'm so sorry lastly superintendent if you don't mind and if it is feasible um the strategies that you have in place are you able to periodically uh provide us with feedback like for example you mentioned develop strategies to support minority staff teacher feedback surveys are you able to provide us from time to time like what like develop strategies what are those strategies um and what are the surveys that

075are being sent out and what is the the feedback from our staff regarding those services um not services the surveys along with all the you know the plethora strategies that you have in place um i you know if it's possible that you could provide feedback sure how you're you're going about it yep so absolutely so first of all we have uh we're putting a committee together where we actually have a group of four staff members right now that are in a program with the department of education we had one meeting already at two and a half uh it'll be five times we'll be meeting with the department of education on developing strategies to hire more minor minority uh staff members and and ways to support our existing minority staff members um which is a very

076comprehensive program we've actually been in the program for the last uh four years but this year is really focusing in on how do we um put in strategies in place to ensure that we are uh hiring and recruiting because it's not a matter of just posting and hoping that your minorities apply but it's really getting out there and recruiting and what are the things that we are doing that would make a diverse person uh feels so they're welcomed here glts you know everything from looking at our website to our hiring practices and all those other things so we're doing a deep dive into that and we are having a committee that's working on putting a manual together uh developing a manual for uh developing practices in hiring a diverse staff and and then also in

077ways to support them so as as we continue to develop this and put this in place i will uh bring some of that to the committee uh as we uh continue to work on this one more thing i would add to that will be the intel prep for teachers of color the until prep test itself isn't friendly for teachers of color and that's a proven fact and research it indicates that that one of the biggest struggles is passing the mtel preparation program the mtel licensing exam and that's why we're doing the um mto preparation program so mr superintendent that would be something i would add to your um to your strategies because it is a very hard test and for teachers of color it's very has become very difficult to pass and that's something the

078department of education is looking at to see how they revamp it um vivian well now i'm just a little curious as to why is it predominantly affecting teachers of color in passing this uh test like why specifically cultural um and the other factors has looks like she has a comment yeah i was just gonna say sometimes it's a cultural bias in the test questions themselves like it's just like it's been known and that's that's been shown through research that some of the um the actual mtel tests just like in the past we've had issues with mcas questions having the same impact so which is why there's a high concern at the state level and why i was that was reached out by the state dedication to put this program together um so it is part

079of the the issue when we look looking at um trying to diversify our educational staff um so we are ready to look into how we are addressing that um thank you superintendent as well do you have something i forgot obviously but let me go backwards so i hope that those 40 thousand 40k grand that we just got for the intel we can put it on good use to develop programs to help those people you know yep absolutely also we will be able to uh utilize some of that to i think we can utilize some of that to recruit some minority we're going to be doing some workshops particularly in the vocational area to recruit more vocational teachers so we're going to be going out into the community doing workshops to try to recruit more vocational

080teachers there's a super shortage of all uh career areas particularly in the minority area that we need to try and we have so many just looking at our own school how many graduates we've had over the last you know 20 years that are minority we need to try to reach out to them our alumni and put a strategy together where we can try to encourage some of them to try to become some teachers here at jlts because for years and years we had alumni that came into jlts and became instructors which we still have quite a few in the building now but it's time i think for us to try to encourage more of our latino graduates to try to pursue a career in education so that's part of the work we're going to be

081working on is one of our strategies as well you said that that for that you have been it's been four years that you have been trying to working to get people of colors in i mean you said that you just um created a community for that but it's been going on for four years we've been part of the dnc's uh minority recruitment program for the last four years and um last although last year didn't really uh i think we had one meeting last year because of covid the every before we had two because it started in march so they're just really getting started again uh into the program to be more uh to be more aggressive in uh in the work that they're trying to do our first week was i thought was very very

082good with lots of a great foundation in which to start working and planning so i think this particular program by the end of this year we should have a good manual put together with good ideas and strategies to can we just get updated on the progress of that program i will update you as we develop it and also give you the final manual a copy of the final manual but before we finalize it i'll also present it to you for you may have ideas i would like to see you know what we're going to do different this year to to hope that this whole program really take off and have some results absolutely this is actually one of my it's part of one of my goals besides so i'll be reporting out periodically on our

083progress thank you so back to the questions that i have on the retention strategies so on the nc it's an interview data that you provided you read which it wasn't included here but you read it from um from your notes um uh there was one you said there was no interview which is for this year this you know there were you read interviews for this year excellent uh interview the exit interviews from this year just for this year yep just for this one year yeah so one there was a comment that the person left because of language can you repeat that one for me sure let me look it up uh i guess the closest thing to that that i that i read i think is do you feel glts is wealthy welcoming of cultural

084racial differences and eight out of the nine said yes that's the only one that had oh in the comments there was comments that you've read of people and one of them you said that the person left because of some type of language or something there was some one that said that they wanted it i did i think there's a move from commute like to working with differences in alumni from the school not retirement centered i feel the fias goes above and beyond really with superintendent lavoy my native comments do not include staff in the show i can help yes superintendent liveaway i think that was the comment it was around the position um like to be working with a different and more varied speech and language population so it was a particular comment on someone

085left that was a that was their position oh here it is like to be working with a different and more varied speech and language population like to i would like to work with a different and more varied speech and language population which is kind of an odd comment i think so that's for a particular specialized position and that person might want to work in a clinical setting instead of an educational setting it's not anything to do i know what you're saying it's not the context of like a like language in the sense of that it's more about a a an actual a specialized position and how it could be a clinical position they might want to work with um elementary school team students it it makes my head feel better um okay so i know

086you said um this was that like i said already this year's interview can we see a cooperation of all the years like like we saw with the failures of the students i just i would like to see more of this i mean this is a great start i love to hear all the this information the way that you presented it but i would like to see more and compare two years in the past are you referencing uh the exit interviews yes questions and interview data that you provided so um in terms of the exit interviews i'm not sure how much data we have prior to this year was done by our hr director i'm not sure that she went to this that we did to this extent where we asked all these questions but i

087will check with her tomorrow if we have other years i will also bring those bring that to you moving forward just as well collect that that way we know what we should be working on to keep the teachers um thank you um marilyn yes i would make a suggestion that if we are able to have this information that it comes to us in an email or in print rather than having to have it read to us at a meeting that we can use it for our own thank you mary and i agree with marilyn any further questions no thank you superintendent and yes moving forward can you please get it in a documented form sure i just uh just received this information an hour before the meeting because i asked hr to put this together

088this morning for us so she worked on it all day um personal considerations report resignations i see none legal absence of xenon retirement none appointments superintendent john mintz we have um miss annuary judy a special education bilingual family liaison effective on november 29 miss elizabeth trong nurse effective december 6 2021 miss nicole savino health assistant instructor effective december 12 2021. thank you job postings we have a lifeguard phys ed swimming classes this position is responsible for guarding the pool ensuring the safety of all students enforcing pull rules and implementing the school's eap as needed applicants must provide the following certifications lifeguard certification cpr certification first aid certification and an aed certification 20 an hour it's a one month position for 20 hours it's a replacement position which we hire when we are teaching uh when

089we have phys ed classes to teach students how to swim i got a second maryland yes um i have a problem with listing this at twenty dollars an hour and the um you know maybe we already have somebody in mind but the difficulty of finding somebody sporadically during that time a couple of hours here a couple of hours there and you're asking them to disrupt their entire day for a few hours for twenty dollars an hour first of all um it's a professional position and twenty dollars an hour in my mind and you all know where i'm coming from is um insulting for what we're asking this person to do it'll be the most imperson important person in the pool at the time so as a minimum because i mean minimum 25 an hour to

090get somebody to come out again unless we have somebody that we know um [Music] it we need to make it a higher my my opinion so um uh hold on a second john um vivian this is a replacement position what do we pay the person that was doing this job before we we haven't had this position in the last two years because we haven't taught swimming because it's covered so this will be prior to that uh i believe that's what we were paying them but of course that was three years ago times are different in terms of finding anybody for any position today so it was a recommended salary to me um that they thought we possibly could get someone for this amount um but um you know if the committee feels that we should

091post it for 20 to 30 dollars an hour and see what we can get if that would be make more sense i'm not sure if there's somebody already uh interested in the position but i'm happy to put it in a at a range of 20 to 30 dollars an hour if the committee would be more comfortable with that well i think we need to we need more information we need to discuss it a little more because i mean i don't i really don't know what a person gets paid to do this job anywhere um maybe we also need to instead of raising that maybe giving uh paying a minimal amount of hours for the time that the person yeah even if the person only worked one hour you know the minimum pay is four hours

092i mean we can do it different ways but i think we need to discuss that a little more and see what it's more um more feasible vivian then miss um then maryland and mrs linski i guess uh oh oh i'm it's sorry it's okay marilyn it's okay um it's kind of piggy backing off of what your comment and zoeva's and i'm just noticing i guess the it's a one-month position and just curious as to like so within the month like how often um how often would this position take place is it just a few hours every day is it only a couple times a week um so i was able to speak with mike nelson this position came as a request to superintendent lavoy and i on mike nelson the athletic director he also is

093in charge of the wellness instructor instructors and as superintendent lavoy mentioned we weren't in session last year we did not have any swimming at all especially with everything that was going on with um you know tragedies around people with water this the wellness instructors as well as the athletic director really thinks it's important to get kids back in the water his plan is to have both of the instructor the wellness instructor that will be it will be their class is also has all the certification so this position is actually um the second person um that will be the certified life guard kind of like on deck and their job is to kind of watch both the the class as well as the instructor um when speaking about rates i believe that the rate when we

094did it last time i think the rate he said he thought we did was around 17 or 18. so we bumped it to 20 he had asked around i think that if we're able to recruit a more high quality person and it's the um you know wish of the district or the committee i think that superintendent lavoie would consider that how it's going to work right now is when we're going to have this person come in and they're going to be working with the teachers eight periods a day so each class they'll come in and they'll be you know a class that they'll do with breaks um you know they may teach six out of eight like our schedule is so um it would be some we would be looking for someone that would come

095in it wouldn't be like an intermittent an hour here and now we're here it would be kind of this would be kind of the unit of swimming instruction for that teacher or these teachers i believe we have two teachers targeted for the ninth and tenth grade right now and um we would be working um they'll be working with two teachers to plan it so they believe mr nelson believes that this could be done within the month and i know i asked about that because i was wondering too like if there was someone in mind i know last year we did last time we posted it we did get someone that was a certified instructor that was available for those times and so that's what we're hoping for um is this a brand new position or

096is this going to be a stipend position for extra duty no this is actually we've done it's it's a replacement position we've had it done before but it's not going to be filled it has to be filled by someone that's a certified lifeguard that's not here in the building they have to come from outside because we already have those certified teachers that will be in the pool as well actually very are you done okay i had a question um do you know what month this is scheduled for potentially i believe it's december or no it's january because we wanted to make sure that we were able to post and um we were able to post and get applicants and interview so then when we returned from the students return from winter break it would be

097that month that's a tentative plan i i think that doing this obviously there are many college kids that are home for the month of january and i know we have some that are very familiar with all of our rules my mind's going crazy thinking of a few but the fact that it's january we'd have a better chance of getting somebody but i still think the 20 an hour for the as i said it is a professional job not enough but that's just my opinion um there's a motion on the table made by mr lamontagne it was seconded by marilyn vivian okay vivian yeah they did at the same time uh so vivian um rokosu actually maryland ah no it was the motion go ahead miss fitzgerald yes miss disla mr lamontagne yes miss mamo yes

098and mr cirillo yes environmental science program development john we're looking for one one teacher for up to 40 hours to develop the new you know environmental science content curriculum and establish industry partnerships for the development and submission of the chapter 74 new program application uh local 1707 school year 2122 new position so in order for us to have this program approved we have to have this curriculum in place and completed by uh april can i get a motion second discussion also miss fitzgerald yes ms disla mr lamontagne miss mama and mr cirillo careful cheers substitute um school nurse substitute school nurse we're looking to try to find a few daily substitute nurses we can put on our list to fill in for nurses absence upper contract immediate 2021-22 school year that's a replacement position we

099are having difficulty finding nurses and the 273 is the going rate for substitute nurses uh when we checked around and um anywhere from 273 to 350 dollars we found in order to find someone that's willing to be placed on our substitute list last week we had a couple i think one day we had no nurses and another day we had one nurse and our director of guidance and admissions uh worked in the nurse's office along with nari who works in the nurse's office every day now but that it just shows you how difficult difficult it is to find nurses right now we did we do have a new nurse starting soon that we just hired and have a posting for another one so um we're hoping to be in good shape by the by the

100time the christmas comes around and by the january break uh after the january after the christmas break so making a motion check motion first so how many nurses do we have right now we have uh one nurse and another starting um in a couple weeks and then we're in the process of uh interviewing for uh the third nurse you all said sir any other questions leo superintendent what is that um what's the daily rate roughly for a nurse that's on staff roughly the daily rate well depending on what their salary is would probably be uh close to 375 dollars a day i would say in that range what's your personal i mean i think you gave your personal opinion that 273 we probably are not going to get any takers yeah we um well looking

101around we think we could probably get at least some nurses on our sub list for that amount of money um and that i mean we feel comfortable if we could at least get two or three on the list that we could call when we get in those times where we have you know one or one nurse in the building to really try to get a substitute in i agree with you 100 that we should have a list of two three how how many we can have i'm just not i'm i'm just not sure that the two the amount per day for dm is going to do it but if you know if you want to start out there that's fine yeah the our director of guidance and admissions uh brenda richardson did some research and

102she feels like that would be an amount that we could draw some nurses in some of the interviews or conversations she's had with nurses as well leads her to believe that that might be a number that will work plus you can always come back to you know come back to the committee if it uh if it's not working you know yes move my discussion i'm so moved for approval leo i'm sorry you're wrong move to approve um um i'm gonna ask this again i'm sorry but so we have one nurse one that's going to start december 6 that's going to be two nurses and we are looking for a sec third one we're gonna have three nurse and then this and why this is for sustain to to have a list separate from the three

103correct yes that's so if somebody's out then we can call somebody in okay so we have one one that's coming in december and one that you're waiting for to to highlight and the third one we're interviewing so what our goal is is to have three full-time nurses okay and this is just for 62 to have them on the list yes okay thank you welcome in a discussion um i believe we we did for this year was maryland secondly yes that's what i have um miss fitzgerald yes mrs disla mr lamontagne yes miss mama and mr cyrillo careful cheers future agenda items anybody has anything they want to add there is we had two other positions that were i was asked to place on the list today so one is a culinary art we're looking for

104a culinary arts teacher that would work at an hourly rate to oversee the uh financials and do the ordering there's a a definition attached definition of the essential functions and duties of the position it's uh it's basically after school one of the staff members would do the ordering of foods functions there's a list of 10 responsibilities that come with this they would be paid at the contract rate of 35 an hour we've always had someone in this position but we uh because of coal with last year we didn't have someone in the position and uh because this year we um we're not doing uh as much we're still doing some ordering but not as much we are soon after the holidays expecting to open up the uh the two restaurants to the public so uh

105at that time uh we will need to have uh someone on board to manage and oversee the business basically it's like running a business so moved make it a second second the vivian in maryland so is this a replacement position yeah it's just a replacement we always had someone doing this particular duty um except for last year okay all right i guess i'm thinking back a long time ago or maybe not so long ago i always thought that this was the responsibility of the department head of the program and i'm thinking of other areas of our school that you know i'm reading each of these functions first of all there is not a limit on how many hours a day so this person could be here three hours a day after school five days a

106week and all of a sudden we have a really big expense so i would want it to be with a set amount of time and i know that you answered the question that it's a replacement position but prior to it being a separate position who did it was it the department head and isn't that their responsibility so many years ago uh this there was a position in the culinary department that was a department headley teacher but they had no teaching responsibility and they did this job we eliminated that position and made this a stipend position after school because we didn't want a teacher spending all their time doing pay a teacher ninety ninety thousand dollars a year to order uh food and oversee their budget so rather than that we we established a that then

107it was a stipend position of ten thousand dollars a year uh we we believe that an hourly rate would come in less than ten thousand dollars a year but i'm happy if we were to if we were to establish no more than five hours a week um it would come out a full year would come out to about nine thousand dollars a year which would be a little less than ten thousand we believe the job can be done within an hour a day or approximately five hours a week not necessarily an hour a day and the person doing the job would have to do the job here at the school and put in a time sheet um i thank you for the clarification and that does make sense now that you say that i'd much

108rather have our um teachers teaching uh than just ordering but um it obviously involves some financial there there's i feel more this then um i guess what i'm trying to say is that this person needs other skills also when you're asking for the them to do the cost analysis the comparisons and so on so now that you've explained it i have no problem with the fact that it uh will be a separate position and why we didn't have it last year but i guess i still would like to see a limit on it either like that when i think of a stipend i think of a set salary versus an hourly rate so whether we say okay you're only going to work five hours a week six hours a week or we're gonna pay you

109nine thousand dollars a year whatever i think it should have some type of parameter on it in terms of the finance part so you're looking for a set number of hours marilyn either way whatever um the superintendent is comfortable with and um principal whether they want it to be a set salary stipend knowing that the job has to get done no matter how many hours it takes or do they want to do hourly but then set the number of hours well i would be happy to set it no more than five hours a week if they do it in three then that would be fine but no more than five hours a week leo will you take that as a friendly amendment to your emotions yes yeah just my adjust my uh my motion to

110include uh up to five hours per week thank you leo you had your hand up that's what i wanted to do okay uh vivian um see that's why i was a little confused because i see it's culinary arts and um hearing the specifics of what the what the definition is they're not an instructor so what is theirs you know what is specifically the name of their position then i know it's the culinary arts department but it is a it is a culinary arts teacher that would be doing the position because there are they're ordering the materials that they use every day to teach the students and to operate to provide uh the food services that need to be ordered every day just like a regular business would be so it has to be a culinary

111teacher that would be doing this who knows the curriculum knows the menu every day and so it has to be someone out of that department that does this job very so yeah because maryland did bring up a good point in the sense of like uh all like the essential functions so i'm assuming that um the hiring of this position of any culinary arts teacher would have the minimum requirements to to be able to conduct these duties yes i just wanted to add that i had the opportunity to speak with the cte coordinator judd berman after he spoke with superintendent lavoy just he also confirmed what superintendent lavoy said you know it is not a position that we would we were going to approve like someone working 10 hours a day on this it isn't anticipated

112and they can look at how depending on the week and what they have to order some weeks maybe three hours but it would be no more than five hours thank you john the one other thing i want to want to clarify that um that this person um not last year but the spring of the year before there was a posting for this position but it was a one thou a thousand dollar stipend position because of the limit amount of um hours that were being put into the position uh now that it's full time it's a totally different role and more responsibility so uh via and that's a rationale for making it up you know hourly hourly rate which will bring in about nine thousand dollars uh if they were to work five hours every week

113thank you john um there's a motion on the table with your amendment to add for maybe um five hours made by leo seconded by maryland rokosu miss fitzgerald yes miss dislove is that no so no okay no abstain no okay mr lamontagne yes miss mama and mr cyrilla yes u.s skills career coach john so this is our last position skillsusa career coach we posted this earlier in the year for coaches but 10 coaches does not give us one coach per shop we are trying to encourage more staff members and more students to participate in skills usa because we we value the experience that the students get from participating and also it extends the curriculum and opportunity for learning for our students but in order to really provide a strong support system and experience we really

114need one teacher for every shop to be the coach for the kids that are gonna that are gonna participate in this particular uh program um so i would like to make a recommendation that we hire which would require hiring an additional 10 instructors for uh to cover the 10 shops that we would not have covered by just having nine i mean nine more we need nine more positions because we had only ten prior so we in order to cover all 19 shops we'd have to hire at least another nine instructors to cover this opportunity for students to have support a support system if they're going to participate in this program otherwise i feel like we're doing the students an injustice and asking them to participate in some in something that they're not going to get

115a lot of support for the salary for this is 600 for the year are you looking for nine um additional instructors john yes okay um leo you made a motion marilyn you second it yes discussion rojo miss fitzgerald yes miss disla yes mr lamontagne miss um before we move on i wanted to bring uh can you tell me what's going on with the dress code i received a bit i believe everybody received the email concerned about the dress code sure i can bring you up to date on that so uh as you are aware i received a email from a person that led me to believe it was a parent but in doing some research couldn't find the name of a parent that had emailed me from any students that were lying to any students

116we also checked the emails couldn't find anybody by that with that email in our system at all in terms of parents or guardians i'm not saying i would assume there isn't one given the thorough research that our director of student information did but in any case we did get an email i did get an email asking about our dress code that they felt as though we weren't following our dress code and that we weren't following our badge uh bat student badge id requirements as well uh i did return the uh an email to that person which i cc the committee on stating that i agreed that we should be following our policies and i met with the principal uh as part of our plan we've never had any intention of not following our dress code

117one of the things uh procedures and uh expectations that we set for this year uh given the issues with the problems we have with trying to get every all students a uniform and we had a lot of problems with our id badge computer system in trying to make the id badges which we since have resolved in the last month and are now working on making sure all students have id badges so that was an issue we also had one of the things that we thought was important when the students first arrived in the beginning of the school year was to try to get the school react students reacclimated to the school try to get the students feeling good about being back so we were not we didn't see a major problem with in terms of

118there was a question about students wearing pajama bottoms and students wearing ripped jeans which in fact there have been some students who have been that have worn ripped jeans and pajama bottoms it hasn't been an enormous problem but we have not put a lot of pressure on students uh because of the difficulties and the challenges that they were facing with a lot of mental health issues and a lot of other issues we felt as though it would be important to let them to adapt to the school first so in our conversation in the last couple days with the principal and myself uh and we've we've brought it up to the administrative team and what we've agreed to do at this point is to let the students know that by december 1st the expectation is that

119they will follow our policies with regards to ripped jeans and pajama bottoms that they needed to follow our student handbook with regard to dress and id badges and as a result of that we would put together a committee of students faculty members and administrators to look at the dress code and give them a little input into what they believe a conversation opportunity to express their feelings about the dress code and to give to be fair to students and give them a voice we in the interim will be putting a committee together to do that we felt it was important uh so that the students felt like uh they do have a voice but in the and we thought that would encourage them to follow the rules knowing that we are going to give them a

120voice and uh i think uh that will make a difference to our students and also i think it shows them that we respect what they think and what matters to them um and so we thought it was a good approach to do um so as a result of the email you know gave us an opportunity to reflect on our procedures and protocols and our expectations since the beginning of the school year and and i think in the end it will be a positive result in moving forward and i do want to say the principal put out the email today to the students and the staff and the parents and i think it um i expect a good response both from from all parties uh i thought the email was welted well written and well done

121and really gave a a tone of a very positive tone in the situation any questions is this yeah um so regardless of who send the email it's true the the students are just coming in in pajamas that's what i hear you said there were students that had there were some students that have pajama bottoms which is a common uh thing going on in schools these days uh students wearing pajama bottoms but i i don't think we when in talking to the dean of discipline uh today uh yesterday um he indicated to me that it wasn't you know an epidemic and i did a lot of touring through the school and through all uh lunch uh lunches the last couple of days and i have to tell you i i personally didn't see any pajama bottoms

122i did see some students because it's the style today you know student kids are paying eighty dollars for a pair of uh blue jeans that have rips in them but it's not to say that that's okay so i did see some uh a few uh ripped jeans um mostly on the girls not so much on the boys it's because i know that's a style but we'll look at that i don't know if it's a problem in the shops i'm not hearing about any safety issues or problems with regards to what's going on in the shop i think for the most part students are following the dress code in the shop one of the other issues is students not wearing their shop t-shirt in the academic week so which is required of them so we are

123we have upped our expectations to this point for our students and have made them aware of it miss liske can you share that email that you sent to the parents please thank you um can you add this um for the future agenda items uh report back on a next meeting under a survey or the email that you sent any other questions uh miss marmo superintendent when um i think it's a good idea to involve the students to be part of the process you know gaining their opinion um in updating the handbook if that is necessary do you mind uh letting me know when was the last time that handbook was updated um considering that we are constantly updating policies so out of curiosity sure i'll do some research on that and also any changes to

124the handbook will have to be approved by the committee so i'll bring that to the committee once the students and the staff do the work just to add to that the direct the student dress code is part of the student handbook which is um you know we look at it we get input it goes to the fact the school council first which is made up of parents community members students and staff and that student handbook is approved every by the end of the year every year by the committee thank you um what's up vivian can i get a motion to go into executive assistant contract negotiations and we're going to be coming back here to adjourn or vote if need be motion made by leo seconded by vivian can i get a roll call miss

125fitzgerald yes miss disler yes mr lamontagne miss mamo and mr cyrillo 8 10. you it was not on resignations the packets go out last week thank you um back in session can i get a motion on the contract you have your mic make a motion that we uh make offer of uh two uh i believe it was two percent to the teachers union for this year um you're not going to agree each other's going not i personally not plus one but that's me okay so there's a motion to vote down this contract and reoffer two percent can i get a real closer okay um miss fitzgerald yes mrs destler mr lamontagne yes miss marmal and mr swillow um miss olinsky you had um and missing we have uh we got received a resignation for chemistry

126teacher um and we did not post the position it just happened recently friday i believe and so it missed the posting even the late posting so i would like to request that a committee consider posting for a chemistry teacher so they're very difficult to find and if we don't post this week we'd be two more weeks without posting and students wouldn't have it that much longer we'd have to hire a longer term sub in order to take the place of that teacher so moved discussion now that i want to stay here longer but we got a paper today with new um information added why wasn't that out of here one two we had a resignation and it's not even showing here that we had a resignation even if it was yesterday i'm sure this paper

127was drafted today so i have a problem with that i'm sorry but this needs to stop you guys need to come here prepare give us the information in writing so that we can have it ahead of time i understand that this was added today but you right now are saying that something else was added that is not even here in in a brand new paper that you gave us today so i have a problem with that and it's the same problem that i've been having since day one i'm sorry my my thing is like i'm not voting for this and i know the need i know what you said but we need to do things right and we need to start somewhere vivian okay so um john so i'm not going to make any excuses

128other than um this came in late friday since last thursday i myself have been working on the esser grant which is worth about seven million dollars thursday friday monday today 12 hours a day trying to get this out there along with about 100 other things that cross my desk now if this crossed my desk and i missed it so be it but the bottom line is that regardless if i miss it or not and don't get it in the get it in this document which would have been late here regardless because it came in so late after we had already sent out the packets what's critical is that posting for this position provides students with a teacher sooner than later which is the most important thing you know i think the most important thing is

129that we get a teacher in front of those students um so that they can to be provided the quality education they're entitled to um if you spend you know one day in this whether it be the principal seat or my seat um you know i get here at 6 30 in the morning leave here at five every day work another two hours at home go go go go from the second i get in this door it's just been unbelievable so i'm not going to apologize if it didn't get in this document or make excuses it's just the fact of the matter is it was missed um but it's not something that's so drastically bad in the sense that we're not making a decision in life or death here we're making the decision on providing the

130kids a quality education it's not a hard decision it's very i think simple decision we love we've had someone resign we're going to take that salary and find somebody else and give them that salary it's not a really complicated situation the same you're talking to me but you're looking somewhere else so why do you do that as well all i'm saying is this i'm not saying this is not a simple thing i know it is but it's something that happens all the time so that is a problem and you don't want to admit it but it's a problem when we're not ready all the time that every every week every two weeks we had to add one or two or three items in the agenda because they it was just last minute now just answer

131me one question please when was this paper then this one the one that we just received tonight the one you got today was done this afternoon so and you said that that resonation happened thursday and uh or yesterday so why is that not here why the destination is not showing here and why that that island it's not here if it was done today it wasn't there for a couple reasons i don't wanna my point is we always have some one two three items that we just bring the last minute that's my point well it probably wasn't in the first of all the items that are in today's the document that went out today i didn't put that document together i don't always put these documents together people put these documents together for me and then

132i presented to the committee i don't oh i'm not on top of everyone that's resigning or not resigning or i'm doing 100 other things that i might i've been working on the eso grant rewriting the essa grant for the last three days because it's how critical and how important it is it's in fact i've got to get it done because we've got three projects that are on hold now that we can't get started because that grant's got to get done it's critical and it's an enormous amount of work and an enormous amount of responsibility to get it right my focus has been on this grant for the last three days because it's the most important thing our grant writer is on vacation so i'm filling in for her and doing that grant i'm also trying

133to do some of the business manager's job because she's not because we have no business manager meeting with our every day we're approving uh payrolls and doing financial stuff so somebody has to stay on top of that um so there's a an enormous amount of things going on uh that john so i'm saying that miss hey i didn't know until i just found out about the thing thank you i just also i will take response i want to apologize to the committee that it wasn't on there and i'll take responsibility typically i review the documents to make sure that any hiring positions are in but i was not able to review i happened to notice that it wasn't on there and if it's a problem we can wait i only wanted the committee to consider

134it because of the timeliness of the posting but i want to take responsibility for the fact that it was the resignation and i just did not notice it until we got here that it was not on there and if it's something that's not a protocol we can certainly wait i just thought that we could bring it up because of the in urgency of the situation but i want to apologize on that it wasn't that i did not notice it until here thank you leo give me a second um and it was brought up to my attention just before we went to executive session um and it is a high priority thing because getting postings for teachers is going to be is a tough um thing to do especially with the holiday season coming up upon

135us um so with that i will take the blame for it not being there not just not miss sunscreen or the superintendent um vivian and then proceed on the motion no i just wanted to state um obviously if it's not an egregious uh behavior pattern of constantly missing things that should be part of the agenda i think that that's where i would personally find a concern but i also wanted to make sure going forward so i try to brush up on robert's rules to make sure that i'm doing things according to how a meeting is conducted and from my understanding and i would hope that leo with your years of experience marilyn and uh chairman that you guys could pitch in as to what i'm about to say from my understanding when reading the robert's

136rules of order um i don't think there is necessarily an issue per se to bring up new items that are not part of the agenda that we receive you you're able to bring up new items so to speak that are not necessarily on the agenda is that correct so correct they're they're it there does it um hold my i'm trying to make sure that i'm wording it correctly there isn't um a violate so mike my my question is it it's not necessarily a violation per se in running a meeting um that okay let me reword it i'm gonna have to rephrase it when conducting a meeting is there a necessity that when uh something is being brought up that it has to be part of the agenda in advance or going forward um is it

137is it okay for for items to be added last minute and again i state that as long as it's not an egregious um and that we're not um violating any rules then i i just want to make sure that oh my god i feel like i don't even know what i'm saying i just want to make sure we're not violating any rules okay yeah emergency items do come up in meetings all the time john can you make sure that you bring submit the information on the resignation um and the job posting um to our next meeting there is a motion on the table sure um there's made by leo seconded by maryland rokosu miss fitzgerald yes miss disler i asked him i'm sorry upstage um mr lamontagne yes miss mama yes and mr sorella yes

138motion to adjourn no second yes sorry miss fitzgerald yes ms disler mr lamontagne miss mama mr srillo thank you you