MSAD #60 School Board Meeting

001hmm okay chris can you hear us chris [Laughter] [Music] there he is yeah you're good loud and clear okay thank you ah thank you and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all there are vice chairs if allowed by the board chair each speaker named address and agents of speaking public input is dedicated district residents but the wheelchair may grant drug residents the office committee to the best courts please note that statements involving certain subject matters such as personnel cannot be made during these found on the district website email statements will be read during the first input session at the beginning of court meetings um and i just want to clarify a few things before we start with public input we realize this is an

002emotional issue and we ask everybody please be respectful in your comments um there will be no uh interaction with people that are speaking people are coming up to say give their statement and then sit um this is not a time when you ask questions it's not a time you question the board we're going to we're glad to have everybody here we're wanting to hear everybody's input um we're going to take it all under advisement but it's not a time when we have a back and forth we are going to stick with three minutes have a timer so if you have a lengthy statement real fast i guess um and if someone else has stated pretty much what your thoughts are uh you're more than welcome to come up and say i agree with mr smith

003that maybe you have one or two points but if someone else has already said basically what your statement is um please don't read the whole thing so we can get because i think we have quite a few people and i think we're going to start with the online tonight comments so we're going to read the emails okay and i will be i will read quickly um we actually have only 12 public input statements which is nice for 70 last week so this is uh this is better um at least in terms of the reading part so here we go um chris can you hear me it's okay just going to give me a thumbs up on my computer um this is danielle minuti north berg as both a parent and a teacher i ask that

004you reconsider the current mass policy and implement district-wide universal masking many schools in the state who had a similar policy to ours are reconsidering and requiring mass or a shutdown for quarantine with universal masking far fewer students will need to quarantine and make a positive cases with optional masking unvaccinated close contacts will need to quarantine and join remotely for several days please speak with admin and amy creighton ask about what will happen under both scenarios although there are many voices calling for optional masking they base their opinions on potentially debunked misinformation which cannot be made as equal um to the contributions that are based on scientific fact karenic whole of lebanon there are a lot of parents in lebanon that are upset because of the mass mandate the science does not support why the school

005board is forcing this mandate on their children please reconsider allowing mass to be optional at all grade levels christy devlin hayes of berwick i appreciate the evidence-based decision to enforce masking in k-7 cdc studies are showing high coverage transmission nationwide in schools without mass mandates and there have been several highly publicized instances where districts have lost multiple educators to covert deaths in a single day or week hospitals are overflowing with childcover cases to protect our educators their families and families who either choose not to vaccinate or cannot get vaccinated due to health issues i hope you'll consider reinstating a mass mandate throughout the entire district elementary students are also eating breakfast and snacks in the classroom while sitting close enough to touch one another i hope there's a policy about social distancing and ventilation in

006spaces where students gather without mass thank you eric douglas lebanon our children are the least affected by coven as a parent with a first grader this mandate is stunting their growth robert harper of berwick first off the fact that this meeting was changed to virtual is nothing but cowardly this is just a tactic the board and superintendent is using to silence the majority of parents shame on you second to mandate mass for children is unacceptable the data shows that children are at an extremely low risk of transmission and becoming symptomatic from coping 19. how many terrible flu seasons have we been through without mass more children will die from the flu each year than all of the coven pandemic combined lastly i thank you for making these poor choices in regards to mandates and attempting

007to silence the community by hiding behind a computer screen you have a firing community and we will not tolerate these actions we've inspired the citizens to become involved and the school board and superintendent will be looking for new employment the lessons you are providing to us parents to teach our children about refusing to conform to tyranny is greatly appreciated bob roots of burma i'm dismayed at the board not taking the health and safety of our children the teachers the administrative staff and my school volunteers seriously fewer than 50 of the high school class is vaccinated maine icu's are almost at capacity in every county and there are reports from districts all over the u.s of the delta variant impacting the health and well-being of students and schools other studies have just been published regarding the

008punishing health effects of lauren covid on teens and children these are real and disputable facts from what i've seen on morning walks and bike rides during the first week of school students who are supposed to be wearing masks on buses aren't you aren't even enforcing a basic sane requirement there let alone doing the right thing and having everyone in the schools do something as simple as to put a piece of cloth on to protect themselves and their community i'm further dismayed by how apparent it is that the community at large seems not to care about the health and safety of their peers by not volunteering to have their children wear mats it makes me regret moving here a decade ago you should all be ashamed of yourselves and i'm truly sad that the health and

009safety of my child and as a result of my family is in your obviously incapable hands if you aren't going to make this decision based on real facts not many unproven theories handed down in social media and local social clubs and how can we trust you to make any other decisions rely on data and facts for answers laura missoula northbrook good evening i'd like to thank you for all the work you do for our schools i'm sure it often feels like a thankless job but please know you are appreciated i'm writing to you as both a teacher in the district and a parent in the district i have three children who are not old enough to receive the vaccination today i saw 49 students in my classroom over the course of the day of those

01049 students seven were their maths 14 of my students had maths on in one class of 18 not a single student had a mask this is what happens when we don't have a mass mandate students who probably had every intention of mother mass chose not to because of what their peers were doing yesterday there were 433 cases statewide today there were 624 schools starting for most districts the last week for this week i would dare say the increase in cases has everything to do with the start of school most of these cases were in mainers under the age of 20. i'm asking you to think about these numbers as you make your decision this evening thank you again we have an email from victoria salary from lebanon um it's kind of specific to her student

011so i'm not going to read it because it's it's more pertinent to her and we will follow up with her specifically it isn't really about this as much as it is about alternative learning thomas streiter of lebanon kids who are vaccinated shouldn't have to wear face coverings those who are more concerned were given the choice to enroll their students in noble virtual academy lindsay kelker of north berwick i am a parent of two elementary children and also a teacher in a neighboring school district with a current uptick in numbers and hospitalizations and increasing youth being affected by copenhagen i am concerned that the district is not employing sufficient mitigation strategies in our schools in fact we are currently not following the recommended guidelines put forth by the cdc and the american academy of pediatrics if

012our goal is to keep our kids in person in school we need additional safety measures in place the lack of a mass mandate at the high school is extremely concerning as must mostly protect those around the world i'm concerned about our students but also our teachers who have families at home to protect as well additionally over 300 school districts in may have signed onto the pooled testing program i am hopeful that you can revisit offering this in our district i worry that many parents did not realize the importance of answering the survey sent out this summer and hope that this option is still being considered for the district i am a teacher in a local district where a weekly pool testing will be happening parents were sent videos to show how fast and easy the

013testing process will be which helped to encourage many sign on i encourage more information to be sent out to families lack of distancing lack of universal masking and no regular testing is a likely path to illnesses in quarantine i encourage you to listen to experts in the field while making your decisions this evening uh kristin hardingham which is two more kristen hardingham in berwick thank you i'd like to take this opportunity to express my support of the school board's decision to require universal masking of students and staff grades k through 7. it is my hope the school board will extend the universal massacre requirement to include students and staff grades 8 through 12. masking has proven to be an easy and effective method of slowing the spread of coven we have the opportunity to teach

014our children that the health of our community as a whole is important and that their actions and members of a global community can directly impact the health and well-being of others it is an opportunity to teach our children that minor personal inconveniences such as mass wearing do not outweigh the importance of safeguarding the health of our fellow humans some of whom who do not yet have access to a safe and effective vaccine and the last is andrea groft of berwick good evening i'm writing to you to ask that you institute a universal masking policy at the high school i am the mother of a high school student plus three young children including a newborn and also a teacher in a neighboring district despite the availability of vaccines for high schoolers the highly contagious delta variant

015can be carried in nasal passages of both unvaccinated and vaccinated people and spread to others which is why the cdc now strongly recommends indoor masking wearing a mask is most effective when everyone is wearing them they primarily protect the people around you adolescents face a great deal of social pressure so asking when their friends aren't becomes a really difficult request regardless of our opinions about the master vaccines i hope we can all agree that we want to keep kids in school they need the emotional connection quality instruction and social time that remote and hybrid learning could not provide is it worth the freedom of optional masking if our high schoolers high schools shut down or worse in cases at the high school that are brought home lead to high community spread i would argue no

016police can still consider instituting a universal masking policy not just for families like ours with young children but with the hope of keeping our schools open this entire year [Music] could i just have to show hands on how many people who would like to speak tonight so i know okay well some people will give you a morning when you have like 20 seconds or so left okay anybody would like to start go first i can start so my name is uh jeremiah mulligan i'm from berwick um i have one kid that has already gone through the school system and i have three in in now i hate to disappoint everybody but i'm not here to talk about math um so my issue is i have a i have a son that um goes to srtc

017over at sanford um and we're being told now that he is required to take the bus there um rather than driving himself he drove himself there all of last year now he's required so i mean again what we're here for i just i don't understand i think we can all agree if we can agree on one thing that it would be it's more socially distanced and safer for kids to be able to drive themselves and i i'm not necessarily worried about my son catching kovid on the bus or or the effects of that that's not my concern my concern is he will be forced to quarantine for 10 days and then miss school so i just don't i would just like um the board and the school to take a look at this um i

018was i was told so i spoke today with uh mike redmond over at srtc and i spoke with allison kearney here at noble both were super super helpful they got back to me timely gave me all the information i wanted to know they did a great job i appreciate that and from what i was told that this was a decision that all the districts that send kids to sanford made this decision together and i would just like the school to reconsider this again i'm just mainly mainly concerned about my son missing out on other activities because he was forced to ride a school bus if there was someone positive on the bus then he would would then be forced to miss school because of it i mean i think we can all agree that the

019safer smarter thing to do is to allow them to drive there so um i just want to check my notes make sure i don't have anything else i want to speak about but um i think that's it thank you very much all right it happens all right i'm rick pelletier um came here last year my son was high honors for math science everything then you guys kept them at home three days out of the five days at the end of the year they told me he did he needed help and all his off his uh classes and everything that they were offering him summer school thought that was a joke you know so you can see what keeping kids away from school will do to them you know my son was 99.9 percentile this whole

020state and now he's not anywhere near it so i really appreciate that uh second thing is there's two board members on here that mocked us parents great job not too not too not too smart as what i got to say about that um i say the majority of us say it's our kid we do what we want with our kid it's not up to you guys but i see you guys have the power but i say that you know the majority says no mass you should be listening to the parents see that up here this lady was just talking about all this it was all about wearing masks where were the people that said you know against him i'm just saying i'm just saying we don't know if you guys are silencing people or not

021so it's it happens trust me um second thing is or whatever whatever number i'm on here i say that if the majority of the parents say no mass we should go with that because if not i mean we ought to pick it to school i mean really we need to be heard you know and our children can pick it as well because it's legal totally legal you guys want to hurt them they're going to fight back too and i say the last thing that you know if this school board can't get their act together and listen to the parents i think we should defund the school we've been pouring millions and millions and millions every more every year and what do you guys do you don't listen to the parents at all you know i

022said the majority i mean most of us are saying it should be up to us and yet you guys are like oh making fun of us saying you know they're going to say this and they're going to say that and mock us you're one of them mr travis and some other lady that all i saw was her eyes i mean who mocks people you know and you're on the school board you should be ashamed so that's all i gotta say and i'll be i'll be around i promise you know i promise i will make my voice heard if you guys continue to pull these games on our children yes thank you i'm matt leggett lebanon uh resident i have a kid in ninth grade and so um i heard from the school board meeting two

023weeks ago first two minutes somebody came on the video chat and said parents would have different opinions someone spoke that you could find science on both sides i just want to quickly show i'm on google put cove and death count by age the first site is the cdc you can click it go right here sex and age and it brings up the death count sex and age it's not not hard it's not conflicting information it's on the cdc website so let's look at it real quick zero to 17 400 deaths the past year and a half for kids between zero and 17. that was just males from covet total that's 54 771. maybe we should focus a little more on where they're dying they're not dying from covet pneumonia death without covid 908 from pneumonia

024were we wearing masks for the flu were we wearing masks for pneumonia no so the science isn't conflicting it's right here it's right in front of us pneumonia deaths 908 for males 413 for females covetous again 400 for males 178 for females between 0 and 17. wake up zero to 17 are not being killed by covenant it's not it's not hard to find it's not some fake science it's on the cdc website if you're in the age categories that are affected by covet you go to like 75 to 84 171 000 it's a lot of deaths that's terrible right this is a year later we have a vaccine right we believe in the vaccine i hope people do everyone makes their own choice on the vaccine the vaccine lessens the symptoms keeps people safe keeps

025them from dying so those who are affected by covin can now be protected by the vaccine again the children aren't dying from coven it shows it right on the cdc website so what are we doing why are we masking kids why are we doing all these crazy things that we don't do for pneumonia which kills kids twice as much as coving why are we masking the children i don't understand it makes no sense the numbers don't lie this is not conflicting data i just showed you how to get to it you're more than welcome to look it up yourselves but stop ignoring the parents we're not stupid it's not some made up numbers it's not some conspiracy theory okay thank you so that's what i have in i just want the board to listen to

026the parents real quickly i did do a survey it's not like an official survey i just put it on the facebook pages 336 parents responded 70 do not want mass mandates seventy percent i urge the school to send out their own survey so they can do an official one with known parents send out a survey see what the parents said hi i'm sophie larson from northwestern i'm chairwoman honored board members thank you for taking the time to hear my voice thank you also for requiring masks in k-7 um please note that my children would not be in school word otherwise now get to the point my students know me as a teacher with infinite patience but they also know that the iliad starts like this rage sing to me muse of the wrath of achilles

027so what does an educator with near infinite patients do when the basic feeling is rage i turn to something i say often to my students it doesn't matter what i think and it doesn't matter what you think what matters is how we think so it doesn't matter what i or you think about masks what really matters is how we think i'll show you how i think right now i think about my students the decision not to require masks in high school is an outrage in three parts firstly it's deeply upsetting that my workplace doesn't comply with cdc and doe guidelines for best practices that decision sets a questionable president for our district the timing of your decision two weeks ago adds insult to injury it's virtually impossible for any teacher that feels uncomfortable with your

028decision to find alternatives just 10 days before the start of school secondly all my students all your students are guaranteed by law equal access to a meaningful education the decision not to require masks in the building makes it unsafe for those that are disabled or immunocompromised relegating our most vulnerable students to an online experience is shameful and unconscionable because we all know online is not equal to being in person and forming valuable relationships with peers and teachers finally and most importantly i want as much in-person time with as many of my students as i can possibly get i need it so do they and masks are one effective way of making it happen contact tracing procedures mean that with universal with universal masking more students have a better chance of spending more time in person

029again the decision not to require masking in the high school cuts my precious time with my students unnecessarily short i am so terribly disappointed that my students and i are not getting the best shot we can possibly have at in-person time rather than online to finish up i want to bring up our four values here noble this is on the classroom wall in every room in our school this is the dream of noble equity collaboration and community equity means that all students and staff must be safe in our buildings collaboration means listening to one another and i urge you to listen to your teachers and staff even those that can't come in front of you today to give input if they're not residents in your town seek out their thank you seek out their voices

030and hear them is as essential to us as anything if we don't safeguard it we will continue to lose the best and brightest community means being together that's why i'm here i beg you give teachers and students the very best chance to be together that we can possibly have please require masks in the high school as well hey good evening i'm drew from lebanon i have two children in the district i'd like to start off by thanking the school board for voting to allow the high school to decide what was best for their own bodies and their health choices i decided to reject a one-size-fits-all approach to individual health i hope you stand by this courageous decision and you don't allow politics or funding so thank you for this in regards to the younger kids

031my kids i was shocked that the school board members individual comments prior to the masking vote last time the majority of the board stated that they think the parents should have the right to choose what is best for their child yet voted opposite for the k-7 basically voting to turn a recommendation into a mandate many board members statements included uh the phrase following the science or of masking i'm not here to list any listening mass facts or argue them whether you think they are extremely effective or not at all the fact remains that you chose to ignore a whole ton of other aspects of science in your choice for just one of them explaining to you all the various ways that children learn would be a waste of time and i'm not going to do

032that to you but you must admit that many various forms of learning are negatively impacted due to your choice for just one aspect of the science the health of my family is and always has been a primary aspect of my life both physical and mental we do all kinds of various activities like go to the gym hiking biking ballet karate we spend more money on gyms and the kids activities than most new car payments we buy the freshest healthiest foods we can we don't drink soda so i'm hoping you can understand my frustration i'm also curious where all your history teachers stand on this history has also shown us the road that these mandates start to take and it's ugly you should ask your history teachers maybe familiarize yourself with the nuremberg trials if you're

033not at this time i'd also like to know where the district's stance and teaching diversity and inclusion training is that you've previously mentioned which i've now come to learn is another name for critical race theory or crt to be honest i'd like to see a statement from the district explaining the commitment and teaching and adhering to the american values and principles set forth by our constitution and bill of rights i think this would be the best diversity training tool oh 15. thank you i know making these decisions can't come easy i believe you're all good people trying to do what you think is best i realize this issue puts you in the hot seat but that's what's involved with your position thank you for all the other things that you do for our district please

034take this chance to do the right thing thank you very much i did have one question um jason york from berwick i had some questions about board members and how much time they had left and for upcoming elections and things like that i was like who do i direct that to because i sent an email to the chair but i didn't get a response back if you want to chat with us so i'm for safety i've been vaccinated my wife has been for proven things that help such as ventilation social distancing things of that nature it's all proven science for those kinds of methods i've found in my what i've read up on masks especially the cloth ones they're only useful for about 25 to 30 minutes in a setting so if you're wearing a

035cloth mask and you're here for over an hour you're sharing air with other people you're being contaminated but we're going to make our kids sit in a class all day long so they're sharing the air with the other kids in their class that has the particles of coconut that's cdc and other studies proven so another proven cdc thing is that they studied 90 000 students in georgia georgia this past fall where they didn't have master requirements and then the schools what they did and they found that there was no statistical evidence of any benefit from the students that wore masks it was the same in both ways so just mass of themselves are not helping prevent our students from getting coded the cdc has made the recommendation sure but what about the rest of the

036world the who has recommended that students don't wear masks because the risk of them getting coveted versus the negatives of the other aspects such as the impact of their education their social upbringing that there's there's no the risk there is not outweighing it um countries like uk ireland scandinavia france netherlands switzerland italy they're all doing no masks at varying ages two to five two to ten different ages like that where they don't wear masks based on what the who has said i strongly recommend that the board sanctions a survey to the community i think you'll find probably 70 or more is for making their own decisions for their students for their kids because they know what's best for them my own son i shared last time was here has been impacted negatively because he's had

037to have a mask and it's hurt he's falling behind so i'm not saying no masks they're not helpful at all why can't we think a little bit more outside of the box when they're sitting at their seat take their mask off but when they got to go to the bathroom put their mask on okay oh there's been a lot of talk about hospitals being flooded in icus i looked that up and most of that is from rsv and people have postponed surgeries if you actually look at the details most hospitals are not being overwhelmed by covid it's much it's like 10 of their beds in the icus are actually covered cases so hello i'm brandon i'm a new resident of lebanon um i'll talk quick because it's what i do um i'm a father of

038two children with chd uh one that just started kindergarten today and one that is due to be born later this month i knew this whole thing i'm going to be very involved in my children's upbringing and their education but going off of the fact that i have a child that has had open heart surgery he's had a very rough first five years of his life and now he's supposed to start you know start school he's supposed to be in a classroom full of other kids and teachers wearing a mask which we had a i was watching a video earlier where somebody was taking one of those carbon monoxide sensors they stuck inside the mask and within the first minute it tripled it's it's going to have a very adverse effect on my son's growth his

039education he already has his problems and making him wear a mask he he's just one of the drones going through he has no individuality because he's just another kid forced to wear a mask living in a world of fear that really doesn't need to be there i mean i got vaccinated earlier this year and i still got coded i did my quarantine my entire family did the quarantine we took care of ourselves my son perfectly fine he thrives but this this entire mandate is stupid i'm his father she's his mother we should be able to decide what is the safest thing for my kid because i'm not going to ask anybody here board or other parents what is the best choice for my son that's my job it will always be my job until well

040frankly until i'm dead so i think that that choice should remain solely in the hands of his family sounding as parents not in the hands of people who really do not give any care about you know my kid so thanks for your time hmm hi good evening my name is pat wheeler i'm a berwick parent and i'm not going to speak for long because so much has already been said i would like to support the teachers in this district because they may have kids or relatives who they're going to be more likely to bring this home to if they're forced to be in classrooms with kids that aren't masked my son um we do we have a grandson that has hd as a matter of fact whose doctor is very concerned he's three and he

041wears masks everywhere i take him and that's what his medical team wants us to be doing my high school student who isn't easily pressured did feel some pressure at school today when he was one of the only ones wearing a mask i don't understand no part of me understands why we've decided to take a recommendation made by the state and turn it into a public debate i think that's asking for for trouble my son had a miserable past year he missed his entire junior year he missed the sports season i really want him and his peers to have a senior year to be here as much as they possibly can if i'm not mistaking srtc has already had some issues that have caused quarantines and not taking the one small thing we could do to

042protect each other i don't see this as a big deal am i having to wear a mask i'm vaccinated almost everybody i know is vaccinated i'm i don't know anybody personally who knows that you're having this discussion and having it turn into sort of a public vote most everybody i know thinks that all of these students should be wearing masks to protect each other not it's irrelevant to my personal liberties as far as i'm concerned this is really about a community issue so i would ask the school simply to follow the recommendations i think school board spent many years on the school board i'm pretty sure we do that with a lot of other things and i'm not i'm not clear if this is now turned into a public vote i think you really do

043need to let people know that you need to show up here and place your vote about what you want to have done i kind of hope that i can trust my school board members my other elected municipal officials to make decisions based on what the experts we rely on for other things advise us to do rather than take it down to i can take any statistic you want i'm a math person and i can make it say anything you'd like it to say i trust that the people who are in the positions to make those decisions and make these recommendations the doctors and scientists do it in our best interest so i hope you do that thank you i want to apologize in advance i didn't plan on speaking but here on both sides i'm

044the victoria from lebanon that did all mine private so to mask or not i agree my child's mask or not is my decision you guys yours i'm not gonna fight that one up my concern is if the child is not able to participate in school i heard somebody else say if it wasn't math they wouldn't have their child there whereas other people are the opposite so my concern is the remote options which it's either i know at the high school level that's all i can speak about it's either plato which is a pathway kind of more along the lines of the first year maybe a little more in depth which i don't feel is best for my daughter or going to ycc and doing plato or whatever it's like all over the map she's right

045best with the model of last year remote learning so if other people are pulling their kids out to me that remote learning we did last year is the closest thing to being in person still having that interaction as well as the accountability so that was my concern beyond the to mask or non-mask so the other concern is if people got a quarantine then had them having that remote option so they don't fall behind is important or a staff member but if somebody staff member has a child at home and they can't be there having that report like i have a whole list of scenarios or god forbid the school does close down again whether it's for two weeks or whatever so i think having the option of the remote learning to sustain all those scenarios

046when i say remote i mean like google meets in class in life pretty much so i want to consider that the other thing is i'm not finding anywhere what the criteria we're doing if somebody tells positive whether they had the you know vaccine or not do they have to quarantine do they not cdc kind of keeps changing a little bit on whether you have the back vaccine or not so i would be really curious what that information is if somebody tests positive but they shut down which means remote learning is more important so somebody at some point can direct me to that all right i appreciate it thank you good evening my name is mike barker from north berwick i first want to say i'm for parents choice there are a lot of things i'm

047not going to say that it's an easy choice for the school board to make or for anybody you're not going to make everybody happy but you're going down a kind of bad road somebody just spoke up here about the fact that their kid was kind of shamed because they were wearing a mask and other people weren't how are you going to promote any individuality if you want everybody to conform so you're asking your kids that even don't want to wear a mask they have to conform to the people that do you also in certain policies have made the case that mass don't work the first gentleman that spoke talked about his kid on the bus everybody on the bus is supposed to be masked but if somebody tests positive they have to quarantine if the

048mass work why would they have to quarantine you can't have it both ways everybody looks at the national data we're looking nationwide at the debt have you looked at the data by for york county or for even the three communities that are here on what the case rate is for the three communities that attend our schools does anybody know what the percentage is of cases for lebanon north berwick and berwick so shouldn't the whole board should know the whole board should know right out of the total population total cases of all ages 6.8 so you're making judgment on things you don't even know you don't even know what the answer is so it's kind of hypocritical to make these decisions and say you're going to fall aside to do things or whatever you don't you

049don't even know it you know parents want to be able to make the decision my daughter's a freshman i had another daughter that went through the school they're doing well they get a decent education could it be better it could always be better they're doing well my daughter does not want to wear a mask i respect her right we talk as a family and she thrives in that way if you want to wear the mask you want your kid to then that's okay you can have that conversation but even for somebody to stand up here and say that my kid was shamed because he was the only one or she was the only one wearing a mask and that your kid should to make my kid feel better well how come that kid can't take

050their mask off to make my kid feel better hello my name is robert travers and i'm from lebanon i want to take a moment first to thank the two people that decided to follow the parents and vote no i i i don't have kids i have none but i was a former graduate of this school class of 2011 and as a citizen i think that parents should be able to choose whether or not their kids sorry i think sorry about that again i can't i can definitely speak english anyway so as a citizen i think that though what the choice as to whether or not our kids should wear mass or shouldn't wear masks shouldn't be up to anybody but the parents at the end of the day it's our right to make those decisions

051for ourselves and our kids i mean if you want to wear a mask go ahead i'm not going to stop you if you if you want your kid to wear masks again no problem i don't have a i'm not going to stop you here either but if i were a parent why should i why should i allow others to make the decision for me i mean i personally already don't trust the public school system but by having these mandates in effect we're just making the problem worse thank you hello my name is kevin johnson from uh my husband father or two i've been here first responder past 19 as a paramedic and i'd like to thank the school board for your service i'm talking the world about how to weigh science and who should decide

052when students wear masks or not the answer is lie in peer-reviewed scientific medical journals not internet web chats or opinion shows cover 19 is a public health problem everyone needs to come together to tackle this is not a personal problem but one that encompasses the world when the school board followed guidelines from the cdc on baskets they were doing their part to protect the elementary school students the most prudent course of action is to assume we will be wearing masks at the school for the foreseeable future i propose that we survey the students invite them to show us areas where masteries can be improved upon i personally have no idea what the day-to-day life is like for these students i didn't have the internet in school when i was a kid like this and i

053just i don't envy the position that they're in we should be working to make sure our children are comfortable and safe the upcoming school year my son would need to were to need a break from masking i would be delighted for him to spend some time outside without a mask for however long he needs however i would hope that you know a survey of the students would identify other areas where masking could be let up on the students surveys are difficult i would encourage a school board to approach all three town councils all three towns have resources where they can go out and improve a survey response to get a good statistical um review to how many people you know give us a good statistical analysis of what people actually do think not just people

054coming in saying you know i'm the majority you know let's actually go out and find out what it is uh lastly i'd like to thank the school board for volunteering their time during this time period all of you should be commended for the job you are doing during this difficult time do not let a small but small but vocal group of people bring you down you guys rock hello my name is jessica brooks i am from lebanon um i have three children in high school and one in elementary um so one has to mask and the other three have choice um and also i am for parents choice um like everyone else says they're my children i feel like it should be my choice to um just like it should be my choice to vaccinate

055or not vaccinate um also for the buses that they have to wear the mess the bus driver kind of gave my daughter a little bit of a hard time this morning because she didn't have a mask on if it's the mask mandate they should be uh we're giving them out for the parents uh or for the kids i'm not going to go buy mass because i don't believe um so if my child does get on the bus i feel that they should be readily available at that time um and also for the full testing it's such a it's a joke and i do not give permission to anybody except for my child's physician to test them for coping um and i do have a daughter that just started school today that's in high school she

056has severe anxiety she was very nervous about coming to school anyway but if she was to have to wear a mouth she would definitely have to have a breathing treatment because she also has asthma so she would not be able to attend school if she was required to mask and i just want to say again for parents choice thank you hello i am alexis adams i am a resident of the town of lebanon um yesterday was my son's orientation okay when i was growing up teachers showed us the classroom they showed us where things went they showed us where things go and all that fun stuff my son's teacher was more concerned with his mask being over his nose than showing him the classroom that is not okay i don't care if you are for

057masks or not for masks i am pregnant i ended up with coven my family entire family was vaccinated my son not symptomatic at all and has a cardiac heart defect and well my second one has a cardiac heart defect it is not fair to children to be forced to wear a mask because people are scared i get it covet is real but so is the flu so is ammonia so all the other things out there you got people are forcing us to put masks on children children who should be children and be able to play like children and be children and i want my son to be able to know his friends faces i don't want him to know somebody behind a mask that's not okay to me parents should have the right for their

058children to wear masks or not and i am 100 with parents choice and the way teachers are the way people are the way school is now i'm gonna be honest i'm disgusted it's a disgrace growing up there was way worse things that kids did worse than kobit and yet every a lot of people are must protect you no they don't you're poisoning children's minds from carbon dioxide you keep those masks on the children's face all day causing them to not be able to pay attention in school not be able to really interact with other children the way a child should be able to for 15 seconds my child needs the social interaction but the mass mandate is not allowing that social interaction it's not so i am for parents choice thank you hi i'm amy

059barker i am in north burke i worked for the district for five years and everybody i see on the board you know i love everybody it was this is nothing personal um just in my experience of working with the younger kids um i have to say last year working during covet was one of the hardest things ever i am high risk i um have had an open heart surgery when i was four years old and i wore the masks and um it was horrible it was horrible i got vaccinated but i just want to say it's not as perfect as people think it is and you can't make kids be perfect like that they don't stay six feet apart they don't stay three feet apart they don't sit forward during their lunches they want to

060talk they have their masks up they want to see each other's faces um kids would drop their masks and before you could run across the cafeteria they would grab their mask off a dirty floor and put it back on they would sneeze in them they would go and hug a friend and get scolded for it it was the hardest thing i ever experienced i don't work in the district anymore i chose not to this year um but i just i just feel strongly about it my daughter was uncomfortable with it this school has air conditioning but other schools didn't we didn't we were hot there was no bands allowed um it was very difficult it was a very long year and it was very difficult and i just i have to say that um i

061think the school did as best as they could but kids are kids little kids or little kids they want to play they want to see each other's faces kids were tripping on the fields when they were outside with masks on when it was mandatory and they couldn't see they couldn't they couldn't experience life and they weren't being kids and kids were crying that i worked with because they couldn't breathe during work and they couldn't focus and some kids got lightheaded and so just on the other end of it um i understand that there there is high risk i'm one of them but i also see the other end and i think that i feel very strong that parents have a right to be able to make a choice for their own kids switch may i

062ask a procedure question may i ask a procedure question we're basically done right we've set our peace all right with all respect i'm just gonna go home and put my kids to bed thank you um amy's presentation there's a weird echo going on yeah that i cared [Music] just let kids be kids so my name is amy creighton i'm the director of nursing services from cd60 and also the nurse one of the nurses here in the high school um things that have changed since the last time we were here i feel um like i'm going to start with um updates on the state level and then kind of zero into our county level and our community including our noble community and then review like we did last week what we are being held to by

063the state in the standard operating procedure issued by the state domain the doe in conjunction with the cdc so this slide is from the uscdc which color categorizes our county's risk level of community transmission uh since the 24th of august we changed over to the high level of community transmission next slide amy sorry or maybe you're gonna never mind you're gonna answer here okay yes so this is a description of how the community transmission levels are calculated by the number of positives for 100 000 people this all seems pretty changes and i've kind of attended to the flag at the beach up here in maine our flag dangers don't quite change very often but if you've ever been to say florida or overseas um you kind of pay attention to the flag color before you

064go in water so that's kind of what it it changes daily so i look back and as of the 24th we're in the red next slide this shows how the current number cases in the state mirror the surges that we had from last january and then again in the spring so that's kind of letting you see where we are and where we've been next slide this slide shows us the last 14 day average update that was done on 8 26 i pulled this yesterday i don't know that it was updated today so this shows the history of the last 14 days of the number of cases in maine the total number of cases was 1626 with 336 of those confirmed cases coming from york county so roughly about 20 percent of all cases in the

065state belong to york county next slide next i'd like to talk about vaccinations so according to the maine cdc's vaccination dashboard 71 of eligible mainers have received their final dose with nearly 63 percent of maine's total population being fully vaccinated zeroing in on york county we have 70 of our eligible population fully vaccinated and nearly 62 percent of our total population fully vaccinated why here looking more closely at our three communities the total percentage of vaccinated residents in north berwick is 79 lebanon 54 and berwick at 56 and then next slide as promised the main cdc has posted the youth age 12 to 19 years old vaccination rates by sau on the vaccination dashboard our district has reported 45 to 49 youth population fully vaccinated we had put out a survey to staff several weeks

066ago that resulted in those who responded responded that 91 of them were fully vaccinated we also are in the process of developing a system in which we will have to report staff vaccination [Music] statuses to the state and that has to be done on a monthly basis so i'd also kind of we talked about this before last year and looking back on the previous surges that we had had in the winter and then again in the spring i kind of like to look and see how that what that equated to in our schools and when we were in those surges we saw about eight cases per week of positive staff for students which some of them required quarantining students and some of them did not because of the hybrid situation that we had so say

067a high school student only came to us once a week had they been there five days a week we probably would have quarantined students we had sent out the community letter a few days ago i believe a handful of days ago updating on the cases that we have had in the districts we had several athletic cases or individuals associated with noble athletics test positive before we even entered school also a few cases from north berwick elementary and then again like someone had mentioned on the first day of srtc we had several of our students exposed and are in quarantine currently i reached out to the other nurses in the schools to kind of get an idea of how many students are currently in quarantine from home exposures and that haven't had a chance to make

068it to school yet and we're about 15 fish across the district who haven't come yet they're still in the warranty um all right were any of those kids in the hospital is it can i answer sorry i don't think we have that information i don't know any of the kids were hospitalized and any of them have to go to the hospital i probably if i knew him okay okay i'm sorry yeah oh we know they're sick but we can't know they're in the hospital so the last slide we had last time and this is where i think we get into the nuts and bolts of what we are held to in terms of having to quarantine students and the four levels of exceptions that we can apply to a level of quantity if that's a

069term so exception number one vaccination if a student or staff member is fully vaccinated and they are deemed a close contact they do not need to quarantine from school from the community or from other school related activities exception number two if we have laboratory confirmation of a previous coveted infection and you are considered a close contact you don't have to quarantine from community school or school related activities quick question the 90 days refers to what if you've had a previous coven infection within the past 90 days okay and then exception number three if a school does pool testing and a student is determined to be a post-contact they do not have to quarantine from classroom activities or school related activities however they are expected to quarantine in the community so that would mean no girl

070scouts no grocery shopping and then exception number four if a school has a mandatory masking policy then the exposed classroom student does not need quarantine from regular school day activities when the school close contact was at least three feet from an infected student provided that school enforces consistent and correct abuse of well-fitting masks and there was no physical contact now exception number four is limited to classroom exposures only these students may continue to come to class but they need to quarantine from the community setting as well as from school sports and activities again this is classroom exposures only it doesn't count for the bus doesn't count for the lunchroom and outside of school exposures that that doesn't count with this either so if you're exposed at home you can't come to school even though you're

071wearing a mask that's a little bit closer of a contact a school exposure okay no sense whatsoever and that's short to the 10 day timeline in maine and this is the requirements for us if we regardless right yeah is this a good time to ask more questions on this case sure um do you have a couple do you have any is there any reasoning that a teacher would have to quarantine out of the classroom that a student wouldn't yeah if they are not vaccinated and if they were with the positive student six feet 15 minutes okay and then what did you say you said on going back um you said so an unvaccinated so the top half of exception four they would not they would not be able to ride the bus or they they

072can go to class they have no sports and no bus they can ride the bus and they can go to class yeah so that is the piece where universal masking would keep kids in the classroom even if they were close contact not necessarily on the sports field but in the classroom i have a question what we're using for the year this is the model this is in the standard operating procedure that is updated as they see fit at the state level so this is version this is new this year uh this is version number seven since we began this last year i have a question i'm just looking at this and i'm saying so a vaccinated person who comes in contact are we testing them because some of them are coming up positive okay so

073the recommendation from the cdc is for a vaccinated person if they are deemed close contact is to test within three to five days and to wear a mask until that test comes back well until that test comes back thankfully it's negative and if they become symptomatic that's another bottle of wax they should stay away but that's at the point where somebody knows they will contact yes correct so they could have already exposed other students right so if we one of the levels so we have a whole process so we if we get notified of a positive case we confirm it and then we look at when the positive case was in school last and if it was we have to contact trace 48 hours two days two full days from when they were there and

074we have to pull who that kiddo or staff member may have been in contact with if we have assigned seating which we do we do a six foot radius from around that positive say student if we are in a grade level where there could perhaps be fully vaccinated students we are able to either elicit that from a parent that they've already given us proof of vaccination and we notify them of course if they were exposed you're fully vaccinated please be aware of your student however they do not need to quarantine and then if we get a non-vaccinated student then we give we have form letters from the state with the quarantine information that they should follow clear active the football players that were exposed by another team ended their quarantine i believe our srtc students

075who are exposed i believe they're quarantined until the 10th i'll believe it's the end of this coming week i think they can return is srtc fully they're all massed in stanford they were exposed to sanford with the masks on yeah no no at srtc the vote center i just have one thing to say clearly there's and this has nothing to do with like our school our nurse anything but there's no rhyme or reason to any of this you talk there were other people that spoke about singling out of kids you can't tell me that these kids aren't feeling singled out this one's vaccinated this one's not they know who's been vaccinated and who hasn't been just based on who's being quarantined from the football team it's not okay um and you know i have a

076kid that's a senior in high school he is on the football team he's already lost so much this last year and a half all he wants to do is be in school with his friends his teachers that he loves his football team he's worked his butt off and what i have to say is these kids whether you guys put these rules in action or not they're getting together they all are getting together because they've had it and what this damage is what damage is being done to these kids aside from this it's it's unbelievable um you've already done the public import part though can i say one last five second thing these these kids you're telling my kid that because he's in srtc he's on the football team every time he has an exposure he's

077going to be out for 10 days from well seven days from school and a sport and that's gonna restart restart restart every single time he just had this interaction on a football field with a marshwood kid that he never came in contact with you so you guys none of this makes sense and it's i know it's not your decisions i know it's not amy on a state level this does not make sense anymore but we can't change the state no we need to fight for our kids somehow it's good let's keep going yeah good who sets it up they keep changing everything every time they turn around a lot of people didn't i mean you guys know my feeling but i think that it's a really good tool that can keep a lot of um

078the microphone is right there and the people in the outside world can't hear what's going on here because there's smaller conversations i don't know conversations that might be helpful because um people are texting me sorry okay keep going any other questions for you did you want to follow up with me yeah i mean just following up so today was our first day and for those who don't know me i'm aj dufour principal at noble high school so today was our first day we had at the high school level about 95 attended so that puts us plus or minus 1200 students that came through our door today um and i think and again regardless of where you know there's obviously always going to be a lot of different opinions for me and for our students and

079our teachers i think the ability to be in school i know you know myself and you folks on the board we had a lot of those conversations last year as we tried to really find ways to maximize that and i think to amy's point when she goes through the the four levels and whatnot i just so you guys i think just for numbers sake no if we back date those 48 hours that she talked about with close contacts probably that's going to be somewhere between 70 and 100 close contacts 70 and 100 individual people that a student comes in contact with so we have five blocks a day you're gonna double that because you're going back two days and we have day one and day two classes so now you're talking over ten blocks a

080student is going to have somewhere between six to eight people within that radius with them in any classroom so we're starting and again so i'll call it 60 to 80 students you're then going to you know again if we assume that 45 to 49 vaccination you know i think we're looking at sending home for 10 days 30 to 35 and again it could be higher than that it could be lower than that depending on the case they're all not going to follow along every block isn't going to fall along those lines specifically but i think it's just the context of thinking about like real numbers real people what it would look like is important because i think today was really good at noble high school because we had 1200 people in the building so i

081think you know i know our students are looking forward to football game friday night you know we had a crowd for a cross-country meet today which was fantastic um so i think folks were antsy to get out so that's just kind of the first real full day we had our eighth graders in yesterday but the first real day at noble high school today so just the numbers of it and certainly if anyone has any questions and i will say you know we didn't write this it was given to us i certainly do not agree with some of what's in here i question it but it's what we're being held to like it or not yep yes we do not love those phone calls that's a lot of parts on easter on the weekends um amy

082you said this is the seventh version of this do you do you feel like this is you know maybe we're gonna hold on to this for like a couple of months like i mean this is the seventh version in a year probably a couple months probably four months i mean maybe until we want our students here and we really feel supporting the cdc recommendations is the way that we're going to have our best opportunity to have our students here you know my thought is i'm just like i can't help but to look back over the last year and every single one of our meetings and you know there you know maybe weren't a lot of people listening but like i feel like we worked so hard you know sometimes to the point of tears to

083just get our kids in school and i i nobody actually wants to wear a mask like it's not something that anybody wants i just feel like you know the just like that was our overwhelmingly that was our goal last year was to get the kids in school i i personally feel like you know we're giving a few different opportunities to not quarantine kids can get vaccinated that i'm you know i don't know if everyone agrees but i think the pool testing i know it's going to be a lot to implement if we do it but i just i feel like it's a huge win and it's a guarantee to keep your kid in school regardless of their vaccination and status and and it sounds like you know a masking requirement is another another piece so

084i what even though i don't love many of the options i just i can't erase the last year that we spent sitting around these tables trying to figure out ways to get these kids in school so personally i will do whatever it takes to keep them in school five days a week in my opinion this is how the state is trying to corner these kids into getting vaccinated and parents into making our kids number of days which is what we really need it was so bad last year um [Music] but um you can't refer them and ask my favorite viewers i agree with the most important thing is keeping them in school and keeping them safe making yesterday middle level approach well i didn't sit around this table last year but i certainly um respect

085the work that four did last year my concern is keeping the kids in school and keeping them safe and following the cdc guidelines seem to give us the best opportunities to keep the schools open and keep the kids in their classrooms um i'm for parent choice i've said that from the beginning so i'm not going to label but labor that but i i think once they reach back to asian age you know that's a parental choice you make that choice and you also don't make choice for masks i agree with nancy i kind of i like the parents choice of the older kids because they have the option to be vaccinated the other play that i've noticed that the napoleon seen it it would towards us in the last two weeks right so my concern

086was they can start making them you know giving the elementary kids the choice to vaccinate the concerns that you're going to start having more of a bullying aspect of the younger kids the bigger kids they can have a friend for themselves they can they can make some choices with their parents they can they're old enough to really have them discuss with their parents so that they can um have those discussions in school if they needed to so i i like the idea of a parent's choice and i think i keep hearing following cdc recommendations and what i hear is that the cd is highly recommended that we wear maps our school i just saw our sign in that school today is highly recommended that you're wearing that i think um i don't like the fact

087that this is being put on autism before i think if it was it was something that wanted to be controlled it should be controlled at the state level and they're they're pushing it down towards us which is causing a lot of analogy for no reason um i think i saw what i said to me it's a parent's choice and to me it's also following cdc's recommendation because the cdc is not mandating that's aware maps the cdc is i think the cdc has lost a lot of credibility in their statistics that they've been putting out personally um so to me i don't know if i would go 100 what the cdc says right now i do want to just agree with travis that it is this is not what the board the board wants to be

088discussing curriculum and you know other things and so i um i agree that it would be a lot easier on everyone if there was some sort of consistent something consistent that doesn't you know take up board meetings when we have a lot of other more educational topics that we should be spending our time on so it is unfortunate and not to mention that our kids go to other schools and they come here for the uh sports and it's just you know having everybody all over the place doesn't help anyways my two cents on that i i still feel the way i did last week with the older kids having their choice um i also think that from last year something that i really held in was um and people don't always hear about this out

089in the public so i'll just say sometimes we're contacted directly by students and um and sometimes we're contacted by their parents but it's not just always things that are put out for the public to hear and i think there was a lot of problems for for some kids with having to wear the masks um you know caused them problems while they were here and caused them problems you know during the summer just trying to recover for that and um so i still stay with the optional master all right let's add though the one the parents should understand the full gamut of things like you've just heard tonight if you choose to not vaccinate you're not fascinating if you choose to not mask your child they could get sent home before you not be in school

090for 10 days but if you choose to mask your child they could stay in school for 10 days so i think that's the important aspect is yeah the whole school has to adopt universal math policy okay okay but it is true that if they're vaccinated or we participate in full testing that those are ways to to keep the kids incredible and last week i said it too i'm for family choice i'm not in any way troll mask or against them i believe even myself there are times i wear it and there are times i don't okay so i made my choice but i believe that should be for everyone family choice is just what i'm saying is the parents and the child before that child there are there are instances where mass can do more

091harm than good for a child the parents would know that you're not adults um but i believe it should be their choice um and the reason i believe it when the when the cpc came out last year i was not here i can't say i know what you guys went through i don't i don't i don't it must have been quite the situation but what i'm saying is they mandated we're supposed to be listening to them yes they mandated so we had masks here and show you guys we're we're on board on them right now they're listening to them and they're saying we are recommending which is what the board decided to do us and to really kind of recommend for the high schoolers and the board decided that the younger kids that weren't able

092to get the vaccination to make now that it wasn't 100 it wasn't all everybody didn't agree but that's what the majority decided so i'm still on the same side i was that time that we should have definitely let let um no no mandate you know i'm looking at this chart and you know i think denise said well we don't want to have to mask kids but we want kids in school and one way to do that is to mask them they won't have to quarantine if it's universal okay the quarantining would be dramatically different if we have a universal policy it'll be dramatically different is that um it's just a classroom that would not have quarantined but that kid is still a close contact on the bus they're gonna have to quarantine that kid's full

093close contact at the lunchroom they're gonna have to pour it so yeah so this does not know so amy a masking policy does not apply to buses but it does apply to the classroom yeah no bus no cafeteria so that would be those two settings or if something happened out at recess and there was a something so if they're on the bus and there's a close contact then they have to quarantine so yeah yeah that makes no sense this day i will start my wood stove fire with these [Laughter] process to drop documents because i deal with it from the emergency services side which is different and it's completely different than what she deals with in the school but you know the same damn thing but it's all coming from the same person right right

094so it's been a very frustrating process as far as having to quarantine a whole classroom that was version one two three four possibly and then we moved on to the assigned seating caveat that we have we plan to follow in all grades as much as possible so i would hope that the days of quarantining a whole classroom mask or no mask are over and we have the assigned seating that we can go by six feet out from the positive case now i'm sure there might be instances where maybe a teacher is positive and they had contact with each and every one of those students for 15 minutes six feet within 24 hours each case is individual but that is what we are striving for no mask even even with the what are we doing in

095the hallways are we actually traveling in the hallways we're traveling in the hallway that could be 12 feet away from in the classroom i'm just could be walking side by side with them in the hallway that's not 16 for 15 minutes typically our hallway passings are five minutes or less there is no eye on every single child nope the very middle of the day you're right it's very i mean we do the best with what we have what we've been given um are we doing for lunch this year i know we had lunches all over the place last year what are we doing for lunch of this year we are um back using our cafeteria so we're spreading out the best we can we have some students eating in the town square area up above

096in the mezzanine area and in the bulk of the students are eating in the cafeteria i went down and visualized one of the lunches it looks a lot busier of course yeah what i saw today and what i've seen in years past the amount of movement that happens in the high school cafeteria is such that by the time a student gets their lunch has a seat someone else pops up goes to the bathroom they mingle in town square they come down to 20 minutes 20 minutes the chances are that someone solvedly with someone 6 feet 15 minutes is pretty low i believe that when we get a positive student upon interview with them the parent we can ask people who have been around at times like that that weren't in the cafeteria to identify potential

097contacts in the grade schools it's a heck of a lot easier if they have a science saving spread out as much as possible and in those cases we will know who's sitting where typically with their classroom i think solidly with their classroom anyways it will know six feet the this exception number four does that pertain to our grade k through eight and again if you think of the dynamics of a recess kids are here there everywhere [Music] if another thing that's in the definition list is direct physical contact so football that case where we would have to we had to quarantine members who played against the other team who could have come in direct physical contact so say there's a scuffle on the playground and we find out three days later that one of those

098kids might have been positive maybe the administrator remembers the scuffle on the playground and says oh yeah so that gets a close contact there's a lot it sounds silly but could the kids move every 15 minutes well they're not if you've ever seen a recess they're moving oh no no in the classroom could they move seats every 15 minutes then they're never within 15 minutes or 24 hours i actually have a question so i'm looking at the one of the slides where it shows the positivity rate and the ups and downs and all that sort of thing it would appear and i know that's at the state level it would appear that we're about where we were in february and again in april or may what did that what does that sort of curve look

099like right here in said 60. are we are we where we were at that same time here or you know i'm just thinking the same protocol should be in place right so it's a level of cases two of coming into school and so during those previous surges we were seeing about eight cases that affected our schools in a week during those previous ones this one we don't know yet [Music] the obviously srtc's quarantining thing looks the same um do they has there been any communication with stanford like how does so our kids have to warn us when they're there yes okay so right so they're following the so it's my understanding that our students were quarantined because there was no assigned seating happening if you think of the nature of an srt cc program they

100were working closely together but their kids did not have to quarantine they did they did have to work so even though they have a universal mask policy yeah so they kind of it's universal masking assigned seats keeping them relatively three feet apart so the clustering in the classroom probably happened but then let's ask the question why would they be forced to ride a bus altogether like why wouldn't you guys want them to be able to drive to school so i guess you can get to that yeah amy what i'm wondering about my list is like so does our decision does it have any impact on the srt srtc kids like do you know what i mean yeah i mean so i think what we heard back was it was the nature of the program so

101whatever they were doing so again i don't pretend that it's not it's way easier for us to control the environment of the classroom setting that we have versus the hands-on nature so and again because i believe it was the first day or one of the first couple days i don't know if it was looking at it i don't know what spurred there to be all of those close contacts it certainly was not classroom work that they were doing so i think the nature of the activity is what caused there to be that many close contact and come up with a structure that would yes maybe i think you know if it were a program where you know two students are working on a robotics so it might be if one of those two were to

102test positive maybe the partner even with universal masking would be considered a close contact but i don't think i don't think it would be typical to be an entire program like i believe it was pretty close to an entire program and then also i'm sorry before we vote um i guess i don't know if you can amend the um recommendation um but i do think it's something that we need to revisit you know don't want to do it every week but if we could watch the raids you know and that was part of the lesson well i mean that's basically what you do yeah i don't want to be i don't want us to be like voting on it every week but i know but i think that part of whatever we put in place

103or don't put in place i just i think that we need to watch the numbers and revisit and be one of my concerns last year is that we were not ready to make a decision when information changed and so i would like us to be a little more ready this year to be able to make a decision and if the numbers really are going down to not be afraid to take that into consideration and if they go up to not be afraid to take that into consideration so whatever we're basing our votes on you know if that changes i'd like to see as a board us be able to you know to revisit a little bit more quickly than we were able to last year well we've done it now so we know that well

104i think we get updated with a bunch of information that sways us one way and the other that's when any other discussions i'm sure do you want me to amend it to have that language i don't think you need to something i guess not if we're really going to revisit it yeah so i'd like to make a motion to amend our decision a few weeks ago and mandate mass universal masking for students staff and faculty in k through 12. how do you okay all of us in favor all right so that is you took away parents choice because a couple kids get sick they're not in the hospital they're not dying and you took away a parent's choice to make medical decisions for their kid that's disgusting they're sick they're not in the hospital they're

105not dying that's ridiculous does the masking applied to only in the building or is it anywhere on school grounds i'm just kidding um right okay thank you i do not have access to when i'm working for it came quite a while ago no just as i don't have access but i do have june 17th [Music] thank you so much okay anybody see these errors sessions spelling problems oh hold on one second i don't just tell you guys [Music] i don't know if i was here or not it says yep okay then we have the 17th okay my name is oh just my name is uh [Music] it's just in the the paragraph nomination yeah which means somewhere the warrant for the assessment taxes based on the approved budget income is now in the motion second

106value of the talking about the warrant for the assessment taxes was approved by the board um that one that was when we appointed aj let's get back up there while you're finding that can i just quick think this wasn't sure okay it all those in favor are you abstaining i wasn't here i wasn't right all right june 30th very short this is [Music] okay july 22nd sorry which one are we on july 22nd it says you weren't there that's wrong um something about oh and like the fourth paragraph she's talking this is that and it's recommended that all staff and students in k-13 when i was in high school in canada we went through grade 13. really it ended the year i actually graduated from grade 12 because i was in the us at that

107point but at the end of the year i would have graduated all those papers and that's it because we're going to get the 19th next so yes who did who seconded that one thank you um what has happened that caused because it's difficult um make sure you have so march you know last year we were all in the leagues with people in the remote outdoor boat in homeschool our home school so the last i compared this to march march 1st 2020 was when we took the last um in school like physically present enrollments so that's on the right hand side and then this is september 2nd as of today so just you know crazy little cameras are all over the place but the total is just is pretty similar yes i just wanted different size

108classes have something to do with that too right right there was a bubble that went to the high school that left the middle school um north berwick if you look at north berwick has just had the hunting school and old school the hanson school and elementary oldest yeah but not as significant as it was last year it was like 149 last year are those mostly elementary does that include the nola people no the noble people are on our roster okay the um unlimited academy north berwick as we know is already tight school-wise so this really is uh stressing that space so that's just today because it was first day for some today as well so yesterday we had the sixth grade in and on the seventh grade at the middle school um and interestingly the

109sixth graders were there last year but the seventh graders weren't because the seventh graders were up here with sixth graders so it's like the sixth graders went in and they're like okay we know this we've got mess in the seventh graders yesterday was around 5 20. that's that is late but it's in line with usual first day and i was doing two trips on something some of us that was one of them and it was a lebanon bus and it left lebanon at 4 15 so it was about an hour a little over an hour today was much much better um reported that the buses left around 10 to 504 from there which is more typical so they get done at 3 15. we start pickups around three and so they the second trip kids

110have to wait in the next one but then you go slow you know you don't always get all the buses there at the same time for that um so we we have a lot of parents that are picking up in all of the buildings right now and i don't know if it's gonna fit out or not um i think it's gonna probably remain what it they are using the is k5 they're we're looking at starting at the middle school but because we had sixth grade in one day seventh grade in one day they're just trying to gauge how that's going and what that's looking at like but i think it's going to be about i think they had 80 pickups today and dropbox at the middle school and without that the sacred day before 160.

111from tuesday yeah get to see that um cuz we took i think it was 149 pickups today yesterday and lebanon had kindergarteners in today they did orientation yesterday so a little different that way um we had a very peaceful opening and closing for both both days and in all of our buildings and um it was just you know as aj has said as other principals and have said he wearing buildings and it's just nice to see the children in session it's nice to amy creighton said you know somebody got gum stuck in their hair and she had to work on the problem it was nice um and are they all doing that yes and what are we going to do about the construction meetings we have schedules for those days to be yeah we are

112so a couple of things we are doing 8th grade 8th grade orientation not in person right that happened right was the 31st that evening uh virtually actually monday the 30th i guess it was trying to it was monday night yes we are trying to keep our numbers um in the buildings pretty controlled and one of the things that they said is just having a lot of different people in the buildings at one time is tough and that is a huge attendance you know so we are doing um the students are participating in creating the um open house for the families and they'll have uh be able to see it online that's all all the schools so it's not just one building versus another the building meeting i don't know how large that's going to be

113like here it wasn't very large so i hope it's larger when we go in right now probably the reason why we're piggybacking but we didn't schedule them on open house nights anyway we didn't we scheduled them not to be on open health sites we talked about open house nights they were scheduled for the open house was on the 16th oh you know what i think it was the post the board's up right from there yeah yes i don't anticipate it's going to be that many students and that means parents coming for those so i think we're in good shape okay [Music] making sure our northbourne building meeting is on tonight at 10 o'clock and our husband building meeting is on the 13th at 6 o'clock it did bctv um was there for the last presentation

114yep they did some follow-up with me and it's going on the bc tv they're gonna run a couple of times it's on our district site the three presentation um and then we'll continue to provide updates as they come in i don't know where i had it but i thought i had it as the 21st to the 8th no it's the 8th the 20th the 21st is the budget hero okay because then november we vote okay the town's vote okay september 21st and show the plans on the projects and that will be enabled are they just i'm just trying i don't i don't know the damn space so i think that's it um second reading of the policy and i know we just kind of want to walk through it yes okay so just so i'm

115clear we're doing this because we didn't previously have a remote policy but there was a whatever emergency policy in place that expired so we have written our own policy basically earlier this week the um lynn stephanie and i met and we went through that as our policy committee right now and we've been through this and just made some changes you'll see some strike throughs those were suggested changes um so we had looked at making just the word practical even though this um because of that the sense down below if we're going to change it to practical that sentence below where it starts with circumstances um we talked earlier about that talk on the back of the first page all that stuff that's crossed out when we talked about putting you're going to allow emailed public

116input 24 hours in advance do you want to put a length on that and just keep it the three minutes it takes to read it or because we have a three three minute limit of somebody speaking here so they all email it in and they're like quite lengthy so i think we should do the so i think the three minutes okay or do we just want to get rid of the link when we're having personal meetings right that's what we've talked about right true i don't i don't mind i mean this is for when we're doing it when we're going yeah i don't if we're doing remote meeting like we're fully remote right now do you want us all right maybe just after that sentence prior to this start of the meeting should be read

117during the meeting and then put comments should not exceed three minutes to be submitted in 24 hours in advance anybody have anything else travis did you find what you were thinking of for work yeah you were working yeah so the question is interpreted [Music] the circumstances with which critical presence is not practical include can be quarterly policy and to just those circumstances or if for some reason all of us are on vacation and we decide we want to be able to hold in to the board meeting and we allow them to build a vote that says um prior notice of the board's members absent it should be indicated that they want to participate remotely and should communicate to the board chairs foreign yes it's temporary absence from the area [Music] it looked to me that's

118do you just say temporary absence wish there was someone to say due to working conditions or or something like that well i mean it could be running i mean right but it could be these could be or if we should be and get rid of governed by the board temporary absence from the area that causes the boardroom that you face and then we totally took out three islands to you and it's proving that you are comfortable with the um adjustments or we can bring it back to you and do it it may make sense to just prove it that's his right still life if something happens uh [Music] okay [Music] for your approval assistant athletic director lauren moussard so she graduated from springfield college of sports management recreation um and then university of southern maine

119exercise science and minor in health fitness she's currently currently the special olympics of maine and um we had a committee made up of some middle school representation high school representation coaches as well as coaches who were teachers so we had a good cross-section of people on the committee it was unanimous this is unanimous choice um can i be the one to nominate her she's fabulous like we're super lucky to and i think the kids are gonna love her i think staff's gonna love her and she's incredibly capable incredibly capable as well as just she'll be like she'll just be a great addition to that team now is the plan still that she does middle school with the assistant in the high school so it smells so probably six um sixty percent of the middle school

120and then she supports the athletic director here for the rest of it i'm trying to like pull back together at a very common devices i would like to make a motion that we what what is it that i'm actually emotionally approve the nomination um assistant athletic director second all those in favor next employment and i love that you listed everybody that's not good i was just on the street tonight okay so these are um our new hires that have already started um but we have today was the last day of the ability for us to extend uh contracts up to tj staff it goes back to the more accurate so um so these are our new hires tamara duvis who's noble middle school spanish and that may come as a little bit of a surprise

121because we haven't had spanish at um the middle school and this is we had a position last year somebody don't get laughter yeah okay okay yeah so tamara is taking somebody retired yeah the position was never filled last year right so this is going in it as a as a yes rotation so we're getting we're getting the opportunity to have a foreign language at the element of this school yeah which we haven't had here and she has a degree in law so yes and has done some real estate in the area and is just very much looking forward to teaching your glory coleman who is coming in as a lebanon school counselor she graduated from usm she was excelled in stanford so i'm going to give you a little background on her lauren coleman was

122the last spanish teacher we had at little middle school really yeah so then she left and went to stanford for other reasons but she that was when we lost spanish over there so she's coming back yeah and then jesse sears for multiple pathways health and pe that's jim winslow when jim moved over to a sister principal that was jim's position so jesse graduated from unh and was most currently in loving john hall this is the exact same name as john paul at the middle school so this is for social studies yes yes so he's graduated from usm and he was in kennebec community college in yccc so he was the he's the actual was the dual enrollment coordinator for yccc and noble and he's fabulous we're really lucky he's and then we have maria cannon

123uh graduating who graduated from 4h i think she's still getting her certificate advantage degree from unh she was most recently at the art school in massachusetts and she's come to the high school we have camilla shaw from knowlton grade five and she's a recent graduate of kingston college with crystal hansen who's a special education teacher at knowlton school she graduated from the state university and was at dover middle school we have jeremy noble high school social studies teacher he graduated from the university of new england he most recently was at pahoni middle school that was a one year only position we have tim crotsman noble high school multiple pathways english teacher he graduated from unh he most recently was working in at the shanghai american school yeah yes and he located back here um due

124to uh and um our most recent hire is kayla appeared noble high school band she graduated from unh she joined falmouth high school in massachusetts currently and she is looking to relocate back here so she's scheduled to start the end of next week in the beginning and then barbara schwartz who is a long time educational technician at milton school she was at hudson school for a little while she has extensive work she was in her before she came to maine um and she is going to be taking over for special education as a case manager a resource teacher she has her certificate her emergency certificate we should say for that um so those are our hires that we've already had and then we have a resignation and that's carissa and she was middle school special

125education wells and then we have two uh recent retirements jeff patton for 25 years history at build high school and mark mamey 26 years fabulous teachers so i don't know and are the are they already retired are they like have they finished yeah srtc kids have to ride on the are the districts open to revisiting that so that's the question well has never allowed our students to drive to vote last year it was allowed because of the closing situation and that just eliminated all the problems in terms of and then then they rolled it back to the original piece which is we don't really have a lot of parking extra hunting to come in from all the other districts that's really what this is about um and we can you know we'll bring it to

126the visible facial and they can talk about that um if there's anything um like and if an exception can be made we certainly will talk to um the folks at sanctuary as to what that exception is and then how the developments can try to meet that exception but uh that's really there's some history here that i wouldn't think it is i mean it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to force our kids the right thoughts i mean if we're all going all now the other practice to be of our kids driving to school but it's like during the school day it's just one more additional sort of concern about kids of cars so no i get that but one of the conversations that like is still so with me from last year was that

127we couldn't put other kids here back in school because these kids had to drive to and from yeah and that was like that ruled really so many of our choices and so yeah like it doesn't it doesn't make sense to me from a sort of covet standpoint i do get it from a parking and sort of consistency standpoint but you know it's yeah i think honestly some of this is just it's rolling we had that on here in between where things were opened up a lot more to they want to go back to the older friends so we'll talk about it i guess i don't know that we'll i don't know but we'll talk about that for sure um now someone said something about this absolutely going to be no hormone learning going on now

128i didn't understand that to be true right so we have currently oh sorry let's deal with something something else don't currently have three students potentially four students remotely high school we have kindergarten to fifth grade across the district seven families or seven students not even family seven students which turns out to be like three or four families that are participating in global learning there are none in normal middle school because we've got that at the very final middle school so that's what we have out of all of our students is that a choice that they're making they can make a choice based based on health factors that we covered last right across time that if there was a health factor or a concern something a note from the doctor that we would honor that but

129it was not going to look exactly like it did last year because across the state no schools are are doing the kind of remote that we did last year so i met with um and i'll talk with with aj about like she's asked i think he's she's been offered several options and i don't know that they meet her needs right now or her what she thinks is the best need for her daughter so we're just it's an individual thing and we'll sit down and talk about that and yeah that's completely something different with my concerns and yeah we do aj do you want to talk a little bit about like if you had to quarantine 10 children or five children from a class yeah so at the high school level um so we still have

130a number of our classrooms i think the last number was 22 that don't have the technology here either because last year the reason we had the technology we used all the double classrooms so now with closing those walls only one of the two classrooms have it but in the event that students are quarantined we are going to be able to do really short term remote to those kids that are that we have put in quarantine if you will not that it was us doing it to them but they met the qualifications of quarantine due to coped we want to continue them with their education but it's it is going to be relatively short term because you know generally speaking if a student tests positive it's going to take a couple of days since the actual

131exposure before we find out that someone tested positive so usually a student would have seven or eight days left in their quarantine so we'll do three or four days of each day ones and day twos with them being able to log on remotely so they can keep up with their class and then when they come back in person after the 10 days are up for the short term students yes basically you need to equip every classroom across the district with the ability to go remote at any time we're working on it yes is that what we want to do well i mean i think we want to be able to continue to offer the class i mean because a student could be in december when they're you know determined to have to quarantine for the

132first time we don't want them to miss what could be up as far you know it won't be quite two weeks of school because the weekends and whatnot but we don't want them to miss that time gotta admit i am shocked that we are going down this road yeah i mean i think there's no so what we're not doing and we're working individually families we're not starting a student out on day one of the year saying you are always going to log in it is uh but isn't this cut isn't this like a tremendous amount of work for that teacher well i mean our hope is i mean and not to turned on tonight hopefully our number of quarantines are down tremendously based on the masking i mean truthfully that factors into it that there

133should be you know now if a student test positive we're maybe talking two or three related to that one that would need to quarantine from school so the numbers should be we've also cohorted ourselves honestly it doesn't really matter what the number is like either you're turning you're turning a classroom into a remote teaching or you're not it doesn't matter if it's one kid on the other end or ten right but it matters if it's one time every so often for two or three classes versus every every single be gold day room to room is that what you're saying no and is it just for core classes it's for all of us and one of the science uh history teachers room is not equipped for that yeah so i mean a lot of our teachers

134are using so again and we have told teachers it's not going to be perfect so our teachers are already using google classroom so the student it may be a situation unfortunately if the technology is such where the student can hear and listen to what's going on in the classroom they have the powerpoint i'm dating myself you know this the slideshow that's being presented at the front of the room they can watch that on their own screen at home they can listen to what's happening but it's the focus is going to be on in-person learning because that so it won't be you know i think what we're hoping is that when the student comes back from quarantine maybe they have to stay after school one day to get caught up versus needing to stay after school

135four days to get caught up because that's just a lot for a student so it's going to be the focus is in person with allowing the student to access and still you know again it wouldn't work for a student to do that for the entire semester but it should work to keep the student afloat during the mandatory quarantine period because otherwise they're out and is that well they shouldn't complain about it now they're all universally masked so there shouldn't be any complaining about oh i have to go into the remote for about 10 days ago yeah you know i mean i i'm just thinking about the feedback from the teachers last year and i like how incredibly difficult and taxing that was to do those dual classrooms and yeah like and it was i guess

136i'm just very surprised to hear that this is going to be easy to implement right i think the the big difference honestly is that the script is flipped based on the focus so our focus last year was trying to do both really really well and it's hard i mean i would dare say it's nearly impossible to do both well the focus this year is it's your in-person learners it's like someone on the outside being able to essentially listen in and keep up it's not you know again i don't pretend it's going to be great so i will apologize for that in advance dark so exactly and it happens like so when my daughter was a long time ago in ninth grade she had knee surgery on both knees and she was out for six weeks

137in each of them she had a little [Music] it's more about being able to access the in-person pieces of it as much as i mean right yeah i mean because we had folks and again did an unbelievable job i can't you know but they were putting the people at home into groups with people that were in the classroom and trying to like trying to meld both worlds and it's it's really really hard and we've been really clear that that we were super appreciative of that but it's not sustainable to that level so it's now going to be more like they're able to keep up and that's our hope justin just going to be open to somebody who's just sick at home with the cold the link to class is only going to be shared out

138and i think that's the other part of the feedback we got and folks were spot on you never knew day to day who was going to be where yeah so when the student wasn't in front of you now you're looking on the computer to try and find them are they there are they not there where so now the teacher will be notified that such a student is in quarantine they get a link but someone else who's sick doesn't get one exactly and truthfully the other pieces and we're going to be very clear when a student goes into quarantine oftentimes there may be lead time to make that happen because if i'm making that call to the family at eight o'clock tonight in their school tomorrow i don't think it's fair to expect that block one

139at 7 40 the link's going to be had and this like but it's okay students are sometimes absent for a day that happens what i don't want to do is sort of we don't want to require a student to be absent for the four four day ones that happen with no learning during that time what if the options are an option for extended absences like that situation yeah i mean it would be case by case i think at this point we're trying to be really clear with it being coveted related just to put some parameters because otherwise it becomes tricky but we are working with families um around other remote opportunities i think one of the advantages we have especially for our older students is being able to offer york county community college classes um

140that have been really really beneficial for a lot of our juniors and seniors and we actually have a couple of sophomores that are like can i try one i really want to try and families have been really receptive and sue mentioned it during the nomination of john hall the our john hall um with him can i you know i think he's going to try and continue to be an adjunct and teach a class every great once in a while at yccc it's going to be a really huge ally so like i have a couple of kiddos who were scheduled to have him that audra spoke about that have a medical condition that won't allow them to come in they can take yccc history with the same teacher that they would have had at noble high

141school history so it's a pretty good it's a pretty good thing that we can offer so we're not offering it for a year-long program or not somebody who doesn't want to come to school no and you said it's not movable from classroom classroom but it can be removed right no it's set to the classroom yeah the the eye in the sky special camera microphone later on i'm looking at it from if we are getting rid of lebanon elementary can we take the stuff out of there i would think so i would think so yeah i don't think the the elementary stuff is different than the installs here at the high school they're more um between costumes um we have two options that that could happen and again some of it's a case by case spaces

142but if somebody needs to quarantine we have a facilitator a teacher facilitator that's doing k5 the seven students so if there was a situation where somebody had to quarantine that facilitator would be the check-in person for that student and the teacher would supply the work similar to like if somebody goes out for an extended time the teacher provides the work um but this person would be the check-in person so that the teacher doesn't have to kind of run a dual piece here um so that's that's what we're looking at for the lower ones and then at the middle of the thing kind of stuff because i think it's going to be a little harder to kind of try to get them into the virtual academy so we'll talk about it a little bit more [Music]

143debt or uh a width of grade span so we'll have to check that out i don't know i have to be honest i'm sure that they have a plan because i just i think i've lost they don't have extra mass on the buses now i don't wish we should be supplying each other every day because i'm surprised by that honestly so we'll follow up because they should open up yeah i had another quick other and we can think about it for the future or whatever cafeteria workers i've heard some stuff um just i think that's being put out there asking us if we could maybe accept the plastic masks that come from below and go up in other words so they wouldn't uh be able to get anything i i worked when there's less people

144in there or potentially like a very low number if they were able to spread and then be able to put that on uh to make it nicer for them can you say that because samford started with that policy they wanted universal asking for the kids but the teachers if they were just teachers in the room or if they were by themselves they could take the mess up they got and in that same uh idea with the whole plastic mask thing with the younger grades when teachers are reading and they're maybe they can like go to right where the chalkboard is and have that distance between the kids and desks is you know is that something that we maybe want to do so then the kids can see the teacher's face or leave it like we

145have it like i'm just throwing it out there kind of thing i wanted that too when beginning readers and they need to see the mouth of the director there are extra mouse on the buses so it will follow up i will just tell you that anybody else helping others i do um we have talked at the beginning of the summer about either i can't remember exactly how we left it but either setting up a workshop or inviting the i also can't remember the official name of it but the diversity committee i'm sort of hearing secondhand that there's some frustration that they feel like they're going to stop from meeting with the board um i know we have talked about getting something on the calendar so i'd like to just september 16th more or less september

14616th yes that's the next meeting right what's happening that's my next video that's the nfc which is the birthday coming to you yes great because i'm in love okay [Music] mandated vaccine i saw in one of the minutes we had said that there was like 100 kids that were missing where are we with those kids i have yeah the number is rapidly going down so that's a good thing um and we're at a point right now where i think and i don't know that the number of days but there is a grace period that's allowed if a family has made an appointment and we have most of our families in that queue the the test is going to be like confirming that that was an actual appointment that resulted in said vaccination you know it's

147so that's where we're at so most families have been very receptive to it and have said they'll do it amy did a great job i know she was able to secure um some of the vaccine right in the office with the ability to administer it so that was hugely helpful and i know she even started that process during fall sports pre-season so that students were taken care of prior so i think we're in much better shape than that number but it's a constant is it more of a high school that you have a problem or more yeah i know it was that for us it was that 12th grade vaccine i believe it was the meningitis vaccine that students needed to get um yeah and and it fell under the the timing of the state

148law and no longer allowing the um philosophical or religious exemptions so it was kind of a double whammy maybe with covet and no longer allowing that exemption yep in paper thank you congratulations thank you buddy i appreciate that it's good to see you likewise fellow math guy that you're making that happens somewhere in there so we have a new calculus teacher here that is from she has been at burke academy [Music]