20200916 Hanover Regular Board Mtg.

001said then hey all right i guess we're starting but i i sent you that uh and josh is on i sent you that note about funding for technology um this afternoon no no no no this is like a week ago they're they're available the grant thing yeah so you know i anyway i mean i wouldn't be the one doing the heavy lifting but i'm happy to help a little bit was it about um was it about like community wireless is that well i you know it was it was financial support for rural areas um and uh i i don't know what the restrictions are on it um but uh if you want to have a meeting about it just i mean just let me know i mean again i'm not everybody has more than enough

002on their plate so i can't drive this but if it if you feel like there's a shot then i'm happy to help it's it's a huge need and if if there's any help out there we need to take it so i don't know josh maybe you can maybe you can look and i mean we have enough technology people on the board besides me that you know it might uh anyway enough said you you you all can look at it and decide if it's if it's worth pursuing and then i'm happy to be part of a meeting so i think we have to ramp it up pretty quick because i think it's october beginning of october i think is the deadline for oh thank you having it in um we are recording we are live on

003youtube um folks that are listening in um if you are dialed in with a phone you hit star nine to raise your hand we generally use the raised hand feature for folks and i think um everything is ready to go if you guys want to get started hey thank you josh uh so it is 702 and i'm gonna go ahead and call the hanover school board meeting to order so uh first on the agenda is a donation from jack and dorothy byrne foundation is someone want to discuss what this one's about is this laura lord i would love to take this one yes um so in our previous meetings and as right before we kicked off this one um as you all know technology is a hot button item right now and something that we

004um have been really trying to build over the past many years and the covid situation has certainly amplified our need for technology so ruth arjona our tech person here at ray um has taken on an initiative to try to bring one-to-one devices here at the ray school for a variety of reasons you know students access to technology in kindergarten through fifth grade allows us to start teaching students very early what it means to be a digital citizen in this digital age that we're in additionally with covid we have found that the sharing of devices adds an extra complicated layer to the current technology we have at the school if we have students that are sharing devices between sharing of the devices those things would need to be wiped down sanitized or as we say at

005the rate school put on vacation quarantined for a certain amount of time um and we this year for the first time have built in technology and media into our specials rotation so there is a there was a real identified need for these tech items in our past several budgets um we have uh taken a close look at our budget lines and sometimes made cuts to to the budget in the tech lines to try to reflect what is needed in the moment but not necessarily what would be needed in the future or our hopes if we could get everything that we wanted so when ruth brought this to me the idea was that we would have one-to-one devices that would be chromebooks in third grade through fifth grade and then in kindergarten through second grade we

006would have students using ipads we were able to purchase the chromebooks through our budget and using some of our covered resources but we didn't have any money in our budget to be purchasing a new fleet of ipads that would make it possible to have one-to-one devices for our kindergarten through second graders ruth wrote a grant to the burn foundation and we were just absolutely shocked and thrilled and and just really appreciative that the burn foundation has agreed to um give a generous donation of 48 000 towards this cause i hope you've had a moment to take a look at the application that ruth submitted because it is it fully explains um the need and the desire uh and we're just so grateful for the burn foundation their generosity supporting this initiative supporting our students and

007supporting the race school thank you lauren at this point would someone like to make a motion good job move to approve with gratitude the donation from the jack and birth dorothy burn foundation in the amount of 48 000 to purchase a side of technology okay going around john yes dan rock more yes ben eeny yes marcella glacias and johnson yes and i just want to thank again the jack and dorothy byrne foundation they are wonderful supporters of the race school over the last couple of years and this is this is really going to help us a lot so thank you so at this point we're going to move to public comments so uh anyone in the public who would like to make a comment please uh raise your hand and we'll move you over so

008you can chat if you have something to discuss that's on our agenda if you could wait until we get to that part of the agenda to discuss it but this is an opportunity for anything that's not on the agenda to bring to the attention of the board so i've got jared from norwich so jared we're going to move you over um and if you're going to introduce your first and last name and where what town you're from hello i'm jared benedict from norwich had a question about ventilation i couldn't i didn't see it mentioned on the agenda is that the case yeah it's in the facilities update so uh down here okay i'll wait then thank you anyone else from the public want to make a comment ask a question okay see no takers we're

009going to move on to agenda review uh does anyone have any changes to the agenda moving things around or adding things i knew jay was gonna do that go ahead jay i'm sorry rick but um the only thing i have to to offer is that there there was an agenda item on there earlier that that uh if you haven't refreshed recently i removed and it was a motion to approve um a process for the friends of hanover norwich schools grant making process and there's no need to do that so i eliminated it from the action items okay thank you any other additions or changes go ahead kim sorry i thought it was there but i thought we'd be approving the board guidelines do i not see that i think yeah i thought that was i

010thought that was past to be added to the agenda on a it's a it's a of business requiring this oh oh i see i guess i just don't see it in action that's all gotcha so it should probably be added yeah because i think we want to have the board approve it i i'm happy to do that right now great thank you kim [Music] any other changes or additions okay uh moving on to lauren's report let's love to hear how the first week of school has been going at the race school i will try really hard to put all my thoughts into a coherent message here and i will start by framing it around the pictures that were uploaded um so if you take a look at the um attachment to this item one thing

011that i'm a little bummed about is that for whatever reason when one of the pictures was uploaded it has all of our galaxy terminology and it's very um pixelated and hard to read but i will still talk you through that when we get to it so just looking through the pictures that you have in front of you i think this kind of leads and guides our story about what has happened since we've opened school so i walked into my office on the first day of school to find my face in the ray rocket ship which is the first picture and just a really um supportive message from staff who have worked extraordinarily hard as we all have to ensure a successful opening so if you haven't take a little a minute to take a look

012at the message there because it feels like um you know we launched into space for sure as students entered the school on the first day they were greeted by this rocket that was created by some of our staff members here led by leslie connolly one of our kindergarten teachers and students were able to walk through the rocket and we have lots of pictures of students with the rocket there are actually lights that light up on the battery pack and i think the message is clear there we're launching the adventure and we will rock it of course you gotta fit in a nice pun there all around the school different places are labeled with uh creative names that reflect what happens in different areas of the school all around this galaxy theme um this is gwen's

013desk so uh it's obviously the mission control center of the entire school up at the front desk area the next one of course i'm sorry i should have probably asked permission but we had a great visit from many people from the sau come over and walk through our school in in the first few days and i managed to grab a picture of jay next to the rocket so there you have it you can also tell how large that rocket is it is floor to ceiling um and then you know the a picture of me as well welcoming students into the first day of school so the next picture is the chalkboard that we have in the front area and it lays out the different terminologies that we are using here at the ray school some

014grades uh it feels a bit more developmentally appropriate some of our older students are like yeah i'm over it like good try but i'm kind of over it regardless as staff we're trying really hard to use creativity over covid we can't control covid but we can control how we talk about it and how we keep our students and ourselves safe so what you would see on that picture is some definitions uh we call helmets our face masks our face shields we have laser checks which are temperature checks we have our personal space bubbles that remind us to physically distance we have operation decon or operation decontamination which means washing our hands and keeping proper hand hygiene orbiting is safe walking in the hallways or outside when we're all together space stations are our classrooms mission

015control is the office the milky way is our playground wormholes are our hallways operation wellness is the nurse's office space debris is what we're calling trash and recycling and then we have our satellites which are our remote classrooms and just a huge shout out to ray school staff that that took this on um and got so creative with with what we're doing here uh the next picture uh talks a little bit more about the ray galaxy way and if you have not been following on twitter i've been trying to keep a daily update about different things that you can see around the school because it certainly feels different not to have families and volunteers within the school seeing what we have and what we've done with the place to make it fun and safe for

016students so we have the red galaxy way and then we have pigs and ppe reminding us to be kind astronauts and orbit safely around the school so the pictures tell a lot of the story um but i'll add a few other thoughts as well um we anticipated that this would be really challenging and it is it really is uh this is a whole new level of classroom management um when you think of having you know 16 to 19 students in a classroom who are all expected to wash their hands multiple times during the day while still maintaining their personal space bubbles the hand washing and the transitions are something that we knew would be challenging but really are quite an interesting challenge to have this year it certainly eats up into the time that we

017would normally be spending in the classroom doing other things like teaching and providing academic instruction um i think that it's something that we will continue to reconcile and try to manage but it's certainly something that we've identified as as a real challenge as we've headed into this year with that sort of comes this acute awareness and sensitivity around what we know and believe is best practice when it comes to teaching we know that we as educators should be collaborating and that students should also be collaborating that those student-to-student conversations are just so incredibly important that the small group instruction that we provide that elbow support that we provide makes a huge difference when students are learning and when students are engaged we have a big focus here at the race school on rigorous academics all

018of these things are things that we hold dear and we place at the forefront of our educating and it feels weird to not be doing these things that we hold so dear and we know our best for students i think that has definitely been a challenge and taking an emotional toll we're used to being super student focused in in ways that we know are the best for students and those ways have have definitely changed um these are not things that we can readily do and that's a really hard thing um that that issue of time which is a precious commodity in a normal year is made even more precious and uh even less this year when it comes to collaboration with each other um and in having our students engaged in those academics so um

019i continue to give the message this year that we are focusing on connection that we are focusing on the relationships with our students there is certainly a trade-off here and i'm i'm naming the things that are challenges because they're important to name this is really hard um there are there are trade-offs we are in person we are providing a remote option but when we're in person it's just not going to be the same this year um i am expressing on behalf of the staff i think what we've all felt sort of this level of uh stress leading up to the opening of school and that to an extent i feel like that has now transferred to our teachers right so my stress in making sure that our staff was feeling really ready to go well

020now the staff is taking that on to make sure that their students are feeling safe and are safe that they're healthy and we need to keep an eye on making sure that those basic needs are met before we're diving into that rigorous academic um program that we are so used to starting with very quickly at the beginning of the school year so it's important to recognize important to acknowledge that school looks different it's hard physically it's hard mentally it has the potential to take a toll but we're really just we feel very fortunate and we're very glad to be able to offer these in-person and remote opportunities we are so glad to be with our students if you walk through the hall you talk to anybody that's looking particularly tired on a specific day and

021we're not very many days in people are still saying but it's so great to have the students in the school and that will continue to be the feeling even when we're feeling tired and even when other things are taking their toll um we're trying our best to remember that this is temporary that we're we're going to have to reconcile with those trade-offs um and we appreciate the continued support and understanding from the community to that end um i'm so incredibly impressed and proud of our school opening both remote and in person i'm so incredibly proud of this staff and i'll just end by saying uh what a fellow district administrator said so very well um that it is easy to look good when you're surrounded by talented and amazing people and that's exactly how i

022feel here at the ray school thank you lauren um anyone have any questions comments for lauren kim hey lauren can you speak a little bit about how the first couple or first week or so of the remote learning has been going george so we have three remote learning cohorts we have a teacher that's teaching a k1 group a teacher for our second and third grade group and a teacher for our fourth and fifth grade group the reports out are that students overall are feeling really successful in remote learning given that it were only a few days in we are still navigating some technology challenges i think one of the things we've made an assumption about is that folks that would be accessing our remote learning maybe folks that have a good uh comfort level with

023technology and that hasn't been the case so far so we have been doing a lot of troubleshooting when it comes to technology the feedback that i'm getting from parents though on the remote learning side is that is that recognition that building relationships across the screen can be really hard but that their students are feeling seen are feeling heard that teachers are taking the time both in whole group meetings and then small groups and individual conferences to really get to know students and establish that zoom classroom culture schedules are still being hammered out a little bit we are still working on having our remote students access spanish and specials right now it's just been the classroom community with the remote teacher and the remote eas we will figure out moving forward how we can also incorporate

024specials enrichment and spanish as well i will probably have more to share both on the in-person academics and learning as well as the remote academics and learning at our next board meeting when we're more than are we seven days eight days into the school year but we are off to a solid start in both areas navigating the challenges that i think were very expected along the way along with a couple other ones that weren't expected but that's the nature of education i think right now thank you lauren anyone else questions or comments kim i guess i just wanted to say that you know i hear you with the challenges definitely in the you know last week or so but it does kind of concern me when i hear sentences like you know it's challenging as

025educators if we're serving the best interest of our students or in person learning so i you know i just want to make sure that um and maybe it's too soon to tell and maybe it's at our next meeting but just to i should ask the question you know is offering this option in the best interest of our students in both remote learning and in person you know both questions so um i guess more to come on that unless you have anything to add right now yes i would i would say with a a resounding yes this is what we should be doing i think that the that the most difficult thing right now is reconciling the fact that it looks different there are i don't think there's a teacher in the building um i would

026ask them to share that thought freely they have not expressed that to me that oh my goodness we've made a mistake everybody is like this is what we should be doing having students here in person you know five days a week making these connections building these relationships is so incredibly important we wouldn't change that but it's this idea of of also thinking about but i can't do this and i can't do that how am i going to do it differently okay planning collaborating around that that i think we knew was going to be a challenge going into this i don't think a single person would change what we're doing this is so incredibly important to have students in our building it's um allowing ourselves the room and the space to say yes this is different

027and it's going to be okay and we have the support of the school board and the support of the community in this different type year to figure out what works and make sure that we're doing that here in the school and lauren thank you and and to kim's question i i just want to be clear and i've said this very frequently that our remote learning options are an approximation of the the curriculum that our students will experience in in person instruction um there's there is no i would contend that even in places where they have they have been working for years to provide online learning experiences for for children at the elementary level that um you know there are some kids who who thrive in that environment for the most part though the research shows

028uh pretty um clearly that it is an approximation of what we can do face to face and we said that to our families we know there are some families who have to use remote learning but they have serious health concerns um that that forced them into that option but we would all we'd be being completely um dishonest if we were to say that it's it's every bit as effective and uh and and as as um it's simply not on par with in-person instruction it's it's our attempt to do the best we possibly can um given those limitations and so i i don't want us to think that the standard is that it's going to be exactly like in-person instruction in terms of rigor um you know the depth of the connection that that is uh

029able to be established between teachers and students it's it's simply it's the barrier is that that we're doing things remotely and that that definitely uh um reduces a little bit of the effectiveness and it's something that we really need to do the best we can to to sort of um attenuate and we'll continue to do that lauren i just wanted to add one one piece to sort of what i just spoke about too you all know me well i have a lot of energy and i'm a real ra ra cheerleader and i also think that it's so important that i represent what i'm hearing among the staff too so i do not want to be any sort of debbie downer and i don't want to be and sorry to any debbies i shouldn't have said

030that i don't want to be somebody that's acting like things are really hard they're not going to get better what are we doing that's not what i'm trying to express at all i'm trying to be very honest on behalf of my staff and the concerns that i'm hearing about what we're navigating but i don't think that this is anything anything that i've shared so far is something that has surprised us we knew it was going to be hard and i think that it's important for our community as well as for you all to know what we're up against what we're navigating so that next time when we come back together i can share how we've changed things how we've adjusted things and and how we've modified what we're doing ben yeah hi lauren uh just

031a general question about like how the logistics going you know transportation social distancing the plexiglass and the rooms lunch and breakfast stuff thanks sure that's i think one of the most incredible things that we have going so far is that we i mean we plan so much to the t about so many of these things so that what we see popping up are not huge problems but things that we um can just tweak so i have said in my rays of sunshine a rival has been amazing we are so grateful to the community for the early drop-offs there hasn't been a day where we have multiple cars in the loop um after like 56 7 57 that is unheard of and i know it's taken a lot of patience and flexibility from the community to

032make that happen but just so impressed with arrival and then with the temperature checks that are happening at our entrances our teachers and our staff have stepped up and are you know manning the classrooms uh earlier than they're used to so at 7 30 making sure to welcome students in and have them settling in for breakfast and sort of calming welcoming activities first thing in the morning a half hour early then earlier than usual um lunch is uh we change the process and with a change of the process comes challenges we're still navigating those so right now we have a weekly link that's going out and this we've only done it twice right for two weeks of school um and uh the deliveries overall to the classrooms and avoiding the lunch lines has been spectacular

033uh getting in all orders in a timely fashion has been challenging we're trying to figure out how to better do that whether it's posting it on the website earlier extending the time we're looking at all options there so that's certainly a challenge around lunch breakfast seems to be going pretty well lots of folks here at dismissal that's probably one of our more challenging times of the day students are arriving on buses in a very timely fashion and are entering into the school we don't have any late buses our buses have been arriving on time in the afternoon and students have been able to board i have not been boarding the buses so i can't speak to what's happening on the buses but i know students have assigned seats which is really helpful um i'm trying

034to remember what your other categories have mentioned were there ben was there something else that you wanted me to um generally social distancing and like sort of the barriers in the classroom themselves sure uh so teachers that requested a plexi barrier for their desks um have them at their desk areas we have the crisscross sort of x plexis for tables we did have to get creative and use some zip ties to tie the table legs together because the tables some of them are two half tables that are put together and with any jiggling of the table we had some movement of those ex plexis but we've solved that problem uh the trifolds that are up on the desks um our desks are all three or more feet apart and students are doing just an incredible

035job wearing their masks we haven't had any issues with with mask wearing you know reminders here and there when students get up and forget that they need to put their space helmets back on their masks back on but the mask wearing has been great the the physical distancing i think it is different for all of us you know we're we all have to remember about physical distancing and the same applies to all of our students we do have to give a lot of reminders to students about their personal space bubbles um but we're trying to be very deliberate with that um be models for that when we're out and about in the building as adults um but there you know there are times in passing where students are with their masks on uh closer than

036we would want them to be and we give them reminders and move on from there i think that our plan has several layers of of protection and of health and so a student in passing with another student that has a mask on even per the guidelines that we've been given from dr chapman that wouldn't constitute an exposure but we are all being very vigilant um around the physical distancing that's probably the greatest challenge kids want to be near each other you know they gravitate towards each other just like all humans do um so we're still working on that but feel good about that thanks lauren appreciate it absolutely any other comments or questions for lauren jay i would just say to ben's question having visited and having had lauren like take me through almost every

037classroom i i was really surprised at how well-spaced each of the classrooms is and and how well the the students were were abiding by those those those guidelines in class i know there are challenges i saw both at the race school and at rms during recess but it just it just forces us to remind them but they're very responsive like when we've had when we had to remind them they're they're very quick to comply and and again a close contact is considered when someone's in that space for 10 minutes and we're talking about matters of seconds often on the playground or or when we're in recess so i was really really pleased and and honestly surprised by how well spaced everyone was in a regular classroom during instruction lauren um again a gratitude to the

038community our kids they they want to wear masks and i don't phrase that correctly they are they are willing to wear their masks they don't love them most of them some of them actually really do like them the majority will say that they don't really like wearing masks and yet we haven't had a problem with students just saying no i'm not doing it they're wearing their masks and we have you know some of the just the most wonderful students who even when they're they're having a mass break or they're outside um and they're told you know you can take the mask off because we're all really far apart and you know we're outside and we're doing everything that we need to do we had one student say i'm not taking my mask off because my

039dad told me i need to wear my mask all day so it's just another gratitude it's obviously been worked on in the community and it's made the transition into the school year so much easier so thank you so much for working with your students around that thank you lauren any other comments or questions for lauren thank you lauren um at this point we're going to move on to business requiring discussion so we're going to discuss the budget timeline guidelines the um retainage and then we'll be actually voting on those in the next phase of the school board meeting so budgets timeline and guidelines is that jamie or camera boss i think i would defer to kim as the chair of the budget committee but absolutely be here uh if there are further questions i do

040want to say i have posted the hanover quick model but i posted it right after you opened uh board docs so if people want to refresh that's there and that's what the budget guideline was drafted on great thank you kim take it away thanks rick um so i really don't have much more to add than i really strongly recommend we take a look at the hanover draft budget guideline proposal document it's a two page that explains the position on how ultimately the budget committee came to a stat recommendation or should i say the hanover um or recommending that the hanover board recommends uh the hanover district for the budget year of 2021 and 2022 to have budget assessments that do not exceed last year's budget um or i guess it's technically this current budget that

041was voted on in march and keep in mind that this budget that was voted on in march this year was contemplated pretty pandemic so this level of funding does represent a 1.35 percent increase over the 2021 budget when you look at a roll forward that is largely due to um some some savings which we will not have to spend this year because of a lower estimate for sixth grade tuition um but we are in but with this keeping it flat we are anticipating that in the hanover portion of the budget that hanover taxpayer should um not experience a change in the tax assessment per this kind of budget target so i can kind of go on to some of the movers and why we came to that uh but that's kind of the overall headline

042i'm not i'm happy to talk about anything in detail but for this meeting uh just wanted to see where the direction takes us are there any questions regarding our guidelines for the budget oh we got someone in the audience uh carrie callahan can uh josh can you give him permission go ahead carrie thanks rick um um uh lauren congratulations on opening the school and and for all the hard work on the part of the administration staff um awesome um with respect to the budget the hamper finance committee met on september 14th kim was in attendance um and um we did have a chance to very quickly um review the quick model and the guidelines and um uh i think you know we also discussed the retainage which i guess this may be a separate item

043you're about to talk about but i'll just tell you now that you know recognizing the need for um fully safeguarding health and safety of our students their families staff community the finance committee supports the proposed retainage of year-end surplus also recognizing that that would not impair the achievement of the tax rate inconsistent with the warren article which is that you know that helps um so that was not a formal vote but that was the um sense of the committee with respect to the budget guidelines the k-5 operating budget increase of 4.5 percent you know it was noticed that the um big driver there is benefits that's over half of the dollar increase and i guess a big chunk of that is the new state of new hampshire on the pension so um questions as to

044um how much if there's a you know specific dollar amount related to the pension because it's mixed up with the health care in the um in the quick model so how much that is um and then also um with respect to the guidelines what are the assumptions on enrollment and staffing uh go ahead jamie so as of now the quick model was pushed ahead somewhat because of the press for time because the administration's been uh all about getting the schools open and my departments are most all operations so i didn't amy and myself hr department have not we've not even finished hiring for this year for all the turnovers and we didn't have time to update the census the employee census so the one that you see built is built based on numbers that were

045used in the present year we're in which is the 2021 budget uh there has been turnover absolutely and there were savings so um as far as the census that does have the extra teacher that was added and rolled forward in it in the quick model lauren myself the administration superintendent assistant superintendent have not had time to actually sit down and meet about projected enrollments forward and to see how that breaks down into class sizes so i know that when we had early discussions about the quick model the feeling is that some of the numbers are probably a bit high um so there's pro they'll probably come in lower once we have those the ability to update all of that information as we now move forward and start building the actual budget itself as far as

046new hampshire retirement system costs i can i can give you that number i don't have it off the top of my head and i know it's here somewhere in one of my banks the new hampshire retirement system for hanover school district is primary they don't have a choice like dresden dresden has a choice of vermont or new hampshire and predominantly in dresden they choose vermont so it's not as costly new hampshire school districts have to participate in new hampshire retirement system um so i get you that number i'll get you that number well amy or jamie is that the 18.09 percent it's definitely increased that's the percentage of increase yeah on the teachers and then the 25 of increase that's not those are not the rates themselves but those are the increased percentages of the

047rates for that from last year this year um the the 25 covers that support staff folks and or administrators non-union uh certain folks who are not actually in the classroom yeah so i'd like to touch upon that so the new hampshire retirement system has decided that this year of all years to do a correction um for their pension rate just to kind of get everyone up to speed on what that is it's actually it affects um town and school so actually um while we might think 18 increases or 25 increases it sounds very high for rates it's actually even higher for the town for police and others so um this is going to be a major driver in both the schools and the town's budgets this year um and that's not anything we can control

048um we have to participate and accept it so um you know it's a challenge but uh you know we took that as as a given because that's what we have to do and also try to make other reasonable adjustments to make sure we have you know kind of a safe school for next year as well anyone have any comments or questions regarding the guidelines uh do you need to point out anything in the timeline jim i don't think i have anything to add on the timeline except for maybe it's added at the bottom of our draft board guidelines is maybe just a little bit of patience and flexibility as we uh kind of embark on hopefully a lighter touch quote-unquote budget process but we'll still be you know reviewing details and whatnot but i think

049kind of when meetings happen and when they occur might um be more in flux than they usually are this year so um just from a timeline perspective we still hope to kind of march on as as normal and make sure we get community feedback that's clearly important um but just just some of the dates might you might see pop around more than normal great thank you kim uh no more questions or comments we'll move on to the hanover dresden tuition discussion go ahead kim nope so who was leading this discussion is this jamie or so this was a i think we this was thought uh maybe about a month or two ago is that right jay that we needed to get a placeholder to start discussing the rates that hanover pays to dresden for our

050sixth grade teachers or our sixth grade students um and last year when we were in discussions with the lyme school board and it was pointed out that our rates uh may be uh significantly different than what we are uh charging uh tuition students is that correct go ahead kim thank you i'm not sure what this exact agenda item was about but that is a topic um and if i could maybe if um if i can suggest a way forward i know the hanover finance committee in prior meetings has discussed this as um basically being helpful a helpful resource if we'd like to kind of have them help us through thinking about this topic um so i'm happy to and i know there's a lot to do everywhere but um not speaking on their behalf but

051just i'm happy to offer um to take this up kind of using them as a resource as their um constitution allows us to do yeah so i now that we're talking about this i think i added this either our may or june board that we needed to make sure we put it somewhere so we could at least start the process um but maybe we will move this to october or november board once i get with you kim about uh getting with the hannover finance committee and jay go ahead i just feel rick that we need we need some study on this it's it's not the kind of thing i think we can handle in just like a meeting here and there i think it's going to really require some research there are implications for um

052how our relationship with norwich for example and um and we have changes in intuition like when we look at what's happening now even with regard to uh our high school population um we need to we need to have probably um i'm guessing that maybe a special committee and jamie i'd defer to you too i think this is the kind of thing that's going to require a little more careful study than simply a meeting here or there yeah i mean it's a very complex issue and it's not it ripples across all three districts right because what we're gonna see is what we saw two years ago where um you know we're coming off a mountain of a large dollar amount that was paid from hannover to dresden and so on the dresden side they have all

053they had all of this revenue coming in right so next year yes the hanover side is projected very early projection based on the kid counts about i don't know a week ago when i did that um which are you know can move a little bit here and there but you know while while hanover's going to have a reduction of about 700 000 in expenditure that means dresden's going to lose revenues of 700 000 which then trickles back through to hanover on the backside and to norwich so it's a really it is a very complex issue that you know has been discussed many many times before me um and you know i know carrie callahan and kari asmus and you know they've had multiple discussions about how to try to smooth the effect of changes in

054enrollment populations um you know interestingly enough there i mean there's a um part of the tuition that's charged is based on the debt right that of the building when it was built richmond middle school to accept the sixth graders because it was built supposedly larger to accept that class um so there's a debt component that gets tacked on to the tuition rate for the sixth graders going into dresden so there's a lot of moving pieces to this and interestingly enough that debt is going to go away in two years right we're going to pay it off in a few years but i think it's a very important subject and i think there are people who are much more well versed in it than i who have been you know involved in those discussions on numerous

055occasions um but it will also require discussions with the dresden board as well yeah and uh carrie has something to add go ahead gary yeah i was just um let me just echo kim and saying that the um hanover finance committee to the extent we have capacity we may have more jamie you're really busy um but we might be able to um you know um do some work just you know calculating some numbers etc we're happy to do it i think the motivation is smoothing um you know the wild swings like we saw in the 700 000 this year in the um guidelines um and also maybe a question of equity as well so so kind of for both those purposes but you're right you know it's got implications for other districts and so it

056ends up being um a bit of a drawn-out affair but it's an important one yes so who is going to take i guess the first step what should we be i guess organizing or who's going to take the lead on this well it's to the extent that there's capacity and that's a question mark um you know i could foresee some sort of a working group where you know we can at least you know amass the data figure out a sort of procedural you know process for going about it um so that would probably be the the first step and then you know after an analytical group works works it through we could talk about next steps okay so hey uh i'll sit on that that working group kim are you volunteering sure um is anyone

057else interested in uh sitting on this working group i don't think it's going to be a lot of meetings but uh we need i just don't want the the momentum to kind of uh get lost again and we're talking about this a year from now so go ahead kim i think a good first step is just if um the hanover finance committee could receive the copy or whatever backup information about what the sixth grade tuition arrangement is just um so we can have um or so they can have um some kind of documents to to work around or think through too before we have some sort of first meeting okay jamie can you get those to carry sorry i assume they already had them because carrie callahan and cariasmus were both on multiple boards where

058the discussions and surrounding the tuition rates were done so yeah i'll research so maybe it's just kim hartman okay i i can't reason yeah and full disclosure i'm a purger when it comes to that kind of stuff okay all righty okay so i guess first steps well jamie will get the information to the hanover finance committee and then maybe carrier uh uh someone could uh let us know once they think it may be a good time to have a quick meeting and i'll it'll be me and kim and probably jay and jamie okay great okay so uh moving on to retainage discussion for governor's order number 38. kim i don't know why it keeps putting myself on you um so i'd like to chat about um kind of what what are we here to do

059um again i've talked about retainage i think in every meeting for the last few months but basically this is now the time to make the decision so um what the hanover board is being asked to do is to look at our surplus that we received last year the unassigned fund balance which our surplus of that is about 307 thousand dollars which you can see in the attachments there and it's to decide how much of this should we retain and um that we could um use for emergency purposes next year um to help offset our covet related expenditures and others um and so that's basically that's what we're being asked to do the hanover budget committee has been looking at this very carefully over the last seven eight meetings and we tried to delay this decision

060as long as possible but the tax rates will be set in october so here we are in the september meeting to to decide how much it is to retain and um i first want to remind um you know really why do we have this surplus it's not because we budgeted a crazy large number last year it's really because we have the surplus because schools across new hampshire were state mandated to close in-person learning and switch to remote this on net was a savings for us and made it possible for us to consider reopening schools in the fall when we were facing an already voted on budget and that budget was prepared free pandemic so we have really been watching this carefully and in late august the hanover budget committee recommended to retain all of the

061and 307 941 dollars um that we have available uh we tried like i said to wait as long as possible for to have the most updated information and uh this retainage should cover the upper end of our projected cova 19 net expenses that would have been over and above the approved budget so absent these funds we could potentially would be likely in a deficit scenario so the current estimate as we've last seen for the for the covid net expenditures is somewhat less than 300 000 like i said that was the upper end but there are many factors that will play out through this year and potentially the next and we feel as though we need as our town manager julia griffin often says as many errors in the quiver to make sure we cover our

062risks so unfortunately we haven't heard a lot of favorable news as federal and state funding has been rather modest to help us with kova 19 related expenses thus far in fact we've actually seen emergency funds that we thought were available to schools through fema to help pay for ppe and others actually get shut down as recently as last week so it really feels i know local control is often mentioned in new hampshire and we really are kind of a bit on our own own on this so far so based on advice from medical leaders we as a board have heard that it is reasonably safe to provide in-person education and an option in this current environment and we understand that it is more expensive to operate than our usual education program but it is in

063the best interest of our students to provide this option we understand that there are businesses and organizations and our neighbors who are struggling now and it is probable that we are still only in the beginning of this economic downturn and please trust to those those watching that we are working diligently to keep a close eye on expenditures this year as every year and the next um and also the next so as we begin to prepare next year's budget that we just discussed so in fact you may not know this but the board does see every single expenditure that the school makes they are sent in very large pdf files and we have two board members review question and approve them every week so we deeply understand that the times are challenging however i think we've

064also learned due to the pandemic how much public education is the backbone of our economy just to give you a sense of how much of a relief it would be to taxpayers should we give all of the retainage that we um have saved by closing schools uh back to the taxpayers it would be an annual savings of roughly 70 for a home assessed of at five hundred thousand dollars um if we do not retain this full amount um then just speaking as chair of the budget committee i will have to ask the question whether it's financially viable for us to continue to open our schools for in-person education and if we were to close and to switch to remote so we can get our financial situation in order then this would likely have a large

065ripple effect across our economy and something that i would argue would cost more than 70 dollars per 500 000 home and i want to reiterate that the situation is not that draconian now we are simply recommending to keep the funds that we have the right to do per the governor's order number 38 which were saved last year when the schools were closed and which can be spent only in case of emergency including the health and safety precautions for cova and if perhaps you're the taxpayer you know watching on zoom now um there is some welcome news i mean so assuming that hanover and dresden which we have not had the meeting out that will be on tuesday but assuming hanover and dresden approve retainage levels um the that the budget committee recommends we do not

066anticipate any unfavorable change in the tax assessment for our school tax bills in december that was promised in march at the time of the vote in fact we're actually anticipating a lower tax rate by about three cents as we're targeting to keep the total assessments the same as the march vote and we have a welcome surprise a projected improvement in our net assessment valuations for the properties in hanover uh just to give you a sense this is actually about less in taxes per 500 000 home than what was voted back in march so all in i i personally think this is as much of a win-win as we can get in 2020 by keeping these funds we can keep our schools open and still have lower property tax bills in december hopefully um so in

067case that wasn't clear the budget committee supports the retainage of the 307 000 or all that we have to retain [Music] thank you kim you explained it very clearly um jamie yeah and i just want to point out one thing that that as good as i am at projecting uh that is an unaudited number okay so i've got to call out to our auditors to find out where they are with the auditing of the books they've been working on them uh throughout so that we can get a number before i have to file that with the dra but um that was a that's an unaudited number um the 307. so the question is we're going to be um having a motion on this in the next phase of the school board meeting so what number

068should we be putting out there the 300 7941 or should we be saying a cap or how do you want to do the motion if it were so my suggestion uh would be and unless kim doesn't agree i would set it at 300 000 and then whatever is over that maybe let it flow back based on the expenditures that we've made at this point and what i think we need to sustain to move forward jim do you agree so i heard three hundred thousand i mean not sure well i just i i just don't want to have a motion now we're kind of locked in on an exact figure and we're either leaving you know leaving money out there or so i don't i didn't know if we wanted to say not to exceed or

069can we do that can we say like uh vote to retain an amount of 325 000 not to exceed or something like that um they the dra doesn't really like the not to exceed votes and the the risk that we run while i don't think i don't think the retainage will be beneath 307 it in fact probably i mean the um you know the the unassigned fund balance i think may go higher than 307 um but i just think that you know picking a round number is probably even if you did 305 right and then whatever is over that will flow back automatically because that's how it works kim could we say that meets our march assessment number because that's kind of more of the spirit that the cap was made just wondering is that

070okay language um um i let me just reread what caitlyn sent okay one second kelly yes sir sorry can you kim help me a little bit with the years i'm so sorry i try as i might every single time then the because we're in between the years i get all confused so this is the 1920 retainage that we would be then retaining to use for emergency purposes in this current school year yes and if we don't spend that on emergency funds then it would go back to taxpayers is that correct correct in the next year out in the next year out okay so this is not money we're voting to sit on indefinitely this is just for this year for emergency purposes if necessary correct with probably a big asterisk that we might have governors

071order 1 hundred and whatever that ability to retain it for another year but yes i mean as what we know today that is correct but at some point if it's not spent for emergency purposes related to this it would go back to taxpayers okay so i'll let oh go ahead kim just just while we're on this i i do want to add um this is more of a forward-thinking thought um for we would should maybe think about adding a warrant article next year because while we are given a dispensation this year typically we do we don't have a standing warrant article that says we can kind of retain funds like we do in dresden it is something we could ask voters to do from what i understand um but we don't have this um kind

072of already voted in the this transaction where we can retain and then kind of keep next year um it may be something we want to think about other school districts have it and they kind of could retain it on the dime um but it's just more something for us to think about because um we we had to make sure that we checked with the state um dua to make sure that we could do this because we hadn't already had that kind of standing boilerplate warrant saying that we could procedurally do this as a board um they've given us because of this governor's 38 order so we can do it legally now but um it's just something for us to think about going forward so the words you're thinking of would be a standing every year

073or do we have to put it on the a warrant every year going forward just one time saying okay okay just like i think we did dresden at some point yeah okay uh carrie go ahead kerry sorry about that um two points um on the latter point by the reserve funds obviously you've got them for special ed building sixth grade tuition so you already you do have those tools um with respect to your motion and i'm not i'm no expert in motions but just recognize that you do have war in article number five a hundred thousand sixth grade reserve that has to be funded presumably first and yeah and two hundred thousand on the um budgeted fund balance revenue offset so so anyway and just they need to be in the calculus obviously yes and

074they are so that 300 is actually over and beyond those two okay so um we are going to move on and then when we uh take this motion up for consideration hopefully someone has some language that we can use and at this point friends of hanover norwich schools jay is this something you're going to discuss yeah i think jamie and i can can touch on this um we had a conversation with jennifer rickard from the friends of hanover norwich schools and just wanted to reiterate sort of the process we have policy kcd which stipulates some gifts to the schools and um the friends have uh excuse me they have um generously offered to sort of depart from their normal process uh to provide us with a 25 000 grant and the purpose of the grant

075would be to help each of our schools fund professional development on diversity equity and inclusion for the coming school year and also to provide some additional funding for ppe that's sort of beyond uh the stuff that we've already um requested and that jamie's already procured and so they wanted to make clear that um that they're standing by to help us in any way they can in addition to the 25 000 that they're providing right now they've told us that they have another 13 000 that will be available through their normal grant making process so i just wanted to bring it to the board and let them know that the friends of hanover norwood schools have been um extremely helpful partners uh standing by to do whatever they can for us and i also want to

076like make sure that we acknowledge in in multiple ways that uh if anyone out there is interested in helping the schools uh beyond what they already do with their their uh their um taxes that they they furnish for us uh that the friends of hanover norwood schools is the entity that that is is uh best positioned to help us with with those other um non-budgeted needs that we have so that's that's what i want to share with the board and just to make you aware that this this gift of 25 000 that they're they're contemplating is going to help us in the short run great thank you jay thank you friends of hannah over school so um carrie your hand is still raised do you have something to add uh no sorry i meant to

077lower it sorry about that oh okay thank you uh so now we're gonna move on to uh business requiring actions um and did we come up with a number that we're fine with for the motion for the uh retainage i see jamie shaking her head so what what do you suggest jamie 305 you're on mute so i i'm rewording it now um i will reword it to say up or i will reword it to say up to 305 thousand that way you're covered even though the dra doesn't really love that language it will cover it because they still have to use an audited number okay so um i'm going to suggest that we pull that motion the retainage decision per governor ordered number 38 out and we'll vote on that separately but if someone would

078like to make a consent motion for items b c d f and g we can vote on those items now kim move to approve items b c b f and g john okay going around the horn john yes yes kelly mcconnell yes and johnson is yes okay so now returning back to the retainish decision uh would someone like to make a motion regarding item e can you refresh if you refresh i've reworded it okay got it okay so would someone like to make a motion on item e move to approve retaining 2019 2020 unassigned fund balance and amount not to exceed three hundred and five thousand did we want to say 96 or up to um not to exceed 305 000 per the governor's order to cover unanticipated emergency expenditures in the 2020-2021 school year

079associated with opening the ray elementary school during the covet 19 pandemic ben ii and john hunt yes dan rock more yes marcelo iglesias kim part minion ben ini yes kelly the tunnel yes johnson yes great thank you everyone okay um moving on to communications and reports so uh i go first and i have nothing to report at this point uh our next meeting i'll let you know at the end it's gonna be october 14th on a wednesday and that's all i have so i'm going to turn it over to tony to give us an update on the race school facility yeah good evening everyone i'm tony daigle for i see some new faces so i'm the director facility for the sau 70 i helped manage all four schools um so you have on your board

080docs um or uploaded pieces of information and i guess we'll go the first one we'll go through would would be the school fire and life safety there's really no surprises there our local assistant fire chief mike hinsley visits the school the race school often and he visited it back in august and then completed this report at the end of august of course there was nobody in the building no occupants or anything so it was it was pretty clean so we got a fake you know it's very favorable report and a lot of our systems at the ray school with life safety are are new uh newer we had new new uh fire panel and horns and strobes installed back in 2015 um the sprinkler systems are checked annually all these life safety systems are checked

081some biannually some annually so that that if there's any questions on that report um just let me know it looks pretty it looks like we've passed on on every item on this list when it comes to uh you know occupancy load means of egress the protection part of it which are the sprinklers and the fire alarm uh yeah panels new and you know everything everything works on this light and this this report so if you don't have any questions we'll move on to the the other two items um anything on life safety nope you can move on all right so then the next one is um our annual uh doe survey for indoor air quality and that one we've gone through a few times i will point out you know it's a looks like the

082state has actually paired this report down a little bit from previous reports there are some things we still need to work on a little bit on this report uh i highlighted a few on my notes here i'm still a little unclear if if we have any policy on uh staff bringing in chemicals or furniture into our schools um so that one we got to work on a little bit uh let's see what else we got here uh in the complaint section number two we did have a complaint last year on uh room 210 but we we had that room thoroughly uh we had hygienist in to check the air quality i my team opened up the walls to look for mold and we found nothing so that that was a good thing um and a

083couple other items on this list where i where i highlighted that uh we don't have an integrated pest management written plan but we do have an action plan where we we have a contractor who has been servicing the school for over 10 years they come monthly they have certain bait boxes and and we have a we have a work order system for them that if we see any pests or anything we note that or we call them and they uh look at those areas but i probably will we'll look at making a written plan on what they actually do monthly so at least we have something in case lauren needs to see it or you all uh let's see some other areas on this thing okay so when it comes comes down to the fresh

084air which will also be we'll be talking about the ventilation shortly here um we uh previously would change the filters uh every six months but with our new we're going forward here we're going to be doing at at least a minimum of every three months quarterly which is one of the uh questions on here and we might even might even even up that a little bit more if we see that we need to but but uh but it so i put no on that answer because it says quarterly we used to do biannually but we are moving forward with a quarterly um filter change on our hvac uh let's see what else is on here that i've noted that was um okay we've also uh we've done some training with the maintenance with some of

085the teachers not all of them but there's a there's a line item here number 19 about blocking the ventilation um we have worked with some of the folks who went notorious of uh blocking off the ventilation and explained to them the importance of keeping their bookshelves or or whatever they push carts or whatever they have in their classroom you know at least minimum three feet away from the ventilation so you can move the air around uh let's see okay next one is about um checking the diffusers and the registers i've worked with my maintenance team and my custodial team to that this has really become a priority that they need to you know at least visually inspect these things and and and vacuum them if they need to and if we have to go any

086further with the maintenance team like take them apart but everything has been cleaned recently and um it's in pretty good shape now so but we've been did some training on that uh the next 20 number 22 about the ductwork we have not cleaned our ductwork every five years like this survey ass but we have started jamie and i have started uh to embark with a company that's going to come in and inspect the work and give us a report on that and we will we will pass that along to you when we have that it's just been challenging to try to get them in with the start of school um we we didn't do this back in august we um we just got we just contracted them recently and we're now trying to figure out

087what's a good schedule to get them in it's probably gonna have to be a weekend or something um they weren't trying not to you know bring too many people in the building because of covid but we'll we'll get them in and we'll get those get the duct work expect inspected and we'll go from there uh let's see what else we got here um again uh i i put a no on mold prevention um i don't really have a remediation plan but again we have it we have an action plan me and my team my maintenance team and my custodial team anytime we we're always looking for leaks and we get reports from teachers and foreign and our action plan is to try to solve that any kind of plumbing leak roof leak anything that would

088create mold um as soon as possible you know we either we do a lot of different things we you know fix the plumbing we get up on the roof and we shovel the snow off we get the roofers in the patch leaks as i've mentioned before you've all heard me talk about the roof at race school it's a really challenging system we have there um but we do uh and and we do dry the places out so with some of the testing that we've done we've found that you know there isn't we're in good shape we don't have a lot of we don't know no no no action mold uh conditions at the ray school um let's see what else is on here well there's one here i put no on number 29 about humidity

089levels now we don't have any dehumidification or humidification mechanical devices at the school so we're kind of um you know at the mercy of the outdoor air if we're bringing in a lot of outdoor air and the humidity is high then we we're going to get above 60 percent um and in the winter time we might get below 30 percent uh so those are those are some of the mechanical challenges we'll have to try to think about in the future but apparently i can't say that we always maintain um between those two levels because i think when we did we had the hygienist there we were down you know around 25 humidity in that in the building that day let's see here the rest are all i'd also mention that um you know while some

090of the things there we have to say no on um because of some of the guidelines and guidance that were shared with us this year which we're going to talk about in the next report we have purchased um portable filtration units for every single location throughout the entire school that does have the hepa 13 filtration levels in it and so if we if we did have any type of you know dust or pollen or mold spores you know because mold spores are regularly occurring in your air every day right it's a matter of what kind and what the levels are so with these um new portable filtration units that are their metaphy air and they're medically rated that we've deployed throughout the entire school with some of the answers that we've had to say no

091on uh we're feeling pretty pretty good about the fact that we've had this uptick in filtration for all the different um locations within the building and they turn the air over pretty rapidly um so and that's in our next report but even though we have a few no's there we've tried to mitigate some of the other potential issues or risk by doing the portable filtration units which were actually suggested in the very last cdc guideline that was put out so tony um two questions one uh number [Music] 23 it says does your school flush the building with fresh air after the school day is completed you got yes i assume you'll talk about that when you're going to talk about how we're dealing with covid but the other question is how come we whatever happened

092to the army corps of engineer issue two three years ago i know they were monitoring and uh is that kind of been resolved so that's our that is over at the richmond school rick oh i'm sorry that's people across the street um and that's and that's that their remediation plan just to let you all know it's going very well um i could report on that at some another time but um but that's going very well uh and richmond has not been affected by that at all okay yeah i remember we initially thought maybe the race school but then when they did the testing they found out it was not an issue so okay and just on your first part there about flushing the air yeah you know we have a pretty good ventilation system at

093the ray school we'll get into a little bit more but um i always say yes to that question because we do operate the system for approximately 10 hours a day and that is a adequate and well we we operate it more now but we were on a typical year we were running at 10 about 10 hours a day and that will flush the air in that building a number of times which i'll get into a little more okay thank you yep all right so i guess if nobody else has any see anything on that report that they have any questions for we can we'll move on but i'll give you a minute a second all right on the next one why don't you go over the summary the summary of the report and then if

094anybody has anything in depth we can then dive further in yeah so on on the uh on the hvac uh that we've done we we had a company come in to help us evaluate our equipment uh e and e and so we've got their report and talks a little bit about the race school and under there uh comments which is the you know the the ene document um they found that the ray school is in pretty good shape that the ventilation systems are adequate enough to uh change the air over and move it medically through the classrooms and and all that they do recommend you know to try to go to a higher rating merv filter uh we've been running merv eights which is a kind of a standard level filter in our in our

095systems and and for me being a facilities guy i'll just say that merv 8 is kind of a typical thing we were always trying to protect the equipment not really thinking about too much about viruses when it comes to mechanical equipment at schools or commercial buildings of any kind you're trying to protect uh the heating or cooling coil that's in the unit so it will work and operate you know accordingly whether it's trying to do its job but along with that you also have to bring in some fresh air and and that the filter and recycle the air in the room so the filter does help by protecting the equipment so you will get some air movement in proper air movement and and research or fresh air because if you clog up your coils in

096a unit um you're not going to get any airflow and that's going to be detrimental to what you're trying to achieve so what they found um that the mechanical equipment is is adequate to ventilate the building and i will uh have to agree with them on that because i've been operating the building for four years and we uh we do get some good ventilation then so our little summary we we put in here that uh which is the sau summary um it talks a little about so we have three is it three two or three basic systems at that school we have some rooftop ventilators and we have some classroom ventilators and various ages different renovations have happened there and like i said most of our equipment has been running a merv 8 we've ordered

097and so everything was serviced and cleaned the new filters back in august we've since taken their recommendation and we've ordered a higher mirror filter and i expect to take delivery of those within a few weeks there was pretty big backlog with some of these filter companies in new hampshire everybody's doing the same thing but we did get in the queue and we have some coming and i i do plan to put the try to install we'll install those in october and to see at that point we'll we'll measure the um the pressure resistance across the coils and stuff to see because that's why some units are you know they recommend a certain filter the manufacturer and because of that the way it's designed if we start we start to choke the unit down with a

098higher rated filter it might put a little more work on the motor on the blower motor and then you know could lose motors and then you have no no airflow but this the company we hired thinks that some of the equipment can take a higher merv rating so we've ordered those filters and we're going to install those shortly here but i can only report that there's only one at the ray school we have you know about 47 mechanical pieces of equipment um 33 of them take filters we every time we change filters over there it's 114 filters i only have one piece of equipment that's not working to date and it's an exhaust fan in the gym bathrooms it needs a new motor that doesn't take a filter it's just an exhaust fan but it

099does exhaust the bathrooms and we need to get that fixed so i can report that you know out of the and this 47 pieces doesn't include heat valves and all that stuff but they're all working but anyway the 47 pieces are all 46 of them are working out of 47. thank you tony anyone have any questions for tony great um so now uh we've got a jared from norwich so i'm going to allow you to talk jared go ahead thanks thanks tony for the update and i tried to get a hold of you today but i couldn't connect so i'm sorry no that's okay uh um and happy to connect more i guess my concern is just uh as the temperatures drop knowing you know having the teachers know hey this room has not been

100updated with filters uh you know don't close the windows or i'm just unclear of i don't know i don't know if the board knows i don't know who knows what about what's been replaced and what hasn't and um so is is that clear in your mind of making sure that uh instructors or staff are understanding what they can and cannot do to keep the the ventilation safe until all the filters are updated and stuff like that i can answer jamie okay um well the well that building jared we have found that the ventilation system does work um and even in the wintertime when i when i run the the outdoor air at a minimum let's say 20 percent i can still keep the building comfortable uh temperature wise and also allow to bring in some

101fresh air that will approximately change the air in those rooms you know every two hours with some fresh air we do have again ray school is one of our uh schools that all the systems are intact i don't know if i can say that for every other school but we'll talk about those at the next meetings or or you and i can talk about those at any time yeah i i just would i would i would hate to see a situation where there's some miscommunication of uh of a room is not ready to have you know all windows closed or something like that um and i'm thinking more broadly across all the schools i know that we're supposed to be restricting it so i just don't want a like a silly mistake like that done

102so that's correct so we're complying with all cdc regulations and we also have been uh using and reviewing the ashrae guidelines okay so jared because if you're not able to put merv 13s in everything which almost every school in new england isn't able to do that in fact the bulk of the schools probably don't have ventilation as good as ours but because of that because schools are so aging and old in new hampshire and new england that's why the cdc came out with the updated guideline in their august review to say to move to portable hepa filtration units which we have done for every single room in every single building the only building that doesn't have these units deployed fully yet is the high school because the other 80 units were due in on the

10310th and right now they are in route i'm expecting them to flow into the building i'm hoping by friday if not monday but that's the next step that you go to if you want to provide another level of mitigation um even though all of the studies that have been done show that this is not an airborne virus so so i have just enough information to be dangerous um but i i i can test that fact i believe there are many epidemiologists that have co-signed a paper that indeed says that this is an airborne virus um and i think there's also there is there's not a whole lot of evidence that the portable hepa filters uh are effective uh one way or another i don't i don't know that there's a lot of scientific evidence again

104i only have enough information to be dangerous here which is kind of why i'm looking to others to sort of step in and say don't worry about this or worry about it um uh so in my in my searches i could not find actual you know uh evidence that the hepa filters um were effective and and some people were suggesting that they may actually make things worse just because they are increasing uh protect potentially infected airflow through a room that wouldn't have that normal airflow so i just don't want us to be depending on something that we don't have a lot of science behind um and i just don't want us to get us into a situation where we're in in suddenly in this cold weather you know uh temperatures where we we can't can't

105provide enough air flow um so yeah jared our goal is to provide enough air flow and in areas that we we don't have that we are going to aggressively look at how do we solve those problems and it's very few but we we might have a few now thank you jared thank you tony um so at this point we're going to move on to um the out of district placement report from rhett yes thank you um brett derek i am the director for student services for the school district so i did provide some documents that were uploaded to docusped the document titled odd update hanover school board includes the information i had uh at the time of putting this document together i did receive some good news um that one of our programs that we

106have a student at is reducing their tuition for the 2021 school year by about forty thousand dollars um so you will see that uh if you look in the fourth line down in the table tuition private other nine through twelve um that projected negative balance of sixty two thousand will drop by about 3 000. i also included just some revenue projections based on the special ed aid reimbursement from the state of new hampshire and because it's a very cumbersome reimbursement process i included a document that i use which is called the special ed tray special head aid tracking form sample which goes into a little bit more detail about how the reimbursement works so i'm happy to field questions or discuss further any specific points do we do we anticipate red any of the other

107district placements to be reducing their tuition costs or was this a kind of a laugh yeah not that i'm aware of the the program is a program down in massachusetts and their rates are set by the state um and we we received a letter from the program letting us know that there's a reduction in their tuition for this year okay thank you anyone have any questions comments for rhett okay uh moving on to jay's report sorry yeah so right if i think i'm reading this right so it looks like we are expecting so is it 95 000 increase in the out of district placement budget but then that would be reduced by the 45 and or i just want to make sure yes i heard that right so it's like roughly half that is the

108overage sorry i was muted um yeah so if you look at that uh the red number in the total column 95 000 that would be down to about 55 with uh including that reduction in tuition okay great and we do just kind of to carry callahan's point um earlier we do have special ed um reserve fund if if we need to tap into it great okay jay thanks rick uh it's interesting the uh start of school like the lead up to the start of school was such a such a tortuous journey for all of us that the reality of it was a real joy seeing the students and the teachers eyes light up at the prospect of kids returning to classrooms and resuming traditional routines even though we had masks on even though we're implementing

109different measures to protect kids by distancing and so on uh i was just actually overjoyed i mean i i hate to say it but i was i had sort of um expected things to be a lot more difficult than they ended up being and and i really credit our our principals our teachers those building level teams that pulled it all together jamie and tony and the folks who did all that work to make sure that that everything was in place like right down to the wire jamie was recruiting uh strangers to go out and uh rent u-haul trucks to pull plexiglas in from manchester and concord up until the day before school started it was it was a team effort and it was really impressive and uh just in the past week i had a

110chance to substitute teach at rms and talk to kids uh and and uh in the first week you got the chance with lauren to visit classrooms throughout the race school and the kids are so glad to be back and they missed their teachers and when i talked to them they talked about how remote learning you know they understood that it had to happen but they told me multiple reasons why it was so um so inferior to their experience they have when they're together and they're able to actually see their teachers and that to me really justified all the work we did to make sure we had an in-person start you know of course with the provision that we would have the remote opportunity for those folks that really needed it um and and that is

111another thing to acknowledge i mean we've got staff who had reasons to to not be able to be on site and they've risen to the occasion and and the the efforts that they're going to to provide remote learning opportunities to our students are commendable too i mean everybody is is bending and flexing in ways that none of us ever imagined and it's it's incredibly stressful on everyone and i just want to acknowledge that uh i think the entire community is grateful our parents have expressed nothing but gratitude for students coming back to school um our teachers many of whom were very um very concerned about coming back have have uh told me personally that um that they're glad and that they're really enjoying the fact that students are back there still is a lot of

112concern and we're we're very mindful of that we are in touch with our medical community on a on a daily basis um i i know robin steiner has taken over as our coveted 19 coordinator and has met already at least twice i think robin with that group which is sort of a pared-down version of our overall task force that we had in the lead up to the start of school and anytime there's been any um any whiff of a coveted 19 case we've been being notified by our our authorities locally and then we've consulted immediately with dr chapman and anyone else that we need to to make decisions based on that information so um i have a lot of confidence that the process that's in place for us to identify uh potential outbreaks and so

113forth is great i've seen firsthand what our teachers are doing to ensure that they're they're taking out proper precautions and i'm just really pleased to report that we've had a much smoother and much better start to school than i even imagined and again i credit to um to lauren and to her peers her fellow principals who have done a magnificent job keeping everybody calm and and bringing our students back in a way that's been beneficial for everyone that's my report thanks jay anyone have any questions or comments for jay and it's jamie's turn now jamie you're muted i am muted it's probably a good thing right um on occasion so we have had amazing challenges in transportation with bringing students back to the schools um even though we sent out multitudes of surveys a lot

114of folks still you know didn't understand that they needed to sign up ahead for transportation services so literally every single day we deal with you know 6 8 10 12 changes to different routes right now we're running the school buses as we originally stated the plan would be with one student to a seat unless they're related and then we put two to a seat every seat is assigned the bus monitors in the morning do temperature checks and the and they check off whether the student is riding on the school bus we're tracking attendance on school buses both am and pm in order in case of the need to do contact tracing if something should happen it's been a huge challenge we went from open ridership with no lists on any of the buses and not

115knowing who was riding to reservation on buses with assigned seating that being said it's also a challenge because you know people are wanting to reserve space for what if or the one tuesday every six weeks that my child might need a ride home um which is really a lot to navigate uh and i want to just thank you know karen wright has been amazing shannon howe has been amazing through the process i couldn't do this without them you know sta and their lead driver charlie we've we've redirected routes we've moved buses we've uh you know moved poor kiddos back and forth one of the hardest challenges is not yours it's norwich transfers from mcs to hhs and back so right now we had to consolidate one of our routes we consolidated three and eight because

116we have we are down four drivers um across both towns so right now with the eight routes we have running in hanover plus one that comes up from heartland and is you know kind of doing us a favor because we don't have enough drivers to do a backhaul um route h1 has two seats available left am pm h2 is full both am and pm h3 is conceivably full because we had to bring a backup bus up from heartland to do the pm run directly from the high school out up to the northern side of our towns h4 has three seats in the morning it's full in the afternoon h5 has one seat open in the morning and it's full in the afternoon with a waiting list h2 has a waiting list h6 has four h6

117has openings um i don't know why but they do they're like the only bus that's not near to capacity um h7 has a lot of opening in the morning we have we're using it as backup for some of our larger clustered areas just in case people decide they need to ride in the pm it has three openings but we're about ready to redirect that bus out to a different route we're probably going to be changing uh h9s route effective about a week out we'll be splitting that up because i have more reservations wanted and requests h9 has a couple openings in the morning but it's full in the afternoon so because of these ongoing daily challenges that i've yeah i've spent we have spent multitudes of hours dealing with on a daily basis um and

118i've got other things i got to start getting done we held a meeting with our um with dr chapman um and mike hinsley our public health officer in hanover um and and had this discussion about how we're cohorting students in the schools um and so as we're running out of room because we are and while everybody you know said that we could do second runs it's not conducive to programming to do second runs because parents don't want their kids picked up before seven in the morning and the schools don't want the children coming in after eight in the morning because it affects programming so we discussed being able to put students two to a seat even if they're not related but if they're in the same cohort within the school so like if they're in

119the same first grade class and they're cohorting anyway to be able to allow them to share a seat on a bus because they're in the same or similar cohorts also with some of the transfers or back calls if the ride is quick like 10 minutes or less in between schools um we've been able to put two to a seat because really the um you know the guidance on that is that for it to be considered a contact trace up to have occurred it has to be between 10 and 15 minutes um so we're using that as a guidance as well so basically you know in the presence of a community that we're in with very low coveted rates we're going to evolve from our originally stated plan and we're going to look at also vermont

120and new hampshire both the guidelines out from the doe and the aoe support two students to a seat i know of seven school districts in the state of new hampshire that are doing this and so they support the relaxing of the ridership numbers um we will not put three to a seat that's just not it's not good practice i don't even care in good times um so we may need to put a few students together but we're going to look to do it by cohorting um and then and you know these were these decisions are being made in conjunction with you know our public health officer and our uh medical um guidance from the experts up at dartmouth so i just wanted to let you know where we're at um it's been amazing that we've

121been able to pretty much accommodate everybody's questions concerns wants needs you know within a two-day turnaround but it's been labor intensive and it's it's it's a daily like like jay said it's a daily rubix cube and i'm i never thought i was good at them but apparently uh you know between me and the team were pretty good at it um but it's becoming more challenging as people are are you know sending in emails saying you know i thought i could do this i thought i could transport i can't you know or their hours are being changed or they're being brought back to work more um so we need to figure it out and that's part of figuring it out is to be able to expand you know some more children sharing seats um but doing

122it in a manner that makes sense right for lower amounts of time and you know trying to match them up with the buddy system of the students that they're already spending time with in the same room within the schools um we have not i know when i got here four years ago uh we didn't allow high school students to ride on two different of two of the different in town runs because they were within a mile and a half of the schools we relaxed that approximately three years ago in the low road verona neighborhood and also in the neighborhood downtown off in the dartmouth area and allowed them to start riding um we're looking at the numbers and you know right now i think by allowing for the cohorting you know to be able to

123see together we don't have to ask you know the high schoolers to be removed from the runs um but that would be our next step you know if if we get over full and we just can't accommodate um for anybody within that mile and a half loop and there's quite a few um so that's where we're at uh i'll be sending out a notice it's going to take a few days to go through all of the class lists and figure out who can be you know matched up on the runs where we have waiting lists which are h2h5 um you know i think we can provide a little bit of relief with redoing the root on nine and seven redirecting some of the stops between the two um we hope and pray for more drivers

124every day um the d.o no the dmv sorry too many monikers um the department of motor vehicles has finally started opening up and testing again so not only were we we're at a disadvantage where we can't get new drivers tested in order to put them behind the wheel um you know because there are a couple in the queue and so as we can get them tested and get them behind the wheel we we hope to open up uh the two routes one in hanover one in norwich that we had to consolidate thank you jamie every year i always look forward to the bus discussion so thank you um okay at this point we're going to move on to committee reports does any committee chair have a report kim what are you doing there's a member

125of the public with their hand raised edison can you uh introduce yourself and what town you're from hi this is anna edson i'm from hanover and um just following up with what jamie was sharing about the bus ridership um and definitely trying to understand all the challenges that you are facing with that um if the choice is made to participate in the bus ridership um rather than to take on the hardship of leaving or getting to work late to take your child on your own but then these changes have come about at what point um are those changes communicated to the families so that they can make the decision to perhaps opt out if they feel uncomfortable with these new um new guidances that have been put forward thank you thank you for the question

126uh jamie or jay so this is the first discussion of that we had the meeting with everybody yesterday and so before we would put the kids together in a shared seat um environment i would send an all-call email to the folks who are already built on the lists and writing to let them know so that they could and what date that we're looking to do that on i need to i need to spend some time and go through the wait lists and and as i said they're cut more people are asking every single day you know with only 26 available seats we have you know eight bus routes in hanover 26 seats to a bus unless they're related and you know three or four hundred kids the math just doesn't it it's tough so um

127so i guess ms edson will send it out ahead of time um i i wish i could tell you i could say a week i i don't know if i can say a week i would hopefully notify everybody you know by next wednesday and then probably start any of the changes for the following monday uh we usually like to give at least two three days for making any changes like that i want to take a look at re redirecting the two different routes because i think it might provide a little bit of relief on um on h5 you know we're only going to do it if we absolutely have to i'm going to have to do it for norwich on transfers there's there's i have no other means of moving children between the two districts

128kim just i guess it's a question for jamie is this still an option i know in the covid budget on the higher side of the budget was assuming we'd add another bus route um i guess any thoughts on that or we just don't i don't have drivers or buses i mean i have empty buses i have no drivers so i could do another loop it's not a popular idea with the principals or the parents they don't like kids picked up before seven i already have people complaining about the length of the runs and why everybody can't get dropped off first um you know it's it's the same as every other year but worse this year because i have less space so so yes we could if we had drivers absolutely um i'm really hoping that

129you know we'll get two more drivers instead of having people leave us uh we had a resignation of a heartland driver that's going to affect my back haul runs and i'm hoping they're going to be able to fill it by monday or i'll be scrambling i'll be driving the white minibus twice up to the northern reaches of our school district and again my other jobs won't get done thank you jamie so moving on to committee reports to any of the committee chairs have a report i know we've been very busy with all the meetings and emergency meetings so i'm not sure if a lot of the committees have met so at this point we're going to have to move into non-public hopefully for a very quick discussion of some hiring and changing of ftes and

130then we will reconvene in this zoom room to move on those positions and then adjourn so kim i kind of just wanted to follow up on the committee and i know this is an sau committee but um i didn't want to leave tony's question about whether we have a policy on kind of facilities hanging out there i guess i would just maybe gently encourage that um our policy committee can kind of get restarted at the sau level um in some form so we can kind of identify some of these i don't know if that one's a top one to discuss first but to kind of kick start that i would encourage that wherever possible thank you kim so does everyone have the link to the non-public zoom room so at this point i'd like to

131see if someone like to move us into non-public wait sorry rick where is the um it's the yeah it's that standing room we've been using for the last couple months uh he uh josh had sent out an email a while ago august 12th was when the email was sent that's called non-public thanks can i have a motion to move us in the non-public wow ben we've entered a non-public session under rsa 91-a colon 3-c personnel john going around the horn john yes marcelo lassie yes kim art minius dan rockmore yes ben keaney yes kelly mcconnell yes and johnson yes so for those in the public uh we will be back here shortly to finish up the school board meeting thank you wow we're getting really good at being back and forth in this meeting so

132it looks like we've got everyone except for marcela there she is there she is oh there she is hey marcella okay so we are going to be back in public um so would someone like to make a motion regarding the teacher uh the music teacher i was a zoom was blacked out there for a sec did someone raise their hand kim move to approve increase in music teacher fte from point two to point three for nick zenoni as presented second uh ben going around uh kim kardash john what yes ben gina yes marcela lassie yes kelly what cuddle yes dan rockmore yes johnson yes okay uh we have a motion for the grade four teacher ben who would approve the hiring of melanie peterson as a fourth grade teacher for a one-year term as presented

133second john kim yes marcella alyssia kelly what title yes dan rock more yes and johnson yes uh grade two teacher motion john move to approve hiring tiffany young as a second grade teacher as presented second kim kim i got kim as a second but kim you for your voice john yes and bikini yes marcella flossy yes jelly mcconnell yes dan rock more yes johnson yes okay um so uh please let me or jay know if you have any items you want to add to our next meeting in october i'm just hold on i'm going to manipulate my screen here for a sec lauren go home [Laughter] yes so our next meeting will be wednesday october 14th uh and right now it's still playing on to be a zoom call and uh at this point i'd

134like to thank everyone for attending tonight thank you to our audience who sat in uh these meetings can get kind of long we've got a lot of items to get through especially at the beginning of the year lauren please again let your teachers staff let them know how much we appreciate it hopefully they enjoyed the lunch last week or the week before and uh everyone go home and get a good night's sleep so at this point do i have a motion to adjourn john motion to adjourn at 9 15 pm second ben oh dan uh sorry sorry ben you've you've been doing a lot of seconds tonight so i'm going to give dan a chance uh going around the horn kim art mania john hunt yes ben gina yes marcella flossy yes kelly mcconnell yes

135dan rockmore yes johnson yes thank you everyone yup josh thanks so much for uh air traffic control again as usual thank you all