School Board 9/15/21

001francis thanks oscar i don't have any uh plan you do that someone bought something like forty five hundred dollars um hello and welcome to the september 15th meeting of the school board we're gonna start with the pledge of allegiance thank you all right so we have the review and revision of the agenda do we have any changes aside from the public the the private uh non-public meeting at the beginning of the meeting no and any changes or updates are noted in red on the agenda so that's just to make sure the board knows if we have made any adjustments great thank you i'll read the summary of non-public actions from september 1st 2021 mrs harrison made a motion to accept the nomination of jennifer grantham as lms principal at a salary of one hundred ten

002thousand dollars prorated from the start date for the 2021-22 school year this is aim seconded the motion carried five zero zero mrs harrison made a motion to provide a pro-rated stipend of three thousand dollars to martha thayer as lms interim principal mr bork seconded the motion carried five zero zero mrs harrison made a motion to accept the nomination of curtis of the creatus at a chs chemistry teacher for a salary of fifty four thousand three hundred forty six dollars pro rated for the twenty twenty one twenty two school year mr burke seconded the motion carried five zero zero mrs harrison made a motion to accept the nomination of charlema as gms grade four teacher as a salary of sixty one thousand five fifteen for the twenty one twenty two school year mrs aim seconded the

003motion carried five zero zero it should be four one zero four one zero that was some fat seizure right nope that was for grade four that's the next one then miss mrs harris made a motion to accept the nomination of susan rafferty a chs facts teacher for a salary of forty two thousand five hundred fifty nine dollars for the 21 22 school year mrs hershberger seconded the motion carried four one zero mrs harrison made a motion to approve the non-public minutes of august 18th 2021 mrs ames seconded the motion carried five zero zero mrs hershberger made a motion to up to accept the lssa tentative agreement mrs harrison seconded the motion carried five zero zero that brings us to presentations and recognitions so uh what we've asked for tonight is our um library media specialist

004to come and to do a presentation on learning commons i thought an overview of exactly how learning commons are supporting learning throughout the three schools will be really important so um this is a great way for them to share what they're doing and how the learning commons have sort of evolved with a little bit of a coveted hiccup in the middle of the process of rolling this out um to where we are today and then give the board a chance to interact and ask questions so looks like julie's driving the presentation so we'll turn it over and um go from there should we introduce ourselves let's do that perfect okay so i am julie green i am the library media specialist at campbell high school i'm amy provincial i'm a librarian school and um molina

005provel tomorrow the library media specialist at gms so thank you for having us as we go through how i wanted to start here is to talk i just want to kind of put up there the american association of school library they have created these six standards and you can see that their inquire include collaborate curate explore engage and we're going to touch on each of those tonight but as we were kind of going through these key things what we really noticed and as we start talking about them how closely they were to our portrait of the learner the communication the integrity the perseverance and adaptability and critical thinking the things that we want to bring into our classrooms into our community and have our children have at the end of their scholastic career here in

006litchfield so that kind of took the center stage um personally what i love about being a media specialist is sharing my love of learning with the students of litchfield and i love that my job is constantly evolving and changing you know when i think about the librarian that i had when i was a high schooler she didn't really do any of these things i mean not to knock her she was a great lady but she didn't want us to explore she wanted us to be hushed and quiet in the library and the things that i love the best times in the library are when it's crazy and loud and kids are engaging and they're all working together i also included just for you guys to look at later not really um now but these are

007some of the different things that are on the asaasl website and so how do we bring things to the community how do we bring things to our peers to the people who we work with and then how do we support the child um the first one i kind of put that up there because i love the one quote that says especially or because today's gamer could be tomorrow's inventor and with a little one at home who seems to only want to play games it really kind of spoke to me of you know you're reaching out to everybody you're trying to pull those kids off their electronics and get them to kind of take all those things that they saw and make it into something else make it something that we can use so we have

008been going through i think maybe a year or two ago i redesigned the website for campbell um kind of putting all of our so our sources out there trying to make it easier for kids to access the books um to get them engaged and so we've been working to do that also for lms and also for gms connecting it to the books that we have and to just make it a little bit more um user friendly so that the two other ones um the gms and the lms hopefully we'll have that by the start of 2022 but it's just something we got the little tweaks to do and they're looking like they're almost there but i just kind of wanted to share that with you guys today are you doing that yourself i am we

009we do have websites up and running for years it's just these are more of the same like uniform format but i do have all my links and everything that i use and have the kids go too and that is what i did i pretty much just took their websites and i made them look exactly the same so that and the my idea behind it was that and throughout everything that we're going to talk about is that we want to create something that they will start to learn in gms and it will look the same so that as they go they are in age-appropriate content age-appropriate resources so that our kids are not being exposed to things that they're not ready for but then when they go to the next school they don't have to go

010looking for it they don't have to you know be searching they already know what the resources are so that was really kind of what the the goal was and it was just to take that content that was already there that's already the foundation was laid it was just making them all the same oh go back over here see that's the only thing squirrel sorry okay so now we're gonna kind of tell you a little bit about what we're doing in our individual schools i don't know if everyone can see so i am going to read off of the slide that um i have some overarching goals that i've pretty much just created there's never really been a set curriculum so i've kind of invented things as we've gone along over the last 21 years which

011certainly things have changed since i started in 2000 um but definitely my goal is to encourage reading and the love of learning and that's the most important goal um and with that we explore different kinds of different authors illustrators different kinds of genres um i don't know if you're familiar with the new hampshire ladybug picture book award or the great stone face awards but the students actually get to vote on which one is their favorite so they actually have a say in which book wins so that's a pretty powerful opportunity for kids to get to vote on something and the caldecott award is united states picture book award that they don't get to vote on i don't even get to do that but um it's something that is important for them to learn about and

012appreciate the um work that goes into a picture book that you wouldn't think would be as much work as it is um and then i teach them different online resources so we have our catalog that we all use in all three schools destiny where they search what we have in the in the library physically the books and and such and um we just added sora recently with the remote time so they can read books electronically um and audiobooks anywhere and we have world book online that we've been using that i teach the students i've started well you'll see on the next slide when grade levels i usually introduce at the difference between fiction and non-fiction even what is fiction i mean when you're starting with the young ones they they're just learning how to uh

013simple things like how to take care of a book not not bang it and things of that nature and then the the transformation with the learning commons has been adding like a lot of the steam for space activities for exploration and you can see some of the kids this is from this year um you know in the bottom left we have kids playing with a marble run and they have to figure out how to get the marble from the top to the bottom and different ways to you know if they add on if it just gets stuck what do they do next and they work together um we have different building blocks such as legos and in the corner on the right there's some magnetic shapes that they um can build with and there's many

014many more i don't even have everything out at this time i have to kind of like rotate them because it's just not enough space to put them all out there um but it is really neat to see them they really work it's an opportunity for them to work on their social skills and cooperation and communication for sure but then just the imagination um and the engineering is pretty awesome and they are so proud of themselves i have so many pictures of them holding you know something they create and they're just so proud so it's really great to to see that and then this is just pretty much um everything i teach with the younger kids i just kind of spiral up and um use it as a foundation and just keep adding more and more

015skills that i introduce to them so you know what a fourth grader can do is certainly much different than what a kindergartener can do and the first graders through fourth grade they have their own chromebooks now which has made a huge difference in being able to work with them and plus the remote time also um helped with encouraging a lot of technology skills um so some of the newer things would be like the breakout edus that at least i've started with second grade [Music] and google slide presentations they did really well with um in third grade i started with fourth grade wii video and then i worked my way down you know you kind of start with the older kids and then you say hey i bet my third graders can do this or at

016least maybe halfway through the year as they've you know kind of matured a little bit um so the new thing would be on the bottom of the fourth grade list there is the gale elementary and that's a database that i don't know julie i'll touch more on it okay so that so i'll be starting uh you know the fourth grade so hopefully that will help for next year with the middle school so i'm excited about that i just had a little tutorial myself from the gayle representative um two days ago so i'm excited to incorporate that into my lessons ready all right so um i'm gonna take a little bit of a twist on this and talk about the transition from the library to the learning commons because that's really what fuels my excitement um

017so it was about five years ago we started the process at the middle school um and i feel like i really wanted to change the atmosphere of the middle school library um to me libraries are about individual quiet work and a learning commons is about creating a space where kids can be creative and collaborative and more hands-on and like julie mentioned earlier it sometimes gets loud and i really thrive on that i really like that i really like having kids come into the library so i spent a lot of time trying to change the i just want to click here yeah that's sorry um i wanted to change the the way that students felt about the library so i started with the physical um the physical space by changing out my furniture and putting in

018comfortable furniture that is mobile so that i can promote large group work small group work i can everything in the library is on wheels so i can move things out of the way kids can put them together in groups and then you know the changing the environment and allowing this is a little bit of a story but when i first started i would hear teachers tell kids that they weren't allowed to walk through the library between classes and i decided that that was not what i wanted if kids aren't coming into the library between classes and they don't know what's going on in the library so i put signs out in the hallway i started doing some some community building activities like contests or having raffles or events and inviting them to come in and

019see what was going on and i noticed a huge change in the feeling in the library so once i felt like the environment was something that i was hoping and wanting i started looking at the collection and i spent a lot of time reading through the books and cleaning out actually you can see in the bottom left i don't know if you can see that smaller picture but there were piles of books everywhere because i took the fiction section and genrified it so i put everything in my type of book rather than by author and that took several months and it was a huge mess but i was able to i put my accounts in every single book in that library funny story i actually found a book in there that my brother checked out

020when he was in sixth grade stamped with a gms stamp on it so um it was time it was time it was well overdue yeah and he's like 45 so anyways um that was quite the process and actually just finished that at the end of last year with i moved from the fiction to the non-fiction and i took those and put them each in their own individual case and that was a real eye opener for me because it made me realize that we had say a ton of books on animals and not so much on current technology so that really guided what i did for purchasing books at the end of last year so that was very helpful for me and also it got rid of those gigantic if you've ever been in the library

021before you know that the longest one in the library was one giant metal case of bookcases um now everything is eye level i can see over everything i can see kids coming and going so that's really been my um focus is just getting kids into the library into a space that they enjoy and i did add some quotes because they're just too precious really um the way that kids feel about the library that's what really gets me up in the morning um so my vision for the future would be to continue to do that sort of thing and to promote you know using the library and i would really love to be able to offer students more of maker space time i have a 3d printer sorry i'm all over the place i have a

022cutting machine i have craft supplies i have a button maker things that they can come in and use put their hands on i have a green screen in the back what used to be my office i clean that out and turn it into a green screen so kids can come in and make videos with wii video and melina had mentioned that she teaches that to our fourth graders which has been great because they come up knowing how to use it and we just build on that a little bit um so i didn't talk about my curriculum at all but in this year i'm teaching two classes a fifth grade class and an eighth grade class the fifth grade class we focus a lot on technology and using online sources to do research so right now

023we're working on an internet safety unit and then we'll move over to digital citizenship and you can see them there but they eventually the long-term project is to it's rumbling for me to do a research project that they have to present to the class so for each of those units we do mini presentations some digital presentations so one of them we're doing right now is called powtoon to practice and then they get to choose one of those for their final project which is a research project that they present to the class my eighth grade class is we're calling it a passion project i was really um nervous about it but i wanted to share a win that i've had this week um because it's going much better than i could have imagined so we have

024a particular young man who um came in and said well i'm gonna just play fantasy football because that's my passion so i kind of just sorry that's fine play fantasy football so i presented the project we talked about the project and next thing i knew he had sketchup out and he was designing a racetrack so i heard a couple kids over here talking about designing a race car and the light went off for me and i said what if you got together and you create the racetrack and you create the car and they were like oh my god yes and they got together in this group and they were working and every day they come in despite the fact that i may want to do something in front of the class or show an inspirational

025video or something they want to get working so to me that felt really really good um so i'm it's also helping me get a little bit more excited about that passion project and i'm glad because they get to use the things in the library so they're going to use the 3d printer to print their things so they get to use the materials in the library when they may not have had a chance um our schedule's a little tight this year so is that something that all eighth graders are going to do um good question okay uh i have half well i have a chunk of them for a semester and another chunk next semester but i'm not sure if that's everybody okay gotcha it's not a good answer but no that's fine i'm not 100

026sure it is not everybody because it does um you know the way the eighth grade is set up they have the one you block yeah um so it's split between band and chorus and this library and um pe and art so um just to make sure our kids have a space but the idea is this is sort of the pilot year um and and see how this goes to develop into something more great i like the idea of having an eighth grade capstone yeah like we do at the high school for the seniors i like that i think it's me thank you so to start out with i thought i'd focus on the thing i probably enjoy the most at campbell and what i enjoy with the kids what kind of keeps me in the

027education field is making the connections with the kids over the last five years i found that to be the most rewarding it's the most you know the most what i talk about the most the wins that i make so i like that kids have a place where they can decompress um it's so important in the high school to teach them about what to do when you're having a bad day you can't throw a fit anymore you have to act like an adult and so giving them a place where they can come in and they can just be themselves i think they forget sometimes how to engage with others without their phones and they all try and figure out a way to get wi-fi for themselves but they don't have it so they have to put

028that down and they do have their chromebook but after a while they just kind of want it to go away so when they come to the library we end up having all these different things that they can do whether it be art projects or puzzles or games like uno chess i've really one of these days i'm going to learn how to play chess and i'm going to or i had one kid try and teach me but my brain just could not do it that day and the other thing that we did one time was the rubik's cube challenge which hopefully they'll offer again we were just looking to see if we could buy 300 rubik's cubes and yeah that isn't gonna happen um but it was a free program and all we had to pay

029for was shipping and it was awesome to see everybody come in and they'd have to solve the little matrixes the 10 by 10 matrix so we're really excited that we are going to be able to start bringing them back this year hopefully fingers crossed and we'll be able to have these activities we've already got a lot of things planned that we're going to be able to have for them to do what we did last year because of covet we did make and takes so that a chinese ladder bracelet was one of them and we made little individual packets and we hung them out on the bulletin board and it was amazing how fast they would go and we would walk into one of the rooms and they would be there and it was like their

030study hall and they'd all be making bracelets and it was just some mindless activity for them to do the biggest thing that i love about the games is i love you know a lot of times games you need like four players so we'll see kids come and play together you know interact together who most most of the times wouldn't but they need that fourth player so they'll ask somebody who's just kind of quietly working hey you want to play and they all end up working together two years ago it was a lot of fun with the class of 2020 and how they would interact with everyone so some of the things that i've i do that take me out of the library especially with covet i have left a lot when i go up and

031i work with the different teachers doing collaborations and a lot of it is beyond the books especially at campbell i find a lot of kids with now especially this year having seven classes especially with ap and honors they don't have a lot of time for free read but they with the most important thing that i want to make sure that they all have is the ability to research because if their plans include going on beyond i want to make sure that they will be able to research and be successful in college so that's one of the things that i've been focused on with the teachers um i've created a lot of these class research pages and what i do i know it's kind of hard to see there but i'll put up at the top

032whatever the goal is for the teacher what they're trying to do to remind them as they're searching you know you are trying to solve this problem or answer these questions this essential question and then here are some of the resources that we have available at campbell so they can go and it's not them just searching or them you know not sure what resources to utilize they actually have been focused on where to go and one of my wins from last year was i did this with a social studies teacher and maybe halfway through the year i went into a spanish class and they needed some help and i walked over to a kid to see how he was doing he was like oh don't worry mrs green i already know where to go because i

033use the stuff you gave me when i you taught me in social studies so it was a total win having them have you know taking what they had just learned and taking it on so i always try and make things kind of graphic um graphical kind of make it kind of bright colors or campbell colors yeah i kind of get sucked into that but the choice board it gave them a choice you know i want you to learn i want you to explore everything but you can have a choice in this you might not like what i like so pick what is interesting you and once you get that bingo line or that diagonal you've been successful um one of the things i'm really finding is that the collaboration is so important we have though

034had some turnover so i just made a staff access page that i present it to the entire staff and it just gives them access to everything and tells them what's available and if they don't know how to use it how to gain access but also reminding them that i'm there to help them you know i go and i'm i've been meeting with the new teachers and talking to them but i think it's really important that they can kind of go in here and they can do this and then also working with them and being a support in whatever they're working on with students as far as promoting reading that's the fun part for me i love to read i've always been a nerd i've always had a book in my nose um i probably know

035actually more about the books that these two promote with the great stone face but i read a lot of the books that are in the essence oh i probably said that wrong in the flume and it's always fun when the kids come in and they are they get excited um one of the things that i love about books um is that they they're growing and a lot of books are being put into netflix uh series and so it's kind of cool when you see that your favorite book or your favorite author has been picked up another thing that i did was the new book posters we put them into all the bathrooms actually i didn't do the boys bathroom i just didn't really go there but um i put them into the girls bathrooms i

036probably will continue that maybe have one of my helpers go and put it into the boys bathroom but they just kind of give them a little you know introduction to what it is if it's been focused or if it's been highlighted in a series and kind of get them excited another thing that's going to hopefully happen this year is some book clubs [Music] so that was what i'm doing kind of what i'm passionate in there another thing that i'm really kind of passionate about and i'm kind of dragging these two along not that not that it took much convincing but online resources um another person who really kind of helped me to to want to engage the other two schools is our new um tech tech integrator her and i sat down over the summer

037and we start talking about you know why is it important for us to have online resources why is it important for those online databases and the biggest thing is the age appropriateness you know when i first started when i first would tell people that i was a librarian they're like why do we need a librarian we have google we have siri we have alexa why do i need you but like even when my family asks siri a question i kind of groan because i know that they're going to get you know this half vague answer and they're not going to really get the answer that they want it and we really can't expect that a kid is going to go and google something and not be accessing things that they shouldn't be because it's such

038a big vast world so by getting these age-appropriate and reliable resources we are making sure that they're focused and i can't do it right now because i can't get into everything we've got it all pretty much open inside the schools but i did just a search in one on dogs and i was able to get all these resources but they were age appropriate at a middle at an elementary school and then i went and i did it the same exact one in gale inside of the middle school one and they were more in depth more about like what do dogs do when they're working what's a police dog do and then i did it in high school and then it went even more in depth and so it's kind of nice to see that it's

039not just what a dog is in that encyclopedia it's got articles it's got videos it's got all this good resources to help them to be able to research so i just want to add to the online resources not just gail but the world book online you can click on having it read to you and it highlights the words along the way for kids learning how to read that is huge so i love that um that part of it and another thing that's nice is that they are they do tell you what level they're at so if you're looking for a kid who needs to have a level greeting you can assign one assignment for one kid who maybe needs a little bit more help but then go a little bit deeper with another kid so

040it really helps teachers and all of us to be able to make sure that we're bringing kids up and it doesn't overwhelm them so maker spaces we all kind of touched on that i think it's really some place that's we had a little bit of a road bump with this because of covet we had to kind of hide everything away but now that it's coming back you really can see kids creativity coming out you know like amy talked about you see these kids have that passion and it comes out um in the library i've been bringing in my kids old legos that they hadn't touched in years and they're going through and they're sorting it and my son comes after school and he's been building every single day and it's amazing to see that something

041that was collecting dust in one place all of a sudden creates that spark i just want to mention that my 3d printer ran today and hasn't run in 18 20 months so that was awesome um and then we had those kids recruiting the car talked about creating an rc car so i have an old one at home that i said i will bring in you can take it apart see how it works and [Music] i mean that's the space that's what we do in those spaces which i think is just i remember a few years ago you did that you let them take apart like an old printer or something like that it was a vc vcr yeah we don't use this anymore just to be able to see the inside see what's going on

042in there i have an old typewriter and it amazes me how much they get into typing it's like yeah and imagine having to do an entire 10-page paper on that and making a mistake on page you know three yeah not fun um and you guys had asked for the stats and so this is our book checkouts um these are our current numbers it definitely you can see that we did take a hit during covid um we all kind of did different things to help promote reading amy had a google sheet that kids can request did you bring books to kids i had um sheets and then once they were back in the library i let them check out books there as well i delivered to their classes and i would have kids email me especially

043during lockdown and i would bag them up and then they could pick them up a huge thanks to mary and it jason and his staff because they were able to get us linked into sora and that made it so that it's available to every single student inside their google waffle which is what i call that little huge thing rubik's cube yeah and so now they all have access on their chromebooks it's so great and it's really great too for the kid i got a girl the other day i wanted ramona right now so i was able to go in right then and get the book and she could read it that night which was nice yeah so 21 is stopped in march that i get all no it's when they stopped 2020 was stopped in

044march it's all a blur and 2021 was the we were in school but we were limited yeah yeah i get it i wasn't even in the library yeah it's still impressive and on that you know i think there was a comment about you know were we still buying books and we were and you know one of the important things for us to do is to always curate books because like i mentioned so many of the books that i i got last year are now becoming netflix or hulu series i just had a kid the other day pick up a book that you know was purchased i think probably five years ago so they do go back and they look for old books we're able to do displays on this your favorite book is now a

045movie and so having them there and also being able to talk them up one of the nice things especially over the summer is that i get to read a lot and then come back and tell them all i'll stop in every once in a while in the summer and pick up the books so that i can take them home and continue being my nerdy self so friends ask questions about circulation yep you go back 2019 you're talking like at lms maybe three not even three books per probably like two and a quarter books per people if you look at the high school you're talking probably the same kind of numbers how many books you you buying a year lms and ch i'm not going to go by gms because you send kids in and they

046take books by the pound so it doesn't matter and they fight over them too uh i don't even know if i could guess i could look that up for you i could rough just give me a rough guess like how many purchasing safety this year say for me it's probably about 200 books a year that i get and it's always it's high interest books um making sure that it's you know i've got some graphic novels different like amy was talking about the genres making sure that i'm covering the different genres making sure i i don't read science fiction don't even ask me to recommend a book in science fiction because i couldn't so just trying to get the you know the top sellers that are selling inside of barnes and noble so that you know

047if a kid were browsing barnes and noble they might say oh you know what when i walked by the library the other day i saw that on display i'm gonna sit and i told that to kids i'm like save your 17 and go buy a starbucks coffee because they probably cost that much these days and come to the library and check it out you know and then sometimes they're like well you only let me have it for two weeks i'm like no if you need it for longer you know just talk to me we'll make it work for you and so that's how i kind of make sure that kids know that we're there and can get them the books they need i would say probably i was going to say around 200 for me

048too but it's hard to know because i had been doing that weeding so i focused a lot on the non-fiction last year so and those tend to be a little bit more expensive so it's probably a little less than that but yeah i'm just trying to like think about like how many buying and how many being taken out and i don't know if my kids are different than most but i have a senior right now who's never taken a book out of high school i have a freshman who's never taken a book out of the library um and a sixth grader who hasn't taken a book out of library yet well if i could just say to that um a couple years ago i reached out to some of the teams well i would reach

049out to all the teams and i took everybody's curriculum and i went through it so for example in anthology and language arts and if there was a book in there where they only had an excerpt i looked for the book to have in the library so that way if the kid liked that part and they wanted to come check that book out they could so i have a whole section library that's called curriculum connections so that was where the focus was that particular year of where i spent my money um and then the same would be true for the non-fiction so if there was a science topic that's mentioned and kid wants to know more i'd do that but i do tend to see um well every year is a little different like there was

050it was probably two three years ago um that eighth grade group i saw them all the time though that eighth grade group was always in the library it's hard to say for the last couple years because you know it's been weird but um we do tend to have some of the same kids who come in frequently i've seen one particular sixth grader this year probably six times already um swapping out her books so yeah i think it just depends on the year the interest and maybe what's available for books too new books and i'm certain there's more and more usage of their chromebook as they get more comfortable with them that they can basically get anything on their chromebook that they could out of but you'd be surprised how many want to say i want

051to hold the book it's true i mean definitely with sora i think that's been helpful for sora the huge thing i think is the audiobooks and okay i'm gonna go to the next slide but we can come back to that if you want to because i have one more question yep but like with sora i i get audio books with my kids that's how we read all those great stone face and now my kids would never check out a book but they listen to audiobooks when we're in our cars because we drive a lot and what i was thinking about doing for amy to try and get some of her kids to read more is to talk about some of these great books the one that was amazing was ground zero and it goes through

052and it's one kid who was on one of the top floors and he had just gone down the elevator when the first plane went into the building and like we were listening to the book and like my reaction to it my son was like mom what's wrong and you couldn't tell if you weren't if you hadn't been there what was happening but i knew what was happening and we got out of the car and he was like mom were you alive during that i was like yeah i was and it was you know it's it's but i want to like talk about that and like also introduce myself to the kids down at lms so that they start to see well why do i want to read these books and the reason is because you

053go on these you go on this journey and you can go to all these different places and learn about all these different people and help other people interact with the world and so giving them that that love of reading you know it's they do lose it somewhere in element in after elementary school they have they have it i was down with molina six years ago and i loved that i loved that passion that they all had they were all fighting over that minecraft book that whole list was forever long for that book and it's like how can we get that back and how can we reinvigorate so i hope that we can do that the other book that i really loved was a book called the boy who failed show and tell another great book

054if you're looking for a good one i think you make a good point because when you start to have conversations with kids they get excited too but sometimes they just don't have the time to spend looking for that great book and to have that conversation with them gets them excited so your other question how many books you think you have no to learn in common at the high school she asked me for that stat we all could have gotten you that stuff we all have it like we could just pull it but ten ten thousand more or less i actually did this once way before my reading and i had about eight thousand books in library but i've weeded them so it's probably less and they've been over what it again how many years when

055did you say your lms started so the books that some of the books in my library came up with lms when it opened from dms um i'm asking it is again usage of books in the library is like incredibly low yet we have a ton of inventory and i know we try to like you know be as vast as possible but i guess i'm thinking of space usage you can probably eliminate 60 70 80 of those books and i think all three of us do go through our collections and you know make sure that it is up to date so uh destiny does have that information we can pull how many books we have the life of the books all that kind of stuff and so we have been going through um i've consolidated amy's

056consolidate i know every year molina you know goes through and checks for the books that aren't good at everyone's smile on on the facebook pages you'll see why did my kid come home with this book and it has that discard stamp on it we're like don't bring it back we don't want it back i think in the last week i've been in all three libraries yeah i just i look around and look at the amount of books that are in there and it's like it's just and especially like non-fiction yeah it's just a lot of space taken up and just collecting dust but yet then like i have spanish classes that come down and they do country projects and so they use those books and they you know have to learn how to not just

057have a website give you the citation like how do you do the citation um but there are books like dictionaries yet i had somebody come down just last week and ask for a dictionary so there is definitely a process and we all i think are going through that to find the space to make it become we're never going to lose that library we're never going to lose that book side of us because people do like having the physical book but there is that transition and even i was thinking you know could i smoosh down one of the the bookshelves and put a bigger table so that there's more workspace and so i think we're all kind of slowly kind of changing as we go and figuring out we need less books because we have sora

058or because we have the databases the databases are making it so that every single kid who was looking at that cute little labrador and wanted to learn more about it we can just say well i'm going to put you on a hold but you know what you could go on galen you could learn all about them on there and then they all can go home and they all can be looking or they can go back to their classroom it's not just one kid it's all the kids that are being exposed to it because this has been well it's something that that's worked me like for like the last five six seven years there's so many things and i'm certain i mean when i was in school yeah we used to like grab a magazine because

059it was all current and you know you didn't have it in that or anything else those magazines as soon as they hit this your stand are they're ancient already it's like why do we bother i don't i don't buy it anymore the newspaper i question is too like the union leaders like really yeah by the time you read the union leader in print it's already like two days old the magazines i have in the library right now have been there and i'll admit sometimes i have a hard time throwing things away so i have a couple students who really need a dirt bike so i'm constantly like handing off the dirt bike magazines i don't want it back you can just have it so i have definitely stopped buying magazines because i think like chs

060i think i saw people magazine there's nothing wrong with people sometimes you need to just decompress yes that's true too you do sometimes you do and so for me with a good book but the other reason why i haven't gotten rid of them yet is because a lot of times they do projects where they have to cut things out and they have to do dream boards or that kind of stuff and so i have a big box of all the ones and i do the same thing like if it kid comes in you're like that just take it you know if that piqued your interest i don't want it back we stopped cataloging them um take it and so i try and make sure that i have at least one magazine for each um curriculum

061so that and like john vandykar the other day came down and he grabbed the one that i have for woodworking he's like this is great this is going to be for my kids who they all can't get onto the lathe at the same time so i'm going to have them look at these magazines so they are still being pulled by certain teachers um but i do every year you know look at and i you know they both found that they weren't being used or they weren't being used past that show i should say i do have a make magazine about maker spaces yes the one magazine i do still get that is a good magazine the thing about magazines also is that it's a quick read you can read an article in a short five

062minute span if that's you know if that's all that time they have and kids who get overwhelmed with long books those are great for for kids like that too so i mean they do have a place i just found mine we're just sitting julia do you still have classes coming down to your room because if kids are in the corner playing chess and doing other stuff i wouldn't feel comfortable bringing a classroom down there because it would be distracting because half of my kids would be wanting to play uno over in the corner so last year i had study halls because of code because we had to know exactly where everybody sat so right now we are in the transition back to the way it used to be and i think we've got a little

063bit better of a control on it so that if we need a class to come down we will then tell the study halls the teachers because we kind of went to each study hall teacher and said instead of saying you know your library pass is full open you can send as many kids as you want so you can pretty much have the period off we said you've got this many people to come down so we could control it but also so that if a teacher requests to come down to the library we can say you need to hold your kids so that we can focus on it and then you know remove the distractions and focus on what's going on give the attention to the teacher let them be able to use the resources that

064we have but also use me as a resource right to make sure that the kids are learning what they are and taking everything that they learn down at gms and lms and bring it together so that they're ready for college awesome that's it thank you any other questions very much sure so thank you all for coming tonight and julie i just want to compliment you on your great use of red orange and blue you have picked up on the theme that i've been subliminally sending out and did a great job with that so not even on purpose it was only it looks a lot like a presentation template that i we used to have at hewlett packard why did you use the hp swoosh [Laughter] [Music] it's definitely attention getting thank you very much for

065coming thank you thank you sorry [Music] all right um that brings us to community input we have we have an allotment of three minutes per person um and i just wanted to read this statement just because in light of recent public input sessions things have gone on a little bit longer than expected so um public comments shall be made without expectation of a response this is from our regular public public input policy um public comments shall be made without expectation of a response by any school board members to matters raised by such commentary comments and statements may be made on matters of public concern directly related to the district's policies programs and operations public commentary shall be limited to three minutes per person and must identify the first and last name and address of the

066commenter let's see so do we have anybody here for public input all right just come on forward you can sit at this table and um [Laughter] um i guess you can you can come up there's two chairs yeah moral support is always a good thing not that you need it and just make sure you state your first and last name and address my name is leanne thompson i live at 44th century lean okay and donahue at nine duck pawn circle so i'm here tonight i just want to thank everybody for everything you guys have done it's been a really um tough time obviously the past two years but i am here tonight to express my disappointment on the overall communication from the litchfield school district prior to the start of the school year this year

067specifically regarding the changes of the uas at lms often our community the parents are getting information from facebook that is not accurate and people are getting upset and then the truth isn't anywhere to be told particularly this year when the schedules came out at lms everybody is texting each other saying what's happening why why does my child have music why why doesn't my child have gym what is going on the information that we got was from each other and not from anybody from the school it was really hard to find out what the truth was how that decision had been made and even looking back on that to try to figure out when did that happen or was it over the summer or when did that happen it wasn't really communicated in a way that

068was easy to find for the average parent or community member there is extensive research that concludes that physical activity and recess improves class participation time on task attentiveness cognitive processing class behavior it releases anxiety stress and builds relationships and it also improves test performances and scores can i stop sure okay so on that note i can i only can speak for my kid for him it's jim but there are so many children it's music it's art it's homec but my son came home from home back and he's like i'm cooking dinner i'm like yes you are and i i just for me it's the concern to like health falls in there that's that's something that concerns me um but to your point that um it does drive them like whether it's at the beginning of

069the day the end of the day whatever that maybe it's a library where they can be a little bit quieter maybe it's gym class where they can be crazy or whatever it is i know for my kids any one of those passions that are outside of that academic world where it's the homework and the structure really drives them through the day and when they're coming home because they only have a couple of things and neither one of them feed them they're not too happy and and and i get it it's life at this point listen buddy i don't make the rules it is what it is i think we're just hoping just to see it more from a kid's viewpoint i understand that it was said to contract wise and i've i've done a little

070bit looking into that i don't want to be a part of that world that's all your world and lea world not my place but i will say that actually listening to julie there was a thought that i had of if we were to go back the old way and we had those extra planning periods which i think was part of it maybe integrating some of those planning periods mixed with classes i was just jotting stuff as she was talking for example math with family consumer science where you have home economics and that so that you know when that whole mech teacher might be having a planning period but doesn't need it all jump into a math class let's work with somehow to work in and i don't have all those answers it was just a

071thought um i'll let you go from there um because after that it's the health that really is a big concern sure so um the state of new hampshire department of education does acknowledge the research and does recommend the 30 to 60 minutes of physical activity to allow students to optimize their ability to learn and perform i know there is a policy from the student from the school board here as well but it's unclear to me why our schools would not want to promote the physical activity with all the research that support supports that but actually for the fifth graders now not having either having recess or having a physical education class and only having a 10 minute movement break for their full day um this is obviously in fifth grade in normal times is a

072big year of significant transitions uh expectations responsibility more time on the chromebooks and increased stress and that and then you put covet on top of it and just magnifies everything so to have 10 minutes in a day for these students fifth grade and up just to be able to and it's ten minutes of supervision from their with their teacher too so they don't even get to on the recess and just be goofy with their friends to have that so that outlet that we all need um and for each kid that's different i want to be clear like we're not just saying jim we're just that's our example for the physical part of movement it can be different for every kid some kid that's i just want to build on that i think it's great that

073lms um provides students in the music to have the opportunity during school hours to participate in chorus and music but that opportunity for other children who will do well in art or computers or physical activity there's no opportunity during school hours for them to have that that seems a little bit unbalanced it's a great opportunity for music people that love that and have a great outlet but there's nothing for any other students and it does seem like there might be an opportunity for us to to change this with the best program i think the communication on the best program also has been pretty vague i think it's been hard for our parents to understand it but it does look like there's been about a 38 minute session built into the school day to for best

074and from my understanding and if i'm wrong correct me it'll be a good education that it has to be an enrichment and an educational component provided but if that could be provided during a physical activity it would give these kids an outlet to do that so i'm just hoping that the school board would support that with the best program and perhaps recommend that a daily physical activity that meets the best requirements could be um and i think this is this is us in the in the event that things cannot change in the way that we are hoping to go back to some quarterly so that you know for example you can't golf for two weeks you're out sorry it's your favorite thing to do you're looking for your teeth nope you can't golf but you

075get to go back in two weeks you're gonna do your therapy on your arm you're gonna get to golf or whatever it is i like my nails done but when that's removed for a year it it kind of closes you in and and that kid's like i don't know if i want to go back to gym i've kind of sat for a while i don't know if i can cook again i didn't i missed that that is my concern coming from just my kids and i don't want them there was a lot of opportunities taken away during covid i don't want that gone again i want that i want them to see everything and find the pressure so when high school comes and those electives become a choice they can say you know what mom

076i really like to cook i'm going i want it i want to jump over to alvern i think all right cool or during best i think it's great to introduce all these different things like like engineering and robotics and stem all the things that we do we don't have courses for but it isn't for everybody so i think it's great to introduce it but is there a way to introduce it and still allow those kids that maybe need the movement or the study or whatever something i'm just hoping there's other solutions uh down the road and again i am more than willing to offer that help i i god bless you for sitting on i cannot sit there can't do it but don't think that the parents aren't willing like i i know it's probably

077you don't want too many hands in the pot but there's a lot of us although there's only two of us here but more than willing to help where we can um this is not the norm still and we're lacking a lot of hands on deck we are aware of that not to mention we lost our principle and that's a whole nother whirlwind that i'm sure got thrown everywhere so as much as we say all this we do respect and we understand there are things that are out of out of our control but i think there are things that we can bring back to a realm and we'd like to see that happen and i think there's an and heidi can probably help me with this but kind of looking at the rsas of new hampshire

078too they there is the code 306.18 that counts up to 30 minutes of recess a day for people from k to 6 as instructional time so i'm not under don't really understand why if we're worried about instructional time why can't we give those kids 30 minutes to run around on the recess just run out in the park look literally take a little area and mark it off and the kids would love to have that free time that's something we have to look into because our school starts at our middle schools at fifth versus other middle schools that are seven right but there's k through six i agree with you so i think it's worth looking at if that does qualify as instructional time why isn't that an option for the students thank you as well

079um and i know you just said no direct communication with these but i find like the communication i would love communication back specifically on these somehow however you communicate communicate back to the community and to the parents what your thoughts are there how do you feel like you're interpreting these uh rsas and do you support that you know we are providing time during the school time day for music but for nothing else if you want to do sports or art or computers it have to be after school so to provide all of that to the music which is wonderful but not to provide it to the other kids who may like something else i think is disappointing big thing and i'll nutshell the health i know that health is listed under you waves for me

080that's a huge important thing and i'm i'm i say this because i think of every year if there's one quarter of it one semester whatever it is i don't know all the things one semester of it you have that one it touches on so much more than just how we grow it is mental health social health it's abuse at home it's drug use there's so much there that i feel like when we if we were to miss a year that you have that one student that comes in something changed at home or whatever and doesn't have the outlet to wrap their head around or even to have that door or communication open can that does concern me huge i mean i try to talk to my kids but let's face it they don't want to

081talk to me about everything either but they will talk to their friends but only if that door opens somewhere and i'd rather it open in the classroom than hanging out at the park that's just my opinion on health so it'd be great if the school board could support the best program and possibly request that it was kind of vague that they were coming with different ideas like poetry and like baseball statistics and these other things but they really didn't look to me when again it was a very brief presentation there was anything with movement in there so i would love for the school board to somehow approach that and say this is a great opportunity but the time is built in the schedule can we can we provide that for our students yeah okay thank

082you guys very it i'll much you um actually mrs thayer is going to discuss best later tonight right that's right that's why you're here you're on the agenda what's that yeah oh the principal's report yeah yeah okay um any public input online so i just checked in online and we don't have anybody waiting okay thank you for checking all right that will conclude our public input portion of the evening for now the board will continue to meet in public but requests no more public comment questions or statements until the second public input so if after mrs thayer's presentation if you have further questions um there'll be another public input session later in the meeting thank you um that brings us to correspondence we had a few correspondents the first one was from september 7th was

083from erica donahue inquiring when our next school board meeting was and tina i believe you responded to her on 9-6 brandon lafabe um sorry you made the list twice brendan the fabe um thank dr jetty for answering his questions um he also um requested all his communications to be put on public record he said last week nothing was mentioned of his prior email um and part of the reason for that is he did not send into the entire board nor did he request that it be put into public record so if he wants to send something to the entire board or request requested if he doesn't then it'll be put into public record he's concerned we do not have policies preventing teachers from having lgbtq plus conversations k-12 he's very concerned about this topic dr

084jetty has responded to him several times and answered his questions on 9 9 marissa brunell was following up on an email that was sent to dr jetty on 8 28. his question dr jetty's email on nine nine about when mass baby may be required um in class and then she's questioning as far as when they're sitting down when they're in class when they're at their desk when they're in the halls just exactly when and she also inquired as to why we are waiting for a cluster before we mandate mask 910 mike breton once again bringing up the mask debate i have not seen any data yet that that shows that masks are safe talked about his son will not wear a mask and inquiring what will happen if he does not if his son does

085not comply um he's got a fear that his son will get sick and if his son does he said he'll sue us on 9 10 brandon lafabe feels we are avoiding his questions he's upset he can't find policies that would prevent gender theory being taught from k through 12. again dr jetty has responded and answered his questions on 913 susan haley um concerned about district grading and what's happening with the system she's wondering where the guidelines are and inquiring and feeling that we're not being transparent and i know mary woodman replied to her that that should be forced down through the admin teams in three different schools and that she is here every fourth meeting presenting and discussing as far as the grading and tara gives updates also as far as during our meetings on

0869 13 like bretton again again looking for and continuing trying to find proof that mass work and again how will we address students who will not comply and on 9 15 the last one which just came in a little while ago erica donahue asking if there is an agenda and where to find him you're here and again tina responded to her and she found the agenda and that was it [Laughter] thank you brian all right that brings us to superintendent comments we have the first friday enrollments yep so just the first friday enrollments are you know it gives us a chance to let things shake out a little bit over who's in the system going into the beginning of school this year the first friday because of the long weekend ended up allowing us eight

087days of experience before we were pulling those numbers so if you take a look at them um i think they're relatively consistent with what we expected our overall district total is 12 37 when you look you know the numbers we've been watching most closely are at griffin and all the numbers have held based on the um the expectations that we had so i've also provided to you uh just for memory sake what we had on opening day enrollments and so you know not a lot of cleaning up has taken place or not a lot of shifting has taken place as we've done the cleaning up and our next enrollment date and this is the most important one is october 1st which happens to be a friday so what we're asking the schools to do is

088to work on cleaning up their registers tracking down students who may not be attending et cetera i know that you know we've received a couple of homeschool notices this week so um we'll have that october 1st number and once that comes in michelle and i will create the spreadsheet and make the projections so i would imagine you would have those they may be ready for the october what's it going to be october 6th board meeting but if they're not ready for that meeting you'll have them at the meeting after that so we'll we'll get those turned around as quickly as we can that's good because i don't have it side by side right now and definitely bill can answer so we have first aid head count for the high school is 380 or 397 and

089then august 30th it was 4 26. what was it on so so the difference is if i may that the first day count is actually counting noses in seats so that is um if you have absent students or you know there were some students who didn't attend on the first day and so it the the number that's in the system is probably more reliable um so you'll notice it was 397 but in the system there were the 426 registered on that day and on friday we're at 4 28. and so we need to keep making sure but i i have a feeling it had to do with counting noses more but bill do you want to come in and then your account actually went up two okay then your account actually went up two after

090that from 426 to 428 as a friday [Music] so the next thing i just wanted to visit with the board um we had a discussion about this because i had a revelation uh when i was presenting to the faculty at the start of the year oh my gosh what did i just do bear with me in a minute there we go um in looking at the board goals i i think we made an inadvertent error by goal number two um and you'll notice that goal number two was worded great teachers and you know one of the things that i was reflecting on as i was sharing this with the entire staff is we have a lot of great staff members too and i acknowledged them all i said how awesome our parents were and our

091custodians our food service workers and our administrative assistants and i just thought to go back to this goal and to rephrase it and i put in green what i'm suggesting to be two quick ads because um i i think we actually meant this but we just didn't write it because it said great teachers and i wanted to say great teachers and great staff and then when you read the beginning it's a professional learning community that values everyone so that sort of is inclusive language indicator one says ensure that we attract and retain high quality staff so it uses the staff term it's not limited to just a teaching staff but it's to all staff number two if we add a pd learning program that supports teacher and staff needs and growth that would also be

092better more encompassing language and then the third indicator fostering a positive collaborative culture of data informed decisions in all schools doesn't really speak to staff or teachers so i think we're okay so my suggestion is that we reapprove it by adding in what's highlighted in green to make sure that everybody knows that they're valued and that their great work is important to us to make a motion to make the changes in green to add staff to the school district goals a second all in favor for further discussion all right all in favor say i i i opposed abstain passes five zero zero i just wasn't listening you just voted for it i did not vote for it i didn't say anything my lips were closed can we add the words in green yes sorry i

093was i knew what we were talking about but i was forwarding an email and i'm all in favor aye five zero zero excellent uh and and i just also want to share that um we received a an email to this point so lss uh president has communicated to us that they had their membership meeting today and they have ratified the uh tentative agreement so um so i mean kind of remarkable but we have i mean here we are on september 15th and we have a ratified ta to go on the warrant in march but we worked really hard and i think we have a really good agreement to bring forward and you know the next thing is to make sure that the public understands what it says because part of attracting great staff is going

094to have be having a collective bargaining agreement that helps us to do that so that's the support staff that's our support set yes so we'll let you put on our website uh so now we'll we'll go through all those processes i think um getting a press release out so it sort of summarizes it and we can start to communicate that great thank you update yeah just a quick thing on bus routes so um the bus routes are actually working pretty well at this point so the we've solved a couple of glitches you know one glitch was getting the buses into the high school compound in a timely manner we now have a process so they're coming through the back gate they're not mingling in with parent traffic that's working pretty seamlessly um the buses are

095actually pulling out of campbell at 2 28 at the latest so they're on their way to do drop-offs with high school and middle school students and middle school students admittedly are on the bus a little bit longer but they are arriving home um you know within the time frames that are set on the bus schedule so i would urge parents to pay attention to the posted bus schedule routes that are on our website um we've been communicating with first student uh so like many industries right now flush driver shortage is also impacting some of the issues with buses right so uh if you've seen recently the governor of massachusetts has called up the national guard to drive buses in some cities because they have such a shortage of bus drivers a few of our routes

096have had a revolving door of bus drivers and every time you put somebody new on the route they've got to learn the stops they've got to learn where to turn they've got to learn what the traffic flows are that's resulting in our buses leaving griffin so the the routes at um at the high school in middle school are are working um but then they're they're arriving a little bit later at griffin than we would like we've resolved some uh traffic flow issues along routes especially in the northern end of town um so that we can keep the buses moving in a more timely manner and one one thing for everybody to be aware of is that um we do stop at st francis and pick up the children who attend school at saint francis so

097saint francis children have access to the bus routes in town there are children there are taxpayers they have access to our bus routes they're their bus routes um and so we need to wait with all the buses at griffin until the shuttle comes from saint francis so each bus doesn't stop at saint francis to pick up their kids you have to wait till their bus from saint francis arrives and then the children get off and disperse among the various buses to get home right so you can't leave griffin until everybody from that bus has arrived and that's the route that is getting bogged down in the north end so that's resulting in the buses pulling out of griffin a little bit later than normal um we think we have it resolved and it is better

098but i just wanted everybody to be aware when you see the concerns that are out about the bus routes um that's been a key aspect that we've been trying to tweak and adjust and what does not help is again when somebody calls out last minute and we're scrambling to get a driver or first student's scrambling to get a driver on the route it's not helpful to us but i just want to pause there and see if there were other bus route things that you wanted to know about [Music] can you comment on how many students i i've there's been a few questions about three to a seat or that there's some overcrowding on the buses i sent that question to michelle so can you put that on the record how many students are on the

099bus and what that looks like i'm gonna actually michelle has done the roof so michelle can you just tell us how many students are assigned i did a account of not the actual students on the group who i had assigned to the buses on the route and there is every bus that i counted is at or less than 52 students which is two students to a seat or less we heard the same comment about three to receipt i mean we're not going to stop somebody from sitting through to a seat so if three students want to sit together that's their choice but we don't believe the buses are overcrowded with a requirement to have three to receipt based on the rooting sheets that we have we have found some um some students have not been

100riding the correct bus and we've had to redirect them so you know some of the buses do cross each other so i'll give you an example to solve a concern a parent had on page road we actually added stops on both sides so as the bus travels it picks up only door side but if a child who should be getting picked up here crosses to the other side and gets on a different bus that is going to cause a shift in the numbers but that's not by design that's by people not being at the right stop can we get a bus count anytime soon you get a what best case last count we we will get one um can we get an accurate one this time can we possibly get an accurate account well i

101spoke shouldn't be that difficult counting one two three four i spoke to the bus company about doing a bus count by the roster um hopefully by the end of september because i think it they'll they'll have their driver situation hopefully resolved or somewhat resolved and that they'll know the kids enough to be able to count them on the run they'll have a list of they have a list now but sometimes it changes and so and as kids pop on they're asked to take their name so that i can go back and check and see if they even belong on that bus so we will have a count no later than october 1st i i asked the bus company that that was the deadline well i had a question about the first view app the first

102few days of it was working and the last week or so it doesn't sit like it's saying that gps is not available in the afternoon this this is our understanding with the gps question um first student again because of labor shortages they have not uploaded the roots and so i think the first day it was using the old route sheets that they now have cleared out because what they have said to us is it shouldn't it it's not working yet because we don't have the information loaded up so um now we've made calls to first what's it called first view procedure which is the app right and those folks are out in illinois or somewhere um and they're we're also having trouble getting a hold of somebody i suspect it's the same labor issues so

103we're working to get the gps activated and up and going again don't have a tracking device inside the bus i don't think it works that way do you uh there's a specific they have to upload the the she she explained it to me today she said most of the students are uploaded it to the system but there are some that are missing because they've been switched around or whatever so they have to accurately upload all the routes into the system and then the codes for the devices and then they can you know there's a team that's what they have to match and yeah i i offered to go there and help but so in my mind it's as easy as like a tracking device right but i think it's more complicated there's this piece that

104has to be linked to the students so we're working to get that yeah i think they have to tie it in with the school code and then to the bus number and all that and the device on the bus and i think the ones that are working because i believe some are and some are not and so yes we're working to get that result okay so i understand you know what for gms you know when they leave gms so they left late today at 3 15. 3 17. 3 17. so do you know when the last kid gets dropped off or you just assume it's exactly i can only surmise when they get drunk don't call the bus company and ask them because i i actually waited at a gms bus stop the other day

105to see when because my street the next one after you was the last stop and are they the parents there of kindergartners left work to stand at the bus stop and they were there for an extra 20 minutes since the beginning of the day missing work because they're waiting for their kindergartners to get off the bus and i told them to give it a chance because the more people who are upset with the bus are the more people that are going to drive which causes more traffic on 3a so i told them if they created a time sheet to tell you when big buses were coming that that would give you guys a better idea of when the buses were dropping the last bus off and i think that's the north stop you've been to

106the saint francis stop it is that's a it's a it's been a kind of a problematic last year was different because with a covey there were less kids on the bus but it's a bus buster has always been kind of a late bus because the traffic in the north end of town i've been up there on those routes and it is when you're coming off a corning road that the traffic is coming both ways and in the afternoon they don't yield and it's very and you've got kids living at the very tip of charles bancroft so you have to they have to go to manchester to turn part of manchester to turn around and it's it is it is problematic we are actually working on a solution for that though the bus number three three

107but go with that for a second so turning left on corning at that time of day can it's hit or miss you know you can pull right out if you hit it right and you could be sitting there for a bit especially with a bus trying to turn left and then the bus actually has to go all the way to the litchfield line to drop off and now what it's got to turn around and the only way why does it take it should be taking a right out of corning then well at the it does if they're they go to corning and do those drop offs and then they turn or they go to the end of litchfield and then they pick up saint francis nope so it so then it goes toward manchester united

108and so one of the things is the our belief was that they were turning up pine which is a dead end and turning around and coming back out again turning left out of pine on that corner that could be a challenge right and then uh if you have a new driver on the route who misses pine now what you know it's like they're going further into manchester to get the turnaround so all of these pieces are sort of adding to the time on that end of the route and the traffic flow and then they turn around and then they pick up the same francis kids so that's the high school middle school bus oh okay so the gms bus isn't going to stay present no because it's already got the students from saint francis they

109dismiss it 240 so we pick them up on our way back to gms and then they you know they get off of that bus and get onto the bus that's going to take them to their homes all across town all right because the way it was when my kids were in elementary school they picked up the gms kids and then they dropped our kids off got it so keep in mind too with gms there's uh one child that lives at right on the border oh yeah we had that in hudson by elver in that street and there it and it's past pine so they have to go all the way down to charlotte street street to turn around that is the same yeah it is that makes sense on a turnaround it might be an

110area where they can get a turnaround charlotte's in manchester so our bus has yeah to do the all right so there's a street down there lilac yeah yeah it's a short street actually you talk to the people so i guess the takeaway is you know stay with us we're working on it that's it we think we've solved the problem we think we have yep and we are on it please let us know if we have it and we're on it every single day so just let us know thank you let's see all right at least we have buses at least we have buses yeah drivers drivers yep it's another one of those fields that everybody's looking for good people um school board comments we have the nhsba delegates and resolutions so the annie i'm gonna

111jump in if you don't mind so the nhsba has changed their um their member their delegate what do they call assembly it used to be in the spring they've moved it to october 16 of this year and so we need to choose some a delegate from our school board to go to the delegates assembly and um vote on the resolutions so um i've done it in the past tara i know you did it a few years ago um i think it's unclear right now last year it was remote i don't think virtual um so i got to sit in my jammies and attend which was great um i'm not sure what the format will be this year i'm sure it will depend on how with the covet situation is but i think so we have

112the proposed resolutions for this year that were submitted by other school boards across the state and the continuing resolutions for our review and at the our october 6th meeting will vote on how how we would like our delegate to vote on those um resolutions is anybody interested in attending on october 6th i mean i'm sorry october 16th here potentially i don't know my calendar though what day is this saturday it's a saturday six yeah it's usually on a saturday it's like nine to one when it was remote it was actually much no it was about the same amount of time i don't mind doing it if anybody else if everybody else is busy i have a commitment on the 16th okay yeah i'll make a 6 or 16. 16th is the delegates assembly the 6th

113is our next meeting where we need to vote on the resolutions so i just pulled it up so you know what you're agreeing to it is a live meeting at the triangle park office building [Music] go ahead tina you can do it if you want to actually there's a workshop from eleven to one on hot topics for school boards the d a the delegate assembly will take place from one to three okay i if if everybody's alright with that i will plan to attend and then if you guys can review the resolutions in time for our next or the october 6th meeting that will give us time to figure out where we stand great thank you [Music] i'm just going to put that in my calendar um and that brings us to public minutes from

114august 18th october 6th is a wednesday yeah are you sure that's our next meeting so we're gonna so you're going to read the resolutions that were linked here in time for our october 6th meeting and then we will vote on those so that i'll know how to vote at the assembly which is when which is october 16th oh it's the 16th yeah sorry that's a that's the saturday thanks okay all right and then were you gonna is there gonna be more school board comments for anybody else who wants thank you yes are there any more school board comments well as a matter of fact there is oh i have one and it's in reference to dress code um it's one of two things either we revisit which i think we should revisit dress code but

115that would take a motion but my concern is and it's one simple one as far as with dress code and that's girls shirts as far as cropped dress code says everything has to be covered and again styles right now are i mean having three girls i see what they're purchasing and it's not just my three girls it's the majority of the girls and i missed on sterling that i i believe when i voted for the dress code because i know we had conversations as far as what areas had to be covered and those were the three main areas had to be covered as long as they were we were fine then a little cutout doll came and like everything had to be covered the problem is it's not being we're not controlling dress code that's

116what it comes down to i've been at the high school for the last four days and i count just quickly girls coming out and how many little belly buttons i can see and it averages about 18 a day and that's just the ones i see at 2 25 what list i'm just laughing i'm not even going to go there counting i'm not there looking to come belly buttons i just happen to be there because i'm waiting for the middle school girls to come so we can are they shirts up to here or are they shirts that it varies it varies but i'm just saying that funny the thing is that's the style and i personally don't see a problem with seeing a belly button it's the style of the shirt but if that's gonna be

117our dress code then we should control the dress code but we're not doing it if i can see 18 coming out 225 and i don't know how many left earlier i don't know how many is still within the building that are breaking the dress code so again on any given day if i can see 18-20 coming out i'm certain you can probably like double that number and i personally don't see a problem with it thank you any other questions or comments um yeah briefly um i had a couple of questions um or comments one i can't i agree with brian um i think that the dress code needs to be revisited either that or there needs to be some consistency with enforcement one of those two things needs to happen but at this point to

118me there's a difference between a shirt that falls to the waistline and when you raise your arms you see a belly button and wearing a sports bra and again i know we tried to find that balance with the dress code but i i think we need to consider the fact that um belly buttons aren't offensive and so i you know would like to consider reviewing that whether it's pulling the committee back together however we choose to do that um i would like to support that um the second issue is i wanted i had sent an email this morning that i wanted to briefly ask and maybe it can be incorporated into the covet update if we had discussed or have interest in joining the safety at school screening program safer at school screening program which

119offers the covid testing um that can be offered by our nurses um i know bedford and nashua have signed up for that that will start at the end of the month um i've heard from several parents as the coped cases are rolling out and quarantines are rolling out with kids that have been sent home that they've had to wait three four hours in urgent care parking lots in order to get a coping test because they're not readily available at doctor's offices or hospitals for them to to have it so their kid can come back to school um and so if we have the i i don't think it should be without parent consent which i believe is the program itself that's a founding principle of it um but i would like to discuss or know

120if that's been something that the kobit admin team has discussed and if that can be something we can implement and you can address it during the covid but i i think we should i think that should be an option for parents so actually if i can just reply now so i'll take it to the team tomorrow we meet on thursdays for our weekly coveted call i'd like us to discuss it um there has been some concern relative to it um and you know there are some there are some other schools that are doing it that are finding it can work against so i wake up my kids not feeling well so i'll send them to school and if they get sent to the nurse they'll just get tested there so there has been a little

121bit of are we relying too much on the school to take the parent role of a sick child right so that's been a concern um but i think our team should discuss it one more time and uh and see about whether involvement because i i also i do understand from the parent lens of waiting four hours not at work you know with a kid in a parking lot trying to get a test allergies sorry who has allergies yeah or a tummy ache or a headache or whatever because again it's such broad symptoms at this point it's not a whole lot that can get you sent home these days um and so and i understand it i agree with it i just if there's a way that we can facilitate the testing and again i you

122guys know better than i do but i i promise we'll we'll discuss it tomorrow and i'll um i'll update the board by the end of the week so i just want to add to both the potty's comments the first is going back to dress code and my main thing is i think the admin team has a lot more to do than enforce a belly button i really do i think there's many more things more important for them to do in the schools than than that and the other is when you just talked about it i'd rather the child if they're not feeling well the parents and the nurse and receiving all kinds of money from the state at once some point in time correct so you would think we could utilize some of that money

123to purchase kits so that if a child is sick i'd rather the school know okay this person is positive or this person is negative and then move them on their way and we keep talking about this money that we're going to be getting eventually hopefully i think it'd be a good use of utilizing a few dollars of that to purchase some kits this is actually a separate part of fonts too so if you enroll in the sacred school uh program then it's a hundred percent paid for by other grant funds that i guess the hhs has got the reason to do it i have a comment i always have a comment i agree kind of with you guys i don't i don't agree with belly buttons being shown because cleavage might be the next might

124be the next trend or boys wearing their underwear outside of their pants are we gonna let them do that i do don't have a problem if a girl can pull a shirt down to her waistband and do you they don't have to go lift your arms off and i have shirts that do that and they're not even half shirts i i think that is a concession but allowing a belly button is a pathway to sports bras because i've seen it in a little shrug and it you can't leave anything to the imagination they bring it to the next level because that's what kids do that's what i did that's what you did so i kind of agreed with both of you okay any of anything tara do you have anything yeah i have no girls

125but i you know i mean i think i'm okay with the shirts going down to the i don't know i think part of what i mean i understand fashion but i do think we're you know we want kids to dress respectfully you know for they're in a school setting you know they're not at their homes after school so maybe i'm a little bit more old-fashioned in that respect i agree with tara and and what you've said liz i stand by our current policy i was on the committee to help create that policy i think it's very liberal compared to other school school dress code policies that i've seen um and i think you know i think we we gave a lot of freedom when we devised that policy and you know covering your torso was

126one of the things that we maintained and i think there's a time and a place so when i think i think ask dressing to follow the dress code isn't a lot to ask i really don't that's my personal opinion that said if you know if we want to reconvene that committee that we can we can certainly do that should we vote on whether or not to reopen that that's your call i i've made a note i intend to have a conversation with the admin team okay um you know uh or do i have a motion to rate to reopen that policy i'll wait until dr jetty comes back to the next meeting to make my decision yep all right have the admin team conversations first okay all right thank you good discussion all right any

127other school board comments um public minutes from august 18th i'll make a motion to accept the minutes of august 18th well second any further discussion all in favor opposed abstain liz were you paying attention [Laughter] um september 1st 2021 we have public minutes from our last meeting make a motion to accept them as from september 1st a second all in favor aye aye opposed abstain five zero zero and that brings us finally to the stairs sorry for the delay yeah lots of important stuff to discuss tonight let me just do this in about two minutes by the way two minutes a lot of renovations to our school um which um i will get to in a moment um we enrolled 21 students over the summer we went to june 12 for getting a pain of

128nine i've given you the um the total count per grade level with a total of 356 students attending on the middle school and that's where we're at right now um as part of that um reconstruction at the middle school um all of our rooms have been renumbered we're still waiting for them to actually get put on they've ordered things that are coming in our front entrance is now complete um it is very secure and we have a conference room right off the front entrance so that if we have someone come in they don't have to travel about the school remains very secure we just have a new start time there were a lot of changes at our school this year we have a new start time we had a couple of glitches in the first

129couple of days but buses had been really good they all 10 of them were there this morning at 7 15. it was awesome the kids are very good about getting out we we still do serve breakfast we have doubled the number of breakfasts that we have served from last year which i think is a good thing and i attribute that and i think lauren does too to the fact that the students from the elementary school are used to getting some of that lunch so it is it's growing which i think is a good thing um we're still serving it from the cafeteria there's potential that will serve it from a cart near the gym which is where most of our kids come in but we tell them every day if you want breakfast go over

130to the cafe and they're never they're not late they get their breakfast so that is a good thing um we have we're able to put all of our students this year in the cafeteria for lunch um and we have assigned the first couple of days we kind of let them figure out what they wanted so that they could have some freedom and make you know it's hard the first day you can't say have a have a seating chat the first day because they don't know where all their friends are we've got that in place now so they they're sitting with friends we have a seating chart in case we need it for anything i'm covered related the other thing that we did this year was um we increased the number of students getting out at

131our drop-off line um i don't know if any of you are doing doing drop-off but today i'll drop off line um was incomplete completely done with two minutes to spare before the homeroom bell went off while the first period bell went off um and once we get um every year we have to have some numbers we painted because of first period classes changed so once we did that we're going to increase the number of spots but we're letting students in we have a fob now thank you corey um at our sixth grade side entrance so we're able to let students and it just works better and we have i have a really good crew out there they're committed to it they enjoy it and it's working well once we got the buses loading um all

132of them together in the afternoon i'm getting them out between 2 10 and 2 15 unless they have to hold the bus for looking for a child so that's working and i'm i'm i've been hearing from the high school that they're getting to the high school and plenty of time to pick up those students so that they can head off drop off and get to griffin hopefully in time but i think it's working better um recognitions i have to tell you that um the day before school started so school started on on a monday and the weekend before that that friday was really the first day our teachers had to be in the building they were in the building but the first day they really had to do any work and it was a mess

133from all the construction that took place everything was still in boxes they had no time to take anything out of boxes and i told them you know room wasn't built in the day one step at a time do what you can i didn't want them getting overly anxious about that i came in early on monday i come in early almost every day but and i walked through that building i could not believe what i saw the rooms i there was not a boxing site for starters they all they stayed they did what they needed to do our uh the superintendent for the construction company said i said to him it's like he said martha it's like we weren't even here he called the head the owner of the construction company said you can't believe this

134it's like we weren't even here and it was phenomenal so i i have to recognize the staff for doing that it was tremendous the way they pulled together it was incredible it was just it was wonderful to watch um our custodial staff has worked like nothing i have ever seen in my life um they are they're crushing it in ways that are just unbelievable so kudos to them um i just we wouldn't be where we are without them so i want to recognize them our pto was very very generous gave a wonderful breakfast bar for our staff on that not the very first week but right after and um our athletic director uh dan defourny he's new to that position he's done a great job he's gotten everybody coordinated he's done what he can the

135the games are going off without a hitch we've had a couple of bus issues but we get we have buses i got a call from one of the coaches on my way home from the grocery store about five o'clock this week we have no bus martha so i called but there was a bus driver at that same school that had an empty bus and they got her to take our kids home so they like five minutes after i i called they were they were on a bus so that worked out well um we had our open house we had about 58 of parents show and the way we we figure that is that we have all the students fill out a schedule for their parents put it on the desk and they go in and

136then we go and collect it and then i collect them all again and i start counting and i figure it out so we have about 58 uh we always have the most in fifth grade were you supposed to put the schedule back somewhere no you didn't did you no no but we collected them from everybody who didn't show up so i counsel those yeah [Laughter] but it's it's good information for us and um so um mostly we had the most in fifth grade we had a lot of seventh grade parents come so that was very exciting too um and we always have the least in eighth grade it's just the way it goes you know they've been in the school you know their kids were actually in the school for a full year before we

137had covert so that's the only grade level that has and um i did give a presentation on best i had to talk really fast that night because the teachers gave me the 10 minutes of best time so um i was gonna have to write everybody late passes because they're all late from best class but um mike do you have i certainly do let me switch gears here i want to add that your new principal at lms is very familiar with this program she's using it at her school and it sounds like you've started everything off to a great start well i is so i talked to her i asked her to share with me what they do and she said what are you doing and i said this is what we're doing she said well

138that's really what we do so i thought you know like i said that night rome wasn't built in a day um we are trying to inspire passion in what we do so we're asking the teachers to share what they something that they like that might be either connected to their their um their subject area or maybe a little bit different and we have quite a quite an array and i will be able to share with you more topics tonight um so um the lms do your best that's our theme um we always had the believe in yourself extend the health i can't show respect and take responsibility but it also means for this particular program bringing every support together so in addition to doing some of these activities it is when some of our students

139will receive the services that they need and we were able to really put that together we're using i ready now and that's really going to help us figure out all early reports on i ready are extremely good they really feel like it's a great measure one of the better measures that we've used ever and it's taking a little longer but and i said oh my gosh when i was talking to the teachers i said i didn't realize it would take that long but they said but martha it's really giving us good information so we're all very excited about that and i think it's really going to help especially in where we've had some gaps because of covet we're going to be able to see that and address those um so what is best um best

140is there is a movement break and it is about 10 minutes a little bit longer to be honest and right now we're doing a few more movement breaks because we are math um it's instructional it's building relationships and as i said that night we kind of front loaded that in the beginning because we wanted to bring the students in we wanted them to develop a relationship with with their teachers so that they felt like if there was a problem they would have somewhere to go or someone that they could trust and we've actually gotten some parent reports that it's working out well which is always really nice it is a time for remediation in additional help for understanding and it is a time for enrichment it's teacher-led with student choice our teachers this week got

141um training from andrea stern on adaptive scheduler our front office has been putting in the different course choices and i will start to name a few of those for you we have one point perspective drawing is one of the ones that they can do sport and fitness um and that is with mr dufourney and he does have a best period opposite the grade levels he teaches so that students will be able to rotate in to those classes and we're going to keep a very careful tally of who's in there so it's not the same students all the time is so that everybody gets an opportunity so it will go on two or four week rotations and they'll all get it they'll if they want it they'll all be able to have it and they'll probably

142be able to have um that that multiple times literacy circles so that promoting reading and just reading like a book club you know and talking about it reading for the the joy of reading a journey back in time which is a look at the revolutionary um war and looking at different um technology that's going to help kind of bring a little bit more life to that um sports statistics for kids who really like that i heard that's a biggie in other districts so i'm glad that we have that going poetry and music looking at poetry looking at different types and then talking about how it relates to our culture and and how we find it and how poetry is used in our in in music and our um culture get your hands dirty i said

143you gotta really put something with that but that's someone who wants to do composting they want to build a raised garden um and grow herbs that can be used in our fast class pop song composition brain teases and sudoku to kind of get that going and that's pretty cool they've got some really good some ted ed programs that really help with that sewing skills um different kinds of art from different cultures um the underground railroad and how that relates um to the study that they're doing especially in um sixth grade um brain twisters discovery game app so they could develop a game i'm using i think it's the discovery program stock market game again sports and fitness and what's well that's a wrap and that's for music and um we have a teacher in the

144seventh grade who's gonna do a digital newspaper based on school activities um we have something called get in the game it's sports journalism um culture club um exploring um hispanic and latino cultures um battle of the books so kids reading books and then really kind of having to talk about which one they like and why and whatnot um sweet solutions and it's um and so that's after the teacher she got married her this is sweet now and so she's using different um tricks and see i thought it was going to be candy making i think that it could work out to this i would get a candy thermometer i would go into the bathroom i would make it i wouldn't make candy um and there's going to be some yoga so um those are some

145of the things that are great that we're doing and that's probably the next slide mic i probably like uh i looked ahead and it wasn't so no it's not um oh i'm sorry yeah there it is that's it i couldn't fit all that stuff on um that night um but and the grading they're not going to get a number or a letter grade they're going to be graded on their work study practices those soft skills that we're looking at especially as we're looking at portrait of a learner those are all going to tie into that you know can you can you listen to others points of view can you can you work to follow classroom rules and expectations those are the areas that we're going to be focusing on so that's my that's my little

146presentation on that if i could just jump in for one second i think everyone has to understand what a huge undertaking this has been you know best has lived sort of in the supervisory homework world and sort of in this and redefining it as instructional time to make sure we meet the rsa and legal requirements for the number of instructional hours at the middle school you know we've now solidified that and the staff has been incredible i mean listen to that list i didn't come up with that martha didn't come up with that mary didn't come up with that the staff came up with that and so you know this is this is a great concept we're kindling it here as it sort of grows and gets going but i'm confident that um we're in

147a much better spot relative to the way that time fits in um and and students will as they now fall into it and it gets better defined i think it'll be pretty clear where uh what what the purpose of it all is we do have a staff member who is going um for the the state training and to get the materials to form a to form a chess club and do chess and so we have someone who's already we i've already been on the first meet with the the uh the person who's doing the presenting he's down south but um we went through of the first piece of that and so she will be going and she will be working with other educators in the state of new hampshire and the state of new hampshire

148is actually funding that so we will get materials the cost of her actually taking that that that workshop is being covered by the state so we're excited about that just so you know in the gms pto shed there is a life-size yes that is cool yes someone did it for a boy scout project i think and it ended up getting stored there they're huge they're tall i think that's like so perfect in the spring for our um that's where it is [Laughter] and i think it's something hands-on and the kids actually have to pick up the pieces and yeah so um the commissioner reserved the significant amount of the uh funding that came from the federal government for this chess rollout right so that's why everything's free because with all of the coded money that

149came he held back however the training for one staff member is four days which is a substantial investment of time but again it's all funded by the state and so are there still monies for that they held it and now they're they're they're dispersing it the reason i ask the chess is great but i'm just thinking i've seen them before they're outdoors so they have like plastic they have like yeah you know they have a platform there's like a cracker barrel and stuff like that i mean if you can acquire something like that because then you can just leave it outside and not worry about it sure so i think the ones that they're wood they would all right martha i really appreciate how many things aren't on the computer because yeah i fatigue too

150much time in front of a screen i love that right so let me ask you this let's say an eighth grade english teacher one is doing poetry well she still have time to do remediation on like maybe one day a week she does this with her group they're gonna they're gonna rotate that and i love that it's our first time going through so we're trying to keep it fluid and so they they keep coming to me with ideas and some i say we have to stick with what we're doing somebody said that's great let's try it but um and and so i'm trying to trying to maintain some level of equity throughout the year because you can put like limits on how many kids can go in yeah and there's lots yeah i think this

151is awesome and so um and and they they don't have to do the same thing they're going to do it for a certain period of time and then if there's a lot of a lot of kids and they all can't get into the first session they'll run another session but if it's kind of run its course they already have ideas of what they want to do to either carry it on or to um do something new so um but they we are going to do remediation and and some and i'm letting it kind of go by grade level some are going to do remediation twice a week on certain days and they have what they call a toolbox of activities that they can do and some of them might be other like competitive games um

152cribbage was something that was going around uh we were talking about that and there's a lot of things you can do but then there's other um they're going to be there's going to be a toolbox of higher level activities related to just their curriculum on those days when you have kids who need remediation but you may not have kids who need remediation so you want them to do something over and above and that that's where that toolbox will come into play so they're not just sitting here playing uno for 38 minutes or something no yeah yeah they're moving yeah yeah who knows um there's a lot of games though that i that have a tremendous benefit oh absolutely so but like but you have to be careful about the ones you choose because some of

153them just you just need to know your numbers and your colors and so at middle school i kind of like this one yeah but that is you know that everything has its place um our our sports teams um are off to a good start um the girls um in soccer they won their first game it was a shutout we had a great match with a volleyball over a pentachuck where that bus came in handy they got home and they were happy about it our first cross country meet went very well um yesterday and both of our teams boys and girls placed second so we had a lot of we have we always have strong runners so that was good to see um upcoming dates um our green our green links club is our recycling club

154it was going to start um yesterday but they they pushed it out a week because of they needed to make sure they had the um permissions of some parents in our picture day will be on the 30th we have in october we have a workshop day on the 8th and columbus days i'm um a day that we give off so um great that's what i have for you do you have a school calendar on your page i'm obsessed with calendars now like if you open the lms page is there a calendar i was just curious um i i'm not sure if it's on our page but i'm going to look i can look yeah she does do that but i as on a calendar that's a really good idea i can ask her to do

155that like oh like that like does that have picture day on it yeah yeah oh it does you have it you don't need to see it it should have everything on it and i know i yeah i told them to update everything keep track what do you mean the whole district oh everything from middle school games yeah it right now let me know that's awesome it's easy to populate i have control to populate it i'll make sure cara has control tom had control and dan would he put the games on he'd give it to carrot and character even better okay that's awesome no all right any other questions for martha yep i have a couple actually um so you mentioned breakfast do you know how many breakfasts you're serving about 50 right right in the

15650 area last year we were around 22-ish 18 between 18 and 22. lauren lauren sent me an email today with some numbers and the the numbers for both meals are steadily increasing great at all schools so just a couple of comments one um as far as pick up and drop off i can tell you it is like night and day from and i knew it would be like the first couple of days um it was kind of shaky there which it always is as far as i think school opening but it's it's amazing how much right now it's almost like they're like mid-year as far as like it's very smooth as far as pick up and drop off um you mentioned the ad as far as um taking over mr defourny i can tell you

157he's doing a great job his communication is spot on doing a very good job as far as communicating um you know out as far as just a different information he's really available i mean anytime talk to him i've heard he's visible like going to games and stuff and practices that's awesome he's doing great so then the last thing is and i don't know if maybe some food for thought for next year um we said what 58 percent became an open house thank god it was only 58 it's unfortunate i mean i obviously would rather see a hundred percent it was crazy you couldn't put any more cars anywhere right right and that's why i don't know if we can do it split you know grade five six and then seven eight yeah but definitely definitely

158food for thought i mean i feel bad for the people who are basically parking on pine crust yeah i know i was shocked that we had as many people as we had i wasn't expecting it we actually and i think it was good i was shocked that that many people came to to it in person that really spoke because the teachers were a little leery they said well we did a survey last year martha and they said they really want to do remote and they don't have to leave but we haven't you know we almost have a brand new school you know with all the stuff that's been done to it and people it's their school it's not it's not it's not the teach it is our school because we we're there all day but

159the school belongs to the town and they should come see and i've always felt that way living in the town you know it's not my classroom this classroom belongs to the town i use this classroom this is where i'm living right now but they every they should come and see it they should it's part of community and so i think that's good and i think the other piece with that that could be really helpful is we always get the parents who i call it the terrible tear because i have a kid in fifth grade i have a kid in seventh grade who am i going you know now we're not going to be able to do it four nights but it will definitely take care of the student the parents who have a younger and

160an older and they they can they can get to see what's going on with all of them yeah or twins and you're you have to well i don't know how i'd handle that one so you talk about that even if we did it alphabetically you'd still talk about the building you know the improvements it's like a new building mrs mississippi made a point of pointing out the windows saying how great they were and the fact that she can put a fan and she got air flow now and they opened more than one way so she's like i tell them i'm pretty excited about the world yes i tell them open them in the morning let the cooler and then shut them so you don't bring in the heart it makes such a difference i can

161hear a difference like when i come to pick up i i usually arrive early and i can hear what's going on in the classroom yeah someone's yelling today like in a good way it was a good yelling but it you know it's it's really nice to be able to hear that and to know that the kids are getting the fresh air coming in and the air circulation it's really nice to see in here yeah so it is nice now they've already roped off those of you who do pick up you've seen that this it's fenced off um so there there will be some significant pieces of equipment coming in yeah but we have we will uh manage that and we have made it so that the back of the building no one and i have

162to say i said it once to the staff and i haven't seen one car parked back there yeah so that that was awesome maybe they haven't i haven't seen it but i i just watched it oh well yeah yeah yeah no but no let me know yeah so i you know and on a regular day this this where the portable's gone there is there's actually room in the parking lot so yeah martha i appreciate that you thank the custodial staff because those days before school started were brutal because i was in my classroom then the fact they take such pride in our buildings it wasn't just the day before it was like like mike was saying it was the construction they had to work in contributors to the cleanliness and sometimes they get overlooked and

163i really appreciate everything they have been doing yeoman's work mm-hmm they really have so well and they're interested in the saturday before um sherry who's the second chip lead down there she came in on saturday made sure all the boxes were cleared to finish the floors amazing so that's great they really wanted these people to take a great deal of pride that's all really good they're more short-handed and there's some that's the great stuff that we're talking about earlier so great thank you ladies thank you mom and martha thank you you know i was actually just going to say martha before you leave but you were here to hear that input um and i and i think that's a great you know it's a great conversation to be had and as we're kind of leaving

164things fluid maybe there are opportunities that we can i think come together and take them up on their offer to help and volunteer and yeah maybe we can get somewhere yeah absolutely i think it's a problem in all schools especially when you put band against jim and it in middle school for some reason it's just the band or gym or it's always a struggle that you can't every i know i wanted my kids to have gym every semester but they couldn't so it they need to broaden their horizons martha you're doing an awesome job you're blossoming in front of us thank you i've always been here it's nice to see more of you yeah just work on the time of your presentation please a little long yeah you sat through them all before it was

165perfect don't listen to him it was perfect i just wanted to acknowledge another piece that i know we've talked about is really clear and concise communication on a weekly basis if you're looking at the parent communication you know martha's done a great job bullets go a long way towards sort of helping so thank you for that especially for us to lose track a lot [Music] since we've already been talking about the middle school so um north branch reached significant completion about a day and a half before school started weekdays um so obviously you'd like to have more time for your teachers to get in there but the fact that north branch got this done in the aggressive time frame that that they were given is incredible um the fenced off area on the side that

166will be the staging area for equipment and materials for the roof which we're expecting the roofers to be on site within the next three weeks i believe i think first second week of october they're coming in to get that started um and we've already started having meetings for the the planning of phase two for next year so all the consultants were in a meeting which is kind of like listening to a bunch of people speaking greek at times and it's just it's really exciting to see this thing moving forward so i know tara had sent me an email the other day we will get some pictures compiled and get a folder out there for the school board to see some of the things anyone who hasn't been at the building can see some of the

167work that they've done community would like that too yeah yep so we can definitely compile that and get that out there the north branch did give us access to their i don't even remember what it's called it's their own tracking database so they have pictures before and after probably yeah all kinds of stuff so we will uh get access for that if you send me some i can put it on our facebook page okay yeah definitely we could do that because it came out really nice the new flooring and the the new conference room and the offices like everything came out really really nice and the windows are great like um i've also included on here the uh the budget timeline things that are going on so this coming monday all department budgets will come

168in to me and then wednesday through next friday me and mike will meet with the administrators and directors and go through them um and then just followed through and listed out some of the the dates we're looking to hit so we should have a good chunk of time to put a put a presentation together for for the school board and for the budget committee and we'll make sure we hit those dates um that we get i believe uh the superintendent's budget will come to the school board on the 29th and then we'll provide it to the budget committee on november 2nd seeing that schedule of all the dates this year and i think that that i don't remember getting all those dates previously so yeah and yeah and it's good to have it have it

169clear the time it's a pretty quick time timeline yeah i think we actually have them do about a week earlier than we normally would but no one's seem to have any problem with that and um just getting ready to go the one that you probably you won't so holly will meet with us in mid-october um just because she's gonna need some time to compile that the salaries and benefits and there's pieces that that won't fall into place until i think november 15th is when we expect to get the the pricing for the health care right so but that won't be included in the budget anyway right because that's a contract item that's a warranty so the rates for next year on the on the current plan that will impact that'll have some impact so you

170have to budget based on any increases and you know projections on current and then if something else happens as a result of collective bargaining that any changes would go into a separate warrant article there but you know you have to assume x number of employees are taking insurance if it goes up 3 5 10 you have to budget that um and one more thing that that is pretty exciting is that we've really started the meetings with uh kyle barker architects to talk about the options for for the new elementary school and um so those meetings will be ramping up here pretty soon with with consultants and um is it ashley mcgraw at a syracuse area that will now be pulled in for that and start getting some of our uh marketing together so what is

171this exciting stuff capital improvement committee for facilities so it's uh next wednesday so the one that was supposed to be last wednesday we got we postponed until next wednesday uh we spent about three hours with the architect touring griffin on monday and i think kyle is coming next wednesday to sort of talk about some of the things that he's finding um and we'll have a it's going to be a lot of dialogue and then seriously between now and halloween there i think there are a couple of community involvement sessions where um we're going to be asking the public to engage begin to engage relative to the planning of what to do at griffin so um it's it's going pretty fast and brian spent um the whole time with kyle and and doing the tour so

172so he's participating too great so as far as the roof when is it too late for them to do the roof and we talked about as far as the weather and i know it's all dependent on whether but and they said six to eight weeks to install and they actually said there's no such thing as too late they if it snows they shovel it off and they keep roofing so their sense was you know now that that turns into the problem though grinding obviously water melting etc but you know so the ideal thing is that we get a clear window of time to get the roofing done up there but it can't be any worse than the leaks that we have now um you know there was no but it would be a shame you

173install a brand new roof and then you have problems right afterwards because the way it was or when it was installed because of installation that that it happens we're getting a new roof from my school and we have leaks at least you find them yeah before seriously at least you know where the weak link is okay and then you have the year to date uh i don't have any specific numbers just kind of gave a impression of where we are in terms of what's been uh what's been expended and encumbered to date so 17 million dollars in salaries and benefits has been encumbered through the year so it really shows that 85 percent of our budget truly is sound reasonable yeah okay and you'll send me the updated financials i will get you financials for

174in time for you to bring up for the budget committee can you send those up to us as well at the same time yeah if you could get those two by the end of the week that would be great thank you corey and just i i think you found those links that right under corey's report so we link those this afternoon they're things that we have but i'm like let's get them in front of the board so you have them um but those calendars are very helpful all right we have some policies to review if i can ask before we go to old business because it seems to be omitted from the agenda and that's committee reports did we have any oh okay i didn't i've been to him i'm sorry i didn't realize it

175that's right well on 9-3 we had an emergency management team meeting which i'm going to say was really it went excellent we had both um fire and police there at that time is when we gave our emergency operation plans to both police and fire but i thought it was a lot of good communication we had between the two of them uh with them being there we like bounced a lot of things off of them and going back and forth we talked about the cameras at the high school which hopefully will be installed shortly which is going to give us that we can see the parking lot and review film which right now we can't all three schools okay yeah um but we had a lot of discussion as far as um alice drills as far

176as starting those back up um how we're gonna go about doing that we're gonna start like softly doing it and then you know roll out a little bit more in depth possibly do a full uh alice drill like we've done in the past and we talked about fire drills reverse fire drills and it was just a lot of good communication um that we had between the two departments and the emergency team and like a lot of questions were answered you know we talked about the alarm panels as far as we got the phone that um it was a mother was going to go back and and attempted because she thought it was a little bit more cumbersome than it really was so it went i thought it went really well i mean i came out

177of there like saying that we got a lot done here in a short period of time ryan who's on the committee is it the chief of police and the fire yeah they don't come that often i mean there's not really a need for them yeah you know once or twice a year if they come i mean it's really good but it's the admin team oh okay uh well it's the assistant principals are on that team um i don't know what's involved corey myself michelle mike um captain scotty chief sergeant yep uh deputy nicole was there this time frank does come sometimes so they've done ellis they've already so they know the rally points because of fire drills but the alice piece is still to come alice has actually revamped their website and they know where

178to go yeah training institute changed their website it's no longer ls training it's navigate 360. and when you go on it they do have the basic certification and recertification but they also have other resources for staff like alice for custodians alice for food service workers just things that you don't all the different scenarios that you can't fit in that one that's good it's excellent for pd there's suicide prevention and awareness trainings there's all kinds of stuff so we're working on getting that up and running awesome thank you i'm sorry sorry brian take away from your limelight that's okay i'm just gonna talk about my next committee okay now who has all the committee right um so the next one wasn't and mike already touched on it or corey did that we every monday we have

179a meeting as far as the new gms and you know just roll into like different parts of it and there was a lot of good conversation as far as there's studies that have to be done but either we rebuild a brand new gms or do we fix the gms we have and there's still a lot of questions as far as what would have to be done as far as looked at are we really sitting on the water we think we're sitting on are we sitting on ledge are we sitting on rock is it the drainage is there different things that can be done um you know the cost prohibited as far as building new as opposed to old it's not a wood structure you know it's a block structure so a good part of your

180cost is already there and you know there are different components that go into it like if it's more than 60 of new then you go new if it's less than if you can do it then you're probably better off in turning around saving maybe 14 million dollars so there are a lot of questions that still need to be answered there are still like specialists he has to bring in to start looking at different things but just walking around the building some of the things we saw you know we talked about moisture in the building and he's pretty much again without doing any studies or anything else his first thought is it's not coming in through the building it's more air moisture coming in there were different parts of the building we're watching like drainage that

181wasn't draining the way it should um the back i'm not sure what side that building was was it east side it's not coming in through the building so it's coming in through the air yeah or the foundation it's not coming through the foundation okay that makes sense it's really the south side i think now because he was pointing north towards uh the baseball field that's north that's south yeah i mean i'm going on 3a as north south but right but we went like whatever the curve a little bit what wing is that first grade yep yeah it was like a jungle really i mean it was like you've got like you know a little well wetness because nothing's cut back i mean just that alone there's like no sun coming into the building and you're

182looking at the way the way the roof pitch was some of the water was actually like coming back towards the building so just a lot of different things to look at and a lot of things that um he'll be looking at with his team before we go forward is like okay can we do something with this building is that actually at the point that it's at do you ever look at the location the fact it's so close to the street when my son was there this is before the whole alice thing there's it's just not to mention like the cow manure and stuff that was their biggest complaint my biggest complaint was if somebody loses control of their car they could go right into mrs johnstone's room it's just in that door it's had a

183glass had glass in front of the building and that to me where it's located so close to the street is a big there's just a lot of things a lot of things to look at and a lot of things we talked about we looked at the 30s building you know what we can do with the 30s building again the thing is solid you have water you have electricity you have heat in there so it's just a lot of things to look at and a lot of things to think about in different components he's looking at you know he he even suggested that uh you know it could be a partial tear down so you might take like the first grade area which is probably the worst part of the building it's the worst construction because

184it was the 1950s it was a whole different standard of what you did so you knock that part down and then if you build a two-story um section there you know so that you can accommodate more students for example you know and then you tie it in with a complete renovation so you wouldn't even know that you were in the older parts of the building because you renovate those and bring them up to current standards etc so that's something we hadn't discussed before but you know crossing that out what would that look like i said to him i want to make sure educationally that these buildings are going to be fitting the needs of kids today and tomorrow and the year after and he said absolutely you know if you do this correctly you don't

185feel constrained by the walls that you see now you know just envision you wouldn't even know that you weren't walking into new space when you replace the lighting replace the ceiling replace the floor and etc so i think we just have to kind of open our minds to getting every single option explored and figured out how many elementary schools are two levels that i'm just waiting for you can actually you can put any student on a second floor if they're kindergarten for a second they have to have a dedicated fir no they have to have a dedicated stairwell so the concept is that you don't want older students knocking over the younger ones trying to come down so as long as you have first grade with a dedicated stairwell you can put them on the

186second floor i wouldn't recommend that if you're building two-story right so you can you can find a way to make this happen but um i guess i don't want anybody going into this thinking you know so one thing is renovating everything that's there another thing is taking sections of it away and replacing it with something more appropriate and it's not necessarily on that footprint you know maybe you build somewhere else the new section whatever fits in programmatically right and you just knock that down well it's possible too that the gym would end up being classrooms because the gym is way too small so that would have to be reconstructed but just of the required space it's half as small or half as large as it should be so you know that's something that we would

187have to address as part of this so then what do you do with the gym options because taxpayers will want to know what's that make sure we get out there we did our homecoming started and got it all right i i have also asked that the 1930s building that we make a decision and if we're going to keep it let's do a complete renovation and make it usable i think what's there just doesn't make any sense it's a closet at best and we should just stick around right now it may cost a few bucks but let's just embrace that and you could picture that maybe that's a standalone building close to 3a with the rest of the school sort of behind it maybe the sau is occupying that space unattached but in the front yard

188that's a different you know so so all of this is what we talked about but we have to just either i mean i'm sorry you have to either decide that we no longer need it we've been talking about we're gonna since i've been on the school board yeah we've done studies we've looked at walls we've looked at floors we've i i like the idea of it keeping it because it's a part of history and there are a lot of people in town who went to that school mm-hmm the 1930s yeah yeah now we have to address i'm just not a fan of not doing something with it it's just just sitting there right now and we have to address all the ada stuff and right etcetera but a lot of work that needs to be

189done in that building in order to make it ready and appropriate for our needs part of what's interesting is that that building is relatively dry and you have to ask yourself the question why when half of it's underground right and yet you don't have the moisture issues there huh it's just a huh it's kind of a so is it really tied you know kyle's point is the rest of it could be tied more to the architecture and the way the buildings were built um and not so so much that the ground is the source of the water it's air and then how does it or how it breathes how we're distributing the water off the roof that type of thing it's like yep it's you know the way the drains are they're not right so

190we don't know if that's a problem or not you know there's a moisture problem there's no two ways about it it's just where's the moisture problem coming from i thought i thought it was it had a high water tank right i mean i i feel like there was already information about that it does but what's what i think has happened and again this is all we don't know more stuff for us to look at but you know so the way the roof originally drained and then there was a solution to that and did the solution really solve the problem or did it just kick the problem down the road that's what we're just unsure of and so why are we just discovering these and thinking about these things now well i haven't you know we've

191done multiple studies over the last 20 years correct i think the difference is that um i don't know that in the past the question of what would it be to renovate has been fully explored versus it's impossible to renovate we need to go new and so going through this exercise um i i think is actually going to get us to so if the answer is new because cost effectiveness that's the right thing to do then we know and if the answer is you know and it makes it a lot easier so you know we've done we've followed every avenue this is needed the best most fiscally responsible such um solution why we're asking some of these questions or you know the questions are coming up right now it's because technology is different too so the

192ability to like go a little deeper and find out what's going on is available to us so building science you think about what we know about buildings today versus what we knew in 1950 although david ely said to us that the wall style in the 1950s edition if i have that part of the building right is like the best type of wall i mean it's brick it's air space with foam in it and it's concrete block inside now the part of the building that is just concrete block cold air concrete inside that's that could be that could be sucking the air or the moisture right in because there's no insulation it's a concrete block so there's no value to that part of the building but that doesn't mean the other part of the building doesn't

193have value right so you have to take a very comprehensive look at it all okay we got the right guy i i felt after the discussion and we've selected the right guy absolutely no doubt good good all right any other committees brian no no the other meeting was cancelled which one this um cip tell me next week trading and reporting is going to be meeting next tuesday so i'll have a report the next one great and budget committee meets actually after our next meeting so is that right do we no we skip i think do we have one in the 20 the last week of september 29th we don't have one that's the same so we meet on the 23rd i believe so we had an extra week okay any chance start time committee's going

194to get going at some point it is bear with us a few few little fires here no problem in the meantime enjoy your time on just a few minutes yeah right just a few you mean 500 000. [Music] man um all right so on to policies we have a second reading on policy gcc bc fmla leave i'll make a motion to approve that policy as a second reading second discussion questions comments right all in favor of proving a second reading on policy g c c b c say i i opposed abstain five zero zero excuse me we have a second reading on policy gci professional staff development opportunities um i'll make a motion to approve that for a second reading second um just to point out what's highlighted in yellow i think with the minor

195corrections the board asked for right yeah yep is everybody ready to vote on that one yes oh yeah that was an easy one um all in favor opposed abstain five zero zero and then we have a policy discussion on class sizes yep so the ihb so the board's asked to take a look at this in the fall prior to budget season and after uh we got school open with our classes set so just bringing forward ihb for discussion purposes um notice there's kind of two elements to it so the first is the class size policy that the board is set you've got the number that you strive for in each uh each grade level or class um 18 20 23 25 and 25 are the numbers and basically the the question that has come up

196is the way that operationalizes when you get onto page two um and so i h b r which i my understanding is it had its origin in the budget committee so the budget committee took what the school board had indicated the class sizes were to be and they then put it into operation with okay if you have this many students here's how many class rooms you need in order to educate them um concern has been raised so we'll just look at the kindergarten one you'll notice that you're striving for 18 per class 18 times 4 is 72 however you don't actually add a teacher until you hit 75 or until you hit 76 kids because um 75 which is greater than 72 means that you have three of the four classes that have one student

197over the guideline and then you you trigger once you get that extra kid that makes every class overpopulated that's when you trigger a number and the same thing applies for grades the next section is grades one two three then there's a section on grades four and five we don't go beyond that um mainly because it's it's a different way of adding classes up at the upper grades right so i just wanted to bring it back forward to the board um at this point that is part of we've incorporated it into the policy because it didn't make sense to have a separate sheet of paper that we went to to figure out what that meant so we have it all as one but um i know the board is interested in thinking their way through are

198the are the trigger numbers right um keeping in mind that you have a policy that doesn't have a firm number it's a striving for a number and so what's the right way to put that into operation when the kindergarten number really ends up being 3 19s you know you you you hit 19 with all of them before you do anything so um you say the number is 18 but you have to have 19 and some possibly so i think i explained all that yeah i think that's why the word strive for number is part of the definition does it make sense to have a minimum number per class so that if you know like oh like it's i think you know what i mean like adding another class right gonna be is going to make

199it 14 kids per class but adding you know if we don't add a fifth class it's 22 kids yeah does that make sense sure would simplify this but where is the number the least amount of like i think having 16 kids anything's ideal anything less than 20 but 16 in the third grade class is i know at one point we had 16 kids in the third grade class and 22 in first grade are we discussing this policy right now is no i'm sorry let's go not just be here for hours all right let's start a discussion it is it is discussion we're discussing we're now late now already so so you would rather not discuss this at this time no because i think this is going to take some time to discuss that's just my

200opinion it's fair enough i think it's right i think could we devote a good chunk of our next meeting to it and not put any other policies or try and limit the other business name there i'm okay with postponing it yeah um i'd also love to have the admins weigh in yeah you know it from each school but particularly gms is where we're really focusing but to have dan you know mr mitchell weigh in and say dan is weighed in he thinks 18 is a firm number he thinks the minute you have 73 right so 18 times four you get it's 72 you get 73 that's when you trigger it because he his feeling is in kindergarten the smaller the class size the better in terms of getting the students acclimated and so forth could

201you get a sense from him on grades one through four as well he's going to say a low number because that's what any good administrator he'd say 16. he he he's going to view each number on this page as the absolute and the minute one class succeeds it his recommendation would be that you you reconfigure the um the second page so that it you know right here says 272 and that keeps your average at 18 not 18.8 right and then it would be 73 too and just a little more food for thought when we were talking kyle as far as the new school remodel whatever he brought the state standard and when you build and when you do class size it's based on is it was it starting in grade one i can't remember it

202said grade one but you billed to 25. although he also said that most schools don't most schools right don't go 25 but that's the states i'm just saying that's the state number that they utilize for for square footage you would say he had a number so many square feet per kid you do it for 25 that decides the size of the classroom however he said most schools do not put 25 in that space so you know another if if the board wants to direct us we can come up with a draft policy that operationalizes what dan has said right just so you can see it i will vote against it yeah me too actually so but we could bring it forward so that you can see it oh absolutely there is a minimum number in

203here because if you look at it it says from 15.2 to 18.8 yep because if you add a teacher early it goes down to 15 students in a class which is you had 73 for you know starting where 76 is starting five classes you're talking about 14 kids class but we can put that i mean it's easy to take this chart and change those numbers around based on right yeah so why don't we present to the board two extremes you have what's here now which i think some see as one end of the extreme will operationalize it around the actual numbers so that will create the other side of it and then we can have a discussion next time can you also start with number of classrooms being three because for example grade five we're

204under the 96. think it was like 80 something just start at a lower threshold do you know what i'm saying yeah that's a good point i i think when all this got created the assumption was four is always the yeah right the basement if you would um but we'll take them down one more because that could be our new reality exactly depending on where grade 5 is depending on where grade 5 is right if grade 5 stays at lms then it's a programmatic change grade 5 low grammar school grade sixes grammar school i agree but right now they're at the middle school and that's how they operate yeah right it would differ if it was at gms what do you mean it would differ because well the number is still the number right but you

205would have self-contained classrooms so you could have three fifth grades because it would be a self-contained classroom where at lms right now they rotate per content area so they need four teachers right no matter how many i say yeah yeah right yeah yeah i think ideally everybody in this room would like to see 16 kids per class in every grade level but it's unrealistic that's not necessarily true i don't i disagree with that i wouldn't but if we set the trigger numbers at not the trigger numbers if we hire a teacher at the trigger before the trigger number we will get out to 16 in some classes because that's what happened in third grade a couple years ago so i'll be honest i'm kind of in the middle of this i hear where dan's coming

206from and i i i don't think it should be all four classes have to hit it before but i also not sure one should be the reason one class being it right so maybe the answer is it's somewhere in the middle for me but i will go for that um you know if you have two classes that are going to be over then at least you have some buffer right i don't know i'm just kind of giving a leaning of where i am but i would love to have an actual policy in front of me so we could have that discussion and really kind of give it the thought brian's getting tired so we'll move on to the next discussion all right how are we doing mike uh so let's walk us through it um

207so let me show you the current situation and i i'm hoping this spreadsheet the way we're sharing it is making sense to people um i'm going to start actually on this page which is the summary sheet right so we updated it um last thursday so see i'm trying to think i think you saw basically what our intent was with it right but now this is out there and available to parents so um as of last week in hillsborough county the rate of transmission is at 332.9 new cases per hundred thousand people and then when you bring it into litchfield you know so how is litchfield doing compared to the rest of the county and remember the rest of the county excludes manchester and nashua so it's the rural sections of the county if you would

208not the two cities um the litchfield rate is actually 356. so it's a little bit higher than the county-wide rate i know people have asked us to pay attention to local numbers so that's why we're tracking them in both cases the community spread in the county and in the town is substantial okay the school impact at griffin and the high school has been low but at the middle school it went up to medium so why is it only medium if there's an outbreak at lms so let's go let's go look at the definition it should be in my mind it should be substantial yeah right that's what we are going to discuss tonight but that was the directive no that's a separate question on the masking result uh you have to go to the the

209policy which i pulled up here right and so um the criteria is what is the level of community transmission so that gets you the substantial because it's too high but if you look at the level of school impact and let me blow that chart up so that everybody in the room can see a little bit better and the public at home can follow so notice that medium says one cluster in the school okay right um and it also says that student absenteeism due to illnesses between seven and fifteen percent so the middle school has been until today it dropped below seven percent but um it it went into seven percent plus eight or nine percent i think at some point um and the other thing is uh and and remember there's no you're sort of

210saying okay so where are we with transmission they have it labeled as a cluster three or four three or more individuals uh confirmed with covert 19 who are part of a related group of individuals for example in a classroom who had the potential to transmit infection to each other through close contact dhhs actually called it an outbreak because they determined that those three cases actually probably transmitted in the classroom in the school setting so that's why i thought it would be aha right they changed the definition between a cluster and an outbreak yes yep because high is two or more unrelated clusters right and so when when they termed it an outbreak under their new definition that sort of left us you know saying okay so what is it i still look at it as

211one cluster it was three or more cases that occurred in the eighth grade but there were two additional ones yeah there were but they they've not been determined by the state to be related so uh it this is relating like it's most likely that student a got it from student b got it from student c versus the others are there are additional cases because there were seven total number right but i looked at the new definitions and it seemed like i mean here it's just one cluster or multiple the new definitions where it says hi it seems like they can def they define it a couple different ways like ten percent of a particular group so i feel like we yes i feel like we need to bring that wording into this chart where where

212are you finding that wording in the toolkit where they define the um cluster as far as i was concerned they were both the same because then they say a cluster or 10 percent yeah well first of all you're gonna of a group but is give me like two and a half two kids yeah right and a class of 20. so hang on one second if i go to i think i found it under under the school child care tool toolkit okay so i'm opening that now yeah i saved that one and it was just something every time they update something you get an advisory you get a like a ta from this and they so they're saying cases within the facility sporadic cases without evidence of facility transmission they're saying single cluster or multiple clusters

213or a larger outbreak so define larger outbreaks right do they no i don't think so hold on i mean to me you have an outbreak seven kids out of three hundred and something she says if the cluster outbreak is small and confined the facility should work with public health to investigate and control any cluster or outbreak so to the to the point about the chart um based on what we adopted remember this is our version of it we had said that if we were looking at substantial community spread which we are county-wide or town wide and we're looking at medium impact we had targeted masking as the requirement now targeted we defined as required in grades pk to six because they don't have access to a vaccine public areas of lms and suggested in all

214other settings our feeling when we saw outbreak in grade eight we went to required masking because i was like how long do you wait do you wait for a larger outbreak do you wait for this to get worse you know i wonder when i look at the numbers you know the outbreak occurred in grade eight it was an unmasked grade could that have been prevented could it's a question we don't know but i felt the need weren't they all reported over the weekend so when they come back they might not need to wear masks anymore when those three kids well for right now we went to target and masking because we were trying to prevent it from getting worse and we continue to monitor the numbers same thing i think you know this was the

215printed out this is the box that we all we're like what do you want it to be yellow or red yellow or red um we if we so technically i didn't follow what this says because we said put the mass on everybody let's prevent this from getting worse it felt like the thing to do i think delta has been a little bit of a game changer in terms of the way this thing spreads my recommendation is that we should consider turning this into red and make it mass required because the goal is to prevent it from becoming worse so before we engage in too much talk about that um notice that here i have it labeled as read required we're going to write something in here tomorrow after we pull all the numbers and decide

216where we are and we're going to use that grid um we didn't follow it yes did an overreach on it but i think it was the right overreach but i think the definition changed in the time that we create we agreed to yellow versus yeah i think things changed a little bit on they did i still feel like the current situation that we're in i agree with the masking situation but i i think we're in the high level and i think it's just a result of the definitions that have to be updated where at the middle school what if we changed that definition under two or more unrelated clusters or an outbreak to be high or i don't know if you want to put it on you know i don't know how you feel about

217that but then that way if there is an outbreak that triggers required masking ah i get too many tabs um i've been telling you that for a week so one of the things i thought of was you know targeted yeah like we we limited this to access to the vaccine versus or when appropriate to prevent the spread you know so if we we could get at it one of two ways you just go with that has to be required change that dot to red or that square to red or allow us the flexibility when we see a problem through targeted masking to address it so you know our intent is not to require we want kids to not have math as much as we can but in this one with the eighth grade we felt

218no other choice but to make that call i agree with that so because it's an outbreak seventh grade has to wear masks there's an outbreak in the eighth grade seventh grade houseware apparently yeah our our feeling was we just don't know how this thing is gonna go with siblings we don't know how it's gonna go in the building um of them share classrooms too but if they're vaccinated they just go back they can come back if they get if they're vaccinated they don't need to quarantine if they do get coveted oh yeah hold on okay we'll go back not exactly i'm gonna go through the algorithm hold on that one for a second so just picture that they're all healthy kids except for a couple who are positive and our goal is to stop others

219from getting it and the feeling is that the mask is the easy request to mask up um you know we'll take outside mass breaks and all the other stuff but you know so again you could just say targeted you can put a definition here that strengthens it or it's targeting the whole school it's not targeted at the day because it's already required fifth and sixth so they're still required but there are no cases in seventh grade but i so i would define targeted as k to sex and you know classrooms or cohorts as as being necessary cohorts or grades yeah but there are no cases in the center let me let me give you this for a second go to griffin's numbers zero cases the kids have been wearing masks from day one right and

220there are zero cases we have sent home look at here quarantining students who have gone home have had tests and they've all come back negative so far we've yet to have a positive case there right and we're messed we then come over to and our attendance rates are you know kind of normal a little high yesterday but it's backed down again yesterday sorry something was going on yesterday there were lots of absences so then we come to let me let me shift up to chs nothing too alarming you do see the number of positives i mean we now have a positive staff we've got have been cases from the beginning with students but relatively limited no mass there it has not resulted in an outbreak but notice too that the absence rate has spiked over

221the last couple of days so we went from threes fours twos percent and then we're up to six percent six percent and five point five nine so we're we're approaching seven percent we're approaching not low but medium here then if we look at lms you know it all began on the seventh with three students those are the related students and then four five five seven seven down to six and notice that two students came off positive quarantine today however one went back on so we only had a loss of one because of that and this is when dhhs said that's an outbreak and i argued with them they said where are you getting your definition because that's not the definition yesterday it's actually it's it's in the it's in the toolkit but i didn't think

222they were going to change definitions they've been using for a year but they did so um so right now we're back to overall a low because we're below seven percent the six kids who have it the clust i'm sorry the outbreak was up here and that's now getting resolved because of 10 days so that's kind of the walkthrough of what those numbers are i still think we're not in a medium right now where right where it says it was an outbreak right it hasn't been 10 days we haven't been well we've been in no but she's saying it it's yellow medium yellow it should have should have been high red yeah yeah which reflects the action that was taken correct right so but but look at what high is for a minute two or more

223unrelated clusters which i mean that's where i might consider adding the word to say or an outbreak wait a minute this is this is our chart right okay so we get to yes we get to modify this so you could say two or more unrelated clusters or an outbreak which means it's transmission within the school facility so that can put you in high yep um but if we only had one here and then our attendance was 7 to 15 and our level of impact is relatively normal highest of whatever criteria it was how do you mean if your attendance is medium but your first line is high you're in high yeah yeah i agree with that it doesn't need to tick all three boxes yeah so if you're saying that whatever of the three it's

224whatever's highest we might be pardon me we might be in high for a while um because right now i would say our staff capacity is normal we yeah we have some people out but nothing needs to be more than one check mark and so the problem is you're you're doing that diagonal one high one medium and one low i would say that's medium still i don't think we defined it like that last year this is another year i know new definitions vaccinations well we definitely need to change that language yeah right to say two or more clusters or an outbreak right is everybody happy with that language change because that fits that follows the new definition that dhs just put as time goes on and i think right now our guidelines are but i think

225we should i i support changing the box on our little colorful box chart to red to reflect what we what we did with at lms when we had but we've only checked i don't because i think we were really insubstantial at that point in time how do you you know we're not as high you mean high impact sorry high yeah oh i think that's but we're not anymore you think we're in medium mike uh overall staff are normal right so again they're the vaccinated ones um and so we're doing okay staffing the attendance rate is clean that's that's number of students divided by who's absent or who's absolute divided by the number that's seven percent it's barely into that moderate so when do the kids take their mass off according to this chart never if

226we have to check only one box when the attendance rate drops back down to what under seven percent you said it was at five today didn't you at gms oh no at lms uh i'm sorry lms is 6.42 but we we didn't take the action because we're also you know one day is not right i mean i'm looking for a trend remember you're trying to prevent it you're looking for a trend you want to take a sudden she said we were going to look at it today oh yeah we i said let me go to the board and see if we get first of all did we overreach with the masks is there language that clarifies this that helps us all along the way and then we have our covered meeting tomorrow and we'll be

227able to look at does this number go back up to 7.1 i just don't know so we're kind of involved but yeah so i understand i understand where tar is coming from and i understand where you think it's a medium um i don't think right now we need mass you don't no no not according to these numbers we neither are not according to the chart that we've established as far as what we're going to follow do not announce it in the middle of the day just saying well you're saying maths for this seven and eight seven and eight seven and eight seven and eight five and six are required right when i say lms i'm referring to yeah so maybe my question is do you think requiring mass was a mistake when we saw that

228not in eighth grade no no i think it's like one of those things let's be safe and then look at the numbers okay and we've looked at the numbers now and i think the numbers if they hold to this like tomorrow then i think that mask off we knew this roller coaster ride was coming no doubt about it i just i i feel like we did something that made sense but our charts didn't exactly say to do it and that's again i think that's the flexibility we talked about that you had and the committee had that you know there's no harm in like okay you do it it's being reactive rather than reactive i think it's the best thing to do in these situations but then continue looking at and i think mata is pretty

229clear okay we're going to look at in a week but i still don't understand why seventh grade has to wear maths and mingles with eighth grade all the time yeah are they yeah i didn't think they passed at the same time they're in the band together they're in uh you know i don't know it's just sorry they're on sports teams together it's like but yeah i thought someone said they were worried about siblings if that if we're using that then everyone should be masked because there are seventh graders that have kids in the high school they're eighth graders that have second graders i'm struggling with it right now i understand what tara is saying and that with it being an outbreak i don't to be clear i don't think it was a mistake to mask

230i absolutely think you made the right call and i think if the same thing were to happen again i would want you to make that same call and so whatever authority we need to give you i think we already have an outbreak yeah the discussion he's got that flexibility well if it makes everybody feel better if i mean the definition of targeted we made up so if we just add in or when an outbreak or other situation arises that administration feels mass could help prevent a bad situation from getting worse i mean these words are behind the charts and everything else so i don't really think we have to stop adding more verbage and make it more confusing except that it varies right now it's very specific to pre-k to six to one and in

231public at ellen i think so i i'll also say right now the eighth grade parents i think they understood they saw the numbers right so they understood why we did this but if we had a parent who was a rule follower a letter of the law person who comes to us and says that's not what it says my kid's not wearing a mask um yeah that's where i would be hanging out there a little bit and so i just see that some verbiage that lets me say look here's why we're doing it and we do have the okay of the board to do it i think the simplest thing is to say an outbreak the only reason i say outbreak and it's defined and that give that gives you the coverage you need to say

232i'm following and that's just adding two words rather than making it i mean at the discretion of if you consider it so take away the whole eighth grade piece of it if it's say it was 11th grade you know then that would we would have to do targeted masking at chs it would be it would fall into under the targeted category right if we had an outbreak at the high school and everybody would have targeted well if you if you had if you had an outbreak in a particular classroom and you could somehow say here here's the population we're going to target at the high school because that's where it occurred or let's say the outbreak actually occurred at the auburn cte and we just say everybody goes to cte needs to mask up at

233the high school because you were where the outbreak was you're the ones who were worried about the exposure on i still find it highly ironic that all of last year we couldn't we we couldn't not that we couldn't but we there were so few cases that were identified as being from the school and now their definition it seems like they're going it's be i think i think titanic said it earlier it's because it's delta it's delta you know i know it's more i know it spreads more but still it could have had it could still happen yeah absolute sports game or whatever because it's because i think they're attributed i think their attribution model has changed yeah i don't i've never thought of sportsbooks i've never thought that where you got it mattered i mean

234for me the point is you're sitting at three feet away from a whole bunch of people in a classroom you can transmit it to half those kids in a half an hour you know it's just whereas like you said earlier with with the alpha strain that we had last year it was you know i'm sitting within within three feet of people i might infect two or three now that number is eight to ten but people are out there someone's i could be sitting next to you at the sports plex in little mikey's right here people are out and about they're opening broadway it's coming from everywhere now right but that's not the issue i don't i mean the issue is we're trying to reduce transmission at school by encouraging people and having people wear masks

235when dated when it's appropriate as outlined under this chart right this versus the fruit fly what's going on i think that's why it makes sense to say school impact so it's where you've got it it's how it impresses bear with me i'm going to come to that but so heidi where do you see you want to add it into this high that's where i think it would be because then it that would have triggered a required and which is exactly what you did i think two or more unrelated clusters and i i think we need to be clear yeah in the school but we didn't have two or more unrelated clusters but we had an outbreak okay so that's why we triggered that's why the admin team and what's an outbreak in comparison to a

236cluster three the class is three of a cohort or a close grouping of students it's also if they determined that the likely transmission was in the school so here's what i assume three kids have it that's a cluster but then they talk to all the kids and they're like oh you know the only the only possible exposure would have been these other two the only common denominator yeah so that's where the state comes back and they say based on our interviews with families we've determined that is an outbreak spread was likely in your school setting to answer tara's question last year we were masked kind of universally this year we're not so and i think if we have an outbreak and we stop there and start putting mask on and stop the outbreak right that's

237the main objective right right right right and so that's where now you've got me in high here which is helpful i still have one high one medium and one low and so if you're saying if the rule is error on the side of higher um that's why i said air on the side higher for this but then don't change the other box right so it stays the other box as it is but if any of these are red or any of these i'm sorry are high and then you target then you target so i mean the what what and all that other stuff what you're telling me is treat lms as high because of that outbreak which means you're at required masking correct until the outbreak is resolved hopefully by then you've contained it which

238is what's happened it seems like and then so starting tomorrow presumably and or or whenever the admin team decides maybe starting next week whatever day it is masks will not be required for seventh and eighth grade going forward i think you get to the point and it could be tomorrow that you're no longer in high then that's when you don't require masks i just think parents want definition we had an outbreak there was a temper you said it in an email or text that that made me explain it not only is there an outbreak we have eight percent or nine percent i think we're trying to do that list but at the same time i think there's so many different variables i can't even figure out targeting that's what i'm saying i understand what parents

239want but recommend what we're trying to communicate to them mike can you go back to make you just want to be a mess using this music video three times like what is the difference well how is cluster different than outbreak asterisks but they didn't make it i'm still not sure what the difference is to be honest yeah i'll go to that if you want i'll give you it'll change tomorrow i think if we're looking for a definition and you're saying you want the ten percent we say what a cluster is defined as we can say an outbreak is defined as this underneath the chart right there so put a different type of asterisk yeah yeah right underneath and say an outbreak is defined currently because who knows what it's going to be tomorrow but currently

240defined as i think they redefine it going into the school year but i doubt they're going to change it yeah right and then that cluster definition needs to be updated yeah and that's not our wording that's that's the previous definition if i may i gotta go back to oh god where is that tool kit this one here so for anybody following along at home page 13. still awake page is definitions of key terms so what i emailed the board you know there's close contact what does that mean and then down here you have a cluster and an outbreak and they call it child care setting that includes school did you put that on the facebook page without comments if people ask what i think so i don't even know that we need to define it

241in ours we can just say as defined in this well you can have a link already in our real plan right actually see page 13 of the toolkit yeah and then you can even link it yeah because there's a cluster you're right now we're all right so i think you've given me what i need i will and by the way i appreciate the confidence that we made the right call because i i was like oh i feel like we're going out there but you know what we have to just yeah like to pull it so just add are you going i'm deleting my comments i'm deleting your comments um i will you were going to add some well i would like you to add something underneath the color chart so that targeted means um and

242as neces you know deemed necessary by the admin team do we need to vote on this or are we all done fixing it once it's all yeah which is the last thing i need [Music] so i'm just gonna put here um and i'll put a link before that in the da da [Music] and then at the underneath the color chart do you want to add something about targeted means k to six it's always at lms and underneath [Music] so it says targeted means mass are required in grades pk to six and in public areas of lms such as hallways etc um masters suggested in all other settings as a pro but it's not required under that it's not required if there's an outbreak like an eighth grade again so well it is now because because

243it's high we would determine it to be high based on this so you actually have lms um high substantial so you're you're in that red box in the corner but it does say required in all students and staff pk to 12 so what we're actually saying is it's okay to target grades so i don't know if we need to change that language uh so i could add it after requires like three different schools we're just making it so complicated for ourselves no i know i'm just saying it says required means it's required pk to 12. i don't want a parent to say right there's an outbreak eighth grade an element so chs should wear masks right we definitely defined it previously as the decisions would be made on a school by school basis but i

244don't think on a class or grade basis so yeah yeah and i think that clarifies it again that clarifies my question too about the seventh grade [Music] you didn't want them to felt left we didn't want them to feel left out oh okay but those are the words i'll make i'll get the formatting effects just make the um the font a little bit smaller yeah but that's what you wanted to say and i think that gives us the clarity we need so mitigate not prevent we can't guarantee it mitigate [Music] any other questions or comments do you want to re-vote on it all right any promotion to approve the december 15th version of uh what is it called plan second any more questions or can or no okay all in favor say aye aye aye

245opposed five obscene four one zero stay in the course thank you for all of that um we'll until next week all right so that's our current situation update reopening guidance masking chart oh we hit it all yeah if you have anything else for me let me know otherwise yeah i do because i know it's come up um and that is mask requirement when we do require when we hit high low green red whatever yeah rainbows up there sorry they mean defensive like a rainbow but um as far as requirement for a mask we have a student comes in say in eighth grade right now and does not want to wear a mask what are we gonna do so does not want to or has like um will not will not so i guess i mean

246we're going to deal with that as we would with any other refusal to follow school rule um you know if there if it turns out that there's more as a story a medical reason i'm saying just in non-medical just a belief so we'll go through all of that to try to accommodate the best that we can given the situation and if it's literally a i just will not do it uh we're gonna have to deal with that as a unwilling to follow a school rule and there'll be a response to that i mean mass are provided free of charge by us we have an ample supply of masks but frankly if somebody's just refusing to cooperate it's not unlike any other refusal to you know follow the dress code or some other just flat out

247refusal we'll have to then again if they refuse will that soon be sent home they would have to be sent home if it if it rises that brian i would like to think that uh given the situation with the pandemic there'd be an understanding that we're doing what we're what we are um what we feel is the appropriate thing to do for clarification i mean it's no different than the other policies if a student does not want to follow that policy i really agree refuses to then that child would be sent home let's hope it doesn't come to that i just know that you know there are other districts states towns that you know do have different issues as far as masking and requirements so excellent all right any questions on the manifest we need

248to talk about quarantine he didn't oh sorry i didn't know can i um can so it's a separate thing but let me go back to you don't have to i no i do you reacted this week because i was so concerned that there were 12 kids out that i thought we had a much bigger problem than we had so let me just walk through so this algorithm is available to parents um you know and basically here's the biggest thing is so does somebody have close household contact with a person confirmed with coca-19 so that's what we've encountered right household contact means that a sibling in the household means that you have a sleepover and now there's a bunch of kids who stay in the household so they may not be household members but they all

249are in the household um and so really the the biggest thing is you determine that that has occurred and the very first question is are the people fully vaccinated and if they are fully vaccinated there's no action required they're advised to wear a mask to help protect others they're advised to have a posit or have a negative covet test or a kova test three to five days after that exposure but they're not required to do that so the assumption is that because they're fully vaccinated you know the breakthrough cases are a tiny fraction of a they don't have to miss any school they don't have to miss any school if they're fully vaccinated all right what we've encountered are a significant number of students who are not vaccinated in that situation okay in which case

250the very next thing is they have to quarantine and get tested and the quarantine is 10 to 20 days depending on the scenario so um what we've run up against and i just want to be clear that the 10 days is because that's when the incubation is occurring and the transmission could occur right um so the assumption is that they're in the household together quarantining and therefore when the person is now outside their 10-day positivity they're no longer contagious that begins another 10-day period for the other people and they they now have to wait to see if in 10 days to make sure that they don't come down with it that's how you get a 20-day warranty 20-day quarantine when we're not offering remote on the same you know blended synchronous remote like last year

251that's a long time to be out of school all of it could be prevented with a vaccine by the way just to state that um however what we're having is there are families who are saying that yes we have this exposure but we've now isolated the other household members the sibling the parent whatever so you know they've gone to live in the in-law apartment above the garage and no longer have contact or they have their own private bedroom and their own private bathroom and they're isolated away from everybody else so because of that um dhhs is ruling that that isolation means that the 10-day window is all that applies and an additional 20 or additional 10 is not necessary we're our nurses are very uncomfortable with that because they don't quite understand why dhhs is

252being so vague about that um and what's the guarantee that there's absolutely no additional contact in the house and especially with delta being so contagious um do we have enough backing and understanding of it to really make that ruling so after 10 days we require a test to come back or not or can we not do that we could we we can set a rule what can right if the concern is we're not programmed i mean the concern is okay we're taking them on their word that that's exactly what the situation is but after that 10 days you know do we say you get a test come back so i i propose that i said what if on day 10 we we asked for two things the parents to write to us and explain how

253they know isolation has occurred so we have a written statement from the household you know the sibling did this uh here's how we know that they that 10 days is all that was necessary so you have the written statement and then the second thing is a negative test um does that land us in a better spot i don't understand how we can pick and choose what we listen to from dhs g h do you know what i mean like we decided this is the law we're going to quarantine for this but we're not really sure on this one so we're going to make it harsh do you know what i'm saying no yes that dhs d whatever that is they say one thing we're following that as the rule that this is an outbreak but

254now they're saying we can let kids back after 10 days and then we're not going to let them no no it sounds like they have to stay up for 20 days no we're just strengthening what they're saying that's all we're following what they're saying 10 days yeah but we're just adding a component to it another 10 days no no we're adding a test they could come back after they've had a negative cova test i thought you said we could do that are we doing that we we i mean these are all the new scenarios that we're encountering so um but i think for the safety of the rest of the school i think we should require them to test oh absolutely but i want we can't just decide that we want to do this and

255not do that if we this is our first big test of what we're doing like what is happening to the siblings of the infected people are they coming back students um depends on their vaccination status so in the first case dhhs wrote to us and said the sibling is out of quarantine on this date oh it was 10 days because the family advocated with dhhs that there was complete isolation in the house so they're taking care of that that's not another burden we're putting on our school nurses but our nurses questioned if we should be following that because they said that they were concerned that we had somebody coming in who could potentially spread because it went against the original dhhs and so it's a new year well and the other thing was there's a

256there's just a question like okay so the dhhs go and inspect the ventilation in the household how do you know that the air from the bedroom is not mingling in with the rest of the air conditioning in the house and you know that in fact it's blowing the air from that isolation room around we're not talking a hospital setting where you can say oh yeah that's an isolation room we're talking a house and that's way beyond our scope of what we what we should be determining i mean we we're following dhhs guidance which is 10 days if you're vaccinated no nothing if you're vaccinated 10 days if you're not vaccinated or 20 days that isn't their recommendation 10 days from last exposure right and again they're they're determining based on what the family explains whether

257whether there was ongoing exposure or not so are you letting the child back in we in that case we did and the nurses the parents to advocate for themselves the nurses felt that that was a mistake they felt that we might have it's really hard when dhhs reverses their decision on right there and the child has to be mastered back i guess nope nope family refused to wear a mask although wait a second the child i think returned to required masking so but it wasn't yeah we just said that they need to wear it or they go home but it wasn't required masking because we had a child we were concerned about returning right that's really i mean it was because of the other situation i don't think we can pick and choose which policies

258they follow last year's or this year's because the nurses don't agree with it this year's policy is that it's 10 days from last exposure in a close household contact i mean that's this year's guidance where did the 10 days come from because they're saying they isolated in a separate room so you have two siblings that share a bedroom and there's no way to isolate the culvert then that's going to be a 20 day right if they are able to isolate based on what the family is okay so we're not making it mandatory 20 for everybody unless they can last year we did last year the assumption was they're all in the house together and it's a 20 day yeah right last year we also had blended synchronous available yeah this year we do not so

259we're looking to get them back quicker but safely the concern was that what the family reported initially differed once they understood the rules what was then reported differed right so that was like so what really is the story that's the question it could still be i could have a sniffle not get tested i could be spreading cover right now right it's all yeah i don't know i don't know for the copic test if we were to require that could we make it on a specific day because my concern would be is if they got the kova test day seven right it would need to be from day i don't know within 48 hours or something of day 10 or i don't know what that means a lot of the tests are it's a 45 minute

260test yeah they come back they come back so you could say on day 10. yeah you say today's the 10th day we'd like you to produce a negative coconut that would be more than fair as much as possible yeah right i also want more vaccinations but i know your fruit fly yeah if you look at the um i think it was on mur that the nurses association is upset with dhhs so you may see a you know they'll change the rule friday right the governor was on today and i don't know if if anything got announced relative to that but um but the nurses are the nurses are feeling that they're hanging out there that this is not as clear as it should be and that like everything else they put on especially if you

261can call and get an exemption you know right that's frustrating all right so what i'm hearing you say is we have to follow dhhs guidelines which is what we've been doing um if dhhs is saying the student is clear to return we could ask for the pos or the negative test to clear the way and that would just sort of make everybody we can do that i think that's because we require that if you have a sniffle right if you're if you're homesick with a headache or a sore throat you can't come back until you have a negative test right or seven days so yeah i think that's a reasonable i agree a reasonable accommodation and we're going back to brian's point yeah brian which point he's the one that's in a 10 days get

262a test and yeah come on back in yeah because i really want seats and kids in the seats at school we all do and that's why i mean the teachers do because they're having to yeah you know put together work to send home and trying to you know be in touch with students during the day i don't know how they're doing it but even if you're sick and could possibly spread anything so and we have one staff member quarantined at the high school according to the chart one positive in quarantine according to the chart correct um i don't know how to say this but that one case had some ramifications and it goes back to again the the vaccination question if you're vaccinated you're able to continue to come to work if you're not vaccinated

263you're now out for 20 days until you invoke this um rule uh about isolating in the house and then um getting a negative test so i did that when i was you'll get a positive and you are vaccinated one of the few breakthroughs i guess right are they can can they wear a mask and go back to school if they're vaccinated no no no no because they have any positive code right okay they have to wait until they've been without a fever for 24 hours yeah okay without pain without medication to make that happen they have to on their own just not have a fever and have symptoms get better so the interesting thing because i'm a vaccine geek about this um but the vaccine if you're vaccinated your studies have shown that you're only

264contagious for about three days at the beginning at the beginning of the onset but if you're unvaccinated you're contagious for up to 10 days so getting the vaccine even if you get a breakthrough case and you you do test positive your your ability to transmit the disease is a lot is is reduced a lot okay i'm done okay all right yep not making a judgment just stay tuned liz does that answer all your yes it does okay i would say more questions just submit them in writing when i saw 12 i was freaking out thinking that we had that many kids sick at school when i heard completely different things remember when we talked about things other than kobe no no i don't know heidi doesn't no i know right all right all right um

265with that i'll take a roll call vote to go into nonpublic i don't want all this what let me just look online see maybe oh right i'm sorry public input we have no public here unless oscar would like to say anything he's laughing over there sure he is very entertaining looking tired but i'm there [Laughter] we're all punchy now too um all right so no nobody in there let me just let you just me all right um now i'll take a roll call vote to go into non-public session rsa 91-8 311 a through c a the dismissal promotion or compensation of any public employee or the disciplining of such employees or the investigation of any charges against him unless the employee effective one has a right to a meeting and two requested the meeting be

266open in which case the request shall be granted b the hiring of any person as a public employee c matters which if discussed in public would likely affect adversely the reputation of any person other than a member of the body or agency itself unless such person requests an open meeting yes i have a yes from brian i believe i got a yes from liz i don't know but i'm a yes i'm a yes as well all right and that brings us to non-public session have a good evening yes thank you i got you