School Board 8/18/21

001thank you for joining us for the august 18th meeting of the litchfield school board i'll bring the call the meeting to order and we'll start with the pledge of allegiance [Applause] i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all the best i'm sure all right um review and revision of the agenda do we have any revisions i'd like to make a motion to move the covid19 discussion that is currently listed under old business to after correspondence and comment so before general business i think it's an important topic that a lot of people are waiting to hear from us on i also frankly don't think it's old business anymore the new school year i

002think it's new business this year um and i'd like to see it moved up so that we can have that conversation a second real second yeah all right any further discussion all right see none um all in favor of moving the covid plan to earlier in the meeting say i i closed passes five zero zero so that will be then after the correspondence and school board comments board comments okay perfect thank you thank you all right i have a summary of non-public actions from august 4th 2021 mrs mcdonald made a motion to approve the non-public minutes of july 14th 2021 mrs hershberger's second motion carried five zero zero mr burke made a motion to accept the nomination of robert moore as chs science teacher for a salary of seventy three thousand seven hundred fifty dollars

003for the 2021-22 school year mrs hershberger seconded the motion carried four zero zero mr burke made a motion to accept the nomination of annika vitense as lms science teacher for a salary of fifty three thousand no i'm sorry fifty thousand seven hundred fifty three dollars for the 20 21 22 school year mrs hershberger seconded the motion carry four zero zero mrs hershberger made a motion to release jodie callanan from her contract as chs guidance director mr burke seconded the motion carried four zero zero mrs hershberger made a motion to accept the resignation of jodie calanan as chs guidance director subject to hiring a suitable replacement mr burke seconded the motion carried five zero zero mr burke made a motion to release tom leclider from his contract as lms principal subject to coordination with the superintendent

004for the transition of a suitable replacement mrs mcdonald seconded the motion carried five zero zero um that brings us to presentations and recognitions presentations so you can see we we were doing a presentation but we've moved it back in the agenda in order to accommodate the presenters so we'll come back to presentations it is in the agenda later on okay that brings us to community input we are still supporting the google meet for community input from home um you can join that google meet at meet.google.com h a r hyphen j a n a hyphen h n k or by phone at plus one six six two five six five five one four six the pin to enter is nine one one nine nine two three five five pound is there anyone in present tonight that

005like to speak i just before we did i did log in there's nobody there i'm gonna log out just so i can say madam chair rather than have community input now it sounds probably a better option to have it after the presentation because i have a feeling that some of the community input is going to have to do with the reopening plan that we just moved up do we have a second community input lead session i'm saying just put the community input after the conversation of the reopening plan but we want the input before the decision is made is the way i look at it just i don't know but we may answer some of their questions before they ask them okay that's my point i don't really care maybe we can have it before

006or what if we move the second one to after the second one is after we just moved closer after no why not i want to so do you want to make a motion i'll leave it okay all right i just think we may end up being redundant that's all okay um does anyone hear what we just come up and speak you just need to come to the microphone and state your name and address it's a long walk we're in 43 brickyard drive the last um school board meeting i'd submitted a list of requests um i'm just here for feedback on that if there's been time for a appropriate review and discussion amongst the school board and whether or not any of those requests will be fulfilled um honestly i we have we haven't had a

007discussion we discussed it up briefly at our last meeting but i don't think we reached any consensus besides going back to the drawing board and bringing a new a new statement of um unity back and then having that discussion at that point i think the last two weeks have just been filled with hiring and resignations and plan opening plans and and things like that so i apologize for not getting to it as if we haven't had a meeting since as a board to discuss it but thank you it's still on the radar is there an expectation with the school year starting uh uh what is it one or two weeks now um i'm just looking to kind of button up whether or not any of the requests will be fulfilled by the beginning of this

008exactly um so i honestly there's so much there it's very long and detailed so picking it apart and then figuring out exactly how to respond to all the pieces is going to take a bit of time is there something in particular that is like pressing for the start of the year that you want to make sure you highlight it for us specifically elementary and below a lot of the topics that are identified such as the white privilege sort of topics lgbtq plus education topics so and so forth ensuring that there's some sort of policies in place to prevent those conversations from happening in those uh elementary and below environments got it um and so our intent is to train the staff right at the start using the um the guidance that came out from the

009department of justice and the doe that we've shared publicly so or it's been shared publicly so that guidance is going to be the um the backbone of what we're going to train our staff uh relative to it so you know those topics are not part of the curriculum they're not um nowhere does it say you know we teach the following so it's not something that we're adding and we'll be training staff on how to have the um the appropriate conversations in a way that will comply with hb2 to make sure that they know what those kind of guardrails are mike i have a question a follow-up question on that um is there a way that we can make sure that our teachers and staff are know about the you know the discussions that have happened

010over the summer and make sure that they're informed on where we kind of the input that we've received as a community sure yeah um mary and i just had this conversation as i was leaving high school today and um we're leaving it up to the three schools because it is a different conversation at the high school level than it is at the middle than it is at the elementary and so uh we're going to be working with our admin team to make sure that they're addressing it that they're having the dialoguing conversations so that teachers will know what those guard rails are and how to stick within them so we're going to do it at each each school and then we'll collect feedback from those conversations are there ongoing questions or things that you are

011not clear of that we can get clarified at a higher level if you would so but that will involve educating all of our staff about how things have unfolded over the summer you know a lot of staff are watching on tv they're aware of what's going on they um they either attended the community forum back in july or they watched it so they do have an awareness but not all due some people were away so it'll be our obligation to bring everybody up to speed thank you you're welcome i'm still uh looking forward to a full response but that's primarily the elementary and below is my concern as we get into the school year so yeah so uh elementary you mean elementary school right yeah okay i'll um has principal mitchell reached out to you

012directly on it no i'll we'll i'll work on having that happen too because i i think it's important that he is the leader of that school be the one to sort of drive that understood thank you thank you anyone else for public comments i mean do we just get up and just yeah you can just come right up and we just need your name and address okay leanne romano seven country lane um i uh obviously i came late i went to the high school so i apologize um have you decided if they're having masks in the school or is that still up in the air and do we get a vote so we will be presenting a reopening uh framework to the board tonight the board will be the ones to vote on that and

013who's the board the school board members are not everybody raise your hand if you're a board member those five people are the ones who will vote on it um and then uh and basically it's endorsing or telling us that we're off base on the reopening framework um you know we're not going to be having uh daily votes about what to do today we're going to have a framework that will provide guidance that we can make the right decisions you have some criteria that you're working with correct um do can you tell me what that is yup so the uh so the state of new hampshire after they got cdc guidance they published a document called the school toolkit for reopening schools and and who made that school to kit that was published by the department

014of public health through the department of health and human services so dhhs is how we often refer to them or dps department of public services public health services um and that document got released on august 11th so less than a week ago is when we received that does it differ from what sununu said no masks no mandates you know a lot if it differs because what what the governor is saying is he's not going to issue an executive order relative to masks but it does have universal masking guidelines when conditions call for universal masking so we could potentially start without masks until something arises right there are metrics outlined in that document and that will be if we adopt that plan that we'll be using the metrics um that's later on in the agenda though

015right yeah we'll be going over that right after correspondence so i'm jumping the gun here a little bit okay you know what you know what you're not jumping the gun on what just tell us your opinion because this is your i can tell you my opinion yeah do it i feel as though masks or the masks that we're using in school or whatever um are not doing the job um my daughter played every single sport and through the summer played sports no masks no covid no illness we had coveted in our households we all recovered in seven days i have friends that have taken ivermectin and have actually recovered in three days my mother who's a nightmare like a wreck with her health and my sister who had brain surgery and my brother-in-law all a

016mess recovered in five days on rem deserve so there are remedies my fear is that once we go with the masks then we go with the mandated vaccines because everyone's pushing for all the kids getting these shots they're not vaccines they are emergency medical treatments deemed as potential vaccines vaccines work this isn't exactly working 100 so i'm not putting my kid through that position and i don't want to take her out of school i live a softball throw from my backyard to your school campbell she's going to campbell so i really really stress and really stress we did the masks she wore the masks for every sport she did her part we all are doing our part i don't want to go against whatever you guys decide but i want to fight it i really

017do she did a great job but you know it's it's not easy to go six hours and then two more hours of practice or tryouts or whatever she has asthma she did a really good job not suffocating but i'd prefer to not have it and there are options people can do vaccines so they're supposed to be safe right if they're not safe it isn't working my opinion my opinion not medical but i have a lot of friends that are medical i get a lot of emails about what is this scientific this this i know i'm not a doctor but are any of you no no not that kind so i think my opinion matters just as much as the boards and i say no that's my opinion sorry if i'm being aggressive but i know

018these half were all going down so and i don't like any i think it should be choice thank you and i will make a good choice if my daughter is not healthy she's staying home if she's sneezing or coughing she's staying home and if there's someone in the classroom that might be sneezing and coughing you know i'll be like look we have the mask stay away okay but i don't want to put anybody at risk i love the teachers i absolutely love the teachers and i do not want to see their health decline or be at risk they have the option third vaccines i don't want my kids have to deal with that she's healthy and i've heard so many horror stories about what has happened with thank you anyone else yes [Music] i'm helen

019rondon eight robbers roll this phil um this is going to be my first year that i'm i'll be in the litchfield school district my oldest was two years at middle school they went to san francis and i had to pull them out from where they were because it was just getting way too out of control i've heard so so many good things about the lichfield school district i'm a little sad that i should have done it before and um but now i'm happy that i'm here i'm very concerned about the mask i don't want the kids to be masked if you guys vote for the mask can we compromise like in when they're sitting at their desk can we take the mask out can we compromise i'm just i'm begging because the kids they're sitting

020at this listen to the teacher as you can tell i have an accent i learn my english and when i talk to people when they talk to me first thing i look is their lips i need to see your lips to understand clearly any kids that you're either visual or auditive it's either way i believe that the teachers should not wear a mask because he's standing in the front he's has his distance i think it would be helpful for some kids that struggle even now i'm pretty good with my english but i go places that i'm like what what i i can't because i'm so used to read on people's lip and if when they walk in the hallway in the bus maybe they can wear the mask but if we can start with no

021mask that would be the ideal i would love that but i'm ready to somehow compromise if i mean i don't think the mask works because the virus is sub microscopic you need a special microscope to see it and if someone parts and you have a mask and you can smell it the math doesn't work that's my philosophy that's how i see it but you should teach others but i mean i'm trying to bring some positive and like trying to be funny but it's just like i've heard good thing about litchfield i'm actually excited and just just one point of clarity the um so the bus questions so that's settled because that's federal law so any passenger on a public transportation has to be masked by federal law so you know we'll be enforcing those rules

022because that's what we have to comply with um and just to be clear that yeah that's something that's interesting it's fine because by the time they leave home by the time they get to school they can take it out um but once they're sitting in their desk but again when i sit the mask i don't think it's a good thing the kid put his mac on the desk then the masks fall on the ground they take the kids take this master what do we have after that other than the cobit it's all the germ and now we wonder why the kids are sick it just i don't think it's the purpose of it but if some specific area we can like okay the bus we need the mask no question asked that's it that's all

023i think we can all work with that input [Music] pete stone 15 car load drive i'll be brief i am the same boat as folks behind me i don't believe masks are the answer for our children i think we're creating psychological problems down the road for our kids not being able to see other people speak and and interact socially i think um last year i think although we did a good job because we had no choice i think we're we've passed that hump at this point and we need our children to be able to socialize and and build build bonds that they don't normally do especially in the day and age of electronics when they're on their phones and their games all the time you know school is one of those spots where you know

024social aspects are huge and that's a huge part of their educational experience you know so assigned tables at the cafeteria during lunch and masks and thing i mean come on guys think back to when you were kids none of you would have liked that you know i mean i get it if if we have a you know a flurry of new new cases in litchfield or in new hampshire then we we can make another choice but i think as a rule we need to mix the masks [Music] thank you hello everyone my name is kevin o'bill i live in uh sixth nathan drive sorry what was your last name noviello nov ielo um so i just have some questions i want to know about the program and so forth we were talking back fourth email

025mike a while back in uh my my first thing is what was the percentage last year of the infections in our school do you have any idea on that um we had that stat and the student rates were in line with the state average and but more details would be great what's the details just because i want to get i want to get an understanding of what we were yeah uh just because obviously we're a small town compared to big time and i know the difference is between bigger population smaller population just curious it may take me a while to pull that i didn't i didn't bring that data with me tonight i will tell you that our staff were infected at roughly twice the rate right because so the adults were more infected than

026the kids were would you agree with that it's twice the adult rate so um i think it's because we're in-person services with um you know in the schools but the rate was higher for the adults not the kids though right right okay that's that's that's because obviously it's the biggest reason why i'm not here you know and i totally get it with the adults and i know we did everything we could as litchfield we all pulled together and so forth but we also have to understand what psychological emotionally what happens to these kids i deal with kids all the time in over the past five six months the social and emotional experience these children have had i mean what's the biggest fear for a child does anybody know what that is it's public speaking that's

027the biggest fear right communication being able to talk with someone to be able to understand what's going on with them what's that i've been amazed at how kids actually can public speak in our school system because i was one of those growing up but anyway but they're just really impressed me right but still that's still that's still a big thing right and then obviously what deters them from doing that yeah i don't have the percent so okay like that's how many cases we had in this school does it do the percents underneath it oh i'm sorry 5.55 for students positives and 19.5 percent for staff possible staff so staff was and it was running at about a so our staff our students were about half and our adults were about double yeah and obviously was

028some of those two also remote too was included in that well it was all the students yeah so so if they were remote or in person it was all included in that right yeah and the reason why i say that is because i think it's very important especially you know kids that are three four five six years old they're trying to learn their verbalization they're trying to learn their communication and their skills get diminished and i mean i also ask this too is that who's the who's the children see all day pretty much during school a teacher right so the teacher is like that parent which i commend them all because it's not an easy job especially dealing with kids all of all different challenges but for them that child looks at that parent that

029teacher as a parent so when they're trying to get interaction remorse confidence uh acknowledgement because obviously you know i own a business i deal with children and the first thing when the child does something really good what's the first thing they do smile they look to see the parents acknowledging them and smiling and being able to communicate and i look at that and i know it's not an easy job for anybody and i don't recommend it i mean it's it's an impossible win on either side but i look at it this way if we want to make sure it's not a social or emotional damage to these children we have to think about being smart about protecting everyone and this is not going away there's already another variant there's going to be another one coming

030through i mean how many times like what do we have statistics of what the flu was in 2018 or in 2019 at the school i know one of my child in september in 2018 half the class was stricken with the flu there was no precautions then with the mask right i mean the flu has been killing people unfortunately no one should ever lose a life for over 80 years and for us as a town i think we've done a really good job for the most part but i think at some point in time we have to be able to move on and evolve and do it smart but for these children's sake having a mask on at least give it an option that's what that's you should consider because we all know that it's not

031going to go away anytime soon we'll have to deal with it and i think that when you make that decision tonight when you vote and please don't vote you know vote for the whole meaning of both both sides because i know there's people that want to be masked and some that don't i think the best option for town of litchfield because you mentioned in your last meeting that you don't look at litchfield on a national level correct that's what we talked because we talked about the crt you didn't say we don't take it as a national level we don't think it is a state we don't think it is a county but we take it as a local town and it's important like the case is in the local town of litchfield it's not compared

032to something like manchester or nashua great that i know it's a bigger bigger ah community and so forth more exposure and all that but i think that's super important i think the board should really think of that when you do make that decision that you know not for me but sakes for all children and not just my children i'm not here for my children i'm sure i've been involved in this community for over 17 years and i've been probably taught most of your kids at some point so forth but to me is i think it's important that we have to make sure that when we do this decision that it's not going to make repercussions down the road because i don't think we want to be known for for the anxiety and stress that's already

033caused as it is going to the next level all right so i hope we make a reasonable decision on that uh on the mask aspect and make it at least an optional thing and i hope that that happens thank you for your time any other um public comment carrie douglas nine pheasant street and i thank you for having input now because i actually couldn't wait that long i have an appointment to get to um you've heard a lot tonight people obviously are very interested in having the option nobody is saying that a parent who wants to mask their child can't do that but what parents who don't want their children masked for whatever reason health reasons there are children who for health reasons should not be masked there are children for sensory issues that should

034not be masked for emotional and social issues that should not be masked those parents have to make the decision that is right for those students that is maybe very different from somebody else but that's the choice they have to make for their family and as a school board who is here to support the students of this town it is your responsibility and obligation to support the parents in making the choices that are in the best interest of their students now if that means that some parents are not comfortable with being in school without with children without masks there are options there is v-lacs there are other places that they can go to send their children if you're not comfortable with kids not in masks what is the choice for a parent who does not want

035or is not comfortable with sending their kid in a mask they have to send them to private school they have to tuition them out or they are the ones who have to send keep their kids at home that's not fair to those children so not only these parents should have the right to make that choice now i'm hearing that there is the these metrics my understanding is it's a county-based metric based on what the community spread is i mean i've all seen the sign the market basket in hannaford we are hamstrung by the fact that our county includes manchester and nashua whose numbers are significantly higher than our town this decision if it is going to be a local decision needs to be based on local statistics i believe i saw that we have what

036one to four cases we don't even rank high enough to have a real number we're one to four so make a decision that is appropriate for our town because the reality is whether or not masks work doesn't we can have that debate but the fact is this is a small town and these kids are socializing outside of school so if you're out on the soccer field if you're in scouts if you're playing lacrosse or football or whatever other sport you're playing with does the virus know that it's only supposed to spread on school grounds i mean if you can get through activities socializing outside of school what's the point in masking them in school they're already cross-contaminated they're already a cohort so that's realistically it doesn't make sense to mask them in school when they're

037not masked anywhere else so again i urge and then i've heard rumblings about possible testing of children in the district i sincerely hope that that's simply a rumor and not something that's real because i think parents would have a very big problem with their children being tested on a regular basis so yes i'm sure people say you don't have a kid in the district you're right i don't because i don't want to deal with the masks and i don't want to deal with what i feel to be some really ups and downs instant out we've made the choice that was best for my family and i encourage you to support the other families in this town to make the decision that's best for them because even if i don't have a kid in this district

038i am a den leader in this town i am a scout leader i love these kids i have a vested interest in these children regardless of whether or not one of mine is in the school i watch what's best for all of them all of them not just some can i just clarify two points um so manchester and nashua are pulled out of county staffs just to be clear okay they're they're standalone when you look at the state map you see manchester and nashua are not part of hillsborough county for this purpose okay that's that is a very important point yes um and i forgot my second point so you're off the hook i would still encourage you to focus on town numbers when making a town dr jenny i'm decision curious bedford and londonderry

039both voted uh parent choice how did they i mean how do we differ from them it just i mean i'm very impressed because i feel as though the people in bedford and the people in london there have some very intelligent people that vote and i think that it's a good decision to excuse me to allow those intelligent voters to uh make are able to make really good decisions so can we do something like they did well so you're asking me that question but it's the five board members who are gonna i would never make that happen it's an option i mean it depends on each individual town at each individual district each individual school board makes the decision for their own town the other piece is that uh the working relationship that we've formed is

040that the board has hired me so for example there's a snowstorm coming i'm not taking a vote of the parents on what to do i'm not calling all the board members to say what do i do today i'm getting up and i'm making a call in the best interest of the safety of the children and actually the feedback i've received has been pretty positive i've made the right calls overall um we tend to be more open than closed the staff haven't always been thrilled with me that we're more open than close but that's the bottom line of what is the right thing to do in our town so i do take all of that into consideration um i think what will happen tonight is if we present is not acceptable i'll be sent back to

041the drawing board and come up with a plan that's going to work um the point i was going to make earlier mrs douglas is that um also has a right indication and so all that i'm trying to seek right i'm trying to find a way to make sure we are keeping everybody underneath the middle of the public education stream um and you know that's that's a challenging point trust me we i i think overall last year we got it more right than we got it wrong and i would just ask the public to continue to trust us as we work our way through it i am on the side of parent rights i get that um but if we have uh it's not an all it's not an either or thing in my mind um

042we started the year last year with masking in the hallways and then when children were able to be um physically distanced at their desks they could remove the masks we started you that way and then what happened was the pandemic went like this and then we said okay no more of taking the mask off at the desk because we're trying to contain this thing we're trying to stay open we're trying to get through the year i brought the point up about staffing because i mean quite frankly 20 of our staff i need those adults in their classrooms it's not effective to put a sub in there or to combine two classes because we don't even have a sub you know i would make an appeal to the public right now the number of openings we

043have in our school we are we are hurting for staff right now trying to hire people in and part of it is the we've lost a sense of grace with each other i mean we teachers are under fire left and right and so trying to make sure that we have staff in those buildings let alone in the middle of a pandemic still having problems i i get that but here's the thing the doors are opening on august 30th and the kids are coming in with the federal government and they're not happy about it but you know what we got i know it sucks because i'm in the same position but you know but we need to we need to make the right decisions to try to get everything balanced so i'm just saying that it's

044it's bear with us i think overall we've been very steadfast and um did things the right way last year and and i hope you trust that we're going to continue to do psychologically my daughter being in school even with the mask it was so much better for her than all of her softball friends that are from varying towns throughout new hampshire in person is the best way and i love every one of these teachers i am very close with them because i have a child that has an iep in the high school and we're all buzz i want them around i can't do it i am not capable but these children need normalcy and i don't mean this made up vaccine normalcy i know some kids are immunocompromised but mine's not she's still not getting

045that vaccine but i still don't want her masked if she doesn't if you need her to be she will be but six hours then two hours of she plays every sport yeah that's eight hours she gets out of practice and she's understandably like you know like got a headache would it be too complicated to put those kids that more sensitive that have immune compromise in the separate room and they have all their masks so what is the amount of kid that have to be really careful and i understand and i totally respect that we we've talked about that i mean we've already got students who are attached to a teacher so can you imagine if we were shuffling that all up at this point so there's pluses and minuses to all of these not like

046parents upset that their kids are being isolated away from everyone else it's not there's not an easy answer trust me on it but again is like when you i can't remember how many kids died from koben in 2020 but in 2019 900 kids died from drowning have we banned the pole we should bend all the poles and i think only what 20 kids have died from coven and then we're shutting down all the schools we mask every one but 900 kids drown we should put a lock and ban all pools around the world that's how i see it no i don't have a left thought at my pool um i appreciate all of the feedback and all of the input um but in the interest of time i wanted to ask if anyone else wanted

047to speak yeah you're welcome to come on up there's also someone on the telephone just so you know okay i got a text okay um on the call call not the video but the call okay so i'm jillian osmore 34 page road so i have a very different opinion which is why on my way home i quickly came in so um i feel like people's opinions are one thing i feel like people who study this for their job who are immunologists who are um experts in these fields are another and the cdc the us department of education the american academy pediatrics have all said that all children in school then from kindergarten through 12 should be masked whether or not you agree with it it doesn't matter you're a teacher right i'm not enough don't

048i wouldn't want you as my kid's teacher i disagree right so i'm not gonna be insulted i'm telling you my feeling right so i'm talking okay i'm talking right so the problem is this year you're not offering a remote option so you're requiring that i said my kid who has special needs to school who cannot be vaccinated so i am requiring that you protect those kids the other issue i'm very concerned about is you're not going to offer synchronous learning so when my child is exposed and she's home for two weeks who is then going to be her para who's going to read every assignment to her who's going to teach everything and the number of times that she's going to be exposed is going to be more because if only half the kids have

049their mass on then they're going to be closer and the exposures are going to be higher because they're not vaccinated so i think there are a lot of things that yes we all want things to be normal we all want that but it's not normal i would also say the cases in litchfield currently are 13 which is higher than we went back to school last year right so last year we had one to four active cases in town we had lower spread in local towns and we more masks when the kids went to school so now we have higher cases um i think that when you actually read the peer review articles there are concerns and the children cases are much higher and it's happening down south yes because the vaccination rates are lower but

050they're also in school so that's what's going to happen up here because when we send our kids to school and we don't follow the guidelines they're nose-to-nose apart they're not wearing masks they're not wearing them at recess um and i think the argument too where i've heard a lot is that they're saying that a lot of kids are socializing with their friends and they're out at cub scouts and they're doing different things not all kids are doing that so i think the belief that it's not fair for kids to have to find alternative placement well it's just as not fair for kids who feel uncomfortable and want to wear a mask to have to find alternative placement either right so i think you know there are a lot of different opinions um obviously but the

051reality is that there are experts in this country who have made recommendations and i feel like we should be following them and so that's all thank you i'm not anti-mask i'm not i'm just going to leave that as it is i am not anti-mask i'm annoyed jessica same characters hollow i like to speak fact logic be logic get all the emotion out of it and i actually have something in front of me from on the cdc website itself based off of all of the studies that they've done and i can forward this to you um in regard to medical masks and how effective they are disposable medical masks also known as sorry i'm half blind also known as surgical masks are loose fitting devices that that were designed designed to be worn by medical personnel

052for the to protect accidental contamination of patient wounds and to protect the wear against splashes or sprays of body bodily fluids there is limited evidence for their effectiveness in preventing influenza type viruses and transmission it's right on the cdc website all of their studies all of their research every all of it it doesn't prove to be effective what we do know is that there's a lot of children that have gone through psychological issues those are the facts and that's all i have to say and i will forward it to i'll send it out thank you 17 nesting keg uh i think it's all right there's a couple there's a bunch of things a bunch of things i've got online but um i think it's great for people that got covered and recovered that's fantastic i'm

053very happy for you i lost an aunt to covet last year my wife's cousin just spent two weeks in the hospital with a coveted infection this is not it's not terrible for everybody but when but do you want to be the one who dies of the it all the points that that masks are not great are not fun are causing causing problems for kids yeah absolutely probably is the case but the alternative's worse okay the alternative is worse i don't want to take a chance that my kid is going to get sick get his brother sick get get me sick or that i get them sick because we're not wearing a mask the highest risk of transmission is a group of people sitting in an enclosed space for multiple hours of time does that describe

054your average classroom my five i've got a five-year-old i've got a three-year-old neither of them can be vaccinated when the vaccines are approved for younger younger people my three-year-old will probably not be able to be vaccinated then either because they're going to cut it to uh to an age group higher than him so i've got unvaccinated kids that uh that that can't that can't get a vaccine uh the five-year-old is starting school we should be really happy instead we're really scared that he's gonna bring something bring something home because you know if we're not we're not masking and taking the precautions then that that risk is there is it definitely going to happen who knows but i haven't had gotten in a car crash i still wear my seat belt every day delta has a

055delta has the other problem is that delta has a higher rate of asymptomatic transmission got a lot of vaccinated people which is great the vaccine keeps delta from from uh making uh giving them a severe infection but it also turns them into an asymptomatic carrier and they can spread it to all the people that aren't masked that are around them we've already said that nobody here is a doctor i'm not a doctor but we talk to doctors doctors are all saying that we should be masking okay doctors said they're not on fox news say we should be masking excuse me excuse me you had your opportunities for implement we need to let him speak thank you state the state health guidance that was just released said that if we are in a an area of

056significant spread we should be universally masking we are in an area of significant spread the data the data is there we should be masking also and to the early point that that this is just like the flu we have a flu vaccine and we take that too yeah thank you the fact is you're never going to be able to all right anybody else for public input i'll admit the call oh oh that's right we're going to go to the caller and then i call her you're uh you're on into the school board meeting can you just identify yourself name and address please yes i'm sorry um i'm driving to the hospital at this moment i got called in i would have been there if i could my name is samantha mcclelland i'm at 31 chase

057brook circle glitchfield um i'm i've been listening to the meeting on my phone on the way in first of all i wrote a letter and i hope that my letter can be read in full i feel like i made some very valid points on that letter and i am hoping to add a few more points to um what i've heard so far today um in september of 2020 when school started last year we had a total of seven hospitalizations with zero icu cases in the state of new hampshire um yesterday there was a total of 68 with 15 cases on icu i am headed to the icu right now to take care of two of those patients um we as of today i think it was last night's numbers were 13 active cases in literal

058so um saying that our little hamlet town isn't our numbers aren't substantial when you think about 13 cases and 8 000 residents that's actually a pretty high percentage compared to nashua or manchester um the other thing was the mass effectiveness the cdc that was read earlier that is the effectiveness to the wearer not to the people surrounding that's why in a hospital we're not wearing masks to protect ourselves well not surgical masks to protect ourselves we're wearing surgical masks to protect our patients from being exposed from another patient so um the mask at the mouth is actually helpful because it can keep the viral load and droplets of the wearer without without spreading them um i'm just i'm not going to go over what i wrote in my letter because i i don't want to

059bore you all but i'm just very concerned with the delta variant um children are getting very sick we are we have a higher case load than we ever have in new hampshire and school has not started kids are getting very sick young adults are getting very sick most of them are not vaccinated so my biggest worry i understand that high school and possibly middle school um can have like possibly um uh the ability to to choose in some points but i think the most important thing is we have a whole bunch of children that don't even have the opportunity to be vaccinated whether somebody wants that their parents want them to or not my child who is going into fifth grade is not vaccinated and i'm scared to death for her to be sitting in

060a room my child in eighth grade is in special needs and he has sensory issues and he has asthma and my son is the first person to put a mask on and will keep a mask on all day that i'm not saying that that is all children are different but i think it's important to to realize that as children i would rather have this be a really tough two years then next year say oh we lost 15 kids which in the scheme of thing wouldn't be a big big percentage but 15 children dying are becoming very sick is is astounding for litchfield and if you look at percentage-wise that's truly what could happen if you look down in florida right now um one i wanted to say um was i'm sorry i apologize for blabbering

061on um i just i just i just very much worry about what is going to happen in the long run with with everything um my children did kind of remote and in person when the numbers got really high we were very worried so we pulled our children out and they did remote learning and their teachers were amazing and the schools were amazing and my child with special needs he had his tara was amazing logging on with him every day and helping him i'm i it was hard though it was extremely hard and i think that if we want to keep the schools open i feel that it's very important to wear masks because i just got a text um yesterday from a hospital in florida offering me to come down and take and go into

062their pediatric icu to help them because they have 72 children in their icu at the moment and 72 of those children are all unvaccinated i'm sorry that's wrong 70 of those children are vaccinated two of them were vaccinated and and it was because they didn't wear masks in the classroom none of them had inceptions until school started there's just not enough air movement in these classrooms sports is fine kids are moving around air is moving around but i'm just worried that in order to keep the schools going this year which we all really really want we don't want to have to go remote we don't want to have to um i i mean even do even do the synchronous i know that's not on the table but i'm just thinking you know like looking at

063different areas of the country where these things are happening and boston is already starting to see some of this so not too far away that the only way that we're going to make it through the year is to have some kind of protection and i think that's math so i'm sorry to take up your time and i um thank you and i ask again that i hope my letter can be read in full well your letter has been read by uh the board members and uh thank you for the call thank you anyone else on masks sure good evening thank you patrick keefe i'm the lea president i just want to talk about the reopening plan um in the reopening plan it's alluded to uh that some students may need remote instruction and obviously if

064if we don't mandate the mass then some kids will stay home with massively many masks some kids without massively stay home so whatever you guys decide on that it appears that we're going um back down a road where teachers really don't want to go and that is the blended synchronous model where i'm trying to teach in the classroom i'm a teacher i'm trying to effectively teach in the classroom to a whole host of kids in the classroom and then teach to students at home at the same time um it was it was a modality of instruction that didn't work last year when you talked to teachers it was the biggest difficulty i think of last year teaching so what i would like to advocate for is to take some of the covert relief funds i

065think the district and i know mike i sent you that from the doe i think it's 1.3 million that is coming into the district and take some of that not all of them a lot of that money has to go to upgrading the hvac systems and repairing repairing ventilation i get that but some of that towards possibly hiring remote teachers uh or making it work because i know last year we said why can't we have remote teachers in the classroom teachers and you said well then the balance isn't going to be there would have to maybe hire teachers or part-time or whatever but i would recommend that uh we try to have remote instruction teachers if we do go back to that uh where a lot of kids are at home uh receiving instruction remotely

066and a lot in the classroom because it's just really really nearly impossible for a teacher to successfully um offer instruction when you're when you're trying to juggle both of that it's really hard and i i want to thank a member that spoke um on behalf of teachers thank you we work really hard we love working here and by the way and i know mike you didn't mean it like this but when you said some of the teachers didn't want we want to be in school we did last year but particularly this year where if you know if you want to be vaccinated you're vaccinated so i think teachers feel comfortable returning to the classroom but we just it's really difficult to do both things at one time and i just would like the board to

067consider uh having remote instructors this year if in fact we do go offer remote instruction for a lot of our students thank you okay i guess i just don't understand if your child is vaccinated and you want them to and you prefer them to wear a mask why you as a parent can't make that decision for your child and go why does it have to be all the students wear masks if your child is vaccinated you want your child to wear a mask your child will wear a mask and their backs send them to school that way if you're a parent and you don't believe your child why does it have to be like a one-size-fits-all type thing and if they're vaccinated and we believe some believe the mass work when you're wearing the mask

068the child is wearing the mask to protect themselves i mean i think to the point that was made earlier the effectiveness of the mask based on the research i've read is not for the wearer as much as the speaker so what it does is it captures the particles at the mouth and does not allow them to get into the air so right that's the that's the challenge that we have does that mean that's the challenge that we have right now is that it's that filter on the on the person so now you could this is not an open conversation we need to move on so that we can see the presentation if you want to protect your child and they're they're vaccinated and you want to set another school with an n95 then your child

069will be protected and why does all children that's what i said at the beginning we should have this conversation after we see the plan all right brian we'll give you one it just doesn't make any sense to me i'll tell you that okay i'm sorry i'm sorry we've got to move on we're not like we've said we're not medical experts but you know i encourage you give us stuff to think about though okay more i have more questions now no and i'm not telling you what your child needs i'm sorry no what i meant to say was we have all done our own research we no i'm not a medical expert i'm a teacher and an educator and i represent i work for all of the students in this district and keep their best interest

070at mind all right should we go into that presentation at this point so we actually move this to after my comments and the board but you can move it now if you wish just roll right into it okay so let me switch gears yeah that's a good idea um hang on i gotta we didn't move it in the age i'm gonna find it all right so the current situation update um just to recap for everybody we have finished our summer school we've actually had very successful time in summer school uh this year and we're now gearing up for the start of the school year [Music] if you look at what is going on and we have looked at the numbers we are in a substantial spread scenario all parts of new hampshire are now in

071the red zone based on the guidance i think people speaking tonight have highlighted delta as a concern and that's obviously the variant that has taken hold and it is a as we all know it is a more rapidly spreading uh form of the coronavirus so that's our current situation and what we have out there in looking at the reopening guidance and i just wanted to say too um this has been posted on our website on if you go on your laptop under the coronavirus updates tab it's a yellow tab on the side and this this has been posted there since we started talking about it back in august this is well it was just updated today so as we update it and as we get more information and guidance from the state we think we've

072updated this this draft as well is that correct so this was first shared with the board back in june it was emailed to every parent in the district back in june at the time it was titled version 1.0 because it was our first attempt to articulate what we thought was going to happen and i have been very clear with the community and the board from the beginning that we're going to wait until august because the situation is evolving and we need to continue to monitor it we do believe in making local data-driven decisions and so it's important that we wait until we're closer to the start of school to see what that current situation is so a couple of things here in the plan uh you'll see that it talks about our key instructional strategies

073so basically we are committed to in-person learning we do believe that that is better than remote learning for most students um and that we will continue to offer highly engaging direct instruction as our primary means of teaching and learning we did it successfully last year for 80 75 plus of our students um and i think that that's a hallmark of what we're setting out to do this year we have commented on remote instruction notice that we say when properly designed and resourced we'll continue to have a role for some students while we recognize the situations are rare the district will allow remote instruction when school-based teams have determined that it is in a student's best interest due to medical necessity those school-based teams also have to determine the resources to do it i appreciate the

074lea president's input about hiring staff but right now patrick we have six openings for regular classroom teachers and you know the idea that we're just gonna have additional remote teachers uh is a little bit beyond what i think we're capable of doing for the start of school so our intent is to work at the school level and to make the right decision our staff always makes the right decision for individual kiddos there's never been a severely ill child in the past who we haven't been able to figure out how to educate and i'm confident that we'll continue to do that but those will be rare situations we're not going to go back to the truman show with the um the camera in every classroom okay so we're good you mean like skype we're not talking

075about having the blended synchronous model for all tools what about having like so the child who has to be at home because of the illness yeah can i just get through that yeah that's okay um so that's sort of where we stand relative to remote um we also are fully committed to google classroom our staff now are really have become experts in how to use it and that's not going away so we expect that that will continue as our learning management system so even the child who is um isolating or is ill the the information will be available to them in google classroom because that's the learning platform that we have adopted and are using at all times so um that's oh that's far different than the old days of sending a packet home or

076somebody having to swing by to school to pick up a packet because it's all digital and electronic and available so all of these things are things that are enhanced as a result of the experience that we've had with the pandemic we are committed to the emotional and physical well-being of our staff and students and we're going to keep emphasizing that and making sure that there's equitable access to the support services including mental health and instructional interventions we've gotten so much better as a result of the pandemic in the way that we deliver and i think that will continue into the future and we also want to include and actively support collaborative planning time so with the new schedule at the middle school and a return to the schedule at the high school we know that

077our staff have the time to work together on instructional goals that are better able to meet students needs and you know working collaboratively on the assessment practices are better able to meet students needs so a lot of positive things for mitigation strategies you'll notice that uh here's something that is different from version 1.0 and version 2.0 and those are the links that are in there so we now have the link for the most up-to-date information from the cdc and also the link to the august 11th document from the new hampshire department of public health so those links have been livened up for you data we're going to examine local and state data points to help us stay ahead of the curve we never put all our eggs in one basket last year we never said

078there's one single data point and we're reacting to that we were constantly triangulating hovering above what we were looking at and then trying to make the best decision on the data so we would continue to do that going forward you'll notice that personal responsibility has been a hallmark of what we've been doing we believe in that we are asking that our families continue to do the daily health screening we're not going to be a district that has somebody punching that into in order for kids to come into school it has to be entered into pickup control for example i had to do it every single morning and i was the negligent parent i get a call from my wife saying did you do the pickup patrol nope forgot but i have to answer the questions

079they don't have a temperature they don't have a cough they haven't traveled internationally et cetera we don't want to be a district that does that we want to be a district that trusts our parents to do the right thing but we're going to clearly communicate what those are and notice with the daily health screening we are going to ask our school nurses to periodically check temperatures of sap in students quite frankly a fever could spike during the day it may be related to covet it may not be but um periodic checks with a temperature scan on the forehead on contact is not a bad practice for us to have to try to keep everybody healthy physical distancing um we now know that where all the studies have come we started off with six foot of

080physical distancing and now we've brought it down to three foot nose to nose that's the new standard that we're following so tina and i right now make three feet no so they'll turn your head but we make three feet nose to nose um that is very eye opening when it comes to decisions relative to eating in the cafeteria and so forth um and we're going to continue to try to maintain physical distancing as much as possible um masks here's the statement masks have proven to be effective in preventing the spread of airborne pathogens we're going to use the masking we will use masking when deemed appropriate by nh dhhs guidance currently listed on pages five and six of the school toolkit i'm now going to open it so that everybody can see what we're talking

081about so in the toolkit and again look here it's the august 11th issue by the new hampshire department of public mike can you make that larger yes no just because we don't have to see the side pages but i i know this is uh i i don't know so when i don't have my cheater glasses this is what i do at my desk i have my chair glasses it's linked in the agenda yeah but i'd rather watch it here with you guys looks better on the back right here and again for anyone following along at home or here it's under the coronavirus updates tab on the district webpage so basically looking at their strategies they want us to plan and communicate with our community i think we did a lot of community outreach and communication

082last year we intend to continue the second thing is promote vaccinations we have held vaccination clinics sponsored vaccination clinics in concert with hudson and we have promoted that and i'm a big believer that people who are capable of getting a vaccine i eat 12 and over have that personal responsibility to make their choice and then to live with the result of the choice that they make um three use face masks wisely so it talks about communicating the two important purposes protect the person wearing the face mask and prevent the spread of cover 19 from the person wearing a face mask to others so they're clearly delineating that it does two things the effectiveness of one is more than the other i believe and i think the source control number two which is preventing particles from

083getting out is um the more important aspect of it schools and child care programs can recommend or require face masks so we're given the ability by the state to do that and we should decide based on community input which i think we're receiving a lot of um what the best course is for litchfield taking a look at the level of community transmission reported at the county level with the cities of manchester and nashua separated out as i explained earlier so it's hillsborough county minus those two cities the number of cases of coven 19 within the schools and whether we have any clusters or outbreaks within our school our ability to implement other prevention strategies so for example are we able to keep the physical distancing um you know if we achieve six feet that's very

084different than if we are only able to achieve three feet nose to nose so we have to look at all those factors i will tell you our classrooms are fairly crowded especially at griffin which is the school where there's no access to vaccine by students and the level of covert 19 vaccination within our school population and you know we should be getting 80 percent of the population vaccinated we're not there but those are the things that they've asked us to look at face masks are not recommended in most outdoor locations so right now when it comes to after school athletics we are not recommending face masks to be worn the only time that that would be accepted is if we were playing a school that had a mask mandate our athletes will only play yours

085if your athletes are mad or masked then we would comply with the more restrictive school request that happened last year it did it did happen last year in boy sports but our we will not be asking visiting teams to us to mascot right how many parents can go we will not be limiting attendance the only conversation that we've had is volleyball because it's indoors at the gym and so we haven't sorted that one out yet but outdoor we're not putting any limit on who can attend um and we recommend recommending face masks for anybody who desires maximum protection for themselves or others so if they've not been fully vaccinated have a weakened immune system want to protect a household member because remember in some cases there could be a medically fragile adult at home or

086sibling at home and so we are recommending face masks and you know i will tell you i have been wearing a face mask um i wore a face mask two out of three days this week and i did it because i'm trying to role model i don't want the kid with a face mask to be the weird kid and i think that if what i can do as the leader of the building is to wear a face mask to say this is okay i can make this choice and i shouldn't be criticizing that choice that's okay too but what i don't want because i do believe that the minority of students will be the ones wearing the mask i think it'll be fewer than uh required right so i just am saying let's let's make

087sure that people feel comfortable wearing a mask if that's what they want to do it's okay doing that for those kids really scared i have to give you this but some parents and some kids like um and you'll notice it also says that mass are required to be worn on school buses and other forms of public transport that federal order was set to expire on september 13th it's now been extended to january something i don't know the exact date but at least the first half of the year the federal mandate for masking on buses will be in play it flows under the almost like the tsa like the airports are requiring it's the same federal law so then the state has put forth this decision matrix and you'll see at the top it says level

088of community transmission and i think they have purposely left the word community because it's something that we have to exercise as a team so what does that mean what's the local community what's the county community what's the state community just so that we can have a dialogue about where we are on this when it is minimal moderate or substantial and that's the way the state reports it out on their website we then take a look at what is happening within our facilities i would encourage us to think of three distinct buildings and three distinct educational communities where what we do in one community may differ from another what we do in one school may differ from another depending on what the situation is last year we had cases that erupted at griffin we didn't close

089campbell we kept campbell going right so we treated the situation at griffin as a distinct situation that was occurring and i believe that that's how this matrix is set up when the cases are sporadic and that there is no evidence of facility transmission so you know last year we had the student who was on a hockey team and may have been exposed and so that was an outside of school piece we could say okay that wasn't something that occurred in school so you know there's not facility transmission but if it was a situation that took place in a classroom it is facility transmission so we're going to take a look at those a single cluster um a cluster is three or more cases that are related so if if we could say that i had

090coded and gave it to tina who gave it to corey we now have the three related cases and we're going to take a look at that that's obviously a concern because it's then spreading within that cluster are kids still being clustered this year cohorted cohorted so uh we're cohorting is one of our strategies that we're trying but um it's different this year tara so for example at the high school by returning back to the a b block schedule we're not cohorted in the same way as we were in the four by four so when students only had four classes they were mixing up four times a day now they're mixing up eight times a day uh or every other day when you're doing a 48 hour look back period right so um so the cohort

091is still clustering at elementary but the other two schools so the cohorts have expanded there at the middle school um they are keeping the cohorts tighter the way they had in the past by grade and um the way the students move so i guess in the past when they moved between the cores they would mix up a little bit and now they're sort of traveling a little bit more closely together so they're they're trying to keep some things in place but that word cluster is a little different that that cluster is referring to three or more cases related so we could be in three different cohorts but somehow we have a cluster that is broken it's linked like maybe we sit together on the bus and that's how it spread i don't know and then

092the last thing is when you have multiple clusters or a larger outbreak so three or more clusters is an outbreak that would be nine children with uh covid that's a high number if you look at our numbers from last year that's a problem um and so you'll see that when you get if that were to be a situation that were to happen then you can see they're recommending universal masking so that red zone so the the tier is that you need to enter into the red but you're talking nine or more we never i mean we had 20 total at one school so you know the idea that there are nine active cases at once there's a big problem and we would need to take steps right so our goal is to be in the

093minimal level with optional masking at most times and at the moderate level we would still say optional this is recommending universal when you get into the substantial which is currently where we are so this would this would be advising us the recommendation is that we open with masking in place universally because we're in a substantial spread but that's a recommendation and then i think what our team has to do is take that recommendation and say what are we seeing happening then remember that's only if there's sporadic cases um we would want to take that recommendation filter it down to the local level and then decide what the right thing to do is for us they're using the phrase targeted as sort of that second tier the cautionary tier and um i think we have phrased

094that as sort of strongly recommended so so i think targeted they're they're using the word because they're they want us to be a little bit more directive to say you know masking this scenario but not in that one are we only counting the population under 18 are we counting the 66 year old with asthma in our accounts do you know what i mean like are we only doing children i'm just asking a question because i'm sure some of them like are we taking like a 66 year old who who has asthma that didn't get a vaccine or whatever he's part of the thing because that's community transfer no it's actually most of the cases now aren't in those age groups because they've been vaccinated so we're seeing the ones in the hospital are that age

095group 18 and above right we're seeing a lot more cases and younger people that have not been accidental the largest uptick in cases are under 50. so again they're they're i mean i guess 50 years old i don't know but you know but they're framing it there because that's in the past that was not the case right that's where they're currently concentrated because i was just curious because i tried to look for numbers so mike bedford was held up as an ex as an example a few minutes ago and i'm curious if you think that they're following this model because i do i read the headline and the union leader today and then i read the whole article and the very last sentence of the article said masked recommendations will be revisited throughout the year

096and mass may be required under certain settings including if coven 19 clusters or outbreaks occur so that to me says they're following this they're just you know they're starting with a no mask yeah i i think so here's what i'm seeing from other districts and there there are districts that have voted to start with masks because they're basically landing in that substantial spread right now so they're still following this guidance and they're just landing at that point um my own my own district the board boy they it was a back and forth meeting and in the end they they muddled it got so muddled that now they have to have an emergency meeting next monday that they've moved to the high school gym um and they're going to try to clarify their stance because the

097wording of it is so again in that case the board voted on it and didn't leave it in the hands of the administrators to make the decision and the wording you could read it two ways and one way is you masking mandate and the other is no way is there a masking mandate it's all the way it got worded and um i think i know what because i was in the meeting i think i know what they intended but you can't tell by reading it and it's caused a major outrage in that community so um so again i i see this as a guide you know notice it's called a decision matrix it's it's guardrails it tells us this is what we think should be going on and really to me the idea of masking

098is to calm things back down so you get back into the green you know it's it's sort of like we've hit some turbulence here let's buckle up be safe with it and then when things have come back down we can get back into the optional piece and again i don't see that as a all or nothing the kids will have their mask on on the bus because they have to if they take it off to walk outdoors and to come in you know we'll be flexible with it until we know exactly what the expectation is based on what we're seeing so um this document is many many pages long i'd encourage you to read through it it talks about physical distancing it talks about cohorting uh it came up earlier in the presentation about screening

099so i just want to address that we are not going to be advocating for the school to be testing kobe cases i will tell you that there are there's tons of grant money available to schools to provide testing at parent option is as far as i would go so a nurse calls up and says hey you know we think johnny's running a fever um you need to come get him and by the way we can you know you can take him to go get a covet test or with your permission we could conduct a rapid test here and i think what will happen is some parents will say go ahead and do the test save me the trip and if it's a convenience and it makes it easier for people we'll do that another parent

100may say don't test my kid not a problem but now they can't return back to school until the fever is broken and blah blah right so parent choice on what to do with it if we can provide it as a service and we're still quarantining the kids around covid boy or girl kids are gonna have to be quarantined so the new the new quarantining there's no test how do you know they have coke so the ear infections the new the new guidance on it is a major reduction in the amount of quarantine oh okay there'll be a major reduction in that because it it's talking about quarantining for household exposure but it does not talk about quarantining for school-based exposure so there'll be way fewer kids quarantined as a result of possible exposure at school

101but i do think that if we can provide the service for those families who choose it it could be helpful for them it would be no cost it would be something that we could participate in but completely voluntary no mandatory testing and you may hear of there are some districts that have done what's called pool testing so everybody in the classroom classroom gets picked at random everybody does the nose swab drops it in one big bucket and they test it and they say okay that classroom is clear or they come back and they say somebody in that classroom has it right please don't go down that path my friends i'm telling you right now i'm not leanne look at me i'm not going down that path we're not going to fight over this because i

102the last thing i want is hey somebody in the 24 is no i don't see any benefit that would come from pool testing i just want to stress that there have been um reports that state that many of the pcr tests are not 100 valid because of whatever okay and if a person had folded 14 days ago they may still test pause them but according to the cdc guidelines we can send them back to school anyways which is fine i i mean you know it's hot it's so hard yeah yeah so because my kid had covered like three weeks ago do you support parent choice and testing absolutely we're on the same page okay all right so that's that's where we are with uh what this guidance is saying um and then there is the

103you know stay home with sick and get tested increase ventilation that's why we're investing in our ventilation systems that's the best thing we can do by the way bring the fresh air in that's our that's our safety measure um we'll keep up the hand hygiene and the respiratory etiquette sneezing into the elbow etc we have to teach those things to kids right um clean and disinfect that's another key strategy um contact tracing isolation isolation and quarantining you know so our teams are ready to stay on top of all of this stuff so there you have it let me come back to the reopening plan here you'll notice that we have hand washing and sanitation effective communication vaccines facilities keeping everything uh cleaned up and we're going to limit we're going to continue to limit visitors

104and we have asked that our visitors continue to be vaccinated i think that that's a control point that we do make there are plenty of plenty of visitors and volunteers in the building who can show that they are in fact vaccinated and we'll keep using funds to work on our ventilation system so that's what's in the plans folks and um happy to turn it back over to you can you just i have lots of questions let me just go back to the chart again as far as green and just let me just give the numbers again when we get out of when we go to universal so if there are sporadic cases in our facility so day one we don't know what we have in our facility because people have been on vacation all summer

105um so i would say that we would have to say we're at sporadic because we just don't have knowledge of it but if there is substantial spread in the community we would be looking at universal masking so what is substantially what is substantial spread so substantial spread is hang on let me get that for you and i want to know what 50 plus people who are 50 years and older have to do with our children wearing masks yes some of those 50 year olds are parents of kids in school those are grandparents yeah that aren't but they could be vaccinated they could be they could be but if they aren't i mean they could say my kid has to wear a mask because a 50 plus year old decides not to get vaccinated no not

106just because of that i'm sorry i'm not italian like you no a vaccination doesn't mean someone can't carry or spread this is going to go on forever i wish i didn't get my kid vaccinated now why is he growing that third arm yeah what is he already growing his third arm what has he already grown his third arm the heck is this thing well if he had to wear a mask anyway why did i bother parents we're not listening to people so brian to answer the question this is the dashboard it's the covert 19 dashboard put out by the state for some reason the link is broken in our internal dashboard but that's fine it goes here um you know important to take look look at where we are on august 17th of 21 you

107can compare it back to august 17th of can i yes yes almost um august 17th last year so when we opened with the protocols that we had in place we were at a much lower level than where we are right now we're on that uptick it's important to point that out and then if you look at um is it the more the delta that they're talking about yes so how can they show the delta versus how they convey how can they test the test and it's they can design oh this is a delta there's not a different test for it there is there is a different test so when i actually got my child um tested it was just code right they send them they send a selection of the test results i think positive

108test results first i can't even get the pcr test right for further they can determine the delta how do we know it's not the i'm trying to i'm trying to tell you sorry they send a sample of the positive test on to be to be genetically sequenced to see if it's one of the variants of of interest okay right positive or negative right and that's the result that you received you don't necessarily receive the information about what variant it is it goes into the statistical analysis for the for that nobody can further except for that then they publish anti-mask i think parents should have a choice to mask their kids or not it's okay i was trying to answer the question um it's used in statistics to in epidemiology to determine what is the most

109prominent variant out there right now okay and right now delta is 90 of the positive cases that we're seeing on that i didn't hear far less so what's our next step do we vote do we talk about it let me let me answer brian's question okay so i i have it here right so when you're on this you can click on the school tab and then it brings you to the the website linked to the schools itself you can search by district search by town and when you do that it comes up with what is the level of transmission in the town it's substantial they're they're saying that that's based on the 194.7 new cases per 100 000 people over the last 14 days and you can see i clicked on it because it tells

110you that if it's greater than it is substantial it's almost twice greater than 100 right so that's why it's in red that's all of hillsboro right this is um except for nashua in manchester exactly because again here's here's the county map and you can see nashua is this carve out right here and uh manchester would be a carve out kind of up in this direction so they're they're pointing to our schools so there's the high school and then the middle school in elementary right next to each other so they look like one dot so this is just the community not the students because we have inhabitants right so you'll notice that the active cases in our schools is zero they tell you the number of recovered cases and when they were last reported we haven't

111had a case since may that makes sense right uh because we haven't been in person yeah oh the kids in the school in the school and the seven day uh positivity rate in the county is 6.7 that's moderate that's why it's in yellow um so it's between 5 and 10 and again that's a county-based number right so that's what we what we use if we're trying to get to the town level um you have to drill deeper into it does that answer your question brian it does so according to the numbers right now where it's substantial correct and that's seven positivity cases 13. eight thousand eight hundred and something eight hundred people no that is that is for hillsborough county and it's the rate per 100 000 people so each each county um so that

112we can compare the numbers because some counties have a lot of people and some counties don't have fewer people they they change the ratio to be the number of cases per 100 000 people so that rate you know for a small town like ours even having 13 people you know if you extrapolate it out to 100 per 100 000 people it's it might be a higher rate and does it say how many are in the hospital we don't know it does on the state dashboard when you're talking about putting math summaries are they or are they 55 do they have kids in the school that matters it does matter you're not basing on third you're not basing on 13 people right right no no you you're basically on the county county oh and it's challenging

113yeah we could base it on litchfield if there was i know we joke about the force field around litchfield but if nobody ever left town and was never exposed to any other towns around us we could we could count just on litchfield people but so there's 13 total cases in our account no there are 13 cases in litchfield how many cases in our county in our county yeah um well so they they they standardize it per hundred thousand that's why they give that 194.7 um we could calculate it but that's not the way they report it yeah so that's do you know how many teachers live in litchfield the teach in litchfield no not many do you know how many teachers live in manchester nashua to teach in litchfield many okay that's why you have

114to look at a broader picture you can't just look at litchfield can i ask a clarification question so what is the what is the purpose of today what do you need from us what is the goal going forward because i think we've had community input we've continued to hear questions which is great i like communicating with everyone and i think we should however we've had that input we need to have a chance to debate it i think amongst ourselves and then i don't know what is what is the purpose what's the next step so this is what i'm looking for version 3.0 yes which has been refined over 1.0 and 2.0 is our reopening plan so i'm looking for the board's support that our reopening plan has considered all the possibilities and that the um

115the data in form metrics that we're going to use as an admin team to make the decisions are the right metrics that we're looking at the right thing i'm i'm looking for support that we're being flexible but not overreactive and that we're trying to keep our schools open you know if if i say at griffin we're going to have mass on because our team has come up with this is the best thing we need to do given the current situations because we want griffin to be open tomorrow and next week and i'm looking for the board to back us up that we're making the right decision on those so as of today they would all be masked because it's substantial spread um as of today because it's substantial because it's more than just that though

116liz it's a school where no child has access to a vaccine because they're all okay they're all under 12. are we talking just gms right now yeah griffin well we'd make a determination for each each school is what i meant but according to yeah that's what i'm trying to get clarification because last time last meeting we looked at all three schools differently yeah that's that's the point i'm trying to make is that when it said community or school based that we would be making a decision so it's not firm and fast griffin where no child has access to a vaccine is different than the middle school where half the children have access to a vaccine is different from campbell where all of the children i guess when i'm asking for clarification what are we utilizing

117numbers-wise say for the middle school and high school because the high school right now would still be substantial correct right the chart looks like it's treated all the same and we would be making the call based upon um based upon what what the conditions are in that school so we could be making a different call at campbell the chart the chart i do not believe is a be all end-all i don't think it says because we're red everybody in litchfield has to have a mascot i don't i don't like it that's what it looks like i think that's what the guard rails are but i think our team has to have the flexibility to decide what are we seeing at the community level and what's the right decision based school by school is the point

118i'm trying to make to them but you have no chair can i ask the audience to be quiet please you've had an opportunity for public input right now we're having a discussion there's another public input later on that you can jump in then i as a teacher understand pole starts parts i was in the classroom all last year i wore my mask i did my thing i have the option in my district to wear a mask but now i'm concerned because a parent who spoke earlier said her child will not be in my class because i'm not wearing a mask to me my students couldn't understand me they couldn't see me they couldn't understand i work with special ed kids they couldn't see my expressions i couldn't project my voice i couldn't do anything this

119is a whole different thing if we're not wearing masks are we going to have kids who kids are going to have to switch classrooms if teachers don't have to wear masks i think it's something that teachers and parents need to work out on an individual basis well that's what i think they should do with mass i think a parent knows their child this is my personal opinion i'm not passing judgment i'm not anti-mass i think we are not doctors i think personally that every parent knows their child and how they can react to mass and how they mentally kids are exhausted and i know we have very different opinions on this board and i respect everyone and i won't raise my voice unless i'm called out and i think parents should have the choice and

120i'm just going to leave with that before my blood pressure goes up again in my hands listen i know i'm all out can i ask you so does that mean you are in favor of this draft plan or i don't understand the draft point still so you i think what's confusing like sure is the red is all read under substantial so it does not delineat that right side is any to me i look at that and say anytime the county is red we're wearing masks regardless of school of the case input within the facility regardless of school impact [Music] the schools are wearing masks but what i just heard you say is that might not be the case and i would like to understand that that's the guidance right but remember the state has put

121this out to every single school including the dilemma i'm dealing with which is kids who have no access to a vaccine and kids who have access so they're saying here's the best practice the cdc has said children going to school should be masked governors in some places have said we don't care you can't do it it's a mess so i completely agree with that but our reopening plan 3.0 if you go back to that says we will use the masking when deemed appropriate by the nhd hhs guidelines so that's what the guideline says so if i'm a parent and i'm trying to figure out whether my kid's supposed to be wearing a mask i'm going to go to this chart i'm going to look and see if we're substantial and i'm going to say okay

122my kids got to wear a mouse today or you're going to put it out in an email i think there has to be an emphasis on local conditions and that's the point that i'm trying to make is that when they put this chart out they're doing a one-size-fits-all recommendation but i think i think it's important too that parents have something that they can refer to so we know when that switch is going to happen you know or the communication comes out and says these conditions weren't this change because going back and forth i think in flip-flopping and it adds a lot of confusion and stress to parents and kids so i'd i'd like to have something that is you know yes flexibility and built in the flexibility but i'd like to see you know this

123is the plan to stick to it so can i make a suggestion a couple of suggestions i'm all ears that top right can that be yellow erratic yes so substantial but sporadic cases locally could that be yellow and could yellow mean and this part may not be as popular but could yellow mean k through six it's targeted to k through six which is right now the population that cannot be vaccinated so we are targeting a mandatory mass to those yellow ones but seven and higher who are back i wouldn't even say vaccinated they have the option so if they choose too great if they choose not to that's their choice but seven through 12 would be optional is that their room for something like that totally so go back to what i had at the

124last meeting i abandoned it because this came out but i think i've added more confusion yellow square would be down to the single cluster too because if you have a single cluster you're gonna um what is the word again mitigate confine uh what is it called quarantine or iceland i don't know they're gonna be out for what five days or whatever so i would argue the yellow should go down even to the second row it is on the second row so no no substantial targeted also means recommended so that's where i disagree with the recommend i i don't see a difference between i think you should wear a mask and i really really really think you should wear a mask that to me i don't know what that i i don't look at that if

125i'm looking at a stop light i'm saying okay we're going to get our group that doesn't have the option to get vaccinated and then the ones that do have the option to me that makes a difference you have your choice you can choose and if you choose not to bummer but once that's your choice that's the yellow light right they're yellow yield a little well don't don't and i do think you know and i do think with the data that's coming out about delta there is a vast difference in the num and the severity of disease in people that have been vaccinated and those have that that have not been vaccinated right so i i just pulled up i want to go back to this for a minute yeah so this was the august 4th

126right we were ahead of the release of something we were trying to come up with a plan this is what we came up with yeah i got that right here which was the level of community transmission these definitions right here are from that matrix on the state i didn't create them yep out of thin air they come right from that website so we define minimal moderate and substantial based on the seven day positivity and the hundred thousand cases over the last 14 days right and then we looked at just litchfield uh well that's no that's the candidate that's the county zeta because it they don't bring they don't give that per town yeah the other thing is i will just tell you in talking with health officials in town they have cautioned us against using

127it i know we think we're a small town but um there are a high number of known cases that were not reported let's put it that way so there's a reluctance to get tested that has shaded it so they're suggested but they're suggesting if you go to the county level that's why the 100 000 is a better look because it it mitigates some of that then we had the school impact and look at our colors right you like that better i i do like that better except for yellow meaning k through six i i don't i don't understand the difference between like i said we recommend and we really really really recommend i think to me that should be for par as a parent of has two vaccinated children and one that is not vaccinated

128i worry greatly for my fifth grader who right now at least doesn't have the option to be vaccinated and i worry for all of the k-6 students and so if we are in a high impact and if we are in substantial i think that is something we should consider particularly for that age group i may reassess this and my opinion may change when and if the vaccine rolls out for that age group and that could be something that we could talk about at that point but for me i'd prefer the yellow and i'd be interested in hearing the feedback on making that last column in the second row yellow as well that tara suggested what would be the thought process behind that so if there's a cluster in a school is what i think that

129second level means that medium one cluster and for school impact or it could be as if there's a cluster amongst staff because i believe we did have an issue with last year the entire fourth grade team had to go out for quarantine for a period of time at one point so i i'm interested in your thoughts on that if that should be red or yellow i mean obviously you thought red but why um you're talking this red here yes last call the substance this this one right yep that's the one so notice that we have the asterisk in that one yep and it was red can't see anything but yeah yep so the asterisk is there and it's defined that it's only read um when uh students don't have access to a vaccine yeah it's

130only red when they don't have access it would be yellow at campbell because all students have access to a vaccine so that personal responsibility factor has come into play and we had contemplated making three different charts but the only difference between them was that box and so we just did it as one box and by the way we didn't um we didn't split the middle school between grades because you could have somebody who is what did they tell me we could have a uh 12 year old seventh grader or an 11 year old seventh grader so you you can't even say it's seven and eight and five and six it's two models we should separate fifth and sixth and seventh and eighth no different high school to me i would say that if you're in

131the hallway during that time period seventh and eighth can wear their masks getting to and from their classroom but when they get there to me that can come off versus it when we're in that yellow zone versus fifth and sixth i think we can make split those hairs a little bit to make sure that that fifth and sixth grade is protected walking through the halls and whatnot so let me ask this question if um so i i do like the personal choice like this is where we're not even harping on it it's you know everybody does their thing i guess my concern is right now we're not there yet we're not there we're not there but but i want to get the matrix right for when we get there right so the personal response the

132personal choice personal responsibility maybe yellow using the state language of um targeted which i think gets more to the point you're making which is um okay targeted so yeah because seventh and eighth graders because we have younger children and siblings in the building when you're passing between classes you need to mask up yep um then you're not talking but once you get back in your classroom you're safe to take the mask back off so the target it can become tailored to exactly what that situation is i i like that and and it's better than now we really you know i i didn't know what else to call it i strongly recommend it we were trying to say look danger yeah you know danger it's it's recommended that you put the mask on but some people

133can't do it do you think it would be possible to find out um people that are vaccinated not to get personal names and people that have national immunity what we've done that would be the percentage of the total of it so if we have example 90 of people that are vaccinated in um right i think i see what you're saying i just i'm i'm trying not to it's not a public forum if it was but um i think what i what i hear you saying is that if we know how what the vaccination rates are per school we can inform our decisions um we have offered our school nurses have reached out to parents at lms and chs and said if you'd like to share your vaccination status and have your our your card on

134file that helps us with contact tracing but parents are not required we're not going to be requiring parents to vaccinate or to provide proof of vaccination but you're saying even if my child gets coveted he's still going to have to quarantine even if he has the vaccine yeah and what's why did i even send my thing into the school because he's a lot less wait what i don't no i don't understand why we're quarantining kids who've already been vaccinated because they can be they have coveted they can still be they would still have to quarantine it's the breakthrough cases and the cdc yeah okay so going back to like the guidelines and the numbers so we open campbell tomorrow they all have to wear a mask no no because we don't have any cases if

135we open okay so now right but if we're going so what i'm hearing right now is substantial what i'm hearing from the board is that you like this better am i correct that this is for me i know that's why i'm checking in because brian the answer would be if we were following the state guidelines as a decision rule like pardon fast we're in the red master universal i'm looking for more flexibility with it this might be the way to get at it because then we'll be basing it on levels if we change the substantial um so we're not going to be looking at numbers if we change yellowed to targeted at campbell they would not be required yet and at gms they would they wouldn't oh no they're still low so it's still for

136gms but they're in substantial substantial so gms would have masks not not if it's a low school impact yeah that's what we're saying it's that yellow box yeah heidi was saying the yellow is targeted and masks are targeted for gms to grade six because they can't be vaccinated so that that's included in the targeted masking got it yep so gms and five and six would wear masks if if today was the first day of school based on the substantial level gms and fifth and sixth would wear masks the first day seventh and eighth would take them off when they get to their classroom and high school would not it'd be optional right and they'd all have them on the bus got it it's so confusing but that's why i wanted it i'm getting that but

137right now or substantial right right so which is this column yep so and and we're assuming that it's low impact because it's first aid change those words which words strongly recommended to make it targeted yes totally this one i own i can edit away so i i guess i come back to i think as parents i think parents want something very clear that they can look to and not do so much of a it feels like we should do more or less or this it's less data i want data points i want some very clear data points i think everybody does better with data points then there isn't a question mark it's very clearly there now again i also think it's important to take into consideration that level of school impact and one of the

138things that you talked about the august 4th meeting was impact on staff you're the one who will know you know how you're doing with your sub list and if you have enough subs to cover whatever it is you need to cover etc etc so i do think there needs to be that to me falls under that school impact of low medium high um but i i think we all for me i do better with data i want to be able to say okay here's where we are and and check it off and we have 17 cases in litchfield that's that's what i want to see if we have 40 cases of kids under 18 we can shut the schools down and go remote that's what i want to see if we have 40 cases in

139kids i mean that's more than we had last year an actual number actually really helped like you said i think a number but i think i think we we are having a number by going by what the state rates are right right and the states have this they have a level of school impact but it's defined i mean and it's clearly defined but it doesn't take into account the teacher effect we had a lot of times where we had um staffing strained critical staffing levels but our teachers have chosen to get vaccinated or not vaccinated so i'm hoping we don't have that problem hopefully not but we i mean we still have how many openings that's everywhere i mean yeah so i mean hopefully that won't be the case and we won't have to close

140school at all but and that's what we're trying to avoid okay so i think i'm understanding the puzzle okay right now all three schools are low impact correct but we're absolutely substantial community correct right so we're under targeted right now yes at gms schools so targeted means and then we could have that definition there that says targeted means k through six required seven plus seven to eight i think you have to carve out and say masks in the hallway and then i think chs optional okay so then let's say we we drop to because we're low let's drop the medium yep if we go up to medium but subs but the community transmission falls to moderate right then we'd be still in that yellow targeted yep and the teachers at gms will have to wear

141masks as well even though they may or may not have been vaccinated i'm just curious because i'm sure they're wondering too that's another variable do they have to wear masks the teachers at gms i think if we're asking we do not they're um we haven't discussed that with teachers no question yeah actually i could see both sides of it yeah was that a fair fair response where where i am with it is that it would be individual choice individual choices which means some will have them on at some point some will wear them at times and i don't think we're in a required posture with staff but all right um so i guess a couple of things that i mean i was trying to keep our reopening plan to a one-pager front and back i

142don't think i'm gonna be able to because i think what we're gonna do is refer to that but then put this decision matrix and this isn't right yet and it's seven o'clock at night we've been going since seven o'clock this morning so i can't develop this on the fly but i got the gist of what the board wants oh i don't want this we have to i want to i think that's what we need i think i got a gist of what the majority of the board would like to look at okay there you go thank you so what i'd like to do is work on this tomorrow and get it into a format that's clear doesn't leave any gray areas and we'll get it pushed out to the board in a final form so

143that you can so i appreciate that but i think families we need to know we have to do a vote tonight i mean i i think we have to do it based on what we understand it to mean and you can clean it up tomorrow got it um but i think we need to vote tonight because it's already the 18th school starts in two weeks we've got to give people time and but you want it to be based on all the conversation so so basically that's what my choice would be but i'm not well bored taking that chart and inserting it into the other document is more or less where i think you are headed right so can we briefly do a round robin and see where everybody is everyone knows where i am you

144open i'm out we open tomorrow gms and fifth and sixth have to wear masks and not staff if they don't want to i thought you were taking a vote on that we're just discussing what the table says at this point so the table says um i just want to just to jump on what heidi was saying i think back at last year and i know that i along with other board members were adamant as far as getting the kids back in school i also know that we were extremely cautious and wanted to make sure that we had done everything we could to make sure the staff was safe and the children were safe and one of the things we did aside from the cleanliness and everything else was the mandate mask because we felt then

145as i think a lot of people do and some don't that mask help i think they helped us stay open all of last year and maintain a much better education in person than not in person and i'm not quite sure and i've gone around circle with this and i i know like a few weeks back i've been saying you know that i think it should be people's choice but i think for the fact that preschool through sixth grade cannot get vaccinated they're multiple vulnerable so what can we do to have them best protected is the mandate mask until they can get until they can vaccinate until the younger kids can get vaccinated i i think it's the safest route thank you brother i i feel like um at the elementary school level we ought to

146at least give them a chance in meaning that i think as long as we don't have you know give them a chance to go without mass until we start seeing cases in the school and that's kind of where i stand i mean and i think it should i think maybe they should be mass at the second level but probably not at the first level for me let's give our town and our parents a chance to make this work and then if we see evidence then no um so open the schools right now as if we're all low i would um but i do think also that from you know i think that um the high school um the kids should not be maths and the teachers should not be me or it can be parent

147choice up until when we have multiple clusters i just agree with that with the high school yeah i agree with that with the seventh and eighth grade also yeah liz i agree with parent choice pk through 12 and we can't make parents get their kids vaccinated we might not even get 40 percent of our kids vaccinated it's a k-6 does that mean we're going to wear masks forever no that's what we're saying grades seven through is different they've had the opportunity to get vaccinated if they don't want to that's their choice they can wear a mask if they don't want to they can not wear it on a tie it should be the parents choice i don't we're five people making the decision for hundreds of parents we're not listening to what they i i'm

148listening to what i heard and what i got emails and i'm just projecting that i'm speaking for the other like we've all had i think we all speak for a segment of the community and i agree with tara you said you're listening to like correspondence and that there was only like 25 27 correspondents on this subject there were more than that there were two there was 36 correspondence but they weren't all on masks but i talked about people brian okay but that's 9 000 people in town 25 people well i say if they don't send an email then they don't care either way i don't think i think you know what no matter what i just think it's a parent choice to decide and i agree with tara we should start with no mask and

149see what happens and it i agree if we do get up to high or whatever put the mass back on it is what it is i'm not anti-matter day one without mask but i still think that it was part of her opening plan last year and the reason being is we thought that was the safest route to go for the children then it will never end that is my personal opinion there are countries have been wearing masks forever liz anything else nope that's it thank you yes thank you so i prepared a little statement just because i have been rounding around on this and i have to say if i was asked to vote on this back in june or july i think my boat would be very different than it is today i have

150read every piece of correspondence that has come in i have listened to every piece of community input anyone who sent a link i have clicked on it and i have watched your video i have watched and read the articles i don't come to this decision lightly and so that's why i'm saying this i consider myself to try to be informed um i don't think this should be a unanimous vote the bedford vote was three to two and i think that our vote should not be unanimous either because there are the town isn't unanimous on this we're not all going to be unanimous on this for me i have um really thought hard about this and i understand where you're coming from tara with the starting with no masks my concern with that and if we

151can address that maybe i would be in favor of that would be starting with no masks but what happens if litchfield gets higher but we're still in substantial when do we trigger but it's not in the school what when do we trigger that if we go down and then we move back are you looking to make that one green i guess is my question um that far right one on the top low substantial would be green yeah across the board so if there's low impact currently in school it's green across the board okay i i would consider that i would consider it um but my goal at this point is there's a large population that is not vaccinated that that preschool all the way to sixth grade um probably for the first time in my

152life you'll hear me say that i agree with brian all right write it down where's the minutes put it in there um i do i agree with brian um on this and i i really i feel like we have to at least for now while it's not an option to vaccinate that population we have to be more careful so i would vote to make that yellow targeted be that k through six i do think seven and eight should be treated differently i don't think i understand that creates enforcement problems for the middle school and i empathize with that but i think we can do it as long as it's hallway traffic and they can take them off in the classroom i think there are ways around that i think at the end of the day

153for me um the biggest factors in all this is i have done a lot of the research reading the increase of cases in children down south over the past three weeks with there being 121 000 coveted cases which is more than 14 times what there were in june for children hospitalizations reaching an all-time high for children um the fact that litchfield was one to four two weeks ago and now is at 13. i understand 13 is still a very low number but if you exponentially look at that that's a high increase in a short period of time and i worry about where we're going i'm not a health expert i'm not going to pretend to be one i don't play one on tv but at the end of the day i think we need to

154mask up those kindergarten to sixth grade students when it is substantial i'd be open to talking about giving him a chance starting with no masks though so that's i know it sounds wishy-washy but i'm open to hearing about it i read that article too when point two of those kids are hospitalized that's kind of where i am that's that's where i'm stuck what's that trigger right that's where i'm stuck i actually i agree with you as soon as there's a case and as soon as there is a case in the spike for me yes as soon as there's one case in the school in each if you remember last year we opened with masking in place we had a case on day two yeah yeah it took that long for the case to occur right

155just saying yeah and rates are higher now than they were the rates are way higher than they were last year i agree with heidi and brian i'm sure nobody is surprised i think that you know from the beginning and and based on the scientific consensus of the scientific community and the epidemiologists that i follow it's been vaccines masking and and physical distancing that those are the three you know those those are the three hallmarks of protecting like a preventing spread of coven 19. so if we have a population of kids who vaccine isn't an option we're down to two measures that we can do which is physical distancing and masking and i think i think we need to mask when when numbers in our community are substantial as a rate with you know with the

156population of our community do we have a number for substantial did we come to that or is it a percentage from upstate it's based on the county level it's the county level exclusive community but you're talking right it's really accounting yeah our community is our county so is there no measure for litchfield so um hang on a second i think we could create one so if it's a certain rate per 100 000 we could certainly say what our number for litchfield would be i just have to figure that out yeah because i mean i think litchfield yeah last year my husband followed the the per capita cases in witchfield and we were um about the same to above most days of the of the year if above londonderry hudson manchester nashua and merrimack so he

157followed this he did so he has it developed and he shared it with me if you look at this map um so this is doing the county map so if i hover on hillsborough county i get the numbers that we saw in the other one 194.7 100 000 cases over the last 14 days that's where it pops up right it's different than if i hover on manchester which is a pull-out and nashua is a pull-out right they also have public health regions so we are in the greater nashua public health region that's a different defined area i i don't think that helps us and then we used to be able to i could hover on litchfield right here but it says data suppressed in fact it says data suppress for the entire state so i

158don't know if there's a break in it tonight or if they've done something but it used to be you could get litchfield data right here um and that would be the number i would guess that we would use and i think that's the number dan has been transferred i just feel like people who are for parent choice and it was obvious today are throwing facts at me and i felt insulted at the tone that was used and i have a different school of thought i'd like to know how many kids are sick how many have symptoms how many are in the hospital because you might have coveted and we don't even know it right now you could have coveted you could have coke and i wouldn't even know but we're gonna make 398 kids wear

159a mask because five kids in litchfield may or may not have symptoms right one of the one of the other concerns is when someone mentioned it i like your tone brian thank you thanks it's different like a lot of people keep talking about like all summer they've been you know playing together playing you know sports camp doing everything but again you're outdoors that changes that changes it quite a bit how are you gonna see 75 kids in my house right yeah now you have 20 and they're all of the age of you vaccinated so and i don't know who's vaccinated or not but now we're going to take 22 23 24 kids in one classroom along with a parent a teacher and have them in a confined area it's different are we going to make

160them wear kn 95s because if i was really concerned i'd make my kids wear a nine and nine to five that's your choice have your kid wear whatever they want but that's my choice masks help cloth masks help surgical masks help it's it's not the end-all be-all it's not going to be the end i'll be able but it helps so if we can reduce the rates of transmission telemetry school kids wear mass are we going to read the emails is that after because we got emails from elementary school teachers in this town who are against masking or parents very possible are we going to do is that next i don't even know what the um i know we're all over the place yeah correspondence is next okay um do we want to wait for correspondence

161and then i was gonna suggest that we wait for correspondence so that uh let's look at the presentation here and mr perez is here yeah yeah so we'll take a vote on this later or after correspondence i read all the correspondence that came out yeah i mean i don't need it i mean brian can report out on it but i don't need it to make my vote nor do i okay um that sounds like we're all prepared and we all have how we're failing on it yep so um i guess the motion is to approve covax 21 version 3.0 3.0 410 which will include a matrix that looks like this with i've been trying to edit as we go i put targeted in as opposed to okay i've tried to define targeted i mean i

162i'm going to do my best to capture what i think i heard yeah yeah i think the only question is whether that top right side is green right that's what tara has proposed and discussed as a possibility can i can we just vote on that show that's the only question this box right here ever see it that substantial low how many people want that to remain yellow if that turns green that means that you would open with no maps no masks how many people want that to stay yellow targeted okay how many want that to be a green box no i haven't voted yet what my concern is how do we know when we move what if we have to move back into that box so we're saying we're starting green to give everybody a

163chance so if school impact moves back to low but county info stays substantial that would be green though to me is no cases in the school in the lowest defined as zero cases or sporadic cases with no evidence that it occurred within so the kid who goes over the weekend a hockey thing and reports back and there's no evidence it was related to school that doesn't count that keeps us in low and to me that that would also you'd go back into that level after the quarantine period right so it's not just up it's not just when they're diagnosed it's just after it's after that well it would be a school-like policy it wouldn't be per individual student right but it would kick in when a student had when there was a case based on

164that definition right i don't i'm guessing that it would be a current case and so when the current case is over then that's the number of change i think is that what you're saying yes okay so if we open day one green no mask day two if it occurs like last year if there's a case then we go to mask and go to yellow i would it would i would be in favor of that if that's how it happens that would be if it were green well that i don't want to be that one kid all right i mean nobody put anything on facebook so i'd almost be in favor of leaving the chart as it is i don't want that purple that's tight [Laughter] leaving the chart as it is but adding an asterisk

165to say all schools will start green i don't know you can start green but we're already in yellow right right and that's the thing i mean i look at where we are in cases compared to where we were last year would i have wanted kids to wear a mask last early maybe i would have right i also understand that's my opinion i'm trying to take into consideration that's okay it's why we're a five-member board you vote your you know your what you believe and and we come to an answer together so i'll recall the vote [Laughter] we have a motion and a second to um leave do do we leave the cell in question yellow for targeted masking measures or do we change or okay so if you support keeping it yellow say i i

166keeping yellow means you start off with i know let's define it keep it yellow that means k to six is mass p k to six would be mass seven through twelve would be masculine seventh and eighth grade would be massed in the hallways so the motion is to keep that's yellow how it is to me i am to me i i am somewhat influenced by the the feedback that we've got at this level to make my decision be low or to make my decision be green um at this level i think that's to to me i think that the risk is still very low in that case so so all in favor of keeping it yellow can i ask it sorry we just do a story hands yelling is that orangey box gonna be the

167same for the one above it and the two next to it you just haven't edited it yet it's supposed to be yellow it shouldn't be anything different i would say no that's right so what's written in that box says seven to 12 required pk to six that's what we're saying is going to be in anything that's yellow right so yes right so what i what i did is i modified an old red box yeah and it really should be yellow targeted gotcha now because i'm i'm looking at it so require pk to 6 is our def correct is our new is our targeted for all yellow boxes but that box was right because targeted means that it is required in pk to six so therefore i don't need to have this as a separate box

168any longer so i should just like to keep it a red box oh dear that's right i think that should be personal choice so i think where we are which one the orange the upper right one the upper right a medium school impact with substantial community impact transmission i think should be red so that we can prevent it from going higher i don't want to call you yellow this is yellow oh yeah you're like maybe the wrong yellow no that's green oh okay it's yellow it's the same color it's not a difference let's talk about the original yellow targeted box yeah is everybody ready to vote it's yellow or green this one here that one that's the one okay okay how we doing so we're voting to keep it yellow yes all in favor of

169keeping it yellow say i all right opposed i abstain so keeping it yellow passes three two zero so k to six is going back to school we really took a vote on it because that's where we're at well we haven't approved the plan yet but uh we've approved that box being yellow so actually that's helpful because the rest of the plan you what that would be we pick seventh and eighth because they are eligible to be vaccinated what what happens now when we have a sixth grader that can get vaccinated and i thought i heard september for even younger kids well that's what that was yeah and then this would all be a non-issue it would be but you're going to have sixth graders become eligible to get vaccinated shortly because of okay then we

170can always come back and revisit this you know we can we can move the goalposts as as more kids become vaccinated right or we could just say targeted mean mass are required in grades where [Music] right the other decisions are not available the one grade that would yeah the kids turned 12 throughout the year is that sixth grade right yeah they turned 12 throughout the year so you're gonna have some that turn 12 in october you know november december all the way through right i don't know where the bulk of them fall with their birthdays but i see your question but i would think at that point that they should move into the targeted case i think show proof of vaccination and as it's i think it's a matter of availability right so as it

171becomes available to that age group it just that's going to be a tracking nightmare for the teacher right so we want our teachers to be teaching and not in i mean trying to be that difficult you have a teacher that's got students in front of her you got a checklist it's like okay but it's changing daily by when somebody's birthday is right when they get a vaccine by when they're two weeks beyond the second shot i don't think it's fair to a sixth grader that turns 12 say september or october can get vaccinated and then it's going to be required to wear a mask i don't see how they're any different than a seventh root that's why the parents should have the choice well and hopefully that situation doesn't happen because it'll be opened up

172i would say even if you have that situation of a september birthday you still have to get your first shot three weeks second shot two weeks i think we have enough time that we can assess and hopefully vaccines for that entire right by then and then we can assess it but the very earliest the new sixth graders that are turning 12 would not be fully vaccinated i realize that yeah i just don't think i don't think it's fair enough that they would have to go through an entire year no i agree yeah like no i understand okay but but we're changing our definition of targeted from a grade-based definition to a vaccine decision definition i mean you're you're changing i'm not changing anything given the plan just how it is yeah but what i'm saying

173is we need to revisit sixth grade in as far as students and i realize they can't all be vaccinated or if something becomes available in september then we'd hand out no different than we are with seventh and eighth grade that if it's available september one then we know that come november one they've all had the opportunity to get the first shot second shot and if clear okay so that's that's if you change the vaccine level below age 12 right yes but if you change it to 12. but what i'm what i'm saying is no matter what you're going to have some students in the grade who meet the age threshold and some who don't it's just going to become a real tracking nightmare that's all i'm saying just keep that in mind we ask a

174lot of our teachers i know that's just one more component of it mike none of the seventh graders none of the eighth graders are vaccinated they've had the opportunity to be vaccinated so if that's apparently a choice like a liability situation pretty much if a parent chooses not to vaccinate their students and they so they can make the traders get vaccinated or maybe four you need to see a vaccination card we don't we don't okay i just heard ryan say no they just show the vaccination no it would be i i said it if that child says i'm vaccinated and i don't want to wear a mask then they would i would think would have to show proof that they vaccinated because it's going outside of what our parameters are all right yeah all right

175so we have one box colored in yellow any other changes to the to the um matrix i am a little bit concerned about the medium skull impact and substantial community impact being yellow and not red i'm sorry which one which box the one substantial yup yup and the medium school impact the way over this one yes okay so i would prefer to see that red i'd entertain it if anybody else supported finally got it yellow it's a bright yellow yellow it's a good yellow but i highlighted it in blue that that's the box we're talking about so i'll make a motion that we turn that box red for k through six only required required well under targeted they'd be required anyway it would be a school-based thing so again it would be required by which

176same is required for all of the other high school impacts if we can't understand this how can we expect joe public to understand it my husband can't understand it he just so what i think you're saying is that if if it's turned red all the schools and and every school is in that box area then then even the high school would have to wear mass at that point in time right i i disagree because because tara it's school impact you have to you know so well we've made this i guess well if the high school was in substantial and then medium impact then that would mean yeah so i'm sorry we've covered i'm getting myself twisted up but because of the way we've written this it's now a global look at three schools um targeted

177impacts each school a little bit differently and so really what i have to write is required means k through pk through 12. i'm i'm gonna write the definition that i think we're working on right yeah yeah and medium impact is what exactly again for school to me to me it's one cluster right that's the department of health definition but then there's also that teacher component component so the medium is one cluster in the school absenteeism seven to fifteen percent and staff capacity is strained is what you had written down previously right under being a level medium so that's three or more linked cases that's your cluster we've got absenteeism rates of seven to fifteen percent now pre-covered we ran four percent would be a high day so when you're looking at seven to fifteen percent

178absenteeism that's pretty substantial and we're strained with our staff does anyone find it ironic that we're sitting in a room less than three feet apart not wearing masks most of us oh no we does anyone see the irony in that in a substantial spreading spread because i've been vaccinated and i made a personal choice to not wear a mask so then why i'll second it for discussion i don't know if i'm voting for it but i'll second it for discussion any further discussion means mass are required for all students were we ever in medium last year we definitely had a cluster right did we ever have a student absenteeism rate to 7 to 15 percent during the school year hard to predict because we had 25 of our students remote so that clouded it we're

179talking now we're all in person if you hit that level that would be double what was pre-copied so that would be so which is like a flu outbreak basically in a regular year and strange steps and strange staff and we were strained a lot so we're starting off the year strained aren't we with staff i mean just yeah that's my concern is that we're starting the year off that way my take on it is that by being a little more proactive and a little firmer at the beginning maybe we can back out guidance was read you've already made the first substantial red yellow right and now we had yellow all across and the suggestion is to go red like the state is advising just and again i think we're going to impact a vast majority

180of people that are already vaccinated or have the opportunity to be vaccinated and i think we keep it yellow okay tara do you have any thoughts um [Music] well i wanted the other one above it green so this would be yellow yellow okay liz green heidi i'm with keeping it yellow okay i feel comfortable i don't think we need to vote then that could think the consensus is yellow take your um what i'll withdraw my motion and um we can keep it yellow okay thank you brian um okay so now can we take a vote on whether or not we include this table in our reopening plan is that the next step that's what i would be helpful i'll make a motion to what i i don't i thought we have not made a motion

181to include this in our plan we just voted on the two little boxes yeah so i make a motion to include this table utilize this table instead of the state one in our reopening plan a second all in favor aye aye opposed by and abstain sorry you can say for no i know what you meant um four one zero and now we need to make we need to approve i'll make a motion to approve kovacs 3.0 as it is drafted [Music] second discussion any further discussion i don't hear any so i will take a vote for um all in favor of approving 3.0 uh there we go we have a reopening plan excellent thank you for that um so this is what i'm gonna do i'm gonna work on it tomorrow i'm gonna set it

182back out to you only because if somebody thinks that i didn't get what the will of the board was let me know that um and then once we're confident that it is what we approved i will get it out to parents so that will go out um maybe friday if we can turn around yes and we'll get it posted on the website once the board is confirmed that's a lot of editing i just want to make sure i got it right i think i do but just to make sure all right the majority of the boards um once the vote is taken it is the board all right i will speak in the board um okay so okay now we have correspondence can i sit here yes yes oh presentation you want to do this

183high school presentation yeah yeah sorry you guys had to sit through all that they've been sitting there for a long time they have okay they're with me here you're honorary campbell high school representatives now you did your time yes is is there a link do they have a link in there like yeah i just have to state your first name their presentations just your first names because you're miners did i move it on there oh here it is all right okay hi i'm josie i'm haley i'm bailey uh we're here to present our senior project uh we're doing personalized parking spots we recently met with mr perez and then the head of maintenance mr ross and they approved it and then we wanted to come to you guys get further approval just because it is

184a big task and also like our rules regulations that have to go through further and like what you guys are looking for so basically what our idea actually is is so we want upperclassmen juniors and seniors to be able to paint their parking spot so they would pay an additional fee on top of what they already paid for their parking spot we haven't come up with what that fee is and then they would have to buy their own paint their own supplies and then they could basically just personalize customize their spot however they want within reason obviously and then we just really thought that this was a good idea for like school spirit and bringing positivity and we hope that it could be a tradition that we could bring so basically on the dock that

185you guys have are just some of the like criteria and requirements we have for what you can paint on your parking spot and what we want to do for that so um there is a box that we have um on the last page where um if you want to paint your parking spot you'll have to submit your idea like a rough draft an outline of what you want to paint on your parking spot that'll have to get approved by the administration and then you can go from there and go ahead and paint so we want to do a couple days that will be there um obviously we'll be watching over and hopefully someone else will be watching with us and then as far as the fee um so it's gonna be another expense on top

186of the hundred dollars but hopefully um the hundred dollars that we already pay for our parking spot that will go towards the resealing of the spot at the end of the year so the students don't have to do it themselves and it'll just be all professionally done and all set to go at the end of the year and um the money that we get from this could go towards the senior class that's i think that's it um i think it's a great idea i've seen other schools that have done something like this but they just kept it the seniors but if it's a fundraiser i totally understand why you want the juniors involved um so my my only question for you was where does the the fee for the painting go um and you answered

187that it would go to the senior class yes okay only if like it's not used to reseal so if you do have to take costs i'm gonna um calculate that like for like square inch like square feet and then the sense to reseal it so it kind of depends if we can get it out of the hundred dollars that are already in like the bank account for parking spots or if it's gonna be an additional cost to like have to pay for the vco okay and that all drives with the accounting that we've done so far and how those fees are yeah i mean we leave the fee we keep the fees in order to uh do maintenance on the parking lot i'd have to get an idea of what the cost of a resealing

188would be you'd have to reseal and paint in in line dave was gonna check on that yep okay i know the striping's not that much i doubt i doubt sailing would be much above it we do have the balance in the in the student activity fund to take care of that so so i looked at this if you okay so you haven't determined yet the the additional cost that they would need to buy a paint permit yeah okay that's the other thing too uh dave is going to make sure that they know [Laughter] so but he said that he would give them the to be recoated not that i'm aware of that i'd have to talk today most of the work we do is as needed are we going to re seal each spot or

189it's going to be the whole thing because i think that would be really expensive you'd have to do the whole thing in order to reline it realign a number oh okay he said if we gave him like an estimate on how many people were doing it then he could give us like a quote on how much it would cost so then we could figure out if we needed to charge an additional amount for the resealing or if we could just use that money for the senior class okay awesome with them once they get the numbers you definitely want to get the cost of the resealing before you establish your price because you could like turn around and say 20 for a parking space and find out it's going to cost you 30 per space to

190reseal yeah that's why we're going to meet once they get the numbers of rough estimate of how many kids want to participate then we'll be with them and then he'll kind of give us and for the seniors this can almost be like a practice run for your uh graduation hat like this is what it's gonna be in a bigger picture right i was thinking too i don't know if uh the painted spots are going to be clustered so if you have a spot here there and everywhere that could be more expensive than if you had all the painted spots in one area because you sort of could reseal an area right so just factor that into the cost calculation but they already have their parking spots yeah they picked them today we picked them today

191and um yesterday yeah but it's not going to cost us any money is it no no no make sure everything's cool yes absolutely that's a good idea homecoming's a few weeks earlier this year but i think depending on what the cost is for resealing part of the reason we charge hundred dollars per parking spot is for the upkeep of the parking lot true and i don't know when the last time it was recoated we did i think we relined it we relined it last year i don't i don't think it's been resealed since i've been here i like the idea of tying it to homecoming i was going to say you may want to think about a second date because i think when other people see it they're going to be really excited about it

192and maybe wish they had done it the first time but if you're doing it at homecoming then i think that makes a lot of sense to just keep it to one day i think you guys should also have artists for rent i know boys don't do themselves like do you know what i mean like my son would pay bailey twenty dollars to put like something on there that's exactly what i told my daughter i'm serious seriously yeah yeah paint my spot for me this is what i want money should go to the government that money should go together have any other concerns or questions do we need to approve this or yes yes yes we do um so i'll make a motion to approve the painted parking spot a fundraiser for the senior class all

193second okay any other discussion all in favor opposed and abstain five zero zero okay nope nope oh you abstain okay yeah um four one zero zero one four zero one okay thanks for that's awesome good job good job sorry we took so long yeah you had to wait welcome to the show all right so i believe that brings us to correspondence all right there it is all right so like i said we've had i believe 36 correspondents in the last two weeks so i just tried i tried to be brief as i was last time with each correspondence and just pull up the highlights so the first one is on eight four from rich los alas complimenting us on the meeting that we had for the message of unity thank chairwoman for taking ownership of

194the release of resources made a statement that you know the district plays an important role in what goes on the website and he knows that dr jetty can't vet all the information that's there so that someone should be in charge of taking care of that he wants to make sure that we answer all the questions on the right to know that laura gandy had presented you'd like us to reissue the message of unity to truly be inclusive um they also stated that we got the message that critical race theory is not now nor ever has been part of the curriculum at any level of school district debbie rice who wants to make masks family choice and again stating that kids been playing all summer and still the numbers in new hampshire are very low if

195you also want us to caution because the cameras are on and just some of our i can't remember exactly what she said no i just have just i know that she made a statement to make certain that we know that the camera's on so how we i guess control ourselves um she was also concerned that the statement was made that we wear masks to protect our friends as condescending implying kids who don't wear a mask want to hurt their friends um and she said when a school board member goes on social media and tries to promote their own personal view it's it undermines the literal role of a school board member age six was jim norton he sent the chart of vaccinations by town in new hampshire he feels that vaccine no masks unvaccinated should

196wear a mask as cases are rising and all we should follow science number five is jositas just made to hear that a good portion of our conversation focused on personal opinion rather than factual information about the delta virus she sent us four links um delta s is more infectious we need a flexible mode that allows for a mandated mask when needed i think that's we work on tonight on 8 6 pm uceles she's a grandmother of two at gms concerned not vaccinated safely mandate mask for students and teachers she would like to have teachers wear them along with students throughout the year of next year on 8 9 brian dodge once again reached out he says it's been two weeks since he sent out his last inquiry about utilizing fundraising funds from washington dc you'd

197like to buy some wood for a sophomore project and i think you've already reached out to him on eight nine stephanie silver wants no mass decision decision should be in her hands on eight nine gen white fully against wearing masks 12 and under much lower risks those that get the delta or lovid has milder symptoms on 8 10 terry dekarli make wearing a mask a choice for those who are vaccinated on 8 10 christine trembly sent five links would like to see the delta we use to make our the data i'm sorry we use to make our decision under 12 not at high risk a10 tyler matthew enough is enough wants board to vote on mask parent choice make them making a child wear them as child abuse and bigger chance of dying in a

198car crash so it's time to learn to live with coven and stop fearing the mongering what is the objective of keeping kids safe no covenant no hospitalization no deaths on 810 donald lacrosse i'm sorry donald rose hope the no mask mandate um she submitted a video of the doctor same one that leanne sent and she made a statement that youtube keeps removing it it's a doctor in mount vernon indiana jeff evitable on 810 does not want to mandate wants choice [Music] on the same date i believe was 8 10 i didn't write the date down kurt shafer wants a choice and against cohort groupings um samantha cloud i got to pull hers up because she just asked if i could read it so let's get right out here did you use your whole pad of

199paper for the next so samantha wrote on 8 11. i'm writing as a parent of two children lms one is vaccinated one that is not because of age i'm also writing as a respiratory care practitioner and an ecmo specialist unlike many who have opinions on this matter i'm actually dealing with children adolescents and adults alike with the delta variant especially in the last couple of weeks the science is clear mass protect however they only work when everyone in the room is massive it protects those from someone carrying covet by stop stopping it at individuals with covered masked masked mouth that protects others schools on an area of protection schools are in an area of protection to not mandate mask wearing for those that cannot be vaccinated and have much higher percentage of getting deathly sick

200is astounding to me my children be wearing masks to protect others but knowing others may not be wearing and protecting is devastating for someone for some that don't believe that the delta variant is affecting children i was never asked to help at any children's hospital during 2020 kova spikes as of last week i was asked by my hospital to go to florida or texas as an ecmo specialist this is a complete life support there are not many ecmo specialists in the country they are audit their adult covered ecmo unit as well as a children's hospital and covent ecmo units units are double occupancy staff have been living in the hospital for over two weeks with no breaks because they have no others to take care of their deathly ill patients all these children are not

201vaccinated and some were unfortunately infected by family members that had been vaccinated and through through that made them safe this is slowly spreading up to us this is not a flu it may start flu as flu symptoms but quickly ends up in children not being able to oxygenate their vital organs now overall this is still a small percentage of children that are infected that get to the point however i would hate to see other children in our district is sick like this or even half as sick which is as much of a higher percentage my personal hospital has been sending children to boston children's due to the dakova symptoms in the past two weeks and we are slowly getting younger sicker patients that are have no i don't know how to say the word morbidites

202daily morbidities morbidities thank you we still don't know why some people get so sick and why others aren't i also hate to be any of the children or mine a mask offers no protection unless everyone is masked the mask at this point is actually our only true protection those vacuum vaccine those not so i asked no i beg that for the 12 and under crowd at least please protect our students and those unable to vaccinate an immune compromise again what i say is not hearsay nor is it from a news source it's what i'm seeing is a person who takes care of children adults with coveted and post coven symptoms why not find my mail out there all right on 811 jessica von martin common sense wear a mask under 12. everyone has seen the

203importance of wearing masks follow cdc guidelines a12 anissa swanson requested no mask mandate vaccinate two children so they could be normal decision is not size fits all one size fits all 2012 laura gandia no wants no mask nascar contrary to everything of the country stands for and she gave 12 reasons why we shouldn't wear masks and a couple or cause acne psychological and uncomfortable many unknowns of wearing a mask short or long-term effects on e3 13 steve doucette has a seventh grader and he's concerned about not having pe um he wants to know who is responsible and what's the thought process why can't uas be split and rotate scheduled differently uas maybe once or twice a week on e15 caitlin mccormick make masking a parent's choice we were elected by the people of this town

204to represent us and put our children best interests first her family all had coveted from school on age 15 cat duke concerned about uas one one of her children has no gym one has no health she watches 7 14 meeting and not voted on confused what and when uas are available want us to review child obesity is on the rise um 816 erica donahue concerned about the lms schedule that it may affect ua's again jim's her son's uh is jim is her son's outlet and she suggested we change the times of the schools gms start time 725 lms 825 and chs 925. on age 17 michelle zejas pleading to insist a mass mandate until vaccination is for all i know right 817 mary frank please start the year wearing mass new hampshire numbers are increasing

205every day michelle gill now should not be required just like other towns she also states it's completely unprofessional for a certain school board member to be taken to be taken to their own facebook page encouraging friends to write letters in support of masks to meet their own agenda parents of litfield do not want mask masks don't work age 17 scott mcdonald please allow parent choice we wear we were better off because we were in school last year data shows younger children get mild symptoms 28th lee and romano let parents decide like surrounding towns have done in on 8 18 ec enos vote no on mask parents choice 818 don parmalow mass do not help does not want mask 99.97 kid percent of kids don't get sick he also states i along with 200 others at

206least know of a board member to have sent out a social media post to have her friends write in demanding mask if this is true and happen you should be ashamed 8 18 leanne romano um thanks for paying attention and watching um it was the same video she said all not all see this differently and she said hillbillies and selfish racists meg leon guerrero masking plan that is established with advice from health experts systems that is clear when to wear a mask you need a bigger notepad 8 18 christine rogers no mass like many of the surrounding towns have me and romano sent again that same video from mount vernon tara coakley the message of unity without the links appreciate the message we had put out before i just need to find one more [Music]

207i've lost my mail and the last one is from john york who i also asked to have you written into the record i mean sorry read into the record i'd like to add my voice to those asking the school board to maintain masks this coming year there were only 13 active cases in litchfield the town of 800 people or 0.15 of our town population i also don't want to i also want to voice my displeasure with the school board and superintendent for not sharing his plan for the coming school year before the meeting tonight so citizens can review the plan the school board is taken to not posting their meeting agenda in a timely manner and provide little to no valuable information in the meeting materials in fact this meeting today as of 1 50

208pm there is nothing in the folder in today's meeting i must believe this is a conscious decision on the part of the school board chair to not provide this information as they are responsible for making sure the information is correct and posted one more thing that the crt issued the school board would decide provide more information for the citizens instead of less i would encourage a school board to move in a new direction and replace the president's school board chair if one is unable to provide the correct leadership and direction for the school board they should not be in the role in watching the last few months it seems like the president's school board chair is more enabled with the title than doing the job of the school board chair and that is correspondence um

209aren't the minutes all when the minutes can we reiterate when the minutes are posted and once we approve under the school board agenda tab and on the calendar so if they're not in one place they're in another only usually by the friday is it by the friday before it's the monday the monday the monday so what i have been doing consistently or somewhat consistently is posting when those documents are made public and posted on the website i post them on the on the school board facebook page with an announcement that we're having a meeting we're not required to post it on the facebook nowhere it's being posted per the yes in two places right um so i have some school board comments in in response to some of the con the comments made in correspondence

210is it all right if i take this opportunity to respond to those comments or would you rather me hold them off or should i hold them off for school board comments we can change it to school board comments now can't we yeah just everything's awesome i know we're okay i know all right i have some comments too thank you um so i'd like to respond to some of the comments received in correspondence accusing a certain school board member of actively campaigning and encouraging people to email the board in order to sway the vote regarding mass policy the certain school board member i believe was me and the allegations are in regards to an analogy i posted on my personal private facebook page comparing the changing covid mitigation recommendations to a pilot turning on the fasten

211seat belt sign when it had previously been turned off i agree with this analogy policy sometimes needs to change in response to changes in the current situation whether it's covid bullying school shootings or any number of items that we see on a daily basis as board members in order to provide a safe consistent learning environment for all of our students a friend of mine who works with young children and whose husband came very close to death due to a coveted infection commented on my personal facebook post i just watched last night's meeting the uninformed cannot be making decisions regarding policy it is vital that accurate factual information be analyzed and considered how can i help make that happen to which i responded keep being involved and send your input including your position and any factors

212that you'd like us to consider in decision making decision in making decisions regarding masking to the school board litchfieldsd.org website first anyone who has followed my tenure as a member of the school board knows that i have always been an advocate for transparency increased communication and opportunities for the community to provide feedback to the board i've consistently and repeatedly responded to comments on facebook with please email the teacher slash principal superintendent slash school board with your concerns and questions my response to my friend's comment was no different and echoed the statement dr jetty made at our last meeting that if anyone had any input or factors that we need we should be considering in making these decisions to please email them to the board second i created the school board social media accounts and i

213took on the role to represent the board on social media doing so allows us to keep an eye on tops of topics of concern and to answer questions i've always fully supported all community input emails meeting attendance in person or by google meet and have work toward more community involvement in our school board decisions whether i agree or disagree with the opinions provided third my personal perspective and take on the policies of this district is one of five we work as a collective to represent all stakeholders in our school district to the best of our ability each of us saw our positions to improve education in litchfield to serve our community and to always keep the best interest of students at the forefront and every decision we make our perspectives and viewpoints differ which is

214why the district is run by a board of five instead of one individual we have no power or decision making power individually only as a board convened in a meeting so my response was one of send your input to the school board which i've always advocated for it was not meant as a email campaign to sway anyone's vote or anyone's opinion on the matter so i just wanted to clarify that because apparently over 200 people thought that that was what i was trying to do um and i have a response to mr john york's submission which was just read during correspondence um he says i just responded to a few of his quotes i sent the response to the board as well and as dr jetty did you not receive it yet no okay um

215i said he said i also want to voice my displeasure with the school board and superintendent for not sharing the the masking the reopening plan for the coming year before the meeting tonight so citizens can review the plan i responded the draft kovacs 21 plan was discussed by the board at several meetings it has been posted on the district website since mid-july it has been updated throughout the summer and includes links to the cdc nhgps recommendations we are considering tonight it is posted on the website under the coronavirus tab and i've asked for a link to be included in past meeting materials it will always show the most recent version as it is a live document furthermore if anyone had asked for that document it was a public document that wasn't posted on our website

216so i would have been happy to direct anyone to it further he says the school board is taken to not posting their meeting agenda in a timely manner and provide little or no valuable information in the meeting materials in fact for this meeting today as of 1 50 pm there is nothing in this folder for today's meeting i must believe this is a conscious decision on the part of school board chair not to provide this information as they are responsible for making sure that this information information is correct and posted i responded i agree that posting of the agenda and for our meetings this summer have not been as timely as in the past i share your frustration and members of the board can attest that i have discussed the issue at length with our

217superintendent and requested better compliance to our policy the meeting materials for tonight's meeting were in fact posted on the website monday august 16th i shared the links to the posted agenda and the meeting materials on monday evening as soon as i was able to return home after my father-in-law's funeral mrs flynn has just notified me that the link had been bumped on the website as other items have been added and that she has returned it to its original place on the agendas and meeting materials page in the future please contact me if the agenda or materials have not been publicly posted on the monday before the meeting or if you were not able to find them on the website as i stated earlier my goal has always been to increase communication and transparency the last

218statement made in that email was if one is unable to provide the correct leadership and direction for the school board they should not be in this role and watching the last few months it seems to me the president school board chair is more enamored with the title than doing the job of sb chair my response is the role of the board chair is one of a collaborator and a facilitator not one of power i take my role seriously and i serve at the will of the board i'm sure as a former board member and chair yourself you understand that the work is never finished and is often unseen by those who aren't privy to the scope and gravity of the responsibility of being a board member these past two years in particular have brought many

219tough decisions and challenges to our board and i believe we have weathered them well that said i will entertain a motion from the board to remove me and replace the position if of chair if any member sees fit that's all for me you you addressed my question from mr york um what i don't understand is when he says the folder what's he referencing i have no idea there was no folder yeah so i'm wondering if i'll reach out to him yeah because i think he might be trying to access the old folder as a board member which he's been removed from access so it's always going to be empty for him because i don't think there's a public folder correct michelle so i think he's looking in a spot that he used to have access

220to that he no longer does and i'll just clarify that we'll get him right directly because as soon as i've read that i'm like yeah and i did provide him with the links to the current agenda and the meeting materials that were posted on the website um i think it's possible too he's just using a just a term because he's reached out to me in the past and said there are no materials and then i would reach out to michelle and sure enough they weren't and then they were so but this time there were something yeah and and you know the the the plan was there that's why i'm you know he's saying that the plan was in there at 150 and i'm like it's well it's really essentially the same plan from june and

221july with slight modifications but right i just i want to clarify where he's looking i want to make sure that we're in the right spot as i said i'm happy to help and anytime he would like to if he can't find a material that he's looking for i'm happy to be the liaison to make that happen any other school board comments i just would like to say that um actually tina i appreciate when you you know we we do all have differences and um you know i i appreciate the fact that you respect all of everybody's opinion and even though you know i didn't agree with you the three of you on that one square it was handled very professionally nobody was demeaned and um you know i think that that's important so thank you

222thank you i think this all goes back to social media it's all social media and i think people assume because your school board chair everything that comes out of your mouth is as a school board chair that's why i don't post anything political on my page nothing about school all you see is my kids and maybe that's how it was misconstrued but i think we don't have a personal facebook that's what you think your personal facebook page is just for you while other people see you as the chairman of our board and everything you do is i'm just trying to see how they're seeing it you know what i'm saying yeah i understand i just wanted the opportunity to explain why i posted that and it should be different though it absolutely should be i

223was actually upset when i was emailed about all this crt stuff in my personal email that is not right you know um it needs to be going to my school board email school board materials need to go to school board email addresses you know i think i think the benefits of you as a representative of the board being you know being that voice on facebook there is much more benefit to that than drawback um there's been more communication than ever i we're never going to please everybody it's just not possible but i think the board over the years has come a long way and you're more responsive than if you know the board has ever been so and i i think overall in when you look at the balance of it i think it's a

224positive thing you know might might we all at one point or another disagree with maybe some how you've said something yeah you know but do i have the time to do it absolutely not i don't have the time but we have to be mindful christina harrison as the resident christina harrison as the school board are two different people so that's why we're supposed to say i'm speaking as a school board member i never say personally or anything like that right and when i speak as a school board member i make that clear right right right when she was publicly she's yeah right this was on my personal private page so i in the future i'll be more careful about who sees what i post and what i do post um and i don't think the

225discussion getting into discussions on facebook is appropriate either not that anyone's doing it because we represent our school board no matter where i am whether i'm at hannaford someone said i'm doing my hands again if i represent i rep someone's everyone here gets an earful wherever they are as a school board member and and as a parent we opened ourselves up to that but we're also residents of this town who have our own opinions which you obviously on my mind you both you and heidi have been very respectful and questions about that i've had you've answered via personal messaging which i think is the better format yeah because then you don't have to yapping right it does you know right because everybody and i do different from anybody because no one wants to get into

226it on facebook because we've seen all sorts ugly in every way shape and form yeah um any other school board comments let's keep moving um superintendent comments all right so uh just to give you a quick enrollment update i'll try to blow this up on the screen um so keep in mind last year k through four we had 394 students at griffin part of that was uh because of the covet situation there were some families who made choices um not to be at griffin we were predicting that was a uh prediction that was sort of um you know it was based on the coveteer we were experiencing right because we're doing rolling averages three-year averages and so when you have a dip then that impacts the averaging so 417 was what our prediction was as

227of today hot off the press we're at 428 so we're 11 students over the prediction i don't think that's a misprediction i think it's the covid uncertainty that's being carried forward if you look at the kindergarten number the trigger number was 76 we're at a solid 83 so we're going with the five staff in first grade we were at 84 we're now down to 79. we were bellied up to 84 with 83 students for a good chunk of the summer principal mitchell was watching that very closely but we've since learned of students who are moving and so that number's dropped back to 79 which gives everybody a chance to breathe um the trigger number in second grade was 84 and we're we're steady at 81. that's up one from where we were it has been

228creeping up but there's still some wiggle room the third grade number uh 84 was the trigger we're now at 87. so again we had we had surpassed 84 all along but you'll see that it's gone as high as 89 and now it's back down to 87. and then finally fourth grade the trigger number was 97 and we are at 98. so we are above that trigger number and we're in the process of hiring he has interviewed um teachers for that position and is trying to work out who to finalize recommendations and get a candidate to me so that we can have that in place um i also asked him the current pk enrollment is 30. so when he presented this he had uh 458 in this column and i'm like oh that whole column is

229k through 4. so i said pull pull the pk out park them on the side um rather than confusing i want i don't want it to look like you're at 458 pk through four or i'm sorry because even all the way back here it's always been about the k4 number so 394 best compares to the 428. so let me pause and see if you have questions about the enrollment numbers and where we sit and we'll know a lot more at the middle school and the high school on first day counts friday you do the first friday account um we do we do three trigger points so it's the opening day who's actually in front of you then there's a second one which i think is the first friday but this year we're not in school

230on friday so we might have to do it first thursday monday following friday well the following the first friday oh there you go so we'll still do the first friday it'll just be two weeks in and then the last uh one is october 1st and that's the real that's the one that we used to go for all right all right thank you you're welcome um bus route update do we have a bus route update yes so this is where we are with bus routes um michelle has finalized the bus routes and they have gone off to first student for first student to verify that they're accurate uh our goal is to have those posted by friday i believe michelle possible friday if the latest will be monday this weekend but i think i haven't heard

231anything back from the bus company so i'm trying to keep my fingers crossed everything's good so the bus routes are are almost ready for prime time and that then i i would just remind the board that opening days are going to be very telling we're a little unsure how many high schoolers will be riding the bus uh what's the impact with middle schoolers how many will be dropped off i mean the earlier start time may work well for some families who choose to do the drop because my kids off it's going to be new this year that they'll get on the bus so yes it'll come out i'll post it on facebook i'll post it on facebook when it comes out it'll be posted on the district website and each school will have their bus

232routes on their page so if you're there with a portal that you created if you no no you go to like litchfield middle school home page okay it'll be there i think the fact that master gonna be required on buses may encourage parents parents may be interested in driving their kids similar to last year at that those levels what do you guys think i think it could go either way there are some who will feel comfort with the masks and want to ride if there are some who will not want to ride because of the masks and i think the other things are what we what we don't know is um because drop off at the middle school is between 7 15 and 7 20 for parents that's a tight window and that may work

233well for families on their way to work but that's such a different window than what we had last year it could be a swing that that shifts what ends up happening so i see yeah dr jetty i'm sorry to interact i know the interrupt this year your comments i know there have been a lot of questions about why are you going to address that later why we changed the hours and then just to remind parents why we did it so because people are questioning why it was done why we went to 7 15. i i've seen that question i don't respond to things on facebook but i see it all our interim principal martha thayer is putting a communication together that will go out to families by the end of the week okay that will

234answer a lot of the questions but in a nutshell let's just do a quick reminder um we've added 30 minutes of instructional time at the middle school which we were short for the state we were we were bellied up to the hours and then depending on how you interpreted um the best block okay that that tipped the scale one way or the other so i think what we've done is come up with a plan that adds 30 minutes we've solidified the best block as instructional time that may mean a little more homework coming home because it's not getting done during the day but that will be instructional time um you think about 30 minutes that's 90 hours of instruction a year so i have a lot of confidence that the way we can meet programming

235needs so for example health and pe are purposely rotated so it's pe one year health the next pe one year health the next so the point is we're all about teaching healthy habits and behaviors and education throughout the middle school years there could be topics that are covered in those that are a little bit different but you know physical education is not physical activity they're two different um two different notions right so as we refine all of this i'm confident that we're going to be able to get all the activities in for our students and um you know to clarify because i i read some of the comments that came in too our teacher's contract is very clear that the teachers can only have uh four four preparation periods and that's the thing that drove

236why we had a semesterize the classes because of the contract language so we're meeting the agreement that we have with our teachers and that's a firm commitment that we need to have going forward so all of these are what factored into the new schedule but i think you know the community appreciates having the additional instructional time and frankly middle schoolers will be at school longer when you add the bus rides in too it's a it's a longer time period that they're engaged in school bus riding and school activities thank you for clarifying that brought it all in i think i captured you did capture it there's a lot more but so where do we how do we do drop off now is it at 7 15 instead of like 7 30 like it was exactly

237so we get in line i would get in line at seven i would get in line at 7 10. and so what is pick up now um martha's going to be sending an email out to everybody but it will be 205 something yeah so same as last year pick up the share was two so it's 205. oh okay so extra 20 minutes per day yeah gotcha okay and did you finalize like what's happening seven and eight are masks in the hallway masks on bus and mass getting into the classroom and then when do they get to take them off or do they stay on will martha address that we'll address all that and stuff like that so are we getting an additional email from that as well correct so nothing is finalized so when people

238are like oh what's going on you say nothing when is it going to be final saturday we got people waiting at home yeah it will be out by this uh friday okay all right you're in trouble we just finalized it yeah he did and you're right what you just said is accurate yeah yeah you you have it i was here i heard it on board anything else on bus routes um michelle the bus routes are starting at 6 45 6 40 6 45 6 45 but just so parents have that guide 6 45. the last thing is the 2021 2021 22 tuition rates this is going to be a tongue twister all year i think um so essay 2122 we'll know what you're talking about 21 22. i just need to cut to 20. so

239um we fill out the doe 25 and that was given to the board at the last meeting we then calculate what the tuition rates are going forward i asked michelle to add a column in called the daily rate because it's it's difficult to say that the elementary school is going to cost sixteen thousand and fifty eight dollars a year you know we simply divide that by 180 instructional days and we say it's 89 21 a day the reason is that we have some families that are asking about tuitioning in they may not have the ability to pay 16 000 in a lump sum but we do monthly payments et cetera so uh so the daily rate was just something that was helpful you can see the high is at the middle school at 94 11

240a day um and below is actually at the elementary at 89 21 a day and we have in the past had individuals that only paid a week or two weeks or a couple days because they were coming in so um and you can also look back at the bottom the last two years approved rates so you can see they do fluctuate it all depends on the way everything is charged back relative to the doe 25 but i am looking for the board approval on on the tuition rates which are calculated right off that forum i'll make a motion to approve the tuition rates well second any further discussion all in favor of approving the 21 22 tuition rates say i i i post abstain passes five zero zero i've already done school board comments so

241i'll make a motion to approve the public minutes from july 28th second discussion all in favor say hi opposed abstain public minutes from july 28th are approved five zero zero business administrators report all right so i provided uh reprovided the report from the last meeting because i was away on vacation i just wanted to have it back out there in case there were any any questions on any of that information um we had a very successful audit they were with us for two and a half days there were no audit adjustments made to the the financial statements so what i initially provided um towards the end of june is pretty accurate to where we stand now based on that the doe 25 was provided uh for review over the past couple meetings uh michelle has

242signature sheets for those who those can be submitted to the state by the um september 1st deadline also in there is a signature sheet for the ms-25 the ms-25 is an identical report to the doe 25 in a more concise form um so they just go to different so the the ms-25 will go to the um municipal services division the dra for for tax rate setting in their portal and the doe 25 goes directly to the department of education um i gave an update based on some things that are going on right now um based on construction management meetings and just reviewing what's going on at lms the windows are completed uh the main office has been completed um they're starting to move all the furniture back into those areas the one thing that we've

243run into is they want to and we've decided to relocate a rooftop unit um that would run more efficiently inside the mezzanine so they are working on bringing that into the building oh inside the building not in the thing in the middle yeah it was it was originally it's if you're sitting at the circle at the school you can actually see it it's a blue blue rooftop unit yep um it's going to be moved into the uh mechanical room which is right there and the old equipment has already been demoed and taken out of there so they're sufficient it's smaller too it is smaller um but just from talking with all our consultants and everything it will run much more efficiently on uh they have also completed doing two testing rooms uh for the windows

244insulation at the the roof joint and insulation along the concrete slab one on the north end one on the south end of the building um they're going to conduct lower door tests when the insulation is completed to see what efficiency we have picked up in that room based on a test that we did on one of the first windows that was put in i believe they said it was about a 46 increase in efficiency um in infiltration so where we had the the drones go through and to take thermal imaging of the building um it would the side of the building was glowing red with the heat loss so we're hoping this is going to be a major uh improvement in comfort level and it's also going to save us some operational cost because we're

245going to save in fuel we're going to save an electricity i'm sorry i missed the beginning is it due to the windows the window replacement the window the window replacement that was the first test we did okay on one of the first windows that was done so they they do a blower door test and pressurize they're doing that and they're going to redo that test on the test rooms that we've they've completed on either end of the building i'm interested to see the savings next year yeah like the gallons maybe not we can't go by dollars but we could go by gallon juice or propane therms whatever they are and and the tests are going to be just based on those two rooms and you take that and extrapolate it out yeah on what you

246can save and dick henry helps us out a lot with those those type of calculations and such so north branch is bringing in their cleaning crew tomorrow and friday to do a final kind of once-over and then hand the building back over fully to us to be ready for for opening so the new conference room in the area yeah and he just dated okay you have to date that there okay um yeah their their foreman darren has been ambitious with his three week schedules every time he shares them with us each time we meet and he's been really following through on it he's kept those subs moving so it's been a great experience working with them um trying to think is there anything else on the project no we're just we're we're holding off on

247the the roof will be uh forthcoming when that comes in in the fall into the kitchen this year we did not do the kitchen that's at this point and we are still looking at the we're looking at doing the cooler replacement yeah okay this phase but the next phase will be the the renovation after we've done the design perfect so that will bring us to the gms project and what's included in here and i believe mike sent it out to the board members and linked it to the the agenda is the proposal from barker architects which is the architect firm we chose out of concord to work on the new elementary school this proposal is for pre-bond services so conducting a needs assessment reviewing i think he's going to review both lms and gms um

248and from that he comes up with the what the options are what what are the decisions to be made going into the future proposal is also broken out by the three organizations that are involved barca architects ashley mcgraw architects out of syracuse in basin studios which is a part i think part of actually so they do the landscape architecture and marketing and all those types of things so it's um the total for that is 117 000 for the services through barker uh for the pre-bond phase and um those costs would be funded through the the expendable trust fund for the capital improvements so basically the hundred thousand dollars we had added to that fund last year almost covers that yes the cost of this we've added a hundred thousand twice so yeah we added another

249one has 200 yep okay um and just so the the full board has this we uh remember we started with rfqs we had a number of firms that we reached out to to hit on the project we interviewed four that came in that were really attractive and uh selected two as finalists and the thing that i think tipped the scale for kyle kyle barker is that he's he is experienced building schools in new hampshire and we could go and see public schools in new hampshire that he has constructed the other thing is that you know don't panic over the syracuse connection uh the folks in syracuse have built 30 net zero schools schools public schools 30 of them versus in new hampshire you know the first net zero public school to open will be oyster

250river that will open next february so new hampshire does not have a lot of depth of experience with it um and so kyle will be the architect of record but he'll be he has a big house backing him up that will make sure that the work he's doing meets all the things that need to be done so um and dick henry who is our energy consultant was very excited by what the folks were bringing to the table very so excited i mean he's driving out to syracuse to have lunch with calvin i think who is the guy he could be energy efficiency guys yeah yeah so it i i think we have selected the right firm um i don't think the other i think any of the firms would have done a nice job for

251us but um but the way kyle has put it together and his experience in new hampshire is critical so we're hoping the board will approve the fee we've already had two different preliminary i will note as well that we have received a proposal um and we'll bring it forward uh probably in a couple weeks but we did receive a proposal from dave uh david e lee to stay on as the owner's rep in working with the architect so that make sure because mike said it this morning in the admin i i haven't built a school he hasn't built a school so that having david e lee there as that that piece for communication that middleman um he knows the questions to ask so we'll be bringing that proposal forward um probably through the the capital

252or the facilities improvement committee within the next couple weeks i did have a question um looking over the report i noticed on the second page under general pre-bond project management they wrote an estimate of forty thousand six hundred thirty dollars but then put in parentheses thirty three six hundred and when you add up that total it actually adds up to a hundred and twenty seven thousand dollars okay so number one so i just wanna make sure i think are we proving 117 are we approving 127. 117 because actually when he handed us the proposal over an oyster river he said he had revised that number because it's the 33-6 so he just didn't revise the words okay um obviously legal document we probably want to have him revise that because it's the written word that

253right that's what counts on a check anyway it's the same thing in in contract yeah so yeah if we can have him just revise that it stays correct but it's the amount is the 117 yeah okay because there was one of the double check items covered there that were also duplicated in another area in his initial proposal so he had to make that adjustment well he has another one he has to adjust too what's that the needs assessment feasibility study yeah it's written out seventeen thousand four hundred and then in numerical it's seventeen thousand eight hundred all right we can have him make those revisions before we sign it yes before we sign but we would we would ask for the authorization for for micro myself too um okay i'll make a motion to approve

254the architect fee proposal as amended thank you seconded any other discussion all right all in favor say aye aye all opposed any abstain five zero zero i think as the board starts meeting some of the group they might be through yeah google meet or maybe in person they're young energetic they're just very professional and i think they're gonna do a super job like each one of them has like a different component what they're responsible for and you just sense the passion in like how they were talking can um so brian and tina have seen the rfqs have we shared kyle's packet with the full board i think i i think i asked you to do that last meeting or two meetings ago did i have all of them you have kyle so yeah so great

255is it a great cover yeah i have it okay i just want to make sure i did it and you've had the chance to see it yeah it's pretty exciting stuff very nicely all right school board action steps school goals before you do that i just got one thing for corey can you possibly just double check your reports when you send them make sure they're like the right way yeah on the on the pdf yeah i can do that for you great i have a couple that are like this that's my dad i usually do that michelle will you send me the um july report and the august update and i will share that with the budget committee thank you we have our meeting next i think 28th so school board goals action steps um

256did you want to provide some context we need to approve the school board goals so you know these were presented at the last meeting and i asked the board to look them over think about them um and just looking for feedback and whether you agree that we're on the right track with our the action steps that we're setting forward we're trying like i cautioned the principles i'm like do not write 15 action steps because you can't do them so i want you to really focus on three key things or four if you need to um and so i'm just looking for feedback and whether we're in the right spot i think i think they're good i had a comment the last time which was incorporated um but my question is with the lms principal leaving

257and the chs guidance counselor leaving how does that affect these if at all it shouldn't affect them because what so we're in the early stages of finding a principal at lms and it'll be up to martha and me and the rest of the team to help that person lead this and the reason we've named martha is interim she helped tom to develop that so i feel like he's going to walk in with a vice principal that's collaborated tonight and and i think that you know then we just basically say the principle this is what to really zero in on and focus on um the chs guidance transition um we have somebody in place you'll be looking at the packet later and um again the team is going to take charge of how to how to

258focus on on that so i feel very confident that as much as there's a personnel change the organization has a direction so all right so you need approval on those action steps the question to approve the school board school and district action steps for 2122 second further discussion actually the only discussion i have is and it's a comment for the handbooks too can we spell out any acronyms or define them just because this will end up being a document that parents and guardians read and yeah they don't understand them yeah yeah plc seo yeah exactly they're all important none of them important um acronyms all right thanks did i call for the vote all in favor yes all opposed abstain five zero zero we already talked about the senior project which was approved and now

259we're on old business policies we have approval of policy j-i-c-j-i-c-d j-i-c-d-d j-i-c-k i'll make a motion okay brian has a motion i'll second all in favor of approving policies j i c j i c d g j a i c d d and j i c k say aye i know i was taking a bite of my banana sorry abstain five zero zero those are all approved um we have policies to be rescinded i'll make a motion to resend policy j i c d r and jkd second any discussion all in favor aye all right opposed abstain 0-0 rescinded as requested school handbooks so i think you had the handbooks last time minus uh the final tweaks to the um the discipline tiered system and you had a draft of what it was going to

260look like and that has now been finalized by the three schools so um i think it's actually a couple of things it provides continuity across the schools it's consistent with the new law in terms of a progressive discipline model and it's really more clear to our administrators and teachers what they should be doing versus uh you know where everything falls so i hope that this provides greater clarity going forward i agree i'll make a motion to approve the progressive discipline charts and the student handbooks for 2122. second so my only question is i did notice on the lms handbook there are references to mr elect lighter throughout [Music] so we'll need to for the 21 22 so we should probably update that i don't know when but at some point because it's on the cupboards

261and then throughout in the middle as well the letter the letterhead yeah it just seems like we're not on top of things if things aren't updated like if you see a picture from 2018 you know yeah keep in mind the timing of when mr leclider announces so we're under the gun but i think we're going to post it as is because we sort of have to and then we will um update it because it's online yeah it's not going to be printed out right now right exactly and we can do a find and find and replace search and replace so we'll and heidi will remind us i will sorry but i yeah i just i think you know in terms of it says on here who to contact and it right he's still listed there

262and i assume at some point that no one else is um i had a couple comments for gms but i put them on there so those could just be shared um one specific question i had is why can't students buy an extra milk or our la carte items at gms they've never been able to they should be able to where which page is that page 26 section 8-8-1 that's what it says students did you make that comment on there yes yes i did so that's something i feel like we should look into someone agree with that if they can purchase ice cream or other a la carte items um so that was one thing and yeah i don't know yeah we'll have to flush it out with lauren no it will not be allowed to

263charge milk or all the cart items if they don't have money in their account it's oh yeah they need to have money in their account maybe that could be clarified but i think that's what it is i didn't read it that way you don't have a balance but they don't have autocad oh my god that was a boston accent slip they don't have garlic do they have milk just milk is considered a card but they don't have cookies and stuff with gms because they have ice cream they just have ice cream but i think that's gone yeah um that's where a lot of it's gone because of where we are yeah but i think she's gonna start bringing back the a la carte items because now you've got you've got food service being reimbursed at

264a higher rate per reimbursable meal but now you have an opportunity to make up the local revenue by bringing all the cart back in and generating revenue which is really the the goal of this year in the in the program who doesn't love an ice cream sandwich during the day i know all right and then lms that says all gms well actually my question is um i guess gms it says that gms is going to be included in lms emails now yeah i'm not sure all gms should be included i feel like it's just the uh incoming grade like fourth grade if possible and maybe just at the end of the year yeah true but anyway just clarification on that [Music] okay so are we ready to approve it or do i mean we need

265kind of need to approve it because it needs to be posted and signed on yeah all right so i'll make a motion to approve the student handbooks i think i already did this and progressive discipline charts as um amended all in favor opposed abstain five zero zero can i just clarify you wrote mask link you mean like embed it right so instead look at how the policies are done in there yeah yeah exactly just so you don't have to see the url it just it's cleaner especially all the policies are done properly yeah i got it just make it a different color it um like it says www.schoolcounselor it's like you know american association school counselor website and you highlight yeah yeah so you embed the link right all right that brings us to the

266manifest any questions on the manifest did you sign it it's all set yeah okay um public input do we have any more we don't have any more in attendance do we have anyone from home let me go look let's see oh god what did i do that's not good no you know what it is the link ends at eight o'clock so cinderella turned into here we go and it's me myself all right i think everyone else has gone to bed um so with that i will um close out this meeting and thank everybody for watching and attending um i think it was a much longer meeting than anticipated but i think we had some really good discussion and i think everybody knows now where we are moving forward so um our next meeting is september

2671st september 1st it will be at town hall at 5 p.m you can reach us in the meantime at by emailing school board litchfield sd.org thank you and have a good night that will go into non-public um rsa 91-a colon 3-1-1 types parentheses a through c a the dismissal of promotion or compensation of any republic employee or the disciplining of such employee or the investigation of any such charges against him unless a employee affected one has a right to a meeting and two requests that the meeting be open 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 this person

268requests an open meeting mrs oh that is it so um a role called vote ryan yes tara yes liz and heidi yeah yes so that brings us to non-public have a good night in those links is all right