This program is brought to you by cable franchise V's and generous donations from viewers like you First order. I will Seeing a presence of a quorum of the Amherst school committee and calling this a meeting to order at 632 p.m And we'll start with a roll call attendance Ms. Spitzer Spitzer present Mr. Demling Demling present Ms. Lord Lord present Mr. Harrington Harrington present and McDonald present. I'll turn it over to the Pellum chair All right. Thank you seeing a presence of a quorum of the Pellum school committee I'll call the Pellum school committee to order and we'll do a roll call. Mr. Menino Up your on me run Menino present Miss Dancer Dancer present Kenny Kenny present and Hall present great and Seeing a presence a quorum of a quorum of the region school committee I call that meeting to order and we'll start with roll call there as well. Ms. Spitzer Spitzer present Ms. Lord Lord present Mr. Demling Demling present Mr. Harrington Harrington present Ms. Dancer Dancer present Mr. Menino Menino present Mr. Sullivan and not here yet. So and McDonald present. Oh, Mr.. Sorry I was writing your name as I was going to forget people this time. Mr. Sieger Sieger present So we are now in session So thank you again to Amherst media for broadcasting we are streaming on live on Channel 15 in Amherst and also online Through Amherst media and This meeting is being recorded So our first Item is to approve our minutes from June 25th from our joint meeting then were there any Changes edits Miss Kenny So I just saw two things I had questions about on page 13 near like halfway down It said the Snell test. I think it maybe should have been this Mel test with an M and then in last paragraph it talks about Jesse saying something about keeping the three feet distance, but I'm pretty sure she said wanting to keep a six-foot distance So those are just two typo looking things I noticed Thank you Anything else that people noticed Not seeing any Would anybody like to make a motion? Mr. Demling I Moved to approve the minutes of June 25th 2020 for the Amherst school committee Lord second Moved by Demling second by Lord. So this is for the Amherst school committee Miss Lord I Mr. Demling Demling I Mr. Harrington Harrington I Miss Spitzer Spitzer I And McDonald I Minutes are approved five to zero Mr. Demling that was so much fun. I'll do it again I moved to approve the minutes of June 25th 2020 for the Amherst poem regional school committee Lord second Moved by Demling second by Lord miss miss Lord Lord I Mr. Demling Demling I mr. Harrington Harrington I miss Dancer Dancer I miss Spitzer Spitzer I mr. Menino Menino I Miss Seager Seager I and McDonald I The Motion passes eight zero and one absent miss Hall Thank you There are motion from the Pellin school committee for the minute. I move that we accept the minutes of the school committee from June 25th 2020 Second the motion Great. All right Roll call vote. All right, mr. Menino Menino I Miss Dancer Dancer I Kenny Kenny I and Hall I Thanks, great So next up is a public comment and we have a lot of public comment. We have two voice messages recordings and And then also a document With several email comments and just as a reminder people We welcome public comment. We welcome coming in any time to the school committee at ARPS.org email address and Public comment specific to meetings may be submitted by 3 p.m. On the day of the meeting so I will Begin by playing the audio before we go into the Printed ones However Frustration with distance learning should not be confused with optimism about safely sending our children to school and become investing in new The second voice message Hello, my name is Carol Gray and I'm making a public comment I'm a parent of a 10th grader at the Amherst regional high school And we're calling to urge you to create a robust online program for the fall I think we may need to be 100% online personally I don't feel comfortable having my child go to a public school right now when The death toll and the COVID cases are still on the rise just this morning The news reported that 41 cases were experiencing a rise in COVID cases 14 states had single-day highs Dr. Fauci said that with the opening up nationwide This is a quote. He says we're within a period of a within a period of a week and a half We've almost doubled the number of cases nationwide. This is not the time to go to in-person classes If you do Feel it's The only thing that you're gonna try. I hope that you will at least create an online program That can be implemented immediately when cases start to arise this has been done in other countries and In Israel what happened when they reopened the schools within a couple of weeks They had to shut down because they had more than a hundred cases Developing in one school Actually, they have a hundred and thirty cases in a single school So they had to shut down schools again one doctor in Israel said he wasn't surprised by this because this is also what happened in South Korea and Singapore So the spikes because of opening up public schools are very real and we have to have an online program That we can immediately kick into if we have to shut the schools down Denmark is the model to look to if you are planning to have a reopening And what they did was they first sent back the youngest group of students I'm reading all this from a Brookings Institute article that was just published yesterday online and in Denmark They sent that grade zero through five On April 15th Finland do the same thing they sent back grades one through nine on May 1st And then in Denmark they later sent to secondary school students grade six through ten. They are a more vulnerable group What there's not data about is how much are young people even with your young children? How much are they spreaders of the disease transmitting it even if they're not coming down with symptoms as much as adults? The other things that Denmark did is they had students were required to wash hands every two hours They were seated six point five feet apart. I know you're already doing that Educational materials and equipment had to be cleaned twice daily additional sinks and toilets were installed parents dropped off students at staggered times and at different school entrances parents were not allowed into the building and Parents and children with symptoms were not allowed to attend school. They also use community buildings libraries Hotels conference centers banks were used for schools Denmark also gave parents the option of keeping their children home if they did not feel with Sorry, that wasn't me Google voice actually does end at maximum of three minutes for the voice message and so Dr. Morris, are you able to share the screen with the with the email comments we've received? So I just want to note that I'm getting some text that people who are watching the stream are Having a harder time seeing the letters. It's not it's a little blurry. I I Don't know if it's coming up blurry to anyone on the Who's on the call, I don't know if it's a connection with Amherst media But I just want to pause here because I'm getting some text from folks I don't know if you know, Miss McDonald and Miss Hall. Are you seeing it clearly? Yeah, okay, and this will be part of the minutes and we can figure out if I can somehow get it to Amherst media I don't know if there's a way to to change it, but it certainly looks clear on my screen And so I don't think there's anything I do to make it more clear. I think it must be somehow the connection to Amherst media. I Think so as well. I'm streaming both and on my zoom. I see it clearly or Google meets, but on the Stream, it's blurry. Okay. And so I'm now getting lots of text and so some of them are indicating on channel 15, it's coming up clearly But on the live stream, it's blurry so and Faith Famer's media is saying that she can't she's trying but she can't make it any clearer. So I don't know how Which I want to pause and give the chairs an opportunity or I Want to pause and then you all want I'm hearing that as well that I'm TV On the on channel 15. It is clear But Better it just got better who's streaming it. I don't know if that's accurate or not. I Didn't do anything different. So Yeah, I'm getting multiple people telling me it's clear now Mr. Demley Yeah, so if that's the case great I would suggest and we should probably invest the time and just Rewrunning the comments that we've already run out of respect for the people that submitted the written comments Sure, so I'll go to the top and I'm getting multiple people telling me it's clear now So hopefully who are on the stream? So whatever faith did. Thank you faith Amherst media. You're wonderful and We'll try to scroll down Yeah, a lot of people saying it improved a minute ago. Whatever happened. Sorry. I was muted So now I'm getting people telling me it's getting blurry again. Just to clarify. I'm not doing anything different I'm just trying to scroll down. So I'll just pause again for the school committee Mr. Demley So dr. Mars, are you able to like double the size of the font? Mm-hmm Double would probably put it off the screen, but I'm able to increase okay significantly increase such that possibly the blurriness will be Less I think it's it's sort of as big as it Can be I don't think it's a size. It's more the blurriness is what people are texting me I'm also just happy to read them if people would prefer that or I'll take turns if someone wants to do that I'm also just happy to read Read it that Why don't we? Read and if we have And CL is offering to take turns as well. Oh, that's very sweet All right. Well, I'll read until it feels like I'm getting Tired of reading and then someone else can take over. Thank you Cilla for offering So first public comment as we think about how to begin the new school year while still in the midst of a pandemic I'd like to offer a few comments drawing my experiences as a clinical psychologist We should begin by thinking hard about what all kids need whatever the circumstances Children need two things above all else they need to feel as safe as reasonably possible both physically and psychologically They also need an educational setting that gives them some structure and limits I'm gonna pause because actually someone should be timing these at the three minutes because otherwise that would unfairly Benefit people who wrote comments versus people who typed out comments and I did not think of it before I started Yeah, so if someone could be the timer and tell me when to stop I feel like that's equitable Um, okay, I will do that. I'm starting it now. Okay, I Forgot we're as I'm gonna start the beginning. Sorry. It's a long-winded one as we for me As we think about how to begin the new school year while still in the midst of a pandemic I'd like to offer a few comments drawing on my experiences as a clinical psychologist We should begin by thinking hard about what all kids need whatever the circumstances Children need two things above all else. They need to feel as safe as reasonably possible both physically and psychologically They also need an educational setting that gives them some structure and limits We can never guarantee complete safety, but COVID-19 poses unusual challenges Moreover, although children and adolescents thrive with some structure and limit setting indeed They require it the requirements of social distancing and face masks require more than the usual effort to establish and maintain limits and May cause some low-level anxiety among students that surpass surpasses ordinary levels in fact We should be alert to the possibility suggested by clinical observation that some children adolescents with higher levels of anxiety Even before the coronavirus may actually do better with remote learning done primarily from home I've seen this in my own adolescent practice as have colleagues to whom I've spoken We may worry that they will lose the benefits of social interaction But when those interactions come with unprecedented levels of anxiety There may be no benefit at all at least in the short term that said my practice constantly reminds me that children are by and large remarkably resilient and do have capacity to adapt to difficult and unusual circumstances Yet again, their resilience is not a sufficient substitute for careful planning and education about what they will be expected to do Everyone has to work together in this process teachers administrators guardians the community as well as the students My clinical practice suggests that flexibility and creativity are especially important in moments like this our conventional assumptions about class time and structure are Not now a reliable guide Traditional classroom activities five days a week is not a magical standard, especially for adolescents. That is essential to enforce regardless of circumstances Finally, I think planning should occur I think planning should consider the advantages of making relatively modest changes that can be altered as we go Dramatic often on changes can be particularly stressful for everyone. So we try to do our best to avoid moving back and forth between full Reopening and fully closing. Thank you for all your incredibly hard work in this difficult time and your ongoing dedication to staff teachers and students Catherine oppie side the Amherst Go on to the next one. I'll do a couple and then maybe someone else can jump in And I apologize if my intonations off. I'm just trying to get through them under three minutes and they're not my words. I'm doing the best I can but I apologize in advance because I'm probably making mistakes. I'm happy to take a turn to so that you're Voice doesn't get too soon. All right, I'll do three and then I'll probably need a break Hello, thanks to the school board for all of its work on developing reopening plans. I know you're an uncharted territory and appreciate the time the committee is taking to think this through in so many levels. I'm a parent of two air ps children and the wife of an air ps teacher. So I definitely have concerns about reopening across several levels. I'm also a college professor and have deep concerns about college students returning. There are a couple of things I'd like to comment on, given my positions. I mean the unique situation of a younger child and lower elementary and a child about to enter middle school. We are lucky to come from a well resourced home, both my partner and I have maintained our jobs. But after doing 3.5 months online learning with both my children. I would like the committee to think about the youngest in our community. On a personal level, my six year old has had major regression as a result of the spring emergency closing. He has regressed in his behavior emotions and certainly his academics. I have deep concerns that if my child who comes from a well resourced home with parents were able to provide academic, social and emotional support. Had such a difficult time, then I deeply worry about parents who must leave the home to work with themselves under resource and who are unable to provide for their children. The time necessary to support them with online learning. On the other hand, my 12 year old is flourished. She was able to easily navigate online content. She developed innovative ways to socialize with her friends. She took on baking and cooking projects and developed her own sense of social justice. The fact that she could already read and be somewhat self directed was significant. While having all children in school as much as possible would ideal and something the district should work towards toward. I want to make the case for doing whatever is possible to keep the lower elementary grades in school full time. Although I worry about my partner teaching so many children being exposed to the virus. I think if we're going to risk opening schools. We need to prioritize the most vulnerable children and put the youngest in full time school. I also hope that the school board is in communication with the chancellor at UMass. I'm not sure if this is possible, but I'd like to see you mass develop social programming for returning students to keep them on campus as much as possible. My biggest worry is the spread of the virus will come from college students. If the committee can ask the rest of the Amherst area to community to prioritize K 12 education. That would be awesome. Thanks for your time. Best Rebecca dingo Amherst. Alright, so if I do one more, maybe I'll turn it over to miss McDonald and I think you have this document so As well, miss Donald. So we, the members of the Amherst Pellum Education Association stand in strong opposition to returning to in person learning in the fall of 2020. We call on the district to work together with us without further delay and improving refining and setting standards for distance learning. As educators in the Amherst Pellum regional public schools, we care deeply about the safety and well being of our students as well as the quality of what we provide. Quality of the education we provide. Excuse me. The educators of the Amherst Pellum regional schools have shown for decades. They hold the interest of students and their success and the success is success of the school system as their first priority students first ethos compels arps educators to go above and beyond in their efforts to elevate the opportunities for student success. They commit to these goals knowing that achieving them often means working long into the evening, sacrificing time with family and ignoring self care and personal health needs. They do this out of a vocation to teaching. We asked them to ask them to put their lives and those of their family members on the line for the sake of reopening is to ask too much. The APA cannot support any plan that puts its members at such serious risk until medical science fully reassures the public of the utmost safety from the deadly disease of disease of COVID-19. In light of the current rise of COVID-19 cases throughout much of the country directly caused by the premature reopening of communities. Our members feel it's unsafe for students or teachers or staff to return to classrooms specifically the following are grave concerns staff traveling between multiple buildings related service providers teachers and para educators do not feel safe. The lack of district provided PPE for students and staff untenable and unsustainable scenarios for compliance with PPE distancing guidelines puts the physical and mental health of students staff. In administrators at risk teachers cannot be tasked with policing students bodies and behaviors as opposed to being educators who connect with students and cultivate a love of learning. Staff were vulnerable or her families are vulnerable to COVID-19 the clearly documented disproportionate dangers to people of color from COVID-19 stemming from and furthering racial injustice environmental concerns loom large such as school buildings with poor ventilations rooms without windows. The desi guidelines ignore the science behind coronavirus transmission and spread the CDC contradicts itself by citing requirements to open and truly safe manner. I do not account for the physical and economic limitations that this district and those across the country face on one hand and declaring that students need to return to school for their own well being on the other to conclude the coronavirus continues to spread rapidly through the United States. The only true safe option is the plan for improving distance learning and use the remainder of the summer and early September to strengthen and implement those improvements. We have the tools to remain socially and therefore educationally engaged to reopen any other capacity especially in a college town with the likelihood of closing again due to a surge in the first wave or second wave infection rates ignores the reality that without testing contract tracing proven by COVID-19 the risk level for the entire community is too large. Respected members of the school committees and respected members of our district request that you do not allow us any excuse to justify the risk that may threaten the health or life of even one person to as together we fight COVID-19. Let us continue to live to teach and to learn in the safest way possible remotely. Thank you very much for that expertise. I also want to say I want to thank Michal Conner and Mica Conner APA President and APA Executive Board. And if someone's able to give me a little break it would be great. Okay. take over. Thank you, Cielo. No problem. Can you hear me all right? Okay. My name is Mylene Rodriguez Scott and I have been a resident in Amherst for the past 23 years. My K through 12 schooling was through the ARP system and my younger brother is entering eighth grade at Amherst Regional Middle School. I am writing to you today to express my concern if ARPs were to reopen this fall. Although in-person education is crucial to our students development, I believe that reopening the schools this fall would pose too large of a health risk to our students, the staff in the schools, and the family members of those students and staff. I do not think ARPs could maintain social distancing protocol for our students, not due to a lack of effort from the teachers and staff, but simply because expecting our students to maintain a six-foot distance until we're masked for the entire school day is unrealistic. Nor do I think in adjusted school schedule with rotating in-person and virtual classes will keep our students and members safe. Ultimately, the safest option that could be made is to continue virtual learning until we have a vaccine against COVID-19. UMass' decision to invite students back to campus this August and the travel season also put our community at a higher risk. So I ask that the school committee help reduce the overall risk in Amherst by supporting a plan to keep our schools closed until it is safe to reopen. Thank you for your time, Mylene Rodriguez Scott of Amherst. Dear Chair Allison McDonald and members of the Amherst Pellum and Amherst Pellum Regional School Committees. Many of us have stated our commitment or recommitment to non-negotiables, including the health and safety of the students of our school districts, the staff and all of our families, the whole well-being of our students, including their physical and social emotional well-being, the urgency in rethinking our institutions and practices with a critical anti-racism approach to center the experiences and histories of black and brown students in our communities in order to rebuild an education system that benefits all of our students through learning to be actively anti-racist. I have seen our district's commitments mentioned or echoed in many other guidance for venues, including Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and the American Academy of Pediatrics. But what I have not heard from our school committees, Mass Desi or the AAP, is a proposal that integrates these three commitments. We, our community and the global scientific community, know that know what we don't know. We don't know how to stop the spread of a deadly virus that is currently present in our communities using the materials that we currently have unavailable. We also know that BIPOC, which stands for Black, Indigenous, People of Color communities, are disproportionately affected by COVID-19. If we are to truly center anti-racism and safety, none of us can be willing to design and implement a medical and public health experiment that we know will hurt some members of our school communities and disproportionately hurt our BIPOC communities. By implementing six-foot social distancing versus three-foot in order to curb transmission is not acceptable. We cannot bring our children into our buildings until we know that we will not be putting them and their families at risk for death, infection, or growing scientific acknowledgement of long-term effects post-COVID infection. Medical history in the United States is laden with experimenting on black and brown bodies. We cannot add to this history. You, the school committees, have the power to bring our educators together to plan for and implement safe educational practices to get better at what we've started to not accept anything that may physically harm our students, staff, or our families. As an institution, the school committees can join with our unions, forward-thinking school districts, and as many state governments that we can muster to demand government support services that our families need to be safe. To stay home while we figure out how to be safe in schools and to not be a dangerous medical experiment. Signed humbly and urgently, Lonnie Fletchman. PS, I write to you to express my personal views. I'm also grateful and proud to be the Fort River librarian and the APEA Unit A co-chair of elementary. Good afternoon. I can, you want to do one more? I can, I'm feeling recovered, C.L.O. Do you want to do one more? Okay, I'll do one more. Good afternoon, Chair McDonald's. I'm writing to express my concern about the potential reopening of ARPs in the fall. My name is Daria Karanchevsky-Lipsit, and I am a graduate of UMass Amherst and a resident of the town of Amherst. I was dismayed to see that my alma mater's decision to invite students back to campus for in-person learning in August. A decision putting not only students and staff at the university in danger, but posing a risk to our entire community. While I am a lover of education and a big believer that virtual learning will never be able to replace the value of in-person schooling, I strongly believe that to see this choice for everyone in our community is to continue virtual learning until we have a vaccine or adequate contact tracing. Thank you for your time. Daria Karanchevsky-Lipsit of Amherst. Thank you very much, C.L.O. I can try to take over. There's a few more, but hopefully I get through them. My name is LaMico McGee, and I'm a special education teacher at the middle school. I'm deeply concerned about the possibility that our schools are considering in-person learning as an option while we still battle the COVID-19 virus with thousands of people dying every day. There is no way to open school safely, and I humbly request you consider remote learning as the only option until scientists have declared that the virus has no longer a threat to our health, even our very lives. As a teacher in the middle school, I know my students, even trying their best on their best behavior, will not be able to adhere to guidelines necessary to prevent the spread of this deadly virus. Many of us students and staff are older, have health conditions that put our lives at grave risk. Many of us students and staff have elderly parents at home, or those with compromised immune systems who bring this virus home to loved ones, it will likely be fatal. Please make the right decision. Thank you, LaMico, McGee, MED, JD, Special Education Department lead Amherst Regional Public Schools. I support the APA statement on the plans to return to school in-person this fall. I dearly miss my students and think that in-person learning is a period of remote learning. However, we do not have control of this virus. I'm returning to school in person. We'll put us all at risk, only to close again after we start. I think we can spend this time planning for better remote learning, connecting with families now and helping them to set up plans for fall if we plan for remote now instead of putting hundreds of thousands of dollars into returning to school, only to be closing abruptly again after the virus spreads. Shari Conklin, teacher at ARPS. It seems the big concern people have about distance learning isn't fair to all the students and their families, but try to get back to normal during a pandemic doesn't actually solve the problem of inequality and could even make things worse. We really want to address fairness in our society. We need to take the effort being spent trying to tape things back together and use it to instead to build something new. Aaron Jensen, Amherst. Dear Allison, I completely fully support the APA's statement regarding remote only learning this fall. I love teaching with all my heart and miss my students terribly. I feel that remote learning best supports health and safety for everyone. Thank you, Kate Perkins, third-way teacher, Prokka Farm School. My name is Alicia Walker and I live in Amherst. I'm the parent of three young Black children, the Amherst Regional Public School System. I'm also part of the 1% of teen moms who earn a four-year degree by the age of 30 and as alum of UMass Amherst. I currently work in the criminal justice system advocating for anti-racist policies. I'm advocating for Amherst to also implement anti-racist policies within the school district, incredibly disappointed in the district's ability to engage families of color in COVID recovery. We know that students of color are having continued to bear the burden of a broken educational system and their voices must be centered in the town's recovery plan. Families of color are also experts in their children and needs and their voices must be strategically amplified. When considering the priorities for fall, for the fall, I demand that the district focuses on developing task force, forces, excuse me, or working groups that include and compensate educators, families, students and community members of color for their work and apply that information of COVID recovery and planning immediately and without question. Thank you, Alicia Walker, Amherst. I apologize. I do not have much time to write since I'm at work, but I'm the mother of a soon-to-be eighth grader. I do not feel it's safe to reopen schools. I would not feel comfortable sending him physically into the school building. Thank you for your time. Jennifer, Scott, Amherst. And I think that's it. Thank you, C. Lill. I needed that break. Great. Thank you both for for reading the comments. That was that was super helpful. And we're always we're always flexing with our technical challenges in this in this virtual environment. So I just we don't usually comment, but I just on public comment, but I will just call to attention that many of the comments that people made in these in these public comments get items that are in our agenda this evening. So we will be actually circling back and coming and talking specifically to some of those exact topics that people raised in their public comments. So stay tuned. And we also just as a reminder for everybody who's watching at home, we also have two town halls planned on Thursday, one at noon that's primarily focused on elementary schools and one at five that's primarily focused on our secondary schools. So there's more opportunity to share feedback and ask questions. I will. Mr. Menino. How does the public access those forums? The great question. There is a flyer that is in tonight's packet. It was also it's also posted on the arts.org website. And for those that use social media, it's posted on not just the arts social Facebook page, but also several PGOs have shared it. Several school committee members have shared it. So it's it's a YouTube live stream. So another route is just to go straight to YouTube and search for it at 12 o'clock or five o'clock. And it's also been emailed. You may have said it's been emailed out to all staff and all families. I think on the end of last week, I can't remember which day. Thank you. So next up, we have superintendent's update. Sure. So I'll try to be brief because I know we have a long agenda. So skipping around a bit, so one of the nice things is this past week, we were able to send out class of 2033 t-shirts to our incoming kindergarten students and I got some nice feedback that they were well received and some of them wore them multiple days in a row. And that was created a little bit of problem in some people's houses, but it was it was a nice thing. And thanks to Shacha Figueroa, who really organized that and got those out to our incoming kindergarten families. It was brought to district's attention the last week that one of our staff members posted information on social media that's causing some concerns in the community. And I just want to say the district doesn't support these views or comments. It's not a private page. We are currently investigating the matter. We're also considering our social media policies for staff more generally. And so we'll have more on that soon. But the human resources is taking the lead on investigating that. And we want to be more clear with our staff and set more clear expectations of social media usage when not in the building. This summer, we have lined up the bright folks for those who don't know Bright's a program in our middle school and high school started in our high school a couple years ago several years ago. They're experts in mental health and they're running some workshops on how to support students given the closure given the pandemic. So we're going to be working with them in early August with administrative team and then turn that to our staff because we know how important the mental health needs of students are right now. And we want to be prepared for that for fall. Summer school started yesterday. We talked about all the summer school programs that we had. What's needed sort of becoming a laboratory for new ideas around distance learning where I know our teachers are doing some excellent trying out new things in different formats. We've got some positive feedback on that even though it just started yesterday. On that note, our elementary achievement Academy has this year we're having a different program with a library and a film festival. So that's our title one and ELL program. So we're trying again to provide some enrichment activities as well as the academic content that students maybe need to be maintaining and in addition for our summer programs, there's been videos for families set up on how to connect to Wi-Fi and mobile hotspots connecting to devices. And that's all been done in English and Spanish because we're trying to continue to support families around the technology device. One thing to support families with devices is another thing to make sure they have all they need to get on board. And because we have so much other stuff on the agenda, I think I'll leave it there for this evening. Thank you. Are there any questions from any of the committees? Mr. Sullivan, and welcome. I think you're muted, Steve. We still can't hear you. Do you want to? You probably can't type it in the chat either. No. OK. Hopefully, hopefully we'll be able to hear you at the later point. Any other any does anybody else have questions or comments? I'm seeing none. Let's go. OK. Great. Chair's update. I've already previewed my update, which is our town halls on Thursday, so I won't spend any more time because we have a lot to cover tonight. Are there any announcements from school committee members? Mr. Demley. Yes, I wanted to give everyone a brief update on the resolution that we passed a few weeks ago, calling on the state to guarantee every school district full reimbursement for whatever COVID-19 expenses. We incur following state mandates, whether it's remote or in person, whatever the model is. So since that point, 128 school committees across the state have passed the resolution and it's starting to get some attention. And I wanted to give a special thank you to our state representatives. So Senator Comerford, Representative Dome and Representative Blay, the three state representatives represent all our towns and our three districts, sent a letter to Governor Baker, Education Secretary Jim Pizer and Education Commissioner Jeff Riley, along with five of their other colleagues strongly supporting our resolution and urging a timely response, which is exactly what's going to need to happen in order for this to get done. We're going to need a host of state representatives from across the Commonwealth, urging that this get done. So this was really great. So I wanted to thank them. The participation as well as their colleagues, State Senator Adam Hines, as well as representatives, Sabadosa, Kerry, Mark and Whips joined in that letter as well. So hopefully that leads to something, but it was great to see that level of timely advocacy. Mr. Lord, I would like to announce to the public that next Wednesday, July 15th, there will be a school equity task force meeting at seven o'clock. The information will be posted on our website, and I welcome you all to join us. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Any other announcements? Seeing none, great, then we will move on to our new and continuing business and our first item is the Distance Learning Survey results. Sure. So I'll bring that up and share that. And Obed is here. So thank you, Obed. He worked with me again on this survey and he's becoming an expert at it. So we have a long agenda. So and I know it's, you know, in the packet and people were able to see it before. So we're going to try to summarize the high, high points. We're not going to read through every single that on a 23 slide presentation and then open it up for conversation throughout. Once I open it up, I won't be able to see you. So I'll just look for audio recognition that people can see it. And then also Ms. McDonald, if you could let me know if there are questions throughout because I won't be able to see them. Sure thing. So let me bring that up. Is that visible for folks? Yes. OK. Sounds good. So we again wanted to start. I'll do a little introduction. I'll turn it over to Obed. But we again did find Mass Inc did a poll a little before. So but at the towards the end of the school year and the question we thought was particularly relevant was parents. The question was the percentage of parents who said they give a great deal or a fair amount of assistance with, you know, the darker bars, the purplish magenta bars or technology and the pink hue is schoolwork. And its short story is what you see is that the younger the students are, the more involved the parents had to be for students to be successful and that it sort of when you got to high school is pretty even across the grade levels. But you could see, you know, with the primary grades to the middle to the intermediate grades to middle school, you could see that trend line is really clear. So I think the thing I want to note is on the left, you can see the averages and, you know, there's sort of extremes of the younger students and the older students don't really fit the averages. And the short story is we saw a similar trend here. So I'll go through this slide and then probably turn it over to Obed, which is one of the questions asked how independently can your student complete remote learning activities and assignments. And the red is to need help for each activity and the blue is need help for most activities. You can see elementary school parents. Well, you know, over 50 percent were in one of those two categories, whereas the middle school that was down to 16 percent and at the high school that was down to 11 percent. So we are seeing that same trend that was in the statewide daddy. We saw in terms of our distance learning plan in the spring. Obed, do you want to go over this one as well? You want to pick up from the assignments on the right level of rigor? You want me to go for a little further? Sure. That sounds good. OK. All right. So I'm just going to pick up where Dr. Morris left off. This this question as you see is asking about the level of rigor for the assignments that students received. And this graph is showing parents responses across grade levels. So elementary, middle school and high school. So as you can see on average across all grade levels, 57 percent of parents expressed that the rigor that there showed the rigor of the assignments that for the assignments that the children received, they were not challenging enough, whereas 30 percent expressed that the level of rigor was just right and 13 expressed that it was either too rigorous or somewhat too rigorous. If we want to student responses for the same question about that's the next one. Yeah, there you go. About 60 percent of students expressed that the level of rigor was just right, whereas 16 percent expressed that it was either too much or somewhat too much. Was either too much or somewhat too much. And another 24 percent indicated that the level of rigor was too little. And in addition to that, another question that was asked was trying to assess how parents felt about the level of personal connection that students were having with their teachers and other peers during this model here again across grade levels, about 78 percent of parents indicated that their children were either too disconnected or somewhat disconnected during this online learning model. 20 percent indicated that the level of connection. Yes. Question. Yes, there's a question, Mr. Manino. What does disconnect it mean? So I can answer that one. So I think what the question was trying to get at is disconnected from both their peers and from their teacher and from the education experience. And so, you know, that's one of the things that we heard anecdotal feedback about throughout this spring. And I think you'll see that the student and the family responses and the staff responses actually line up with some similar trends. But we were hearing that anecdotally from a lot of people. So we wanted to follow up about whether that again, that personal connection was adequate. So, you know, for me, if it's disconnected, it means the personal connection wasn't adequate. If there was, you know, if it was the right amount or even too connected, that would that would get at that personal connection, which you know is so important for all of our students and particularly for our students who really require that to access the learning. Thank you. Ms. Spitzer. So just one. Excuse me, clarifying question. When you say student responses, I'm assuming you didn't survey the kindergartner. So could you just clarify which grade levels you Yeah, I should have mentioned that at the beginning. When it says student responses, it's we only ask middle school and high school students. So we don't have elementary student elementary student responses. We've elementary family responses, elementary staff, faculty, family, but not student responses. But so when it's students, it's exclusively looking at the middle school high school. I can pick up. So yeah, so 70 percent, as I said, of parents indicated that their child was either too disconnected or somewhat disconnected. 20 percent saying that the amount of connection was just right. And a small amount, two percent expressed that there was too much connection. So when we go to student responses, again, this is middle school and high school about 57 percent of the students in the survey indicated that there was either that they were that they felt too disconnected or somewhat disconnected from their teachers and other peers in this online model. 40 percent indicated that the level of connection was just right. It was adequate and about a smaller percent indicated that there was too much connection. As far as staff, they the staff had a similar response to parents in the sense that staff also indicated that there was not enough personal personal connection. So about 82 percent of staff expressed that the level of personal connection was either too much or somewhat too too disconnected. 17 saying that it was just right and less than one saying that there was too much. In addition to this question, parents, staff and students were also asked to indicate how manageable the time was that they had to dedicate to remote learning purposes. So this is this slide is talking about the family responses about 50 53 percent of parents in a survey said that the time dedicated to remote learning was either manageable or easily manageable. Another third expressed that the time was barely manageable. So there may have been some challenges, but they were still able to do it. And 14 percent just 14 percent of parents in a survey said that the time dedicated to remote learning purposes was just not manageable at all. When we move on to staff, there's a similar response in terms of the time being manageable. Based on 226 responses, this we according to the surveys, staff spent about five and a half hours daily on remote learning purposes. And when they were asked to indicate how manageable that was, about 62 percent indicated that it was either manageable or easily manageable. 36 said that it was barely manageable and 2 percent said that it was not manageable. When we asked students the same question, when we asked the same question, it was important to yeah, that's right. OK. Yeah. Yeah. So before getting before asking students the same question, the survey also tried to get a sense of how much time students were spending using the devices for remote learning purposes. And across all grade levels, it was about three hours outside of just general use of their devices. Yeah. And I just want to interrupt for one second to say that was consistent with the desi guidelines this spring was for people to be for students to be doing work about half the school day, which is about three hours. So just want to note that across all grade level spans, we hit that mark. Sorry to interrupt, Obed. No problem. So if we go to the next slide, we'll see that in this slide as well, about 76 percent of students indicated that the time that they had to spend for remote learning was managed was either manageable or or easily manageable. 18 percent indicated that it was barely manageable and 6 percent said that it was not manageable. So the next couple of slides, another part of the save was just trying to see how parents, staff and students felt about the communication from the various schools and the district as a whole. So this slide is covering how parents felt about 67 percent of parents indicated that the level of communication was either adequate or more than adequate. Another 26 percent said that it was barely adequate and another seven indicated that it was not adequate for students. About 59 percent of students expressed that the level of communication was either adequate or more than adequate. 34 percent indicated that it was barely adequate and 7 percent indicated that it was not adequate. And for staff, about 72 72 percent of staff indicated that the level of communication from schools and the district was either adequate or more than adequate. About 25 percent said that it was barely adequate and another 3 percent indicated that it was not adequate. And so the last cup set of slides asked parents where these slides are going to portray how parents, students and staff evaluated the online learning model as a whole. And so for parents, parents about 33 percent expressed that the online learning model was that they were either satisfied or very satisfied with it. 38 indicated that they were either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied that they that they were either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with it. And about 29 were sort of neutral. They weren't. They didn't have any strong, positive or negative feelings towards the model. As far as things for improvement and this was based on 412 parent responses. Many parents advocated or expressed a desire for having better communication between teachers, students and family. And this is sort of a theme that runs across all of the responses for parents, staff and students just having better communication between students, teachers and family so as to make sure that students are being held accountable and that students are being made aware of the expectations that they have. Parents also desired for more organized structure and clear expectations so that could look like having, for example, one place where students could go to access all of their assignments to be made aware of all the different class times that they have and the like and also making use of online resources such as more synchronous learning and breakout rooms so that students are being engaged in the learning process. And that sort of like feeds into the last category or the last theme that emerged which is the higher quality instruction. Just having the instruction include more rigorous assignments. Teachers teaching newer content as opposed to just reviewing older content having more individual feedback and grading students as opposed to having credit and no credit grading basis. So when this question was asked of staff about 52% of staff indicated that they were either satisfied or very satisfied with the online learning model. 10% said that they were either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied very dissatisfied with the learning model and 38% were sort of neutral. As far as emerging themes similar to the parents staff also indicated that there needs to be more communication between students teachers and families. There was also a desire for having clear expectations for students basically communicating and making sure students understand that the online learning model was not optional that it was mandatory that their assignments were going to be graded and that they had to participate in virtual learning sessions. Staff also indicated that they wanted to change the structure of classes so having more synchronous learning making more use of the breakout section breakout sessions so that students are engaged in their learning process. With that there was also a desire for more professional development around the resources so that they could be implemented in their fashion so as to promote and enhance the learning experience for students. And ultimately staff wanted to make sure that they were getting a better understanding of the access and support students have so that they could tailor their instructions to be equitable for everyone. And so when we go to students students about 39% of students in the survey indicated that they were somewhat satisfied or very satisfied with the learning model 26% indicated that they were either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied and 35% were neutral. And so when students were asked about what the district can do to improve again more communication between them and their teachers more clarity about expectations such as like having a more predictable class schedule knowing that their assignments are going to be graded and the expectation to participate in virtual learning sessions. And the last emerging thing that came about and the student surveys was a desire for a more organized class structure. So again, having more synchronous learning being able to have more individual feedback with their teachers having assignments or being able to collaborate with their peers during class time. And the last thing served also try to see how motivated students were during the process and what they felt were things that could be implemented so as to make sure that they remain motivated. So when students were asked if they had trouble staying motivated about 82% expressed that they had trouble staying motivated whether that was sometimes always or usually 14 expressed rarely and 4% expressed that they did that they did not have any trouble staying motivated. When students were asked what would help them to feel more motivated to complete their assignments allow the same things that we saw in the previous slide emerged here such as having assignments that were required knowing that they're going to receive a grade on the assignment having a better system for organizing their work so being able to go to one place to be able to access their assignment and being able to engage with their teachers and peers online. And as far as the last slide students were asked to make note of any benefits that they experienced during the remote learning process. So some of the things that they mentioned was having a later starting time so they felt more energized and because they were able to sleep more and lastly they had freedom over their schedule. So they were able to have more control over when they were going to do assignments and what time they were going to turn it in. And so that that includes the distance learning service findings. And I think the one other thing I'd like to share I thank you but that was really helpful both in terms of putting together a presentation and your presentation of it is that all the surveys all the raw data is on our fall 2020 planning site. So you know we just took out any identifying information that people put on but if anyone's interested in looking through the raw data and not just a summary we'll eventually get this slide deck on probably on Thursday if not tomorrow but the raw data is all available for anyone in the public on our fall 2020 planning site which is you can link to from our homepage at arps.org. And any questions from the committees? Ms. Segar. I'm curious for the student count I noticed there was like 130, 131 responses. How many students are there in the middle school and high school combined? Yeah, so there's it's about we got about 10, 15% I think some of the responses had more response was some of the questions students skipped and some of them they answered so the actual number I think was a bit higher but the yield wasn't as high we emailed it out to all students so there's no way to know if that's a representative sample so as a overall size it's a decent end size as a percentage of all students we would want it to be a little higher I think to come to broad conclusions but I would say that the anecdotal data that we collected informally throughout the spring either hearing from teachers or others lined up pretty well with the survey data that we received. Any other questions? Ms. Spitzer. Yeah, I guess just to piggyback on that a little bit my only concern with an email survey about remote learning opportunities is that students who have the hardest time accessing remote education are also gonna be the hardest to reach through these methods. And I guess that's kind of I feel like we've been doing a lot of surveying and I am generally like fully behind I think it's good to get as much feedback as possible but I would like to see if possible to think about focus groups or just qualitatively like trying to reach out to some of those populations that we know are gonna be less likely to respond to an email and I know that there have been some efforts to do this but I just think having some reporting back on what you're finding through those ways and trying to balance out some of the reporting on the surveys with some more of this qualitative or mixed methods findings would be really useful. It takes a lot more time is the problem. Like a survey is easier to analyze. It's easier to write up and I want to acknowledge that and I think it's, I'm not trying to, you did excellent work on the survey so I want to start with that. Like I think it's important that we're doing this. I think it was well, you know, generally well done, I think being also mindful of this, you know, some of the calls to try to be more inclusive and I think sometimes the survey methodology can exclude systematically certain groups that we want to make sure we're hearing from. And if I could respond to that, I agree with Ms. Spitzer's comment, I think some of our challenges that about 90% of our staff stopped working on June 18th and we've been doing incredible amounts of outreach on multiple topics. So I don't disagree with you at all. We are running into some capacity issues on how many people we have to work on these projects and so we run into this a lot. I think when we're trying to get opinions, you know, we do, we're doing our best and the best isn't always going to capture every voice and I think some of the voices, particularly for those of you who read through is a very long document, but the raw data on the family survey, we did have some families who were able to speak to their child's experience because the child might not have been able to speak to their own experience for a whole host of reasons. So that's one of the things that I do encourage the committee and the community to do is to try to look through all three surveys because as Obed mentioned, there were some through lines between those surveys. I mean, you look at the raw data and the specific individual feedback, I think we are able to see some of what you're talking about, Ms. Spitzer. It's hard to capture explicitly in a summary of literally multiple hundreds of pages of feedback that we receive, but I do think that'd be a rich data source and I encourage the committee members to take a look at all of those. Ms. Spitzer? I'm just thinking of some of the, if there's any potential for collaboration with college students like Obed who might be interested in doing this type of research. And we're knowing so many opportunities have been closed and we may be able to take advantage of some of the resources in our academic community. Thank you. Any other questions? Or comments? I'm not seeing any. I think I can see everybody. I just wondered if, since you talked about it and I don't wanna put her on the spot, but I keep on doing this every meeting she goes to. I don't think, hopefully this doesn't discourage her participation in the future, but we do have a high school student present and we're asking her to comment on if she chooses not to. And it could be about the survey data and whether it lined up with what her experience or what she's hearing from experiences, but we, I don't wanna make this a research effort, Emily, at all, but it's certainly one I just invite you if you had something that you'd like to share that you, I'd like to encourage you to be able to do it, but certainly can pass and feel no obligation. Yeah, I didn't hear all of what you said, but I think I got it, so. I think you're good. If you'd like to share your thoughts, you're welcome to. So from the people that I've talked to in the school community, I think most of the students sort of felt that distance learning wasn't, I guess what they thought it would be or it didn't really live up to what their expectations were of it. And I think mostly it's communication issue from what I've heard. So that goes pretty similar with the results of the survey, but I'm coming from like actual students. I know not all of them obviously took the survey, but I think that the results align pretty much with what I've heard, but it's just, yeah. Thank you, Emily. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? I'm not seeing any. So nobody objects, then we'll move on to our next item, which is a space study, which is the space utilization study that district. Dr. Morris? Sure. So again, I'm going to present. So again, I'll not be able to see you all. So please pipe up if there's a problem with the sharing or if there's questions. It's a longer presentation and the principals are online because they're going to, I'll do an introduction, but they're going to walk the committee and the community through what the schools could look like. There we go. So Allison, is that clear? Yes. Bright color. It doesn't stay orange. So I apologize about that. So again, we're going to mostly focus on space, but I do think it's worth mentioning all the operations because it's not, we're not looking at one thing in isolation, all those things mentioned. You've heard me mention these four things before, transportation, maintenance and cleaning, staffing and space. And so I wanted to provide a transportation update for the committee. Obviously this isn't the focus of tonight, but we have talked about transportation before. So currently the Amherst Elementary bus runs about 44 to 52 students per bus. That doesn't mean all of them ride the bus every day, but in terms of students who have bus stops, we currently and have for many years offered all students transportation. We've done that even though the district policy, which is still in place, says that we only need to provide transportation, should provide transportation for elementary students who live 1.5 miles or greater from the school. If we implemented the district policy, we'd be down to 24 to 27 students per bus, looking at other states. Again, Massachusetts hasn't released their transportation numbers. That's in the range of what students are in bus. I'm seeing a number of states come out with one student per seat and sometimes a little more. If they're siblings, it also doesn't account for families driving their students to school. The legal limit for elementary students in Massachusetts is transportation has to be provided for students who live two miles or greater from the school. If we went to the legal limit we'd be like some communities have, it would be at 16 to 17 students per bus. Dr. Gris? Yep. Is that a question for Mr. Manino? Thank you. Does that 1.5 miles means that you expect the kid to walk? 1.5 miles to school? So it's your policy. So I'll just say that it's, my understanding is many districts that have that policy assume the families will provide transportation, whether that's my car or other mode of transportation. Okay. Yeah. And I'm just about your policy, but since we haven't implemented it's a little hard question for me to answer, but that is the current policy and the hyperlink on the slides goes to that policy. In Pelham, it's a little bit more complicated actually because there are fewer students per bus right now, 37 to 43, but the yield is a little different. There's only two buses in Pelham, but one of the buses is more significantly affected if we implemented the district policy down to 22 to 32. And if the transportation is provided at the legal limit, we get down to 20 to 26. At the regional level, the secondary level we're required to provide transportation for students. That's part of our reimbursement that we receive. We get a lot of transportation. It's over half a million dollars a year. And also a comparatively low percentage of students live within a 1.5 or 2.0 mile radius from the school. So even if we implemented it, we'd lose reimbursement and we don't actually get there. So we're sort of obligated to provide that transportation. That's going to create problems if there's an effort to get all students in school because there's not that kind of avenue to reduce the number of students in a bus based on implementing a different policy or actually implementing our own policy in this instance. Again, this is a big category, but I did, you want to thank Rupert Roy Clark for doing the analysis. And it's certainly something as you're developing your models, we can come back to. But I think that the short story is at the elementary level, even if we simply implemented the current school committee policy and students, some families drove, we probably could get to where the state's going to land. That's not sure at the regional level. So I'll pause because this is the only slide on transportation if there are questions. Mr. Demling. So do you know, I'm not familiar with the design of our current buses. If we stuck to six foot distancing on a bus, what does that restrict us to? And if we stuck to one child per seat, what does that restrict us to? I know that we haven't seen the state guidelines, but our committee has a recent notable history of not going to the letter of the state guidelines on some things. And so I'm wondering where these numbers would align with some other possible limits. Yeah, so what I've seen from other states is having one student in a seat in each seat gets you to 24 students on a bus, 23 or 24, depending if there's maybe a monitor or something like that. We wanna think through that. And the way I've seen some states do it is that sort of on the left side of the bus, you'd alternate from a student sitting on the inside of the left row and the row in front would be to the right side of that row. So you'd sort of stagger it. It's hard to talk about without a picture, but very similar to how we might stagger desks to increase distancing. I've seen states recommend that they're able to do that and that gets you to either again, 23 or 24 students on a bus. I think some states have gone beyond that and included siblings sitting next to each other is acceptable since they're in the same home, but we haven't measured it out. It's trying to just guess a little bit of where our state land and looking where other states have landed on it. Sorry, we have a lot of visuals later, so on the classrooms, because that was our focus for tonight. Mr. Demling. Yeah, follow up on transportation, not to belabor it, but this is one of those really sticky wickets in implementation. So if let's say we continue to offer transportation at the elementary level to everyone, regardless of your distance from school, which is what we currently do, and yet the survey that we did on about are you likely or very likely to provide your own transport, if those numbers stay more or less the same, is the number of students, regardless of distance from school who reported back that they would likely need busing around 24 per bus, or is it, I'm trying to line that up with what the survey said. So if there was no change in district policy, well, that's not true. It was no change in district practice around transportation. And 30, I think at the elementary level is about 31% or something when you disaggregated at elementary secondary, but 31% of families said they would definitely drive their students and then you've got another 20% that said they might.  If you combine the definitely and the possibly I think was the word or probably you get close. I'm not sure you get all the way there, but you do get close. And to be really clear, not just financially, but there's not more buses available and there's not more drivers available, frankly, to increase that. So I'm intentionally omitting things that are not feasible, which is adding buses or adding drivers. It's financially not feasible, but actually it's just practically not reasonable either. There's not spare buses around for use and certainly we didn't budget for that. So I think the short answer is you get close. We didn't ask it as a binary. Yes, no question because we were trying to get a read on what our families were. If it was a barrier, like we can only do X number of days in school if X percentage of families were drive. In some of my conversations informally, people were saying, well, I'd be happy to drive another kid if they're in the same class because they'll be in the same sort of pod and we can wear masks in the car and keep windows open. So I think it'd be close, but I can't tell you affirmative definitely that it could work. There's also things in between, right? Could we land to, I'm interpreting Mr. Minino's question. I'm not trying to speak for him, but what would it be if we didn't provide transportation for students who lived half a mile or less away from school, right? That, you know, you might wanna combine strategies of not quite going to a mile and a half or two miles, but trying to see the yield from families and who's willing to drive students in carpool and then adjusting the district practice or even the policy about bus runs to make it all work. I think you'd have to look at both of those, not in isolation, but actually in combination. That was a long way done. I'm sorry, Mr. Downling, hopefully that made sense. Yeah, that's good. That's the most substantive commentary we've had on transportation implementation. So to date, I appreciate it. Before I go on to, I see a couple of hands raised, but I think something that you said, Dr. Morris is really, really important that's not actually not on the slide right now, which is there aren't more buses lying around for us to grab. Like there's a finite number of buses. So when we're talking about models, I think we need to make that absolutely crystal clear that there's a maximum in terms of number of students that we can be transporting at any given time. And that is I think pretty big constraint right there. So I saw Ms. Kenny and then Ms. Spitzer's hands. So Ms. Kenny. I just wanna make sure we take into consideration kids who would be walking to Pelham are gonna be walking down Amherst Road, which is not a good place to walk or down North Valley. Those are two, I mean, as far as Pelham is concerned, pretty busy streets where there aren't sidewalks and they're very twisty tourney. So I think we need to, I know we're at a point where like, we have to make some decisions, but like we're talking about children's safety. I think we have to remember those pieces too. Ms. Spitzer. Yeah, I think one of the other things I wanted to bring up and not saying we need to solve this now, but if the problem is that we're probably gonna be seeing because of the way housing is segregated in the United States and also in Amherst, clustering is based on like socioeconomic status and maybe access to cars is going to be highly clustered. And I think we're gonna see clusters of places where people are really likely to be able to drive their kids and clusters of places where people are gonna be less likely to drive their kids. And then we're, I think the other, so I guess I'm just making a question of whether or not we have the ability to map some of this out, like do we have GIS capabilities in the schools or even at the planning department in town? Maybe this is too, but it seems like in order to create, if we're asking about people's ability to drive their kids, we're gonna need to know where they live and potentially the other complicating factor, and I'm maybe overthinking this, but is that there may be people who have already formed their own informal pods. And so like my kids are, we're essentially plotting with neighbors or we're essentially, we're plotting with this person who we're happy to drive them because our families are already having so much connection and we're comfortable with it. And do we want to ask for not only information about the willingness to drive their own kids, but it seems like at some point we're gonna wanna ask, you know, in the past we've asked, do you have a friend who you'd like to be in your class? And it almost seems like maybe instead of asking about a friend, but do you have a person who you're already having regular contact with who you could drive or who you should be plotting with in this classroom? So I don't, it seems overly complex to do this. I don't know if we have the capacity to, but I just wanna put it out there that I think geographically, it's not just the number, but it's where they live. And if there are these clusters, it's gonna make it even more difficult to solve, problem to solve. Yeah, no, I think that's right. So I'd love to live in the school district that sometimes I hear about. We do have some systems, but it's not, I wouldn't say it's fully GIS kind of driven. But I think even who filled out the survey that we're basing this on wasn't fully representative and we have data on that of the entire of all families. You know, we did lots of outreach. Wildly off, but it wasn't exactly describing all of our families. And I think you're right on that front. This is a broad brush and we're trying to do as you'll see later, lots of work very quickly, but we thought it was good to at least share where we are and our thinking about this and the quick data that we were, I shouldn't say quick, it took a couple of people a lot of time to do this. We did map it out about where the lines would be for the schools. So we do have some information geographically on where the 1.5 and where the 2.0 is. This was a full presentation on transportation. I'd have four or five more slides on it, but it's something that we can certainly bring back as we want to think about it. I do want to also stress the regional piece, which I'm not getting as many questions about and maybe because it's more clear that it's a huge barrier for us at the secondary level. And I'm not sure it's a barrier, frankly, that we can resolve. I think it'll get a little more clear with the space piece in the schools that we have many, many more barriers at the regional level than we have at the elementary level. And that has not speaking at all to elementary students being back in class more important, right? That's an educational piece. I'm just talking about logistics and operations. Our number of barriers at the secondary level is high and transportation is not low on that list. Thank you. Ms. Lord, you had your hand raised for a while. Yes, thank you. I know this gets into contract negotiations and potentially more money and a timing trickiness, but if I'm looking at the Amherst Elementary, there's about a 10 student difference between the 2.0 miles and 1.5. And I'm wondering about a double run for those 10 other students in that 20 minutes. And I know when we get to the regional, maybe freeing up an Amherst bus to do regional and doing a double run. I don't know if that could work, but potentially scooping up kids within a mile and a half might be able to be done with a double run. Yeah, so we have talked a little about that, and that's a great question. I think the barriers for us on that, and they're not impermanable, but they are barriers. One is financial, as you note. So if we use five-star drivers, they're our bender. Every run costs X amount of dollars, so there would be a financial implication for us at the, on a practical level in the building, if we have students getting to schools at different times, same school at different times, it creates some logistical challenges and educational challenges. So it's certainly something we can look at, but that would trigger us staggering our start times by section, but it really wouldn't work that way because it's based on location. So it would bring about some challenges for us, both financially, but also operationally and educationally, but it's certainly all options should be on the table, all ideas, there are no bad ideas right now. So I'm not at all trying to be dismissive, mislord at all of that, and we could take a closer look at that and see, particularly for some of the runs that are not that far from the building in densely populated areas, it might not add that much time to do a second run. If it's something that's far out, like Shootsbury and Leverett doing a second run, by the time that the driver drops off, drives back to Shootsbury, comes back, right? A period is done. So, I think we may think of some isolated areas that are high density, where that could be a very effective strategy. So thank you for mentioning, because we loosely talked about it, but not in the level of detail that you just mentioned. Mr. Minnet, did you have a question? No. Any other questions on the transportation? Not seeing any, Dr. Morris. Sure. So this one, maybe we quicker, we'll see. But maintenance and cleaning, so all filters will be changed before fall return to school. We're intentionally not doing that work now. That'll be done in August, because we'd want to replace the filters pretty much right before our staff and students return. Exhaust fans, so the preventive maintenance that is happening in process, and all belts and motors replaced as needed, again, for ventilation. We have looked a lot at ventilation. Again, Mr. Roy Clark can come back and talk about that sometime soon, but we are setting that we would meet and primarily exceed the ASHRAE standards for fresh air in classrooms for use in fall. And we do that by two approaches. One would be increasing the velocity of the venting. The other is running it for more hours. So typically we use the ASHRAE standards, and that's where the exceed word comes in. We try to meet the ASHRAE standards, which balance air quality and energy efficiency, and that's what we aim for. The exceed part is that we do have most of our classrooms, we could go above that. It will not meet the energy efficient ASHRAE standard, but it will meet and go above in terms of air quality and fresh air use. We've now ordered tents for all schools. Most of those for the K to eight anyway will be in within the next two weeks for outdoor learning. We are also exploring unrelated to tents, like at the elementary level, a model from Finland where there might be 45 minutes or 50 minutes of academics, and then 10 to 15 minutes of outside time. Again, so it gives students and staff an opportunity to be outside every hour, and also lets the ventilation system work better. So that is something we're actively exploring at the elementary level. In terms of projects related to COVID, the quad project at Wildwood is going well. We've already taken out, there's a quad that's truly a habsi, as we're calling it now, although Nick and Diane are gonna get some feedback from students and staff and try to rename it, because habsi is just my silly name, and hopefully they'll come up with something either better or silly or both. But our facility staff is working on that. We previously had committed to new flooring in carpets in two quads in the ELL room, and those projects have commenced. At Fort River, we've signed the contract for a vendor to complete the quad project there this summer. Again, we can get into more detail later, but I wanna just give an update because it's one of our four areas of operations we continue to work on. Unless there's questions, I'll keep on going. I'm not seeing any. Okay, so from the staff update, we surveyed staff right after school ended regarding medical needs that they might have as per CDC guidance, and the follow-up conversations with HR in progress. I know a bunch happened today, actually. Just going back to budget decisions, we made budget decisions to mean primarily retain our staffing levels. We had 1.0 total full-time equivalency or position reduction across three districts, and all three districts were near level funded. We cut over a million dollars. And we did that because we wanted to maximize in-school time. If we weren't trying to do that, we would have made some different choices. But as we're looking at fall, it's becoming plainly obvious that we need to have increased staffing levels if indeed we are gonna have in-school services. We have initial scheduling models reduced the number of classrooms that teachers, staff teach in per week. And there's multiple examples of this, but one that's easy to describe and important is elementary specialists. So for instance, at Wildwood School, elementary specialists would see 21st classes a week. We would not have that in place next year. We're working on models that would essentially reduce that by two thirds to three quarters by having an elementary specialist having a set schedule set classes that stay constant for an extended period of time before changing. And that's a recommendation from our health department as well as from CDC. The personal protective equipment, 90% of that orders in, it's huge pallets where I am in the middle school. And maybe I'll just read through what's been ordered and most of that's here. It's 100,000 three-ply adult masks, 16,000 pediatric surgical masks, 13,000 KN95 masks, 180 reusable face shields, 240 reusable eye protection goggles, 9,600 isolation gowns. The number of gloves, I'd have to do a lot of quick multiplication, so I'm not gonna do that, but it's in the thousands. Hand sanitizer, foam sanitizer, refills, wall dispensers, because some of our classrooms have sinks and some don't. So we have a significant number of wall dispensers for that, sanitizing wipes, all those in the thousands. And I wanna thank Joe Constantly and Rupert for working quickly on that list and not waiting for the state order. We followed the state guidelines on what to order, but we feel like we're in very good shape with our personal protective equipment for staff members, both for the most staff members and then also the specific pieces like isolation gowns and other things primarily for staff members who work with our youngest students in preschool, as well as some of our special needs students as well. So that's where we are on staff update. I'll pause and then after this, we can get into the space, which will be the bulk of the conversation. Mr. Demling. So on the last point, PPE for staff who work with students with intensive needs. So, you know, we have students, we have student populations, we have programs where we're gonna have teacher and student settings where we can't rely on consistent following of masks and or distancing. It's just for one reason or the other. So can you talk a little bit about what the initial discussions have been about how we ensure staff safety, how we maximize both staff and student safety in those situations and what kind of any lessons learned so far that we have seen from other places in the world that have begun this. Yeah, so in many places, that's actually the first population has come back to students with more intensive special needs. And part of that's because that's a population just quite candidly, despite everyone, and I'm not talking about an Amherst or a region or a Pellum thing, just in general, that's a population of students we're just learning for many of those students does not meet their needs, not if they're learning needs or social emotional needs. And so that's really where we get into the isolation gown, it can 95 masks. The types of PPE, frankly that mirror what happens in hospitals or in doctor's offices while we're not getting into that level of invasiveness of incubating our students, we're mirroring in terms of the PPE, what's being recommended to us to do. And I think one of the pieces that, two pieces I want to mention, one is that we actively are thinking about what level of inclusion makes sense for students that we may want to really work with students on acclimating them to their new environment. And the other one, I think this is really critical and I think we'll talk more about this over time is making sure that we're building in staff training for both professional staff and paraeducator staff on this. It can't be happening just before school starts or a one day training. It's an ongoing type of time that our staff will need that they've not needed before if students return to school. So I think in terms of what we've done for PPE, we've again mirrored the experts, Mass General Hospital expert was the one who kind of worked on this list for districts of what to buy. Again, we adjusted it a little more on the student side a little reduced on the general staff side because so many of our staff indicated that they're already wearing cloth masks. So we want to be cautious of how many disposable masks we bought, still a hundred thousands a lot. But it's really where we get to the KN-95, some of the pediatric surgical masks for thinking through the face shield, the reusable eye protection and goggles, the isolation gown, the nitrile gloves for depending on the needs of a student that our staff are equipped in the way that experts at Mass General would say they need to be equipped. And then we also really have to think about program design and that's we're going back to the guiding principles on specialized program are critically important that our staff came up with those and we're following those to a tee. But I think of all students in our district, perhaps somewhat ironically, the students who may have the hardest time in terms of all the things you mentioned are also the most critical ones for them to have in-person education. Like if I was prioritizing my list, they would frankly be at the top of the list. And so I think it's to that reason that we purchased the equipment we purchased. We went above the state standards on that because state documents and guidelines because we know we have, we maintain a higher population of students with intensive needs in our district than the state was going to average. So we increased our purchasing for those students, but a lot of it's around training and support and some of that even could be done in some of the summer programming that we're doing. If once we get a sense of what the plan is, we can even integrate that and work with families in the summer before the school year starts. Sorry, long-winded answer, but a really important question. I don't think there's any such thing as a short uncomplicated answer to any. Are there any other questions? I'm not seeing any, so we can move on. Okay, so space summary. So we did this part for staff. We had a staff town hall meeting right before this. We're really, we just had time to run through this because we felt it was really important as a leadership team that our staff were able to see this and not be surprised by seeing it in a public meeting with everyone. So we had about 160 staff members log in and our principals did very similar thing that we'll have to do it tonight. So we wanna thank all the staff members for participating in that. So what we understood is that the school committee requested that we work with desk arrangements to support six-foot guidance between students and staff members as per the CDC. And the way we looked at that is mid desk to mid desk between students. And so what you'll see on the following slides has that. I think one thing that Ms. Consolino, our health director found out on a call with the mass department of public health is another reason that, you know, I'll say, you know, I said it, I supported it the last time, the quarantine piece. So if a student is suspected or a staff member for that matter is suspected, but let's stick with student as the example of having COVID-19 before they're tested, there's gonna be a need to quarantine everyone who spend more than 15 minutes because that's the duration period, less than six feet from that student. I'll tell you that, you know, COVID-19 symptoms are similar to the symptoms of a cold or symptoms similar to symptoms of the flu. They're similar to symptoms of allergies. And so to imagine us being below six feet and the level of quarantine that would need to happen in immediate dismissal of all those students would be highly disruptive. So I say that just to reinforce that I'm supportive of the six feet that you all talked about. But I think on a practical level, I wasn't aware of the quarantine piece till Ms. Consolino had the call with the mass department of health. We've also been consulting with the Amherst Health Department on all this work. So what we did is we mapped out the rooms with windows. We were not planning on using any rooms without windows for ventilation purposes. We tested different desk configurations with literally on the ground as well as on paper. We removed communal use rooms and looked broadly at what rooms could work for groups of students. And we also matched the anticipated enrollment to space capacity. We know that enrollment's not likely to be 100% but we have to plan for that in our work. We label the grade levels logically. It wasn't randomly done and you'll hear that from principals but it's for display purposes and we're looking to get more feedback. I know we will from staff and from the community around that. Just to remind you, the maps are not close not to scale, some are a little closer than others. And we did note that tents will be there. We didn't note the location because we're still working on that out. And that some of these spaces will need technology to ensure they'd be ready to go in September because they're not typically used as classrooms and we'd be planning to use them. And so I think with all those caveats, the first school is Fort River. So Diane's on the phone. So I'll introduce Fort River. Ooh, I have one more before Diane goes. So just a chart of the three foot separation versus six foot. So on the left is a slide literally copied from a DESI document emailed to superintendents about the DESI and the World Health Organization model of three foot distancing. This is a typical size classroom at the secondary level. This would be really small at the elementary. I can, we have a couple and you'll hear about them that have about 750 square foot of usable space. Most of our elementary classrooms are significantly larger than this. But at three feet, you can see that the DESI slide shows that 32 individual des fit. And then the right is the CDC model that we're planning on implementing or this is all based on. And you can see if it's 16 individual des is also a lot more teacher space to use. I didn't, I wasn't able to figure out how to move the teacher space line down, but just comparing it, you could see that there's much more significantly more teacher space. And we often have multiple teachers because we believe in inclusionary practices. So that was really important to us as well. Every classroom is different. This is looking at one with particular dimensions, but we, I wanted people to see the visual of three feet versus six feet because I thought it was important for people to consider. Any questions on this before I go to the fort? I'm not seeing any. Okay, very good. So Fort River. So I've done enough talking. So I think I'm just gonna turn it over to Diane to take us through changes at Fort River and what were some of the initial decisions and how they were made. Good evening, everybody. Thanks for having me. So as Mike described, the first significant change is moving from quads to duos. Those of you that are familiar with the Fort River structure in 1973, big open classrooms were built and have been modified over the years to have kind of partition walls. And for the sake of ventilation, those partition walls need to come down and actual walls need to be built to clean up our ventilation and not cross circulate all of our air. So in retrofitting the school, we end up with instead of quads or three rooms to each large space, we ended with duos or havesies, whatever we choose to call them for lack of better terms. So our class sizes in those rooms lead us to basically 12 classroom spaces plus three for the kindergarten, which is 15. Well, if we use our projected numbers, we needed 18 classrooms. So we had to look outside of the typical spaces that we were using for classroom spaces. Again, taking into consideration where we have windows and also where we have sinks, the places that we went to first were what we used previously as the music room, what we used previously as the art room and one of our cafeterias. So it also leaves very large spaces. The duos will be large spaces so we can continue our projected class sizes we had originally anticipated even before the shutdown. So the other consideration we thought in placing our classes in certain areas is bathrooms and knowing that our K to two kids we really wanted to make sure that they had a bathroom in their quad. And we also wanted to consider a few moves as possible because it's pretty laborious to move belongings that belong to a certain grade level. So we ended up with this structure also trying to keep our grade levels close in proximity if we possibly could. And the last consideration was again class size and our fifth grade classes are projected to be the smallest in the school. So they would be assigned to the two areas that are the smallest since we're footage which is the music in our room, the former music in our room. So we end up with this layout which does cluster the kindergarten together, the second grade together and the first grade together and clustering kindergarten and first grade is essential also because of the coming on face program because we have staff that are shared across that program. So having them in the same former quad or right next to each other is essential to the continuing of that programming. We also are able to maintain sixth grade where they were and fourth grade where they were with an addition of a new section going in there. So a few classroom placement changes we also are restructuring our office of course to uphold what is required for a quarantine space for if we have sick kids close to the nurse's office. You'll see that in every school that there's a quarantine space. We also have tried to reassign where some of our adults go kind of as landing places. Those that don't have a specific classroom will be paired up and we'll have kind of a place for their prep period to continue. We also are gonna be reconfiguring a little bit inside the office just to potentially protect the office staff as well. And one of our cafeterias is potentially gonna be held for overflow to our program. So speaking to Mr. Demling's concern about space, we already have an additional space for one of our specialized programs outside of that program because we know students sometimes have varying levels of need. We're also trying to look at one of our cafeteria spaces to be an overflow to that as well. And the last thing to support the programs is we have met with Rupert to our facilities director to see if we can make some modifications to the actual classrooms that house the programs. So they're more conducive to having more students that are able to do academic tasks for a longer period of time in those program rooms. And of course the tent outside is something we're gonna encourage use of as well as our garden for as much outdoor activities as possible. Big thing, I think the only thing I'll add is that just if you're wondering the size of those havesies or duos, it's about 1,900 square feet of usable space. The quads because they significant amount need to be reserved. We had architects estimate less than 700 square feet. So they're not quite three times as big but they're almost three times as large as the quads were in terms of the usable space. Well, Mr. Demling, any other questions? Am I just clarification? Am I to assume that all these configurations that we are gonna be shown accommodate all existing students? These plans will fit all existing students, yes or no? So I mean, I can answer more generally not just for Fort River will be explicit when they don't in Fort River's case. The answer is yes, the student, this school used to have over 600 students and has like 330 projected. So this is one of our best examples of being able to de-densify an existing building and safely fit the entire population. That is not gonna be true for all of our schools. Thank you. Any other questions for Fort River before we move on to Pelham? I think it might be obvious but I just, so just to state the, I'll ask the obvious question so that you can state the obvious. This assumes that there is no use, no meal service in the cafeteria. Yes, correct. Sorry, I didn't mention that. Yeah, all of our students. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, what Ms. Chamberlain said and that's true for all of our schools. We're not envisioning and the guidance we've received does not have cafeterias and use as food service at all. Yep, Ms. Spitzer. And I think the other point of clarification if somebody's not familiar with this building and I'm more familiar with Wildwood but I believe that for some of these spaces there are windows that you wouldn't necessarily assume so like the blue room for the overflow space, like that doesn't necessarily look like it has a window but or- That's correct. That's why it's only designated as overflow space. It will only be used if necessary. Okay, so the mail, but are there areas where there are like these courtyards in the middle of these buildings or if that may not be obviously have windows to somebody who's just looking at this diagram? So there are still courtyards. Yes, at the inside part of each quad there's still extra rooms but each quad will now have full access to see windows from door to window. So every havese will have the full bank of windows at the end. It's actually an improvement in light to all of the instructional spaces. Yeah, and to your point, the orange cafeteria is not drawn. This is where the scale part comes in because it actually extends quite a bit below the office area. So it does have significant windows to a courtyard and it's not really reflected in this kind of more simple map. Any other questions? No, I'm kidding. Thank you, Ms. Chamberlain. Thank you. We'll go on to Pelham. So Lee's with us and Pelham is another school where from a space perspective we are able to design spaces that would fit all students in Pelham but there would be some changes needed to accommodate that. So I'll turn it over to Lee for sharing more information. Hi, good evening everyone. It's good to be with you. So the map of Pelham looks relatively similar to how it has looked in the past. So when we were looking at space configurations for the fall, our big priorities were to keep children in developmentally appropriate learning environments, keep cohorts of students together and maintain our current staffing levels. So you'll notice a few changes to this map. So our enrollment for grade four is currently a little higher than some of our other grade levels. And so we have, we're proposing to move fourth grade into the cafeteria and convert that to a learning space in order to keep the cohort of fourth graders together. The next piece is that the grade two classroom was originally built to be a specials area and is significantly smaller than some of the other classrooms in the building. So you'll see that second grade is in what it was formerly the fourth grade space so that we can again, keep the second graders together as much as possible and fit more students into the learning space. You'll see, as Diane mentioned, there's a quarantine room which was formerly our technology lab. It has great proximity to the nurses office as well as being really centrally located in the school. And then the final piece is that we're looking at our enrollment numbers recognizing that they're subject to change and thinking about the potential of a multi-age first and second grade classroom. So right now our enrollment for first grade is a little bit on the low side compared to the other grade levels and our enrollment for second grade is a little bit higher. So we're thinking through some options that would be the most supportive and developmentally appropriate for those grade levels while also keeping students together as much as possible. So it's a model that we're exploring along with some of the other elementary schools. And then you'll notice the tent which was already mentioned as well. So we'll be taking advantage of lots of outdoor learning come the fall. So it's among the more straightforward maps that you'll see this evening but I'm happy to answer any questions. Or Mike, please jump in if I left things out too. No, I think that was spot on. And just to be clear, the overflow space is that room 18 is what's thought of when Lee was talking about second grade. It's that one's the one when I was referencing the space at the beginning of this, that's a very small elementary classroom. It's only about I think 740 square feet, something like that where the other rooms are significantly larger. And that's why when we looked at enrollments it didn't really make sense to try to fit a full class in there because it is tighter than all the other spaces in Pellum. Any questions for us? And Mr. Monino. I can't see my computer but that pink room next to the second grade, what is that? So that is what we, it's labeled on the map as the quarantine room. So it was formerly the computer lab but the space is just too small to safely and comfortably. I didn't see it. Sure. I missed it. Just for my own curiosity, on average how many students do you imagine having per grade like in the third, second, fifth and sixth grade classroom? So, Lee, correct me if I'm wrong but I believe that those rooms, kindergarten's a little bigger, fourth grade obviously is different that they would max out at 18 students. Is that, do you remember it? Yeah. I believe that was it as they're about a hundred square feet larger than the models from Desi and the 16 square, a 16 desk model that you shared earlier that was 750 feet. I think these are about 90 square feet larger. So there's the ability to have two rows of four and two rows of five. Yes. So they're about 840 square feet. So the first grade room, the third grade room, fifth and sixth are all about the same size. So we did measure out that 18 students could fit and with more students being able to fit in the kindergarten room, which is about 1,100 square feet. And then the cafeteria learning space is just about 1,000 square feet. So we projected that we could comfortably fit 21, 22 students in those learning spaces. I'm not seeing any more questions from. Okay. So thank you, Lee and Nick will come up and well, it's a different orientation and different map. The buildings are very similar. Wildwood and Fort River. So there are differences that Nick will highlight, but this should look sort of similar if you turn it 90 degrees to what Diane spoke about at Fort River, but I'll turn it over to Nick. Hi everybody. Thank you for helping us try to figure this all out. So like Mike said, at Fort River, Wildwood's very similar. I think that the figure in 1900, Mike makes me realize why it looks so big when I went in there the other day. These haves, these are enormous. And so creating that, like Diane said, created 12 rooms instead of 24. And our goal was 21 classrooms based on current enrollments. So then counting the three kindergartens that brought us up to 15. And similar to Fort River, when we looked at the haveses, they each have bathrooms, they each have sinks. And so we thought that the younger children, grades one, two, three and four would fit into the haveses. And that worked out mathematically. We put them all side by side just so that therefore teachers could be in close proximity to each other. They are building walls that go across the rooms, but they are leaving one door in case a teacher needs to check in or with a colleague next door. So then we were looking for six other spaces. And so if you look at the map across the green are two cafeterias plus what used to be a fourth cafeteria space is now a movement room. And so we put grades five in there. Again, to try to keep the grade levels closer to each other. They each have windows that open wide and two of them open into a courtyard that was redecorated a few years back by the Rotary Club grant. And so that offers a nice outdoor learning space. And then in the orange, that's our ELL room, art and music room. And that's where right now we're proposing putting grade six there. And once again, grades five and six could walk to bathrooms that are in the hallway. I don't, and you know, other than that, the library is right now is a potential overflow space, though we do have also the use of a middle cafeteria that's not highlighted at all as potential overflow as well. There it is like, yeah. And then also we have a, we call it the green room in here, but those spaces weren't considered, particularly the library and the green room because they did not have, they don't have windows. And then similar to Fort River, we have a light blue space and it's part of the offices. That would be the quarantine room. Anything else like that I've left? No, just I don't know if the committee has any questions about Wildwood, but I think you've got all the details. Actually, the one thing I'll say is that one unique piece of Wildwood and Fort River that people may not focus on is the kindergarten rooms aren't usually large.  They're much, much larger than MSBA would allow us to build now, but they do provide a really wonderful space and there is a bathroom suite that is shared between the kindergarten gardens, but they're in their suite. But I think it is just worth mentioning those are very large spaces as well. Right, and similarly in the spaces, we're looking forward to having enough room to continue the co-teaching model because the spaces are so big. I'm Ms. Spitzer. Sorry, it's getting dark in my room. Hi, how are you doing? One question I have is thinking through, we're gonna be trying to maximize outdoor space, outdoor time and also minimizing time in hallways and kind of shared areas. So I guess for Fort River and Wildwood and also for the Palomarini of the schools, we're gonna be looking at how much access is there from the classroom, like a door to the outdoors? Is that something that's available in Fort River or Wildwood, the ones we've looked at so far? Or do they need to go through, kind of always go through the corridors in order to access the outdoors? Yeah, similar, we definitely want to access the outdoors and I think, so in the, I don't know if you can see my cursor, but that all the habsies have outdoors doors that just go right up, yeah, there's that little hand. Thanks, Mike. They go right outside kindergarten as well. Two, they also have, I think it's two out of three, but the third one is right near an outdoor door. I think we'll have to, I mean, we're as a group, we're looking at arrivals, departures, how to get outside, how to have really minimal mingling in hallways. And so that's another reason why we're thinking right now, putting the fifth and sixth graders in spaces where they also, but they have to move a little further to get outside, but they would have separate ways, so the sixth grade would have one way of entering and leaving the fifth grade would have another. Yeah, I mean, one of the things that is the feedback we received this week from the Amherst Health Department is the more particularly at the elementary level that students actually can even enter in through some of these doors in the morning and not have a bottleneck in the front, or to have different entrances. If we are going to use the hallways for some students at different ends, so they helped us think through some of that and that's sort of the next level of planning we have to do. Any other questions? All right, so now we get complicated. Thanks Nick, to Mr. Mead. What I also wanna, as we're transitioning to Mr. Shea, just note that Ms. Westmoreland did all the color coding and a lot of the design work with principals. So I wanna publicly thank Ms. Westmoreland for making these so easily visible about where things would be. So you all know her well from her prior, or many of you know her well from her prior role, but I think she was really outstanding in this regard. So the first three schools we went over based on our analysis at six feet, the students fit, that is not true for Crocker Farm, pre-K to six. And so Mr. Shea will talk through, Derek will talk through some of those pieces, but I wanna preview that there's two grade little's not on the sheet from Crocker Farm and those are fifth and sixth grade and we'll work on sharing why that is and why the efforts to densify at Crocker Farm aren't able to maintain the whole student body and staff as the other three elementary schools, but I'll turn it over to Derek. Good evening everyone, thanks for having me. I see it's getting dark outside. I was actually just looking at my phone there and in my dad's village in Scotland, the last light is 11, 24 PM this evening. So 3000 miles away anyway. So thank you for having us. Just maybe a couple of things to get started. I wanna thank Mike for saying right to the beginning that as you look at the Crocker Farm map, you will see that there's a pre-K through four plan, not a pre-K through six plan. And certainly some of you may know this, but I mean, I'm getting into my 11th year at Crocker Farm, 24 in the district. I love Crocker Farm, I love my older students, love the younger students too, but our sixth year has just left and some of those students are working for like seven years and so you develop these bonds in these relationships with kids over long periods of time. But as you look at this map and if you see what it says Crocker Farm instructional spaces, just below that, I think it says that Crocker Farm is approximately 71,000 square foot. The other schools, well they're in Fort River are somewhere in the region of 78,000 square feet. And so I certainly know next year our numbers, this year our student numbers, people could just, and a bunch of you on this call, know that Crocker Farm School quite well. So we had 416 students last year at the school, pre-K through six, over 100 staff. Next year our numbers in K through six are projected to be 325, which is only five students less than Fort River would be but with 7,000 square foot less to work with. So it makes for a difficult plan to try and make this work. And so clearly as you look at it, you'll see, and someone may say, so why do we have pre-K in there and not five and six? And I just want to be candid and offer a couple of quick thoughts on that. So our preschool program has shifted all about the district for many years. I mean, I actually remember when I worked at Fort River many years ago, working with a number of the preschoolers there. And the preschool found a home at Crocker Farm a good number of years ago. And what they ended up doing was actually physically building preschool setting to make it actually physically right for preschoolers. And so a large amount of money was invested to make those classrooms work down there. And outside space, which was beautifully done in the last year really fits well with the preschool model down there. It's accessible for students, 50% of the students who attend the preschool program are special education students. That's the mandate of the law. And a number of students in our preschool are fairly complex, whether it be physical or social-emotional needs. And what we've learned over the last number of years is that we have not had enough space for everyone to co-exist at Crocker Farm on a quote, regular year, whatever that may mean. And it's always been very tight. It's been a very tight space to work. So when we went through all of the classrooms, if you look in the back hallway there, for example, the sort of green colors and yellows and blues, I don't know what the other one is. Not very good at colors. But you're talking about these 11 hallway classrooms in the back where I went into the school myself and Mike was in with me one day but I'm back a couple of times just to sort it out. And you can look and you see the rooms, they can accommodate 15 desks and 15 chairs and one teacher desk and that's about it. And I've done that a number of times to go in and take a look at it. There's cubbies in those rooms that make it a little bit difficult to get more space. There's also egress issues in terms of wire codes. If you look what it says, room 34, 35, 36, those are little pathways that need to be left open for students to be able to exit the property properly. You can see probably in this map as well that we've got two kindergarten classes scheduled but our numbers right now are such that we may have to go to a third class because we have probably 15, 16, we can get in those kindergarten classes but our numbers are a little higher right now. So at some point, Mike and the district is going to have to make some decisions about that because our numbers are like 38. I think the last time I looked at mine you'd be a little higher. Too high for regular kindergarten previous years, good numbers but too high for what the physical distance rules say for right now. We've got a one, two pegged in for one of our grades. We've got too many students to make it work in two first grades and we've got too many to make it work for three second grades. We've got this overspill number where we have to figure something out. You'll see in the map a number of third grades. You'll also see in the map some overflow space. Last year during the school year we had 17 additional students join us after September. That's not a small number of students. It's perhaps plausible that number will be smaller next year but I could only speculate. I don't really know how that'll shake it. Preschool has got some additional space granted in this map and I think it's going to be necessary. Preschool for many years has struggled to maintain their program with limited space. So in this model here, preschool would get some additional space and I do think it's the right thing to do. We also have probably next year some of the region of 70 plus English language learner students and 23 of those students, certainly for right now, are students who are just beginner students and so we're going to have to figure out how to service our ELL program students next year because translators for the most part I don't think will begin into classrooms and so we're going to have to figure out a model for our ELL students so hence you'll see there's that ELL classroom up there. We may need even more than one ELL classroom. Not quite sure how we're going to figure that part out yet. I'm not sure what else to say but I'm going to talk about 5.6 in a second but I'm obviously a little anxious talking about this because it's not something I'm excited to talk about. Right, Derek, do you mind if I jump in for a quick second? Just to add a little bit about the 5.6. So just one other additional detail in the pre-K is that as opposed to the K to 6 or K to 12 program, there's different EEC requirements about number of kids who can be in a classroom as well as movement spaces so you're going to see it's a significantly more space for preschool and that's just based on how we're reading the EEC's early education and care I think or committee. I forget the acronym but it's basically the governing body for early childhood centers in the Commonwealth and there are some different rules for DESI and so it's making sure that we're not looking to expand our preschool offering. This is actually just maintaining it but we know we're going to need more space. Second thing that is more challenging at Crocker is that the cafeteria is not a space. It's a huge space without windows that open so it's not a space we can, it's functional as a classroom and the same a little bit for the library, there are windows in there but the orientation of the space doesn't make it suitable. So some of the other schools, elementary schools were able to be differently creative on space. Just it's not possible at Crocker Farm. We weren't willing to cut corners and in terms of public health and the six feet and the orientation questions and additional variables, these back spaces and then four, five and six, they have built-in cabinetry we really can't remove and that cuts in the space. You may be wondering, why does Crocker Farm have fewer kids in the classroom than the other schools? It's because there's built-in furniture that makes us fit 14, 15 students in a space as opposed to the other schools that don't have built-in furniture inside the classrooms. It's a real barrier. We did explore a little bit about removing those. It would be not removing, it would be destroying those. There was a lot of problems with that. There'd be a lot of problems with the flooring because they're truly built-in with the renovation in 2002 but it's a huge barrier in terms of class size and where students go. So I just wanted to be explicit about that piece. And Derek, it's okay, you know, in Ms. McDonald if we just show the five and six on the middle school map and then we can pause for questions on Crocker. Yeah. Okay. So here's the middle school and we'll get to, you know, Principal Sharon in a little bit but Derek, do you wanna just talk through the fifth and sixth grade here at the middle school building? Yeah, I'll just say a few brief words because I'm not an expert. I've worked in a number of schools in town but the middle school is the one place that I haven't spent a lot of time, certainly just to go visit my kids when they were there. It looks like the way it's designed right now is that the fives and sexes would be allocated a segment of the school. Perhaps a wing is the way to frame it. And then that segment in the second floor or fives and sexes would have their own area, obviously their own classrooms, their own bathrooms, their own ability to have space for their teachers that work with them and there is special education teachers, ELL teachers. Also when I was meeting with Mr. Sharon today, Diego today, we realized that the fives and sexes would also have the ability to have their own way to enter and depart the property. And so they wouldn't have to come in through the front door with the older students. And certainly I think Diego and I had made this commitment as we were chatting today that if this holds to be true that we would certainly spend as much time as possible in the next coming weeks to continue to look at what would make sense for our fives and sexes. But I do like the way that they've got their own separate quarters designed up there. So I'll pause here before we talk about the middle school specific to arms if there's questions about Crocker Farm. Mr. Manino. Support services and access to the principal. How do these students in a different location locate you? Right. And so we've had initial conversations about that about just very bluntly, there would need to be someone with administrative credentials in that role on site. This is over a hundred students and we wouldn't put that on Mr. Sharon or the middle school. There's certainly from a safety and security perspective there would need to be coordination but from an instructional leadership perspective we'd want that. So we have a couple ideas on how that would work. At this point we're looking at space but I think you hit the nail in the head that we'd have to have an administrative model to support that. And I've talked with Ms. Smith, the assistant principal as well as Derek had some initial dialogue about that. And so if this ends up being a model that the committee wants us to explore in more detail then we can kind of flesh that out. Ms. Spitzer. So I just wanna kind of pose the question because when I'm not suggesting this as a solution but given what Mr. Benino just brought up. So when I was at Cargo Farm I was in a modular classroom. So I think there are good reasons that we probably don't wanna go the modular classroom route but I'm assuming that people in our community might raise the question. So what are the advantages of going to the middle school over doing something like bringing a modular classroom onto the site at Cargo Farm? So I can take a stab at that Derek unless you'd like to. I would prefer you did to be honest. So we're talking about seven classroom spaces and that's a lot of modular spaces. I don't know the size of modular classrooms. I remember the ones over at Mark's Meadow and Nick remembers them better than me probably. My recollection is they were long but narrow. I also think from a cost perspective that'd be a huge expense. Certainly something we could explore if that this committee wants about what the cost is and availability of them to be here on site in time. The other piece which is perhaps neither here or there but when we think about de-densifying I do feel like there needs to be fewer bodies on site at Cargo Farm. And so the idea of modular takes care of one issue which is instructional space. But on a larger scale it's already feels very full at Crocker Farm with a current number of students. And I think finding an outdoor area to put six or seven modules maybe get one more class in and one of those overfill spaces. It's still the same number of bodies on site. It's still the same number of cars, buses. And so I guess I have a bias against that and it's not that my bias can't be overcome. It's certainly the school committee can ask us to explore that and we can get back to you. But that was certainly my thinking. We did talk about that a little bit. But when those were on it was during a construction project and no one speaks super fondly of that from the staff. I was still, I still got to Crocker Farm in 2007 I think it was where people were still reliving the construction years and not always so fondly. So I think given the alternative it's certainly something we could explore because they may not view this model so fondly but I really do worry about the capacity to pull that off for early September from a functional perspective cost perspective and then what does it mean? If you're really just spreading students out outside does that cut on the outside space that we want all these students to have? So those are my initial thoughts. I haven't done as much deep thinking on it but again that's something we could explore if the committee would like. Ms. Kenny. So I see in this pink corner I'm not sure if it's a Crocker Farm question or a middle school question but it looks like room I'm gonna go with C44 because I need new glasses and B this is little down in the bottom like left hand corner all of the rooms around there look like they have no windows look therefore are not being used but this says I think it's a specialized programs in it. So does that room have windows and ventilation? Yeah so the answer to that is it does it has windows into a courtyard that you can't see because it's not shown on the map it's sort of the only one of those interior classroom ish areas that actually does have windows. So it doesn't look like it on this map it looks like the library extends but it's actually a courtyard right here that doesn't extend all the way there but it extends to right here so there are windows to a courtyard. Mr. Demwing. Did I miss it or did you describe what combined fifth sixth grade means? You did not miss it and Derek I'm sorry, did you wanna? I was just trying to get Peter's question there. Were you looking for the numbers or for the plan Peter for in terms of? Like just wasn't like what does it mean? Does that mean we're educating fifth and sixth graders at the same time in a new hybrid kind of class model or is it in the morning it's fifth grade and the afternoon it's sixth grade? Yeah, no I think that the way that we've got so there's approximately give or take whatever pleasure there's approximately 110 students who are in fifth and sixth grade for next year for Crocker Farm and the way the numbers are set up right now we would and looking at the and again I don't know them in school as well we certainly know the numbers in terms of students per classroom we would ideally have not ideally we would have three fifth grades just like we would normally three fifth grades at Crocker Farm, three sixth grades and then we would be looking to perhaps develop a five sixth classroom because we have again this sort of funky number where we'll get too many fifths to make you know three classes and too many sixths for three classes so we need to do something a hybrid in the middle somewhere and so it is a little bit of a come back to your cricket reference earlier of sticky wicket right? We're in a little bit of a sticky situation and we're trying to sort of like figure out that that's the one place where yeah we we would hybrid at any like a five sixth so you'd have seven theoretically seven classrooms the middle school operating in an elementary school model I apologize I can't see everybody on screen when we're presenting but we have a question from Margaret and then a few questions from Mr. Harrington Thanks Allison I was waving like crazy so I figured you couldn't see me So I have a question about the tent you're showing one tent here at the middle school and I guess maybe I have two questions is the intent to have one tent per school or does this simply represent that there will be tent space and is there going to be if there's only gonna be one per school are you going to have one for the middle school and one for the fifth sixth grade students? So at the current time we have one for the site to answer your question so it would be you know what's been ordered is one for the middle school And so for the fifth and sixth graders to have that kind of opportunity there they would have to use the same one that's used by the middle school Yeah I think when we go through the middle school let's come back to this question because I think it'll the size of the adult of students in this school will be similar to the number of students that would be in the other elementary schools based on who will fit but since we haven't done the middle school I haven't been able to explain that one yet So let's come back to that Okay thank you Mr. Harrington All right so I guess my first question would be So this is regional space being occupied or used sorry utilized by an Amherst school is there any sort of compensation that needs to be provided from Amherst public schools to the regional public schools since we're going to be providing regional services and such in there too? Yeah so I think that would be a discussion for the committees to have in terms of rental of space we looked at this when we were looking back at sixth grade to the middle school a while ago in terms of staffing we would imagine this to be Amherst public school staff so I don't think that is a conflict financially but in terms of rental of space there has been dialogue for many more years and I've been involved on what that would be and I don't imagine that to be a huge sum but that would be something for the Amherst school committee and the regional school committees to discuss but when we say fifth and sixth grade at Crocker Farm what we would be talking about from a staffing perspective is fifth and sixth grade teachers and para educators at Crocker Farm there would probably be some shared staff in terms of the nurse that's the one area that comes to mind most acutely. And then also I got a couple more here but so in terms of parents who might object to sending their fifth or sixth grade student to the middle school is there space to accommodate those students in fifth and sixth grade in the other two elementary schools or three actually elementary schools? Not that I see Fort River is the one with the most space per student if you did like the math of it but because of the specialized programs that Ms. Chamberlain spoke about earlier in terms of building blocks and Ames both being on site there and the concerns that we'd wanna make sure that there's additional spaces for those students given their disabilities. It's not a question I've explored extensively there's certainly not seven extra spaces at Fort River that I can say confidently. If there was questions that are fewer my instinct right now is that would I don't wanna compromise the experience that particularly the students in specialized programs have and as Ms. Chamberlain said trying to think of additional spaces for those students to be in seems pretty critical from our equity lens. So it's a long-winded way of saying I don't think so that there would be available space. And then my last question for now is how are we accommodating recess for these students? Like with my familiarity with that particular site it's I guess less accommodating for recess than the other elementary schools would be. Yeah, I think there's a lot of physical space over by the ball fields. So in terms of like just open space and that was sort of Mr. Shea was talking about that earlier that there would be easy access to being outside but you're absolutely right in terms of playground space. There's not a place at the way there