Okay, well good evening everybody at 630 so I think we'll get started and as I said will let people on as they arrive. My name is David Steven I'm going to be one of your facilitators tonight, along with my colleagues from denisco design, and I'm going to let them introduce themselves now. But before I do that, we also have our translator with us Nadalia Alicia Lozada, and she's going to just see if anyone is interested in some interpretation services tonight. Okay, thank you Nadalia and Nadalia will be with us throughout the evening so if people come on that need interpretation services will be sure to get that set up. So maybe I'll just open up to have Donna and her team just do a quick introduction of them. Sure, sure. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Welcome my name is Donna to nisco and I'm with denisco design, Vivian. Hi, I'm Vivian low also with the nisco design. Thank you for making the time to be with us. This is going to be great. Rick. You have room. Okay, Rick we were having trouble hearing you there. Also with this. Looking forward to having a lively conversation with you all today. Hi, Tim Cooper with the nisco design. And Brian Hunter with the nisco design. It's good to see everyone here tonight. Okay, great and Kathy I guess I'll hand it over to you to say a few words of introduction. Thank you for those of you who don't know me. I'm Kathy Shane here in Amherst, not with the nisco design. I am chair of the elementary school building committee and also on the town council. I'm pinch hitting for Mike Morris who would normally be introducing this educational workshop because it's about the education curriculum and how it relates to the design of the new school that we're all thrilled. It's a great way to getting. I just want to mention to people that this is the second workshop, and there will be a third on February 17. And what we're doing tonight is building on years of work in Amherst to envision the type of curriculum what the priorities are for the curriculum, as well as what is currently in the elementary schools in your programs and program goals. As you'll see as David leads you through the workshop, what the workshop's goal is to link those priorities, and have you express any additional ones to the potential design of the school, and this will be part of a document that we have to first bring to the school committee for their vote and signature and then bring to the granting authority it's part of the initial feasibility phase, as we think through our new school. So I'm just going to turn it over at this point to David Steve and Donna who conduct the workshop, and I just want you to know we're taping all of these. We're making them available on our website. So you can go back and listen to what happened at earlier one, and they're also being conducted with school staff. Okay, thanks Kathy. And Nadalia, we've had a number of new people join us so maybe you could make another quick announcement. Great, thank you. So yes, some of you may have joined us in our previous meeting, which was during the morning, this is going to be a very similar kind of format to that. We are, we're going to be sharing with you some of the highlights of the educational and architectural priorities that are being discussed for the project so far. And we want to get your feedback on that so we're going to have an interactive format where we're using a platform called Mentimeter, where you will be through your computer or your phone you'll be able to to offer your feedback. This is anonymous feedback and but we will be able to visually see what people are thinking. I'm going to bring us through a series of slides and we're going to open up for conversations at different points. I'm going to share my screen right now. And I'll tell you about sort of the agenda for tonight. First of all, let me just make sure everybody can see my screen if you can see my screen can you just give me a thumbs up. Okay, great. And so it's going to be a little difficult for me to sort of keep my eye on the chat as well as be presenting to you all so, but we'll have people focusing on the chat and try to address questions as they come up. And so in terms of tonight's agenda, what we'd like to do is give you an overview of the visioning process that is part of the MSBA feasibility study for the Amherst Elementary School, and talk about some of the sources also of that we've been mining in in terms of the all the, the, the priorities that have been established by the district over the last five to six years, and that we want to revisit of course in this situation. We'll be doing some priority goal setting and asking you to give us feedback on your priorities, educational architectural community priorities. We'll be talking some about the key programs of and learning goals of Amherst Elementary Schools also asking for your feedback on that. And, and then we're going to take a break. And we're going to for 10 minutes and we're going to shift over to talking about design considerations we call them design patterns that have also been discussed for the school thus far, and share those with you. And we're breaking into small group discussions then to talk further about the design pattern and priorities. Now, if you would rather stay in the larger group and just address any of your questions and concerns for district consideration. That's a great option for when we go into our small group so. So, you know, when when we do that just just don't accept the invitation to the small group, and there will be a representative from the district and from the design team to discuss any, any issues. Now tonight's meeting is not about site selection, it's not about whether to build new or renovate. We're looking at the educational and architectural priorities that are the high level priorities. So that would be the lenses through we looked at any of those different options and actually the MSBA does require us to look at all of those different options. So, in terms of new construction, addition renovation and renovation. And so that's going to be part of the discussion now I put in the in the chat. I'm going to talk about the project which is the Amherst school project. And so you can find there all the materials that we're going to be developing as a result of the notes from this presentation as well as the video and and the presentation itself so you're going to be able to the design team wants to make this process really as transparent as possible. The visioning process itself is something that the MSBA requires as schools go through the feasibility study, because they really want districts to take the opportunity to craft their educational vision and a forward thinking vision. And so that to design possibilities push their thinking forward about what's possible by seeing lots of examples of schools that have been designed and built in the last five years. Create a set of guiding principles and connect that to ideas about key space and adjacencies. And so you know that your district has done a lot of thinking about this already. And so we're going to be building upon a number of different studies that have been done and and adding new voices to this conversation and so those studies are the the original Amherst elementary visioning process joined the meeting that went on in 2015 2016 for the Wildwood school that involved visioning group workshops community meetings, representatives from all three of your elementary schools, and the development of a comprehensive set of educational and architectural priorities for elementary schools. Now, that was further developed through the Fort River draft education plan that was developed by the district, outlining the learning goals guiding principles and evolving educational practices within the district that you need to support. And so we've also been looking at that as a resource. We also had a study the TKSP Fort River study that looked vetted the educational needs and programming that had been established thus far and looked at an evaluation of existing conditions and options for renovation. And finally, we've been looking at your elementary school improvement plans so all of your schools have improvement plans that talk about the educational priorities that are that are most important for your school so we've been looking at those as well, and we'll be reviewing some of those in just a moment. So this is all for the purpose of adding to and further developing your narrative. Now, we want to help the district optimize the MSBA space template and align this vision to your educational plan as it moves forward. Of course it's very important to reach teachers and talk to teachers. We had a workshop yesterday and after school voluntary workshop for teachers, and we're going to be conducting focus groups with them. We have really been trying to be very sensitive about the stresses on your teachers right now on your educators, due to on the chron and all that goes along with that. So, so we're going to try and reach them wherever we can get their feedback and add their, add their voices to the conversation of course there that's extremely important. I'm going to do a little review of some of the priorities that have been established and asked for your feedback on that. But I wanted before that to just say that as we look at a renovation, or a new school or a renovation for this project, any MSBA project is going to have certain things so ADA will definitely you will be ADA compliant will be looking at safety and security features will be looking at thermal comfort including pooling. We see buildings as year round buildings of course. This comes along with modern technology and furniture. We know that classrooms need to be well sized because it's not just more, there may be more traditional delivery going on but there also maybe lots of small group things going on in a classroom, and those classrooms need natural light. We know that we'll be looking at how to maximize connections to your site and that indoor connectivity will be looking at special education delivery and how to make sure that it happens in the most seamless way possible. And we'll be looking at safe drop off and pick up sustainability we know is incredibly important to your district, and, and we'll be looking to make sure there are an adequate number of distributed bathrooms and gender neutral bathrooms as well so those are some of the things that any renovated or new MSBA school will include. So this is really an opportunity, especially at this phase of doing the high level visioning to be very aspirational in your thinking about what you would like to see both educationally and architecturally for this building and we want to be thinking about really making sure that that this is going to be a building that's going to last you for decades to come and that can involve with changes along along the way. So we have a large group here so it's going to be difficult to do to do a whole group, sort of introduction, but what I wanted to do is to just maybe if people feel comfortable turning on their. This works much better when we turn on our monitors for just a moment, if people could turn on their monitors and then we can see.  And so I'll just give people a moment to do that. All right, so do we have school administrators here if you're a school administrator please please wave to the group. All right. Hi Tammy. And what about teachers do we have teachers with us tonight if you're teaching in the system, can you wave to the group. All right no teachers tonight well we're going to we're going to get that we're going to get to those teachers, we're going to do focus groups within their schedule at the school. Parents what about parents I'm sure a lot of you are parents of students that have either and that includes parents that are maybe of students that have already gone through the system. All right, how and community members I'm assuming that we've got mostly community members here. Many people wear many hats school committee members do we have school committee members with us. Any school committee. All right, how about community partners. That are like work for agencies within Amherst and and partner with the school district or with youth development. Okay, any town officials. People on boards or. Okay, well, so what I want to do now is I want to give people an opportunity to sort of share. We're going to be doing a bunch of priority setting, but I want to give people an opportunity to share their greatest hope for this project. And so we're going to do this by going to a platform called Mentimeter. If you want to do it on your phone just use this qr code here and put your camera on it, or you can go to mentee.com and type in this number, and you're going to get to this page. So I'm going to keep give people just a moment to do that. And thank you for adding into the chat that there are lots of special education families here too so we really are thrilled to have you with us here tonight. So, yeah, you can see down someone already did it there's a heart down at the bottom in the right hand corner if you get to that page you can press on that heart, that'll let us know that you've reached there. Great. All right. So, each of the pages that I go to where I'm going to be asking for feedback will have this code up at the top if you lose it for any reason. Okay. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to go to a slide here, which is just asking you to share your greatest hope for the Amherst elementary school project. I hope that connects to educational or architectural ideas or it's placed in the community. So we're just going to open up for a few minutes to do that. And we do have a lot to cover tonight. So, so I'm going to keep us moving along. And we will save time at the end for Q&A, and we will be going into our small groups and for those people that might have just entered in the last five minutes. I did mention that we're going to be going into small groups to talk about design patterns and design ideas, but for those people that would like to stay in the larger group and talk about big picture issues or concerns about the project with a district representative you're welcome to stay in the large group and there will be a half hour for doing that at the end. So we'll, we'll save our questions for them. All right, so we can see these things coming up on, on our screen. So uniting around shared goals, making sure we can get it done. Finally, build a school building that's healthy, light filled and joyful, preserving and enhancing everything you love about your child school now. Yeah, we know that that change is difficult and we certainly want to give you something that's going to be a joyful and safe and personalized environment. Developing broadest community support. Climate resiliency as a hub for the town. And that's certainly something that teachers have mentioned and others have mentioned as part of a curricular piece as well. Where children can thrive minimal strife in the community on the shortest possible timeline. And by the advising it's a role, revising the enrollment policy to allow siblings of students. Okay, we're going to be so what we're going to be doing is all of these notes we're going to consolidate them. We'll see all the themes that have emerged but they will all be part of the, the consolidated set of notes. Okay. So a lot about, you know, people coming together to come to agreement about what's going to be best for the kids. And a transparent and honest process and I know that you're certainly your architectural team is very committed to doing that. So I'm going to keep moving along here there'll be more opportunities to share more specific priorities. I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the future ready learning goals and programs that have been highlighted in the ed plan that we as designers are going to be taking into consideration. So, so there's a set of future ready learning goals that was established by the district, right up at the top is empathy and citizenship, and, and being students feeling part of a flexible community that is self aware that they're having that the building and the program sort of facilitates social interaction, also supporting curiosity, creativity and risk taking, sparking people's imaginations, supporting collaboration. That's a recurring theme, cultural awareness and expression so sort of multicultural literacy and global awareness and effective oral and written communication so these are some of the things that have been established. They were also guiding principles for design from the ed plan that connect to these and these are the big picture kind of priorities, excitement and engagement, a building for the community and that builds community, a building that's adaptable and flexible and can evolve over time, and, and fostering collaboration and sharing of expertise, and allowing teachers to work together in in teams and meaningful ways so that they can better serve your, your children. So now we're going to open up for you all to share some of your priorities, and I'm going to. We have three different slides, and I'll share one slide first on each of these different categories to show you some of the things that have come up already.  Now, we're going to start out with educational priorities, and some of the things that have been highlighted are certainly supporting future ready 21st century learning, social justice and diversity programming we know is incredibly important. Equitable use and access of this building supporting diverse learning needs and special education programs and delivery in the dual language program that we know is extremely important and a big part of the Fort River programming at this point in the districts and so, additionally, social emotional learning, your restorative justice practices, the pop the delivery of a more interdisciplinary project based hands on student centered learning, lots of different words here that may sound like educational jargon but these are things that districts around the Commonwealth and around the country are thinking about maker spaces art and music programming which we know are extremely important to you also. I'm going to open up now for a few minutes for people still on that same mentee code 5573500. I'm going to open up for you to share your educational goals now we're going to have an opportunity to share architectural goals. So if you're thinking about collaboration being important, important, maybe you would you wouldn't talk so much about collaborative spaces here, as you would about collaborative programming so we're really thinking about the educational piece right now. I know they're all very connected. Okay, so support for neurodiversity and inclusion mental health that definitely connects to the idea of universal design for learning and an inclusive curriculum. We've learned a lot the last few years about increasing outdoor education opportunities and the importance of those outdoor connections. I'm going to articulate most important goals in a few seconds. Okay, well, so that's actually and I want to, I'm glad someone said that because this is not the end of the conversation. And you can certainly that we have a link at the end, Debbie Westmoreland your district communication director is going to be the sort of the person who will continue to take comments so you can have this presentation at the link that I included in the chat. And we will also have the tape of this. And so, as you think of new things you can certainly reach out and we will include that in the information that we're collecting. So thanks for pointing that out. So curriculum that can challenge every student at their level, diverse learning across the spectrum, maker spaces and music are critical. And we know that that's important to the district supporting social emotional development of students that has a lot to do with sort of a building that really supports both small learning communities and the sense of being connected to the larger whole and outdoor educational opportunities, bilingual and do a language programming access to music and arts experiential education. And a sensory gym that allows for neurodiverse children to attend better in their classrooms. Okay, great. And curriculum that prepares our children for what the world will look like when they're in charge of it. And that's certainly something as we think about these future ready learning goals which we'll be discussing in just a moment that's that's kind of the point of it all. I'm going to move on to architectural priorities and some of the ones that have been that have been highlighted so far. So as a space that's inspiring and warm and promotes a feeling of belonging universal design for learning, supporting all kinds of learning so quiet noisy small large traditional project base. And that has a lot to do with also the ease of way finding through the building, a building that's practical and comfortable, safe and welcoming flexible spaces and we certainly look at a lot of our big ticket spaces as being multi purpose and multi use community building, connecting to the whole as well as the small learning communities and display throughout the building posting student work celebrating student work and room to expand if needed. So those are some of the ones that have been established so far. And here we're opening up for you to share your top architectural priorities. I will say, natural light is something that we think about a lot. It's certainly connected to sustainability but it's also connected to health and wellness, and, and connections to nature. So, well built and not costly to maintain. We have only child oriented designs for thinking about scale, and, and we know, you know, there's a range of kids kids really vary in size along along the elementary spectrum so we want to be thinking about age appropriate scale. We're not only sort of that is not mundane at all that's one of the bigger things that storage that we're thinking about a lot. Because if you're doing more project based especially your hands on learning or neuro diverse learning you need space for storing a lot of equipment. And I will say that all MSBA classrooms now are required to have two sinks, so that they can support that kind of more project based learning. And so we have connections to the outdoors, considering no more than two floors to minimize the need for using elevator. Yep. Open spaces for gathering contains spaces for day to day learning, no open classrooms so we know that you have been living in open school environment so, and that's really challenging, it's really challenging acoustically. When we look at more kind of connect the benefits of that is that you've got sort of connectivity right and so, or more opportunities for teaming so we're going to try and take the best of that, but give you doors or, or, you know, openings that can close and that you can have that acoustic privacy and visual privacy when you need it. So we have four real walls that go from the floor to the ceiling interactive net zero system so we'll look at the whole idea of building as teacher. Light happy comfortable, not institutional sustainable common space where children can all come together space for outdoor recreation. Great. Air circulation. Fewer blue rooms instead more room more accessible rooms for all good sound performance. Okay, open classrooms are no longer a thing in in Wildwood and Fort River. Okay. So we've got tiles that are easy to maintain security features. They're conditioning and COVID and other airborne virus safe building. Yeah. And one of the things we think about related to the pandemic is, how do we use every square inch of the building, so that we can spread out in terms of, in terms of social distancing as needed, but also just to be really practical and get your biggest bang for the buck. Ventilation minimize the spread of COVID. Not too loud hand dryers okay, and secure entrances. Okay, we're going to keep going to community priorities as related to now one of the things is that, you know, since your older buildings were designed we're definitely thinking about schools as community resources and community centers that are used after hours and on weekend so safe community use and access to key spaces and multi use those big ticket spaces like your cafeteria or your, or your library or your gym. We also want to promote family and community engagement. So here goals for community support as something that has has been mentioned many times, connecting related service providers and providing spaces for them environmentally sustainable and green building, which we know as a community wide initiative, and connected to that the idea of the building itself as a teacher. Okay, so I'm going to now give you an opportunity to share your community priorities. Okay, so outdoor bathrooms so after hours playground use is welcoming for families, connecting to public transport outdoor spaces, open to family safe travel community access. Live our equity and diversity values by encouraging a new building that will offer multi purpose use by the community as appropriate. accessible gathering spaces unitization for community events and celebrations, keeping taxes at a minimum picnic area that can be used by families as well as students during lunch, inclusive playground for children of all abilities. And can continue to be used for election site selection should consider how the time might use the other site. Okay. Green space outdoors again, increasing home values playgrounds open to all a community garden. Yeah your teachers were definitely talking about that yesterday. There's space for community groups places for performances and sports and shared resources, like a pool or rehearsal space. Ways to connect with nature and outdoors safety but also a sense of openness yeah that's that kind of idea of safety and welcome is something that we're going to be really thinking about a lot of it is. You know, sort of more kind of creating a gateway mechanism where you tightly control how people get into the building but it doesn't need to feel like you're, you know, you're getting frisked or anything when you come in. But a lot of visual access as well, but active and passive measures for safety, and that can definitely align with a sense of openness. So it's important to understand what we all know and understand to be the definition definition of community and it varies among and across so many groups that we might get off that we get off on the wrong track and take us down the wrong path. Okay. It meets school committee policies and school facilities use space for community gatherings on the weekend speedy project completion. We spent a lot of time in this town with people putting up roadblocks so we want to make sure that this moves along. Consider locking doors near voting areas for election days. Yeah, one of the one of the elements of promoting community access in a newer renovated school is providing sort of a community core or set of spaces that have adjacencies to each other, but they can be locked off from the rest of the building so we're going to be really thinking about how that access happens in very safe ways. Okay, included sports fields, getting the job done and CPAC would like to see social and academics connections being made to disable peers and spaces that help facilitate that. I'm capitalizing on the school complex in existence where Wildwood is knowing we need to rebuild the middle and high schools next okay adequate parking without negative traffic impact. Safety for entering the building, but also easy access to and through the outside spaces. Easy access for parking and drop off and we're going to definitely be thinking about safe drop off and pick up in terms of access to the site. Okay, I'm going to, I'm going to make a shift here. And I want to share with you some of the ideas about future ready teaching and learning that that the district has been highlighting in its education plan, and it's school projects. So, we know that the district is really committed to providing students with a high quality education and that that the multi ethnic multicultural and pluralistic focus is really strong. Looking for equity for all students and making sure that students feel respected and and learn to respect the others. We've looked at these future ready learning goals from the Ed plan, and they very much align with other things or things that other school networks are thinking about and one of the things, one of the sets of future ready learning goals that is most I think well known is are the five C's that were that were coined by the 21st century the partnership for 21st century skills. And these are all higher order thinking skills that you know they're they were every bit is important in the 20th century and the 19th century but they have particular impact. When we think about giving kids the skills to be really proactive learners to develop confidence in themselves as learners, and to learn to learn that whole notion of lifelong learning so it's it's. So when we think about critical thinking communication collaboration, creativity and citizenship. These are all sort of similar to the future ready learning goals that were developed and have been developed by the district. And those C's are in there and those C's are really baked into next gen science standards and next gen MCAS. They're really part of sort of the conversation that's going on in most schools. How do we make sure that we're giving kids mastery of poor academic content but also focusing on these higher order thinking skills. So connected to that is the, the idea that we may have more traditional delivery still going on but we also want to be getting more and more student centric learning is becoming and should be more active. That's not, you know, it's very sometimes it's going to be in more traditional delivery other times it's more active and project based environments need to then be flexible. They need to evolve to be able to support sort of whole class instruction or small group instruction or independent work. Technology should be seamless and available where you want it when you want it not necessarily an end in and of itself but a tool that is is available and is ubiquitous. And we're looking at one to one technology now 10 years from now 15 years from now. We maybe have many, many devices on hand that we don't even know about. We're looking at collaborate supporting collaborative learning, recognizing that we also still need to have spaces where students can focus and where they can be quiet. So we have collaborative environments and quiet environments subject based delivery and project based delivery so the key is really variety of spaces and adjacencies to support a wide variety of delivery mechanisms and this is all again connected not only your district learning goals, but what the World Economic Forum in their top 10 skills of 2025 has coined the skills for engaged citizenship and a new economy. So when we talk about preparing kids for the world of work and future learning. One of the things that people are thinking about are the skills that you learn applying the content you're learning in active ways, and the ability to be adaptable in your thinking to learn and unlearn things. I'm now going to share the focus areas that have been highlighted in the in the ed plan by the district. I have 12 slides. And after that, I'm going to allow you to help or give you the opportunity to tell us what's missing, and what's most important to you. So I'm going to go to look at each of these and share with us what's most important to you so I'm going to go briefly through through these. They all are highlighted in your education plan and as a design team, we want to make sure to really fully understand what they mean to the district and to your school so I'm a social justice and multiculturalism curriculum that emphasizes that and is is sort of key and and so culturally sustaining learning experiences and connected to that the idea of climate justice. So think about buildings being teaching tools and helping students be good shepherds of the environment that's that's definitely connected to that. Now, each of your schools have core values and mission. And these all actually have implications for how we think about creating community through the way that we design a building and and develop connections. So really thinking about those core those core values and and your mission very much around respect and empathy and feeling a part of the community and engaging families from the community in equitable ways. The universal design for learning has educational and architectural sort of meaning. So on the educational side, we're really thinking about that neuro diversity, and working with students and nurturing and challenging them according to their needs and needs. So to do that we want to give them opportunities to interact with curriculum and information represent and express what they know and engage with it in a variety of ways that could be hands on and that involve the opportunities for action and expression. And this definitely means that we need to be thinking about learning environments that can that can adapt to a lot of different delivery methods and that differentiated instruction and tiered intervention, which is, which is really core to that process of meeting communities where they're at is does imply that oftentimes there's co teaching going on in a classroom or multiple adults that are in a classroom. So that's something that's very different than the way we've, you know, we've, we've seen school done in past in past decades so we need to think about classes that are supporting potentially multiple adults and thinking about the spaces outside of classes classrooms that might be comfortable for doing more small targeted intervention work. I know your dual language program you're coming on this program is is something that people are very excited about. And we'll be talking to you all into your teachers and the district about how to best locate this within the new building, in terms of how to fully integrated within the new building and and support the program as it grows. Social emotional learning is something that a lot of schools are thinking about this connects to the idea of growth mindset and the development of persistence and resilience and grid. It relates to just general ideas about mental health and responsible decision making, being part of a democratic community, and, and building your relationship skills. Community and community engagement is very important to the district so building community connections, really fostering parental involvement, leveraging the resources of the community and adults as mentors and when we think about project based that really connects to the idea of the community itself as as kind of text, and that's very engaging and motivating for kids to feel like what they're doing has real meaning beyond, beyond just the confines of their classroom. So that kind of relevant and engaged learning where students might be doing projects, they might be creating products that have some tangible value. And they are establishing adult world connections. And this implies also that there would be different methods of assessment. So we think about presentation spaces and and exhibition and display as being part of this and this is something that each of your schools have said to us that they're in the process of you know really kind of developing more fully and that it's really important to them. And so interdisciplinary and project based learning how to connect sort of as as teaching teams, how to collaborate in professional learning communities and providing a context for that is something that that this is connected to and health and wellness, just general movement opportunities for mental and physical fitness varied context for learning outdoor connections age appropriate play opportunities and movement opportunities. And I think we're getting to the end here, stem and steam so this is something that a lot of schools that are thinking about science technology engineering and math. And then in steam we're adding the arts or arts and humanities to that so this is really a kind of like a cross discipline approach that's very engaging, because it involves a lot of hands on and project based learning, and many schools have been stem and steam programming, and actually the MSBA provides space to do that in a science technology engineering lab. And so that's something that we're definitely going to be thinking about. And this is the last one your Amherst integrated arts initiative. So arts and performing arts and visual arts programs are all very important. We're going to be looking at really centrally locating these programs within the school environment so that they're easy to access, and, and also supporting before school and after school programming that connects to that, as well as sort of community art. So, so that's a lot. And we're going to take a break in just a minute. But I have one slide here, which just allows you to kind of give us your first shot at, you know, what are the things of these of these 12 programs that have been highlighted in your district and plan as as a particular importance. What are the things that that are most exciting for you. And then I have a slide after this, where we can share what's missing and what what you'd like us to know about the programs that are most important to you, if, especially if we haven't mentioned them. So that if you go to mentee and go to this code again 5373 500, you will get to this slide and you should be able to scroll down and just choose the ones that you're most excited about and we'll just see a graph that kind of emerges here. I would say that all of these aren't important they have been established as key priorities by the district but just always interesting to see from a community perspective, what people are most excited about so social justice and multiculturalism right up at the top. At least so far. And then social emotional learning and differentiated instruction. And these are really connected as well. That kind of differentiation as connected to interdisciplinary and project based learning is very, is very key. Just take another minute or two here and but then we do have another slide where you can share other programs that we have not mentioned here that are particular importance to you and your families. Okay. I'm going to open up for this here and what I will do we're going to take a break after this. But what I'd like to do is also just invite people to, if you would like to verbally you've been listening to me talk for a long time now. If you would like to share some of your thinking about this we would really welcome that we can have a little bit more of a conversation. And then we're going to get to take a break of 15 minute break and come back and talk some about architectural ideas. Yeah, we've heard this before the Spanish instruction for all elementary kids in the district not not just those incoming on this. And music learning that doesn't involve devices so. And I will say that a lot of a lot of schools that we see now especially elementary schools are really trying to create some technology free zones within the school, and really promote much more targeted use of technology when as a tool when needed an interactive curriculum that teaches the students about climate change and energy conservation and environmentalism. And looking at neurodiversity to be included in diversity. Okay, so that needs a more direct sort of less implied and more direct. Okay, communication skills or written. We don't want great thinkers and analysts who can communicate their ideas. Yep. preschool aftercare programs, understanding global community, more arts instruction that crosses disciplines. Okay, the arts was cut by 20% this year so we need to restore that cut and expand. Climate change is a major priority. Use weekly technology classes for more hands on project based exploration, engagement with elderly in the community so multi age spaces that are family friendly per family survey. A room for teacher generated instruction tech free zone, literacy rich, numeracy rich. Okay. These are great. All right. I don't hear anybody turning off their mics to do any sharing with anyone like to share any of their ideas about some of these. Okay, well, it's 725. We're going to take a 15 minute break, and we're going to come back at 740. And at that time, I'm going to leave this slide up so you can put more on it if you want. And we'll come back at 740 and we're going to shift over to talking about some ideas about architectural design and and approaches. Okay, thank you. So everybody, we're going to get started again. We're going to, we have another hour and 20 minutes and within that time. I'm going to spend about 2025 minutes talking about some design approaches that have been discussed for the school, whether it's renovation or renovation edition or new construction. And these, we call these design patterns and so we want to, we want to share them with you get your feedback on them. We're going to then be breaking into some small discussion groups that will be hosted by our design team members, and at which time you'll have a chance to talk in more depth and to get any of your questions answered about these design patterns and and and talk about which ones are are your biggest priorities or that you're most excited about. At that time, we will also have an option, if you would prefer not to go into a smaller group but stay behind in the larger group and stay with a design team member and a representative from the district to talk about just general considerations or questions you have about the project. So we have those two options towards the latter part of this. I'm going to share my screen again. And Brian I just want to make sure that we're still recording right. Okay, very good. So, what we'd like to do now is just talk about some ideas about things that we think about in general when we design future ready schools that can support very delivery and that help to build community. And that are warm and inviting places. I'm going to share, I'm going to share 18 different, what we call design patterns or approaches that have been prioritized within the ed plan, and that have been discussed at different points along the way. As we think about the school project. I want what I do want to say is that it's the concept not the details so if you see a picture that has colors that you don't like or materials that you don't like. Try to get beyond that to the concept that's being discussed because these are just, we're showing you some examples but there are many ways to to approach these different patterns. As I said there are 18 patterns and the first six of them. We're calling givens. These are, these are things that at the beginning of this presentation I mentioned that any new or renovated school through the MSBA process will be considering. I just wanted to give you some illustrations of them and talk a little bit more about them so one of them is this concept of welcoming arrival which which also connects to safe drop off and pick up. But when we think about welcoming arrival for a building, we want to make sure that one, we know where to enter the building. There's a clear entry sequence that has good visibility to and from the building so that we can see or people in the building can see who is approaching the building. This is also connected to security when you get to the doors of the building, but before that time there might be places to sit outside where parents when they're dropping off their kids can talk to each other and chat. Before there may be places that are protected from the weather from the rain or snow, if the doors to the building aren't open yet. So we want to be thinking about that, that welcoming arrival connected to safe drop off and pick up. We're not greeting gating gatekeeping and security so any school is going to have a gatekeeping system. It's been mentioned a number of times when, especially in our meeting with the teachers yesterday that people don't want this to feel like they're entering a jail or that it's an institution. They wanted to feel warm and welcoming so we will definitely be keeping that in mind. Simply in terms of the active security measures, there's a gatekeeping mechanism where you have to get buzzed in to a set of doors. And, and there's visual access to whoever is coming into the building. So, so in this service school and Newton and these are all MSBA projects that I'm sharing with you right now that have been designed and built in the last five years. So in this service school, we've got, once you enter in, there's a, it's also your first impression of the building so what do you see well you see easily into the main office which is over here or the cafeteria. There's work on display on the walls and also a flat screen monitor that talks about the life of the school, there's comfortable places to sit, and it's a bright open space. So here at the Cabot School, which is a renovation of a school in Newton. There's a nice low counter with a friendly face that that houses the administrative offices, or some part of the administrative offices so there's a sense of warm entry and greeting that's connected to security. Again, we're talking right now about the six givens that any new or renovated school is going to be taking into account flexible classrooms, they're still your basic building block of any school. We want to make sure there's good natural light, we know that that really and good ventilation modular furniture that is easy to move, but sturdy enough to withstand student student interactions that where you can work individually or work as groups, we want to be thinking about storage, robust technology, maybe places within this, and in this slide right here you can see there's a little nook right here, where students can sit that's a nice place to like if you need to kind of like, deescalate or calm down or just have a quiet space to read you can go into that space we want to be thinking about storage for books as well around the perimeter. And you can see here there's some good closets for storage and as I mentioned before, any MSBA is going to have two sinks within its elementary school classrooms engaged outdoor play. And now this is also connected to the idea of outdoor connections and connections to nature. That's another design pattern but this is a, you can you see here more of these paved surfaces and sort of play environments. So I'm going to talk about how how age appropriate play is connected to the use of the site and easy access to classrooms and sustainability, looking at active and passive measures. The MSBA school is going to be looking at mass chips or lead certification, and looking at, you know, the degree to which the also the community would like to work towards a net zero building using passive and active measures, and make that whole process kind of an interactive one in terms of the way the building is interacted with with students and teachers. So those are six of the givens of the design patterns. And now we have 12 more that we're going to share that are a little bit more. Yes, we're going to be considering them in and these are things that have been already highlighted by the district as things that are important to them. Wayfinding in streetscapes really connects to the idea of universal design for learning and being able to people of all abilities being able to easily navigate the building to know where they are. So how can we do that through use of color and texture and light and graphics can help you move through the building. And that you'll see here that these schools have lockers and cubbies but just not in places in these in these images that you can see. But these are streetscapes that that people are making their way through good natural light oftentimes borrowed light coming in, but also showcasing things along the way, or maybe creating places where the hallway is wider, there are nodes for seating for a small group that can be connected to a classroom neighborhood or views in and out of of adult offices adults modeling collaboration that's going on, and also work on display. So wayfinding and streetscape. Oh, okay someone asked what borrowed light was so borrowed light is light getting light into the interior of the building. So as we build, you can see that there is in this particular image right here. These are not windows to the exterior of the building. But those exterior windows that are within this space in here are letting borrowed light come through into the center of the building. This building happens to have some very nice sawtooth skylights in it as well that are lighting that but we're, as we think about borrowed light that connects to the idea of where do we build in transparency in appropriate ways so that we can have informal supervision throughout the school but also connectivity between the adults and the students or views into interesting things that are going on in your steam lab for instance or in your art room. So so that is all those are also places where we can get borrowed light as we as we put control transparency in this is a design pattern of classroom neighborhoods, and the idea here is that it's no extra square footage, but is it's looking at the adjacencies between spaces in a way that creates synergy between those spaces and gives you a variety of opportunities for delivery. So, in this image which is at the service school in Newton. The central area, which is what you see in the plan down here is a flexible project based learning area that is at the center of a collection of four classrooms, and there's also a small group room and a pull out space. So here you have sort of collaborative environments small group environments and your classroom environments, and there's a good bit of transparency here you can see there's a lot of borrowed light. We know that in a lockdown situation we need to be able to pull a blind down. All of these rooms have areas of refuge within the classroom. So, but what you have here is a classroom neighborhood this could be a grade level classroom neighborhood. We also know that sometimes there are bubbles there are more kids in one year than another we don't want to get locked into certain pods but we can think about how to co locate classrooms in a way that creates a neighborhood. It's a sense of place. It's a sense of belonging for students, and it's a way to create a really small learning community within the larger community of the school. Another pattern, looking at breakout and pull over spaces so one of the things that we know through through desi the department of education, elementary and secondary education. We are taking an approach towards special education delivery where you will certainly get occupational therapy physical therapy sensory rooms. We will be in a certain part of the building that may be more private but we also want to build in breakout and pull over spaces in the form of breakout rooms where you can close the door, or maybe nooks or areas in the hallway, extended learning areas next to classrooms. And that allows you to do targeted intervention and enrichment in close proximity to your classrooms. So, desi really wants to see this distributed throughout the school. One of the news is that there's a lot of square footage that is now through the MSBA template that is that is put towards delivery of seamless special education and enrichment services connected to that is this design pattern of extended learning spaces so in any given school and you have these open plan schools so not so much in Fort River or or Wildwood but where you have hallways that's taking up 30% of your square footage that goes unused most of the time so the MSBA is definitely interested in, especially as we think about environments being fully wired with technology and and being able to create areas where students can do small group work and get targeted intervention in close proximity to their classrooms. So thinking about, can we widen the hallway in certain areas so that there are paths of travel but there's also areas for students to work. You can see this at the at the herd one elementary school here. This is defined by a bank of lockers here but you've got some areas right outside connected to two or three different classrooms and close proximity, where, where para paraprofessionals or or can work with small groups, or teachers can bring them outside here at the oven Smith elementary, the whole hallway has been widened to about 16 feet and there are areas outside of classroom, where you can do that kind of pull over work, or small group work. A lot of schools are thinking about collaborative environments so those breakout spaces I do want to mention to our spaces where we can get quiet, because we need spaces where kids can focus. So here's some other examples of collaborative environments. In this case, at the oven Smith school, we've got one of these learning stairs that's a great venue for presentation and either formal or informal presentation and just group gatherings community building. This is right outside the learning commons and you could the library learning commons, and you can see that this is a glass wall here that can be completely opened up or it can be closed for acoustic purposes but you still have that visible connectivity. And here at the Cly Brown elementary you can see also outside of the art room an area that's a project room, located right next to a teacher planning area so that there's informal supervision and surveillance happening there as well. But these are areas that you can spill out of the classroom. So definitely on the elementary school level supervision is very important we always need we know we're gonna. We want to give kids the opportunity, especially older kids to practice, being more independent but but we know that we have to have eyes on eyes on the street at all times. Auditoriums are definitely something that you will have in your school. Well, you could have a gym auditorium. The MSBA does not support auditoriums in elementary schools, but you can see from these cafeterias here that they're very pleasant multipurpose spaces. They have really good acoustics they have stages with full lighting and audio visual. And, and so they're great multipurpose spaces that can be used for as a community hub. And we're really looking at all of these spaces like the cafeteria the library and the gym to serve multi purposes and not so when when when this is not being used for food service. It's not being used for extended learning environments. This is also a great resource for the community and many schools use this as something to generate revenue by renting out this space at different points. Now the media center learning commons. It's very important that we still have tactile books and storage for books and access to books, but we're also looking at this area as performing multiple functions. This is really an area for more quiet focus work and an area for more collaborative work or for more kind of presentations and and and group sort of collaboration in this here the Gibbs middle school and you can see this is a renovation. This is a sixth grade program where we've got a project based learning mezzanine and a stem steam lab that's connected to the library. And, and there are also areas for more traditional kind of work and focus work and interactive work. This is often the place to where professional development happens for teachers. This is a program and steam and maker spaces as I mentioned the MSBA template has a science technology and engineering room built in. This is one example at the Jacobs elementary in New Bedford, where their steam lab is a program that all students, twice a week, have access to this space, and it's simply lots of big table surfaces and tables on wheels, so that we can spread out and do projects, good storage for engineering kits along the perimeter. In this situation they've got a garage door that opens directly out onto a roof deck, and that roof deck has planters and weather stations it also connects to the art room that's immediately adjacent. And here you can see in this maker space flexible furniture, lots of storage and it's just a great hands on space and venue. Another design pattern that have innovation hubs this is the, the born intermediate elementary school in Cape Cod. And what they did here is, they took a lot of the sort of those big ticket spaces like the library learning commons, the art room, their stem or innovation studio, they created an outdoor classroom. And here's their music room and they co located them in what they call the innovation hub, which is also accessible after hours it's where, and it's where after school programming happens so it's a really nice kind of. Again, you get this synergy between the spaces, but it also, it's very centrally located this is a new school building, and the classroom neighborhoods are around the perimeter so these are very easy to access display an exhibition. The teachers talked about this yesterday the importance of multiple venues to celebrate student work that can be in 2D 3D format and cases glass and close close cases or venues for more professional kind of curating the student work or LCD screen So you certainly at the entry of the school want to give people a good first impression but at different areas throughout the school provide venues for for that celebration of student work and outdoor learning. We know that this is real important. We're thinking these days about outdoor classrooms. So in this bankrupt elementary school and and over, you can see that there's a protected area with internet access and a blackboard and now they have furniture there. And this becomes an outdoor classroom that's easily accessible areas certainly for display for discovery and play and interacting with nature and maximizing your site and here at the cabin elementary school, which is a renovation edition. You can see some beautiful site work that that really kind of connects to also the fields of the school. And finally, building as teacher we've talked about sustainability as something very important to the district at the MLK school in Cambridge, where they have geothermal wells and photovoltaic panels. All of the energy consumed by the building is you can look at it minute by minute students and teachers can interact with it in this touchscreen panel when you first enter and then throughout the school there are different panels. As there are lots of information about how the building works and the recycling program. Some schools look at color coding. Some of the systems and making it really clear or even putting a window into the mechanical room and labeling the equipment so that so that the building itself really can be interacted with. Yes, those are 12 I will 18 the first six were given. So those are 12 design pattern priorities that have been established as part of this process. And so we just like to we're going to be getting into small groups for you to ask more questions about this, and also to see what your priorities are. But first we'll just open up for meant to meet or once again, using meant calm, and this code 5573500. And you can tell us which of these things you're particularly excited about. Not that not at the expense of the others but just the ones that that really resonate with you. So if some people are finishing this up. I want to point out that in the chat. I have just uploaded a design pattern handout, and that has a, it's a PDF document that has all of the design patterns that I just shared with you. And so, I would ask that you just double click on that and open it up, because before you get it once you get into your small groups, meeting with your person, your architect. You're not going to be able to access this. So it's, it's important for you to do it now. So that you can visually access the design patterns because what we'll be doing in our small groups is we'll be really talking about the things that are most exciting for you, and you'll be collectively making a list of your top six to 10 design patterns that you have in your vision for this renovated or new school. So, please, please do that. And then I will also say that. So we have Mike Morris with us I Mike. And, and we have Donna with us from the design team who's going to be staying back in the larger group. We have a study that would like to not go into a small group discussion about design patterns but would, but has other conversation that they want to have with the district about concerns or or priorities that you may have. So, what we'll be doing is, in just a moment you're going to be getting an invitation into a small group. And within that group, we're going to spend. So four now. So we're going to spend probably about 25 minutes and and discuss what you're most excited about and what questions you have about any of the design ideas that have been brought up so far. So any questions about that before we jump in. All right. So what we've done is we've made up a number of groups. So what will happen is, we don't know how many people are not going to go into the small group just yet. So it may be that we read, redistribute things once people what what you will do is you will get an invitation into a small group. And, and so please accept that, unless you want to stay in the larger group. Okay. And so, with that, I'm going to say have fun in your groups. Yeah, hold on. David sorry. This is Donna. I think and I could be wrong that if people joined late. They might not be able to have access to the chat. So, if, if you can't see the chat and, or could only see the, the late part of the chat couldn't see everything else. Oh, I think Mike just went ahead and put it up. There's a Google drive. Thank you. I just made it a David I just took yours and make it a Google link. Some people I know to download PDFs and just, it's the same thing. There's no difference. Okay. Is there anyone that's having a problem accessing the PDF. Okay. Are we ready to jump into groups for 25 minutes. And, okay, so we're going to do that and again, we may just, thanks Kerry. We may just redistribute groups a little bit once we find out, you know, we want to have a good, you know, four or five people in each group so we can have a good conversation. So just looking at our design priority slide before we just how that how that all shook out looks like outdoor learning way up at the top. Classroom neighborhoods and, and breakout and pullover spaces and those are very connected and collaborative environments, all all connected stem and steam way up there as well. Okay. So we'll see you in your small groups and then we'll see you back here in 25 minutes. Hi. I don't know how many people will be joining. So why don't we wait for a second. Let's see. Okay. I'm room one and there are 12345. But I only see. Okay, so there are a couple that are not joining. All right, hello everyone. Thanks for making the time to join us. I'm Vivian low with Dennis go design and would you mind if we just kind of took a couple minutes to introduce ourselves. Hi everyone, my name is Anastasia or donors and I'm a parent of a Fort River fifth grader and a Amherst regional middle school seventh grader. I live here in Amherst. Thank you. Amber. I'm just going through my boxes. I'm Amber Connell Martin and I'm a parent of a kindergartner at Fort River. And I'm also the parent of a fifth grader at Wildwood, and my kindergarten doesn't want to go to bed. He's right here. I know your type. Aaron. I'm Aaron Hayden. I was a parent many years ago. So I raised my hand at the member of the community in the very first question there. Been involved in all kinds of stuff like this. I'm an engineer for a school in town. So this is all good. I'm going to have you. I was wondering how many folks just from the community would join us. So I'm, I'm glad you're here. And I'm nervous. Nice to meet you. My name is Amariz Cuevas and Spanish teacher for dual language kindergarten coming out this. I'm here for here and everything that the people say. I'm glad you're able to join us because, you know, before the pandemic when we used to do these, we would have in person visioning sessions and, and we would have teachers as well as parents and administrators and it was just really great. We sometimes we even had kids, because if we had a series of these we would invite the students as well so they get to be really fun and very creative. In any case, we have an assignment. Do you have, have you had a chance to take a look or were you thinking about what some of your priorities maybe as David was showing the slides I could also put them back up. Would you like me to put the slides back up so we could. Okay, let me share my screen. See if I could do this. We're all getting so good at zoom nowadays right. Well, speak for yourself. I am challenged every day because there's always something that happens that doesn't work, but hopefully you can see my screen, can you see the slides are actually they're like their images from David's presentation. Okay, yes. Okay, so I'd love for this to be a dialogue we could. You know, I'd love for you to just maybe one by one say what your priorities are or we can go through the slides and say yeah that's something I'm really interested in and we could do it any which way but we don't have a lot of time so I'm going to jump in then just to try to cut to the chase and maybe I'm hoping my my colleagues here will too. I just wanted to chat or chat with you about the value and the importance of it's interesting how they change the names over time, but they're called stem now and steam. I want to call it art and culinary arts and music and the, the thing that I wanted to say about that is that those spaces, those programs are valuable for learners along the whole spectrum so the people that need a lot of help in order to master the material. And the things that the students are in school for those are places where they can really be help is a lot of tools there that that educators seem to have to reach and help them. And then at the other end of the spectrum that the students that just, you know, you turn them on and off they go. Those are the same spaces. Interestingly, and my experience from when I was a parent that support them as well. And sort of in the intervening years since I haven't been an active parent. I've been watching those spaces get squashed. Music is gone. Arts are gone. And that hurts, even though it's supposed to help you know it hurts both ends of the spectrum. Well, it hurts everybody. When, when their budget cuts, it seems to always affect those programs. So I think that's just a misunderstanding as to where the, the bank for the buck, the education buck is, and also, you know, as a taxpayer, I'm just cheap. Well, you know, taxes just keep going up so we totally get it. All right, so what I'm hearing is that what's really important that you see is a STEM scheme maker space program. Yes, and maker space adjacent programs there are things that are not maker spaces you know music is not a maker space, the culinary arts is not a maker space typically and then now maker space is also being redefined. It's just a new new term. Yeah. Agreed. Okay, great. So that's your one. If there is one thing that you would like to see and I knew or renovated school. This is what we really want to. I'd like pretty hallways and the secure front doors and the classroom clusters to be supported by STEM space. Yes, exactly. Thank you. Yeah, I am. I definitely echo what Aaron is saying I also wanted to, for me, you know, I just reading recently of this new research report that came out explaining that New England is actually the fastest warming area of the United States. And Massachusetts in particular will be experiencing climate change much faster than many of our other neighbors to the north and south. So I think that, you know, sustainable and building is extremely important for the future. There are many different reasons both practically speaking I think we're going to have to just, you know, face the fact that heating and cooling will become a lot more difficult and challenging in upcoming years and so we have to make sure that all of our buildings that are being built are sustainable and are, you know, if not net zero definitely have that aim. So I think that just, you know, making sure that we have spaces that are, you know, collaborative environments where students are prepared to learn in the modern environment and that they are able to feel like they can, you know, work independently and work in groups. All of that is also extremely important I think for the modern school and for modern work spaces I mean a lot of the time, you know I'm working now remotely and most of the work that I've been doing in recent years has often been working at home behind a computer, but also when I get into a space with other people I have to be able to work in a project environment I have to be able to work with others in those kinds of environments so that's extremely important and, you know, extremely important for me I think. And then the last thing I was going to say is that I actually think that our building as teachers is also helping us meet those sustainability goals and having a building it doesn't necessarily cost us that much more or if anything at all it's just thinking about it a little differently than we thought about buildings before where we would hide the furnace in the room behind a closed door now we're actually providing, you know, a glass or transparent space so that students can learn from that and see what's involved in the operations of our buildings and if we want people to be aware of, you know, the their energy consumption and buildings that they want them to be good 21st century citizens they actually have to be able to see those buildings. University, UMass here, sorry, UMass Amherst has built a couple of buildings in recent years where they've actually implemented some of those technologies, so that, you know, visitors and students and staff that work there can see the day to day changes in consumption that's happening in those buildings and you know again it's just a panel on the wall it's not anything more expensive or much different but it really does provide I think a different environment and shows students, you know, as especially very young ones as they're learning about all the way that you know that we work in schools work and all of that how that connects back to our values as a community. So those are the things that really mattered to me I feel like you know a lot of the other stuff will kind of figure out and you know and, and it's great to hear that the MSBA has these, you know, many of these sustainability goals already in place. But I think that for the design patterns for me as an individual and as a parent. Those are the things that I really want to see.  It's kind of a given now when we do new schools we we design them so that they can accommodate solar panels and be sustainable in so many different ways but this is one of the priorities that the district has outlined so we're definitely going to spend a good amount of time looking at that and making sure the school does does is sustainable as we continue down our path and hopefully it will change that path a little bit right with kind of the climate change. Amherst we require that of our capital projects just by like oh and one other thing. Please, none of those ceiling mounted fan coil units that you've been showing all the pictures for. No, just just no. Wait, we've shown ceiling matted fan coil units. Almost every picture that has been shown tonight any the air conditioning system has always been a VRF ceiling mounted unit and it's just like, I'm sorry, that's what I do for a living and drives me crazy. Can we get can we get that stuff down at a level where the guy doesn't need a ladder to surface it. I'm sorry. Oh, I see you mean make things accessible so that I like to be maintained that stage is talking about that this is this is great. Well, it's near and dear to my heart as a stem guy, but don't hang it in the ceiling please. Got it. All right. Amber, what about you. I really like what Anastasia was saying about the importance of building as teacher and, you know, having it be a net zero sustainable building and I really share the concern about climate change myself so I echo all of that. I mean in terms of what I, I saw that I would prioritize I mean everything looks amazing like I grew up in a school that looked like a prison, right so it's like anything. Everything you've shown is just like oh my god this is beautiful this is amazing. I want all of that. Yeah. For sure but I think like, you know what I would I do really value about the schools now that my kids are in that I'd like to see continue is just the sense that it's like, it's one, you know, school community like it is a small school like everyone's like coming out for each other and cares about each other. I like the stuff that's on the walls. That's like the student artwork and I like how you come in and it's like how to say hello in every language and there's like pictures of the kids and what countries of origin their parents are from like it's just, you know, the whole environment just says like this is awesome it's about us as a community and as a school. So, as we get these like beautiful designs like I still want to maintain that in some way so that it still feels like you know the building itself as an expression of us as a community and in our values. So that being said I mean, I really also prioritized outdoor spaces like I think, you know, outdoor space is super important I have my kindergarten or who just like wants to be outside and running around and playing all the time and he's like a ball of balls so like the outdoor space is super important and then like from you know my older kid music is super important and so like he's you know take lessons outside of school in school. And it's just done so much to improve his life and really you know make it better so I want to make sure there's like really you know beautiful music space and beautiful art space. All those things that aren't necessarily academic but they really like add to our kids education and build them as people. So that's really important to me as well. Yeah. Now I think. So as we talk about stem and steam steam is. So stem is science technology engineering and that right so when you throw in art or arts that is what makes the steam but you can define art in so many ways right there's fine arts, which is, you know, art, the way we we know it painting and graphic design, etc. So there are the performing arts so some schools really integrate that piece of the steam into the whole curriculum where we where we provide and design flexible spaces for performance for just, you know, learning stairs where kids could, can bring smaller groups out for informal meetings and informal presentation so there's so many ways we can skinless cat and the really great thing is that the MSBA now has folded into the program a stem, a stem space so now they support that which in the in the past they had not so it's really. So I think they're realizing the importance of that and how every child learns so differently. So that's all really. It's something that we will definitely address. Do you have anything to. I'm sure as an educator, you must have so much you would love to see so as we as you go through this and thank you Amber because one of the questions I was going to ask if you didn't get to it is, what is it about your schools now that you actually love and you would like to see at a new or a renovated school but go ahead. The teacher. That's amazing. Of course. During a school. You know, everything is super cute like super amazing. The outdoor space for for later is amazing, especially in my case, so I'm a Spanish teacher, the kids learn Spanish, and we need to do everything like the hands on and more experience for they make connection for the language. So, I think that the focus on Flexi classroom is super important for us, because we need to get out of the classroom in math in one way is in phonics in other way, in context. So, change the classroom and bring the space for that. That's, that's really cool. Yeah, absolutely. So what is it about it. Are you at Fort River or Wildwood or Fort River. What is it about Fort River that you do like that you would like to see or improve at a new or renovated school. So, I like the school is big my classroom is big. The other class is more big and now about for pandemic, but I like my classroom is big the storage. So, in kindergarten is teacher has this storage, because we have a lot of stuff for working with the kids. So in the center. That's super like it. What I improve, I improve the hallway, we have like quacks. And sometimes when I'm working with one kid, we have running. Oh, I don't know you.  I'm something I like, I'm lost. So, I improved that so how management, the hallway for location location for the people when one walk or something like that. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, the school is really interesting but what I did find that I really like was the large library space, the media center and I don't know if that's something that most parents and teachers like or they don't, but it certainly it was to me very large and flexible. It seemed like there were a lot of different ways you could use that space. And the community uses it to not only for school functions but it's a way of connecting to the school. And it seems to be the center of it's like the hub of what's going on in the academic area at least so. All right, so I'm going to, I didn't get a warning yet but I'm going to share my other screen. I'm here. David's happy faces there. Hi there. Hi there. We're doing fine we've got we've got another probably eight minutes or so. So, I'm going to stop sharing the photos that I was really bad at scrolling through, and I'm going to share my one quick thing while you're finding that. The one thing that I that I like a lot about Fort River is the outdoor garden space that teachers and students had started a few years ago, and it's small and it's not, you know, it's not high tech in anyway right, but it's so happy and you have kids able to go in and grow some vegetables and you know learn how to tend for vegetables and things like that. I'd love to have something like that continue. You know in in a new school space it'd be awesome if we had like a dedicated outdoor garden learning area where students could go and you know perhaps learn little details about the plants that taking care of learn how to you know the best kinds of materials like mulch and things like that to you know, it's just there's so many different opportunities in that kind of environment. Not just an outdoor learning but just a natural hands on type hands on garden space yeah for sure. And I might expand on that. Yeah, yeah I would add that this the. I've heard in the presentation about the technical free spaces, where those human skills that are masked by technology or not exercise through technology, socializing decision making all of those things, which the hands on stuff that then associated talking about does also foster how do you how do you collaborate how do you engage somebody to help you understand it. Yeah, and then this is something we see a lot of schools, I mean absolutely no problem building in gardens into the into the landscaping design and a lot of schools are really valuing that. We can also think about easy connections to the outdoors, a lot of times when you have a stem or a steam space, you may have a garage door that opens directly out into an outdoor area that allows you to build bigger things and and just expand outward if you need to. I think the Connecticut Science Center has that entire rooftop garden, which is absolutely amazing right my kids love to spend time out there and even in the winter because even when it's completely frozen over. They can walk among the beds and there's you know some sculptures and stuff that are in there it's just really cool. And I'm going to go chicken and another group of five more minutes is five more minutes. Okay. So I'm going to share thanks to David. I'm going to share my tally sheet so that we can kind of fill that out. Can you see I'm scrolling down. So top six to 10 design patterns. So I took some notes, which I'm going to edit and clean up but what I'm going to do is plug in what I heard which is, I was going to do a tally but I couldn't do that fast enough. And feel free to say no no or let's add some because let's hear what the most important ones are so sustainability actually was a very, very important one so I'm going to put. Yeah and stem was down in the middle. And was that okay so we're to rate these right I'm going to say maybe two stars there and let's see. Outdoor was it outdoor class outdoor learning, let's call that one of them. So what would you say that is a two star three star one star. The problem I have with this is that they're all, you know, absolutely you know they're all one star or five stars.  Right, we can out of 18 I think we can do that. Yeah, our music flexible. I heard flexible. Yes. Okay. Absolutely. Storage was one of them. And let's see, building as a teacher. Right. And I'm going to throw in all the other comments that you guys had because I think they're also valuable. We are really. We are just at the beginning of collecting information. We're going to do some test fits on the site to see what makes the most amount of sense so that we can compare all the different options right doesn't addition renovation. Make sense at Wildwood addition renovation at Fort River, a new building at one site or the other so we're going to look at all the different options and be able to kind of assign value. to the priorities and the criteria for evaluation so all of these are going to fold into then as we start to design the preferred option, and this again is just the start of it because as we get into the design design really starts after the next six months, really, really in earnest and you'll have more opportunity then to participate and certainly. There will be even more opportunity down the line, once we get closer to completion of design to with where the principles may choose to create smaller groups for evaluating evaluation of the plate the play spaces the outdoor spaces. Technology all of that fun stuff so it's again we're right at the start and we just love hearing all of your feedback because it's so important. This is going to be your building all you know the communities building the educators, the parents and. When we open the doors and we share the kids come in and say wow, you know the parents it's and I've had that experience, once which is really sad because I'm never really there when they open that we have that experience and just to see the smile on the kids faces were just, it was just. So valuable anyway, so we're going to close the breakout in less than a minute, are there any last minute other items you want to share. Break out a space. Break out space. Yes, there and that takes care of our eight number eight. Yes, breakout. Thank you so much. I really, really enjoyed talking to you all. And there's going to be a third. There's going to be a third visioning meeting in a few weeks so maybe we'll see you all again at that point. Easy to get here. Yes, isn't it great.  I would love to see people in person so maybe after maybe after the summer. We'll see across our fingers. It was great to meet you all. Hi Tim. Hi Tony how are you. Good, how are you. I'm doing great. It's actually exciting to get really good engagement and a lot of people with very informed opinions. I serve on the building committee in my town we're doing in elementary school too and this is refreshing compared to what I do with it. Yeah. Good. Hi. Tim there are you doing. So this is your opportunity if you have strong opinions about anything that you've seen tonight or the project in general to let them be known. I mean obviously I can't promise that everything you say is going to be included in the project but you know this is our process for listening to as many people as we can increasing the bandwidth just having a discussion with everyone. So I think that you know the ideas come through and more than a sentence so there's some nuance and explanation if that's available, and then we can relate that to the rest of the design team. And then obviously if you get bored with this conversation you can go back to the main conversation where Mike and be talking about big picture issues, but we can also talk about big picture issues here, and they will be considered by the entire team. So I don't have a jumping off point other than what David has been talking about but if any of you have a particular interest aspect, something that you want to see in the project or don't want to see in the project, have at it. Look at this list and just kind of wonder, you know, like I'm just I'm not an educator. There are things that I like on this list and you know those are interesting to me I don't know that they should guide, you know wonder what the, like at what point does the administration or the educators. And obviously they've already, I mean you've been having this conversations but how does their input shape this versus ours. I mean, you know, like a cafeteria sounds great but you asked me to mar it might be number 10 on my list like I don't know. Yeah, I mean, no understood and honestly it's a complicated process because obviously the administrators in the town has a fair amount of say and, and, but this is a school for the entire community and we're trying to listen to everybody and accommodate everything but you know specifically you mentioned the cafeteria. Almost all elementary schools that are built in partnership with the MSBA these days have a cafeteria because they understand the importance of arts in the education it's funded by the MSBA as part of their core curriculum. But they don't fund auditorium as David said so a lot of the things that were mentioned in this list are going to be part of the project it's just the way things are done. But we are looking to see what is particularly important to Amherst so that it can come to the floor in the project and maybe time energy resources are spent more in that space or that relationship. I will say that in almost every meeting repeatedly, we hear about the importance of outdoor learning space. We haven't designed anything yet. But when we do. I'm absolutely certain that it's going to come clear that we heard you loud and clear because well one you have two sites which is lucky. But both of them are really well suited. And large, I mean, I'll give you background along the schools I'm doing are in urban neighborhoods so this is this different but there is opportunity to bring those things as a program so we're listening to you say things like that that we can you know that make real in the final project. Thanks. I'm just wondering about some of the classroom neighborhood areas the breakout spaces extended learning spaces. How do you bring daylight into them. If you know if the classrooms on the outside of the building. I'm looking at some of these spaces and a lot of them in the pictures seem to be like artificial light. So, is there a way to bring like if they're on the ground floor and it's a two story building for example, how do you bring natural light into those inner spaces for shared group work. And that is a lot of thought will begin that during design so as you mentioned a two story building sometimes we are capable of skylights and bringing natural light through openings in the floor to the first floor in common spaces. But we have lots of other means. And that comes down to glass at the side lights of doors between the classrooms and the common areas or simply orienting the breakout spaces the project learning areas in between the classrooms at the exterior wall. I mean all of these things have considerations that need to be weighed against other priorities if you take the pull out learning spaces the small group instruction spaces and put them at the exterior wall obviously you're going to make the room a little bit larger so there's efficiency implications there's cost implications. But I mentioned after learning just as much as that we've heard daylighting from people in Amherst to an extent honestly it's always important it has quantifiable effects on everything and no one views that, but we've heard it as a real priority from Amherst. So, we will strive to include it and then it affects everything. You mentioned a two story building. If it's a single story building as well within Fort River are now tends to pancake a bit. So the very middle of those buildings if there's not light from above which there isn't really now, you're not going to get natural light so if we reuse the buildings there's probably going to have to be a lot of structural interventions to get light in maybe remove so it's not as deep. There are a lot of tools that we have to get light into the building but we have to weigh them against all the other priorities that include efficiency have adjacencies of spaces. You know, time and learning as it's affected by kids moving from one building to the other and, you know, simple things this cost which we don't like to admit are real but they are so Any, anything else I mean I can answer. Obviously I can answer questions about what the buildings don't look like but I can answer questions about the process about what the MSBA fund what they won't, they won't participate in. I can't tell you how much they will pay at the moment because that's a convoluted formula that no one knows at the moment. It's basically your chance to, if you have a strong opinion. Let me know. Thank you so much Ellen Ellen do you have anything you want to say before I say anything else. Thanks to me. I think I mean the outdoor spaces are pretty key for me and making sure the building is as energy efficient as possible. And, you know, keeping the context of climate change in our minds. And as a parent of a specialist at student, making sure that the spaces are as I mean I love that diagram of the school and Newton, and what they have their, the, you know, the special ed classroom and the pull out area and the center of community area that that was fantastic I mean one thing we struggle with quite a bit is how to integrate kids that are in sub separate programs with Gen Ed kids and getting that time together and just, you know, talking about neurodiversity from preschool all the way up, rather than the high school which is kind of where the conversation is right now. And a design like that just made me feel like, you know, they would see each other and maybe be able to be together more often so that's, I guess those are my two main perspectives after hearing and seeing the presentation. The MRS, that's zero energy bylaw is actually very forward thinking and we fully embrace that it actually gives us some opportunity to do things that in other communities, we can't for practical reasons and this is a mandate to do it, which is fantastic. The efficiency in both the systems and the building are all tied together so that's a great prospect. And then you mentioned their school, we'll spend a lot of time trying to, you know, make sure that the spaces are appropriately and make sure that there's separation when needed, separation when it's not, you know, making sure that the explosion. Getting all of those spaces to work together is where we're going to spend a lot of time in the process. It's good to hear that input. Just picking up on Ellen's comments about the climate change. Do you know, Tim, what kind of costs it adds or complexity it adds to incorporate climate resiliency hub for the community into school like I imagine there's in the climate emergency, for example, if they, the members of the community needed to use the gym or the cafeteria for, you know, air conditioning during a heat wave or warmth during a snowstorm when there's when there's energy blackouts. So they need like more power outlets to power their phones and things like that. Like what have you done it in any schools before and if you have, or if you've heard of it, do you know how much it adds to the project in kind of complexity and in cost in complexity, not that much honestly because there is going to be backup generator that will power a certain number of systems. At the base level, it will keep emergency lighting on it will prevent the building from freezing in the winter and it will keep the food from going bad and of course, if you want to do more than that if you want to resiliency you can have a shelter. In terms of complexity it's not much more but the cost you up because the size of the generator goes up here. If you're at the fore river side it's going to be a gas power generator service make a look but Yes, there's a cost what it is in terms of percentage of the overall cost I really can't tell you right now without knowing a whole lot of other things but I think the grand scheme of things it's, it's, I don't want to say so. Yeah, adjectives on numbers are can get you into trouble but it is it is a quantifiable cost that many, many towns decline to exercise simply because there is a cost, and if they if they don't have some other means of providing a resiliency shelter something like that. I hope that answers your question and around about sort of. Yeah, thanks I was just curious because I imagine it wouldn't if if the community prioritized that if it was important to the community at large I imagine you would need to know that soon so that you can build it into the early design. Absolutely so big decisions like that in terms of how large systems are. Those systems that are going to allow us to achieve net zero geothermal well field if it's part of the project photo book traits if they're part of the project. Those will all have to be not detailed but essentially coordinated in size. By the time we issue schematic design to the MSBA, which is the basis for the project funding agreement. So that will be submitted at the end of the year essentially. So we're going to do PDP where we get the educational stuff down, we're going to do PSR where we pick an option that'll be June, and then SD will be at the end of the year. And so, when we have SD that all that the agreement for funding is based on will have the mechanical system size will have the outline of all that so the things that you're talking about now the big picture items will be locked into place. And yeah that will have to be a robust conversation about what is important. And you know this is the first step of it. And how many of these school projects that you personally worked on. Personally work on so I've worked on a bunch from start to finish in this role. This is my third. I did, I just completed one in Springfield did one in Cooper and then worked on a bunch in various capacities. Then I had all other career and other architecture stuff before schools. Is the MSBA still is they have the capacity to throw any last minute surprises and how do you kind of have it down. The thing about the MSBA is last minute surprises are so thoroughly beaten out of the process by the bureaucracy that they have their quirks they have things that don't necessarily make sense if you were to do it over again but last minute surprises is not one of the things that they do they you know you know when you're going to do stuff with them a year ahead of a bigger complaint about the MSBA there's a complaint about someone who's going to give you quite a bit of money for your project is that they take too long because they're stated state agents. That's what they're good at, but they're very thorough. They do a great job for a lot of communities and they build wonderful schools so that is thanks. Next to the main group or should we. Is there anything else you need from us Tim or, or maybe I. If you have anything else. Absolutely, but also at any time feel free to go back. Thank you for your time. Thank you for coming tonight. Tim, I have one other question for you. I'm sorry go ahead. Oh no I was just saying thank you. I guess normally having done several of these things is this process of engaging with parents in this way. I'll be at under normal circumstances you might do it in person but is this normal part of the process is an Amherst part of the process. It's normal process. I would say in some communities it's a lot more engaged than others I mean we have, I have worked in communities where honestly no one shows up. I'm just happy to be getting a new school I've been in communities where the biggest priority is they don't want their taxes to go up so there is a full spectrum, just like their 300 plus towns and Massachusetts municipalities I should say and there are probably about 500 different ways this meeting could go so. It does. I will say that this is very informative, educated, positive. You can tell that people just want a good project. Many times, majority of people that show up are against the project in some way and I don't get that sense of the inverse. We'll see. We haven't met everyone yet so. Even those voices are good because they, they keep our feet to the fire, they make us, you know, they hold us to the highest possible standard. I mean that's what you do when you're doing something. We accept that and we actually encourage it because it makes the project better. I appreciate it thanks for doing this. We're going to leave the room and join the big room but this is good. Thanks. Yep. Hey everyone. This is my reader Oscar. We're going to be able to take notes here. I am, I'm ready. Hi everybody. Hi, I'm going to share my screen. You've also got, this is the same presentation that David just went through. And you're also that we've gotten a PDF from and what, except it's forward to a slide but one like to hear from you all is what resonated with you. One of the design patterns, did you really like and why everybody put down things to prioritize but what we'd like to do is to just come up with like the things you really, really like the most important maybe a half dozen to your favorite order. And that will help guide the priorities as we do for the design so we didn't really like to start. You can also start by asking a question. I can take a crack at it. So, the outdoor learning spaces. I put at the top, in part because we don't know how long COVID is going to be around or the next pandemic or just in general I think, you know, having the ability to be outside, regardless of what kind of precipitation is, is I think a really nice option. The, the second thing that struck me is. It sounds it's like a little bit fear based but the, you know, I think in the wake of Sandy hook. A lot of us were really keenly aware of the, the problems with Fort River and Wildwood in terms of safety.  I think is really important for our student body. And then, so sustainability is important to me, and I love the idea of the building as teacher. I think there are a ton of opportunities there for, you know, creating lifelong awareness of the built environment and how we interact with it and the impact it has on the environment so that just seems totally cool. And then I guess I had a little bit of a question about that which is, at one point I was talking with an architect friend about the fact that we have a net zero bylaw and Amherst. And she was like, who, okay, like, you're not going to have a school with a lot of bells and whistles like you're not going to have beautiful wooden ceilings because just making the building that zero is going to like, eat up all the costs. So it's going to be like a pretty basic rudimentary structure with like kind of the cheapest materials because getting to like the net zero is going to require a ton of, you know, capital. So I would love to hear a reaction to that from the architects in the house. And I would just say right off the top, that's not necessarily the case. Certainly, certainly, somebody might approach it like that. But it's, it's possible to have exciting, inviting buildings that you're enthusiastic about that happen to be net zero or even, you know, not zero positive. There are a number of projects on, on tap, we've had a couple of recent successes in that manner.  It's, it's establishing priorities, but zero is a fact of life, but it doesn't shut the door to everything else that we're talking about. Sure, if your idea to have an outdoor learning is to have a 10 by 12 roll up door in every classroom. So that's going to make net zero pretty hard to achieve. That's also pretty hard to meet the basic energy for doing that too. So it's all, it's all about, but it doesn't mean you have to give up one for another. I didn't say this, but because it seems like it's just implicit, but to me, the, you know, the daylighting and just like bringing daylight into as many corners of the building seems just so important. My sister-in-law is a school nurse and you know she spends her day in a dark cubby in the interior of one of these buildings and it just, it's just soul crushing. There actually used to be a lead credit. It was the first time I saw a lead before you know what we talked about, we mentioned a lead. But that was for having stairways that were bright and inviting and made people want to use them instead of using the elevator. And I think that recognizing, recognize that light is good user good. You can turn something that, you know, and certainly there are a lot of 60s examples that are a silo with steps in it, but turn it into a learning environmental system that is used and that can be a way to get, there's a question about what was borrowed light, but introduce borrowed light into a corner that may not have it by having elements like stairways be very bright and inviting and transparent. That's a good start. Anybody else want to jump in? Nicole. Hi, can you, can you hear me all right. Yes, I can. Great. Hello. I'm Nicole. I'm the art teacher at Fort River. And I see there's some families and hi Oscar, there's one of my sixth graders. Hello. So one of the things that one of one of the realities that we're facing in Amherst right now, definitely a Fort River but I know this is true in all the schools is that with the way that the schedules are squeezed and teachers have been sort of like contorted into not having a lot of time and and the buildings are pretty sprawled out. One of the sort of struggle points both in terms of like building logistics but also in like student sort of like wayfinding but also like mental transitions throughout the day is that there's a huge amount of distance between classrooms and the spaces that the entire school needs to use. Right now at Fort River, the library is the most most central place which is awesome, but like the music and tech spaces and cafeterias are like these way remote like far away things and the transition time is really hard to build into our schedule and transitions are the time when student behaviors are the most likely to explode. Obviously if you look at behavior patterns in the schools transitions are one of the biggest struggle points for a lot of students, and we have a lot of ways of coping with that but if the building helped to minimize the stress of transition and the length of transition, that would be awesome so I was really excited about the, I was excited about the classroom neighborhoods and the innovation hub, but my concern would be if those things are then located far from each other. Then the class the kids couldn't get to those other hubs like they could get to the other classrooms, but not to the, like all the specials that they'd be then using every day. So, I wonder, you know, if there's, if we think about the spaces that the entire school uses right like a single classroom is only used by a single grade level, but places like cafeteria, music, PE, tech library, special ed spaces the guidance suite all of that right. If we can have all of those things nested centrally somewhere, but still like on the edges so that we have windows because if the art room doesn't have windows I'm going to go nuts and so as everybody else. But, but so like, please, oh my goodness have the art room on a wall, but also if they're essentially located and not like way at the edges that would really help like behaviorally and logistically for all of our kids. I understood one of the things and you're in a one story school right now and having a multi floor school would be a radical change for anybody that's teaching in a single story school, but it can be possible to get closer to somebody the special sentiment of specials. If you have, you know, multiple levels. And so that's something that we look at. The other thing that you look at is not only all those course spaces that are called core spaces and of course this is actually, because everybody wants to get them doesn't really want to be in the court, they want to be centrally located. But there are also components of those that also want to be available to the public and available in the public off hours without people taking through other buildings or the building so that's a consideration. And this is all a very, very delicate dance about priorities and will also be taught to eventually as we're going to design about adjacencies. K-5 schools that have a strong theater arts program might try to get the arts and music rooms at the back of the cafeteria very close so they become green notes. And so that starts to gather the arts together and put them in a location that's centrally located. So, yeah, I hear you it's one thing that the classroom concept of the cluster five concept of the neighborhood does it also stops the skills of having a million mile long corridor, and which can be a pressing, but you're right. You don't want to send somebody to the other building because that's an opportunity for them. And we'll be working together to develop the adjacencies and come up with plans that would work. Yeah, I remember, you know, years ago when we went through this process before they had like a pair of art rooms on the second floor kind of above a lot of other main spaces and I totally loved that idea the art room balcony. But yeah, whenever I would hear by like to volunteer that whenever you're ready to discuss adjacencies I would like to be at the table whenever you're ready to have teacher input on that. I don't know about it. But I mean, anything else. Let's think of anything. Any questions for me. I don't really have anything new to add but I just wanted to emphasize, you know, like your hot eye also. And my name's Carrie I'm a parent. This is a hopefully a future student at one of these schools and then I'm also a former school committee member so I've been thinking about this stuff a lot.  And so I think no matter what I'm sure this is included in the givens but just having enough space for breakout rooms for special ed enough space for all the specials that we need outdoor learning opportunities that benefit not only the students but as, you know, younger, and maybe older kids to who live in our community and who may not be enrolled in our public schools. I think I really, you know, just love to see a healthy building. I know this is a given but I just want to emphasize it is you know a building that has natural light where staff and students have you know spaces that that just feel really welcoming. So, I'm excited about this process. And I think, you know, it's hard to really rank things because these are all so important. But I think especially in the time of COVID you know the outdoor learning and the ventilation and just creating buildings that meet kind of these minimum standards will just be such a such a nice, nice thing for our community. So thank you. Thank you. So, one thing that I heard was one of the comments about outdoor spaces and outdoor use. And it was a comment about having restrooms available to people using the outdoor spaces. And I know that that exists at Fort River. And is that something that you think would be used or would be sustainable? It's because it's been a problem in the past because I see that it exists. It's funny I haven't heard of that comment. Yeah, yeah, no I saw it here. I hadn't heard it in the past. And I think it's important but I guess I just would worry about who's responsible for maintaining and care the cost of that type of service because I think that would be great but I think it would be a lot to place on the elementary schools to cover the cost of maintaining for the entire year. I know there are outdoor bathrooms at Fort River. And, you know, for like, for example the ultimate Frisbee teams like the middle schoolers will come on the bus, change in the bathrooms, and then go and practice on the fields at Fort River. I don't know whether that falls to the Fort River custodial staff to manage that space or not. I don't change in the bathrooms, you know, and I'm pretty sure they don't. Usually the bathrooms are in horrible shape. Yeah, half the time they're closed up. Okay. The reason why I'm taking this opportunity to ask is it's the first time I've ever seen a comment like that, and I knew that it existed at Fort River. And I just wanted to get some spin if that was a voice for like, oh yeah, that's, that's a big deal. That's an amount of that's worked out. Okay, thanks. Thanks for just filling in a little bit on that. Brian, do you have any thoughts? I'm just following along with everyone else. Okay. So let's see. So outdoor learning. How much, I guess, how much outdoor learning space do you think would be get used? It's become a common practice to have a space or two. Now, David showed a couple of locations were outside even the one of the warm inviting porous of whole linemen. In other words, that was actually an entrance way that also could serve as an outdoor learning space. During COVID, were the kids outside a lot? Yeah, I can speak to that a bit. Yeah, as much as possible, teachers have been trying to teach outside, you know, whether permitting and temperature permitting mostly. There's like small tents that were put outside that only work to an extent like you couldn't really fit a whole, there's one that was gigantic and then many that you couldn't really fit a whole class under with social distancing anyway. I think, I think, and we do also have this great garden classroom out in the back fields that's totally beautiful and lovely. And for instance, I would do a lot more like outdoor nature sketching if my room weren't on the complete opposite corner from it, right? There's quite a ways away from most classrooms, including some of the ones who might otherwise use it the most. And so I think with outdoor learning spaces, it's again a matter of proximity. Like I think having multiple, you know, my wildest dreams, I have no idea if the like surface area counts for this but there would be like several adjacent outdoor classrooms around the edge of the building so that whoever's nearby can use whichever one is closest to them and not have to like, you know, walk all around the and go get to it because I don't know, like art class is only 40 minutes these days and maybe that'll change in my wildest dreams, I don't know. But like 15 minutes getting everybody there and settled in there. Yeah, exactly. And, and you know, another thing that I've seen work really well at summer camps actually is like, is like covered porch style learning spaces where it's not like a freestanding pavilion but it's like, if you imagine just a really really gigantic covered porch pergola type object, such that you could have a whole classrooms where the floor area under a waterproof roof, and then you could be outside even when it's warm and rainy for instance. That kind of thing would be right next to the building because it would lean against the building have a door to be inside, but then still be usable, no matter the weather. And that kind of thing I've seen work really really well. I'd also like to mention that, I mean, and hopefully we won't be in this place when this building's built, but outdoor eating has been really important and I can't, I mean for me personally like when I take a break at lunch to take a walk or just to get outdoors it's always nice and I think it's the same thing for students and we I know that there's been an emphasis on trying to get kids to, you know, take lunch outdoors for safety right now but I can't imagine that we'd want to completely eliminate that in the future so I don't know if there's a way to connect the cafeteria to outdoors as well. How does, you know, right now, I'm stuck just thinking like, oh, our elementary schools are one floor structures therefore that is how elementary schools work but like Nicole was just referencing that, you know I don't remember the previous school I thought that it was two levels and how I don't know does MSBA have thoughts about that do you have thoughts about that does it depend on the site. It seems like a much more efficient use of total area to have it be two stories but even more, I don't want to freak you out but we've done a number of three-story eight-five buildings in the last few years and very often and that can be a big departure for people that are coming out of a 1957 one-story building that can kind of be a three-story building. Certainly site availability, you know, it can make it not be a choice but say if you want to do all this stuff on your site you've got to have a more compact building. You can zone it. We've put gymnasiums on second floor over catheterious. The gymnasium will be on the second floor of a two-story school. So that's, you know, one flight up, one flight down, or, you know, a horizontal jump to it. So, there can be, it can make the building easier to get from point A to point B. It can be larger on the site than what you're used to. It can be very different than what you're used to as far as doing a one-story building. And so change, when confronting with change, it's something that you got to get brought along. It's also a multiple-story building is more compact and it's environmentally friendly. You've got less surface area. It's easy to make your energy loss calculations. You don't have as much roof and as much outside wall. You've improved in that way. So there are pluses and minuses. There are considerations for the neighborhood. So if you saw, you know, the Cabot School in the last slide. Hi, folks. David here just checking in. We've got about five more minutes. Thanks, David. All right. Let's see. I'm crumbling here. I'm camping with a laptop. So here are a couple of examples. This is in here. Of two-story schools. And then the Cabot, which being a renovated building, is even taller. That doesn't work and it's 1200 times its size, does it? I don't know. So the Cabot School here is an example of a small 20s neighborhood in Newton, which has some very tall spaces. There's an addition, a three-story existing building and a tight single-story, you know, two, three-story residential neighborhood with functions like the gym being readily available. And this was a very small site. So this is kind of forced. There's an addition and a renovation. And it was a very small site that actually also included closing the street to get this much area is a way that you get all the function on the site. You get small travel distances, you can zone the building. And it's still, it's kind of a different type of field than what you've got. So any of your addition, renovation schemes, you know, wouldn't be a three-story addition next to a single-story building. But it wouldn't be unheard of if there wasn't an addition, renovation scheme, but there might be a three-story addition for one-story building or something like that. So it's all things to be considered. And I think all of those kind of occasions as we go through. I will say one of my, I love the balconies and I love that, that what is it called the teaching stair, like that struck me as like a really just a cool space. I apologize for stumbling through that visual example. Any thoughts about how you use the space outside of classrooms and classroom clusters? I have no idea. I'm not an educator. I couldn't, I couldn't hear the tail end of that question. I'm just wondering if there's any appeal. This is a school that has a cluster of four graded classrooms. So, I think this four of these are the third grade classrooms and the second grade classrooms across the way. It's a cluster of four, cluster of four, a hallway, going to core space in the middle, and then there's a stair and some break-up space in the end. But, you know, some of the decisions that we work with the educators are where do the kids start their stuff? Are you a cubby school? Are you a locker school? Are you a cubby school for kindergarten, maybe first grade? Or if anyone wants to stay and has other general comments, I guess I'll be hanging out. Yeah, for those people that want to stay, for those people that want to stay, Mike and Donna are going to be here to talk to you. And if no one stays, Mike and Donna, you can jump in to just let us know. We'll put you in a group. Hi. Hi, Sarah. How are you? I'm actually, I have to leave to go do bedtime with Linda Gartner. So, but this was a really terrific presentation. Thank you. Very happy to be here. Yeah, thank you. And we have a community forum coming up, which we'll talk a little bit more about the project itself, sustainability and how we're going to evaluate and rank the options, etc. So, I hope you continue to join us. Sarah, if you have any questions for me, sorry, I was at a pellet school community meeting, but I'm here now, Mike, and you get enough emails from me where you know how to get in touch easily with me by replying to any of my many. But you know, if there's any questions you had that you would have wanted to jump in on, you know, please do get in touch with me and I'm in frequent communication with the design team, I'm happy to share your, you know, your feedback or answer your question, make sure the design team sees it as well. I saw a lot of friends here on the, on the zoom so it's good to see a lot of people so thank you. Thanks for doing this at night and for all your work. Good night. Good night. Bye. So it looks like David there are a few visit each group to make sure that they're okay. It looks like these folks are staying in the larger group. So we've got we've got about four people four or five people in each group. I think there were a few people that are one person that just joined so I don't know who that was. Let's see. All right, well I'm going to go visit, visit the groups if anybody is is there anybody in this larger group that would like to go to a small group to talk about Sarah you had your hand up. Oh no. Okay, all right, good, good. All right. I think I'll probably jump into a small group. Which I'm in, I'm in for group four if that helps. Actually, yeah, what yeah but there's no one there so we're going to help you. We're going to put you in group. In group three, you'll get it. I will join in them. Should I do not now for group four. There it goes. I just wanted to hang with this group for just a minute because I, I know there were some things discussed in a kind of very specific thing at the last meeting and I think this might be the more appropriate group to talk to about it. So I don't know if it's, if anybody else had anything or if I should just hop into what I wanted to say. Okay, so, so there's been a community member brought up this idea about the special education programs, advocating that they be broken up. And, and put it both the, the Crocker farm elementary school and, and the new school building. And I'm a parent of a kiddo that's been in that program for a long time and I was the special education parent advisory council president for a couple years. And, you know, I think where this idea is coming from is from the last school project where one of the great advantages of a consolidated school was where because we have these consolidated special education programs meant that kids no longer would have to be an out of district out of enrollment zone placement and there's quite a bit of disruption and stigma. And it's so dramatic for families who need access to those programs. And so it was a great feature and that one of the biggest reasons I was really a big component for that last, you know, consolidated idea. But now that's not on the table anymore. And, and I think if you, I mean, I, I haven't heard any special education family for a part of that program, think that those programs can be as strong if they are broken up into multiple buildings. We just don't have the number of students needed to do that. And provide the depth of para support that we get the amount of expertise we get. And our students really are a unique population that we need strong expertise. And if we try to do that. What I'm afraid what's going to happen is that we're going to have more students without a district entirely placements that our programming will be so watered down that kids will not be feeding into the middle, you know, we're going to end up with a much more expensive interventions needed that they're not going to be nearly as included in our community. They're going to be bused far away. Our programings will really suffer from that attempt to do something like that. And I'll have to say to that, you know, our, where we're moving one of the big things that is happening with this school plan is that we're going from two enrollment zone or currently two enrollment zones to two enrollment zones. So this will be less of an issue for many kids we've you know cut the problem by two thirds. To start with, we have instituted or are shortly hopefully going to institute the school committee voted on it last year and I think it's been implemented yet. A sibling enrollment policies so that siblings can attend the same school with with other with the special education students who need to be in these specialized programs. And the other big thing is that we have a dual enrollment or the dual language program that now pulls students from the entire district. So that means if I'm walking down the street with my kiddo in my neighborhood. The first question isn't oh it's great as your kid in at Fort River because that assumption is no longer there. Because of the dual and dual language enrollment thing you can be in a school that is not your neighborhood school anymore and it in it can be for something other than special education, which takes away a ton of the stigma, a ton of the assumption ton of the just like assumption that you're going to go to the school on the corner, because that's not true. And now it becomes a much more equitable way to access our school system because of the existence of that dual language program. And so I am one, you know, it just seems like a holdover from a way of thinking of a previous project that is not really relevant anymore to the way we're thinking about this and I'm really fearful that that idea takes traction when it's really an idea that is not being brought forward by people who are involved in the program in any way. And, and I think it's really something our community we always, you know, are really great proponents of, of social justice and equity, but I think sometimes people speak for others from a knowledge base that they don't have. And it's really important to let the voices of the people who have experience with these issues, have the floor. And I really hope that that idea the idea of needing to divide up these, these takes any traction because I don't I really don't think it's a good one I don't think it's coming from a place of knowledge or intensity or lived experience. And I hope that the folks. I hope that idea doesn't go anywhere because I don't think it's a sound idea in this context. It's not the long time. Sorry. No, Heather, it's okay. Can I jump in David, is that okay. So I'm going to speak because I agree with a lot of what you said I'll try to be succinct. And there may be other people with other questions this was talked about at the school committee, slightly pre pandemic which you know years all blend together. And folks came up with a lot of the same perspectives you did and particularly the staff because we're looking at one program in particular and potentially splitting it unrelated to a building project. And I met with the staff and the staff said, look, we can't offer the same level of programming if we're in two different places. We just can't. We have two classrooms for a subset of students that in theory have similar needs but in reality, the range of needs in those programs is is much more significant than the light person might believe yes, a program might be for students with complex and multiple disabilities and intellectual disabilities. The range of that group of students is huge and they're able to group students in ways that are really thoughtful. And also, there are sometimes students who don't shouldn't be in the same room. Right. You know so the idea of having two rooms in the same school is no one has to change schools if that happens. The dynamic can be done so we talked about that a while ago. The more practical nuts and bolts reason is there's just frankly not going to be space across reform to have the program set up that way so but what we heard from the level of collaboration expertise that different staff members would bring if the programs were split in that dynamic which is to your point how they're very different than the prior project where all the second through six years being one place so that there's nothing comparable in this setting. So we heard that feedback loud and clear and I think something I said at the last school committee meeting was, you know, when we have our educators, very clearly stating this is a model that that is working for our students. And if we split the program we won't be able to do that remembering that elementary school six grade levels which is another point they raised that they're able to do a younger kid cohort and an older kid cohort and, and how valuable that is so at this point there's no plans to I wasn't I'm sorry I was at a film school committee meeting I was not able to be at the first part of this meeting, but the same thing came up with a prior meeting as well. The prior community meeting, and I'll do a little more detail because it came up at school committee as well but there are no plans to relocate specialized programs in general.  And the ILC to position them a