Seeing a presence of a quorum, I'm calling to order this meeting of the Regional School Committee at 6.33 p.m. on Tuesday, March 23rd. And let's start with the roll call attendance. Mr. Demling. Mr. Demling President. Mr. Harrington. Harrington President. Ms. Penny. Kenny President. Ms. Lord. Lord President. Just in time, Ms. Seeger. Yep, she's got Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer President. Ms. Dancer. Mr. President. Mr. Sullivan. Sullivan President. Ms. Seeger. Seeger President. And McDonald President. We are in order. I'll turn it over to the Chair, Union 26. Okay, and seeing the presence of a quorum of the Union 26 School Committee, I'll call this meeting of the Union 26 School Committee to order and we'll go around and do the same presence. Ms. Dancer. Ms. Dancer President. Mr. Menino. Menino President. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer President. Ms. McDonald. McDonald President. Ms. Hall was not present and Demling is present. And that's Union 26. Thank you. So tonight we have one agenda item, which is to approve the contract, superintendent contract or consider an approval of the contract for Dr. Morris. And just for background and context, hiring and evaluating our superintendent is one of our number one roles as a school committee and ensuring sort of longevity and strength of leadership for our district and for our students is a number one number one objectives as a school committee. And one of the things we did approve a contract, a new contract with Dr. Morris just about a little over a year or a year and a half ago. And the reason why we're looking at it again today is we've in a really tight superintendent market in Massachusetts, we know that we've had five years with Dr. Morris and we've consistently been pleased and as evidenced in our evaluations. And we know that he is a highly sought after and heavily recruited candidate for the very, for many opportunities in the state. And so we wanted to express our confidence, continued confidence in Dr. Morris and extend that contract with him. So a couple of things in the contract. The contract is in our packet and as we've discussed in our private sessions but for the public, there is no change in compensation beyond what was previously agreed in the contract. The changes in the contract are to do with the length of the contract. So this contract will automatically extend at the end of every year given no prior notice. We've extended the notice for that from 10 months to 12 months or six months to 12 months, sorry, which is more in line with typical superintendent contract. And we've tweaked the voting requirement for removal to a two thirds vote. So those are the key changes in this and I apologize for stumbling through that. Mr. Dimling as chair of union 26, is there anything you wanna add to that that I may have missed? No, I think you covered all the main points. Couple other items changed in the contract is that the severance increases to 12 months and there's an option for a payout of up to 10 unused vacation days per year. And yeah, other than that, I think you framed it correctly and accurately that this is no change to the base salary but this is a strengthening of our commitment of the working relationship between our committees and the superintendent. So we'll open up for comment or discussion. And Dr. Morris, I don't know if you wanna say anything before the committee speaks or if you want to sort of fold. I think it'd be fair to wait until after the committee speaks and before I think if that's okay with Mr. Dimling. Yeah, so we said two weeks ago that we would go around the table. And so I do see a hand, Ms. Stanser. So I'll start. So my name is Margaret Stanser. I've been on the Pelham School Committee for three years. I've been a member of the Regional School Committee for two years. And one thing I would say about Dr. Morris is that he's been an absolutely steady hand through all of that time. And I think that we just can't give him enough credit for getting us through, especially this past year, but even before that. The second thing I'd like to say is I really appreciate his collaboration, both internally with his administrators in accepting their ideas and also enabling them to act. And also for looking externally, working with others in, with colleagues in other school districts and looking for new ideas and bringing those ideas back into the district. I appreciate his dedication to achieving equity across all of the districts. It's not an easy job. I think improvements have really been made thanks to him and also thanks to his staff because he enables them to do the work that they need to do to try to move us forward. And lastly, I would like to say his obvious interest and delight in the students and what they do, which is evident so strongly when he tells us stories about things that he's encountered when he's got out into the schools. And I think that that says a huge amount about why he's a really good superintendent. So thank you, Dr. Morris. I can just call out names if folks would like to.  Well, my name's Ron Manino. I've been variously a member of the region, the Pelham and Union 26 for the last four and a half years. During that period, my rating of superintendent Morris is excellent. He knows how to plan strategically. He executes tactically. He regularly seeks out feedback from various constituents. He constantly is reminding people through videos and letters and newsletters. And he communicates well. I'm impressed. I guess he started out as a grade school teacher and it shows. He cares about students. He cares about staff. He obviously works well with everybody involved. I hope he never leaves the superintendency. That's it. Thanks. Ms. Lord. Thank you. My name is Hala Heather A. Lord and I have been on this committee almost a year. It'll be a year, April 22nd. And there's so many things I'd love to lift up about you, Dr. Morris. The thing that's coming up first is how as a complete newbie, you've taken so much time. Any question I've ever asked, you've answered. If you didn't have the answer right away and I don't think it's ever happened but you would go find out and then come back and bring it to me. So as a new school committee member during a pandemic I absolutely appreciate that labor that you don't have to do. That comes out of your time and your generosity. So thank you. I want to echo some of what Ms. Dancer said about your... No, Monino. Oh, darn it. Don't name names. That somebody else said about your commitment to the students, every student. When we were open those weeks, you were in the schools talking to the kids and the parents and you know, your heart was happy or at least it felt like your heart was happy. And everything, you just work. People don't, I don't think anybody has an idea of how much work, love and time you put into this position above and beyond. So thank you for all of that. Thank you for being able to break it down in ways that I can understand it when I ask you big questions about budgets. And I'm grateful to be under your leadership. Mr. Harrington. Yeah, so do we have to do the intro? Is that like a few things? I'll just say I'm Ben and I wear a lot of hats. I am, we'll go with that. But yeah, I just, I'm being completely blunt here. After this last year, right? The desire to continue doing this for an extended period of time, I think it says a lot about who we have at the helm, right? Like we're weathering the storm, we're in the process of getting through there. This, I don't wanna speak for you, Dr. Morris, but I imagine this has to be the roughest year for you to have been a superintendent through. And I think the fact that like you haven't wavered is, it says a lot, you know? Like people talk about strong leadership. Well, there's strong leadership that's been tested here and that still has the ability to smile and still has the ability to be happy, you know, on the first day of school at Crocker. You know what I mean? So I do a lot and I don't do half of what you do and I appreciate that. And I, the other thing I would say that definitely stands out for me is the faith. I'm using that word a lot these days, but the faith that you've had in the staff is kind of what has led a lot of the staff to have faith in their ability to keep moving through this too. So I'm very appreciative of that. Mr. Sullivan? Alrighty, yeah, I just wanna thank him for all the hard work that he's done. And I've been on this committee for seven years now. So I actually, along with Shabazz and Trevor Baptiste and a few others appointed you as Mike Morris, the assistant superintendent. And then Mike Morris, the interim superintendent and Dr. Morris as the superintendent. And I just wanna thank you for all your hard work and carry on, Mr. Ms. Segar. So I've been on this committee since I don't know, was it June? I've been on the Leverett committee for almost six years now and have done, I think almost every role, I've been in every role you can have on that committee and hadn't been on the region. And then having joined the region during one of the most intense times, I think you've all had in a really long time with COVID, I just wanna echo what somebody else said. In terms of leadership, like a lot of leaders, I think COVID really showed you who the leaders are. And Dr. Morris stands out with that. He's always been responsive to emails and just in general, like I find him to be an excellent communicator, which is amazing given how many, I imagine that Dr. Morris, that you're super, super busy with all the schools and then a committee like this and all the other committees that you're a part of. I feel like you know the district really well and the town and your role within the school. The amount of engagement with stakeholders is amazing. I don't really like the word stakeholders, but I mean families and I work in tech, we have stakeholders. But I just, I've always appreciated how fully engaged Dr. Morris is and how committed to what he's doing in this district for this district and for the families. So I feel incredibly grateful to have him here as a school committee member and as a parent whose children are either coming in or will be coming into the region. So thank you. Ms. Spitzer. Thank you. So when I first saw negotiations for Union 26 pop up on our agenda, I had a little panic because I was like, we can't lose Dr. Morris during COVID. And I think that kind of got reaction because I didn't know what the negotiations were gonna look like was probably felt by others. And I think it speaks to not every leader would you feel that way about? And so I think it really says a lot that even the possibility of having a transition during this incredibly difficult year was difficult. But I think even if it weren't, he's proven over the last three years that I've worked with him to be incredibly thoughtful, incredibly compassionate. And also I think the deep roots in our community is something that we're just not likely to find anywhere else. So when I learned that Dr. Morris was looking to make a stronger commitment to the district, I was incredibly pleased because during this really long, hard year, he's just shown the ability to dig deep on issues that no superintendent ever probably thought they'd have to become experts on in terms of public health, but also, not only digging deep and trying to understand, but also being humble I think about where there's learning to be done and recognizing when you need to seek outside an expert opinion from others. So I really appreciate both the leadership and humility that Dr. Morris has shown. So thank you very much and I look forward to working with you in the future. Ms. Kenny. So one of the great things about going near the end is like all of my colleagues have already said all of these great things that I can just say, yeah, me too, that's how I feel the same. But I also wanted to just say, I have not been on the region for very long and also fairly new to the Pelham School Committee. And Dr. Morris is super easy to talk to. I'm gonna be a parent in the district for a while and so I love being able to collaborate and feel heard, not just as a school committee member, but also as a parent of the district. And there have been moments where things have not been great, but it's never felt like it's a personal issue. It's like, all right, well, here's the thing, let's figure out, and it's always solution-based. How can we get this, whatever it is, to be good as good as we can make it for everybody involved? And I super appreciate that collaboration and that kind of leadership, because that is especially in a time like this where things feel crazy most of the time to have someone who's like, okay, yep, this isn't working. How can we fix it and make it be better? And to also recognize the times where things are working really well. And to lift up those people, one of my favorite parts of the superintendent's report are always like, I wanna say thanks to this person because they're doing a good job. And I think having a leader that recognizes when people are doing well at something is really, really important. So yeah, I'm really thrilled that we get to continue working together. Mr. W. So yeah, plus one to Sarah Bass on, you can just say everything else everybody else said. You know, I kind of split the reasons for why I think this is an excellent idea and in the best interest of our district and our students right now and to like the hard reasons and the soft reasons. So like the hard reasons to me are, there is a pragmatic reality that the superintendent market, like the labor, the available pool of superintendent's Massachusetts has decreased quite a bit over the last decade and districts struggle to find superintendents that will stay for a long time and that have all of the different skill sets, right? Cause it's not just, it's not just, we talked about leadership. There's the communications we talked about. There's the understanding of school finance, which in Massachusetts requires its own special sauce. There's the understanding of pedagogy. There's being able to work with the school committee. There's being able to work with staff and most districts get a leader and they're pretty weak in one or more of those areas. And so they last for a certain amount of time and that doesn't work out and they go on. I feel like Dr. Morris has a very high floor on every single one of the skills that you'd want out of a superintendent. I don't think he's perfect. I think he definitely still has room for improvement. He's still young yet, but I feel like he's excellent in all of those aspects. Another hard reason is that we have, comparatively speaking, a complex set of districts. With the three districts, we have a superintendency union here tonight, the region, declining enrollment, a small school, and so that's harder than the average district in Massachusetts. Plus we have an above average demanding community, which is both good and bad. And if you hear for more than a few years, you love it and hate it at the same time, right? Most of that feedback is good and reasonable, but we know some of that feedback is not reasonable and not respectful and that's part of the aspect. So the fact that I think, Mr. Harrington said, if you're able to do this in this kind of community under these conditions for this long and you want to re-up, then you're an excellent match for what we need. And just statistically speaking, we are not likely at all to find somebody else who is this good of a match. And then like the soft reasons, so I've been on the school committee for four years now and thankfully I find myself agreeing with Dr. Morris on his major decisions more often than not, but four years is long enough that I've disagreed with him about some of his decisions and told him that and have engaged on that in meeting and on an individual basis and lived through that. And that's where I think the real telling moments in a working relationship. It's not that everything's rosy and going great, right? It's when the pressure is really on and there's a genuine disagreement about where to go, how does that work in a relationship? And I've been so impressed, people brought up collaboration and it's one thing just to sit down and have meeting with somebody, but to continually work on understanding someone's perspective and trying to integrate that always with the other soft skill that is the reason why I feel so compelled to make this commitment to Dr. Morris is his heart. This is human services that we're doing here in public schools and we're not just making widgets.  And Dr. Morris has such a genuine engagement with being an educator and educational leader and does it with such humility. It's just really impressive. So I feel at the end of the day when we have this many people who have worked with Dr. Morris this closely over this length of time, all feeling equally strongly about this commitment, it really says something. So I think our community should feel really good that we have an excellent superintendent and I'm very grateful that he'll be continuing on as someone who has such a good match for what we need in our community. And I have the benefit of going last. So I will just say plus one to almost everything, actually everything that everybody has said. So I'm not going to take up more airtime other than one of the things that I've heard of several of my colleagues state is the time that you are willing, that Dr. Morris is willing to take to teach us, to explain, to help us build our learning and understanding and always with an attitude of your own growth mindset of trying to learn from us as well. It's not sort of, okay, you've knew these on school committee, here's what you need to know. It's really a collaborative, supportive relationship. And I think, echoing what several folks have said is if you, just the fact that you're willing to and want to extend your time with us says so much about your willingness to invest your expertise and your leadership in this community. And we are fortunate and grateful for that. And then myself personally, I think I said this when we signed your current contract but I've learned so much from you and I continue to learn from you every single day. And in terms of talking about disagreement, I actually wrote down on a piece of paper here, something that you said in a conversation where we weren't all seeing eye to eye. And I think the word you said was, can I offer a different perspective? And I take that to heart because I think that's really how so many, in so many ways you approach conflict and disagreement and it's not in a way of sort of winning, it's really to find what is the best outcome for our students, for our staff and teachers and our community. And so I wholeheartedly also support this extension of your contract. And so now after all of that, Dr. Morris, do you want to say anything before we move to a vote? I think it can probably be appropriate after the vote as opposed to before if that's okay. Yeah, okay. So I'll turn it over to Union 26. All right, so would anyone from Union 26 like to make a motion to approve the contract for Dr. Morris as presented? So I'm happy to. For a moment I thought Margaret wanted to. I move that Union 26 approve the contract with Dr. Morris as presented. Move by Spitzer, is there a second? Second. Move by Spitzer, second by Stanzer. Is there any further discussion on the motion? Seeing none, I'll move to a roll call vote. Ms. Stanzer. Stanzer, aye. Mr. Manino. Manino, aye. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer, aye. Ms. McDonald. McDonald, aye. And Demling, aye. It's unanimous, five zero for Union 26. And would somebody like to make a motion for the region? I'll make the motion. I'll move that the regional school committee approve the contract with Dr. Morris as presented, is there a second? Lord, second. Move by McDonald, second by Lord. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none, we'll move to a roll call vote. Mr. Demling. Demling, aye. Mr. Harrington. Harrington, aye. Ms. Kenny. Kenny, aye. Ms. Lord. Lord, aye. Ms. Seeger. Seeger, aye. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer, aye. Ms. Stanzer. Stanzer, aye. Mr. Sullivan. Sullivan, abstain. And McDonald, aye. The motion passes unanimously eight to zero with one abstention. I did get everybody, correct? Yeah. Okay. So in the spirit of learning, I continue to learn as evidence in this meeting tonight. So thank you for that. Yeah, maybe if it's okay just to say a couple of quick things. I'm prepared to talk about a lot of other things tonight. This is one I'm less prepared to talk about and probably is less comfortable to me, but maybe I'll mention just four things. So I think the first thing I would say is that, I appreciate all the support. It's really humbling. And I mean that quite literally, when I saw the amount of time that's on the agenda, I'm like, cool, just bring it up and they'll vote one way or the other and then move forward. So, I really appreciate all the words, all the kindness that I heard. And for me, the having a longer term commitment, I think not just gives me comfort, but it actually is I think, what's in the best interest of the district? And I can say that truly authentically that I think during this time, a district should have a leader who can make long-term decisions because I think there's a million ways in which short-term decisions can go awry, particularly as it relates to coming out of the kind of year that we've had and the year that everybody's had to different experiences. So I appreciate that and I think that's gonna be really helpful for all of us. I think secondly, I think someone mentioned it before and I won't name drop who it was, but just the word of team. And I think that's a couple of people mentioned that and that's really critical to me is that I'm only as good as my team is, right? And so, when I think of building principles, system principles, directors, system directors, both in the academic side and the operational side, we're only as good as we are collaborating. We're only as good as we are working together and just wanna take a moment to thank everybody who deals with my obsessive nature on certain things about where the bus runs and all that kind of stuff, right? And so that's part of my job is to make sure that things happen and when they don't, I take ownership of that and that happens frequently, right? We're not perfect as someone said and I'm not perfect for sure. But I think we really have built a collaborative culture in the district where we are working actively together. So I think it really does matter and it makes a difference in sort of for me but I think in a broader sense, it makes a difference for the work that we can do that we can't actively disagree. We can work together and we can have tough moments and we can continue to work, move forward for the work of kids. And I would include the entire faculty and staff in that as well as the school committee, school committees I should say that to a couple of people mentioned, we haven't always agreed and I think the fact that we've been able to move forward regardless has been critical. Disagreements, not a bad thing. Disagreement to the point where we don't move forward on something and we're not doing what's right for kids. That's where it gets complicated and I have not experienced that in some time in terms of, how I've experienced the work of the committee. The third thing is, I do appreciate the larger community in terms of the values. It's not that Amherst-Palm-Levitt issues may always agree on things. I think we have tangible evidence that that's not always the case but I think at its core, they are communities that care about kids and have particular focus on students who are underserved either historically or currently or both which is often the case underserved in our four communities. And so that matches where I come from in terms of values and that makes it for all the challenges that people describe, a community that does feel like a match and something that I would wanna commit to. And the last thing, and this is gonna sound perhaps goofy again, I'm not as well prepared as I would have liked to have been for this, but there's never dull moments, right? It's intellectually incredibly stimulating and that's not to scoff at because I use the word leaders, I know a lot of people use the word administrators and that's fine and both are fair but you can get lost in administrative items and never get to the core pieces. And so this community and both, and I mean the larger community, it's even my leadership team, they'll never let me do that, right? There's always things to do that have to do directly with kids, directly with our students directly with how to improve their lives that continues to be a focus despite all the town meetings and town council meetings and all those other things at its core, it is a really stimulating job, and one might argue over-stimulating at certain points but that's okay. But I think we are always striving to be better and I think to kind of paraphrase what someone said before, we have always people who are gonna hold us accountable to continue to improve and that's a good thing, right? And that's something that really, again, speaks to me in terms of my professional growth and our collaborative professional growth. So I appreciate all the confidence that you shared with me and incredibly kind comments that you shared tonight and I just continue to look forward and continue to improve our district and continue to improve outcome and experiences for all of our students. So thank you very much, I appreciate it. And with that, once there are any further comments, I would entertain a motion to adjourn Union 26. I move to adjourn Union 26. Is there a second? Second. Oops. Moved by Stancer, seconded by, I'm gonna give it to Mr. Menino and we'll do roll call vote, Ms. Stancer. Stancer, aye. Mr. Menino. Menino, aye. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer, aye. Ms. McDonald. Ms. McDonald, aye. And Demling, aye. That's the unanimous Union 26 is adjourned. Turning it back to Ms. McDonald. Thank you. So continuing on with our regional school committee agenda, we don't have any minutes to approve. So we will proceed with public comment and this packet is posted on the website on the regional school committee agendas page and I will share my screen. Are folks seeing me? Yes, okay. It's mentioned that document is posted on the regional school committee agendas webpage and we did receive some comments related to Amherst elementary schools. So just note for members of the public, if you didn't see your comment in there, they, your comment will be included in the next Amherst school committee meeting. And now our next item is a superintendent's update. So I'll turn it over to Dr. Morris for that. Sure, a couple of things. So on Friday afternoon, we received guidance, actually not from DESI, but from DPH and Department of Public Health on graduations. The summary is that for schools, our size indoor graduations are not viable. We might not be preferable regardless, but they're not viable because of caps on number of people can be in indoor space. But outdoor graduations do seem quite viable. So since we got that guidance on Friday afternoon, we've been in touch with a couple of venues, a couple of our higher education partners, trying to explore what sites may be possible for an outdoor graduation. One way or the other, we will have an outdoor graduation for our high school students, at least desirable, but maybe not scenario would be doing it at the high school, perhaps in the parking lot that the fields, we don't want to have a graduation in the fields and then not be able to play sports the season after, which is a likely outcome. So we're still exploring what's possible, what's out there. Thousand seats doesn't do much for aeration. We'd be cautious about the use of our fields, but we are hoping to have a venue that may not be at the site of Amherst Regional High School, but is in a local area and provides for a really rich experience. So I just want to note that these, I talk about learning, right? So last spring I said, these seniors have had just about the hardest experience of ending a high school career that could be imagined. And I think I have to take that back and not to, I don't want to do the comparative piece, but I think this year senior class having their junior year interrupted and then much of their senior year in the same way, we want to make sure they go out with a bang and but we want to do it in a safe way. And that's why we're looking at different venues and different possibilities. So we've been at work at that since Friday when we received the guidance and we'll get back to folks as we kind of narrow down our choices. You know, it's obviously complicated. Not every venue is open to having large groups of people come and it has to be pretty big if we want to spread people out. What we've seen some other districts do is they have identified some venues but they're really limiting, they're doing one of two things, if not both, they're either limiting ticketing to a very low number of guests per person because every guest group will have to be, you know, apart from every other guest group and or they're limiting attendance to do two graduations. In other words, one for, for instance, last names A through L and another graduation directly after for last names M through Z to reduce the number of people there. So depending on our venue, we'll look at all of our options and, you know, get together and make the best decision but, you know, just want to be clear it's not a drive-through graduation that we're planning, it'll be an outdoor graduation. And again, we just want to get a site that's going to maximize the benefits and minimize some of the challenges of doing that during COVID but we want to just acknowledge how hard it's been for that senior class. It's been hard for a lot of people but I think particularly when you think about the last year and a quarter of your experience being virtual for many students that's been a real extreme challenge. There's a hand up before I go on. I think Ms. McDonald's chewing so I'm just gonna call on you, Mr. Demling, if that's okay. Well, we gave you an extension all of a sudden you're power hungry at the open meeting. So thank you, thank you for saying that one way or the other we will have an outdoor graduation. That is really great to hear. I mean, I'm sure a lot of seniors and senior parents will be happy with it. Obviously, it's challenging with distance and parking and all that. And I've already gotten a bunch of messages about what about Plum Brook Fields?  That's huge. And once you get into all these things is the logistics is much harder than any of these things seem at the, there was no perfect solution. It's just what I'm trying to say but I appreciate you and the high school team making every effort to make this as good of an experience as it can be for this class that has lost so much. So thank you very much. Thanks for saying that, yeah. And the field piece is just, we live in New England, it's tough, right? We can't guarantee that it won't rain for five days directly before it. And at least for fields that, some of you been on the committee long enough to remember when the fields were the predominant issue at school committee meetings for a while and so we have to be really cautious about the fields that we have, the current condition of those fields and some long-term impacts. So that's, you know, I think a lot of people say, oh, we just do them in the high school fields. And we thought about that and talked to people who are more knowledgeable that on fields than us and they express some pretty significant concerns about long-term damage that could be created not because anything's doing wrong but just lots of chairs on fields and we can't undo our plans the day before if it rains a lot and it's really swampy and long-term damage. So that's where we're struggling, not struggling, that's not the right word, we're in its infancy, it'll be a quick fast path but trying to find a site that doesn't have the dual implications of perhaps long-term damage to, there are non-seniors who would potentially be wanting to use those fields in the fall. So that's where our balance is, but we're working on it. We have a couple of leads on locations that are outside the auspices of the region but with mental fees that we are well within our budget. So that's where we are. Hopefully in two weeks I have more of an update for you because there's a lot of work that needs to happen between whenever we settle on our date and all the logistics that go into place. Next thing is we had fantastic feedback on our professional development data was last week and Kimmy Carlos was the keynote speaker, she was outstanding, it was like 4.8 out of five in terms of the staff responses to her and we are actively thanks to Doreen Cunningham who is reconnected with Kimmy to potentially do some family and then student outreach events so that the professional development that our staff is receiving, which is so powerful on diversity, equity, inclusion could be more folks in our community could have access to that. So more soon on that, but thanks to Doreen for her work on not just putting together the PD day but also for extending that out and seeing if we can do some more community events as well. Today, one of the highlights for me, actually definitely the highlight for me, Simon Lotz, who's a high school social studies teacher, I was fortunate enough to be invited to his class this afternoon. And in his class, Judy, I believe it's but Taeyang is my guess, I didn't hear that, I missed the first five minutes, so I missed her introduction. She is the author of the light of days, the untold stories of women resistance fighters and Hitler's ghettos. She was a guest speaker in that Holocaust class this afternoon and I was able to stay for about half an hour. It was just if you read the New York Times frequently, there was a piece a couple of days ago previewing her book, which is coming out next month. I know I'm not an expert, but I know a fair amount of this topic, but the untold stories I think is an appropriate term about the women resistance, the part I heard was about real stories of women in the Warsaw ghetto and how integral they were in terms of the resistance and I learned a tremendous amount. I know the students learned a tremendous amount and sometimes you have authors to come in and sometimes just because you're a good author doesn't mean you're a good speaker, right? And vice versa, she happens to be both. So it was just a really neat experience. Thanks to Simon for the outreach and finding this author to come in but and also inviting me and I know a couple of the assistant, one of the assistant principals, the principal were also able to come just for a piece of history that's underreported, right? It's not that the Holocaust necessarily is underreported or the Warsaw ghetto, but the female part of that is as someone who learned a lot about her as a kid, that was never emphasized. If anything, it was probably looking back de-emphasized and someone who's bringing those stories to light on a national scale to be in front of our students was just fabulous. So on a personal level, I appreciated a tremendous amount but I know that the same was shared by the students who were there as well. So thanks to Simon and thanks to Judy for coming. I want to thank more thank yous. The town has graciously, and I think this was shared by email with the committees, open a vaccine clinic that is tomorrow night is the first round of that, both in Amherst and in Northampton, which has convened some of our staff members live across the river. So since it's the evening clinic, that's helpful. We were appreciated. It's just dedicated just to educators in Hampshire County. I know many staff members have signed up. Sort of the interesting thing is we've put it out and I put it out again tonight as a reminder, they're still open slots. So any staff member who's watching this, started to ask you to check your email at night, but it's a good one to check. We put it out yesterday afternoon. It also is a sign that I think our educators, and I said this in a different format last week have done an absolutely astounding job of informal networking around staff members who would like to get vaccines, finding, I'm aware that there's Google sheets out there that I've not seen, but I'm aware of people working with others. The early birds waking up early, the night owls staying up till the appointments at CVS get online at midnight or 12 30. So the fact that, we sent this out yesterday afternoon and there's still open slots, lets me know that anecdotally I've heard this, but that many of our staff members who are interested in getting a vaccine have been successful either in getting in the queue or getting their first dose for a shot already. So I wanna thank the town, but also thank our staff for kind of the informal organizing that has contributed to anecdotally hundreds of our staff already are one dose in. I know the UMass clinic has also had appointments and many of our staff members in the last two weeks have been able to access it. So I feel really good about where we are when we were two or three weeks ago. And I think we were in that, ooh, the state's making it eligible, ours people are going to get appointments. And I'm not saying this is perfect and this is not a comment on the state or federal government and how they're approaching vaccine distribution. But I just know locally, I think people are anecdotally sharing much more relief that they've been in the queue or they've received their first shot and have their date for their second one. So it gives me relief that our staff members are feeling more confident about the vaccination opportunities that have been available in the Valley, particularly through CVS, frankly. So thanks to President Biden, which I should thank him because immediately CVS made it, teachers eligible, Massachusetts took a week. And so many people are in much better shape with that. But thanks to Emma Dragon and Paul Bachmann because they're, they dedicated the greatest amount allowed in Massachusetts. So a quarter of what the community center in Amherst is getting for the next couple of weeks is going to be available to school staff. So that's really helping our folks out. I know many people have signed up from our district as well for this week, for tomorrow night. Staying with the general topic, a couple of weeks ago, we had a presentation on pool testing, what we've noticed it's kind of a inverse relationship in some ways of the vaccine. We're noticing a declining number or just declining percentage and number of staff members are wanting to participate in pool testing. Some of them are voicing that they already are on the vaccination route or they're fully vaccinated at this point. They don't feel a need to be participating in pool testing. We're now, last week, we were well under half of our staff. It was about a third of our staff. We're participating and some people who've been signed up got there and said, I don't need this anymore. They felt much more confident. And so the nurses made a recommendation to me over the weekend to not continue with pool testing because they're seeing the participation rates relatively low. They also expressed significant concern about the workload with students coming back in the building. This is taking all of one person's time, one of our nurses and significant parts of everyone else's time. And they're not seeing the sort of the benefits at the same level. And with students coming back in the building, there are a lot of concerns that they'd be able to do their core admission as well as do pool testing. And there was concerns about the cost. So they made a recommendation to me to maintain our by next now symptomatic testing for any staff member or any student who consents to have a symptomatic testing on site. But to discontinue our pool testing project because they're just, they're not seeing the level of participation they don't believe it's sustainable once we have students in the building starting on the April 5th to be working with students and doing the pool piece. So that's the route we're going for now. As I said, there's a number of other districts who are having similar experiences. I talked to one on Friday where they're under 20% of participation and from a pooled aspect, if you're not getting enough of the pool, people in the pool then the pool itself actually doesn't hold a lot of value in terms of the testing. So it's certainly a conversation we can go back to, as the further we move along, but at the current time, that was the recommendation nurses and they wanted to be really, or the nurse leader and the folks she's working with, some of the other nurses in the district. I think the other thing that they wanted to be really clear about is this is not at all lowering the commitment to health and safety in the district. It's that they're finding this is actually pulling them away from some of the core mission, especially when the schools where kids are back in person. That it's taking all of their time and they wanna be tending to students and staff throughout the school day. So that's the way we are. I know there was a presence, I think it was two weeks ago, if I'm remembering correctly, on pool testing and two weeks later with more folks in buildings, it's becoming more clear to them that this is not with declining numbers, declining participation and no decline in terms of their workload and what their professional opinion is. I wanna say that I'm supporting their recommendation to me. I think when we get to the summer and fall and rethink things, we may be in a different place in terms of what the cost structure is, the time and energy, it's clear that the companies that are doing this are very new at doing this and it's no criticism, but they went from paper consents to electronic consents after all the paper consents were already in. And I use that as an example because it's a non-confidential example of the level of overhead and how much time it's taking and how many hoops they're going through. And I think that's also negatively contributing to the staff participation as well. So that's sort of where we are on that, but I know when we presented it two weeks ago, we said we'd come back with an update and that's where we are. I have a couple other just very quick ones. Joe Truss who is worked with our, he's a trainer as well as a school leader. He does a lot of work on white supremacy culture and schools and he's led a set of workshops at a number of our staff and I know now Ms. McDonald has participated in maybe others, but Ms. McDonald was there on Saturday. So we chatted a little bit about her experience. It's been really well received by our staff and he's gonna offer a part two for our district on April 22nd, 23rd. So we're gonna continue that work because for some people he's done the introductory and then people are ready for the next layer of work. So we have 30 slots in that course and I know Doreen has reached out with staff and people are filling those out. Three more quick ones. Good news is that our internet speed has doubled in the last week. So thanks to Jerry Champagne who's been working to on how to increase the bandwidth given the students coming back in, the nature of that more people may be on doing meets from the building, in terms of staff members, they may be connecting with kids who are remote. Some students may be accessing remote classes when they're in school, the secondary level. And so he has worked creatively to increase our bandwidth. So thank you, Jerry, if you're watching because that is gonna make a huge difference for us in our implementation of technology planning. Next one is we have our next round, latest round of, we just looked at some spaces we hadn't tested before in terms of Airflow. There was a couple of spaces that we were not planning on using, but we wanted to, now that we have more kids coming in, ought to know what they were and just tentatively as good results by the end of the week we'll be able to share those out once that we get them formally. But informally, spaces like the high school cafeteria tested to the good, some spaces at Krocker Farm that we wanted to have some small group rooms as well as some larger group rooms, tested to the good above four air changes an hour. The middle cafeteria at Fort River tested at four changes an hour, because now we're looking at like what spaces can adults eat in? So it's not just the instructional areas that we'd already tested, but we wanna think are there large group areas where adults could be in seated six feet or more apart and not have to be in their classroom eating lunch or outside, outside is preferable, but it's gonna rain and be windy and be cold at some point in the spring. So we're getting more and more of those spaces online, which is great. So thanks to Rupert Roy Clark and his team because they've been working with our folks and I think that'll be really helpful. So again, none of these are particularly relevant for like core classroom spaces. Those were all done, but some of the auxiliary spaces and particularly the spaces for adults to be in when they're not with their class was an emerging need. So we got some good news on that yesterday and more information coming out again by the end of the week. And my last one is there's certainly a lot of discussion about six feet, three feet with the CDC last Friday changing some of their recommended guidance also limiting the guidance for dividers which we thankfully never put a lot of stock in in terms of those student dividers you might see on TV and they said they don't really make much of a difference and not recommended at this point. I think you'll hear this later at the elementary level as a regional meeting but I'll just say it at the elementary level we have been able to achieve six feet of separation at the regional level we are striving for it. You'll hear a little more why a little bit later excuse me as to why we can't sort of be super clear on where we are in terms of six feet or less than six feet. And some of that's because at the high school level in particular we have a good sense now of the yield of how many students are planning to return in person but it's core specific. It's not like the elementary level or reorganizing the whole system for that. So you'll hear a little more of that but we are striving. I will say that the majority of districts in Massachusetts are settled on three feet. Our commitment is to be either at six or as close to six as possible. And we're trying really hard to get to six feet everywhere as best we can. You'll hear it from the principals a little bit later about that but the CDC news was obviously a big news story not just in educational circles but it was front headline of many newspapers and nightly news shows. And we are aiming for there. We are not settling and just saying we're gonna do three feet because CDC said we could we're still aiming for as many feet as possible. And I think we'll be pretty close to six everywhere is my opinion based on the yield we're seeing of students at the middle school and high school and some that who want to return in person. So you'll hear more about that later but I at least wanted to set the stage by the high school folks around the line so they can hear me say that before they get on a little bit we're running a little behind schedule for those folks so I apologize. But I didn't want to not mention the CDC piece because it's certainly still fresh in people's minds. And that's the end of my update. Are there any questions or comments from the committee? Almost for the superintendent. Ms. Spitzer. Sorry, thank you so much for the update. Couple questions related to the vaccine. So I'm so happy to hear that there seems to be enough or at least implied by the data you're looking at that there's enough vaccine to meet the demand. A question about that demand is like, have we been seeing any hesitancy on the part of teachers and getting vaccinated and going forward? I know we're not, I don't, I don't know. But as long as it's under emergency use there's no potential to require folks. But I'm wondering as a district for two reasons. Are we tracking it? One is just knowing that often folks have strong reaction after the second dose so it would be helpful to be able to plan and be able to absorb a lot of absences after a big group of teacher that gets their vaccine at one big Amherst-Banks Center site and then the two weeks or sorry, four weeks later we don't want them all out sick without being able to have support in place to deal with that. So just two questions about kind of how we're communicating with staff about vaccines either in terms of whether or not they're open to getting it or also whether or not we're planning for potential sick days shortly after the second dose. Yeah, so I think that's the benefit in some ways of a disorganized, dysregulated system that people have signed up in is that not everybody's on the same day. I think the downside of like, I've seen some of the districts, and I know some people are getting the shot tomorrow and I applaud that. Like we want people, I want people who are comfortable getting vaccinated to get vaccinated, right? I think that's a good thing. But because it's not all in the same day I think it's a lot easier. I do worry about places where all the staff got vaccinated they're all getting their shots in the same day and you're like, what's the day after that look like? I think the reality is most of our staff there's a regional meeting. So the majority of our staff would have their second shot well before the return sometime in late April. Just if you think of the number of weeks most of our staff I think who are interested in getting a shot have gotten a shot. And so if you forward that three or four weeks we're still on the right side of the return. So I think of the elementary schools we could, when we're at that meeting Ms. Spitzer I think that might be a little bit more complicated. But I think the good news is that nobody's there wasn't one date where like half of our staff received a vaccination. So I think it will be scattered and we are the HR staff has been amazing at finding permanent subs who are gonna be with school specific permanent subs who are gonna be there all spring. So they learn the protocols, they're part of the trainings and can jump right in. On the first part of your question about hesitancy I wanna thank the APA they've done a really good job of outreach to their members. We sort of made a decision. I don't think they might be saying it. Apologize if they do. Cause they had an info sheet that I saw that was a positive encouraging info sheet about the science behind vaccines and these vaccines. We opted, I opted some of them. I opted that they should send it out. I thought if I sent it out it might feel like slightly coercive cause of my role. And you're right as it's an experimental level we can't require it at the current time. So I didn't want any staff member feeling like it was implied that they needed to get a vaccine to return to in-person work. Certainly CDC going back to there they suggest that you don't need it. But I saw the document cause they shared it with me and I think it had strong indication. And I think the first thing I said a while back about the vaccines is that these informal teacher networks have been incredibly helpful. No one's been telling them to do that. This camera is not, I've not, right? It's Mr. Slovin, none of the principles but I think that there have been informal ways by which staff members have been able to have accurate information about the vaccines to allow for people to make the choice that they think is in their best interest. So I've gotten a couple of specific questions and I've always forwarded them to like public health people like Robin Supernaut or Evan Dragon because I know what I am and I know what I'm not. I think, I've made my decision about where I think it's a good idea for me to get vaccinated but I feel like the appropriate role is to have people more closer to the public health who have literally been in vaccine clinics have seen the reactions are able to speak more specifically to science to be able to answer those questions. So I don't think there's been broad scale resistance. I've not heard any reports of that from any corner of our organization. Do I think we have 100% of our folks getting vaccinated? I do not, right? I wanna be really clear about that. Like I think that every industry, I mean, not to put you on the spot, Ms. Spitzer but you've said that, you know, in public meetings and you work for a hospital system, right? And I think that's, we're no different than any other system like that but I think there's a lot of inertia that people think vaccination is a good idea in our schools. Sorry, Sam, you're happening to be on this is superintendent update, you don't have to jump in but I know you're at the school level would you agree with that general sense of things? Okay, yeah. So that's my perspective on it. And, you know, I think the big thing and then I'll close on to another question is making sure all school staff realize that they can get vaccinated, right? So so much even the language on like the CVS website is like K to 12 teachers and then, right? So like, you know, I wanna thank, you know I've bugged Rupert and frankly, Ben but the other hat on enough with early morning texts and there's appointments at CVS, you know like all that kind of stuff because we wanna make sure that our folks in facilities our paraeducators are folks that when you look at who's listed it's like it always starts with teachers and then it gets to all the other school roles. And so I think, you know, I don't wanna people that's not our messaging but that's the messaging in all the state documents and all the CVS website. And we wanna make sure that all of our staff recognize that they're eligible to get vaccinated and they do interact with their colleagues they do interact with kids, even if it's less directly. So that's really been a lot of the focus of the outreach is making sure that everyone in the organization recognize it like tonight I sent an email right before this meeting started about the Linux tomorrow and I kind of emphasized this isn't just for any group it's for any staff member in our district. Cause I think in every organization there's people who feel more on the inside of things like that and people who feel more on the outside of it and we wanna recognize that there is no inside and outside on this. This is for everyone who works in the school. Mr.  Yeah, so I just wanted to comment a little bit on this the way in which we talk about safety and social distancing and this just this whole idea of three feet versus six feet. I'm not asking you to take a binary position on it but that is kind of my point, which is, I think like the information we have with COVID and trying to make a continuously evolving assessment of risk and safety is that, none of us are expert in every single area and so it's just satisfying to the human mind if we just boil it down to one thing, right? And just, do you have six feet of distance if you do then it's safe? Which, I think anybody here would, I think would agree is it's not that simple, right? And so, I watched a 60 minutes documentary on a district in Georgia where they were talking about some districts that don't have mask policies and that have been open throughout the entire pandemic and I mean, I guess this shouldn't surprise me but it shocks me given that we just presume, right? That we're doing that. So like I would feel safer with a strong mask policy at three feet than I would with no masks at six feet, right? And then we get into all the other things that we've done that have made our schools safely and all the work over the years from our facilities department that has kept our systems up to date to where we can now do this testing that we have the ACH that's more than four. And in addition now we have most staff are going to be vaccinated. So it's, and the CDC talks about this, right? They talk about these layered mitigation strategies and how it's not just, you know, that this, if you, as long as you do this number that everything else is perfect. So I just think as we kind of evolve and socialize that discussion and we set people up in their confidence level for the fall and for our summer programming, I think it's also good to talk about, you know, comparatively speaking, we have very good above average beyond CDC requirement level risk mitigation strategies, particularly with our air exchange and adherence with those other safety protocols.  And I felt like that was the right thing to do based on the information we had available. But now, you know, with information evolving research we didn't have at the time, I think to model being continuously empirical about it and updating our thinking process is important to have in that kind of continual conversation with the public. Yeah, and if I could comment briefly on that and I don't want it to play over because I know we're already behind schedule. Thank you for that, Mr. Deming. I think the thing I'd say is that, you know, I don't want to repeat what I said, but I think it is worth it that we're trying to maximize the amount of distance, right? Like, so I think no one really knows, right? There's some element of like, we're still accumulating information. And I think CDC got to a place where they felt like they had enough information, you know, for them to be able to come from making the recommendation. But I don't think anyone would suggest that, well, because it says three feet, let's not go further if we can, right? That seems like strange to me that we would say, well, we could go three feet, there's no, but we could also do four and a half or five or six with the number of students returning and we're just going to choose not to, like that seems odd to me, right? You know, I think it's given what we know, given the science that we know, given the fact that no one is 100% knowledgeable of everything at this moment, what's the series of risk management tools that we're going to put in place? So one is masking, which you mentioned, one is ventilation, which you mentioned, one, you know, which we're not talking about that much, although the high school will talk about it a bit is, you know, reducing the number of different sections that we're having. So, you know, students aren't going through a day with six different classes throughout their day. So I think what you're going to see, you know, in all of our presentations tonight, although the brief is that, you know, we are approaching this in a way to minimize risk. And I think we're trying to take every step we can to minimize that to the greatest extent possible. And I think that's sort of our cornerstone and how we're approaching this and we'll continue to do that. But I think you're right is that there's not, you know, the one formula, you know, is great. I mean, it's interesting, I heard a superintendent the other day say, now we're going to go four and a half feet, right? Which is sort of like halfway between three and six. And I'm not trying to like belittle anyone or make any negative comments, but I think the idea is can we maximize as much as we can while still maintaining our instructional programming, the amount of space and all the other mitigation strategies we have. And that's what we're going to plan to do. I'm going to try to keep us moving because we're pretty far behind now. So I hope folks don't have any burning questions, but Dr. Morse is always available by email as well and phone call, so as we well know. For a chairs update, I think I'll try to be, I'll be quick. I was just going to mention that, which Dr. Morse already did that I participated now for the complete dismantling white supremacy workshop with Joe Tress and his team. It was a phenomenal learning experience. There were about 30 other educators from ARPs and I know that Ms. Lord participated, I think last summer in one as well. And there were about sometime in the last 12 months, 18 months, with equally large or even larger number of educators. And I think in thinking about this, that was a really tremendous learning journey for myself. And I really do look forward to continuing the work as a committee together on dismantling white supremacy in our schools and partnering, collaborating with the teachers, educators, APEA and the entire district and working on that. One of the, I mentioned this to Dr. Morse, one of the eye-opening things I think that myself and several of the other educators came away with because we participate in this with educators from all over the country. And I think there was about 170 people in total. And one of the things was listening in the small breakouts to what are the challenges that other districts are facing. And in many, many cases, the challenges that they're facing in this journey are akin to sort of where we might have been five or 10 years ago. So it's heartening to see, it doesn't diminish the amount of work that's ahead of us, but I think it's also heartening to see and acknowledge the tremendous accomplishments and sort of the progress that we've made as a district and a community over the years. So lots to do, but we're on the right track. And I'm going to now turn it over to our next item, School Committee Announcements. Are there any announcements from committee members? Ms. Lark. Thank you, Chair MacDonald. I want to take this moment to say that I condemn the horrific and hateful targeting and murdering of Asian women last week. Not only that, but according to stopaapihate.org, from March 19th of 2020 to February 28th, there were 3,795 incidents of reported harassment, bullying and targeting of our Asian community. And we know, I know that for every one report, there's a ton that aren't reported. So Chair MacDonald and I have drafted a statement in support of our Asian and Asian American community and families, and I'm hoping that we can vote on that at our next Regional School Committee meeting. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Deming. Yeah, so thank you for bringing that forward, Ms. Lark, Ms. MacDonald. So if there's urgency to passing something like this, the open meeting law doesn't prevent us from taking new business up, as long as it's not controversial, or we don't have any reasonable expectation that the public is going to see it as controversial. And I mean, so it's really up to the Chair to decide, personally, I don't see any reason why we would expect this to be controversial in terms of, you know, committee support for it. And it would be really good to, I mean, I just think, to hear that, given the, just given the seriousness and the urgency of the situation. Yeah, thanks for bringing that up. I'll sort of look around the screen to see how others on the committee feel. If it's something that we wanted to take up tonight, we could add that. I would recommend if we add it to between item C and D, and otherwise we could address it in two weeks as our next meeting. So how do, what do folks think about adding that to our agenda tonight? Seeing a lot of head nods and thumbs up. Okay, so in the interest of all of our guests that are attending this meeting, if it's okay with you, Ms. Lorde, we'll put that after item C before we get to item D. Okay, thank you. Any other announcements? No, okay. So we'll move on to our new and continuing business. And first up is our FY22 budget vote. And there, as we tee this up before I hand it over, hand the reins over to you just to clarify, there was a significant amount of material that was posted online today on the budget portion of the ARPS website. So the folder and the complete budget document is now available there. What's in the packet tonight are sort of the summary documents that summarize the changes and the key items that we'll be voting on. For viewing public that would like to view all of the details of the budget, it is available online. With that, I'll turn it over to Dr. Morris and Dr. Sark. Yeah, we're gonna be relatively brief tonight. At a core level, there's not a lot of changes to the last time you looked at this in terms of the ads cuts, which is where many people go. And that's not the only part of the budget, but I think it is the part that attracts the most attention in this particular community. There's no reductions or additions that weren't publicly presented last time. The one thing that is a bit different is we made a decision about a recommendation in terms of an assessment method. And maybe I'll speak to that a little bit and Dr. Sark can certainly add. But essentially what we're recommending to you is to use the 65% method. And there's a couple of reasons why we're recommending that. And this was in the packet as well with more information. We kept the information in terms of the town of Amherst, we met the 2.1% increased guidance that we've now received from the town of Amherst. At the last four town meeting, town of Pelham indicated it would be okay at 45, 55 or 65 that they plan for this. And I know at Leverett, the Leverett folks, not you, Bethany, but at the four town meeting indicated some concerns about this. But in real terms, it's a 0.49 reduction, which is essentially 2% below the guidance that we received from the town of Leverett. Town of Leverett gave us guidance of no more than 1.5% increase. So I think for the folks in Schuetsbury, they advocated for the 65%. And I think the 65% because all the other numbers went up, because Amherst went up, you know, it's sort of interesting how it plays out financially, but we feel like this has the best chance of passing the four towns at town meeting and the town council. We feel like it does keep within the guidelines, the budget guidelines and real numbers that we receive from all four communities. There is no perfect compromise here. I mean, I think that's really clear. If we could propose something everyone would be super happy with, we would do it. I don't think that that's out there. I don't think there's a perfect solution, but we do think this is kind of the middle ground solution that keeps within budget guidelines, particularly for two towns that would prefer us not to be at 65, it does get us a 65 in a town that does. And again, it stays within what we heard from the town of Pellum. So that's what we're recommending to you tonight, just to back up a step. What we're asking you to do is whether you agree with it or not, we can adjust it if you want Doug to look at a different number that was been presented prior. Is the votes for those of you who don't know is you have to vote to amend the regional agreement for one year for this adjusted assessment method. In other words, this is not what's in the regional agreement. So the school committee, if they agree with this, we'd have to vote on the assessment method that's used. And this is in the packet, the language. Thank you, Dr. Slaughter is in the packet. The raw numbers per town of the assessment also needs to be voted. And then the debt needs to be voted. So it's actually three votes, one on the assessment method, one on the operating budget and one on the capital budget that needs to be voted. Again, at a core level, there hasn't been any changes to ads cuts. There have been some adjustments based on, Amherst giving a little more, us trying to reduce a little bit, use a little bit less choice to make ourselves more sustainable. But in terms of the personnel implications, they remain the same from two weeks ago. Dr. Slaughter, what did I miss? Nothing really. I will say on the, I'm noticing on the budget, on the motion language, I don't think I put in the correct dollar amount for budget. So I will have to give you the correct dollar amount. You know, for the, so I try to, you know, the budget language that we have to vote is actually very, very specific, which I therefore copy it from the previous year. And I think I edited the fiscal year, but not the actual budget number. So I will make sure to get that to you when we get to that step. But otherwise, as far as the mechanics of what we're talking about, the nuts and bolts are the same as what we talked about last time. Doug, I'd recommend before we open up for comments and questions, if you could, when you do get the correct numbers, just if you could project them so that, you know, both the committee and then the community could see the actual numbers that the committee would be voting on. At this point, we open up for any questions or comments from any committee members. Thank you for Dr. Morris for the explanation of why you went with this budget. I just wanna say I'm looking at last time where we had a version A and version B. What I wanna express is my disappointment at not going with something on version A, period, because for folks listening, that's a $21,000 difference between what could have been in the district and what we're gonna be probably voting on. I mean, what we're gonna be voting on tonight is 65% on the version B budget. I'm just really, really sad that that money is not gonna be in the budget and that we couldn't work out, not the administration, I mean, the four towns could not work out a way to have that money be there. And that's all I wanna say. Ms. Lorde. This might be the simplest, most obvious question, but we are voting on just the regional, right, middle and secondary, because I see some elementary school stuff in there, but you can vote on one section without having the other. Does that make sense kind of? Yeah, so yes, tonight is just the regional budget, just the seven through 12 district budget. I think where it gets a little confusing is that when we're doing assessment methods, actually the minimum contribution gets funky here to use very technical terms, sorry, because it somewhat bases it on the town, which again, then gets split between the elementary and the secondary and the elementary part of it, what we don't vote on actually has implications for what the minimum contribution amount is of the region, which then affects the assessments to each member town. So generally what happens is if the minimum contribution is going up at the region, it's getting more expensive for a town, it's generally the flip is having at their elementary level in terms of how the state calculates it. So there is a connection there, but tonight really all we're talking about is the regional school budget. Yeah, sorry if that wasn't clear. It's regional budgets is cumbersome to say the least. I'll ask a question that a community member asked me and I wasn't able to appropriately answer. And thank you, Dr. Slaughter, for responding to my email this afternoon. Well, I know you were getting ready for busy with many other things, but I'll ask the question and ask if you can explain it out loud in case others are wondering that. But for folks that are connecting the dots and trying to, or trying to connect the dots across the various presentation, budget presentations that we've had, including as Ms. Seeker referenced, two weeks ago we had the option A, option B, as well as the one that was in our packets even before that. So we had three different versions last week and now we have this one. And the question came about sort of that top line. So in our packets tonight, it's the 33,113,777 dollars. If that is our level services budget, why does, why and how does that change between some of those different versions if that's our level services budget? And I believe I followed your explanation in the email response. So I'm wondering if you could walk us through that. Sure. So a couple of things. Part of it is that there are a number of funding sources that we apply in the, in the operating budget. And so it shows up in that, in that operating budget line. So for example, school choices one, we've classically put in, into that operating budget. So when we apply school choice, it reduces our operating budget requirement. And so it lowers the total number. We do that with some other things like we apply circuit breaker and other funding sources of that sort. So when we look in the middle section of most of the charts we have where it talks about the revenue, that's not every revenue source in some respects. And so that's one key difference there. It causes me to think about how we might present it in the future to make it a little more obvious when we make some changes, especially late breaking changes like we had this time relative to school choice. But by virtue of having, this additional resources available from the town of Amherst, we have to sort of calculate, well, what impact does that have once you sort of run it backward through the assessment method. And then, Supernight, Supernight and I spoke about what's an appropriate sort of change to make whether it be to look at our cuts list and restore something or whether looking at our school choice usage for the year was a better plan. And I think for the long-term health of the balance in our school choice, we opted to use school choice. And so as a result, what happens is that line that says operating budget, even though we didn't change anything about actual work people do or those sort of things that are involved in what people think of as level services, that number did go up because the support from an outside source, meaning not really outside, but the school choice source, we lowered that support and therefore we have to appropriate more money to make that happen. And so that cascades its way through and shows up in the assessment that's required of the four communities. So I'm hoping that helps kind of paint the picture. It was a different choice that could have been made or offered as a suggestion to you was to restore something from the cuts list, which would have changed that $1.2 million number. It would have had the same material effect at the sort of bottom of the charts that we have, but nonetheless doesn't, either choice has the same monetary impact. Thank you. Any other questions? Mr. Deming? Yeah, a few. So, one brief comment is I think strategically this is the right way to do it, given our consternation about next year, not this budget we're voting on, but the budget of the year after that. I mean, who knows what exactly we're gonna get from the Biden failout bill. Hopefully it lasts and it lasts a couple of fiscal years, but we don't know. And the operational budget that we're gonna get from the four towns next year is obviously very much a concern. So, I think banking that in terms of this kind of the school choice fund, school choice, I always get a concern the public doesn't really understand what we're talking about here because it took me like two and a half years to understand what happened on school committee. But basically, when students choice in from other towns, we get $5,000 a year from those districts. And so it builds up into this kind of like side fund, which you can then use every year to help your operational budget. You don't wanna get into trouble we're using too much more than what you're taking in otherwise you end up in deficit. That's my five second summary of school choice. But basically, I think it's a good idea to do that. It's hard, obviously, when you're cutting more than a million dollars, but that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to smooth out the pain. Let's see, I had a second question that I completely forgot about. So I'll just ask my smaller one to Dr. Morris. Can you, community member asked about the arms bilingual therapist? Obviously, our committee is very concerned about mental health, emotional health and supporting all of our students, including our English language learners. I know that cuts are never as simple as they're either enrollment based or level services cut. And it's always hard to know exactly from just seeing on paper what the impact to the student experience will be and are those services being provided elsewhere. So could you just talk about what's the impact of students is of that particular cut? Yeah, so thank you for the question. So that particular cut is around a psychologist whose sole role is to do evaluations of students who are bilingual Spanish English. It wasn't a direct service position. We had it open, we couldn't get an applicant with the skill sets that we needed. The licensure frankly that we needed to be successful. We'd love to fill that position. We have been filling that position on an ad-needed basis with contracted staff members. And at this point, we don't have more, it's been posted multiple times and we've not gotten the applicants that we need. So to fulfill it with contracted staff as needed, we'll have no negative impact on individual staff members about how we filled the role. Ideally we like to have people on our staff. We think it's a good thing, but when we can't find them the same services, same in this case evaluations need to be completed as part of a student's educational plan. So while there is some financial savings to it, the same work's going to get done and it would have no impact on individual student evaluations. The students who are bilingual Spanish English will still receive evaluations that are done bilingualy and the work will still be completed. So ideally with this would not be the case separate from finances, but the reality is we can't find the person who can do this work with the skills that we need. We're going to still get the work done, but there actually is some material savings along with it. Thanks. Any other questions? And I think I heard you say that we have to take three separate votes. I feel like I saw four in the packet. Is that, is the fourth a different? That's, did I miss one, Dr. Slaughter? Yeah, so we have the authorization. I didn't scroll down far enough. My mistake. It's budget. It's a capital plan and an assessment and bond authorization. So, so I'm going to share that now updated slide regarding the motion language on the right one. And I'm going to turn to my meeting law because it's two thirds majority of voters present. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. So, so I've not shown what's, what's above, which is the sort of Clifton's version of the budget. But I will point out this actually I'll scroll up and show you one quick thing. So the number we'll vote for budget is actually this number right here, the 31,913,777. So that's the actual in total budget that is being appropriated in and, but the first order of business is actually the assessment method and I think the easiest way to sort of do the actual motion is instead of the word voted, just put I moved to amend and then read the rest of it verbatim from there. You'll see it, I highlighted in yellow here the actual dollar amount on that second motion. I'm hoping everyone can see that fairly easily. Okay. Well, then I will, I will make a motion. I will move to amend section six of the Amherst Pellum Regional School District Agreement by adding subsection J as follows. For fiscal year 2022 only, the alternative operating budget assessment shall be calculated as 65% of a five year average of minimum contributions with the remainder of the assessment allocated to the member towns in accordance with the core pupil method found in section six E of the Amherst Pellum Regional School District Agreement. The five year average of minimum contributions will include the five most recent years or take any other action relative there too. Is there a second? Second. Move by McDonald and second by Demling. Is there any further discussion before Mr. Deming? Yeah, I just wanna say briefly, from a regional school committee member standpoint, I'm voting in support of this assessment method, not because I'm making a personal determination or opinion that it's the fairest. I wanna acknowledge that our member towns don't agree on what is fair and that what is fair is fairly complicated given that our region started many decades ago and then education reform came in 93, emergence with the statutory method that had a wealth factor. And yet even with that wealth factor, there's a different disagreement about whether that wealth factor actually fairly assess as well. And so our obligation, my obligation as a member is to propose something that I think will pass. Like I have to kind of put aside my town bias about fairness and say, we need to come to a consensus about our town supporting a budget. And so that's why I feel like this is the clear choice for that reason, not because it's an assessment of fairness. That's a question that I did, at least for me for this particular motion, doesn't factor in. Any further discussion? So we'll take a roll call vote of the motion on the table. Mr. Denling. Denling, aye. Mr. Harrington. Harrington, aye. Ms. Kenny. Kenny, aye. Ms. Lord. Lord, aye. Ms. Seager. Seager, nay. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer, aye. Ms. Dancer. Dancer, aye. McDonald's, aye. Mr. Sullivan had to leave for an emergency. The motion passes, eight, sorry, seven, yay, one, no, and one, not present. Moving to the next, would somebody else like to read or would I'm happy to continue reading? If I could add one quick thing. Yes. We do have to read all the towns and their assessment values. So whoever does the reading, we'll have to read the numbers associated with each community. Thank you. Ms. Dancer. To read this, I move, this is the budget, correct, that we're doing now? Yes. I move to adopt a budget of 31,913,700, $777 for fiscal year 2022 for the Amherst-Pellum Regional School District and to assess member towns, according to the method in the just approved amendment as follows. Amherst, $16,748,783. Pellum, $929,525. Leverett, $1,465,975. And Schuetsbury, $1,611,137. Second. Moved by Dancer, seconded by McDonald. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none. We move to a roll call vote on the motion. Mr. Demling. Demling, aye. Mr. Harrington. Harrington, aye. Ms. Kenny. Kenny, aye. Ms. Lord. Lord, aye. Ms. Seger. Seger, aye. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer, aye. Stanser. Stanser, aye. In McDonald, aye. The motion passes unanimously 8-0 and 1-9-present. On this one, I'm guessing we need to read the dollar amounts for each town as well. I will move to assess member towns for debt service on previously approved projects. According to the debt schedule for fiscal year 2022 as follows, Amherst, $328,979, Pellum, $26,333, Leverett, $38,594, and Schuetsbury, $31,942. Is there a second? Second. Ms. By McDonald and the second by Seger. Any further discussion? Say none. Move to a roll call vote. Mr. Denling. Denling, aye. Mr. Harrington. Harrington, aye. Ms. Kenny. Kenny, aye. Ms. Lord. Lord, aye. Ms. Seger. Seger, aye. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer, aye. Ms. Stanser. Stanser, aye. McDonald, aye. The motion passes unanimously 8-0 when not present. This one's a lot of reading. I'm happy to do that again. I have a large screen. I move that the district hereby appropriates the sum of $500,000 for the purpose of paying costs of the following projects, including the payment of all costs, incidental or related there too. One, high school exhaust fans in the amount of $90,000. Two, HVAC modifications for Summit Academy and PIP in the amount of $100,000. Three, renovations in the high school girls locker room in the amount of $15,000. Four, renovations of the walk-in cooler and freezer at the high school in the amount of $25,000. Five, parking lot lamp replacement and district offices parking lot resurfacing. The middle school in the amount of $70,000. Six, concrete repairs of exterior stairways and decks. Decks at the middle school in the amount of $40,000. Seven, middle school pump room project part two in the amount of $90,000. Eight, district-wide renewable energy study in the amount of $15,000. Nine, district-wide ADA improvements in the amount of $10,000. 10, district-wide asbestos abatement and management in the amount of $20,000. And 11, district-wide access control and electrical service upgrades in the amount of 25 electrical service upgrades in the amount of $25,000. Said some to be expended at the direction of the regional school district school committee. To meet this appropriation in the district, Treasurer is authorized to borrow said amount under and pursuant to chapter 71, section 16D of the general laws in the district agreement as amended or pursuant to any other enabling authority. Any premium received upon the sale of any bonds or notes approved by this vote, unless any such premium applied to the payment of the cost of issuance of such bonds or notes, may be applied to the payment of cost approved by this vote in accordance with chapter 44, section 20 of the general laws. Thereby, reducing the amount authorized to be borrowed to pay such cost by a like amount. Further voted that within 48 hours from the date on which this vote is adopted, the secretary be and hereby is instructed to notify the board of select and of each of the member towns of this district in writing as to the amount and general purposes of the debt here in authorized as required by chapter 71, section 16D of the general laws and by the district agreement. In addition, the committee shall cause the same information that we published within 10 days after such authorization as it paid notice in a newspaper circulating in the district. Is there a second? Second. I'm a Donald seconded by Demling. Is there any discussion? Mr. Demling. Yeah, I assume when you said further voted, you meant further moved and that you would take that as a friendly amendment? Yes and yes. Thank you. There's no other discussion. We'll move to a roll call vote. Mr. Demling. Demling aye. Mr. Harrington. Harrington abstain. Ms. Kenny. Kenny aye. Ms. Lord. Lord aye. Ms. Sieger. Sieger aye. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer aye. Ms. Dancer. Dancer aye. And McDonald's aye. And the motion passes seven to zero with one abstention and one not present. Is that all of our votes? Yes it is. Great. Thank you. Thank you. And our next item of business is spring sports. And Ms. Stewart is here with us. And so thank you for Ms. Stewart for coming back for, you know, usually she has three seasons this year. She's got four seasons. So appreciate your patience and working through all those different seasons and all the different modifications to all of our athletics, which have been greatly enjoyed by our students. So Ms. Stewart, would you like me to do the slides? Cause I have multiple screens where I am. Sure, that's fine. Okay. I will do that in one second. There we go. So hopefully you can see that Ms. Stewart and you can take us away. Okay. So thanks again for having me. This is my fourth time. So hopefully four for four, but on March 12th, the MI Board of Directors came out with a statement in regards to spring sports and all the modifications. They did approve of having all spring sports that we usually have. First one up, baseball. It's going to be very similar to softball. Mask have to be worn at all times. The little difference between the fall and the spring, we did have like mass break zones on the field, on the playing surface, but this time they're going to be mass breaks off the playing surface. No mass breaks on the playing surface for these outdoor sports. Equipment can be shared. So bats, they just need to be sanitized in between. I guess we just had a town hall today on baseball and softball, but no seeds, gum or spitting is allowed. I guess they're going to get used to that. And also players most likely pitchers have to refrain from licking their fingers or anything before pitching the ball off to the batter. But basically that's pretty much it, similar to just keeping spacing between timeouts and breaks during the games as well. So there's a number of sports, but I think it'll get lost if we don't give an opportunity. If in case there are questions and we're trying to get through our agenda quickly, but I think if six sports later, I don't think people are going to remember about this business with baseball. So if there's any questions on each sport, why don't we pause for a second? If not, we'll just keep on going. Sure. Any questions? Okay. Let's see any. Okay, so boys lacrosse, it's seen as a high-risk sport. We've actually played a few already this year. So it's similar to hockey and right now football because they're both wearing helmets. So they can't wear... I've received some emails from parents and players as well. So you might as well say it here. Those shields in front of the helmets, those aren't enough. You need to wear a mask underneath that if you wanna have a shield. You can do that as well. Calls are gonna be made quickly by referees and officials. The quarters or 12-minute quarters reduce time of five minutes just so that they can be off the field sooner. The games will get done a lot quicker than normal. And that's pretty much it, yes. And football, similar to football on the sideline, they have to be separated right now. Football is using cones. I'll also probably spray paint when we actually have our first home game on the field.  But when they go away, they put cones. So that's boys lacrosse. Questions? No? Okay. Girls lacrosse, the reason why these two are separate is because girls lacrosse is seen as a moderate-risk sport, but they have the same exact rules except for 12-and-a-half-minute quarters. Boys lacrosse is just seen as high-risk because there's more intentional contact, whereas girls lacrosse, checking's not really allowed. Also, hand sanitizer's gonna have to be used more in girls lacrosse just because they don't have gloves on. Boys lacrosse, they wear gloves.  But going on the field, they won't really be putting hand sanitizer on because they have to put their gloves on. They're not gonna be putting gloves, hand sanitizer on their gloves. I've forgot to mention that in the previous slide. But girls lacrosse, they don't wear gloves. So that's just a thing. Question? Softball, like I said, similar to baseball. I forgot to mention also in baseball that the dugouts, they're not gonna be the six feet distance. So we're gonna have to have some student athletes to the side to make sure that all happens and we'll give, I'll make areas available for those players. Again, no seeds, gum, all the above that you saw in baseball. There's nothing really new there. Any questions? Tennis is our only low risk sport that we have this spring. Massive to be worn at all times. However, they do suggest that athletes do wear headbands, bring towels, hats, wristbands. So they can refrain from touching their face with their hands and wipe off their sweat with towels or I guess their headbands catch it. Also, only home teams can touch scorecards. There will be hand sanitizers on both sides of the nets as players are switching nets and switching sides. Any questions? Track and field. We're kinda doing this right now, guys. Like I said, indoor track is outdoors. If you guys have driven by the high school, you'll see them on the outdoor track. However, there's a lot less restrictions as Eastern Mass is some of them are running indoors. So we are allowed to use starting blocks. They just have to be sanitized. Everything has to be sanitized and we can actually use more lanes with it being outdoors. So it's exactly the same thing as what we're following right now. Any questions? Okay, so Ultimate Frisbee is seen as a high risk sport. This is not a MIA sport. However, our coaches are a part of the Pioneer Valley Ultimate Community, which is a group of coaches in Western Mass. They all came up with some modifications to the sport that I reviewed and it's very similar to the MIA modifications such as masks. They also added in a new infraction called space. So players, I don't know if you guys know, but Ultimate doesn't have officials. So players, coaches can call space and the person defending the person with the disc has to back up if they're too close to the person holding the disc. So I just wanna let you guys know the Pioneer Valley Ultimate Community is kinda like how we're a part of the PVIC or other sports, so that's our league. And we would only be playing schools that are following these modifications as well. All of these sports are recommended that I just spoke about above. If you guys have any questions, please feel free to ask them. I have one question that's not necessarily sport specific, but which of these will also, excuse me, will also be played at the middle school? And will there be varsity and JV for those that are at the high school? So varsity and JV that all happen, we'll figure out once registration opens maybe today or I mean, not tonight. I'll say tomorrow or the next day. We'll see how many people sign up and then try out how many kids we get. We have gotten less numbers due to the pandemic, but maybe because it's the spring season, we'll have more people sign up. As far as middle school goes, we have boys middle school across, we have eighth grade girls being able to join the high school so we can try to have a JV girls team for the lacrosse team to keep that team going. Softball, seven through eighth graders, seven through 12, but that's the high school team. Tennis, we have nine through 12, except for the girls, the girls are allowing eight through 12 just for numbers sake. Track and field, that's also middle school. Ultimate also has middle school. Baseball's eight through 12 because of numbers too. If I could just jump in, something I should have said when I was queuing up, Ms. Stewart was that we are still technically in remote. I know the presentation right after Ms. Stewart, we'll talk about the return to in person. So this will, we are asking for a school committee vote to move forward, hence Ms. Stewart's comment about when registration will open to sort of contingent on the vote of the regional school committee tonight. Ms. Dancer. I'm wondering about the fans, observers, will they be allowed for any of the sports this spring? So right now for football and outdoor sports, I spoke with Ms. Dragon and she's allowing two spectators per student athlete. And I'm just tracking that through 70, about 24 hours or 48 hours before the game, I send out a link and families sign up right there and I have their contact information for contact tracing. And I will know who's gonna be going through the gate at those times. So that's what we're following right now, which could change. Okay, thank you. Any other questions? Ms. Stewart. Thanks, I guess, thank you very much for this presentation. I know these sports are really important to our students. I just wanted to confirm when you're saying these are recommended just for the benefit of the public and for the committee. They've been reviewed by the Emma Dragon and she's recommending that they're appropriate for us at this point in time. And I guess the other thing I just wanted to also just reiterate is that I'm assuming we're emphasizing the gameplay actually seems like some of the least problematic time in terms of potential for transmission. I'm more concerned about like practicing indoors or not practicing, but like weightlifting indoors or something in preparation for gameplay and also travel to the site of the games. And so I'm assuming that we're following the same protocols that have been in place and that you've gone over in the past for this season as well. Yes, that's all correct. I think, yes, thank you, please. Your presentations are always so thorough and concise at the same time. So it's great, so thank you. And I think we should call out because this is the fourth sports season that you've asked us to vote on. And I think with the first one, there was a lot of unknowns and I think one of the things that we've learned through the year and just want to call out is the great leadership that you're providing, Ms. Stewart. And we hear it, we get individual emails from parents commending your work with the teams and with the opponents, whether it's holding our opponents to the MIA rules and sticking to it, holding our own athletes to the rules.  But I think that really instills a lot of confidence in myself as well as I think the community and our ability to safely have safe sports in this environment. So thank you for all of your work on that and for bringing this forward. Mr. Demling.  It's really, really good. And to be so known as position and to be knocking it out of the park. I mean, this is not an easy year to like be finding your footing and so many positive bits of feedback from both students and families about the job that you've been doing. So thank you very much. Any other questions before we move to vote? Seeing none, would somebody else like to make a motion or? I would like to make a motion that we approve the spring sports as recommended as second. Moved by Kenny and seconded by Spitzer. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none and take a roll call vote. Mr. Demling. Demling aye. Mr. Harrington. Harrington aye. Ms. Kenny. Kenny aye. Ms. Lord. Lord aye. Ms. Seager. Seager aye. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer aye. Ms. Dancer. Dancer aye. Mr. Sullivan. Sullivan aye. And McDonald aye. The motion passes unanimous nine to zero. Thank you. Thank you. And thanks to Ms. Stewart as was noted for incredible leadership and an incredibly difficult year for something that's made a huge difference in the lives of our students. So appreciate your support and appreciate Ms. Stewart's leadership on that and have a good night Ms. Stewart. Thanks, I'll see you guys maybe next year or next school year, hopefully. All right, bye guys. Great. So moving on to our next item which is the middle school, high school, cement academy, spring in person model. Thank you. So I can cue this up a little better than I did the athletics. And so the short story is three presentations. We're gonna start with the high school, then talk about summit and then talk about the middle school. And the idea is that we wanna share where we are, what's going into the planning and our thoughts about how to move forward in the best interest of students. And so I think each presentation is a little different in terms of what we're asking for, what flexibilities or non-flexibilities we're asking for from either the school committee or the desi. So I'll try to be really explicit on the front end around this. So at the high school, and you'll see this through the presentation, we had a significant shift. So at the high school level, we were planning based on the school committee and vote to come back and kind of, and I think you heard this, more hybrid or more limited level in terms of number of days with desi being really clear that at some point this spring, high schools will be back five days in person. Where I was on a desi conference call today, they said the exact date will be announced in early in April. So I don't have the exact date for you on high school return. If I did, I would share it with you as well as the team. You know, one of the headlines is we're committed to doing that. We're committed to doing that in early May. All indications are that that's likely the date around early to mid-May when high schools be expected to return five days a week. And it is a pretty significant shift from what was being planned for prior to the desi piece on high schools. So I'll turn it over to Principal Siddique and Assistant Principals Kamaki and Camera to be able to talk through some where they are in planning, what feedback they've received from students and what a schedule would look like. But I think to be clear, the flexibility we're looking for is given the shift from the original plan, which was coming back in the 26th in a more limited hybrid model to a five day a week model, a little more flexibility is being requested by the high school team. And I support that. So I'll turn it over to, I think Principal Siddique could probably get us started. Would you like me to do the slides? Just so it's easier for you to manage because I'm in the office, so I get a lot of screens. Yeah, I'd appreciate that. Yep, bring that up. Okay. Yeah, you can just go to the next screen. Thanks. Have you just clicked through? So yeah, so all of those pop up. Thank you. Yeah, as Dr. Morris said, we are requesting a start of May 3rd. And on here, you can see some of the reasons why we're requesting that. So if it is approved, one of the things we want to do is to have an orientation day for our ninth grade students who haven't been in the building for classes yet, as well as students new to the district. We have, so that will happen, it'll be like a half day, so like a nine to noon sort of thing. They'll get tours to the school, members of the National Honor Society, and I'm sure we'll get many other students who'll be happy to give tours to the ninth graders and new folks to the district to help them be able to see the building before they're expected to go through classes and find their way around.  All of that, just about all of the classes on the English language hallway as well as the world language hallway are being used by intensive needs programs. And so all that furniture's been moved out into different parts of the rooms, classrooms that would have 24, 25 desks and now have one or two desks and chairs. So all of that furniture needs to be moved back into those rooms. We also have to finish putting signage up in all of the, throughout the school in the fall when we're preparing to have phase one. We really only did the first floor because that's where all the students were gonna be. So we still have to do the second and third floor at the order, a lot of the signs as well. And we really want to allow, you know, time also all the windows need to be inspected. We've been hearing more and more from some of the more veteran teachers about the issues they've been having with their windows up until this point. We want to have our students be as safe as possible. So with the air purifiers and hand sanitizers that are already in the classrooms, we also want the windows to be in the working room. That's all gonna take time as well. So now after we get all that, the building ready for teachers then to come back in and make their classrooms as welcoming as possible is all gonna take time. And teachers haven't been in the building for over a year. They've been doing a great job of transitioning from teaching in person to now teaching remotely. Now they're being told they have to come back and teach in person and teach remotely at the same time. It's gonna take a little while for them to figure out how to best set up the room to make that happen. I don't want to rush the teachers anymore than they've already been rushed and pressured so far. You know, they'll also need time to acclimate to being back in the building. I wanna give them two days of being able to get their classroom set up possible during the week of the 26th after break. They're gonna have asynchronous learning days for students and take the time to really get their classroom set up so that they can do their best job to teach the people in front of them as well as the students who are still gonna be remote. So that's kind of sums up many of the reasons why I'm hoping that we can start third. Yeah, Tal, do you mind if I add a little bit just on the operation side? I didn't ask the operations folks to come, but I think some of the complexities at the high school level just because of the size of it is also a cafeteria. And I know this will come up in the schedule, but I think it's relevant here. Just figuring out food service for that number of students to be in a building, how students access lunch is a different challenge than it is at K to 8, no disrespect to Dave or Diego who are on this call, but just the scope of the size of that for our food server staff is a little bit different. I think additionally from the transportation end of things, that is also a significantly different challenge not just because of the four towns of the region, but just the nature of the high school and how many students will rely on buses or not. We're starting to get some information on that. I know from Mr. Roy Clark who's working very hard on our Amerson Pellum transportation as well as our students who go to Vogue school. Another factor right now is our Vogue school students have been in person but they get picked up at noon which adds a bit of a challenge to some of our programming on the transportation end. So there's just a lot of moving pieces at the secondary level. And I think you'll hear this from Principal Sharon, Principal Sloven as well that are a little more unique than what we experienced at the elementary side. Sorry to jump in there, but I just wanted to do my operations folks justice. Appreciate that. And I think that just for the committee, there's only, this is not, we intentionally, there's very few slides. So if we were okay to just keep going through and then hold on questions still, as opposed to the last one, I think that would flow better if we could just keep rolling. Thank you. I'll forward the slide unless there's more than anyone on the high school team wanted to say on this one. So this is our schedule. So the schedule in terms of the time classes we'll meet will remain the same. So we'll still have a 739 will be the teacher's prep time, a period will still go from nine to 1020. We've put in a 10 minute passing period. Again, when we were planning for phase one and now it's just a 10 minute break in between classes, but when we have students in the building, they are gonna get 10 minutes to go from one part of the school to another part of the school with the signs and adult help. We're gonna try to cut down on crowds gathering in the hallways as much as we possibly can. And lunch, we're gonna have divided up into two cohorts. And the plan now is to arrange the cafeteria in a way that all the tables will be set up far apart and they'll only be at the roundtables will be like two students and at the long square tables when they can usually fit, I believe 12 students will be probably four students. We want the majority of lunches to be outside or in the classroom. And after we get final numbers and start finalizing, our plans will have designated spaces outside for students to eat their lunches and we'll let all of them know exactly where they'll be expected to get their lunches and the options will have them where they wanna eat. And you can see after that C block is still one to 220, then at 220 we're asking all the students who will be in person to leave the building to go to get on the buses and go home. And that 220 to 250 time will be the time that the teachers who are in person will be offering extra help to the students who are remote. The idea that during the classes, students who are in person will have plenty of time to ask clarifying questions, get a little extra help on things and we'll want it to designate some times so teachers will also be able to answer questions for students that are home during the school day. So we spent a little bit of time thinking about questions that you might have and these are questions that came to us primarily from families. And so I imagine you'll have more questions but we decided we would answer a few of your questions, possible questions in advance. And so the first question I think Mr. Sadiq just answered truly is will students be eating in their classrooms when they're not outside? Again, we're gonna encourage outside. We know that outside with masks off is much safer. So that's what we're gonna encourage. And if it's nice out, I think it won't be hard. That kind of encouragement won't be hard. If it is raining, most of our answers to this question really depends on the number of students that will be in person. And so they will remain in classrooms and then other settings that we've set aside for eating that will really allow for six feet distance because their masks will be off. We'll talk more about how much talking and this is a complex question. Even in class when students are thirsty and drinking I know that the elementary schools have done a good job encouraging folks to have water bottles with straws. So there's a lot to think about there but in terms of eating, we're looking for at least six feet distance if not outside. And in terms of the physical distance in class I appreciate Mr. Demling's points earlier about this because I agree, I think we need to create a culture of sort of health and safety and respect for each other in addition to evaluating the sort of science-based research on this. And so we're striving for six feet, right? That's our goal. We will maintain at least three feet, okay? So, but again, that's not sort of magical number at this point. It's what we've got, what the research is suggesting to us. This year we do have a D block and so many folks had questions about when that will meet. So we're going to have, if you think back to that schedule, the schedule, the full lunch block is one hour. And so there'll be cohorts A and B. And so half of that lunch block will be for D block and half of it will be used for lunch. If you don't have a D block class you will be in a directed study. Again, we're hoping to have as much of that outside as possible. You can go back to that slide, Mr. Morris. So the D block, those D block classes don't necessarily meet every single day and they will include some synchronous meetings. But there's a chance there will also be asynchronous work that students will be working on. Academic skill students are going to be scheduled with their teachers again, also opposite the lunch period. But that's a little bit more personalized. And so that really depends on the needs of the student and the liaison and again, their needs. So that's the D block. The school building. So the students may end up arriving a little bit sooner. It's sounding like possibly right around 8.40 but we're not going to open the doors until 8.50. Again, we'd prefer folks to congregate outside if they need to congregate and inside is just indeed less safe. And so we're going to ask them to remain outside until 8.50 AM. We're going to have to talk about how to supervise the congregation outside. So that's another sort of puzzle that we're working through to move to the next slide. So again, I think Mr. Siddique answered this question. Students are going to be dismissed at 2.20 and they are going to be expected to leave the building at that time. Many students will stay for extracurricular activities and for sports, but we are asking students to go outside for that. Will there be extra help in the building after 2.20? And the answer to this question is no. Students are going to be using that time to support students that have remained remote. For students who need extra help when they're in person, they're going to make a range, hopefully they'll make arrangements and we'll encourage them to make arrangements with teachers for extra help within that class period. The good news with the block schedule here is those class periods are longer and so there's a little bit more opportunity for individual support given the length of those classes. For students who remain remote, will there be orientations in the fall to support them with their transition to the high school building? Yes, of course, absolutely. How many teachers will return to in person? Right now it's looking like most teachers are returning to the building. So that's the good news. How many students will be in person? We've got some preliminary results and it's looking at about two thirds of the students have adopted to be in person while a third of students have adopted to remain remote. This may change as more responses come in and it may be that Mr. Siddique has even a more updated number than what we spoke about earlier today. So those are the FAQs we came up with. We, unless Mr. Siddique or Ms. Gramaki have more to add to these FAQs, we'd love to take questions. Any additions? I have one, which I just wanna thank Dean because they ran a couple of town halls last week, I wanna say, that were really helpful on some of these FAQs because I was more a facilitator than a participant in those, but came directly from the town halls. So just wanna thank the team for their work, especially as this was a more significant shift after the desi piece than probably at any of our other levels from the way we were thinking about it. So we can certainly, with Ms. McDonald's approval, open up for questions from the committee. And Ms. Segar. Wow, thank you for all the work you've been putting into this, all of you. I can't imagine how complicated this is. And I appreciate all the FAQs. A big question for me, knowing that these, we recently voted on late start times for the fall, I see it's happening now, which makes sense logically. How are the buses gonna work for regions between the districts like Leveret and the region? Well, I can jump in on that one. So I had a good conversation with Superintendent Culkin yesterday about this because there was rumors of buzz. I don't know if it shoots very Leveret, but it was one of the two. And so the short story is looking at multiple options. So one option would be that Shoot Spare and Leveret Elementary School students might ride the bus with Leveret and Shoot Spare secondary students, because actually the time works out pretty well for a drop off at Shoot Spare Leveret Elementary School and then the ride down to the regional middle school and high school. So that's one option that's being explored. Another option that's being explored is, depending how many students from Shoot Spare and Leveret choose transportation to take either van service or something like that. And the least preferable option, I think, from the student's point of view is we could run the regional buses at the typical, what's been the typical time. They would get there quite early and they could go to the cafeteria and have some supervised work session. However, I think that would greatly reduce the need for buses and Shoot Spare and Leveret if they were the only students getting there that early and having a supervised work session that early in the morning. I don't think is anyone's plan. So that's our least preferred option, but I know our transportation folks are reaching out to the transportation folks in Union 28 to try to work on preferably option A or option B on that. Just with the drop off right now, how it's listed on Shoot Spare and Leveret Elementary School and since the number of students taking the bus both at the high school from those communities as well as from the elementary schools there is not very high and a lot of kids could sit with their sibling if they have a kid in the middle school and then a fifth grader, that's sort of our, I don't know if I would say preferred option, but I think it's becoming our preferred option because the timing works out actually perfectly. And it reduces the number of runs which is sort of better for the universe more generally. But that's where we are on that. We're still working out the pieces and that's really where the high school team getting that information and by Monday sharing it with our transportation folks because our transportation folks at that point will be done with the elementary runs by the end of this week. Then next week is to dig into the regional runs once we have that data from the middle school high school on Summit Academy. So there's several hands in the order that I saw them raise was Mr. Sullivan, Ms. Spitzer and Ms. Kenny. So Mr. Sullivan. So I only had one concern, but now that I've heard the bus thing, I have two. So I guess with that option of the elementary riding with the high school, that'll be one way we can get most of our elementary kids to get a ride to school. Cause I don't know how many parents are really, I mean, I don't know how many wanna put, cause that's that conversation we had about sixth graders riding with the high school kids and even going into the middle school. So that Mr. Demling that changes my vote a little bit. But anyway, so my question about the high school was about the academic skills. Cause my former student that was, she relied on that almost on a daily basis to get through her day. And if you're blocking that all into one block, I don't know what kind of one-on-one or one-on-three or what the ratio would be, but that's really gonna cut into some of the students and the needs that they have with their liaisons. So I'm happy to take that. That's a great question. So one thing to know is that this year by running a three by three, students actually have three courses to manage at once. Some students have elected the D block, but many students have used the D block for their special education services, though not all of them. So what our liaisons have already done is they've divided their caseloads into those three half hour segments. And so what we're looking to do is just provide students with the same level of services that they've already received. It's just that some students might have to have that half hour shifted to either the 230 time or switch into one of the other two cohorts, depending on how many students on a caseload come in person versus how many students are still remote. So nobody will be losing any service time. But that sounds like you'd be asking students from Sheetsbury to possibly hang out after the end of the, at 230. Okay, so I'm so glad you're saying this because I'm sure this is what's on other people's minds as well. So what we're actually doing is taking students who are going to remain remote, who right now might have their academic skills, say at 1150. So those remote students will then have their academic skills. I see you shaking your head, so I think you get it. But just for anyone else, because I think that's an excellent question, it actually allows us to just shift the remote students to the 230 and then put more of the in-person during that lunch block. Again, it's all relative to the total numbers that we get, but the way it's working out right now with the 1 third, we're very hopeful that we can accomplish that. Ms. Fitzer. Thanks and thank you so much for this presentation and all the work I'm sure has gone into this. Sorry for the baby in the background. The question I have is I'm certain you probably described this in an earlier presentation, but with the deep look, is that a time for elective style classes? Could you just explain for the school committee who might not have high schoolers a little bit more about that? And then my second question is from what I'm inferring is that we're going to be moving into a model where the teacher, whether it's a social studies teacher, an English teacher is gonna be simultaneously teaching the remote students and the in-person students. And I know this was something we had worked really actively to try to avoid. And I feel like Desi has really pushed us into this position. So it's not a criticism. I just wanted to make sure that that's what I'm hearing and ask like, do you have what you need in terms of technology and things like that? Or is the district going to need to spend more money or make any other shifts in order to accommodate this big change in the style of remote teaching and in-person teaching? And so one last follow-up is, I'm assuming there are gonna be some instances where it sounds like in most of the cases, the teacher's gonna be in-person and the remote students are the ones who are going to be receiving the education remotely, but it also seems like you could potentially have in-person students whose teachers have for whatever reason needed to remain remote. So are these students gonna be like in a classroom where maybe the teacher's presenting over a Zoom caller or, sorry, Google me? Thank you. So I'm happy to jump in and take the easiest part of that question, which is the first one. And so the way we've set up the schedule is with the three by three, the idea was that most high school students would take their five core academics, so mass social science, English, and world language. And that would leave another block, which would be the sixth block for something else, so electives and so forth. But then because some classes are double blocked or some students are musicians and needed music plus their academics, and they had, say, AP, BC calculus that was double blocked, we created these, what we called these D blocks, the seventh block. And that was really to help students, especially special education students who like it was mentioned that that becomes such an important part of their day. So we wanted to offer that and we didn't want to mandate it, but for students who needed that seventh block to really fulfill a schedule, that those students took that. And so a lot of students took health or someone who just really, really loved art and wanted to take a D block painting class. We allowed for that as well. So that's kind of how the electives work. But for many students, they took five core and then two quarter electives. And so they had those five core plus two electives. And so the three by three worked for those students. So I'll take the second part of that. Is that right, Mick? Is that what you hoped for? Okay. So, Ms. Spitzer, that second part of that question you were asking is a very complex question and I appreciate it. So in order to maintain sort of equitable pedagogy here, we are gonna have to run, so if you can picture a teacher in the front of the room running a Google Meet on their laptop, but facing the students, okay? And so in that Google Meet, you will have students that are remote and then there will also be students that are in the classroom, okay? And so there is a chance that we are going to struggle with bandwidth here, but we're working really hard on this. And we just met with Jerry Champagne about this and we're hoping to add more access points and to put some more drops. All of that language might be harder to understand, but we also know that it may be a challenge and given that, I'm imagining we may have to choreograph something else which includes putting in the Chromebooks at half-mast so that the students that are in the room aren't using the input and output data, so the upload and downloading data. Sometimes we may have to turn cameras off, but our hope is that we can at least project the faces of all the students that are remote. The challenge is gonna be, can the remote students see the students that are in class? So that may be more information that you wanted, but I think we're doing enough sort of evaluation of the systems right now to make this work. But it is complex, you're right. We didn't really wanna be in exactly this position, but here we are. If I, just camera, do you mind if I add to that just a little bit? So I think I mentioned at the beginning that we've doubled our bandwidth, which does have financial considerations. As someone who signs lots of POs, I see the results of that. Today I signed POs around adding drops, adding specific places where Wi-Fi can go out, both inside and then potentially expanding that a little bit outside the building. But I think the thing, if it's okay with you and if you disagree with me, any of the high school folks, you know, one might ask, why are we doing this differently than we're doing at some of the other schools? And it's because there are so many courses that are singleton or offered in small group, or like, you know, there's not like fifth grade, where yeah, we might have to transition kids to a new fifth grade, but we've got eight fifth grade teachers across our district. And they're all wonderful and they're not interchangeable, but we can put students with an in-person or a remote fifth grade teacher based on their choice. There's no way to do that at the high school level, right? You know, because if we have students in BC calculus and the teacher happens to be in person, the student chooses remote, we can't say on May 3rd or April 26th, whatever, we can't say, oh, I'm sorry, you can't finish your calculus course because your teacher's in person, right? It would just eliminate the option. So the reason we're having to do this model issue reference, which again is not ideal, is that the alternative is kicking kids out of courses based on their choice of in-person or remote. And I think we'd all agree that ethically we can't do that, right? And I think it's particularly acute at our high school. If you look at our program of studies, it's one of the things I'm most proud about. I take no ownership because I do nothing to contribute to it, but if you look at our program of studies, it's like a liberal arts college. It's amazing the amount of courses that we have. There's not like, oh, you just take, you know, this course and then this course and this course and maybe senior year will get an elective, right? Our students are experiencing electives in core academic areas throughout their academic career. So there's a tremendous amount of upside to it. The downside, you know, it's less efficient and we hear that sometimes from town folks who are concerned about costs, but there's some truth in that. The downside in this situation is that it doesn't really allow for, okay, well, we can transition you from the same course you were taking and offer it both in-person and remote because we have enough sections to do that. That's not possible at our high school. So that's where we land with this sort of hybrids, the most overused word in schools in the last year, but this sort of hybrid model where we don't wanna eliminate access for students. And I really appreciate the thoughtfulness of the high school approach to have that block of time at the end of the day for students who are attending classes remotely to have more access because the reality is, and this is not because we value them less, it's gonna be a more removed opportunity. You know, I've had enough remote meetings with my administrative team of the last couple of years where you're gonna hear literally and figuratively the students who are in-person more, right? It's human instinct and as much as you try to fight it when someone's six or 12 or 18 feet away from you versus on a screen, it does feel different. So it's trying to best accommodate students regardless of the choice that they make about in-person or remote. And so this is sort of the compromise we have to make. You know, if we were having an only remote option like we were an only in-person option, which the state is definitely pushing for next year, that would sort of eliminate this piece, but that's not where we are. And as you heard the numbers that Ms. Cameron said before and Principal Siddique kind of acknowledged where we are right now, when we're at a two thirds, one third, you know, that's a lot of students that we wanna accommodate. And just the other alternative that's very real is some high schools or just some schools, not high schools exclusively, are just saying to remote students, yeah