of the Regional School Committee at 6.32 p.m. on Tuesday, April 6th, and we will begin by a roll call attendance. Mr. Demling. Mr. Harrington. Harrington President. Ms. Kenny. Kenny President. Ms. Lord. Lord President. Ms. Seager. Seager President. Ms. Dancer. Dancer President. And McDonnell President. I'm not seeing Ms. Spitzer or Mr. Sullivan. Ms. Spitzer, are you are you present? I am, so I'm just having some connectivity issues present. That's great. Thanks. So we are in order and we are joined this evening by our new student, Ms. Ruby Kane. Welcome. And also Assistant Superintendent during Cunningham and of course, Dr. Morris. And Ms. Sharkis is our minutes taker. Our first item is to approve our minutes and welcome Mr. Sullivan. So we have minutes from our January 14th meeting with the APEA Executive Board and the minutes from our joint meeting with Union 26 and then our meeting alone on March 23rd. So I will note, I think on the January 14th notes, I noticed on the top of page two where it's an open floor. Ms. Mangala, I think it's, I think that her last name is misspelled. And I think, and her role is APEA Unit A co-chair, not universal co-chair. Ms. Seager and then Ms. Dancer. I noticed that on the March 23rd meeting, I'm not listed as in attendance. And I'm there because I'm also in the minute. I have comments in there. Ms. Dancer. Ms. Dancer, you're muted. Sorry. I just have two typos on page three of the January meeting. The paragraph that starts Miss McDonald thanked. If you go down, it says in collaboration with, I think it should be with just minor thing. And then, oh, where was I? On the first page of the March 23rd minutes, Mr. Menino, the paragraph that starts Mr. Menino, I think it should be an actively works to seek feedback, not seed feedback. On that same note on the same page, just above that, Ms. McDonald described that we are, instead of continuing to expand, I think it said we are considering to extend. And I also think for the attendance list, I wonder if it might be helpful to, instead of separating out regional school committee and union 26, just list the names and then in parentheses say which committees they are members of. But I believe Ms. Sarah Hall was in attendance and she's not listed. Ms. Kenny. So on January 14th, I was not there, but my name is on there. And on March 23rd, I was there, but my name is not on there. And then I think also on the 23rd, I don't think Sarah was there. Okay. I don't think she's come that day. Sorry. That's okay. On the 23rd, also under item nine, which I can't see a page number, sorry. So under number nine school committee announcements, Ms. Lord, I think commented is correct, not commended. Are there any other edits that folks are seeing? Seeing none. And I will make a motion that we approve them in its as amended of January 14th in March 23rd, 2021. Is there a second? Second. Moved by McDonald and seconded by Spitzer. And it is a roll call vote. Mr. Demling. Mr. Harrington. Ms. Kenny. Uh-oh. I have, I wasn't here on the 14th. So should I not vote on that one? Oh, yep. Sorry. So one obscene and one yay. Should we amend the, Dr. Ors? The train has left the station. So you got to just follow through the vote. Okay. Yeah. And I was going to say you are able to vote on minutes, even if you weren't there, as long as you believe them to be accurate and you have no reason to believe that they were misrepresented the meeting. Oh, okay. Well, then sure. Yay. Ms. Lord. Lord, aye. Ms. Seager. Aye. Mr. Sullivan. I didn't catch that. I think you might be muted. Sullivan, aye. And McDonald, aye. The motion passes unanimously. Oh, Ms. Stanser. Sorry. Stanser, aye. Thank you. The motion passes. My cheat sheet is out of date. So that's why I'm like, everybody's out of order. So I apologize. But the motion passed nine to zero. And now we'll move on to public comment. And as mentioned, there's no written comment this evening. And we did note that on the website. So in case you go looking for it, you'll know that it's, we don't have any, but we do have some voice message comments. And I will play this now. I'll note that this first one, the very first one I'm playing, was received two weeks ago, actually almost three weeks ago, and I neglected to play it two weeks ago when we met. So I apologize to the commenter. And I'm playing that this evening. This has been put out of nine people's minds because of the pandemic. But it's really important to me that when we go back to school, we have adequate access to period products. I get the period every month. Most people who have periods understand that they're far from comfortable. There's the obvious discomfort from the fact that there's literal blood dripping out of you. Most times when I'm on my period, it's accompanied by a strange trapping feeling, as if my gut was being torn apart from the inside. That is awesome, but a headache. Occasionally felt feverish, like I'm going to pass out. Periods are incredibly hard to deal with. The first few times I got one, I stayed in my room all day trying to get the current fever away because it hurt too much to stand. Most administrators are going to deal with the physical problems after a while. But the social problems are a little harder to figure out. For some reason in our culture, period is in a group. We feel big to hide. At my school, I find myself doing everything I can to stop my periods from going around my period. It's super embarrassing to have your periods now such an intimate thing about you. Even unwrapping a pad in this bathroom is not racking. Going to the nurse is even stricter because not only your peers can find out, but you have to tell the nurse as well. I'm asking the period products I put in the bathroom so that students can easily access them. Without the embarrassment, I've gone to the doctor. Thank you. This is Alyssa Ranker. I'm a resident of Peace Cancer and I'm a para educator. I work at Amherst Regional High School. I'm calling today to urge the school committee to agree with solid cost of living adjustments to staff wages for the coming year and to strike free transparency and budget decisions for the coming year. The austerity of the current budget comes at a great cost to many of the other programs, such as hard, tax, family outreach and staff positions. I am disappointed to see that the APEA's request for a 2% cost of living adjustment was rejected by the school committee while superintendent Morris has received a 4.3% raise. While I keep in respect superintendent Morris leadership, our district must value all staff members who credibly hard work this year when making budgetary decisions. Up to this point, there has been no concrete specific commitment to a cost of living adjustments for staff. I and other members at the APEA support teachers and staff receiving a cost of living increase as close as possible to the 2% requested by the APEA. Many staff in the district, particularly our unity staff like me, currently struggle to support ourselves and our families initially. The lack of a cost of living adjustment will affect all staff, but particularly our most vulnerable school employees, maybe it's even more difficult to live amidst the global pandemic. All staff must be supported so our students and community can thrive. Thank you guys. My name is Carol Cherrington. I live in Pellum. I have two grown children who went through the public schools in Pellum and Amherst and I currently work as a para educator at Amherst High School. I'm going to respectfully request the school committee to agree to a cost of living adjustment to staff wages for the coming year and to strive for transparency and budgetary decision in this coming year. The austerity of the current budget comes at a great cost to many beloved programs, our technology, family outreach and staff positions. We are disappointed in the schools that the cost of living that the union requested, which was a 2% request cost of living adjustment was rejected by the school committee and yet we've seen sizable percentage increases for those in administration. Up to this point there's been no concrete reply from the school committee about what QSI offers and I and many other staff members and community members support educators receiving a decent cost of living increase as close to the 2% requested by the union. Okay, thank you very much for listening and we look forward to hearing of your work. That concludes our public comment and the names I believe will be included in our in our minutes. Before we go on to the next one, I want to apologize. I neglected to introduce one of our guests this evening, Ms. Lauren Mills, who's joining us to present part of the school equity task force report presentation. So welcome Ms. Mills. And now I will turn it over to Dr. Morris for this superintendent's update. Sure. I'll start it and Ms. Cunningham will also offer some updates as well. And I know we're on a time crunch because there isn't an executive session later, so as it is trying to do, I'll try to be brief. But the graduation survey for high school seniors and families will go out this week. We're trying to there is some fixed choices that we have to make in terms of a number of students who can attend a number of families who can attend and like many other communities, we're going to have to make some challenging decisions. But the good news is we are, you know, one of our staff members is over at the potential site over at the park today, loved it, had lots of good ideas, and we'll be engaging again all the students and families in making the best decision as we move forward for a natural graduation for our seniors. I want to second what Ms. McDonald said and acknowledge and appreciate Ruby Kane for joining the committee. I also want to thank Emily Grubco who's done, in my opinion, an outstanding job as a student for quite a while. Ms. McDonald and I had a good meeting to make that transition and support Ruby with the transition. Ruby and I have known each other for quite some time back at Crocker Farms, so I'm really happy to see how much she's grown and that she'll be part of this committee. So welcome, Ruby. Really happy to have you. I want to thank Mr. Siddique, the high school principal last Wednesday hosted a Google Meet for students who wanted to talk about the hate crimes and acts of violence against the Asian Americans and Pacific Islander, the API population over the past year to work with students and faculty to ensure that the high school is responding firmly and appropriately to what is being experienced by students here as well as people across the country. So thank you, Mr. Siddique for that. This is, I want to thank our staff. There's a number of things going on for Autism Week, acceptance week this week. So today, and I was able to catch a couple minutes of this, there was a college support discussion where a number of colleges who have worked successfully integrating students with disabilities into the higher educational field met with students and those moderated by our staff. Tomorrow there's a conversation about adult services as students who are transitioning out of our school district and Thursday there's alumni and current student panel from the high school. Thursday afternoon from five to seven and some of it's again a panel and some of it's a discussion and celebration after the panel. So all are welcome and that information's on our website and you know kudos to all the staff members who are putting that on and families and students who are going to sit on that. A couple other quick ones from me, some good news that in terms of the vaccination front, the town of Amherst as well as the town of Northampton facilitated a second educators or school staff only vaccination effort. And I think I mentioned the last time we met that I felt like most of our staff who wanted to be vaccinated had gotten vaccinated or had at least gotten a shot. As we moved along and this was confirmed this session in Amherst was for all towns east of the Connecticut River in Hampshire County. There was 80 appointments and when I checked about an hour before starting last Saturday 34 were unclaimed. So to me that means that indicates that we're probably at a saturation point of staff members looking for vaccines being able to get them and you know by all indications the majority of our staff are interested in getting them. We just know data source for that it's all anecdotal but that's what I continue to hear. That being said I want to thank the towns of Amherst Northampton for providing that resource for our educators and our educators were working together along this front. But it's certainly those just to be clear too the town really want to be to emphasize this it's not like those vaccines went away they were integrated in the other appointments that are for non-educator or for anyone who is eligible that the town is doing it's not like these are lost appointments they just get integrated in and more people are able to get vaccinated on their normal clinics. But it was a good data point to say that we are pretty close to saturation and that feels really good because I you know I think that hopefully makes everyone feel a little more comfortable and confident. Two more just some data initial data on return to in person at the high school our data shows about 60 percent of students are opting to return to in-person learning and actually only about 20-25 percent are planning to use transportation or the buses which helps us out frankly about the buses. At the middle school that number is a bit higher so about 69 percent of students are slated to return and about 50 percent of students are slated to take the bus. I should have mentioned at the high school we believe we can maintain a six foot distance in most but not all classes it sort of depends on you know individual classrooms and how many students were in the class and how many are showing up but we feel like we can get most of the way there we do not believe we'll be at a three foot distance for any of our classes it will all be you know six or relatively close to six feet. At the middle school looks like we'll be at five and a half feet of distancing that's more evened out across the classes we're unable get to get quite to six but five and a half again is ahead of the vast majority of districts in Massachusetts most of whom are at three feet of distancing. Summit Academy has 51 percent of students returning they have some students now on the voluntary return plan I went over I was over there today it was great to see some students some that Ruby I know from Crocker Farm actually so that was neat and since they were quite little and so and I was able to talk to some students and staff members so they're they're going to be a shade over 50 percent of their students again smaller sample size because of summit but I wanted to update the committee and the community on that and my last one I had is sharing a little bit about fall certainly may want to have this on an upcoming agenda at some point and this was shared with the committee electronically I believe this morning the state Mr. Sheen and I were on a webinar from the state yesterday about virtual schooling it was for districts that showed some interest in maintaining some level of virtual education I think the the air was taken out a little bit of Tim and I you know when we recognize that from the state's perspective some things frankly aren't very realistic about maintaining that the application is much like becoming almost creating a charter school in your district it is creating a completely separate and autonomous school next year it would have to have a name it would have to have a staffing model have to have nurse it have to have a food service delivery plan all this is due by the way for districts who are interested in the next about three and a half weeks they talked about a ratio of 35 students to one instructor so we're talking about radically different class size than what we experienced or we have implemented also school choice students would not be eligible for the virtual school even if they were existing in the district so there was some some what seemed to us to be some very unusual rules around that I think implied my opinion and Tim's opinion was that we already have two virtual schools in massachusetts their schools of choice and that students who are interested may access those but I will say the bar is extremely high and perhaps not attainable for moderate size districts to create fully create a school in the next month it's to actually do exactly a month from today with a fully formed staffing model so the documents that accompanied that were emailed to the committee so it really has changed our perspective on perhaps what's possible for the fall and perhaps at an upcoming meeting we can go a little more depth but I did want to share that with the committee and the community that a more casual approach of maintaining some virtual options is not going to be supported by our state and we had a you know I don't want to sound like a broken record but we Tim and I had a hard time thinking that school choice students would have no access to a virtual program because they are full members of the district so there were there were numerous challenges that we had we had many other districts had on that call and I think you know when we do start talking I know in Pelham we're going to have that conversation next week starting to talk about fall 2021 and probably should do that at the region sometime soon as well but I wanted to share that that was the update that we had from desi and the we sent some of the documentation I think the slides also when we get them I'll share with the committee before we transition to Miss Cunningham's update I wanted to pause and see if there's any questions for me and the secret yeah in terms of um the thank you for the information on the high school in the middle school and the update on returning this spring I was wondering if you could also if this isn't violating anything talk about the school bus situation since it's part of the logistics sure so uh as tomorrow at five o'clock is the deadline for the schools to make sure that they have accurate school bus and you know the transportation information to share with the transportation department they then will be spending the next week and a half putting together routes um and I think particularly for shoot span levered I know there's some question about how that'll work and once they get the accurate information they'll be working on that and I can share that back with the committee I don't think we meet for a little while after this meeting but I can share that electronically so people are aware of uh how that is going to shake out um I think there's a follow-up yeah missy yeah my concern is with um with the elementary school and the time change so right is that going to be part of what you'll share yeah absolutely I mean the short story is uh the elementary school and levered and shoots very are going to start at the same time that they starting this week um it's really about how do we get middle school and high school students are they going to share a bus and then just come down the hill or they're going to be a dedicated bus that comes earlier and some of that just depends on the yield I gave you the percentages but the percentages don't mean anything it really is the number of students and shoots very love it uh that are going to drive that decision and until that's cold which we'll have tomorrow it's hard to make a determination but absolutely I you know I know that's a concern and I'll be able to share that with the committee uh likely before the break mr. Demling yeah I have three questions um hopefully the first two are very short um so for the virtual schools um so thank you for that I also had read that desi instruction and it seemed in addition to all the other complications that you mentioned to be financially completely unfeasible for a district like ours in our budget situation so even if we wanted to drop everything and and run run like the dickens over the next three months and do all the things you talked about it doesn't seem didn't seem to me like we had the the financial work with all um so are we still going to have the ability to though to uh do something for our small number of students that may have a severe medical situation um where um if covid isn't completely wrapped up which probably won't be a hundred percent wrapped up by the time we go back and fall um but if we you know we have children two students that are immunocompromised and whatnot you know what what are our ways to accommodate them and then i'll throw you a second completely unrelated topic if you want to answer it at the same time can you just talk about the mcast update and its its impact particularly for um our seniors next year yep so on the first one they did talk about students uh who are auto immunocompromised and um they did not frame it like this i think because of legal reasons but the sense i got is um that we would treat them like other students who can't attend school because of health reasons um we have home health aid and home health programs that we provide now for students for a variety of reasons who can't attend school um and i think what i heard what was implied in the comments and tim heard the same thing was that uh we would use the same kind of model that we have now with home-based tutoring and access to courses that way um so they said an FAQ document would clarify that that FAQ document has not been released but when it is i'll be sure to share it with the committee and come back to share that update with the community um the second one is that mcasts are no longer a graduation requirement for the class of 2022 um so given the interruptions and given where they are in their education the state is no longer requiring uh passing the mcast to receive a diploma for that class any other questions mr. demlin um yeah i'm happy to come back around um so uh this is great to the middle school so i understand that this is a massively busy month for you and the rest of the district with regards to all of the dates for in-person return um and and i believe we have uh talking about sixth grade to the middle school at this committee's level um on may fourth um are we going to be so the question i have for you dr morris are we going to be ready to hit the ground running with that process so that we can really uh engage uh do a high engagement um time efficient process the reason i ask is that ideally it would be good to be for our districts that may pretend may decide to send if the region of committee agrees um to send six to the middle school for them to also have time to make the decision i'm thinking of other committees that i said another committee i said on and there's three other towns as well um it would be good for those districts to be able to make that decision by the end of this school year and if we start this process in earnest on may fourth it really leaves us a couple months before the the school year ends and so i'm just wondering if in terms of timeline do you as of this date do you think that that that's still realistic to achieve uh i'll be quick on my answer no i don't think it's realistic to achieve i think the the community's capacity to engage in a question of that magnitude as students are returning to school separate from our central office that's not where i'm going with my comments but um you know that's the date at which you know our middle school high school students are returning when we be starting that engagement um i i'm hard pressed to to think that that could um occur under that timeline without feeling incredibly rushed i know we had a school start time change uh that occurred under a pretty quick timeline but that wasn't a six you know a four week timeline um and i think this changed the magnitude of it it's quite a bit better and just bigger and some of it's just logistics and legally you know how that change would occur given the different districts if we were one k to 12 district i might say yeah we can we can do that engagement i think the reality is uh some of the details that are going to be highly relevant on financial and illegal ground um are gonna likely take longer even if we started today um to fully resolve where i think the committee can be ready and that that's relying on folks like legal counsel and you know the mass association regional schools and and how that all shakes out uh as well as the towns um all four towns um so uh i think can we absolutely start the engagement this spring absolutely i i have a hard time thinking that towns will be ready to make a decision um in the middle of i'm thinking of the other towns too there there's there's spring town meeting that's happening a lot of energy will go to budgets and spring town meetings they start up on may 1st but then they go on and shoot spurs not i think till june or 12th something like that i think um thank you and then uh pelham and levard or towards the beginning of may so i think in bandwidth i think the goal my personal goal i know this is going to be on an upcoming agenda is how do we build our capacity to talk about it how do we acculturate the community to think about it i know we did some of that last year but that was pre-covid and uh i don't think picking up right where we left off is going to be where uh is it going to be people's mindset so um what i'd like to do at the next meeting which i know we're getting creeping into agenda planning and this like donald could stop me if it's wise uh maybe we'd talk about during agenda planning because i think we should have a conversation of what what what our expectations are for that agenda item and how to move forward but i think that'd probably be the more appropriate place for that discussion i agree miss king do you have any insight on mcast for class of 2023 nope they uh well yet that's not true yes i do uh at this point the uh state has only relaxed the rules so to speak for the class of 2022 i think the expectation for class of 23 will probably be unchanged from the expectations for classes that have come before it and will come after it that's my that's my understanding and and they they continue to say to be determined or we'll share more information so as i get more i'll be able to share that but um at this point all i know about is uh all i've been told about 2022 there is an alternate path for 2021 like we did last year of company determination and they did help a couple students graduate who needed some support last spring and we're you know we're looking if there's any students who need that for this spring as well any other questions for dr morris not seeing any turn it back to you sure i'll turn it over to miss cunningham hello everyone uh typically in november our hr department has an opportunity or or for many years have had an opportunity to report on some of the diversity equity work that's taking place in the district and you know this past november we were not able to due to the pandemic and many of the other things that took precedence so i'm just going to briefly follow dr morris's lead to try to run through some of the things that we have been doing this year and i will read from the document really quickly so remember tip i'm normally have a large power point we normally take about 25 minutes but i'm going to just run through this as quickly as possible so as far as staffing the information on our desi which is the department of elementary and secondary education website is still unchanged so the data that we presented last year remains and that data just shows that we're doing a really good job at slowly increasing our number of staff who identify as a person of color in the region and we are also doing a better job at retaining our staff at the region so many of our curriculum has been reviewed and some modifications have been made and we're still at the secondary level still working on making changes to the curriculum to make it more diverse and helping our students to have access to different curriculum that has pictures and tells the real history is what we're looking to do and will continue to do at that level many of our staff members have attended joe trust and he is the founder of the dismantling white supremacist culture program so approximately 130 of our staff have attended and this is 130 individuals across all of our bargaining units we've also had goldie mohammed dr batina love and kimmy carlos speak to our staff and present on topics such as race racism abolitionist thinking and youth and the trauma of racism goldie mohammed continues to work with the high school and she's there to help them with the professional development that they're doing and creating action plans to move the high school forward on these topics kimmy carlos who i mentioned was one of our keynote speaker she is also going to come back and speak to families and caregivers of youths so that she can talk about the intersectionality of trauma and race and that'll be upcoming either the end of april or sometime early may we usually have a fall professional development half day and this year i'm pleased to announce that we were able to offer two of these days so we had one in the fall and we recently had one last month many of our teachers led the fall professional development opportunities this march many of our teachers just facilitated a conversation among content areas and this is the first time in a long time that they were able to stay either at grade level cohorts or content area cohorts meaning all math teachers joined together all english teachers all related service workers joined together so across the vertical alignment they were able to just have conversations and find out what each person is doing in regards to racism and reviewing their own bias along with the items listed above some of the schools have had book groups and community readings and have read books such as this book is anti-racist by tiffany jewel some have also read how to be an anti-racist by abram kindy and many schools are currently reviewing their policies and practices that disproportionately identifies one group of students for services and the middle school has developed a partnership with an organization called pk which is parent institute for quality education and just going from their website it's a national organization that engage empower and transform parents to actively engage in their parent in their child's education and strengthen parents school collaboration so how do we know it's working we use the typical evaluation system whether it's quantitative or qualitative information we get this directly from staff via surveys via exit interviews and also the decrease in the number of investigations that hr has had to do so that's my brief update and i am open to any questions that the committee may have thank you that was the impressive condensing that into that that list and and also accomplishing all that during during this pandemic year so and questions miss dancer thank you miss cunningham that was very nice to hear all of those things i'm wondering is do you have a document that you could actually share with us that has this information in it i do have the document that i just wrote with my notes on it but um i can always put something together and share it with the school committee that would be i thank you it would be appreciated mr damlin um yeah thank you that was a very comprehensive impressive list um a couple questions um a year or so ago um we talked about uh that we had introduced anti-bias training into our um hiring process in terms of people that participate on screening committees and interview committees i'm just wondering if is that something that we're still doing and how is that going as it has been well received and do you feel like now that we've had a bit of time with it working do you feel like that's improved the process uh and then my second question i forgot so i'll just stick with the first one oh thank you for asking that question yes we didn't introduce the anti-racism part in our hiring process and i'll tell you that it has worked tremendously because one we have increased the number of people being hired who are people of color and um and it's not as though we targeted people of color to say oh we're going to make sure to do x y and z with them we still have the screening process where there are no names and of course there's no race listed and when we do things the way the committee had found to be best practice we found that people of color have been moved to the interview round which they typically were not right so now they're getting that chance to interview and um recently as recently as yesterday i had someone mentioned to me that the way our process is has been so helpful to them because they this is a candidate who came in for an interview she said typically she's anxious coming into a room full of people but the way we communicate our process and the way we give them a step-by-step guidance as to what's going to take place when they're interviewing and then being able to come into the room virtually um and seeing all these different faces she felt comfortable because it wasn't just one race or the typical race that she was seeing at the table and she felt that her voice was heard and respected during the interview i had another gentleman who came in for an interview today and he said you know he wish other places would revamp their hiring process to be similar to ours because our process shows our commitment to social justice and equity miss kane um so i know that you mentioned about the secondary curriculum being revised can you go can you dive deeper into um what class areas are being revised and if that would possibly mean more classes or different class frameworks so i can only go into that very briefly because i am not the principals at the secondary level so i can only tell you that based on the information i received i know they're looking at the math curriculum and um social studies english and other content areas and what changes will be made was would be made based on teacher input after the group reviews all the curriculum and the principal of course would or each principal would of course talk to the staff students and communicate with families about any changes that are being made any other questions for miss kane him mr dimley so um that was really helpful on the anti-bias training on the on the recruitment piece and the you know we always talk about retention so it was good to hear that you know our retention is also increasing that's and a lot of companies struggle with that because there's so much focus on the interview process and widening the pool that once employees get here and i know we had talked a little bit again a little while back about affinity groups and staff of color and and new staff and how how we we support staff especially in their first years to acclimate and and whatnot is is that something that we're still doing and can you talk about that a little bit we do have um affinity groups still in in um amherst and i know this year there was a struggle to continually meet as an affinity group we also have a small group of individuals who are looking to create a mentoring program for staff who identify as persons of color or by pock so that in their first and possibly second year of being here in amherst they have a dedicated staff member who looks like them and can understand their experiences to help guide them through the process of being here in amherst and help them through uh navigating some of the things that they may not have navigated in other districts so that's something that we're looking at there's also groups of individuals who um would call themselves white allies to help to work on the culture in the district um on it from a different lens of of individuals so yes affinity so the short answer is yes affinity groups are still in existence but we're changing the face of what these affinity groups may look like any other questions not seeing any so um thank you very much for that update super helpful um now we'll move on to um chair's update and i think the only update that i'll share is that uh yesterday evening miss stancer and i joined dr morris and dr slaughter at the amherst town council meet meeting of the town council last night um to present the regional school budgets that we approved weeks ago um and uh and it was a budget hearing as well so um lots of lots of good discussion and comment um i think the the sum up to sort of the primary well and there was a finance committee meeting on further on that today so um uh i would say biggest question areas were just understanding how we define um level services budget um and how that shows up in our budget documents um and i'm trying to i didn't write down the other one right now but um miss stancer i don't know if you wanted to add anything no i guess just that um i guess the number of public comments that were concerned about the cut of the art position at the middle school and actually just um people saying you know this is not the time to be cutting education thank you yeah there was robust public comment um also during the hearing so uh moving on to our next item the school committee announcements does anybody um from the committee have any announcement or updates they'd like to share seeing them and we're we made up a lot of our lost time so that's great um so we'll move on now to our new and continuing business and our one main item this evening is the presentation from the school equity task force and um as i introduced earlier um miss lauren mills is joining us this evening to participate in that and i'm not sure do i turn it over to miss lord or miss mills i'm going to begin she's going to end okay i will share my screen so that you all can see the thank you and well chair mcdonald gets the slides up i just wanted to say first of all thank you chair mcdonald for welcoming this presentation and thank you of course to our sctf school equity task force um members who worked really hard this whole year trying to be supportive gather information get it to the school committee and district and just be helpful wherever we could in some ways we're like why are we presenting this now because it's fixed we're all going back to school but no um part of what has been highlighted spotlight just drawn more to the surface is some of the inequities that are existing in all our institutions in this country and so i want us to like have this on our public record and in our minds that we can go back and say okay this is something and we're working on it and um assistant superintendent cunningham just showed a really solid way that amherst is taking amherst paladin regional school district is taking huge steps forward in this work so it's not just performative or like on paper we're actually doing stuff so this is just a piece of that our piece of that um school equity task force survey on experiences during and impacts of remote learning next slide please an overview of the sctf okay scd we only had 62 families that participated um in this not i shouldn't say only but 39 percent were people of color identified and 21 percent were not people of color identified but on free or reduced lunch so some of the 39 percent of the poc is also on free or reduced lunch next slide please what worked well this pandemic has taught us a lot it's been a lot of hard lessons but there's also been some things that oh i really want to keep that post pandemic um so some feedback we got was the later start time we've run me do that for our secondary students three classes instead of seven that's not sustainable but we might want to look at what are ways we can de-densify some of that in the future being home with family less distraction the book bags thank you to the librarians i want to lift susan wells up because she was the first one i learned to do it and there's probably all of our librarians so please don't be offended if i don't sell your names but thank you to the librarians and volunteers who did that small groups break out rooms and then yeah teachers and paraprofessionals have been great and patient but we do that already next slide please hopefully so mental health um cpac also did a survey and and this is sort of similar to theirs of course eight to ten reported negative effects on household mental health there's no surprise there um next slide please there was a desire and a need for more tutoring and it was a pandemic and we're all doing the best we can but maybe this is something even going forward that we need to look at like how do we get tutor services or make them more accessible if you don't have an ip or a 504 or even if you do okay next slide please thank you thank you and then of course there was more we were more likely to experience finding negative financial impacts if we were already on free and reduced lunch because many of our families me included are in that where we can't work from home our jobs aren't such my two jobs still haven't opened up um not to be about me but i'm just saying the financial impact on our families and then i'm blessed because i can get a stimulus check but there's a lot of our families that can't get that for whatever reason so um i know it's not the schools yeah we think about the whole child so we also want to think about what they're going through sorry about all these dings i just got some good news um next slide please i'll turn my phone off maybe not a hope communication with the school this is something that i know everybody has been doing their best with um but a lot of in retrospect and moving forward how do we communicate with families differently um this is a handful that we're not contacted and maybe it's the squeaky wheel but sometimes the squeaky wheel doesn't know how to reach out and so communication there'll be another slide so i'm not going to take up too much time um next slide please oh here it goes that is the other slide i guess i'm doing it is this number ten no this is the last one i think okay communication is one definite way to break the isolation of the pandemic i do know that we had a survey recently and a lot of families hadn't responded so the guidance counselors or the high school staff called every family that hadn't responded and then they followed up with a second call so i know right now presently our communication is really chugging chugging um but how can we do it besides just email and surveys and so that's we want to look at that think about that how do we get more out there to the neighborhoods that you know might need us to be there and then there is no one site to go to or general number to call for information and our website has a lot of information but it is still tricky you need to know to go where to go to look for the information so that's just food for that and thank you very much next slide please and i believe i'm handing it over to you miss mills thank you thank you yes uh thank you uh thank you for inviting me this evening um and allowing me to speak um uh as a member of the sctf the school equity task force and i'm also a parent so i'm speaking as a parent as well um i we but did the survey i believe it was in the beginning of january and um as heather said and as you know many in the district were concerned about um what the effects of um the so remote learning were having um i am not uh like a doctor or a psychologist or anything like that so from what i observed in my own children and what i know all of us have heard from the responses from other parents that you know called in and left voice messages and attended other school um school committee meetings have been very like distressing distressing as well to hear you know what they were going through um and also i know that you know members of the school committee have made the comment that you know the the stress of um dealing with this new normal of you know not being able to see um friends not being able to be um in the school with your teachers even though that's not the case now um that's still you know may and is most likely going to have an impact on students um not just you know it's not just going to end once you know schools open up fully so these were some of the questions that uh the school equity task force came up with um that you know i guess are for all of us to consider and take take in um how will this commitment to social justice and an anti-racist curriculum be accomplished um i'm sorry i should have started with the top rs has committed to a system that is just dedicated to social justice and multiculturalism um as part of their mission mission statement but we know um on the um in the same breadth or in in the same um school district that we do have challenges around um bias around um equity and disparity in our school system so um that was one of the questions um individual families have sought tutoring mental health counseling social contact and contact the schools about their needs um uh but not necessarily from our um our only survey there wasn't a a big response back from uh the schools and you know i'm one of the parents who you know i i like to you know know what's going on but as heather mentioned from the the the findings of the survey um a lot of parents you know they're they're busy or they're just maybe not they don't know where to to look or or to call um and so maybe they're not getting the information that they need to like you know advocate or be supportive of of their their child as as well as they would want to um can can how can the district retain uh staff of color and build on these programs um i'm just gonna read all of them what data will demonstrate that the district has effectively addressed these issues how will the district communicate uh these programs and provide ongoing communication to families in need and i think yeah that's a big thing communication because there may be things that the school district is doing um that parents don't don't know about or and and we're just you know forming our opinions are um from you know what we what we don't see happening because we don't know what the the school district is doing so the presentation from um during cunningham uh it would be nice if you know the sctf had a better communication to know all the things that you know the school district and um amherst uh schools are doing administration is doing next slide please thank you um i got this uh this next information from um a a website um it's called uh brilia and um it is like if you want further information you can go to the website um but uh it says the effects that so the the effects that so remote learning likely has likely has already had on amherst students i'm just going to read the quote um from the website not only does screen time take away from our personal and quality time studies show it increases anxiety and restlessness studies show that too much screen time can make children exhibit symptoms of adhd limiting limiting screen time and taking control of content on screen helps you discover more of the amazing non-tech driven world around us it's a common space to live in um and then it has um three articles of how video games affect your child's development uh parental control tricks to monitoring screen time for kids screen time and kids with attention issues what you need to know and um before the whole remote learning we always had the message you know from doctors and that you know too much screen time you know you have to monitor it and then now our children were on the screens for school like six hours a day or or so and then plus that because they had the ability to use a computer they would use it even after school ended so i think that you know that really has had an impact on you know our children and our students next slide please um this is a um some information that i got from the ops website around restorative restorative practice resources um and i wasn't sure if people could see the the left where um the left rounded you know um image that has restorative practice in the um the center so i was just going to read that and um it says restorative practices again this is a guy for educators um uh it's a well it's a it's information from 2014 that's on the ops website and it says because at the sc t f we've you know struggled with you know is does the school um what restorative practices do they have in place you know is their mission does it expand to anti-racism um work for you know school-wide administrators and staff and all that or is it just like for a social awareness is it multiculturalism so there's like all these terms and we weren't really sure you know exactly what the schools what the school is implementing but um restorative practices should include um to um address and and discuss the needs of the school community build healthy relationships between educators and students resolve conflict hold individuals and groups accountable repair harm and restore positive relationships and reduce prevent and improve harmful behavior um the the right hand side um hope i'm saying that right is another um visual from the web um from the uh restorative practice uh resources on rp's website it says a tale of two schools um and one side talks about um or shows like the progression of like if you have a zero tolerance tolerance education system how that affects students and then the difference between that and and restorative practices in the educational system and how it restorative practices you know are have a better outcome for students and i think for the whole school um next slide please um yeah this is just some more information that um i got from the website um the arts website and again books are a great a great way uh for um parents to you know get their children curious about their cultures other people um so um i think this you know is is a a good list even though i'm not sure when this was put together um i think it was it says 2006 and as also was mentioned before that um there have been other book clubs or book um discussions around um social justice and um racial justice and i just want to um come in and and thank um the crocker farm pgo for supporting um uh racial identities book club that i think we've gone through four books and we're going to a to a fifth book so that that has been a good experience to connect with um parents and be supported by the pgo next slide please um yeah i i do want to reiterate that i really i really feel like um um there has to be there is a need and so there has to be a strong demand um from the community and as a member of sc tf again um we are you know trying to be be that voice and advocate for the needs that we see the community um is having so um we really need um a budget from the school committee that supports restorative practices that develops the love of learning and affinity for others says to others but for others counseling and tutoring for any student who requests it based on the school-wide effects of covid and loss of in-person learning and i'm just going to stop there because um as it is now um it feels like unless you know you're individually um advocating for your child that's one thing or if your child has a special needs that's another thing but again the covid pandemic the effects of covid on on the all students whether it's small or great um needs to be addressed and it needs to be um it needs to be seeing that it's it's it's an issue so i would hope that the school committee can provide counseling and tutoring for all students um who request it um and we have suggested using the family center to expand um uh this work and and so we would like to use the family center as a place to practice restorative justice and provide resources to families and staff so that students feel comfortable heard acknowledged in their lived experiences and are able to speak for themselves and speak up for others continued use of technology to to close educational disparities and address each student and their individual learning styles and needs next slide please um anti-racist curriculum um again there's a lot of terms so i had to look this up again i'm just going to um read a definition that i got from um a website called um uh the committee for for children again there's there's many um there's many um i guess you say doctors or um leaders and and or consultants that can speak you know more to these these things than just you know a parent um but i wanted to just share a definition of anti-racist curriculum it it says from this website it says addresses um power dynamics and equity and anti-racist curriculum addresses power dynamics and equity brings awareness to prejudice while promoting respect for and value of differences falls under social justice education which centers around development of social awareness of inequities along with with a critical lens that encourages social action and i think that's what we want to be um we want to see uh active participation in in this work next slide please um this is the last slide and um i i it might seem a little off but um i think you know besides the work um that uh uh miss cunningham shared that the district is doing um we often get like when these external um things happen like the pandemic or uh you know uh violence that has you know happened you know in different parts of you know the the country that affects you know us and and and bring these these issues to the forefront um racial race racism and um and and violence um we we need to uh not just like send out a letter um saying that we condemn it but um i think again it's what what are the other action steps that we can take and i you know just in my research i um came across this um and it it shows 19 um 19 towns um i believe in massachusetts that have declared um racism a public health crisis um i'm not sure if north hampton is on here but i think north hampton is one town that's very nearby that has declared racism a public health crisis and maybe that's something as a school committee and as a um school community we can um think about doing yeah that's the end of my so thank you for listening thank you thanks very much um pretty comprehensive do um does anybody have any questions for miss mills or miss lord um and i'll also note that mr herrington is also um one of our um committee reps on the sctl any questions or comments mr demling yeah i i really appreciate the the focus on the theme of of communication the need for proactive communication and and how that relates to the mental health um needs of students as we return from covet um i feel like you know one of the ways in which systemic racism manifests is that like the squeaky wheel gets the grease right and so if you know how to if you know how to work the system if you know how to communicate if if you have the language if you have the tools um that you can you can get the services you need um and and if you don't then then you can you have additional barriers and so um i think one of the slides mentioned the website um and uh i would second that that you know there are there are sometimes there are services that are available uh whether that's um you know uh support for families to the family center or whether that's academic support um or mental health support and it's it's not easily discoverable right and so there's it's one thing to have these things available it's another thing to be easily discoverable so actually dr morris i i don't know if you've done some thinking already and i know we've talked a lot at the school committee about we know it's going to be increased in mental health needs um as students come back especially next next fall as people really settle in um and you know i i'm sure that if students are or families are loud or proactive about their need or you know are of their own accord are coming to tell staff um of their mental health needs that they'll be addressed um but then there's all the students and families who aren't going to feel that comfortable right and so what given this this is going to be another abnormal year right pandemic recovery you know what what's what's our early thinking on how do we proactively reach out to uh and monitor you know students so that um we're proactively addressing their mental health needs right because we don't want to have like half the school year go by and then have kids really struggling and then only then intervene in the crisis um and obviously these things affect um you know disadvantaged students you know more so so um i don't think the initial thoughts on that yeah i'll share just two quick ones one is that it's certainly something that we're planning on doing over the summer i think it's going to be hard to survey students over to come to conclusions until they're in our until many of them are in our buildings and i think well too much we're even two days in at the elementary level we're getting a sense of where uh students are not just in what their you know surveys would say but they're literally telling us so i think we're going to have a great opportunity to understand where students are from the last two months of the school year at the middle school and high school level i think the second piece is is then utilizing the summer to do some action planning it might involve some surveying or focus groups of students and we are looking to utilize some of our stimulus funds in a way to support the well-being of students in in all the ways that you mentioned i think miss mills's presentation was spot on in terms of highlighting that as a major need as we head to the next school year and that this pandemic and we've talked about this multiple times has been experienced it's one pandemic and everyone's experience in their own unique way and not equally across the board as you noted so you know we are going to take a keen look on what students experience as they're in the building we know that's not all students but it is going to be a good snapshot for us and then to do some really action planning over the summer with the stimulus dollars that we have to figure out what supports additional supports do we need and how to make sure that families are aware and can access those um i just wanted to add i had made a note during the budget hearing last night with the town council that one of the council members asked how they can help what what we can do to help them communicate how we're going to be ready to help the students with you know and and advocate not advocate but communicate for them to be able to tell people what the schools are doing to be prepared for the issues that are going to come up when students come back to school so i um that stood out for me last night i have a quick question um maybe it's not quick but um i recalls um maybe it was at the end of last school year that sctf was looking exactly trying to dig into that a little bit more on communication and outreach directly to families um and i was wondering sort of if there if you've had further conversations about that and sort of ideas about other ways um that the that the district or the school committee um can be connecting with with um the families that you're that you're talking to i guess that's a question for our sctf reps or miss mills i'm sorry i didn't know if you sorry i apologize can you say it again um my question for the for our sc for either of the three of you from sctf is i recall the conversations were beginning probably last summer um about sort of how how to ways to engage and and conduct outreach to the communities um particular communities of color within within our district and i just wondered if you if you've had insight or thoughts or sort of you know um more deeper than what we we were talking about then that you would be helpful for the district or the school committee to to sort of work on in terms of outreach my first response would be um anybody who's listening who has ideas please oh i didn't wait for you to call on me i'm sorry you don't have to i was directing my question at one of you three is to please um email call it in any ideas that we're not going to think of because more heads is better than like a hundred heads is better than three but i know that the pandemics really squished it a lot no excuses but i'm hoping to be out in the apartment complexes weekly on some rotating schedule just sitting there with a chair and some water and be accessible that way i also think when we have community events again especially ones like kwanzaa juneteenth maybe having a table set up just with information about who we are how we can just like the face-to-face building relationships those are my two ideas i know other people have ideas but we would also welcome any ideas from the community because we're all the the district yeah i would just add quickly um every week we get a newsletter from the superintendent and um so i get information from there uh but i don't think all um all parents you know they may not they might not check their email they may not look for information you know in that way so i had suggested um sctf um a newsletter um that could share other you know community information in other important events um that could just be that would actually be printed and put into people's hands or you know you know be able to be distributed to their door i'm just like a one page newsletter it'll be helpful i see two questions i don't know who was first so i'll start with miss king i have a question angled towards dr morris um you're discussing a lot about this summer but i'm kind of curious from this data we see that eight out of ten um people are experiencing mental health crisis or having mental health issues what are you doing now currently and specifically in the high school around that sure so i want to compliment our mental health folks at our high school and you're right for noting that i should have mentioned this earlier um to have been doing tremendous work doing office hours proactive work our folks in the bright program who are working with a broad range of students right now and adjustment counselors and psychologists who are trying to keep tabs on students that they can't see in person which is which is a unique challenge um so my opinion you know uh they've really risen to the challenge to try to meet students needs where they are um and done proactive outreach for high school students um the communication again for families has been really critical uh you know sometimes it's thought of more of the k to eight piece but i think in particularly as it relates to a pandemic that family communication at the high school has also been critical uh in maintaining those connections for students and so it's not something we often talk about because it's not something that i'm sort of at liberty disclosed in terms of some of the interventions that have gone on for individual students but i do think the committee in the community should be aware that at the high school level our counseling team has been working in in all sorts of ways and that's including some of the academy as well uh to meet student needs um and to best support students all along the way and they've really taken the lead on that um you know even going back to last spring uh when things were much less organized um to be able to do that so you know that that's really the framing that we've had is supporting the work we've also done some work um Dr. Brady uh facilitated group of the leaders um you know thinking about homework thinking about how we support students great acquisition and and those some of the challenges to acknowledge that they're going on for students and how do we kind of share some great forgiveness uh during this difficult time which has been critical for students and their well-being as well i think the last thing i'll say is one of the largest things that we've also done is maintaining a later start time which all the evidence suggests but nationally as well as in massachusetts is one of the greatest contributors to improving students mental health is not forcing them to be at school at 7 30 in the morning um and i know it sounds simplistic and the evidence is very convincing that that's going to we'll continue to contribute uh this year and then we'll be implemented more fully next year as a strategy to support well-being of students did you have a follow-up miss kin or is it a separate question i did um i should have reiterated what have you added on that like what has been additional that you didn't do last year to support more students with mental health issues sure so um i think a couple things um one is i think you know we certainly if this is a topic that the committee wants to have we can have the mental health team from the high school come because i think they could describe what they've done in a drastically better way than i can summarize so i don't want to be disrespectful to their work um but i think as as it relates to the difference between last spring and this fall and throughout this year just we've been much more organized about keeping tabs on students making sure that uh there's more regular communication even the kind of how you sign up for an appointment with a counselor like you know some of the electronic systems have been developed uh and much more thorough ways than last spring when we were kind of in reactive mode instead of much more proactive approach this year also just in general the teachers have been you know had more time to prepare for what was happening and a lot of the pd we had this summer about distance learning wasn't really just focused on the more academic side it was about how to support student well-being and making sure students weren't on screens or didn't feel like they had to be screens on every single second of every single day to accomplish their learning what are different ways at the high school level that students could still be activated uh and learning without being glued to a screen from 9 to 230 and so those are some of the ways but certainly if it's a topic we want sure we could have folks demand and share more specific details on that miss fit sir um first i just want to thank miss mills miss lord and mr herrington for all the hard work on sat f over his presentation has been once a year but i know you guys are serving for the entire year so thank you very much um the i'm happy to hear that we're going to potentially be using federal dollars to help meet the needs for counseling and tutoring and i think everybody's said that already so thank you um i'm happy to hear that i guess my question has been um and maybe this is something more agenda planning so i will i won't go too far into it but i just wanted to understand if the survey that we do annually of students to kind of ask about the environment and how things because we've had this nice longitudinal data set that we've created and now we have the pandemic um i'm curious if that's still happening and if there's any potential to potentially um ask about some of these mental health needs or other count you know types of needs that might be unique to the pandemic could be introduced through that uh mechanism that we have annually so we yep so we did not survey students and partially because of the pandemic but we did i did get a report from the mental health team at the middle school high school was discussed about whether we should survey folks or not and they opted for not um and again if this is something that the committee would like um certainly could help them back and describe their thinking and their report of what they're seeing from students from well-being perspective challenges they're seeing and interventions they're doing uh in much more detail um given that this was an sctf presentation i wasn't respectfully prepared to talk in the level of detail that are being asked to but if that's a topic the committee would like we certainly can ask the experts to come back and be able to do that well we'll come back to that in our agenda planning miss mills did you have a comment that you want to yeah yeah i um just wanted to say that um it sounds like the counseling services are i'm not sure but it sounds like they're one on one or um like uh some of the uh counseling guambodars you know have been in a group for parents but i really feel like in order to um enhance the school culture um to be more inclusive and you know to really um support students at this time there they have to actually be like group group um group um support likes it not just like okay i'm going through something and you know i'm going to go see the counselor but you know at different ages um and i'm just going by you know a parents experience you know nobody wants to feel like they're singled out or look like they have a problem but we know that you know the whole community has gone through something so to me the the school needs to address it like in a collective way and not just to be like okay you you you're going through something and so we're going to deal with this on an individual basis so i'm just conscious of time because we do have some um some folks outside of our committee joining us um shortly before eight for our executive session so um i'll give one more pass for final comment or question okay thank you and um i know i know we've said this several times but thank you again um miss mills and and um miss lord and mr herrington for all the work that the school like woody task force is doing and has been doing and for bringing this presentation to our meeting tonight so thank you and look forward to further conversations about some of these issues with you all thank you um and now we're we are on to uh future agenda planning um colleges i don't have that right in front of me right now i don't know where it disappeared to um i can i can show that if it's helpful yeah if you have that handy that would be so our next meeting um regional school committee is on the fourth of may no 20 you're right yeah it just seems so long we've never gone more than a week with that in me um so on that um on that date um as mr demling alluded to earlier we will be taking up that middle school grade span report and talking about our next steps which includes not just um uh not just the outreach which is a significant portion of it but also just sort of refreshing ours in the community's understanding of how a decision like this needs to be made um because it is first day regional decision but then understanding the the sequence of um outreach and decision making that we'll need to make um we are um planned to have this feedback in for their annual report um and presentation and i believe as somebody mentioned earlier they are also conducted a survey recently um and they are planning to join us um for that meeting um looks like we also have slotted um the fall 2021 discussion as well as the msba um middle school roof statement of interest for the accelerated repair program um which is something i think every year since i've been on the committee and probably longer than that we've been submitting so is for that any other i'm a seeker this is more of this doesn't directly relate to this but um i had thought there was another meeting in the month of april uh so it's more of a school committee announcement but this is then technically my last meeting with you all tonight um and i just wanted to mention that so i'm sorry i didn't think of it sooner and i'm sorry i didn't read this sooner um but i wanted to note that and i'm going to encourage levrett to try to have somebody at the may 4th meeting because they're going to have to regroup i think the night before um because our town meeting is i believe me first so hopefully you have a levrett rep then um i know i've been here a short time and it's been a pleasure to work with you all it's been a very short but intense period of time i was about to say it was it was very short i think you squeezed in probably at least two years worth of school committee work and the time that you've been with us so um and uh yeah thanks thanks for letting us know i'm sorry that we didn't know ahead of time but i i do want to i'll just sort of go a little up topic but you were um uh i do recall that we we um it had some several conversations um before you joined us on on region and i think um sort of worried about the workload and even though the workload was immense um i've really enjoyed having you and i think you've been a really productive and full part of our community so i really appreciate the your service over this past very intense year i'm sorry to see you go yeah thank you it's the end of my uh six years in levrett on the committee there so um and i'm kind of sorry i didn't wasn't on this committee sooner i've enjoyed the experience so thank you all any other um comments on an agenda planning i see mr dimmling's hand yeah i can't believe the spitzer isn't bringing up the superintendent evaluation process and the uh so i'll bring it up um we should probably uh set the vote for that and then reverse engineer the steps we need to do in order to get there if we're going to finish that on time this year which we probably should i think if you scroll down dr morris we there's some placeholder points on there but we did need to talk about the tool um and probably need to move that artifact presentation too i added something at least for that conversation that occurred the next meeting i'm made for is that sound okay mr dimmling mr dimmling do we still have an active superintendent evaluation subcommittee because that would be those would be the members to more want to chime in on schedule i believe miss spitzer has been chair of that and i don't know who else it was me i think forgive me if i say somebody who is not actually on it but i believe mr sullivan was was on it with me and um yes miss dancer so um perhaps we should find a time to meet although i i do think it should be pretty straightforward because although i don't want to creep into talking about the subject but we we may want to think if we want to rethink the format in light of the the year we've had um so um we can talk about that later so that would be probably a good um you know a month between now and may fourth that that subcommittee could meet and we can we can circle back what how we um frame this on the agenda but it could be sort of just how to as you just framed it sort of what what process and what tool do we want even if it's not sort of the the actual tool to um review um i think i see miss lords hand up i know that we're thinking about this in a little while but i don't know if we want to put it on to start talking about um the idea of doing a land acknowledgement and other ways we interact and support the indigenous community in our school and district and curriculum thank you like that be june since we're not going to meet again in april and may looks full what do you think that's too soon i think if you're okay with you land acknowledgement i think it's okay to put because the other stuff goes in with that so it's not performative in my opinion thank you any other miss dancer i guess a question when we do the the 2021 let's see i can't see it can you scroll back up a little bit on the document the fall 2021 discussion um based on the this evening's discussion can that include something about the mental health preparation so i had separated them out to that being more of the format of fall 21 and then i added um based on the conversation tonight from sctf and this canes comment a separate item you may not be able to see it on may 18th uh okay mental health and well-being of secondary students thank you because i think i think they're two different things and i agree they're related but i actually think looking at them separately might be beneficial okay that's great thank you any other um comments or ads miss lord did is your hand up again or is it no okay great okay awesome um moving on um uh warrant report miss spitzer do you have any words to report i do um just one so um i carry spitzer authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of 66 nine hundred sixty three dollars and thirty one cent for the warrant dated april second 2021 this included general fund expenses of thirty one thousand nine hundred thirty seven dollars and three cents revolving fund expenses of twelve thousand seven hundred seventy one dollars and four four cents grant fund expenses of twenty one thousand two hundred eighty seven dollars and thirty four cents and other funds in the amount of nine hundred sixty seven dollars and fifty cents for capital and i signed this on april second 2021 thank you um next up we have um accepting gifts and i don't believe there are any gifts this evening um so with that um i am going to make a motion that we enter into executive session to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation of ap ea if an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining or litigation position of the public body and the chair so declares and i declare with no intention of returning to open session is there a second second and moved by mcdonald and seconded by spitzer we'll take a roll call vote mr demling demling i mr herrington herrington i miss kenny miss kenny says i miss lord lord i miss beaker seager i miss spitzer spitzer i miss dancer just answer i mr sullivan i can read your lips sullivan i and mcdonald i um so the motion passes unanimously and so we will now move to executive session thank you to emerson media for broadcasting our meeting this evening


Welcome to digital asset news like a top stories and crypto current digital assets and break them down to bite size pieces today We're gonna talk about where are my spark tokens from the XRP or flare airdrop This is a question that I keep getting from a lot of different people and it's actually one of the questions that I have Myself so I want to dig deep and take a look at this but make it very simplified so first of all I put a lot of my XRP into the Celsius wall because it was the easiest for me and It actually shows in my Celsius wall that I have 23,000 worth of spark token which I had twenty thousand worth of XRP so great So I'm looking at this. I'm like, okay. It's already there, but that's not the case the snapshot actually happened About 12 hours ago or so So this makes it very confusing because we look at Celsius like oh, I already have the spark tokens But that's not the case really what's what's going on is that the snapshot was taken and you're not going to get the actual spark tokens from flair Intel q1 or q2 of 2021 so if you if you have Celsius or maybe another wallet where you you take a look at you like Oh, it's already here. It's not there. I think they put that in there just so people would not bother them Like like, you know, where's my spark and this and that so I think this is what they did But I could be incorrect. So this is actually from the flare official website I'll put that in the link in the description below flair.xyz and what they state here is it's very simple actually and this is a nice little claim decision tree I'll let you take a look at that, but I don't really care about that right now What I care about is this part right here. Let me so great nice and big so I can see it So distribution date. This is the big thing Distribution date is when the flair network goes live and that's not gonna happen Intel q1 or q2 2021 and some people talk about April not somewhere on April 2021. So right now they took the snapshot They have everything there. They're going to distribute it later So even if you have something like this on Celsius or any other wallet, you may think you have it But you don't have it. It's just a snapshot I'm actually making this video today because I actually put out a poll and I asked the same question Are all your spark tokens showing your wallet and yes and no when airdrop what and people sell the same question like Hold on what what what's going on? I don't understand So just you know that is exactly what's happening and then to get into some details about this airdrop first of all, there's gonna be a hundred billion spark tokens created and That's a ton and this is how it's actually gonna be as far as like distributed and the claim eligibility So really what it comes down to is out of the hundred billion If a certain exchange doesn't didn't actually come forth and say yeah We're going to actually be a part of that that means that all the people had had the XRP on there they would have been excluded and You would have gotten more spark because all those XRP holders were like well, you know They didn't really go for it So that's why I was kind of like when coinbase said it I was like man crap that sucks because that means that all the people on coinbase will get it at some point I thought that if they didn't do it then that'd be more a spark for all of us But hey, what are you gonna do and then also this is the people that are excluded they stayed other than ripple ink And then in the non-participant exchanges there are a few groups that are completely excluded from distribution One is Jed McKay lipple I'm sure everybody knows him in that little group So he doesn't get squat and then accounts that are known to have received XRP is all the fraud theft and scam So that makes a lot of sense. So that's pretty good. And then also there's a thing called a whale cap So if you have over one billion XRP you're capped out of that So if you got like one like two billion you're gonna get that one billion However, I think they can there's probably a way around that if you just have two wallets But I'm not for sure and then this is the big them big one what you will receive and win So each account that has claimed spark will receive 15% of the total spark for which they are eligible 15 This is 15% of the spark claimable term and the equation above you take a look at this nice equation That's got this thing as far as spark claimable XRP owned divided by and blah blah blah great The remaining spark claimable we will be distributed over a minimum of 25 months and a max of 34 months So you're looking at really two to three years. So what they do this? Well, it says it right here It's all about weak hands. Well, they don't want to have is people just get all these tokens all at once and then just dump them So this is why they're gonna drip everything out So if you participate in the snapshot congratulations, everything is done now It's just a waiting game and that's not gonna happen until around April of next year So hope that answers your question. So that's it. Just want to make this quick video just to talk about these little Issues that were popping up and things that I've seen so that is it for today. Thanks so much and I'll see you on the next one


Let's use that. That's fine. So where are we today in terms of our blockchain ecosystem? We're in a world with like thousands of blockchains already public chains private chains Catering to different use cases in the public chain world We have smart contracting platforms like Ethereum anonymity coins like C cash Monero in the private chain world We have chains that are catering to interbank settlement to stock exchanges So my question for you is what if we could connect those chains in a more Natural way like today if you want to transact between chains You would have to go the old way of transacting across exchanges Sending your Bitcoin to an exchange like Mt. Gox bit Phoenix. You see the problems already. It takes time It's slow. It's not really native to a blockchain where you expect speed Safety, trustlessness. So what we were asking ourselves, what if we connect those two block those blockchains? And that's what we did with Comet. It's a protocol that does exactly that it allows us to do instant transactions across blockchains So how do we do that? We use three simple block three simple building blocks and I think for everyone if you're Technical or not should be familiar the first one is a concept of a multi-sig if you have ever opened a corporate bank account Share checking accounts where multiple signatures are required. That's exactly this concept The second one is the concept of a time lock If you have set up a trust fund that your kid gets access to when it turns 18 That's this concept and the last one is the concept of a password in this case implemented with a simple hash function So if we find a blockchain that has those three building blocks in its smart contracting language And we found even very simple blockchains like Bitcoin have those smart contracting capabilities of multi-sig Timelocking and the hash function Then what we found next is that more than 90% Have those building blocks that allow us to build the Comet protocol And I want to go a bit more in detail in how that works So we use two different concepts first the concept of a Cross-chain circuit when we go across chains also known as a hash time lock contract And I want to go through it real quick how that works even for those that are not technical It shouldn't be too hard to understand it uses only one thing it uses a hash lock You can in you can think about that as a as a password lock Where we have now two different chains We have transactions going from a user to a liquidity provider to a business Traditionally you would have an exchange in the middle or somebody that does a translation between multiple asset classes here But with Comet we can do this trustless and instant So if we have a business on the Ethereum chain wanting wanting to be paid in a sing dollar token And we have a user wanting to pay in Bitcoin Then what you can do is you can lock up the funds sending them to a liquidity provider under a hash lock So it actually starts here business creates a hash of a secret gives it to the user as an invoice User pays the liquidity provider locking up the funds under that hash Which neither the liquidity provider or nor the user can actually resolve and here from that point on the liquidity Provider knows that he can only get paid if he actually forwards the promised payment Like he would already have arranged beforehand What is the rate that he would would do this transaction and by doing the same transaction by copying the hash? You have linked those two transactions because you need the pre-image of the hash to fulfill either transaction Which means once the business sees the transaction coming in it would most likely accept it But and has therefore has to reveal the password has to reveal the pre-image This is the first concept which we use for linking multiple block chains And you might point out that this is quite slow because you have to wait for the settlement onto the Bitcoin blockchain To prevent double spans and then you have to wait For settlement onto the Ethereum blockchain that the business actually can guarantee it gets paid And therefore we use a second concept. It's called a payment channel to speed the whole thing up a Payment channel uses nothing else than a multi-signature address Who in here is familiar with state channels and payment channels? Okay, I think I want to explain that then Multi-signature is similar to a shared checking account So I will explain it in the world of finance instead when you open a bank account Where you have two signatories to give you a checkbook and every check only becomes valid when you have both of those signatures on it So what you can do is now you can go with your friend Assuming you want to do multiple transactions with him open that account But before you put money in you already signed the checks getting the money back out So each of you holding let's say a check over a thousand dollars Once you have cross-signed those you know you can get your money out by just cashing in the check So you can safely put in the money on the blockchain. The same is true. You can have a multi-signature account Where you already have signed the transactions to get the money out before you put the money in and here comes the trick once You have settled the transaction for putting money into the multi-signature account You can update the transactions who owns how much the equivalent on the checkbook Example is that we just tear apart the checks and write each other new ones because now We can do transactions that we don't have to wait for the blockchain to settle anymore The same is true of the checks the bank doesn't know who who owns how much because it have no insight over the checks until you Cash them in and basically close that account same is true here We can do transactions between each other at the speed of the network between us Simply by updating those two transactions so if we put those two together we have linkability between blockchains and We have the speed of real-time, which is just the network between the nodes and you can form a network So if you're on the same network then that concept exists Maybe somebody is familiar with the lightning network or the Raiden network Which are implementations of these concepts for a single chain what we're building with commit is using the same building blocks to go across chains solving the problem of Trading payments across any number of blockchain networks while retaining The real-time capabilities so you can easily like here I imagine a multi-hop transaction which still works by using the same principles of having a hash Therefore linking all of those transactions together that either all of them are fulfilled or none of them And because it's real-time you don't have to lock it up for long meaning you could do a transaction Saying okay, I want to get this payment through in one second if some of those nodes block it you just try again different route I Think I already have to finish up So I just want to finish up with the last words of Imagine where you can go if you have hyper liquidity between different asset classes Where would that go thinking about Goal thinking about real estate, but maybe many more assets that people are putting on the blockchain become liquid and usable Thank you very much


So when you get to about three weeks of pregnancy, your energy level goes down a little bit, but it's important to stay active. Before I got pregnant, I had kind of let my exercise routine low a little bit, but now that I am pregnant, I've started walking on the weekends in the morning and I'm participating in yoga classes. Even though pregnancy treats me quite well, it's a workload on your cardiac health and I'm not used to being winded going up just a flight of stairs. This pregnancy, I've tried to do everything I could to make sure my pregnancy was healthy and I felt good. I did go to the gym through the first like six months of pregnancy and then after that we just have been walking because it's been nice out. Staying active will really help your delivery process go a lot smoother. So going on walks every day, getting on an elliptical machine or a treadmill 30 minutes a day four to five times a week is something you can do to help stay active. As you get farther and further along, you may notice that it becomes a little bit harder to maintain posture. But whatever your body was conditioned to do before pregnancy, you can do during the pregnancy. Of course, if you were doing kickboxing or you're an avid skier, you may not want to do that when you hit your second trimester because those are things you can't control, but for the most part you can do whatever exercise you enjoyed before pregnancy.