 This program is brought to you by CableFranchiseVs and generous donations from viewers like you. So seeing the presence of a quorum, I'm calling to order this meeting of the Regional School Committee at 6.35pm. And I'm going to immediately move that we enter into executive session to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation with the APEA. If an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining or litigation position of the public body and the chair so declared, and I do declare, with intention of returning to open session. Is there a second? Second. Moved by McDonald's seconded by Spitzer and will take a roll call vote. Please state your vote when I call your name. Mr. Demling. Demling, aye. Ms. Lord. Lord, aye. Ms. Begur. Begur, aye. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer, aye. Ms. Stanser. Stanser, aye. Mr. Sullivan. Sullivan, aye. And McDonald's, aye. Thank you. And we will now move to executive session. I will call the meeting of the Amherst School Committee to order and we'll take a roll call attendance. Mr. Demling. Demling, present. Mr. Harington. Harington, present. Did we lose Ms. Lord? Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer, present. And McDonald present. And that is quorum. So we are in order. Okay. And I'm just realizing actually we don't have a quorum yet. Mr. Me know what had has not joined yet. Right. He didn't jump on earlier. Okay. Okay. So, I don't have a quorum yet. So, how long does not yet have a quorum? I know Ms. Kenny is not coming right now. It's just me and Ms. Barlow. I've not heard from others that they were not coming. Yeah, so my recommendation is, you know, since the first order of business is public comments that, you know, with Ms. Hall's permission, you may be able to start that process and when a third member. Oh, never mind. I will be quiet. All right, terrific. Seeing the presence of a quorum. I'll call this Helen school committee meeting to order at 715 and we'll start with roll call attendance, Ms. Barlow. Okay, I'm just realizing I have a quorum yet. Mr. Me know what has not joined yet. Right. I'm hearing an echo. Is that? Oh, okay. Maybe not anymore. Okay. Um, all right. Sorry. I didn't hear your response, Brenda. Barlow present. Okay. Great. Mr. Me know here. Ms. Dancer and all present. All right. Sorry about that. Thank you. That's fine. Okay, so our first order of business is public comment and we have a lot. I'm going to start with the voice message comments while I get the written comments. Thank you. I appreciate that the APA and the school committee were able to gather for a transparent trust building meeting. I hope that discussion will continue to create a plan for safe reopening of our schools for this spring 2021. Many of our students are suffering from remote learning. Although most teachers are doing their best to engage students and provide instruction, our students continue to fall behind. Their time on instruction is less than any other years. Their learning from other students through normal classroom discourse is absent. The students are suffering from social isolation, lack of engagement, and a continual decline in the desired alarm. Parents, guardians, and teachers try daily to encourage engagement and students, but nothing can replace the learning, social and emotional development, and overall having a skating by in person instruction. As schools all around us are able to safely open and medical professionals continually show that schools are not super spreaders. It is important to act now. Time is of the essence. The detriment to the emotional well being of our students is more important than the low risk of contracting COVID when safety measures are in place. Like so many parents, I implore the APA and social school committee to actively engage in a dialogue and create an immediate plan for the safety of our buildings. It's time to take advantage of all the hard work completed by our facility members and all the PPE purchased and put our students back in the classroom. It is time to put aside differences expressed in the past and put scientifically based metrics in place for return to in-class learning this spring. It's time to consult with experts such as the town health director and those with knowledge training and expertise to make the appropriate call for in-person learning. Parents want to support teachers in the schools, but without a plan of action to get students in the classroom this spring, many parents, APA and school committee cannot show collaboration and a goal of in-person instruction for students and create a plan in the very near future. Parents will continue to lose faith and trust in the art system and seek other options, furthering the decline in enrollment and increased budgetary constraints. I sincerely hope that the APA and school committee will continue their open dialogue and allow all parties to the education system, educators, staff, administration, school committee, parents and students to voice their needs. These conversations and decisions should be completed imminently. The students are our future. It takes everyone's actions and desires for civil discourse and our focus on putting students first that will allow the trust in the system to continue and parents to send their schools to the Amherst Regional School District. Thank you for returning our students to in-person learning. As a parent to students being educated in the district and as a professional who consult with many other districts in western Massachusetts who have secured out this process, I have been discouraged by the lack of flexibility demonstrated by some of the players involved. I remain an advocate of public education and I'm hopeful that a reasonable renegotiation of the current MOA can be achieved. Thank you very much of a Wildwood kindergarten and second grader. And I just wanted to take a moment to first thank the APA and school committee for the meeting last week. I thought it was really productive and heartening to see both sides come together and build trust. And I just want to encourage everyone, all sides, to continue to work for original creative solutions to figure out a way of safely reopening our schools. I think it's really imperative that we find ways to get students back into the classroom and make sure that we're doing it safely. Thank you. First grader, I'm just calling to once again encourage school committee to do whatever they can to get kids back to school. This could be as costly as the science shows that kids can be brought back to school safely. Almost every other county in the Commonwealth is doing it. Are folks seeing my screen? So this public comment document is quite long. It's about I think 30 pages and it will be posted on the agenda's webpage in the morning. I apologize. It did not get posted today. But for folks that are having, you know, want to follow along at home, this will be available in the morning online. As I mentioned, that document will be posted online on the arts.org website on the regional school committee agendas page. Our next item is approving of the minutes. And I'm going to point out that, that what's in our agenda is actually incorrect. We do, we did not and have not seen yet minutes for December 1st, 15th and January 5th. And that was, that was just last week. But we do have a pull up and we have September 22nd, September 29th, October 6th, October 20th. And then the three November dates, the November date that says November 11th in the agenda, it actually was November 10th. We did not meet on the 11th. We met on the 10th. So that was there. So for folks watching at home, the school committees received these, all of these agendas that I just listed a week and a half ago. We discussed them at our last week meeting and changes and any revisions were emailed to Ms. Charcus who kindly helps us with minute taking. And what's in our packet now reflects any comments and revisions that were sent to her within the last week. So tonight, rather than going through each individual one, unless there's a glaring error that somebody noticed that didn't get into the updates. I would accept a motion to approve the batch in one, one swoop for region. Sorry. I move that we accept the minutes listed. For the region. Yep. For the region. I second that so moved for the region by stancer and seconded by McDonald's. Is there any further discussion. Mr. Seeker. Yeah, I'm just noticing my name isn't on a few of the meeting minutes from it looks like November 4 and November 10 as being in attendance. I believe those were included the region so I'm just double checking. So Ms. Charcus just commented that she, these, she did not send the updated versions yet. So these are. Is that correct that these are the, I believe Miss Kenny had a bunch of edits. Did she, she's not here tonight. And I might suggest that we table this and come back to this at our next meeting then. So as a reminder for anybody who is noticing edits in this packet. Please do email Ms. Charcus. Today is Tuesday, if you could email Thursday, then we can be looking at that. Would that be enough time as Charcus for getting them into the packets for next week. Yeah, that's another time for me. If you could actually send them by tomorrow just because I'm not going to be here this weekend, that would be great. Great. Super. So we will now move on to our next item, which is a superintendent. Oops, am I right? I'm on the wrong page. Sorry. Yes, it is the superintendent's update. No, that's okay. I was going to say if there was something else that you want to do that was fine too, but so I actually have quite a few. I apologize, even though just last week. So as you know, the budgets have been frozen, except for essential purchases in all three districts and you'll get a second quarter just ended for us 12 days ago, or 13 days ago, but we continue to be concerned about the budget. And so on Friday of last week, we did inform our AFSCME cohort, which is custodians man drivers maintenance staff. We said we would have to look to furlough while schools predominantly remain closed. So we do have some UFCW food service workers who have been furlough since the year as you're you're aware. And so we'll just keep you up to date, but I did want to let you in the community know that, you know, it's not something so probably the least fun thing, you know, or at least in the thing that we like doing the lease in terms of the HR department is when we've looked at the fiscal realities this year, particularly in some of our districts. It is the case that we are going to have to adjust that adjust our budget and also adjust that it looks like we will be in remote for some time we have been and you know if that changes, we will adjust those furloughs but at the time being we are starting to you know as, as we typically would with the bargaining members and the leadership of the bargaining, but since that email went out on Friday and there's more follow up today. Just wanted to communicate that as always we start with voluntary furloughs in terms of our staff, particularly with the unemployment benefits. We have the cares act for a whole variety of reasons who may be interested in voluntary furloughs. But that's the way we've approached it with other bargaining units and we're at the place where we have to talk about that with AFSCB as well or in the process of. Positive note. We got last week a project bread grant of $2,000 that's going to supplement the food service program that we're running that is service, you know, serving hundreds of meals every day. So thanks to project bread thanks to Michael Gallo Connell, who is the facility or the food service school nutrition coordinator or director excuse me for doing that application and Shannon on the business office who processes that all. Third thing is just thanks to during Cunningham as well as a team who put the anti racism curriculum together. So that's, we're getting that going in Crocker farm and then we'll expand that to other schools it's intentionally an iterative process. So that as teachers are interacting with the curriculum and working on it that it can be improved and over time and so really thank the team that Miss Cunningham brought together in the summer as well as her leadership on it. And I know it's one of the things that was high interest in the community of getting that going as we said at the elementary level. Crocker farm had done some work last year with an external consultant. So they felt very, you know, prime to get going on it but it'll go through all the schools throughout this year. And again, in a way that we're going to get a field tested by our staff and improve by the end of the year so we're ready to go full school full you know with everybody in the same piece, the same page next year. But tremendous amount of work went into that I just want to thank folks who are worked on that. So there's a, the state came out with some support to get started with pool testing of students and staff members were already approved and have access to by next antigen testing. So that's the webinar today for about an hour and a half along with Robin super not our nurse leader as well as favor, 80. You know, I think I got some mixed feedback from desi whether our current distance learning model was was the right model for pool testing just because it's so small and there's not a lot of close context because everything's individualized but we're going to, you know, keep on following up with desi. See if they will approve us. So at least, you know, perhaps start a pilot of it. But, you know, I think it was the sense I got from the call is much more directed for districts that have more typical learning models in place in their schools, with more than one to one, you know, an adult and a kid in a room each or some version of that so remains to be seen whether desi will approve us to be part of that program but just wanted to pass that along as well. Okay, so we got a couple of grants that are required as part of the grants to hire consultants around mental health supports and River Valley is working with us there they've been part of with us before and we're working on trying to get in person counseling available for students through River Valley so thanks to them we're also looking, they're working with us and trying to find bilingual staff members who can provide that service for families and students who are interested so of more soon on that but that's been a really nice partnership to get going. Just amber school committee meeting up because it's a joint committee just a review for people who didn't watch the meeting last week that the district asked for three different Romans one that was the 600 student Roman that had been talked about a lot in the last couple years one for river enrollment for only enrollment and then one that was in between that would have had not exactly the same but roughly equal size schools and involved in addition to Parker farm MSBA only approved two possible pathways to study. One was to look at Fort River only they size it at 320 students based on capacity and the rest of the district, and then one was a 575 K to five school option that would take Fort River Wildwood offline and have sixth grade go to the middle that is now been submitted and approved. We also submitted additional forms that they require that just confirming that the town council has approved the funds for the feasibility study everything's in and say afternoon I get confirmation that we are on target for moving forward to the next MSBA board meeting which is February 11. At that point we'll move into hiring an OPM by weaving the building committee will look to hire an orders project manager. They have that slotted to perhaps come to completion in June or July, because that has to be approved also by MSBA, and based on their schedule they said, you know, sort of if you're ambitious you get to June otherwise you get to July. But that would be the next step in the program is is a multi month process to hire an owner project manager. So we'll keep you up to date for the good news is we are moving forward. I think I mentioned this last time MSBA said, you know, it's slower and more expensive than everybody thinks it should be and that's true of everyone's experience in MSBA process so I'm going to say that every single time I give an update because I think it's the best advice they give me and they encourage me to say it as often as possible. That's a lot of update I have more but I went on that pause I see a hand up if that's okay with the chairs. Since one is eating I'll just assume that role and call on Mr. Demling if that's okay. Thank you. So yeah I bring this up because it's a joint interest in Pellum meeting so so related to the MSBA update you gave so two options that were approved one is a K to five option and one's a K to six option and so clearly depending on what the regional school committee and the Amherst school committee decide with regards to sending sixth grade to the middle school or not that that then defines what option is is viable going forward. So I think I believe we discussed at the end of that Amherst meeting the therefore heightened urgency or priority for finishing the discussion that we started a year ago of exploring sixth of the middle school and I understand we have a lot on our plate right now. We have a very aggressive late start that you're probably going to update us on the whole of it. You know in person at all. But if you could just maybe talk about what you think broad strokes is is a reasonable timeline. For finishing that work. I'm hoping that we can finish it like this this school year so that we can give the town of Amherst. You know the parameters it needs to know what's what's viable going forward but interested to hear your thoughts. The report is mostly done what's not done is the engagement. You know so what you saw in when I presented what people on those committee or Amherst school committee saw at the regional committee when I submitted my artifacts over the summer was a mostly completed report without the huge component which is the engagement. My recommendation and I've talked to the chair of the building committee about this is, you know I wonder if the school committee and the building committee can actually work jointly on that engagement and I agree with you that this spring was not too soon to get started. I think it would really bring together people who are going to be charged with two different decisions but but they're interrelated decisions. And I think if we can get the broad swath of the town. You know, there may be different constituents that want to be involved in that. I think it's good because they, you know, you can cut it a million ways for me. They still need to come together with a decision that relate and I'm not trying to relinquish, you know, or take away the school committees authority on this but I think it'd be really good for the building committee at least to be aware of the dialogue the school committee is having instead of to be completely ships passing at night. So my recommendation is that I love to task people with things I suppose in these meetings I'm starting to get better at that is that I wonder if Mr Harrington. You know, in terms of this McDonald myself and and the chair of the building committee at some point sit down and talk and try to figure out what that might look like. But you know in terms of the data and the report. It's pretty much done it's really the part that wasn't done with the engagement and an executive summary but you know that that's relative to the full report that the committee I thought did an outstanding job on that. I wouldn't be really clear to that like I am not at all. So the things that you want to say for me I'm not saying sequester should or shouldn't move. But I think it's really about the process and the engagement at this point. I think Mr. Minino may have a question about that so I see his hand up. Yeah, and then I have a question to Mr. Minino. When will the time appell them get a chance to express its position on the movement of sixth grade to the middle school. So here's how it sequence this I think unless Amherst chooses to send its sixth graders to the middle school there's no conversation for the small towns because it wouldn't. It just doesn't make sense either space wise or logistically to send 16 students 16 sixth graders to the middle school is just a non starter there wouldn't be a program for them. So certainly the town can choose how much they want to engage in this in the front end but until Amherst makes a decision. There is no decision for for how I'm levered or she's fair to me because logistically it doesn't make sense. So, you know, as soon as Ron that I could say that this building project because you're never a palming out the region. As soon as this building project and the best case scenario everything works perfectly there's kumbaya on the world and we get there would be the fall of 2025. So, yeah, there's, you know, I think there's a there's on the Amherst side in my opinion there's some urgency that I'm feeling and hearing, because it's there's a fork in the road coming. And one of the forks involves six graders going to the middle school one doesn't. But from everybody else's end, there's a long time between that decision gets made in a building process. And when, you know, potentially a new building would be built that would would force that decision to be realized. Does that help Ron. Yep, helps. So I'm just going to jump in and I'm speaking with my hat of the regional school committee chair on not the Amherst school committee because I'm going to do get out with the Amherst school committee chair. Seriously, I'm speaking at the region chair. The decision is I recall about sixth grade to the middle school starts first with the region. The region has to make the decision about from pedagogically is is this what we want our middle middle grade education to look like. And that's a decision that lies first and foremost with the region, regardless of any sort of building project happening in Amherst or LM or anywhere, frankly. So, it's not that I'm objecting to partnering and with the with the building committee on it, but I don't see. I think we need to have a conversation about it because it's it's it's awkward right be just from a from a decision making process there's no decision for Amherst to make until and unless the region decides that we'll take sixth grade. Now you're, I totally agree and we should put that on an agenda to come up sometime soon on the region. I think that's that's really helpful. Thank you Allison. Yeah. Any other thoughts on this? Okay, so I'll move on to the update. I want to thank our nursing staff, many of our nursing staff for giving the opportunity to volunteer this week in the regional vaccination site for first responders at the bank center here in Amherst and many of our nurses participated and they're doing incredibly important work of a couple hundred people getting vaccinated. Those who are actually they themselves can get vaccinated mostly towards the end of the week. But just want to thank our nurses for volunteering it was all day yesterday it's four to eight so just ended tonight. And it's not just for the town of Amherst it's actually for, you know, we're us in North Hampton or the sort of the regional hubs for the area for first responders. It's not a work and thanks to Emma dragon and her folks in town for their work. Good news and distance learning center the state instruction I got word this afternoon was passed so they'll be looking as soon as possible to get they being the Amherst recreation formerly else to see to get their second set of students in and they're working collaboratively with our team on that so good news all around on that one. So four 10 meeting will be on February 6 nine in the morning. We'll be talking about the regional budget. Well more information of the governor's budget by then. So mark their calendars for that and that was sent out to all members of elected officials in the member towns. So in queue me up earlier. Late start. So we have another meeting with Union 28 later this week we've met as an administrative team multiple times a smaller group, like a task force. And we hope by Thursday to be sending out an email about engagements, multiple layers both large group engagements for family staff and middle school high school students smaller group engagements. So we have further on in the process, a clear survey with a binary choice. So we are working towards getting a recommendation to you the last week in February. For your consideration with I think we've, we feel good about mapping that out we can certainly talk about that if this, you know, one of the regional. Maybe it's a joint meeting but next week but we do want to engage all of our stakeholders in that including, you know, focus groups like BPAC and CPAC and others, but we want everyone to be able to get engaged and we're trying to work on a very finite slide deck with the right amount of information, because you can get lost in the research on this, even though it's very clear and the implications so I think in general we're trying to get a core issue is we're not going to as I said last week we're not going to have all the questions answered but does the community want to make the change because I think if the community commits that they think it's best for kids, we can do the other piece as well over time. If the community feels like there's too many barriers and so be it but that's our goal is to engage the community, you know, there's a meeting about I'll just mention not just North Hampton but there's you know, you know, West Districts a couple years ago that also changed their start times. We are not, you know, it's been done in Massachusetts we are not trailblazers on this one it's whether whatever we think is best for kids, knowing that nothing will be perfect and nothing will will not be unintended consequences of keeping our same schedule that we've had previously and there's unintended consequences of changing it and what do we think is in the best interest of kids. Second last is we got some unfortunate news that the swimming pool in Belcher Town is now closed because Belcher Town is in the red and their health department has closed their swimming pool to high school students so for two weeks. And so we are scrambling, try to figure out what we can do and do involved in some advocacy this afternoon that we are not Belcher Town high school. It's not run by the school department it's run by the town rec departments that's making a little more challenging of who to contact and how to advocate around that but just wanted to share that and I'll hopefully have an update that's more positive next week but that's where we are as relates to swimming. I had a conversation just before this meeting started with Jesse about the waiver request and how to meet the for you know the minimum number of hours for Amherst and Paloma we applied for the waiver I was a very positive productive conversation. Let me know that some of the way we've been coding things, you know, you could have been more generous to ourselves in terms of what counts the synchronous time it does not only screen time it could be work that's assigned as long as it's brought back to and discussed by a teacher so we're meeting tomorrow morning trying to resolve that one but it was a very helpful conversation because it's a little different analysis than what we had previously. And then the positive one so thanks to Todd fruth who works at our Summit Academy and our high school he organized students for last weekend the first ever virtual cabaret they perform students perform solos and duets of popular songs and musical theater numbers. It's pretty cool. January 9. And it's just shorter given the, you know, virtual nature of it but you know just wanted to end with just thanking our staff for being so creative and still making sure that students are able to perform I'll be in different ways. And this time so thank you Todd and thanks for your department for always being creative and figuring out ways to get students in the front of the center so that is a very lengthy update I apologize for the duration. Any comments or questions from any committees. Since Peter went first before I'll start with Mr Spitzer this time. Thank you and I apologize for kind of. You had a lot and I have comments on multiple. So I don't know if it's easier to like, give you the first, like do it one by one give you chance to respond or just try to get it all out there. So I guess one of my questions was, number one, thank you to everybody involved in the vaccine efforts, especially our nursing staff I think that's wonderful news. I was just going over kind of the faces. And I was reading that some of the, you know, independent therapists, physical therapists occupational therapists speech and language therapists performing work in the home are actually listed in phase one so I'm wondering if there's anybody else within our school that might actually qualify for this phase one I know we're starting off with the with the first responders because within the phase or levels of phasing it's it's complicated but that was one question. And then the other question goes to a totally different topic which is the late start time conversation I'm just wondering if I guess as an elementary school parent. It's going to be a later start for any of the elementary kids going to be an earlier start time and I think if we're talking about community engagement and communication around this I think it would actually make sense to say, change in start time, because it's not going to be late for everybody and if I'm listening to this conversation I think it's good to be upfront that this is going to be different depending on where you sit in the community. So just kind of a suggestion as we're putting together those planning resources, I think that's really important. And then I guess the final question that might be. I didn't get to ask because we got started talking about it might have been lumped into your first one was just asking about the expansion of the distance learning centers. That's great news that we have expanded Amherst recreation has been able to expand I guess I'm curious about like what are the constraints on us, going even further, what would the district need if we were going to serve more students in those distance learning centers. And those are the three thank you. So the second one is a great suggestion. So it's not a question so I just accepted as a helpful suggestion on the first one my understanding is that school staff outside nurses are in phase one even the nurses I believe are only in phase one if they volunteer for the to help with the vaccinations. You know, I will say, I can go too long on this one but the I feel like it's 1776 and we're not a country when I talk to people in other states I have a colleague and a neighboring state, who is a college professor who's getting vaccinated because that state has decided educators pre K through higher ed to be in phase one. Someone else I know who was vaccinated in New York State but works New Jersey and the spouse should have been able to be vaccinated but the state boundaries prevent them from being vaccinated, even though by the rules of the employer they would be. So all that to say, it's incredibly frustrating. To see how the rollouts went and I don't mean locally I think everyone's doing a phenomenal job. I do think you know at a meeting where we got an update on this I do think a month from now, you know systems and infrastructure will be built up. And I think we'll see a rapid escalation in the number of vaccines given, you know, and I want to be, as I always try to be in these times, humble about that but but I think your frustration of not being like me not really all of us not having clarity is a huge problem and the timeframe of February to March is still being repeated by the state for where educators fit and phase two of the rollout and I'm just hoping that perhaps when we get to a certain date next week and there's a different plan at the federal level maybe we'll see an impact at the local level as well. And the last question was on distance learning centers. So right now the only one we're running ourselves as you know is for intensive special needs students. And so if we chose to expand that you know instead of relying on our partners but actually you know self fund that it would be a financial commitment that we would be making in that money, you know would have to come from somewhere but there's nothing that would prevent us from expanding or running our own distance learning center. In addition to marks meadow and Amherst recreation or distance learning center of the particular focus like you allow students or something like that. You know, it's a funny it would be a financial commitment that you'd have to make but there's nothing that I see as a barrier to that other than the finances and finding the people to do it. Mr. Damon. Yeah. So plus one of us with your suggestion to call it changed in start time. That's a really good. My questions on planning for next year. So we, most of the public comment was about in person for right now, but we did hear some about people planning for next year and how that affects their near term decisions. So just real quick, could you just confirm so the current MOA expires on June 30. Could you just confirm that that's correct. So when, when do you think will be, when do you anticipate that we will start in earnest talking about our in person in person posture for, for the fall and what our approach to all that is going to be. I'm not blaming us for not taking up the discussion yet given everything that we are currently discussing. But just to, you know, give people a heads up about what the timeline is. Thanks. I don't think I think it's about slotting it in the schedule, you know, in your schedule. I mean, not your personal schedule, but in the schedule of the school committee meetings. But I know it's on people's minds. I've heard that too. So, you know, I think it's the hard thing that was, you know, it's, it feels far away. I know it's not in reality. I don't see a lot of districts talking that far away and I think. You know, there's nothing preventing you, you all from having the conversation sooner as post later. Mr Manino. I'm not sure I understood your answer. Basically, I want to know when will we know whether there will be in person learning in the fall. That's a planning process. When are we going, when who decides is there another negotiation, another memo of understanding. When will we know. I think I'm not trying to be coy here. I think that that's for you all to determine the timeline by which you make decisions about that. Well, I'm not on the regional committee, but I'm on the school council committee. How would a member of the Pelham school committee start the ball rolling to discuss in person learning for the fall? What procedures would a person follow? So there's two options. One is that you could put it on a Pelham school committee agenda by emailing the chair and myself. So that you could talk about in Pelham so that the regional reps from the town of Pelham could take that and bring that with them to the regional, because the region is the negotiating agent. Or you could reach out to one of the two, not both, but one of the two Pella members of the regional committee and share your opinions with that person. Thank you. Not to, not to jump again for any other questions from, from any committee members, but in my update I'll be talking about the next agenda planning for the next regional school committee and I believe that we do have conversation on 21 22 plan for on the draft agenda for next week. So, are there any other questions or comments for Dr. Mars. Okay. So we'll move on. And then I believe, yes, the next item is chairs update and I will be brief, but I have a couple things. So, as many people may have read in the, in the Gazette this afternoon, the article wasn't completely clear, I don't think but the key point is we see we received an email from the APA executive board yesterday evening, late indicating that they do not have a mandate from their membership to reopen negotiations on the MOA. So we are back to square one on that we are not proceeding on that. They also indicated that their membership strongly supports in person learning for intensive needs and preschool students at this time. And they shared with us a proposal also known as a side letter with the described requested conditions that are in addition to those conditions that are already agreed to within the MOA in order to make that happen. The regional school committee is reviewing that. And so we'll, we'll be progressing that but we do appreciate that, that offer and proposal from the APA executive board. We heard in the public comments several commenters commented about our meeting last Thursday, the meeting of the regional school committee with the executive board of the APA. And we do have two more meetings that are of these informal discussions scheduled and on our calendars. The next one is this Thursday at 5.30pm. And the next one is this Thursday at 5.30pm. And we'll be seeing that time, seeing that channel the following week on Thursday, whatever that 21st. So two, two meetings on the calendar is for those. And as I just mentioned, the regional school committee is meeting next week. And I guess it's TBD whether we want to make that a joint meeting. Folks can email me with agenda questions or ads, but right now what's drafted in that agenda. And, you know, subject to change is a budget update on Q2 for this year. School calendar, vaccine update 2021-2022 discussion, including late start virtual and in person learning calendar and structures. Access testing and attendance and distance learning update. So that's all in store for next week. Any comments or questions from. Chair Hall, do you have an update that you want to give for appellant school committee? I don't. Thank you. Great. So moving on to school committee announcements. Are there any announcements from any other school committee members? Ms. Dancer. There will be a budget subcommittee meeting tomorrow at 630. Ms. Blart. The school equity task force has sent out a survey. And we do apologize that we did not translate it ahead of time. If you have families that need it translated. Is there an echo for you? Please contact me at Lord H at ARPS.org and I'll do my best to get it translated to whatever language our families need. Thank you. Any other announcements? Any update from our reps on the JLMSC? Not seeing any. So we can move on to our next item of business, which is new and continuing business. Talking about spring 2021 in person planning. And to kick that off, I just want to say this is an open discussion. The regional school committee has been talking about this. We have been hearing jointly the Amherst and the Pellum school committees together with the regional school committee to continue this discussion. And it really is open discussion and ideation. We face multiple challenges. I'm sure that's not news, but just to recap, we continue to hear from families about their need and their demands for in-person learning. We're hearing directly from educators also that they are interested and willing to return to in-person instruction if enabled to do so. We also received a proposal from the APEA board to enable that in-person instruction on a volunteer basis. For our peak pre-K and intensive needs learning center students. We've begun, as I just mentioned, those informal discussions with the APEA. These are not MOA renegotiations. And I know there's some confusion, but these are not negotiations. They're discussions. And all of us expressed at our last meeting our commitment all around the room, the table, the Brady Bunch squares, to working for students. And a strong desire to develop flexible solutions to better support their learning during this pandemic. So balancing all of those needs is really difficult. And especially when we know that negotiating the MOA is off the table again. So this discussion is really to talk about how do we get there and get there quickly so that students are able to return to in-person learning this school year. So I open up the floor for comment, discussion, ideas, concerns. I just want to say that I'm very heartened by the last week's conversation on Thursday. I want to thank Miss Cunningham for leading us in that conversation and for the APEA for joining. And while I think there's a lot of work to be done, I'm also heartened by the suggestion that we prioritize the pre-K and the ILSC students, the intensive learning students. I just want to acknowledge the potential here for potentially some progress. But I also simultaneously want to acknowledge that I think we want to keep moving because we need to make sure we keep momentum. And I think I'm glad we have these two meetings on the calendar. And I think it's really important that we keep up the momentum and we keep thinking creatively. In particular, and I just want to say like focusing in on these most vulnerable students. So the youngest among us and those who have difficulty accessing remote learning. But I'm really curious about what others think because there are a lot of people on this call tonight who haven't necessarily been in some of the other conversations we've been having. Mr. Denley. Yeah, so I do have a motion I'd like to submit to our committees for consideration. I sent this out to everyone earlier today after we got the news about the MOA negotiation decision and also the letters about volunteer staff. It's it's somewhat long chair McDonald. I don't know if you'd be able to, to share that on your screen. You know, so I can, so while you're bringing that up, I can sort of talk about what it is and what prompted it. Okay, so there it is. So it was prompted by by two things. So what is the is the response today from our request from the member second that the APA is not in a position to renegotiate the MOA at this time which is obviously difficult news and makes it harder to move forward with in person learning. And it was also prompted by the update that we got from our chair earlier a couple days ago, but a number of staff over the last days and weeks have reached out, saying that they would be open to a voluntary return. And then we got the, the notification today that most of pre K and I'll see staff are open to a voluntary return and so what this what this is essentially is saying, let us go back to in person. Let's go back to in person learning starting next month starting in February with staff who voluntarily choose in person instruction. For as many students as possible with them safety guidelines we have right so keeping the, the distancing in the masks and obviously limited by the, you know, staffing availability so prioritizing our higher needs students, the superintendent manages any shift back to remote learning based on a continuous assessment of health conditions and in consultation with local public health officials. And then to work in close collaboration with APA leadership and getting input from the school committee and student families to implement the plan. I have a lot more I could say about why I feel like this is the best way forward now but at the end of the day it's it's a pretty simple idea which is, we know that we have a clear and urgent need to provide in person learning for a number of students and that we're not able to do that right now. And so if there are staff who are willing of their own position to teach in person, you know, let's let's let's make that happen let's make it happen in the most expeditious manner we can so it's more I can say but I'll leave it there for for anyone who has thoughts on that. Mr Manino. I approve of the motion I will vote for it if it's presented. But practically what if a English teacher decides to volunteer in person, how does a student get back home in time to take a math course that's only offered online. Yeah, so I think the devil is in the details and a lot of this and I think it's intentionally vague as an instruction from the school committees to the superintendent about implementation details. You know, clearly, you know, we're not going to get 100% voluntary participation and within the current bounds of the MOA that we have, that's okay. You know, I think the staff are well within their rights of self determination under the current MOA to be teaching remotely, based on what the metrics are. You know, this would be, you know, how can we staff based on based on those staff who are are voluntarily open and willing to teach under the conditions that the superintendent sets. I'm sure that that will lead to, you know, a certain number of staff first a certain grade and there will be, you know, those kind of imperfections that will have to smooth out. Right. And so it's not going to be perfect. But my way of thinking is that I balance the pros and cons against what we're currently doing, which is quite inequitable and quite imperfect. And so it's, it's I think of it as trading one set of inequity and imperfection for a different situation and what are we gaining what we're gaining would be a whole lot of in person for a whole lot of students in a way that completely respects staff autonomy. And when, you know, given the news that the roadblock. Now we have with with changing the MOA. I feel like this is, this is a practical plan B that can move forward in the quickest way possible. That's the other thing that's really driving me here is the time urgency. Our school year doesn't go for the next 60 months. It goes for the next like five ish months. So kids are really on the clock and particularly for kids who have gotten not much or nothing at all from remote learning. Every day that goes by, you know, is is important and so that that's that's the other thing that I think procedurally makes a lot of sense with this approach is that it doesn't get bogged down and let us negotiate all the powers of conditions for every subgroup of student. Right. It just says here superintendent find out who is willing to come back under the appropriate conditions that you set consultation with public health officials and let's get this going. Mr. Minion many know, did you have a follow? I find Mr. Demling's comments compelling and it would also be a signal to the community where the school committee stands with respect to in person learning. So I support the motion. Or the proposed motion. Ms. Hall. I also think, you know, given a really challenging situation. This is an imperfect but practical and I think really important proposed solution. It won't be ideal but nothing is. So to think that it's possible that without this we could be at a point where kids could go potentially into the fall without being in person is just horrible to me. I also like that this shifts the kind of the oversight of this to the superintendent. I think the superintendent has proven that he really focuses on what the public health indicators are and that we can trust him to be aware of what the experts are saying is safe and not be left up to, you know, someone like me I certainly am not but I think that he knows the right experts to talk to to make sure we can do this. So I also support this very strongly. And I think it's actually incredibly important to make sure that we can get as many children in schools learning in person as possible. So I think that we can do that safely. I think I would like to, we talked about sort of the conversations that we've started having with the APA executive board and those have gone, I think, we all came away from, sorry, I should say we the regional school committee and the, because we have members on this call that we're not part of that conversation. But I think we all walked away with a feeling of sort of shared direction and shared interest. And I really do appreciate the proposal and the quote unquote side letter that we've received from from the APA to provide in person learning for our highest needs and highest priority students that are really truly suffering. All students are suffering to a greater or lesser extent right now in extended remote learning but really working to get sort of those priority students in. And I would look forward to sort of this, you know, it's a creative solution around our around the sort of what's become sort of an intractable situation with our with our MOA and I see this as a creative solution as well that's right in the spirit of that. That voluntary return for the pre K and the ILC students. So just extending that that solution or potential solution to even more students. And so I also would support this. Miss Barlow. I also like to share my support for Mr. Demling's proposed motion. I think it builds upon the side letter and it makes a lot of sense and I think it'd be. I'm important for us to respond to all these public comments by trying to find a way to come together to get students in school safely. Other thoughts from folks that haven't had a chance to speak yet. Miss Dancer. So I know that Mr. Demling made this very general but my brand can't stay out of what might be potential details. I like the idea. But, so let's say you're in the middle school and you have half of the team members who are willing to come back and teach and half of them aren't I mean this. There's there's a. It's maybe not the reason to not support the attempt to do this. I just think that we may be putting a huge load onto the superintendent. At a time when he already has a lot on his plate. I haven't made up my mind yet whether I would vote for this or not. Mr. Demling. Yeah, I mean it's an excellent point and it's it's absolutely a huge ask of the superintendent and, you know, if were we to pass this tonight I would expect the, at our next meeting the superintendent to come back and give us the biggest reality checks of what we're asking for. Okay, I mean I certainly would expect that there are going to be some buildings, some grades, some programs, because we talk about pre K and I'll see by the way right but we have a number of specialized programs that are in that high needs category building blocks, some an Academy aims, Pip, you know, let's let's go let's goes on in addition to our other priority groups. So there's going to be cases, you know, where where we don't have enough staff to to meet the in person requests from parents. And that implementation, you know, if we were to go ahead will be imperfect. And in some cases, it, it could be inequitable I don't think we should shy away from that. And so I balance that against what we have now, which is no in person, and, and a host of inequity. Right, I really, I really think about like the low income families and the students and IPs and the students who are struggling emotionally and I kind of balance that and, you know, we, we, if this is asking the superintendent to implement a perfectly equitable solution that we should not pass. Right, we should do this with eyes wide open that this is a very challenging situation. And we are, you know, coming off a really disappointing result with with knowing that we aren't going to be able to move forward changing the MOA. And we have some time left. And so what is, what's the best shot for getting some level of in person. Right, and I, one of the comments from the 30 something pages of comments we got tonight really stuck with me was that gentleman who said that, even if someone got one, one day, they would be elated. Right. And so I think of like, what if, what if the high school will you know eventually ends up that they get a half a day, you know, for one or two of their specials or something I don't know, you know, this is the kind of thing that I would expect the superintendent to come back and reality check us on. I think I would be okay with that because we would be doing the best we could, and we would be able to tell the community, right, we would be able to honestly and authentically tell staff and parents. Look, we heard you. We weren't able to change the MOA, but we did the best we could, but the honors staff autonomy to the help to to provide as much in person as we could knowing knowing that it's not going to be perfectly and equitably perfectly equitably distributed so kind of babbled there but I hope Andrew addressed that. Yeah, I also think that I mean things are certainly challenging now and asking Dr Morris to implement this will be a challenge and I don't need to be flip about that. But we are in for really, really serious challenges, no matter what, whether we do this and the challenges in the immediate term, or if we don't and huge numbers of families leave the district, and then we have really serious budget problems, or if there's even more loss of learning to deal with, especially with the students that are most harmed by remote learning. I just don't think there is a way to do anything in this situation that avoids challenges. And I have to wonder, like, if the issues that we create would actually be worse if we don't do this. So, I mean, I, again, I'm not, I'm not trying to like I'm not the one who would be doing that specific work and so I don't mean to undermine what that would mean, I just, there's no easy way, but I think not making a decision in the immediate term like this is just going to push most likely bigger problems down the road and those won't be able to be dealt with with a single motion or, you know, a few weeks of a lot of work if families just bleed out of the district and then we can't fund programs. Mr Harrington. Yeah, so kind of in reading this and kind of digesting it like I'm reminded of the fact that we're kind of here, because some folks decided to vote for us because they wanted us to kind of represent them. And I'm also cognizant of the fact that we provide a certain degree of like leadership in the district. I feel like this right here is probably it's the best balance we're going to get right now right like this it's, there are definitely going to be inequities, but less so than there are right now I feel like that we are under serving a certain population. This is prioritizing it we've heard from the APA leadership that that's what they want to do to this is this is as good as it gets right now I think. I'm trying to look at it from every other angle trying to look pessimist optimist, but I feel like this is as good as it gets right now. So long as it's not too much of an ask I guess for the superintendent like we would definitely support. Any kind of way we need it to but yeah. I'm glad you said that. Mr. Harrington because that's sort of been what's weighing on my mind. And it's really, really challenging. I talked about this last week is is all the different needs and desires and and opinions that that we have to weigh in that we hold on our shoulders and yet we as school as elected members of a public body answer to our community. And, you know, in the families that trust our district with her with their children's education. And I can't read those 31 pages of public comment and not feel like we're not doing what they're our community is asking us to do and asking us to step up and have the courage to to find a solution and lead. I also read in patients and frustration, the sense that that we've been sitting back and sort of not being creative and not trying to figure out ways forward. And it's unfortunate that that it's now January. I share all of those frustrations and that criticism is is is well well grounded I think. But I do agree that this is it's tough it's going to be a lot of work. I think we need to do this for our community. Ms. Spitzer your hands up. So I just want to raise a couple concerns. One is I'm worried that this is going to potentially have a really negative effect on the conversations we've been having with the API. I don't have a crystal ball but I'm worried that if we vote on this tonight it might close down some of the conversations we've been having. We hear loud and clear that they want us to work together. So I'm concerned about that I'm also concerned about the potential stress this is going to put on relationships between teachers and students so we've been we've been the ones bearing the brunt of you know why not solely I know people have been reaching out to teachers directly to but we've been bringing the brunt of the unhappy teacher, you know the unhappy parent who has been, you know, wants their kid in school and I'm worried about the teacher who doesn't feel comfortable coming in, and then it becomes known because this is now a voluntary basis. And so say like, you know, Joey and the other classes in person now but my kids not in person and putting pressure directly on on my kids teacher because I want to be in person so I'm thinking like we need, I want to make sure that we can protect that person because I think this is a potentially problematic and could really strain the relationship. I guess I'm just I'm worried this is going to stop the conversation about the pre K and I'll see students before it really even got off the ground. So I'm wondering I don't know if there's a way to modify it to explicitly have it since since they've indicated that they're interested in those specific populations if it would make sense to start off with that population in February and then see how the planning goes on those two populations and then come back and potentially have a new motion that would expand it to the next priority groups. I think I'm in the minority here with kind of my feeling kind of cautious and anxious about making this move but I just wanted to voice this concerns. Mr. Damon. So I think those are very valid concerns. So with the end of the motion, the superintendent will work closely in collaboration with a PA leadership. That's not just a throwaway line right and I don't honestly think that we could have put that in there, prior to last week. And, and I don't know if I would have. I don't, I don't think it would be it would have been pragmatically effective to put it in had the APA not come out last night, approving. The voluntary return for PK and I'll see, you know, they've, you know, I give the APA a lot of credit for being the first public organization for for supporting that voluntary return. And, and, you know, like, like we've, I think every person has said in some degree, there's a lot of implementation to be done here, a lot of details to be worked out. And the expectation, you know, the whole meeting of that last section there, the talks about engagement, not only with a PA leadership but also school committee and families is because the expectation isn't the the superintendent is going to go off into an active room and, you know, write up what he thinks is is the plan and then reveal it to everyone, you know, it's, it's going to be, you know, those those details should be informed by those conversations and I would expect that you know at our next and subsequent meetings the APA that would be a big part of it. So my, my concern with with starting just with pre K and I'll see is that there are so many other subgroups that that really need attention. We talk about highest need students and certainly pre K and I'll see are included in that. We also have ESP PIP building blocks aims connections Summit Academy, as well as, you know, the S life students and beginning ELL. These are all students that the district reached out to to leadership on last October to try and get the ball rolling through conversations about volunteer staff. You know that was three months ago, and we have a conditional thought of support for pre K and I'll see that's that's definitely progress, but I think what it what it says to me is that that's a long methodical process. And we should we should continue that and we should absolutely be implementing and keep in the spirit of respecting staff autonomy. I don't I don't think there's any getting around the fact that you know we can't control every person in the community's reaction, and we've certainly seen even with our current model right parents and teachers and members of the public on acting inappropriately. And, you know, I think the thing that we can do to echo Mr Harrington's comment as leaders, as people who are elected and are trying to represent how we go about this is that we continue with the respectful open communication, and we absolutely, you know, respect the autonomy of what has been agreed to so far we obviously want to change the way the school committee does that's very clear but we haven't been able to do that so we have, we have what we have. And, and I think if the school committee expresses that we are, this is our pragmatic plan for right now, and we are totally supportive of the right of teachers to continue to work remotely. And that is under the current MOA sacrosancts. And I think I think if we if we express that and lead with that. I think that that can help achieve these these really needed benefits of in person for for students. Miss Lord. Thank you. I think I'm going to say a similar thing to Mr Demling. I want to address that at times during the school year our school committee union rift as mimic by the town has become quite polarized, and in some ways we've mirrored the national politics of vitriol. I just want us to stop because I know we're better. I know who we are. I know that our teachers love our students and they want to be in person. I'm in support of this motion, and I pray that parents and community, let teachers have their autonomy we don't know whose child is a cancer survivor, or who has underlying conditions so if there's a teacher that doesn't come back. We're all or can I say pray it's okay I hope that we're all respectful of each other story we don't know each other story we don't have a right to know it. So if it's going to be voluntary. I trust that we will let it be voluntary not put any pressure on a teacher that it's really not feeling. I just, yeah, I want to, I want us to listen to each other and hear each other and keep processing with our union thing but I also am in support of this and honoring teachers that aren't volunteering. Thank you. A couple of folks that haven't spoken yet and I want to make sure that before we before anybody else speaks again that you have an opportunity to speak said, Mr. Sullivan or Ms. Seeger. Yeah, I won't just want to say. And full support of this you know we we do have the same goals, but our timelines are so different. And we really do need to start talking about putting kids back in school next week. We're talking about trying to get them in when it's safe and that we just we need to start working on this because otherwise we could end up having middle schoolers or high schoolers go to school for a week in June. And then they, you know, then we're looking at a new school year. So we got to we got to start talking, at least with ourselves now and get this thing rolling. Yes, Seeger. I really appreciate this sentence that Ms. Lord shared about finding understanding for for a system where teachers may opt out and want to stay home. I'm generally in support of this plan and I do have the concern of it being a lot of work for Dr Morris, but from everything you've seen so far in planning. I feel like he can work it out he'll find balance in that between teachers who want to come back and teachers who may not and how do you balance that between the student load and the teams, etc, etc. Although I do acknowledge that it sounds like a lot of work. But I'm, you know, I'm hopeful and especially with prioritizing the students that need to be in the schools, the most that that there will be a progression. This isn't a plan that has to be all put together at once. And, you know, it can be a process and ongoing process. I don't know. But anyway, at any rate, I support this. Ms. Lord, your hand is your little palm, but that's old. Okay. Does anybody have any further comments? Are we ready to make that motion in the vote and take those for the discussion. And so I will share the motion again so folks can read it as as I make the motion. I'm seeing the motion now. Google meet doesn't show you like put a little border or shiny border around what you're presenting. So I have no idea which, which one it's shopping, but good. Okay. Would somebody like to make a motion for the region. Or did we want to start with Amherst or tell him first I don't. Mr. Deming. I approve that the Amherst school committee directs the superintendent to develop and implement a plan for the return of in person learning with staff who voluntarily choose in person instruction. For as many students as possible within the safety guidelines of public health officials, starting in February and prioritizing higher needs students. The superintendent will manage this return and any shift back to remote learning based on a continuous assessment of health conditions and direct consultation with local public health officials. The superintendent will work closely in collaboration with a PA leadership and gather input from the school committee and student families for safely to safely implement this plan. I'll second the motion moved by Demling and seconded by McDonald's and we'll take a roll call vote of the Amherst school committee. Mr. Demling. Demling I. Mr. Harrington. Harrington I. Ms. Lord. Lord I. Ms. Spitzer. I think I'm gonna have to abstain. And McDonald. Yes. So the motion passes for. For yeah, zero. No, and one abstention for Amherst. Sorry. Would somebody like to make a motion for the region. I'll make the motion of somebody else will second it. I move that the regional school committee direct the superintendent. The superintendent will manage this return and any shift back to remote learning based on a continuous assessment of health conditions. Indirect consultation with local public health officials. The superintendent will closely will work closely in collaboration with a PA leadership and gather input from the school committee for safely implement this plan. The superintendent will manage this return and any shift back to remote learning based on a continuous assessment of health conditions. hahaha, I expected them to, they'll echo furtherance and look closely will work closely in collaboration with a PA leadership and gather input in port from the school committee. And student families to safely implement this plan. There a second. I'll second that. Move by Macdonald and seconded by Sullivan. I'll take a roll call vote of the region. Mr. I MR. Harrington. Here and I. Ms. Sieger? Sieger, aye. Ms. Spitzer? Abstain. Ms. Stanser? Abstain. Mr. Sullivan? Sullivan, aye. And McDonald, aye. The motion passes set a six to zero with two abstentions. Chair Hall? All right, I'll move for Pelham that the school committee directs the superintendent to develop and implement a plan for the return of in-person learning with staff who voluntarily choose in-person instruction for as many students as possible within the safety guidelines of public health officials starting in February and prioritizing higher need students. The superintendent will manage this return and any shift back to remote learning based on a continuous assessment of health conditions in direct consultation with local public health officials. The superintendent will work closely in collaboration with APEA leadership and gather input from the school committee and student families to safely implement this plan. Is there a second? Second. All right, moved by Hall, seconded by Menino. We'll do a roll call vote. Ms. Barlow? Barlow, yes. Mr. Menino? Menino, aye. Ms. Stanser? Abstain. And Hall, aye. So the motion passes three to zero with one abstention. I can just stop presenting. Thank you. We now move on to our next item, which is warrants. And we have three committees here. So I believe I have one for the Amherst School Committee. We need to find it. Ms. Spitzer, I don't know if you have any further- I have a few as well. I need to also bring them up just for a moment. I can go, I find mine's up. Aye, Alison McDonald, authorized by my signature to payables for payroll in the amount of $635,567.54 dated January 13th, 2021. And I signed this on January 8th, 2021. I can go now. Yep, go ahead. I carry Spitzer authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of $5,124.64 for the warrant dated January 7th, 2021. This included general fund expenses of $5,124.64 and I signed this on January 7th, 2021. Authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of $66,983.24 for the warrant dated January 11th, 2021. This included general fund expenses of $37,231.01, revolving fund expenses of $9,750.60. And grant fund expenses of $15,264.29 and other funds in the amount of $4,737.34 for capital. I signed this on January 11th, 2021. That is all. Chair Hall, are there any for a poem that you need? You know what? I have a bunch of them and we have a poem only meeting on Thursday. So given the time, I'll just, I'll wait on mine. Thank you. And next is gifts and I don't believe we have any gifts this evening. So I will move to adjourn the regional school committee. Is there a second? Second. And moved by McDonald second by stancer. There's no discussion. Roll call vote. Mr. Demling. Demling aye. Mr. Harrington. Harrington aye. Ms. Lord. Lord aye. Ms. Sieger. Sieger aye. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer aye. Ms. Stanser. Stanser aye. Mr. Sullivan. Sullivan aye. And McDonald aye. The region is adjourned. Chair Hall. All right, thanks. I'll make a motion to adjourn the Pelham school committee. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by stancer and I'll do a roll call vote. Ms. Stanser. Stanser aye. Mr. Manino. Manino aye. Ms. Barlow. Barlow aye. And Hall aye. Pelham is adjourned. Thank you. Good night, everyone. Good night. Good night. Scheduled for Amherst topics, but we did not receive any specific to Amherst. So we can move on to community forum planning. And I'm going to confess I need a moment to pull up the document that I shared with you all. And of course I can't find it, but I will. I have the Google doc, so I will do that. So this, what we're talking about, there was a, just as a reminder for folks watching at home or for those of us that at this later are we being need a refresher. We had, there was a group of citizens, or residents of Amherst that submitted a petition under the town charter. I forget the section that it is, a resident meeting, a resident open meeting and requested us to do this, requested like school committee to have a meeting on the absence of in-person learning. What I shared as a draft is really, really to have the conversation going, but as a proposal of how we might structure this forum. And just as a note, I did review this with the primary petitioner. And so this incorporates all of their input and ideas as well. So just, I find it always helpful to just capture what are the objectives of the forum. And so, and again, I reviewed this with the petitioner and this sort of aligns with what their expectations are for what we, with the objectives of this forum will be. So it's really to provide an opportunity for community members to voice their concerns and questions about the 2021 school year, particularly with regard to the lack of in-person learning and to foster a shared understanding of the factors that are related to implementing in-person learning in the district during COVID, including, and there was in the, for those of you that have seen the petition, there's a whole host of questions that were included in that and they're sort of at the bottom of this page. And I tried to bucket them into sort of big topical areas. So impacts of the extended period of distance learning on students, health and safety plans for in-person learning, phasing and timetable for returning to in-person learning, decision metrics framework in the MOA for in-person learning and budget impacts of extended distance learning and of a return to in-person learning. The proposed format would be a two hour online forum. And I talked to Dr. Morris and I talked briefly earlier this week. Actually, that was just yesterday, wasn't it? It's like this week seems so long. That we can do this on Google Meet. One of the things that the petitioners really like hold dearly is that it's a live comment and live commentary presentation opportunity for resident participants as opposed to what we typically do with public comment right now, which is the prerecorded comments or email. And there is a way to do so with Google Meet. We just need commenters to be able to sign up ahead of time so that they can have the correct link to be able to get into the Google Meet to be able to speak. And then Dr. Morris would be able to facilitate so that they're muted or unmuted as needed depending on when their comment is up. We're proposing January 28th, which is a Thursday for that. And then this is sort of roughly the flow. There would be a brief norm setting, very brief presentation that sort of touches on what is known and what is sort of just the common set of facts on sort of these big bucket areas where the petitioners had questions. And then the bulk of the time would really be in that community live, I called it presentations, it's really comments. There would also be an opportunity for response to questions at the end of that. And the petitioners also requested that we have our public health director join. And so I haven't yet extended the invitation, but so that's why that's in italics is that potentially we would invite Ms. Dragan, our public health director, to join to answer any questions that might be related specifically to community health and public health. So thoughts or ideas on this format, a proposed format, and it is draft. So even though it represents the input from the petitioner, I think I tried to highlight what the key areas of interest were from their perspective. Mr. Dentlin. So overall, I like the structure. I appreciate you taking the time and effort to reach out to the primary petitioner. We want this reflective of what the request was. So that's excellent. I like that combination, that three point combination you have out there. District presentation on topics above. So we very recently passed a motion that affects a lot of this. And so I'm imagining, given the timing, right? It's like what 16 days from now, there will be more information available and more questions that there will be about that implementation of voluntary return. And so I don't think we need to decide what those slides are now, but I would imagine that the superintendent can contour that presentation to what is needs to most effectively be communicated. If it's allowed within the town charter for this kind of thing, I don't know what the town charter says about it really. It would be great to ask or invite the APA board to leadership to participate on the panel if they wanted. And keep on that spirit of collaboration, I think would be really good. Now I love the fact that you have Emma Dragon there as the person to talk about the safety. So, but overall, I think it's a good plan. I should have noted, thank you. I should have noted also that I have a question at the town council will also be invited to be present. And the question that we have right now is to what extent they'll be actually the invited versus the viewers. So that's TBD. And we also will share this and publicize this with our colleagues in the region. So that they also are aware if they want to sort of acknowledging that while our residents are residents of Amherst and there's two different districts, the request went to the Amherst School Committee that our neighbors don't always make the same distinction between bodies about whether it's a secondary and elementary school question. So that our colleagues from the region will be invited to view it as well. Any other thoughts? I think that would be a question back to Dr. Morris and then probably not that one that I would expect or ask you to answer this evening. But I do think, so the point that Mr. Demling raised about the timing of it, given the motion, the vote that we just had, does this date work for having some of those answers or not, right? So I think we'll just want to sort of think through that as well. Dr. Morris? Yeah, I don't think we'll have super clear, I mean, I don't think all will be resolved in 16 days just to be very candid about it. And so I don't know if that matters or doesn't matter and maybe that's a really good question to bring back to the petitioner. Given the vote that the three bodies took tonight to get a sense of what works best because I think this is a community, my understanding, or I'm not, it's my understanding and believe it's truth. I'm like, is that it's a community-driven petition. So I think just if that person who led the charge on this would feel differently on the timeline, I think giving that person the opportunity to weigh in, that would be my recommendation. So it's not really up to myself or the committee, but really it's about what the purpose was. Yeah, that's a great idea. And I think also, in the spirit of ensuring and bringing all stakeholders to the table as we develop this plan, I think that also could be really useful to have it when before any plan is being rolled out, sort of to really hear sort of the ideas from the community on this. Okay, are there any other discussion ideas from any members? No? Okay, so I will follow up with the primary petitioner to sort of ask that question about whether that date is still amenable. So our next item is the Cominantis sibling policy. This was sort of revisiting our current policy in light of some questions that have come from community members, families that have students within Cominantis. And Dr. Morris? Yeah, I can just give you a sense of where I believe it's coming from is families who have kids that were in the first cohort of Cominantes who are current first graders who don't live in the Fort River catchment area. You know, I understand, I'm not taking a position on it, but I understand their advocacy for younger siblings to be involved in the program. I will give you my two cents, but I think that's the framing is we now have kids who are not at Fort River, who are at Fort River, excuse me, solely because of Cominantes and then their younger siblings joined the program. And so I have two sort of competing viewpoints to be candid. So the first is, as long as the Spanish number, Spanish speaking or multilingual population stays at the point we want it in terms of the modeling English speaking population, I'm pretty open to that. It's really, for me, it's not an educational challenge. It'll be a logistical challenge, but it's really about a community challenge that you all face. What I'm not willing to do is to dilute the percentage of Spanish speakers in the program, because I think that's both critical to the success of the program as well as consistent with the aims of the program that we had at the beginning about why we started it. I think the thing that I, you know, for you all to consider is if you open the door to siblings joining the same school as siblings who are part of a program, I think it's a broader conversation where you may want to think about special education, specialized programs and other things. I'm not going to weigh pro or against, you know, for or against, but I think if we're going to have a sibling policy based on program, I don't know how we cut the distinction between common aunties and specialized special education programs. And then if we go down that road, there's some logistics and cost to it. And, you know, it's hard to quantify that because we don't know exactly how many people, but, you know, I think that's where it gets interesting. And I don't mean that to be flip. Like, I mean, it's actually like a really interesting question that this committee struggled with and sometimes before we had common aunties about how to manage the fact that for some families, one sibling attending a school because of a specialized special education program meant that the other sibling was not able to attend that school. So there's a lot of, it's not a simple issue for me. I'm very empathetic to folks in the community who are advocating around the common aunties, you know, as a parent of multiple kids, I think, you know, those of us who are can all identify that, you know, there might be some real interest in having kids be in the same elementary school for many families, not everyone, right? I'm not talking about special kids or anything. Some families are like, no, keep my kids apart. But for many families, from a convenience viewpoint, from a pickup drop-off viewpoint, if they're providing their own transportation and just from a school climate and culture viewpoint, that's a real advantage. But I think I can't, you know, for me, I can't separate out this program from some of other district programs that have students attending outside their catchment area. So to summarize, I'm really, I will be comfortable in the end, as long as we're not diluting, reducing the Spanish-speaking or Spanish language population. But I think the broader context of about students in programs, large and siblings, is one that does come with logistical challenges and then potentially financial challenges as well in terms of additional busing, because our van seats are at a premium. And so that doesn't apply as much to coming on days, but it does to specialized programs. So it's messy, you know? I wish I could be here and just be like, oh, it's really clean and this is smooth, but I think my job is not to do that when it's authentically not clean and smooth. So sorry to make things complicated. I was really quiet much of the night. I have a question about how this, so how this would be, or could be implemented if we were to do this, would that mean that potentially a non-primary or, you know, in the English-speaking cohort of, but a Fort River Zone student that is English-speaking, that desires to be in the Cominantes program, that they could potentially lose that seat to a student, an English-speaking student from Wildwood or Crockerfirm? That's true. So it does, yeah, no, I'm glad you raised that. I meant to and I apologize, it's late. I was up early. You know, that's the other political complication, you know, and practical complication is, you know, it means that, you know, in the first two years, we were pretty much able to support every Fort River modeling or English-speaking student who wanted to be part of the program to be part of the program. Think two or three years ago, so Mr. Demling, you may have been, are you the longest serving member of the Amherst Committee now, Mr. Demling? Yeah. I think, so you may be, I may have said enough years ago where you may be the only person who was here when I said it, but one of the pieces of feedback that Ms. Richardson and I got was a caution on sibling policies, mostly because districts utilized them or were pressured to utilize them to produce a number of native speakers of whatever language the program was in. So I think that's not so much a challenge and I don't think that this will be a challenge in the sibling front for a little while, but as the program matures and there's more and more younger siblings, it could end up being, you know, if we have 20 English-speaking spots and 10 go to siblings at some point in the future, that certainly wouldn't happen next year. Then you're talking about half the program being sort of closed for the Fort River population. So that's why I say it's not easy. Like I wish, from the parent point of view, I absolutely empathize. I want to be really clear about the desire to do that. I'm not opposed to it in principle. I think the practical realities are unfortunately a little more complicated to sort through and they're not so complicated for next year. Again, I don't know the number of siblings, but I imagine it's very low just based on a number of, we haven't had that many non-Fort River kids, monolingual kids in the program, but the concern is just over time, how that goes. So, you know, I think, you know, there's a number of different ways we could think about this. You know, we could try it for a year and or cap the number of siblings we accept in the program and have their own separate lottery. Yes, it was in the packet, but you know, we have our four groups. We could make a fifth group if we wanted to make a fifth group or something along those lines, but I just wanna make sure we're tracking this over time to make sure if the committee wants to change the policy that way to make sure that we're not making it a closed program. That's, personally, my concern is, because then it becomes an equity issue because it's no longer sort of, it's sort of the idea of a close and exclusive access to a program sort of in a public school makes it challenging for me. And I grew up with a sister who was in special ed and went to a different school than I did. So I know what it feels like and I know how challenging that is both for the family as well as for the students. So I really empathize with that situation. I think I'd be open to five and having a separate sibling lottery. Or is there a way that we could put a cap on it, like a fuse that says once we get to this number, then we move to a lottery, right? So a separate lottery or some, but that starts to make it super, super complicated and I don't know how we do that. So I saw Mr. Demling's hand and then Mr. Spitzer's hand. So we'll go Demling and then Spitzer. Yeah, so I appreciate this conversation. There are like three or four points that both Dr. Morrison and Ms. McDonald have brought up that I have not considered. Given that it's 920, my preference is not to vote on this tonight. I would like to bring it back and digest these points. Maybe with the ability to email Ms. Richardson if she's available to it to kind of talk through it. I find myself coming at this from an interesting point of view. So I was a Crocker Farm parent and I was a Wildwood parent. So I was zoned, I am still currently zoned Crocker Farm. Well, I don't have any more kids going there. And my oldest son went to Wildwood because he was part of the ILC program for intensive special needs. And I really appreciate the services he got there, but that was hard, you know? And this just obviously came up when we were looking at the building project a number of years ago. So I understand the strain that it puts on families. And as someone who went through that, I'm not particularly compelled by the line of thinking that because we don't offer sibling programs in these other programs that we then therefore shouldn't offer it in Comanantes. I feel like Comanantes should be evaluated for what Comanantes is and what we're trying to do. And there are some subtle differences here, right? You know, Comanantes is an opt-in program fully, right? Now, technically, so was ILC, but not really. Like that's where my kid really ought to have gone if he wanted to get the services he needed. You know, so it wasn't really much of a choice. I do find some of the arguments that we got from a community member who sent us this issue compelling about the benefit to the program and to the students in the program when there are siblings in the program. I won't go through all the information they cited, but they did make a decent case for, you know, how it increases parent engagement and having two students in the same house that are going through that immersion setting. I completely agree with Dr. Morse's first point that we don't want to dilute the Spanish-speaking population. So if we had a prioritization adjustment here, my point of view would have to be within the language groups. You know, not crossing that boundary. You know, I've spoken about this before about how some other changes that I think we should do. But yeah, I don't think it's simple. And I would like to digest some of this new stuff that I heard tonight in order to make a more informed decision. Ms. Spitzer. I agree with Mr. Domenic. It's been a long night and it would be nice not to have to make this decision tonight. But I guess I'm just not inclined to change the policy given that we said that we were very clearly communicating the policy prior to anybody opting to enroll in the program. You know, we had a very clear policy. And I'm a little concerned just, I think there's so few seats available to those who are not within the Fort River District that to put, essentially take more of those seats off the table feels, I just, it feels like it's gonna make things a lot more complicated and potentially, the other third thing that we haven't talked about and it feels a little bit like getting really far ahead of ourselves. But I'm just gonna put it out there because I've been thinking about it is the building project. And so if we end up, either one of these options is gonna have huge impacts on the common anxious program. But if we create this sibling policy, and I know that, you know, like you said this earlier, 2025 is the year we're looking at. But I could see people who are currently in the program having siblings who start in 2025. So are we potentially locking ourselves into something that's going to have an impact down the road when we're looking at a new building. So again, I also feel like I'm not quite there yet when making a final decision, but I think it's worth just keeping that in mind as we move forward. I like the suggestion to sort of marinate a little bit longer and maybe and then come back at our next meeting to vote. I was just looking just to make sure that we're not, that the lottery wouldn't be starting before then and looks like it wouldn't even start until March or April. So yeah, so we have time. Yeah, I think that with a new building, the entire policy probably would need to be re-looked at because of a consolidated school or even a smaller school. So we don't even know where, you know, we just don't know the impacts of that new school building. So we, it's very likely that it will need to be re-looked at. Okay, Ms. Lord or Mr. Harrington, do you want to add anything to the conversation? Yeah, okay. So... I moved to adjourn the Emmer School Committee. I was going to say item 17. I second, moved by Spitzer, seconded by McDonald and no discussion. So Mr. Demling. Demling, aye. Mr. Harrington. Ms. Lord. Lord, aye. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer, aye. And McDonald, aye. The Emmer School Committee is adjourned. Thank you.