 I'm calling to order the meeting of the regional school committee at 632 p.m. And we'll have to take a roll call. When I call your name, please say present. Mr. Demling. Mr. Demling, present. Mr. Manino. Present. Ms. Lord. Lord, present. Mr. Harrington. Harrington, present. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer, present. Ms. Stanser. Stanser, present. Ms. Seger. Seger, present. McDonald, present. And that's everyone. And I'll turn it over to the chair of the Amherst committee to call. So seeing a presence of a quorum of the Amherst school committee, I call the meeting to order at 633 p.m. Unfortunately, we'll go through a roll call again. Mr. Demling. Demling, present. Ms. Lord. Lord, present. Mr. Harrington. Harrington, present. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer, present. And McDonald, present. And I'll turn it over to the chair of the Pelham school committee. All right. Thank you. Seeing the presence of a quorum, I will call this meeting of the Pelham school committee to order. I'm going to use our Pelham informal first names. Jesse. Jean-Louis, present. Margaret. Oops. Stanser, present. Therabast. Therabast, present. And Ron. Vaninda, present. And Hall, present. Great. And I see that Mr. Sullivan joins. So Mr. Sullivan, can you please announce that you're present for a region? Present. Mr. Sullivan is present. Wonderful. Thank you. And now, next up, we have a public comment and committee announcements. And we have, I believe, two or three. Three. I can get them up now. They're all the ones I got were all emails, right? There's no voice ones. Correct. So let me zoom in a bit on that. That's better. And as I have in the past couple of meetings, I'll just scroll down and anyone can let me know if I'm going too quickly. That was the first one. Here's the second one. Hopefully that pace was okay. Thank you. And as always, we are always open to public comment. At any time at schoolcommittee at ARPS.org and in for any meetings by 3pm on the day of the meeting, either by email to McDonald's a at ARPS.org or to our phone number, which is always printed on our agendas. Are there any committee announcements? We will move on to, I also don't have any chair updates right now. So before we move on to our new and continuing business, Dr. Morris, do you have a superintendent's update? Yes, I do. And I know we have a big agenda, but I think it's worth mentioning talking about two, two specific things, one very positive thing and the other dramatically less. So I want to start by talking about the high school graduation. Ms. McDonald was there some of the same time that I was there and just how wonderful it was to see a structure where students were able to walk across the stage and be able to hear that and hear some of the valedictory speeches. And that'll be shown on Amherst Media Friday evening, the compiled one. It will not be that eight hours that they were there taking video. It'll be shrunk together to be normal length, but just appreciated and how much positive energy came from students for being able to have that physical experience. It wasn't the same as what it would be in the Mullen Center. There's no doubt about that. Although from my perspective, there are a lot fewer people watching my speech. So I appreciated the 12 people who had golf claps because that was during a break and that was a lot less anxiety provoking that it usually is going on the court at the Mullen Center. Ms. McDonald got away with one this year, right? It's a different experience, but in all seriousness, it was just wonderful to see the students and I went right from there to dropping off. We dropped off lawn signs for all the retiring staff to recognize them. So, you know, it was just a really special day to be able to see students graduate, see that experience and then to kind of celebrate and honor our teachers who are retiring at the end of long careers with us. So that was incredibly positive last week. So thank you, Ms. McDonald, for volunteering and getting, you know, she has a very official role of did it with a plumb. So well done. On a more serious note, I'm going to start with a quote by Tanisha Sullivan that I saw today from the head of the NAACP in Boston and then I'm going to share some statements that were sent out one to families and one to staff about a very serious situation that's not new, sadly, tragically. But it's certainly become more magnified in the last few weeks. And so what Ms. Sullivan said was we've got a public health crisis. We have an economic crisis and we continue to have a racism crisis. All three of them are disproportionately impacting communities of color, low income people and working class folks. And so I read that and I thought I wanted to start that way. There's other quotes people are reading, but the confluence of events for many people both in our country, in our community, quite honestly are overwhelming and the amount of fear on a variety of levels also is overwhelming. And so I wanted to acknowledge that fact that it's as horrific as racism is as horrific as the many of the incidents of the last couple months have been that have been discussion points. It's also operating in a context that also is disproportionately affected people of color and low income people. So I think it's a particularly hard moment in the nation. And so I'll read the email that was sent to all families and then, which I know many of you have seen, but I'll also read the email that was sent to staff this week as well. So dear ARPS families. As a nation we are grappling with the death of yet another African American man, Mr. George Floyd from an inexplicable act of police violence in Minneapolis. The haunting video of Mr. Floyd's death has been seared into our consciousness, resulting in sorrow, anger and for many in our community real fear for their personal safety and safety of their families. While we can and do convey our condolences to Mr. Floyd's family and friends, there are really no words for the deep grief we feel for our community and our nation. We know that many of our students are trying to process these traumatizing events with their families while being unable to connect in person with friends, extended family and school staff due to the continuing public health crisis. Although we cannot connect with students in person, please know that all ARPS staff and faculty members are devoted to partnering with you to help your children navigate these troubled times. Counselors and ARPS family center staff will be available to students during these coming days and weeks. You can reach your school's counselor or any member of the family center at the email addresses listed below and by school all the counselors were listed. Our school improvement plans indicate that all social justice commitments we have made indicate the social justice commitments we have made and our work will continue. We encourage reflection and continued work on all of our parts to allow safety and equity for all. Later this week, you will be hearing from your school principal. In the meantime, please feel free to reach out to any member of the ARPS faculty and staff if you need support in these troubling times. And that was signed by our entire leadership team. Dr. Morris. Yep. Sorry to interrupt. We're getting messages that Amherst media that our meeting is not being shown yet on Amherst media. I don't know. So I texted as I was getting those messages when the public comments were going. The consensus that it's on at that point was on TV. The streaming was having trouble, but it was being worked on by Amherst media. Okay. They're trying to show it on both channel 15 and 17 and stream. So I can check in. I'm sorry. It's hard to multitask when reading a letter, but I will text Amherst media now. It is streaming now. Oh, okay. Good. Thank you. A lot of devices in this call, right? Thank you, Ms. Lord. So the, if it's okay to continue, Ms. McDonald. And Ms. Hall, I should say. So the last email I'd like to read or message went to our staff and it was sent by both Ms. Cunningham myself, but I want to give her credit because she was the primary author. Yes, I did receive confirmation from Amherst media, by the way. So thank you. Incidents of racism. And now I'm getting lots of people telling me that it's working now, so probably you're getting those texts too. Dear ARPS staff, incidents of racism, bigotry, and brutality have been occurring throughout history. This past week it has reached an unfathomable level. Disturbing reports and reprehensible accounts of police brutality and racial discrimination happening nationwide have been plaguing our lives. These actions are condemned in our district. Amherst will not be silent or condone this type of behavior. We believe in the importance and value brought by having people of diverse backgrounds in our community. It is our job and mission to give our staff, students, and families the safety and respect they deserve. We've begun this work, though many of the initiatives have been undertaken in our schools and across the district. We know we have a long way to go. Many of you are hurting as you reflect on your personal experiences and would like a safe space to connect and discuss ways to move forward. Others would like to show support and camaraderie. This week, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, when it lists times and information, we will be holding virtual seminars to offer safe spaces for discussions and reflection. The first seminar, and I'm going to change the tense a little because some of these things have now started happening, but the first seminar was today. It was specifically for those who identify with men of color in the district. It's an opportunity for them to find support and friends and colleagues who share their same concerns and experiences. The report I received was that it was very well attended and very meaningful and there's a desire to continue that work moving forward. Second seminars, which will be held tomorrow. There will be one for anyone who identifies in Atlanta, which is African American, Black, Latinx, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American. And to provide a safe, safe connect. At the same time, there will be an allies group who will be having their own meeting to talk about how to support our community. And finally, on Friday, there's actually two times because of other events that were conflicts for some of our schools. There's an opportunity for everyone across the district to come together, support each other, have crucially yet important conversations about race and race relations in our school community and beyond. From its inception, the United States has been plagued with the sickness that is racism. This week, it has reached a favorite pitch and set the country literally on fire. Please show your support by attending the appropriate seminar. And then the rest is about information, the detailed information of how to access it. But that's the information and what was shared with our staff and our community. And I think the point is that it's work that will not end. It's ongoing work that we continue. But in particular, we wanted to make sure that families and students knew that they had supports in our schools and that staff members had opportunities to work together in different groups, some all together and some in more specified groups and had safe spaces to be able to process and find comfort and support. And that's how we've approached it. And that's how we're going to continue to approach it moving forward. So it's obviously a larger topic than Superintendent Update. But I did feel urgency given the local and national response and the response to share what we've done in the district today. And I'll continue to keep the committee updated moving forward. Great. Thank you. And I know that I've received some comments or questions from committee members about us having a conversation and discussion about actions or communications that we would like to take. So I will just open it up to any comments or questions right now. But also know that we are looking at putting this on our agenda for discussion at our next region school committee. So in light of that, is there any comments right now or questions that folks would like to make? Not seeing any. Okay, great. So moving on to our single large topic for the evening, planning for fall 2020. And as before I turn it over to Dr. Morris, I just want to mention, as we've talked about in our meetings before, we have a challenging road ahead of us to be ready for the fall. And some of the issues and concepts will be considering. We would never have considered or even envisioned pre pandemic. And this is really the start of our rising to meet that challenge and earnest. I also want to acknowledge that we're having this discussion and significant uncertainty still, and against a backdrop of multiple national crises that only add to our feeling of anxious, angry and impatient to make things better for our schools in the world. On the other hand, I've been very encouraged to see our committees are superintendent and our teachers and staff being proactive and deeply thoughtful about this work. And I anticipate will see significant engagement and energy from the community in the weeks and months ahead. Our heads and hearts are all aligned to provide the highest quality education possible for all of our students and I'm content to together, we'll see it done. So just brief housekeeping. We have a lot to get through tonight, and I'll do my best to facilitate the discussion and keep us moving. As Dr. Morris goes through his presentation will pause for questions at each segment materials so be be ready for questions but I do ask that we try to focus our questions during the presentation on clarifying understanding or clearing confusion on each segment materials to save our comments and deeper discussion for after we've gone through the full presentation. I'll do my best to track when folks have their hands raised. Unfortunately, I think right now I can see everybody on the screen but once we're in presentation mode I won't be able to see everybody at all times. So if I don't speak if I don't recognize you and you do want to you do have a question to ask just please don't hesitate to just speak up and asked to be recognized. I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Morris. I believe you're muted right now. Sorry, Miss Hall is there anything. Oh sorry. Yeah, no I just didn't know if you had any, not that you needed to but I just wanted to give you the opportunity. No, no, no, I think that was a great intro. Thanks, Alison. What I'm going to try to do is see how the technology works by the way actually as I'm doing this if for viewers if you go to our home page www.arps.org. The presentation will be there right on the front page of the home page so if you're someone who doesn't want to squint if you're looking if you're watching this and on a phone or something or some other way and you want to access the presentation in larger if you're one of the people like me who right now has multiple devices you're welcome to follow it that way. Certainly it'll be on the screen but I just wanted to let folks know we're viewing. So let's see if I can do this. Okay, so this allows me to see you and the presentation so we'll see if I can pull this off. I said this, the presentation is on our website and will continue to be but I, you know, fast scramble getting it done with new information from Desi yesterday and making some edits. But we did want to make it accessible for folks to both during and after the presentation. So this is a big conversation as you noted and I always find it helpful when there's a big conversation that this is the district mission and it's not my mission. The district's mission voted by the school committee and I'm going to read it aloud. The mission of our schools is to provide all students with a high quality education that enables them to be contributing members of a multi ethic multicultural pluralistic society. We seek to create an environment that achieves equity for all students and ensures that each student is successful learner fully respected and learns to respect others. And so whenever you have a tough set of decisions to make I always like to go back to what the mission is because I think that helps hopefully guide the decision making that all of us have to manage. And no decision certainly being made tonight. Just to preview that for the people who are watching is that this is really an opportunity to engage in discussion and then eventually this week to gather feedback from stakeholders, the committee tonight, but from other stakeholders later this week. Oh, come on. So the content goals of the presentation so that as Miss McDonald said there's three review the research and summary of distance learning review the 20 many May 2020 guidance and review potential concepts for fall. So what's not addressed in today's presentation. There we go was not addressed in today's presentation and I know there'll be a lot of interest in this is temperature checks. PPE recommendations. Desi guidance and recommendation that we've heard that their anticipated release is mid June, like probably two weeks from now. Preschools and the reason we're not talking about preschools today is they have different CDC guidance from the kid at 12 population there was an additional guidance document that came out even more recently. We're still processing all those pieces of information, but it's not because preschool isn't critically important. Certainly, I know in all districts we believe it is. Transportation bus safety. Desi told us very clearly they'll have some information out in a couple weeks on that. I mean the short story is fewer students will be allowed to be on a bus, but exactly what that looks like will be shared with us and I'll share it with you. Also tonight I don't think we'll be able to talk about educational options for students who families choose not to send them back to school in the fall. I know that's a question many people are interested in but it sort of is contingent on the model that we use for the students who do come to school next year. And so I know it's sort of can't do one without the other so trying to start in gender and conversations on this topic first. So distance learning review. The first thing is I want to have a thank you to staff who shifted their modes of instruction and managed five separate guidance documents from Desi and the United States Department of Education. And for families for persevering with distance learning we know is very difficult for families to be able to do that and we really want to thank them for that. We also want to I want to share and this is a live link for anyone who's watching online. The committee already has a slide deck that there's significant evidence that we've said this throughout that virtual learning does not replace in school education in terms of academic process progress and that's true in virtual schools whose only mission is to provide virtual education. You know they're all built around virtual schools and what they still see is not as much educational or academic growth. There's also research evidence that it's not equitable across many different groups of students so younger students students of special needs English language learners all their students who tend to make less academic progress in resistance learning as compared to their peers. Frankly the staff and family responses to the first survey were offered aligned very well with that research base and because of that there's a lot of concerns both nationally and locally that this is an educational crisis that for some students the progress that they're losing out on this spring and could extend will affect students long term educational prospects due to the length of the school closure. So the public health and the educational health are intimately related and I think it's just worth mentioning those pieces. Dr. Mars, I'm also getting texts that suggest that the presentation streaming is not smooth. My voice or the actual visibility of the presentation. The visibility of the presentation. So I don't know. It looks clear on my screen. I don't know if it looks clear on other folks screen right now. It does. It might be something the TV streaming. I'm not sure. Okay. So. Yeah, I'm not sure how I can. For folks watching at home. I think just a reminder that the presentation is available as as Dr. Morris indicated on the homepage at arps.org. So folks that have a device at hand can go pull it up there. And it will be emailed out to everybody on Friday off all parents guardians. So the last slide on this one is continue fall for spring 2020 so we're going to do another distance learning survey. Now the distance learning shifted halfway through based on the second or third guidance from desi and we have planning groups of staff members working on all these different sources. I think the key piece. I'm not going to read them all the two I want to point out is there's a lot of focus on social emotional says a group and I was set in on a couple minutes that group is really impressed with their work. And also staff support that we are thinking of this not just from an academic lens but also from a social emotional lens as well. It's critically important that we're not just thinking about math achievement or reading achievement certainly is critical that we are thinking of those things but not in a silos. The last other thing I wanted to mention is that the governance group is the last one. One of the things we learned is when we've had kind of groups working on related but not exactly the same topic that it needs to be a group that comes together and coordinates the work and shares across groups what's happening. And so the governance group is coming out of learning even from distance learning when we first set up groups to organize distance learning we didn't really have a centralized group that came together. So the facilitators of all these groups are meeting weekly to be able to coordinate the work so that it's aligned and that we're learning from one another and the conversations that are cross group can happen. I'm going to pause. I apologize. We're getting folks are saying actually it is your voice Dr. Morris and I'll ask the committee. It's a committee experiencing the same challenges and break up in. No. No I'm not but I've gotten a couple messages that everything's coming across. No problem here Manino. So why don't I suggest that I turn off my second screen wonder if that's creating a problem. And so what it just means is I won't see you I'll only be presenting. What's on my screen. And so I'll just rely more on Miss Holland Miss McDonald to interrupt me at times. So let's see if this improves and I'm sure we'll get text to that effect. And let's share this screen. Or was I I was here I think so. So hopefully this helps a bit. I guess we'll find out probably shortly but hopefully this helps. So this is the end of this section so I want to stop and see if there's any questions for me. I am getting text that this so hopefully this helped. So not hearing any and not being able to see you I think I'll continue if that's OK. I'm getting mixed reviews so I guess that's as good as we'll get at this moment. I mean I'll make sure do we want to pause for two minutes. And I can try to log out and log back in. I'm happy to if it's if it's that distracting to people then I don't want to continue given the content. Yeah. To sign in and sign off. Yeah. Is that OK. Yeah. I mean you don't have to do anything but I'll try to sign in sign off and see if that helps. OK. Sounds good. Alison I was also getting a text that it might be everyone's audio so it might be everyone's audio being affected by Dr. Morris's stream. I suppose if it continues to be at a very low quality we can have everybody log off and log on but that would be that would be last resort nuclear option I think. Yeah I'm getting some text that says it's it's better when not using the two screens. So I think that maybe part of it and if it looks like everybody in the committee is muted at this point except Mr. I'm not sure if you're able to mute or not. I know it's hard to find it but you're muted. Thank you. Try again. And I'll mute myself also just so folks know. Right. OK. So let me get back to where it was. OK. Hopefully this helps. We'll see. I'm hearing that it all works well when I'm not in present mode but I don't know how to quite do that. I'm not presenting. I mean I suppose someone if that continues to be a trend I suppose someone else could present the same slides and I could speak to them. But I guess we'll see how this works now I changed the audio system I'm not using the microphone that I typically use so hopefully that helps as well. OK. There we are. OK. So I'll continue unless I hear otherwise. So the CDC guidance based on public health factors is the second part of the presentation to frame it. There was it was a link to this earlier in the in the slide deck. They have three steps. We're in step one right now we're currently closed. And if the data these are all based on a set of criteria on page nine of that CDC report. And if schools are currently closed they remain closed. The learning and distance learning opportunity provided. Step two is remain open with enhanced social distancing measures and step three is remain open remain open with distancing measures. So I also want to say I want to appreciate Julie Federman and the Amherst Health Department because they have went over this information from her and having her input is incredibly important as she's closer to this world of public health certainly by eons and eons and I am. So what I thought I do actually before I go through it is that I selected the CDC guidance on social distancing and I have direct quotes from the CDC document on schools on K to 12 schools and analyze them for across grade level bands and the impacts. So the student guidance on student groupings was insured at level two or step two and consider at step three that student and staff groupings are static as possible by having the same group of students stay with the same staff. Again all day for younger children much as much as possible for older children and the key phrase here is restrict mixing between groups. So at the K to six level. This would mean staff rotating through classrooms because more than one adult works with the students students stay in the same classroom and we'd have to think about how to add movement breaks and outdoor learning when feasible. I'm hearing it's still choppy. So I'm wondering if it's possible where someone else might be able to present the same slide since you have them. And I speak to them I know it's a little awkward because it meant it would mean that I'm having to say next slide or something but I'd rather not have people watching and my continue to get text that when I'm not on the here. When I'm not sharing the screen, the volume the voice is much better and every time I share the screen, it gets choppy. Mr. I have them open and could try sharing if that's helpful. Okay. Thank you. I'm sorry about this. Not great with Google Hangouts so. Miss Jean-Louis, did you have a question? I was suggesting that maybe Dr. Morris if you shut your video off it may decrease. Like while presenting I don't know if you want to try that first or just try someone else presenting. I'm getting some text that this is happening to other people in the last day or two. That for whatever reason when people are presenting the audio gets choppy. So I wonder I mean I'm happy to turn my video a gladly turn my video off but I think I if we could try the with someone else presenting to see if it improves things. It might be worth making that effort. Sorry I'm running into some technical difficulties where I need to open system. If anybody's done this before and can do it quicker. I'd be happy to I just need to pull it up and I feel like we my connection might be stable. Yeah I apologize. I specifically came to the office because of the wired connection so I was hoping to have less technical problems but that's laid plans. Oh I think I got it now. Let's see. Yep I see it. Okay so I'm sorry I went back to open the guidelines I'll go back to tell me when to stop. Yep right there. Thank you so much Miss Spitzer. Yeah I'm just going to mute myself now. And so and I'll take Mr. John Louise. Well let's see how this works. So implications K to 6 I mentioned implication the middle school gets a little more complicated the team model particularly would need adjusting. Well they could rotate through teams. There's an Uber team right now which has six teachers on it and that there's a lot of details that need to be need to be worked out with that. And at the high school gets incredibly more complex because as you know the high school is situated where individual courses seven individual courses happen one stopped each day. And so that's where the student grouping thing and restricting mixing between groups gets particularly complicated. People are saying it's better now so thank you Miss Spitzer. And wasn't quite ready. Sorry. And so I think the the other thing to note is that Desi has shared with us that they would look at some limited mixing at the high school level because it's hard to imagine high school students staying in one place. Given the coursework so we're anticipating what that would look like but undoubtedly the complications at the high school level or more. You look at the college at the higher ed level they're looking at models like the Beloit model and other models that essentially have students. Some colleges are looking at this for many are taking only two courses at a time to again reduce the amount of mixing between students whether we could simulate that at a high school level or something analogous I think is something that is going to be complicated complicated discussion and it's not it's not easy at K to six or at the middle school level but at the high school level it's particularly complex and next slide would be great Miss Spitzer thank you so much. So the next one at the steps one or two cancel all field trips intergroup activities and extracurriculars and at step three limit gatherings events and extracurricular activities to those that can maintain social distancing. I want to stress that these are CDC guidance for all schools none of this is you know I did the analysis but the comments in the left hand side of the table are all direct quotes from the CDC guidance. So at the K to six level major implications before and after school programs school trips, assemblies probably not all that feasible at the elementary level it's hard to imagine many of those that maintain social distancing. Middle school it's similar. There's a little more there's athletics the middle school there are middle school teams and there's some additional pieces that I think make it more complex the middle school bit. And at the high school certainly you know that my statement with the high schools if you go there at six in the morning you go there at eight at night. There's always cars in the high school parking lot. There are so many events extracurriculars between not just athletics but clubs but dramatic performances that not all of them probably can maintain social distancing even at step three will look for desi guidance and additional CDC guidance that hopefully comes out. We also have very expansive field trips like one that was canceled this spring that I know group is hoping to take in the fall to Senegal and Gambia. It's that's a harder field trip to imagine those types of trips I should say are harder to imagine given this guidance and interstate ones as well so again the implications at the high school of this one are particularly high as compared to the elementary and middle school. I think I'm ready for the next one. Thank you. So the visitor policy so restrict at level at step two show I'm using level and step interchangeably. Not essential visitors volunteers and activities involving other groups at the same time. And either stagger arrival or drop off later I'll describe how complicated that would be and perhaps not feasible but put in place other protocols that would limit close contact with parents and caregivers as much as possible. So as opposed to the first two social distancing guidelines that I mentioned this one has a larger impact on the elementary level. There are just frankly more parent guardian opportunities to be present in the school setting at the elementary level you think of the primary grades in particular. Certainly families are welcome in all of our schools but when you think about very young children families are in the schools routinely. And so thinking about models where they wouldn't be in the school where parent guardians couldn't be in the school and how to maintain those connections is a challenge. We're also looking for guidance about student teachers and interns because we do are located in an area with multiple universities and colleges that have teacher prep and counselor prep and number of programs that are licensure bearing programs. This would have pretty significant impact on us but also significant impact and we have had those colleges university should reach out to us and looking for guidance on what to do with potential interns for next year. And right now we're we're in a holding pattern at the high school we do also tend to have more school visitors not necessarily just parents and guardians but other folks who volunteer for different activities. And so there's high impact across the board but particularly at the elementary level this would be a market change in the way we've experienced school in the past. And next one seating in space. So the CDC guidance is to space seating in desks at least six feet apart and turn desk the same direction rather than facing each other or have students sit on only one side of tables spaced apart. This one means and we've started doing the measurements on it and Rupert will jump in in a minute or two to talk about Fort River and Wildwood. In particular but what this means is that we can fit roughly 1112 to 15 students in a in a classroom based on the specific classrooms dimensions. We did some measurements at some of our schools the other day we still have more work to do on this. But that's roughly what it looks like even in classrooms where they're very large and you theoretically could fit more than 15. It seems like pretty inconsistent with the guidance to be to push that envelope. And so that has implications of course very high implications at every single school. If we can only fit that number of students into a classroom safely a particular variation or a particular impact and I'll queue it up and Rupert can give details is that Fort River and Wildwood. Thank you maybe I'll turn off my video and see if that helps. Thank you Mr. Harrington. So at Fort River and Wildwood. The issues are significant with the quads. So for those of you who don't know Fort River and Wildwood there are six very very large spaces that are divided almost exclusively into four different classrooms. Well they different have they definitely have their own univents they do in some ways share error and the outgoing ventilation which Mr. Roy Clark will will describe would be problematic in this scenario. So we've already started some design planning because for students to be back in school at those sites and this is based on guidance from our head nurse Mr. Roy Clark I have talked to Miss Federman about this as well. We would have to make some pretty pretty significant modifications to those spaces and as I am as you all know me well enough to know Mr. Roy Clark is able to describe those in much greater detail than I can. So I'll turn it to Mr. Roy Clark. Hi so. Miss Bitzer could you click on the Fort River link in your document. And let's see if that gives us a picture or the Wildwood link either one. It's still loading. Okay. I've got a circle. Perfect. All right well it may as well show us let me let me describe. I'm down I'm trying to download it. Okay I got it now let's see if I can share this okay. All right. Oh small. The second one's large the second one's larger if you want to do Wildwood it'll be the same design the first one does come out a little small. Yeah. So in essence each quad is roughly 4,000 square feet. And there are partial walls that divided up into roughly 1000 square foot spaces. And those spaces really limit the number of deaths that we could fit that will satisfy the guidelines. But in addition to that the ventilation system is not set up well for COVID safety. Each of the four classroom areas has their own air supply through a unit ventilator. But there is a single exhaust point for all four spaces. And so the way that it's designed is that air from all four classroom areas moves through all four classroom areas to get to the exhaust system. And this is particularly troublesome if you're trying to control any airborne moisture particles that could be contagious. So the plan is to take the temp the partial walls down where we can and create a hard wall that divides the quads in half. So here you can see a picture at the top of your screen are the are the bathrooms and the doors to the outside of the building. The screen is the courtyard which acts as a ventilation source for the class areas that are closer to the hallway. So if we take out the existing partial walls and replace it with a hard wall that seals all the way from the courtyard to the bathrooms that effectively divides the quad into half. We need to modify the exhaust ductwork which the point of exhaust is is by the bathroom wall near the top of your screen there. So we would need to modify that ductwork so that it would divide from each half equally. What that would do for us is that it would ensure that no air from the right half of the picture gets pulled through the left half of the picture while it's on its way out of the building. And it's essential for us to be able to keep kids safe in town. How we do that is going to vary between Wildwood and Fort River. There's so significant differences. Well, significant to me. There's some minor differences in in how the exhaust system was constructed and how the temporary walls are constructed. And that will affect how we do it on a quad by quad basis. But this gives you the general picture of how it works. I imagine it would work by on the right hand and left hand sides of your wall. There you see those little rectangles. Those are supposed to be the sinks. So each half quad would still have access to a set of sinks. Each half quad would still have access to one of the two bathrooms. Each would have two means of egress one to the outside and one into the main building. So we would ensure everybody safety that way. By taking out the partial walls that go from sink to sink, more or less, we open up the space to allow a slightly larger layout of classrooms. Sorry, a student desk in each classroom. In the in this process where possible, I would like to try to do some more soundproofing because that will only help us for however long we have these buildings with classes in them. And that's sort of the general overview. The other picture if you look at it is basically I took the original blueprint for Wildwood and highlighted in red one of the quad areas and then drew a blue dotted line where the division wall would go. It's pretty much the same picture, but it's got some dimensions on it. And it's better than, you know, my handwriting. So I think that's the basic overview. I'm open to questions or I can carry on. Does anybody I can only see. Raise his hand, Alison. Okay, sorry. Yeah, just real quick. So do you have an initial ballpark capital estimate for what this might cost. And also, if we go ahead and do it when we would need to start. I don't, we'll know we'll know what it's going to cost. Once I get this out to bids, I'm working on documents now. And I'm hoping that we can solicit. And if it's under a certain amount, we won't have to go to advertising, which will save us a month's time. But I'm hopeful that we would have some idea within two weeks. Certainly by the end of June of what kind of money we're talking about. It's conceivable to me that within how staff we might be able to manage Wildwood. It's going to be a slightly different project. Pretty much each of these walls is 1000 square feet. So roughly 10 by 50. So that means each quad needs. Sorry, that's 500 square feet 1000 square feet of sheet rock and paint. And there's six of them. And that's where that's where it makes sense to try streamline and get an outside contractor in. If we can keep it under $50,000, we can use some of the state contracts to to manage it without going through the full advertising process. Dr Morris and and I'm still getting lots of messages that that were incomprehensible. So I just got a message from Amherst media. They said the recording will be good. But they're, I don't know what this means, but RTP stream to their server seems to be glitchy. And they'll have it up by noon tomorrow. So I think we've sort of got a decision to make in terms of, you know, I don't know if it makes sense to try to have me do this presentation orally, because it does seem that when the I keep getting texts that when we're not presenting, it doesn't matter who's presenting. It's when anyone is presenting. It's glitchy. And so that's going to be a lot of oral content without the slide deck in front of people, but I'm not sure the best way to. I'm just telling you what I'm not going to try to solve this one. I'm just going to tell you what I understand. Let's take a moment. And I see we're not presenting right now. So I know all of us were emailed the document and the document will is also available to the public what for when the recording is is available. So how I'll just sort of look for comments or ideas. But one idea I have is that we just we just go with the oral presentation and those and those of us that have since we all have the presentation ourselves already in our email that we sort of follow along on our on a separate screen. And Dr. Morris can just alert us when he's on which page he's on when he moves pages. That's one idea there are other kind of folks feel about that or does somebody have a another creative idea. Mr. Yeah. So I mean, it might not work. Okay. But the only one and doubt reboot, you know, so if we all disconnected and then we all reconnected to the meeting, it might take three or four minutes. And that might that might clear up whatever whatever connection is lost. You know, I guess the problem that now that I'm thinking about is that the the connection to the live stream is going to break and then you have to reconnect that. So perhaps I talk myself out of that idea. Yeah, and I think the fact that it's all the audio and video work is working fine for all of us. It does seem to be that the issue is with the live stream and not sort of with the meeting itself. But any any strong feelings about continuing with an audio only presentation, seeing thumbs up, not head nodding. Okay, then why don't we why don't we proceed that way. Dr. Morris, but you're muted. Thank you. I just had so I don't know if I thought maybe there was more questions for right. And so I'm being reminded, it's a lot of devices we all have, but people at home can open the slides from the website in a separate tab and follow along. So if you go to our homepage, it should be the first thing that you see is a link to this presentation. And if you're really savvy and you just want to listen to us and there's nothing really to see except our faces. You could you could have that open and still hear us and no disrespect to anyone's faces on this on this call. But people could follow along that way. Like right now we're on slide 11. So I'll be very clear to share what slide we're on each time. I think that may be the best we can do. I am doing the same presentation for staff tomorrow. And so I want and that will be recorded. It's on a different different platform. But I wonder if that that goes well. Maybe that's a way that we could share it or I could just record it with nobody there, you know, just with slides of my own. But we want to make sure that people have access to both the slides in the presentation at once. And we'll figure that out by the end of the week. Great. But I didn't know if there was other questions. I thought maybe I saw a hand on some of the what Mr. Roy Clark shared. Miss Kenny. So I just have a question. What are you proposing the wall to be made out of? I would do what's economical and sturdy. It would typically be for brand new wall. It would be metal studs with sheet rock and some sound insulation inside. We will have some difficulties doing that in the wildwood applications. So that's going to be partial steel frame and and and sheet rock and partial existing panels. Miss Spitzer. And just to clarify, the walls now don't necessarily go all the way up to the ceiling. But under this new system, would they go all the way up to the ceiling? Or would there still be kind of the gap? They would go all the way. Well, at the minimum, they would go all the way up to the drop ceiling. If possible, I would extend the wall all the way up to this to the building structure. And then reattach the the drop ceiling to it on each side of the wall. Mr. Redclack. For those of you who are familiar with Fort River, I forget which grade it is. I call it quad H. If you go on the front door, the main door, the first quad on your left, they have a wall that pretty much extends from one end to the other already. I would probably need to do some improvements on how they modified the ventilation system to make it more efficient. That could give you, if you have that mental picture, that could give you an idea. We probably would still need to take out the sidewalls to make enough room for the students. Because what I'm imagining is that we would only fit two classrooms per quad. Yeah. And with that getting, I want to continue to move on the presentation. But I think for people who don't know, because of the nature of the quad system, it means students are walking through each other's another quad to use the bathroom. Part of that quad space becomes a hallway. And the usable space of those classrooms gets, if you're spacing out desks six feet apart, it gets to be untenable. So we're not suggesting that we'd put permanent walls both ways, because you end up with not enough space and not access to bathrooms and sinks and other things. So at the primary grade classroom, most of our students sit in table groups and not in desks. So we would need to shift that at the elementary level. The short story on all schools is that fewer students can be there. If you're having a significant reduction of new students in a space that is going to result in fewer students in classrooms and thus fewer students in the schools, and more spaces would need to be used as classrooms. And so we'd have to be thinking about what spaces currently aren't core general ed classrooms that have enough room to fit. And that's true at elementary, middle and high school. Miss Spitzer? I guess just knowing that the student populations at the middle school and high school are substantially less. And, you know, at the elementary level, we have had a reduction in our number of schools from four to three. So I'm just wondering, is it, I'm assuming it's much more acute at the elementary level than it is at the middle school or high school. Do you have any sense of, like, how much, what the difference is at the grade levels in terms of our ability to spread out? Or are you thinking of it as a whole? Because I feel like you could think of it as, like, our entire, all, all of our buildings, look at them all together, or you could think about it as elementary, middle and high. So maybe this'll get explained later. But for the public, I think they may be thinking of the high school and the middle school as having a lot of extra room. Right. So the middle school is the school right now that has the most space per student. You know, if you remember the middle school, high school study, we were looking at whether sixth grade could fit in the middle school without changes, and we found that it could. But when we looked about seventh and eighth grade, getting to the high school, it wasn't close. Even when we looked at eighth grade itself, getting to, and getting to that, it wasn't, it wasn't really close. So the middle school is the only building that we have now that has excess space. You may remember that Summit Academy moved to, for those who weren't here, Summit Academy used to be at a different site. It's now located at the high school building. So some of quote-unquote excess space, although it was always in use, ended up is now used by Summit Academy. So really the only, the only building that when we start looking at it, you start realizing, well, maybe they could fit, you know, not quite, but get closer to that, or the percentage of the building that could fit would be closer. It wouldn't be at being able to fit, but it would be at the middle school level. But I think that'll be explained a little more, because it's not just about can we fit the skids. It's how many students we want in the school at once in terms of entry and exit procedures and about ability to clean. So we'll get, we'll talk more about that a little bit, if that's okay. Okay, we'll go on to slide 12, which is communal spaces. And I apologize, I'm probably going to do a little more reading of slides, because not everyone probably in who's watching can access the slide deck that's on our website. Guideline is closed communal use spaces such as dining halls and playgrounds if possible, otherwise stagger use and disinfect between use. If a cafeteria or group dining room is typically used, serve meals in classrooms instead, serve individually plated meals. So this has high implications at all schools. Essentially, it's suggesting that eating meals in classrooms that has large implications for staffing, because one of our, we're very efficient with staffing for lunches. Very few people can watch large groups of students that would that flexibility would go away. It also has large implications for custodial work, something I'm going to say, likely way too many times in the next, not just tonight, but continue is we have to think about what's our capacity to clean. And that's going to be a consistent theme throughout. A lot of people, a lot of models that probably get created that I'm going to have a hard time with because from a public health perspective, we need to be sure that we're setting up models where we can effectively clean and disinfect schools on a routine basis. So with meals in classrooms, it's just a challenge, but it does seem like what we're going to have to do and we'll have to operationally plan for that. We have a lot of communal use rooms in our schools. You think of a lot of rooms by communal use, they're thinking of any room that has different students within it throughout the course of the day. So at the secondary level, almost every single room is a communal use room because students change classes. Same at the middle school at the elementary level, there are significant number of communal use rooms. So what they're suggesting here is that we want students not only staying in the same group all day or as much as possible at the secondary level, but we actually want all the spaces to have the same kids every day. And so that does shift where certain people will be located in our schools and has wide-ranging implications, particularly for specials and elective classes and the structures that would be used to how they would teach next year and where they would teach next year. Did you have a question? I'm a little confused. There'd be no cafeteria, people have to bring their own lunch? Nope. It wouldn't suggest that people have to bring their own lunch. It would be where students would eat, would have to be in classrooms and not in communal use rooms. So they go to the cafeteria and bring the meal back to the classroom? It would more likely be that adults would bring meals to the classrooms for students to eat there instead of students because we don't want students mixing with other students. Sorry if I wasn't clear about that. I apologize. Okay, I'll move on to slide 13. CDC guidelines about materials. Keep each child's materials, each child's belongings separated from others and individually labeled cubbies and taken home each day. Ensure adequate supplies to minimize sharing of high-touch materials such as art supplies, equipment assigned to a single student. Avoid sharing electronic devices, toys, and books. So that has major implications for specials areas, playground balls, technology labs at the elementary level. It means we need to think about electronic devices for kindergarten through second grade students who typically learn, you know, they have a computer special every week in all of our elementary schools. Our upper grade elementary students, there are enough devices per student, but also as implications for libraries as well as other elective courses. I'm going to pause here, especially because people might have missed the beginning part of the conversation. So, you know, every time, and I've practiced this presentation a lot, but never without the slides in front of me. So, or fly slides for people to see. So I want to pause because what I started with was talking about the educational implications of the closure. And because I'm starting to sense if I was a lay person or if I was watching this, I might hear these CDC guidelines and say, why are we trying to have school? This is going to be so different from what I experienced. And what I want to pause and start say what I start with is the educational implications of this closure are enormous. And they're particularly pronounced for our youngest students, our students with special need, and our English language learners. So why when we get to potential concepts, I know this is hard to hear and their implications of schools going to look really different when students return. But the urgency I feel to explore concepts of how this could work is because what we know about distance learning, not just from our district, but we know from the research base is students, especially in those subgroups, are unlikely to make effective progress in school. There's research and it's one of the hyperlinks from earlier that there was a number of reasons that students in Argentina long time ago missed varying parts of school years for a couple years. And there's long implications for those students. In other words, students, particularly students who didn't have some of the advantages that other students had, never caught up with the skills. And there's not good examples of programs to help students when that happens. Not a lot of evidence the other way. So I know this is really hard to hear and it's really hard to think about, oh my God, it wouldn't be going to this space. The cafeteria is my student, my child's or the student's favorite spot because that's where they get to interact with peers. And that's 100% true and I want to respect and honor that. But at this point, especially if people missed the first part of the presentation, I want to emphasize the piece that the stakes on the academic side are, in my opinion, equally as huge. And that's why we continue with this couple. That's the last CDC guidance page. But the reason we're not, in my opinion, calling it a day or my recommendation will never be to call it a day unless the public health says it isn't that it's needed is because there are real lifelong implications here. And I feel the urgency of the public health piece and I'll talk about that more in a second about how to maybe achieve these CDC guidelines in a safe way. But the implications of students not all students not returning and particularly some subgroups are not returning for me is equally as if not more daunting than some of the CDC guidelines. So sorry for my long soliloquy, but I just was recognizing that not everybody heard the beginning part of the presentation where that information was shared. Mr. Menino. Timeline. I don't know you. But when do you think a decision we've made on these various issues, three weeks from now a month from now that seems about the latest you could delay it till. So I think that'll become more clear in the next couple minutes. Okay. But you should be thinking that way. That's right. You know, summary for slide 14 has some key takeaways 14 and 15 actually key takeaways from the CDC guidance. We're going to have fewer students in classrooms. We're going to need additional spaces required for uses classrooms. The structure the entry and exit to schools and classrooms will be highly structured if we're not wanting mixing. Students education will occur in fewer spaces and preferably one and I say preferably fewer because it's we still have guidance counselors. We still have folks who are going to need to interact with students, but the primary spot for any student is going to be as few as possible. Preferably one staffing constraints will make us other shifts necessary to cover the additional section and that could potentially affect the length of the school day. We've heard a comment this morning or the public comment about, well, whatever we do, let's start a little later, right? We may that may not be our choice. We may need to because of staffing constraints in the length of the day. Common areas and communally used classrooms materials may not be accessible. That's a significant shift. Transportation and meal service will be major hurdles. It's going to have differential impact on grade level bands, all the CDC guidance. And the final small takeaway before I get to the summary slide is it requires significant shifts in the instructional models we use. And the short story is, and I'm going to be really clear about this, we have to use the public health information to plan the public education information. And there's a lot of folks who are anxious about their students returning that number probably went up in the last 15 minutes of the people who are watching this show. And from my opinion, actually, what I'm suggesting is that, again, for me, we can only do things that are consistent with the public health guidance we have. There will be inertia and there will be a push. And we see it in other states. And I will say, honestly, I'm starting to feel it in this state to move faster than the CDC guidance. And my personal opinion is there's a number of concepts that I'll get into in a second that I think we can achieve some, you know, some solid education for students with that conforms to CDC guidance. But much like we did on March 13, and we've done since, my opinion is we need to be very conservative and very cautious about how we approach a return to school and not push the envelope. Because I do think the public health guides the public education. I don't think as much as passionately as I feel about public education, it cannot be the other way. I've actually seen some countries go a little quicker than what I would be comfortable with. And we're starting to see them come off that as those situations don't go the way they hoped. So my slide 15 has the two key takeaways. It does not appear feasible that all K to 12 students will be physically in school simultaneously in the fall. Unless a vaccine comes months and months ahead of any estimate I've seen. We will not have 2600 students in our three districts in school at the same time in the fall. It just can't happen from a public health perspective. The second key takeaway is that this new phrase that I think is going to be a catchphrase. So glad to get on it early. We need to de-densify our schools. And what that means is we need fewer people in our schools. It also means we need fewer things in our schools. And we need to make sure that we're having schools that have sufficient amount of custodial staff and maintenance staff to be able to maintain them based on the number of students. And we need to actually move things out. It's not just about the students. It's actually about everything else so that custodians can do the level of deep cleaning on a routine basis. And that's the thing I was talking to public health about this on Friday. And, you know, I think there's a lot of interest in what deep cleaning means. And the best public health guidance we get is the routine daily cleaning. That's really where we need to put our stock. And I see some people nodding their heads who are more knowledgeable about this than me. But that de-densifying is really important. So I'm not interested. I'll say this very clearly and very publicly before we get into concepts of squeezing kids in if we can find spaces that we can to squeeze kids into the school so that we can get everybody in. I think the public health really has to come first. And our custodians have been wonderful and they've been under a lot of stress and strain over the last few months. And they've done, in my opinion, a fantastic job. And we need to make sure that we're setting up systems, protocols, and making decisions that they can effectively do their work to keep us all as safe as possible. So at this point, before I start exploring some concepts for fall, I want to pause and see if there are questions on the CDC guidance that anyone would have. And I apologize. This is a longer presentation without the images in front of everyone. But I do think it's worth me to spending the time so that I can talk through these things even though I know I'm reading from slides just because not everyone has them in front of them. I didn't realize it wasn't muted. I think the other thing to point out is that I'm assuming this off the table today is everything about PPE and all of that. So I think it would be just helpful to remind those who are tuning in that this is just a piece of the CDC guidance having to do with the social distancing piece and that there's actually a lot more guidance that we're going to have to go through later. That has to do with masks and hand sanitizer, you know, some of that stuff, just so people don't think that we're ignoring that piece right now. Thank you, Miss Spitzer, because people may not have seen that slide at the very beginning of what we're not talking about today. And those things are critically important and we're waiting for desi guidance as they are trying to translate and articulate the CDC piece into what that would mean for Massachusetts schools. Yeah, I'm so happy that Miss Spitzer brought this up and I'll just reiterate because it's such an important point that, you know, from everything I've read about return to any level of in person activity, it's about layers of defense. Right. I mean, we all know that the safest possible thing is just shelter in place until vaccine but we're not doing that. And so we're trying to minimize risk by multiple layers of defense and de-densifying is a core part of that. But so is the PPEs. So a number of other things that we're not talking about tonight. And so, you know, they are being talked about in some of those other groups that the superintendent mentioned. And we'll definitely have in-depth discussions about those other items. But yeah, this is such an enormous chunk of stuff to get through that, you know, we couldn't have less than a four-hour meeting without getting into all the details. So thank you for bringing that up. Does anybody else have a question at this point? Not seeing any. Yeah, and thank you. And I know that what I shared was really hard. It's hard to start conceptualizing school being really different than what we know. And I know for some people they're, and I've gotten emails to the like and I respect that they're feeling like we can folks feel like we can get back to normal. But for me anything that I'm going to recommend, I'm not recommending anything tonight specific, but anything that I'm going to bring and present for the public and the committee has to be consistent with the public health guidance. And that's what the public health experts are telling us and I'm working within those constraints. So some caveat about explaining concepts is this is an imperfect situation. I think that's abundantly clear for anyone who's watched the last half hour. And so all of our solutions are also going to be imperfect. Many of these details are subject to bargaining with our contract, our unions. We have multiple unions that we would have to have these conversations with. So I had to edit the slide deck because I had a conference call with the commissioner of education at DESI yesterday. And he suggested that guidance was coming in mid June, probably two weeks. And it would be 80 to 90 percent directive about a model and that waivers from the directive may be required if districts deviate. My own personal perspective is that you're elected officials and you're elected to represent your community. And these are really large decisions and I'm not in the place of trying to be insubordinate to our commissioner at all. But I do feel like you likely have a role in having these conversations and you may have opinions. So I think one of the questions may be why are you having this conversation now when DESI is suggesting that they'd like the state to all be on the same system. You look at other states like Missouri, which just came out with their guidance and they have explicit acknowledgement that there are a lot of different districts in Missouri, like there are in Massachusetts in terms of size, scope, geographic area. There are K to 12 one school districts. There are districts like Boston with over 100 schools. And so I do want to give you all in the public an opportunity to consider what options may be out there. And then when DESI gives their offers their guidance, that'll be a conversation we can have. But I had a conversation with the chairs yesterday about what to do about this and I appreciated their guidance that we should move forward and have the conversations, see where the chips land with DESI and continue that conversation as that guidance is released. I think a lot of these options require multi-school committee within ARPS collaboration. So I'm so glad to have a joint meeting tonight because I think we have this distinction between our three districts. And if we're thinking about what's best for children, my personal opinion is some of those walls need to break down a little bit. And we need to be a little flexible in thinking about this. I have talked to Miss Culkin, Superintendent Culkin, who's a superintendent in Union 28. We have conversations all the time. We chatted. We're on a group call today. So she's aware of this presentation and what I'm sharing with you and we would continue to do that. We're going to need to do people, Mr. Muneo referenced a lot of planning for academic programs and spaces. So that's another reason to start having these conversations now because the amount of planning and work that will need to happen for successful implementation of any model in the fall is substantial. One of the hard things is we don't know how many students will return. It will not be 100% of students who we have on our list. We know that some families are going to have a hard time sending their children to school until there's a vaccine. We've heard from families. We don't know what that number is, but we also can't really plan that they're not going to come because what we've seen in other countries is a certain percentage returns. And if things are going well, that number grows. So we need to maintain some spaces for students and not exclude anybody from returning. And so that's an additional variable. I'm also aware that we have a significant number of students from private schools and charter schools who are unsure what they're going to do next year. And students who are enrolled in multiple school districts or multiple schools right now. So that is a challenge. CDC guidance could change. This is an evolving situation. But I think the big thing is that I want to stress is returning to normal models of schooling. I don't believe to be feasible. And there's a huge emotional load on that for people that even if people who knew this kind of conversation was coming every time I've, you know, this is like the fourth or fifth time I went through this this slide deck. It's really hard. We love our schools. Our kids love our schools. Our staff love our schools. And to think about this level of magnitude of change is really significant. So I also just want to stop. I know I'm trying to be very orderly in my presentation, but I do want to acknowledge that to start to make sense of this as someone who's living it and breathing it every day. It's still challenging to talk about. And it's a very emotional issue for a lot of people. And I want to acknowledge that fact. So one thing I'm on slide 17 now that we did is we looked at there's a really good report, Linda Harling Hammond from Stanford and others detailed China, Denmark, Singapore, Taiwan and Norway countries that reopened schools. Well, one sort of didn't close it, but four countries that reopened schools. So that report is a hyperlink on the presentation. We were in touch with our sister city in Kanagasaki, Japan. They did close the reopened and we got some advice of how it's going from them, which is great. We're very fortunate to have partners. I included the Maryland draft document. They have a draft return plan that's on the website, on their website. And I included that. I didn't put the Missouri one on. I just saw it today. But you're trying to see what other states are thinking, recommending and organizing so that we want to learn from folks who are either reopened or planning to reopen who have put out public documents. Our primary limitation slide 18 is just space. You know what you saw before Fort River and Wildwood means we lose a lot of classroom spaces at those sites. The spaces we will be left with are quite large both in kindergarten and those half quads. It's an awkward way to say it, but I don't know a different way to say it. But we're going to struggle with space also for the number of students who can be in a classroom space six feet apart. That's a significantly lower number than are typically in our classes funding you and all three districts right now. We have essentially level funded districts which have caused significant amounts of cuts between the three districts over a million dollars of budget cuts. And the reality is we don't even know where the state budget is going to land. We have no idea. Checked in with legislators last week. We have no idea if things are going to get worse before next year. We have no idea if the federal government will step up and support this. I saw a conference call. Thanks to Ms. Seeger for sharing some information. There's a great webinar which I sent to the committee at Johns Hopkins today with one of their professors of education and public health or a doctor. And they were talking about how models like this are and you can't do them for the same kind of value right to cost more money. And so more more efforts I think hopefully for some push on the federal government to support that in terms of funding. But there is a reality that if funding was no object we find a space for every student every day K to 12 you know maybe maybe we could rent spaces elsewhere but we're operating in a situation with limited funding. As is every other district right we're no different from any other district. I don't want to make us we're well funded district overall and and that actually may give us some advantages that makes more things possible here than other districts. And I both feel good about this district or these districts and feel poorly about the inequities that that reality has in Massachusetts staffing will be a limitation. Right. It's how many staff do we have if we're going to tell staff as we did in March please stay home if you have the inkling of feeling sick. That means that fewer staff our staff attendance rate will likely go down and we need to plan for that actively. Right. The capacity for cleaning objects shared space has already spoke about that training for staff and students. One of the things that I'm noticing as I'm entering the public a little bit more lately is that as as people get together a little more in distance ways. The first half hour everyone's vigilant. After half hour people start slipping and I've seen myself do it in quasi social situations that you know you sit down in a distance way to have dinner and everyone's far apart. And then someone gets up something drink and sure I'll sit with you now and catch up and you just it is the however old you are you have been conditioned that that's the acceptable way. You know how close we are when we speak to another right that varies based on person and culture. We don't think to be as far away as we will need to be to communicate with one another. There's a lot of norms that we'll have to work on with staff and students and I already spoke to the enrollment projections. So slide 19 I think I already spoke to another why initiate dialogue now I think another piece is that staff can participate more fully while school still in session. I'd be deeply concerned about starting the conversation when the desi's guidance comes out which is the end of the last week of school for staff. So tomorrow as I said we'll have a session a session to engage staff in this. Our staff members most of them across the district are 10 month employees and certainly some will be engaged throughout the summer. I'm not suggesting that but I think it's respectful of our staff not to wait until the last day of school to start engaging in this topic. And so that's another reason I felt urgency to talk about it. And again I want school committee members to you to start talking about to Mr. Menino's point you're right we're going to need to work on a timeline we'll talk about the end about next steps. Because we can't make a decision in August and open school in September. I can tell you that's way off the table the amount of design work and planning that we'll need to do and I'm not talking about Mr. Roy Clark. I'm talking about instructional model design work that we're going to do is we're going to require us to in my opinion make some decisions. In the next five weeks is my guess but we'll have that conversation towards the end of the meeting. And finally to get back to my long to look we early the stakes are incredibly high for our students. So I'd rather have this awkward conversation now that's going to change tomorrow and next week and we'll get desi guidance. And it's a bit uncomfortable to think about it than being passive and waiting too much longer I'd rather jump into that. I think we'll be better we'll make better decisions the end jumping in a bit sooner. So the goal again slide 20 of our fall planning I'll read this is to utilize our collective resources to produce the best long term outcomes for students. Understanding the additional educational debt that are the closure and the larger COVID-19 impacts have made on communities within our arts. Right this is all contingent us being beyond step one and other variables being resolved. Any models going to involve some shared sacrifice and what I mean by that is flexibility on the way things have been and to think differently about the way things need to be. And that's true of every stakeholder in our community. I'm not presenting models today I'm presenting general sort of options or concepts. And I think the challenge for all of us is going to be there's some forced choices that we have to make that we've not had to consider before. And that's why I'm so glad it's a joint meeting because we really need to think about every every single child in all three districts and beyond. So I'll go on to slide 21 which is concept number one. There's only two concepts so it's not like there's nine or 10 because I know I'm getting it's almost eight o'clock. So concept number one is a K to 12 hybrid model which essentially is that all students receive in person school and alternating days or weeks and some method of distance learning for students is received when they're not in school. So a couple of different ways to do this that I've seen in other states or other countries one is like two days a week like group A comes Monday and Tuesday group B comes Thursday Friday. And Wednesday is kind of giving time teachers time to organize the distance learning components that everyone's getting when they're not in school and for cleaning. Another model is every other day so you know Monday the group comes be Tuesday the B group comes Wednesday the group comes so on and the other one is every other week so there's an a week and a B week. In my personal opinion in any of these concepts we need to explore allowances for some special needs and ELL students to participate and attend school in person more often they're more likely at risk for educational declines based on distance learning and have less access to it and I don't have that mapped out this isn't a model. It's a belief that it's consistent with the mission of the district that we think about some students differently given that. Yeah. Mr. Menina. Does this mean before school and the after school programs are non existent. But it depends what I don't have a clear answer for you and some of that depends what step we're at and some of that depends on what model we end up with and how it plays out but I think the idea of this model is that there are roughly half the number of students in the school at any given time. So if you're at Pelham and you typically have 130 students in school. At any given moment you would have between 60 and 70 students in school because those half the students attend on one schedule and the other half attend on a different schedule. So some of the benefits of that approach is it's more easily understood I shouldn't say easily but more easily understood than some of the other concepts it involves the least amount of change. Shocking as it seems it's it involved less all students K to 12 could have some in school components. At least half of the you know roughly half of the time two days a week a little less but at least 40% of the time. The transportation challenge is going to be a little easier than concept to and it seems likely from what I'm what I heard to be favored by desi and it may require a waiver or some explanation or permission. If the concept is not followed. Some of the challenges is that the hybrid model of in class instruction distance learning is a little challenging to think about particularly at the elementary level. If students are in school roughly 40 to 50% of time. Based on the feedback we've heard both from teachers and students try to map that out of what the distance learning part looks like for especially for your youngest students. It is a real challenge and also a staffing challenge because the students are the teachers are still working full time. So there's not like now where there's teachers the right amount of teachers and maybe you could release some teachers to do some in home but it's not going to be half and half. So I think there's a lot of details to be worked at about how personalized the hybrid model could be. I talked about the differential impact that younger students I believe this will be harder for. The point is probably the largest challenge in my mind and I'm sorry I'm in the logistical phase but that's where I am at the moment. The viability for families and staff members with young children in terms of being able to return for employment if they're young children are only attending school. 40 to 50% of the time is hard and I'm particularly thinking of staff members with young children and I don't have a good solution to that problem I've heard this model suggested and. But we have a fair number of people who are the primary caretaker of children in our schools and have young children and so that is a major challenge that we would have to work on. Lastly the cleaning protocols for the every other day concept implemented at all schools would create significant challenges and that if you have the same students sitting different students sitting in the same desks. 16 hours from one another. I'll be honest that the public health folks I've spoken to are very uncomfortable with that model, as well as our custodial you know Mr. Roy Clark now I'm not asking you to jump in on this Mr. Roy Clark unless there's questions but. You, you essentially don't want to promote different people using same spaces that's the whole thing about communal spaces. Some of these models, especially the every other day one make every space a communal model, because I think 16 hours is a pretty short time frame. So why don't I pause there before I go into concept to to see if people have and I like Miss McDonald's phrase clarifying questions because I will stop talking in the next 10 minutes and then we can have a more generalized conversation about everything but if they're clarifying questions on that concept I'm happy to answer them. Mr. Spitzer. Alright, so this isn't so much a question but a comment so feel free to tell me to punch it for later but I think the other thing to point out here is that if you have the other every other week model. It would allow a week for students to be home and to monitor whether or not they develop symptoms of the virus and so I've seen. Op eds in New York Times suggesting like you go to school for four days and then you stay home and then you go back so I'm not voting for this but it's something worth noting another reason I think you express concerns about the every other day model. And I think that's another reason I would vote for the every other week if these were the only two options and I'm not endorsing this concept necessarily. Miss Kenny. So kind of along the same lines but are we going to think about parents that have children and multiple multiple children in multiple places and like, I mean I have two kids. So is one going to be home one week and one home the next week and I never go back to work or is it going to be aligned like there's a lot of moving pieces I think we need to think about with this. Yeah, and that's one of the challenges you know the best thing I've heard which isn't really the best thing right there is no best thing in the situation in general but the strategy that I've heard some superintendents talking about is that you basically do it by bus runs. So that it maintains some siblings having the same week but we have siblings in multiple schools and siblings in multiple districts. So it doesn't really resolve all that. It also is the case that if we're lying just on geographic area that wouldn't really design the groupings that we'd want in terms of some of the service delivery that we have you might end up with a really unbalanced group really unbalanced groups. And so it is a conundrum that will need more work and more study. But I think you both of you are highlighting issues and I'll be really clear and I'm not advocating for anything tonight. But there are issues with every model and it's you know what's going to be the best choice you know going back to the goal of this with our resources. The best long term outcomes for kids and some of that is tied to families. I'll get ahead of myself to say that one real difference from the fall from the spring to the fall is more and more families are going to have to go back to work. Right. So one of the benefits of the spring is that the vast majority is not everyone made it in central workers but the vast majority of people were not at work for at least some period this spring. That will not be the case in the fall. So distance learning particularly as we think about young children on those off weeks will eat to Miss Kenny's point will have to be you know for many families it'll be older siblings helping them. But parents guardians and caretakers who are adults won't necessarily have the flexibility to be home. Some people will but there will be a lot of our families that will not. And so it is a real challenge with this model to think about what distance learning looks like without being able to have as many parent guardians and caretakers primary caretakers available to assist students and again particularly our younger students. Miss Dancer. One of the things I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around is if you're splitting the kids up. How. Teachers are going to teach the same things. Let's say you go every other day so they're going to teach the same thing one day to one group and the same thing to another group the next day. And how are you going to progress in a way that we would normally progress when you're going every day to school. So that to me I you know I'm trying to imagine how that's going to be for the teachers. Right and so I don't have a great answer I think the models I've seen on some of the hybrid or that. Let's say just because you're talking about I'm not trying to suggest that Miss Spitzer's comments are inaccurate but let's go with every other day model just for the sake of this discussion. So I think the models that are focused on this say that you're teaching class group a on Monday. On Tuesday when group A isn't there they're continuing the work on by a distance learning. And so that their education is continuing on the days they're not there by a some version of distance learning. But I think as I said earlier one of the challenges is that the majority of teachers are going to need to be in school for this whole operation to work. And so working out those pieces will be significant challenge. I would agree with you. At the secondary level you can imagine a good article last week. It might be a little more feasible because if you think about like the college schedule and high schoolers aren't college students and that's perhaps a false analogy. But I think you can one can imagine a model that has less in class instruction because the independence of the learners and their age could move them along at a little different pace. And we've seen that this spring that our secondary teachers were teaching new content the whole time they were allowed to. It's a fantastic job with that in a different way than you can assume that new content will be taught with a six year old right just developmentally. It's it's inappropriate and as a you know six squares of learning developmentally more right it's not like it's deeper or high school students aren't but if you look at where students are and foundational skills. That's harder to do virtually not a great answer but it's where I am. Is there any other clarifying questions or questions for clear confusion before we move on. Okay. So concept to is to prioritize elementary education. So more or less this tries to get elementary students to attend school five days a week might be reduced length days but five days a week. The challenge for this multiple is well through the spacing requirements the upper elementary grade students likely need to attend a school to another site again that de-densifying. You know so could we add three partitions to each cafeteria at some of the school right. We start getting into these scenarios and my personal perspective and I'm not saying anyone other superintendent says something different is wrong, but we still need fewer students in our schools. We can't get around that difference so even if we splice rooms differently and can staff them which I have my own questions about. I think fewer students in this matter and the only way to do that is to have some students attend a different school if we're going to say we want elementary students in five days a week. And so what that would push us at the secondary level is to either implement revise enhance remote learning for all or a hybrid model. You know one can imagine perhaps you know middle school students having a hybrid model and high school students being all on distance some version of that. It could be all students coming in less often middle school and high school, but we're going to lose some real estate if we want elementary students to be in every day. And that's going to trigger for secondary students fewer in class days again in my personal opinion we still need to explore allowances for some students with special needs. To attend more often consistent with our equity. So again the benefits it responds to research about distance learning it allows for it allows for additional staffing flexibility of already at high school teachers I've not presented this to any staff members. Any teachers before tonight. But who have said you know I do distance learning and I can sub because it's going to be really hard to find subs if I'm if I'm the distance learning person because I'm my grade level or my content area. Sign me up I'd want to make the system work so we could have some more flexibility there. It's consistent with how most other countries have approached returning to school prioritize elementary if you look at the Linda darling Hammond report you'll see that it'd be a better support for families with young children to return to school return to employment and the cleaning protocols. Get a little easier if it's the same students in the same spaces indefinitely throughout the year. Some of the challenges is it changes school building usage right and anytime we do that that is going to be a challenge for many families they're going to know that we have all this mapped out their kids are going to be safe and well taken care of if they're attending a different school than what they're currently presuming. It would require regional all three of our districts to cooperate on things which I think we do in general would push us to cooperate in different ways than we have in the past. I mentioned Union 28 here not just for Mr. Sullivan and Miss Seeger's benefit but it also would be something that we'd want to have conversations with both from a transportation perspective and also a student perspective. As I see this if the same thing is true in Leverton shoots very elementary and I'm not at all waging wave going into that that's you know not my knowledge base nor my area of expertise nor my role. We would want to extend some similar thoughts to all four towns or all four communities whether they choose to take them up or not. It would limit the in class sessions for secondary students compared to the first option and that is a huge challenge of this model. The transportation perhaps is more challenging might be that we had elementary schools that started on somewhat staggered schedules. Not by days but the time of when they start and when they end and it may require a desi waiver which was new information to me yesterday. It seems like desi is taking a different approach than Maryland and Missouri of at least trying to have I think the word was you know having like a pack mentality of everyone doing the same thing. And I'm not trying to be critical that totally I want to note that some of that is so that people don't start comparing schools or making decisions and school shopping of this one's better at this grade level. I think there's some reason for that. However I think you all need to be you're the elected officials for communities and my personal opinion is that you need to be involved in that decision making tree. So some models that we're I'm not bringing up or one model is a split day model or option. This is like some students come in the morning some students come in the afternoon from a public health perspective a cleaning perspective it just seems not feasible I see some laughter from people who know better than me about that. But frankly it's a transportation we don't I don't think we can actually transport that many students every day with a fewer number of students who are going to be able to be transported. So that one I know some states are looking at for me I think that's a non starter here. And and the 26 slide is basically just saying that we're going to need to revise distance learning plans regardless and we have teams working on that as you know, because we don't know even if we're back to school and any of these options. The public health situation could change and we may need to move to distance learning very quickly. So whatever option you choose we need to have robust distance learning plans available and ready, regardless some additional. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay, some additional considerations. Slide 27. I talked about substitute staffing challenge licensure requirements hopefully desi would allow us to be flexible with grade levels, because I think we're going to need to do that to cover staffing staff will need more planning time. They will be operating in very different situations. I've already see the number of emails from staff around that will have fewer spaces for classrooms at Fort River and Wildwood due to the quads will need storage for people who used to be in those spaces. Where do they put their stuff even if someone's going to be on a cart and come into classrooms, they still need to have a home base. We need to retrofit not just the spaces at Fort River and Wildwood we may need to do some work at other spaces or retrofit them to make them appropriate for full day classes. One thing that we've heard some conversation with Richardson about our ELL coordinator is, you know, is this the time we could have an ELL newcomer program if our classes are small enough and would that be another way to respond to ELL students. We may look at the elementary level at multi age groupings, given that the smaller class size and our space challenges, especially at the primary grade levels, and the fact that students are going to come in in different places than they ever have it's less predictable. So we may want to think about multi age groupings which historically we've done some in Amherst, especially at Marks Meadow when it was open. I know in Schuett's Bayon Leverett there's been times when multi age classes have occurred as well in the past. We want to think about our special education programs. By programs I mean students in substantially separate programs within our district. What are those students' needs? Typically their inclusion programs. How is that going to work in terms of shared spaces? Finally, for the Amherst school committee to hear our Cominantes program. I'll share that my personal perspective is we need to double down on that program. What does that look like particularly in a model where students aren't going in that option A, where students aren't attending school every day. I will say our Cominantes staff have done a fantastic job transitioning to a distance model. The reality is for dual language programs in my opinion, and I think the research would suggest this. This is a Spanish-English dual language program. For those of you who don't know, I don't need to speak in code. They need to hear and speak English and Spanish significantly throughout the day and using this format, even synchronous learning, it's not the same. Meetings like this would have more people talking throughout if we were live than we were here. I think some thinking needs to happen on Cominantes. None of that is a retreat from the commitment. If anything, it's going the other way and saying we have to figure that out, but it is an additional hurdle. Last slide, 28, and then I'll stop talking for as long as you'd like me to, is about what would the focus be. We've talked a lot about organization and logistics and where students would be and CDC guidance. And probably the most important thing to end on is what would we actually do when students return? And for me, there's four main priorities. The first is to train and support staff, students, and families in all the new public health structures that allow for reopening of schools. As I mentioned earlier, these are really new to all of us, and even those of us who are in the thick of it can slide a bit when we're not reminded in setting real clear parameters, protocols, and training for staff members and students and families is going to be critical. The second piece is a return to socialization of peers as staff and social-emotional learning. We don't have a lot of evidence or there's not a lot of research on students who've been quarantined for five and a half months. We can look to places like Hurricane Katrina where students were displaced, students what we call SLIFE, which is students of limited or interrupted schooling who have been in different situations. But we have a whole 220-400 students who have all had that same experience over the last five and a half months. That's not a typical situation. So we really need to make sure that we're checking our students and developing a curricula to re-socialize them to school, to each other, to their peers, to their teachers, because that has not been their experience over the last five and a half months. After additional assessment of academic skills, because we're not clear where students are going to come in with, adjustment of the curriculum to meet student needs, we're not going to teach the next course as if nothing happened. Fourth grade is not going to start with, you know, the math curriculum on page one on the first day of school that's not appropriate given the learning loss that we assume and have evidence has happened. And the last thing is that we really need to stress movement breaks within the classroom and outside the classroom. Looking for opportunities for outdoor learning, outdoor experiences for students. We know that being in one space is going to be a significant shift for students. And we're going to have to actively think how to adjust our instructional models so that students are making connections, are being active with their bodies and are looking for opportunities during the months where it's appropriate for students to do some outdoor learning throughout the day because I think that's in both the students' best interest as well as the public health guidance we have. I apologize for the sound trouble for you all and for everyone watching online. This would have been much better if you could see the slides. I would have been doing much less reading and it would have went much more quickly. So I apologize for the duration, but this is really heavy, heavy stuff is understatement of the night. And I wanted to start by sharing the public health piece because that has to come first. And then what potential options there are to explore and what I'm hearing from Desi. So again, I'm happy to sit back and, you know, I know that your chairs will facilitate discussion. I'm also happy to answer any questions the committee has. Before we open it up to, I did have a clarifying question on the 527, which I know we're not looking at it, but under the additional considerations, programs and spaces, you talked about multi-age groupings. Can you explain a little bit more about what you mean by multi-age groupings? Sure, sorry. So this would be perhaps if there are, let me make up numbers so these aren't real. But let's say we had, I'm going to do really small numbers because it's easier in my head at 819 right now. Let's say we had 37 students in grades one and two in a school, right? So you might think, okay, well, we'll sort of do, you know, we sort of have to break it into four classes because we've got seven or eight. Let me put it differently. This is a better way to say this, excuse me. So let's say we had 15 students or 16 students in grade one and 16 students in grade two, right? And theoretically, that means four classes, right? So you'd have eight students in one class of grade one, eight students in another, eight students in grade two, first class, eight students in another. Or you might think, well, why don't we actually combine grade one and two in one of the sections? We form a group of students that we think would be a good cohort. You would reduce the number of sections you need, which is going to be critical, not just on space, but our staffing limitations. I've read some articles recently that are suggestive that particularly at the elementary level and the range of skills that students are coming in with and what they missed. It might be a very good model. In general, I think you all know me that I'm an Occam's razor person. I like the simplest solution and this is the opposite of the simplest solution. But I do think it may be an effective model for students and it may be both financially, space-wise and resource-wise, something that we really have to take a close look at. In most years, I would really struggle to say, well, who's going to teach the second grade curriculum? I don't think the second grade curriculum exists in the same way it ever has right now. And so, thinking about the right group of students to do it would be effective. Nick Gaffey, who's the principal of Wildwood now, but with the principal of Marx Meadow, and I have had conversations. He's our resident expert of being involved in that. We do have other teachers still in the district who taught it. I will say they taught it when it was a more typical time. And there wasn't this five and a half month closure. So, I do think that's an opportunity we should explore. I think there's both fiscal space, but I think there's educational reasons why for some of our second grade students, that might be a really good place for them next year to think about what their needs are. We certainly would want to survey families and get feedback on that. But I think we have an opportunity, perhaps, to make an educational environment that really works for students and actually works for us in terms of space and capacity as well. Yeah. Thank you. Sorry about that. Does anybody else have a question before we move into discussion or comments? Mr. Denley and then Ms. Seeker. So just as sure as you can make it. So you talked about modest onsite for secondary students in option two. Can you, I know you don't have all the details. Figured out. But can you talk about the range of possibility? If you're a secondary student and we do option two, what's the minimum maximum range of onsite days per student we're considering in that? Right. So there's two different models that I've seen people discuss, districts discuss. One is where you have a similar, it's more of a spectrum prioritization. So if you want to say elementary kids are in every day, then means middle school students are in maybe half the days or 40% of the days in the high school goes all distance. I've also seen models that work more along the lines of fewer days in school for all students in seven through 12. So it's hard to, we're not there. And part of the conversation tonight that I'm looking for feedback on is if that's a non-starter for the committee and I'm not asking like binary questions, yes or no. But if it was for instance, that'd be good to know because we won't go down the road of studying that in more detail. Do I think there's a way to perhaps get every secondary student in the school in some way shape or form in that model? I do. It probably is pretty limited in terms of number of days. Some districts again have stressed the middle school student more and the high school student less in terms of in class time. But that is certainly something worth exploring. If it's something worth exploring, that's the next set of conversations we can have. Sorry, I did not be more clear. We're just not there. Ms. Seager. I'm not sure whether this is an appropriate question or not for you specifically Dr. Morris, but in terms of shopping around, are charter schools in our state, do they have to follow the same regulations that Desi is going to put out? And will that create any issues if they don't? My understanding is they do in terms of the regulations. That's probably all I can say. Yeah, sorry. Ms. Spitzer. I guess one of my questions is you kind of led with what's not addressed and I wanted to know a few things that aren't necessarily on here as being not addressed, but I didn't necessarily hear in your conversation. So feel free to be like this is not the subject of today's conversation. But the question I had about one thing was this idea, and you sort of alluded to it of these rolling closures that are potentially going to be happening. And I think we're seeing that internationally right now. At least I saw a few stories about South Korea and Israel today in the news where they had opened up and had to close. So it's related to that question about who chooses not to send them back to school in the fall. But I think what we will see is either the schools are going to have to close. But the other thing that's related to that JAMA article you sent is that we're going to probably be recommending to our students and our staff if you are sick. And in the JAMA story they were saying, or a member of your family is sick, somebody in the household in which you live. We are going to ask you to stay home. And so one of my fears is not just the loss of education. If we have another one of those closures, and it's not just for those people who are like, I live with grandma and I'm not going back to school or I have an immunocompromised issue myself and I'm not going to go back to the school setting. But is it that's the standard by which we're keeping kids, you know, you're having to make that decision to stay home or not stay home, we're going to see a lot more absences due to sickness. And I think that's the right thing. But we're going to need to support those kids who are forced to stay home because their brother has a cold and it might be coronavirus, but we don't know. So I think I want to know more about, and it doesn't have to be today, but when we're going to start thinking about that, because I feel like these options are, it's all connected. And then the other thing is just thinking about some of these social network issues and contact tracing. If that's something that would be coming out with Jesse guidance and some of the CDC issue guidance too, because I think we're going to want to, people might need to be comfortable sharing a lot more information with the schools than they normally would in terms of personal information about who they live with and who they're having contact with and also about their health. And that would be true for all of these. So again, I just want to put them up as things I'd like to talk about in the future, if not today, before we move on. I can very briefly respond. So on the first question, you're right about that. I think I'm very concerned on the staff side. So one of the reasons I was kind of conservative when I answered Mr. Demling's question, or in my opinion, conservative is I think one of our limitations is going to be the ability to make sure that we have staffing in place knowing that if we're telling staff, if you feel a little sick, all the things you said, we're going to ask you to stay home. Well, that sounds great, but we're going to be really cautious about using substitutes next year. First of all, I think substitutes are going to have thoughts about coming into school settings and replacing someone who's sick. There's going to be some legitimate concerns, I think, around that. We can't find enough substitute teachers, and it's not us. It's a national, statewide, and local challenge to find enough substitute teachers now. So I tend to be someone who thinks about resources and resource allocation, and so one of the reasons I'm being a little, in my opinion, conservative is you can develop plans that look great on paper and they work when everything's working well. This is the opposite of that situation. We have to actually plan for things not working well. We have to plan for a higher than typical absence rate. We have to plan for not doing professional development during the day because we don't know if we're going to need different people throughout the day, and so I guess my concern, and I'm going to be really blunt about it, my concern about a lot of the models I'm seeing around the country is I don't believe they're all taking into account the factors that you just mentioned on the staff side. I'm not trying to minimize the student side at all, but the reality is if there's one student out that's a problem, if there's one staff member out, then we've got 12 kids that don't have a teacher and we need to find another teacher, that's a 12-student problem. And so that's, I think, where I get really conservative about thinking about models and thinking about staffing and our capacity and not banking on things working well because I don't think that's a reasonable assumption. On the second part, you mentioned contract tracing. I believe that'll be out in the DESI guidance. I know they're working with some folks helping them with that, so I don't have any more to share at this moment. So unless anybody has another sort of clarifying question, I think we can, what I would propose we do is we go around and if folks just hear sort of reactions, comments, discussion to the presentation and the questions at hand. There were a few hands up before you said that. Okay. I'm sorry, if you want to go on, but I know there were a couple hands up. Or maybe I was making it up. I thought I saw Miss Hall and Miss Kenny's hands up. Yeah, my hand was up. It was not a clarifying question. I'm just going to wait my turn. Okay. Miss Kenny, did you have a question? Or are you? Same. I was just waiting for my turn. Okay. Well, since you're unmuted, would you like to be first? I would love to be first. So I think there are lots and lots of moving pieces that we're going to have to take a look at. Have we thought about surveying parents and guardians, how they're feeling about things and if there is a model that would work better for their families. I think, you know, part of being able to have a model work for as many students as possible is having their input. Touching marks. Yep. There will be a survey that goes out to all families on Friday, all staff members tomorrow. It's a pretty simple survey, but it gets at exactly the points that you raised, Miss Kenny. And it's not a voting poll because I don't think we have enough information for people to do it. But there are some differences between those two options, and there may be options we're not thinking about. So it gives an open-ended space at the end for people to weigh in. But part of the reason I'm doing this presentation, and granted the connection of the stream, I'll have to think about it, was I was planning to not just send the slides, but the video of this presentation. I think that's going to be less valuable given the technical problems we had, but perhaps I'll just send the slides so that people are starting to have more informed discussions about what options, at least, that I'm thinking about, that you're all talking about, what am I missing, so that we're getting that stakeholder feedback and trying to have a quick timeline turnaround on that so that it can be available for us to look at at some point next week. Miss Hall, would you like to go? Sure. I have some concerns about Desi's new, seemingly new approach that they're going to be making more requirements instead of recommendations. It just seems like, talking about things like stakeholder feedback, it doesn't allow districts to focus on their local community. I also understand that Desi has hired Ed Davis, who is a former Boston Police Commissioner, to lead their return to school efforts. He's retired law enforcement and now runs a, I think it's a business strategy and security services firm. That does not inspire a lot of confidence in how they are approaching that if they are not bringing on public health experts. Dr. Morris, I really appreciated your focus on the public health angle without ignoring the public education angle and the fact that this is all very, it's overwhelming and very emotional. I feel really strongly that to sift through all of that, things that will get emotional, things that will get political, things that could get personal, I think for these committees to continually focus on what public health experts are saying, on what data and research and science being published by reputable sources are indicating is best from a public health perspective and best for children. And then within that focusing on children who have special needs or who are ELL or anything like that and prioritizing those subgroups as we need to. But that's, I know the purpose of tonight is not to get through anything really specific about masks or anything like that. But I feel like every single decision that these three bodies make has to be focused on the data and that we have to be relying on the right experts to guide our decisions. Maybe we should go around the table. Mr. Demling. Yeah, so my first two comments are really for the public and my first comment is the most important I think and that's please send your input to us over the next five weeks to whatever way is most comfortable for you. Schoolcommittee at ARPS.org is our email address. The superintendent also sees that all one word, school committee, two M's, two T's, two E's. We really need, we always ask for input, but we really need a cross-section of points of view. This affects so many different people in so many different ways and it's not like a tally vote, but we really need to hear about your feedback at this presentation available, ARPS.org, download it, digest it, talk about it with your family, talk about it with your students if you're able to and send us your thoughts and feedback because we really want to make sure that we take that into account. A couple of points about what's going on at the state and the desi comments that Ms. Hall had that I 100% agree with. Never before and certainly in our lifetime have public schools been asked by the federal and state government to do so much more with so much less. It's appalling, it's appalling how they are just leaving us to hold the bag. And you know, we've heard multiple times talking about the legislation hopefully at the federal level, but that's a political thing. But this is also going to be a state issue. You know, especially if the federal funds don't come this year and next about how to equitably, most equitably distribute to public schools. So I would say to the public, you know, stay active, stay engaged, watch this space, watch our representatives, we're very fortunate to have excellent progressive state representatives watch what they're telling us because there are definite fights ahead for public school funding. As far as Dessie, I would welcome the fight if Dessie wants to come and say we are not going to prioritize student safety. We are not going to go above according to CDC guidance. We're going to put non educators in charge of a massive committee to spit out guidance in a compressed timeline after having dropped the ball on when we should be closing schools on when we should be coming back and we should be graduating on MCAS on a number of things. I think our committee should be prepared and be prepared to support other districts who push back and say we value student safety first. And because of the educational needs that the superintendent and others have mentioned tonight, you know, we are going to do what we can to bring students back to school but we're going to do it in the safest way and we're not going to kowtow to direction if we don't feel like we're going to support students. So, you know, as far as the actual content of what's been proposed with the concepts, you know, I don't want to say too much right now about my personal opinion. I really do want the public to get as engaged as possible. I will say that the points about the academic progress of elementary students and the employment issue of parents is pretty compelling. And, you know, so I have a hard time embracing a model where some of our families can't work because, you know, it's a real hard obstacle for me to think through getting past that. You know, but because these are important solutions it's also very hard to tell many older students that it's going to be all online for you. So, you know, that's why I asked the question about the range of options and I'm not ready to say yes or no to anything at this point. You know, I really want to, you know, hash all this through as quick as we can and the time we have available to us. But I really would like to see, you know, here, you know, in upcoming meetings, what is practically feasible in terms of a minimum onsite presence for our older students? What can we tell them? What can we tell their families is feasible? And if that requires additional funds then we go back to our communities and we say, hey, look, we need X number of funds in order to make something happen. And then we explore it that way. But I think we have to have that discussion. You know, just a last couple of thoughts. I think this is a lot on staff and at all levels of staff. And you know, Dr. Morse, I would include yourself as well as your leadership team in central office and our building leadership and our students and our teachers and staff who have already been going 110% full throttle since mid-March. And so I really think that a key part of this, because we want all those people to be at their best this fall, is to proactively think about how to make sure people don't get burnt out, you know, and to have some discussions with our assistant superintendent on charge of HR, Ms. Kiningham, about how we make sure that people who would otherwise give 110% of themselves all the time until they drop, how do we make sure that they are still going at the pace that we want them to be going and that we'll need them to be going in the fall? So those, you know, I don't really need a response on that, but I just, just a few things that struck me from presentation tonight, thanks. Thank you. Mr. Minino. Well, I'm confused. I'm overwhelmed. Thank Dr. Morse for a very thoughtful and thorough presentation. The presentation only bogged on my mind because some families are going to win and some families are going to lose, especially in the work situation. I don't know how some parents are going to manage the work child care situation. I would love to hear more feedback from the community, but I'm afraid when I hear more from the community, I'm going to hear one vote for one method, one vote for another method, and I'm going to have to choose between two bad alternatives. Dr. Morris said this was an awkward presentation. It certainly was. It certainly is. And I'll try my best to choose between the competing alternatives when the situation arrives. That's it. Mr. Harrington. Yes, I mean, first and foremost, wow, like this is, this is a lot to take in, but I think for me, and I don't think I've really veered from this perspective, I think for me, my greatest concern, and not just as a parent, just as someone who comes in contact with our students quite often, I have a lot of concerns about how whatever decision we make for the fall and going forward, how that's going to emotionally impact our students and what the long range effects of this are. Like before I make any decision or am a part of any decision, I'd like to see what data from the schools that, from these other countries that have opened up schools, what data have they gained about like social emotional impact and these sorts of things. But at the same time, to kind of echo Peter's sentiment there about our staff, I'm also very, very concerned about their emotional well-being. We've had people burning the candle at both ends for a long time now and like, I mean, I mean, this is like the catch-22 of that too, isn't it, right? Like how their emotional well-being, how this impacts their emotional well-being is going to directly impact our children's emotional well-being that's already being impacted. So there, I mean, there's just so many really scary moving pieces here and like that's my personal concern, I guess. All right, all right. I have a thousand concerns, but that's kind of where I'm trying to keep, I'm trying to keep my focus like student-centric. And then also the other issue that I have that, I mean, I don't know if the red flags were flying up for anyone else here, but we have some serious equity issues to consider here. This is, we're not, I don't have a lot of hope after seeing some of this that we're going to be able to meet a lot of our equity goals. Like Mr. Monino said, there are going to be people who lose out in this and I don't know, there's no great decision here. I mean, this is a really tough time, but yeah, I don't think we have a lot of room margin for error here. We have to do the right thing. And it's going to take a lot of data in a really short period of time to figure that out. Dr. Morris. Because Mr. Demling and Mr. Harrington mentioned it, I do want to really state affirmatively, I agree at that point about staff. Ms. Cunningham had the idea of facilitating that staff support group and they're coming up with a good list. So we are actively thinking about that and working about that. I get to get into view that group's work today for a short bit, which is great. And I think it's a really important point. One of the stories in my professional life, and I want to go to narrative, but I think it's actually relevant here that I'll never forget is a couple years ago, we had a pretty sad thing happen, someone in our schools, and we had someone who's a trauma counselor come in and she was available in the school. And Dr. Brady and I were her primary points of contact and the traumatic thing was pretty disconnected from me. So I wasn't managing the trauma myself. I was supporting others as with Dr. Brady to manage their trauma. And so, you know, it was a nutty time because of that, but it wasn't personally nutty. It was professionally very busy. And so we sat down with her at some point during this time period and she said, oh, how are you doing? And right, I gave the typical educator response, which all of our teachers say, yay, I'm fine. Let's talk about the content. Let's talk about how to support others. And she stopped us and very affirmatively and said, I'm not talking about anything else until you tell me how you're doing. Like this meeting is over if you're not going to actually start talking about how you're doing. And it was startling because that's educators, like you said, they go 110% all the time. And so afterwards, when you do briefing, I was like, so that was interesting. Tell me more why you did that. And she said, that's what first responders do, right? They just keep on going. And if first responders, which I think our educators are in this situation, if they're not making sure they're comfortable, supportive, confident, that's going to trickle down to the students. So we absolutely have to, you know, one of the reasons we're continuing to engage staff members and continue staff support groups is I agree affirmatively with Mr. Demling, Mr. Harrington's comment, and we need to set up the structures that make staff feel comfortable and confident in their roles and give them the tools that they need to enter a world in which there's no script for. And that's the world of this fall. And so I just wanted to affirmally, I know it was a long-winded story, but it was something that comes back to me all the time. And it's a strategy I use frequently, particularly with our leadership team when they're managing crisis, basically what we've been doing since about March 7th. And so I think that's true for every educator, every staff member in the district and just a critical point. So sorry to be long-winded, but I just, I think it's a really important point I wanted to support. Thank you. Ms. Jean-Louis. Yeah, I think I agree with everything that's been said and want to reiterate the, you know, supporting of staff and students through this trying and uncharted waters. Because, you know, like everyone said, no one's done this and we're all in this together. And it is a huge, huge, you know, decision-making that has to come. So, you know, talking it out and continuing to get input is, you know, the way to go. But, you know, it's hard to think that we're not going to be able to meet everybody's needs and, you know, make it work. We just have to do our best to make it work for as many as we can. Thank you. Ms. Spitzer. First, I just want to, you know, thank you for putting this together, this presentation. And I think I really agree with the chair's decision to move forward, even though we may be getting different guidance from Desi in a couple weeks or days. I'm going to reiterate a point that Mr. Demling said that, you know, I think sometimes people listen more when it's the MD speaking, but in that JAMA video you shared today, they actually spent a lot of time talking about funding. And I kind of wasn't expecting that from the JAMA video. And the reason I've been reiterating this is I've been thinking about, you know, some sort of op-ed or some sort of called action for increasing federal funding, because one of the doctors, he stated, actually school systems could be asked to cut money at this exact moment in time, which is just crazy. And that really stood out to me, because we've been doing that. We're doing that on the operating budgets. We're doing it on the capital budgets. And I think we're going to need to be active, not just in planning, but I think in advocating and communicating to the public why we're going to need additional resources in order to meet the needs of our kids. And it's the emotional resources that we've been talking about, and I think it's also the fiscal dollars and cents that we're going to need. And I don't know how we can impact. I don't think it's going to necessarily be able to come from our municipalities and our, you know, our state, because I know they're hurting and losing funds right now, but I think that the federal dollars we do get, everybody's going to be having a claim to them. And I think we need to find a way to make sure that our schools get the appropriate share of those CARES dollars and FEMA or MIMA funds. And so to the extent we can, I think this is going to require sustained advocacy along with sustained planning. And I just want to make sure we do what we can. I think the other thing that I didn't hear a lot about, and this may be totally hippie-dippy of me, but we're at Amherst. And I really think that to the extent we can, everything I've been hearing is that outdoor space, there's less transmission. And I don't think this is an option where we can suddenly do like we're doing forest kindergarten, you know, which has become trendy in certain segments of the world. But I think if we can plan not just within the walls of our schools, but if we can find ways to get kids outside as much as possible in a safe way, if that means maybe buying some equipment that we wouldn't necessarily have purchased before, like clipboards, and I don't know. And I don't know whether or not, and this is kind of our question concern, but what are, do we have, like clearly in December, this isn't going to be as much of an option. But in the fall, in the spring, maybe there'll be more opportunities for outside learning. And to the extent that we can plan for it, are there any restrictions from the government about why couldn't it take advantage of all of the outdoor space that we do have around our schools? And then I think it's just really important to say that we're going to be asked to make a proposal and as flexible as we can make it, I think is important. So there may be, like, I went to some kids from high school who dropped out and are now, you know, teaching at University of Michigan. And they, you know, had, you know, successful, totally, you know, individually directed learning and they were really successful in that. And I think those are the types of kids who if you ask them to go home and do self-directed online learning, they're going to do well. But there are plenty of kids who that's really going to be a struggle for. So I think, and that's the reason I'm having trouble, like saying, let's move all high schoolers over to online learning. I think that's going to be really hard for a lot of people, but I do think there's really good evidence to prioritize the early education, you know, the kids in elementary school. So this is going to be really, really difficult and we don't have the data and we're in a community that I think you often want to do as much research as possible and gather the data. But science takes a really long time. Science takes longer than three months and there's no way we're going to have the answers to these questions in the time frame that we need and we're going to need to make a decision to start planning in like four weeks. And that is way shorter than we normally would make a decision in the rest of the scale and way shorter than I'd like to. And I think it's just, we're going to have to be gentle with each other. You know, people are going to be upset and we're going to be under a lot of strain. And I think that obviously just to the extent that we can just to try to keep communication civil and supportive of everybody. Yes. So just very briefly, Miss Spitzer, I mean, after learning, you know, yes, you know, we have a lot of people coming up with some innovative ideas and thinking about that to the dollars just so you have the data in the great recession, which obviously didn't have a public health concern. The federal government through the stimulus package pre-K through higher ed. So including secondary or post-secondary spent 129 in today's dollars, $129 billion on education and to date the federal government has spent $27 billion in the particular situation. So I just wanted to support that with some data that a university person was able to offer me. And Miss Lord. I want to say first, thank you for putting together this presentation. It's evident that ours research articles consultation went into it. So thank you for that, Dr. Morris. I'm curious if this presentation can be made available in Spanish or in other languages for to make it more accessible to some of our families. And then I'm really concerned about the survey because I know a lot of families don't actually fill out the survey and maybe those are the voices I really want to hear from. So I don't know if there's another delivery system that we could use with that, whether it's calling parents, talking to them at the food delivery sites. I'd like to think about other ways besides just the email survey to get feedback from the families that I feel I really want to hear their voices. I also want to hear the ones who will reply to the surveys and have but it feels critical to me because some of these families are already getting the short end of the equity stick. And in this scenario, like has been mentioned, it's going to be really tricky and difficult and there's going to be a lot of struggling and suffering. So I want to make sure we're listening to what the needs, desires, what might work best for different families. And then we haven't... Spits are about the thing about what about families who want to stay home. So that'll be talked about down the line. And you brought up staff that might not feel safe returning. I know and I understand why the elementary schools are prioritized for learning and brain development but I also have read some articles about teens and the depression and the struggles with the quarantine. So I don't know how we support them not only in their learning but in feeling their social... emotional growth during this difficult time. I think that's about it for trying to figure out our next steps and how to talk about making decisions. Thanks. Dr. Morris. Just very briefly, I love that idea and if there are ideas you have about how to reach out to communities that perhaps an email survey is not the best one, please follow up with me offline. If you have those, I think our challenge always is capacity particularly in this time where we can't really... other than the food delivery sites which itself is complicated because we still are very cautious about social distancing even at those sites. So I'd love to hear ideas and I'm happy to connect with you offline if you're able and you can shoot me an email about how to do that and I think it's a really valuable and important point. So thank you. Ms. Dancer. Well, one of the things about being at the end of the line kind of is that everybody has already said everything that you might have thought of saying. I would like to hear what the staff have to say. You know, we've asked for public input. I would really like to hear from the teachers and the staff because that is a concern of mine. And I guess the other thing really is a question for you is what can we do to help? You know, we're going to be asked to make a really big decision and there are so many areas. Are there ways, you know, what should we be doing to educate ourselves and to be prepared to make that kind of decision? Dr. Morris. So thank you. I mean, I think Ms. Lord modeled that and thinking about ways around communication. I think one of the things that elected officials in their communities are wonderfully helpful with and I appreciate is being able to reach out to communities and sometimes communities that because we are all connected to the Amherst regional public schools, but as staff, it may be a little bit harder. You may hear things that people wouldn't share necessarily with a staff person because of, you know, some folks experience. So I think that'd be really helpful to make sure that you're sharing out with your communities and different communities that, you know, please pay attention to this. We want to hear your opinion. I think that is critically important. I think something that I've seen modeled tonight and I'm not surprised by it, but I want to comment on it is that people can share different points, different perspectives and modeling that at the end, we may not all agree on what the best thing for students are, you know, the people have raised comments tonight that are incredibly right and accurate about the implications of being secondary students being in school less. People have also raised really important points about what it means and what distance learning, what's the capacity for elementary students to really engage in that model. All of those are really important points. And I think if we can model for the community that this is an incredibly difficult set of circumstances and decisions, I think that's a really important thing. I think that's probably why Jesse may come down with sort of something they want everybody to do is to save everyone the strain of having these community conversations. And so on one hand, I appreciate that. On the other hand, I do feel like to your point, it's really important that we get both the community and the staff input on this. If it doesn't work, right, if one model is heavily favored by the staff, we have to take that into consideration for how this is going to work because they're the ones who are going to be doing the work in the end. And I think that is both from a work perspective and a life perspective. We need to make sure that we're taking all the feedback we get from all stakeholders in. And I think understanding that there's a difference between the feedback we get from staff and the feedback we get from parents. It's not the ones more important, but there are going to be different perspectives offered and different experiences shared. I think those are the things that come to mind. We'll see how serious Desi is about making this choice for us, quote unquote, and what that looks like. Even if that ends up happening and we go with that or whatever that is, I still think it's really important to get people's feedback and opinions and to get everyone comfortable with that this is a really different environment that we're entering in. I think you all know me well enough to not I'm not interested in just waiting for someone to tell us what we have to do and just doing it. In Amherst and Pelham and Leverett and Shootsbury, my experience is that's not a good strategy. It doesn't work, maybe in some places it does, and that's not a critique of those places, but we have a very community that wants the question, wants to inquire, wants to come up with solutions, wants to be a part of that process. So I think modeling that in the way that I think you all have tonight and continuing that is going to be really important wherever we land in the end. That process piece really matters, so I guess that's my response. Miss Seager. I think it all might have pretty much been said. I too listened to the discussion. It was a JAMA Network discussion with two experts from Johns Hopkins University this afternoon. It was around lunchtime, and it was pretty amazing because a lot of what they talked about, we're talking about here too. And a couple of things that stood out to me is one of them said, we will not reach a no-risk situation here. This is extremely challenging, and it's impossible to overestimate the complexity of the situation. They also described it as being all hands on deck now. This is like we need to act as an emergency response team, and by we, I mean the unions, parents, bus drivers, kids, if it's applicable, so I'm just really appreciative of all the work, Dr. Morris, that you've been doing in thinking about this because it's not easy. I mean, everybody said that. It's just not easy. Some of my thoughts in the conversation tonight that's standing out about the survey, I just want to make sure that the incoming sixth grade families who may have not been involved in the middle and high school are included as well for those that are not necessarily paying attention to this. And I'm thinking about the families that have been obviously struggling these last few months to make ends meet, to give their children, to have homeschooling on top of that. And in thinking about going forward, I'm really interested in a solution that really takes that into mind, and I'm sure that that is under complete consideration, but that's in thinking of the two that are there tonight, and I have my opinions on it, and I really do look forward to seeing what the public shares as well. One of the things that's standing out to me is food insecurity in our communities, and how that would fit into all of this, especially if we have a pattern where there's days that kids are in the school and then they're not in the school. And so that also is going through my mind as we talk about this. And with that being said, that's pretty much what I've been thinking about, and I definitely look forward to the feedback from the staff and the families in the district. Thank you. And now I'll share my thoughts, and I agree with Ms. Stanzer and Ms. Seeger that one of the benefits of going at the very end is that we have the benefit of hearing what everybody else on our committees have said. And I will comment sort of echoing what Dr. Morris had said is what strikes me is it's not just a diversity of opinion, but it's also sort of diversity of perspective and sort of what each of us is bringing to the table into this conversation. And I really, you know, just listening is like, you know, each of you has said something that has sparked a thought, oh, wow, yeah, that's something that, you know, struck me. And so I do think, you know, this, just to echo what Dr. Morris said is sort of the way, the modeling of this conversation that we're having. And I hope that this can continue. I'm going to go back to something that I think Mr. Menino, you're the one that said is like, you know, but we've said it all along also is that this is a choice between what feels like bad alternatives. And we started this with saying like, we're looking at things that are obviously less than what we hope to do less than what we feel like we have been doing in our districts up until now. And so acknowledging that, you know, so wherever we land is not necessarily like, yeah, this is great because it's not. And so that's always going to be hard. I think, and as I think Mr. Dimling had said is, you know, we're not really, you know, we're still gathering information, hearing from each other and from staff and community and all of that. But I do think one of the things that I think about is knowing that we're looking at too bad, you know, too bad alternatives, if you will. And there's probably some variations in between is I think what I don't want to see us do is sort of just say, well, everybody, you know, we're just going to cut it across the top and say, you know, everything's going to be 60% or everything's going to be 40% because then we're sort of, you know, you've talked about prioritizing ELL and special ed and certain sort of vulnerable populations within our student community. And that's great. But I also think, you know, when we go to an all hybrid model or something similar to that, it can easily feel like we're just sort of, you know, cutting it in half and saying, okay, we're going to do the same for everybody. And that's not necessarily the best. So I do appreciate the approach of thinking about, you know, in this concept to prioritizing the elementary but I also agree with Mr. Demling that I would hate to see grade seven to 12 be 100% distance for all of the reasons that many of my colleagues on these committees have said that there's still social emotional growth and development that happens and can only be supported with in-person learning at those grades. And so, you know, and then part of it is, you know, some students are thriving in the 100%, you know, in our current environment of distance learning. And so, you know, is there opportunity sort of to take your analogy, and I know it's not, but of college where, you know, maybe right now high school students do have some choice in sort of their course selection. And maybe there's some choice in like, I want to take a distance learning version of math this year but I want in-person orchestra or, you know, is there opportunity to sort of look at it that way. And then my other thought, actually now I've lost it, so I won't even say it. But I think, oh, we've talked a lot about staff in addition to community, and I do think, you know, we as a district and community do think of our schools as whole communities that aren't just about the students, you know, in providing education with the students, it's all of the facilities and spending, but it's all the humans that work with them and the families and the communities that support our schools and our students. And I think that is hyper-critical as we think about what we're going to be, what school looks like next year. Because we could have all of the plexiglass and PPE in place and the best transportation plan, but if half of our teachers are feeling really uncomfortable with it or can't make it work, we don't have a there-there, right? Like we've sort of failed at that. So I do think, you know, that is as critical as any other of these components of these concepts that we're talking about is where our staff feeling and how are we supporting them in providing that learning for our students, whether it's hybrid, in-person or distance. So I will stop there. Does anybody have any other comments? So those of you that had the misfortune of going first, do you have any other comments or ideas that you would like to add to the conversation, having now heard everybody else speak? So Dr. Morris, I'm going to turn and ask you, do you feel like you've gotten what you wanted and hoped out of this conversation tonight? I have. Thank you. And so I think, you know, in terms of next steps, you know, what I'd like to know from the committees, I'll just say one reflection is it was really helpful and thank you for Ms. Hall and Ms. McDonald or Ms. McDonald times two, that we organize a meeting that had all three committees here and we're able to talk across committees because I think actually even like the Fort River Wildwood conversation, while not relevant to Pelham in one way, I actually think everyone understanding everyone else's kind of situation in plight is a really critical thing because again, I think we have to make a decision that's the best for the 2600 and not for, well, because Fort River has this problem, that doesn't affect Pelham. I actually think, I appreciate the lens that I felt throughout the meeting and the comments that we're really thinking about the whole. Yes, we have, you know, somewhat, I don't mean artificially like they're not important, but human-made constraints around Amherst Elementary School, Pelham and region and I think the more those constraints fade away for this conversation, the more informed the decision-making will be. So I guess the question is, and it doesn't necessarily have to be answered now, I certainly can follow up with the chairs, but just, you know, when was the next time this group wants to get together? I've got a couple things I took notes on that, you know, next steps in terms of getting survey data out, looking at international schools and comparisons to kind of social-emotional things that have helped. We'll have the DESI guidance somewhere around the 15th or 16th. So, you know, I think that was the only thing and we could talk about that now. It could be something I follow up with the chairs, but just trying to think about what's the next conversation, right, and what data, is it more time to process it and the feedback that might be mostly enough if we want to get together sooner just so that the committee is able to reflect on and look at the data. You know, I'll be honest to say that I don't see an end in sight in terms of the need to have more meetings, except for Michelle and Louise. She's wisely leaving, departing. Probably her last meeting is a Pelham School Committee member, so we'll see how soon the next meeting is, so before I commit to that statement. But, you know, I think that's the thing that, you know, the one thing I guess I'd like to have to bring to the committee the next time is both the survey results and the additional pieces, but also trying to think through what, how do we make or create a process by which you all and the public can understand, you know, a decision making, you know, we're going to have this, these meetings on this date to talk about these things and a decision made somewhere in the neighborhood of vicinity of here and what is that decision, right? It's a decision like we like option one and then there's a sub-decision about which option and option one, right? Like, I think that needs, and, you know, I talked to Ms. McDonald's Hall, I wasn't ready before we had this conversation to do a process map on that because I needed to at least present this piece. We may have to have another meeting, particularly on PPE. I mean, I heard Ms. Bitts or other people when we get that guidance, but I guess I'd like some feedback and again, it doesn't have to be now, it could be emailed to the chairs and myself or just the chairs, but trying to draft a schedule, you know, for the committees and then the public about how to do this and how to do this effectively is really important to me because I think the decision's going to, the success of the decision is somewhat going to be dependent on the process used, right? That's always the case and so any feedback on that, again, it's late and perhaps a Zoom meeting at 9-11 may not be the best time, but, you know, however Ms. McDonald Ms. Hall want to do that, that's sort of the thing that's the front lobe of my brain right now is how to put this together in a way that works for the committees and thus the community to get a sense of mapping that out. Mr. Demling and then Ms. Dancer. Yeah, I really like the idea of identifying, doing work now to identifying what the meeting schedule is between now and decision point. I think that worked kind of well for the budget process that we just went through. Having the community know proactively what the dates are and what the points are to pay attention and even though we're accepting input the whole time what the decision point is going to be. I think, you know, it obviously depends on people's availability and also demand on Dr. Morris and staff. I'm thinking somewhere on the order of including the decision meeting like three or four meetings. I'm struggling with imagining just one more and then voting, but I also don't think that we should meet as frequently as humanly possible just because it's a big topic. I don't think meeting twice a week every week for the next five weeks would be productive, for example. Somewhere in there I would defer to how everyone else is feeling and also the chairs in terms of the actual dates. That would be a good zoom a doodle poll challenge from Ms. Westmoreland. Ms. Dancer? Questions for you Dr. Morris. Obviously, we don't have the desi guideline so some conversation after those come out would be necessary and do you have any idea how long it will take to get the feedback on surveying? Because I don't know and let me also say I really appreciate all the information that you're putting out as we go along so that we can consume the kinds of resources that you find to be helpful are very helpful for us too. I hope you'll continue to do that. I'm just wondering do we have the need for a conversation before either the desi information or the survey information? Is that a good next place? Dr. Morris. So I'll just answer on the survey part we were it's a pretty brief survey I think there's seven questions and they're not voting questions like which do you prefer it's trying to understand how each it's actually very I think she put it together I just offered 5% of feedback but I think it really hits on a lot of what some of the comments towards the end of this discussion have been looking for feedback and the different options but also how it affects people's this isn't just about people's education this is about people's lives their ability to work and so it's pretty open ended but it does try to capture some of that data because it's so short we were thinking staff will get it tomorrow families will get it on Friday we were looking for a pretty quick response trying to get a response by Tuesday our perspective and our experiences when we give pretty short surveys almost everyone fills it out and then if they don't we send another reminder and a smattering come in actually it doesn't matter the length of the survey that's always our experience the first click when people get it if they do it then I'm going to get back to that after I put my kids to bed that is where 90 to 95% of our results come in in the first 24 hours of every time we send a survey because this one is so brief I know the content is deep but the survey responses are pretty short and direct we were looking at a pretty quick turnaround of responses so that if you did want to meet at some point next week we'd have the capacity to do so I'm not pushing for a meeting next week I just wanted to let you know that because of how we structured the survey looking for quick responses and I want to be really clear we anticipate surveying families and staff again that was the other reason we had a long conversation about whether should we do an expansive survey now it's going to be one of those things we survey staff we go further down the road as staff and families we survey them again with more updated information because as based on the conversation that happens at this table the questions are going to change and so I think frequent briefer feedback ways to get feedback is going to be preferable than really long surveys and I think a Miss Lord's point as well about for some communities if you look at a survey and it doesn't fit on one page for many people that's a non-starter so we want to make sure it's accessible to all as well so I went on for a while because I think it's important to understand that this wouldn't be the only feedback mechanism that we would use along the way I would sort of building on Miss Lord's earlier comments as well as Miss Dancer's even though knowing that we're going to be coming out and getting more you know this isn't the only the end-all opportunity to provide feedback or input from the schools community but I do think I agree that you'll get the most response in the first 48 hours but how do we make sure that we're sort of hearing from a broad swath of people and even if they didn't check their email in the next week which is possible or if they feel like that format is constraining and the opportunity to just have a conversation and ask questions as opposed to just provide reactions I think we will want to be thinking about how we do that and that we'd probably need to be doing that fairly quickly given that we want to have a goal for ourselves that we want to be sort of decided four to five weeks from now then that doesn't leave us a ton of time for turnaround but I'm wondering if we can sort of invest a little bit of conversation time to figure out other ways that we can sort of make sure that we're getting the questions from the community as well as the reactions and the feedback Dr. Morris So I wonder, I'll just go with like a thought that I know meeting next week, it was scheduled for next Tuesday so I'm not looking for responses, I just want to like posit an idea so that people can consider a react to. I wonder if we move that back to perhaps and I don't even know if I can do it I should look at my calendar now but next Thursday or something at that point we'd have some feedback back. The other piece that I'll have next week is I believe the DESI PPE document will be released before then it's not coming out with the full you know my understanding is we were supposed to get it actually on Monday and I think for a whole host of reasons DESI hasn't been able to provide that to us yet but my understanding is by the end of this week we'll have some of their guidance on PPE because they're going to give us some purchasing advice because they want us to buy it now so that it comes in time for fall so you know that might be enough for our next meeting like PPE guidance that we're receiving from DESI and survey results and whether that's next week of the week after that's actually that's not a short meeting just with those two topics frankly so it's something to consider I know it's late so maybe people can certainly weigh in where the chairs would like but people can get in touch but I wonder if we can make that meeting even if it's some region but there might be region only topics but a joint meeting to go over that. The next week is the week that the DESI guidance comes out and so I guess it's an opportunity do we want to wait till the DESI guidance comes out so look at the staff and parent feedback or not that's sort of what it comes down to for me that would be the critical decision I can't believe I'm advocating for more meetings than fewer right now but I do think that's a good point having being able to put a bit of a box around what we're talking about each time I think starting today's conversation with here's what we're going to talk about that you can utter those words but that's it I think that having them having it sooner rather than later so that we can focus on specific issues might just lead to greater clarity sooner Miss Spitzer I'm also going to strangely argue for more meetings I'm also thinking just hearing the feedback about the survey and the fact that we're going to get this DESI guidance I'm wondering if there might be an opportunity to take that feedback from the survey then a week later we get the DESI guidance and then maybe we follow up to that survey and the DESI guidance with some sort of in-depth interviews or you know like clearly we're not going to be able to talk to every member of our community but we could try to have conversations more in-depth with make sure that we find folks who might be representative of some of the people we're worried we're not hearing from and also the people who might be underrepresented if we just kind of took a broad swath of folks through a survey Mr. Dimley yeah I've everything that everyone just said I've been in agreement with but given my bleary eyedness at 920 I do think for this kind of a massive topic if we did one continent at a time we might be able to span the globe a little easier I want to have to two hour chunks you know I think might be more effective for this size of a group than doing you know multiple marathons every time I'll second that Dr. Morris so I agree with that and I don't anticipate future presentations being 28 slides like categorically against 28 slide presentations like as a rule and unfortunately we're in a crisis so I had to break my rule but it's not best practice and I don't think it engenders the kind of dialogue in general but I would not imagine PPE and survey the survey results might have slides just slides just going through what the results are especially as they're mostly qualitative and not quantitative but I think we can do some summarizing but I agree with your point about shorter meetings of more defined topics but you know to me tonight and I'm not, you weren't suggesting I'm not taking it as a negative I think we just had a lot to share to get the ball rolling but I think now that the ball is rolling or the globe has to use your analogy you know we can slice off more discreet slices discreet parts can move them forward so I feel like and Miss Hallway but I'm feeling like we're seeing general agreement to having a meeting later next week I think Thursday was the night that Dr. Morris suggested lots of happy heads and thumbs up okay so we will work together on planning for that then one more meeting okay any other final thoughts I'm seeing them we have on our next I'll do one more call and one more glance through all the Brady Bunch here okay so our next topic we do have accepting gifts I don't think we have any gifts now okay so we'll move on from that item to our final Mr. Denley I moved to adjourn the Amherst Farm Regional School Committee I second moved by Demling seconded by Stancer can I ask there's no discussion I know for this but if we adjourn the region is our all do we have to go through and adjourn all the others or just the region we do we have to adjourn everyone yeah okay so there's no discussion so we'll call vote Mr. Demling Mr. Minino Mr. Harington Harington I Ms. Spitzer Spitzer I Ms. Lord Lord I Ms. Sieger Sieger I McDonald I passes 8 to 0 Ms. Stanser sorry Stanser I I apologize so now it's 8 to 0 and Mr. Sullivan present so the region is adjourned and I'll move to adjourn the Amherst School Committee second moved by McDonald seconded by Spitzer we'll call vote Mr. Demling Mr. Harington Harington I Ms. Spitzer Ms. Lord I McDonald I passes 5 to 0 Mr. Demling I Oh Demling I I was making a joke goodbye all right take care everyone second all right Sarah Best hi Kenny I Ron Minino I Stanser I Jesse John Lee I and Hall I we are adjourned thanks everyone good night go home