 This program is brought to you by Cable Franchise V's and generous donations from viewers like you. Hello, I'm Claire Healy and this is the Amherst Weekly Report from Amherst Media. Under the new administration of President Joe Biden, a series of measures and executive orders have been enacted to uphold and respect LGBTQ plus rights and individuals. Among these changes is the ability for visitors on the White House's website to indicate their pronouns for the first time. A stark contrast to the previous Trump administration, which had removed a page dedicated to LGBTQ plus rights made by the Obama administration. The Amherst Weekly Reports Chris McLaughlin spoke with Jenny Beeman, the director of the UMass Stonewall Center, to learn more about the significance of this change and others being made by the federal government in regards to LGBTQ plus rights. Beeman personally uses they them pronouns and is an expert on the lives of transgender college students and trans-inclusive policies and practices on college campuses. It enables people to be recognized for who they are and not have to be misgendered and while the White House adding the ability to indicate pronouns is a small step, it's a really important step that the executive branch is wanting to respect people and treat people as how they see themselves. And it sends, I think, a very valuable message to other institutions, state governments, local governments, colleges, universities, schools, et cetera, about the need for them to be doing the same, to be giving people the opportunity to indicate their pronouns if they're requiring that someone's legal name be asked that they also get people to indicate the name that they go by or if quote-unquote sex assignment or birth or legal sex is asked then people also be able to indicate their gender identity or to indicate the formal title that they may want to use for themselves, Ms., Mr., Mix, MX or none at all, so that people can be treated with respect and not be misgendered because that is so disheartening to be seen as who you are or not to be invisible, to be marginalized and it's really important that institutions particularly our government who is supposed to represent us treats us with respect and wants to be representative of all people. Beeman added that they think asking for one's pronouns is becoming more common. Due to institutions such as the White House now implementing such policies as well as a trickle-up effect from the younger generation. This generation, Generation Z is growing up where this is commonplace where the majority of members of this generation know someone who uses they, them, pronouns for themselves or maybe they themselves use they, them for themselves and so asking pronouns is something that this generation is very accustomed to doing and wants to be doing to be able to make sure that they're not misrepresenting misgendering someone. Beeman spoke about other changes made by the administration thus far. This includes expanding the rights of LGBTQ plus individuals within federal non-discrimination protections such as health care, housing and education, the reversal of a ban on transgender people joining the military and the appointment of LGBTQ plus individuals to high level positions of Biden's cabinet. Among such appointments are Rachel Levine, assistant secretary of health and the first transgender federal official to be confirmed by the Senate and Pete Buttigieg, former presidential candidate and mayor of South Bend, Indiana to transportation secretary. Well, I think it's really positive development to see LGBTQ folks in very prominent roles in higher office in the federal government than we've had previously. It gives really important visibility. It provides role models to recognize that we are making important contributions and need to be recognized for the skills that we can bring to the table. I was really especially heartened to see Rachel Levine be chosen because it's like, you know, Mayor Pete was in the mix, but then okay, is he going to have anyone who's trans in his administration in a visible role because we as trans people are just so invisible when it comes to public leadership positions nationally that it was just so important to see that happen, to see a trans person be put into a position where they will be visible whether we'll be on the national stage because that is something we've never had in the past and especially given the extreme discrimination and violence that trans women trans women of color face. It's just so important to have a counter narrative so you don't just simply hear about trans people being killed and how we experience these horrible crimes, but really to see that trans people are visible, are leading successful lives. That's important too. Nevertheless, despite these advances, women also noted shortcomings of the system and areas still in need of improvement. I think this is an important step, but I think one of the things the government can be doing, I work obviously at Institution of Higher Education. One of the impediments we face is that the federal government requires data to report it to male female. So we struggle with being able to give individuals the ability to indicate their actual gender identity because we have to report only M and F to the government. So I think this is an important signal on the part of the Abide Administration to do this. I think a larger thing would be to change their reporting requirements, and so they are able to allow institutions to report non-binary as well as binary gender in their various reporting mechanisms. Trump rescinded the Obama Administration, Dear Colleague Letter, around Title IX for K-12 and colleges. I think the Abide Administration having told institutions of education to be protecting the rights of trans people and seeing trans people as how they identify. I'm interested in seeing what the Abide Administration will do to try to not only rescind that, which I assume that they will do, but also to see what they will do going forward so that we're not just in this sort of tit-for-tat back and forth, where one administration is going to do trans-supportive things, the next one is going to do resend that and do anti-trans things, and that's going to be every administration is going to change it. I'm really curious to see and really hopeful that the Abide Administration is going to take steps to really make these changes concrete so that a future conservative administration is not going to be able to roll back rights of trans students because it's just so disheartening if you're a trans person, one year you have rights, the next year you don't have rights, and so we really need to solidify having people be able to be, going back to what we said at the beginning, to be respected, be treated as how they want to be treated and not have this constant roller coaster of policies and rights depending upon what political parties in power. With the transition to remote learning as a result of COVID-19, Amherst students had to adjust to education from home. Last fall, absences grew among low-income and marginalized students in Amherst. We wanted to know why and what the school district is doing to help students. Amherst Weekly Reports field correspondent Rebecca Duffy sat down with Dr. Michael Morris, the superintendent of Amherst Pellum Regional Public Schools, to learn more. With a couple small exceptions, we were mostly in a virtual context. So we started the year, like many districts in Massachusetts, with 10 days of professional development. We did some work with a virtual school, actually an international global, international virtual school to provide professional development for our teachers because, you know, what we learned last spring. So last year was that translating what happens in person and just translating it with no adjustments to the virtual space, it's not an effective teaching methodology. So it was much more about engagement, how to engage students, how to make it interactive and how to best mix synchronous and asynchronous activities so students could be acquiring knowledge but not necessarily in the same way they would in person. So we had some intensive professional development before the school year started. We also did adjust the schedules. So, for instance, the high school, we went moved to a block schedule. And so that students are going more in depth with fewer courses at a time, just the nature of Zoom meetings like this. And Zoom classes is that to maintain a seven-period schedule didn't seem like was in students' best interest. And we've gotten some positive feedback about fewer things to focus on and the depth of conversations that are happening. Many of our underserved, in our underserved population of students, we were noticing an attendance, attendance was disproportionate. They were being disproportionately affected and we don't believe it's about technology. And one of the pieces was about access. We had a family, for instance, who were very clear about their work needs. And their work needs meant that they weren't, it's not that they didn't care about education as much as any other parent, they cared deeply about it. However, they weren't able to attend in the same way because of their working hours that they had to do to make sure that they could make ends meet. And so a couple of things we've done since then is each of our schools has attendance teams. They meet weekly, there are view attendance and they make proactive phone calls when they notice attendance trends headed in a negative direction. As I mentioned, we partnered with community agencies. And we now have actually we just got approved for a third section of distance learning centers, which for families where there are extenuating circumstances, we can provide transportation if needed. Students come, they're in a very physically distance environment, they're adults to help them with the distance learning needs, but the big thing is that they're being supervised by adults and not other siblings or cousins, things like that. So that's had a positive effect and I'm really glad to say that we're seeing those trends. They're not eliminated, but they're significantly reduced. Since we talked about that in the fall. We're looking at bus routes for next year because we're trying to figure out, if we do changes schedules, how can we shrink some of the bus routes because that'll work out better logistically. And one of the things we noticed is if you live in certain neighborhoods that are high density, you know, the bus stops maybe a little further away and there's a lot of kids at bus stops. If you live in more suburban looking neighborhoods, there can be multiple bus stops where the kids can see that the next stop over they can see stops on either side of them and there's no safety reason why. So we are trying to promote. It's just a there's many examples about that but that's one example of it's forcing us to look at our systems look at our practices and procedures and improve and so sometimes you don't always like finding out when you're looking at bus stops. I don't typically look at bus stops that closely. And it's no one's fault. It's the way it's quote unquote always been. So, you know, I think that evaluation piece of how it's going and how it can be better is can be overwhelming at times but it's something we're trying to take head on. Dr. Michael Morris explains some of the ways in which the Amherst Pellum regional school system is working to provide more technological access to students and better training for teachers. Duffy also spoke with Alicia Lopez, a seventh and eighth grade ELL teacher at the Amherst regional middle school. Lopez said that some of the low income and marginalized students in the community might have higher absences due to systemic inequities. I have two different groups of students I have the beginner English language learners and then I have I have two different groups of intermediate language learners who have been here for, you know, most of them for like three or four or more years, some of them were even born here but they have English, English is still their second language because they speak a different language at home. And so with the beginner group like I said it's been amazing. I think part of the reason for that too is that I've had some of them last year in person. So we already kind of had an established relationship. And the other students who I didn't have I taught their siblings or cousins, so that you know they already sort of knew about me I think. So also from the beginning I really focused on relationship building which I think a lot of teachers have done. And so like I said they've been there right with me I don't, I don't, I think I've had maybe two sentences all in that class. And those they're two classes one is English and one is social studies. So that has been amazing in my intermediate groups. I have had more absences and lack of engagement. So the absences have been mainly due I think to, like I can think of one student for example who has to care for a younger sister, while he's in school, and his two older sisters are also in online school. But the mom is working. So they kind of share childcare duties and that's a big responsibility for a 1213 year old. And I think that that's what's happening with a lot of our Latino students anyway. Even though that that is happening I still in my intermediate classes that there have been more absences I guess then in the beginner classes but overall they've been doing a really good job of attending class and and being engaged there's only a couple students who I kind of worry about a little bit but overall it's been really good and so I think that while I agree with I mean I'm not going to dispute the data. I think it's important for us to look at that data, but I think it's really important for us to examine the causes of why all of this was happening before remote learning. These are not new situations you know these are all of this stuff like having kids in very adult roles doing childcare and helping out with the house and cooking and things like that. All of those things were already happening. And I think being online has added a complication and because so many of our Latino parents have to leave the house to work because they're in the service industry, a lot of them. This you know points to this need of childcare so on the one hand it points to flaws in our system already and you know on the other hand the yes we need to pay attention to all this data but we need to figure out what we can change not only for remote teaching but what we can change for when we're back in person in school. We cannot do all of our communication with families by email you know and this is something new for some teachers like having to call families because or even text them you know using Google. You know that like hides your phone number but this these are kind of new things for some teachers in terms of communicating with families. However, our district and our school has really emphasized the importance of this and you know trying any means necessary to really communicate with families. And then another thing my school did was we had parent conferences which we called family reflections this year, and each teacher basically chose six or seven students to reach out to the families and set up a family conference with them. And it was basically a time to check in with the family and talk about the students social emotional state, not so much the grades but you know talk about what you know how can we be helpful and how is your student doing what concerns do you have and that kind of thing. And so it was it was kind of a complicated process to set up and start but I think once everyone started. I think it was a really valuable thing for us to do. We will be continuing to investigate this ongoing story. Thursday, February 4th, the Amherst School Committee held an open meeting of residents at the request of 240 Amherst petitioners. Topics included a discussion of the impact of distance learning models, health and safety plans for in-person learning, and decision framework in the MOA negotiated with the teachers union, as well as phasing plans for in-person learning and budget impacts. The meeting began with a presentation from the Amherst School District and was followed by an open comments and questions period. The full meeting is available to watch on Amherst Media's YouTube page. After having to spend their first semester of college in their hometowns, many first year students at UMass finally moved into their new home away from home. A socially distant move-in week began last Monday for the class of 2024. With the dining halls being grab-and-go style and only one extra person allowed in dorm rooms, they are experiencing a semester like no other. Ethan Braille-Brown, a freshman journalism major from North Adelboro, Mass, shared his experience of being a first-year student on the UMass campus. I first had to go to the Mullen Center, get a test, and when I got my test, they gave me my U-card and my room key. And once you were done, you had a scheduled time, so I came a little bit early, so I still couldn't go. So I was just driving around with my mom. Then once the time came, they had these bins set up for us that we could pack all my stuff in. So we packed all the stuff in, went to my room, we had to unload, and my mom couldn't stay to help. They didn't allow helpers to actually set up your room. They only let them move in because of COVID, and I had to make my room. Basically here, you can't have a social life in a way, but at the same time, it's more of a social life than it is at home. Like, I can only have one person in my room, but I want to make more friends, you know? So you want to talk to people, but you can't, but at the same time at home, you only have those online people. You really don't even have the in-person connections. But I definitely wanted to come here. I wanted to leave my house so bad, and I'm enjoying my time here the first week immensely. I'm really in for social distancing and the dining hall. People are crammed in the line waiting to get the food. There's no social distancing. Everyone's wearing the mask, and the mask has been really good, but in the line, no social distancing. That's where I think they lack, but I think they do really good and all other aspects. At UMass, as freshmen move in, their fellow students have been leading the COVID testing effort at the Mullen Center, administrating tests to university students, staff, and Amherst community members alike. We spoke with two students about their experiences working there this past semester, and the impact this experience has had on them. Lily Chamberlain, a senior nursing student, described a close-knit community at the Mullen Center among her fellow nursing students. She helped launch the Center at the beginning of the fall semester when nursing students began working there as part of their coursework and to get their clinical hours. I was part of the first group of nursing students to help launch the testing site back on August 6th. We started off just as volunteering to help get the center up and running. The first few days were pretty slow. We had just a couple hundred tests or so in those days. Since then, we've conducted, I want to say, over 170,000 maybe from the Mullen Center. It's been pretty cool to see what the testing center has become since then. I really enjoy knowing that my work has been beneficial to the community. I wouldn't say it has changed what my passion is that I want to go into for nursing. I want to do maternity nursing, but I do like the aspects of public health nursing that I've learned through working at the testing center, interacting with the patients there, also working at the vaccine clinic now that we have the COVID vaccinations on campus. So it's all been nice interacting with our community. I think this has been a great experience in my transition from student nurse to a registered nurse when I graduate because I've learned so much about interdisciplinary collaboration. I know that nursing involves working with other members of the health care team. It's not just working just with nurses. For example, you work with the physicians, PT, all that, and then there's also the public health aspect that comes with working at the testing center. So I've been able to collaborate with public health students, learn more about contact tracing, all of that. She said that the experience hasn't changed her passion, which is maternity nursing, but that she's enjoyed the experience of learning new aspects of public health nursing. And we'll take with her what she's learned from other disciplines. It's so exciting now that we're giving the Moderna vaccine at UMass. We have the vaccine clinic in the campus center basement. So it's a nice wide open space for us. The flow of the actual of like the registration and the whole process is nice and spread out and all of the precaution. We're following all the precautions there. So it's good. While most students working at the Mullen Center are nursing students, Michelle Mucasa, a senior biology major and aspiring physician's assistant, joined them after volunteering her services when she went in to get tested herself. As she hadn't been able to get her clinical hours as planned the summer prior, this gave her the opportunity to do so. I decided to take the initiative and ask the supervisors about any available positions there. I mentioned that I was a CNA so being a CNA and working with the nursing students. I figured that I would, I would be like a good candidate to work at the testing center because CNA sort of learned similar skills to nursing students and like being able to work in a clinical setting with something I really wanted to do. During the entire pandemic, I spent most of my time at home and while I was home, I just kind of was sitting there and I was hoping that like I really wanted to get out there and do something to help during this pandemic. So I was glad I was able to help working at the testing center. Mucasa said that she enjoys working at the center because she enjoys working with and meeting different people. Overall, the experience was very positive working at the testing center and I really enjoy going to work, I work most days during the week. And I'm glad that I'm able to, I'm very fortunate and grateful to be able to be part of the organization and being able to do things that can help people during this difficult time during the pandemic. After a community member came in who was deaf, Mucasa suggested to her supervisor that it would be helpful for testing center employees to get training in sign language. And the supervisor set up a course over the winter that Mucasa took. During the time I worked there, I actually was was visited by a patient that was deaf. So they came up to my registration area and like I knew a little bit of sign language like just small things like thank you. And like hello and like being able to help somebody that's that is like has like that is hearing impaired. Kind of gave me perspective and made me realize that the pandemic is rough for most people but even more so it's going to it's very difficult for people who like are blind people with disabilities people who can't hear and they made me realize just like how much more meaningful the work we do there is. As the university sets up its vaccination clinic, Chamberlain is volunteering there as well and received her own vaccination from the clinic. Amherst has entered part one of phase two vaccination efforts, which now allows those age 75 or older in Eastern Hampshire District County to register for COVID-19 vaccines. This is in conjunction with those eligible in phase one, including frontline health care workers, first responders, and those working in long term or congregate care facilities. More information can be found at amherstcovid19.org slash vaccine. The town council will be reading a resolution opposing the Palmer Renewable Energy Facility Springfield biomass plant on Monday, February 8th. As mentioned in an earlier Amherst Weekly report, activists have opposed the construction of the biomass plant, setting its potential to have detrimental effects on the community health. Particularly in Springfield, which has been named the asthma capital of the US, the incinerator plant poses a great threat to the community and has been called an act of environmental racism by activists and representatives such as Senator Cumberford in an interview with Amherst media. Opposition to the plant has focused much of their attention on the house version of a recent state climate bill, which included biomass as a viable renewable energy source, a categorization that has been widely renounced. This language in the bill allows the state to grant subsidies to biomass projects such as the one in Springfield. The bill passed twice by the state legislature and was sent back to Baker's desk each time, who holds reservations about the impact the bill could have on housing costs in the area. Baker used his veto the first time it was sent to him and now that the legislature has approved it a second time, it is again on Baker's desk. He has 10 days to sign it, veto it, or propose amendments. The latest version does not remove biomass from the list of non-carbon-emitting energy sources, but proposes restrictions on it and requires an investigation into the effects of biomass within the next two years. The restriction comes in regards to municipal lighting plants, which purchase electricity from plants and provide electricity to cities and towns across the state alongside the larger investors like Eversource. The bill requires them to purchase from 50% non-carbon-emitting energy by 2030, 75% non-carbon-emitting energy, and energy sales achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. In the latest amendment, biomass cannot be included as a non-carbon-emitting energy for municipal lighting plants. What happens when you let a collegiate art professor use a commercial space for rent? They turn it into an art exhibit. Amherst Weekly Report, field correspondent Rebecca Duffy has the story. Thanks Claire. I'm currently standing inside North Square where commercial space has been transformed into a beautiful art exhibit. This art exhibit was created by UMass Professor John Simpson and his art students. We sat down with Professor Simpson to learn more about the exhibit. It was kind of a showing of my paintings, which I haven't shown anywhere outside of Springfield, I think, in some time. A group of them together, large ones, in this huge space up there, which is this place called Mill District. In his art class called the Springfield Renaissance, Art in the City, Professor Simpson teaches about themes and historical figures from Springfield Mass, as well as the Renaissance and Leonardo da Vinci. Students drew on the significance of Springfield to create these pieces on display. Last semester we did it up in North Amherst because we wanted to connect Springfield and Amherst a little bit. So with the students did themes of Springfield, but they really kind of always encourage them to jump off into their own invention, in their own discovery of themselves, you know, what's channeling through them. So everyone's got their special thing, you know, but we just use Springfield as a tool for thinking about it, thinking about invention. And then with the students, I was so impressed, and I always am, but like the paintings were beautiful, and we wound up getting a few of them in Mass Live. Mass, the Republican photographer came up and took pictures of them with their artworks, their first exhibit. I was like, isn't that awesome, you know, it's the beginning of the provenance of those paintings. And I'm like these artistic careers, and I'm like proud to have been associated with it. Professor Simpson says he's really pleased with how the display turned out. I'm happy with this exhibit in Mill District, and it's great to work with Cinda Jones, it's like an amazing place. It feels like a New York giant gallery in the old days, you know. If you would like to look at these beautiful art pieces, check out the Mill District Facebook page for dates for when this art exhibit will be open to the public. Reporting for the Amherst Weekly Report, I'm Rebecca Duffy. Thank you for tuning into the Amherst Weekly Report from Amherst Media. I'm Clara Healy. We'll see you at the same time next week.