 So seeing a presence of a quorum, I'm calling to order the meeting of the regional school committee at 6.30 p.m. This is a virtual meeting through Google Meets and is being live broadcast on Amherst Media on channel 15. And we are being recorded. I'm going to start with a roll call of everybody who is present in this meeting, beginning with myself, Alison McDonnell, president. Benjamin Harrington. Present. Kerry Spitzer. Present. Peter Demling. Present. Margaret Stanser. Present. Ron Menino. Present. And attending from the district, Superintendent Michael Morris. Present. Doug Slaughter. Present. And Emily Gribko. Present. Thank you. So our first, I will also just restate that we are, we all will remain muted until we are speaking. And I will recognize you once I see your hand waving so that I know that you would like to speak. And we'll all pause until you unmute yourself. And so our first order of business is to review and approve minutes from our meeting on March 10th, which was our last in-person meeting. And if folks can see that it is being, Dr. Morris is sharing that screen with the agenda there as well. Mr. Slaughter. Just to have a correction to the minutes. In the approval of the items for the capital plan, there's a laundry list of I think 11 or so items. Roman numeral 10, which has, I believe it's the access point listed as 15,000. That should be 20,000 instead of 15,000. Okay. Mr. Demling. Yeah, so just a couple of minor edits on number three. I have number three. Tracy Novik was there and was helpful in sharing information about regarding school choice. It was more focused on the Student Opportunity Act and school choice. And then on item number four, just a typo of Representative Dome should be D-O-M-B. That's it. Ms. Spitzer. Sorry for the delay. Also minor typos on three. It should be Andrea Rose, not Andrea. And I made some additional edits that I'm not able to bring up right now, but I will. They were also very minor. I had a minor edit on point G, public comment management, but halfway through that paragraph, it's with Mr. Demling said this is policy D-E-B-H. It should be B-E-D-H. Any other seeing none? Does anybody want to make a motion? I'll move to approve the minutes of March 10th as amended just now. Moved by McDonald's, seconded by Sanser. All those in favor, I'll remind we have to do a roll call vote for all votes on a virtual meeting. So roll call vote, Mr. Harrington. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer, aye. Ms. Stanser. Mr. Demling. Demling, aye. Mr. Monino. Monino, aye. And McDonald, aye. Passes unanimously, eight, zero. Or seven, whoop, do I hear six? Sorry, next order of business is public comment. We had offered to take public comment by email to myself as acting chair and any public comment that we would have received, we would have shared on screen and potentially read aloud. I did not receive any public comment as of actually even as of now, just before this meeting. So I'll just remind any community members that are watching us online. We are always open to public comment even when we're not meeting using the email school committee at arps.org or to individual members and our individual member email addresses are listed on the school committee website at arps.org. Moving on to new and continuing business. Tonight we have two new policies, EPSLA and EFMLA that we will review and need to vote on. Both of these are policies that were drafted and proposed by council to recognize the new federal provisions for sick leave, emergency sick leave and emergency family and medical leave policy. These were, those regulations were effective April 1st. So we do need to connect these pretty quickly. I don't know, Dr. Morris or Mr. Slaughter if there's anything that you would like to add, Dr. Morris. Yeah, so typically the policy process would work a little differently than this is working. However, in this instance where there's with the state of emergency in Massachusetts and as well as the steps the federal government had taken the legal advice we received from council was that we wouldn't take the typical steps. Certainly if you don't vote it tonight the body doesn't vote it tonight, doesn't vote it tonight but that typically would have first read, second read, policy subcommittee but this is really compliance with the federal law in an emergency situation. So his recommendation was to forego the typical policy approval process given the factors and that it's, these are both policies that are supportive of staff members and we wouldn't wanna wait for our policy. In his opinion, the district wouldn't wanna wait for the policies, the gap, the policies became effective April 1st regardless of what the committee did but just having a long gap where there's a change, there's a difference between federal law and district policy he felt was inadvisable. Mr. Demling. Dr. Morris, could you talk a little bit about how this new benefit would be communicated to employees particularly in like the current environment where there's so much information under the greater category of COVID-19 and just how we're gonna ensure that people clearly understand what's available to them. So the advice that we received from council was to share these policies with the bargaining units, non-unit staffs a little different and we would have to work on that a little slightly differently and then work with the bargaining units to communicate out to their members these potential benefits and I think that's actually in the statute that once our policies pass that that would be the preferred method of working within if we're in a unionized environment which we are that we would work through them to communicate to members. Any other questions? Ms. Spitzer. No, I think it's great that we're doing this. I'd be given the environment. I think it makes sense to vote as soon as possible. Can I just clarify one thing? Are we an employer with fewer or more than 500 employees? I wasn't sure how it would break down in terms of because of our weird district nature and could you just comment on that? Sure, so the 500 piece, my understanding which is not council and I haven't gone through this but I did ask that question is there's later provisions in the law that aren't necessarily shown in the policy because the law is a lot longer than the policy that that's more geared towards private sector employees than public sector employees that public sector employees even if they have fewer are still and I can't remember it's encouraged or required but I think it's the latter to follow this statute. So really the number of employees is a little when you get into the fine print my understanding is that applies more to private sector organizations as opposed to public sector. Any other questions or discussion? Seeing none, does anybody want to make a motion? Mr. Demling. I move to approve policy EPSLA as presented. My second. Moved by Demling seconded by Spitzer. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none, we'll start with a roll call vote. Mr. Harrington. Absolutely. Ms. Spitzer. Ms. Spitzer, aye. Mr. Demling. Demling, aye. Ms. Stanser. Stanser, aye. Mr. Menino. Menino, aye. And McDonald, aye. So it carries five, zero, one. Does anybody want to make a motion on the other policy? Ms. Spitzer. I move to approve policy EFMLA as presented. Moved by Spitzer. Second. Seconded by Demling. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none. I'm actually going to go alphabetical order this time. So Mr. Demling. Demling, aye. Mr. Harrington. Mr. Menino. Menino, aye. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer, aye. Ms. Stanser. Stanser, aye. And McDonald, aye. So this policy passes with a vote of five, zero, and one, abstention. Thank you. Moving on to item B on our agenda, which is COVID-19 update from Dr. Morris. So this is a somewhat lengthy update. And so I apologize for that. The other thing I shared with Ms. McDonald is once I'm presenting it, I'll share the screen so you can see the slides and not just see an email that I send out and I think it didn't perhaps get to Mr. Schlotter or Ms. Gripko. So, but I won't be able to see you. So if there are questions, I'll stop multiple times to see if there are questions, but if there's a question on a particular slide, I'll just rely on Ms. McDonald to call on someone because I won't be able to see a hand go up. And it was one of the things in putting this together that was incredibly difficult is the number of people who've played a central role over the last, I would say month in supporting the district, supporting students, supporting staff, is way too long to put in a slide deck. And so I had to make some intentional choices about the most relevant information for the public to see, but I want to start with the caveat that there's a lot of things that have happened that I can't fit in slides because I presume you don't want to be, I guess you'll be where you are all night, but you don't want to necessarily be on a phone call or in a meeting all night. So I'm going to apologize and have that caveat in advance that I captured a lot, but there's a lot of things that I didn't capture because it's been a pretty, it's been a time where everyone's stepped in with both feet. And I think, compliments to everyone who worked for the district for that. So I'm going to share the screen so that people can see the presentation, which I'll bring up. All right, so let's get this out of the way. And can you all see the slide? Yes. Okay, good. So the objectives for our response, right? You can see them, I'm not going to read all of them, but communication was incredibly important and continues to be. Thinking about our students and teaching and learning, of course, is central. Technology barriers, we know they exist particularly in this environment and all the steps that we're taking to try to minimize those barriers. Food insecurity is an issue everywhere. It's certainly an important piece for our families, the mental health needs of staff and students, incredibly central to how people are feeling these days and how they perceive and interact with others in a virtual environment. And then of course, what can't go unstated is revising systems so that the core operations of the district continue, that the district still exists, even though students and teachers aren't coming into the building and many other staff as well, and how does that work? So I'm going to go through the objectives. I'll probably stop after each to see if there are questions. And then the second half of my presentation or second, the last third of my presentation are just a couple of things moving forward. This has been mostly ongoing and previous work. And then the last couple of slides we'll talk more about next steps. So some of the steps we took, they grew up to 15, but 16 sort of happened tonight. We just don't have it on our website yet. But we've been trying to keep all members of our all stakeholder groups, families and staff members involved and included in all of our communication. One thing that's come up is we haven't been sending direct emails to students, particularly the high school level and some high school students who haven't been thrilled to receive all the information from the families. The flip side is that we have students even at the high school level who receiving emails about COVID-19 can create a lot of anxiety and family members who have asked us not to. So it's been a hard one to balance on the direct connection to students, but we've been certainly sending those emails trying to keep families and staff in a loop and then trusting families to talk to their children in the ways that they feel are appropriate. We developed and to maintain a COVID-19 website for families in the community. I'm not necessarily gonna click on that link but you all have the link, it was emailed to you. And we also developed a COVID-19 website for staff. So one of the things that we recognized early on, really staff members brought it to me was the importance of having video contact that not just relying on emails because we all are getting too many these days. And so each week I send a video update I've survived on four of them to staff. Principles are sending them home particularly at the K to eight level regularly to students and families that are more directed actually at students. And it's been a good medium for communication that way. We've utilized our social media platforms. Fortunately, unfortunately, people aren't social media perhaps more than ever before. So we wanna make sure that our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts are communicating that information out as well. We tried to really maintain some of our normal structures. So every Friday we have an ARPS update that goes out a newsletter and that continues even during this time. We wanna maintain some kind of structures and remind folks that everyone's still working incredibly hard in the district for the betterment of students. More recently, we've developed systems and templates for staff to use with distance learning 2.0 which I'll get into a little bit later which is starting on Thursday, more of an orientation day and then more in full the following week and communicating widely with staff and family. So that just happened in the last two days that those templates and systems were developed. And really we wanna, as we've had more time to develop and the longer this goes to make sure that students and families and staff know what to expect, what assignments will look like, especially at the high school level since the credit no credit piece, what that means and when their math teacher and social media teacher will be in touch with them. So that all went out at every school in the district today to families. Most of them are translated, this translations will go out tomorrow but we wanted to really get them out as soon as possible and staff had them, we're able to offer feedback and most of them were really developed by staff, actually pretty much all of them. We also have shared new tools. I think a number of staff members wanna be connecting with families by phone for a whole list of reasons that may be preferable. It's an option that staff member has to but we've provided different ways where they can contact families or students by a phone while maintaining the privacy of their personal phone number. So there's kind of three different methods that we've shared with the staff because we wanna promote that communication happening in a way that protects staff privacy. We talk, frankly, we talk all the time to town officials and public health departments. It's worth noting in the region that there's four different public health departments that we're communicating with. There's the Amherst Health Department. Pelham is part of a consortium with Wehr and Belcher Town in their health department and for Leopard and Shootspanner, those reps aren't on this call. They each have smaller public health departments. So that's been a little bit of a challenge to be candid with you but everyone's been working very hard and very well together. Last week I participated in the Amherst town hall events, two of them with the town manager and public health department, which were great. And as you hopefully aren't sick of yet I'm providing daily updates to the school committee of the different things that are going on because we haven't been having quite as many meetings. So before I go to distance learning I'll just see if I'll pause there and see if any committee members or anyone who's on the call has any questions for me about communication. Anybody have a question? I'm not seeing any. Okay, then I will, oops, I started from the beginning, my apologies. So then I'll go on to do the distance learning piece and I think I'll just roll into it. So at the beginning of the closure we filed the DESI guidance which was to provide enrichment activities to students. We received new DESI guidance on March 26th. This was, I think shortly after the governor had extended the closure period to May 4th with a transition to learning what we're calling distance learning 2.0 which is, we tried that distance learning piece in the Richmond and this is a more organized structured approach with DESI guidance and that link will bring you to that guidance from the commissioner learning for approximately half a school day and that distance learning is more than just online learning. In other words, it's not just a lot of colleges have gone on, the classes operate at the same time. They just happen to be online versus in person and that's not appropriate and DESI's eyes nor mind to do at a K to 12 level, a pre K to 12 level. Two additional documents I shared with you here. There's new DESI guidance that derived from federal guidance actually, US Department of Education on students with disability and that's a little more directive than some of the other guidance that we received. There's really talking about two types of remote service delivery options, supports and resources and services instruction. So that's more directive, particularly the second and build point there. I think it's worth noting that IEPs are not, they can't quite be followed in this setting in terms of the number of minutes, but it's what we have been told to do an endeavor to do is make our best faith effort. Some disabilities modifications, accommodations are a little easier to manage in an online environment. Others are more of a challenge and what our team is working on, I think incredibly well, is thinking about the range of students with disabilities and what makes sense for each individual student and what sessions make sense for each individual student. One of the things that we continue to hear is students are missing seeing other students and so the idea of co-treatment or having students in small groups for treatment is something that students have expressed an interest in and we're working on those models and starting implementing next week on that. ELL guidance came on Friday, which is a little late for us because our documents had already been put together. Thankfully, they really matched what our plans were and that one has a focus on oral language development and trying to do more, in all of these there's opportunities for live instruction or synchronous, what we call synchronous instruction as opposed to asynchronous instruction, but for ELL students in particular, it's really important that they're talking and listening in live ways. I'll just speak a little bit more and then we'll stop for questions. So after we got the guidance from Desi, the way we modeled it is we had 150 teachers, our educators and administrators in 13 different groups, over 150 of them, developing documents last week. We sent them to all staff on Thursday and Friday of last week, we got a lot of feedback on them, met again and made adjustments and edits and that's sort of the nature of, it's an iterative kind of process and we wanted people doing the work to be creating the documents and leading the work and I think we were successful in providing opportunities for staff to do that. I think also noteworthy is that Tim Sheehan, our curriculum coordinator, held open office hours on Google Meets hangouts like this that were well attended by staff to problem solve and as we transitioned to discipline 2.0, our student service and ELL administrators were also going to start including open office hours because what we know is that this is the very different form of education than what staff students have experienced before and we're gonna learn a lot as we go and we wanna provide vehicles for that feedback loop to go for administrators and staff and problem solving, frankly. Staff have been having faculty meetings led by principals and department heads that's particular at the high school and then curriculum leaders at the middle school. I think one of the things that's worked well is like a crock or farm last week, there were 91 people on the phone, right? Because we were able to include paraeducators as well and people are missing their connections. People care deeply about the work but they also care deeply about their colleagues and in this socially distance or what I call physically distance time, making social connections is incredibly important. All documents will be finalized and shared out with staff and families this week. The ELL one is gonna be finished tonight and as well as my cover letter and most of it went out but all of it will go out by the end of the week and this Thursday is really an orientation day to distance learning 2.0, what we think about, whoo, this type over there. So what we think about distance learning 2.0, the way we're describing Thursday is it's like the first day of school because it really is gonna be a different experience for students and faculty. And I should say we'll begin in earnest Monday, I think that, I believe that's Monday, April 13th. So I apologize for the date error on the slide. And I think that's, yeah. So I'll stop and pause and see if there's questions on distance learning. Does anybody have questions? Mr. Demling. Yeah, so thank you for this presentation. This is very helpful. So two of the things that I'm thinking about must be current challenges for you are what's the status of the MCAS, particularly with our current seniors and when might we be going back to school? When it's likely that we're going back to school. I know those are big questions that have gotten a lot of state coverage but it seems to me that if you don't have a decent guess about what those two answers to those questions that it's kind of hard to architect something for the next four weeks versus the next 10 plus weeks. So do you have any clearer sense from Desi or from the state in terms of guidance on MCAS and return date if there is going to be a return date for this school year? Sorry, Peter, when I can't see you, I don't know as no when people are done. So I apologize for trying to not intentionally cutting up. So MCAS, I'll speak to return date will be a pretty healthy conversation a couple of slides later. So if you don't mind holding on that, you're absolutely right in what you said, but I'd like to put it in a larger context a little later in the deck. For MCAS, my understanding is the legislature gave the commissioner the ability to make a decision on MCAS. Federal government has allowed states to waive the annual testing requirement and to date we have not heard anything from the commissioner nor the governor on that particular topic, which seems odd to a lot of educator because MCAS would have started a couple of weeks ago. And it's a relationship I suppose between when we return, but even on the earliest return date, which is May 4th, which I find incredibly unlikely as I'll describe later, it's hard to imagine how all the MCAS tests could fit in. And I will say educationally, the last thing I'd want students doing after they were home for an extended period in some degree of physical isolation is to provide a standardized test that seems like a very odd choice. And again, I'll get to that later about some initial thoughts about when students return, whenever that is, but the idea of social and martial learning being part of a community, and that's not just for students, that's for adults too. We're getting too, I find myself getting, it's getting too normalized that I'm on calls like this. And when I'm back in a traditionally normal situation of being with people, that's gonna have to be an adjustment for everybody. So the idea of doing MCAS seems very unusual to me, but I'll certainly update the committee as the commissioner shares any information about that. But many other states have taken that step and many educators across the Commonwealth, I think find it quizzical or odd that there has been no public dialogue on that from the commissioner to superintendents. We had been having weekly meetings with the commissioner of education and we didn't have one last week and we have no information about one this week. So we're not quite sure why that communication loop has slowed down either. Mr. Demley. Yeah, so thank you for that. And before we drop the MCAS topic, I'll just say from a school committee point of view, I think it's pretty ridiculous that the state leadership is dropping the ball on this. And I hope they do come to their senses soon. Are there any other comments, Ms. Spitzer? So could you say a little bit about what the students are expected to have access to at home? I know there's been a movement to try to, and maybe this is on other slides, so feel free to punt. But I think it would be good to know not only for the traditional learners, but also the students with an IEP or the English language learners, what supports are we offering to make sure that they can have access to the distance learning that we're providing? So when I send slides, like, I don't know, an hour before a meeting, that's on me, but we will get to that in a little bit. I apologize for the late timing of your receiving slides, but we'll get to that. I'll be able to answer that question slowly and very shortly. And my apologies for the late send. Yep. Ms. Spitzer? I just want to also just add that I really appreciate the focus not solely on the academic, but on the social emotional, because I think the idea that we'd all just be carrying on is normal. Learning at home is one that's just totally unrealistic. I guess the follow-up to that would be for, because it's not only the students whose lives are disrupted, but the teachers' lives who are disrupted, and as a parent of three young children, I could have a lot of empathy for a teacher who may be in a similar situation and unable to deliver. I'm wondering if there's been any, and maybe it's too soon, I know we're still adjusting to this, but are we seeing that we're losing any teachers, or what kind of accommodations are we making for those who might be in a similar situation? Right. So I think- You just passed. Yeah, so I think what we have been seeing is incredible work by our staff. I again want to compliment them, and I think like many people, or many, hopefully districts, we're providing organizations, for instance, we're not mandating what times staff are working, we're just trying to mandate what work goes to students. So for some people without kids, they may work a pretty typical, they might do their work during typical work hours, and I got an email from a staff member yesterday who was saying, based on her family, and it could be not just kids, but also people caring for the parents right now as well. So I just want to broaden that, not that you were being narrow, but I just, there's a whole lot of stresses on everybody. And so this person was saying that they're able to take, or do their work after their kids are in bed, or after they're caring for parents. So we're providing that flexibility. Certainly, we're not advocating exclusively for live instruction. I think that some teachers have taken that step, and other teachers for a whole host of reasons have not, and what you'll see in our documents, if you didn't receive them yet as parents, but certainly we'll have them out on our website in the next day or two, is that it provides a lot of flexibility for that. There's also the piece about live instruction and being over reliance on that, because not every student may be available at the same time, based on their responsibilities. We have students who are caring for their parents, or their grandparents, or their younger siblings. So there are some real benefits of asynchronous pieces, whether it's emailed work, but also taped lessons. There's some real benefits to thinking about asynchronous work as well. And the way we've approached it with staff, with their support, is really providing a menu of options and making sure the communication's happening, and that education's happening for students, but not really mandating a strict schedule or exactly how it has to be, because we know that staff members, like everybody else in the country in the world right now are under significant stress, and while the work needs to happen, we're not gonna define exactly when it happens, or exactly how it happens. It's more just making some commitments about what students receive and making sure they're being supported in the learning. Sorry, that was long winded. Any other comments or questions from the committee? Ms. Gripka? So as a high school student, I was just wondering if there's gonna be any more communication specifically from the school, aside from just teachers, or hearing stuff from our parents, if there's gonna be any more of that? Yeah, and I think that's a good point, and one of the things that Principal Jones and I were talking about is, while we have stayed away from communicating specifics around COVID, this is really about expectations for student and teachers, so we sent that to parents today, but I think we're likely to send it to all high school students tomorrow, because this isn't something that should cause the same level of concern in terms of anxiety. I mean, students may have anxiety about the plan, but it's not quite the same situation, and high school students are a little different, and I think it's worth noting this. I'm glad you asked. High school students are the only, and we're following the commissioner's recommendations on this, there is a pass, excuse me, a credit, no credit, quote unquote grade that students will receive for the second semester of work if they're in high school. We're not grading in terms of affecting GPAs, or getting an A or A plus or B minus, nothing like that, but at the K to A level, we're following the guidance and recommendations of the commissioner that there are no grades, so we're encouraging students to participate and families to support their students to participate. At the high school level, it's a little bit different, and that's also the only level where new instruction can occur, like new topics can occur, so it is a little different, and we will be communicating that directly with students. The same documents, it's not, it's very accessible for a high school student to read it, but we'll get that out to students tomorrow. And the same for Summit Academy as well, when I say high school, I'm really of two high schools in the shared building, and while they have different documents, we're gonna share them directly with students at that site as well. Any other questions for not seeing any? Okay, so. All right, so on to Ms. Spitzer's question, minimizing technology barriers. So the IS department has been, in terms of staff who've been in the building the most, I think probably them, the business office and food service, but I think they may quote unquote win that competition, so if you will. So they started, our middle school high school has one-to-one program, so all of our seventh through 12th grade students have Chromebooks. There was a couple of students who left them in school, and we sort of have managed those pretty well. At grades three to six, students have Chromebooks, but they don't go home, so we distributed 117 in the week and a half after the closure started. And then we recognized, well, we reached out to everyone, more grade three to six, the longer it took, some families said, I don't really want my kid to have a Chromebook, and then as they realized, whoa, this isn't gonna be two weeks, more families reached out, and we have added a secondary distribution for those students, but also looking at K to two students. So that's taken a credible amount of work for Mr. Champagne and his team, because those students don't have Google accounts, so if you don't have a Google account, a Chromebook doesn't work. So they created Google accounts for a couple hundred kids in grades K to two, bought cases, because these Chromebooks didn't go home, so they didn't typically have cases. So all together, as you see, we've gotten 330 Chromebooks to students in grades K to six, which is not an insignificant percentage of the total number of students in those grade levels. Again, only the students who requested them. We have about nine or 10 that now have requested them, so we will likely have to do a third round of Chromebook distribution. I think the other step we noticed is that many families don't have internet access, so a Chromebook, again, or any device, but particularly a Chromebook doesn't work. If you don't have internet, it can't be that not much happens in the Chromebook. And even if you're using a personal computer or a laptop, so much of this requires internet access. So my one regret is that we spent a week, week and a half trying to work through different ways like Comcast and all that, and I'm not trying to knock on Comcast, but a lot of these other vendors who are trying to offer internet access in certain ways. And for a whole host of reasons, they were not effective in working, in being able to support the families we needed to support in our community. So what we did is like Cambridge, other communities have done, we ended up knowing that mobile hotspots were the way to go. So we purchased 95 of those that came today. They have to be set up and we are legally required to set up filters for a couple of different things when we're giving internet access, either in the school, but also even in people's homes if it's coming from us. So that'll happen the next couple of days. I wanna note that we'll talk about FY21 budget later and that's related to the FY20 budget in terms of E&D, but as we've agreed to compensate our staff for the rest of the year and don't have as much revenue coming in, the umbrella PGOs organized, it really came from one PGO who reached out to me and said, how can we help? We wanna do something. We obviously can't open our doors to people, but we wanna help, what are the needs in the community? And they then initiated with me a conversation with all the PGO leadership and all the schools in the district and started an amazingly successful fundraising campaign to support not just the hotspots, but also the data plans that come with them. And I'll let them, they can share how much money they've raised and the incredible work they've done, but the community outpouring of support for this has just been incredible. The other thing that you realize is I'm always looking for silver linings in life and perhaps the silver lining in this is we've recognized how much of a digital divide has existed that we knew about and hadn't taken the steps to do. So I think long-term, this is a conversation we all need to have by we all, I mean literally the community as well as the school committee and administration. So we're now gathering, we did an all call on Friday and we're getting lists from families because our all calls don't cover the 40 languages that all of our families speak. So our teachers are helping us and principals are helping us by sending lists of students who do not have Wi-Fi and there's home and once this setup is done, we'll be starting, we'll start the distribution of hotspots. And the other nice thing about hotspots is once they're configured, they're plugged in play as opposed to other forms of getting Wi-Fi access. So I want to say an incredibly large thank you to our PGOs who took this on and have really mobilized the community to support students to have access during this time, especially with the extended absence. We had a separate group last week that formed, I think it's pretty big, it's 10 or 11 people, maybe even more group of educators and teachers from the schools and Jerry Champaign was on there too. We're interested in providing trainings for staff because what we know is that this is a big transition for staff as well as it is for students and perhaps for staff. Perhaps it's for some staff anyway, it's an even larger transition than for students. So there's their trainings today and tomorrow that were live, there's also take trainings they've shared, they have their own website so that people can go back and access it. And they've just been absolutely incredible in supporting their staff members. They've also developed tutorials for families on what we're doing at Google Meet and Hangout and other tech topics that we'll be sharing with families. And as I said at the beginning, it just sounds like I'm doing a lot of thanking people but people deserve the public recognition. I asked staff members, couple working remotely and a couple have been in the buildings throughout. They've provided these resources to our families and as we've moved to a more virtual world, the number of questions and emails are just incredible and the needs are incredible. We don't really have the capacity to add staff temporarily at this time and they're working incredible hours to make sure our families have access to what they need and our staff have access to what they need as this transition takes place. So I'll pause and see if there's any questions. Mr. Director, thanks for all of this and also thanks to the PGOs and everybody else who's working so hard on this. One question I have about the hotspots is say we had a hotspot that was in an apartment complex with that hotspot be able to serve multiple families or is it a one family per hotspot? So that's something that we're looking at as we develop the list of students. The hotspots, the answer is it depends. It depends on the proximity of apartments. They're not big enough where they could serve. Like there's been some urban areas where like they have a huge one on a bus and we looked into that and for a whole host of reasons that didn't work for our needs here but we are looking if there are families for instance in adjacent apartment buildings, it's possible the hotspot would be able to serve both needs. So it is something as we're getting our list of students that we're organizing it and trying to look at proximity and whether that can help. Any other questions? I'm seeing none so I think we can move on. Okay, sure and I'll try to pick up the pace. I know this is a long presentation but there's a lot happening and I had a hard time again shortening it. So the food insecurity piece between our nutrition services and our partnership with UMass were serving over 2,000 meals about 2,500 meals a week at 14 locations, 13 in Amherst and as Mr. Minino and Ms. Stanton will be pleased to know our first one started in Pelham yesterday with 23 meals picked up from Pelham. So that was a nice addition and that really came because the federal government and the state government allowed for some different flexibilities for us and for other districts to do. Starting last week, we added a large number of meals to our Friday delivery. So the weekend scarcity issue has come up and so there's four meals going out on Friday instead of the typical two meals so that hopefully it helps people get through the weekends. Starting next week, we're actually gonna be shifting our model. We're gonna maintain the same number of meals but reduce the number of drop offs and that's really just because of the rise of COVID that we're seeing locally and recommendations from folks in the nursing and the health field. We wanna still provide the same number of meals but again, reduce the amount of potential contact. We do do it in a physically distanced way but the reality is when you're out in the field, we wanna reduce that as much as we can. So we're gonna reduce our pickup days to three days a week but still be providing four meals at each time. So we'll be providing the same number of meals next week as we are this week and our nutrition services, our UMass partners, our family center, the van and bus drivers who are doing the routes and we have many, many staff who are just volunteering to do this because they wanna see their kids and families and they care about food scarcity. So we've had an abundance of volunteers that's maintained because you always concern when you ask for volunteers, the first go around, you get a lot and then it's gonna wax and wane but we've really seen a pretty steady stream and UMass partnership has really helped us in terms of just maintaining, keeping a reasonable capacity that we have to sustain as well. So we feel really good about what we were able to provide to our community because we know the needs are great and they're not slowing down in terms of needs. You're only accelerating for families and there's a lot of concern. I'll be very frank about what happens if this goes on, can we sustain it and we've committed to sustaining it throughout the end of the school year. I think that's the only slide on that one. Any questions on the food and security piece? Ms. Dancer, can you describe what happens when the meals are sorted out? Yep, so there's a, at each location, there's tables that get laid out and then there's boxed bags with the food in it and we ask people to be sort of organized and come one at a time and stay six feet apart as the recommendations are for that so that it's very controlled. It's not like we have groups of families or groups of our staff gathering together but what our volunteers are helping the van driver get the meals to the table, we wait till families have done the pickup, get the tables back in the van and go on to the next location. Ms. Spitzer. So I just wanted to clarify something that I believe is true but I wanted to just confirm is that these meals are available to any young person, person under 18 in Amherst, is that correct? They don't necessarily need to be a student at or within our district. So here's what I will say and I'll be careful with my wording. According to the reimbursement policy of the USDA, they are designed for students age five to 18 who attend our district. However, we are not required to check or there's no sign up sheet or sign in sheet or notation needed for that. And so when families come to our locations, we take them at their word and we wanna make sure that families in general and our community have food. So that's as far legally as I can probably push the conversation but I think you probably catch what I'm indicating. She gave you a thumbs up. We don't turn people away. I mean, that's the blunt part of it. You can't see. Okay, sounds good. Sorry, since I can't see you, I'm getting like only feedback is a blue screen. Yeah, Mr. Manino, did you have a question? No. Seeing no other questions, I think we're good. Okay. So the last one, no, second or last one, support mental health. Right, so our educators at school best sport, right? They continue to engage students in social emotional needs and counseling needs. The transition to distance learning to put out included a group of counselors that Mr. Shea who is principal of Cracker Farm but used to be a counselor at both the elementary and secondary level facilitated and provided additional structure and organization for office hours, for ways for families and students to get in touch with counselors and provided, yeah, again, more routines and structures around that. In our academic areas, we're very clear that we need to start lessons and start with acknowledgments of the challenges the epidemic is causing. That we think the academic structure that will support students is good for their social emotional functioning but not at the exclusion of acknowledging the situation we're in. And I'll share the next slide shows a slide that I shared with many of the groups working in the academic side. So it was a nice placeholder, kind of informational, I guess visual to support that. For our staff members, we have an employee assistance program which is a free confidential professional counseling program that's continuously available to any staff member. And it's free on demand now because of the situation they're offering free on demand seminars, workshops and resources through their website. So they're supporting staff in multiple ways but I wanna show the slide that I took completely from someone named Jessica Minahan who's an expert on anxiety. She's come to district multiple times. She's based in Eastern Massachusetts but she's written a number of books just remembering and those of you have taken like Psychology 101, you remember this as Maslow's Hierarchy. And really thinking through what Maslow's Hierarchy is right now. I think all of us are sort of intuitively doing it but really making sure that where school sits on that, that for many families, the psychological needs, the safety needs, the feeling of love and belonging particularly in this environment, how esteem works and self-actualization, those things are gonna come before school right now. And so I really like the quote at the bottom too and I'll read it just for people who aren't seeing this clearly. Our kids and families need us more than ever before, more than ever to model social-emotional learning before content. And that's really our focus and that's gonna be true at the high school as well as kindergarten, right? It's gonna look a little different and be implemented and realized slightly differently but everyone has the understanding and the acknowledgement that one of the best things about being more structured in our approach to supporting distance learning is that that community feel can come back a little bit more than it has. It's not just about the academic piece, it's really about that community and making sure that every student, for many students at every grade level, the adults in their school are adults in their life that they rely on not just for teaching and learning but for many less tangible factors and we wanna make sure that we're recognizing that that's very real for students right now, that their sense of isolation is very real and we need to lead with that. So I'll stop there before I get into my last section on the current systems and then we can get to thinking about the future which I think I imagine you'll have a lot, the committee will have a lot to say on that. Are there any questions on this section? I'm seeing none. Okay. So the last one, I'll just again, because of time I'll roll through. So, you know, Dr. Slaughter could certainly talk to this but you know, we have to make sure people get paid and some of our staff, many of our staff get direct deposit, which is easier. Some needs checks printed. We have contracts, we have vendors, we have mail to get because our schools are closed and so Dr. Slaughter is involved in that, how that process works. And so that's a critical area and a critical need and thanks to Dr. Slaughter and his team has gone off incredibly smoothly given the situation. Human resources, we're still hiring. So then, you know, the middle school and principal Pelham searches are moving forward with virtual semifinalist interviews. They're done for Pelham and they'll be done for the middle school by the end of this week. And you know, by the 15th, we're hoping to get a number of other job postings out. What's a little hard is we don't exactly know what the budget's gonna be so that's gonna limit us but we have some positions we know will be open regardless of budget and we're gonna try to work on that. Virtual health insurance enrollment from HR began on April 1st and that's gone incredibly smoothly. Usually there's a health insurance fair and different things but we've moved to a virtual environment. An operations point, I can't say enough about the facilities and maintenance team. Sanitizing cleaning, how that went, especially the last week in school and the first week after. Maintenance that we're still maintaining things like fire inspections. We're still talking about larger projects and we're continuing to buy different products for sanitizing and pleasing that are gonna make us, this isn't a short-term problem. So the custodial crew, the maintenance crew, facilities, transportation, they've done just incredible amount of work and that's why we're in as good shape as we're in. And so oftentimes the unsung heroes of the district and they deserve to be recognized. So I wanna really stress that. Another thing I wanna say is that we've moved to a virtual registration so we have, last week we put out we have an online kindergarten registration and we have like 35 students and so by the end of today had already registered, which given what everyone else is dealing with was actually out, it was higher than what I expected. I know this is a regional meeting, we'll probably talk about it at the Amherst level when next time we meet, but we're gonna have the same virtual registration system for students at all grades who are moving to the area. I think moving to the area is probably gonna slow down a little bit, but the kids who are already here who either are gonna transition from private school or charter school to our district or are planning to move here in the summer, we have a nice system set up where we can take most of their information virtually and when our school's open up again, they'll have to bring in some of their documentation that we need to see literally live according to current law. But that's gone very smoothly. And again, that was a combination of our family center, our IS team, WS Moreland, our communication team. So those things really matter that we're maintaining our systems in the middle of this crisis, even in a virtual environment. So that's the last slide on where we are, and then I'll go on to moving forward. So I don't know if there's any questions in the operational systems. Ms. Stanser? Regarding the searches, the two administrative searches, is there a process for getting feedback that you would normally do through a public meeting? Yeah, so we're still working through, oh, I'm sorry, I apologize, I can't see people so I jump in too quickly. Sorry, Ms. Stanser. Oh, I guess that was it. So, yes, so we're still finalizing that, but I think there's a couple of different ways to do it. We may look at our system like this where we get questions in advance from members of the community and different stakeholder groups. The candidates, however many finalists there are usually two or three answer them. And we can both live stream that as well as save the video and send it out so that we can get electronic feedback from anyone in the community who wants. So we're still trying to figure out whether we should do that a little more synchronously or asynchronously, and what would be the better way to get feedback. But I think in the next week, it's about a week ahead of the middle school search and you'll hear about that process moving forward. But absolutely, I think there actually are some benefits of not having to literally go to a forum but being able to get it emailed to you and watching the video and being able to offer feedback. Again, I'm always the silver lining person, but I think that it may actually engender more participation in the process. I'm not seeing any other questions from the committee. Okay, so three things moving forward. So talking about April break, talking about potential return date for school, which Mr. Demling asked earlier and planning for fall school year 2021. My phone is blowing up because I think Dr. Fauci is talking about fall, what it's gonna look like nationally. So I don't know what he's saying. I just know I'm getting a lot of texts about it. So for April break, there's been a question and the commissioner of education, and this is gonna be a theme, has decided that it should be a local decision as opposed to some other states that have made decisions around it. I met with the head of the APEA, which is our largest union. It's not the only union, but it's the largest union. And we decided, and we were hearing feedback both ways from staff and families, that we would survey the staff and really have that be the lead in the decision. Cause I could really see it both ways. The one thing we both agreed to is we weren't asking staff if we should do away with April break altogether, that we think there was enough people who felt like this transition was stressful, that this time is stressful, that for our staff having some breaks. So the two options we offered staff for feedback, one was to continue to not, continue to have April break as it was scheduled. I have that whole week off, which many districts are doing. And the second option was to have school that Thursday, Friday of April break. So in other words, have a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday off, but have a two day week. And the nice part of that is that pushes the end of the school year from Monday, the 22nd or 23rd to a Thursday. So no one likes coming back for a half day on Monday at the end of the school year. So we thought that might be an incentive for staff members to take it more seriously. And this is the data. We had 377 responses, which both Mick and I would say it was remarkably good for a one day survey. And you could see that 86% roughly of staff favored having a three day week of April vacation and have distance learning 2.0 on that Thursday and Friday of that week, and which would have the year end on Thursday, June 18th. And to get 86 people in this community to agree on something is no small feat. So we take that really seriously. But on a serious note, having 14% of staff wanting the full week off kind of reinforce the piece while it's still a minority opinion among the faculty. We're glad we didn't push to have the whole week off because that people are dealing with a lot. And that 13.8% may have additional stressors that 86% don't have. And we want, going back a couple of slides, we wanna make sure we're supporting the mental health of everybody. And that's 13.8% is not an insignificant number and I know Mick would agree. I think it's worth noting this survey went to all staff, not just APEA members, we just worked on it together. So we'd like to announce that moving forward that we would have school on the Thursday and Friday. A lot of the feedback and comments were that everyone will still be here anyway, right? No one is going on vacation those weeks or at least they shouldn't be. But it gives a little bit of a breather for students and families during a nice time of year to take a breather. It's been a very stressful last month for everyone involved and as we transitioned distance learning 2.0 that is gonna be an additional stressor for both students and families and staff. And so we thought having a longer weekend but still getting in some learning that week made a lot of sense and again, the staff agreed. So we'd like to move forward with that. Certainly I'm happy to take any feedback or questions from the committee before I, this is the only slide on this particular topic. Are there any questions? I'm seeing none. Okay. All right, so we'll just look out for that announcement. There's a lot of announcing going on this week so we'll try to probably put in the Friday newsletter so everyone gets it at the same time. Except for those of you who are watching the show and then you'll know a little ahead of time. So this is a more complicated conversation to return to school date that Mr. Deming raised. So, Governor Baker said, and this is a direct quote from his formal statement that K to 12 schools shall not reopen for normal operations before May 4th. The problem is from my perspective, the governor statement is being interpreted by many to mean we will likely return on May 4th that there's data attached. And I think it's human nature that when you think about, when you put out not before May 4th, everyone's gonna focus on the date. And so I'm having an increasing number of staff, students and families get in touch with me with a lot of concerns about that date. Concerns frankly that I have as well. But it's starting to get, I'm starting to reconsider how to approach this because it's stressed that I don't feel like people need to have right now. The governor stay home order expires the morning of. I find it really hard to imagine that we'll go straight from stay home order to getting kids on a bus six hours later to having 950 students in our high school, right? That just seems all the experts, even the people who disagree on when this whole thing will end, no one is suggesting that you go straight from where we are now to normal typical life straight through. And I'm really deeply concerned because it feels the cognitive dissonance of having that statement with May 4th as a date out there. I think it actually challenges the confidence people have in leadership. And while that's not my decision, I'm responsible for this. I feel responsible for this district as I know you all do too. And I don't like people have cognitive dissonance on something like this during a time where there's already a lot of stress. So increasingly I'm getting concerned and it really has the spring break question, the April break question has really elicited a lot of feedback on the May 4th piece because people are feeling like we'll have this break and we don't know to Mr. Deming's point, we don't know how long it'll go. And I honestly think it's a week of a lot of holidays for a lot of faiths. If miraculously this goes way incredibly better than that seemingly every expert says, I think there'll still be a lot of staff and families who will be very concerned about a May 4th return date. And I just don't think it's feasible to be very candid with you. I put some slides, just the top right one is this is from the federal government, kind of unfortunately a morbid one, but I think it just shows their projections. Again, this isn't number of cases of COVID-19, this is number of deaths per day. And I only put this one up because it projects out pretty far. And if you look at May 1st, it's not close to on a national level when we'll see the curve going down and up where it seems like it'd be safe for students to return to school and staff members. Secondly, a couple, let's see the six today is the seven. So yesterday this was in the paper that folks at Bay State, which is the largest teaching hospital or the only teaching hospital I believe in Western Massachusetts, they suggested that the peak out here will come later than perhaps in other areas and come in May. So there's no indication, there's no evidence or data that suggests that May 4th is actually a reasonable date we would return to school. And here you just see the Hampshire, this is all public information. I'm not privy to anything that goes beyond this, but Hampshire County and Franklin County COVID-19 cases and you could see the increase. And if you think of where we closed school, we were on March 13th. So it was still pretty low. And you could see where it is now and to think that it'll drop to the same levels that quickly seems against any advice I'm getting from any public health official, any hospital in the area or really the government, you know, the federal government's guidance as well. So we end up in this awkward situation. I feel like I am in an awkward situation just to be very candid about it where every, all of my formal communication says we will return to school no earlier than May 4th, which is an arbitrary date that I think is becoming increasingly unrealistic. So what I love your feedback on is, you know, there's sort of two options. One, we could maintain our current model and double down on the communication that the closure will end no sooner than May 4th. I'll be honest and frank that I'm fine continuing to do that. I think no matter how many times I say the no sooner part, the May 4th part is what sticks out in people's mind. It's human nature. Or the second one, which is something that over the last four days, I've been thinking a lot about and I really want your feedback, changing the designation to an indefinite school closure and being indefinite until public health officials deem it appropriate for students and staff to return. And the reason I've been thinking about the second one is it's, to me, it feels more honest and accurate. It's not pretending that this is a hypothetical date that I know of or anyone else knows of where it'll be safe for students and staff to return for school. I know indefinite is the flip side of it is it removes any date from there but I actually think that's the environment we're in. I think we're in an environment where we don't know. We know May 4th is very unrealistic. Even if realistic from a health perspective, from a public confidence perspective, I find it wildly unrealistic. And indefinite is accurately describes how I feel about when we'll return to school. It really is up to public health officials. There's so many variables that we're seeing and when you think about it's different setting at college and universities because their students are living there as opposed to living at home but how quick they were to make school closure decisions. And I know increasingly there's some conversation at college universities, not necessarily locally but there may be, I don't know, but in other states about even questions about summer programs and whether they have to shut down summer programs because there are concerns about that. I think we're up to 10 other states that have closed for the spring. I'm not suggesting that in Amherst we make that decision right now but I'd really love your feedback on this because again to go back to the beginning, I'm concerned about its impact on the morale, the psyche of our stakeholder groups here in Amherst. And no matter how many times I tell people no sooner than May 4th, they remember the last two words of that statement and not the beginning. So I guess I'm not looking to make a decision tonight but I am looking for committee's feedback on their thoughts on kind of this dilemma that I and we face. Mr. Harrington. Am I there? Sorry. I'm definitely inclined to agree with changing it to the word indefinite because I mean everything is indefinite right now. And like you say in interactions with the community and people within the school system, May 4th is like this bright shining object but it's undefined. So I think indefinite is perfect. Thank you. Mr. Demling. Yeah, so I do like the theme of the second phrasing better. I don't know if it's just my ears but when I first heard it it made me think of next school year as well. So when you think schools are closed indefinitely that might mean we're not coming back for years and I don't want to put any percent chances on what exact date is because that's not what we're here to do. I thought alternative possibility to consider would be schools are closed for the year until public health officials, et cetera. You're certainly not making any promises about what happened in September but it does say that for this school year they're closed until it's appropriate to open them. I do agree though with the more general first point that it's not helping at this point to have May 4th. I mean, I'm probably not the only school committee member who gets questions saying, so when are schools really going to close? Because we all know that it's not going to be May 4th. You know, I'll honestly say I don't have any insider information and neither does anybody else. The other comment I had about the phrasing of the second option here is until public health officials deem it appropriate and while I certainly wouldn't say that the school committee or superintendents are better qualified to assess a medical situation than public health officials, it does beg the question, okay, which public health officials? Yup, that's a good point, yeah. We talked about our districts, Amherst and the region's health officials, the state health officials, might make a different call in the Boston area when the conditions may be different on Western Mass. So I'm not sure whether that might confusingly transfer the autonomy of the decision, which is really yours to health officials. Even though like when you close school, when it's snowing, you're deferring to the weather experts even though you're the one who's making the call, right? So it's a good point. I don't have a clear answer for you there, but I think you're heading in the right direction. Yeah, no, that's helpful. And I will just comment on your other part about you get questions. So I get them every day from my six year old, let alone the rest of the community. And I keep telling him the same thing I told you, I don't know, right? I don't have a good answer for that. And I think that the sooner we can be honest about it and whatever the wording is, and that's really helpful feedback. You know, I think the transparency in this situation really helps. And I think it just helps in terms of public confidence that we're not putting out a hypothetical date that we don't actually believe. So, but thanks, Peter. That's really helpful for me to think a little bit about the language of that. I see Ms. Spitzer. And then I think Mr. Manino, you had your hand up earlier too. So we'll start with Ms. Spitzer. So, you know, I work in health. I'm not an expert on this at all, but I have been on, you know, conference calls where we've been talking about the models that were just being shown. And there are, today I was on a call and they've discussed about six different options of modeling. So I think you can kind of choose the model, but no matter what the models, at least what I've been hearing, and again, I'm not an expert on this, but I've talked to some experts on this, is that like early May, the peak there is kind of the earliest that we'd see it. And it's very likely that it could happen late May, June, in some cases, even July, depending on how effective the social distancing that we're doing is, it'll, you know, flatten that curve, which will be a really good thing in terms of keeping our hospitals, ICU beds open to receive patients. But the bad thing is that our kids will probably have to stay out of school longer because I think the social distancing, you know, we really, the schools are one of the places where this type of disease can thrive. And so I think, I personally can't see a situation in which we would potentially be going back to school this year. And I think to acknowledge that and to give all of these folks feeling a lot of uncertainty, some, like, something to plan for, I guess, is helpful. I don't, I think it's also because there are so many families who kind of depend on the schools for everything from nutrition to just childcare, you know, and all of these supports that our schools offer. It's a really, really hard thing to tell people. But I almost feel like it's- Yeah, and if I could comment on that, oh, I'm sorry, Karen. No, go. But I just feel like if you get that information out, it gives people time to plan and adjust to the new reality and adapt. And it also allows us to start, you know, doing all of the things that we've already started doing and rolling out the supports that people need. Yeah, I think, you know, for me, I don't disagree with everything you just said. I think I'm not probably at the place to say that we're not coming back to a fall publicly, but I think what I'm trying to strike the balance of is saying that's likely the case. And I think being transparent about that and just wiping away the May 4th thing. You know, like if miraculously on May 15th, you know, things are much better than we planned and then that's okay. But I think having that date in people's heads is really not helpful for people. So all this feedback is really helpful and gladly this gets recorded and I get the video right afterwards. So I can think through all the feedback I'm getting and try to craft something that captures a lot of what I'm hearing. This is great feedback. Mr. Minino, did you have something you wanted to add? Yeah, I think it's best to plan on school being closed at the end of the school year, June 18th. It's silly. This is a serious situation. I'm no medical person, but I'm not leaving my house. You can call it indefinite or use some kind of moderating words, but also it would give the new computerized system a chance to work through rather than just work, you know, if a teacher learns how to teach online for the next three weeks, well, that's good. Then you can do it for the next eight weeks or 10 weeks. I get the benefit of the learning curve. But plan on June 18th. Yeah, I think I would add a sort of and sort of building on what Miss Spitzer was saying earlier also this idea of nothing's certain right now. And it's not just the uncertainty, it's that the daily, if not hourly, changing and shifting sort of how we're understanding our environment and our world and sort of having a date out there even if it is no earlier and sort of sitting there in anticipation that on May 3rd, we're gonna all of a sudden hear news about when the new date is going to be is a little unsettling. And so if we can sort of, and I think Miss Spitzer, you were getting at this also, which is by saying something that gets too indefinite and I agree with Mr. Demling's comment about, you know, indefinite suggests that this could bleed into next school year as well. But something that gets that, we don't anticipate that this school year will be back this particular school year unless things dramatically change. That gives people as disappointing and challenging as that news is going to be to hear, it at least gives people a stake in the ground, okay, I don't have to just get through these next 10 days. I can start thinking and planning and even though that's not certain, it's something that's at least manageable you can sort of think through and see through. Okay, I need to figure out how I'm gonna get through June as opposed to, well, I gotta get through now and then wait to hear if it's gonna continue. And so the solutions that we as families and students and teachers and staff put together to sort of cope with this new situation can be a little bit more permanent feeling or at least stable because we're not sort of just, you know, just trying to do this balancing act temporarily. And I saw several hands, I saw Ms. Spitzer, Ms. Dancer, and Ms. Demling, I'll start with Ms. Dancer because you haven't spoken yet. Thank you. Another piece really that I think supports the idea that we're probably not going back to school is the fact that nobody even has a clue how we're gonna go back through this. You know, I heard something tonight news about they're trying to develop a test for the antibodies. I mean, because they don't even know how do you go back to what would be potentially a normal life, they don't have a clue how to go about doing that. So to me, that's another reason that I think about probably not going back to school this year is what's gonna happen. Yeah. Mr. Demling. Yeah, so I think Dr. Morris, I heard you say a little bit, what I think is like the clearest indication to me so far, which is you're not ready to say that schools are definitely closed, going to be closed for the rest of the school year, but it's likely. I think if you feel that, you should say that. But schools are closed indefinitely, likely for the rest of the school year. I think that simply that, telling people, hey, look, you're not ready to like X marks the spot, but in your opinion, in the superintendent's opinion, we're likely not going back to school for the rest of the school year. I think that would be very informative. Yeah, that's helpful. Thank you. Ms. Betzer, did you? I just wanted to add to my comments that all the modeling that I've had privy to through my conversations at work has been showing that we're gonna be far behind Boston, likely. And that's the same thing. So I think the thing is that people may not realize if you're following news outlets that are out of places like New York or Boston is that the peak is gonna be there in the next couple of weeks, but it's very likely gonna take a lot longer to get out to a more rural community. So whereas upstate New York is gonna be a lot later than New York City, in the same way, Western Mass is likely gonna be a lot later than Boston. And so that can maybe cause a little dissonance if you're following like the Boston Globe or the New York Times or even just President Trump when they're making announcements about when the peak is. So I think that's important to keep in mind when we're communicating is that it's the point where the press is often covering bigger cities and we're different. So I wondered if I don't mean to put her on the spot, but Ms. Gribko, if you've had anything, any thoughts from a student perspective and certainly you can pass, but I just was curious because you're here and I don't get to see many students that aren't my own kids lately. So if you had any thoughts, I'd love to hear them. Yeah, so I think as students, a lot of us are sort of, I guess, predicting that we're not gonna go back this year. And I think that having the May 4th day is just sort of it's like making the students feel that we're not getting all the information communicated to us properly. And I think that the indefinite wording or the indefinite end of the school year might be a little more clear about what we can plan for if we're learning and how we're gonna talk about MCAS and all those things. Thank you very much. Sorry to put you on the spot there, but I just was very curious what you were thinking. Okay, so very last slide again, apologize for the, I think it's the last slide. Almost, is just planning for fall or whenever we come back. I think the things to note, and I'll just be brief on this one because this is one of the things that as we get through the implementation of learning 2.0, our next step is gonna be thinking about the return. The thing I can say very publicly and confidently, it's not gonna look like a beginning, typical beginning of the school year. And first and foremost, we're gonna have to focus on rebuilding our communities, social-emotional learning. And just as I mentioned before, reintroduction of being in groups and in-person learning. I had a neighbor email me today, which was just so weird, she's three doors down. But that's like the world we live in and that's not the world we're hopefully going to come back to. So I think a lot of that's gonna have to be the focus and to be the school year. Additionally, we'll have to develop a plan to better determine where students are because we know that students will have been out of school for an extended period of time and make the necessary adjustments in the curriculum. But I think that is very much secondary to the focus on the reintroduction and being socialized again, of being in groups physically. There's few things that happen where you think there's really a before and after. This is a thing, right? COVID-19 and how it's affecting folks and I'll just focus on the local piece, but certainly there's a broader implications that there's gonna be a before and after. And so I think rethinking about what that after looks like is where our mind's gonna go in the next couple of weeks and certainly we'll be fortunate to have the summer to do some thinking and planning about that. But it's gonna be a big transition and I wanna be really public. I don't have the plan, I don't have it mapped out, but I do know what I care about, which is that since the staff come back and we focus a lot on what it's like to be back together. And yes, we have to teach academics. I'm not suggesting we don't, but that's gonna come after we rebuild the community and not before. So that's really all I wanna say. I know I've spoken a lot on this slide deck and if there's any other general questions or comments, I'm happy to answer them. Mr. Demlin. Can you briefly mention your current thinking on graduating seniors in terms of needing the necessary credits to graduate? And also, I mean, I know this is like way down the list, but if you're graduating senior, there's graduation typically and that's a huge milestone achievement event. And I'm presuming that that's not happening, at least in the form that we're typically used to this year. So any initial thoughts on that? Yeah, so in terms of the plans, and this was in our principal Jones letter, any students who maybe, who are 12th grade students or students who are hopefully on a piece of graduate who are perhaps need to change some things to get the credits they need to graduate. They're either we're failing a course or something like that. The council's will be reaching out to them individually in the next week to develop a plan of how to get there and we'll have to monitor and keep track of that throughout for all students. And I think the credit no credit thing, I think what's important to note in the commissioner's letter and recommendations we're taking that seriously is we also have to be conscious of other commitments that happen. So a student may have a personal situation with illness in their family, illness themselves, they have to be taken into account. Really, the credit, this is gonna sound strange. The bar to receive no credit is a really high bar. It will require a lot of staff outreach and a lot of explanation before we get there because we know it's a very difficult situation for everybody to have to be in. I think on the graduation piece, it's interesting I'm following this at the university level just because their graduations are earlier they've already canceled them all. So I'm trying to see what they're doing. And it's interesting some places have canceled them and just made broad decisions. Second principle join us about this today. And I don't mind saying this in public is, you know, one of the things we're talking about is trying to, if we get to the place where we are canceling graduation, can we survey students about some thoughts they have? I know some places have done graduations in virtual environment. Some places students have advocated to come back and do like a mega graduation a year from June or a year from May in the university setting. Because they want the opportunity of physically walking across the stage. And so what principle Jones and I talked about is not necessarily making a decision but perhaps having a menu of options and then an other box, because I know our students will use the other box with creative solutions that we haven't thought of. So I think when we get to that decision point we'll have to engage students as well as faculty but particularly graduating students and see what would work. And that's not that everyone's necessarily gonna agree on exactly how they want that to happen. We want their voices to guide it because the graduation is primarily for them and their families and it's primarily for them, I would argue, and the family piece is certainly huge. I don't wanna minimize that but we wanna know how our 17 and 18 year olds and 19 year olds, how they'd wanna walk through that very unusual process. And what we're not interested in doing is making a sweeping decision for them other than the ones about if it's not safe to be in the Mullen Center, we're not gonna be in the Mullen Center. We have been in touch with the Mullen Center, they're aware of our situation and they're just gonna call us every two weeks to see if we have an update for them. But they're having the problem with everyone who had reserved the Mullen Center so we are no different than perhaps you're, perhaps more popular musical acts and athletic events or anything else. And they're very conscious of the limitations, not just on our schooling but actually on having large groups together. I find it highly unlikely that in June, anywhere there'll be opportunities for large groups to be together in that kind of scale, right? If you look at professional sports and the discussions happening there, you get a little bit of a window into how people are thinking about that. Ms. Spitzer? So thanks again for all of this. I guess there are two questions that weren't covered. So what I have is we've been seeing in the news all of these stories about people 3D printing face shields or, you know, so, and I do know that, you know, we had a great presentation, sorry for the background noise. We had- It'll be coming very soon, don't worry about it. We've had all these great presentations about 3D printing capabilities. Has there been any thoughts of trying to use those from our high school? And then secondly, I just think it's really important that our schools kind of are places where people get information about a lot of things. And I'm wondering what we've been communicating about kind of instilling the norms of social distancing and kind of communicating the importance. Just like today I was walking and there was high schools, college students were partying. Down the street for me, you know, having a drinking game. And I know our high school students are much more responsible, but I think it's the young people because they kind of feel invincible may not be taking it as seriously. So if you could just comment on what you're doing around that. Sure, so on the first one, our 3D printers are mostly in schools where we're not letting staff be. And our staff have been entirely focused on getting Chromebooks, the training for staff, getting and reducing the digital divide. So I've seen some districts do that. It's certainly, we have the capability of doing it, but in terms of human power, we're dedicating it to digital divide and training staff right now. We are, I will say we are donating our nurse leader to a Consolino was in grabbing some supplies that we feel like we have an excess of and are dedicating or donating that to the Amherst first responders, the Amherst fire department. So we're not trying to make as big a deal about that, but we are, I will say that we are donating primarily gloves is what we have in excess and nurses offices and we're donating that to the Amherst fire department. On the second question, it's funny you'd mentioned that because what we're noticing, and I heard from principals literally like in the last three hours about this, are more reports of families, more reports of students having social gatherings together, not in the way that you necessarily described, but even just like groups of kids going on bike rides together, not six feet apart. And so we hadn't heard many reports of that and something perhaps seems like it flipped this week where we're hearing more, it's all anecdotal, so I don't have hard data on it. But before this meeting, I talked to the town manager and was in touch with the public health department in Amherst, trying to get some level of statement to put in the newsletter, not that everyone reads a newsletter, front and back, but just to remind folks of what they're telling us and that the police will come and break up social gatherings. And I wanna say it's really important to note that it's happening in, we're getting reports in all different kind of communities. It's not particular to one neighborhood or anything like that. So we hadn't gotten many of those reports and in the last day and a half, we seem to have gotten more of them and whether that's a trend or whether it's just the anecdotal reports actually got to us, right? It's hard to judge. We don't have tracking devices where we can do that, but it is concerning and a number of principals reached out to me today because they were starting to hear reports of that. The weather got a lot nicer too, so. I think that may be part of it and that, but I do think people can start relaxing sometimes, right? It's been a while, it's hard to maintain this level of, right? I was on a hike with one of my kids and there was a young kid, probably three or four who ran over to my daughter and the parents had to hold her back and it wasn't because she knew my, I don't know this family and they didn't know us, but they were then shouting at me from 20 feet away that their daughters are really social kid and it's really, really challenging for them to not have her physically, it's hard for their daughter and therefore hard for them. So I think do think the longer this goes on, it is hard for many families and students to maintain the physical distancing that we need to for a public health, from a public health perspective. And I do worry a little bit, as you said, Ms. Bitzer about some backslide on that. Sorry, end in a down note, but. Any other questions? Hold on, nope, nope. Okay, so we were ahead and now we're way behind. Sorry, 15 minutes probably wasn't reasonable for COVID-19. Really great presentation. So thank you, it's comprehensive. I think answered almost every question that we could possibly have thought of ahead of time. Thank you. So the next item is the appointment of a school committee member to our negotiating team. Yep, so I can explain that. So we are in negotiations or we're starting trying to start negotiations with our food service union. They're the only union that's up for a contract this year. They're contracts up this year, excuse me. The member who was on that negotiating team was Mr. Fonch. He, as you all know, is no longer on the regional school committee. So we do need somebody on the regional school committee to serve on that negotiating team this spring. From a time commitment perspective, we haven't had that much experience with food service negotiations because we just recently have went in, but past experiences would suggest it's not as lengthy a process as it is with some of our unions that have many more members. It's not that they're any less important or the issues are easier, but when the APA is negotiating on behalf of several hundred members, it's a little more complex perhaps than a smaller group of employees. So it's not incredible amount of time, but it is real time. We don't necessarily have a schedule set. We're waiting for the committee member and then we'll go from there on that. And Ms. Cunningham is the one who facilitates those those negotiations. Don't volunteer at once. Mr. Harrington. That didn't work, did it? I heard you, I think you said what I heard was that you would volunteer if no one else would. Right. Yeah, okay. I think everybody's silence is a grateful head nod to your willingness to step up, Mr. Harrington, so. Thank you. So thank you, Mr. Harrington. Back to the agenda. So next on our agenda is the FY21 budget update. Yep, and I'll share the beginning. I'll turn to Mr. Slaughter for a little bit. This will actually be a brief update because what we have to share is incredibly not specific. And part of that is because there was supposed to be a live stream meeting at the state house to update on the state budget picture and they couldn't work out the technology so it got delayed a week. So we were really excited for this agenda item to be today because we'd have fresh information. And unfortunately, Dr. Slaughter waited on a conference call that never happened. So what I will say is that we were both on a conference call last week and the desi told us explicitly that they're fully expecting that no regional district will have a past budget on July 1st in the Commonwealth. They said they're happy to be pleasantly surprised but their guiding assumption is that no regional district will actually have a past budget. They also indicated and then followed up with me which was really helpful because a couple of us had some strong feelings about a one 12th budget. And one 12th budget is a month by month budget the state sets for district, regional districts if they don't pass a budget by July 1st. Actually now they can do it this year they're gonna be able to do that from municipal districts as well. It's a little different than in the past. Usually it was just regional. But I'll focus on region because that's our committee here tonight. And so they indicated that typically the one 12th budget defaults the statutory method but that's under normal circumstances and these aren't normal circumstances and that Desi would look at each situation uniquely. So as you may know from past years when we were in budget duress or budget questions the if we failed it there was the piece of well the state's gonna come in and they'll automatically go to the statutory method and I've emailed from an administrator at Desi indicating the opposite that you know this isn't normal situation and they'll work with local school committees and local districts to figure out what a one 12th budget would look like. And I think the only other update I have before Dr. Slaughter can jump in is that Amherst Town Keats Council's meeting every week. At this point the Schuetsbury has rescheduled their town meeting date to the very end of June June 27th, 6th, something like that. Pelham today reset theirs to June 6th I believe it was. Leverett has decided to not set a date. At the current time they're gonna wait and see what the situation is. I think you could all imagine in the current situation getting that many people together in one setting would not necessarily be the most wise or allowable thing. So when they said that they don't expect anyone my interpretation suit doctor Slaughter agrees with me when they said they expect no regional district to pass a budget part of it's that they don't expect regional towns to all be able to have town meetings this spring. And part of it's that there's so much uncertainty both in local budgets but particularly in the state budget that it'll be hard to form a budget that actually would have time enough to be debated and pass multiple communities before July 1st. But Dr. Slaughter may have more insights than beyond that. So I'll turn it to him. No, I don't really have a lot more to add. I think that's absolutely the critical thing is that the timeline becomes so short once we get to a place of being able to get into groups and towns have meetings like a leather helmet shoots very, you know, the just the mechanics of trying to go through the process is going to take some time. I think the other thing is we roll over into July 1st is that to set a 112th budget the state's going to have to have a budget as well. And so or at least we're going to have to have some sense of what local aid looks like in each of our communities. And that's going to very, very, very considerably between the different communities as we move ahead. So we're going to keep a close eye on that. You know, Amherst has a particularly different connection to local aid than the other three communities. And so that'll be a big factor for Amherst. And again, I think that just the nature of how this virus plays out and when we can actually come together and have these kinds of meetings and have significant conversations about the budget and then subsequently have the town meetings to vote on those budgets is just going to take a little bit of time. So I'm hopeful, and I'll say this here and I'm not sure this was superintendent but I'm hopeful that the state will give us some flexibility around E&D. Currently we have a limit of 5%, you know that we bump up against and it's not that we're not expecting to sort of spend money but I could see a situation in many regional schools where by virtue of how the district and the spending plays out at the end of the year and the tight time frames that you might, we might be working under at the end June, you could end up sitting on more money than you really want to and to have some flexibility to then subsequently spend it in the new fiscal year could be really helpful because I think there'll be expenses we just won't know until after July one. And so to have some flexibility there as far as closing one year and starting the next would be very helpful but I don't know if we'll get that or not. And meet myself, sorry. And Mr. Demi. Yeah, so Mrs. Slaughter, thank you for pointing that out. You know, when I think about what's going to happen with the state budget from an advocacy point of view, I fear that the decision dynamic is gonna be a lot like what happened with the $2 trillion stimulus at the federal level, which is you have this massive amount of change happening in a very short period of time and certain things are gonna get overlooked and there's really not gonna be a lot of time. So it's good to focus on these details because we're gonna try and get our reps attention during this because there's a few other things I think we should focus on but I think it will be good to look at those details. I did also wanna say before we left the budget item if anyone's watching this and you're wondering how you can help public schools in the future, we did all get this in the mail or you should have and do a little visual here. This is McDonald's, this is the MASC newsletter and it's probably not large enough font to read but their headline is 2020 census is critical to school funding and I won't read all the details but basically there's a enormous amount of federal funding that comes in that is based on census and so the very strong recommendation of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees is for school committees to do a lot of public awareness about how critical it is to report the census report everybody who's in our districts and to encourage your friends and family to do the same. So obviously COVID-19 is gonna dominate discussions for the rest of the year but I just wanted to give a pitch to the census to make sure it keeps bubbling up on our public relations radars that we continue to encourage people to fill that out. Great, thank you, Ms. Dancer. May I ask Peter Demeline a question? Yes. How do you get that newsletter? I've never seen one. So there must be some registration link I followed when I first came on the committee at MASC.org. I can send you a link offline if you remind me but yeah, MASC membership is really great. They send you updates through email as well and there's free seminars and whatnot so it's a good organization to be a part of. Thank you, I would appreciate the link. Any other questions or comments on budget? Ms. Spitzer? I would like to just echo Peter's emphasis on the census especially in our community where now all of the college students are actually gonna not hear on April 1st. So I'm actually quite concerned that Amherst is gonna have a major undercount issue because our higher ed schools have been closed. I guess the other thing I wanted to just, I mean my gut is that we're gonna be facing a really negative budget situation when we actually do get around to being able to make one and I guess are we already, I'm hoping you guys are already starting to make some plans or contingency plans about how we're gonna deal with a potential decline in income from tax base and potentially all of the other sources that we rely on and how can we be supportive in kind of being proactive about what I'm sure it's gonna be a difficult situation in the months and years to come? Yeah, so we're starting to do that. I think the hours and the day problem is a big one and I think the particular uncertainty in the regional district is subsequently different than in the elementary municipal districts. I'm not saying the situation, the budget situation would be easier or harder but the level of uncertainty at a regional district is that much greater. So we are looking broadly at just what vacancies would naturally emerge, those types of things but I think in the next couple of weeks both in the state and the local level we'll probably get a little more information and be able to be a little more clinical and how we approach a task. So at a broad level absolutely and I would say we're probably two weeks away from getting enough information to have more informed conversations moving forward. And Dr. Slaughter wants to jump in. So one other thing that came up in one of the many video conference calls I've been on that was something that hadn't as yet crossed my mind until recently, you certainly heard a strong message about the number of people applying for unemployment benefits. That will subsequently have a cascading effect on the number of people that qualify for free and reduced lunch. And so our supports that we're gonna need to have in place around our free and reduced lunch programs but also the other things that tie into that. In other words, that's an indicator of need from a food standpoint but obviously there's a lot of need that people have in that regard. And the number of people that are potentially displaced from their jobs and may not be back in their jobs for a considerable amount of time will be a significant factor. And I think that'll be another piece that we're trying to sort of keep in mind as we start the plan for next year as well as understanding the circumstances that we've already discussed. Very briefly, just to support that point, we're seeing it even in as we've surveyed folks to see who doesn't have internet access. The number of people who have said, I've lost it in the last two weeks because I lost my job or I'm furloughed or I have it, but please keep me on the list because I don't anticipate being able to pay my bill this month. It's really shocking. And you look at the unemployment data, you can't help but see the paper but when you see it on an individual level, it's really heartbreaking. There's a lot of heartbreaking things but just seeing it on an Excel sheet of who says they need internet access and we don't ask why but families are volunteering that information to the person who's receiving these calls. It, you know, I'll just say it, I don't want to belabor it, but it's just, it's incredibly sad and I think it indicates the level of need that's going to grow in our community as well as everywhere else. Not seeing any more questions from the committee. No. Okay. So thank you. Next is planning for future meetings and this was a topic that was added or suggested by Mr. Demling. We typically at the end of our meetings, we have the agenda topics for future meetings and we have a regular schedule of meetings but in this environment, we've moved to essential business only and sort of as needed. But I do think and Mr. Demling, I'll turn it over to you to sort of introduce sort of your thinking behind this but just to have the conversation about what would, what type of discussion, vote potential, vote business that we would have that would warrant us coming together for another remote or virtual meeting in the future. So Mr. Demling, did you want to add to that? Sure. So yeah, so I guess I'm thinking about it in terms of those two general areas you described the what constitutes essential business, things that we either we are legally required to get to before the end of the school year or gosh done, even in a virtual state of emergency we've really ought to get to. And then other things that we were that were in various stages of process before this all hit that are obviously still important because we were paying attention for a reason but could to some degrees depending on what it is be deferred. And I guess I just wanted to get an understanding from the superintendent and maybe from the chair a little bit about what goes into column A and what goes into column B because I mean, so just speaking from my own point of view, I'm very mindful in this time that as a school committee, I think that we need to be very conscious to calibrate our workload so that we're not creating too much of a demand on our leadership on our superintendent and on our other school administrators and who do a lot of work to prepare for these meetings. And so like one example for is the superintendent evaluation process. You know, last couple of years we've gotten this very comprehensive very detailed artifacts document that doesn't come together in five minutes, right? And that's just one detail of the superintendent evaluation process that we probably need to talk about what are we gonna do differently this year? So, and then there's some other topics that aren't front of burner critical in an emergency situation but they were chugging along right until we stopped. And so I don't think it would be appropriate to have 15, 45 minute items that we require updates and grill the superintendent on Q and A for but it would be good for some of those lesser priority things just to know where they're at, right? Like for example, like the sixth grade grade span advisory board I don't think it's appropriate to bump that up to the top of the priority list in the middle of an emergency situation. But even a couple of minute update at one superintendent's update at one meeting to cover that and the other things that fall into that priority level I think it would just be helpful just for general communication but again, I am very mindful I'll just I'll wrap this sandwich comment in the same thing I said at the top which is I'm very mindful not to want to add extra work for the superintendent I think the superintendent and school administration is doing an excellent job communicating and navigating this crisis and the best way they can and I want to make sure that the school committee is helping and not hindering the that priority management. Dr. Morris. Maybe I'll suggest that if and I haven't talked to the acting chair about right, this is happening live but if there are topics that aren't about COVID-19 or budget, because those are gonna be two things that we spent a lot of time on over the next two months that people want to get updates on if they could maybe share them with the chair and me individually, not sending them all and then working with the chair we can try to map out what that might look like. Does that sound, you know I just want to make sure every school member has access to be able to suggest topics but then I could work with the chair on what we can do, what we can't do and then we can come back at our next meeting and share the list had 12 items. We prioritize these three, does that sound about right and have that conversation after we've heard from everyone on the committee? Does that sound as a process piece does that sound agreeable to folks? Seeing thumbs up and head nods. I agree, I think that would be a good approach. I do want to, so I think, and then from there we can define what is the next sort of meeting cadence and when our next meeting could be. I think just to say out loud, I don't know about the rest of the committee so it's part statement, part question but my calendar, personal calendar still has all of our meetings on them I haven't deleted them. So my sort of preference would be if we are going to be scheduling, when we do schedule a next meeting I would like to look at when we had originally had regional meetings on our calendars. So maybe with a head nod if folks think that that works for them or if given this new environment that we're in that we need to look at other alternative times than what we had originally put on our calendars. Stick to sort of the previous schedule. Okay, great. Thank you. So unless there's further discussion on that, I think none and we'll move on to a warrant report. I need to get up and just grab some papers but I'll be right back. Apologies for the delay. So Doug kindly came over to my house and I was able to sign some warrants. I'll report on them now. Does the date that I signed them on matter or can I just read the, here we go. Sorry, I'm still getting used to this. I'm shaking his head so no, no. Okay, so I carry Spitzer authorized by my signature to payables. My child's trying to come in at this very moment. I carry Spitzer authorized my signature to payables in the amount of $299,888.38 for a warrant dated March 20th, 2020 which included general fund expenses of $293,204.52 Revolving fund expenses of $2,390.11 and grant fund expenses of $4,293.75. In addition, I authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of $788,714.97 for the warrant dated March 18th, 2020 for pay roll, one more. I carry Spitzer also authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of $797,820.24 for a warrant dated March 19th, 2020 for general fund expenses and that is it. And I think just a comment on the warrants we did receive information that we're looking at ways to be able to sign remotely, which is great in this current situation. So it'll be, but thank you, Doug for faring those around. Okay, our final item is accepting. We have some gifts. Anybody feel like reading? Ms. Spitzer. Sure. Okay. I move to accept gifts from Shirley, the following gifts. From Shirley, apologies from pronunciation, Musimachi, number 238, to support the Leo P. Vignole scholarship in the amount of $500 and from the ARPS Friends of Performing Arts Incorporated, number 312, performing arts trip to support a performing arts trip student activity account in the amount of $2,384.03 for a total of $2,884.03. Second. Move by Spitzer, seconded by Demling. Any questions, comments? Okay, so roll call vote, beginning with Mr. Demling. Demling, aye. Mr. Harrington. Harrington, aye. Mr. Manino. Manino, aye. Ms. Spitzer. Ms. Spitzer, aye. Ms. Stanser. Stanser, aye. And McDonald's, aye. It carries six to zero. And before we go to our final, before we adjourn, I do want to, I neglected at the beginning to express huge thank you to Amherst Media for continuing to be in operation and help us in live streaming this on channel 15. So thank you so much for partnering with us in making this meeting accessible to the community. And I also made the mistake of introducing Ms. Grukko as a representative of the district. She's actually our student representative. So thank you, Emily, for joining us this evening. Do we have a motion? I move that we adjourn. I second it. Moved by Manino and seconded by Spitzer and there is no discussion. So roll call vote. Mr. Demling. Demling, aye. Mr. Harrington. Harrington, aye. Mr. Manino. Manino, aye. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer, aye. Ms. Stanser. Stanser, aye. And McDonald's, aye. That we are adjourned.