 Good evening, I'm Bill Hanich here of the Allington School Committee, this open meeting of the Allington School Committee is being conducted remotely consistent with Governor Baker's executive order of March 12, 2020, due to the current state of emergency and the Commonwealth due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus. In order to mitigate the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, we have been advised and directed by the Commonwealth to suspend public gatherings, and as such the governor so order suspends the requirement of the open meeting law to have all meetings at a publicly accessible physical location. Further, all members of the public bodies are allowed and encouraged to participate remotely. The fine posted with the gender materials for this meeting allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely, so long as reasonable public access is afforded, so that the public can follow along with the deliberations of the meeting. Ensuring public access does not ensure public participation, participation, unless such participation is required by law. This meeting will feature public comment. The Allington School Committee is convening via Zoom, as posted on the town's website identifying how the public may join. Please note that this meeting is being recorded, and that some attendees are participating by video conference. Accordingly, please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and that take care not to screen share your computer. Anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording. Other materials for this meeting, except any executive session materials are available on the Novus Agenda dashboard are on the town's website, and we recommend the members of the public follow the agenda as posted on Novus, unless the chair so notes otherwise. I will introduce each speaker on the agenda after they conclude the remarks. I will go around and ask members if they wish to comment or have any questions. Please remember to mute your phone or computer when you are not speaking. Please remember to speak clearly and in a way that helps generate accurate minutes. I'm now going to confirm the members present. Mr. Schlickman. Good evening. Ms. Eckston. Here. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes, here. Mr. Cardin. Yes, I'm here. Thank you. Dr. Holman. Present. Dr. McNeil. Here. Mr. Mason. Here. Mr. Almar. Here. And Ms. Keys. Here. Thank you. I'm now going to the public comments section. Members of the public are asked to send written comments to the school committee secretary by 12 noon on the Thursday date of meeting. All comments and questions received by the school committee by that date and time indicated will become part of the packet and public record and will be shared with the full school committee and administration before the meeting. The email. No written comments will be read at the meeting. For members of the public who wish to address the committee on the zoom call, there will be 30 minutes of public comment set aside, depending on how many people sign up. The time allowments may be reduced, but will not exceed three minutes each. The number of people assigned up exceeds that can be reasonably done in 30 minutes. The number of speakers will be capped. We'll be invited to speak based on timestamp of their emails to Ms. Diggins. The school committee respectfully request participants of the public to utilize the camera, if possible, before speaking and to hear the public comment policy, the EDH that requires participants to give us their name and address. Now we have one speaker tonight. It's Mr. Cochran. So, Mr. Cochran, you have the floor. Thank you. And good evening. My name is Brian Cochran. I live on Everett Street. My son is a second grader and my daughter a kindergartner at Hardy. Dr. Holman welcome and thank you for the clear comprehensive and timely communication from your office. It is appreciated and valued. Thank you members. This is the second time in six months that the state has removed the burden from your shoulders, but I'll still say a few words about masks. Mostly because unlike last spring, the state will probably return this hot potato to you as an option rather than a directive. All else being equal. No mask is better than wearing a mask, and we should only do so in exchange for some benefit. We don't even need to consider the two related and more controversial variables in the mask equation. The underlying risk of COVID itself and the costs that come with wearing a mask. On the cost of masks, I believe it's being framed incorrectly as a logistical problem measured in degrees of inconvenience. I think this framing is the adult experience of masking being projected on to our children. There are 22 socials and 20 emotionals in the back to school plan. None of them refer to the downside of kids wearing masks all day. I think we are doing is doing significant damage to all of our students, even the least vulnerable, their posture toward risk, fear and other human being human beings is being impacted. The impact will last for years, if not forever. As I said, we don't even need to consider those issues. Mass only if there's a benefit. And clearly with all the mass discussions going on around our country, there must be lots of studies telling us exactly how effective they are. A prominent recent study came out of Duke, perhaps you saw in the New York Times earlier this month. It was presented in North Carolina as explanation and evidence for this year's mask mandate, which is curious because it doesn't tell us anything about mask effectiveness. It couldn't. It compared no unmasked student data because there was none. Per masks, this study distills to the same assertion masquerading as both hypothesis and conclusion. We believe that masks would work. And now we know that they do work because we required them. Our CDC study of Georgia schools actually had the mask versus unmasked data, but it couldn't demonstrate a link between wearing the mask and lower viral transmission. So we don't hear much about that study. We're 18 months into this and the best that we get to justify masks is something that says nothing at all about masks. They didn't even try to fake it. They just left it out. But there is another nugget from the Duke study and it's the real reason why I'm speaking tonight. That study demonstrated, as the CDC Georgia study did to that six feet versus three feet distancing was pointless last year. So as we embark on this new school year with a new plan for resilience and reconnection, surely we're going to see the humility that would come from getting last year wrong at such a great cost. We need to sit with that last statement for a while. What we did to our children last year, and ourselves was in exchange for no measurable benefit. And I don't see any humility in the back to school plan. Quite the opposite it's a confident document. I didn't observe any humility at the committee meeting on the 12th. We need a lot more humility if we're going to keep making decisions that impact our children, simply because we adults believe things. Thank you for your time. At this time, I would ask Dr. Holman to talk about the only thing the pandemic recovery plan. Absolutely, I'm going to share my screen to give me a moment. Can everybody see my screen. Yes, yes, fantastic. So, good evening members of the committee and members of the community who are joining us from home I'm going to share some updates to revisions that we've made to the pandemic recovery plan. Since the last time that I presented it to the committee on August 12. Tonight includes updates to our communications really that's just an FYI after we did our first our first forum the other night. Some updates to our vaccination procedures and expectations and update to our routine pool testing plans for the coming school year to distancing and cohorting. And then a lot more comprehensive information about the test and state program quarantining and isolation because we received those guidelines from DPH and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education since our last meeting. And then I also want to share how we intend to respond to and report COVID-19 cases. So I'm not going to go through the entire plan the final plan was in your materials for tonight's meeting. I'm really only reporting on things that might have shifted or providing a little extra context where the context was requested by committee members and also by members of the recovery planning team. So, first on communications we held a district forum this past week and we have another one coming up tomorrow. Actually, that should say the 25th not the 24th. We're going to have school based forums beginning tomorrow and moving through September 2. In the evenings, all of the languages will be available at the same link that's been shared with families and is available on our website. Families are able to comment and ask questions via the chat our technology worked pretty seamlessly when we had our forum last week on the 19th. All of the district forums are 90 minutes long and school forums are 60 minutes long. And I didn't include it here but I'm also having a staff forum tomorrow at five o'clock p.m. for any staff members who want to join it's entirely optional we've been clear about that with staff. But we wanted to give staff an opportunity also to ask any questions they might have about the plan. We in our first family forum had lots of families join us we had 69 join on the English stream 18 on the Mandarin stream 12 on the American Sign Language 16 on Spanish and 13 families on the Portuguese stream. Our Japanese interpreter had a last minute conflict but we do plan to have Japanese on the stream that we will do tomorrow, and we will have recordings of these posted along with the other recordings available on our website. We have ongoing tours happening right now for our new and students who were remote last year. That's going on at all of our schools has been communicated out by administrators at the schools and are being led by the administrators at those schools. We are still planning for some opportunities for students to connect with teachers virtually or in person at the start of the year on September 1 and 2. Those opportunities are designed to allow teachers to make initial connections with students to say hello, I'm going to be your teacher. Here are some things you can expect on the first day I can't wait to see you. It's a very informal opportunity but it's something we're trying that's new this year that we hope will allow us to establish some connection with students before the start of the school year. As it relates to vaccinations we will be requiring the vaccination of staff in the schools we're currently developing those parameters, and we're working out the details of this requirement in full collaboration with the AA and the AA with potentially other bargaining schools that follow the the Arlington Public Schools and the Department of Health and Human Services will be offering a vaccine clinic the Thompson Elementary School on Thursday, September 9 from 3pm to 7pm, both to support the vaccination of any students who are eligible and would like to get the vaccine as well as to support any staff members who want to take advantage of that opportunity and are not yet vaccinated. We will continue to continue those vaccine clinics throughout the year and will be very eager to open some up when vaccines become available to children under the age of 12. As it relates to pooled testing we are still acquiring consent for participation in pool testing for the new school year. We did learn late last week that DESI has contracted with a new vendor CIC for the pool testing initiatives that are going to be funded by the state. So they're no longer going to allow us to work with the vendor we had previously which was ginkgo concentric. This information means, first of all that we're doing a lot of logistical work right now to make sure that we are up and running as quickly as possible to start the school year. I will not definitively say that we will be able to run a round of pool testing in the first week which is really only two days of school. We're working as hard as we can to get pool testing up and running quickly, but we do need to pivot training. Some of the logistics are different with this new company we need to make decisions about what kind of pool testing options we want to take through the program that's through the state. I'm happy to have Ms. Sheridan Curran who is overseeing some of those efforts right now come and speak with you about how pool testing is rolling out when we get a little bit closer to the start of the school year. But for right now we're just working on getting all of the paperwork in and pivoting as quickly as possible. This does include a pivot of the returning student update form, which we are thrilled to say 70% of our families have filled out at this point. We've updated it with the new form, so we had about 3,000 in when the form switched, we updated it to the new form as quickly as we possibly could, and a lot of families have filled out the now updated form. We're working on how we're going to flip the consents that had already come in onto the new form and what we can logistically do to make that as seamless of a process as possible. So our goal is to make sure that they understand what the differences are between what they signed and the new program. It's pretty minimal. The new program is very similar to the one that we were on and making sure that they can basically say, yes, I'm still consenting or to let us know if they want to change their answer. So there at the bottom of the screen are the data related to how many have submitted. We're thrilled that we have so many people who have submitted up to this point and the deadline is September 1. So if we have families who haven't submitted, we hope that they will do so quickly and we have been reaching out and re notifying families who haven't submitted yet. We have some cohorting measures that will be in place pre K to six. We are working on ensuring that students will be three feet or more apart while seated at their desks. For the most part we are going to be able to ensure this in instances where we're not it's because students are sitting in table groups, and so they may be within three feet of the person sitting immediately next to them, but wouldn't be closer than three feet to anyone else, even at their table group. Students will have a science seating and will be collaborating in their table groups for much of the day so when I said pods last week. That's sort of what we meant is table groups, and Miss keys is here and can speak to the fact that this is pretty common practice in our schools before and and during the pandemic. It's not something that's really all that new miss keys I don't know if you want to jump in here and talk about some of the conversations you had with teachers about this. Yeah, most of our elementary schools have had kids sitting in little groups where you know push two or three deaths together or maybe up to like six together for years like that's just considered best practice. The only real change that's coming this year is the kids will be eating lunch with those same group, but otherwise it's just everyone's just kind of excited to get like back to normal back to collaboration back to sharing. Thank you. And Miss keys just mentioned one of the bigger changes is that when they eat lunch they will be seated with those same students, and that's to facilitate contact tracing. That's to make sure that when we ask who are the close contacts of this individual student, we are identifying as few people as possible who are within the immediate vicinity of that student. And so if they eat lunch with their table mates, then that means that we are identifying fewer students as close contacts. That is only the case for lunches in the instances where they need to eat inside. So when they eat outside, they can sit with other classmates, because they are outdoors we can distance more when they are outside. So that rule only applies when we need to eat indoor lunches. When we do eat indoor lunches we will have classes or learning communities at the Gibbs separated by a minimum of six feet during those indoor lunches outdoor lunches are going to be as an option as often as possible we've gotten a lot of questions from families about how often we will have lunch outside and we've spoken with the principles about this at length. We're working together to make sure that we have as consistent of an approach as we can, but there are a lot of factors when it comes to determining whether to go outdoors. Some of which are linked to is it precipitating and sometimes I've learned in Arlington it can be raining in one part of Arlington and not in another part of Arlington. And also temperature. There are lots of layers to the conversation when it comes to whether or not to have outdoor lunch but our principles are committed to being consistent about this. They have heard feedback from the community they know people want us to be outside as often as possible, and we agree so we're going to try to be as consistent as we can about when we go outside, and ensure that we use outdoor spaces as much as we possibly can. We are planning to rent one large tent each at the Gibbs and at Arlington High School, we are not getting tense for every single school and there are a lot of reasons for this. I spoke with the principles about this and they all felt unanimously that tents are not the thing that keeps us inside, or allows us to go outside, because you can only fit so many students under a tent anyway. And when it's precipitating, especially if there's any level of wind, or if the ground gets wet doesn't really matter if there's a tent there or not it still precludes us from going outside. So the principles really felt that last year the determination about whether or not to go outside was not dependent on the existence of a tent. It had a lot more to do with whether or not it was raining, whether or not the ground was okay to sit on. We did go ahead with tents at Gibbs and AHS because of the volume of students that would need to be in a smaller space. If they all were to go into the cafeteria, of course we have open campus at AHS to facilitate some of that. But at the Gibbs the cafeteria is only so big, having that extra spillover space with a very large tent is more helpful there than the elementary principles felt like it would be. So we are planning on a large tent at Gibbs and AHS but not at the elementary schools. We will allow students to play unmasked with students from other classes during recess and outdoor instruction will be prioritized where removal of masks is beneficial as we reported last time we met. The illness protocol is slightly updated from the state. The state has updated what the list of symptoms are the symptoms at the top in bold are considered standalone symptoms, which means that if a student has any one of those symptoms they should not report to school. They should be tested for COVID-19 and all of the symptoms below that are not considered a standalone symptom. It's notable that coughing is not considered a standalone symptom, but we don't want that parents to take that to mean that if a student has a sudden cough, and there's no other known cause to that cough such as known seasonal allergies. But when in doubt, you should keep your child home, stay home, be tested, and then come back into school, if the test is negative so I just wanted to highlight we got some questions about this on one of the parent forums that yes cough is considered a standalone symptom when it's not due to another known cause like chronic cough, but please take precautions and if you're at all concerned, get your child tested. We did add some travel recommendations to the plan. But strong recommendations that families take some actions if you're traveling out of the state or out of the country mitigation measures listed here are simply suggestions they're not supposed to mean that a student cannot return to school following travel. These recommendations are that families vaccinate all eligible members of their household prior to travel that they wear masks during and after travel. Test for COVID-19 before returning to school and then again on day five, actively monitor for symptoms following travel and use mitigations in public areas while traveling, especially when crowded public areas like masking, regardless of vaccination status. We're not going to recommend or require quarantine for students following travel unless it's required by a state or national travel order. And I know that that's in some contradiction to some of the CDC guidelines that recommend quarantine for unvaccinated individuals but we believe that it's very important that students be back in school and so we won't recommend quarantine for students who return from travel. I have some updates relative to the state's new test and stay program. We've gotten some more details about this test and stay program so I want to describe it a little bit to the committee in the community. Close contacts under the test and stay of somebody who is COVID-19 positive may remain in school and they do not need to quarantine as long as they fall under some certain provisions so as long as they are asymptomatic. As long as they wear masks in school at all times, when they are eating or drinking they need to be distanced three feet or more from others. They need to take a rapid antigen test at the start of each school day and receive a negative result. Anybody who is participating in test and stay needs to consider themselves a close contact and quarantine when they are not in school. So when they are at home on the weekends when they're not in school based activities and that does include after schools they can still attend after school. And they remain asymptomatic then when they return to school they need to be tested immediately and they need to take all the precautions of a quarantined individual when they are not in school based activities. If the individual remains negative they can stay in school they need to conduct active monitoring and self isolate notify school officials if symptoms develop at any time during the test and stay program. When it comes to quarantine students may families may choose to quarantine a student if they don't want to do test and stay or if they're identified as close contacts from an exposure outside of the school day. If that happens and when I we say outside of school we also mean any school based activities so you can participate in test and stay if you are exposed at any school based activity including extracurriculars or after school. If you are quarantined then you may return on day eight providing that the student remains asymptomatic receives a COVID test on day five or later and produces a negative result and conducts active monitoring for symptoms through day 14. We will provide asynchronous work for students who quarantine and we urge families to take as many precautions as they can and participate in test and stay so that we don't have students missing school. It is important to note that participation in test and stay is going to require consent for COVID-19 routine pool testing. Students who have not filled out the RSU or the consent form won't be allowed to participate in test and stay because we won't have the consent to do the routine testing with them. So we really need everybody to fill that form out so that we have full participation in that program. A few more updates relative to quarantine and isolation. We got a lot more detail on this and we've been sort of working on making this as clear as possible. There is a lengthy document that DESC put out that I would encourage the committee and the community to review if you have additional questions. But if an individual test positive this is the same as last year. They may return to school after 10 days and when they have not had a fever for 24 hours without medication and when they have experienced improvement in other symptoms. If they are symptomatic, if an individual is symptomatic and has not been a close contact, they can return to school once they've received a negative PCR test result for COVID-19. A medical professional has made an alternative diagnosis. They have had an improvement. The alternative diagnosis is only if you don't have a PCR test. And they have an improvement of symptoms and they've been without fever without the use of fever reducing medication for 24 hours. If the symptomatic individual chooses not to be tested then they must remain out of school for the full 10 days returning on day 11. And for a symptomatic individual who is a close contact they may return to school after a resolution of symptoms and a negative PCR COVID-19 test. And in that scenario the student would need to participate in tests and stay once they return to school. Otherwise they would need to be subject to those other quarantine protocols if they're not participating in tests and stay. And finally, this is the last slide, last bit of updates. When we identify a positive case I want to be really clear about what our procedure is going to be and the procedure I would recommend that we move forward with. The first thing we do whenever we hear about a positive case in the school is we identify the close contacts. That's defined as individuals who have been within six feet of a COVID-19 positive individual while indoors for at least 15 minutes during a 24 hour period. But a notable exception, so this is the blanket rule, a notable exception is in a classroom setting where individuals are fully masked, which applies to APS. Close contacts are any individuals who have been within three feet of that individual for 15 minutes or more during a 24 hour period. So that's who we would identify as close contacts anyone within three feet for 15 minutes or more of the student. We will be working in collaboration with the teachers, the nurses, the Department of Health and Human Services to identify and notify close contacts. This is a process that takes some time. It can be challenging to do in a classroom where students move around a lot during the day, we will over test and stay when we need to. If we want to over identify close contacts just to make sure we don't have cases in our classrooms, then we will of course act with precaution people who want to just make sure and participate in this. If they're concerned or if we're concerned or not quite sure about whether or not someone's a close contact will go ahead and identify them as a close contact out of precaution, as opposed to under identifying people and not including them in some routine testing just to make sure we don't have a case spread in the class. We will inform close contacts only if your child is identified as a close contact. If a parent's child is identified that family will be notified by a school or health department official with thorough instructions, and we will update the district's COVID-19 dashboard which I'm currently working on. We'll conduct test and stay with students who are close contacts and after each case we will be following up and monitoring the pool testing data and procedures at each school to make sure we don't see any evidence of school based spread. We are working on an FAQ document right now to help answer some of the questions that have been coming in and that will be published with the final recovery plan on the website and updated frequently as a live document. And with that I will take any questions that the committee has. Morgan. Thank you, Mr. Heiner. Thank you, Dr. Homan. This was great. I really appreciate your good nature around the pivot on the testing plan. I think you were very gracious tonight in describing what this means for your team to change suppliers. I hope that you can express to them our gratitude for doing this with the level of urgency. I have no doubt that they are doing it is a big, big task. And it's such an important piece of our safety plan for our students and for our staff. So, please express to them our gratitude. I have a small inkling of how big of a job this is. And it's significant. So thank you so much for that. I had three things. One was a comment. I'm glad to hear that we're talking about lunch equivalency across different schools. I'm a little disappointed that we're back to micro climates. I thought that was something that we were going to move away from but that has been used for many years as a rationale for why recess is handled differently in different parts of town. But, you know, there's no, there's no micro climate that explains why second graders at one school have never eaten lunch outside and second graders at a different school are eating lunch outside in January. This was definitely a really unequal situation throughout much of last year, especially in the spring when we had 75% of our students back and I'm glad that it's something that the elementary principals are really going to work on because it's something that I think is really critical. And we certainly need to make sure that that we're doing it as as evenly as possible. And again, there are certainly nuances at different schools, but there's just a sort of limit to what what we can accept at some point. So, I'm glad to hear that that's a discussion. I had two questions. One was around vaccinated students and staff and exposure. So there's lots of talk about test and stay. But I'm not sure how that's going to apply to students who are vaccinated and I'll ask my second question, and then you can answer both of them and then I'll be done. One, and I suspect it's just the answers we haven't gotten there yet. A vaccination requirement for volunteers and other adults who are in the building. We want to make sure that we're keeping our staff and our, our students from being, you know, exposed to COVID, obviously. And so I'm wondering what I know that, you know, we're hoping to have, you know, adults in the building it more than we did last year. I'm wondering what the plans are for making sure that those people are vaccinated so that we can let our, you know, that our staff knows that and our families will back. So those are my two questions. Thank you. So the, hold on, the first question. The first question was about, no, no, it's fine was about plans. So, so exposure for vaccinated. Students like so grades seven and up, right? Luckily, I mean, the vast majority of those kids are fully vaccinated. Yep. Yep. So we are recommending that we do test and stay with all any anyone who has identified as close contact within the context of the school day. The desi recommendation is not for that. The desi recommendation is that vaccinated individuals do not need to be surveillance tested. Given what we know about Delta and given the fact that we have the supplies to be able to do this routine testing and the test and stay program. I see no reason why we would not routine and surveillance test, all of our close contacts that are identified within the school day. So to start the year, our plan is to do test and stay with anyone who has identified as close contact regardless of vaccination status except test and stay would look different for a vaccinated individual in that if my vaccinated child was exposed to COVID at school and was doing test and stay in grade seven, he would be able to attend soccer practice because he is presently fully vaccinated. Or if I was a seventh grade teacher who was exposed, I would participate in test and stay at work but I would still go to stop and shop, or wherever, wherever people go to buy their groceries, I could still go there in the evening. However, if I was a unvaccinated third grader who was exposed, I would attend school through test and stay, but I would not participate in activities that are not school. Correct, correct. So you would not be subject basically you are sub if you are an unvaccinated individual you are subject to quarantine guidelines that apply to you, because you are an unvaccinated individual who is a close contact, except that you may come to school driven activities under test and stay. And if you are a vaccinated individual you are not subject to all those quarantine guidelines. However, the school system would like you to participate in test and stay as a vaccinated individual so that we can maintain surveillance of virus presence in schools. That sounds super clear and then my other question was around vaccination for other people come into buildings and are in contact with our, you know, people who who work for us and our students. Yep, we are pursuing a vaccination requirement for visitors, particularly visitors who are volunteers in classrooms and are going to be student facing a visitor who comes to pick their child up. I don't see us doing a lengthy vaccination proof process. We are still working on what a protocol for this will look like for those who are going into our classrooms volunteers who are going into our classrooms. I do think it's important to note that we have made full vaccination a condition of be becoming employed so it's a condition of hiring. So anyone who's coming into our schools as a new hire is required to be vaccinated. Anyone who is going to be a student facing volunteer will be required to be vaccinated. I've also spoken with John Bowler about what this could look like for visitors to things like events. Right now we're going to require full masking in collaboration with the Middlesex League at all indoor events that are sports events. So we're moving forward with that and are not looking right now at a vaccination process check process for entering one of those events. But we can look into that if we find that that's necessary. However, anyone who's going into any of our classrooms will be required to be to show proof of full vaccination. Thank you. Any other members. Mr. Cardin and then Dr. Ampe. Thank you and thank you Dr. Ohman for the updates to the plan was very responsive to a lot of the parent questions and our questions from last meeting so that's a good progress there. Just one quick question and then I'm more of a comment. The definition of close contacts within the classroom. Did that come from desi or is that our own structure that comes straight from the desi guidance. They identify basically what a close contact is, and this is in line with with national and state guidelines from departments of health and CDC, and then exemptions to that and one of the exemptions is individuals in classroom settings, which is what pairs that down to within three feet. Great. And then the other more of a comment was about the tent of the elementary school I was a little surprised to hear that we were I wasn't aware that they weren't being utilized last year. I hope it's not a cost concern that's driving it. I mean, certainly we have, you know, a lot of fun flowing in so if they weren't being used, and that's what the principles feel they don't need them, then, then fine but I particularly I thought for, you know, like speech classes each language therapy and other things where it's beneficial to be unmasked. I know that those that those shaded spaces were being used for that but if they weren't, and they're not necessary then fine but I guess I'm a little curious as to why we abandoned the tense. Well, to be honest, cost is a factor for what we get, given what we would expend on three months of tents at the schools. The principles did not feel that those resources were as worth that as spending resources on learning materials on additional staffing support if we needed that on getting monitors in so that we can offer breakfast at every school for example. I want to speak to the relative cost of renting the tents because we did look into this for a three month period. Yeah, I mean, we, the total cost for a tent, typically for the year it's about one after the year but for per month it's a little bit over $1200 to rent one tent per month. So some locations did have one or two tents. And over the course of last year we spent over $100,000 for the tents that we have installed. We were able to spend a lot of relief funds on this but the relief funds that are coming out of S or two and S or three are really supposed to be targeted at learning recovery attempt like efforts and strategic planning efforts, and not necessarily at operational costs which isn't to say we can't spend some of those funds on operational costs. However, when we reviewed it with the leadership team, they didn't feel that the cost benefit on tents was worth it given the way that they were used last year I think they were used to the factor that determined whether or not a group went outside. Okay, thank you. Dr amp. Thank you. Thank you Dr homin for your update and for the changes. I just wanted to ask questions about the travel section again. My understanding. I appreciate that you clarified for parents what they should do if they come back from traveling out of state. I am confused because first I can't find a good synopsis on desi's website so I'm not totally sure what desi is implying at this point. But the recommendations. That were given are different than what the CDC is recommending. And for unvaccinated students, and I'm just wondering about that. This was a very lengthy discussion for the health protocols team on the recovery planning team. This is actually pretty much the thing we talked about when we met last week. And they helped craft these guidelines and Christine was there and helped us also craft these guidelines and I think the biggest thing we're, we're weighing is the fact that safety is a spectrum and to keep a student home after travel. In a situation where being home unsupervised could be more unsafe than being at school. It just doesn't, there was not support on that committee and there's no nothing that comes from desi that suggests that we should keep a student home after travel and follow that CDC recommendation and that CDC recommendation also is speaking largely to unvaccinated individuals, not specifically to school age children and I don't know if, given that level of nuance. I don't know if their recommendation or not considering the American Academy of Pediatrics said that students shouldn't be quarantined. You know, if at all possible so that that was a lot of the conversation that we had in the team last week too. Okay, I guess. I don't mean that but I'm also wondering, why not throw these students into the test and stay protocol, you know I understand they should be getting the PCR test but could they also just be getting the daily tests in lieu of quarantine. We need to do that. Families would need to tell us, though, which is hard because we don't always know, right. Miss keys has her hand up to. We need more nursing staff if you want to do that. Think about how many families are going to be traveling the week before Thanksgiving. Our nurses can't be testing all of those kids every single day. I'd love that if we could provide that service it would be really great. I don't think we have the staff for that right now. That's a good point. So I guess I'm still. I understand what you're saying. I think it's. Yeah, it's a little confusing in terms of who's recommending what where how, and then providing access to it, but. Okay, thank you. Any other members were to comment or ask us to select one. Thank you Mr chairman. Thank you superintendent for a very detailed report that we received and in a nice update which really focuses our attention to the changes in the documents and I have, which is one that I don't expect an answer to because it can't be answered today is we are members of the middle sex league and I read the middle sex leagues advisory regarding participation. I believe that all student athletes who are participating middle sex league events are 12 years of age and over, and it's not part of our regular curriculum. The appreciative of the next time you communicate with the other middle sex superintendents that you request the middle sex league to draw up a policy requiring proof of vaccination to participate particularly once sports moves indoors. We can't enforce of our own if we're playing an indoor sport, and we require our students to be vaccinated. And the opposing team is not the vaccine mandate would be worthless. So, please go back to the middle sex league and ensure that all the students who are participating in extracurricular athletics. Are fully vaccinated now that the visor vaccine is is now approved for general use thank you. I will take that back to them. Thank you, Miss accident. Thank you, I have a few unrelated things based on some things people have said and some of my own thoughts. So, I want to echo everything that Ms Morgan said about the lunches outside. It was really inconsistent. Last year, different schools, going outside in all kinds of weather through January others never, ever, ever, ever feeding outside. So I hope that we can have more consistency with that this year. I want to support your administration decision about the tense. I just want to make a comment that you experienced tense last year myself, the wind pushes the rain into them so that you can really only use half of them. If we're spacing out a little bit underneath them not an entire class doesn't even fit under a tent so I actually think that that was a good decision and I, and I support that. I just want to make a comment that more for the public that's watching that the nurses and the Department of Health have been so helpful and clear about what to do when your student is can is a close contact so I just want to reassure families that you will be told what to do and when your student can come back and how the test and stay is going to work by the nurses they've done a phenomenal job and I know that that will continue with regard to the travel. I was a part of that conversation. And, you know, one of the things that you wrote in there was, you know, our goal is for students to be in school and I think another thing that that we talked a lot about is the travel guidelines by the Massachusetts during the state of emergency was that students children 10 and under were not required to be the APS required them to be tested but the state didn't require them to be tested and they, the parent could be tested and then the child was considered negative. And then if your parents were vaccine there was a short period where if the parents were vaccinated, the student under 10 didn't need to be tested now I realize things are different with Delta. But I think that's another sort of part of the conversation was that kids under 10 fell in a gray area by state guidelines all along. I also wanted to support Miss keys comment that the test and stay for travel would just take so much staffing and resources and I think we just really need to encourage families who choose to travel to be really vigilant about their testing and about testing, when they get back to be to be thinking about that. And then finally my last comment goes along with Mr slickman I was also going to ask if we can pursue vaccinations for extracurricular activities for students who are eligible for the vaccine. So I think those, those are all my comments. Thank you. Mr Thelman. Thank you, Mr hater. I want to echo most of what was said earlier and that I think the doctor home and the team did a great job and report I think you came to the right conclusion on the travel policy so I think you came to the right with realistic, given our resources. My, my question I have one question about process and I don't know if this is the right time to ask a question about the PDF document you sent with the recovery plan is this bill is this is this okay to do that okay. So, my understanding the process is tonight we are endorsing this plan or we're adopting this plan is that what the school committee is doing is that our motion tonight. And then our and then we'll get we'll get periodic updates from you doctor home and on the progress of the plan. And if there's a modification to it my sense from the last meeting was the majority of the committee want to want to vote on any modifications to it. Or what would I'm just kind of want some clarity on the process after we vote tonight. Maybe it's a committee discussion I'm not sure I just want to know what that is. I would listen. If we want to have more discussion on that part but I, my understanding was that if there was going to be changes in it. Dr homer would be bring him to us in the timely manner. We would have a discussion and make a determination at that point, whether to adopt or not on modify. Does anyone else want to go to Dr home and first and then I'll go to the members. I think the biggest thing that I think we were discussing whether or not the committee should vote last time we met was the masking requirement. Now that the state has eliminated that from your table. But with their own masking requirement I think my interpretation of tonight's vote would be an adoption of the plan, as it is. And I do think that we talked a little bit last time about us having the latitude to update protocols bring those updated protocols to the committee as quickly as possible, and have the latitude to make those adjustments in real time. I'm open to if there are specific things that the committee wants to have the authority to vote on, or at least make sure come back to them of course masking is a huge one of those things. I would we wouldn't make a pivot on masking quickly, we would do it after a lot of deliberation and conversation we would give the committee on opportunity to weigh in on that before we made a final determination. And I think the actual attitude to make decisions about what protocols need to adjust would be very much appreciated by the administration. So we talked we started talking about this when we met a couple of weeks ago and I, I, I appreciate we can certainly address it within the context of this agenda item because it's going to be related to this stuff and I guess the framework that I would propose really is that in situations where the district and the administration is following guidance from the state of Massachusetts, and the Department of Public Health of Massachusetts, that would be an area where I don't see a need for us to weigh in right So at this point in time, the state has said, thou shalt wear masks, well they didn't say that but like, they basically said that. And, and, and, and the counter to that I go back to May or June when the state came and said that thou dost not wear masks outside anymore and the and the, and at that time, the superintendent made the decision. All right, we're going to go with the state's decision on this school committee didn't weigh in, we weren't involved. I guess what I would like to see is in situations where the district is electing to deviate from the state guidance, which right now it doesn't seem to be anywhere at this point that that would be a situation where where we would weigh in so for example last year, the district elected to have a travel policy that was far more stringent than what the state required, and I would have liked to see more school committee engagement in that, in that process and how it was both rolled out and then pulled back. But I think that that generally when, when we, the district is following what the guidance is coming from the Department of elementary and secondary education that to me feels very operational. And what we would expect our administrators and superintendent to do, excuse me, sorry, we're on vacation so I don't even have a desk to do regularly anyway so you know, I don't feel any need to, to really be involved in that if that makes sense but that the main work that I would use is that if we're within what the state recommendations are and we're doing what they have sort of set as their baseline, I feel like there's not a lot of room for us to need to be all that involved but when it becomes more rigid. I think that it's good to have some buy it. It's a challenge you want to respond to, you want to make a motion. Well okay. I saw it before. I'm sorry, but I want to say that I think what Ms Morgan articulated is is consistent with my thinking. I'm not sure if this is that I can I'm not sure we can figure out a process going forward because we have seven different people at seven different perspectives I suspect, but I would agree with that that if we're going to do something. If the district decides to do something that is not within that whatever state guidance is is issued then I think the school, I think that's an area with school committee should have a conversation for sure. So, that's kind of where I line up. But I also want to say, I want to make it pretty clear, very clear that I have a great deal of trust in Dr homin, Dr McNeil, the leadership of the district all the principals and the teachers to collaborate and come to to mutual decisions over the course of the year lots of things. I mean, when you run a school work in a school, lots of things evolve in the moment. And you don't really have to, you know, it's a burden to administrators to have to go to the higher level body to get permission to do things sometimes when it might make sense to pivot rather quickly. I can't think of a specific example. I don't even want to speculate on what that might be. But I do, I do feel myself that I trust the administration. The principals, the department heads, the superintendent, especially the leadership of the Union, and I think together they're all going to be able to come together to come to agreement on certain reasonable changes that might need to be made in the moment. And I am comfortable with that, even if it deviates from this policy we're adopting tonight. And that's what I, that's all I wanted to say. So, so, before you do that, Jeff, I just want to get my little penny and a half in. First off, I would like to make it unanimous thank you Dr homin for phenomenal report. Can I, I'm a second, if I so before I have a second set of questions I want to ask about the, about the PDF right ahead Jeff. So, on the PDF that you sent out Dr homin. There's a whole section here on page 1213 14 about. I'm not going to ask any specifics but about, you know, coming back to school the first six weeks, assessing where our students are academically, and then responding to it which is great I'm glad that's a high priority I applaud you for putting that right in there. I'm going to get a report at some point on what you find will be will be some data that comes from this, like, I don't know what, what about this, as much data as you can give us and watch analysis. I'm curious to see what we find from our students when they for when you when the teachers first come back and start working with them. To some extent I'm going to defer to Dr McNeil, but I will say that that's going to be one of the goals of the one but by the time we do the outcomes report we will just be getting some of that data in. School improvement plan should show you some of that the school level, but Dr make me all do you want to talk about this little bit. Yes, that's a great question. Thank you very much. So we have in the recovery plan we have an outline of what the first six weeks of school will look like, and in that, in that section of data informed instruction we also have an assessment calendar. So at this particular point in time we don't have specific dates in there, but over the next couple of days as the administrators come back and we come together, we're going to identify specific dates. So to answer your question absolutely we can come back and give an overview of the different things that we find from the data, especially as we compare to, you know, pre pandemic. I also want to say that along with the school improvement plans that many of those action steps and things that we need to focus on will be reflected in the goals that the curriculum leaders come up with at each level. So that will also be an indicator as to what we need to focus on in order to address the learning needs of our students so to answer your question, we can do that in a variety of ways we can do it in a report and we can you go. And that will be reflected in our, our goals that we set for the year. I, I'm happy about that. I think we, I think it's a burning question and a lot of people's minds and, you know, when we get that data and 6, 8, 10 weeks, whatever you guys have it that would be great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for a phenomenal plan. I will at this moment entertain a motion to approve the APS pandemic recovery plan. There's a second second roll call vote. Ms. Morgan. Yes. Dr. Ampe. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. This accident. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. And I broke yes unanimous vote. This time the school committee chat dates. This accident. Sure. Thank you. So the draft schedule is in there. We reduced the number significantly from last year. There are only 12. Dates so each member will need to attend three and then a few of us will need to attend for. I know we had talked about changing the times up a little bit to make them more available, but the subcommittee agreed that the consistency of Saturday at 11. That was, was just helpful for the community. There are two weekday ones to give some flexibility. And then the other thing you'll see the guidelines were edited slightly just to remind attendees that it's a forum for sort of sharing big picture ideas and not place to address specific issues about individual children or teachers. So I don't, I don't know if we need to approve this, but I just wanted to make sure the committee was aware of it and that I will be recruiting members to attend to the chats and they will be virtual. Sorry, it shows with them. Is, is there a neat, I don't remember having this approved by the committee before. Okay, we don't need to go. Thank you, Miss accent. I'm sorry, is there any members that wish to comment or ask any questions on this for clarification. Thank you, Miss accent in your committee. Right now, superintendent's report Dr. Holman, your mic's not on. All right, great. I'm going to share my screen quickly for a few enrollment report updates you have a new enrollment report in your materials for this week. I want to also note a change in that enrollment report because I didn't quite have all the analysis done when we submitted everything on Friday afternoon last week. I do have many first and second grade students who have enrolled in the past two weeks. We are excited that they're joining us. 35 kindergarten families this is a question that came to us from a committee member on 35 of them have students who will be six to start kindergarten didn't start kindergarten last year just chose to delay, and we'll now be starting kindergarten with us. I don't have SLC enrollments yet I do anticipate that by the time we meet next I'll be able to provide those because at that point class assignments will be completed and we're also working on a system to make sure this is easier for us to pull at the district level so that we're not reliant on class assignments. Our out of date out of district placements were added to this report so that they would match up with the projections that Mr Mason had provided the committee last year. We calculated that comparison like I said after we sent the report so there's a screen shot there at the bottom of the screen that gives you the new totals, and more appropriately calculates the difference so that variance for calculation now matches the additional analysis that you got from Mr Mason, that is aligned with the projections that he had provided you with last year so at this point I'm going to turn it over to Mr Mason to describe the secondary report that you got which did the analysis against his projections Mr Mason. Thank you back home. So the, the, the second report is a report comparing. I'm trying to pull it up on my end. Comparing what it gives it possible to pull it up. Yeah, give me one minute. I will find it. I can also share my screen. Actually, why don't we do that. I think that everyone can see this. Sorry. So, this, this report, if I'm not sure if you recall back in the, the, the winter months. We were talking about enrollment projections and we also discussed the amount of students that left the district or amount of students that the families have removed from the district whether they were transferred to another, had left to another community or they had enrolled in a private school or had their child participating in a home school or a pod. We, we had to make some adjustments to our normal projections. And there was a couple of scenarios that was discussed and one scenario looked at four categories of students that left the district and added it back to the base, assuming that a certain level would return it was about 50% of these four categories would have returned back to the return this included those that had decided to withhold their students for a year. And those that may have transferred to a private school or some other source where our homeschool where they would likely come back. I then done normal cohort methodology calculation of a survival rate to determine what the projection was, and we determined that in this line here. Which 6175 students would return back to the district. The 6175 on our projection includes out of district enrollment. And we then went and looked at the current moment. And that we see that we have on file, and between out of district in our total placement, this is all by grades, obviously, we have 615 world, and this is slightly off from the projection, but it was in between what the worst case scenario could have been to what was more likely to be the projection. So it's pretty it's holding pretty strong reflecting that we are seeing 174 additional students over what we had last year. I would prefer I will also provide in the future. Additional information in terms of the students that returned I did some initial look research on the students that returned that those that we reported that accident the district. There was about 117 students that returned of the 400 and so students that had left the district. So it equated to about 40% of the numbers that I was projecting of the four categories returned, which were the likely candidates to return. And that will conclude my presentation. I don't think we need to take any questions on the enrollment report before I do the next piece. Mr Mason and Dr Homan does the 6015 are complete are completes right because we the pendants are now off that. We certainly need to see them, although I think historically we found that the vast majority of the pendants do show up. But but they're not in the 6015 so we would expect that that we're going to pull closer to the poor Mike for Mr Mason week week, I've now dubbed it the Michael Mason number that 61 75, but you're you're going to be very close. And that's the fact at the end of the day, which is is incredibly impressive given how little we knew and I sat in a lot of meetings last year where we sort of went back and forth about what we thought was going to happen there. So the other piece I just wanted to draw our attention to was the 27 students in 12th grade without a district placement, which is a very large number. It's, it's all students 18 plus so anybody who goes up to. I always forget about that. Yep. All right, we're good. Thank you so much. That's all I have. Thanks. Anyone else that has any questions on this. Mr card. Thank you so just looking at the, the new number of sections compared to the last report. I know my printers I couldn't bring them out and compare them side to side. So do we end up dropping one section at the elementary level. Yes, and where is that position being utilized. Is that been determined. That position was not filled so it was somebody who left incidentally at the exact grade level where we had room to collapse the section. And so we collapsed the section are not filling that position right now so it is net asset that we can put towards another need in the district. Okay. Thank you. And well, this is just like one. Thank you for the comprehensive report just that we be asked if there are any significant changes or trends between now and opening school that were notified, particularly as sections are added and we're relieving pressures on on enrollment. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Dr home and you can continue. Okay. I have one more piece to share with everybody. Some exciting news that we have as of yesterday and I confirmed with her that it was okay for me to share this with all of you because she just signed her higher letter we have a new director of the met co program we're very excited to welcome family staff and administrators said some beautiful things about her that I'll let you read there right here on the slide. And she is coming to us, having been a social worker. She has 15 years of experience in the field of organizational leadership as well. She recently completed her master of social work at Simmons University congratulations to her, and has a certification in urban leadership. She has been a fellow to the dean of community engagement and social justice in her work at Simmons, she's received awards from the Boston Public Health Commission, and has been a met co parent herself, and a leader of met co parent organizations and Newton. So we're very excited to have her she's going to join us for our leadership workshop over the next two days she has to dove in with two feet, and we're thrilled that she is joining the leadership team so that that concludes my update. Any questions. I figured that one Mr short but just a quick update on our flooding. Sure. So we had in the we thankfully with passing through of tropical storm on re we didn't have any significant flooding at the buildings. The week before that we had some flooding at Arlington High School in the parking lot that did not cause any damage in the building but did threaten to cause a bit of damage to people's cars thankfully everybody's car started and they were able to drive away. We did have some staff who were waiting out to save their cars and we sent them home to make sure that they had dry feet for the rest of the day. It looked as though essentially what happened was the catchments underneath the ground and the town units flooded and the brook flooded and so our parking lot flooded. It was in the area next to the Circle Drive. And then we also had some flooding at the Gibbs School. Mr Mason and I are working on some short and long term possible solutions to some of the challenges there. Some of those challenges arise from things that we think are relatively preventable, like making sure that gutters are clear making sure the drains are clear. So the other challenges may require us to think a little bit more long term about what mitigation factors are on the site, whether or not we want to have any landscaping looked at to determine whether or not we can keep some of the water from flowing towards the building because one of the challenges I understand there is there's a lot of concrete and the building is sort of set down. And so the water flows towards it which created some flooding in the cafeteria area that they were cleaning up when I visited last week after the heavy rain in some of the lobby area on the carpet lobby that's right inside the front door when you walk in and in that entryway area. There's an area that I guess routinely floods when there's heavy rain so Mr Mason I are working with Greg Walters on the town side to figure out what we might be able to do in the short term and then whether or not we need any long term strategies to make sure that that building doesn't continue to have these challenges. Thank you and thank you for notifying us very quickly when this happened. This Morgan. I'm all set thanks. Dr. Ampe. Thank you. Dr. Holman is there. I'm thinking about what you said about the reason for the flooding on the high school parking lot. And if the catchment basins are are filling and then flooding. And it's not, I don't know for sure that I'm correct is that the reason that those catchment basins are there is to capture the contaminants and stuff that come off of the cars and stuff. So if they're filling and flooding, then that's a environmental issue. And I'm just wondering if it's something that we need to be considering for the under the high school building project. You know, do we not have the right size? Are they not maintained? Had they not been? You know, some of this is, I'm not sure how much of this is maintenance issues, you know, was there a maintenance problem or is there actually a sizing or, or, you know, capital issue so I do intend to follow up with public work, Mike Rademacher on what, why exactly that flood happened. I'm not sure the extent to which this is typical because I haven't been here. My understanding was that that was a fairly unusual day and an instance. Yeah, okay, people are nodding. So yes, it was a very, it was a very strange occurrence and so we do want to look into it and make sure that if there's any mitigation we need to do with the building project that we consider that. Mr. Thelman. I was just going to follow up offline but I'll just say faster. So I was going to suggest back to home and then you reach out to the design team for the project and ask them to just take a look at this and see what if there's anything we should be doing about it. So that saves me an email or text or whatever. Thank you very much. Is there anyone else? I just like to suggest Dr. Holman Mr. Mason to look back at the construction on Gibbs. This town has a history of different floods and different things that go on. And that's a brand new building. That's something and they found a lot of, there was a lot of mitigation going on things that they found in the building ahead of time so the idea of gutters filling up and stuff like that with any what two years it's kind of tough. Anyway, anyone else. Thank you. Thank you Dr. Holman. Consent agenda. All items listed with an asterisk are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion will be no separate discussions of these items unless a member of the committee so request. In which event the item will be considered in a normal in its normal sequence approval of warrant number 22021. August 17 2021 509,095 dollars and 39 cents approval of minutes special school committee meeting superintendent retreat August 10 2021 approval of minutes special school committee meeting August 12 2021. Is there a motion to approve. So move. Is there a second. Second. Thank you. Dr. Ampe. Yes. Mr. Schlickman. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Mr. Carden. Yes. Ms. Exton. Yes. Ms. Morgan. Yes. And I vote yes. Subcommittee liaison reports and announcement budget. Dr. Ampe. Yes. We have a doodle. I haven't heard the results but we're planning a meeting before September 9. Thank you. Committee relations this accident. Nothing to report. Mr. Carden. So I have nothing to report. I didn't want to ask though if. I can't hear you. Mr. Sheikman. Yes. I'm sorry. I was just going to say that we're going to have a few more things to report. There's a lot of things to report. I'm going to go to the timeline. If people are interested in exploring the changes that gives or anything else just contact me and I'll set up a meeting. Thank you. Facilities, Mr. Thielman. Well, I was going to say if there's an interest in talking about the flooding and the impact I can have a subcommittee meeting. I'll talk to Dr. I like to high school building committee. Mister salmon. We are we moved our meeting. The next meeting. Oh, I guess we have an emergency this week with some of them. Not a big not a big emergency issue. But there is a meeting on Thursday about certainly and then we meet again. We move the meeting on the 7th of September the 14th. I think I have that right. Are there any liaison reports. Any announcements. Future agenda items. Okay, seeing none. We will be entering executive session to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations in human union and our non union personnel contract negotiations with new union and non union in which if held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect to conduct strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation which are held in an open meeting may have a detrimental effect collective bargaining may also be conducted tonight to discuss the legal bargaining implications of code COVID 19 vaccination requirements with all the unions. Motion. I will attain the motion to go into executive session. So move. The second. Second. All call vote. Miss Morgan. Yes. This action. Yes. Mr. Cardin. Yes. Mr. Schlichman. Yes. Mr. Thielman. Yes. Dr. Ampe. Yes. And I vote yes. And as far as I know we will not be returning to regular session.