 And we are now recording, I want to welcome everybody to the Amherst Community Chat for Thursday, December 3rd. We have Dr. Mike Morris from the Amherst Regional Public Schools, superintendent of the Amherst Regional Public Schools joining both myself and your town manager Paul Bachman. So welcome. Thank you for being here Mike. Nice tie. So we've got a lot of questions today that were pre submitted and we hope for folks in the room to be able to ask their questions live they can do so by using the Q&A function, as well as raising your hand from zoom or star nine if you're calling from the phone. Before we get to that I want to give a chance for both both your town manager and your superintendent to give a brief report out. You want to start Paul. Sure. So there are a couple things I want to mention. First is, we have a new program that started this week where we're partnered with the business community and local restaurants to provide dinner meals a couple times a week to people who have been pre identified as being in need and suffering from food insecurity and that's a really exciting program. That's basically just through December. It's a limited time program. We have partnered with the family outreach of Amherst to who have already identified people who were who are needed and needed additional support in this area. The second thing I want to mention is that the community safety working group which was the group that was put together to examine how we do community safety specifically policing in the town of Amherst has begun meeting. They've, and, you know, there are two former principals on it. Paul Wiley, who is former principal of cracker farm school is the chair of the committee and Russ Vernon Jones former principal Fort River School is on the committee, along with five other really talented people and it's really an exciting committee. It's meeting every week, every Wednesday at 530 if anybody wants to zoom in and listen to the meeting. It's a, it's a, I think it's a stellar group of people with a big agenda and limited time so we'll see how they do. Great. Thank you. And Mike. Sure. So I've got a little lengthier list of updates. I'll try to keep it brief. So we have more time for the Q&A for sure. But want to start by just acknowledging that the state of the town is on Monday and Paul and probably will remember the time better than me. Although I know it's on my calendar. 630. Thank you and school committee chair Alison McDonald will be presenting a report about from the schools as well as there's reports from other town departments and well as the town itself so that's just an important one and it's also just it's a really nice event. In my opinion where we get to see the different departments of the town. You know, I think to the public, we each can be look pretty siloed. And the reality is Paul and I talk or text routinely close to daily, I would say, in the same for Emma Dragon, the health director, you know, she's come on, we're in regular contact. And then the other departments as well. Tim Nelson send me updates about weather and, you know, all these things that we do function together and we don't offer we're not often in the same, you know, literal or figurative place. And so just wanted to acknowledge that and really thank Miss McDonald for putting together I think what will be a comprehensive report and I'll preview one thing which which I've said in other settings of late is one of the major focuses of the school committee in the community in the past few years has been diversifying our staff and faculty and this about a week and a half ago the state updated its uploaded its website with the most recent data and so five years ago as compared to five years ago, we've seen close to a 50% increase in our faculty or BIPOC, you know, our staff of color. So, you know, we're, you know, we're, we're about 105 years ago, staff of color and we're at 150 now between the Amherst and regional schools so really good work done by Doreen Cunningham our assistant superintendent our principals directors. It's been a very intentional focus there's a lot of research and evidence of why it's important to be able to diverse have a much more diverse faculty and staff, and just want to, you know, share that so that'll be a prompt or a tease to see the rest of what Miss McDonald is putting together as well as the other departments on Monday. So the second thing I want to mention is just to thank the food service department. A couple, couple months ago we went over 100,000 meals served since the pandemic started. And for those of you who don't know you can find this information or website or they have their own website, which I think is Amherst food.com. So these are the meals for any, any child ages five to 18 who resides in the town. We have over 10 sites with specific time and it's Monday Wednesday Friday, and Monday you get a breakfast and lunch for two days Wednesday get a breakfast and lunch for two days. And on Friday you get breakfast and lunch for three days to cover the weekend. It's a great resource it's completely free it'll be free all year, I will say I'm a resident of Amherst. I have children like it I continue to pick up from there multiple times a week, and it's spread throughout town so there's a site no matter where you live in Amherst there's a site pretty close to you. It's not the one of the pieces of feedback we've been trying to sort of correct is that some people think it's only for certain populations within Amherst. It's for any child ages five to 18 in Amherst there's no you don't have to bring a license there's you don't have to give your name, you pick up the meal that we just have to note it because of reimbursement from the federal government it actually helps our district the more meals are picked up, because we do get reimbursed for them. Based on our existence in the summer meals program prior. So just want to thank our food service staff, but also really want to reinforce that it, the meals are there. They're good, and they're for anyone in the community. The third thing I want to mention is the school committee last week talked about how to discussion about this week, excuse me about athletics winter athletics and they'll, they'll come to some votes on next Tuesday so if you have any thoughts that agenda be posted I think like later today or certainly tomorrow morning but they plan to vote on winter athletics next week that's certainly high interest for many in the community. And so I wanted to communicate that a couple questions that both Rihanna got but also that I've gotten by email and I tried to address on the school committee relates to the, the memorandum of agreement between the school committee and the Amherst Palms Educator Association the teachers union here locally. And what I'll try to restate what I tried to say clearly on Tuesday which was that my job is to implement both the policies of the school committee and then and legal contracts between all of our bargaining units not just the teachers union and our school at this point. I know people have been asking me why do I have to follow and I have to follow because it's the law, right so there's always, there are sometimes gray areas in contracts and that's what we try to work out with our bargaining units and that's not just a local thing that happens everywhere that sometimes there's conflicts. The language is really clear in my opinion on that particular front and so I know that there's been a lot of families and community members would like us to reopen school sooner and disregard the MOA and that that's not something that I feel like I can legally do based on what I know about the law and what I read in the contract so I know that's frustrating for folks in the community but I at least wanted and that's not about blaming anyone school committee APA and I said this Tuesday night very and tried to be very clear about it, but it is a reality that from a labor law perspective, I need to follow contracts that are signed. So I wanted to clarify that. I want to thank our schools we had really what I thought were fabulous open houses I was talking about that a little bit earlier before we went live. The schools did live sessions with principals or leaders and then some videotape sessions with teachers to go over you know the different parts of the curriculum and, and how families could access them and they was really well received I think they were really clear guidelines I want to thank in particular the high school was our first open house and it went really well and all of our other schools followed their lead. But in a virtual environment it allowed for you know, ability to interact but also an ability for family members who had their kids there at the same time often just because the nature of things these days to be able to at their own pace select the teachers that work with their children, find out about the curriculum and really open the door to the parent conferences that were to follow so really well done I just want to think I think our staff are doing that. We do have three distance learning centers that are operating in our schools one is completely ours and that's for a relatively small group of intensive needs students who without in person support. Don't have access to the curriculum so we have 13 students right now that are being educated virtually but have in person support at the high school, physically at the high school building. The second group is through LSE so or Amherst recreation. See if I got that right on off that name changes happen yet. Hopefully I'm not the faux pas Briana will edit it out if I'm ahead of ahead of where I need to be on that is operating in the building I'm in now at the middle school. And the last one is the marks meadow after care program and again they're providing in person support for students access distance learning appreciate all of our partners on that. One of the things that we continue to hear experience and read about is the very real concerns about mental health and well being students as we enter. Start entering the winter months and it's getting colder and snow in the forecast maybe on Saturday and for some people they rejoice for that other people like me who wants to change my background to a really warm climate and pretend that I'm there. In one event, a couple weeks ago we plan for two more with our bright partners brights a program based in Brooklyn but we partner with them. They're experts on mental health. I thought the first, the two clinicians that let it had tips that were not only helpful me professionally but frankly personally to you as we head into winter how to support students and ourselves for for hopefully our only true covert winter that will have hopefully the immunization and those pieces make things better in the future and we're not quite in this situation here from now. And so we'll do another one to be on the lookout for that but we want to provide tools and resources for families and that realm and the, I think that's it so I did a little more time that I thought but I wanted to have been on here in a while and I share some updates with the town and the larger community along those dimensions and I'm happy for answer any other questions and dialogue that comes up. Great thank you so much Mike and I think the intro was great because it did address some of the questions that got sent into us previously. So I hope the folks that sent in those questions and who are on the call. Some of the portions of your your comments and questions were answered but I will try to address the ones that haven't been as we take questions from the room and pre submitted so there's a couple questions that have come into the room. We've got a comment and a question from a parent of a Wildwood student one of the questions you just answered but dear Dr Morris thank you in the school district for your hard work in this difficult time. So questions about in person teaching. So what concerns what concerns the teachers about in person teaching and what did the district do to ensure that teachers and staff are in fact protected. Thank you. Yeah, so we had a very robust plan. I think it was like a 38 page document that delineated procedures that went well and above what the state recommended in terms of safety. We bought we have five digits numbers of can 95 masks, which was not necessarily a recommendation from the state. There's was more for more typical masks, but we purchased those. The state said we only had to have students masked if they were above a certain age level for us, unless they had a medical or disability related reason to not wear a mask we may have to do everyone wear a mask so you know we felt like we tried to provide the most safe environment that is possible. I think every environment in the covert area carries some risk. That's just the nature of it and same the same conversation we're having about athletics. We had our all of our rooms tested there's no state requirements and ventilation we said that we would only have students and teachers and rooms that were above for air changes an hour which is a standard that you know kind of Harvard public health is set but the state did not set it. And to get there we did invest a significant amount of resources into room sure fires with the UV light which were recommended to us as the best in the market. So we tried to address concerns that existed there there is no way to address all risk in the covert environment and I think that's that's just simply the reality of it. Particularly as we see rising numbers in our area, you know our distance learning centers are framed a little differently and that their their access to these learning students are way they're not getting together in groups the same way you might in the school environment over the last one I should say that comes to mind in terms of safety as the state recommended a three to six foot distance. And our school committee very quickly affirmed my recommendation that we maintain a six foot distance between students in classrooms so we did have students in for, you know, about a week and a half. In the month of October, you know, feedback we received from directing students and teachers is that it felt good that those requirements were being met for the most part and then there are other individual students who had to build up mass tolerance absolutely for individual problem solving there. So, you know that those are the steps we took and I want to, you know, also suggest that, you know, to assume a risky environment is not, is not, is not real in a covert world so there are some things that we cannot control we recently got approved and got a state grant where we can have a symptomatic testing of all teachers and staff members and students. So we'll be implementing that and our distance learning center the one we, we take ownership of at the high school. So anytime a student or staff member has any symptoms of covert and as you know that the long the list is quite a long list. So we have a lot of testing right on site that would need to be confirmed later but these are pretty high quality tests that can be done right away. As opposed to waiting and I think everyone's read the articles about some challenges with getting tested these days so we're, we have final pieces that we have to send to state will be sent out tomorrow. So we imagine we'll have that up and running before the end of the month. Thank you Mike we have a couple questions that have come in live from the room so I'm going to take them in the order as they came in. So here's a comment and a question Comcast will be raising its charges for internet use so families may face higher bills while their children participate in distance learning. What will the school district do about this will they reimburse families. Okay, so we've looked at that and we've looked at, particularly for families who can afford internet access we have more than 100 mobile hotspots that we were supplying and really much of that is thanks to the PGOs who had a project last spring to raise funds for that we've, we've exceeded the cost of those at this point and we're recovering those from the district, which of course we're willing to do. So I think that that is what we've been able to do is try to provide internet access for families who didn't have it and that's been our primary focus we've given out well over I don't remember on the I apologize but you know, between K to 12 now, or pre K to 12 I should say, I believe the numbers over 2000 devices, you know the very young level, you know kindergarten preschool that's my pads at the rest of the lab. That's been Chromebooks to make sure that folks had the technology needed to access it. And as we did our distance learning, you know survey, what we found is that very few people were maintaining we're having technology issues with distance learning and our focus is shifted much more to the pedagogical challenges that come from that mode of learning and we're trying to look at that and see how we can improve things as best we can best we can for the student experience. Thank you. And I can say just to having a third grader who is remote learning right now in the district she now thinks she's an IT and knows more about me for troubleshooting stuff so thanks for that. So we got a bunch of more comments and questions so I'm just going to go right through them. I'm a parent of a weld with second grader and who is considering other options for my son in the spring given given that it's currently seems unlikely that children will return into in person schooling this year because of the MOA with the APA. Is there anything parents can do to help with the situation with the APA MOA who want to stay in the district but also see that our children are falling behind. Yeah, people have and I think continuing to communicate with the elected officials the school committee, you know I get CC on all those every every email I receive. But as they're the bargaining agent or one of the two bargaining agents, that's where I would continue to communicate with, you know, they have reached out to the APA to see if they were willing to renegotiate that process has been agreed to this moment but I think continuing the communication and sharing those experiences I know every school committee member reads every email they get and takes that very seriously and that would be my recommendation. And you certainly can see see me but anything that goes to the email address at school committee at ARPS.org school committee one word at ARPS.org and all of those get forwarded to me as well so I do have access to those and you know that would be, I think the best vehicle by which to communicate the concerns. So you can't just wave a magic wand and say everybody come back to school Monday right. You know, we have a contract that we need to implement and that's the way contracts work. And I think, you know, as we've looked to work with partners around distance learning we've been trying to try to meet some needs, some of the intensive student needs and students are struggling with attendance. And I know that working with those programs they are looking to potentially expand. When we get into January to open up more seats, it's not quite the same thing. I want to be clear as as opening school, but for some families. I know that's made a huge difference for them. And I was up there yesterday, really well run kids enjoying it they're around other kids even if they're in different classes they've got the headphones, but it's been a really successful model for some students. And I think a lot of people are also asking so it's a school committee in the union and it's the two of them have to both agree to come to the table to change what's what's been agreed to so until both parties say yes I will sit down at the table. You know people are saying well what, when can this change and it's until they both parties agree to sit at the table and that's why you say contact your school committee members because they are the elected officials who are one of the two parties at the table. And we do have a couple of the questions in the room that kind of relate and connect back to that that contract question, such as, you know, is it the particular iteration expire at any given point and another question asking if they don't agree when's the next opportunity to revise these criteria based off of a timeframe. Yeah, so I'm just going to make sure I get the language correct, but the MOA is for this current school year. The title of it is regarding the 2020-2021 school year. So, you know, if nothing changes in terms of renegotiating the MOA was written for the, you know, the school year that ends in the end of June. All right, so we still have a lot of questions in the room so I'm going to try to run through those now. So we have mental health is not only counseling mental health could be helped in the winter snow if outdoor programs were offered for kids and teens to skate sled hike build the fire together, etc. What can the town and schools do about it. Thank you. I'll start with that one. So we actually had a conversation with the, the LSSE is now or the recreation department based on and so that's that's exciting. And the, you know, that the recreation LSSE is looking at lots of different options, including, you know, we've had a request for multiple skating rinks we've done. We've created skating rinks in the past that talked with the health director she thinks outdoor skating is good if you're doing things outdoors, much better than anything indoors. You know, looking at, you know, activating Cherry Hill as a more as an opportunity for cross country scheme. You know, I think, you know, the LSSE, I still say LSSE, I have to train myself. And, you know, I know we have the chair of the LSE commission in here. And they are actively thinking along these lines to, and I agree with you 100% that, you know, mental health of the next three months plus is going to be really challenging for everybody we talked about it for our town staff as well this morning. It's going to be a hard time, and especially if the caseloads keep going up. And so and being having children especially outside activated in. I know that they've worked closely the LSSE has worked closely with the school district to utilize the Pellum gym for basketball. And so that's really exciting because that has a really good airflow exchange. A lot of our buildings don't have that that quality of airflow exchange so we're going to be utilizing that space for basketball programming multiple nights a week I think. Yeah, that's exactly I'll piggyback on that one Paul, and I'll get on Barb's good side by saying Amherst Recreation is working effectively with us. So one of my jobs is I'm also the superintendent of the Pellum school it's a different district. And as Paul noted there, the ventilation scores in their gym were very, very high gyms generally aren't very good as you may have read in the newspaper not much about our gyms but gyms in general, do not have good ventilation Pellums for a whole host of interesting reasons that we'll get into on a here has particularly good ventilation and so we do have we have allowed an outside soccer group that was for an all commerce to do a session. So Amherst Recreation is looking and sent us a schedule to start up, I believe, right after the new year of basketball clinics for students and think as young as third grade and then as old as eighth grade. As I mentioned the school committee will be considering winter sports and voting on that next Tuesday. And, you know, I agree with the health director agree with the comment as well that it is going to be a challenge this winter as all noted, you know, case counts are continuing to rise and being outside is ideal. And so we do have one indoor space that, you know, according to health directors both not just the current one but past ones, it's meeting the threshold for some indoor activity I think it'll be booked very much throughout the week from interest and vendors because this is a rare resource, not just in Amherst and Pellum but in the area more generally. And I think, you know, continuing to have ideas for us to think about both the town side and the school cut side, you know, would be great please send them our way of other things that would interest children in ways to safely get together over the winter. And to me concerned with Paul I'm sure he doesn't mind getting them or to send them to, you know, our bills at Amherst recreation I think the more ideas we have the better programming will be. And in the Amherst recreation brochure, which includes everything that we just talked about plus a couple more activities will be coming out in the next couple of days. And Amherst recreation is transitioning away from LSSC. So they'll be, we'll be putting out, you know, a new web address and a new email address to fall in line with that so that's some exciting stuff that's coming up for Amherst recreation. All right, so I'm going to go back to the questions in the room. How much money have the town and region spent to enhance safety in the schools that now stand effectively empty. Most of the funds that have been spent have been CARES Act funds both the town which has been generous to share those with the school as well as our school specific ones but you know, I don't have a specific number off top my head but it would be multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars just to work at Wildwood and Fort River would be combined over $200,000 in terms of closing quads and making classrooms or spaces that used to have four classrooms to but full walls and changing the ventilation. So I can give a specific number but I can certainly say it would be a six digit number. Great. Can't the schools offer extra curricular activities for teachers who are willing to work in person would that be against a contract since it would be extra. No, and that's happened so at our high school we had the drama teacher did a dramatic performance actually multiple dramatic performances with students outside in the fall. They were really cool. I'm sorry if you didn't miss them this newspaper did nice job covering them sports is another example of an extra curricular that's occurring outside the school so there's nothing barring that from happening at all from the MOA. Okay, another question and comment ARPS is now one of the few towns in the county that has remained closed is this information being communicated with the teachers. In my experience some seem surprised that the public schools are teaching in person. Yeah, so I don't know. I don't control the information flow of what goes to all staff members. I do think it's been widely reported I think you can't look at the Gazette and not see an article about schools somewhere and what they're doing. But I do think it's been, you know communicated in a broader sense that at this point we are in terms of Hampshire and Franklin County, one of the few school districts that is not open at least to some level of in person learning. We've got a couple more here in the Q&A that were from the room so I understand the ethical obligations to uphold a contract. What about the ethical obligation to provide free public education to our children. This person feels that right now that second obligation is not being upheld. Yeah, no, I understand that and we've heard that from many family members. My perspective is that I can't knowingly break a contract that's been signed in good faith by both parties. So I hear that and I understand that. And again, I think the more people can communicate their concerns about that to the critical stakeholders and I'm one of them is a good thing. Alright, so the last live comment that I have here. So feel free folks as we wrap up on our half hour. It's your last chance to pop a question in the Q&A and to and or raise your hand via zoom. For those of you who did submit questions if they weren't fully addressed. I did copy the superintendent on those so he has your full comments and questions there. So with all that happened with the APEA and school negotiations this year we're hoping that everyone has learned from those mistakes and listen to parents about what we need for next year about what we need for next year our plans being made to address that. Actually, it's a great question and there was some dialogue about this on the school committee meeting on Tuesday and it'll be on the agenda for the next school committee meeting which is on the eighth next Tuesday is thinking ahead towards the 2021 2022 school year and a whole It's not just about the MOA so I think I can't speak explicitly for the school committee but based on what I heard on Tuesday night and what I imagine will be some dialogue next Tuesday. I think they're actively are thinking as soon as possible of clarifying what the program will be for next school year and to take into account lots of the feedback not just from staff members and parents but the larger community as well of what we want to think about for the next school year so I think that comments spot on and that's why the school committee is starting these conversations significantly earlier than they typically would. Great. Okay, so we're almost at our half hour. I want to give the chance for for Mike and or Paul to, you know, leave the room with, leave people in the room with something that you didn't get asked or didn't get brought up yet. I'll defer to Paul, as I typically do to go first. I think just the number of people who are participating in the questions, we know that this is a driving issue in the town right now I know the school committee and the superintendent are struggling with this and hearing everybody's voices. It's a tough one. And so I just feel for for the, my colleagues on the school side for that. So I really have a lot to add. I did have one last question that came into the room that I'd love to make sure it gets asked if that's okay if we go over a minute. Yeah. So what is the school district doing about the high number of absences among students particularly low income minority students who are already underserved. Yeah, so we had about an eight point plan that was presented the last, maybe two school committee meetings ago, about how to approach the absence issue the short story if those of you who weren't watching or the, the number of absences or attendance is roughly similar to last fall when we're in person but the distribution was troubling to us. It showed that students who are typically underserved in school so our BIPOC students are low income students, especially that students actually attendance was better. That actually showed minor, probably not statistically significant improvement, but those other groups were highly concerning. So, every principal in their goals for me this year has delineated their plan. It involves, you know, some working with distance learning centers but that's gotten maybe more attention than some of the other parts every school now has an attendance team. That's regularly tracking attendance making phone calls people have been assigned different roles and responsibilities to make the one on one connections to understand what our barriers that are going on. The feedback we're getting is technology is actually pretty low in the list of the barriers. There are more often kind of individualized concerns about access to the curriculum based on language linguistic sting engaged has been a major challenge as probably everyone is called experiences being on screens. A lot is is a challenge and we're all adults, and that can be a challenge for students so we are trying to address the root of the problem and what we find is there's no one root of the problem. Mike, if someone does know someone who does have a technological barrier can they reach out to the school district to health. If they say I don't have they don't have a computer at home or whatever they can reach out to the district and get accommodated. Absolutely and we're finding that out. So as these individual reachouts happen. There are very small numbers of people who are indicating that that's the barrier it just doesn't seem to be the predominant one but absolutely and that's why when we're noticing absences accumulating we typically had an email that went out and a kind of set of steps and we're accelerating that so we're trying to be ahead of patterns that we would that would be concerning to us. So instead of getting email we're getting folks are getting direct phone calls and having direct communication to try to understand what are the barriers. So, it's a good point Paul I should have said that absolutely if anyone has a has a technology challenge. Please let us know. What we found so far is that hasn't been the predominant challenge that has that folks have expressed about being on being a virtual school. But thank you Paul that was an important point and we've got, you know, was an international Chromebook shortage in the fall. Some of that was because of the pandemic but actually a lot of that was based on labor violations on the other side of the world that meant that 1000s and 1000s of Chromebooks were confiscated, depending on who made a specific part to them so you know, we did well our IS director found other resources and other ways to get them but now all of our back ordered ones have come in. So we're not short on ability to have technology. And, you know, it's, I think the challenge of distance learning for many families who are struggling. To resolve the tech part, and it's the engagement, the learning part and making sure that students and families are receiving feedback routinely. And that's been more the theme that we've heard of late and so you know we have a pretty strong approach our principles are taking this very seriously. Again it's in every single one of their professional goals for the year to improve not just the overall attendance but the distribution because we know that's a problem. And we're trying to work collaboratively with families on how to solve that. We're going to ask something I didn't share so that's a good one. So I want to note two things. One is that we even extended December break the school committee had a great discussion about this in the summer and our winter our last day of school before the winter break is actually December 18 that Friday. I want to note that and some of that was, well, you know, we're not encouraging people to travel we follow CDC guidance we know that the reality is some people. When this decision was made the world was in better place with COVID or at least our world was in a better place with curve it. But we wanted to have an extended break because we just thought it was in the best interest of everyone to have a longer break of school and I think that's proven to be a good idea. So I think we have a full two week vacation period starts on the 18th and students to come back on Monday, January 4. And I think the second thing I want to notice I just want to think, you know, this is obviously a contentious issue in just about every community. What I want to look at is dominated with stories about this and, you know, as a quote, I set up sort of like a schmule Rosner wrote it was a couple weeks ago. Fewer fewer things prompt hatred fear and vengefulness like a pandemic, right and I think there's some truth in that. And I just want to thank the community while there's been strong opinions shared and today and in other days. I think we've done in my opinion pretty well at having those opinions shared and not getting to a place where our community is truly splintered like it's happening. I'm not pretending that these are. These aren't hard conversations that people don't feel really strongly on one side or another or some third way. I also just really appreciate the questions today the questions Brianna sent me and they're being framed in a problem solving approach. I can't promise we'll solve all the problems, but what I can promise is we read every single comment. And I appreciate that that people are very often going to the place of how do we resolve this how do we improve this how can this change and not to a different place for frankly many superintendents and school committees and other folks are experiencing very personal attacks against teachers against parents against school community members, you know, my job is just the nature of it I'll get the attacks and that's fine. So I'll leave myself out of that for the moment. But you know, given the intensity issue I just really want to thank how people are framing their concerns their legitimate concerns for their children, they're very legitimate concerns for their children's future and the learning of their legitimate concerns about health. So I know it's contentious I know it's really hard. And yet I just, I hope we can maintain the sense that we can advocate without becoming, you know, adversaries and that's sort of the approach that I'm trying to take throughout all of this is that I hear everyone's concerns I have certain opinions. I think it comes as no surprise to someone that you know I wish kids were in school more often. Right I've said that since we started talking about this in June. So I think it's a surprise there. That's not a controversial statement that you can go back watch school community meetings talk about some challenges distance learning and some of this all this what's happening. You know, I've spoken about we have, we have an MOA that we have the school committee is requested to sit at the table they can't do things a unilaterally. It's a very frustrating place for many members of the community so I want to both acknowledge that but also share an appreciation for the framing and, and how people are expressing some very deep seated, very deep rooted concerns about their children and what they're experiencing. So I just really want to thank everyone for coming on this chat thank everyone for the emails that you're getting that you're sending. They're all being read they're all being appreciated by everyone who sees them so thank you all. Dr Morris for joining us today. This will be Mrs being recorded will put up on our playlist and next week we will be having our public work superintendent to talk about public works updates and winter prep and all things. Infrastructure, etc. So tune in next week as well and I want to thank everyone who joined us today. Thank you. Have a nice day.