 Okay, welcome everyone. We'll start in just a moment as we allow a few moments for people to get connected. I want to say hello to all of our Amherst and ARPS community members and we thank you for joining us on this community chat. We will be holding community chats like this on Tuesdays and Thursdays at noon for the next couple of weeks. My name is Brianna Sunrid. I'm the communications manager for the town of Amherst. In this webinar, to ask a question from the Zoom application, click the Q&A button to type in your question. Your questions will only be visible to hosts of this meeting. Additionally, if you'd like to speak, please use the Zoom raise hand button or press star nine from your telephone. We ask that you introduce yourself before asking your question and to maintain civil discourse. As a reminder, this webinar is being recorded, so please refrain from asking any personally identifying health questions. So today, joining your town manager, Paul Bachman and I, we have Amherst school superintendent, Mike Morris. Welcome to you both. Thank you. Before we launch into Q&A, are there any status updates from either of you? So I'll start. Yeah. So I was talking to someone on the phone earlier today and I had not talked with them since March 10th or something. And the world has changed so much in those in the time since it's barely five weeks, I think, and it's, it's has been a tremendous change in how we've done business. The way we communicate with each other now we're using Zoom or Microsoft Teams or different platforms for talking to each other. The services we provide has changed. We've just become a wholly different society. So that was really struck me this morning as we're talking on the phone with this person. So I'm really happy that with Briana's help, we've really set these things up. So we're having bi-weekly meetings every Tuesday and Thursday at noon and we record them. You can go to our COVID-19, AmherstCOVID19.org website and watch any of the previous ones. On Tuesday, we had a police chief Scott Livingstone on. And we were supposed to have Julie Fetterman, our health director on today, but she is unable to join us. And it's okay because we've got Mike Morris also scheduled. And Mike has a lot to share with you, I'm sure. So I'm going to hand it off to Mike in case you have anything you want to start with. Yeah, I'll just, I'll give a broad overview of where we are and then, you know, open up for more interactive dialogue as we go. So yeah, we're, as Tom Andrew said, we're on week five and it is a different world that we're in. And I think notably in the schools is that we've, the first couple of weeks we were encouraged by the state to offer enrichment activities for students and families. And that shifted as this extension of the closure statewide actually as well as locally took place. So we've transitioned what we're calling distance learning 2.0, which is more structured to it. There's much more interaction between teachers and students and really it was a group of over 150 teachers, power educators and administrators have put together the different plans both at the elementary, middle school and high school level as well as focusing on special ed and English language learners who each have their own distance learning plans. And so it's it's been a huge amount of work. I want to publicly thank our teachers. I promise someone that I'd wear a Fort River school shirt. So I am wearing a Fort River school shirt. Those teachers in addition to doing their normal duties have organized drive-by through Fort River neighborhoods. They did one about a week and a half ago, another one coming on Friday, which has been greatly appreciated. I happen to live in the Fort River catchment area and was so nice seeing folks in my neighborhood whose kids had graduated Fort River some years ago come out. It was such as just a community event, even though it was I think designed more for the staff and the students and the feedback I heard from staff is it was equally beneficial to staff as it was to students for them for the staff to be able to see their their students be able to wave at a physically safe place. I want to thank the Amherst police department firm just from a safety point of view. There's not many. There's not much traffic on the roads these days and there was a long caravan of cars and they provided support for them as well as some interesting commentary which I appreciated as they were going making sure that kids were listening to their parents and working well with us. So that was that was fantastic doing it again and I want to thank the staff all over the place and particularly at Fort River. So, you know, I'm open up, you know, we can open up for dialogue or any comments and questions but I think the big transition been is providing more structure for families and students in this process and, you know, it's a work in progress. Obviously, this is not something our schools were designed to do a month ago. We didn't have distance learning plans but I really think our staff have stepped up wonderfully to support students and families and it looks different at the elementary middle school and high school level but I think we've made our approach age appropriated each of those. Great. Thank you for that intro, Mike. I'm just going to remind our attendees who have joined us that if you would like to put a question you can use the q&a function in zoom and type that your question in it'll only be visible to us the hosts and then we will read it. Alternatively, if you'd like to speak, you can raise your hand in the zoom application and we will acknowledge you and unmute you so you can come into the conversation. So we have a couple of questions already on deck so one question we have for Mike is what is being done for students who do not have internet at home. Sure. So we spent a lot of time looking at different options furiously looking at other different optional work best for our families and where we landed is that mobile hotspots for the best solution for to provide internet in homes that didn't have it already. So this week actually Tuesday and Wednesday we had a pickup and we did some delivery for families who weren't able to get there of and I'm trying to forget the number but it was between 60 and 70. We still have some families on the list that we have to work out drop off points for mobile hotspots and the nice thing for mobile hotspots is they're ready. We are I staffed at all the configuring and they're plugging in play you plug them in the wall and you've got Wi Fi in your home and we purchased. We purchased plans for them. One of the things that a lot of districts who are doing similarly is if they purchase something that wasn't unlimited data, doing things like we're doing right now. There was a lot of data and so we did would provide the unlimited data plan and this was been generously supported by the PGO is there in our district they ran an amazing across the whole district. They ran amazing fundraising effort to support students and with the unclear knowledge of when we're going to turn or how return really thinking about this digital divide not just during this crisis but actually long term and how we could support them so we're thrilled to get the hotspots out kind of well time but the transition discipline 2.0 the folks who volunteer to to either deliver or to drop off those front of the middle school building said just it was just really nice moments that families, not just for the academics and the teaching and learning that were the primary focus, but so many so many people video conferencing like this is how families are staying in touch. And we want to support families in this time not just on the academic side, but really on the social side as well because you know how challenging it is. Great, we've got a comment here and a question. Thanks to all ARPS teachers and staff for the tremendous work undertaking in the last five weeks. Looking forward, is there any thought of offering catch up opportunities during the summer. It's funny you mentioned so we just had that conversation a little bit today. We're not quite sure exactly what summer will look like we'll, you know, because we typically have some summer school programs both credit recovery at the high school and some programs at the elementary level as well as special ed across K to 12. And so we're looking for guidance from the state and from local public health departments about whether summer programs will be possibly buildings if it is possible to be in buildings. What the what the programs will look like I know for California for instance their governor has laid out a set of criteria that would limit the number of students in classrooms and really well students in the fall there will be returning to school it won't quite look the same likely as it has in the past. So we're trying to look at what that looks like and how we can support students we know that in terms of summer opportunities some of our students perhaps are having a harder time, not because of internet I think we've done well with that but just accessing the rich curriculum that our, our staff offer and so we're also looking from, you know, what some people call achievement gap we'd like to call educational debt in our district in other places. How do we make sure that students aren't falling further behind during this time and how do we do in the summer to support students so when they re enter school in the fall, they're caught up so all those things long winded I'm sorry I apologize but it is something that we're actively working on thinking about and feel really deeply concerned about both locally and nationally about the impact on some students who distance learning for their learning style their child's learning style may not be the modality that is the easiest to access and and how do we support them moving forward. Let me throw something in here. We've all watched the interplay between the president and the governor's about who makes the call but what's open what's not open. Can you talk a little bit about who makes the call about when our district is going to open again and right now I think you are on May 4, although that's been adjusted somewhat and you know when will people know about when we're going to be open again. Yep. Thanks. So that's exactly right. So the governor right now that the existing orders may forth that and it was no sooner than May 4 so I think that's one point of confusion. The governor did not say schools need to reopen May 4 just with the state of emergency. They were not able to open sooner. So I think probably sometime last week about a week ago I put out a statement based on some information that came out of base state and other public health departments with concerns about Western Massachusetts and really recognizing that May 4 wasn't a reasonable date for return. And so for me I went date less. It was schools were reopened when I feel confident from both the public health perspective locally as well as experts down at base state that it's safe to reopen schools. I think it's I think it's highly likely that the governor will extend the May 4 piece given the the numbers we're seeing of confirmed positive cases of COVID across the state, whether that's a spring cancellation, you know and return in the fall or a later push to a later date in the spring, really is anyone's guess right now but from my perspective, I'm not going to be comfortable opening school until the experts which to me are the public health department and doctors and physicians assure me that it is. And so I think like many superintendents know the state we are looking for leadership at a state level on this. And at the same time, you know, great working with the town of Amherst, Julie Federman has been absolutely wonderful. She's sick of getting phone calls from me at this point but but I'm lucky she still answers the phone and and I, there can be statewide decisions and still I have to go to what the local experts say, and you know, we don't take action steps in our district without talking to our local experts first. Unfortunately, it's the superintendents decision on when schools reopen. Basically, it's not neuro president making the call. That's, that's my belief. I know in New York City that's getting a little complicated. Fortunately, Amherst is in New York City. And I don't think we'll have those political complications certainly hasn't played out the same way in Massachusetts on many fronts as it has in New York, you know, for better or worse. But I think to read my point is, you know, working closely with local public health officials, both on whether it's safe to reopen but also how it's safe to reopen. I think that second piece is perhaps not as much in the consciousness yet of the public but I would say it's equally or more important because there's real questions whenever we come back. So if we do come back this spring for instance, I think it's, it's highly unlikely we'd be able to have school wide events with hundreds of people in that we usually have in the spring, not just at the high school level but at all of our schools right that's not going to be every every expert I've seen has suggested that it'll be a gradual opening up of schools of businesses, you know, not just like poof one day it goes back to normal that normal is is not the term that we'd be using right now. So that's really, you know, it did have a conference called the Commissioner of Education with other superintendents this week and a lot of the focus was exactly that trying to figure out what will it look like when we return, as well as when we return but really what would it look like and what are the educational implications of that. And so, you know the six feet distancing for instance we, in our current model of school. We're not six feet between students and staff at all times. If that's really you know if there's some distance that they're going to ask for it we're going to have to shift our shift our operations and so I think the interplay between the date we return as well as how we return is what I'm watching for and certainly what I'll communicate out to the public as we get more guidance from the state and local levels. Great. Thank you. So, Mike, next week was our normal April vacation week in the school system. Can you say a little bit about what that looks like now. Sure, so we pulled the staff in particular we wanted to know what it was, what it would look like what was preferable. And I work with the, the Association, the union president, teachers union president on this. And we both felt that based on what we were hearing from teachers, but the stress of the transition to the new type of work, as well as managing different family needs that they have that we wanted to make sure that staff did have some break based on what we're hearing. So we gave multiple options and the option that came out with I think 86% of our staff, supporting it was to, was to have a two day week so Monday's a holiday it's Patriots Day that would be off anyway, but to have school on Tuesday have no school on Tuesday and Wednesday, it's a five day weekend but have school on Thursday and Friday from distance learning. There was a couple reasons we did that one or staff for support of that one is it made the end of the school year Thursday. I think it's June 19 or 18 whatever that Thursday is. If we didn't do anything the school would have come back for a Monday in late June, which is nobody's idea of a picnic, so to speak. So we thought it would be the right mix of giving everyone a break families students and staff. Well, not making it too long a break and having an interruption that would start on a Friday and not return a week and a half later on a Monday that felt too long to staff and it felt too long to us. So I think it was a happy medium I've seen districts go one way or the other there's about six or seven districts that are recalling ourselves the hybrid districts, we're having some break but also some school that week I think Holyoke's the community is locally doing that. But it felt like the right amount of balance. There's a lot of stress for staff for families, and we wanted to balance that with also maintaining the kind of operations that we have now and just as learning to point out. Great, thank you. I think we've gotten this next next question a couple of times in different formats but so this is the current situation push back any of the funding from the state for the new elementary school. Right so the time manager and I were in a conference call the week before last fall. That's right with MSBA. What they're telling us is at our sort of nascent stage of the process that we should continue and we, she asked if we could and we felt like we could, could continue our path which means that May 1, our enrollment period opens up. I think it really involves the town forming a building committee, some work on my end which is really just cataloging our maintenance practices and our current programming and thinking a little ahead to the future but there's not high stakes decisions in the first couple months, other than the formation of the committee but not in terms of the actual building structure or anything like that. So we are feeling like the last week I would say that we're able to at the school department take on we made this transition around distance 22.0 we're able to get back to some of the projects that were on pause a bit and this is one of them so we feel good about where we are. I think, talking to other districts there are some concerns because the construction industry in general. There are staff who are. Some projects have slowed down to it down to a halt construction projects and that is something that came up with MSBA meeting the other day and districts were in the middle of projects are concerned about cost escalation if construction stops for six months. All of a sudden you've got you got challenges with that. Fortunately for I mean unfortunately for us we're still far away from a newer renovated school but the fortunate part on the timeline is that won't affect us. Because actual construction is quite a ways away and the MSBA is functioning in a virtual environment the same way the towns and schools are is it's different but we're still having meetings and they're still having meetings and they had one this week and and so for us I think we're we're continuing we're staying the course and MSBA staying the course with us. I don't know if town managers I think else that you'd like to add to that. I agree I think you really summarized it as well. So we will continue moving forward again in this virtual environment when we start to form the school building committee and ask for volunteers who want to serve on that. So I think that that will be a good thing to be moving forward on. And I think you're right Mike one of the things I felt was at the last day or two it felt like we could. I got our legs under us finally because we're just dealing with thing thing after thing after thing and feeling like oh we can get our projects moving again. It reflects a little bit about how we're managing the town's meetings. We're you know in March it was just pretty much the governing board in April. We've opened it up to some of the adjudicatory boards like the zoning board and the planning board and Board of Health. And then in May we hope to open it up to a lot more excuse the phone a lot more committees I can operate and even this week you know the school committee and the town council got together to select a new member of the school committee so school committee is back up fully staffed. This is Ms. Lord gets sworn in so that can be done virtually to self. And Paul when when you put up the the call for volunteers for that it'll be on our on our website pretty pretty prominently is that correct. And on the hopefully the school's website as well. Absolutely. Absolutely. Social media as well. Yeah. I did see a couple new people come in so I just want to remind people if they would like to pose a question you can use the Q&A button in zoom or raise your hand in zoom. So next question we have here is about graduation and what that's going to look like for our seniors this year. Yeah. So one of the concerns that well there's a lot of concerns just about what the senior year experience has been and you know on the state publicly what everybody I think would assume that we feel poorly that this isn't the senior experience we want for our students and they've been wonderful at you know bearing with us as we're trying to do the best so there was this week there was a meeting between the senior class advisor who is one of the assistant principals of high school and the senior class council and they've co developed a survey that's going out to all. Students seniors and as well as their families to try to gather some thoughts about different ways and what we really felt strongly about wasn't that we one solution or other we really wanted in particular students and to a larger group as well their families to be weighing in and helping us make a decision. You know our job is to set parameters of what's reasonable you know we're highly unlikely we're going to be in the Mullen center on June 5th just from a physical distinct standpoint that doesn't seem realistic. At the same time what else we do we've seen a lot of different models universities and colleges have you know you can see really different things that have gone on. So we gave them the students came up with a number of different scenarios as well as an open ended answer of what are we not thinking about and that relates both to graduation things like prom other events that are likely to be canceled in the near future just because of the physical distancing and we're just I'm just appreciative that our students jumped right in they've developed a survey that I think would make our data folks at UMass and other colleges very proud really really smart survey that wasn't leading in any way but provided a number of different options. We are purchasing or have purchased some live streaming software that would allow for a model that could work and we've contacted the graduation speaker was already identified that person lives in California and you know doesn't seem like there's a scenario where they would be here. So we really there was about six or seven options as I remember the survey as well as what are we not thinking about and we really want the students to make this decision as much as the graduations. People like me you know I get to go and say my piece in the high school principal and families. It's really important us that we're honoring the students legacy by giving them, putting them in the driver seat to help us make a decision and really for them to be able to make it and our only role is, you know, making sure it's safe. It's reasonable in terms of access for for all of our families and all of our students. So stay tuned for that and I can't wait the survey just I think it went out to families about an hour ago and I think it's going it might have already went to students and we're I'm really curious of of what they come up with and what ideas they have but they'll certainly lead us to a better place than if we just got in a room with a bunch of adults and made a decision and that's how we're leading on it. That's great. Thank you. I'd be curious to see what what they come up with. Yeah. Shifting gears a little bit. Can you talk a little about the prepared male meals distribution and what that's like right now. Yeah, so since so the 13th of March is when we close that was a Friday we made the decision to close the following Tuesday we started meal delivery. So it's 13 sites we added a 14 site which is at Pellum elementary school. And we the second week of that we partnered with UMass who took on half of our sites. And so we between the two of us it's about 2500 meals a week that are delivered for our service we're now in a Monday Wednesday Friday schedule we provide four meals at each of those drop offs. UMass is that still on a daily schedule for us it was just trying to be as physically safe keep our folks as physically distance as possible. Over the last we started that I think last week. And so we picked high density locations where we knew a lot of our families would live. And it's the support that we've received is great we just received a grant that was going to support us with $2,500 more for $2,500 to continue and support that. But our food service staff are volunteers which are staff members in the district who support the sites have a really good method of making sure the meals are laid out and so physically safe way, keeping distancing in mind, and families come up one by one to get their meals. And the demand has continued to be high which I think speaks of food scarcity in our community at this point in time. And we're just we're really happy that we've been able to contribute to support that effort that I know many, many people in the survival center many, many folks in Amherst are deeply concerned and are contributing to food. So trying to help with food scarcity, but it's a very real issue because we know for many of our families, the fact that their children get two free meals a day in our district really supports them in a number of ways and so we've been happy to be able to do that and again, thank you to the members of the family center and the food service department who have just been rockstar outstanding on this front. And we're going to continue it till the end of the year we're continuing. That's one thing I want to mention is we'll be continuing it will do Monday, Wednesday, Friday next week, even though Monday's a holiday. We'll have staff in working on a Monday to make sure that we're continuing our meal service over April break. And that that the senior center is also doing on wheels for the seniors which is terrific. And then just this morning we had a call with left and Ezra who's the director of the survival center because in our estimation, food security is going to be one of the big issues that sustains through the next. I think of things that I call the 246 two weeks four weeks six weeks, but for the survival center as we've talked to them we talked about the next three months, six months, 12 months, 18 months because I think with the economy and such depths of being in bad shape that food security could be a major issue in supporting the survival center plus all the other groups that are working with that and to see where the town can step in and where the town can provide support and we program some of our money to ensure that food scarcity isn't an issue. And they have seen, you know, love was saying that there was a tremendous uptick in the demand for services both in prepared prepared meals of 50% increase just on that alone, but also for bulk foods and that the grocery stores are who used to donate so much. They have few so much bulk food. They have less food to donate so they're they might be in the market for purchasing more so they need funds to do that. And it might be ways that in terms of physical locations we've talked about different locations that we may be able to help expand their services because one of the things she also identified is that with the reduced bus service from PVTA people can't get to the survival center and get home at a reasonable time so bringing food to where people are, which is what the school district is doing with the prepared meals is something so there's a million logistics that come into play with this and so it's really good to have, you know, subject matter experts like like love who's who's thinking 24 seven about this and talking about what we can bring to the table to support. It's because it's not just one solution. There's lots of people who are in this area who are all thinking and I think it's really great that we have such a robust network of supporters here in Western Mass. Yeah, I think the only thing I'll add grew with everything Paul said and we've been kind of encouraging we have had staff who say we want to support this effort, you know, we know the school's food service and, you know, we've been encouraging them to get in touch with the survival center, whether that's, you know, literal in person support or, you know, financial support because the great work they do. And we're all supporting the same people. Right. And so I think that's really important to know but our we did, you know, the only reason we were able to start so quickly is because we do have a summer food service program that started two three years ago and so we'll be we'll be doing that again this the summer as well which will support summer, so our families well the school year. Well, the school year is not in session. And just one little note that Bistro 63 is also offering prepared food for restaurant workers who've been laid off. So there's a lot of grassroots things are happening that are really, really terrific. So I cut out because my internet connection is being told it's I'm being told it's unstable. Could you repeat that one follow. I'm sorry. I guess I Bistro 63 service workers is also on their own just offering support and food prepared food for folks, which is just I love how seeing how these things are popping up everywhere. Yeah, and I think I'll just if I could add to that just briefly and you're looking to get in Brianna but I think there's so many stories like that like I started with the Fort River teachers no one told them to make a parade through the Fort River neighborhood. They chose to do it because they thought and you know if we had more time in this show, we could we could each tell many, many stories of residents staff of the town staff of the schools who independent of being asked to do anything have done just amazing acts of support, encourage during a really hard time so I just want to thank everybody for We lost him. Oh, internet stable. Yeah. Well, I've definitely seen that in our community. All right. Well, great. Thank you both. On that note, it is time for us to head to wrap up. I will say that we are going to be doing this Tuesdays and Thursdays at noon. Next Tuesday, we're going to have our special guests is Amher senior services director Mary Beth. Oh, hello, it's did I say that right? Yeah, that one. And she is going to be talking about resources for seniors and programming that she has going on. So if you have any seniors in your life, please ask them to tune in. We will record these sessions and they'll be on our YouTube channel as well as channel 17 for Amherst media. So any last comments before we we wrap. I think the town. I'll let Paul the last word but I just want to thank the town for continued collaboration. It's infrequent that I have a day where Paul and I are neither talking or texting or not just and I like the three six week nine week right it's we're thankfully for the most part out of the three week piece you know where the current piece and we're thinking Oh, I could finish this sentence for on my think is a really appreciate I want to say that that partnership. Right back at your mic. So, thanks, thanks. And thank you to all our attendees today if you had questions that didn't get answered and you want to email us you can email us at info at Amherst ma.gov. If it's a question for the superintendent we will get it over to him and to hit into his team for answering. So thank you all for joining us and we'll see you on Tuesday at noon. Thank you.