 And that is starting right now. So welcome everybody for joining us on the chat for July 2nd as we head into the 4th of July weekend. I want to welcome Dr. Mike Morris from the Amherst public schools today joining myself and your town manager, Paul Bachman. Before we launch into Q&A from the folks in the room and some questions that were sent to us, I want to give Paul a chance to operate any updates he might have. Sure. So two things, major things happened this week. First is presented the budget to the town council on Monday. And that launched a series of meetings with the finance committee on every Tuesday and Thursday for the next couple of weeks and then a public hearing on July 13th in front of the town council. On Tuesday, the superintendent and the library director reviewed their budgets with the finance committee and will sequentially go through every department. And these meetings are at 2 30 in the afternoon. So you're welcome to join all on zoom. The second thing that came out this week was the University of Massachusetts at Amherst released its plan for returning in the in August, actually. And with a with opening up a lot of their dorms and having one out of seven classes being on campus, the rest of them being remote or online. So, so we were in conversations with some about the impact that we'll have on the town, our concerns and sort of a healthy dialogue along those lines. Great. Thank you for those updates and I just want to remind everybody in the room to ask your question you can use the q amp a function in zoom, or you can raise your hand from zoom and ask your question live in the room. If you're joining from a phone just press star nine to raise your hand. Mike any general updates you want to give us before we launch into questions. You know, I think the. It's funny school year ended. It wasn't that long ago but it's a soft end for for many people because it involved physically being in school and I think that's for many of us, that's our vision of what school year and means. We have our principals for doing fabulous jobs, ending the school year and our staff with graduation ceremonies virtual graduations that were done in ways that were incredibly inclusive and some in person opportunities for instance Wildwood and some of the other schools had some staggered onsite pieces where students could at least be at the school site and see their teachers on their last day of school the last week of school so that was only two weeks ago so not too much two weeks ago today actually. But this is not a summer like any other and that's true for the town as well as the schools. And in the time since then we've received the initial draft guidance from the state although a much more complete guidance is expected the next two or three weeks about return to school. We've basically been eating meeting just about every week. This being an exception this week being an exception but our school committee has taken very clear stand that they want the administration to start be start drafting up scenarios and space summaries based on having the CDC guidelines of between students. And so we've been working on that and next week, next Tuesday we'll have a joint school committee meeting between the Pellum Amherst and regional school committees, where we'll be able to offer a pretty detailed update on space we'll show some maps about where students fit and don't fit. So people can get a visual sense of what this looks could look like. We're also going to do an update based on distance learning surveys will do a summary and analysis of those that occurred in the spring from family students and staff. And perhaps most importantly the school committee is going to be starting to consider priorities for the administration so really help driving what plans get developed. We'll be talking about that on Tuesday night at the school committee meeting. There are two town halls which will probably talk about later on Thursday to solicit input from both elementary and secondary stakeholders and then hopefully voted that the following week on the 14th, so that we can then we being the staff can respond with models that conform to the priorities that the school committee set so all this is happening in real time, you know, something that people hear me say a lot as there's four operational areas we're talking a lot about one is maintenance cleaning, as it relates to safety, transportation staffing, and then space and so in addition to the instructional incredibly important instructional work that's happening. We are thinking a tremendous amount about logistics, because if we don't get the logistics right the learning can't happen and so that's sort of the work that we're doing on an ongoing basis. It's challenging work but it's also there's pieces that are exciting we're doing problem solving every single day. And so intellectually high stimulation and also problems that we haven't had to solve before that we're working on. It's really been through the teamwork that we have I think the last thing I'll note, and maybe I'll send it to be honest we can put it in the chat or make it publicly as we have opened a fall 2020 planning website. It's located on our website. So the idea is that it's continually updated with you know survey results presentations made at school committee and we're trying to do one stop shopping for everyone who wants to find information from the district about that and so that'll be updated on an ongoing basis. And then when we actually get to plans you'll have that we have our guiding principles that our staff worked incredibly hard on, and primarily teaching staff worked incredibly hard on at the end of the year so you can see what our guiding principles are for instance for distance learning at elementary and secondary levels if we have to rely on it next year around operation space food service, all those pieces, and they really are wonderful guiding principles that as we come up with a plan will implement those principles in action. Probably enough talking for me for a second so sorry about that Brianna. Oh no that's perfect and we will get that link out when we share the copy of the video so we'll put it out on our Facebook and our Twitter channels and we'll also note it into the recording itself so people can get have access to that. So it looks like we just got a question in a couple questions in from the room is ARPS leaning toward one of the two models presented to parents in the surveys at this point. I wouldn't say that we're leaning in any direction that's really where the school committee priorities will set the way that will lead what we're doing after this school committee identified six feet six feet between students to be the kind of the space piece what we did as a space analysis and also a transportation analysis that we're presenting back and the school committee will lead the way on kind of what priorities for in person versus this learning we can have once those variables are known which will present on Tuesday. So that might be a good point to you mentioned a little bit in your opening statement there about the process and how people can offer feedback. And some of the upcoming events that are going to be taking place to do so do you want to dig into that a little bit right now Mike. Sure. So, we have a couple ways one is that the school committee would always remind me and I want to make sure that I share this that anyone can offer feedback to me Morris am at ARPS.org but the school committee directly is school committee one word at ARPS.org and and that's a really good way for feedback to be offered. I think more intentionally there's two town halls on Thursday so week from today on the night there's one that's more focused on elementary level. And that's at noon, and it'll be on a YouTube so very accessible for everybody if you have, you know, the link is is on our website. It's on our social media accounts was emailed out to all all staff and families. So that way questions come in through the text and it can be answered there's also some presentation component that I think the school committee will make will make on their initial thoughts on priorities. The same thing will occur at five o'clock in the afternoon and that one's more focused on the seven through 12 students on the secondary students but the model the school committee laid out is they're going to have a discussion about and deliberate about some draft priorities that they would like to provide to the staff on Tuesday the 7th get feedback on the ninth in those two sessions and then you know through email and other mechanisms and then hopefully make a decision on the 14th we'll see if they're able to do that or they need more time. But it really is. Once we have the space and those variables are sorted. They want to come up with what the priorities are get feedback from the community and then move forward so that we have the staff level can then provide real options based on the feedback we received from the community via the school committee. Great. Thank you. I have a question just came in from the room for Mike. Have you reviewed the recent guidance from the American Academy of Pediatrics, which recommends that children return to school. What are your thoughts on this. Yeah, so we have seen that I thought it was a very thoughtful document that they put out. I think there's multiple factors here where you have competing state agencies or federal agencies offering or in this case, private agencies offering really different advice. The guidance received from the school committee was real clarity that the CDC are the government's best mechanism to talk about disease control and we're in a pandemic. And the guidance I received from the school committee is this is a public health issue. And I understand what the pediatric saying it's a public health issue if students don't return as well. And I think both things can be true. But I'll say personally for me one of the things about three versus six feet is also about the quarantine rules. So, and this is playing out there was just a case in California that this sort of played out in in a non school setting but to be distance means six feet. And so if a student return is less than six feet away from another student and has COVID like symptoms. Then that other student would need to also be quarantined. And so, you know, how often does a student have COVID symptoms in school right once COVID symptoms are fever, coughing, sneezing. And so I have students every single day in our schools who have that it could be allergies or there's a lot wide range of reasons so one of the things the school committee I think one of the reasons that I support the school committee recommendation is it's not just about who we get in school it's actually keeping them at school, keeping schools open because we know the line I've used multiple times in private and public conversations anytime someone pushes against the guidelines around COVID, COVID wins. And there's plethora of examples of that. And so I think from the school committee perspective they want to make sure the public health guidance drives the education piece. I think things become more clear Tuesday night when we done the space analysis that perhaps and I said this last week at school committee, perhaps more as possible than students not returning to school at all at any grade level may not get to all kids coming back five days a week. And that's really for the school committee to weigh in on. So we are reading all reports that come in I think they were really valid points made in the pediatrician article that that's being referenced. But the guidelines from CDC continue to be our guidelines as it relates to public health. Okay, we have another question that just came into the room more speaking to the more broadly the population in Amherst. And Chris, could Paul comment on the added risk to citizens and students from the arrival of thousands of students from outside of Amherst and they're mixing into the local population. Yeah, it's that's been the topic of the week. The when the university revealed its plans on Monday. We have had conversations with Hampshire College Amherst College and the university and trying to get a gauge on how many students are coming back how many will be on campus, how many will be off campus. What are their protocols for testing surveillance testing as asymptomatic testing whatever it is, and what are their plans for isolation and quarantine if there is a positive. I don't think I think we will. There will be an impact on the town with serious concerns about the impact on the town on multiple levels. One is the health of the of the popular of our general population, their year round population. We're just recognizing the age group we're talking about these are young people who have a lot of pent up energy who haven't seen each other since they were, you know, before spring break and naturally they are where social animals are going to want to be together. Typically, we have parties in the town. When college is in session. Normally we are able to manage those in a pretty successful way. But in this day and age, when people probably aren't going to be wearing masks when they won't be observing social distancing when they are might have larger than the 10 people. We have deep concerns, plus an environment where there's a fair amount of animosity to towards our police officers. It's a very complex environment we've we're having those conversations with the university and the colleges. And hope that they will understand the concerns that we have, and even concerns such as going to big wire CVS. You know, I think we've done a really good job in our town of observing social distancing wearing masks and things like things like that. And as long as students are over anybody coming into town is able to join in is, I hope that they will help us to keep up the good work that we've done. I don't think you can introduce that number of students into a small community like ours, without there being some kind of spike of some sort. I think we've managed through that because these are decisions that these three institutions have made, and we will bear the responsibility for managing through them. We've got another question in the room that's related to this same concern. A concern about the capacity of our local health care system, especially with the large influx of students back in our community. They're wondering kind of university and local hospitals handle an outbreak. It's not my impression we're prepared for this. I say this with a lot of empathy for colleges making tough decisions and the students who want their regular college experience. Yeah, it's another good. I mean, I think Mike and I talk pretty much every day and I see the complex decisions he has to make and his team has to make colleges. It's an equally complex decision making process. And you're dealing with the sort of economics of higher education. And you're dealing with three institutions that have really suffered financially because of the free fall from COVID-19. So I really do. I appreciate that the writer identified that we have asked that question specifically about the internal capacity. They are all very aware of what the capacity of our local hospital is. At the university, they have university health services. They are ramping up a center to talk about public health and that will help sort of be an epicenter area for them to provide testing. They believe I think all three institutions believe that proper testing against symptomatic asymptomatic and surveillance testing, which I think is really the key will help them move forward. And another comment from the room that again relates to this last thing you just said, will the results of COVID testing of students be shared with the town's health department. Yeah, that's it. If they live in Amherst. So the university is sort of an entity on its own. It's a sovereign part of the state. They get their test results independently from our health department. Our health department is part of the Maven system. But there's really close communication between our health department and the health department at the university very, very close. They talk daily, really good, very professional people at both ends. But the university through its system, they get notification of any positive cases faster than the town does actually and they, they have been sharing any kind of information like that. We're encouraging them to continue that practice and to make sure that it's their entire community, not just the students living on campus but all staff, students and affiliates of the university. If they have a connection to the university that they are able to provide the testing. A lot of the stuff is going to be at the initiative of the at the university is a pretty big expense to do all this testing that they need to do and they want their building that they're trying to build their own capacity in house to be able to do that. So real credit to them. I think they're taking this very seriously. And it's a big job for them and to ramp up in a really short period of time. So I do see a hand in the room and I'm going to invite my friend Ken in. So Ken, if you could just unmute and introduce yourself. Thank you, Brianna. I'm Ken Rosenthal. I live on Sunset Avenue. I'm the father of a daughter in New Jersey. Excuse me, who's an elementary school librarian, and her sister in Pennsylvania as a almost six year old who's about to go to kindergarten. So we see the problem from both sides and and we see two important principles here. One is it's really important to get children back to school. It's so hard to do this from home. The younger they are more important is to get into school. And the second one is it will be terrible to open the schools and then have a problem and have to close them down again. That would be very, very bad. So we come up with one very expensive solution for you that nobody will like financially. And I was a college treasurer and I understand these things but the six foot separation is really hard for little children. And we think one answer may be to more teachers AIDS in the younger, the classrooms of younger children. They don't have to be qualified as teachers. They could probably be young people who are out of work otherwise out of work who would come in and just work with the teachers and work with the children in very small groups so that they are separated and don't run together at recesses and times like that. It's very hard and of course all of those people would have to quarantine themselves at home so that they don't bring anything back to school. It will cost you some money. I just put that on the table as a solution we've come up with that doesn't it isn't economically sound but it may, it may work and I think tax payers like me would be willing to pay a little more if we knew it meant that our kids were a safe our teachers were safe and they were able to go to school. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you Ken and yeah so something similar. There's a New York Times article it's getting a lot of social media attention that that's focused on particularly having college students or recent college graduates. I think the conversation it's an interesting connection to the conversation and the questions the town managers answered and then also how people feel about their children and go into school. You know I've been in conversations not at the level Paul has but with UMass in terms of their College of Education and what does it mean to have student teachers. And you know what's the community levels comfort level with having student teachers not just from the university but from we have some teachers from five or six different institutions higher education, given concerns and given particularly the trends of other states and age groups, which seem seem like they're going up and higher numbers. So, it's an interesting one I do feel like, and this will become a little more clear on Tuesday when we share our kind of space diagrams. We're very fortunate to have a significant number of staff members both in terms of what we are terming would be para educators, as well as professional staff in our schools and how we staff our schools will look really different because one of the pieces in CDC guidance is just a six feet. It's also about keeping the same cohort together all day and that's not our typical model. And so I think what you'll find when we don't do that is we have a lot of adults that perhaps aren't typically in classrooms they're usually pulling students out who who will be in classrooms so as the school committee models gives gives a staff guidance I think we'll be able to start plugging in the staffing models of what it looks like and seeing if it meets people's comfort level because we're doing a significant amount of frankly construction at two of our elementary schools and you talked about elementary schools can we will have some pretty large spaces and this has been shared in public at two of our schools at Fort River and at Wildwood, getting rid of the quads and moving to kind of half spaces they're 1900 square foot classrooms those are really large, and kind of created a lot of learners. And so I think it's good feedback to think about other creative models. And I do want to note and appreciate the support we do receive from the town of embers for running our schools even on uncertain times and the more ideas the better so keep them coming. Did you have any follow up or are you all set. Okay, I'm going to pull you out of the room then. And I do see that we got a hand from Ron so I'm going to pull you into the room Ron if you could unmute and introduce yourself please. I'm Ron I'm a member of the Pelham school committee Mike. I read those letters from the community stressing five days a week they were compelling, but it still doesn't answer the question if the very virus doesn't spread. Why are the kids wearing masks. So, there's an implication in the requirement for mass that the virus spread somewhat. How do you trade off five days a week for the burden that's going to place on working families what do you do about that. And I think Ron highlights the tension point that that we're all facing and again I know maybe I should have come on next Thursday Paul I apologize but I think things will become more clear as to what's possible from a space perspective, you know we're just working we're pretty done K to eight work on the high school map and Summit Academy at this point, but I think once we're done with that, it'll become more clear what's possible what's advisable what's beneficial right that'll be run unfortunately for you perhaps some of your job and your colleagues to work through but really the guidance is really helpful about the six feet because we were then able to literally go building to building, put desks in, put out the measuring tape measure six feet between where students would sit. We have a couple odd shapes room Ron Ron school in particular has a couple odd shapes rooms up in Pelham. They aren't rectangular or fully rectangular so we were able to do that you've got situations at Crocker farm where there's built in cubbies in the rooms that we can't remove. So we had to account for that we looked at staggering rows so we have a lot of data that we're coming back with and I think that'll help inform the next piece of the conversation about what's possible. Thanks. Thank you Ron good to hear from you. All right, thank you Ron. So, again, I know we're having a lot of these details forthcoming but we do have a question about what your thoughts are around busing in the fall and whether or not sports in person sports and team sports are a reality in the fall. So, in terms of busing that's another data point will be presenting on Tuesday night might be a long meeting so you may want to grab some coffee hot cocoa cappuccino I don't do caffeine so I don't really know the right words for it but Paul does know. And we'll have a lot of data to present, you know we got multiple hundreds of responses around distance learning and we disaggregated by grade levels you can see how elementary families staff responded a secondary family staff in the middle school students and high school students. We have a lot of data will presenting on that we have done an analysis, for instance, our, our current school committee policy is that we only would have to provide transportation for students who live a mile and a half or more from school, our reality and it's been a reality for a long time as we transport every single student who wants transportation to our elementary schools. The law is that it's two miles from the school. So we did analysis of how many students can fit on a bus. And in all three of those models are current model, if we went down to a mile and a half or further, we went to two and two miles or further. At the regional level we have to drive all students because that's the basis of our reimbursement being a regional district so there's not a lot of wiggle in the region for the secondary student transportation. At the elementary level our surveying showed that between 30 and 40 actually K to 12 showed between 30 and 40% of families said they would absolutely provide transportation next year either to help the district or because they felt like it was safer for their child. A significant other percentage that they might be able to do that so I think transportation is a complex piece of all of this. It's a complex of the elementary level in some ways because the district could the school committee could move to change who gets buses who doesn't at the regional level, it's harder, but it's simple because we have to be able to provide transportation for all students, and that'll be a barrier in terms of getting all kids back for five days. So, we will talk loosely about that and we'll have some data on Tuesday night. But I don't think that'll be the primary point of the conversation with the school committee because there's only so much data you can go through in one meeting. And still get to the dialogue you want to get to the second part you mentioned now is lost in me Brianna I'm sorry. So, you know I did see that Williams College Amherst College Mount Holyoke College Bowdoin College all have canceled sports for fall we're not a college we're high school so we're waiting on the MIA a which is the governing agency to make a decision. I interestingly have seen a couple other states. And I have no knowledge that this is going to happen in Massachusetts but I, you know, become an obsessive reader about what's happening elsewhere is they've actually shifted the non contact sports to fall. So, like tennis and golf and being becoming fall sports in the hopes that a vaccine or some treatment will come and some of the contact sports like soccer football. Sockers, some states consider soccer contact sport. Some don't but football I think everyone contenders contact sport and some of the other higher contact sports could perhaps occur in spring if a vaccines here it's an interesting kind of model. Maybe an optimistic model in terms of vaccine timeline but we all need optimism these days and so I'm still waiting on MIA I know they have having meetings. And I got a survey from them the other day. So they're trying to solicit input. So I think with the state guidance that comes out in a couple weeks from desi hopefully they have a decision because I know there's a lot of student athletes that are really anxious about what they're both anxious on both levels they're anxious about perhaps playing because they know their their sport is going to be really hard to do socially For instance, they're also anxious about what will happen to their season if we don't have sports in the fall doesn't mean football doesn't happen for this whole calendar year or there's still some hope for spring so we sort of have multiple governing agencies that are going to give us that feedback, but it is interesting to see some creativity that I've witnessed from other states about how they might do that and tennis and golf are the two sports that I've seen as being. Some states have felt more comfortable moving forward and fall with but I have no knowledge of whether that'll happen in Massachusetts. Great. And I think we're getting closer our time but we have one more question that kind of answers some some of the things you've been speaking to today. So it seems that schools are going to need a lot of work in the buildings and maybe even paying additional people. Where is the money going to come from. I'm hearing Paul bagels all the time. You know he loves bagels, but no in a serious note, you know the state has provided us with some additional funding. I think one of the challenges is the state budget level, the state level our budgets only. We only know what our budget is in the summer. There is no state budget for the next fiscal year so we're all making some assumptions we don't know if those assumptions are accurate, they're optimistic or they're pessimistic. It's a it's a real challenge with budgeting and I think the town of Amherst has done a really good job of making preliminary plans and knowing that we may have to have additional conversations over time. They've been a great partner of the schools in that way. But it is, it is something that's on our mind we're trying to be acutely aware of our finances and we also know that our community has high expectations of the education that we provide for their students and hopefully we don't get into a conflict place and where those are pitted against each other and if that happens what we're going to do is what we always do which we share, transparently information we have what we know what we don't know and have community stakeholders, talk about the problem see if there's creative solutions and work through it and I think the big thing that I feel confident about is our school committee is dedicated to our students and dedicated to being good stewards of finances and dedicated to working with the towns, town of Amherst, town of Pellum and Shootsburg and Leverett as well, to update them throughout about the situation but you know the last couple years even in some tough budget years we've been able to manage some deficit that we had at the beginning of the year where there's health insurance. There's a particularly acute one where we received negative health insurance. I don't know was it a week into the fiscal year a couple years ago Paul something like that. And, you know, we work through it. This is a different challenge. There are more unknowns in this challenge. But you know, we're just going to keep on talking about it and keep on making sure we're staying on top of what we're spending and what our needs are, and keep on communicating that in public meetings that we'll have. We had probably more summer meetings that we typically have. You know summer usually July in particular is a slow month for school committees statewide that's not the case this year. But I think at the end of the day we still need to talk about budget and where some of these cost centers are going to come from and what tradeoffs we have to have. On that one. The good news is the town is in a strong financial position we have the flexibility we raise we built up the reserves for purpose, not expecting to have to use it for this. We hope we still don't have to use it for this. The other piece of it is that the state has comes has come through in the federal government with some money and different pots of money come in and tied up in different packages and so we're trying to place those pots of money appropriately there's some building there's some money that comes in that the schools cannot use for staffing but they can use for construction. We get money and so it's like making sure that we're maximizing the availability of funds that we get independent of the local tax dollars is really important. And I think that's we're managing that on a daily basis because there's different money comes in all the time. There's different pieces that that I think will help us get through this. And we're, we're hoping for more, we need more. And I just want to remind everybody to that we will have, we'll share all of the schools information about how to keep updated and offer your feedback throughout this. Finally, the next few weeks in town will be focusing heavily on the budget. Next week we will have our finance director on the call to answer questions, as well as will be trying out something new doing a 24 hour. If you have anything about budget and finance next Thursday as well and we'll share out those details so if this if you have additional budget questions, please try to use that format and we will get you some details. So with that being said we've we're done. We're done with our time here today, unless there's any last statements you guys want to put out there. I'm good. Have a great Independence Day. Absolutely. Okay, having me. Thank you all for joining us. Thanks Brianna. Yeah, have a nice day.