 This program is brought to you by Cable Franchise Vs and generous donations from viewers like you. We'll get started then, so should I call the meeting for order? Okay. Seeing a presence of a quorum of the Amherst School Committee, I'm calling to that meeting to order at 631 p.m. on Tuesday, December 15. We'll take a roll call attendance. Mr. Demling. Ms. Lord. Lord present. Mr. Harrington. President. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer present. President. Seeing a presence of a quorum. I'm calling to order the meeting of the regional school committee at 631 p.m. We'll start with roll call attendance. Mr. Demling. Demling still present. Mr. Harrington. Harrington present. Ms. Kenny. Kenny present. Ms. Lord. Lord present. Ms. Seager. Seager present. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer present. Ms. Dancer. Dancer present. Mr. Sullivan. Sullivan present. Ms. Mcdonald present. And we also have a few guests. Dr. Slaughter. Dr. Morris. Ms. Richardson. And Ms. Charcus who is taking notes for us. Thank you very much. And our first item on our agenda is the ELL program report from Ms. Richardson. So I'll turn it over to Dr. Morris and Ms. Richardson for that. Sure. And the next item is the PEPAC committee for your flexibility. Ms. Richardson has an L-PAC meeting, excuse me, PEPAC. Sorry. I can't keep up with the acronyms and initials, but it was a good change. It's just not stuck in my head yet. Sorry, Ms. Richardson. At 7 o'clock. So that's the parent advisory council. Around bilingual and English language learners. So we appreciate you fast tracking this to be at the earlier part of the agenda before public comment and other other items. And we also appreciate getting both committees together to be able to have this conversation. And I'll just do a little 30 second intro and turn to Ms. Richardson given the time that we, it was something that we wanted to do. And we had an outside reviewer or evaluator come in last year and you know, as you saw from the executive summary, meet with staff members, look at data and make some recommendations for us in our program. We plan to share this with you last spring. We've changed. So we did not. But you know, some of the work tonight, even at the BPAC meeting in a couple of minutes, we'll be going over some of this information, sharing the executive summary and taking some next steps around the programming. So we appreciate your patience. And thanks, Ms. Richardson. She's consistently inappropriately said, when are we going to get this on a school committee agenda? And tonight worked really well. So thanks for your patience, Mr. Richardson and alternate over to you. Great. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me. As Dr. Mara said, it's, it's been a long time coming. But it felt important because, you know, it's a, it's a report that we'd like to take the opportunity in the winter and spring to kind of start planning next steps. So it, you know, as we were thinking from the spring to the summer to the fall, I didn't feel like there was ever a good moment. And yet I wanted to start to have the dialogue with our staff and our families in the school community about kind of where we go from there. So yeah, so here we are. So I'll try, obviously I could talk for hours about everything that's in this report. So I'm going to try to just care sort of some of the high points that I see or takeaways that I see. And then I'm open to questions from all of you. So, you know, part of this was where we originally came to doing this review was through our desi review a few years ago, where they did find a couple of things that they wanted us to work on in a corrective action plan. And so one of the steps in that corrective action plan was to have someone come in and work with us on an evaluation to get an outside lens on how we were doing. So that was where this came to be. And so I think it really, you know, it's, it's, there's so much to include. And you've gotten the snapshot here, the work of the ELL program touches over 250 students. It's, you know, our students are spread out across the district in all buildings. I mean, there's a huge impact and lots to talk about. And I'll say, you know, even though there are some places where such a short report focuses on next steps and what we need to do, I think it's just super important to recognize the amazing work that our ELL staff are doing. I've had the great opportunity to visit and observe in a lot of classes in the last month, and it's fabulous to see what they've been able to do. That quality of instruction and now reach to families, the engagement is really excellent. So I just want to note that even though that's not necessarily highlighted here. So in the summary, a couple of the points that stood out were in terms of next steps. So they talked about some of the strengths of the SEI program. So this gets pretty technical pretty quickly, but the sheltered English instruction. In general, we talk about that as having the component of ESL instruction and sheltered content instruction. So that's an important distinction to keep in mind that they were both looking at how are we doing when we're, when our ESL teachers are providing instruction and how are we doing when our content teachers are providing instruction, which is made to incorporate English language development throughout the curriculum. So you see some language about that in the report. So, you know, there are plenty of strengths that they highlighted in terms of our policy that we're well-resourced, that we have a lot of people that care a lot about our students and that really work hard to continually improve our practices. One of the areas within the SEI program, they stated that we are not in complete alignment with sound educational theory. And the highlight of that or the thing that we have to really think about is the amount and the way that we use primary language support in terms of supporting our students that are learning English. So we have this great resource in that we have a fabulous interpreter staff that are largely bilingual and bicultural and they do amazing work to support our students. The challenge comes when we try to figure out how much of the curriculum is actually being delivered in another language versus being delivered in English and scaffolded so that our students are also learning the English of the content. So that's an issue that I really look forward to talking more with the school community about how do we kind of hold on to that resource and that support but shift it a little bit so that it can sort of, it can provide the support but also boost our students in their English language acquisition. So that was a big piece. There's a large component around the fact that English language development is not yet systematically enacted as a core component of content instruction. A couple years ago some of you may remember that the Department of Education rolled out the SEI endorsement course and while that was a great start that certainly isn't enough to get us to the place where we're really embedding those practices in a systematic way. So that's just a long term goal to continue working and supporting staff and really giving them the time and space to collaborate to infuse those practices into their teaching. And certainly we've made great progress on that and we have more to do. So that was an area to look at. When they, let's say, when they talk about students not making adequate growth, I think a couple things that I've been looking at closely are the percentage of our students making progress on access. So of significant concern is the secondary level, the ELL students, the percent of them making progress over the last five or six years has continued to decline. And I think there's a lot of reasons for that, but it's something that we need to look at as a community and see how we can do better. So we did go from about a 60% making progress rate in 2014 down to a 12% progress rate in 2020. So it's definitely an area of, and it's not that it was one fluke year, it really has been a trend. So that's something we have to look at pretty carefully. Whereas our Amherst numbers have stayed more consistent, more in the 50 to 60% of students are making progress, which is on par with the state average in that sense. Let me see what else. There's so many more things that I could say, but I guess those are the biggest ones. I think there's some commentary around curriculum and professional development, ongoing need for collaboration. Those are all parts of our practice, and they were cited both as strengths and areas to continue growing. So I think that's kind of in line with what we would expect. Yeah, so it was really nice to see, to have the opportunity for somebody else to come in and look at what we're doing and give us feedback. And I think what you've gotten was the executive summary, but the full report does go much more in depth and give a lot more specifics and suggestions that we'll be able to engage with the community going forward. I'm happy to open it up to questions or comments. Mr. Denley. Yeah, thank you for the overview and for forwarding the report summary. I think coming on days gets most of the public attention recently when we talk about English language learning in Amherst regional schools, which is great, but it's also good to be able to take a look at these resources as well. So when I think about resources these days, I think about budget, given that we have other items on our agenda tonight where we're talking about the prospect of what the superintendent has termed catastrophic potential impact to the budget, so a million or more cuts at the region and we haven't talked about Amherst yet, but it's the same, it's a similar funding posture there. And so I think about the impact this could have across the region and to different programs that we might not talk about a lot. And so I think about all of our ESL and SCI staff and if you were hit with, say, major staff cutbacks next year, given these additional things that we want to do out of the report, what kind of impact would that have on students? In terms of how we're able to reach and support students, what would that decrease number of staff from what you have now, how would that impact their learning experience? That would be very challenging, absolutely. I mean, we're staffed well, I think right now, just to meet the needs that we've seen in the student population over the last few years, we have grown the secondary ELL, FTE overall to match the fact that we've had more students coming in with greater gaps in schooling, and that's been super, super valuable to be able to support our beginning readers that are coming in at the middle of the school level. So that would be a huge challenge to try to condense the teaching that we're doing of content, of language, of literacy for students that really need all of those skills. I think, yeah, we have significant paraeducator support and those folks are helping students access the content within the classrooms, and I also see that coming out of this year, we're going to have an immense need to continue a high level of support. We're doing a really great job keeping up where we are, but it's not the same experience of a full day in school, so I do have that concern. I think Dr. Marce. I think the other thing I want to note is, I think what the department has done well in response, and even before this report was completed, was it was a secondary level when we had students who were coming without language background in their first language. We talked about the slice position that was added at the regional level. I think it allows us to distinguish between ELL groups. We talk more, frankly, at the committee about special education and there's no such thing as the typical special education student. Just because a student has a special education can be well placed necessarily with other students with learning disabilities to meet their needs because each student's needs are different, and that's true the same. I don't want to say ELL students are special ed students, but from a programmatic point of view, there is the same level of distinction that we want to cut based on what students' learning profile is, what their home language is, strengths in their home language are, and I think 30 years ago maybe everyone put students who were just learning English in the same classroom and figured it would all work out, and what we know is that it doesn't all work out, that we want to be much more deliberate and intentional about how we meet students' needs based on the background experiences they have, and you can only do that if your staff to do it. I think that's one of the other elements that I want to stress is what we're trying to do, and I think we need to think about how we're working with students, English language learners, and how we're thinking about English language learners not as a monolith, but as very much individual students with individual learning profiles. I'm not looking for IEP-like necessarily documents for every ELL learner, but I think there is, you look at the evidence and the results, not just in Amherst, but across the state, and I think we do need to think we need the staffing to be able to pull that off. I think I just wanted to add to Katie's point, we've seen an increase in the last 5-10 years of students who are coming to our English language learners coming to our district without, for a whole host of reasons, without a full level of educational experience in their first language, and that's a really different profile for us to be able to support, and I think when you've seen some of the staffing shifts and changes, it's really responding to the different needs that we have in our schools. I apologize if you stated this earlier already and I missed it, but when you talk about the increase in Slife students, what order of magnitude, what percentage or proportion of our students are that within our ELL program now. Katie, would you be better able to hazard a guess on that one than me? Yeah, I'm going to guess maybe 15% I'm just, it's not, I have to look back more closely, but I'll park guess. We did look at interestingly, there's the piece with the primary language support and what percentage of students who are in their first year of arrival are receiving primary language support or are students continuing to have that support longer, so I remember seeing that clearly in the reports that we had about 20 to 25% of students particularly at the secondary level that were in their first year. So that also gives a sense, there's students that come with limited home language literacy or math skills there's also just how many students are beginners and maybe have that academic foundation but need additional supports to access. So there's a lot of different considerations there. Thank you. If I could have one thing I don't want to hug and there may be other questions and I know Ms. Richardson has a meeting at 7, but I think the other thing we note is that there's a fair bit of transiency within our ELL population both coming in and going out and so that's another challenge from a staffing perspective is that it's not necessarily the same cohort in nowhere in our district the same cohort students but our English language learners tend to have a slightly higher level of transiency which forces some decisions on us and some of that's known we have students who we know are here for 6 months or a year other students who we know are going to likely be here for much of their educational career and so that's another just layer of differentiation that occurs more in the English language learner student body than in the general population as well. Any other questions? Thank you Ms. Richardson for joining us this evening and on the tail of or in front of your next meeting so I appreciate it. Thank you. Absolutely, yeah. I'd love to come back and hopefully there would be some space in the spring to hear where we are in the process of kind of working through some of these issues and you know in more detail but I'm glad to be able to share that much at this point. Thank you all. Okay. Great. So now I am going to I'll move to adjourn the Amherst school committee. Is there a second? Second. I'm moved by McDonald and seconded by Spitzer and there's no discussion so we'll take a roll call vote. Mr. Denling. Denling aye. Mr. Harrington. Ms. Spitzer aye. Ms. Spitzer aye. And McDonald aye. The Amherst school committee is adjourned and now moving on for region I didn't see minutes in the packet. Dr. Morris. Yep, so Ms. Figueroa and I are almost caught up on just all of Ms. Miss tspo, Mr. Scharkas is excuse me our first meeting in January you will have a long long list of minutes to approve but we just wanted to get them organized instead of doing a piecemeal so we'll have at that first meeting in January it'll be a very long packet of minutes and I apologize for that but I think we'll have them all caught up and then we can clear the deck and get going on a better kind of weekly meeting timeline of approving minutes so we're just about there for me tomorrow morning and we'll finish a loop and for that early January meeting we'll get caught up. Um can I make a request slash suggestion on the minutes since we'll be reviewing a whole slew of them and I'm sure our memories will be fuzzy would it be possible to include as the first page for each set of minutes the agenda for that meeting so that we'll see the agenda and then the minutes then the agenda and the minutes I think that might help us go through them. Okay so um we now move on to public comments and we have two voice messages and a packet of documents I'll start with the voice messages. Good evening my name is Stephanie Hockman and I'm a resident of Pellum with students in the eighth and ninth grade. I believe in the public comment tonight specifically to any teachers and APEA leadership who are listening. 2020 has been a difficult year. We've all faced challenges due to unemployment racial inequity and turbulent economy resulting in lost wages and jobs. Many of our teachers have risen above and beyond their challenges these challenges to provide the best education possible given the hurdles they faced. However those same teachers who are known for expelling are the same ones that know the best way to educate the future of our society the best way to provide the education to our students is through input and instruction. To that end I implore all teachers to reach out to your APEA leadership and request that they return to the negotiation table with the school district. The current MOA is not in line with scientific data that we now have about the transmission of service. Complaining to be in a fully remote learning environment is harming the education of our students harming the social emotional well-being of our young people harming the financial stability of our district and most importantly creating insurmountable inequities for most vulnerable community members. Did you know that Amerson Pellum are two of three towns in Western Mass that have not had some form of in-person instruction since October 26th and that the other town Plainfield now has a date of returning to in-person instruction in January? The current MOA metrics are based on fear and are not flexible to allow for adapting to the new facts we have about COVID and safety. The current MOA has resulted in our schools being an outlier to all other districts. We are last in getting our children back to in-person instruction and we are last in putting the needs of our students first. In addition since 2019 the district has had a status of requiring assistance or intervention from the Department of Education for some years to make adequate progress for low participation rate among students. This has been made worse due to remote learning. If this term continues into year five our district could end up in receivership similar to Holyoke. No one in our community wants that. With in-person instruction we can make real progress in increasing participation and especially in our most vulnerable students. Teachers, please follow the facts in the science. Understand that we know and can follow measures to keep everyone safe in in-person instruction. Don't allow others to speak for you. It is time to return to the negotiation table and create metrics that are reasonable and based on facts as we now know them. If most of the schools around the country and the world can place in-person education of their students at the top of their priority so can we. It's time to put the education needs of our students at the floor front of the discussion. Please put things first and ask the AP. Just so folks listening at home understand this the recording the voicemail setup for Google Voice actually cuts people off exactly three minutes so that was not me. Hey my name is Bennett Hayes. I live in Amherst on the parent of a Fort River Elementary student and a middle school student. First one I thank the teachers for the amazing truly amazing job they're doing and from our view into their classroom work at both the elementary and middle school level for my kids and I'm amazed. I know they must be working twice as hard this year and I don't want to lose sight of that. On comment today it's really around time. It just takes a long time to get things done following established processes. You all in the school committee have to get meetings booked, get readouts of meetings, schedule more meetings, engage with the public, engage with the administration, the union and so on. I think it's important for the union to commit to a meeting with the school committee right now so that we all go into the holidays knowing there's a plan in place to allow us to process what we've learned about how the virus spreads among children, what other leading school districts around the state and the country have learned from their disparate experiences, how remote learning has impacted kids right here in our schools and how things are going to change with the rollout of the vaccine where teachers in Massachusetts are rightly prioritized to receive it. For the sake of comedy and momentum I still think we can afford to close the books on 2020 without knowing that when we return in 2021 there's a plan in place for engaging teachers the way of their union and this conversation. Standing still and just cleaning the plans that were made in September isn't the right thing to do for anybody. We've learned so much and that has to be reflected in our plans. Thank you. So I'm sharing this document for folks that aren't able to see it clearly on their screens at home. This document is posted or will be shortly posted on the regional school committee agendas page so you can read it at cheer leisure later. So as mentioned this that document will be available on our website on the agendas page for the regional school committee. Okay moving on we are now moving to the superintendent's update so I'll hand it over to you Dr. Price. Sure and it's a somewhat lengthy one so I'll be sure to pause a couple times to see if there's questions as I go if that's okay with the chair. So I'll start I'm not going in the order I thought I was actually but I'm going to start with the vandalism that occurred outside Amherst regional high school to start with and what I'm going to do is read the statement that was that was sent out to all staff and all families. This went out yesterday on Monday the 14th. The ARPS community last Friday afternoon racist and anti-Semitic graffiti was found on the sidewalk outside Amherst regional high school. These chalk drawings which included a racial slur and a swastika were photographed and quickly removed however the drawings were blatant violation of school policy and more importantly our community's core values. No one should have ever come to work should ever have to come to work or school and experience discrimination and bigotry in any form. Since the incident occurred we've been using the tools available to the district to investigate the incident and identify the person or persons who committed this hateful act of vandalism and have been in communication with the Amherst police department about this illegal act. The graffiti left outside ARHS comes at a time that there is a disturbing escalation of incidents of bias bigotry and hatred within our country and throughout the world. It's a clear reminder why we are unequivocal about doing work to make our school community an actively anti-racist institution. In recent years our schools have engaged in anti-racist educational programming both for students and staff designed to broaden perspectives and create greater cultural understanding. We are fully committed to continuing this work as clearly we still have as we still have much work to do comes to embodying a fully inclusive hate-free and an understanding community. Understanding that the information about this incident is of great concern and many will have strong feelings about it. Counselors are available for students who want to discuss their thoughts and feelings. The district also acknowledges that this will impact personnel as well as as well and will be planning and offering opportunities for follow-up for staff. Further information will be forthcoming and the signers are myself, Doreen Cunningham, assistant superintendent, Talb Sadiq, principal Amherst regional high school and Dave Sloven principal summit academy at Amherst regional high school. I went out a little bit more than what was in the statement. I think Scott got it really a nice nicely written article today in the Gazette. One of the questions that we were asked that I was asked was you know why did you publicize this so few students would have seen it because schools are closed right so and you know I think the response was our response was that if we're serious about being an actively anti-racist institution one thing anti-racist institutions do is they publicize acts of patriot right and they let the community know what's actually happening and there's nothing to be kept quiet about this. It's true that there were very few people who saw the vandalism and at the same time those few people did and it still happened in the school that you know in our my vantage point belongs to the students and staff even if they're not physically there at this time it'd be no different if it was in the summer or during February break we want to communicate that. I want to really thank you know Mr. Siddique, Mr. Sloven, a bunch of other people who have been involved and trying to work on this. The high school met with students on Monday afternoon to try to right size and guess right size the wrong verb to really gather their thoughts and opinions about what students needed. There was an optional staff meeting as well at the secondary level at the high school level for that I know for River and some of the elementary schools are doing the same to make sure that staff can identify what they need you know and how they can be supported and so this isn't sort of the end of this this is really just you know sort of a shocking and jolting reminder of the work that we continue to need to do and we can't do that if we're not engaging with students and staff about what the next steps are. I also want to thank a number of people from the community have reached out and organizations religious organizations and other organizations have reached out they're happy to partner and meet with students or staff and provide their resources and support to us and so you know we're deeply appreciative of the community's response which was kind of very consistent with how we felt about it that we were disturbed and distraught about it and people wanted to come in and help and so I just want to you know really appreciate the community both of staff students and the larger community for how they've responded to this and you know I will say one of the one of the saddest moments was trying to understand you know over the weekend how other communities how often this happens and there's some things you shouldn't google search and this is one of them it does seem like the racist words and swastikas out schools is a common form of journalism perhaps more common than I was understood before I looked around for it it doesn't stop right it's this isn't the first time this has happened at school and won't be the last time and that's that's perhaps in some ways almost the most disturbing thing is the frequency that these types of events happen so our job and our task is how do we support the community to grieve and also how do we support people to be able to work within our organization to make it better every single day because we clearly have a lot of work to do so sorry that was long-winded but you know it's something that is certainly in a week with a lot of other things happening and around the world and locally it's taken a lot of you know the focus to where it needs to be which is kids and adults and how do we improve our organization any comments or questions about that topic before I move on to the plethora of others that I have to talk about tonight you know and again I want to thank our team for coming together and spending a lot of time together over the last five days working on this and figuring out you know again the what's the what's the response we want to have and and you know I'm glad that we did publicize it even though it's uncomfortable for for people to read and it caused reactions from everyone who read what happened there's not any part of me that feels like that was a decision that should have been kept to a very small number of people who saw it just given the content of it there so on a more positive note the on Friday in the newsletter you all may have seen that we published a set of documents for ventilation testing that showed the full results that we as we have them now for all the schools in the district I know this is a regional meeting I'd like to just show a screen share one one of them I'll show the high school I think or the middle school whichever one comes up on my screen first just to show the the types of things that were there do the high school now let me zoom in a bit so that people can see that a little more so the first part for every school was a table and it was the room number the greater program this one is the one I actually want to speak to them minimum minimum number of supplemental air purifiers required as you may remember we bought HEPA UV light air purifiers that do increase the number of the increase the ventilation in rooms and this is not saying that if you see a zero that there aren't air purifiers in them it's that they're not needed to get to the four eight changes per hour that consistent with the ASHRAE standards and consistent with our agreement with the APEA and so what you see the next column is you know how many air changes per hour without the purifiers and the last column is the total width purifiers now it's an important caveat here because when you see all those zeros most of those rooms have air purifiers so the actual number that we're experiencing is significantly higher than was on the right side we just wanted to have a chart of what's the base layer and how do we show that each room gets over four or doesn't get there and I actually before I scroll I actually want to note an appreciation for all the facilities maintenance and custodial folks our middle school and high school and summit academy they are not new buildings right the newest part of them is older than our students significantly and so the fact that as y'all scroll down you'll see that most of the rooms are over four without any supplemental air purification is really a testament to the ongoing work wasn't like something that happened this summer right it wasn't like oh yeah we got covid let's fix our rooms this was years and years of high quality maintenance and high quality staff doing work over time but I'll just scroll down and you'll see you know you'll see some rooms with the one next to them and on the right side you'll see where they land but these ones these rooms that say zeros most of those rooms just about all of them actually have purifiers in them and the real number is quite a bit higher the ventilation but we just wanted to show that actually the majority of the high school hits the ashray standard without any supplemental purification I know I'm scrolling quickly but this is all on our website um you can see the middle school high school a couple rooms need to be you know tested testing results were inconclusive um and then the the other thing you know I think Erica Vergara Vergara excuse me in the facilities office she made for every school a map and what you see there's color coding at the bottom you are not going to be able to read that but the light blue that the white area is not currently approved for classroom use those are generally small spaces at the high school spaces without windows that we wouldn't be they're not instructional spaces the light blue has zero air purifiers required the kind of medium blue as one you see a couple those like here and the dark blue has two or more purifiers required um so this is the two upper floors and you see the couple rooms need to be retested but the vast majority of rooms um had sufficient air and ventilation on their own even without the the purifiers so I wanted to show that because I got a couple questions after the newsletter went out about that and the short story is the summary I should say is for the number of students the percentage of students who desired originally a return to in-person education we have more classrooms than we need to educate every one of the students who indicated an interest in returning as it relates to ventilation based on at all of our buildings I know this is a regional meeting but I'll speak at a turn and just say that's true pre-k to six so really a tremendous amount of thanks needs to go to our maintenance facilities staff not only working with Nexus to do this testing the really helpful maps some people love looking at that numerical data and tables some people just like show me a map and show me what I'm supposed to see and which room is going to be in and so you know the fact that we're able to offer both is fantastic but more fantastic I think is that we feel like our rooms are ready to go and we now come confirmation evidence we had enough you know before in terms of faces one and two but now at all of our schools we have plenty of classrooms for the percentage of students who said they were willing to their families wanted them to be in school if we get to that place we're still are working on those rooms that are in the that are not shaded yet that need retesting Nexus was in I believe this week or will be in this week to do some additional testing and retesting of rooms that after our facilities department looked at some rooms where the test was inconclusive or came in love so you know we're not satisfied that even though we have enough rooms we want to get all of them on board COVID's not going away that quickly and we want to make sure that we're ready to go at any point for all the rooms that are disposal but we have no shortage of well-ventilated classrooms ready for students and staff to return to when that date happens any questions on this topic lots of questions Ms. Lorde thank you and if you'll forgive me this is actually I'm a response to the topic before but I just needed a moment to catch my breath absolutely may I okay so I just want to say historically this has been happening for years my senior year a racist slur was um written on the American flag so thank you for making it public because truthfully I hear about students seeing racist words on desks and bathroom walls and the facility staff is quick to clean it up and paint over it but we don't end up having these discussions and it lands in a painful way to those of us who are targets of racist or anti-semitic slurs so as we learn more about being an anti-racist and an anti-oppressive community I hope we start having more of these difficult conversations accountability training and education we got a lot of work to do and transparency is an important step so again thank you thank you very much miss Lorde I appreciate and agree with everything that you said Ms. Kenny were you raising your hand for a question or comment I was mostly cheering that there are spaces for all students who wanted to be back in classrooms when we can return to in-person schooling um and how you know just a huge thank you to the maintenance and facility staff for you know those aren't quick fixes and it's because people were on top of their game for years and years um that it was able to happen like that so just really appreciate it Mr. Demling yeah so um there were assertions made by the APEA executive board that I learned about in the press last week that these ventilation reports were not available and also that we don't have enough space for the students in our return plan so I mean so just to clarify because you went over a lot of technical detail there Dr. Morris you're you're saying these reports are publicly available and and we have more than enough space to service the students according to our plan for in-person for for all three phases is that correct that's correct yes and then with this it was emailed out to all it was in the newsletter which goes to all staff and all families on Friday okay so um okay so that helps um on the point of it so in the press you know it is framed as these were conditions that the APEA executive board was making uh to come back to the table to renegotiate the MOA and as far as I understand it um our committee center request our last request on November 2nd to the APEA executive board asking them to talk to be clear not to agree to any changes right just to come back to talk about changing the MOA that was six weeks ago we haven't heard anything so have you or the chair heard from the APEA executive board have these these concerns these the ventilation reports not being available and um not being enough space the the idea that there might not be enough space for all the kids were these concerns sent to you from the board in the last six weeks as conditions of renegotiating or have they have they ever been before they appeared in the press last week sent to you I can say I saw the newspaper article I believe you're referencing I did not receive any communication directly in the last week uh around conditions for renegotiation um I didn't receive any emails with any information about that I can't speak for the chair I cannot speak for the chair not that I can sorry I I did not okay uh thank you any other questions okay thank you and and you know I keep saying it but I think it is worth staying because it's a group of people that that doesn't often get or actually want the limelight but I'm going to give it to put it on them anyway just you know real huge appreciation we talked about the leadership team just making sure that custodians and maintenance folks kind of recognize that the the level of work I mean there's a neighboring district uh and I want Mitch just one they do not have a standard of four air change per hour it's a lower air air change per hour and when we originally read to it um they said well you know that's crazy we have like you know four classrooms in our district that are going to be that are over four uh air changes an hour and you know we have the the the vast vast majority of classrooms even without the additional ventilation we're supplying um over that and we don't have new buildings right it's not like west springfield high school or something that was built in the last six years where one might just assume oh well it's built in the 2010s like you know they probably are all set with ventilation that's not our schools um so you know just want to restate that one more time yeah um Ms. Seeker sorry sorry um just following up uh on what Mr. Demling was saying um sorry a little this this just popped into my brain um in terms of of numbers um for ventilation and maps of the school because I too read that article and was surprised because of sitting on the school committee I know we were seeing maps that the administration put together in August and September and we started to see numbers for the rooms that you anticipated using in phase one and two so I too was surprised to read that and I just want to say tonight that this this email that you put together with this full report in it is not the first time that these numbers have been out there so I just want to speak that here because people who might be watching might not realize that that's not the first time that these numbers were were publicly shared yeah yeah the new information is really on some of the phase three rooms um which we never got to phase three you know in terms of in-person um but you're right phase one and phase two we presented and I think that was put on our website I think was September 29th could be off by a day or two but it thereabouts and just to put a finer point on that we we had phase one students in for for a week and they were 100 of the phase one students that wanted to come back were back in rooms in in classrooms that were meeting these these standards demonstrated to me Mr. Devin did you have another question yeah I mean it it seems kind of I mean I guess I guess we have to just state the obvious but I mean Dr. Morris regardless of what's publicly available and who said what for how many cookies there would not be any point ever right that you would ask staff or students to come in person to a room that doesn't meet those ACH requirements correct yeah no all of our classrooms in phase one you know which is as far as we got we're in spaces um occurred in spaces that were had been previously tested and were above four air changes an hour so I think I'll move forward which is um to oddly juxtapose points but I'll make the first one first which is that um we all have concerns about mental health and COVID winter and you know we appreciate that Courtney and Sarah from the Bright Program not ours but at the kind of the more general they support all the Bright Programs uh their clinicians and they'll be back on Thursday we're doing a 330 event so you know there'll be a lot of snow on the ground the tip to sip your tea or hot chocolate and whether it's for you know kind of middle upper grade students certainly all the regional students would be it'd be appropriate for their families and staff working through head of right size uh expectations that we all have for ourselves for school for our children as we head into this winter and so I feel like both as a educator and educator and as a parent I learn a lot every time I talk to Courtney and Sarah so it'll be an interactive session again like last time where they'll probably do about 20 minutes of presentation chatting and about 40 minutes of Q&A you need to use on using the live stream on the YouTube so we encourage everyone to go the the objects the physician is this morning and trying to be not so epoxy on this one but I'm not sure how successful I will be the the state board of elementary and secondary education and a split vote pass regulations about live instruction uh it's a topic we'll have to come back to in early January I'm not opposed to having regulations about live instruction but the justification was that uh that this live instruction or four hours a day of live instruction was directly tied to students mental health I have not seen any evidence that supports that that amount of live instruction is directly tied to students mental health it's my professional organization Massachusetts Association schools school superintendent spoke out loudly against that proposed vote today it did pass seven to four I believe at desi so we'll come back to this this would be more of a concern in some districts I work for that are not legally called to order right now so I'll leave it at that not so much at the regional level but I do want wanted to communicate that and that the kind of the justification that I was directly told us were other superintendents is that that's there's some minimum number of live instructional synchronous hours that corresponds to students mental health and I I struggle when there's not evidence behind statements like that so that's probably as much as I'll go into it'll be certainly a topic we need to come back to at least some of my committees next month but it is it is a big deal it is you know was debated for hours I believe today I did not watch the full live stream because it didn't my day was too busy and I couldn't squeeze it in but I did want to let you know that there there are going to be some recommendations of live synchronous hours for instruction and there's a kind of waiver system based on parent feedback so we'll have a lot to talk about when we get back in January particularly at the Amherst and the Pelham level so it's probably as much as I can share now but it's just queuing queuing you forward to future agenda topics Allison Richard I'm sorry yeah I'm calling myself with a clarification question so live instruction is is part of but not the same as time on learning correct yeah I shouldn't have I said that in not the clearest way time on learning is the standards that we always have for how much instructional time there is this is about live synchronous instruction as opposed to asynchronous instruction yeah thank you any other questions so something else we'll come back to and I know this answer brought up last time is how are we doing in terms of attendance that's a tentative good news to show that in the last five weeks we have seen we're not resolved in terms of some disaggregated disparities around attendance but they have narrowed in other words you know in particular if you look at Latino student attendance that was a cause of concern that's still a cause of concern but the concern has been you know numerically is shrinking based on the efforts of our administrative staff and other staff who are trying new strategies out and the Distance Learning Center which I know has made a huge impact on many many students so thank you to Amherst Recreation and Mark Smeto after school because I know they're doing fabulous work with with our students I go up and see kids all the time there so I'll come back in January with that but I didn't want to not respond to missed answers very good question last time but we'll have more soon on that topic but um RIS department did run a report that um initial report that showed some gains in the areas we'd want to see gains and and we're not there right it's it's both good news and not good news right good news that we're seeing gaps narrow not good news is that there are still gaps so I want to be explicit about both of those things um see testing um so when we we do have test kits um this week um COVID test kits that are antigen tests they're for symptomatic individuals and um we are nurse leader Robin Supernaut has to go undergo some training but when we get back from the two week break that we have this year for for the December holiday uh those will be ready to go so any symptomatic individual in our distance learning center located at the high school will have antigen just antigen test tests on site uh that can be taken with the relatively quick turnaround antigen test to be clear do need a confirming PCR test but it's um it really helps that process flow and and um so we appreciate the state support and I really want to thank thank Robin Supernaut for jumping in to Jill Consolino shoes when Jill left us and she's doing fantastic work for us so um also of note that UMass is um has opened their testing center at the Mullen Center to community members for asymptomatic testing um so thank you to UMass for that in addition the town of Amherst is doing kind of a one morning fill in the gap symptomatic testing uh or if you're quarantine uh on Friday morning this week this will go out to all family students and staff or all families and staff tomorrow um just with both those options um because what we really what what the town realizes it's great that UMass is open and you can't go to UMass if you're symptomatic right so there's there's sort of people caught in the middle um and if you know I think if the need is there they may look to see if they're they can continue that intermittently in future dates so I think from a testing capacity perspective you know both you know within our distance learning center and beyond if students do come back in person um you know I think our capacity does appear to be growing locally uh I will say you know it's been a crazy week right with electoral college with the vaccine stuff it is pretty amazing to see the vaccine you know rollout and you know under the state's plan and we'll see you all know me well enough to know I tend to be pessimistic on timelines um uh but you know within the next um three four months um it would be that the vaccine would be available uh for educators in our district and that's a really exciting development this this far exceeds my uh lay estimate on how good the vaccine would be and how quickly it would come so kudos to all the researchers around the world who are working on this um and you know probably like many people I got a little emotional watching the person in New York uh get that test uh yesterday and you know you know it's like the enough history was yes yesterday had enough history in it for like years and years and it just all was smacked in one day uh but you know pretty pretty exciting stuff and I'll just we are working with the town of Amherst and vaccine site and and uh how that rollout would be not just for our educators but actually for the larger community that we do want to partner with them we do have access to resources um large spaces uh outdoor spaces that people could get vaccinated and so you know Emma Dragon's been absolutely fantastic I'm sure Ben would agree with me uh in his work with her uh just really connecting with the schools frequently I talk to her today we we talk uh very very often on everything going on so um good news on that front um this is a really long update I apologize but um there's a lot going on and we met last week um uh on the less good side is we are seeing you know statewide and locally an increase in the number of positive cases of COVID uh we are seeing also locally as statewide um that in home spread uh is a significant factor in community spread in other words I'm not suggesting that people only get it inside their homes but when someone in a home gets it it's highly likely that that spread happens very quickly within a home environment and that's predictable people aren't necessarily wearing masks in their homes there's basically no ventilation uh you know um in terms of air change to our home environment and people are less distance right um and so we're seeing that you know statewide has been written often about but you know the health department's noticing that trend is happening you know within Amherst as well as within our communities not just Amherst but our larger communities as well as a result the health department made a recommendation that we pause all in-home um services we do have students who are getting receiving in-home services for special education needs um and then if we're able to write that so they're not um the second part is on us uh transition those services if if we can service students and if families agree to our school setting uh where we know the ventilation is good to their earlier conversation we have professional cleaning we know people are masked you know some students may not be able to wear masks all day because of a disability but all the adults are wearing masks all day long um and uh there's a lot of controls there's nurse there there's testing on site all those things that aren't true in a home environment and as the weather's gotten colder the ability to do outside testing is getting harder and harder I mean if any of you spent any time outside today it'd be hard to concentrate um you know academically in that setting for long stretches of time um so we did communicate um you know pre-k to 12 with staff and families this week about that change about the pause and in-home services uh and we are working actively with families if we can figure out how to service students um in our distance learning center uh we'd like to continue to support students by offering the services that we know they need to make effective progress um so you know I think you know from the health director's point of view there is not a concern about students being in the school setting because of all the reasons I mentioned but there really is a concern about the in-home and it's concern on the employee safety part um as well as on the family safety part um just because the transmission rate in homes is really driving a significant amount of the spread um I don't want to get too much into science of it but if you if you google it you'll see a lot of percentages and numbers um that that really um that site that perhaps even more than half or significantly more than that uh spread is happening within homes and I want to be really clear and I said this twice at JLMC I think with Ben uh our non-public meeting on Friday I'm not suggesting that that in-home is the only place that it's spreading that there's no transmission outside in homes uh that's not what I'm saying because I know that message gets confusing and gets political but what we are hearing from the health department is when COVID enters a home the spread happens very very quickly uh and very definitively and that's why the recommendation is to pause in-home services see if they can be delivered in a in a school setting that's controlled with ventilation professional cleaning nurse and COVID testing on site and so uh we'll communicate with families we're trying to work things out as best we can there are obviously our limitations that we can't control in terms of you know contractual limitations to do that we do have in the MOA that in-home services can continue uh there's not necessarily the same kind of clause for kind of that version of in-home services in the school setting uh you know our distance learning center at the high school for special students with intensive needs is often much like a home setting in that it's either one-on-one in a classroom or two students and two adults in a classroom but in a 900 square foot classroom with good ventilation the health director is not concerned at all about us continuing that program is really the in-home that where the concern lies so our staff doing a great job communicating that and trying to problem solve as best we can uh again we have no depth of classrooms at the high school so we're not concerned about our capacity to to to find spaces for students but the the challenge is how do we staff that and and our families uh willing to bring their kids in when they weren't originally right the students most of the students receiving in-home services had made a choice not to be in person um and so um it's a hard conversation because you know how valuable the services are but again you're going to hear I'm a broken record right when I get a recommendation from public health authorities we're going to implement it and uh you know appreciate Mr. Dragon's point of view on things. Mr. Demling. So question and a comment so to clarify it's it's the Amherst Public Health Director's determination that it's safer for staff to serve as students and by the way these are our highest need students who can't benefit from remote learning at all uh it's it's safer to service these students in our school buildings rather than directly in homes and that's her professional health determination is that correct that is exactly so my comment is and I'll try to keep it together for this comment but my god we have to figure out a way to staff this like I understand everybody here understands the contractual you said it more definitely and obliquely and eloquently than I could Dr. Moore but like I don't know how else to say it to the public and to the community we have very high need students who can't benefit from remote learning we need to get them in the building we need to service them in the building so we can't sacrifice their education like indefinitely because of of issues of other other issues that can't be resolved and I'm it's a comment on a question Dr. Mark because I'm not expecting you to give me a solution right now I know you understand the level of this challenge but I just I struggle with trying to articulate this publicly in a productive way um you know and then go to CPAC and then come back here and then talk to parents and then see everything that we're seeing in public comment I just you know I'm trying to be a pragmatic pragmatic public official here where I'm representing the public interest and not letting my emotions get the better of me but it's it's pretty darned hard on this one um so I just why it's a comment and a question so so thank you goes any other questions miss fitzer sorry um I actually had to start going back a little bit to the vaccine piece and comment on this so I just um I am super excited about the vaccine I similarly was feeling tearing up while watching um you know uh the videos and getting news that the people I work with are going to be vaccinated this week it's just it's huge um I also um I'm concerned about already you know feared that there's misinformation out there and so I'd like to ask the committee and Dr. Morris like if we can in the future I would really like to have us dedicate some time to thinking about ways that we can make sure that good information is getting out there because this isn't an FDA approved vaccine yet it's got this emergency use authorization so we're not going to be able to say all students must be vaccinated um in the way that we have with the flu you know employees same thing it's going to be optional so I think until it gets that FDA approval it's going to be really really essential that we build confidence in the public in this vaccine and and encourage folks who when it's available and I know it's going to be a while especially for kids um it's available but I I think if we can start you know laying the groundwork for um implementation and adoption of the vaccine I think if we can it's great and obviously work with a public health director um so the other um I just wanted to also um state my support and ask like are there any you know barriers that we can help you overcome with regards to trying to move these services from being in home to in safer environments like the schools because I you know today I think I shared with you this you know CDC study that came out and it showed that actually um for inside school was not associated with um increased rates of COVID in the study that looked at kids in Mississippi but visitors in the home there was a strong positive association with a positive COVID-19 test so I think that the data is out there that supports um the public health director's recommendation and so if there's anything we can do to help overcome those barriers I think we need to do it so thank you. Thanks yeah and maybe I'll comment a little bit because I think we talked about the staffing side which which makes sense I think there's also the education for the family side right is that that's equally as important and you know Chris Cusack who is um the coordinator of our intensive needs programs K-12 and Elizabeth Burns who is the pre-school coordinator are doing a great job I think being really clear with families not not coercion obviously but just saying this is the recommendation this is why the recommendation was made because I think there is just an abundance of information out there and for families when you're thinking about kids and if there's a medically vulnerable kid right these are really really difficult choices that there's no right or wrong to from a family perspective everyone's got to make the right choice that feels feels like the right thing to them but we want them to base that choice on science and data and as much as we can provide it we're trying to and again not enough any way that it tries to compel anyone to make any action but just that people can ask questions and again that's where Emma's a fantastic resource for us because she can you know filter data to us that we can share on so and thank you for sending that that report carrier was I was able to take a look at it this afternoon I appreciate how you sending it okay I promise I'm I am getting close to done but a couple more is just I want to thank the PGOs and the family center for the coat drive and coat swap we know how important that is in the winter so they're doing a great job in doing it in a kind of distance manner this week huge benefit for our families as we head to winter and also the family center taking on the kind of winter gift drive that they do with staff to give to make sure that families have gifts for their kids especially this year takes on renewed importance it is a two-week break that we have as voted by the school committee I also want to know while some people are really excited for that break there's other people that that's going to be a long two weeks and so you know we we had lots of conversations actually at our kind of district level leadership team today and we really want to thank our HR team and Doreen in particular for really thinking through how do we reach out to folks who might be struggling during those two weeks because that's a really long break and you know again my we don't live in Florida right and you can look at the good parts of that but you know I could imagine the the two weeks in Florida in December might merit some more easy outside time than two weeks in New England from what I'm seeing from like 10 to 15 inches forecast on Thursday right for some people they rejoice about that for people like me it means winter is really starting and that's not necessarily the happiest moment so just want to note that and just be sensitive to each other and to others because I think you know some people don't celebrate any holidays over the break some people have a whole lot of holidays some people have family locally that they you know can still see outside other people's family they're not going to be able to visit and this is the first time in a holiday season not to be able to visit so just want to balance that that sometimes we think of breaks and a long break being wonderful and that that's just not true for everyone in our community so want to share that publicly and I really appreciate Doreen's thinking about how to approach that speaking of this oh yeah I'm sorry um will um food service meal meal delivery thank you so yep so food service is doing two drop-off days I want to say it's the 22nd and 27th but at all the food drop-off sites they've been communicating that to families about those two days where they're doing seven days meals a huge boxes for families who come get them but that's that's sort of what they're able to do with the holidays and their employees needing to take time off but we're covering every day um it's just going to be in two very large boxes for families that's that's wonderful and thank you to the the staff for working during the break to make that happen that's that's really great yeah they've been fabulous um so my last one is talking about snow days so you know we talked in the summer uh when it was nice out about snow days and not taking them if we're in a remote or actually for in any environment and we're going to do that on Thursday um there's no way anyone's going to be in buildings unless the forecast changes a lot on Thursdays with the amount of snow and especially the timing of the snow um that's just not going to happen we're we are going to do a road learning day but tomorrow morning we're going to set out a survey to families and to staff I've heard mixed things from people in hill towns I know I've talked about it here about internet connectivity during a storm I've also heard from staff members who rely on going to school uh for their internet um and some mixed feelings about snow days so we're gonna instead of just making executive decision we're actually going to collect a bunch of data from families and from staff about how they'd like to see us manage um snow days and then I'd like to bring that back in January so we can come to kind of it isn't the superintendent's court on that one but I'd like to talk about it both with you all and publicly because I think having the opinions of the lived experience of families who especially in a remote environment are playing a very large role in this as well as uh staff members uh what are the implications on days where there's a lot of snow for them and be able to provide that I think is the best approach so Thursday we'll move forward we won't have a virtual snow day on Thursday Thursday will be a we'll continue as a I don't know if I'd say typical day of school but a day of school um but we're going to be soliciting feedback to come back in January to think about how we want to approach this winter um as it relates to snow days and and the impact of snow on people's ability to access distance learning so more soon on that one but I just wanted to share you know sort of where we were and then I've gotten feedback and uh not everyone was thrilled with the idea of not having snow days I would do want to note our school year schedule to end on June 24th so there's not that many snow days we can have before we have to go back and start taking away April break and things like that that people may not necessarily be enthralled about doing but uh we want to gather data uh I'll bring it back to you and we can make a kind of a decision that's informed by the experience of our constituents so that's all I want to say about Thursday and and then about collecting data to come back in January to talk through more and that's the end of my very lengthy update I apologize any questions comments all right seeing none so next item is um chair's update and um I want to take this opportunity to there a lot an hour's worth um of of information in and Dr. Morris's uh update and a lot of comments and discussion so I want to take the opportunity to kind of synthesize a lot of that um and then also can call attention to a couple items that have been published or shared in the last week that relate to learning during the pandemic um one was shared during our meeting last week um a statement from pediatric physicians at at base day that describes the significant and negative impacts that extended distance learning is having on youth in our region including increased rates of physical and emotional illnesses um to the point of ICU um hospitalization for some of them for some of those youth and their statement concludes by saying quote we must provide these students the option of in-person learning coming from physicians at base day and today as Dr. Morris mentioned and thank you to Ms. Spitzer for sharing that report with me as well um the CDC published a report of a study that states that among the children under 18 that they studied attending school or daycare in person was not associated with a positive COVID test result and that builds on all the the data that we saw coming out of other countries and their their um public school experiences during um in-person learning during the pandemic um we continue to hear from parents including in tonight's public comment describing the despair that they're feeling that their child struggles or regresses in the absence of in-person instruction and support um and we read in the press about the APA concerns about the district's plan for in-person learning and i'm pleased that the district has been able to address those concerns already either before the expression of those concerns or with the face three spaces and some of the retesting um just very soon after the district has the plan in place to bring 100 of the students who choose in-person learning into school buildings in classrooms that provide for six feet of distancing and ventilation that is documented to be at or above our guidelines because of the careful planning and hard work of many district staff the district has sufficient PPE on hand and has documented safety protocols in place to support in-person learning the district is ready and we are ready for our students to return to schools for in-person learning this spring when case counts are declining again i hope our teachers in union will collaborate with us as we develop the plan for returning to in-person learning and either way as i stated last week i'm prepared to ask the superintendent superintendent to develop a plan that can get our students back to the in-person learning they need so hopefully i caught us up on some of the time um we'll move on to school committee announcements um and i believe miss stancer you had an announcement um i just wanted to announce that um the budget subcommittee has a meeting scheduled this thursday at 6 30 um we i would like clarification and help on two points regarding that my understanding from our last meeting was um that we have not really told a very good story about budget cuts in the past and how things have happened in the past with the budget and that we needed to do that when you so i i'm understanding that that really is the goal of at least initially what the subcommittee needs to do and i just wanted to be sure that that was the understanding of the full committee and the other is what kind of a timeline are we looking for um to have some kind of a draft perhaps to present back to the entire committee that was um i think it's part of i think the second part of your question will get answered when we get to the agenda item 20 f y 22 budget outlook um because we'll have to talk a little bit about timeline i'm sure there so that part will get answered okay yes that is was my understanding of our asked of the budget subcommittee was to help um build that explanation okay one more one more part of that is what is our intended who is our intended audience for this it was brought up in the context of the four town meeting and one or more people from amherst the amherst group saying that we haven't really told a story about what's happening with the schools and budgets so is this do we want a broad sort of public audience for this or do we want something narrower those are um all great questions and i'm thinking maybe we can fold those into our conversation about the budget outlook when we get to that agenda item so that we can actually have a discussion okay and and please bring it up again if we don't get we don't talk about it in there okay thank you okay um miss lord yes i would like to announce that tomorrow there is a school equity task force meeting at six o'clock till seven thirty it is on the district calendar thank you okay lots of analysis anything more great um so move on to a new and continuing business our first item is um a holdover because we didn't get to it last week which is the discussion beginning our discussions on the 2021-22 school year planning um we had talked about wanting to have this conversation earlier on when we were adding it to our agenda we talked about um creative ways that we could address the whether it's the school calendar and starting earlier to address the likelihood that not all of our students will be vaccinated by by the time the new school year starts and so we wanted to begin early so that we could have the conversations and plan appropriately for any change to calendars um and set up for the school year um i think that's sort of the background and context for this discussion um and i'm not really sure where folks want to start so i one of the things that we talked about just again to recap from the last time was some of the potential um constraints or um conditions that we'll have to consider um as we think about when might be a good um when when we how early we could push back a school start date given that we don't have sort of sufficient air cooling in uh in all of our buildings to to um support hot summer days in our schools um so there was some amount of investigation in terms of facilities to be able to support that as well back to maris well i'll just pick on one topic um and then that relates the next school year because it is timely uh which is i'm sure many of you saw that the north hampton school committee voted to change the start times of their schools and i uh every virtual conversation i have with any student in the regional schools uh within five minutes usually closer to 20 seconds uh the conversation turns to really going back at 745 next year like that's really gonna happen um so you know what i'd like to propose to this committee and i don't want to dominate this topic isn't synonymous with late start but it is just something that uh and meeting this week with our facilities and transportation folks to just try to see what options are available we did have a report completed a couple year and a half ago uh on this topic uh and not to say that we should definitely do it for the next school year but what i know is if we don't have active conversations in the month of January we will have committed to not making a change and start time for next year uh because it's not something that we thrown together last minute so that's something if the committee doesn't want to put that on future agendas that's fine and that decisions made and again i'm not pushing for it and that wasn't a guilt trip in terms of middle school and high school students but it is just one of the things that in terms of things that need to be planned way way in advance um you know that that seems like an important one and obviously there's implications across the board and uh for student staff um and families so just something on my mind you know however you all feel i'm still going to be with the facilities and transportation folks this week and talk about what's possible but i know that that is one that i'm consistently getting feedback on from middle school high school students and families i have a comment but i'll let mr. Sullivan raise his hand so mr. Sullivan yeah i just want to remind everybody that for the past six years i have been a big voice of no we can't go to a late start because of the two schools levitt and shootsberry the union 28 where they had a whole different bus company and it was just it was going to affect the start times of the two elementary schools which would then mess up the other two elementary schools in the that district and with just five star as our bus company it seems to me that we could get the shootsberry roots in the levitt roots where different different drivers did the elementary than the high school high school and middle school were in the past it they've been having to do both the same middle school and high middle school and elementary school roots and that's not the case anymore so as i have stated before to mr. Demling that shootsberry is all for a late start now that it does not affect the elementary schools back to war and just on that note i do have a meeting with uh miss colkin superintendent colkin from union 28 later this week just to talk through you know after my conversation with facilities transportation just talk to any implications and you know we want to make sure we're coordinating across the multiple districts and not forgetting about shootsberry levitt we never do but we want to make sure that we're being really transparent and open with with those folks as well on that topic so i'm glad you brought that up mr. Selvin now miss tensor um i guess i would just like to say that i think we should definitely keep this in our discussion for next year mr. Demling yeah so in terms of the overall topic of the next next school year i think the best the most efficient approach for our committee and superintendent between now and the start of next year would be to kind of divide and conquer these sub projects within the overall umbrella of next year so later start time is one of these sub projects right the other ones um miss mcdonald mentioned at the top but just to kind of iterate my bulleted list one is what is the calendar start date what's the first day of school right that kids go back we know the fiscal year begins on july 1st um but what is what is the date that that students go back are we talking potentially july are we talking august what is what does that mean and that really facilities exploration that we talked about earlier um i think the third major bullet there is what is our posture on in and our promise on in-person learning which for me is what's driving at least for me is what's driving this kind of exploration and um uh and you know we kind of have a a clean slate opportunity i mean as far as so dr. Morris actually if you could clarify this this point so the current moa that's for this school year so that expires on june 30th 2020 correct that is correct yeah the first line of the document i think centered bold is regarding it 2020 2021 first it's cool okay that's actually helpful piece of information for the public to know so as of july 1st 2020 there is no moa there's no memorandum agreement so we have a a new opportunity there to define what we want to define you know what what are we talking about are we talking about in person on day one for x number of students what is you know what's the whole thing you know so that obviously relates to you know uh student preference and staffing all that those those kinds of things um i think if we try and approach all of these topics in the same agenda item going forward it's going to be near impossible to jump around and make progress on i think the other thing too dr. Morris that um you know to um to over burden your plate a little bit because i like to do that is i i really appreciate a couple years ago um when we first started talking about what are the potential solutions for the um for the our building needs at another committee that we both sit on you had i think was was a pretty helpful framing presentation that didn't say here's the solution but you said okay here are the things you want to consider here are some of the the variables and and you gave us a taste of kind of what your vision was it wasn't necessarily a you know uh putting your your finger on the scale for a preferred solution but you you gave us a sense of of where you were going and um you know if we're talking about really out of the box if we're thinking about really out of the box things for next year i i i really would want you to kind of lead that that that guided at least guide us through that that vision space you know not to think talk too um fluffily there but um you know we do need a little bit of of guidance and in high level kind of um contemplation there but what does it mean to have you know two or three months of school in the summer you know it's assuming the facilities can can handle it or what does it mean to compress vacations and whatnot and um and and and what are the major factors even in a vaccine world that we were going to have to consider if we wanted um a much different in person in person posture for first out of next year so those are those initial thoughts of how to approach it i don't have a lot of opinions other than yes of course as late starters believe that we can go um but um this initial does that's right so i really like that idea because i think this conversation would be much even if it was scaled down from i know the presentation you're talking about mr. Demling and uh i think it then might itemize topics in a way that promotes better dialogue so the thing i'd ask is it could be now but probably better off just following up individually with me with an email the types of things that you all are wondering about about the 2021 2020 day school year so that i can itemize them and put them in that same way that i think a really good suggestion mr. Demling that that could be presented on because it may be that you know not everyone's agreement but if we put the whole thing together then at least we know what we're all talking about so you know i'd love just if people had topics like i know in person education is one that you all have talked about in the past um i know late starts one you know but i think if there are other topics that you all have if you could you know email the chair and myself uh with those topics then i think when we come back in january at some point i can put those together into more comprehensive presentation that engenders the kind of dialogue that i think's going to be hard to your point to to have it in the absence of such a presentation or the absence of such a structure that makes a lot of sense to me i don't know how it feels to the rest of the committee i think um just referencing back to one of your objectives for this for this year is really is to reflect on um think you know things that we want to consider holding over as we go forward and one of the things that um that that is on my mind when you talk about in person and learning and and we as a committee have have committed over and over again to prioritizing in person learning and i don't see that i mean i'm not going to speak for the committee but it's unlikely that that's going to change that said we also read um and you know that it's unlikely that students that youth are going to have a qualified vaccine much before the new school year starts um so part of me also is thinking that we need to have a plan for are we you know how far are we going with the prioritizing in person learning and you know how much do we need to continue to offer an option for remote learning and for students that that will need that slash want that yeah i think in particular um i think that's true at the secondary level and in particular the elementary level which it's from what i read it's more likely that that vaccine for 12 and under will come later than 12 and over where at least there's some trials started i look at my other people in this committee who follow this stuff too but that's my understanding at the current time so how would we structure our school year differently or school year plan knowing that a large number of people may be vaccinated but maybe not during any of our students will be and miss spitzer you had your side yeah um thanks i i was thinking the exact same thing as you were chairman down all about how we may need to continue remote option but the other thing i was thinking if um is that a lot of these are questions where i think it would be good to get some stakeholder feedback um and not just unilaterally make a decision as a committee obviously so i'm trying to think in this new environment because one of the nice things i'm like thinking back to i'm assuming to what mr. Deming's thinking about is you know we had these listening sessions where community members you know sat around tables and so i'm just trying to i'd like to see us try to come up with a way to do some of that um virtually and it's going to be really hard but i think it's going to be essential um especially around things like start time and you know some of these things that are harder i don't know i i just want to add that to the things that we're considering is like well how do we make sure that we get parents teachers uh you know anybody who's going to be part of these conversations to the table as early as possible Dr. Morse yeah and i think going back to mr. Deming's analogy to another committee and and you know a challenge i think the way that we i would hope to do that is if we can structure a presentation to engender the conversation then you know have listening sessions in the same way as you know it's possible but i think we need to have some some more tangibles to bring to a listening session other than we're like sort of interested in late start and maybe some other stuff right or like a calendar right like you know i think that that's where my job is to fill in some of the pros cons or what's possible not possible so that that conversation the feedback we get is valuable because i think when we when we go public with looking for feedback and there's no constraints it's just it's a recipe for people to get really frustrated like you're using my time and i'm suggesting these things and then you're telling me they're not possible like why are you actually asking my opinion so i think the more we can be um a little directive on here's the pros here's cons here's things to think about what are your thoughts that can actually that's where it's they call the feedback can influence decision making much more than if it's kind of like listening session with no context or content mr. gunman yeah so i really like that suggestion from miss fitzer i think um to dr morris's point um i think given the time schedule here we're really just gonna have to embrace the imperfect messy you know in a non-covid land we wouldn't be starting the late start discussion even though we're not starting we've talked about this before um you know in in january and potentially thinking about it for july august or september you know we wouldn't be start we wouldn't be thinking about radically altering the start contemplating radically alterating the first day of school um this late right and i think it's and it's the same thing for you know in-person approach but it's just and there's going to be a lot of other things that are going to be pulling for our attention our school committee superintendent tension next spring right budgets and um contracts not the least of the least of which um so you know it's it's not good we're not going to have as much time as we ideally would like i think for any of these threats but that's that's the nature of it right the the other option is to not do any of it and just just to go with what we have to fall so it gets to me it's real it's going to be a little frustrating because we're going to be doing a lot more not just with engagement but in reflection and other analysis and stuff but it's it's a real perfect not the enemy of the good kind of situation like like probably most things in covet times but i think especially the kind of scope we're talking about any more discussion on on this so i'm i i heard as a as a follow-up that if there's other items or threads um as as mr. dimond called them um that we want to consider for for next year um email dr morris copy myself um so we can look at that in june great um next up is the jlmsc update um from the meeting that happened on friday and i'll look to mr herrington to kick us off there yeah so not not a ton to update here we did meet on friday um there was a lot of discussion with uh with anna dragon with the our public health director about uh you know vaccines these sorts of things but um so to kind of give everyone the little heads up here mr sullivan and i had actually sent an email and it was an agenda item that we wanted to talk about kind of the efficacy of our moa and how that's been working out for us but we haven't gotten to that yet so i'm i'm hopeful that we'll get to that this week and uh i'd say that the biggest change though i will say is in terms of communication and how we are going to begin to communicate things to the public for instance the facilities update will not just be you know a series of questions kind of fired off and then answered there it'll be issued in the form of a report there are some folks in that department not uh i'll see not happy about how their work was represented publicly so we're kind of kind of work on the communication side of that but other than that it's um there wasn't there's not a lot to update about it was it was a brief meeting i'll say so i had a question is there opportunity because it is it is it's only a 20 25-minute meeting correct the right the right the public sector yeah yeah um is there a way um to rearrange the order of the agenda so that's because like put the priority topic if you will um up front so that that conversation can happen because you ran out of time and members had to leave so right right and um in addition to doing that like you know sort of how we're doing with the facilities report kind of kind of getting it into a more distilled fashion to take up less time so that we can focus a little bit more on on the things that that the you know the public kind of wants us to talk about and you know our staff wants us to talk about so yeah the communication side i guess is is what we look on a little better here so um yeah great uh mr demling you had a question yeah so is is i'm just trying to think about i don't know i'm trying to think of what can be accomplished at this committee and productively like is is there disagreement on the committee about what i what agenda items ought to be taken up with the and the 25 minute thing i'm a little confused about too are there like like that's a really small amount of time to handle something as big as the efficacy of the i mean even if you want to right to be able to have like a good discussion on it so like um it sounds like maybe like we're not on the same page about it or like i don't know i don't want to read into it too much but yeah so i won't say that there was necessarily a ton of disagreement but where there was a where there was compromise that caused that that time crunch is that that they wanted to kind of the apa wraps on the the jlnsc wanted to kind of parcel out a portion of time to talk about you know issues you know confidential nature that that sort of thing that's like the pre meeting which is kind of that that got sliced off of the original meeting time and personally i feel like if we're talking about safety i don't my personal opinion i don't speak for the grander body here is that you can't limit time time can't be your limit when you're talking about safety and health and these sorts of things i think they need to be more goal oriented conversations rather than to be encapsulated in this little time period but that that's my personal opinion i don't know if mr sullivan feels differently or anyone else but that's that's kind of where i'm at right now i do feel differently i i can respond to mr demling because i didn't even get the invitation to the private party that took place from four to four twenty so i missed out on that and what i feel is going on is that when they get to the public part of the session the apa feels that that's their private time to ask the town health person their questions and it's not really and then they ask you questions but it's really the whole 20 minutes or 25 minutes is really they it appears to me or feels to me like they that's just their time to ask questions and we're just supposed to sit there and answer them we i feel like if we ask them a question that they're not going to even answer it miss seager i am curious about if you can speak to this generically or however um what constitutes constitutes um a private part of the meeting like what what's the content there like in a i guess vague way if you can talk about it yeah so i'll talk about what it's supposed to be what those conversations are supposed to be it's supposed to be the time that we talk about you know issues where where you know it might be a building specific issue where somebody's identity might be divulged and we wouldn't want to do that publicly but um i i guess then dr morris can kind of speak to this that it's it's almost like that's the separate section to ask questions to dr morris that's that's kind of been about how they played out i don't i don't want to no i think that's right i think there are sometimes there are questions where confidentiality would be would be breached and and it's important that there is a space for those conversations to occur outside public view because um just there are certain topics where we might be talking about an individual situation um and that happens that's not atypical for any relationship between a bargaining unit and administration um and that's not particular to apa and the same thing goes on for all of our bargaining units usually they filter through miss cunningham and hr in this case you know i'm involved in that and that's fine given the context of the situation um so you know i don't know if you would agree with that ben but that's sort of my sense of it is it's it's trying to maintain communication that might involve individually identifying situations yep the topic's not fit for public consumption basically miss miss sigar so sort of separately is there a way that if is there a way to create a channel for the apa to ask questions to emma dragon that's outside of this um if there are general questions about what's going on that that's not really applicable to the jlmsc so is there a way we can give i mean i'm sure anyone can contact her at any time so i'm just curious about if that could change yes yeah i mean we have a meeting tomorrow and it's not a jlmc meeting but it is a meeting um that emma's coming to you know on a specific topic so short story is short answer is yes trying to work on brevity well mr gemling yeah i just want to say briefly you know as we're wrapping this up you know i appreciate the efforts of mr selver mr herrington um you know i mean you can only do what you can do you can't make people talk about what they don't want to talk about and you know um we'll keep trying as we are on other avenues to you know push this push this conversation ahead so thank you thank you for your efforts thank you okay so um we will move on to our next item um which is the fy 22 budget book and i'm gonna look to dr morris and dr slaughter yep so uh we thought we'd frame this you should take a step back typically or present budgets in in january or overview budget um february a detailed budget march is a budget vote um what's particularly challenging this year of course no one knows what the budget's going to look like in fy 22 at the state level um the local level could be greatly affected based on how many you know in the town of amherst how many students are back and what restrictions are lack thereof there are when we get to spring um a whole lot of variables that we you know the governor just passed the fy 21 budget with some vetoes that are still going on so there's a lot of moving pieces but the the point we wanted to bring tonight was that at the 410 meeting and this was referenced last week there was seemed to be what we heard is a request from the town of amherst to keep level funding and even request perhaps isn't the way it was worded but i think it was more it was a little stronger than that that that's sort of their expectation um so you know we did not provide that data at the 410 meeting um based on the kind of all the different assessment methods it was hard for us to come up with a budget with amherst zeroed out in terms of a level funded budget i want to just delineate that level funded budget means the same amount of funding one year to the next which involves for almost every organization a significant budget reduction because you know we well our we have negotiated contracts that are ending we have cost of living increases other things go up our retirement goes up health insurance typically goes up a whole lot of costs go up that aren't that are fixed and so what i asked doctor slaughter to present tonight is a similar document to the 410 meeting but with amherst sort of zeroed out in a couple different scenarios so you could see what the overall budget cut number was we're not going to get detailed into we're not ready to get detailed into exactly what those cuts would mean but i have just some numeric comparisons that might be helpful in terms of framing they'll also segue nicely into the next topic when we talk about capital not icely that's awkward they'll segue into that topic so take out the adverb or adjective whichever it is but i'll turn over doctor slaughter and he can share his screen and show the extent of the fiscal situation which we all know is very difficult but if we show amherst at a lower number so dug do you mind taking it away it helps if i unmute myself first i'm hoping that that what i'm sharing is is available to you all uh yeah i would recommend dug just talking through i don't think you have to talk through all the charter reimbursement lines and interest but the bottom line of of some of these different methods and what the implications are in terms of budget cut i think that that's probably the piece that for people who are viewing who can't make out the details on your document that i'd love to make more visible or audible as it is sure um and i guess the first question is can everybody see what i'm presenting i'm not a hundred percent certain with uh it'll do this very often so i want to make sure but just to orient everyone to the to the chart here this is the same chart we saw before um i believe your last meeting mr dimley made the rough envelope estimate that 1.7 million in cuts would would potentially get amours to a level but in a certain stance and it pretty much is so that's what we're showing here so so basically the assumptions about um you know what we think it's going to take to uh to have level services uh what we think are our projections for uh state revenues and aid and reimbursements that's where things those are all exactly as they were presented at the poor town's meeting so none of that's really changed and so the really the big driver of what's changed here is is how much in cuts would be required to get to to roughly a uh a level a level funded budget for amours and so we're in these uh in the current you know scenario of how we fund the budget with 45 percent statutory uh five-year rolling uh statutory method uh and the rest in the in the traditional or or regional agreement method which is the one we're funding this year um you know if we were to cut that that large a number uh amours would be at point oh five percent less than this year so it's a very very tiny difference from this year um you know in the order of like ten thousand dollars um and if we go to 55 percent and and or uh further up to to to 65 percent which were were numbers that were considered uh possible for for a couple of communities uh 55 percent statutory method would would increase amours uh assessment by point oh five percent so less than half a percent less than half of one tenth percent so that's a really small uh change i think the real critical conversations around well what what goes into 1.7 million dollars worth of of change in our in our uh in our offerings in other words what do we have to do to uh to get on you know one million seven hundred thousand dollars reduced out of our our budget uh and that's a pretty significant uh and deep um level of cuts that we'd have to experience to to get to that um i think i'll i'll stop there and and see if there are any other points that that either the superintendent wanted me to address or or if you guys had questions yeah if i could jump in chair mcdonald um so i think uh just three points i want to make so one is that amourst being zeroed out in terms of amourst being um a zero percent increase on all these methods means that the district cuts its budget it budget actually goes down by about one percent so i think that's a really critical point because people might assume oh well if amourst stays at zero the whole budget is level funded that is not the case because of the associate the relations between the member towns it's actually reduced and i can in good conscience uh recommend to you you may all want me to or choose to a budget that actually um is one percent less than the current year's budget um i mean i'll be i'll be unusually blunt in saying that if you look at other districts that have not passed their budgets um and have to go to the 112th budget uh you know in that process there's another one in there for the second year in a row typically they don't have less money the year after than they spent the current year right even in those terrible situations where the state comes in and they're sort of making decisions on assessment method and and dollar amounts so uh i want to stress that that's one point i want to stress the second point i want to stress is um well we wouldn't we'd make cuts that weren't just professional staff um just to put a number on it it's roughly 26 teachers would be 1.7 million dollars this is gonna be a wildly different educational experience you know over the past couple years we cut uh 1.1 million dollars a few years ago we cut over how around half a million dollars last year there's a lot of variables on this budget health insurance you know negotiated contracts right this so it's not a hard 1.7 but that's the scale of magnitude we're talking about right this is a huge huge dollar amount we've already made the cuts that we felt like we were able to make we've cut a lot of soft costs we have not cut a lot of teachers over the last couple years given the budget situation we have and we're sort of at the end of the road uh of being able to to look at things that are farther away from the classroom and so we obviously will continue to look dug myself to rein meeting later this week meeting with principals and all the things that you would imagine us to be doing but we've been through this before it's not like oh this is we're looking at the budget for the first time we've made those cuts year in year after year and at this point the reason we use choice for evolving you know at a high level last year is as a one-year stopgap carryover because we didn't have anywhere else to go that was far away from the classroom my third point i'll save for the next budget item actually i'll make some uncharacteristically blunt comments about capital as well but i think i'll save that since it's its own agenda item but i just wanted to stress the magnitude of what we're talking about here i guarantee the number will change whatever it is 1.7 1.4 you know because we have variables that a month from now hopefully knock on wood we'll know the answer to that we don't know now but it's not going to swing nine digits it's not going to be like oh all of a sudden we have like 40 dollars to cut that's not in the cards from what we're you know we have and so you know we are going to have to look for guidance and you know and i think from you all about how to approach this but i can't knowingly say that we're going to cut one percent of our budget you know going into next year because i don't think it's educationally sound so i'm sorry for for for those comments but i just wanted to you know try to put my finder point on it carrot miss spitzer i also noticed that mr. demling and his hand raised virtually so um i have a feeling we're gonna be saying some similar things which is this is um this is really just upsetting and in a year that there are estimates out there that you know covid and and covid's not going away we're going to continue to have costs related to cleaning i don't think anybody's going to go back to like reducing the amount of cleaning that's going to happen in the schools if anything you know taking keeping level services funding and then taking you know just for amherst it's actually going to be larger because the costs of educating our kids while covid is still around is going to increase the overall costs for the district and so i think this is what we need to start the conversation with convincing you know there's this question that margaret brought up of like who who should we be um who should and i'm on the budget committee so um i'm somewhat talking to myself now but i'd love your feedback you know the committee's feedback on one another seems right but i i think we do because the amherst town council is where we're getting this directive from i think this story needs to be told loudly and clearly to them and to the members of the the fort um towns meeting you know when that happens again but i do think at the same time is we're going to need the public to be um calling on their elected officials you know in the town council to to make the case for why these cuts are really really damaging i mean the big thing i'm worried about is you know i i don't think it's a secret i you know i went to amherst high schools and i think we have been seeing just to put up you know i don't know specifically which programs we're going to have to cut but i think one of the strongest things about our school district is the variety and we have seen that we've been losing that variety of offerings for our kids you know i got to you know choose from like four or five languages when i was a student here there are arts programs our music programs and i would just be heart broken if we need to continue to reduce the offerings to our our district so i think to the extent that we can in the budget committee meaning and working with administration to i know it feels early to put programs on the line and i don't want to scare anybody you know like it's a real balancing act but i think we need to say bluntly like we probably won't be able to have the breadth of services that make our schools as excellent as they are and to the extent that we can push back on the directive we're getting from the town council i think we need to and we need to get the the community members on our side and i know that you know there are other agencies and you know causes in the district that that we not the district but the you know the towns that we're asking for this funding from and i'm not saying anybody's having an easy year i just i really think this is needs to be prioritized and so i appreciate you putting these numbers together and i think we need to do everything we can to start telling the story so i'm looking forward to thursday mr demling uh plus one to everything this fits are said um i so i have a number of questions and comments dr morris will get your get your pencil out um yeah so school committee and superintendent raised the alarm on next year's budget crisis or on the budget crisis for next year i like that needs to be the headline like if mr burr's back if you're out there you know like i mean i was you know thinking about this coming into this and you know before when you were talking in the last week or two about the one million dollar cut or the potential one point four million dollar cut you can't characterize that as pretty catastrophic and a radically different school system with the huge impact on class sizes so i'm wondering how you would classify the funding level that the town of amherst is proposing to us the town manager and the town finance director has given to the town council and that the the town council's finance committee is now considering and that we got zero pushback on at the four towns meeting from representatives from the town of amherst i mean i hate to call it out like that but like like we have to sound the alarm um and it's very uncomfortable for me as a public official on the school committee to do this because um amherst has such a an excellent history even in even difficult financial times and we've been through a lot of of excellent relationship with with town government and this is going back to you know town meeting days um and i say this both of the elementary and at the regional budget level and not that there haven't been friction points occasionally but you know you look across the 351 cities and towns of massachusetts and and for many districts it is it is crisis every single year even in non-covid even in non financial strain times you know it's always you know schools fighting against other departments so you know to have enjoyed the level of support we have is is a major factor in why we have the level of services we do and so i think it's less about how do we you know engage confrontationally or how do we fight as it is about educate you know so so i i'm glad to see some meat being put on the bone of that of that cut so 1.7 million dollars superintendent says is 26 cut teachers next year so the town of amherst is proposing a funding level uh that would mean the loss of 26 staff at the region we haven't talked about the other districts yet i think we need to get more meat on that bone i think we need more details the more details the better and i understand that it that it's really difficult and the numbers change um but the the the the process schedule challenge we have here right is that the budget setting uh train for the town of amherst has already left the station right they had they had the index they had the financial indicators meeting the finance committee is is in the process i think this month is if i recall from their from their chair saying this at the four towns meeting they're they're going to make their recommendation to the town council the town council won't do their final budget approval for you know month yet but um and i see dr morris is handling so maybe i have that incorrect um but but in fact it you know being we have a lot of work to do to um to tell that story and and i think i think that's what's what's at the end of the day that's our responsibility you know i think we don't have the power to make that final budget approval call we do have the power the regional school committee to make the assessment and there's a process of how that grows out but i think i think what we have our responsibility as school committee members is to educate the town council what are the actual impacts of those decisions right the full consequences like we we need to make sure that not just town of amherst for all our member towns are making these decisions with eyes wide open to the full impact and then if you know decisions are made they're made but at least we've done our job about about the impact um so you know i'll just i'll just pause there because it's probably your pencil is probably running um i know that dr slaughters had his hand up for a while um so um since mr spitzer and then dr morris and then i see your hand also stands are so i'll let mr dr slaughtering dr morris do get out about who speaks right now dr slaughters hand was wet way before mine so so i'll uh i'll just uh touch on a couple of quick things um that that i wanted to to bring to to bear in in this conversation number one is that uh to something that mr said is that um you know i think our paradigm has changed a little bit so there's some things even if cobin were completely gone uh there are we're we're different than we were having headed into this and so the nature of you know well should i wear gloves while doing this should i put on a mat you know there are going to be needs along those lines should i have a you know should i keep the air filter running in my room people are going to want to and and uh and need to you know have those kinds of things in there which inherently sort of builds a little extra into our budget that that wasn't there before um and so i think that's a you know just a paradigm shift in in some of our operations that are a little bit different um that i don't think are going to go away in the short term um the other thing i would point out to just the committee at large is that you know you know people will bring up the nature of a declining enrollment and the the difficulty is uh with enrollment decline you typically have to take a more staggered uh reduction as you go through that in other words a reduction of 10 students doesn't immediately trigger the need to have one less class of something so it tends to be a very disjointed in some respects uh shrinking when you have fewer students so even though we will uh we currently have fewer students we may get several of them back next year if we're able to and the circumstances are different uh but we may not but either way you're going to make those transitions from from a you know from a purely enrollment standpoint over a period of time that tend to come in in in uh more stair step manner um and the third thing i i would say is uh relative to the relationship with with that has traditionally gone on between the the school committee and the and the town of government in Amherst has been very very good and i think it will continue to be good i have every confidence that it will be um i think the thing we have uh as part of the task for the subcommittee and for the superintendent myself and others is an education one because i think that if you look at the composition of the council and this is not a majority statement at all they're fairly new to it and and the budgets that they've been through have not been difficult once and so it's not um a circumstance where they've had to uh take a deep dive into some of these difficult uh conversations around what is what is this choice versus this choice mean you know compare and contrast those things so i think that um you know we we've got to kind of bring them up the learning curve uh to prepare them for those difficult conversations and to think deeply about um you know the context of those changes for our schools as well as the other departments within the town as they go through their process um so they have a they have a steep learning curve that they many of them haven't had to deal with because we haven't had a budget year quite like this one in in in a few years and and most i'd say a majority of the of the members have not gone through that in the in the way they will have to this year dr morris yep and i'll uh i'll try to a lot of delicate topics tonight i'll try to do my best um but uh here's what i'd say is this uh the region is not a part of the town of amherst it's not a part of its municipal government it's a separate entity that's funded by the four towns it sets its own budget needs to be funded by the four towns and so um i guess i would just encourage the committee to to think about the autonomy that you have um there's pluses and minuses to that autonomy you know that's that's a be a great topic for another day um but i think in terms of how you approach this i understand the town council setting its guidance um you are responsible for coming up with a budget that you think is because responsible budget both fiscally and educationally and having the towns either voted up or voted down and so i would just encourage the committee to not my opinion to not feel as rushed um to do its due diligence and make us decisions um i feel a little differently in the two districts that i work for that are part of municipal government um because the reality is if the budget gets voted down there's a process by which you know that the state comes in and or gets revoted and those scenarios have to be compared to the scenario that dug put up earlier and so um i'm not saying that i disagree with mr demling first of all i just want to be really clear i didn't say 26 teachers are going to be cut i'm just saying if you do the math on 26 teachers and the cost that's what it adds up to be we would certainly look at all sorts of costs so just i think of scott's watching which want to be really clear about that i'm not suggesting 26 teachers are cut but that is the reason why i think it's a good number is it actually shows the gravity right and that's why it was an easy number it's not actually what we'd come up with right we'd come up with a number of other things but there would be significant cuts to class you know significant impacts on class size there'd be significant cuts to elective programs there'd be significant cuts to extracurricular you can't cut one point seven million dollars and not hit all three of those areas uh just not possible so so i think i think it's important to state that explicitly like i'm trying to now but i also think that you have a lot of autonomy at the regional level that obviously has to go back to town and i want to maintain that good relationship with all four of our member towns not just the town of amherst at the same times we are funded by the towns we are not part of their their municipal governments and so i do think there's some opportunity perhaps to um for the committee to set its course on its timeline to obviously be communicating frequently with member towns but it is a really different entity than the amherst public schools or the pelham public schools or shoots very lever public schools are for that matter in terms of being a part of town government we are autonomous i think there's more minuses than pluses frankly on that but one plus is that in these situations um i don't want the committee to feel like they don't have power to set their timeline set their budget and the towns can do what the towns want to do but um there is high risk to everybody about not having a past budget um but but i believe that you all can steer the ship pretty significantly on that front so other people may disagree with that perspective but i just wanted to share that's where i come from miss miss stancer you had your hand up a while ago yeah i guess listening to mr damlain and dr slaughter um and i'm thinking i think thinking about the subcommittee and and what we will try to do it sure seems like we have some work to do to delve into the past years so that people can understand why we are now saying this is a really drastic time because we need to be able to show that we've cut budgets in the past and what what we've done you know what have we cut in the past so that we can now say headline this is we got a real problem you know so i if you disagree let me know but that's i think that's what i'm hearing yeah i think um the i i see your hand mr damlings out um but one um one other comment that was really helpful framing dr morris i think for for us to be thinking through this because that's sort of pivoted i knew that but the way you framed it was really helpful sort of new thinking um but one of the thoughts too that we've heard people talking about how at least one member communities had come in giving specific guidance that had a slight increase into um what they were willing to fund um in contrast to amers coming in and saying level funding and that impact so it's helpful to see what that looks like dr slaughter um but what's interesting too is by seeing it that way you can see that the magnitude of impact that one that amherst has on the overall thing so that even if that member community did say well you know we we are willing to actually pay more the member community the other towns can't make up the difference that amherst is not saying is not willing to to fund so um you know order of magnitude it's it's several hundred thousand dollars um that that sort of is well more than that but um you know there there's only so much you know a two percent difference or one percent difference from one of the non amherst towns is not going to make up for that half a percent or whatever from from amherst so i think that's a really important distinction to make too because it we've we've heard um people saying well maybe every town should just pay what they are what they're willing to pay but that's not that's not going to solve anything um and in fact could make it even worse um so i i appreciate that framing as we go into this and i saw somebody else uh mr. demling your hand did yeah so i i appreciate a lot of the comments here um the the point about us being an autonomous legal entity and setting our own timeline so i think that actually makes a lot of sense um um you know there was another you know uh some some frank input that we received um from the town council about well you know you're the school committee you ought to be driving this this process and setting setting this course where the member towns and um i think there's a lot of truth to that um uh in terms in terms of framing it so in terms of um you know the budget subcommittee and how do we organize these communications what what role can we play i think maybe thinking about how um our school our committee's outreach and engagement with each of our member towns uh can go timeline wise uh across this budget cycle and then as early as possible at least just setting that expectation of okay here's here's the schedule and so you know we we know we know when we have to pass a budget right and so you put that in the calendar we know where we are now know what are the points between that we know we're going to um have some additional four towns meetings where we'll have other updated finances from the state and whatnot and be able to give give a more and so if if we're able to say you know who's driving the bus on the um on the regional budget it if there's if there's a clear clear communication that the school committee is driving the bus i think that would help plus you know not not to forget last meeting you know we passed a i mean i would call it a value statement but um you know we passed a motion saying that we're committed to working with our member towns to not level fund and to cut less than a million dollars um so you know dr morris i heard you say earlier you know if if we feel like 1.7 million you know we've already you know voted we're not cutting 1.7 million we can always go back and i've i was supposed um but the point being is i think i think early on you know we've established that you know at the very least we want to keep these cuts as small as they can and we're committed to working with our member towns and then sort of demonstrating that with the with the schedule um i i think would be good and the point about the past years is critical um you know showing what happened to uh was it two or three years ago at the health insurance trust and and what happened last year and and i think too i'll keep hammering this every time this discussion comes up but the the more detail we get you know um you we've talked about what does that mean in terms of teachers but even even if we're not committing to it you know giving some examples what does 1.7 or 1.4 or 1 million dollar cut what does that look like at the region how does that feel you know who who experiences that pain and then giving some very specific examples i think in terms of education and and understanding that that impact i think that that goes a long way i'm going to um suggest we we transition a transition a little bit to talking about sort of what um what our budget subcommittee can be working on um and and that timing because i think sort of all of that setting setting what our schedule will be i think could be um a helpful so building on what you were just talking describing um mr. Dunn like in terms of driving the bus right um so i it would be helpful i think for if when the budget subcommittee meets it to sort of partner with um dr. Morris and dr. Slaughter and sort of mapping out what could be that schedule and when when do we want to go back to call um additional four towns meetings with what information and what what sort of overall timeline to get us to us approving a budget and it sounds like to answer the other your other question about who our audience is it's very much our member towns as well as the public but i think starting with the decision makers in the towns um miss kenny i think um we've kind of been talking about heading in this direction anyway but i think as specific as we can get with what these cuts will look like like 26 teachers we won't have a spanish department there won't be gym class like even if those aren't where we would make those budget cuts but to put actual like you know details into that and what that would mean not only for our schools as as a whole right um but also for individual students and how and how that will change for them i mean i think um you know like miss spitzer i went to amherstide too and there were lots of choices then and for my kids to then come through and for them to have a radically different experience than i did you know that's one of the biggest draws for our for all all four of our communities right is like our schools are are fantastic um and and so showing what those cuts will look like on a very specific you know like my new detail like not to hold anybody to like we will not have Spanish we're cutting the whole Spanish department but like what that would look like i think will be really helpful in getting our point across and help raise the alarm that says you know lots of people move to the community because of the schools and we will not be able to provide that which will then you know cycle us down a road i don't think anybody wants to go down i think um i have this sort of circling connecting back to our first topic tonight on the el l i'm talking about sort of what's what is the work that's needed there and and in that program i mean there's there's certain certain sort of services and supports and things that we we have in our schools that we we can't take away so that that leaves sort of other other programs um much more sort of in the in the in the target zone if you will for for those cuts and i think maybe without specifying like it's this it's sort of like describing what are the what are the less safe zones for um you know target areas for that we'd have to where we'd have to go looking for for those 26 teachers or potentially i want to clarify i absolutely do not think we should cancel the Spanish program or anything like that i just mean as as an example of something that would be really really terrible to lose but you know just wanted to be clear about that okay um any other um are we i believe we were only it's miss dancer and the spitzer on the on the budget subcommittee but if there's anybody else that would like to join them i'm sure that they would welcome additional hand signs in that effort we do have heather also but yes any anybody else you know and feedback any comments if you think of anything after the meeting um please send it along in a i guess in a note would be the way to do that i apologize miss lord i i do remember that you volunteered last week and i apologize for missing that um great do you do you subcommittee members feel like you have what you need to the answer that answer your questions coming into the okay excellent thanks so anything more before we move on okay um and so staying a little bit on on budget but now moving to capital um spending um we wanted to talk about these topics that came up we were asked questions during the four towns meeting about um the capital or cp use of cpa funds for the athletic fields or fellow candidates so um i'll let you yeah i'll pass it a dug in a second i think you know as a general comment you know i'm highly supportive and i want to be on the record for how the supportive of you know anything we do to make our schools greener i think it's consistent with our ethos i think it's it's preaching what we practice in terms of having a ninth grade that teaches environmental science as a core requirement which i'm supportive of and uh and all the things that about our community in the net zero bylaw in amerson i think the general sense of conservation that goes on in all four of our member towns i do have to note that you know and Doug will speak to this in the cpa funds and maybe those funds are already appropriate in other ways but i have a hard time thinking about spending of capital items being at the same level which i know is the goal of some of our towns um while we're making significant operational cuts you know um i just have a hard time with it right if there's not cars under the solar canopies because we don't have enough staff to use the parking lot that we would be repaving maybe we should just all park it over at the middle school and we don't need the district office parking lot anymore even though it's got potholes and all that right and just to you know i'm a big supporter of the project but i i do want to say that juxtaposition of the cost of projects while we're you know potentially looking at cutting significant numbers of staff feels very uncomfortable to me uh if it's not about health and safety right directly about health and safety one could certainly make the argument that solar canopies in terms of greenhouse gases but um that's not the environment that we're in right now in terms of fiscal um and the same with the athletic fields you know i can't can't promise that if we're cutting 1.7 million dollars that athletics won't be affected athletics were affected the last time we had a big cut we do a number of games and so you know i get that these are popular projects i get that i'm supportive of them you know i definitely heard from families spent a lot of time a couple years ago if those are like you're on the committee you spent a lot of time on this a couple years ago about the condition of the fields um it's really important that that improves at the same time uh you know the juxtaposition is just hard for me so i just want to share that publicly i want counselors and select board members and finance commuters advocating for capital projects for the regional schools in general regional schools get short shrift not ours but in general on capital projects because you know when you're part of municipal government it folds really nicely into capital projects when you're part of a region and your its own entity you're not part of municipal this is what i was referencing earlier sometimes it it works actually disadvantageous uh and i think that we see that difference in the emmer's public schools and the regional schools and how that works out for capital uh especially as relates to technology and other matters at the same time you know i don't want to dismiss the importance of both of these project i want to be on the record i'm highly supportive of them but i think when push comes to shove and and we're seeing if we do go forward and see significant capital funds go towards them as we're reducing staffing um to levels that none of us here are comfortable with i think it's just going to be a hard moment for all of us you know i'll say it would be a hard moment for me to do that not because i don't support the solar you know part of uh parking lot and not because i don't support the fields i absolutely do they're both projects that need to happen um but i also think we need to make sure we have the staff needed to support our students in school and so you know i think that's going to be a very difficult calculus as we move forward so i just wanted to share a wildly long qualification uh an introduction to dr slaughter who i think is going to be much more factual and concise than um than my comments but i was uh i did have a reaction at the fourth internal reaction you know hearing that dialogue um uh as and we always have this capital and operational if you never spend on capital if you always put all your money in operational you know you end up in bad situations i'm on board with spending on capital don't get me wrong but when our when our potential budget cut number you know is as high as 1.7 million dollars um that's a hard that's a hard pill for me to swallow um so i'll leave that with dr slaughter he can explain some of the cpa pieces and other pieces moving forward because i think both projects are certainly overdue and very very important but i can't pretend that we're not in the context we're in right and so i i think you know relative to the solar i think that the original you know if we look back the the capital project that we were going to i believe partner with town of amherst a little bit on was a was more a solar study camp these was one component that was going to be looked at relative to that i think that uh no one has less interest in doing you know that we don't have less interest than we did have we have the same level of interest and need that we had before uh the economics have changed around us and so that's that's uh you know the unfortunate place we find ourselves uh and so i think our our our impacts on on things environmental will will need to probably be much more focused on uh smaller and more uh internal uh types of adjustments that we're trying to make um and i referenced one at the four towns meeting you know one of the things that have has happened through uh through uh some funding from the electric company is to to relamp a number of bulbs within you know the buildings and that's saving us uh you know energy and and and ultimately money but but also saving the amount of greenhouse gases we produce because we're just using less electricity than we were so i think we're going to continue to explore those things that that are available and become available to us and and continue to refine and and uh perfect as we can the things we can do uh as quickly as we can um shifting to this sort of cpa circumstance so you know in in the uh sort of planning last spring before covid hit uh we had a small chunk of of state aid that had come in for uh use uh in in the region that we were thinking oh we'll take a portion of that and do some preliminary work to get started on some design work for the for the fields to uh sort of um clarify and articulate uh you know pros and cons of of reorienting the fields and and talk about the pros and cons to some extent of of the surfaces that we could explore there and and sort of kickstart the program a little bit and then the idea was to take some cpa money and and start to move the design forward and of course with with the change in circumstances uh that we had last spring you know we've leveraged that money for other purposes um and so we didn't do that preliminary work um and so at this point you know the cpa money that we have received from the town is certainly uh likely to be utilized for that purpose and for you know continuing to the design phase uh beginning design phases for those fields and and track um but i think you know and i've said this before on some of these there are things you can do with those sorts of designs that that are always useful and available and good information but then there are other aspects of it that have a certain shelf life um so we want to be cognizant of that as we move forward relative to to uh to trying to move ahead with with that larger capital project is is can we and should we leverage cpa money can we use that uh and strike the right balance with the other communities to help in support uh through their cpa funds to help support that project but uh again i think at at this moment time given the the circumstances with the you know in the uh the upcoming budget um you know i think the town as well as as the the the town of amherst i should say as well as the other communities you know would would be uh a better reflection of our values to to spin more on our uh operating to keep and preserve our school district uh more as we see it and now we think we should you know and what we should offer and and uh be a little patient relative to our capital needs on on this front um uh the the fields you know have some health and safety concerns i won't diminish that at all and and we do want to address those as quickly and as best we can but relative to some some of the other more uh broadly impactful and and significant things we talked about earlier this evening about our operating budget i think it's it's tough to move forward on on capital projects of that size uh that that don't have the highest level of urgency and and these have a high level of urgency but not the highest level of urgency is how i would state it thank you any uh questions or comments from the committee miss dancer um so i i don't know if this question is relevant but i know that in the pelham town meeting last spring we did vote to provide some cpa money for for the field study so what would you then say to the town about that money if if we decide i mean are you saying we wouldn't use it for that so would we give it back to the town or so what i would suggest is it doesn't expire and so it really would you would be at the town's discretion as to what they would choose so if they wanted to repurpose it for another for another project that they feel has more likely to moving forward or that has more urgency you know that's certainly their prerogative and i would by any means i i think in the short term if if you know with that money that has been appropriated for our use um we're going to hold on to that and and you know if if they decide that it's still okay to fund that kind of a project we'll wait and see if we can fit it into a capital plan that that you know meets with uh our ability to actually fund the project fully and to do it in a way that's not uh you know in in lieu of our academic program that we we need so i think you know it's it you know we're happy to hold on to it we'll be smart with it we want to be smart with it um but at the same time it is the prerogative of the community so if they decided they needed it back for repurposing for another need that they have that's certainly within their realm and unretainable um dr morris yeah i think it may also be worth when we're talking about this decision to bring it to the next four town meeting um for those of you who went to the ones last year there was some skepticism from some of the member towns not so much about the study but actually be able to afford the actual project from capital funds um and uh you know i do think it's worth separate from what i said earlier about the broader context just making sure that um i don't want to do a study that's going to sit on a shelf right you know that happens a lot in organizations and there was some really broad disagreement last year from some of our member towns about the viability of an actual project not of the study so i i do think before going forward people's the town's financial situation certainly has changed at least some of the towns have indicated that and and i'd be curious about making sure all the towns were on board before we move forward with the study because i don't want to set up a a dynamic that we know is going to be contentious in the back and i not go anywhere and and spend a lot of town's money for no reason i think the towns need to be done i want to be really clear like the fields are really they need to be much higher quality uh but what i don't want to do is spend spend some cost funds when we know in the tail end we're knocking out the support of all of our member towns miss fitzer you're muted i just wanted to say that i i i similarly feel like awkward about this idea of funding capital projects while we're cutting our operating budget and and we just saw in the past budget cycle where we kind of hold it a lot of the spending we were planning on capital in order to to fill the gap but i i think what the interesting thing about the cpa funds is that it's not as though we could use those funds directly to fund anything on the operational side and if anything we've seen with our um with this current environment the importance of outdoor spaces and and i think the outdoor spaces around our high school and middle school are i mean probably all of our schools but i'm thinking about you know but the the report i saw from you know i heard the reports um about our fields and it's if anything i think some of them are getting more use at least in the spring you know then by community members who weren't necessarily school members and so i could see a case for if our towns believe that invest specifically the town i i'm from amers you know because the the fields are in our town but those spaces have benefited our community during this time when getting outside is the one of the only safe ways to get together so i i guess what i'm wondering is and this may not be feasible at all um but if we could use some of that money to improve the public outdoor spaces in a way that could be responsive to everything that's changed since covid because it just feels like to i understand why we don't want to but it feels like for the entire community it's not just our schools that use those fields but the having outdoor space in it the people can get together safely is really important and i'd hate to miss an opportunity to improve them next morris and i think i think you hit on a couple things that are important and i know we have to move the conversation along i know it's late but but i think that's a point of that i've heard over the years of contention between the four member towns that one of our member towns because happens to be located in the town of amers um there's a lot more community use of the facilities by community members in the town the schools are located in and that for some of our member communities and i'm not justifying i'm not taking sides on this one but i i want to be really plain and honest about what i've heard that the the benefit is purely to the the students who attend amherst regional middle school or amherst regional high school and much less so for the larger community i'm not saying no one from leverd ever comes that never comes down to use the track but i would guarantee that it's used more by residents of the town of amherst than residents of the towns of chute spare leverd and pallum so i think that's where it gets a little bit difficult to have that conversation uh and everyone has a valid point right you know like there's i don't think anyone comes to that conversation not wanting to support kids or not wanting to support the schools but i do think the fact that the school happens to be located in one of the towns has an impact on some of the community support and that's why i think bring it to the four town meeting uh might be might be warranted and might be helpful in terms of figuring out a path forward to do the things that carries that miss spitzer's talking about because i fully endorse everything she just said any other Mr. Deming just briefly i mean given my concerns about the current operational so i asked this item to be added to the agenda not because i want to add to our capital request for next year i i i go now seriously and i value the the the fields in the and the solar panels if these feel like such throwaway comments right yeah yeah i value them but like i do it's just that you know the reason for bringing this agenda item up for me was because i feel like whatever the questions that we get from our member towns even if we don't feel like it's something we can do this year we just need to be in a position to provide the answers right so if we're if we're asking a town to fund us above a level that they're initially telling us that they want to and then they ask us about xyz even if it's not directly correlated we just we need to be able to provide every answer about xyz so if we hit town councilors saying you know we want info about the solar efforts and see well here's here's here it is like as you've just laid out and and mr slaughter makes the um the excellent point about shelf life is that yeah we could grade the goal is not to have a field study the goal is to have a field right and so if one does not follow the other again eyes wide open right don't don't don't don't fund a study unless you're prepared to to go to go forward with it so i i think that that's the kind of information that you know we can have organized available to answer those questions and i think part and that helps i think just build trust right is that like you're telling us you have a desire interest or concern about some aspect of operation of capital well here's here's the information okay now let's go forward and have the more difficult conversations about funding level what not so i appreciate the information you put together it's exactly what i was looking for and you know thank you for doing that are we ready to move on okay so moving on we have a future agenda planning um i think we have we we have a sort of on our draft comm commons um uh meeting on the 5th of january um but what i'd also like to propose is um is that we um i if if feasible i don't know um how the committee is open whether the committee is open to meeting between now and the and january 5th um in executive session we had several several topics that we didn't get to um in our last one that i think um it would be helpful for us to continue that um and um wondering if folks would be open to to doing that um early in the next week um versus waiting until the first week of january and see my heads great uh tuesday same same bat time same bat channel okay um and then uh for january miss mcdonnell i mean i don't know if people have a more flexible schedule but i'll just say for myself i am not opposed to daytime meetings uh in the next two weeks um that may not work based on people's work schedules but um particularly if it's an executive session where there's not actually other things in the agenda you know in terms of viewership we're needing to do it at night i feel like that's reduced so just wanted to put as an idea out there that i don't think daytime meetings if pure especially if it's just a executive session it would be undoable it may be undoable from people's lives but i think from a public asex perspective i don't see a conflict hi miss fitzer well speaking as somebody who's a parent of three small kids who aren't going to have um school um and not just our public schools but any um child it would be difficult unless and especially given the executive session nature nature of it because i don't think it would be legally allowed to have a you know three-year-old in the background that me is there an age limit on that because if so i can't um i don't know if other people have a similar constraint but that's that's mine um the only reason i'd fight moving at much earlier as much as i'd like to not be on one of these calls later like yeah no that's fine i just wanted to put it out there um it certainly wasn't a request from me just wanted to put it out as an option um maybe we could make it six six we could start at six instead of six thirty if folks are flexible or we're six thirty the ideal time i know that some folks have hard hard time moving getting to meetings earlier okay um and then i think on january fifth we have a variety of topics already lined up um i'm going to try and pull that up i have it here alison if you like yeah so we'll have a lot of minutes to approve as mentioned earlier um we may have an AFSCME MOA to take a look at um you know perhaps an update on jlmc in the in the MOA we'll see how that that conversation goes um i want to come back to the attendance piece that misstands are and others have raised and and try to respond to that um i think the spring 2021 plan i mean the the next school year planning probably better to do with the second meeting in january than the first meeting uh just so i can get a more comprehensive read on the topics people would like to to talk about uh the time on learning and the live and not time of learning shoot the live instruction piece from desi uh and i've got snow days so that's an awful lot of things um there's another meeting later in the month where we'll get deep into budget as well as the 2021-22 school year um we also i would like to bring up um something that came from a partner agency mabe around the access test uh and some implications of standardized testing on ell students um they have a i don't know if it's quite a petition but a statement that i'd like to bring to this committee for for feedback and and potential endorsement of it's a packed schedule it is i'll try to be briefer than tonight my apologies about this evening hopefully the update will be much quicker since there will be vacation the next two weeks right so that'll help great okay um and just a reminder for um folks at the that we to circle back if there's anything more out in sort of school year 2021-22 that folks wanted to include in that consideration to email back and forth uh moving on um warrant report is that sir do you have any warrants from the region to report um it doesn't appear that i do so i think i reported them all last week okay um and we don't have gifts this evening um so we are we caught up a lot of time we're only 25 minutes past um um uh would somebody like to make a motion i moved to adjourn the meeting of the regional school committee i will second that moved by stance or second by mcdonald and there's no discussions i will move to a vote um mr demling demling i mr herrington herrington i miss kenny kenny hi miss lord lord i um miss seager seager i miss spitzer spitzer i miss dancer cancer i mr sullivan sullivan i and mcdonald i we are adjourned thank you everybody