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HomeMy WebLinkAboutSchool Comm. 08/04/2020Approved 10-27-20 Mansfield School Committee Meeting Minutes for Tuesday, August 4, 2020 Virtual Meeting using GoToWebinar An Open Meeting of the Mansfield School Committee was held virtually on Tuesday, August 04, 2020. The open meeting session was called to order by Chair Kiera O'Neil at 6:06 p.m. Members Present: Administration Present: Kiera O'Neil Teresa Murphy, Superintendent of Schools Lynn Cavicchi Michael Connolly, Assistant Superintendent (Teaching/Learning) Linda Fernando Edward Donoghue, Assistant Superintendent (Finance/Operations) Lauren Scher Jenn Walsh Members Absent: ***All votes taken by roll cal[ vote *** Roll Call Vote: Kiera O'Neil aye =� Lynn Cavicchi aye E Jenn Walsh aye Linda Fernando aye Lauren Scher aye Public Speak: Public Speak is open for 15 minutes for anyone who has registered via GoToWebinar. None Communications: Chair O'Neil highlighted the receipt of many emails related to asynchronous learning, cohorts, social distancing at 3 feet vs. 6 feet and the state run remote program. She recognizes all the different viewpoints and concerns but it is impossible to devise a solution that will make everyone happy. Please know that we have received and read your communication even though we have not responded to every email. New Business: Comprehensive Reopening Plan for DESE submission: The purpose of this meeting is to review the Comprehensive Return to School Plan that will be submitted to the state. This plan will be voted on by the committee. Health Agent Amy Donovan Palmer reviewed the risk assessment that is done to consider opening schools and municipalities. Right now we are at a very low risk. We never know when this will change. For now, moving forward with a plan is ok. The entire community will continue to play a role in stopping the spread and allowing our schools to open. Questions/Answers for Amy Donovan Palmer: What metrics are used to open municipal buildings? We follow state guidelines and right now we are still in a "safer at home" advisory. No plans to open the municipal buildings at this time. Page 1 of 6 Approved 10-27-20 Mansfield School Committee Meeting Minutes for Tuesday, August 4, 2020 Virtual Meeting using GoToWebinar What would prompt an increase in restrictions? It really depends how fast the illness spreads and how fast our cases jump. There are new calculators being devised that will help. Right now there are very few cases. A reminder, thought, that masks reduce the spread. Recently Rhode Island has had an uptick. How do we handle staff from this state? Amy will have to review. There seems to be flexibility for Rhode Islanders who work in MA. What kind of regular meetings do you have? The health agent meets twice a week with the Department of Health, State, Town and School Officials. Director of School Health Services Christine Dooline reviewed the steps that she is taking. Currently the district just finished gearing up for the summer program which is up and running successfully. The team looked at every department to see what needed to be done to ensure the program runs smoothly. Some of the mitigation efforts in place: practice social distancing, wear a masks, order additional PPEs including masks, gloves, shields, gowns and clear mouth masks. Right now she is working on procedures for how and when these will be used. The school is not doing daily temperature checks but students must complete a checklist prior to entering the building. The health office is working on several modifications: New entry methods; a new room so that healthy kids and ill students are kept apart; temperature checks within the office. The goal is to allow the safe re-entry of all students and staff including high risk individuals. Questions/Answers for Christine Dooling: Explain the protocol for quarantine and testing for isolated cases. What do we do for students and staff in close contact? Once a test comes back positive we would determine close contacts. Those staff and students would have to quarantine. How we handle positive cases will really depend on each individual case. (Do we shut down a class, a school, a sports team, a bus...) Currently DESE has many protocols in place. Will the community be made aware of these protocols? Yes, Christine and Amy are working closely together and will continue to communicate. How will parents be notified when there is a positive case? The school will work with Fire Chief Desrosiers and Amy Donovan Palmer and will follow state protocols for identifying cases and working on close contacts. All positive cases are sent to Chief Desrosiers. We do not yet have the protocol in place for notifying families when school starts. Are there additional nursing needs? It would be helpful to have permanent nurse subs who could rotate through the schools to cover if a school were to be hit with Covid symptom students. What do we do for a student who has symptoms but mom and dad are not available to pick up? This needs to be handled case by case. How do we get the protocol information out to staff? We are working on orientations and training that will be held during the 10 days of staff professional development. Superintendent Murphy also noted that we are putting together tools to support the social/ emotional needs of both our in - person and remote students. Director of Facilities Matthew Jacques reviewed the steps taken with our buildings. One of the key areas is air circulation. The univentilators circulate fresh air in the building. Roof top units bring Page 2 of 6 Approved 10-27-20 Mansfield School Committee Meeting Minutes for Tuesday, August 4, 2020 Virtual Meeting using GoToWebinar air inside to large areas. At all times 10% of fresh air is always circulating in the buildings. We can increase the air flow as needed. We have hired a full time HVAC technician who is working on constant maintenance such as belt and filter replacements, cleaning. Last year we implemented a new air management software system in MHS and QMS that allows us to easily regulate the flow of air. We expect this to be fully functional around Labor Day Weekend. Air flow at the elementary schools is controlled manually. Regarding cleaning, our custodians are held to high standards and will follow state guidelines. Common spaces, water fill stations and high touch surfaces ore cleaned daily. We are also building many plexiglass shields for high traffic desk areas. We are also looking at repurposing spaces. We have built out nurses' offices, reused storage spaces for teaching areas and converted a conference room to Little Hornets. Questions for Matt Jacques: Are we looking to rent out space this year? Right now we do not plan to rent out any inside facilities. We have rented out our fields over the summer to local sports teams. Will drinking fountains be open? No, but our refill stations will be open so we are asking students to bring in refillable water bottles. How are we creating air flow in the interior rooms? There are alternate ventilation processes for these rooms. The Facilities department is checking all these rooms to be sure the air is circulating properly. Will we be able to keep up with our PPE needs? In a hybrid model we will extend our supply out by 6 months since we will beat half capacity. We are inclose contact with a vendor who will help us as much as possible. Are we doing a deep cleaning on Wednesdays? Our thorough cleaning will occur 5 days per week. No additional cleaning required on Wednesdays. Will windows need to stay open? As much as possible we will keep windows open. Safety concerns will be taken into consideration. Weather will dictate how long we can keep the windows open. Even when windows are closed we bring fresh air into the classrooms. Once heat comes on the fresh air is heated by our boilers. Are teachers allowed to bring fans into the building? Can the air conditioners be used? There is nothing in the state regulations dictating that fans will be required. Air conditioners can still be used based on current guidelines. Will the district use misting machines in hallways and classrooms? Misters will be reserved for large areas. Director of Food Services Dawn Langtry spoke about Food Services: We are currently researching options. It would be very difficult to feed students in the classrooms due to allergies, extra cleaning, etc. The cafeteria is still the best option. Students will need to stay 6 feet apart since masks are off. We are installing touch less payment systems so students do not need to key in pin numbers. Cleaning in the kitchen area does not change as this was always a thorough cleaning. Cafeteria tables and benches will be wiped down between lunches with an Page 3 of 6 Approved 10-27-20 Mansfield School Committee Meeting Minutes for Tuesday, August 4, 2020 Virtual Meeting using GoToWebinar approved cleaner. Traffic patterns will be set up. Food Services will continue to provide grab and go lunches and breakfast throughout the fall whether we are remote or hybrid. Questions for Dawn Langtry: Do we ]snow how many students will fit at a time? We do not have that information yet but each school is working on measurements and table setup. Administrators are also looking at alternate locations like libraries, auditorium, outside, etc. Are you seeing an increase in free and reduced lunch need? We did see an increase in requests over the spring. Assistant Superintendent Ed Donoghue provided an update on transportation: All drivers and students will wear masks. Extra masks will be available for those who forget or break a mask. DESE is encouraging parents to drive students to reduce capacity on the bus. Connolly Bus will clean the buses with a disinfectant spray twice per day and will wipe down high touch areas between runs. We are not sure if sanitizer will be allowed on the bus. In the past, it was not due to slipping concerns. We will get an answer from the state. The district has already reduced fees by $50 due to last year's shutdown and at this time we are not looking to reduce them any further. A shut down of services may lead to a discount in the following school year. Questions for Ed Donoghue: Can families sign up later in the year as their needs change? Yes, but there may be a delay while we check capacities. Overall we are extending the signup period and discount period due to the later start. Is there any impact to SPED busing? Jim Leonard is reviewing. There will be 1 student per bench and 1 row between students. Routes are being discussed. Will there be changes to the traffic flow or drop off in the morning and afternoons? Buses will likely arrive in the same manner. Student traffic flow from bus to and from schools will be reviewed. We are also looking at how to manage senior parking. Will we need additional buses? We do not expect that we will as many families will drive their students. Are there any health risks with older drivers? Connolly bus has not had any concerns yet. Will drivers be trained in cleaning, social distancing and monitoring of students? Yes. Director of Technology Lori Letendre provided an update on Technology: We just received a large shipment of chromebooks and will setup distribution soon. We also have additional chromeboolcs on order. Technology is working on a new distribution and tracking process. Each student will receive a set of instructions along with the chromebook. Staff members will also receive chromeboolcs. We have hired anew staff member to manage chromebook support and have created a new online help desk tool. We are currently running bandwidth testing. Questions for Lori Letendre Page 4 of 6 Approved 10-27-20 Mansfield School Committee Meeting Minutes for Tuesday, August 4, 2020 Virtual Meeting using GoToWebinar Will all families have access to internet? In the spring we did not get many calls regarding internet access. We will continue to monitor and work on solutions for families in need. Are we providing training for staff? Yes, there is an effort right now to provide professional development and documentation. Superintendent Teresa Murphy provided a high level summary of our plan. The ultimate goal is to keep students and staff safe while providing the best education possible. She reviewed the thought process and research that went into developing our plan. Several committees and many hours have been spent reviewing all options. We understand that if we propose a hybrid model, some families would prefer a full remote model. At this point our best option for these remote learners is to use the state offered remote learning program. Unfortunately we do not have an unlimited supply of teachers and cannot manage both programs. Parents do have the option of home schooling though we understand that this is not ideal for many parents. We do have a set of teachers whom we know will teach remotely. These teachers will oversee the State model and act as a liaison between students and the program. We will send out a survey and have parents tell us if they plan to keep their students home for 100% remote learning. This will help us gage staff and program needs. Director of Special Education Jim Leonard provided an update on the success of the summer program. The program is going well and we are receiving a lot of praise from parents. There has been adequate support staff available and kids are happy to be in the building with their peers. The summer program shows that we can have students in the buildings and will act as a model for our fall reopening plans. Assistant Superintendent Michael Connolly spoke of the teaching models. The first option is all students returning to the building at 3 feet apart but with drastic changes to the building and school environment. We cannot bring everyone in at 6 feet apart. This may provide the best education model but is the least safe. The second model is 100% remote. This provides the most safety but is a burden on our parents. The last model is a hybrid model. This provides a balance for parents; however, it is the most challenging to run because we are running multiple scenarios at once. It will be difficult to deliver a top notch education but seems to satisfy the greatest need and desire of our community. As a district we need to measure 3 factors: Risk - Education - Burden on parents. It is most likely that at some point in the year we will have to be 100% remote due to an uptick. We have listened to families who have been very vocal regarding their choices. We believe the hybrid model is the best overall solution in order to meet the needs of families and staff. Discussion: The committee recognizes that it is not possible to go fully in person. Last week we agreed that a hybrid model is the best option we have. However, many parents contacted us with their concerns regarding in person learning. The committee suggests that we start remote and then migrate to the hybrid model. This gives us a little more planning time to be sure we are meeting learning requirements; time on learning and public health metrics. The amount of screen time and social emotional health of our students must also be considered. Chair O'Neil suggested that the committee can vote tonight on a phased in approach or we can wait to see if DESE had further Page 5 of 6 Approved 10-27-20 Mansfield School Committee Meeting Minutes for Tuesday, August 4, 2020 Virtual Meeting using GoToWebinar guidelines for us. Superintendent Murphy noted that a vote of direction would be helpful for us in order to get the plan to DESE by the deadline. The committee then discussed possible start dates. A motion to start school on September 16, 2020 in a Remote setting until the October 16th and then move to a Hybrid model by Linda Fernando / Jenn Walsh. Discussion: Do any of the administrators have thoughts? Mary Watkins noted that it would be beneficial to have more planning time for the hybrid model. Kiera O'Neil emphasized that safety is the top priority. Michael Connolly noted that there are pitfalls with each model and we need to work toward overcoming those issues. Lauren noted that October 16th seemed late in the year to start hybrid. This vote will allow the district to move forward with a plan. Next week the committee will vote on the final plan submission to DESE. Roll Call Vote: Kiera O'Neil aye Lynn Cavicchi aye Jenn Walsh aye Linda Fernando aye Lauren Scher aye Motion Passes: S - 0 New School Committee Business: Next Meeting Tuesday, August 11th. Other- Items not anticipated by the Chair 48 hours prior to this meeting: None Documents Referenced: Draft of Mansfield Reopening Plan Motion to adjourn: At 10:53 p.m., Motion to adjourn the open meeting by Linda Fernando / Jenn Walsh Roll Call vote: Lauren Scher aye Linda Fernando aye Kiera O'Neil aye Jenn Walsh aye Lynn Cavicchi aye Motion Carries S - 0 Respectfully Submitted, Diane Nugent, Secretary to the Superintendent & School Committee Page 6 of 6