School Committee Meeting - August 31, 2020

Summary:

The School Committee voted to approve this School Calendar with two changes from previous calendars (9/23 is now an Early Release and 11/3 is now a professional development (no school for students) day). The Teacher Union and School Committee has agreed on a new “side contract” for the hybrid and fully remote schedules and working conditions and began the school year today with an extensive professional development schedule. The fully remote option with Edgenuity has been renamed “Remote Learning Academy” with dedicated administrators.

Announcements:

Schedules will be available on Powerschool next week. They will be available via hard copy a week later.

Updates have been made to the Reopening Guide.

Information about orientation information for grades K, 5th and 9th will be coming via email from site specific Principal.

Snack and Lunch will be free to all students through 12/23/2020. These items will be grab and go and will help with touchless pickup and no lunch lines. This is a Federally funded program. Students may still bring their own snack from home.

A joint meeting with Board of Health (and potentially the Select Board) will be held on 9/8/20 at 5:30 pm to discuss expectations with virus numbers in the schools, how information will be communicated and how infection cases will be handled.

Dr. Nolin will be sending out information about finding community partners for testing.

MOU (Memorandum of Understanding between the Union and the School Committee)

• has been ratified and accepted by the EAN (teacher’s union) with 80% yes vote and the School Committee with a 100% vote.

Highlights:

• This is essentially a new “side contract” because the teachers’ working conditions have changed.

• The hybrid schedule and the fully remote Edgenuity schedule are designed to be fully aligned with a whole district fully remote schedule in the case that the whole district has to go remote (as the district was in the Spring). This means the School Committee will not have to go back and renegotiate if the district had to go completely remote.

• Live specials available for students in their remote week and students learning remote through Edgenuity

• A “Joint moment” during the day will contain a mix of students who are learning in their live week, in their remote week and students learning fully remote in Edgenuity (will look different at different levels)

• Grading will return to “normal, pre-covid” grading (it will not be pass/fall as in the spring).

• Attendance will return to “normal, pre-covid” attendance, however remote learning counts as time on learning (in the case that a student is sick they can still log on remotely and that will count as attending school)

• Teachers and Staff, for the most part, could not choose to work in school or remotely. Anyone with a medical reason could teach remotely, but there are teachers or staff who are reluctant to return but will do so.

• Specific negotiations for students on IEPs surrounding the backlog of meetings and services have concluded and can move forward on that.

• Professional Development happening Aug 31 - Sept. 15. Read the overview of it here.

Remote Learning Academy

• This is set up for students who have chosen to learn fully remote with Edgenuity

• Website in progress so that information K-12 will all be in one place.

• Three administrators will oversee the Remote Learning Academy:

• Jordan Hoffman, K-5 (375 students)

• Newsletter coming out this Friday

• Parent Information Sessions on Sept. 9 (1 pm, 6 pm)

• Follow on Twitter @Natick_RLA

• Dan Hauserman, 6-8 (150 students)

• Information Session on Sept. 8 (1pm, 6pm)

• Newsletter coming out with ideas of how to make this a flexible option

• Jason Hoye, 9-12 (117 students)

• Information Session on Sept 10 (1 pm, 6pm)

ASAP and Early Risers Information

• ASAP is the After School program families pay tuition to attend, while Early Risers is the before school programming

• Full information is in a document here.

• Need to find outside space to make program available

• It is a priority to provide full time childcare/coverage for teachers

• Any of the program follows the same safety protocols as the school program

• Model is based on a survey to current ASAP families

• 300 children needed after school, before school or both

• Some additional children of teachers

• Do not plan to offer before school program

• Will continue after school program, closing at 5 pm

• Registration will offered only M-F (can’t register for specific days only) to keep cohorts integrity

• Based on increase in tuition and projected enrollment from survey the program still projects to break even (Accounting for renting an space and extra custodial services)

Athletics

• State has left the decision to run athletics up to the Superintendent and District

• School Committee asked Dr. Nolin to develop a tentative plan with the Athletics Director surrounding what Athletics might look like.

Budget

• The complete document is here.

• Outlines $2.7 million in expenses not originally included in FY21 budget (including $420K that is a disputed unemployment expense for furloughed school employees), $1.4 million in revenue from Grants for total unexpected costs of $1.5 million dollars.

• Mr. Gadson outlined $770K additional expenses from facilities that included $517K for a mixture of capital improvements and covid related expenses and $254 in custodial PPE expenses.

• Dr. Nolin outlined the need for the High School projector that was not included in the original FY21 budget.

• School Committee has tried to schedule a Financial Planning Committee Meeting with the Town Administrator, Ms. Malone, the Finance Committee and the Select Board but there has not been a meeting since June. School Committee will reach out again to try to schedule this to discuss these unexpected costs.

• There was some discussion of the additional Chapter 70 (State Aid) that was not factored into the FY21 budget that has now been made available to the town and how that could be allocated between the municipal departments and schools.

Enrollment Update

• This summer additional students were enrolled in NPS (35 Elementary student, 16 middle school, 24 high school students)

• There are an additional 60 students who have been enrolled in Powerschool but haven’t officially enrolled (this number includes 16 K students).

• Projected Enrollment was 407 Kindergarten students but 353 Kindergarten students are currently enrolled.

• The School Committee showed interest in this trend and be prepared for a potential surge in K enrollment in 2021 or are parents enrolling in private K.

• Oct. 1, 2019 enrollment was 5393 K-12 students, 5243 K-12 students currently enrolled with 60 applicants (doesn’t expect all to end up enrolling).

• NPS has 23 students who have opted to enroll in homeschool this year, with a potential additional 8 students. In 2019 there were 22 students who enrolled in homeschool.