April 2021 Board of Elementary and Secondary Education: opening comments

 The agenda is here. The livestream will show up here. 

updating as we go once it starts

Public comment

on schools reopening
Andover mother: high school student
Three foot guidance requires students to be in hybrid model
hybrid model with half the students in a field house attending classes remotely being floated for next year
noise of 500 students in field house
"imagine if a school shooter entered" the field house
Andover has applied for a new high school for ten years
"how can I go to a bar and sit next to a stranger unmasked" and my child can't sit two feet from another

West Springfield parent says parent rep on Board didn't represent parent interests
asks Mary Ann Stewart to resign
thinks labor rep repped MTA
asks that districts not be held harmless for enrollment
districts need to understand that 
asks teachers to be opted out of MTA if they don't think they're essential workers
says he is running in West Springfield and other parents should do

testimony on career and tech ed admission
Dan French, Citizens for Public Schools
testifying on disportionately impacts of current admission process to vocational schools
students from Chelsea:
impacts of students who are not first language speakers
disproportiate disciplinary impact on students of color
Black and brown children more adultified than their white peers
are handed higher expectations with less resources
"if we want our children of color to succeed, this policy needs to change"

comprehensive health framework
lack of revised health framework which is 20 years old
two rounds of revisions; last feedback last June
"students cannot learn if they are not healthy"
critical in educating the whole child
"absence of equity in the frameworks"
reconvene the panel; share the feedback; make public comment available
so the revision can be completed

Chair Craven:
Thank you to Board members for those who have participated in anti-racism training 
"really intensive training to what the Department has been doing"
members have immersed themselves in vocation school issue

Commissioner Riley:
FAFSA completion campaign
campaign on getting it completed: billboards, social media
Dyslexia guidelines released with early ed; promoting document far and wide
Student advisory council and mental health; will have a presentation on DESE work and grants
"a lot of good work there...and a lot of it spurred on by the students"

Secretary Peyser:
Mass STEM summit coming May 6

Update on reopening:

Riley: 90% of elementary schools open for five days a week
those serve about 300,000 students (so less than a third of the full K-12 public school students)
(that doesn't mean that many kids are back in buildings) (I've since been told that this does represent actual students attending; the state's collecting this?)
6-8 by April 28
serving almost 200,000 students (again, not all of those actually in buildings)
high school "sometime next month" but "in process" and will let people know ahead
84 waiver requests, 35 approved for grade 5, 43 for incremental return, 10 denied
pool testing: program has found low positivity rates
state using federal funds to pay to the end of the year
excellence road map for next year
Hills: any elementary waivers still open? Riley, all decisions on elementary made