NASHUA – The Nashua Board of Education passed two motions encompassing the current COVID-19 pandemic with great deliberation during a meeting Monday night.

The first motion regarding payroll proposed by board member Dotty Oden to: “Continue to pay regularly scheduled workers until April 24,” passed unanimously.

Although Oden initially proposed a date of May 4 for the continuation of pay for every worker in the district who is currently being paid, the uncertainty of the status of April vacation scheduled to start on the 27, resulted in the earlier date.

Following a lengthy debate on whether or not to motion a board vote on the cancellation of April vacation, the second motion that passed 8-1 tabled the discussion until the board receives feedback from the teachers union and a survey on the matter is completed by staff and parents.

As the start of April vacation approaches, one of the most pressing matters apparent during the meeting was time.

While board member Jessica Brown insisted that action needed to be taken immediately and supported cancellation of the vacation as a break would deter from the “momentum” of remote learning, nearly all other members disagreed, leaving her as the outlier on the near unanimous passage and prompting board president Heather Raymond to change the date of the next board meeting to April 13, two days earlier than scheduled.

In a discussion on remote learning, Nashua Superintendent Jahmal Mosley described the attendance policy as “fluid” due to student’s various schedules in a self-paced learning environment.

Resting at, “if the student has logged on,” then they are marked as present according to Mosley, 94% of students at Nashua High School South have recorded attendance.

Gregory Rodriguez, Assistant Director of Technology, reassured the board that inappropriate content is blocked on the Chromebooks being distributed to some students in the district and through using an educational facet of Google, students’ information will not be sold, unlike personal Google accounts.

No information about AP or SAT testing has been officially released.

For more information visit the district’s website at https://www.nashua.edu.

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