Sitting behind my lead character, a father, watching the Red Sox in the 1986 and then in the update, the 19 the 2004 World Series are the Royal Routers. Those fans of the Red Sox we already met at the third base. Throughout the show, they continued to relive through song the Red Sox various curses like a 20th century baseball Greek chorus. This is fun. The musical attracted even the attention of the great grandson of Babe Ruth himself, Chris Herline. That's Chris on the far left and in the middle is my babe JH Williston. The story we pitched to the press was that Chris attended the musical to help lift the curse, which of course it didn't. But I like to think the musical tapped into something very primal that ran very deep here in New England. the love of a team that may not have given any championships for 86 years, but one that gave more than our fair share of great moments.
So folks, I I I can't thank you enough for uh spending part of your afternoon with me here on this talk. I'm going to turn things back over to uh Mina and she's going to um I'm going to turn my video back on and let's uh see what sort of questions and comments we have. And again, thank you all very much and thank you uh Mina for having me today. Absolutely. That was fascinating and we have lots of questions here. Great. Um, David, do you want to stop your screen share and then the two of us I we can I will do that. Hold on a second. I think I can do this. Oh, perfect. Can I do it? You did it. Hooray for that engineering degree. Yay. I love it. Um, we Okay, so we're get lots of questions. Um, Diane says her father worked father-in-law worked as a surveyor on the 128 project.
So the compression committee is looking at all groups uh but we did um prioritize certain groups first and based on what meet and confer had requested and then this is the committee's work to come back out of it. Obviously um I I mean I I don't want to redo all the committee work in meet and confer.
The focus was on the behavioral issues. Many gifted kids have behavioral issues. Uh but that was never looked at. Uh so today, I just want to, you know, kind of bring that to light and really hope that that's something that you guys look towards. Um that giftedness is more than just academics. It's behavioral as well. Um, I would love for my kids to be in GPS. Um, I live in GPS. I, you know, that's where my money goes. Uh, that's where I want my kids to be, but unfortunately there's no support for them in in this district right now. Uh, so they are in a different setting. Uh, that has been great for them. Um, it speaks to their giftedness. They, my one of my sons went from B's and C's to 100% grades within two months. Um, they do great at that school. Uh, and I would love to see that.
And what a treat in 2004 to be able to see this headline, subsequent World Series teams, 2007, 2013, and 2018. the 2013 team. I'll tell you right now, they're my favorite. That's the Boston Marathon team. That's David Ortiz and his epic moment on live TV. So, I'd love to know who yours is. And also, thank you all for having me today. I hope you enjoyed the show. And I want to say to all now, even you folks in San Diego and Oakland and Texas, go Red Sox. Okay, now I'm going to turn this off and I'll turn on my video. Wow, you're getting lots and lots of uh a thank you. Yay. Art's back everybody. Thank you. Um do you want to uh stop sharing your screen and we can go into questions? Yes, I will click the stop share button. Awesome. That engineering degree coming in handy.
When he was surveying in Waltham through an area that was previously a pig farm, he came across big piles of silverware evidently mixed in with garbage destined for the pig farm that restaurants threw out. Do you have any information on where on that stretch of 128 the pig farm was located? Okay, you know how hard it is to make me speechless, but but that's a great I I do not know. I do not I've not heard that's the only pig farm I'm aware of is there was actually a not too not just over the hill in Wuburn there was a a a pig rendering facility which when I first moved here to reading 35 years ago you could smell on warm days even though they had topped it off with uh with Phil. So, I I I can only imagine that um it's still kind of smelt in that area on warm.
I think that's why we sent it to them to make recommendations back to meet and confer and answer any questions you guys have. Yeah. And I just want to clarify that the bus driver psych facilities all came out to that 90k with the extra seven for the LPN which we said we still had to do some I know that got said I just want to make sure that was clear among the group. Thank you Kelly. I knew there that that sounded like a total. I was like how did that get on the facilities? I don't know. Yeah. And then it just all got lumped in as facilities which I think is how we sort of branded it initially anyway. And then the information that you were just sharing about the teacher compression that's the 171, right? That's the like moving people to like start at the clean slate.
Unfortunately, like I said, I think the focus for giftedness as a GPS right now is on academics and high achieving. Um, and I'd love to see that expand the spectrum. Um, unfortunately, most gifted service also do not start until fourth grade. Uh, kids need this much much sooner. Um, our both my kids were identified by kindergarten as gifted, but again, there was no services for that. Um, they were sent to special ed instead. That that's not the right place for them. um many of them were disciplined for those behavioral issues that were again not necessarily behavioral issues. Um so again I I just want to bring that to light and and hope that that's something you guys look at as part of giftedness. The last thing I want to leave you with is two quotes from Linda Silverman who is founder of Gifted Development Center um and a renowned uh licensed psychologist.
Oh, thank you. Bravo. Thank you. Thank you. Wonderful. And I am not a sports fan, but I was like, what's gonna what's he gonna say next? So, um, let's get into some questions. Some one came in the chat. Um, I'm going to remind you all if you have questions to put them in the Q&A because it's a little bit easier for me to follow. Um, but Gerard asked, "Was the Huntington Was the Huntington grounds where Nor Eastern University is now?" Yes. Yes. I think there are dorms there now. Okay, great. And um or a parking lot. A park, but it's really close to the Rugles station. Okay. Um Glenn Stout's Fenway 1912 is an excellent and detailed look at the park's first year in the team's World Series winning dry. Yeah, he's a terrific writer. Terrific, terrific writer. Good book, too. Yeah. Okay. All right.
I'm going to have to look that up, but thank you for telling me about that. That's great. Um so, I just want to tell everybody that I'm taking questions from the Q&A. So, if you are putting questions in the chat, just copy and paste them into the Q&A because it's hard for me to follow all of the chat. And um we're not unmuting people. We are in a webinar. So, just please put your questions right into the Q&A and I will get to them. Um, okay. So, Christopher says, "Do routes 27 and 129 have similar history?" I note that those two together constitute constitute a surface circumferential route between 128 and 495. No, it was never designated as such. Um, you should it and a quick story. Thank you for mentioning 495. Uh my father-in-law was a bank examiner for the state for many many years and he remembers in the late60s when 495 was built.
Okay. I just I was pressing that was work that when we came back from the committee with the other items, we had another committee meeting and obviously we felt like we could we could try to get that in before since me and confer scheduled another meeting and we had another compression committee meeting. We felt we wanted to try to get this forward for our teachers. Uh it was really important to the committee to get this in front of meet and confer. So we know it was a last minute uh but it was definitely one of the areas that we've discussed multiple years in meet and confer and the committee felt like it could be um once we finally started getting because that was the next group we were looking at um and it it just it came together really well for us to make some get some uh legs on it.
This says uh and I'm paraphrasing Thanks, Mike. Our next speaker is Lauren Eaton. Please come up to the podium and whenever you're ready, you can go ahead and get started and you'll have three minutes. Okay. Good evening, governing board. So, I would like to express my concern about GPS's decision to eliminate certified librarians. I teach at Camp Overde High School, and I am devastated upon hearing the news that our wonderful librarian, Sarah Flity, will not be returning to Campo next year because her position as a certified, experienced librarian will be eliminated. Sarah has been Campo's librarian since it opened, and a walk through the library space she has created would spark joy and enthusiasm in even the most reluctant readers. With her clever displays of books curated to reflect the trends seen in popular literature while honoring various ethnicities and identities and her time creating programs to spark reading doesn't end with the school year.
So, questions. Let's see. Um, do you know why Johnson and the American League adhere to the gentleman's agreement that banned black players from the National League before the AL and NL struck a truce? Were you just talking about this a minute ago with the uh No, actually we know we didn't talk about the quote gentleman's agreement um simply because there just wasn't enough momentum enough for that to happen back in 1903. Now we we know uh anyone who knows baseball history knows that there were black players in the very early days of of the game. Um, I think it was sometime in the 1880s when the uh the ban, if you will, went into effect. Okay. Um, was that just that wasn't just the Red Sox, though. That was um No, it was all it was it was all the majors. Yes. Yeah. Uh, interesting.
Uh I guess highway designers again that's an I I 495. So lots of federal money might as well take it. And they built that extra uh uh circumferential road. He remembers when was a desert. There was almost nobody on it. Now, of course, there are just as many traffic reports about jams and and and incidents on that highway as there are used to be on Route 128. Uh so, another example of if you build it, they will come. That that just never gets old. No. Um Pat asks, "Are there are any of the original structures still standing?" I don't think so because as they widened, and that's a darn darn shame. Um unlike the Merit Parkway, which I think is still only two lanes for most of its uh most of the length leading up to Meridian. It's that, you know, as they widen the road, they just took those beautiful deco structures there.
Okay, thank you. That was all for me. It seems logical, but I want to make sure that I clarify. So, the majority of the teachers that um would be moving from the tiered or whatever alternate schedule they might be on, I'm probably one of them before moving to now the standard one. So, everybody would be on the same schedule, are mostly longtime employees. Correct. Tiered schedules. Yes, tiered would be um longerterm employees, okay, who got put on that schedule at some point in time. And what we can see what it looks like historically is that we did try to do some compression. The way we did it didn't we didn't do it in a way that would allow us to continue to watch it and keep an eye on it and keep everybody in one place so we could actually do comparative uh studies on it.
She also hosts reading contest over the summer and holiday breaks. It's heartbreaking to realize that GPS district finds Sarah and the other librarian positions at the secondary high school level that have never been refilled after librarians have retired dispensable without getting any faculty, staff, parent or community input. And as a parent of kids who attend GPS schools, and I love having my kids attend GPS schools, I worry about this silent phasing out of librarians, especially during times when literacy scores are suffering, when math scores are suffering. This year, I have sat through many professional development trainings and meetings that all stress the importance of data. What does the data say? My administrators ask, "How can we use data to make the best decisions for kids?" We ponder during PLC sessions. Yet, the district doesn't seem to be using much data or if they are, it'sn't been transparent to us about this decision to scrub out certified librarian positions.
And Roshan asks, "What was the longest curse, and is there still one going on? Well, let's see. I Let's see. So, the the Cubs had 108 years, I think, because they were they last won they won in 1908 and then they won again in 2016. Another terrific series, by the way. Um, I'd have to look that up. That's a Google question. Maybe I can ask Alexa what the longest uh baseball drought is. I think a hundred years is probably pretty good. Cleveland Indians 68-year drought is now the longest for a franchise. Uh uh uh she just answered my question. 68 years Cleveland Indians, the last one in 1948. When they beat the Boston Braves So we were talking about the um gentleman's agreement a second ago and Carl asks there was a Negroes League, right? So they were they like sort of like separate but equal?
I I have to think about that. There may be remnants of one or two existing, but I I I can't be sure about that. Um, let me think. Okay. How long would it take to drive the whole length of the old 128? I guess I have to ask um Barry if he means in an old car or a current sports car. And I guess we'd have to uh I mean it would it would take you one if you tried to do it on a weekend especially during the summer uh it could take you hours but again you people had no choice back then you know or they could go through the city but uh that didn't seem to be a very uh pleasant alternative. Yeah. So I don't really know because I never I'm I'm not old enough to have done that. Okay. Well, do research for us, right?
So because we convoluted it, right? It actually made it more challen maybe it was a quick fix in the in the time period but it made it actually harder long term. So, because I'm just looking at our dollars, right? Like we have all these options. Like one of them is to deal with longevity, but theoretically, at least it sounds like if we did this and that caused us not to be able to do the longevity bumps, it would still impact the same more or less group of employees and give them that that kind of impact. Okay. All right. Absolutely. And just so I mean there are it's so much more than one or two schedules. Yeah. There's like parody schedules, STEM schedule, grant schedules. Um so uh we got it down from like I want to say six or seven schedules to two. We determined there really needed to be two different um schedules.
The school library impact studies have analyzed robust data over the past 50 years to compile strikingly optimistic conclusions about the correlation between fully certified librarians and student perform performance. And here are some conclusions drawn from their data. One, a certified school librarian impacts student achievement more than per pupil spending, teacher per pupil ratio, and the adult education level of that school community. Two, standardized test scores in reading and math improve and show greater growth when a certified librarian staffs a full-ervice library. Three, improvement in standardized test scores and performance especially improves among minority students, students with IEPs, 504s, and low socioeconomic status. Uh, I must recognize that I am completely ignorant of the hard decisions this this district has to make because of such a limited budget. I know teachers in the past and this year have had their contracts put on hold or have been told their positions won't be renewed.