001Good evening. Welcome to the Dudley-Charlton Regional School District's Thursday, July 10th meeting. The time is 6.05. I'm calling the meeting to order. If there's anybody, there's nobody here recording as far as Mass General Law is concerned. So we'll move right into the Pledge of Allegiance. I'm sorry, I should go back and say our regular recording is being recorded and it will be shown on the Venmo website. Thank you Now we'll observe a moment of silence On our agenda we actually have the school committee reorganization since we're not all here I'm gonna just kind of put that off until our new business if everybody's okay with that we'll just bump that down the agenda a little bit So we'll go right into the consent agenda items. Does anybody have anything to remove from the consent agenda
002items? No? Hearing nothing, I'll seek a motion to approve the consent agenda items as written. Second. Thank you. Any discussion? All those in favor? Thank you. Okay. Does anybody have any communications this evening? Pretty quiet. Okay. and I guess we'll move into public comment if there's any public comment tonight Wyatt Summer Knight okay Madam Chair yes I just noticed this I don't know we have lots of people that look at this but the Roman numerals are off so I just apologize for that because that does go through my office so we're not skipping from the fifth agenda item to the 11th back to the 10th to the 11th and then to the 12th so please accept my apology for that All right. So hearing no public comment, we'll roll into our new business. And we
003can either start with the reorg or start with the discussion of the letter from the select board. Anybody preference? Okay with that? We all okay with that? We'll do the reorg after the letter and give some time for discussion, I suppose? Okay. okay then we will start with discussion from the letter from the Charlton select board that we received I did prepare a statement that I'd like to read into the record this is obviously not a lot of representing the school committee but the letter is addressed to both myself and you as a school committee so I would like to respond to this letter that came from the board of the select board of Charlton and is addressed to me as well. So please bear with me. It's a couple pages long, so I just
004want to add some clarity here. I would like to take this opportunity to address the letter dated June 17th, 2025 from the Charlton Select Board to myself and the members of the Dudley-Charlton Regional School Committee. While I respect the role of the Select Board in local governance, this letter contains several unfounded claims that warrant a clear and direct response from an operational and administrative standpoint. My comments reflect the position of the superintendent and do not represent a deliberated position of the school committee. The concerns raised in this letter appear to originate from a public comment made by Selectman David Singer at the March 5th, 2025 school committee meeting. That meeting, like all DCRSD school committee meetings, was video recorded and remains publicly accessible at or on our website at dcrsd.org. You can find it under
005the tab labeled About DCRSD and under that, School Committee. Selectman Singer's comments begin around the 40-minute mark and centered on alleged propaganda made available by the Massachusetts Teachers Association. Specifically, he asked, what is Dudley Charlton either already done or going to do to counter the propaganda that MTA already put out to teachers, including Dudley Charlton teachers, to teach our children? Given the seriousness of the accusation and its implications to our educators, I received permission from the school committee chair to respond at that time, which is not typical during public comment. My response was clear and unequivocal. We are aware that the MTA was required to remove materials from their website. Dudley Charlton is affiliated with the MTA, but our educators are guided by their own professional judgment in the values of our two communities. Our
006teachers do not blindly access or use MTA materials. The materials in question were not used in any Dudley-Charlton schools. Our educators are discerning professionals who make decisions based on what is best for students in our local communities. Selectman Singer acknowledged the response, expressed appreciation for our educators, and asked whether a general, proactive message might be issued in the future. The exchange ended respectfully. Subsequently, At the May 27, 2025, Charlton Select Board meeting, Selectman Singer raised allegations citing incidents of anti-Semitic behavior by students at Charlton Middle School and Shepherd Hill Regional High School. In response, I immediately communicated with all Dudley Charlton principals in all seven schools, emphasizing our absolute intolerance for any form of hate and reiterating clear expectations for response and reporting. My message included immediate follow-up with any students involved and their guardians
007if they were in fact it happened in clear invisible support for any student or group targeted by hate Our principals conducted prompt and thorough inquiries into the incidents publicly presented by Selectman singer They reported no known incidents matching the descriptions provided at the May 27th 2025 select board meeting Next, at the June 10, 2025 meeting, the Select Board voted to send a formal letter to the Superintendent and School Committee continuing to press a narrative that lacks supporting evidence and troublingly mischaracterizes the actions and values of our educators. The letter implies that the Dudley-Charlton educators may have distributed inappropriate materials, an assertion that is speculative at best and damaging at worst. Let me be absolutely clear tonight. They did not. Our local educators are deeply committed professionals who act independently, responsibly, and in the best interest
008of our students. They are not political pawns, and they deserve better than to be casually discredited without cause or evidence. As superintendent, I take all concerns about student safety and school climate seriously. I will continue to investigate any credible report of hate, discrimination, misconduct. However, I will not issue district-wide communications based on unverified allegations or political grandstanding. In Dudley-Charlton, we remain vigilant, responsive, and grounded in truth. If and when specific, substantiated concerns arise, we will act thoroughly, thoughtfully, transparently, and swiftly. Until then, I ask that we not allow conjecture to distract from the real work of educating and supporting all students and staff of the Dudley-Charlton Regional School District. As a district, we are steadfast in our commitment to uphold the civil rights and liberties of all individuals. We do not and will not tolerate
009discrimination based on race, color, sex, gender identity, religion, national origin, sexual orientation. disability, or homelessness. These values are not negotiable. They are embedded in the fabric of our schools and guide the work we do every day on behalf of the children and families we serve. In conclusion, if Selectman Singer or any other member of the Select Board is aware of specific incidents occurring within our schools that warrant further investigation or administrative action, I respectfully ask that those concerns be communicated directly to my office. We are committed to ensuring a safe and respectful environment for all students and staff, and we will always act with urgency when credible information is brought forward. Direct communication allows for timely review, appropriate response, and, where necessary, corrective action. As the superintendent, our district leaders value strong working relationships with
010all elected boards and community leaders. We believe that collaboration built on mutual respect transparency and accurate information is essential to effective public service and the well-being of our schools while we may not always agree we remain committed to open dialogue constructive problem-solving and shared responsibility for the success of our students in our communities Madam Chair and school committee I appreciate the opportunity to be able to read that into the record this evening based off of the letter we received from the select board of the town of Charleston Okay, so to move forward on this matter, I would entertain a motion to, I guess at this time, submit a statement condemning anti-Semitism in W-Chalk for discussion. Can you repeat it a little louder? I'm just saying for discussion we can entertain a motion to put out
011a public statement condemning anti-Semitism in our schools. I'm having discussion. Okay. Sorry. Am I, you know, if I don't mean to say, if I'm approaching it wrong, I don't. I'm going to say, like, personally, I would move to table that because I believe Superintendent LaMarche spoke eloquently about how deadly Charlton Regional School District is and the culture that we work so hard to maintain and to grow in the school district and our communities. So I move that we table it. Can we do that? I guess if there's no second, then we can table it. I don't know. Technically, how does that work? If it hasn't been made, can you really table it? That's true. That's what I didn't know. Just so we can discuss it, we need to get it. I'll make a motion. Write
012a letter to the Select Board of Charlton to whatever you said. Submit a statement regarding anti-Semitism. Make a statement regarding anti-Semitism. Okay. So you're seconding my motion? No. Well, I'll make the motion. Because you were seeking a motion, correct? Yep. Okay. So we have a motion to entertain. And then we can forward discussion if there's a second discussion. I'll second your motion. I just did it so that we could discuss. I mean, I think that the letter speaks to how I personally feel. I wasn't aware of some of the accusations. Can't find some of the accusations that I could see by watching the select boards videos So it's hard for me to kind of follow the whole timeline of what happened and what prompted this I don't have the MTA information that he was discussing
013So it's hard for me to say I disagree, I agree when I don't know everything. And when things have been removed and I know that things get posted on social media and removed and on MTA sites that you need membership to, I can't access all that. So it's hard for me to say, yes, this is happening. No, it's not. I'm not in the buildings every day. I understand that he has a concern, but it just wasn't very clear to me what happened and what his concern stemmed from. So I would honestly not like to make our own letter, but possibly co-sign that letter if that was an option. I mean, I think the letter was fine coming from him alone, but I know that... The select board is looking for a response from us as
014a board too. Madam Chair, for clarity, this is not a letter. This is me writing a statement. Nope, it's not a letter that I've sent to anyone. It's me. It's a statement. Please. However, they are unfounded on the inflammatory obligations that the administration has deeply tried to root out and find if it was any credibility to them, which they did not find. We take every allegation seriously. I have no doubts. I have every confidence in the principals and leadership from the top to bottom that they would be in the best interest of every student. We do not have at hand the materials that the allegations from the MTA were discussing, nor do I believe that they should be dictating what curricula the school should be using or not using. There is a process and a
015policy that they can take through our curricula subcommittee if they have a grievance. And furthermore, what's to say that if it was being used, a teacher didn't say... This is a clear example of what we shouldn't do. There's always that option when we're presenting with material. There's always two sides to the coin. It's not always at face value that things are disseminated in the way that they were presented. I also think it's an overreach that they're at a different autonomous board from us to dictate what we should or should not use for material in curricula. I would even entertain saying this to legal to see if this is an overreach. I understand that we should push back against hate and misconduct in every corner, but there's really two facets to their request, and we need
016to parse that out. I feel like again all right to pick back off of you as well Mr. LaMarche what you spoke of I support completely and feel the same way I am in agreement with Jean to table this and I obviously do not stand for anything that is being alleged I am you know we We have a way that we conduct ourselves here and what we seek from our educators. And I just, I didn't feel right with this whole request either. And I agree there's not enough information to work on in what's being alleged. So tabling it and as far as I'm concerned, the words that you just spoke, Mr. Lamar, should hold for us as a body. My question is, what are we going to do if we table it? You know, like
017I don't know to what end are we tabling it? Are we going to ask legal? I just, I want to make sure that we have a good working relationship with the board. I don't feel that they shouldn't be demanding us to write a letter based on things that aren't necessarily substantiated. Absolutely not. However, all of our policies and procedures. fully fully state that we believe that You know what we believe in and I don't feel that we need to be writing a letter in any way so I also look on it from All right, Dudley Charlton, but Dudley Charlton is not the only school district for Charlton or for Charlton students or Charlton community You know He came to us on March 5th about MTA. Did not go to Bay Path, to their school committee
018to talk with them. I called up Bay Path to ask. So I'm assuming he didn't go to Bay Path because they told me no. Didn't go to SWAC. Didn't go to anybody else. It just seems disingenuous to me. Okay. Is this working? Don't get me going. It's a nothing burger, and I think he owes us an apology and the schools for even saying that stuff without any backup. No hard evidence. It's all hearsay, and I don't think we should respond because we don't need to because there's nothing there. Madam Chair, I was just going to say, I just want to reiterate what I had in here. If he does have more information, please call my office. We'll look into anything without question. Thank you. And when this first did come to light, the first questions
019we asked were, were there any things reported? Have you heard anything? We reached out to all the administration. So we don't have that kind of. That evidence to kind of back the statement. It's an unfortunate Climate that we're in right now But I don't think that as far as the schools go. I also don't think issuing a statement at this time Just having mr. Lamar she's well written Don't want to call it a statement because it's not really a statement but words That he spoke tonight regarding the situation probably cover our bases but if anybody else feels differently we can move forward otherwise um you know tabling it was probably our best bet to what end i don't know i guess we will see the response from the selectmen i suppose if it goes any
020further or if they're okay with us acknowledging it and making sure that there's eyes on it if they come back with any actual you know evidence of it proof of it then by all means it will clearly be addressed by the district and administration at this time but I also don't want to hurt the relationship that we have with the towns going forward but I feel like you know just kind of putting it on the burner and letting them know that we're aware we understand their concerns you know and not taking really a stand at this time Do we feel that it would be appropriate to send a member of our board to the next selectmen meeting to be able to state that to them that we don't feel that we need to be making
021a public statement as it's in our policies and procedures and I just said that. There's been articles in the paper I didn't write in a letter. Yes, I noticed your quote and I thought that was great. I was there at the last meeting in which they were discussing the letter. I did mention the policies and that every year we reaffirm our anti-discriminatory practices through all of our staff handbooks, student handbooks. Every year, every August we do that. I just don't want to get into the point where this clouds the work that we need to do with our kids. But it also sets a weird precedence where now if they do something or if Dudley does something or how does Dudley feel about the fact that Charlton's trying to do this? Like their kids are also
022in the community. And the fact that there is other schools and we were the only approached, I mean, I don't know why, the rhyme or reason behind that. It seems like things might have escalated a little bit beyond our control. I guess for me, I'd actually ask them to redact in their letter that a lack of response to condemn these messages has led to an escalation in hateful acts in the community. Because I feel like putting that out there is so negative. It's inflammatory. It's terrible. after their legal counsel read through it with no evidence of that being the case that it was still allowed to be in the statement letter to us that was surprising I understand they want to bring our attention to it but if they have basically just hearsay to back
023up that and that is yeah deflammatory to our committee and our school and our teachers and the work that we're trying to do here so I understand what you're saying I'm guessing they're watching. I don't know that we need any more of really a response at this time. But we do have a motion. We do have a motion. So all those in favor of issuing a public statement at this time? All those opposed? It's unanimous. Thank you. Okay. Then we will move on. Mr. O'Donnell how about you would you'd like to go now have you go now and then we'll Kathy we waited for you for the review but why don't you come on up and we'll get through the athletics donations Good evening. I'm Chris O'Donnell, the athletic director for the district. I want
024to say thank you everybody for your time tonight. I am respectfully requesting the acceptance of funds to benefit the girls lacrosse and boys baseball team at Shepherd Hill Regional High School. These funds are raised supplemental and do not supplant our operating budget and our basic responsibilities. These teams took part in snap raise snap fundraising application This is a platform that the class of 2025 at Shepherd Hill took part in successfully you and used These contributions came from family members parents relatives friends, etc Families can choose to donate through the app online in any amount they choose or not choose The goal behind these funders and efforts was to cover the cost of specialty items in order to help strengthen and expand these programs beyond their current rosters. Both teams had very successful seasons, winning the
025Midland Wachusett League. The future is very bright for both of these programs. Below are the items that the money is intended for as specialty items. Girls lacrosse specialty items, team sweatshirts for winning the mid-watch, practice specialty items, goal targets, stand-up goalie, collapsed defenders. And then for baseball, specialty items include weighted mound tarp, home plate for weather protection, base plugs to keep bases secure and safe, stone dust for infield lines and home plate. But thank you very much for your consideration, and I appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you. Does anybody have any questions for Mr. Hidalgo? I'm sorry. I entertain a motion to approve the donation for girls lacrosse in the amount of $4,183.93, and for boys baseball, $4,791.30. So moved. Second. Second. All right. Is there any discussion? Can you just tell me, when
026families went on to the website to make the donations, did it specifically state what would be purchased with that? So it included information to say. That teams will be fundraising to expand opportunities for student athletes on these teams Specific goals weren't determined besides just expanding the opportunities My only concern is that is the sweatshirts Where I can understand that we're like that you're gonna be able to use the funds for materials For practice items and all those other things I just didn't like the team sweatshirts was my only question because it's for team members that are already like have they already been purchased none of these items have been purchased yet these are just goals that the coaches discussed with the staff after the fundraisers concluded as items that could benefit the student athletes for
027a number of reasons because these student athletes and families took play took part in the opportunity to try and raise these funds if they elect to. And nobody was forced to fundraise at all as part of these teams. I also think sometimes when you win something, it's nice to promote it too. So for sweatshirts, we're trying to grow the lacrosse league too. So for those who actually won it and took place, I get it. I see what you're saying both ways, but I also do think that it gets the... that gets our district out there as champions for Mid-Watch League. That's fine. I think in the future, just to make sure that it directly states that it may be used for team apparel that stays with the member, not necessarily with the team, that would
028be helpful. What was the average donation? I don't have it in front of me, but I can get back to you on that. I'm just curious. Always trying to keep things in my head when we're trying to raise funds for different organizations. Absolutely. I actually do have a question too. Is SNAP, is that just strictly like cash donation fundraising or were they purchasing like items to raise funds? So it is, so the class of 2025 had done it as well in the past and how it takes part is families can elect to make a donation using their, it's not cash, it's like a credit card. they elect to make a donation like a Venmo essentially but they make a donation to that specific app. Okay, they're not like buying popcorn or going to shows or
029whatever. Okay, I was just so just straight up monetary donations and they were aware of that. I do think that it brings a greater Think we have to understand more in our maybe in budget and finance how all these apps are taking place because I think you know just from Having the kids in school and watching like oh send in $10 in cash for this or $5 this Okay, like I think we have a lot of maybe some monetary policies that we have to think about and put in place just to keep things in good alignment It's a nice lead-in to our distributed policies. Donation, yeah. Donation policies that we have. It was for about a month. But not longer than this one season alone. Correct. So all these students that fundraise will benefit from,
030I mean, maybe the seniors may not get to use the equipment, but the seniors that were on the lacrosse team would benefit from it, from the sweatshirts at the very least. any further discussion okay all those in favor of approving funds thank you mr o'donnell thank you thank you everybody um since these are just policies for distribution um we'll just move into that It's going to matter one way or another. If we do the reorg last, everybody okay with that? Okay. All right. So, Madam Chair, we have a number of policies to distribute this evening. Policy Sub has been working and continues to work. We do have another meeting scheduled this month, as long as those members want to continue to have the fun that they have on Policy Sub. But keep in mind this
031is the distribution part of the process. So we present them to you if you have any questions because you've had them for a couple of days now with some of the changes that are in here. And we'll go through them. Those involving fundraising, public solicitations, facilities use, those are with Director DeSantis. We'll present those to you and what changes may be in those as well. So we'll start with policy JJE for student fundraising. Yep. So student fundraising policy, JJE is a new policy, but it's to replace policy KHB that we currently have related to fundraising. I'll just quickly go through each paragraph and highlight some of the key points to each one of the policies and we can go through any questions at that point. The first paragraph is in relation to DESE and school
032committee policies for allowing students to fundraise. So I thought it was important, we thought it was important to have both the language as it relates to DESE as a governing body and school committee policy as well. Directly after that, we had broken down the types of fundraising to the three major categories of fundraising, and these major categories generally hold true throughout regional school districts and other school districts in Massachusetts. So I listed either school-based, student activity-based, or charitable organization-based. We also, in the second paragraph, first several sentences, we thought it was important to recognize the fact that normal school fiscal policy and planning is not necessarily... I'm going to handle every situation that will arise adequately or appropriately. So we thought creating policy needed to be established to minimize any of those risks that are
033related to any of the fundraising endeavors. So we did add language related to that. A couple sentences further down when we're looking for secondary approval, it was listed as a superintendent. We've updated that to superintendent or designate. Next paragraph and the one through seven numbered items below that are our guidelines to attain approval. We also thought it was important in that first sentence to note that DCRSD does not support door-to-door fundraising. So we did want to highlight that as well. And we also thought it was important to list the prioritization, whether it be for a school-based function, a student activity-based function, or a charitable organization. So we did detail that as well. Going through the numbers one through seven, numbers two, six, and seven. were pulled from the previous policy. Number two relates to the
034fundraising request form that we utilize. Number six is related to the timing of the fundraising. And number seven is the age and grade level appropriations. Going through the additions that we had made, number one, we thought it was important to list that each event must be supervised by an authorized staff member of the district. Number three, to go to Ms. Carmagnani's point, all the monies collected must be brought to the finance office by the following week by an authorized staff member using a revenue report form, which will detail what we've collected and have all the pertinent, relevant information that we can pull as needed. Number four is in relation to the utilization of school property. We thought it was important to list our ML schedule system, which is the system of approval for utilization of
035fundraising if property is needed. We also refer to the use of school facilities, which is another active policy for further information as it relates to property utilization. And number five, if items are being sold, we need to obtain a quote from the vendor, but the order must be processed before any costs are incurred. This just provides us more fiscal protection and ensures that we're maintaining sound fiscal policy. So before moving on to the next policy, I'd be happy to answer any questions as they relate to this J.J. student fundraising. So how does this relate to our affiliate kind of groups, like our PTOs and our parent organizations that are, you know, we have sports, we have band, we have all different types, and how does that all intermingle there? Are you talking about more of
036the definition of if a PTO organization would be considered, say, a school-based activity or a student-based activity and a charitable-based activity? Yeah, like I guess when our like when our PTO does a read-a-thon Sponsors a read-a-thon and asks sends information home with my child to ask them to ask their relatives and friends for donations And then we say elementary people should not be involved in fundraising activities in the community Are we in direct? you know, violation of that. That's my question too, because they're going to do lots of activities. Madam Chair, if I could jump in. PTO, obviously, they're their own entity, and we work with them, and they do an approval through me for their fundraising activities. We want to follow the policies, but this policy really is for fundraising internally within our own
037school system and stuff. So if you look at music, you look at athletics, that's all under our umbrella. PTO is their own 401 3 CB what 501 C 3 CB it was something like that So they go through an approval process with me approval path with me So but we don't encourage going out having elementary kids go out to the community to try to solicit funds Okay. We do have them work with friends and family and that kind of thing. Right. But we don't. And this is not just us. The state has really done a lot of work around no longer going door to door to solicit things. And that's kind of why the last time this policy was updated was 2013. So that's why we're working on it at this point in time. But
038it sounds like you maybe want some type of qualifier for PTO in there or something? Well, I just think we have a lot of. Peripheral not necessarily PTO, but we have a lot of different organizations that are friends of our groups That we need to understand like how that interacts Like all these things if they run events elementary kids are gonna go to so their friends and family will be Asked for funding. So I just want to make sure that that's So we could look to try to carve we could look to try to carve something out for Don't know about the word friends friends of the district or something of that nature, but like periphery related entities Yeah, we can look to carve out a paragraph on that Yeah, I'm not quite sure how
039to put it but they're clarifying Exclusion so that they know that this is this isn't part of the Maybe instead of that, just tweaking seven, because the idea for that is to ensure that they're not door-to-door going out. you know unsupervised like but i think with community where we're talking about where it's in school based or reading at home or asking you know relatives to are you going to sponsor me to read x amount of pages right that's not what we're talking about here we're talking about more no students will be asked to go to unknown people's house like i don't know like just but there's got to be like a you know maybe we can tweak that a little bit where i think we could carve out a little paragraph about You use examples,
040EG, you know, PTO, you know, John Peer Foundation, stuff like that, yeah. And they still require an approval process because they have one now, but yeah. I think we can do that. That's good feedback. I do have one other question, too, though. So if a teacher is doing their own whatever the, I forget what the fundraiser is, or even like Amazon Wish through their elementary class, is that something that's? sometimes you see them put out that way is that something that will fall under this policy? Madam Chair yes that would and that's approved by the principal. Okay so the principal has to approve that currently? Right now that's really that's really the model for internal under our umbrella is the principal's really approving those. Like a what it's called the giving tree is something like
041that. The principal approves that. Do we need any financial information about are people allowed to use a Venmo? Because there were some fundraisers where I Venmoed. individual person's account instead of a school account like do we need to set up some things in place for just to protect people like spend through the PTO or DCEF or stuff like that I just don't want people to like get themselves caught up yeah it's like in you know I just want to make sure we're all Just following. That's something that we can look into as well is just listing the formats of acceptable payment and just come up with a definition of that that we can have and move forward with. How to make it easy for them. Because Venmo is very easy. Too easy. It's too easy,
042but I just don't want someone to be put in an awkward position that they have to use a Venmo. It is easy, but I don't know if it's easy as an organization to have one, but I don't know. It's getting more difficult. It was once that organizations couldn't have it. It could only be personally used, but it's changed within the last year or two. So I'm starting to see organizations use them. Through the chair, we never ask anyone to have to set up a Venmo for fundraising. We've never. So they've taken that on their own to do it that way. But I hear what you're saying. Yeah. Okay. So next for distribution. So we'll carve that out and get ready for distribution. Okay. Okay. Next is public solicitations in schools, KHA. So, KHA, we have
043obviously public solicitations in the schools. This being a new policy, the language was newly defined. The first three numbered items are related to the limitation reasonings that school committee can put on commercial and fundraising activities in the schools. So, very quickly, you can read through those lists as you need. If you have any questions, obviously we're happy to answer. The second set of numbers, number one and two below that, are more related to the exceptions on whether or not the superintendent or a designee may permit occasional commercial fundraising activities outside of direct solicitation of students or employees that may take place without school committee approval. and no general or class distribution of commercial or fundraising literature may take place without school committee permission. There's also at the bottom just a small blurb as it relates
044to PTA and PTO groups and groups representing the school district employees. So it just defines them as, quote, school groups. Details their management level to be at the building leadership and principal level anybody have any questions at this time on this policy What would a commercial activity be or like what would that actually mean like a big business like a big commercial Puts limits on commercial activities and fundraising activities what commercial I'm sorry. I'm so so madam chair Coca-Cola wants to come and give everyone Okay, perfect. Just making sure that I was like big businesses, big company. Okay, commercial. Okay. But there wouldn't be a conflict with yearbooks and pictures and class rings and such? Because that's initiated and grown by us. Okay. Yeah. That's what I thought. But if they came in and then
045sold a... A Ferrari. Or a new fab tassel for graduation that you get extra without our authorization, that's the problem. Okay. With their name on it and all that kind of stuff. You make it so easy now. So moving into policy KF, this is an update to the current facilities use policy that we have listed. I will go through just the changes that we've made. On paragraph four, starting with permission, after the word superintendent or designee, we added via the current designated automated approval mechanism, which is ML schedules, and we embedded a link to ML schedules so people can more easily get to the mechanism they'll need to get that approval. Going down several more paragraphs after the eligibilities, numbers one through seven, after numbers one through three, after that, in the paragraph that begins
046with organizations that operate, you'll notice that just in the last sentence, we've updated the language for billing for the use of facilities from before the scheduled event to after the scheduled event to meet our current procedures. Directly under that, we added a non-profit and charitable organization terminology that says that non-profit and charitable organizations will be reviewed by the Director of Finance and Operations for applicable fees. Our applicable fee rates are already defined by group category, as we have in our use of facilities guidelines, school rental fee schedule. So that can be pulled up at any point as well. directly under that we added the language that approved users ought to provide proper liability insurance where applicable which is very important to note anytime we're utilizing a school facility proper liability insurance must be provided to
047central office prior to the event taking place so those were the only changes that were made to this specific policy On the first page, there was a list of exempt groups, election caucuses, town meetings, police, etc. I was just curious how that list came to be, those particular groups. So that's a pre-existing group? Grouping that was defined based on municipal functions So we did take a look at those municipal functions to ensure that they were all still viable, you know municipal functions Before removing any of those and we did take a look at the list to see if it should be potentially added But the list looked relatively inclusive based on the categories So essentially it was a carryover but relevant still? Correct. Okay. Through the chair, that's a very common policy practice in school
048districts with that relationship with towns. Oh, absolutely. I know that each town has even more committees that are government-based, and so I just was wondering what defined this one making the list versus that one making the list. And that'll also be dependent based on need. If a municipality comes and asks us if they can utilize the facility for a new category, then that's something that obviously we would want to edit the language within the policy to fit our new needs. Right, right. Thank you very much. I do think that we should consider, I am worried that it says there'll be no charge for town use for the following activities, especially... If it's happening on a day where we would have to pay custodial staff time and a half or double time, I do feel that
049there would be no set rental fee, but any cost incurred for custodial time would be passed to the organization, if appropriate. I think that maybe we should look at that because we shouldn't have to front the cost of a custodial fee. That's something that we can look at as well as far as our facility's rental fee schedule is concerned. Maybe it's time that we take a look at that and decide whether or not that would need updating for every category that's listed. What prompted the change to charge them after instead of before? So a lot of times if we had charged them before we were finding that there were variations between What the initial cost was and what the actual event expenses end up being So we found that it was more prudent to bill
050them after as opposed to going through the process sometimes twice And we haven't had any issues with entities not paying their facilities fees. So it has not been an issue. So this kind of eliminated the need for a redundant activity that we could bill after as opposed to needing the small fee prior to that. But yeah, I don't know. I'm not going to pay. Hopefully nobody will do that. We haven't encountered that issue. I'm sure that people are reputable. Thank you. Any other concerns or questions? Does this relate to the PTOs? Because I know they use the buildings quite often. Yeah, they're not charged either. Unless we run into custodial overtime, like Mrs. Carmignani was saying, weekends and stuff like that. What eligibility do they fall under? Of other organizations approved by school committee? Is
051that listed? I would call them number one public school activities because they're PTO. They're affiliated with us. Okay. I just want to make sure they're covered because they use the building sometimes in school, sometimes out of school hours. There's many PTO events that happen within the buildings. So the lens we were looking through is they were part of us, so they're part of number one. Okay. No, obviously if we had an event we work closely with them if we had our own an event like a basketball game and they wanted to use it we would work with them on scheduling all of that but but we consider them possible to us It's just confusing because at first they were not part of us in the first policy they were other fundraising this is facilities use
052right but On one policy they're part of us and one they're not so Okay, Madam Chair and school committee, the next one is JF, school admission residency. This policy was really worked on the actual year that I came. Marion Tossie, who was on school committee that year, really took charge and really worked hard on this particular policy. Now that it's been in play in practice quite a bit, I am recommending through Policy Sub and have their support to make a couple of just little tweaks to this. One of them is because of the next policy is on page, I'm only going to go over the changes as well. So if you turn to the third page, exceptions. The exceptions have always been for two foreign exchange students to attend. I just wanted to clarify that
053those were tuition-free foreign exchange students because the next policy we'll talk about possibly charging tuition. Principal Alwell had gone through a very extensive process with Homeland Security to have students who may want to pay to come here to have our school approved. So we may at some point in time have tuition-based foreign exchange students coming to our district as well. So I thought it would be best in this policy to say tuition free for those particular students. And then on the last page on the back, we didn't have the cross references and the updated legal references for it. But in practice on this policy, if you look at numbers one, two, three, and four, there were things like quarter, 60 days. There are other areas where we say 90 days. So the attempt here is
054to try to make it, number one, consistent. and have everything 90 days but i will say through practice a quarter was a very difficult 45 days sometimes was very difficult if somebody was building a house and i had to try to say you had 45 days to do that and well the contractor wasn't available so we're not going to be done until the 50th day i i sorry i could not ask them to leave and then re-register because they because because the school committee policy 90 days has been a very good practice for us to take a look at and see if that works within that time frame So that's why we're saying a semester or 90 days for the pending purchasing, construction, et cetera. These are annual. I get these requests on a regular
055basis that we're moving in. And they have to produce all of the information that's still in the policy. There's nothing changing there about their proof of residency. That's all there. And then the one that did unnerve me the most was number three, residence and rental properties. I'm just going to say it because I tend to just speak. 60 days was... felt discriminatory if you're a renter that you only get 60 days to prove that you resided there where every other places you have 90 days for this and that so again to try to apply consistency for all those that are trying to enroll in our district and give that 90 day window seems to be a better practice for us moving forward and I'll come back to the committee if this this doesn't work or
056and I welcome you to come to me if this causes problems within the community but I think 90 days is a much better consistent time frame for people to who are moving especially building houses buying land all that kind of stuff so okay who you and your office if we also had an addendum where you could apply for an extension So in your example, great question, there's no extension in here. So that's why 90 days kind of fills all of that. If they haven't been able to try to figure everything out within 90 days, then we do talk about, we talk about for transitioning students, when you change, when you ask students and families to change schools, how many times they do that sets the students back. So 90 days. tends to be semester breaks,
057tends to be a good break for them to say, okay, no, it's not working out. It fell through. You need to transition your student to the town in which you're residing in. So 90 days gives us that opportunity, but it still gives us a chunk of time with that particular student without having them bounce around. So there is no, and I appreciate that, but I don't think we need to ask people to ask for an extension after 90 days. Okay? Because they tend to happen at the beginning of the school year and they tend to happen at the end of the school year. Is this more frequent with move-ins and move-outs of the community or with military families? Because, I mean, sometimes orders get put on hold, sometimes they're expedited, and you have no control
058over those things. Through the chair it's a great question it does happen for both move-ins and move-outs and every one of them is a story whether it's military or some other reason there's there's always a story behind it and we want to try to do the best we can for the students that we have you know I think it speaks to us as a district that we do care about we're not gonna bounce kids out right especially again if they didn't make the quarter the quarter was very difficult for people to make so but it's move-in and move-outs I asked about extraordinary circumstance number A2, where students who move because of severe or chronic illness of the student or immediate family member, or the death of an immediate family member, a disaster to the residents
059or other circumstance. Are we stating that they can stay in the school for that remaining year? Yes. Should it state can finish the school year? Yes. That's very infrequent, but we have had a couple of cases where the student or child is now living with an aunt in a neighboring town, and again, we're trying to make the best of the situation. So we do, we try to, again, we try to look at natural breaks for them to transition. If we can transition them faster or sooner, we do that, but it's a couple of cases that I have in my head over the last six years. They've been for the rest of the school year, and then we go from there. Should we state that? Because in the one above, we're saying they can stay for
060their senior year, which I totally agree with. I'm just wondering if we need to state on number two to finish any school year. Well, the opening line under A, tuition waivers, basically just states that it's the superintendent's discretion to waive the tuition. Wave tuition that we would charge somebody who lives in another town coming here. Okay, so it covers the whole category And what about I know we put this dwellings thing in before has that been an issue that we need to keep that in there? Yes, it is through the chair. It's recently come up and it's the worst case scenario, but what if someone's house burns down and so they're temporarily displaced with every intention of moving back to the community? And we know how long that's going to take to rebuild or such.
061Is there accommodations for that kind of situation? Yes, because even though their dwelling burned down, that's still their ownership of that property, so they're still a resident of the community. They may be living somewhere else. They may actually be homeless too, which brings a whole other... I just don't want to complicate their already existing difficult situation. transportation is not provided or does that you don't need to talk about that in this no because i talk about that with them on the individual day so okay and in the dully chauvin has had a past practice where if you can have your student dropped off at a bus stop and there's room in the bus we do let them so it'd be very difficult to capture all of that in wording in here So, Madam Chair and
062School Committee, the next distribution policy is JFABB, Admission of Foreign Exchange Students. This is a brand-new policy for Dudley-Charlton. And, again, what this is saying is that because we are now credentialed as a district that can accept international exchange students, we have always had tuition-free. But in the event that we do have interest in coming to our district, we could bring in somebody on an F-1 visa to attend our schools. We would obviously come to the school committee for an approval process for that. But this is a new policy. for any of the others um if you could just for the public the timeline i guess for the policy how that works for district once we see it so so uh so now after this i will send these out to the community we'll make
063the few edits that school committee gave us for feedback we'll send this out to the community and we'll look for their feedback policy sub is meeting um july 23rd i had to review any of that feedback and then we'll bring it back to the school committee at the next meeting okay Alright so now we're gonna actually go back up to the school committee reorganization and assignments and I just like to say as much as I've definitely enjoyed being chair this year it was really kind of cool to be chair and be able to speak at my my child's graduation that was really pretty awesome and all the fun things that went that year so I do have a daughter graduating next year hopefully I can earn your vote for that but this year I'm not
064looking for that So with that being said entertain nominations for chair Oh Okay, so madam chair I am very clunky at this so now that I am Looking for school committee reorganization for the chair I now look for a nomination from the committee for chair of the school committee for the 2025-2026 school year Are there any other nominations? For chair? Yes. Who do we have so far? Caitlin. Jane Costello. Are there any other nominations for chair? Okay, so this is where it gets clunky for me. So I guess I believe my next step is to see before there is a vote taking to see if Caitlin accepts the nomination for chair. Okay. and i guess i would see to see if gene costello accepts the nomination for chair as well yeah so now that both
065of you have accepted the nomination for chair i would entertain a motion for caitlyn panzik to be chair oh we already had nominations sorry so see this is where it gets clunky okay so all those in favor of caitlyn panzik to be Oh, I'm sorry. Can we have a discussion? Yes. We have two nominations. We have two motions for Caitlin Pansy and Jean Costello. They both have accepted the nominations. And so now I would open it up for a discussion. I believe you have to have a discussion for each because they're separate motions. Okay. So you can vote on what you would like to do with the chair and what you're looking for for the year. If you have any thoughts. I know it might have just sprung up and spoken. Sorry. Payback. I can
066speak first. I think that when I look at other boards in town, they tend to pass on the baton very often, and it kind of gives them the experience to have a lot more interaction with the community as the chair, interaction with the administration. And I feel like you get to know the ins and outs of everything much differently as the chair. there's a little bit more responsibility which has always kind of held me back because I am busy but it's a time in my life where I am able to take this step so that's why I accepted this year I also like the idea of rotating as we've seen other boards do it. I also have not been chair before. And I really enjoyed working as vice chair. And I would like to move
067forward to be chair as well, which is why I was happy to hear Maureen say my name. And I would really like to work on continuing what we've seen prior, you know, of streamlining. some of our practices of actually working on reconciliation on some but then also ensuring that we're seeing more of you know a school committee calendar you know that we did kind of start and then you know it's like just kind of continue on those growths of a school committee calendar of working with where Kelly did a good job of working with putting The document for the community stuff that I always seem to have forgotten so I was really happy every time you mentioned that You know so it's but I just think like we doing a lot of a lot of
068good But it's kind of like pieces and I'd really like to work this year, you know Bringing it all together Thank you. Any other discussions? It's hard work. It's not easy being the chair and I was really really kind of exciting my first graduation in time So that was unique to me but thank you because that is a thankless job sometimes I appreciate the way you handled the situation with the selectmen and I thought that your words and the villager were very eloquent and well said and well represented us so thank you any other discussion any points of order or move the motion no? I'm looking for some excitement here so before before i do ask for the vote i believe the way it works is if we caitlin it was first nominated so she
069would be the first vote if she does get the votes we don't vote the second i believe that's how it works all right so all those in favor for caitlin panzik to take over as chair of the w chalton regional school committee for the 2025-2026 school year okay the motion all those not in favor is that how you say i have to do that don't i No? Yes. For official? I think official I have to do it, no? I think officially you do. Officially you do. It's actually me. I know it's me, yes, but. Yeah. It has to be recorded, yes. So all those who are not in favor of Caitlin taking over as the chair of the school committee next year, but the year after, please. All those not in favor of Caitlin Pansey
070taking over as chair for the 2025-2026 school year. What say you? Yeah. Okay. all right so i'm sorry i'm the bearer of bad news okay so the next nomination we have is jean costello to be the chair all those in favor of jean costello to be the chair 2025-2026 school committee chair and all those who are opposed the motion passes and jean costello is the 2025-2026 dudley chalton regional school district chair of the school committee congratulations So you take over. Steve gets to be happy, right? Yes. I don't know why it's clunky every time I do that. Well, you know, I'm not the best at it myself here, right? Okay, so then we're moving on as policy BDA states is for nominations for vice chair. I nominate Mr. Kaminani for vice chair. Do I hear
071a second? Second. Do you accept? Okay. Jamie? I'd like to nominate Kelly to stay as vice chair. Or not stay, but as vice chair. No, I got you. All right. And then a second nomination for Kelly. Do we have a second? Caitlin seconds. Okay. Kelly, do you accept? Sure. Kathy, so I get to put you on the spot now. So do you have anything to say about for discussion for vice chair? Sure. I think from... Having held the position before, I would be able to support you in the areas that you may need help and kind of keep the committee going in case of your absence. So I think I've been on the committee now since Richie was in kindergarten. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. I just looked at pictures. Wow. Yeah. So I think it's
072been like seven years. I think I'm at seven years. You're starting your eighth year. Yes, I'm starting my eighth year. Kathy and Kelly? I mean, I enjoyed being chair. I would love to be co-chair, see through some of the work that was done, and certainly have been involved in doing a lot of the work that it takes and the meetings and all the extra things. So I would love to take on that role if given the opportunity. Having been vice chair for both of you, I am going to say working with either of you was actually pretty easy this both years. i always appreciate that open communication that we had any other discussion okay hearing none since kathy was the first nomination um all those in favor of kathy carmignani to be vice chair for
073the 2025-2026 school year that's four and then those opposed so four three kathy do we have to like it's kind of like no we already have four it's like all right and then on to our favorite so congratulations kathy for being vice chair for the 2025-2026 year and then on to our favorite which is um appointing the treasurer the treasurer for the district is cammy lamica i am assuming that cami is still looking forward to continuing that role and that we just need to go through that we is that a nomination or just a motion motion motion so i need a motion for cami lamica to continue being the treasurer for dcrsd in the 2025-2026 school year anthony move do we have a second any discussion no because we all love cami she does a
074great job so happy she's here in the district so all those in favor it's unanimous okay moving on to the assistant treasurer which is typically ben Our lovely superintendent, Stephen LaMarche. No takers for that for you? You still? Heather, Kelly. They all seem pretty silent. I accept that. All right, so I need a motion for superintendent Stephen LaMarche to be the assistant treasurer for the 2025-2026 school year of DCRSD. Moved by Anthony, second by Kathy. Any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor? You're stuck again, Stephen? It's unanimous? All right, and then for secretary of DCRSD, if I remember correctly, officially it's you. Is it not, Stephen? No, it's always changed, so I would respectfully ask you to vote two secretaries. Two secretaries. Celeste? Celeste Andre and Aaron Clark. You can do it in one? I'll
075do it in one. Cool. Do we have a second? Second. Second by Jamie. All right, any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor? It's unanimous. And then the Southern Worcester County Educational Collaborative Representative, which that is Stephen, unless you found somebody else for it. No, but I did just accept to be vice chair of that group, so if you want to vote me down, that's okay. So I move that, sorry, I'm looking for a motion for Superintendent LaMarche to be the Southern Worcester County Educational Collaborative Representative for the 2025-2026 school year. Moved by Maureen, seconded by Anthony. Any discussion? Hearing none, those in favor? It's unanimous. You're stuck again, Stephen? Have fun with your vice chair at the SWEC, you know? Let's see. Anything else can be pushed off to the next meeting so we don't
076have to have Tracy wait even longer? You have a policy subcommittee meeting in July. Oh, that's right. Yeah, I would have to do policy sub. Yeah. All right. Anybody want to be on policy sub other than me because I'm a complete nerd about it? Maureen? Jamie? All right, so we're all together again. Cool. July 23rd. I can't remember the time. Maureen usually texts me because I'll forget. 10 a.m. Central office. It's more like an appointment. Yeah, it's an appointment. No, because the policy is only explicit about... What we just went through Not with policy review. The only thing that we have to do absolutely is is what we just did and then we can go into the workshop, so I Was actually wondering about that Because we need to stay open because this is also
077having our workshop is an open meeting So I think the adjournment there is should actually go below but it might be good to have like a three-minute recess and Then we're go straight into the workshop Are we staying live for the workshop great No, that's cool so three minutes gives a you know a bio break three minute recess so I would like to thank Kelly for setting up this workshop with the MASC that's evaluating the superintendent and be led by Tracy Novick thank you Yes, I was going to say thank you to Kelly for setting this up. I am going to, I know that you had a conversation also about sort of your own goals, and I'll try to weave some of that into the conversation as well, because those are things that should be,
078they should have a relationship with one another, the goals that you set for the superintendent, the goals that you set for yourselves. Although I will say that one of my quips always is make sure that you aren't setting goals for yourself that actually are a back-channel way of setting goals for the superintendent. That's not an accusation. It's just something I've seen school committees do sometimes. So we'll walk through these slides as we go here. So next slide, please. So the first thing that I think is important to know, and again, I know this is a review for some of you, but just so that you kind of know the foundation on which all of this rests, is that the evaluation of the superintendent in Massachusetts is actually covered under state regulation. That was a change.
079as a result of the 2011 Act relative to the achievement gap, which actually standardized evaluation systems across the state. And the thing that I always think is important for school committees to know is that everybody else who uses that statewide evaluation system is a full-time educator. So everyone else who's actually doing the evaluation, right, teachers are usually evaluated by principals, principals are usually evaluated by the superintendent or someone else in central office, school business officials are usually evaluated by the superintendent. So this is actually their full-time professional job. So the first thing I always think is important to get out of the way is, yes, it is a fairly complicated system. And you all are the only group that's doing it, that's doing this as your part-time volunteer responsibility. OK, so give yourselves lots of
080credit and a pat on the back for taking it on, because I think that matters quite a lot. As part of that bill that was passed in 2011 and the update to the state regulations, what the state said was that we're going to essentially have every educator evaluated. Yes, on goals that are set locally, but also on standards that are set at the state level. And every superintendent is evaluated according to the same set of standards, and just as the rest of the educators in Massachusetts are evaluated at parallel standards. And the other thing that I think is important to focus on is that the intent of the system the intent, I'm not saying it always works this way, but the intent of the system is on continuous improvement. So this is about... here is
081where you're at, here is where you can continue to work on things, and we're working to make sure that you're moving towards better practice all of the time. And again, that's just as true of teachers and principals as it is of the superintendent. So it's important to understand that this isn't like giving a grade as much as that's always the headlines I see when it comes to superintendent evaluation. It's really more about, you know, we're having a conversation about where you're at. Where you've been where you're going and where we think that there's room for improvement and how we will get there So that's really what it's about It also is designed to make sure that you're linking the goals that you're setting locally To those statewide standards and I'll talk more about that as
082we go through this next slide So this one does move. You can hit it over and over again if you want to. So the first one always sounds a little silly, but it requires attention to the evaluation process. And that doesn't mean, hey, school committee, you have to pay attention to doing the evaluation. Surprise. Not really. What it actually means is that the evaluation is actually a year-long process, and this isn't something where it should be that you get to July or August or whenever and go, oh! my gosh we have to evaluate the superintendent it is something that should be happening you should be getting information that will inform your evaluation over the course of the year we'll talk more about that cycle in a second most of the time annual evaluations are required
083for long-serving superintendents that have a fairly stable school committee there can be an agreement to do it every other year instead Next one. You do have to use the standard format. I still occasionally see districts being a little inventive. That's less true than it was 10 years ago, but you can do some adaptation, and we'll talk more about what that adaptation is as we go through this. Next. So this is what the cycle is and you know there's a lot of things that we do in education that are cycles right we have a budget cycle we have a policy review cycle the same thing is true here and one of the things I think is important to note is that the value the end of one evaluation cycle necessarily kicks off the beginning of the
084next one which isn't to say sort of like you're always being graded but to say that that evaluation should inform the next set of goals right it should be giving you a way forward to say we did here's where we're at and because of that and other information we might be using we then are going to move forward with um with the next set of what we're doing um it is important to that that every set start with some self-evaluation from the superintendent. Goal setting, of course, takes place jointly with the school committee. School committee, just as any evaluator in Massachusetts, ultimately, if there's a disagreement, has the deciding vote on that. There's implementation, and then you do have a mid-cycle review. And this is another one where the you have to pay attention to
085evaluation kind of kicks in because you don't want to get to more like two-thirds of the way through the year and go, oh! We never did the mid-cycle review, like good to be planning and thinking about it ahead of time. And then you do have sort of the second half of whatever the cycle is for the annual evaluation, and then you do the end of cycle review. Just a note on the mid-cycle review, that is not a you all fill out forms. and submit them to somebody who does a collation and so forth like the formal end of year is this is more like the superintendent does a presentation and sort of a check-in at a public meeting of here's my goals here's where we're at here's what i'm seeing there's a discussion if there's
086any need to adjust the goals or what you're basing things on or anything like that because of things that have happened That's something that can happen at the mid-cycle review. But I don't want you to think that it's filling out the rubric twice a year. That isn't actually what happens with the mid-cycle review at all. Yes? Sorry, Madam Chair. Is it OK if I call on people? OK, fair enough. So what does it mean? Can be. I mean, one of the things that I would say, maybe a more larger picture, that is a best practice is we recommend that as you're getting reports over the course of the year that are part of what the superintendent's reporting on towards goals that you essentially are getting those collected somewhere so that's like you know whether it's
087a dropbox or a google drive or something like that um it can be useful for you as a com as a committee member to note where you're at although the hope i would say would be that um not that it would be irrelevant by the end of the year but that there everything would have gotten so much farther that you probably wouldn't um be in this that you wouldn't be in the same place But it wouldn't surprise me if the conversation that happens at the mid-cycle review then ends up being reflective of some of the conversation that happens at the end of the year. So as we said, there's a five-step cycle. What the evaluation itself, the rubric is, is a two-part tool. There's the goal setting, and then there's the standards. And then you
088take the multi-part rating system that comes together into a summative evaluation, and you give a summative rating. You do that both as an individual and you do that as a committee, and we'll talk more about each of those in a second. Next one. so this is what I was talking about in terms of goal alignment so goals that you set for the district right that are big picture whether it's strategic plans or whether it's you know in five years we're gonna do X Y & Z as a district those are really what should be underlying kind of the rest of what you do and then next What builds on that then you can do the next yeah, there we go is you act well actually there's two things why don't we actually click the next
089two because what you should be Constructing here is then from those district goals There's things that are assigned to the superintendent the superintendent schools there may also be things that are assigned to the school committee and then from there you're then building into the school level of what which of those responsibilities and what of that then influences school improvement plans and things that are happening right at the school level and then from there. We have the teacher goals right teachers again are using the same evaluation system Their goals are being set they're being evaluated on the same kind of cycle and as always the focus is on student achievement Now I would note that when we talk about student achievement in a school committee perspective. We're basing that on Years of research that were done
090by some of our colleagues in other states I don't want you to think that student achievement means MCAS scores unfortunately in Massachusetts We seem to have occasionally fallen into that trap what it means is that you as a committee when you're working together and then all of the work that builds on your work is at the end of the day always focused on what the students are doing what the students are learning how the atmosphere in which the students are learning and the rest of what's going on in the classroom So when you're putting together not just goals for the superintendent but also the goals that you have for yourselves if you decide to back up a step and say as a district what are the things that we have for ourselves these are some
091of the questions that you can ask yourself and it's clear from what you what I see here in terms of the goals that you've had for yourselves that those are some of the questions that you're already asking yourself. But it's good to always keep yourselves focused on essentially kind of what are we doing here? What are we about? And then looking more closely into based on that, where are we and where do we want to go and how do we get there? And making sure that you've got those guiding principles. Now, I'm not telling you, I mean, you may have mission vision statements. You may have principles. There's lots of districts that have lots of kinds of things like this. But regardless of whether or not you do, making sure that you have some commonalities
092in terms of your understanding of what it is you're trying to accomplish and where you're trying to go is a really good idea. And sort of touching, checking in with that every so often as you're doing any kind of goal setting work is again a really good idea. So some of you may be familiar with SMART goals. I will say that I know that MASS is moving superintendents to SMART-E goals. We do have a tendency to beat acronyms to death in education. So SMART, this is one that I think school committees can occasionally struggle with for only really good reasons, which is that we want... We want big things. We want good things. We want to see that sort of thing. And it can be hard to say within this year we're going to be
093able to see exactly this. But you do need to make sure that you're setting goals that are specific, not sort of vague, general, this is going to be better kinds of things, that you can actually measure. that are action oriented, something's happening. There's a change that has been made, there's a difference. R, we overload with rigorous, realistic, and results focused. Rigorous and realistic can feel like they're in tension, right? Don't set the bar so high that it's unachievable, but make sure that you're actually also, actually setting something that needs to be moved. And then timed and tracked, not something that's gonna happen someday. but something that's going to happen you're going to be so far along by the end of the year and then oftentimes there are measurements of equity and making sure that you're
094really focusing on the needs of all students i will say that my quick check for school committees on whether or not a goal is smart is how are you going to be able to tell at the end of the year that this happened? What exactly are you going to be able to point to to say this is something that was achieved or was not achieved? If you can't do that, you probably don't have a SMART goal. And that can be a tricky thing to do, but that is sort of the touch-tone question that I usually challenge school committees with. So the first thing that you do and again, we're doing this to talk about the evaluation cycle, right? This isn't this is the sort of the beginning that the where the school committee kind of
095starts It's important to make sure that everybody is on the same page in terms of what the goals actually are And actually have that conversation in public session So superintendent certainly is usually tasked with making the proposal to the school committee of sort of based on my previous evaluations based on the district plan based on data we're seeing based on other information I have here are things that I think should be my goal for this year and then it's up to the committee then to hammer that out it could be that you entirely agree and decide to pass them it could be that you decide you need to tweak things or that you need to shift focus or that you want to see a goal like that and you can do the next part Now,
096this is the part where the two sections interact with each other, right? So the goals you're setting, like these are the things that we want to see from the superintendent this year. There are four standards. Under each of the standards, and we have a slide for this in a minute, but under each of the standards are indicators, which are various subsets of that standard. Our strong recommendation to you, and I don't want to say if you walk away with nothing else, walk away with this, but this is a good thing to remember, is that when you set the goals, that you then take the standards, look at the indicators, and figure out which indicators you're going to use in your evaluation. If you click again. The thing is, you have to evaluate all four standards.
097You do not have to evaluate all indicators. And we actually recommend that you not evaluate all indicators. Now, that doesn't mean the superintendent gets off from doing that part of his job. That's not how this works. But it means that you as a committee are really focusing on the things that support the goals that you're actually setting for the superintendent. If you decide, and you can too, there's a real need, a real thing you need the superintendent to focus on, you can decide that you're gonna weigh one standard more heavily than the others. Now this is usually where my more math allergic colleagues say don't do that. the one thing i will say is this first of all i'll say i don't know of any committee that's actually done this now i'm not saying it's
098never happened but i'm saying i'm not aware of it if you decide to do it let us know because we're you know we'd be interested um make sure everybody knows ahead of time like you agree with this at the same time that you're agreeing to the goals you don't get to decide this at the end of the year on the mid-cycle review if you really think this is the year where we've got to focus on facilities or budget or cricket whatever make sure and and by the way that means agree to what the math is ahead of time and make sure everybody understands how to do the math ahead of time okay because like that's some kind of a something is going to happen there if you're doing weighting of standards um that's not to
099discourage you just to say make sure you know what you're agreeing to and then this really gets into the question that you were just asking which is that um discuss the artifacts right we said how are you going to know when you get to the end of the year that you've actually met the goals What is it that the committee is going to see, literally see, over the course of the year that it's going to show that you've gotten to where you said you wanted to go? Now, that's probably not going to be, please God, it's not, 100,000 things that you get in June or whenever it is that you're doing the evaluation of the superintendent. It should be things that you're seeing over the course of the year that then are tied into and
100as you're getting the presentation the superintendent is saying, and you'll remember that my goal is X, Y, Z, this is evidence in support of the work that we're doing towards that goal. It's really helpful if someone then pushes all of that into some sort of a collection somewhere that already exists That you then when you get to the end of the year evaluation can actually open that back up and refresh your own memories use it in conjunction with whatever notes you have and say, okay, that's right, we saw this and we saw this and we saw this. And that can change, like superintendent can come to you and say, hey, I've got this extra thing, but at least have some agreement ahead of time as to what you're going to get over the course of
101the year as to show that the goals are being met. So as you're again entering this you want to agree on goals and when we say think about outcomes That's that's my how are you gonna know question, right? Agree on applicable indicators in the rubric now. I'm gonna say the same thing here that I also I'm going to tell you on goals again school committees are Fantastically positively motivated when it comes to this stuff Do not give your superintendent too many goals and do not pick too many indicators on the rubric. Okay, everybody is like, okay, but we got a page. Oh, okay, we got a page. Yes, absolutely, agreed. There's a reason there's that many indicators. But if you have too many, not only are you going to struggle to evaluate, the superintendent's going
102to struggle to focus on the things that, among other things, he has to be giving you evidence for, okay? Because you don't want to be that inundated. I did an evaluation with all of the indicators the first year that this came out. It involved three three-ring binders that were that thick. Like, don't do that. Nobody needs that. If you're going to do a weighing of standards, again, agree at the beginning of the cycle. and make sure you know what it is. Is there an area that needs particular attention that you're going to weigh more? How are you going to know? What's the evidence that you're going to get over the course of the year? And then also a best practice, this is not something that you're required to do, but a best practice, again, so
103you don't end up with that scramble, is to say, okay, so we're going to evaluate at this point in the year. Mid-cycle review thus is happening here. And if you actually already know, like we're going to have a report on facilities in August, and that's going to be part of the evidence, the more you can actually kind of lay that out ahead of time. now you may already use a year-long agenda but if you could tie your year-long agenda into the evaluation of the superintendent it helps keep everybody on track and that way also you have things like you know if somebody's got a question you can say oh you know we're going to actually report on that in march and if you're starting to wonder where you're at in terms of something you also
104know ahead of time like that's coming up at x point in the year yes when to do the reporting um we have such a unique system where Our two towns don't have the same voting day. Yep. So one of them votes, you know, Charlton's in May and Dudley's in June. Yep. And, you know, we wanted to make sure, because we want to make sure that the people that are serving on the committee for the longest time get to be the evaluators. Yep. We tend to do it at the end of April, which for a superintendent at the end of April is really a tough time. Yes. So I think as we go along there probably is a part that talks about agreeing to what you're going to do with elections and timing and people coming
105on and off the committee. I'm glad you raised that. It's honestly very common because honestly even if your elections are at the same time and everybody gets elected in whatever June, right, a lot of times school committees are also trying to do evaluations then and then you've got people who are coming off and people who are coming on and who evaluates and that kind of thing. That's actually another good thing to discuss at the beginning of the cycle. Elections are elections and people don't necessarily know who's coming on and who's coming off and it's you know a year away and people might change their mind and all that kind of thing. But if you can have as I mean you can even write this into policy but you should at least agree when you actually
106are setting the standards of and the people who like the people who evaluate this like with the the rubrics are going to be filled out by the school committee members who served with the superintendent for you know x months. that actually happened now they don't actually get to sort of rejoin you at the table when you do the evaluation if you you can schedule it such that you're actually doing it based on what is really appropriate for evaluating the goals. What a lot of committees we're seeing move to is the people who are leaving fill out the rubric, like at the time they're leaving. The new members are sitting at the table when the evaluation happens. They may not, they often don't fill out the rubric because they haven't actually had the year-long relationship and
107cycle and evidence. But the rubrics of the school committee members who have left get incorporated into the written evaluation document, which then comes to the committee as it is actually then constituted for deliberation at a meeting. And the new members can certainly weigh in as part of that deliberation. Now, again, you're not bound to that. That's not actually written into state law regulation. But that's what we've been seeing, particularly with the committees that have spring elections, of how do you balance out the fact that the school year and the election year totally don't actually jive with each other in terms of that. I'm not saying it's better in cities, because cities actually, like, they're halfway through the year and they get new members, which isn't necessarily better. But it's a little less awkward. So, I
108mean, that would be a recommendation. But whatever you do, decide ahead of time. And you can make it just, and I will say that for the committees that have started to make it just their practice, that as you're leaving, you're submitting a rubric, and that's going to go into the file that then becomes part of things. And the new members know, like, I've only been here for six weeks. I'm here. I'm sitting at the table. I'm part of the discussion. But I'm not going to fill out a rubric because I wasn't here in February and January when we had whatever the information was. I think it can start to become. Understood as the custom. Yes. Yep. You're not privy to all the statements for the evaluations, just the summation. Is that correct? So what do
109you mean by all of the statements? The individual evaluations? Yes, and then we're putting it in the compiling. So no one should be seeing the individual evaluations except for the person who's doing the compilation ahead of the meeting at which the discussion happens. Okay. Now afterward you can do two things first of all afterward best practice is to make sure the superintendent gets all the individual evaluations not so like people can hold grudges or whatever but so that the superintendent can actually see what everybody's actually at. Yes. And you can decide that they're public, you can actually release them as public documents if you wish to. We always warn people that they should consider them public documents. You should act as if they are going to be released when you're filling them out. That is
110a good thing to consider. But yes, and then I mean the other thing that probably matters, this isn't really answering your question, but is related. the new member should understand that like this is sometimes i see evaluations and like someone's like okay this evaluation the superintendent all is in favor even if they voted they may not even vote it but like it is actually something that is an official document that's adopted by the school committee if the compiler comes out with a document and you have an issue with something that's on it Like, it's not going to be the same thing you said. That's, you know, it's a composite. But if there's something where you really feel like it's not appropriately representing or something, you can say that. Like, it's a deliberation. And you can
111make a motion to ask that something be changed. And, like, if the committee decides to do something different than what the compiler had, it's the purview of the committee. It's up to you. And then everybody who's on the committee does actually vote the document, like, that you've then created or assembled or agreed to. Great. Okay. So you're required to have goals in three areas every year. Okay. This doesn't mean you get to have, you know, 27 in each of them. You've got to have at least three. They've got to be in each of these three areas. You should make sure that they're... Tied to the general things you're trying to do as a district whether it whether whatever it is that you have you have strategic plans or district goals or whoever whatever else each
112of them on their own does have to be a smart goal and They do each get checked in on at the summit at the the mid-year Assessment and then they do actually get about each get evaluated at the summit of assessment So that's sort of the first half of the section. Yep Smarty, so you also could add that whether or not this is a district goal that is focused on equity, making sure that you actually are responsible for the education of all students. Yep, I mean I know that it's it's not something that we've actually added to our slides But I know that when the when the superintendents association is training superintendents. They're adding it to theirs I guess we would have to add sticky notes to it So if you and I would not
113be at all surprised if that frequently is something that you're just seeing anyway Because if the superintendents are usually the ones proposing the goals So then there are the four standards. Again, this is the part that every superintendent in the state is evaluated based on. If any of you are familiar with the teacher's rubric, you know that most of these are the same. The operations management is different. So these are the four areas. You've got to cover all four areas in your evaluation. However, if we do the next slide. Each of these standards then has indicators underneath it that break up that larger section into smaller subsections of what they're responsible for. It's the indicators that we recommend that you pick to go along with the goals so that you only evaluate some of the
114indicators. And then if you look at the next slide, this is actually then showing you what this looks like, right? So standard one is instructional leadership. the indicator is curriculum if you're doing a major curriculum overhaul and there's a goal that's associated with that you may want to have indicator 1a as one of the indicators that you evaluate and then what you're seeing there is actually the descriptions underneath each one and what you're doing the way that this works just like every other rubric ever is that you're saying okay so for curriculum which of these descriptions matches what the superintendent is doing in terms of how well the superintendent is doing that particular indicator. Okay? And again, you see these, you'll have, you have a list of indicators for each of those four standards and
115it's the indicators that you should be picking once you've decided on what the goals are. So things that are required. You do have to have the three SMART goals. You do have to rate on all four standards. And then what happens is you as an individual take your evaluation on the three goals and the four standards and you'll combine them into a summative rating. Okay. The same thing, by the way, will happen then when the person who's putting together the composite evaluation does their composite evaluation. Things that are optional that you can be deciding on as a committee, you don't need to use all indicators. We recommend that you not, that you pick them based on the goals. You can weigh the standards differently. And if you do, you should let MASD know because we
116would be interested. Make sure everybody understands that ahead of time and that you've agreed to it ahead of time. The timing of the evaluation cycle, to your point. right when is it that we actually want to do that and there isn't we get this question every year of like when do we have to evaluate the superintendent by and the answer is annually there isn't actually like you have to do it by um unless you're on a a biannual cycle um But you do want to make sure that you're doing it in light of the goals you've set and other things that you have to consider, like absolutely the elections, right? Also, who wants to be doing an evaluation in the middle of budget season? Like, that doesn't seem like a good plan to me. But
117anyway, so that kind of thing. The process for completing the evaluation, right? Who is it that's doing the compilation? What is the timeline? Are you getting this on paper? Are you getting this online? What other documents do you need? And then also, there are committees that use the evaluation then to make determinations in terms of contracts, like we're renewing or we're offering a raise or we're doing something different. Like all of those things, that's up to you. That's a local decision. Next. So when the committee when you're completing the evaluation each of the committee members completes the individual evaluation Fair warning if you get if someone puts this into a Google Doc, that's amazing Please make sure you set it such that not everybody is filling out the same Google Doc because that among other
118things would be an open meeting law violation along with being kind of alarming You should be getting a self-assessment from the superintendent at the time that you're doing the evaluation. Like, so the superintendent's saying, here's how I think I did, you know, here's where I think we're at. Here are the things that you should be considering. You do have the evidence of progress, right, which in many cases are things that you should have agreed upon at the beginning of the cycle. That, again, is not something that you should be getting all in a lump at that point in the year. It's things you probably saw for the most part over the course of the year. You do have to have the form to complete the evaluation. Don't let it scare you. The one thing I
119always say, and this I know dates me, if you ever filled out a tax form, like actually on paper, you have to start on page like three. The evaluation is the same way. You don't fill out the front page until the end because the front page is actually where you do the, we're putting the pieces together. That can immediately confuse people, so do that. And then we do make sure that, like, you understand that these are documents that potentially could be requested. So then once that happens, you then have to make sure that you've agreed upon what's happening then. Is the chair doing the compilation? Has to be a member of the committee. There are committees that decide to have a subcommittee do the composite. Just keep in mind that there is no executive session
120excuse for this. So you would have to do that in a posted public session if you decide to do that. I'm not saying don't do it. I'm just saying make sure you understand that that's the way it works. And then once that composite evaluation is put together, that goes to the full committee, goes to the superintendent obviously, gets posted publicly, and then you discuss that evaluation at a public meeting. If you need to make changes, you decide as a committee you're making changes, and whatever it is that the place you arrive as a committee, that then gets voted as the official evaluation of the superintendent. And then that starts the next cycle, because the superintendent's then going to use that for setting the next set of goals. Yes? highlight an example of the reason why
121a committee might adjust those goals midstream um because you were depending on a grant to come through and the grant didn't come through because we had an impoundment of federal funding and yes like if something was dependent in in particular if something is dependent on something that's completely out of the superintendent's control um the superintendent i mean i would honestly expect the superintendent to come to you before the mid-cycle review and say whoa hey like this is going to be a problem um and certainly if you all realize that like you're headed for a problem with one of the goals part way through the year like bring it up um the the the grant funding thing is the big one but i mean we had all kinds of committees for example change goals midway through
1222020. um and you know then we were heading into 2021 and people were trying to figure out even what to set as goals um so you know international pandemic you know school um sure yes for the chair to provide an example one of my goals was mtss but we were cited in lre these restrictive environments so that goal morphed into least restrictive environment work versus straight mtas oh that's a great example yeah absolutely right you got a state report back that said hey you guys should be focusing you as a district should be focusing on this and the superintendent said you know we really need to do this that's that's exactly what should be happening absolutely yeah i mean i would be cautious about school building projects anyway because again you're way out of your
123control there but you can you can the part that is under your control is you can make plans you can make sure that you know yes do you have another question i'm sorry no okay you know because it gives context of course yeah no because i mean everyone thinks like oh well we're not going to just change it because but there are certainly plenty of things out there in the universe even in the universe without impoundment of federal funds and international pandemics that potentially would cause that to happen but certainly we've seen a couple of examples recently that might cause that to happen Yeah, and so then that composite gets voted on and among other things it's actually gonna go to the state. So the composite is something where everyone should hear their voice. That
124does mean that if there's essentially kind of like a minority perspective that's being represented. That doesn't mean that an individual perspective is necessarily being represented. And something I discourage is, you know, so and so said and so and so said and so and so said because it's like a, it's an easy thing to do or not easy, it's, you know. It's an easy way to feel like you're representing everyone, but it doesn't actually give you a true composite. So it's really one, and I'm not saying this is an easy job. It's actually a complicated thing to do well. But it really is something where the chair should, or whoever the person is that's doing the composite, should really attempt to create a sense of the committee's voice within that evaluation. Also, One of my colleagues
125quips that the reason that one of them is three and one of them is four is so that you can't actually do an average. I'm not sure that was really why. But you shouldn't actually just be doing and adding everybody's scores up and dividing by as much as, again, I tend to see that in newspaper headlines too. It's really one where the composite view of the committee is this on each of the goals. is this on each of the standards or each of the indicators within those standards and then this in terms of the the final evaluation the entire evaluation something to consider is really how comments are going to be handled I actually recommend I mean first of all I think that it's really important to make sure that both as an individual and
126as a committee the comments justify the sections of the evaluation explain the sections of the evaluation and that should also then be the goal of whoever's creating the composite Kathleen question so in the evaluation that we just did we definitely we have the we have the list of everybody's comments we didn't vote on it okay we just said this is it should we go back write a composite vote on it then move forward if it's not too far out of phase that would probably be wise I mean among other things I mean did it get submitted to the state you would probably know because there is something where it's supposed to go in okay Right, okay, the rating. That was what I was going to ask. Okay. It might not be a bad notion. I
127mean, the other thing you could consider, and I mean, this may also depend on where you're at with your self-evaluation and moving forward, is have you done the next round of goal setting yet? Right. Okay. So, I mean, you could consider it sort of in concert of, you know, we never actually officially voted this. Let's vote it. And then maybe that's kicking off our conversation about, well, this is where we were. And now the superintendent's done the self-evaluation in part, which is based on presumably the evaluation that we just did. What then are we doing next? Now, that's a suggestion. Like, you know, take that for what it's worth. But, yes, moving forward, make sure that there's an official, yes, this is the evaluation of the superintendent. Of the composite or of individual ones? Of
128the composite. It totally depends on the committee. I mean, the other thing is that it can... lot of that sometimes also has to do with who's doing the composite evaluation I I encourage my committees to depend on the comments among other things I think it's useful for both the superintendent and the public I know I have certainly seen evaluations where they try to just do the scoring and don't do any comments I mean There is the rubric, there is the DESE form which actually gives you a box. I mean, I'm not sure that necessarily is indicative of how many comments you should be writing. I will say that when I was doing evaluations, I always, like, put more paper on, but that's just me. Have we ever approached the organization of school superintendents and said
129what would be a useful tool in the review would it be more comments less comments I think that's something maybe so I don't think that there I certainly jump in here but I don't know that there's necessarily a single answer to that I will say that the answer thank you okay so that I will say that some of the things you've heard me talk about tonight are a result of a revision to the process that took place in I want to say it was 2021 where MASS and MASC jointly went to DESE and like the hey you don't have to actually score every indicator that was something we went to DESE and asked for because the superintendents were like this is way too overwhelming and the school committee members who already were feeling overwhelmed by
130the rubric in the first place then we're trying to score on 28 or whatever it is different things so we have had that sort of working relationship and and like at the end of this you'll see that there's some resources those were things that we jointly prepared with the MASS and DESE for like these are examples these are best practices and that kind of thing but no I think that's probably that's that's a that's a local relationship kind of question in previous times we had gone in and all committee members were asked to go into teach point to put it in people that were not familiar with teach point were overwhelmed by that we then went to a system that I borrowed from my district that we just did it on a Google like a
131Google form and where we had like, okay, and here's the documents that you're looking at, and here's the standards you're looking at. The one question I have for you is, if we base it on indicators underneath a standard, would we have them give a rating for that specific indicator? then an overall rating for the standard or how would you best do that that would be my recommendation yes okay yep and I will say that what I see that work how that I see that work in terms of the rubric is something that's actually really useful is if the rubric that the individual school committee members are filling out essentially only have the indicators on which they're evaluating So you don't actually have the list of 28 and need to, like, remember which ones count and
132don't. Just only have the ones in front of you that you're actually scoring on. Okay. So would you ask somebody – so, again, you're just going to ask someone to review the superintendent based on the indicator, but not – you're not asking them to delve back into the whole standard? The whole – right, exactly. Okay. Yes. Yeah, and now sometimes we then get a quote as like a question from a school committee member who says okay But we're not evaluating based on budget, but there's really one thing that I want to that's what comments are for Like you can say I know we're not valuating based on this but moving like it's a good place to kick off the next cycle to say You know, I'd really like us to have a conversation about how
133we handle XYZ That shouldn't be included in the scoring per se, but it can certainly be part of a you know, essentially the record and then also is already considering that notion of you know continuous improvement cycle right so would you suggest to put like i'm just trying to make sure that it's easy for committee members to fill out but not cumbersome for every like just not cumbersome for everybody would you suggest to put like under the under the like if we did two indicators under standard one yep you'd have indicator one a one c yep and then you would have just General comments on indicator like yep optional gender general comments for that indicator. Yes Okay, and you'd have optional comments on each of those indicators right? optional comments on the stand on each
134of the four standards and then usually I mean I believe the way the Document is set up is just has one set of comments for goal, but I mean, yeah, yeah easier for an incoming Member to understand the historical look back and then moving forward. Yes, because otherwise Where's your ground point? Right, and where are we coming from? And then, yes, that notion of then where are we then trying to move towards? Yes. And I will say, again, that's another thing for you to consider in your own goal setting, too, which is that there should be a... kind of a dialogue between your standing what you're setting as goals and what the Superintendent is setting as goals and that doesn't mean that you're you know You're doing the same thing or you're working on the
135same things But like there should be a relationship between those things that we as a district actually think X Y & Z is important Here is the part that's yours. Here's the part. That's ours Now, how do you balance? I'm going to use my counterpart at the end of the table for a minute. She works in education. That's her wheelhouse. She has a very unique perspective into certain aspects of, say, review that would be a lot softer for myself. Yep. Because it's not my discipline. But I might have another focus. And we're not weighting it, but I will have a very... more influential or very deep look into a specific topic like and she might yes and when we compositing it how does that how do we get that fair balance force when you have
136one person that might have a deeper understanding than most of the committee members on other things because we all have our strengths we all have yes I mean, I think that's really where the responsibility that's given to the person who's creating the composite kicks in, which is, am I creating a document which certainly depends on the strengths of the people who are on the committee that I know to have particular abilities to understand particular things? while not underplaying those who maybe don't have the same strengths. I do think that's one where there's a significant amount of, and then once it comes out, again, you're back to deliberating at a public meeting. If you don't feel that your voice or a colleague's voice is necessarily in there, then that's a fair conversation to have. And you
137did say that people can see the individual comments prior to the composite? No. The only person who does is the chair. That would be an open meeting law violation. Right. Yep. And honestly, that's up to you. Whether or not you decide to then share everybody's individual evaluations with everybody else in the committee is honestly a you question. The one person I would say you should definitely share it with is the superintendent. But after the fact but after the fact yeah, it could be valued to make sure that look something the focus room that the Composite is the official evaluation Don't don't create or share or have conversations about things that take attention away from a composite evaluation, right? There's one evaluator of the superintendent and it is the school committee sitting in public session. There
138aren't X number of evaluators And I mean also there's open meeting law considerations in terms of who can see what ahead of time anyway. But you know also don't don't step on your own story so to speak. No I just was thinking afterward. Yep. Then. In your comments or in your evaluation, you might have brought up a point that I completely overlooked and I think would be valid for the following year's goals. So you can, what you might consider and the way that I've seen it done is that when you have that, like you've had your conversation about the composite evaluation, you vote that. Someone can make a motion to say, I move that we share the individual evaluations with all members of the committee. If the committee votes to have that happen, then that
139can happen. So as we said, there's a section on our website that actually is resources. It does include a bunch of information about superintendent evaluation. And then the other thing is that the next slide is that DESE has a whole bunch of things. It's actually where you can find the rubric, certainly. It's obviously where you can find state regulation. But it's this five-part video series that actually was the thing that stemmed from this work together with MASS and with DESE in terms of here are, you know, school committee chairs and the superintendent talking about some aspect of the process so if you want to kind of dive into some portion of it or you know get a perspective on other places that are other districts that are doing it in particular ways or found particular
140kinds of value in it that's actually a good resource and that I think is the last slide yeah any other questions for me Yes? Why do educator evaluations have a two-year cycle? Would they have year one formative, year two summative? But yet they've kind of forced the superintendent almost to do the one year one year So it loans so it's up to the school committee school committee can decide to put superintendents on a two-year cycle Although you want to make sure you can really only do that once you've got a longer serving superintendent I think that some of that i mean some of that probably is the idea of superintendents of course are the one group one educator that's evaluated in public right i think that there is that sort of like are we actually
141checking in to make sure that's happening aspect of the job um which is maybe less about the superintendent the school committee and more about the public um i we have seen more committees um I mean, honestly, I think I've seen two things in tandem. As you probably know, master and law allows for superintendent contracts up to six years. As we've seen, some superintendents tend to sort of have those kind of contracts. We've also seen a shift towards potentially more superintendents being on two-year cycles. But I will say that if you're going to do that, it's important to have those two-year goals based on... something that actually lasts two years right so like you're not doing the same sort of here's where our mcas scores are here's what our grad like it has to be that
142you actually are sort of doing more of an overarching thing so i think we're seeing that more with districts that maybe have set a five-year strategic plan or those kinds of things where then they can sort of attach to the superintendent's goals that sort of thing and you can do the same thing of course with yourself in terms of your goals thanks kelly Anything else I can say for you that would help? No, I think it was just great. Excellent. Great. As always. Super. Thanks, Tracy. Yep. No, that's why we're here. Thank you very much, Tracy. Thank you. Thank you. Do you want to say the motion? Let me say the words. Say the words, Maureen. Say the words. What's the word I'm looking for? I move we adjourn. That's an awesome motion. I love
143it. It's non-debatable. Second. Second. All those in favor? You are well on your way.