LAE Board Meeting 1-12-22

001[Music] good evening i am now calling to order the lord's alliance for education board meeting for wednesday january 12 2022. uh i please ask that you stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united thank you uh before we get started i would just like to say that in accordance with chapter 20 of the acts of 2021 extending certain measures that were adapted during the covet 19 state of emergency we do have some board members who are participating remotely as such i will be conducting roll call votes uh for all members just to be able to you know just to make sure that um that all board members votes uh are recorded uh and we are obviously also here in person at south lawrence east where we're open to

002members of the public to participate and to observe the meeting we are also live streaming the meeting as we have been as well before we get to public comment i just want to um just pause for a second it acknowledged that uh dan rivera who has served on the lae since its inception four years ago i believe it is uh this will be his last meeting uh with us uh and uh as you all know uh dan um you know was mayor here until about a year ago and he still stayed on the board for a year after that just to you know uh i think serve the community and represent voices of community members and so uh this will be his last meeting and i wanted to say that at the front uh at

003the top of the meeting uh and you know dan i want to turn it over to you if you want to say a couple of words no pressure but i know that as i've said to members of this board individually and to you i've appreciated your you know just your partnership i feel like you are someone who really helped me uh become a better leader when i was just a member of the board and when i stepped in the chair and so i've really appreciated working with you your collaboration thought partnership so just thank you for everything that you've done for the city of lawrence and for this board but you know when i turn it over to you to if you wanted to say a few words and i believe you might be on

004mute or we're not getting the sound through how about now can you hear me now we got you yep sorry about i'm sorry about that um i um thank you so much mr chair i appreciate your kind words um you know i uh i got to be the the mayor of the city of lawrence um you know really the the honor of my life and uh when i was trying to get the job to be mayor somebody said to me what was the what are you looking forward to the most to do uh and and nothing more than being able to support the the students of the lawrence public school system was at the top of my list and part of that you know being an active guy you know trying to stay out of

005the way said and cause any headaches um you know was hard to do but in the end you know getting to talk at graduation and you know being there for kids having been one of those kids in those classrooms in some of the darkest hours of the large public school system um in its history i um i really looked forward to and every day that i had a chance to help lawrence public school kids um it made my my life and it said it made me feel like that's the what i ran for mayor to do whether it be you know making sure every kid had a laptop or remote device uh had access to wi-fi during the beginning of this crisis whether it was you know something's you know silly like a wrestling mat

006uh or uniforms uh to ensuring that we you know fixed the hbac in the buildings and did capital improvement projects and stuff that we paid for citizens that we didn't expect the state to do we just had to do for our own kids um and so i you know it's bittersweet uh to to have to to come off the lae board i think that receivership however uh abused it may be um i remember the problems we had before receivership um and so i always remember remind that for folks who would want to hasten the the demise of receivership to think back how um how unruly and wild it was in those days today we have uh something else that we should be very pro proud of and that's uh in the highest offices of the

007the district a diversity that reflects the parents and the students of this of the city not every city like ours gets that opportunity and so uh i'm really excited that all those things are there and uh i do do look forward to having my uh some of my nights back with my family but thank you all so much for your time and uh and having served with with the fine folks on the lae in some of the toughest situations i do appreciate you as uh colleagues and friends uh no one more than in pat mariano who has one of the toughest jobs of going back and forth between the school board the school school board and the lae and and all the rest of the partners and um thank you and so i look forward

008to tonight's meeting and then i'll be submitting my letter of resignation to the commissioner um come tomorrow morning thank you and and uh when when things feel or like are in a state where it's safer to gather together uh we will do something more appropriate to celebrate you and your contributions so uh stay tuned um okay i'm gonna uh continue with the uh agenda first uh the second item is public comment we have four members of the public uh signed up to speak we also received two letters uh at the lae email address ahead of the meeting which have been provided to lae members so the first speaker is sunny skye hello okay sunny ski like your ski i'm sorry that's okay um so i just have a list of things talking to various educators

009and pairers and community members members throughout the district um so they're like not in any particular order so i'm just gonna just read the list um so number one is there seems to be no surge plan as evidenced by the huge amount of staff absences and the coverage issues that accompany that um how is in school learning actually number two how is in school learning actually happening effectively if on average it seems 13 percent of teachers have contracted covert and they are contractually and legally obligated to stay home and self-isolate number three how is in-school learning happening when we have to confine rooms so students have a teacher but it acts more as a babysitter also how is this not a cross-contamination contamination issue and a logistical nightmare for the nurses who do the contact

010tracing number four speaking of the nurses were they compensated for coming in on that sunday one uh january 2nd and monday to distribute the covid tests number five were teachers compensated for coming in on their off contract time or is it just an exploitation of their kind-hearted nature some teachers live more than 90 minutes away in one direction making that almost a half day of travel time number six there's some curiosity surrounding baker and the department public health recommendation that you don't need a pcr test to confirm a rapid at-home test and whether this will affect our return to work policy number seven so does that mean that saying the at-home testing kits that were just rushed out during this off-contract time do not even count number eight i believe on monday the 10th in

011my building there were 17 teachers out because of covid issues and other family related obligations so we're just kind of wondering how that's working because it doesn't seem to be fair to anyone uh next number elementary school here and sleep i heard was flooded two classrooms so they had to work very early in the morning to take care of that number 10 i think in the library here there's still a leak in mold we just wanted to throw that out there because we've been speaking about that for years number 12. um i guess there was 50 of our staff here at spark number 13. it was negative degrees out on tuesday our students are not the wealthiest and don't all have access to appropriate winter gear and speaking of that doing some gorilla math as

012i like to call it there were 80 out of 433 students present his parents were asking how does this affect their attendance they know it's an excused absence but they feel led to believe that it meant it was almost like a freebie um by the way there's still three classrooms in this building a spark academy that does not have working heat and then there's multiple classrooms that have overbearing heat and there is no way to cool off even with windows open in negative degrees and the two last point is we heard that haverhill is receiving five hundred dollars for city officials who are vaccinated from the american rescue plan act does lawrence have any plans to do so and i lied there's one more thing some teachers who are watching this on the zoom right

013now were kind of frustrated that half of the board here is also watching with zoom while we have to be here daily in person thank you for your time thank you the next speaker is kobe my sawyer colby callery she just decided to name me after college okay it's that's what it says here so sorry i've known her for six years okay like okay thanks for the sorry for the record just take your name again but hi my name is colby and i'm a proud kindergarten teacher here at lps i get made fun of constantly by my educational peers for working in lawrence they hear of work conditions treatment by administration fights racial injustice and that's only what is made public by the district the other things that are discussed often shock them to pure

014disbelief whether it be that what we are paid curriculum decisions lack of support or even comments made by families and even administrators if i left this district it would be for the benefit of my wallet honestly but the joy and the true learning that i see in the lives of the students and their families is way more worth it i honestly stand here asking you to prove that you care i invite you into all of our buildings all of our classrooms meet the students and staff that your decisions affect meet the students and the curriculum decisions that you are choosing i was feeling very discouraged when i saw apparent half listening faces that seemed annoyed or uninterested in hearing staff truths which is just a few of the behaviors that i personally witnessed at the

015last meeting i honestly ask you to show that you care thank you uh next speaker is mr mali 53 chester street good evening honorable members we that we the citizen demand of you in this year of the contract negotiation for our teachers the best contract for our teachers in this collective bargaining need the best support from lae members lawrence public is schooled by impeccable leadership by honorable superintendent cynthia paris moving forward we are united to support our great teachers and their union we cannot allow our professional employees of lawrence public school suffer from injustice of inequality of the pay the professional or the most important foundation for our public school they must know 83 000 citizens are behind them we demand fair and excellent compensation to prevent a city-wide destroyed by our professional employee remember

016the great leaders such as nelson mandela said the education indeed the most powerful weapon to change the world this change only possible if we support our teachers and their great union lawrence teachers union must know we owe our lives to them we are grateful for lauren's teachers to work so hard in dark days of this pandemic to build the best future for our children remember lawrence teachers and you are our family and member of the family when you are suffering our citizens are suffering in this great new year our citizen pledge to be best support lawrence teachers and their union message to our great for a professional union when you suffer because of injustice and on fair pay we suffer with you we stand with you we the citizen are disappointed with massachusetts attorney general

017morrow haley in days of the pandemic doing nothing we the laurentian remain united under strong we demand the best contract for all teachers and their union and the best compensation for our professional thank you thank you and the last speaker is kimbery good evening my name is kimberly barry and i'm the proud president of the lawrence teachers union 1300 strong members we're made up of teachers nurses counselors related service practitioners long-term substitutes and building-based educators as you are about to vote on the turnaround plan renewal i remind you that we do not support this plan we also do not support the timeline that kicks the can down the road into perpetuity under receivership our community is left without a voice our elected officials are not afforded the rights to have a say in our school

018district extended days without any authentic enrichment that is touted add stress to our students who aren't real after school activities as offered before receivership not additional core subjects offered multiple times a day with test prep and additional testing throughout the year we do not agree that measuring students based on mcas is fair resources are lacking in schools as we suffer shortages of staff our students have need their basic needs met and we need to prepare them for their lives not only for tests under receivership our union lost its collective bargaining rights the evidence is before you today the condition this district is in today relates directly to the turnaround plan and its correlation to our teachers leaving the district in droves over the past decade without a true voice at the table our decisions the

019decisions that are being made are not in the best for our students we have officially sent a demand to bargain our contract to the district we look forward to having an open and honest dialogue retaining and attracting career educators must be of the utmost importance districts are complete competing by offering higher wages better benefits shorter days and more our students deserve teachers that stay in the district they deserve consistency and commitment to the city of lawrence what's good for teachers is good for students thank you thank you we are going to move into the um superintendent's report um in a second here but i i think i just want to reiterate um that um i did receive word uh through the superintendent of the ltu submitting their um letter uh asking to bargain or demanding

020to bargain which i'm really excited about uh honestly like i'm really excited to be able to uh you know come to the table and you know really we appreciate everything that our teachers that our staff do and we know we have many staff members that have worked above and beyond even before the pandemic uh but especially during the pandemic and so you know i think this is actually a great opportunity to then come to the table uh and be able to discuss and hopefully come to what is agreement on a new contract that recognizes and and tries to compensate our our teachers as we're doing the same with other bargaining units as well so just know that you know those comments especially uh kim that you said towards the end we i agree with a

021hundred percent like let's do this i'm excited to be able to engage on this uh and you know more to come uh i know the letter was sent this week but uh excited to engage in that in that process superintendent do you want to say anything about that before i we go to the agenda yeah thank you i echo your sentiments and we're pleased that the invitation to bargain was met and that we are going to be working collectively to be able to identify dates really really soon to be able to address these important issues great uh before we get into a couple of the superintendent report which has a lot of updates and i want to make sure we get to that i just want to make a couple of quick announcements as well

022just as follow-up to the board some conversations we've had the first is just to update you that i have met um uh with jonathan from the school committee who um you know we met primarily to talk about the training that i talked to this board about i think last meeting in the meeting before we met also with glenn kutcher who's the executive director of massachusetts uh school committee association so together we've identified some topics and jonathan's really taking a lead on this but some topics for the school committee training and a little bit of context here you know i view our role as an lae in addition to helping the district meet the goals of the district that are spelled out in the turnaround plan it's helping to support the elected school committee for the

023day that they are you know called on to uh to really uh step into direct uh governance of the district and so the update is that we have met there are concrete uh topics for training jonathan the next step is now to sort of think through the timing and what works for for his membership um but just wanted to update the board on that uh and that you know as we continue to talk it is likely as i previewed a couple of meetings ago that i want uh volunteers from this board just to help coordinate and liaise uh with the school committee the second thing i'd like to announce is i i have it understood from commissioner riley that later this week mayor de pena will be appointed to serve on the lae so um

024[Applause] um i also am excited uh to have his uh membership and participation i think it's really important uh for uh the the mayor uh to serve on this board and also uh given that the mayor serves as the chair of the elected school committee i just think it's really important and a good opportunity uh for the two bodies to work together which we've said we want to do and we've started and so i think that's another positive step uh in that direction so um i'll turn it over to uh superintendent for your report and then um but maybe when i pause for a second i know i gave two updates to any quick uh questions comments from board members if not again i know we have a lot of good information from from the

025superintendent all right superintendent i'll turn it over to you thank you i'll start this evening with a timeline that i hope will provide some context for the decision making that has taken place in the past couple of weeks in your materials you'll find a timeline outline that says december 29th through january the third and what happened on wednesday december the 29th was that the department of education indicated that they were going to be supplying districts with rapid test kits that would be made available over the weekend for planning purposes for each district lawrence public received that shipment also of k9 kn 95 mask from the department of education on that thursday excuse me december the 30th and we made sure that those were available to each school leader for the appointment to school staff upon

026return on january the third on friday december the 31st the procurement there were procurement delays on desi's end and the delivery of those test kits was delayed so planning calls with the leadership team and meeting staff was were made to adjust for the distribution of those kits on saturday january the first lps facility went that morning to pick up deci test kits and we updated staff members as to the status of our kids we also learned that instead of having double the amount of the test kits we were going to be able to have one test kit per staff member our facilities and operations then took the task of putting each test kit and a ziploc bag to ensure that every member every staff member who was able to come and pick up the test

027kit was able to do so on sunday january the second in the morning rapid tests were distributed at two sites here at this site and then in the arlington complex the sites were staffed by nurses facilities and school uh all of which were compensated for overtime on sunday january the second in the afternoon human resources reported a higher than normal staffing absences submitted by staff members who were reporting positive cases in consultation with the leadership team mayor de pena we then notified families and staff of the school closure the following morning as you know school was closed monday january the third we continued to monitor staff absences and made the test available on the following day for staff who were unavailable to pick up that sunday understanding that this short time was not enough for

028staff members to be able to make that drive in order to be at their schools on monday january the third in the afternoon in consultations with principals the ltu executive board deci representation our board chair and central office leadership we made the decision based on staffing shortages to open schools k through 8. we also noted that the high school had quite a bit of absences and needed additional time to plan for coverage as a result we opened on tuesday january the 4th for kindergarten to eighth grade and that day was dedicated to continuing to provide the high school the support they needed for coverage wednesday january the 5th all schools were open pre-k through 12th grade and then of course on friday we had our first official snow day in a moment i'm going to

029ask maricel goris from hr and melissa spash to both report on absences of students and then stuffing so whenever you're ready we'll start with summary of the student absences uh basically from the first date we were coming back in from winter break on january 3rd which as the superintendent mentioned was a no school day so all grades were home and it moves through to yesterday if you look across the top we listed the percent of students absent and then the number of students absent and gave a bit of context on the bottom which is in yellow so on monday all all grades were home on tuesday the 4th of january 42 percent of students were absent that was 3866 keeping in mind that that was only k to 8 that were to be in session

030that day on wednesday and thursday we were back to all schools in session and we had 32 percent on wednesday the 5th and 33 absent on thursday the 6th then on friday we had a no school day due to snow and on monday january 10th we had a 26 absenteeism rate with all schools all grades in session yesterday tuesday january 11th was extremely cold and the announcements had gone out regarding that that we were in session and that there would be excused absences if students were out due to those reasons and so that was a 64 absenteeism rate i'm happy to report that today we went back up to the rates of monday at 27 absenteeism today and i will look at staff absences as well so sorry just a just another way of saying

031that is today we had 73 percent of students in school correct yep so about three quarters of them okay yes that's hopeful good evening members of the lae board i am presenting today on the lps opening update from human resources just wanted to start with where we are with vacancies which would then help you understand um the impact of the staff absences towards the end of the report i provided copies of this powerpoint i can't hear you here yeah i can't hear either yeah let's see if we can sort it first of all thank you for stopping us and letting us know it's a way to get too far appreciate that please do that again if it's if you can't hear us can you hear me yes i could hear everyone else clearly so far

032but this is coming through very muffled let's try it again it's okay i'm just going to move my mask so you could hear me better okay so what we're looking at here is uh where this district is in terms of staffing for as of january we're at 91 of staff fully staffed um which equates to 248 current vacancies 96 of our teaching positions are filled which result in 56 current vacancies 84 percent of our paraprofessional positions are filled leaving 71 current vacancies and our nursing staff is at 82 percent and we're currently have 10 vacancies and that's across registered nurses lpns and cnas can you move to the next slide so our lps teaching vacancies i wanted you to see the breakdown by level so 34 of those vacancies are at the high school 41

033are in early childhood education programs or elementary schools and 25 percent are in middle schools reviewing our resignation trends from 2019 to 2021 i reviewed what are for staff who resigned between october 1st of that year to december 31st of that year so in 2019 we had a total of 55 resignations 5 being retirement and 11 being terminations in 2020 that was 36 resignations zero retirements and 10 terminations in that period and in 2021 our most recent period we had a total of 103 resignations seven of those being retirements and 10 of them being terminations i'm sorry can you just clarify is that the the retirements and terminations numbers are part of of that because those are not resignations or those are three separate numbers the retirement and terminations are counted in the resignations i

034see okay so the 103 includes the seven and the ten correct okay thank you um so if we just focus on our october to december 2021 resignations 103 resignations occurred 45 of those teachers 17 are paraprofessionals and 12 are building based educators or long-term subs of the 45 teachers that resigned you could take a look at how they're divided across the levels and you'll see that are high school resignations 29 are middle school and 42 percent are elementary and so what were the other because that doesn't add up to 103 what were the other 29 resignations there are um not student-facing staff okay gotcha and just real quick we'll get we're going to stop after this presentation and i'll call on all board members with questions okay so with our staff attendance rate for january

0354th 5th 6th and 10th and the 11th as of yesterday we had an average around total staff absence between 11 and 13 i provided the actual numbers next to the percentage so you can understand the number of bodies that we were talking about and for those of the absences i provided which were non-covet absences so and that ranged anywhere from as low as 41 to as high as 55 yesterday absences in the district that were non-coveted related i provided data also of our teaching staff absence those are teachers long-term sub bbes and included paraprofessionals these are staff that are facing our students and helping our students obtain their education of the total absences on average it was about 74 to 79 percent of the daily absences were teaching staff the next sheet kind of breaks

036down the percentage of the total amount of that particular work group or union group so you could see there that on average 11 to 13 percent of teachers were absent during that time period for the paris it was anywhere from 17 to 20 percent for bbes and ltes it was anywhere from seven to nine percent for the administrators anywhere from nine to fourteen for cafeteria workers anywhere from sixteen to 21 percent custodians six percent to 12 to 13 percent safety officers nine percent to 23 percent and clerks anywhere from excuse me 12 11 12 to 22 percent great can we pause here and take questions does that make sense i just wanted to add the percentage of our absenteeism plus the percentage of our resignations and vacancies are were the factors of the decisions of

037why we needed to not open on the first day back we wouldn't be fully staffed to receive all students great thank you all right i'm going to go in order just because we have some board members participating remotely so jess if you have comments or questions or clarifying questions please go ahead yeah so what are the what's an what's a non-covid related absence is is one of them like what are is there is there an overarching reason why teachers are otherwise absent and is one question and then my second question is um what's the normal sort of range of of absenteeism among staff and and then also particularly among teachers in paris so um the reasons the non-coveted reasons ranged from bereavement to medical leave to family medical leave maternity leave and other sick other

038illness not related to covid okay and then do you know do we know what then like how what percent of our staff are normally absent on any given day on the average it's three to four percent but in this school year it ranged from four to eight percent all right thank you you all said just yeah i'm all set up okay me yes i have two questions the first one is do we know why people are resigning and then the other one is considering all the absenteeism how are we coping in the classroom with the teaching and learning and also the support for students and the clerics and the staff how we manage all that and how the staff that are present are managing all those additional responsibilities so because of the student attendance rate

039it has not caused undue hardship on the schools to provide the education that the students need for those that are attending classes okay and then do you know about for the resignation because it seems that it was a large group of people dude did anybody give her a feedback regarding why the large number of people were resigning so the resignations for teachers at 45 is 3 of the teaching workforce um i'm still reviewing that data and it is a voluntary form as of now but it is moving to an online mandatory process for submitting resignation that they provide us with feedback okay so you so you're still analyzing the data to understand the reasons why correct correct we did that analysis for the past three years last spring i haven't yet looked at the analysis

040for this time period and do you guys have plans for um fill those vacancies we're consistently hiring and interviewing um okay we are looking at staff who currently hold bachelor's and master's degrees and could apply for emergency licenses and be hired as teachers okay we just also want to make sure that all those that are interviewed and have the qualifications also pass through our screening process through hr which means you know passing of a quarry and a story to ensure that our students are safe and our families are receiving the instructional support that they need okay thank you welcome pat go ahead yes thank you um ventura um can we go back to the slide with the number of vacancies in the district please yeah that's line number two now my my question is how

041are we covering those classrooms and ensuring that our kids are receiving quality adequate quote and i don't i don't mean adequate but quality instruction and they're not losing out because of these vacancies it's quite challenging pat i think that the teachers are doing the best they can given that there's so many staff members at any given point who are out i can give you some examples of what i've seen across the levels i'm sorry cynthia you're muffled i didn't get the response sorry i've been saying that it's very challenging for staff members to cover classrooms and i think they're doing a particularly remarkable work given that there's so many people at any given point absent and i wanted to share with you some examples in my school visits in the past week and a half

042at the preschool level there were several schools where the classrooms were so small that they were able to combine classrooms an example was there were two preschool classrooms combined in total that was seven students because in one of the classrooms both the para and the teacher were absent and so they were able to then combine the two classrooms but still total there were only seven preschoolers in those two combined classrooms as an example i've also seen [Music] where in the upper grades particularly this week on tuesday and today the class still remains small there have been teachers out of content also covering for their colleagues so it's a constant reshuffling of the staff between each other trying to work together and collaborate as we cover for each other as we continue to do the best

043we can under these circumstances i understand that um the vacancies at the high school again i believe that was the next slide how are you how are we managing the vacancies at the high school where the subjects are you know you really can combine subjects and the destruction it's causing with different people you know monitoring the classrooms i'm concerned about the the and you know what they're missing as far as school work because of these shortages and i understand we're trying the best we can um does the high school have a particular plan in place where um they can ensure that these kids are not missing out so as we mentioned it's it's nearly um again a reshuffling of staff members you've heard repeatedly from public comment where paraprofessionals also have to cover for teachers

044who are not in buildings on a normal absent day the three to four percent and now it's aggravated by you you know this this surge that we are experiencing so it absolutely impacts the high school and you're right they cannot combine classrooms because of the subject matter so at the high school they use additional staff members including paraprofessionals and other staff members out of content to be able to deliver instruction for students it's definitely not perfect or ideal i just want to iterate that that is 13 teaching positions out of the 250. all right thank you uh maria just just a quick clarifying question on the district vacancies the district total 248 is inclusive of the numbers below right as well yes okay and then there that's that number two right the slide number two

045okay and then the on the attendance rate for january the last row it's 79 of those absences were teachers right just for for a moment they are apparently because they sound like we're teaching stuff yeah okay definitely i just want to clarify make sure that i i have that right thank you great but that's important to restate that you know let's say january 11th we had 269 total staff out of that number were teaching staff members yeah i i hear what you're saying i'll say that only 21 stop here right that's what it sounded like so thank you all right dan thanks um i guess my question i have two types of questions one is how is the the district absences for students compared to other urban districts like everett and chelsea lowell i know

046boston is kind of like a horse of a different color sure so i've been in close communication with the merrimack superintendents that includes haverhill methuen dracut tewkesbury north andover andover and lowell of course we're the largest in this merrimack valley and there's no comparison they are also seeing however enormous amount of absences for both staff and students so it's not unique to us and it affects us quite differently but they're also experiencing significant absences both on the staffing and and students i don't have the exact numbers this is yeah communication that i have informally with the other superintendents you know i think that's a good you know a good um layer to the data because i think that um i don't want folks to get the idea that this is happening to just the city

047of lawrence and that this is really a national uh thing that's going on um do you get the sense but then i mean um that on top of um you know the retention numbers you know we were already that we were already kind of gone on un certain i don't know how to really say this that we were like already kind of walking on on thin ice when it came to retaining teachers to begin with before covert right i mean the funnel for new teachers was every time we used to talk about it was you know as we tried to figure out how to diversify the teacher pool that it was becoming smaller and smaller a pool of folks to um to pick from yeah i think you're right i think in general educators and

048then specifically educators that are of color bilingual bi-cultural are even harder to find under these conditions and to keep the staff that you got right correct um again i just want to put color to this because i think that um you know surprised that not more people are retiring um definitely not surprised that the immense pressure we're putting on teachers at this moment makes them want to exit um you know and so just um as we as just focusing as we try to find solutions to this um it's easy to think you know this is something that's just happening to us um but hopefully that you know we can as we look to others as what's happening to them we can also find some solutions on how other people are dealing with it thanks thanks

049julio thank you i think uh dan actually asked a couple of the questions that i that i had but um is there any way that we can compare the teacher retention rate that we've had in the city um prior to us uh having the turnaround plan also uh starting sure so if we can compare the retention rate that we had prior to us implementing the turnaround plan versus not having a turnaround plan um you know which was the norm prior to the commissioner i guess implementing the turnaround plan and also and i think one of either jess or naomi asked about what are the plans in terms of attracting new candidates for teaching so the superintendent i don't know if you have a response to my question for that i'm sure it's something that you'll

050probably need to dig up uh to present to us but i would be very interested in finding out how we were doing prior to that yeah if the data is available 10 years back we can certainly come back to you all and share that with you and it remains a priority for us to continue to recruit recruit candidates it's part of the plans that we've talked about throughout the years and as we've mentioned you know nobody anticipated this this pandemic to continue to be so significant the impact that it's having on our community and our teaching staff and families but it will continue to be something that we work on and and partner with others do we um i lost my trend of thoughts here but it was pertaining to again the turnaround plan in

051terms of uh i understand that this this would be going back a little while back and times were different as well so i'm very aware of that but i am hoping to see shed some light as to whether it's something that we even though this is this turnaround plan is something that we're considering and that we continue to work with whether it's something that we also need to take another look at if this is going to detract us from hiring qualified individuals have we compared what the turnaround plan in lawrence if we compare it to other districts how how does it impact teaching if we compare it with other districts that might not have the same turnaround plan that we have sure are you asking with respect to the academics and the staffing as well

052no we have not done that i'm sorry julia are you asking about other districts in receivership or just other districts in general other districts in general but also we could take a look at other districts in receivership as well i think it's all it's always uh important to for us to to take a look at what others are doing and have been doing in order for us to really be able to say if what we're really implementing is is affecting us in a positive or negative way so that we can continue to provide or attract the best candidates to teach our students so the superintendent again is is it something that we have looked into in terms of other districts or other districts and receivership sorry we have not done that comparison i can certainly

053speak to my colleagues at deci who have records and better data systems to compare that and see if that's available to us and then share with you all i think that might be beneficial for us thank you you're welcome i have um from a human resource perspective i have compared the retention rates in our neighboring districts and also the salary rates the average salary in order for us to kind of understand where we sit in the merrimack valley in comparison to our neighbors you have done that i do have that as of june of 2020. okay and that would be something that you could share with us absolutely thank you can i just make a suggestion whenever we have an action item like this it would be really helpful to note it as such in

054the minutes and maybe we could have a standing agenda section um from meeting to meeting that's a report back on the action items because i you know no blame to anyone i know that things can get lost in the shuffle we talk about them here then people go back to you know all the things they have to deal with on the dailiness of the job but it would be nice to note this so that as the district is preparing for the next lae meeting they're they're reminded that oh there were these five questions that board members have do we have answers or an update on them yeah um i would say that um i think what's helpful as well is there's sort of a line of inquiry here like you know questions around comparing um

055retention rates over the years i heard it to other districts i heard it to pre-receivership post receivership i think keeping it at the level of like areas that we want to hear more about you know like like those kind of topics as opposed to like specific questions you know what i mean because i think i would imagine for the district it becomes very hard to track down five very specific questions the questions i heard around comparing retention to our district partners or you know competitors and then also sort of overall compared through the years pre and post receivership so i think to the degree possible if as a board like we can ask for those sorts of just data points and presentations and things as opposed to like specific questions and i don't think you

056asked i heard it as themes you know but i guess i just wanna i feel like that's more the kind of presentation and overview that you know as a board we'll want to know because we want to know that and act on it and share it publicly as opposed to like individual requests i feel like if you have a question call the superintendent like you know if you have like a one-off question call her she'll direct you to her team if she doesn't have the info uh and but but in terms of like the overall sort of themes patterns which which i was hearing julia you know sort of ask about i would say that there were direct questions there were not themes but there were questions because i think that will make us better

057as a board to be able to address the issues that are coming before us especially when it comes to the loss of staff that we have in the district yeah agreed and sorry i guess what i meant was what i heard was like give us a comparison of retention rates over like 10 to 15 years that will help us understand yeah absolutely whether the number of staff that we're losing at this point compares to what we've lost in the past yep yeah i agree and i think again i guess i'm just maybe we're just semantics i'm hearing that as a sort of an overview of data and things not just like i want to know what the retention rate was in in a specific year you know what i mean like i heard like in

058your question we want to see the patterns like what's happened like analyze it talk to us about it so um which i think is appropriate for a governance board to ask those kind of questions and we want an overview so we want to make sure we note that you know as we do in the minutes um and as we're planning for the next meeting as well i had a couple of quick uh a lot of the questions have been answered and i think first of all thank you for this data it's really helpful to see the data it's helpful to see hopeful and sobering to see the the current number of vacancies i think also helpful though to contextualize it you know within sort of other years other districts i mean things like that are

059always helpful um i would be very interested as you continue to dig into the data on resignations just that the number this year and i know it's a very unique context in many ways october to december of this year but the resignations are so much higher than the last two years and i'm sure we could even go back and sort of compare it and look at it that just that additional data that you're looking at in terms of like the why and you know what people are saying i think will be really really important uh for the board and the district to be able to then uh create action plans around you know based on that data so just just you know want to reiterate that and thank you for for doing that i think

060the other question i would have just broadly uh and it relates to you know we can talk about it you know we have the budget process that's kicked off um is you know we by looking at this is you know i assume that we're having we're going to experience a cost savings then on some on some of the staffing lines that we had budgeted and i would love to engage in conversation as part of the budget process of like what happens with that i know we incur now additional costs potentially with subs and you know additional pay for coverage and so it's not going to be like you know there's going to be you know obviously some additional expenses as well but given that you know a lot of these budgets uh are you know

061fiscal year and if we don't use it at the end of the fiscal year like i don't think we get to keep it so i'd love to better understand sort of what those figures look like and it could be next board meeting we can sort of talk about it and then based on that just what our plan is to if we do have any savings on the salary side how are we reinvesting that you know uh into uh into our district so i'd love to be able to just as part of the budget process engage in that conversation as well all right um we're going to move on but i think jess you might i hear you justin just i'm just going to ask i love you thank you but i'm going to ask that

062yep i'm just going to call on board members um and just note if you're participating remotely you can put up a virtual hand and that'll let me know that you have a question or comment as well but just go ahead okay so i'm sorry i just had a several more questions about this data and related matters so i one question i have is that i know i i believe that at a previous meeting we discussed that the the severest staffing shortages were at the high school at the beginning of the year so not like putting aside for a minute the current absenteeism situation like in in absolute terms has our hiring and has the staffing situation improved at the high school do we have do we have more staff people there now than we had

063at the beginning of the year or are we pretty much in the same boat we have more we haven't filled all the positions but we have more and so has the fight situation improved and the sort of general i know there was a lot of concern about just not enough adults presents and kids skipping class and then the fights and so on and i have not heard anything about fights i'm assuming no news is good news over the past month or so but has that improved significantly yes okay and are we what are we chalking that up to is that just the impre is that the presence of more adult staff around are we doing restorative justice practices is that working out like what's what's affecting that so there's a quite a few things in

064the beginning of a school year unfortunately fights are kind of the norm it's it's our highest need students voicing the need for support and wrap around services and that's sometimes how they get identified unfortunately i think it got escalated more this year and it was twice the normal amount of students involved in fights than in normal years because we were not in person for a year and a half to to grade levels and so those students were referred to the appropriate programming and support services attached to mentors and were provided the supports that they needed to be much more successful social and emotionally we did a lot of things at the high school we presented two months ago about a series of activities that went forward there's a safety task force that's working on these

065activities in building more community pride that jolt of coming from isolation in one's home to being among one of 3 000 students is quite a jump and so building in activities that promote students to engage with each other on social activities was one of the key feedback from students and also from families and staff a clear understanding of the code of conduct and the code of discipline and how that that how we follow uh consequences consequences are delivered what's the process and um those those meetings were held with families so they could really understand that we hired a center for restorative justice a manager for the center for restorative justice that center is up and running um and they are engaged and we're they're hired i think three out of the four individuals for restorative

066justice specialists in order to support students who are either having some conflict with one another or having some challenges with working together cooperatively and having empathy for one another by forming some circles students have been targeted to participate in some group work attendance of teaching staff had improved significantly after the election that that helped kind of simmer down and and and for students to to have a consistency with their teaching staff um to attend class and not be out of class so there's a different feel when you walk on the campus it's much calmer more cohesive and the task force meetings are have been happening every i think it's two to three weeks one night a week in the evenings at the guidance suite on campus and folks can join so they've had a consistent

067group meeting as well as putting together a voluntary task force that will help with a rollout of a of ids and uniforms and t-shirts that will be that have been purchased for for students that didn't have access to uniforms because of manufacturing delays well that's encouraging i would say very much um okay a couple more questions just about the current situation with the absenteeism among both students and staff so i guess some so when given that some kids are coming to school right now right and some kids are getting sick and staying home or in some cases i guess staying home because of the extreme cold on a couple of days and there's not and there's quite a few less kids in the classroom like what's the plan for sinking learning when this kind of

068normalizes again and i mean assuming we all toss around that word normal to like it's actually gonna happen i don't know that it will happen but i'm assuming that this surge is gonna fade at least somewhat and you know maybe we'll follow the pattern of last year at least a little bit um and and i guess related to that like given that there are i i know that jesse won't let us go to remote learning right so which is what it is for now but it seems like there needs to be a lot more support for teachers and for students given the fact that we can almost guarantee over the next couple of weeks there's going to be a lot of students absent and there's going to be teachers absent as well right and i'll

069just speak from my personal experience like my whole my son's whole class had to be quarantined for several days and i know that teachers are dealing with quite a bit right now but there really wasn't much that went up on google classroom um you know there were some assignments that went up but it's really hard as a working parent you know to have to stay home to monitor his academic experience to not have things that they're doing and i don't think that my experience is unique or where that's unique to the school my son is in so you know this is like our second year of being in it like what what's the plan around that around having if i know we can't deliver remote learning with the teacher teaching remotely but we need to

070at least have materials and things that are available for kids to be doing i know not all of them will do it but some of them will and how are we kind of supporting teachers in getting that together right so that we have this reservoir of stuff that can be posted and projects that can be done and students can be engaged because i'm just frankly concerned about you know like how much everyone is falling behind with all of this and that's not happening equally across the commonwealth even though i know that there there's definitely other districts suffering from this but um but it seems like we need to be able to have some resources available for that yeah i can be i can try to answer that because i think the initial plan was that

071we we had agreed that teachers when students would be in quarantine that teachers would provide access to the materials and i think what we didn't plan for was this second surge where also teachers are sick and unable to be able to do that and then the question is how do we support that really difficult because now we're relying on the administrators and or their colleagues to support those teachers who are who are sick themselves and so i think it is bumpy in that way i agree with you i think that they are doing the best that they can given the circumstances it's quite abrupt in many many instances you know there's a pool there's people who then are positive they get the call and the very afternoon they have to everybody has to go home

072so the teacher had not planned for that the teacher had planned for in-person learning and now everything reverted that teacher themselves might be sick and the administrators and the colleagues are doing the best they can to support that classroom as quickly as possible so there will be lags there will be some bumpiness in that particular week and i can assure you that they're all working really hard to catch up as quickly as possible when they get back into those classrooms and so we ask for i don't know i think a little bit of grace and patience from families and our other colleagues as teachers and administrators help each other recover and rebound each and every single time they have to be quarantined because either a student or staff member is sick with covid yeah i

073i hear you i guess um i guess what i would say is that partly because we have no guarantee that this is not going to happen again this year in this next year in the brave new world we're in like we we need to spend some time this summer or when out whenever the planning is happening for the next school year kind of thinking about what these contingencies are and i think jesse needs to be thinking about that too and how they can support that process and understanding that learning is getting interrupted and there needs to be at least some mitigation strategies um in effect and i i guess i had just one more question that's really more of a a process question i'm i'm just you know i and i guess you all can

074tell me to back off if this is not really like if this is micromanaging or not the board's place but i'm wondering like i know that when all of these things are happening and we're like adjusting and adapting on the fly that there's planning that's going on with principles um to kind of game plan how we're going to deal with it are we going to open or not and how we're going to staff it and how we're going to manage all of that and i'm just wondering like if and how teachers are getting included in that discussion and decision making sure so as i mentioned earlier we did consult with the executive board the ltu executive board so the assumption is that they're speaking on behalf of the teachers and and to be fair is

075very very difficult decision making process and we include as many voices as possible given the short you know decision making process but yes that's that's our best go-to which is to include the executive board thank you cynthia do you want you want to add something or i wanted to see if it's worth saying a few things about acceleration academy that's being planned right now as something that we hope will be a way to accelerate some of the lost learning for folks and also just keep kids who would benefit from some continued time in class during that first week of or the third week of february this we are planning a robust program with like 2500 students we've expanded that to include k to two which in the past hasn't been a bigger part of that

076program so we're and we had a grade nine a full nine classes there so we're definitely trying to use that week for some intensive very small group instruction to work on um lost learning a week doesn't cover at all many of the other suggestions are great but i wanted to add that as a component to the increased efforts we're going to put in place during that week great thank you dan and then knowing me thank you so much um really excited to hear about that at the acceleration academy that's a big deal um the most the more you can be able to do in that i think that's going to have some good impact um you know growing that if you can at all costs would be great um i just want to make another

077um so just rise my voice like um to support what jessica was talking about with the packets um you know i know that they're the current you know way we do teaching and learning is um earned autonomy and with autonomy comes this you know ability that folks are doing different things different buildings um but i i think that in there has to be some you know some centralization around if kid a is absent coveted or not coveted um or has to say that a packet with x amount of work is presented to the family regardless of whether or not um to to jessica's point that the child ends up doing it i think it's just an opportunity to keep um the the student engaged um and do do that the best they can now that

078that means you got to have copy paper available this needs to get kept copying available it means those types of support available for teachers to get those packets together um but you know when um and and for those and then you you could probably find the best the best practices are going on in the districts i'm sure that teachers are already doing that but i would encourage you to move off the on this one point about packets going home to kids morning classes um to to come off our autonomy on that piece to really make sure that everyone in every building in every classroom every kid has that um because you just don't know um what is being missed and then later on we try to account for it you know sometimes the kids are

079home with their parents so maybe the parents get engaged more than they used to but it would be a missed opportunity not to centralize that and make sure that every kid who goes out gets a packet for their grade and for where they're at in the curriculum thanks dan knowing me yes i want to go back to what jessica was saying regarding the teacher's involvement and yeah and i agree with her this is not about micromanaging but sometimes you know we as board members we do get emails from teachers that they or sometimes stuff that they might say i have or have not been involved and i also understand from the perspective of the school district that some decisions have to be expedited and they might not be able to include as many people as

080possible but in the process it would be good for us to be presented with how what efforts have been made to reach out to as many teachers as possible to be involved in some of the key decisions that where teachers uh should be involved so i think that you know when when a specific task is presented you know give us an idea of how many teachers were involved and from how many schools because again it will help us to respond to some of the demands and requests that some of the teachers ask us when they email us so i think that would be a good way to also keep the line of communication open and keep a trust through the system great thanks naomi all right thank you very much for the information um i'm

081gonna move us on to uh the the next agenda item sorry did you want to talk about her okay so the next agenda item is uh the turnaround plan and i am looking for a vote here i know we discussed uh this um both in the committee and at the board meeting uh last week so uh i will go through and call on people i will start at the top here um i will entertain a motion and obviously we'll have a discussion but if anyone is ready to put a motion forward i'll entertain it at this time mr chair i i move that we make a motion to accept the turnaround plan is presented is there a second okay i am going to pause and open up the discussion i'll go through and we'll go

082the alphabet now the other way just to see if there any questions or thoughts and then we'll um we'll go from there so julia no questions okay dan i would just say that i think the question about getting out of receivership always comes out and i want to make sure that i say this in as delicate as possible not having a turnaround plan is the way to not get this get out of receivership and so uh however perfect or imperfect you may think the plan is um the ability to go in and change it later on and suggest it and take votes basically at the board level um you know things are going right and things are going wrong that interaction is i think going to be very helpful um i say this kind of

083as i'm walking out the door but i i you know i always felt like i was uh part of those discussions of trying to change what we were doing and encouraging the staff to do that encouraging desi to support that um but i would just encourage us to to this evening pass this because nothing's nothing would signal more to desi that things are on the right track here than us you know proving a turnaround plan thanks okay maria my only comment would be just um a reminder of our previous conversation that you know going forward presentations on specific work or or projects that are happening are linked to the goals that we are approving or sweetie can you can you speak more into the microphone sorry that's hard let's move it to your right so

084when you're looking at ventura [Laughter] i was just reminding them of uh it was just a reminder of our previous conversation just that um uh linking future presentations on on different instant initiatives to to these goals and to this specific plan to make sure that we're on track and that obviously all the initiatives or everything that we're doing budget wise and effort-wise is linked to this work great thank you pat yes um you know when reading the turnaround plan it it was clear to me that a definite roadmap was established with targets and timelines in order for us to exit or meet the requirements to exit receivership i think it's important as dan said um and you know for desi to realize that we're serious about what we're doing and this is the plan that

085we're going to follow sure we might have you know there might be some adjustments needed as we go along but as we you know in looking at it right now it's a clear path and i think it's incumbent upon us as a board to um to approve this plan and move forward thank you normie like i don't have any comments this point thank you thank you jess yeah i i just want to i i just want to reiterate the thing i said last time about an echo what some other board members have said in that we need to make sure as maria said that we're linking like the future presentations and information that we get to to the benchmarks in this plan and how it's helping us meet them and i i want to feel

086like we have very clear reporting points at which we're saying okay tonight we're revisiting the benchmarks in the turnaround plan and reporting on the progress and outcomes that we've made in relation to that um and i want i would like to see that information not just be presented to this board and clearly to the school committee as well but also like communicated to the district in general as well so that people understand where we are in relation to this and it doesn't feel like we're stuck in this murky when will we ever get out of you know receivership round great thank you um and then i guess my comments i mean i echo a lot of what people have already said um you know uh i'd say just a couple quick things is that uh

087this is the plan that we chose to renew so it's you know a lot of the same strategies that the district has been operating under but with updated uh in some ways updated work you know updated programs so just making sure that you know we approve this and when i said this last time um or last meeting rather is in my mind and i want to say it again publicly like in my mind i view uh the role of this board in really overseeing the implementation of the turnaround plan so we're accountable to the goals that are in this plan and you know for folks who are following along at home or seeing the plan you know it's really what i look at is appendix b which is the measurable annual goals like this plan

088has clear goals around things like student attendance dismissal rates exclusion rates student safety student promotion dropout rates graduation rates student achievement on mcas uh it talks about acquisition of 21st century skill per parent and faculty engagement culture and academic success so there are a lot of things that are in here that we're accountable to helping to achieve and the other thing i want to say publicly is you know i view that our job as an lae is to support the district hold them accountable push them to achieve this i agree wholeheartedly with i think just made the comment last meeting where it reiterated it this week around ensuring that we have a calendar of reporting back to the board and publicly on those different data points like we know what the end year result goals

089are for attendance for example how do we sort of you know quarterly or however we sketch it out like we need to be able to uh get updates on those things and know what we're doing differently you know sort of in real time or you know to make changes um and so um i was going to say one more thing and now i can't remember but um so i agree with those comments and and like i said earlier uh at the top of uh of the meeting you know i also see our role as working to support the school committee you know so again i see all these things together like the turnaround plan is the current path for the district our job is to make sure we support the superintendent in a district to

090knock it out of the park so those goals are met which then tells us that students are on a better track and then our job is also to support the school committee to make sure that again they're ready uh to um take you know oversight of the governance of the district when when that time comes and so appreciate everyone's comments and hard work and the only recommendation i'll make later after the vote is if we can get the turnaround plan subcommittee back together to maybe help to sort of map out what that reporting structure could look like i think that'd be a real concrete ass that we can ask of that group and then bring it back to uh to the board uh to work on so all right so i'm going to uh close

091discussion at this point and uh given that we're some of us were remote i'll do a roll call vote so the motion that's has been seconded is to approve uh the turnaround plan that that was in our packet so uh jess all right what's up mute yes know me yes pat yes maria yes dan yes julia abstain and the chair votes yes so it is approved thank you all right the next item teaching and learning update a couple of items under there superintendent i'll turn it back over to you great so in a moment we're going to give you an overview of where we are in our literacy plan that also is part of the turnaround plan and moving forward we will flag it where on that plan is and also just an update on

092the anti-racist work so go ahead melissa so this is intended to be sort of a process update on where we are with the developing our district-wide literacy plan this uh group first came together before my my own place in this role about a year ago and we've been moving forward more from last spring and into this fall and it's been a very demanding time but we've definitely been meeting with regularity we convened what we're calling a strategic literacy workforce team it's really nicely represented across the different grade levels so we have early childhood folks elementary middle and high school as you can imagine the literacy demands are very different at those levels our team is comprised of principals coaches teachers and central office staff and recently we've had an expert from deci joining us as

093well as a consultant this is the goal that the team established which is to develop a cohesive and comprehensive literacy plan for lps that will honor school autonomy yet provide research-based guidance and minimum agreements for literacy instruction for all grade bands i did put a little footnote at the bottom that this is actually in the turnaround plan on page seven as a noted item to follow up on and so this is kind of our launch of that next slide here's where we are right now this was a pretty monumental effort we created an inventory of curriculum and assessments by school k to five we started there intentionally with the idea of moving on to the high school after although we do have a high school member on the team who was very involved and kind

094of added his pieces in there too so we're well underway on the high school side this is something like looking at every intervention curriculum every regular curriculum for core what assessments are being used as you can imagine we have a lot of schools and that's a lot of different items in the inventory we also held focus groups with principals and leaders around professional development which was very insightful and started to help us to understand where we went ahead with professional development as a recommendation we outline district strengths and areas for improvement around curriculum assessment intervention and professional development those kind of the four categories of our subgroups and uh we're we're in the process now what that basically said to us when we started to look at what we found in this inventory and these

095focus groups was the need for a cohesive correct a vision for literacy at the district level that was something our teams in the schools were asking for and that's what we're working on now so we wrote a draft literacy statement and now we're going into what's called an instructional vision it's very granular very detailed and we hope to be able to share that with principals and other stakeholders soon and then with this team those are our next steps developing short and long-term goals to enact the literacy vision that we're putting into place integrating it into school planning recommendations school planning is around the corner so we plan to bring some recommendations that would represent the thinking of all the schools and all the great bands to the the school planning board team and then engaging

096the stakeholders it's incredibly important that everyone has a say in this and that people feel uh invested in the recommendations that we make so i started this by saying it's sort of a process overview i'm not getting you deep in the details of what's there but just to understand there's a very collaborative process in place with a lot of experts in the room and we're looking forward to having something to show to you all soon thank you what i would recommend is we do the second sub bullet as well and then we can ask questions on on both thanks for the update though david are you going to load the the next presentation thanks terrific so this is an update from the anti-racism committee of which i am a part and we have a lot

097of again progress update to provide to you with the anticipation of some reporting out from our equity audit in the spring for this overview we're going to talk a little bit about expanded membership of our team some of how we're funding the work that we're doing the equity audit that is well underway it started in november and it will end in the end of january and then a little bit about the professional development that members of our team are participating in this year here's our membership we expanded it in october to add four educators we worked with the union to help identify those members and they've been incredibly valuable to the team so we have one from each grade band and we also added a member from a parent member from tuvos council who's been

098very instrumental in helping us think about how we link to family voice here you can see we also have two community members jonathan guzman who's also a school committee member for district f and marquis victor who's a founder of elevated thought and organization in town and we have school administrators as well as several members from central office most of our funding comes from the nellie mae foundation it's a private grant we were awarded 250 thousand dollars with a timeline ending this june we are seeking to extend that we have a request in just because it's been a very complicated year and we'd like a little bit more time and because our equity audit is underway and we'll wrap up like i said in later winter the budget from nellie may includes money stipend and money

099for participation on this group also for the equity audit which we commissioned an outside partner to do and then other items like a school-wide book read it's professional development and a youth summit these are items that we are going to plan once we get this equity audit because that should inform our strategies next slide please the equity audit we hired black print educational consulting out of a bid process to conduct what's called an equity audit they started in the fall november 8th to be specific they're going to end their last school visit on january 21st the scope of that work includes stakeholder engagement through town halls those town halls started out with educators we're now moving on to include one for paraprofessionals as well as another for families and we expect to receive a report

100from black print with their findings later in the spring the town halls those are a gathering of stakeholders they're confidential to gather input from families and educators we had two in november and we're having two more in january and february we're just starting to launch some publicity for those events now these are also hosted by blackprint and they're confidential we don't have members of our staff there and they're kept anonymous we also have school visits as part of this this is a very comprehensive effort they're going to every single one of our schools november 8th through january 21st usually those visits are three to six hours depending on how many grades you can imagine a school that has k-8 would have longer time than a school that had just a few grades the visit includes

101an observation of the classroom as well as facilities a principal interview for 75 minutes and then for middle and high schools they we have focus groups about and eight to ten students who participate in those focus groups and of course those have parent permissions what are we going to do when we receive this equity audit later on this is what's written kind of into the scope and so i shared it here we're going to determine the degree to which each school and central office department prefers an anti-racist agenda so we'll have some actual data from these visits and from the town halls to look at and reflect upon and plan around we'll identify which schools and departments would benefit from additional explicit training support and resources and then we're going to use the data to

102inform the types of assistance that all the departments and different schools will receive lastly there's actually two more slides this one is just talking about the professional development that we're doing this is through deci it happens to be black print as well but it's a multi-tiered system for success it's essentially pd a lot of pd i'd say over 20 hours of pd over the course of the year as well as district planning sessions with this core team the membership all attends these meetings and it's been very robust right now we've done a few of them and so far it's been very good and then lastly our team meets monthly if we don't have one of those other meetings and we're working on a book list and a library that we can lend out so that

103eventually we can pull those book groups together and get into conversations with the community with students with our staff so this is an overview to let you know the work that's being done and i anticipate we'll be receiving some feedback soon that we can also share and plan around great thank you so much um so i'll do a round of questions uh board members and again feel free to ask questions on the literacy plan or the anti-racist work update i'm going to start with knowing me i just saw justice camera off so just unless um thank you for the presentation this is very impressive work and my question is related to the previous presentation about absenteeism and the limited staff and teachers how do you think you're able to successfully implement this work when asthmatism

104is so high and and teachers and staff is overstretched already i'll take that melissa i think we're just right now in the stages of both planning for the literacy plan and doing the audit the equity audit so in earnest all of this work will start in the following school year and right now we're at the gathering analysis and planning station stages of both the literacy plan and the anti-racist work we're doing pockets sorry we're doing pockets of where there's doing some pd but this is going to this is a multi-year work also this is not a one one year initiative and considering again that this is in the planning stage how many still how many teachers are involved in the process or staff are involved in the process sure so for the literacy plan there's

105a committee that is outlining that and as melissa mentioned i think that group is pretty big 15 people maybe about 15 and it's a wide range mostly coaches which many of whom are in the teachers union as well as some administrators so many stakeholders um okay and then on the anti-racism committee there's four teachers three community members numerous administrators and central office staff but i think as cynthia said it's a planning time and kind of organizing for launch this summer this fall and next fall okay thank you jess i'm gonna come back to you yeah um i'm just glad this work is happening and i don't i don't have further questions right now thank you pat yes i just have one quick question um as far as the literacy plan goes has it says develop

106a district literacy vision statement instructional vision for literacy you you haven't developed that yet correct we have a i should have written draft we did draft one and we need to bring it to principals and other stakeholders for their feedback before it would be something that we could share more widely but we i should have written draft there good catch pat okay all right thank you i don't have any other questions yeah pat i'm just going to add this this subject of autonomy which dandy vera mentioned earlier one of the things that we're going to continue to talk about and something that you all have asked is how do you continue to be an autonomous district and also share very specific visions and implement that so this group is tasked to do that and this

107is why it's going to take multi-year in order to be very very thoughtful about creating a vision and then adopting that vision within the autonomies that each school enjoys thank you maria so i just have a couple of comments uh with the regarding the literacy plan i just um i'm you may already be um be including this but um it would be a missed opportunity to not include other community organizations in this literacy effort i think uh you know obviously that all the children i'm speaking on behalf of not only early education programs but also after school programs but also the library you know i think there's a lot of stakeholders here that in the community which our community does have a lot of resources around this if we have a more coordinated effort um

108it would it could lead to you know just just better results um and it would be a beautiful thing to have a city-wide effort around literacy versus this district-only effort so i would encourage us to partner with uh again we have so many strong organizations and i will add too from personal knowledge that the early childhood community right now is very um is collaborating at a very high level more than ever because we are also trying to survive these times and i i suspect we're working on some parallel efforts and you know we should consider literacy being always our priority as well so it'd be great to have a conversation about that with those organizations and also include the library too we we have a great library in the city i mean it has come

109a long way since you know for the last number of years so i would love to include city resources into this effort because they're all our children absolutely i really appreciate that i think it's something i'll bring directly back in our meeting next week and i actually do have a meeting upcoming or being planned with the library so i'm be sure this is on the agenda that's great and you know you mentioned professional development i mean how can we include people that are working with the same students at different times you know with after you know some of our after-school teachers at the ymca yw community they any you know any of the organizations that work with our children after school or during summer camps and it'd be great to figure out where are those

110kids in the summer so they can continue reading those books that you are going to identify and have them available for families in the library that's a very you know general example and then with regards to the anti-racist work um thank you for the presentation and for doing that this is i know it's a grant so it's really it seems to be more focused on um students right and and anti-racist work that impacts students directly do we have or have we um have we worked and i may be late to this the question but i have worked on anti-racist work that impacts staff at the district level too in terms of feedback not you know not directed to student impact but to staff impact yeah so just to be clear the anti-racist work is for

111all community members of lps right specific it'll start with the staff and practices that we have and of course that's going to be impacting student experience and outcomes for students perfect obviously think thank you that's that's great because i do personally believe that that's where it will start obviously when teachers are feeling the impact of that you know it will be transferred to the students so thank you good great thank you julio i actually don't have any questions thank you melissa this is a very comprehensive plan and i look forward to hearing more about the development of these these schematics that you have in place right now so but looking forward to your report thank you and again i just want to echo again thanks for just the status or the polls check on where

112things are um i would love to hear more as the work continues on a literacy plan you know the inventory of curriculum and assessment by school so i know that the group is developing a draft or has a draft and we'll be workshopping a vision statement and you know i know that schools have uh autonomy uh over you know sort of implementation and i know we have a responsibility as a district to ensure that curricula and assessments but especially curricular are evidence-based and ones that we think are really going to help you know improve literacy for students so as part of the update that you provide us moving forward i'd love to just better understand what that inventory showed you all how you feel about the curricula you know that you've seen across the districts

113being used and just what opportunities you see for collaboration across the district i'm sure a lot is happening already but are there opportunities to strengthen are the ways that we as a district can incentivize schools uh to um you know change direction if needed or if we feel like we have an opinion on other materials or curricula that could be even more effective so and i know that's all the ongoing conversation with with teachers and with principals and with staff but that one in particular i think is one where i just love to hear more about in terms of the resources and what's available to ensure that you know while people have autonomy i think we we have some clear sort of lines in the sand that you know that we want to make sure

114all of our staff are using and have access to just evidence-based high-quality curricular products yeah two responses to that one is that the outcome of this is really intended to be structured to kind of explain the strengths and the gaps that are in that area and this kind of ties to the sqr the school quality review presentation that cynthia provided a few months back there's a specific indicator there for curriculum and so that's been a great incentive for folks to ensure they go through the process of ensuring they have a strong curriculum the story is pretty good there for the k to five on the ela side yeah and i'll add that this is part of the earned autonomy framework so that's something that we can also adjust yeah and thank you for bringing up

115the sqr because i think this does also and i don't have the data in front of me but i know one of the areas that the sqr pointed out is um just this need for like a stronger shared vision for maybe i mean not just literacy it seemed like you know sort of teaching and learning and so this is in that vein like you know making sure that there's a clear shared understood you know vision for literacy instruction uh that you're right and thanks for bringing that up that we can see in the sqr is one of the data points uh as well so thank you for that all right appreciate it uh and then we'll move to the penultimate item here budget process right so in a moment we're gonna i'd like to share

116with you part of the budget process that will in earnest commence later this spring is some of the funding sources there's been a lot of anticipation and curiosity and i think a little bit of confusion about some of our funding sources in particular the esser so we thought it would be good for us to preview it now and then continue to have really good conversations about the current funding sources oh is that our first one i think it might be yep thank you okay so here is the big pie as you can see nearly 70 percent of our funding is what we called general fund foundation funding and then we have the entitlements which are title grants and everybody is quite familiar with title ii that's always the big one title three also for multilingual

117learners and so on and then of course the newest part of money is the essers one we're currently an s or two and then upcoming is s or three so i'm going to start unpacking those just a quick reminder about what the foundation money is and we talk about this during each budget process the current local contribution that we have is of five percent as a reminder chapter 70 is 95 percent and we are the district that receives the largest state eight in the commonwealth we've talked about this in each budget process which is net school spending and then of course we also have infused in the chapter 70 the student opportunity act as a reminder we had a comprehensive plan of the student opportunity act that includes quite a few ftes in the form

118of social emotional supports for our students and those are things like social workers bcbas and other personnel that's just a snapshot of what the current allocation is and we're definitely going to be talking about this point by point when we start more formally the budget process but i do want to get into the essers because i think that's the one that's kind of hanging just to give you a snapshot also of what the budget has been the other question that comes up quite a bit in conversations is this issue of like well how much money do you have and how much has it increased throughout the years so you see here a five year snapshot and the average and massive will correct me in a moment but we get about between two and three percent

119is the average in 20 in fiscal year 20 the 7.1 that you see there is an anomaly because they corrected the formula for um enrollment i think that's right and so we ended up getting this bigger bump but you can see that in 17 it was minus and then that two percent and this past year 3.8 and so that's the average that you see in a five year so it is everything from minus to as high as 7.1 and again the foundation formula is where we have the bulk of salaries and benefits that's the big pie is the 80 percent the entitlements the entitlements that we're familiar with are everything that we add to support the teaching and learning and here are the five the four big ones title two is the one that we

120talk about quite a bit there's a lot of intervention work doing there you hear us talk about summer work you hear us talk about acceleration academies those are all supported by the titles yep keep it coming with the titles that's just the sorry those are just the allowables and none of the hubble's of the titles which is supplanting versus supplementing our school leaders and some of our teachers know this language really well because we're very tempted also to do some supplanting and so the best example that i can give about supplement versus supplant is you're not allowed to do supplanting so an example is of supplanting would be using title funds like title ii for a math curriculum chapter 70 and they expect that we're all going to have a math curriculum i can't use

121title 2 fundings or any of the entitlements to say i'm just going to go ahead and buy math curriculums with title no chapter 70 funding gets you the math curriculum if you want to add enrichments of math then you can use the entitlements all the other grants here we go here are the essers so i spoke to the principals about this and as we start the school planning process they're going to be able to share this with their teacher leadership teams and that is what are the funding sources what are the big buckets and what can we are allowed to spend some of this additional funding on and what are the things that not so much here's some allowables so i'll let you take a moment to look at that and some of the basics

122that you already would expect of course academic instruction and those again are things to address unfinished learning and of course of social emotionals and operationals related to this pandemic an example of the social emotional supports is we can do ftes short-term ftes the sr funding is funding that expires in three years time so one example is we have given every single school an additional bcba with the understanding that those bcbas will not be available to them in three years time when this pot of money runs out it's a tricky thing to do when you add ftes on money that is one time money because nobody wants to give up their bcbas in three years time the other thing we added as ftes is additional supports in the form of interventionist and also if you remember

123when we were in the remote part of this pandemic every school got a technology liaison that was also funded via the essers again we're quite careful not to put ftes on esser because then they will not exist in three years time things that are not allowable on the essers things like bonuses merit pays everything related to wages however however as it relates to wages we can do things like stipends we can do things like incentives those are quite allowable because again they're one-time funding so if i want to say that the custodians are going to get a one-time retention bonus of 50 that's permissible what i cannot do is embed it in their wages and their salaries because in three years times you don't have that money we don't have that money and then you

124can see other things that are unallowed the list is quite long but this is just a highlight of things that are not allowable and just this is a reminder of when we did the stakeholders survey and what the stakeholders across our community wanted us to see this investment this resources invested in and those are the three top ones you'll see it in the next slide highlighted and the reminder of like when we said here's the additional funding how should we spend that here is it here is how it is attached to the goals and the priorities so in the next slide you'll see that here they are no surprises here we all agreed that it should continue to be focused on student-facing supports in social emotional supports again this is just unpacking that stakeholder response

125that we did in last fall i've already forgotten how long ago that was but it was quite the process we then submitted that to the department of education and they get to respond to us in terms of yes that is appropriate use of this funding no go back to the drawing board we did share this with you all we received a favorable vote and then we submitted it to the department of education great thank you uh i'll do a roll call go again going the other way in the alphabet so julia and if there are any questions or comments uh no thank you thank you superintendent i think it's a very explicit and necessary information for when we begin this budget process thank you thanks maria um so i know this is non um it's

126uh it's for a limited time um three years that you mentioned but um are we establishing some measures in terms of you know what we accomplish with this money within these three priorities that you identified and could we hear you know so we can get reports regularly throughout you know the next three years in terms of what are we doing it is a significant amount of money so it'd be great to make sure that we get some results and that we keep measuring that yeah absolutely and during the budget process we'll revisit what we have done so far with sr1 and 2 and what has already been accomplished and where we are with esr um i'm calling it 2.5 and then 3 s or 3. yes absolutely in addition we have to submit very detailed

127reports to the state on the use of this funding and when will we hear from dussy i i forget will they will they get back to us approving i hope so very soon because we'd like to you know commence that planning for sr3 as well can can you just be a little more explicit on that last point so we submitted a plan to desi for sr3 and we still we're waiting to hear approval of that that is correct okay just want to make sure okay thank you sorry mariani any other questions okay great pat sorry um i stand corrected i'm being told that we did receive uh massive jump in that we did receive so we did receive approval on our plan for sr3 the only thing we're still waiting for approval on are the

128capital expenditures that made it onto the sr-3 plan so that we can't move forward with but all other items we can great thank you pat yes thank you um thank you for the presentation it was very very clear um i have no further questions thanks normie i don't have any questions either was a good presentation too thank you thanks jess um no i thank you i i appreciate the clarification around what things can be used for and i just um i i want to clarify uh remarks that i made at the previous meeting that several people have asked me about you know sort of outside of this so i'm gonna say that based on this and the superintendent's gonna correct me if i'm wrong like my understanding is that that the absolute we can use

129ester funds for increased compensation for staff teachers powers others in the form of stipends and you know hazard pay if you will and as an aside i'm going to say that i continue to advocate for that and think that that's a very good use of the sr funds that we're getting where where we are constrained isn't adding that into the base pay the normal base pay of teachers and we're constrained under both a regulatory level and in terms of thinking about what our long-range plan is for how we're going to support those different levels of compensation and how we're gonna what trade-offs we're gonna make right because we see what the esser what those top three priorities were and if we want to add additional staff in these other areas it it just it seems

130like we can't do everything as a resource can constrain city like we can't we can't give stipends and i guess i won't call them bonuses but stipends and hazard pay or those forms of compensation for you know the incredible work and hardships and stress and extra things that teachers have had to do during this time and paras and other workers all the all the staff in the schools we can't have that and increases to the base pay within the context of the contracts that are then going to like raise the floor for future raises and so on and also have extra staff that we're using just you know that we're deploying to support all of these other needs that we see around social and emotional learning so i just wanted to clarify that because i

131think that it came across that although i had been advocating for increased compensation that i was then saying that we couldn't use it for that at all and that's not the case um and i will i do i do think that we should use some of this money in that way so that we can provide some extra compensation for all of our staff who's who have sacrificed and been so disrupted during this time was anything i said wrong you're factually wrong yep so just to be clear you're correct the the um compensation in the form of stipends and in the form of incentives are absolutely permissible okay and i do advocate for that absolutely so i just wanted to say that great thanks jess um and i don't have tons of questions at this point

132i guess maybe i would just love to have you all clarify uh we're about to start uh this process as we do every year with the schools and the tlts working you know to sort of put forward uh budget proposals and you know we have as we typically do the the core budget chapter 70 primarily and then we have the title funds and then we have the these esser funds that are you know allowed per the uses that you all have laid out here what what can you just help clarify for us then for a school if i'm a school tlt what is going to be different about how i'm sort of making requests about what i think our schools need you know my school needs for our kids that is different because of the

133availability or potential availability of s or 2.5 and 3. if you could just paint that at a high level that'd be great for sure so i think we can anticipate that school planning teacher leadership teams in the school planning process will advocate for additional resources both in the form of tangible resources so that could mean additional materials for example that's a very tangible resource for staff that is facing with students they will also request additional professional learning time and that will be something we compensate teachers for so that's in the form of like skill building for teachers capacity building for staff i anticipate that they'll also ask for additional time for planning and that will be something we compensate as an example we just talked about that being in the form of stipends for example

134and i think there's a host list but those are things that the esther will allow us to do very easily when they come and match goals to some of those needs and we will use the essers to be able to fund those things so that that's super helpful and so those sorts of things are maybe things that are above and beyond what we might be able to typically fund for a school so tlts i'm sure hearing the message loud and clear but make sure that you're putting forward like you know uh ideas and things that are gonna help you all uh do your work in your schools to support kids even better and so that you know that's that's great to hear and one other question is i know it emerged as a priority you

135know based on the stakeholder engagement one of the areas like tutoring programs and support can you just talk a little bit about um i mean sort of what's the status which i assume is more around sort of planning but like how is this going to look if it's a district-wide priority are is this district-wide programs we're going to be rolling out are are tlts and schools being asked to make some recommendations in alignment to these priorities including tutoring like can you just talk a little bit about how the top priorities that were part of the plan how they're going to actually be reflected in terms of the what we see in individual schools and the role of the district versus the school-based teams yeah melissa mentioned already that we're going to be hosting acceleration academies

136that is an example of a district-wide initiative that will be funded via title and accelerations as she mentioned we're adding the younger students that's esser funding as one example we also anticipate that by level it'll be very different we'll see the high school hosting additional academic time on saturdays which is quite successful for teenagers and evenings which is also you know really in line with what our oldest learners need we'll also see quite a bit of differentiation in the summer opportunities enrichment opportunities and it will vary in the levels and so it'll be a combination of that got it so it sounds like a lot of those programs are district initiated but then there's also room for you know what maybe i'm i'm asking this as a question in addition to the district initiated acceleration

137academy's expansion of that summer program those things are all great our schools themselves also expected or able to you know propose things that are in line with these priorities that's exactly right so examples of that at the different levels the tutoring is a good example of that what tutoring is for our youngest learners say grades one two three will be very different and that looks very different in middle school in high school and we're gonna honor that so every single tlt in school matches their goals they'll propose what that looks like and then we'll help them fund it great thank you all right thank you and we'll get to the last item which is the leahy school project support letter great so this last item we have a copy in your materials this is just

138a draft of one that you all supported last time um apologies if your name is not here again this is just a draft with this is no no intention here of your name not being here but we were hoping that you would support a draft if not just like this maybe a few tweaks and that you would say yes to us so that we can more formally make this a document that you all agree on and this is again in support of the leahy project to the city council great um so i had a chance to read it and obviously like there are a couple of edits minor edits like myself and i think julia's names are not on the letter but other than that i felt like the letter captured the fact that this

139board what would we'd be asked to vote on his supports uh the leahy school project and it lays out a bit about the msba's uh approval or you know conditional approval almost 61 million dollars in state funding so just reiterating that this would be sent to the city council in their capacity overseeing city funds uh to continue to work towards a plan where we can use the msba funds and city dollars to be able to move forward with this project yep that's right so maybe i will open it up to board members and in addition to again the edits of making sure all our names are on here is there anything in terms of content that you all would like to see different if not i mean you feel like the content is accurate i

140would at any point also entertain a motion to approve us you know with the with the edits of the names um sending this to the city council on behalf of the lae but let me start with uh alphabet oh let me do i have a motion first of all i was i was moving sorry jess go ahead i was gonna go right to you for your first comment okay so there's a motion i wanted to get on it before pat did okay so fully noted just made the motion i think julia did uh any any discussion all right so so hearing none i'll do a roll call vote to approve that jess yes knowing me yes pat yes maria yes julia yes and the chair votes yes so that's approved and again noted that it's

141approved with the edits to the names the rest of the content seemed seem fine thank you um and thank you to the ltu as well i mean i know that you all have been working on the leahey as well and your support is really valuable and important so much appreciated all right um thank you and so the last items here relate to uh minutes of both executive sessions and regular meeting minutes so i will start first with our last meeting december 8th 2021 meeting minutes i'll entertain a motion to approve those minutes any discussion all right hearing none jess yes knowing me yes pat yes maria yes julia abstain and the chair votes yes so those are approved um i'm going to take us to first the executive session executive committee but executive session minutes

142of december 3rd which is that accurate december 3rd i thought we had it right before the last meeting is that right maria yeah okay so that should read december 3rd right i'm sorry december 8th that was the meeting we had the executive session right before this meeting so i'm going to take that one next because it relates to the december 8th this is now the executive committee meeting minutes of december 8 2021. um do i have a motion to approve those second i think maria got in there with that any discussion all right uh jess yes knowing me yes pat yes maria yes julia spain and the chair of lts and then we're going back now to the executive session minutes for november 10 2021 and just to be clear maria was waiting on me

143to get her the votes that we did here as it related to our board response to the attorney general complaint on open meetings so just recorded those votes so do i have a motion to approve those so moved second second any discussion all right hearing none jess yes knowing me yes pat yes maria yes julia yes and the chair of ots so those are approved um so we are now at the end of our agenda uh just a couple of then reminders to to the board is i will be reaching back out to folks who served on the turnaround plan committee and open it up to others as well for this idea that again we'll give just the credit because i think that's where it started of making sure that we're now looking at the

144turnaround plan and laying out how we're actually just the cadence of reporting back to the board and publicly um on progress towards the the measurable annual goals so i'll be doing that as well i will be um providing a board an update as well on ongoing conversations with jonathan guzman and and uh and the mass association of school uh committees on training and you know sort of what that looks like so i'll update folks on that uh and then the final thing i'll just say is kate cook who's been the attorney for the lae and she's you know the la attorney primarily helping us with questions of open meeting law and process bylaws and things like that so she was just appointed first assistant attorney general for massachusetts so she's no longer with her firm

145which congratulations to her that's a big honor but it also means that um we're going to be working to appoint a new attorney to support the work of the lae so um kate uh you know has been part of a firm that's supporting us and so has provided some recommendations and i'll reach out to the board uh just in terms of a process for us to to make that decision in the next uh month or so so just a couple of uh updates there all right so at this point i'll entertain a motion to adjourn so moved have a second okay back in all right jess yes knowing me yes pat yes maria julia yes and the chair votes yes so we are adjourned thank you very much uh we will see you next month

146our next meeting is wednesday february 9th 2022 here as well thank you and good night [Music] you